Counselling and psychotherapy

Counselling in Leicester and online

Counselling and psychotherapy give you the space to explore how to relate to life in a new way and become more self-aware, enabling you to recognise and meet your needs. My name is Nic Higham, I am a counsellor based in Leicester Wigston, UK offering counselling to adults in person and online.

Research shows that counselling is an effective way to deal with anxiety, depression, trauma, relationships, loss and other mental health issues. It helps people through having the opportunity to think, feel and be while being listened to, and is therapeutic. I have undergone training, hold qualifications and have a depth of experience in working therapeutically. Counselling is non-judgmental and takes place in a confidential setting, allowing you to freely share the things that concern you.

My approach is fundamentally ‘insight-oriented’ and is grounded in relational depth. Therapeutic change happens when we look honestly and uncompromisingly inside ourselves. This compassionate, attuned space helps you understand what you think, feel and do and why. Insight-oriented therapy helps you better understand yourself and your life through ‘connecting the dots’. This leads to greater self-knowledge, self-compassion and freedom and growth. Through this authentic encounter, I will aim to help you understand how and why you have developed particular behavioural, emotional, and cognitive patterns. Relational depth happens when people meet at a very deep level. We feel totally tuned in and we experience true connection. It is a sense of safety, engagement and deep togetherness. Relational depth brings us back into the heart of what is most meaningful for us.

The better we know ourselves, the better we thrive. Self-knowledge leads to freedom. When we are free, we have power and a greater range of options at our disposal to fulfil our needs. Insight breaks us free from the habits and patterns of behaviour that don’t serve us. My hope is that therapy will help you look at and understand underlying triggers to stressful and painful experiences. This will bring to light how and why you regularly experience certain patterns and dynamics and clarify your intentions. 

“Nic is helping me to see what on some level is obvious, but I haven’t been able to see it, then when I see it, I’m changed without there being an intellectual process. It just happens, like water finding its own level. Not like any other therapy!”

Freedom from your past, peace of mind in the now

Psychotherapy and counselling offer a safe therapeutic relationship to process what has happened in your life and how you think and feel about certain situations, relationships, roles and identities. The relationships we have when we’re young can create a blueprint for our adult life. It can be transformative to explore our childhood and think about the effect it’s having in the here-and-now. Counselling enables you to explore what makes you feel scared, depressed, anxious or stuck and soften your emotional defences so you can make good connections with yourself and others. We do this by exploring, processing and sometimes releasing internalised beliefs that no longer serve you.

Find out who you are and what you want

Counselling gives you a chance to explore your thoughts and feelings, attitudes and beliefs, fears and goals. It can help you think through your options for changing your life and lifestyle, enabling you to find solutions and greater satisfaction. I will help you identify choices for the future and support you in making these happen. My aim is to help you recognise how you would like your life to be and then to support you in actualising these aims. We do this through talking, reflecting and understanding and “joining dots” which can produce powerful shifts.

See yourself and life in a new light

I will listen with presence to what you say to help untangle your thoughts, feelings and worries and reflect your insights back to you. Counselling will support you to express your emotions in your own way and help you work out a path forward. It can help you accept what you cannot change and change what you can and I will journey with you while you do this. A wonderful benefit of counselling is that it allows people to think and feel about themselves in new ways, and this can be genuinely liberating.

Gain insight, clarity and direction

Counselling in Leicester, Wigston and online brings insight and clarity, which help us understand the origins and development of psychological difficulties, leading to empowerment. You will gain self-awareness and personal insight allowing you to become more aware of your thoughts, feelings and sensations or energies in your body. Sessions may also help you develop a more precise sense of how others perceive you. You may find self-acceptance, encouraging you to form a healthier attitude towards yourself, and self-actualisation letting you move in a fulfilling direction. Psychotherapy sessions can even help evolve your social and interpersonal skills which can improve your relationships. All this can create healthy cognitive and behavioural changes that stop destructive or unhelpful thoughts.

Counselling and psychotherapy helps:

• to clarify what is important to you in your life
• to discover and tap into your inner resources
• in the exploration of feelings, thoughts, sensations and meanings 
• by offering support at times of crisis
• by offering support during phases of development and transition
• to meet within a compassionate space ‘stuck’ issues — including the integration of childhood experiences
• to discover resolution of problems

What difficulties are met in counselling?

• anxiety / stress / panic
• relationship issues /separation and divorce
• depression / depression symptoms
• spiritual growth
• feeling sad / feeling low
• family issues
• low self-esteem
• trauma / abuse / neglect
• emotional abuse
• low self-confidence
• anger issues / anger management
• suicidal thoughts
• work-related stress
• loss and bereavement

You may also be interested in Nondual Therapy, a psycho-spiritual approach:

In nondual therapy, we identify desire-fear ‘distortions’ associated with ‘qualities’ of the One Self. The distortions are aspects of the ‘limited self’ or ‘ego’. They are parts of us that have become frozen in time through essential unmet needs, especially in childhood. Consequently, as adults, we often live in a state of desire and fear (grasping and aversion) and this dualises our experience. The distortions seem to block the truth of our ultimate oneness and thus our experience of the qualities, such as connection, love, clarity and joy. The qualities are like nourishing food or healing medicine that seem to be out of reach. In truth, they are ever-present no matter what. Through guided meditation, inquiry and exploration we unravel and soften somatic contractions and ideas associated with the distortions. The process unlocks the qualities of Self that the facets of the ego veil. This ultimately deepens your understanding of nonduality; you don’t simply understand nonduality with the mind but come to embody this truth within your whole being.

Nic Higham is a professional counsellor and nonduality and mindfulness author based in Leicester, Wigston. 

Member of British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy 

As well as certain psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches, my work is influenced by nonduality / spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Mooji, Ramana Maharshi, Adyashanti, Byron Katie, and Jeff Foster.