doctor wanted me to have some counselling. checked yesterday and there is only a 4 month waiting list! not sure what else there is in Lancashire. one was also charging for their services and pretty steep to say the least.
I had a couple of sessions, a few months after my Mother passed away. I had just ended up exhausted by a perfect storm of events in the time surrounding it. For example, I went back to work from my compassionate leave to start a brand new job (internal promotion), in a different part of company, which involved crippling travel.
Maybe a few weeks of the dust settling could be helpful before the counselling starts?
I have at other times used a psychologist who is a practising hypnotherapist. Her approach is to take her remit from her patient - i.e. what you need help with, then she'll do a session with you, which you then give feedback on. The feedback was how I felt afterwards, and how I felt in the few days afterwards. That first session was free, to assess if she felt she might be able to help me, and that I might benefit from that help.
At the second session, the session was tweaked a bit, based on feedback, but recorded, and given to me, to use as frequently as I wanted.
My remit to her at the time was that I needed some head space to get things done (like living my life!), and to be able to set the things stressing me to one side for a while.
I have gone back to those recordings (had to convert from CD to mp3 files - that shows how long ago it was) a few times.
I am still in contact with that lady, and would go back to her in a heartbeat. She'd not be much use to your Mikey, as I'm not in your area, but there may be others like her?
Her session aren't the cheapest, but there's no hanging about, and in reality I paid for 2 session (I had a top-up and a tweak to the recording - meaning I had 2), but have resources I can still go back to.
It's a very difficult time for you Mikey.