Angela Baker

For counselling, coaching, supervision, workshops and on-line courses.

Areas of Special Interest

I have a particular interest in working with people experiencing stress, overwhelm and anxiety.

Counselling/Therapy Services

As a Counselling Psychologist I will work alongside you to help you address the issues or challenges you come to counselling to sort out. I help you to gain understanding and insight into the issues and help you to find strategies that will result in successful change. I believe that solutions need to be practical, workable and uncomplicated – strategies need to make sense.

I have a geeky interest in neuro-science and how knowledge of neuro-science can help us understand our own behaviour and how our minds work, which in turn can help us to make the changes we want to make in our lives.

I use a mix of approaches:

• Mindfulness-based therapies focus on self-acceptance, being less in our heads and more able to enjoy the moment, and teach us skills that help us not to get so hooked into unhelpful thoughts and feelings. This helps us to manage strong emotions in a more helpful way. Mindfulness helps us to be more kind and accepting towards ourselves.
• Solution-focussed approaches place importance on your goals for counselling, and build on skills you already have.
• Person-centred approaches focus on careful listening, to ensure that I am staying on track with what is important to you.
• I also use Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) which helps you to develop different patterns (or programmes) of thinking and behaviour.

About Angela Baker

Following my counsellor training I worked in a pain clinic (1 year) and 3 days per week as a student counsellor at the Massey University Student Counselling Service (for 13 years, until 2017) while also doing private practice counselling which included EAP. and ACC counselling. I completed my registration as a psychologist in 2007. Prior to training as a counsellor I worked as an Intermediate School teacher (5 years), a trainer in small business and jobsearch skills (6 years), and a careers consultant (6 years).

In addition to counselling and coaching, I love designing and teaching workshops and have done so for over 20 years. Topics I have taught include Mindfulness, Getting on Top of Stress and Overwhelm and Self-Acceptance.