Marian Leicester

Counsellor, Supervisor

 

Talking sure does work! I have over 40 years' experience of my part in making this happen, for many people, over a very wide range of issues. I work alongside people to help them work out how they can get on top of issues that are bothering them.

Client Types

Adolescents, adults, couples, families.

 

Areas of Special Interest

Relationships, life transitions, self esteem, anxiety, depression, stress, grief & loss, trauma, family issues, family violence, sexual abuse, spirituality, working with dreams. Clinical supervision for a wide range of helping professionals.

 

Counselling/Therapy Services

It's essential to find the right "fit" in a counsellor, as a foundation for the important work to be done. 

You will find me warm, supportive, welcoming and professional. I am committed to being up front with you at all times. You will experience me listening really closely and deeply, as bit by bit, or maybe all in a rush, you find your way, at your pace, to tell me what you need me to know. I am generous with my feedback, which I aim to present as positively and usefully as I can. 

In these ways, we build a mutual trust that enables the issues to be more fully brought to the surface. This then triggers the creative process of generating and exploring new and life-changing ways of responding to the issues. 

I continue to marvel at how this process of co-creativity between client and counsellor can so often, and sometimes, so surprisingly, lead to safe, effective, long-term changes for the better.

(Note: I no longer take new ACC clients)

 

Counselling/Therapy Approach

Fundamentally person-centred, solution focussed, based on a foundation of understandings from family systems therapy, narrative therapy, feminist therapy, dreamwork, gestalt, psychodramatic role theory, cognititve-behavioural therapy (CBT).

  

Registrations and Professional Memberships

• Member of the NZ Association of Counsellors (MNZAC), member since 1994.
• Dream Network Aotearoa/New Zealand

 

Qualifications

• BA Hons (Sociology & Women's Studies)
• Trained Teachers Certificate
• Certificate in Applied Dreamwork

 

Background and Experience

I began my professional career over 40 years ago, working with couples in the then-national relationship services agency, moving to work as a counsellor / supervisor in the public health sector. Then, for many years, I managed a counselling agency in the not-for-profit sector, working with whoever arrived on the doorstep, and doing extensive Family Court and ACC Sensitive Claims counselling (Note: I no longer take new ACC clients), and co-facilitating groups addressing family violence. Since 1990, I have been self-employed as counsellor and supervisor.

 

Supervision Services

I have wide-ranging supervision experience - with established counsellors and therapists, student counsellors, medical personnel (doctors, nurses), social workers, case managers, community support workers, managers from a number of different work settings.