Therapy for people aged 16 and over, at the stage where everything is supposed to be falling into place and often does not. You do not need to be in crisis to deserve somewhere to think.
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, online appointments and evening slots available.
People often arrive apologising, as though what they are dealing with is not serious enough to justify sitting in the chair. It usually is.
Deadlines, exams, a course that turned out to be the wrong one, or a first job where you feel permanently a step behind. The exhaustion of performing a competence you do not feel.
Homesickness nobody warned you about, or the opposite, guilt about not missing it. Working out who you are when the people who defined you are two hundred miles away.
School friendships thinning out, new ones that feel thinner still, and the particular loneliness of being surrounded by people all day and known by none of them.
Working out who you are, including your sexuality and gender, and whether it feels safe to say so out loud yet. This is a space where you will not have to explain or justify that.
Dread before seminars or shifts, a mind that will not switch off at night, or feeling flat after finally getting the thing you worked years for. See anxiety counselling.
The sense that everyone else has a plan. Choosing between options when none of them feels right, and the fear of picking the wrong one and wasting years.
This is the part most people want answered before they get in touch, so here it is without the hedging.
You can consent to counselling yourself from the age of 16. You do not need a parent's permission to come and you do not need a referral from your GP. What you say in the room stays in the room, and I would not report back to your parents on what we discussed, even if they are the ones paying.
The one exception is if I believed you or someone else was at serious risk of harm. If that happened I would tell you first and we would work out together what needs to happen next. It would not be done behind your back.
Parents are welcome to make the first contact and to ask practical questions about how sessions work. Once we start, the work is between me and you. If you are a parent reading this and worried about your son or daughter, the most useful thing is usually to offer the option rather than arrange it for them. Therapy someone has chosen tends to work. Therapy someone has been sent to rarely does.
University wellbeing services are worth using. Private therapy sits alongside them rather than replacing them.
University services are free and know the institution, but term-time waits can run to weeks. Here you can usually start within days of getting in touch.
University counselling is usually a short, focused number of sessions. Here you keep the same therapist for as long as the work is useful, and we review it as we go.
Sessions do not have to stop when term does. We can move online over the holidays and return to the room when you are back in Newcastle.
Sessions run for 50 minutes, usually weekly at the same time. There is no assessment process to get through first and no waiting list. You get in touch, we have a free initial conversation so you can get a sense of how I work, and we take it from there.
The work itself is integrative, which means I draw on whichever approach fits rather than putting you through one fixed method. That matters at this age, because what starts as exam stress often turns out to be about something else entirely.
Daytime and evening appointments are available at The Old Fire Station in Gosforth, close to Jesmond and the city centre campuses, with online sessions as an alternative if getting across town is the thing standing in the way.
Not unless you want them to. From the age of 16 you can arrange counselling yourself and what you talk about is confidential. If a parent is paying, they are entitled to know that sessions are happening and when, but not what is said in them. The only exception would be a serious risk of harm, and you would be told first.
Yes, and most people do. You are welcome to bring someone to the building if it helps you get through the door, but they would not sit in on the session. If you would rather someone else made the first contact, that is fine too.
That is normal, particularly in the first session or two. There is no script and no expectation that you arrive with it all worked out. We can start with something small and concrete, like how a specific week went, and the rest tends to follow. Silence is allowed. It is not an exam.
There is no set number. Some people come for 6 to 8 weeks around one specific thing, others stay much longer. We review progress together and you can stop whenever you want. I would just ask that we use a last session to finish properly rather than ending abruptly.
Yes. Evening slots exist because most people this age are in lectures or at work during the day. They tend to be the first to be taken, so it is worth asking early about what is available.
It works well. We can switch to online sessions while you are away and return to the room when you are back, or pause and pick up in the new term. Either is fine as long as we plan it rather than letting it drift.
No. You can contact me directly to arrange a free initial consultation. No referral is needed to access private therapy.
I offer a free initial conversation so you can get a sense of how I work before committing to anything. If you would rather ask a question first than book a session, that is fine too.
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