Marian Leicester

Talking sure does work! I have over 40 years’ experience of my part in making this happen, for many people, over a very wide range of issues. I work alongside people to help them work out how they can get on top of issues that are bothering them.

Areas of Special Interest

• relationships
• life transitions
• self esteem
• anxiety
• depression
• stress
• grief & loss
• trauma
• family issues
• family violence
• sexual abuse
• spirituality
• working with dreams
• clinical supervision for a wide range of helping professionals

Counselling Services

It’s essential to find the right “fit” in a counsellor, as a foundation for the important work to be done.

You will find me warm, supportive, welcoming and professional. I am committed to being up front with you at all times. You will experience me listening really closely and deeply, as bit by bit, or maybe all in a rush, you find your way, at your pace, to tell me what you need me to know. I am generous with my feedback, which I aim to present as positively and usefully as I can.

In these ways, we build a mutual trust that enables the issues to be more fully brought to the surface. This then triggers the creative process of generating and exploring new and life-changing ways of responding to the issues.

I continue to marvel at how this process of co-creativity between client and counsellor can so often, and sometimes, so surprisingly, lead to safe, effective, long-term changes for the better.

(Note: I no longer take new ACC clients)

Counselling Approach

Fundamentally person-centred, solution focussed, based on a foundation of understandings from family systems therapy, narrative therapy, feminist therapy, dreamwork, gestalt, psychodramatic role theory.

Background and Experience

I began my professional career over 40 years ago, working with couples in the then-national relationship services agency, moving to work as a counsellor / supervisor in the public health sector. Then, for many years, I managed a counselling agency in the not-for-profit sector, working with whoever arrived on the doorstep, and doing extensive Family Court and ACC Sensitive Claims counselling (Note: I no longer take new ACC clients), and co-facilitating groups addressing family violence. Since 1990, I have been self-employed as counsellor and supervisor.

Supervision Services

I have wide-ranging supervision experience – with established counsellors and therapists, student counsellors, medical personnel (doctors, nurses), social workers, case managers, community support workers, managers from a number of different work settings.