Rate Claire Sims

Hello & welcome to my profile....

I am a fully qualified counsellor and work in the UK. I have 19 years of counselling & professional experience which you can see below. I support clients with a wide range of issues including stress and anxiety, relationship issues, trauma and abuse, sexual violence, domestic violence & coping with grief and loss.

I believe in treating everyone with respect, sensitivity, and compassion. I work in a trauma informed way and at your pace. Essentially what is important for you to know is that my work is client led, I am here to work alongside you, to support you - I want you to feel in control and I’ll work with you in a collaborative way that suits you. Taking the first step to sign up for therapy can take courage and I am proud of you for getting started!

I started my counselling training back in 2000 when I realised in my life, I needed a change. Prior to this I had been a hairdresser and stay at home Mum when I began to yearn for something different. I felt unrest in areas of my life, I needed more, though I did not recognise it at the time I wasn’t happy. Unconsciously I had started to listen to ‘myself’ and started embarking on a new career- enrolling myself on a counselling course! At the time, my naïve belief was because I wanted to ‘help people’! 20 years later I can reflect and realise this was the start of my journey to recognising how unhappy I was in my life, the challenges I was facing in my current circumstances, what difficulties I had been in denial of, and what I needed to change. It allowed me to develop ways to take back control of my life and make positive changes.

My training was as a psychodynamic counsellor and that is at the core of how I work, however, over the years I have evolved and developed a more expansive way of working, so I would now describe myself as an integrative counsellor. Really what is important for you to know is that my work is client lead, I’m here to work alongside you, to support you - you are in control and I’ll work with you in a way that suits you.

I started seeing clients in 2005 and since then have worked in a variety of different organisations, services, and settings. Not only as a counsellor but on helplines, as a support worker or a manager.

Here is some of my experience:

• Counsellor at Suffolk Rape Crisis (SRC) Dealing with any form of sexual violence (Rape, attempted Rape, Childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, image based abuse or ‘Revenge Porn’, coercive control, sexual violence within relationships/marriage, stalking & harassment, women going through the CJS from report to court)

• Counselling Coordinator and Services manager at SRC

• Set up an Outreach Service at SRC

• Launched Video counselling service at SRC

• Trained counsellors to work Online and on the Telephone

• Bereavement counsellor at St Elizabeth Hospice’s emotional wellbeing service. Also supporting patients and families.

• I worked with Clarity Wellbeing Services facilitating groups and providing Counselling to new mums and those with Post Natal depression

• Support worker with a service that supports people who have traits of or a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD- or EUPD Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder)

• Trainer for KUF (Knowledge & Understanding Framework) Personality Disorder Awareness Training

• Counselling coordinator for the Suffolk Mind counselling service

• Set up and worked on Suffolk mind’s emotional support helpline

• I launched a dementia counselling service (supporting those with dementia and their families and carers) and a telephone counselling service.

• IAPT Counsellor (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies)

• Counsellor at First Stop (Braintree); Halstead Mind; Progress Counselling Essex

• Facilitating ‘Food & Mood’ and ‘Anger Management’ groups

• Helpline Supervisor and coordinator for Maldon (Essex) Mind (NIGHT Helpline)

• Service Coordinator for a telephone service supporting elderly people in North Essex to reduce loneliness.

So, when people ask, ‘what sort of issues do you deal with?’ or ‘what sort of client do you see?’ I say I see anyone- I see clients- I see you as an individual. I ‘deal’ with anything! The realty is you may go to see a counsellor with a specific ‘problem’ or ‘issue’ and choose the counsellor based on this. Invariably though, there are many different threads or parts of life that are playing into this one area, or indeed be separate from it. This is, or can be, a very normal part of the counselling process. Until you start counselling you may not even know what you need to explore!

What I say is, just get started, find a counsellor, or start that journey with me and if by the time you come to the end of our counselling together and there is a specific problem or issue we feel we still haven’t resolved, we can work out the next steps for you.