Our counselling service in central London

You may be wondering whether counselling or psychotherapy is right for you. If you recognise any of the experiences outlined below or if you feel troubled in a way that is hard to describe, you may find therapy beneficial.

• Depression, anxiety, panic attacks
• Relationship difficulties
• Work issues such as stress, bullying or harrassment, redundancy
• Sexuality, sexual identity, sexual problems
• Illness or infertility
• Sleeping problems or insomnia
• Pregnancy, miscarriage or abortion
• Sexual abuse or rape
• Childhood abuse or neglect
• Disordered eating or self-harm
• Substance abuse: drugs, alcohol
• Self-destructive or compulsive behaviour
• Increasing use of pornography or the internet
• Bereavement and loss
• Anger management, bullying or violence
• Stress and work issues
• Post-traumatic stress
• Lack of meaning in your life

Our counsellors, based in central London but working throughout the capital, can work with you to make sense of long-standing patterns of thinking and behaviour, increase your understanding, and confront destructive patterns, working towards beneficial change.

Counselling usually focuses on specific and current issues, to find ways of resolving problems. Psychotherapy involves more in-depth work and may take longer. Practitioners at The Grove in London are committed to exploring with you, to decide which approach is right for you.

For meaningful change to take place, it can be important to explore the origins of a problem, rather than focus only on the symptoms. This is where a skilled facilitator can help to identify deeply held, often unconscious, beliefs or attitudes that can impact on the issue. Therapy can work on building a fuller or more appropriate way of living, which better expresses us individually in relation to the world.

The Grove offers a safe, confidential, non-judgemental environment for you to work on the issues that you present.

If you feel caught in self-destructive or compulsive patterns of behaviour around any of the following:

• alcohol, food, work, relationships, sex, gambling, drugs or other substances, internet or pornography, workaholic obsession

Please call us on 020 7637 7763 or email us on info@theprovepractice.com so that we can arrange an initial assessment session for you to discuss what’s on your mind with one of our therapist who specialises in addiction recovery and helping people troubled by self-destructive behaviour.

Then we will recommend a programme tailored to your needs, which may include any or a combination of :

• Individual therapy sessions
• Group work
• Personal development workshops
• Recovery coaching
• Hypnotherapy or other complementary therapies
• Referral to other healthcare professionals or residential rehab

The Grove Practice provides a wide range of therapeutic and corporate services to tackle problems related to addictive or compulsive behaviour. These services include assessment, evening recovery groups, relapse prevention – as well as offering individual therapy sessions and face-to-face or telephone coaching.

We have specific expertise in working with people who show compulsive self-destructive patterns of behaviour, facilitating them in finding meaning as a way out of these patterns, in order to find their authentic self, living free from addiction and compulsion.

Therapy can be funded by private health insurance. The Grove works with a number of medical insurers including Allianz, Aviva (was Norwich Union), Cigna, PruHealth, Standard Life. So please check with your insurer and let us know your policy number.

Our specialist addiction recovery team

Sarah Briggs MA   MBACP(Accred)  UKRCP FCIM  MAC

Sarah is a counsellor, executive coach and management development trainer.

She is co-director of The Grove Practice in the West End of London, where she maintains a therapy practice counselling individuals, couples and adult family groups. She is a qualified humanistic integrative counsellor and an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Sarah has received specialist therapy training in working with disordered eating, addiction and self-destructive behaviour, HIV and survivors of sexual abuse. 

Sarah is experienced in working with people who are troubled by their behaviour or compulsiveness around food, sex, internet pornography, gambling or feeling like a workaholic. She also works with partners or family members who are affected by a loved one’s addictive or compulsive behaviour.

She works to understand what lies behind the person’s self-destructive behaviour – the benefits and drawbacks that this brings. By understanding the gain from the behaviour, Sarah explores with her client how they could start to meet their needs in more productive ways. She draws upon Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and hypnotherapy techniques in this work, as well as from her background in humanistic psychology.

In addition to her therapy practice, she is also an accredited executive coach, management development trainer and organisation development consultant.  Sarah also manages The Grove’s programme of professional training and leads the development of The Grove’s corporate services: executive coaching, management development training and organisational development consulting.

Her professional memberships include: Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing; member of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council; member of the Association for Coaching.  She is also a certified Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming and a member of the ANLP, as well as holding a Diploma in Organisational Development and Executive Coaching and a Diploma in Business and Life Coaching - both qualifications recognised by the Association for Coaching. She also gained a Diploma in Hypnotherapy from a training organisation affiliated to the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council.

