Owen Hills:
Trainee Counsellor (BACP student member)
My name is Owen Hills, and I offer face-to-face counselling at the low-cost service at HQ Therapy Rooms in Haggerston and Dalston, Hackney, London E8.
I am currently in my second year of the Diploma in Counselling at the Gestalt Centre. I am registered as a student member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
A longtime Hackney resident, my background is in primary education and music. I also have over two years of experience as a volunteer at The Listening Place, a charity working with people suffering from chronic suicidal feelings.
The Gestalt approach is a relational approach, centered on what is happening here and now. It is to enter into a therapeutic relationship and work with what emerges, honestly and without judgement.
Gestalt works with the whole of a person’s experience, in the understanding that nothing is fixed, and that change can and does happen.
In the therapeutic relationship, we can identify ways in which we are stuck, the ways in which we repeat patterns and self-sabotage. The goal is to bring awareness to our relationships with others, and our relationship to ourselves, the way we are in the world.
I can offer an attentive and compassionate space for you to explore where you are now, and how you came to this place. This can be a daunting process, as I know from my own experience, but we can work at your pace, led by your awareness and understanding of your own process.
I see my role as counsellor as to listen, to reflect and sometimes to guide; the Gestalt approach is that the work we do is a co-creation, counsellor and client working together in the here and now.
I am open to working with people of all backgrounds, ages, and beliefs. I am aware of the challenges we face in this time, of the anxiety and uncertainty that is present, and the very real systemic obstacles there are to the well-being of many of us.
I would welcome exploration of this in the counselling room.
