What is Counselling and Psychotherapy?

The terms counselling and psychotherapy are applied differently by a range of different authors, counselling approaches, and countries. 

Counselling can be defined as a confidential contractual relationship between the client and the counsellor which is a relatively short-term intervention (up to a year but often much shorter e.g. 10 weeks). It may include educational and information giving aspects. Telephone or Zoom is appropriate for counselling.

Psychotherapy can be distinguished from counselling, although it contains the basic aspects of counselling, as longer-term (over a year), and which addresses developmental and characterological issues, in depth, within an ongoing therapeutic healing relationship. Ideally psychotherapy is face-to-face.

The Walking Free Model: Counselling for Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse is more aligned to counselling, especially in the early stages of working through the Walking Free Recovery Workbook (Phases 1 and 2). At later stages your therapist may offer psychotherapy to address emotional healing and developmental, post-traumatic issues, grief and loss (Phase 3). 

For more information see: UKCP website and BACP website including Its good to talk.

What is Gestalt Psychotherapy? 

The goal of the Gestalt approach is awareness of self and self in relationship to others. Self-awareness gives us the opportunity to make the changes in life we want to make and increases our choices.

Gestalt is a creative, respectful and non-judgemental approach which includes ‘talking therapy’ but may also involve role play, ‘two chair work’, movement, metaphor, body awareness or exploration of dreams – all intended to raise awareness. 

What is like to work with Dr. Gillie Jenkinson?

In sessions, Gillie will listen carefully and she is interactive. She does not maintain long silences or offer a 'blank screen' required by some therapeutic approaches.

When working with former members and survivors of coercive, cultic and spiritual abuse, Gillie brings her personal experience along with years of experience working with survivors, her professional training, research and a deep understanding of coercive control, cults, and thought-reform into each conversation. The aim of Walking Free Counselling is for clients to understand their experience on both an emotional and cognitive level – an essential element in recovery as identified in her research.

What should I expect before counselling commences?

A potential client who contacts us by email will receive an response setting out what we offer. They may wish to work with Gillie or one of our affiliates and to discuss the different approaches for psychotherapy, counselling or Walking Free Counselling (formerly Post-Cult Counselling).

The first session will usually take between 1-1.5 hours and will provide an opportunity for both the therapist and the potential client to assess whether they feel they can work well together. This will be charged at the hourly rate. Each therapist will discuss their charges as they vary between affiliates. 
 

A counselling agreement is then discussed and mutually agreed upon at the start of Walking Free Counselling and sets out the expectations and boundaries.
 

Finally, the client will be asked to fill out a brief monitoring questionnaire/form which highlights the issues they wish to address. The client will be asked to fill out a similar form at the end of therapy, and sometimes 6 months post, to determine the effectiveness of the counselling.

How do Zoom and telephone sessions work?

Gillie has been counselling clients by Zoom and telephone for many years – including eleven years staffing a telephone helpline at Sheffield Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Service. She has also trained others to provide telephone counselling and support. 

Gillie usually delivers Walking Free Counselling on Zoom and sends a reminder email to regular clients with a permenant link. With new clients she sends a Zoom link just before the session. 

If meeting on the telephone, clients usually call Gillie. 

Zoom and telephone sessions are charged by the hour.

What is a cult and have I been exposed to one?

Deciding whether you've been in a cult is for you to say. However, one of the problems is that it is sometimes hard to tell.  Some former member’s definitions uncovered during Gillie’s MA Research are:

• A cult is where a person/s become/s devoted to a person or regime, be it religious/sexual etc. People lose their sense of self. Often these cults are abusive and about power and control.
   
• A cult is a group or a gathering of people who are following strict doctrines of some kind, most of the time a distortion of some religious beliefs, and whose leadership exercise power, control, and abusive techniques to subdue their followers into obedience. These groups deny the individual's capacity for discernment and critical thinking.
   
• A pyramid-shaped group, with the leader at the top, who try to control members' behaviour, emotions, thoughts and information they receive. There is deceit in what they promise/expect and the leader's objective is to gain power and money from the members by whatever means: manipulation/breaking the law/psychological/emotional/physical/sexual abuse.
   
• A group (or person) that uses manipulative means, whether psychological or physical, to dominate and control its members, so robbing them of their free will.
   
• A cult has several characteristics: the main is having a charismatic leader and the group believing they are 'The Chosen Few' i.e. if people want to leave they will be seen as bad, evil, lost etc. The family contact is lost if the member's family doesn't want to be involved.
   
• A person/group/church which makes members dependent on them and takes away their choice, freedom and autonomy, using unethical means to do so; such as fear, force, violence, abuse and any sort of psychological/emotional manipulation or dishonesty. Such people/groups/churches ultimately have their own interests in mind and care little, if anything, for the well-being of those they abuse.

What is the different between a first generation (1G) and second generation (2G or SGAs)? 

The cultic studies literature increasingly refers to those who join or who are recruited into a cult as adults as "first generation" (FGAs) and those spending all or part of their childhood in a cult as "second generation" (SGAs - (second generation adults). Those whose family have been member for many generations are referred to as transgenerational or multi-generation (MGAs). 

SGA cult leavers have, to a large degree, had to speak out about their own experiences because their very particular difficulties have not been recognised by society.

SGA's are likely to need to discover who they are and their authentic autonomous identity, whereas FGAs may need to recover who they were before, because they have experience prior to the coercive, cultic setting. Both are likely to have developed a cultic identity or pseudo-identity (the person they had to be in order to be a member). 

What is a 'Third Culture Kid' (TCK)?

A Third Culture Kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’, or primary, culture. The TCK may not have full ownership of any culture, but may build relationships to them all. The TCK’s sense of belonging is, therefore, in relationship to others of similar background, rather than one culture or another.

Find out more at the TCK World Website and by reading ‘Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds’.

What is Spiritual Abuse?

Hope Valley Counselling use the term spiritual abuse quite broadly and have worked with individuals who have said that they had been spiritually abused in a number of faith/belief systems as well as in therapy groups and abusive relationships.

Spiritual Abuse can be present in mainstream religion, in fringe groups, cults, and new religious movements (NRMs). Spiritual Abuse occurs when a powerful or charismatic individual takes advantage of their followers. They will be in a position of authority and be: trained and approved by society to represent God; or be self-selected and have the hubris to believe they represent ‘god’ or a higher spiritual being; or believe they are an incarnation of a ‘god’ or a higher spiritual being. When the only route to ‘God’ or spiritual enlightenment is through the spiritual figure, the power imbalance can lead to followers being coerced to hand over their life, thinking, decision making, to various degrees, to the spiritual figure and to become dependent. Spiritual abuse can lead to sexual abuse (including minister and clergy sexual abuse), psychological and emotional abuse and has been likened to spiritual rape.

Spiritual abuse can have a damaging effect on an individual’s spiritual identity or soul and can destroy hope. The individual’s aspiration to be good can be perverted, affecting the very essence of their being. Spiritual abuse can negatively affect an individual’s sense of self and personal identity. Spiritual abuse can occur in cults. Spiritual abuse can occur in what is assumed by society to be a safe and moral space e.g. Church or Mosque and may therefore be overlooked, minimised or go unacknowledged. [Various sources]