Paul Letham-McGrath

Paul is a fully-qualified registered integrative counsellor based in Christchurch, Rolleston, and online. He has 12 years of full-time private practice experience. His counselling style is warm, interactive, exploratory, and methodical.

Paul’s main areas of specialty are:

• Existential concerns (the search for meaning, purpose, or direction)
• Creative and entertainment industries
• Depression, anxiety, and burn-out
• Relationship problems
• Gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues
• Gender identity issues, including detransition/desistance
• Men’s issues
• Intimacy and sexuality
• Grief and loss
• Spirituality
• Jungian, transpersonal, and depth psychology

Counselling can help you:

• Understand your emotions and thinking patterns
• Develop coping strategies
• Explore options and possibilities
• Empower you to make decisions
• Improve your communication skills
• Build a healthy self-image and identity
• Understand influences from your personal history and upbringing
• Relate to others more productively

About Paul

​Born into a Mid Canterbury farming family, Paul showed an early interest in human psychology, philosophy, and the creative arts. After an initial foray into the worlds of theatre, music and performance, which included gaining an undergraduate degree in drama and music, Paul began studying psychology, culminating in two diplomas and a Bachelor of Counselling degree.

In addition to his academic background, Paul also brings to his practice first-hand experience of depression and anxiety and a deep understanding of the various conditions that can lead to their development.

Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakens.
– Carl Jung

Paul’s Approach

Paul’s work is grounded in the concept of Client-Centred Practice, a philosophy and therapeutic approach that ultimately regards you as the expert in your own life. Paul also integrates other ways of working, depending upon your needs. Drawing upon a number of therapeutic approaches, he also works within existential, solution-based, psychodynamic, Jungian, transpersonal, and cognitive-behavioural methods.

What is counselling?

Counselling provides an opportunity for you to express your thoughts and feelings in a safe, confidential space. It is a time for you to explore what’s important to you, to seek clarity or insight, to make meaning or sense of what’s happening, and to gain control over aspects of your life that may be troubling you. Counselling relies upon the therapeutic relationship that builds over time between the counsellor and yourself. Therapy can be short-term or longer-term, depending on your needs, and the dynamics of counselling will inherently differ from person to person.

What is a counsellor’s role?

Your counsellor is primarily a companion and collaborator. He holds expertise in psychological factors that may be preventing you from living as you wish to. He is curious, engaged, and reflective. Once your counselling goals have been determined, your counsellor’s role is to listen, explore, and challenge when necessary. He helps you make sense of what is going on, accompanying you as you explore new perspectives. The discussions you have with your counsellor are supportive and respectful, free from criticism, judgement, agenda, or ideological bias. Your counsellor is a well-informed, objective, and encouraging companion. He constantly holds your needs in mind, helping you make sustainable change in your life in whatever way is meaningful to you.