Rachel Burrows

The therapeutic relationship can help with feeling safe and connected. I offer a non-judgemental space for you to be heard, explore your experiences and issues, your situation, difficulties and sense of yourself, so that you may reduce your distress, grow in self-awareness and are empowered to move towards change or acceptance. It is the experience of safety and acceptance in the therapeutic relationship that can make changes you want seem possible. I am qualified and experienced in working with adults; I continue to advance my practice with a growing specialism, interest and additional training in trauma counselling,  mindfulness teaching practice, and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) commonly called ‘Tapping’.

I am proud to be a registered member of:

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society

Mindfulness Teachers Association

Where I work

I provide an airy and light room space for sessions with a window, in two different locations in Hampshire.

Winchester, SO23 - Accessibility: first floor via stairs - 5 minutes from junction 9 M3

Part of a diverse community of therapists at counselling@unit12, in a busy community building.

There is limited parking on site, with roadside parking near by.

Location for the space at counselling@unit12 can be found on the map at bottom of the page.

Odiham, RG29 - Accessibility: ground floor, 2 steps up to the room - 5 minutes from junction 5 M3 

Near Fleet, Farnham, Hook, Alton and 6 miles East of Basingstoke  -  we have exclusive use of a counselling room located off the eclectic high street in an historic village location

There is roadside parking, with time restrictions in some areas of the High Street & there is a public pay & display within a couple of minutes.

Online sessions are available via Zoom – please state in your enquiry if this is something you are interested in.

Would you like to book an appointment?

 My approach

I provide you with a space to be heard, where you can feel safe and connected. You and your needs for counselling are important. Together we can understand what you need from therapy and that becomes our focus. Your individuality and particular issues are held in the space, that is for you to bring and express in a way and at a pace that feels right for you. All of you is welcome, I believe every person is beautiful in the light of their own meaning.

I have experienced clients being able to connect with and express themselves in ways that feel helpful for them through drawing, talking about/using colour and choosing images and objects to represent their feelings, sense of self and their experiences.  Together we have thought about how to explore and sometimes a pen and paper, the structure of a diagram, a mind map, or focus on a task can bring new self-awareness.

These ways of working are available to you and can be adapted for working online, should you wish to do so.

I offer individual counselling for adult clients:

• Face to face counselling

• Online counselling (considered by individual arrangement)

• Each session is 50 minutes

• Open ended or set number of sessions as needed & agreed

How might an initial session be helpful before I decide to go ahead?

The aim of counselling is to provide you, the client, with the opportunity to talk about any problems or difficulties you have that are bothering you and to explore your thoughts and feelings in a safe place, without judgement.

As such, an initial session to explore what it is you want from counselling and to consider if client and counsellor are a suitable match, aims to help this process. It is an opportunity for you to ask questions and to share and think together about fears, hopes and expectations you may have about the counselling process and any previous experiences of counselling you may have had.

To help this process, some information about your experiences, significant life events, past and present relationships, and how you are day to day, can be supportive to understanding what life is like for you and what you may need from counselling. You only need to share what you feel safe and are comfortable to share. There is no expectation to go to deeply into your issues at this point, we would work together to build trust and safety in our relationship to help enable this in sessions going forward.

Whilst it is hoped that we will be able to proceed to work together, there may be a number of reasons why we decide that this is not possible and as such there is no obligation or expectation that sessions will continue after an initial session.  

If you do wish to proceed and it is agreed that we can work together, further sessions can be agreed with a view that the objectives of the counselling are decided by you and what you want to achieve.

 What is Trauma Counselling?

Trauma Counselling brings to the counselling relationship, a focus around unresolved and unprocessed experiences of the past, that are held as trauma in the systems within the human body and may be experienced as persistent irritability, disturbances, fear, panic, avoidance, disconnection, emotional fluctuations/instability, breakdown in relationships and high anxiety. Understanding what you may be experiencing through a trauma informed approach, can help to understand how experiences of the past may be impacting on your connection to people and experiences of the world around you.

Trauma informed approaches can be integrated into our work together. We can consider and identify what it is that you may be experiencing now as symptoms and distress, and acknowledge ways that you have been coping that have enabled you to get this far. Collaborating together, we consider and focus on what it is you would like to change and what it is that you need in order to make the changes you want.

The presence of another allows us to feel safe so that we may better make this heroic inner journey.

- Peter Levine

We begin with creating a sense of inner safety and experience of safety in our counselling space and relationship in the here and now, so that we can begin working to understand and recognise your symptoms of trauma safely.

As the therapy continues, we consider the meaning of body sensations, changes and fluctuations in emotional states, intrusive memories and thoughts and the impact on your life and relationships. Making sense of your experiences, any memories, and associated sensations is the focus, rather than trying to recall and retell the detail of the events, that often is not accessible in the fragmentation that trauma creates. This is paced work, that takes time and is centred around safety, stabilisation, re-connecting and developing resources to experience increased connection and support a sense of calm in your body and mind and to the world and those around you.

 Trauma counselling offers hope for connection and safety in relationships, so that life may feel more fulfilling and meaningful.

What is Emotional Freedom Technique ? 

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) commonly known as ‘Tapping’, is an emotional healing technique which is also capable of relieving many physical symptoms. 

EFT is often termed a modern meridian therapy as it has evolved from therapies that can trace their origins back many thousands of years, eg  Acupuncture. 

It contends that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system and meridian points are tapped on sequentially to balance this flow of energy.   

In the Applied EFT approach, we work together to incorporate it as tool into our work, to identify a particular intense feeling and work together to reduce the intensity. 

This can work well alongside the counselling therapy, as we often will have identified and explored experiences, and the origins and patterns associated with emotional states. 

EFT can help process the feelings and reduce intensity that may still be aroused in these associations.

EFT is a tool for processing the emotions associated and that may feel stuck or unhelpfully present still, or that are impacting our choices or capacity to be present in our experiences and environments now.

Carolyn Spring (writer, survivor and researcher) offers reflections on their own experience of the transformation that therapy can bring:

This continued training, reading, research, & experiential workshops, are valuable in my professional development and helps me to meet you, the client, in your individual experiences at various life stages, significant life events. I am experienced in working with a variety of issues in short and open-ended counselling, including: