Patricia Ford

Are you looking to make changes in your life? I’d like to help! Let’s work together to understand your troubles, manage difficulties, find solutions, and build positive, lasting change.

I help people 17 years and older with:

• coming out
• gender issues
• anxiety
• depression
• working with dreams and nightmares
• grief
• loss
• trauma
• sexual abuse
• coping with stress
• relationship difficulties
• building assertiveness and confidence
• life transitions
• clinical supervision

Counselling/Therapy Services

Sharing problems in a safe, confidential space with a respectful and skilled listener can help you live more freely. It is also important to find a person you feel comfortable working with.

You can expect me to be welcoming, professional, supportive and confidential. I will attend and listen carefully to you, starting from where you are at and working collaboratively to explore what you want to achieve from therapy.

We’ll be working with what emerges between us as our relationship develops. Within the emotional safety, support and mutual trust of the relationship there will be space for you to explore the issues you are struggling with, make sense of these and explore new coping strategies to achieve the changes you want.

As part of the therapy process we may explore how past patterns can illuminate the present and help to point the way forward. As a result, you may come to know and understand yourself better, develop more compassion toward yourself, and become freer to be your authentic self, enjoying greater intimacy with others and a healthy more productive life.

Counselling/Therapy Approach

My work is grounded in deep respect for each person and the capacity that we all have, to make positive changes in our lives. My initial counselling training involved an eclectic approach designed to match individual client’s needs.

Keen to work at a deeper level with clients and facilitate more enduring change, I studied psychotherapy and became interested in working in a more relational and psychodynamic way. I continue to keep my client at the centre of the work, exploring past experiences as they relate to the present and employ mindful awareness strategies. Having recently completed a second EMDR training I can offer this as an integral part of psychotherapy.

I appreciate the impact of brain biology on emotions, relational patterns and the therapy process and the evidence this provides that talk therapy works!

Background and Experience

• Working in a University counselling service and as a Guidance Counsellor in secondary schools developed brief and focused therapy skills.
• Psychotherapy training and private practice experience have broadened my experience in working at greater depth and facilitating longer term therapy.
• I am part of the LGBTI or Rainbow Community and enjoy working with clients who are coming out, struggling with sexual identity or managing gender dysphoria and transition.
• I have strong connections to the tangata whenua and appreciate and respect cultural difference of all types.
• I presented parenting workshops, in support of parents with young children and teens, was a volunteer breastfeeding counsellor and CORSO National Executive member.

Supervision Services

I offer clinical supervision to counsellors, student counsellors, nurses, social workers, case managers, community support workers and those in other work settings. You can expect a safe and supportive emotional environment in which we will establish an agreement about how we will work together. This may include focusing on your:

• casework and the client-practitioner relationship
• role and responsibilities
• self-care
• workplace issues
• professional goals and development
• ethical dilemmas and professional issues

Supervision is a chance to reflect on your work from a different perspective. It is confidential and conducted in an atmosphere of curiosity, exploration and openness to learning. It also sits within the context of our work in a bicultural nation and multicultural society.
If you are looking for a supervisor please contact me. We can meet and you can share where you are at, where you would like to be, and ask any questions you might have about establishing a positive supervision relationship. If you decide we are compatible and there is value for you in working with me, we can then negotiate a supervision agreement. Contact me for an initial meeting and I will respond within 48 hours.