Contact Details and Fees
| office: | Unit 5 Ground Floor |
| fees: | $90 per session | telephone: | (04) 461-6068 |
| e-mail: | hilary.smith@xtra.co.nz |
| postal address: | PO Box 13834 |
| professional membership: |
MNZAC |
| office: | Unit 5 Ground Floor |
| fees: | $90 per session | telephone: | (04) 461-6068 |
| e-mail: | hilary.smith@xtra.co.nz |
| postal address: | PO Box 13834 |
| professional membership: |
MNZAC |
If this is your first experience of counselling, you may have no idea what to expect. While counselling is a little bit different for each person, our work together will broadly follow this pattern.
If you decide you want counselling and choose to come to see me, the first thing to do is make an appointment. Call me on 461-6068 and we'll agree on a day and time.
When you arrive, ring the bell to let me know you're there. Come in to the waiting room and take a seat. There is usually a jug of fresh water there, so help yourself to a drink if you're feeling thirsty. I'll come and invite you into the counselling room when it's time for your appointment.
A counselling session lasts for about 50 minutes. At the end of each session we take care of payment and booking for any future sessions.
In your first counselling session we'll spend some of the time exchanging information. I'll tell you a few things about the counselling process, and you may have some ideas or questions about counselling that you want to discuss.
I'll also want to ask you for some basic information: contact details and a few scene-setting things like how old you are and what kind of work you do. Knowing what your life is ordinarily like gives me some perspective when we talk about the issues you want to tackle.
After that I'll ask you to tell me about whatever it is you want to deal with. You tell me your story. I listen. I might ask a few questions to make sure I'm getting the right end of the stick. Mostly I'm paying attention to you and to what you're telling me.
Once I understand something of your situation, we'll explore what you want to achieve through counselling. When we're clear where you want to get to, we'll discuss how that might happen, and work out a plan for your counselling.
After all that, we'll start in on the first steps of the work you've planned.
So by the end of your first session you'll have had a good talk about whatever you're dealing with. You'll have decided on what you want to achieve, and you'll have developed a plan to help you do that. And you will have started activating your plan.
As well as that, you and I will have got to know each other a bit. So you'll feel more confident about how working with me will suit you. If you decide you'd like to try someone else, I'll be happy to give you some names. But if you're happy with how things have gone, then we can book in your next session.
Follow on sessions usually focus on the plan we worked out in your first session. The plan is usually quite flexible. People often modify their goals as the process goes on. Sometimes you need to respond to developments in your situation that are outside your control. Sometimes the counselling opens up possibilities you hadn't considered earlier. So we review your plan as we go, and adapt it where that's useful.
The sessions might include a whole range of activities. We might practice skills you want to develop. We might explore some ideas or responses you have, especially if they aren't working well for you. We will probably look at the choices open to you, and how they can work best for you.
You can be sure we'll do a fair bit of talking. We may work things out on the white board. Sometimes mapping your situation using items in the room can help make things very concrete. We'll be looking for ideas, activities and resources that that help you to make sense of your questions, and move towards your goals.
There are many different ways to approach counselling. What is important is that we find something that you find useful. If what we do doesn't feel useful to you, let me know that and we can try something else.
There are no firm rules about how many sessions you will find useful, or how often to have them. Some people like to book a regular weekly or fortnightly time if they are going to have a series of sessions. Some prefer to take longer in between appointments to see how things develop. We'll work out a practical arrangement that fits your circumstances, and modify it as your requirements change.
What you talk about in a counselling session can sometimes be very personal. I keep what you say private. No one else will listen to any phone messages you leave, or read any notes I make.
Maintaining confidentiality is part of my professional responsibility. There are some limits to confidentiality.
Within these limits, I will keep your information private. You may find that your idea of how private some information needs to be changes. Sometimes some secrets feel less urgent to keep after you've had a good look at them in counselling. But that's up to you.
My primary counselling qualification is a Bachelor's degree in Counselling. I also have a BA in English.
I am a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC). This is the main professional body for counsellors in New Zealand. NZAC guides standards and ethics for the profession. It provides a complaints process for the use of clients who are unhappy with their counsellor.
For the last four years, I worked as a counsellor for Relationship Services in its Wellington office and most recently I served as acting Clinical Leader for the Wellington area. This experience gave me the opportunity to work with couples facing a vast range of relationship dilemmas. I have also been developing counselling resources for Relationship Services for the last six years — something I will continue to do for them part time now that I have launched my private counselling practice.
I have spent twenty years working in a range of roles including advocacy, training, research, management and mediation. I have worked for unions, community agencies, and in the tertiary education sector. It's a varied background and gives me broad experience to bring to counselling alongside my professional counselling training.
The fee for counselling is $90 for each session.