The Positive Living Team

Short-term counselling and therapy.

We offer short-term counselling or therapy of up to six sessions, however we find that need varies greatly from student to student – some attend for one session while others choose to meet for six. Our service aims to help students work through their difficulties, understand themselves better and find better ways of coping in their academic or personal lives.

The team is staffed by qualified counsellors and psychotherapists; Nicoletta Abbate, Meg Lavery and Claire O’Donnell.  We offer a variety of therapeutic approaches; Person-Centred Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Emotion Focused Therapy. 

Person-Centred Counselling

Person-Centred Counselling is a process that seeks to help you focus on and understand more clearly the issues that concern or trouble you. Counselling can help you explore your feelings and discover what lies behind whatever seems troubling or confusing. Counselling can also help with making decisions, choices or changes that are right for you.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a short-term psychological treatment. You will work with your therapist to identity and understand your problems in terms of the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviour. CBT is typically based in the here-and-now and has been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment for a variety of problems from anxiety and panic attacks, to low mood and poor self-esteem. More information about CBT can be found here What is CBT - Royal College Factsheet.

Emotion Focused Therapy

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) is a short term psychotherapy approach substantially based on the principles of emotion theory and attachment theory. Emotionally focused therapy proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated, can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self-experiences. Emotions are connected to our most essential needs. They rapidly alert us to situations important to our advancement. They also prepare and guide us in these important situations to take action towards meeting our needs.  EFT focuses on helping clients become aware of and express their emotions, learn to tolerate and regulate them, reflect on them to make sense of them and transform them. You can read more about EFT here http://www.emotionfocusedclinic.org/whatis.htm

Following your initial contact with the service (either via phone or email) you will be invited to attend a one-to-one meeting with a member of the team.  This appointment will last approximately 25 minutes and is your opportunity to find out if counselling or therapy is the right approach for yo. Sometimes this appointment is enough in itself. 

Other options may be;

• Up to six sessions of individual counselling/therapy
• Referral to workshops
• Referral to longer term groups
• Signposting to relevant self-help resources
• Referral to external agencies for appropriate support

Most sessions are organised on a weekly basis and typically last for up to 50 minutes.

Depending on the nature of the difficulties you are facing we can also help you to identify and refer on to more specialised support.

T: 0141 273 1393 |  E: positiveliving@gcu.ac.uk