REGAIN
CONTROL
OF YOUR LIFE
WITH
MY TALKING THERAPY
Vitality and WPA accredited.
COUNSELLING
Worried?Stuck?
Unsure?
You needn't stay alone.
Depression • Anxiety • Panic attacks • Relationships • Bereavement • Self-esteem • Confidence • Sexuality and gender identity • Over/under-eating • Work, Education & Career • Guided self-exploration • Office politics and team management
"What's happening to us?"
COUPLE COUNSELLING
Get insight on what you can no longer see.
Understand. Untangle. Make a new deal.
The sky is your limit.
Find out what's in your way, make new decisions, jump back into the driver's seat.
Office Politics.
Team Management.
Business Negotiations.
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STOP. Are you suffering? You don't have to.
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THINK. Understand the dynamics: games, ulterior transactions, drama triangles... Are they playing for or against you?
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START taking the edge. Be a winner and regain control of your career.
EXECUTIVE COACHING
Several evenings a week
On-site or remote
Counselling / Coaching (1-12 sessions)
or Psychotherapy (>12 sessions)
Reduced fees for students
English or French
Online calendar, booking, payment
Payment by card or bank transfer
Vitality and WPA accredited, nothing to pay.
Hi! And a warm welcome to you.
Are you looking for someone safe and supportive to open yourself to? Welcome!
Are you feeling low at the moment? Are you going through a hard time? Are you missing something, someone? Or on the contrary, are you having too much on your plate? Are you conflicted, split, feeling cornered? Is it a recent problem? Or one that has poisoned all your life and that you are finally decided to address?
Whatever your reason, first of all I would like to congratulate you for your courage. It's never easy to ask for help.
It's good to talk to an empathic, ethical, non-judgemental therapist about things you're not comfortable discussing with a friend or your family. Talking therapy changes lives because it is safe, professional, ethical and confidential.
Please get in touch and we should be able to start your first session in no time and address your needs.
Who am I?
Eric.
Transactional Analysis Psychotherapeutic Counsellor.
Specialising in Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Executive Coaching.
Graduated from the world-renowned Metanoia Institute (London) in 2016.
Registered member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) No. 753630
Professional Civil Liability Insurance: Howden No. P17J4046
Vitality Health and WPA accredited
My full name is Michel-Eric Cizniar. I am British.
Does it sound French? That's because I was born there. In therapy, you may notice my slight Parisian slant. Oh la la! :-)
I am bilingual English/French and I do provide therapy in both languages as required by my clients.
Just one more thing...
When I am not a therapist, I can be found in a workplace like yours.
Over the last two decades, I have embraced various leadership positions such as line manager and project manager. Transactional Analysis has been a massive tool to boost my emotional intelligence and identify, understand and solve problems.
In my Executive Coaching offering, I am blending my two skills (Transactional Analysis therapist and workplace leader) and sharing my insights with you, to help you not only survive the workplace jungle, but also take the edge.
How does therapy work?
It's as easy as 1-2-3!
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Press this red button:
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Choose your therapy and preferred slot, enter your details, your location preference (remote or onsite) and you're booked in!
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You immediately receive a confirmation email with the detailed address or the link to the online session. Sessions last 50 minutes.
Executive Coaching
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This is a workplace-focused cognitive session. In some contexts this is called a 1-2-1.
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We work on the process. You can bring any situation or question related to your work or your career. I will provide my support and guidance, nourished by 25 years of experience. I will help you identify patterns and strengthen your own emotional intelligence. We are will of course leverage T.A. concepts as appropriate.
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Executive Coaching can be one-off or regular, like a 1-2-1, i.e. fortnightly or monthly.
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It can be combined with Counselling sessions, in which cases the counselling rules apply.
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As it's cognitive and doesn't stir emotions, safeguarding is minimum, and I don't require an assessment questionnaire.
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As a consequence, payment can be made when booking and confirmation is immediate.
Couple Therapy
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I treat couples as a group therapy of 3, including me as the professional facilitator, working on the process.
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This enables couples to step back from the daily grind, reclaim their individuality, and be observers as much as actors.
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To stress the point, symbolically I ask each attendant to join from their own personal device and a different location.
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This being group therapy, interesting patterns can emerge like drama triangles.
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As a participant, receiving the "hot potato" on my lap is not rare. Of course, my role is to be curious about the process, no get entangled into the couple's story!
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Even in moments of adversity, couples tend to support each other, hence minimum safeguarding and no questionnaire.
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This means that payment can be made when booking and confirmation is immediate.
Counselling
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Counselling is the entry point to either Psychotherapy or Life Coaching.
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It usually takes 6 sessions to create a trust relationship or "Therapeutic Alliance" and we will check this.
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We often call counselling "therapy of the conscious" or "therapy of the Adult Ego State" or "Decontamination".
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Which means it starts relatively cognitively. The Client is conscious of these patterns but unable to name or change them. The purpose of our work: bring them into awareness and provide tools to challenge them in the future.
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This has some resemblance with CBT, but there are also differences and clients who tried CBT and found it too "dry" should benefit from my approach.
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For sustainable results, I advise to commit to an initial module of 12 weekly sessions.
