To make sure I’m the right professional for you and that we’d work well together, I encourage you to consider taking advantage of my offer of a no obligation, complimentary, 45-minute conversation, specifically designed to answer all your questions and to allow us to get to know each other better.

This can be an invaluable exercise, allowing you to further your due diligence ahead of any final decision you make about whom you choose to engage.

Together with the practicalities of cost and availability, knowing what experience I have in what you are looking for help with is key, as well as how you feel about us working together.

There are some significant factors I respectfully suggest you research and establish to gain the certainty you are looking for, such as what are my qualifications and whether my services are covered by insurance, both of which I’d be more than happy to provide answers to.

I will also have some input on the matter, as I place a high value on us being a good fit in terms of personality, disposition, and communication style.

Ultimately, the decision will be yours as to whether you engage me; between us we’ll have done as much as it is possible to do ahead of any decision to work together, increasing the likelihood of it proving to be a good choice and wise investment on your part.

Amongst other things: reflection, searching questions, empathy, transparency, and a desire to support you in moving through and beyond whatever you are seeking to change.

You’ll be treated respectfully, listened to, and guided through whatever you become aware of that may feel uncomfortable or challenging.

Each of our conversations will provide an insight into your progress, understanding that we’ll be continuously focusing on possibilities.

There will only be the appropriate amount of exploration regarding what has happened to you at this point in your life. The majority of our energy, attention and focus would go into creating a future you would want, and not a carbon copy of your past.

To support our conversations there will be in-between session tasks that you’ll be invited to undertake, designed to maintain the momentum the conversations themselves will generate.

Firstly, take your time. Finding the right professional is key to you having the best possible experience, so this may mean researching and interviewing a few candidates before making your choice.

I suggest interviewing any professional you are considering because this is an important time in your life, a time when you are seeking the support and guidance of someone to navigate something that is preventing you from having the life you want.

Engaging someone under these circumstances should be undertaken with as much due diligence (on your part) as possible.

Interviewing more than one professional, rather than choosing the first you come across, can help you determine who will be the best choice for you – in circumstances such as this, comparison can give you insights and inspire questions you may not have considered at the outset.

As part of your preparation, I recommend you are clear about a number of things that will help with your selection. These things include:

• How much are you able/willing to invest financially and for how long? Knowing what you can afford will immediately rule some professionals out. Be prepared to share this information up front with anyone you are considering engaging, and use their response to determine if they remain an option or not.
• What, specifically, do you want help with? An effective professional will, in my opinion, want to know this in order to be able to tell you if they can help you. The more specific you can be the easier it will be for them. Their response will tell you if they have the confidence and experience you need.
• Consider what you’d like to get out of the working relationship. Your aims, together with any hopes and expectations, should be shared at the earliest opportunity to allow the professional in question to know what is in your mind. Be prepared and willing to have those aims, hopes and expectations explored.
• How experienced and qualified is the professional? While certificates and letters after a professional’s name does not guarantee effectiveness or success, they are an indicator as to how much they value their continuing professional development.
• How does the professional conduct themselves, how do they come across, and how much confidence do they inspire in you? Your intuitive sense as to their suitability to be the professional who can guide you to your desired outcome(s) will be a useful indicator.
• Practicalities such as location and communication platforms must be considered. For example, establish if sessions are in person or via remote audio or video platforms. Be clear on how you would like to engage with the professional.

I’m very sorry to hear you have had this experience. Your uncertainty about trying again is understandable and justified.

I know what it can be like to not have you hopes and expectations met. When I hear a report of someone who has put their faith in a fellow professional having a poor experience, it always fills me with disappointment.

While I cannot speak to any previous experience you have had, I do have some suggestions intended to minimize the likelihood of you having a similar encounter in the future.

In the past, those who came to me and reported having had a less than positive experience has often not taken the time to be sure their choice was a good one. This was either because they were in a rush to get help, didn’t want to keep looking, or because the professional came recommended and they took that recommendation as enough of an endorsement to not do their own due diligence.

Here are some reflections I invite potential clients to undertake who have asked me the question you have. They include:

• What have you learnt from the previous process you undertook to find that professional that would result in you taking a different approach next time, to ensure a better outcome?
• Did you have any intuitive sense, at any point, that the professional perhaps was somehow not right for you, but you ignored your intuition and went ahead anyway? If so, what made you ignore your intuition?
• How many different professionals did you ‘interview’ before choosing the one you did?

This last question often stops people in their tracks, primarily because the idea of ‘interviewing’ a professional was not even a consideration. For me, it is one of if not the most important steps you can take.

For this reason, and others that are suggested above, I strongly recommend adopting a mindset that looks to establish reasons why a professional would be a good fit, along with reasons why they wouldn’t.

I believe that any professional who understands the importance of being a good fit with their clients would be open to the idea of an ‘interview’.

