Susan Sliedrecht

My role is to provide confidential support and guidance to help you resolve personal, social or psychological challenges. Put more simply – helping you to find ways to deal with the things in life that trip you up, so you can live the kind of life that you want to. I do not hold a waiting list – email me to to see if I have availability. 

Areas of Special Interest

• Sexual Abuse
• Physical Injury
• Health Challenges
• Life Transitions
• Mental Health especially depression, anxiety and PTSD
• Sex and Intimacy
• Grief and Loss
• Stress Management

My Counselling Style

I work toward creating a safe non-judgmental environment where you can talk about struggle and difficulty in ways that you really feel heard. I try to balance that with a forward-looking focus as to what will be helpful to you now in dealing with these issues. My intention in a counselling session is that you leave knowing that you have been heard as well as leaving a counselling session with one or two key actions points that you can take to help you on your wellness journey.

How I Work With You

My practice is based on the belief that you are the expert in your own life – so it is important to me that we work together to understand what you want from counselling. You choose the destination and we work together on the journey to get there. I can work with you to identify emotional triggers, unhelpful thinking patterns, helpful and unhelpful stories we tell ourselves, barriers or blockers that are currently in your life. Together we can look at ways at how you can get the better of the things that trip you up – rather than them getting the better of you. You may call this developing helpful strategies to manage your life more effectively.

Counselling Approach

My background is in Narrative Therapy: Narrative therapy is a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centers people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives.

I work with a range of different clients across different therapy areas as the need arises. I have expertise in Solution Focused, Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I have extensive experience working with clients around trauma and grief and loss – both physical loss such as a physical injury as well as bereavement.

Over 15 years’ Counselling Experience:

• Private practise seeing a range of clients
• ACC registered counsellor for both Physical Injury and Sexual Harm
• Restorative Justice – with people who have experienced sexual harm
• Working with people with physical disabilities and health issues
• Worked as a Practise Leader in the second largest mental health NGO in NZ
• Worked as a counsellor at hospice
• Extensive experience in supervising a range of health practitioners

Corporate Coaching and Development Experience

Coaching and mentoring corporate clients. This includes managing large workloads, managing stress, improving communication within the workplace, work life balance. This is very helpful for private clients as well.

Supervision Services

I believe that supervision is an opportunity to reflect on one’s practice in a non judgmental exploratory way. Important for me is that it includes reflecting through the lens of current developments in our field. Hence my own professional development and staying abreast of what is happening in our field is very important.

I have completed supervision papers at a post graduate level. As previously indicated, I have a Masters degree in counselling and a Masters degree in Social Work.

My work on Grief, Loss and Hope has been published as well as work I have done in the area of Sex, Intimacy and Spinal Cord Injury. I have presented at a number of conferences on these topics.

I supervise a range of Health Practitioners including counsellors, nurses, social workers, peer support workers, school guidance counsellors and students. I also supervise people in the legal profession and other professions working with vulnerable children and or adults.  I have supervised people for over 20 years.

My areas of particular expertise include:

• adolescents,
• health sector including hospice,
• trauma both physical injury and sexual harm
• team leaders and managers – my Human Resources training experience has added to my skill set in this area.