Individual Online Counselling for Adults across the UK & Europe
Ongoing therapy | Weekly or fortnightly | Relational support
Maybe you're the one people call kind, conscientious, good-hearted. You're quick to check everyone else is okay. You might have family, friends, a life that looks full from the outside — and still feel somehow alone in it, watching other people seem to move through life with an ease you can't find. Perhaps you're unsure what you actually want, find yourself looking to other people for reassurance, or notice that decisions that used to feel manageable have become more difficult. Or maybe there’s just this sense that something doesn’t feel right but you can’t name it.
Perhaps day to day it feels like you're just going through the motions. You’ve started to notice a sadness that feels difficult to share. A heaviness that leaves you feeling like you’re walking through treacle. Even the hobbies, interests and activities that used to feel enjoyable don't quite feel the way they used to. Or perhaps you're feeling everything more intensely than usual, and finding it harder to keep your feelings from spilling into the rest of your life. You withdraw, snap at people you love, or find yourself reacting in ways that don't feel like you.
And underneath all of that is the endless feeling that it's still not enough. That you're still not enough.
Sometimes this builds slowly and then something happens — a relationship ends, you lose someone you love, you learn that what you really want in life can no longer happen, or life takes a direction you didn't choose — and feelings that had been easier to live with suddenly become harder to ignore. And somewhere in there, you find yourself thinking, “is this it?” — scared that life will always feel this way.
Whatever has brought you here, therapy gives you somewhere to be honest about how things really feel. We can start with what's happening for you now, while making room for earlier experiences and relationships where they become relevant.
Laurie Hole - BACP accredited psychotherapeutic counsellor offering online therapy across the UK from Poole, Dorset.
Working with you, not fitting you into a box
Every person who comes to therapy is different, so the way we work together should be too. My foundation is person-centred, which means I trust your own sense of what you might need, and the work always follows your pace. I also draw on trauma-informed, relational, body-based and parts-based approaches, bringing in whichever fits what’s actually happening for you, rather than asking you to fit a particular approach.
We’ll usually begin with what’s happening in your life now — how you’re feeling, what you’re struggling with, and the patterns or relationships that are causing difficulty. Therapy with me explores more than just your thoughts about what’s happening. I’m interested in your whole experience — what you feel emotionally, what you notice in your body, the patterns you find yourself repeating, and even the things you sense but can’t quite find words for yet.
From there, we might find ourselves looking back at the relationships and experiences that shaped you: what you learnt about yourself, your feelings and your needs; the roles you found yourself taking on; and the ways you learnt to adapt or protect yourself. Not because everything happening now has to be explained by the past, but because sometimes what made sense then can help us make sense of what’s happening now.
This might mean exploring an experience and finding it starts to feel different. It might mean pausing to notice what’s happening in your body. It might mean getting curious about a part of you that’s reacting strongly or automatically — what it’s been trying to do for you, and whether it still needs to work quite so hard. Or using metaphor or creativity to explore something that doesn’t quite have words yet.
Curiosity and compassion are at the heart of how I work. We can get curious about how something came to be, while building compassion for the ways you learnt to adapt, cope, protect yourself, or carry on along the way. Working relationally, I stay attuned and responsive to whatever you bring, session by session — so the therapy fits you, rather than the other way around.
When understanding starts to feel different
Sometimes you can understand something about yourself intellectually and still find yourself feeling or responding in exactly the same way. You might know that you’re allowed to say no, that somebody else’s mood isn’t your responsibility, or that what happened wasn’t your fault — but knowing it and feeling it can be very different things.
This is why I work with what you’re experiencing emotionally and physically. Alongside making sense of it, something can gradually begin to feel different. The past doesn’t disappear. A loss still matters. Something painful doesn’t become okay simply because you understand it differently. But it may begin to have less power over how you feel about yourself or how you respond in the present.
You might remember something without feeling quite so pulled back into it. Notice someone is unhappy without immediately assuming you need to fix it. Feel sadness, anger or grief without needing to push it away or becoming completely overwhelmed by it.
Small shifts, over time
Therapy doesn’t usually lead to one big lightbulb moment where everything suddenly feels different. More often, you begin to notice a series of smaller, less obvious shifts. This might look like:
trusting yourself more in the decisions you make, rather than immediately questioning whether you’ve got it wrong
asking for what you need in a relationship, or saying no without spending hours worrying you’ve upset someone
making choices based on what matters to you, and less on what you think you “should” do
catching yourself in an old relational pattern more often, and having the choice to respond differently
realising a relationship or situation doesn’t work for you anymore — and trusting that knowing
recognising when you’re angry, sad or anxious, and allowing yourself to feel that way rather than analysing, dismissing or questioning it
noticing when you’re becoming overloaded earlier, and responding to what you need before reaching overwhelm
beginning to believe that your feelings and needs matter, even when they’re different from someone else’s
finding ways to carry your loss with you without feeling that moving forward means leaving behind what — or who — mattered
allowing your grief to be what it is, rather than feeling you need to hide it, manage it, or grieve in the way other people expect
Together, these shifts can add up to something bigger: feeling more connected to yourself, more able to trust what you feel and need, and more present in your own life.
