Courses we run
If you want to develop counselling skills or deepen your self-knowledge, we provide short introductory courses in Counselling Skills and Theory. The courses are held over about ten weeks, one evening per week, in two stages.
The Stage One course (Counselling Skills) is open to anyone interested. A certificate is issued on successful completion of the course, and certificate holders are then eligible to join Stage Two.
For further information about our next Stage One course, please email or phone us (see our Contact page) and leave your name, address and phone number. We will send details on to you.
CPD training for our counsellors
we offer CPD training for our counsellors which. T hese courses are held four times a year on a Saturday at St Mark’s Church in Lorne Road E7. We run these courses in order for our trainee counsellors to be as up to date in their knowledge as possible and as a social event for our counsellors to meet each other and share ideas.
Recently we held a workshop in eating disorders and here is a review from one of our attendees who is a placement counsellor with us.
This workshop brought into focus the activity of eating. It slowed down the usual automatic process of eating. Slowing the process down allowed an exploration of what can happen around the activity of eating.
From the outset of the workshop it was struck me there was more to eating than just addressing a healthy appetite at meal times. There are rituals processes habits aversions memories and concerns and human relationships all potentially mixed with eating.
When young and vulnerable significant others can encourage and impact our choices tastes and reactions to food. ‘You must always eat….. ’ ‘If you don’t eat that you won’t grow into a big boy.’ Some encouragement of this sort may be useful from a nutritional point but not helpful if used as emotional trading revenue –to give or withhold warmth conditionally in response to responses from dictates.
Without having the emotional vocabulary to process experiences at the time issues remain unaddressed buried and erupt unexpectedly or sometimes repeatedly in later life.
Food being a human need a number of industries have grown around food. The media influence our appetites by advertising products which peers may buy into and social pressure upon young minds can create habits for foods which can become quasi addictive.
In the workshop people had stories of their issues and relationships to food. Each had knowledge of their own narrative.
The videos showed some extremes of issues with food. There is a range of addressing eating disorders. What was quite striking was the range and ways of experience in relation to eating which can lead to eating concerns. There seems often potentially significant process going on around the process of eating which can impact our experience of eating.
