Most therapists train in one model and work within it. Integrative therapy starts with you instead, drawing on whichever approach fits what you bring, and changing course when the work asks for something different.
Errikos Kotzakioulafis is a BACP registered counsellor and psychotherapist with over 10 years of experience in Newcastle upon Tyne. In-person sessions at The Old Fire Station in Gosforth and online appointments available.
An integrative therapist trains across several models and draws on whichever is most useful, often moving between them within a single piece of work. In practice these blend, and you are unlikely to notice where one ends and another begins.
The foundation of everything else. You set the direction and the pace. When people say therapy helped simply because they finally felt heard, this is usually what they mean.
Looking at how earlier relationships shape how you relate to people now. Useful when the same difficulty keeps recurring and the reason is not obvious from the surface.
Working with the loops between thought, feeling and behaviour. Often the quickest route to relief when anxiety or low mood are making daily life hard.
Changing your relationship with difficult thoughts rather than fighting them, so they stop dictating your choices and you can move towards what matters.
Patterns that show up between you and other people tend to show up between you and me too. Noticing that as it happens is often where the most useful work sits.
Anxiety, grief and stress are physical as much as mental. Paying attention to what your body is doing gives us information that talking alone can miss.
People rarely arrive with a single, tidy problem. Someone might come because of panic before work, and it turns out that is tangled up with a relationship that ended badly two years ago, and underneath that a pattern of never quite feeling allowed to take up space. A purely symptom-focused approach might quieten the panic. It would leave the rest untouched.
I do not decide the approach in advance and I do not decide it alone. In the early sessions we talk about what brought you here, what you have already tried, and what you are hoping might be different. Some people want tools they can use this week. Others have been carrying something for years and want space to finally look at it properly.
From there I make a working judgement and I say it out loud rather than keeping it to myself. If something is not helping, we change it. You are allowed to tell me a session did not land, and it is useful when you do. There is more on this in my article on what integrative counselling is and how it can help.
Integrative work sits behind everything I offer, including anxiety counselling, depression counselling, OCD therapy and counselling for young adults aged 16 and over.
You do not need to recognise all of these. One is usually enough of a reason to get in touch.
It helped a bit, but not enough, or it ended before you got to the part that actually mattered.
Just a general sense that something is off, or that you are living slightly beside your own life rather than in it.
A difficulty that turns up again in different relationships, different jobs, different cities, with different people involved each time.
Practical help with what is happening now, and space to understand where it came from. You should not have to choose.
Like being processed through a programme rather than met as a person with a particular history.
A bereavement, a diagnosis, a separation, a move, a career ending. A transition you need somewhere to think about.
Neither is better in the abstract. CBT has strong evidence and is often the fastest route to relief for specific, well-defined anxiety or low mood. Integrative therapy includes CBT as one of its tools while keeping room for the parts of your experience that do not fit neatly into a thought record. If your difficulty is clear and contained, focused CBT may be all you need.
Yes. Each approach it draws on has its own research base, and there is a large body of evidence showing that the quality of the relationship between therapist and client predicts outcome more reliably than the particular model used. Integrative practice is built around that finding rather than in spite of it.
The terms overlap a great deal and many practitioners are qualified in both. Broadly, counselling tends to be shorter and focused on a current difficulty, while psychotherapy runs longer and looks at deeper patterns. In practice the same piece of work often moves between the two, so it is more useful to talk about what you want to change than to worry about the label.
It varies. Some people notice a meaningful shift within 6 to 8 sessions; others prefer longer-term work. We review progress together regularly and you are never locked into a fixed number. I would only ask that we use a final session to close properly rather than ending mid-air.
That is one of the most common reasons people get in touch, and it is not a problem. You do not need a diagnosis, a clear question or a tidy explanation of what is wrong. Working out what is going on is part of the therapy, not something you have to finish before you arrive.
Yes. Online therapy sessions are available alongside in-person appointments at The Old Fire Station, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. Some people prefer being in the room, some mix the two, and we can change it if it is not working.
I offer a free initial conversation so you can get a sense of how I work before committing to sessions. There is no pressure and no obligation.
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