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Carlos' Individual & Couple Counselling Profile
• Wellingborough • Kettering • Milton Keynes • Rushden • Bedford •
• Relationship Specialist • Marriage & Couple Counselling & Coaching • Anger Management Specialist • Anxiety & Depression Specialist •

Testimonials


...For many more testimonials visit our counselling testimonials page.
Counselling, Psychotherapy and Anger Management Therapist for Milton Keynes and Northampton Carlos

Contact Details
Tel: 01933395497 (Private office line with answer machine)
Mob: 07427144234
Email: Carlos@TonicTalk.co.uk


Offices
Carlos works out of three of our offices:
Higham Ferrers near Rushden, Raunds and Wellingborough in Northamptonshire;
Newport Pagnell near Milton Keynes, Olney and Emberton; and
Bedford town centre near Kempston, Elstow, Bromham and Clapham..


Carlos' Key Services
Carlos is a widely experienced and successful, full-time professional psychotherapist and counsellor offering a comprehensive range of services:
Counselling and Psychotherapy for common to very complex issues;
Relationship Counselling for all forms of relationship including intimate couples, parent and child and business partners;
Anger Management for all forms of overt or covert aggression, for individuals and couples.

Client Feedback

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Personal Philosophy
Ever since he was a young man, Carlos has had a deep and enduring interest in philosophy and personal, spiritual and relational development. As such, he has dedicated himself to the study and pragmatic practice of personal and relational change and self development. After a twenty year career in developing and delivering high profile banking and finance systems, he changed career to become a psychotherapist so that he may use his developmental and analytical skills to assist others on their life journies.

Paradoxically, Carlos believes that change is the one constant in the universe and thereby everyone has a potential for significant personal growth (self-actualisation or individuation). By combining western philosophy, Jungian, Freudian and other majour psychotherapeutic models, spiritual and psychological developmental practices and philosophies, and honed analytical and interpersonal skills, Carlos has developed a practical approach to counselling and personal development that can facilitate deep personal and relational change. He is able to help people integrate complex Experientail, Emotional, Cognitive, Relational and Spiritual aspects of their lives and psyche so that they may develope into balanced and rounded human beings. Furthermore, Carlos' experience has taught him that, no matter your age or personal circumstances, if you wish to improve your life, career, and or relationships, he can help you achieve your goals.

Carlos also has an unshakeable belief in people and does his best to percieve and accept them as they truly are. He feels no need to delude himself or others into thinking that he himself or anyone else is perfect: without fault or mistake. Though sometimes difficult and painful to understand and accept, he believes that people are what and where they need to be at any given time, Carlos is the first to acknowledge his own pain, harm, mistakes, foolishness, frailties, hurt and humanity. He ardently believes that it is only through truly meeting with ourselves in an radically open and honest relationship and interaction that we can accept ourselves and grow into something new. He is not afraid of the ‘ugliness’ within because he also sees the ‘beauty’ within and the opportunities life has to offer. While this may all seem somewhat fanciful, cliché or trite, it is nonetheless true. The idea that, when our Actions, Thoughts and Feelings coincide we can achieve true happiness, resonates within him.

Spiritual Understanding
Carlos has an active interest in and experience of many religious beliefs including Christianity, Islam, Western Buddhism, Buddhism, Sikhism and others and where needed, he is able to counsel people within the context of their personal and spiritual belief systems. Carlos has many clients in other countries with divers beliefs and cultures with whom he has Skype and other internet based appointments.

Experience:  

Relevant Education and Qualifications:

Counselling Agency Experience:

Other Relevant Experience:

Approach / Model:

Accreditation:

Independent

Personal Summary
Carlos is a fully qualified Counsellor and psychotherapist working in full time private practice in Northampton, Milton Keynes and Bedford. He has been working as a Therapist since January 2006 and subsequently has thousands of clinical hours experience working with a diverse range of clients with a wide range of issues. Prior to his move into Therapy he had a career spanning 20 years and a multitude of roles in large ‘banking computer systems’ delivery and support, therefore, his professional experience of people extends from shop-floor to board-room and everything in between. Also, during his Therapeutic training, to increase his knowledge and understanding, he worked in the care sector, supporting and caring for individuals with learning and physical difficulties and disabilities and short and long term, ordinary and severe mental health issues. Carlos’ experience of mental health issues extends beyond the therapy room into the ‘everyday’. He thus has a uniquely diverse combination of commercial, support and clinical experience that he can draw upon to better understand his clients, their issues and concerns and their lives and experiences.

Carlos as a Person and a Therapist
Carlos is an ordinary person doing extraordinary work. Like most ordinary people, Carlos had childhood and growing-up issues and experiences that impacted upon his adult life causing personal, communication and relationship issues. However, over the years, he has undertaken a significant personal journey to grow and change beyond his formative years and the issues into a confident individual with excellent communication and relation skills and unshakeable self belief and self worth and respect and a deep care for others. As such, he has now dedicated himself to Counselling and Psychotherapy to help and hope to others so that they may also experience personal and relational joy, happiness and self-confidence and appreciation in their lives.

