Counselling

How we can help

Next Steps offers grief counselling and other support to people of all ages who have experienced a bereavement or significant loss. We also work with people who are experiencing anticipatory grief i.e., when someone you love, or perhaps you yourself have been diagnosed with a life-changing or terminal illness.

What is Counselling?

Counselling is a form of talking therapy that enables you to explore many aspects of your life, openly and freely within a therapeutic setting. It offers an opportunity to express difficult feelings such as anger, resentment, grief, guilt, and fear in a professional, confidential environment.

Exploring how grief and loss may be impacting your life, and discussing your feelings, experiences, or behaviour with a counsellor, can often enable you to see things from a totally new perspective. Counselling aims to help you make sense of what you are experiencing, regain a sense of control, express your emotions, and empower you to make positive change.

The Next Steps Approach to Grief Counselling

At Next Steps we offer a flexible, creative, and integrative approach to counselling. We tailor our sessions to best support your needs, both in terms where you currently are on your grief and loss journey, and in terms of counselling modalities and locations.

We offer one to one and group counselling, compassionate guidance, and practical support around:

Preparing for your own death
Preparing for a death in the family
Pet death
Complex family dynamics around a death or loss
Unresolved deaths from the past
Pregnancy loss (abortion, miscarriage, etc.)
Life losses or traumatic changes that feel like a death, even if nobody has died.

The issues you are struggling with may be related to current bereavement, grief, and loss, or they may be connected to something that happened years ago. Regardless of the timeframe, we will work alongside you to help unravel any grief-related emotions or behaviours that are presently impacting your life.

For further information on grief, its common signs and how it can impact your life, please follow this link: What is Grief?

Therapeutic Approach

Our counsellors and group activity facilitators draw on a wide range of therapeutic modalities and techniques to create the best support possible, tailored specifically for your individual needs. Each client’s response to a life-limiting diagnosis, grief or loss is unique. At Next Steps, we believe that a pluralistic approach to counselling, one which integrates different therapeutic interventions and settings, will enable our clients to reach a deeper understanding of their issues and empower them to make long-lasting positive changes. For further information on the range of modalities we offer, please follow this link: Our Therapeutic Approach

Locations

Our therapy sessions are available in indoor (clinic-based) settings or outdoor (nature-based) settings and online.

Indoor

Our dedicated therapy room is based at the Age Concern Centre in Kingsbridge. It offers options for talk therapy, somatic therapy and creative sandtray and art therapy in a peaceful, confidential, and easily accessible location.

Outdoor

Outdoor sessions take full advantage of Devon’s beautiful natural environment. Whether we are simply ‘walking and talking’ along a gentle path beside a river, drawing upon sensory messages and symbolism from beautiful flowerbeds, herb gardens, and other fauna and flora, or actively connecting with insights drawn from the elements, seasons, cycles of the moon and other symbols of nature, Ecotherapy (or Wilderness Therapy as we sometimes call it) can facilitate deeply transformative therapeutic grief work.