Julie Webb MA; MBACP (Accr’d) Counselling, Psychotherapy & Coaching
in Cambridge

Hello! You are here, and that means that you are already stepping into a fertile environment for clarity, psychological healing and change. Engaging in any kind of therapy, coaching or change work is an opportunity to be critically reflective in an atmosphere of warmth, compassion and understanding: a confidential space where the focus is upon you, your dilemma, distress, or whatever it is that is impacting your life right now; a space to explore your triggers and motives, hopes, dreams and desires; a way to connect with what really matters to you so that you can go forward.

Bringing together my training as a counsellor and psychotherapist, experience as a personal development trainer & life-coach, and studies in philosophy, I offer a kind of one-to-one personal consultancy, exploring dilemmas and challenges that you may experiencing. My approach is informed by philosophical and therapeutic concepts that prize your autonomy; have faith in your capacity for change; place value on the experience that you have being you at any given moment. My approach is informed by Person-centred counselling, Existential Philosophy and Zen Buddhist practice, and so it is also representative of how I live my life prizing openness, curiosity, and hospitality.

The service I offer is about aiding you to find a way through the predicament you find yourself in, and you’re here reading this, you already have a sense that you need/want something to change. Whilst first steps can feel daunting, I do believe that you have the capacity to dig deep, explore and investigate if you are willing to. There's no rush and you can take your time.

My work is open to anyone over the age of 18years who is struggling with life at the moment. I can also work with clients via their employer insurance companies: Vitality, Aviva, Aetna, Bupa, WPA, and AXA.

The number of sessions is entirely in your power. Sometimes one session is enough to ignite something for you. For counselling some clients find that 6-12 sessions are enough to address their concern and find a way through. Others find longer term work is of help to identify and address more ingrained issues and habits that seem to impede their life somehow. There are other clients that see this work as a personal development consultancy and use the work as part of their own self-care and development long-term and we can find ourselves working together for many years. I tend to work in an open-ended manner and do not fix you to a time-frame so that you can be flexible and get what you need, when you need it.

I am always open to discussion about tailor-made longer sessions if this is something that you are interested in, and fees will be adjusted accordingly.

However you choose to work with me know that you are undertaking a serious commitment to yourself and your life.

Coaching is a very 'here and now' approach to change work to look at what it is you want and what is stopping you. You want something; you want to be somewhere; you want to feel something particular about your life - it's focus and achievement; you want to understand how you may get there. Working in the here and now, with goals and structure is a valuable way of engaging in what matters to you. Often during this engagement something a little deeper may reveal itself and my experience in the therapeutic field, means that I am aptly qualified and experienced, to deal with such matters and support you through them should they arise. If you are wanting just coaching for a specific issue or task, the format is the same: fifty minute sessions or bespoke sessions if you prefer. Click here for costs

Couples therapy can provide invaluable insight into the workings of your relationship, whether familial, friendship, romantic, marriage, heterosexual or same sex. How we relate to one another has a profound impact on our wellbeing and function in the world and choosing the option to look at it more deeply is a courageous step. Couples come to counselling for all kinds of reasons and do not have to wait until crisis point of staying or leaving is reached. Couples counselling is offered to any couple wishing to take a deep look at their relationship and its workings.

Whilst the past necessarily influences the present, my approach with couples is to work in the here and now and explore the intricate dynamic between you such as - what habits of relating do you have individually and together? What patterns have you fallen into? What matters to you most? How do you hear one another? Where are you not hearing? What do you want from each other? What are you experiencing in your body as you relate to each other? These are all possible questions that may be implicit if you choose to embark upon couples counselling, and I look forward to exploring with you whatever seems difficult in your relationship right now.

I offer clinical supervision to counsellors and psychotherapists, and also to anyone, in any profession wishing to engage in a supervisory reflective practice. I have worked with counsellors and therapists from many sectors and also GPs, teachers, occupational health therapists and speech therapists in a supervisory capacity. Click here for more details.

As a therapist and writer, I work with other writers to aid character development for their novels and short stories. This work can help with stuckness when writing and can aid with the development of plot, story and especially dialogue. Combining my education and experience in the philosophical and the psychotherapeutic field, our dialogue will naturally lead to exploring what it is to be human at a deeper level, what matters to your character as an individual, as part of a relationship or group, as a gendered, political, and emotionally fragile being. This encounter provides an opportunity to examine all the experiential tensions that your character may be holding just by virtue of existing - in fact tensions that we all hold as human beings.

Fictional characters must appear real and believable for your reader to invest in them. Engagement in a session like this can help you really tap into the inner life of your character:

You can book a one-off hour long session for your character. I don't need to know any details up front about your creation. This makes it a more authentic experience for you and your character. You can arrive as him or her with whatever the character would like to talk about. The first ten minutes will be about you and I settling in and me explaining how I work. We will then get into session and I will work with your character for the remaining fifty minutes, in the here and now, in an authentic manner so you can tap into the character in an experiential way. You are free to record the session so that you can replay the dialogue and/or transcribe for further development.

I strongly advise transcribing the session afterwards as you will really get to know your character and feel them as you write. As you transcribe, other details and ideas will naturally come to you for further exploration and development.

Experience
I began my early career in the NHS as a Personal Development Trainer, followed by starting my own company in training and marketing. After a career break to establish my family and undertake academic study and research, I worked as an independent Philosophical Counsellor and Life Coach and this work still underpins my practice as a counsellor and psychotherapist. As a Counsellor I have worked with clients in an NHS GP Medical setting and established a substantial private practice in Shrewsbury before relocating to Cambridge in 2015. I have worked with insurance companies to support clients referred from EAP schemes and Occupational Health departments. I am also part of counselling & wellbeing team for staff at Anglia Ruskin University.

As a counselling lecturer, I have taught counselling/therapy to qualified practitioner and degree level, and have delivered CPD workshops in Philosophy for Therapists and Trainees. I am currently teach at Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education and teach on a variety of courses that run at Madingley Hall.

I am also a writer and have published reviews and articles in Self & Society (journal for humanistic psychology), The Journal for Existential Analysis (SEA), the journal for Person-Centered Experiential Psychotherapies (PCEP), and I have recently co-written and co-edited with Manu Bazzano, a collection of essays about philosophy and therapy - Therapy and the Counter-Tradition: The Edge of Philosophy (2016) published by Routledge (see sidebar for details) and contributed in Re-visioning Person-Centred Therapy: Theory and Practice of a Radical Paradigm (2018). My new book Fifty Minutes will be published May/June 2020.