Anne Aitken

I began my career with Relate and worked for them for twelve years as a Relationship therapist and Course Trainer. I have many years experience or working in Private Practice and within the NHS. I set up and delivered a Counselling Service for nine G.P. Practices in Kirby, Liverpool in 1997. I also work for Employee Assistance Programmes, where companies refer employees to me.

Counselling is a way of working with emotional and relational difficulties which involves the exploration of thoughts and feelings, present and past. Counselling can help you to manage your life better by changing the way you respond to difficulties.

This is important at critical times in our lives, for example when we experience relationship difficulties, divorce, bereavement, depression, or perhaps when we face a difficult and important decision.Or sometimes we experience feelings which we can neither account for, nor control. They may be longstanding or recent in origin.

Many people encounter sexual problems at some point in their lives. Stress, tiredness, illness, family and work pressures, even a new baby can all contribute to sexual problems of one kind or another. It may be a problem you have had for a long time, or it might be something that has developed after a previously good sex life.

A process in which disputing parties seek to resolve their differences with the assistance of a trained mediator acting as a third party. Mediation is voluntary, confidential and aims to offer disputing parties the opportunity to be fully heard, to hear each other's perspective and to decide how to resolve their disputes themselves.