Follow the yellow brick road. I work with your emotions...

I have worked in education in both secondary schools and college as both a counsellor, and a learning support assistant. In these jobs, I focus on people with special needs and behavior issues. I have a great understanding of how it is for both students and staff. At one of the schools, I run an after school 6th form drop in, enabling me to work with the demands and diverse range of issues on hand. In addition, I am also diagnosed with dyslexia , which helps me to have a real understandingof neurodiversity and its super powers. When working for the children's hospice counselling service, I counselled children and young people 6 to 18 online, by telephone and face to face. I led a psychoeducational 6 week group in a local  school and visited IPU to support a children's group.

I have extensive experience supporting those with pre, post life limiting illness and those suffering with bereavement at both a hospice and a cancer support center with both adults, young people and children.

I counsel a variety of people with a variety of issues including complex grief, such as cancer patients, loss of parents, loss of adult or young children, loss of grandparents, loss through miscarriage's and still birth, loss through suicide, loss through murder, loss of friends, loss of partners, loss of pets and wider family.  In my role I also provide initial assessments for a good share of our waiting list,  holding calls to support those waiting and weekly mentor our student/volunteer counselors to reach their best potential and ensure they are safe in their role and share my experience.

I was the lead counsellor for the Solution Focussed Counseling project funded by the Essex County, reducing waiting lists after the pandemic, alongside 6 other Essex services . I wrote and facilitated small psychoeducational adult groups for loss of parent, sibling and spouse in person at the hospice. I now will co facilitating support groups in my current hospice counselling role out in the comminity.

I spent over a year volunteering for Mind working with a vast amount of mental health issues including disorders and some work under the specialized trauma team. I have worked alongside mental health teams to provide the best team of support.

Email;

lynette.priest@followtheyellowbrickroadcounsellingessex.co.uk

• My name is Lynette Priest BACP Registered Member no. 00778218. 
•  I knew from my early 20s that I wanted to be a counsellor. This may sound corny, but it felt like my true calling. Even before I had my own personal therapy, since a young child I was something of a little professor. I kept trying to work out my surroundings, understand people better, see things from all perspectives, question everything and think outside the box. 
• Personal therapy for me was life changing. It gave me the space to really look at my life and my history. Therapy can help you learn about all the aspects of you, resolve issues, feel heard and gain this unconditional, yet at times challenging, therapeutic relationship. I absolutely feel that having personal experience and your own therapy makes you a more empathic counsellor and person, although textbook knowledge and qualifications are important too. 
• Through my training, I learned so much. Not just theory and resources, but how to be resilient. How to fail, but get back up again, and again, and again. The passion I have for helping others and beating mental health issues is part of my core.
• Email;

lynette.priest@followtheyellowbrickroadcounsellingessex.co.uk

Beyond simple talking therapy, I like to work creatively. For instance , I encourage the use of mind maps, drawing, painting, using play mobile, writing letters, writing poems, collages, and mood boards. We humans are social beings, so creativity can have the function of helping the client to meet new people who are like-minded and have had similar experiences. It may help a student that feels isolated or lonely to make friends or become part of a community. It may help someone quiet come out their shell and increase social skills.

CYP often lack motivation and a sense of achievement in their adolescence. By working with creativity, you will empower these people, giving a sense of achievement, discovery of identity and higher self-esteem. It provides a focus or refocus on what they are doing, so they are not busy worrying or experiencing negative emotions. It can increase their sense of freedom and choice in the world, when they may otherwise feel powerless and under the control of family or education.

For more severe mental health issues, it can be used to help a client process trauma by being able to express how they feel, especially when they find it more difficult to find the words. It is a way of expressing what's going on in a way that may not be possible in everyday conversation, or it may even be something unconscious or suppressed being realized.

All of the artworks used were created by my own children!

Email;

lynette.priest@followtheyellowbrickroadcounsellingessex.co.uk