Counselling Publications
Counselling Services 2021
- Counselling for Young People
- Counselling for Adults and Couples
- Workshops and Training
Dennis Lines is a fully-trained and supervised youth counsellor with skills in individual and group therapy. He has over 25 years experience having worked largely in comprehensive schools but in other settings also. Dennis can offer Time-limited counsellng for teenagers and adults in individual work, couple difficulties and group therapy.
Training Lectures and Workshops can be given on Brief Counselling approaches and techniques that are currently employed by Brief Therapists. He is the author of Brief Counselling in Schools, Spirituality in Counselling and Psychotherapy and The Bullies.
As young people pass through school there can be many trials and tensions that occur in all families and whilst most navigate or muddle their way through some young people and parents benefit from counselling support.
Being a teenager is both exciting and challenging and not all youngsters have the personal resources to cope with this transition easily. Pupils find friendship-bonding important but also troublesome at times.
Bullying can occur and low level name-calling and text messaging can erode a youngster’s confidence. Dennis has also trained teams of peer counsellors to help youngsters to deal with their inter-peer relationships, particularly those in the lower years of school.
At times parents need support in knowing how best to manage their children, particularly when they become challenging and when they test the boundaries. Dennis is quite happy to meet with parents with or without their youngsters present to help resolve family tensions.
Sadly, bereavement and personal loss can cause family upheaval, where the normal smooth running of family life is temporarily knocked off course, and counselling may be necessary in assisting individuals to accept change and to make an adjustment to new circumstances.
Some youngsters become depressed and become so overburdened with worry that they do not know where to turn, particularly if their peers are unable to support them. This inevitably leads to a lowering of achievement and the potential to learn. Others display a whole range of challenging behaviours, which are difficult to live with at times, and which are stressful for parents to have to manage. Dennis is available for parents just as he is for teenagers.
Dennis suffered a spinal injury accident in 1986, and his story of rehabilitation is recorded in his book, Coming through the Tunnel.
Brief Counselling in Schools is well referenced and researched. The book comes to life where there are extracts, illustrations and anecdotal stories from the author's work with children. In this practical context, there seems to be real meaning to the tips and techniques that he offers, and this provides an interesting framework for his own views and stands on issues in practice. The new chapter on anger, aggression and violence included illustrations and case examples and was an insightful, lively and moving read. The themes raised are pertinent and I think of interest to all practitioners working with adolescents, and possibly also to those working with parents of adolescents' - Therapy Today
'The society we've put together isn't kind to adolescents. An increasing number of them are mentally ill, and an increasing number of adults are simply frightened of young people. If we want to go beyond Asbos, truancy patrols and sin-bins then we need to give our young people not just hugs but skilled counselling by people who know what they're doing. In the school environment, where time is short and confidentiality is difficult to maintain, that's not easy, but Brief Counselling describes ways of doing it.
It's worth is borne out by the fact that this is a Third Edition, with much new material dealing with the latest legislation on child protection' - Times Ed.
School is often a pressured environment where personal problems and peer group tensions arise, but have no time or place to be properly addressed. As a result, pupils' need for pastoral support and care is great, especially approaching and during that most challenging of developmental stages: being a teenager.
Brief Counselling in Schools, Third Edition is a practical guide to providing help and support to young people experiencing difficulties in home and school life.
Recognizing the constraints of working within school settings, the book illustrates how counselling can nevertheless be effective, even when time is short and confidentiality
is hard to preserve.
Brief Counselling in Schools
As reviewed in ‘Child Therapy and Mental Health’: Dennis Lines was previously a fulltime school counsellor and trainer at Shenley Academy, formerly Shenley Court Specialist Arts College, in Birmingham. If you’re counselling young people, it would be remarkable if you hadn’t come across at least one of his books:
The Author
`Fascinating. There is much here that is controversial, thought provoking and very useful. It is encyclopaedic in its breadth and use of knowledge. Like rich food, it needs to be taken in slowly, savouring every morsel!' - Thresholds
`Spirituality has been traditionally 'taboo' within the counselling and psychotherapy profession. Dennis Lines comes into this controversial scene with a rigorous-but-gentle, mystical-but-grounded, inspiring and thought-provoking voice. The book is well written and presents the model in the context of other therapeutic modalities, which makes it interesting and useful for therapists from different backgrounds and practice settings. It could also be of use for those involved in religious education, pastoral care or anybody interested in the spiritual development of the self or the existential quest of humankind' - Therapy Today
'This gentle, mystical, empirical and scholarly book is truly inspirational and it deserves the widest possible readership among therapists, religious educators and all those who care about the spiritual destiny of humankind' - Professor Brian Thorne, Co-founder The Norwich Centre and Emeritus Professor of Counselling, University of East Anglia
Spirituality in Counselling and Psychotherapy explores the idea that throughout the course of a therapeutic relationship between therapist and client, a spiritual level is reached by the two people involved. The author shows how this dimension can help clients who are living in an increasingly secular and faithless society to find some resolution with the issues they have.
By exploring different perspectives on religion and spirituality, the book provides therapists with the grounding they need to introduce spiritually-centred counselling into their practice. It describes the characteristics of spiritual counselling and covers practical considerations such as:
“Recognising indications from the client to move into a spiritual mode of therapy”
“Exploring the 'self' through spiritual work within the therapeutic process”, and
“How this can lead to healing and growth”, and
“How to deal with doubt and scepticism over issues of spirituality”.
The book is illustrated throughout with transcripts and case studies to show how therapists can integrate the spiritual within their own approach to therapeutic work. It will be invaluable to all those who wish to explore this dimension in their work with clients.
Spirituality in Counselling and Psychotherapy
Is there a particular type of person who becomes a bully? Why do bullies behave like they do? How can we interpret and understand bullying within relationships?
The Bullies attempts to get inside the minds of the bully and victim - the child, the adolescent and the adult - across a wide range of 'closed' situations including the home, school and workplace, prisons and the armed services. By listening to the voices of bullies and victims from all kinds of backgrounds without making judgements, counsellor Dennis Lines provides unique insights into bullying and what makes such domineering and aggressive behaviour so complex. He discusses controversial issues such as genetic predisposition towards abusive behaviour and draws on his counselling knowledge to provide insights on how to understand and treat bullies to change their behaviour.
The Bullies offers a unique and illustrated perspective on a widespread phenomenon, and will be essential reading for psychologists, sociologists, counsellors, teachers, social workers, probation officers, students and researchers.
The Bullies
