Simone Harch
Integrative counsellor and psychotherapist

Welcome. I offer a calm, safe, non-judgemental space to help people work through problems or difficulties that they are facing in life.

People come to see me for many and varied reasons: you may wish your relationships were better; you may struggle with anxiety or depression; or you may have experienced events in your past that affect your life today. Some people come to me not really knowing what is wrong, just knowing that they want life to be or feel different.

I consider all elements of the individual in the work we do together including emotions, thinking processes, bodily responses, physical health and behaviour. Alongside this, we explore life experiences, relationships and culture. I take this approach as difficult experiences often impact us in a variety of ways.

For most clients, this total support enables positive change to occur in many areas of their life.

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About me

I was born in Sydney and moved to England in 2005, living first in Windsor before moving to the Peak District in 2007. I am step-mum to 3 adult children and mum to a teenager who joined our family through adoption in 2010.  In my spare time I enjoy walking, gardening, yoga and spending time with my friends and family.

My first career was in human resources within the technology sector, working across cultures and countries.  Whilst I loved this work, it was necessary to step back from my career when family life became increasingly complex. After spending many years in family-based therapy, I decided to re-train as a therapist as I felt a strong desire to help others as I had been helped through my own therapeutic journey.

I provide counselling services via my private practice. I have a personal interest in working with attachment (relationship issues) and trauma (both single-instance and complex trauma).  A specialist area of my practice is supporting parents of children with complex needs, in particular where children display violent, harmful and controlling behaviour.  The principles of non-violent resistance (NVR) underpin this work.  I am also a qualified adoption support counsellor and work with adults who want to make sense of their adoption journey.

The ’Counselling’ and ‘NVR’ pages of my website provide further information on each service.

What my clients say

Simone and I started counselling sessions during a dark period in my life following a car accident and new motherhood. I was struggling with a selection of post-trauma symptoms and helplessness as a new parent. Simone gave me a safe space – both online and then in person – to disentangle my feelings, voice them,…

A near fatal brain injury brought about years of mental health struggles for me, which I’d tried and tried to figure out alone and with the help available to me, but often with little continued success. Having found Simone and her counselling (at a pretty desperate time), I was able with her structure and guidance,…

I started to see Simone when I found myself struggling to know what was reasonable behaviour, and feeling like I’d lost myself behind someone else’s needs, which wasn’t helping either of us. After a couple of sessions of me blurting out my litany of woe, Simone worked with me to identify underlying patterns in my…

I decided to see Simone after realising that events I had experienced in my life were impacting my overall levels of happiness.  I was scared of talking about things that had happened, for fear of these things overwhelming me.  Simone offered me a safe and calm place to talk and reflect.  I didn’t feel rushed…

After six months of various levels of COVID lockdown, I was slipping into a near permanent state of anxiety and my normal coping mechanisms were nowhere to be seen. I found Simone, and within a couple of weeks of contacting her, was lined up with a video call appointment. She somehow sifted through the garbled,…

I started to see Simone after a long period of difficult family events . I have never considered counselling before but recognised that I had reached the end of my reserves . Simone was reassuring and able to pick some key themes that ran through my current situation, and also my management of stressful events…

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Contact me for more information