Fees
Therapy is an investment — not just in feeling better — but in the relationship you have with yourself, now and in the future.
50-minute session — £85
Sessions run weekly or fortnightly — designed so you can choose what feels right for you. Fees are payable by bank transfer, 24 hours ahead of each session.
Take the first step
If something you’ve read here feels familiar, and you’re wondering whether we might work well together, you’re welcome to book a free initial consultation.
It’s a no-pressure conversation — a chance to ask questions, share a little about what’s bringing you to therapy, and get a sense of whether working together feels like the right fit.
If you have a question I haven’t answered here, you’re always welcome to get in touch and ask.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Research suggests that online therapy is just as effective as working together in person, and being online doesn’t stop us from doing meaningful, in-depth therapeutic work.
For many people, it also makes therapy easier to fit into everyday life. There’s no travelling to and from appointments, you can join from a private space that feels familiar, and your sessions can continue more easily if you travel for work, move somewhere new, or simply have a busy week.
Being in your own space can have other benefits too. You might appreciate being able to make a cup of tea, have something comforting nearby, or take some time to yourself after a difficult session rather than immediately having to travel home.
And although we’re meeting through a screen, the work itself isn’t limited to talking or thinking about what’s happening. We can still notice feelings as they arise, pay attention to what’s happening in your body, work creatively where that feels useful, and make space for experiences that are difficult to put into words.
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This depends entirely on what you're bringing and what feels right for you. Some people notice shifts within a handful of sessions; others benefit from longer-term work over months. We'll talk about this in your free consultation, and it's something we can review together as we go. There's no fixed number you need to commit to upfront, and we can review how the work is feeling as we go.
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That’s completely okay. You don’t need an agenda, the right words, or one clearly defined problem to work on. You might have several things happening at once, want space to explore different parts of your life, or simply have a sense that something doesn’t feel right without knowing exactly what that is yet.
We can start wherever you are and allow the work to develop from there. Some sessions might centre around something happening in your life now, while others take us towards an earlier experience, a relationship, a feeling you’re struggling to make sense of, or something you hadn’t expected to talk about at all.
Therapy with me doesn’t require you to choose one issue and stay focused on it. We can follow what feels important as it emerges, while staying curious about the connections between the different things you bring.
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It can feel vulnerable talking about things you may not usually share with other people — particularly the thoughts, feelings or experiences you feel ashamed of, confused by, or worry someone else might not understand.
You don’t need to present a polished version of yourself in therapy, or say the “right” thing. My role isn’t to decide whether what you think or feel is right or wrong. We can be curious together about whatever you bring, including choices or responses you might feel conflicted about, and the parts of yourself you find harder to accept or understand.
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No. I’m not listening for clues so that I can work you out or arrive at an explanation of who you are.
I will notice things — perhaps a pattern that seems to keep appearing, a change in how you’re talking or feeling about something, or something that seems important even though you’re not quite sure why. I might share what I’m noticing or wonder about it with you, but that’s an invitation to explore it together, rather than me telling you what something means. What matters is whether it feels relevant to you and what you notice as we explore it.
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No. My role isn’t to direct your decisions or tell you what your life should look like. Instead, we’ll get curious about what’s happening — including the feelings, patterns and experiences that might be difficult to see when you’re in the middle of them — so you can understand yourself more deeply and begin to trust your own sense of what you need.
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Perhaps you’ve had counselling before, completed a course of NHS Talking Therapies, or already spent quite a lot of time trying to understand yourself. You may be coming back to therapy because something new has happened, because an old difficulty has resurfaced, or because you want to explore something more deeply than you were able to before.
You might already have a good understanding of some of your patterns or have learnt strategies that have been helpful. We don’t need to start from scratch or repeat work you’ve already done. We can begin with where you are now and what you’re noticing, while making space for earlier experiences and relationships where they feel relevant.
Therapy with me is open-ended and relational rather than based around a set programme or number of sessions. There’s space for the work to evolve around what becomes important to you as we go.
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Sometimes therapy can bring feelings closer to the surface, particularly when we’re talking about something painful, beginning to see an experience differently, or becoming more aware of ways you’ve learnt to cope or protect yourself in the past. There may be sessions when you leave feeling more emotional, tired or unsettled than when you arrived.
That doesn’t necessarily mean something is going wrong, but I also don’t believe that feeling worse is something you should simply have to endure because you’re in therapy. If the work starts to feel overwhelming, or you’re worried about how therapy is affecting you, we can talk about that together and think about what you need.
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Finding the right therapist can feel difficult, and sometimes you only really know once you've spoken to someone. I offer a free initial phone consultation so we can talk briefly about what has brought you to therapy, what you're looking for, and whether working together feels like a good fit.
If you're not sure what to look for, I've also written a guide to finding a therapist who feels right for you.