Rate Ingrid Koehler

I am registered in the UK with 12 years of professional work experience. I have experience in helping clients with stress and anxiety, relationship issues, & trauma and abuse. I also have experience working with coping with grief and loss. I believe in treating everyone with respect, sensitivity, and compassion. I will tailor our dialogue and treatment plan to meet your unique and specific needs.

It takes courage to seek help for what is troubling us or to deal with a problem we cannot resolve ourselves. Talking to a counsellor can support us to make sense of things and join the dots. The counsellor is often a mirror to seeing and discovering what we could not see before and can be a witness to who we are, so that we can understand the troubling situation and know ourselves better. When we have made mistakes in life or there has been pain and suffering for different reasons, counselling can help to see what we need to do and can bring clarity and relief.

My approach is to understand with compassion how your troubles have come about by, firstly, exploring your story and whatever you choose to share and then looking at ways of coping with or dealing with your troubles. I try to come alongside you, respecting your level of comfort, within a safe space of caring, trust and confidentiality either in person or online. Counselling can bring new insights to and awareness of our troubles and can help us understand our behaviour and that of others. Talking to someone who appreciates the human condition can help to strengthen and heal parts of ourselves or to let go of painful feelings, like guilt, shame or remorse or distorted thinking that have arisen through trauma, abuse, loss, perceived mistakes and general fear and regain our confidence, trust, self-worth and self-belief by accessing our inner resources and coping strategies.

I encourage unpacking emotion, so opening up to feelings like being out of control; feeling overwhelmed or confused, depressed or sad, sometimes for no definable reason; feeling hurt or vulnerable, angry, frustrated, desperate, or needy because of particular circumstances, a relationship or our life history. We can also be emotional all the time or the opposite, numb or disconnected, or flat or pointless. We can very often feel rage, lack of trust, resentment and anger or that we’re a victim of injustice, abuse and discrimination. We may have been told by others that we’ve had a ‘nervous breakdown’ or simply a ‘breakdown’. Having physical pain, chronic ailments and poor health can also take their toll. All forms of distress can affect our well-being and relationships. Relationship difficulties are commonly at the heart of our distress and affect how we feel about ourselves. There is more general awareness in these days of the negative effect of being in a relationship with someone with narcissistic tendencies or personality disorders and the advice is usually ‘to see a therapist’ in order to process or move on from these relationships.

Counselling is very effective for trauma. More is known now about the long-term effects of both shock/terror trauma (PTSD) and developmental trauma, often called complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Whether it be a specific shocking and frightening one-off event or emotional abuse, protracted neglect, abandonment, rejection and hurt which may even be in the distant past, the impact on our mental health can be marked. Also, the effects of short- and long-term grief and loss and can take its toll. In recent years, the effect of the Covid pandemic has had an impact in all areas of life and may need a safe space to process.

I have worked as a counsellor in private counselling practice since 2011. I have a background in nursing in the NHS, having worked in the specialty of cancer and cancer clinical trials for many years, though I am now retired from nursing. I work with both individuals and couples.