Spiritual Philosophy
Carlos believes that life has a purpose and that it is our humanity that facilitates that purpose and that avoiding and rejecting what we are denies that purpose and stifles the ability to grow. We are not here to be perfect, on the contrary, we are here to learn and grow and the only way anyone can achieve that is through the sometimes painful process of making ‘mistakes’ and accepting those ‘mistakes’ and frailties and learning from them. The greatest lies we tell are the lies we tell ourselves to provide comfort and deny what is ‘real’. The difficulty there is that the more we deny, avoid and push away, the less we learn and the more we repeat our mistakes and the more unhappy we become as our Thoughts, Actions and Feelings diverge in different directions.

Therapeutic Philosophy
All Therapists use themselves as their main tool for their work such that Therapy is built upon the Therapist’s way of being and their way of relating. It is therefore important for a therapist to have a congruent understanding of life and themselves and for you to know how your Therapist sees the world others and most importantly themselves. Carlos is a ‘real’ person; he does not pretend that he is something he is not. He does not hate or reject himself and then Counsels others in the hope that they will think well of him and be grateful to him to ease his pain. Instead, he does his best to truly ‘see’, recognise and understand himself and those around him; to be real with himself and others in relatedness and then care for, cherish, support and love not despite our ‘humanity’ but because of it. He values both the helpful and unhelpful in him and loves and encourages himself.

Carlos is able to help client’s put down their need to adapt and be ‘perfect’ so that they can be accepted or loved by ‘others’. Instead he offers them the opportunity to be with him in a ‘real’ relationship where they can be all that they are without fear of judgement, rejection, or retaliation. He accepts them for all that they are so that they can feel and learn what it is like to be truly accepted and then learn to accept themselves. This process is not easy and it takes courage to risk rejection in order to be accepted, however, Carlos is patient, gentle and open and clients eventually allow themselves to be seen and accepted so that they can heal themselves.

Carlos is respectful and sensitive to the beliefs, needs and understandings of others and does not seek to bludgeon or impose his beliefs or will onto anyone. He is not filled with empty positivity or ‘happy clappy’. Instead his beliefs provide him with stable ground on which to stand and meet with others and support them through their issues, changes, realisations and growing pains. Each must meet the world and themselves in their own way and for their own reasons and Carlos offers support and insight for that meeting.

Carl G Jung was the founder of analytical psychology and the first modern psychologist to acknowledge the significance of ‘spirituality’ and move away from the reductionist notion that we are no more than the sum of our parts. As such I have respect for the man and his work  and here offer a few quotes that I feel are pertinent:

“An analyst can help his patient just so far as he himself has gone and not a step farther. …. with patients who got ‘stuck’ with their previous analysts and this always happened at the point where the analyst could make no further progress with himself.”
            ‘The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy’, paragraph 545. 1937

“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.”

Therapeutic Model
Carlos is a ‘Integrative’ Therapist; and has chosen a number of compatible theories and practices which he combines into a cohesive and dynamic model of practice that allows him to work within each client’s frame of reference without forcing clients to adapt their understanding and way of expressing to something they may feel is unnecessarily esoteric or academic. Not all theories and practices are compatible and therefore his choices were not random, like sweets in a bag or based on financial incentives but rather based on years of experience.

Briefly, he practices within a professional Therapeutic Relationship based on Roger’s core conditions, Winnicott’s notion of ‘holding’ and utilises his own well developed analytical and interpretative skills and life insights combined with a number of theoretical understandings including ‘Object Relations’; Klein’s ‘projection and introjection’; Winnicott’s ‘false self’; and Dialectics.  He also, if a client wishes to, utilise a Jungian model for dream analysis that allows a client’s unconscious expression to be expressed and integrated within therapy sessions.

What this means for the client is that he forms a Therapeutic Relationship with his clients based on Empathy, (his ability to accurately track and understand what it feels like to be the client and to have lived and experienced their life), Unconditional Positive Regard, (his ability to truly accept and feel positive and care about a client without judgement, or personal agenda, demand, rejection or retaliation) and Congruence, (the ability to be present, real and authentic within the client-therapist relationship). This relationship is key to Therapeutic practice because it provides a confidential, facilitating and holding environment in which the client can be truly free to express whatever they need to express and be who they truly are without fear of judgement, rejection or retaliation.

Together within the therapeutic relationship they work through whatever issues a client brings both presently ‘in the moment’ and historically. They work to gain new insight and understanding, to express denied emotion and thought, and to make the unconscious conscious; and in that expression, re-framing and understanding the client learns to accept and be gentle, tolerant and compassionate with themselves and to express gratitude and joy in who they are.

While during Therapy solutions to problems may be sought and found; fundamentally Therapy is concerned with personal growth and development.

