Therapy sessions available... in my new room

I am writing this blog post in my new therapy room, not far from where I live in East London. It’s my first day here, and I feel like a new boy, starting a new term in a new school. Exciting!

The room is in Space To Be You, a mental health and wellbeing centre in Hackney, situated in the grounds of St Joseph’s Hospice. This venerable institution opened in 1905, and is an important part of the local community today, on busy Mare Street, across from London Fields, north of Bethnal Green (where I live) and south of bustling Hackney Central. Much newer, Space To Be You houses a mix of psychotherapists and counsellors, and complementary, bodywork and massage therapists.

I’ll be offering therapy sessions from here, using the solution-focused approach I specialise in, while allowing ideas from the systemic and narrative practices I have also trained in to influence what I do.

Why the move? Since being self-employed again, from 2010, my work has been based at home, though my training has always taken me out and about, all around the UK and beyond. The Covid pandemic and all its lockdowns put paid to this though, and along with so many other people, my work and my home completely coincided, with all my training and my therapy taking place online.

So one reason is, to move from being locked down to being freed up! To get out of my home environment and into the community outside.

Second, I want to devote more protected time to my practice. Teaching and consultation can tend to dominate, always threatening to take over the calendar. I have done so much talking, thinking and writing about the solution-focused approach for so many years now, and I would like to be focusing on doing it a little more.

I have always remained a practitioner, and since 2010 I have provided solution-focused therapy in lots of places, in addition to my small office at home, including GP surgeries, schools, prisons (most memorably with a prisoner who was due - and keen - to have a second session with me, but who was locked in his cell due to staff shortages, so we had a brief session with me on the landing outside, talking with him though the grille in his cell door) and in people’s homes.

This variety has been stimulating, but I think the time has come to spend a bit more time in one place, a space to be me, in which my clients can have the space they need (and my office/study at home is too small, really). So I was pleased to find Space To Be You, just a cycle ride over the Regent’s Canal away.

From 5th October I will be here from Wednesdays - on Tuesdays till then - and have a 5 hour block booked from 12 noon to 5pm. It’s got good transport links, so should be accessible from pretty much anywhere in London, and from places just outside. I’ll be offering online sessions too, from first thing in the morning, so most Wednesdays I’ll be offering therapy all day (and will still have a little bit of flexibility to see people on other days occasionally).

If you happen to be reading this and you don’t know me personally, and are interested in having some solution-focused therapy sessions (or just one - single sessions are not uncommon), please do get in touch. If you do know me, and you wanted to let people know of my increased availability to offer therapy, that would be great and much appreciated.

Guy Shennan

30 August 2022