My contribution to help you be as thorough as you can, and to establish if we’d be a good fit for each other, is to recommend a no obligation, complimentary conversation that allows you to ask all the questions you might have and get a feel for me and my communication style, with no requirement for you to take things any further afterwards.

I also recommend that you identify anything about your previous professional relationship that you would not want to experience again, as well as anything you did enjoy or appreciate, as these facts will help you with your selection process.

Being willing to take your time and carry out due diligence as suggested will, I believe, go a long way towards helping you make a better choice in the future, whether that is with me or any other professional you are considering.

That remains to be seen. Once I have understood what it is you are seeking help with, I’ll be in a better position to know. The offer of a no-obligation, complimentary 45-minute conversation is there to help us establish if we will be a good fit to work together.

Other factors that will influence this, which can be discussed in the 45-minute conversation, include:

Your budget: how many hours you are able/willing to invest in individual sessions.

Your appetite for learning: time permitting, I will always want to teach you something that, with practice, you can learn to apply for yourself so that, with time, you can also continue to help yourself.

Your hopes and expectations: if this is your first time seeking professional guidance, you won’t know what you are capable of, and, therefore, what is possible for you. Alternatively, you may be very clear about what you hope for and expect, in which case this will help us decide if I am the right professional for you.

Assessing your improvement: between us, we’ll be able to do this as we go. You’ll be the best judge, although, as I get to know you, I’ll be able to spot things that perhaps aren’t within your conscious awareness, in which case I’ll point them out. Your notetaking (a.k.a. journalling) in between our conversations will prove an ideal way to measure your progress and allow you to feed back to me how you are doing. This information, together with the changes we both observe, will help us know the nature of any in-between-session assignments, how much longer we continue for, and whether to lengthen the gap between our conversations.

What emerges as a result of our success: it sometime happens that clients become aware of other areas they’d like to work on or hadn’t realised were in any way problematic at first. I’ll always be transparent with you if I think something warrants extra time or attention, and there’s no obligation to have any additional sessions. One of the reasons I am committed to teaching clients as much as I can is so that they can continue to help themselves and don’t have to keep coming back for more sessions.

While we’ll be as thorough as it is possible to be to ensure this does not happen, the first thing to do would be to look at the reasons why we didn’t get the outcome(s) we had worked for.

Experience has shown that the reasons can be wide and varied, so I am keen to make sure this type of result doesn’t happen.

To do so will require diligence on both our parts and a commitment from you to be consistent with whatever we establish will be important for you to maintain, once we have identified the root cause of what we’d be working on, as well as understanding why it has been difficult to resolve so far (if you have tried already), and what might get in the way of our work being successful.

Once we have established this, we’ve put ourselves in a very good position to ensure that such an outcome doesn’t emerge.

Having said that, and as much as I’m sure you would like a guarantee that our work will be permanent, it would be unrealistic and unprofessional of me to suggest anything can be guaranteed. What will help is an open mind, trust, and flexibility on both our parts when working together, especially as we’ll both be investing in getting you the best possible outcome.

I don’t offer advice on things such as nutrition, exercise or supplements. Counsellors do not prescribe medication. Should you have any questions about any prescription you are currently using, I must refer you to your prescribing professional or pharmacist.

The investment for one hour of my time is €90. No VAT is added to these amounts.

Our conversations will be conducted remotely via phone or video, using the secure platform most suited to wherever you are in the world. This means that your location is no barrier to us having one-to-one conversations, albeit that we won’t be in the same place. WhatsApp, Skype and Zoom are the three platforms I use currently.

In the event you need to reschedule or cancel an appointment, no less than 48 hours’ notice, via email, is ideal. This will ensure there’ll be no cancellation or rescheduling fee applicable.

Should there be less than 48 hours’ notice, then there may be a fee, depending on whether that time slot can be filled with a conversation with another client.

I’m regulated by and affiliated to the following professional organisations:

• The General Professional Association for Counselling (De Algemene Beroepsvereniging voor Counselling - ABvC)
• The International Institute for Complementary Therapists (IICT)
• The Register of Complementary Care Professionals (Register beroepsbeoefenaren complementaire zorg - RBCZ)
• CAT (Complementary Alternative Therapists) Collective.

Let me first begin with the payment information. After each conversation, you will receive a payment link via email. Payment is due within 7 days. Once it has been received, you will be sent an invoice marked as ‘paid’, which you can then submit to your insurance company, should you have additional insurance coverage in The Netherlands.

When you are a resident of The Netherlands with additional health insurance coverage, there are several insurance companies which offer compensation. Contact your Dutch insurance company for more information before we start to work together regarding your available coverage for counselling and psycho-social therapy consultations, to prevent any surprises. Please be aware that any and all reimbursement claims are your sole responsibility.

Yes. Records of our conversations are required to be kept securely for a period of 20 years after our professional relationship has ended. This is following the regulations of the governing body for counselling in The Netherlands, The General Professional Association for Counselling (De Algemene Beroepsvereniging voor Counselling - ABvC).