Testimonials
The following quotes were taken from written testimonials given to me by clients to express their thoughts, feelings and gratitude concerning our counselling work together. Not all clients give written thanks nor is it expected, but it is always a pleasant surprise when they do. What is published below are some exerts from some testimonials to give you a feel for the experience of others. The clients that wrote these testimonials have given permission for them to be published here. (In order to maintain confidentiality, client names have been changed, however, I keep the originals intact for verification purposes).   


Leslie: 31 year old Female.
Issue: Bereaved through suicide.
Feedback:
“Just a little card to say a big thank you for guiding me along a tough journey in my life that has been one of the most rewarding experiences ever. I feel that I have dropped a lot of baggage off along the way and gained a friend.
Thank you so much for all the time and effort you have put into helping me.”


Carol: 35 year old Female.
Issue: Low self worth through Parental Emotional Neglect; Disability and Surgical Trauma.
Feedback:
“When I first met you, I was incredibly down and I felt alone. We talked about my father who disowned me, and about my mum and the way in they treated me had such a major impact on my adult life. Probably the most important thing that I learned whist seeing you was that my life consisted of constant attempts to deny and hide what I was; someone with significant health problems, and dare I say it; a disability!... I was so used to trying to fit in…. Instead of allowing myself to be who I was, I was in a constant battle with myself! Now, it seems laughable…. You taught me that by accepting and acknowledging what my limitations were, if I was prepared to adapt, that I could do anything I wanted to.
You gave me strength, encouraged me, supported me and you understood me. You amazed me by remembering the most trivial details and taunted me with them to inject humour into our sessions. You taught me to laugh at myself; to relax and be just who I was. No matter how upset I was, I always came out of our sessions feeling ‘lighter’ and happier – even the day before I went into hospital. You made me feel worthwhile, that I wasn’t a hypochondriac …. You dispelled my belief that I was a ‘time-waster’…
I could go on forever about how much difference my counselling with you has made to my life…. I did see counsellors in the past…, but none of them have had the skill, kindness and compassion that you have, Carlos. You care passionately and have such insight. I know that part of counselling is about a willingness to help yourself and make changes…. However, it takes an amazing person to break through the many layers of negativity and sadness that lay within me. I feel equipped to deal with anything and I can honestly say that I have never been happier….
Thank you for everything.” 


Jack: 15 year old Male.
Issue: Bereaved of father; Fearful and Agoraphobic.
Counselled: 2007
“Thanks for all the time and help you have given me.”


Bert: 53 year old Male.
Issue: Abused as a child. Ex-offender suffering from depression and low self worth.
Feedback:
“I want to thank you for being my counsellor. You have shown me understanding and patience and your marvellous ability to listen, but most of all your compassionate love. And being non judgemental, you have never spoken out of turn with me at any point.

I remember when I first came to see you; I did not care about my life in any way. Over time I have seen myself become a new person, almost like being born again. I now know how to love myself and forgive myself. I have confidence and self worth and I now see the future in a very different light.

Carlos, it was your ability as a counsellor that brought me through it all. You have a natural skill and such an understanding of humanity. It has been very hard work on my part, but now I am at peace with myself.

I wish you every success in your future as a counsellor and believe that this will set many people free to live as they were meant to be.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart and may pace and love follow you.”


James: 60 year old Male.
Issue: Abused as a child(Physical, Psychological and Sexual); Abusive Children’s Home; Alcoholic; Self harm; Suicidal.
Feedback:
“I feel so much better. He has taught me to handle my issues and not to run away from them. I don’t break down anymore… I can discuss my past with anyone. I am much stronger now because of my Therapy, my life is worth living and I feel important in myself. All I can say is thank God I met Carlos; if I hadn’t then eventually a suicide attempt would have been successful.”

Professional Testimonials
The following are testimonials given by professional Therapists and Supervisors who have professional experience of Carlos.


Colleague: 2007 to –
Carlos is an extremely professional counsellor. His work reflects his attitude regarding confidentiality and boundaries and dedication and enthusiasm towards his clients. Carlos appreciates and understands the ongoing need for personal and professional development and growth and therefore uses his supervision and own personal therapy to monitor himself.


Supervisor and Counselling coordinator: Jan 2006 to –
Carlos displays a high level of professional conduct towards all of his clients whom he treats with dignity and respect. He has a deep level of empathic connection in his work with clients who present with a wide range of issues. Carlos makes full use of supervision.

Services: • Counselling • Psychotherapy • Anger Management • Anxiety Therapy • Life and Career Coaching • Personal and Professional Development • Dream Analysis • Counselling •
Service Area: • Milton Keynes • Northampton • Bedford • Luton • Buckinghamshire • Northamptonshire • Bedfordshire • Wellingborough • Newport Pagnell • Kettering • Dunstable • Rushden • Canterbury •
Issues: • Mental Health • Depression • Low Self-Esteem • Abuse • Anxiety • Stress • Relationships • Couples • Anger • Self-Harm • Eating Disorders & Distress • Bullying • OCD •

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