Mobile: 07973 368512
Email: info@theprovepractice.com
The Grove Practice Limited, 4 Wimpole Street, London W1G 9SH
020 7637 7763 www.thegrovepractice.com

Leanne Lowish

Leanne Lowish is an accredited coach, psychosynthesis counsellor, a coaching supervisor, a trainer and group facilitator. 

She has over 10 years’ experience of working in the field of training, coaching, counselling and addiction recovery. Her specialty lies in working with relationship dynamics, how they play out in teams and employer/employee interactions and the impact destructive dynamics have on people’s lives.

She also works with people in their personal lives to explore how their relationship to themselves, other people and the things they want stops them from finding a sense of purpose and achievement in their lives.

She works with other coaches through training, presentations and coaching supervision to enable them to be more effective in their coaching practice by providing a place to explore their client work, learn new tools and techniques, unpick relationship dynamics, reveal blind spots and explore the larger organisational or personal context.

She co-founded Recovery Coaching UK, an organisation that uses coaching to work with addiction. She is an associate with Eluminas a coaching and development company that works to transform relationships in business. She is part of the learning and development team at the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust and trains people to work with addicted prisoners. She runs accredited and non accredited training around coaching, counselling, supervising, management and leadership, working with addiction and self destructive behaviour, self care, burnout prevention and stress management.

Leanne is a kiwi who since arriving here in 1989 has worked in finance and banking, research, advertising, formal education, consultancy and the voluntary sector.
Her professional qualifications include: Accredited Coach with Association for Coaching (CTI trained); Diploma in Coaching Supervision, Post Graduate Diploma in Psychosynthesis Counselling; Masters in Education; Post Graduate Certificate in Counselling Approaches; Post Graduate Diploma in Community Education; Certificate in Working with Families with Substance Abuse; Certificate in Transpersonal Psychology, Certificate in Organisations and Relationship Systems Coaching Fundamentals.

She is accredited with the Association for Coaching UK, is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Federation of Drug and Alcohol Professionals.

Mobile: 0798 505 8756
Email: leanne@leannelowish.co.uk
Website: www.leannelowish.co.uk

If you want to talk about how you can improve your current relationship, or manage a separation, you may find it useful to talk to one of our couple therapists. Often, the focus can be on discovering whether or not your relationship has a future.

Who is welcome?

The Grove’s central London counsellors respect differences of culture, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. You are welcome whether you are married, living together, separated, divorced or single and whatever your sexual orientation or identity.

What does couple therapy entail?

Couple counselling or psychotherapy can help you take time to see your relationship from a fresh perspective. You can discuss your feelings, values and expectations, and your therapist may work with you on how to communicate more clearly. You and your partner have an opportunity to explore with your therapist your roles, desires and behaviour, to think about what you want from your relationship and what you can do to change your situation for the better. It also gives you the space to explore, in confidence, complex or difficult issues, including areas of less obvious tension or conflict, and your sexual relationship.

Staying together or separating?

Couple sessions can help you decide if you wish to maintain your relationship. However, if you decide to separate, these sessions can support you in managing an ending.

How can family therapy help?

The stress and strains of everyday life, together with the tensions that each member may contribute, can put families under immense pressure. Likewise, personal problems can be made worse by a stressful family life, and it can be a challenge to the family group when an individual family member is going through a process of personal change. Change of any kind can be challenging to how a family works.

Where tensions continue or get worse, it can be beneficial to seek professional help in order to find a way through. You can see our counsellor individually, as a small group or as a whole family together.

Our therapist will remain objective and is specially trained to facilitate families in exploring and overcoming their difficulties through better communication and changing detrimental patterns of behaviour.

The impact of separation and divorce

The Grove’s counsellors and therapists can also support you and your children through a divorce or separation, when all members of the family are affected and strong emotions or tensions can exist – including blended or extended families.

How can adolescent therapy help?

Adolescence is a developmental phase and a period of change that is of critical importance. How this period of upheaval is navigated can have implications for the rest of an individual’s life.

By working with an experienced adolescent therapist, the young person can describe and explore problematic areas such as conflict within the family, behavioural difficulties, stress or anxiety, feeling suicidal, sexual feelings, social skills and relating to other people. Adolescent counselling aims to engage with the problems described, and through increased awareness of thoughts and feelings, to develop communication skills and improve self-esteem.

Parental / guardian involvement

Individual counselling or psychotherapy with adolescents in London can be combined with some meetings with the parent(s) or guardian(s), and/or family therapy sessions, depending on the circumstances.