Vivienne Pender

Who Am I?

I am a registered psychotherapist, a counsellor and clinical supervisor with many years experience. I enjoy my work. I work with adult individuals and couples. I believe in enabling you to live your life fully. This may be through exploring and resolving difficulties and conflicts, dealing with traumatic experiences, completing life transitions, or working out satisfying work/life direction. I am interested in what works best for you.

I have considerable experience working with:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Life/Work Direction
• Life/Work Balance
• Trauma
• Loss and grief
• Life transitions
• Palliative care
• Effective Communication
• Problem solving
• Relationships

Relationship Counselling

I ensure that when couples come in for counselling they experience a safe and respectful place in which to talk about the hard things that are happening in their relationship. Clients often tell me that, contrary to their expectations, the counselling was a surprisingly enjoyable way of working things out between them.

It makes a big difference in a relationship when couples learn the skills of effectively listening to each other, develop a preparedness to understand their partner, and as a consequence each begins to really feel understood. Even after a single session people can go away with some new ways of communicating with each other that will help them work through conflict differently.

Counselling through Change

What a difference it makes to take time to reflect on your personal/work life, and to receive good support while you make the changes.

People come to see me for help with transitions when they:

• are considering making a major change to a specific part of their life
• want to work out how to achieve a better life/work balance
• want support through a change they didn’t initiate
• have secret goals they are too frightened to reach out for
• just don’t know what they want in their life

About Me

I’ve been in Private Practice as a counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor for many years. During this time I was also a Coordinator of a Counselling and Training Centre, a lecturer in Counselling, and worked as a counsellor, psychotherapist, educator at a hospice until recently. Professionally, I have presented my work at NZAC, Psychodrama, and Palliative Care conferences, and have written several published articles.

I ensure my own life is full and healthy. I enjoy time with family and friends, meditation, reading, music, walking, gardening,  travel.

Clinical Supervision, Mentoring and Coaching

As a clinical supervisor, mentor, and coach I have much experience working with counsellors, psychotherapists, health professionals, and managers from many different areas and organisations. The reflective space of supervision is an invaluable way to maintain an overview of your work, and any ways in which your work and personal life may be adversely impacting on each other. Likewise it can be used to consider and strengthen the direction you want to be developing in your work/personal life. Skilful coaching will assist you to develop your life roles to create a full and expansive life.

I am highly experienced in a range of therapeutic modalities including: psychodrama, interactive drawing therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), mindfulness, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), therapeutic writing, and action methods. As a person-centred counsellor I am most interested in what works best for you as an individual professional. I will draw on the combination of my theoretical knowledge and practical experience to help you choose methods appropriate to your context and clients. Where I introduce something unfamiliar to you I am careful to provide clear explanations and examples.

​For supervisees who have an interest we can employ the creative choices of action methods and interactive drawing in supervision. They can give both a visual and felt overview of the work and its challenges. Setting out a system in action, or re-enacting an interaction with a client/colleague/manager can provide supervisees with a fuller sense of what the other person is experiencing. It quite quickly brings forward information from both thought and felt processes, leading to more choices in challenging situations.