Online Counsellor and Online Therapist Sarah Luczaj

About Me

While studying English Literature, in1990, I made use of the university counselling service. I found it to be an amazing experience, which I wanted to pass on to others. After some years working with elderly people and people with mental handicaps, writing, translating and travelling, I started counselling training in 1995 and was awarded a Certificate in Counselling Skills, then a Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling a year later (awarded by the CPCAB - The Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body - UK). After a break to have my first child, I acquired a Diploma in Person Centred Counselling in 2002.

I offer an inter-cultural perspective, I speak three languages and have been based in Poland since 1997. I have worked here on a voluntary basis with women suffering from poverty, discrimination and violence, in a centre which has also undergone persecution for its ideology of empowering women. I also work in private practice. I deal with people suffering from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, eating disorders, relationship and parenting issues, drugs, sexual abuse etc. I am more than open to working with all ages, genders, races, nationalities and sexualities.

I am excited about my new venture in online counselling. My experience of online relationships is that they offer many and various kinds of presence and communication. They can offer something uniquely valuable, just as face to face meetings do.

My Interests

I am interested in how we experience life in our minds and in our bodies and how these things interlink. I practice focusing which is a way of accessing our sense of whole situations in our bodies, and mindfulness meditation. My PhD thesis, in progress, links these interests, as I try to put my finger on how we experience ourselves when we feel fine and in the flow, and what counselling can do to facilitate this.

How Does Therapy Work?

Counselling/therapy (I use the two terms interchangeably as is common practice in the UK) is different for every person, every time.

Sometimes it is mainly a safe, respectful space in which you can work things out privately, almost despite the therapist. Sometimes the driving force is the relationship with the therapist, which allows you to feel heard and understood, and to make new discoveries. Sometimes counselling really feels like teamwork, a creative collaboration, generating new plans and solutions. Usually all three of these elements are present, and the emphasis changes over time.

The main ‘language’ of therapy depends on your preferred way of being and communicating. It can be mental/intellectual, emotional, physical (in the sense of paying attention to how you experience things in your body), or spiritual/religious, and I certainly value all four ways of experiencing equally.

What is the Aim of Therapy?

In all cases the aim is for you to find the change, strength or whatever you are looking for. By this I don’t mean that the answer is just lying within you and you are too stupid to see it without professional help - I mean that when someone else actively strives to understand and be with you in a different way, you start to see yourself in a different way, too. This actually changes things.

The Person Centred Approach

I am not here to diagnose you, judge you, or give you advice. I am here to be alongside you and help you to find ways forward with all the means at my disposal.

Person Centred means I am most interested in the person, not the “problem”.

The Person Centred approach is a humanistic one, it maintains that humans are not intrinsically bad or stupid and in need of fixing, but that we have the resources we need to live “good” lives, in all senses of the word, we just don’t always get the conditions we need to use them, or sometimes even find them!

The approach (founded by Carl Rogers in the 1950s) is based around the idea that if two people are in contact, and one is asking for help, then in order to move in the right direction that person needs three things. Those things are:

Empathy

The counsellor tries to put aside their own way of thinking and step inside the client’s world, while being aware all the time of what they are doing

Unconditional positive regard

Complete respect, so the client does not have to try to please/shock the counsellor

Congruence

The counsellor is aware of her/his own thoughts and feelings and behaves naturally, treats the client as equal, and does not put on a front or play the role of parent, guru, expert or anything else.
I will be as real and honest with you as I can while respecting the boundaries which keep us both safe. E.g. I won’t share things just for the sake of being “real and honest” which are more for my benefit than yours.