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Because Counselling can trigger emotions, safeguarding is necessary and I require an assessment questionnaire. The first session is only confirmed after careful consideration for your own welfare and safety. Counselling and psychotherapy, in particular, are incompatible with some psychiatric presentations, as they just make them worse
Psychotherapy
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Counselling can evolve into Psychotherapy (generally after 12 sessions)
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If Counselling is "Therapy of the Conscious", Psychotherapy is "Therapy of the Unconscious" or "Therapy of the Child Ego State" or in T.A. wording, "Deconfusion".
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This is where Psychotherapy parts with CBT that doesn't recognise the notion of "Uncouscious"
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In Psychotherapy, we try to break into the subconscious and solve unfinished business potentially locked away at preverbal age or following a trauma.
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This introspection cannot be rushed and must go at the client's own pace. Pressure to rush is counterproductive.
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However, a sustained pace of weekly sessions is the gold standard.
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Because Psychotherapy is a follow up of Counselling, safeguarding has already been assured.
Life Coaching
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Life Coaching is also a follow-up of Counselling and takes the opposite direction: the client doesn't want to introspect more (or is scared to, or not ready), on the contrary they want lighter-touch support.
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Life Coaching can be labelled "Therapy of the Parent Ego State": support provided aims at compensating for deficient, inadequate or inexistent experience of received parenting as a child. It aims at helping the client to "re-parent", i.e. to create a notional parent borrowed from a portfolio of adequate significant others.
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Life coaching is less intensive than psychotherapy, fortnightly sessions seem to be good pace.
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Because Life Coaching is a follow up of Counselling, safeguarding has already been assured.
Therapeutic approach and scientific background
There are about 50 different therapeutic modalities around, which I understand is more than you need... and makes your choice difficult and confusing. The good news is: research shows that the modality comes only third as a predictor of success of your therapy (Norcross, 2002). The most important factor is actually what we call the "working alliance", i.e. the capacity of the client and the practitioner to create a therapeutic relationship based on trust and safety, for the therapeutic transformation to take place. Other important factors are the professionalism of the practitioner and the adequation of the therapy to the needs.
I read on some websites "our modality, unlike the others, is the only one that works". This arrogant statement makes me wonder if its author can also transmute lead into gold? The reality is that nobody holds "The Truth". The good therapy is the therapy that works for you and is effective, the good therapist the one that you can trust and helps you meet your goals.
If you choose me as your therapist, we will mainly work under the Relational Transactional Analysis therapeutic modality. Being quite of a mainstream approach, a lot of information can be found on the internet. Nevertheless, I thought it useful to sketch what are, in my view, some of its main points.
Transactional Analysis was developed by psychoanalytically trained American psychiatrist Dr Eric Berne in the 1950s, and was originally designed as a cognitive psychoanalysis for short-term therapies.
Over the last 60 years, thanks to its lively community, Transactional Analysis has happily integrated other Gestalt and Person-Centred influences and has blossomed into several schools. Some of my professors at the Metanoia Institute were the world-recognized founders of the “Relational” T.A. School, and have published many books and papers.
Transactional Analysis’s original tenets are structural analysis, functional analysis, game analysis, and script analysis. These, by certain aspects, resemble Ellis’s and Beck’s CBT (although Berne wasn’t aware of their respective work and nor were they of Berne’s).
The Relational school stresses the importance of the therapeutic alliance between the client and the practitioner. I am trained to identify interpersonal dynamics such as projective identifications and transferences that may occur in the therapy room and which will inform me about my client’s world - your "unthought known" (Bollas, 1987).
A typical treatment plan could start with a therapeutic contract and could go through decontamination (cognitive therapy), deconfusion (therapy of the unconscious), through to redecision work and crystallisation.
As my client, you don't have to be aware of going through these steps, which I will wrap in the foreground therapeutic relationship in the pure Carl Rogers tradition. Although one of our review sessions may be a good opportunity to reflect on it. Some of my clients are surprised by their progress!
To summarise, Relational Transactional Analysis may be viewed as a powerful two-person (Starck, 1999) integrative psychodynamic CBT promoting sustainable therapeutic change. Without the homework. And by no means a costly, intangible, lifelong indulgence!
Conditions
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This is an Adult only service. You need to be 18 or over.
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For online video sessions, you need to have a good internet connection and a private space (bedroom, etc...) which allows confidentiality. You also need to be alone (1 to 1 person therapy). You cannot record the sessions. The therapy may not take place if the conditions are not fulfilled and payment will still be due.
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There are strict rules regarding missing or rescheduling sessions (online or face to face) which will be explained as part of the administrative contract during the assessment session.
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Therapy is confidential but not anonymous and abides by the same rules as the medical profession in terms of confidentiality.
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There very specific cases where by law, confidentiality would be broken, which will be explained to you in the administrative contract.
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It is possible to switch from one form of therapy to another under some conditions.
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Remote or in-person is generally the client's choice, but remote is not adapted to the highest level of distress, which require more "holding". This is discussed during the assessment. Safety always comes first.
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Health Insurers: Depending on your provider and your contract with them, you must be referred or you can self-refer. In order to invoice them, I need your membership member and the treatment authorisation number. The number of free sessions is also determined by your provider and cover, but therapies can be extended, for the normal fee.
Fees (remote or in-person)
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