Click Here For one-to-one counselling or psychotherapy
Click Here For low-cost options
Click Here For couples, families & children
Click Here For group therapy
Click Here For assistance in finding the right person / option for you
Click Here To choose your own practitioner
Click Here For information on different therapy options
Assistance in finding the right person or option
Assessment and Referral Appointments
The purpose of this session is to help you find the right therapist and approach to therapy for you.
Finding the right therapist in Oxfordshire to fit with you and what you are wanting to achieve in counselling/therapy is the most important factor that determines how beneficial the process might be.
Your Appointment
An initial assessment & referral appointment takes about one hour.
Let us know if you would like to arrange an appointment, and details of your availability.
The fee for this appointment is from a minimum of £45 - £80 (£60 - £80 for couples). The fee you pay will be the maximum of whatever (per session) limit you give us to help you find your therapist. This is to allow people that need to to access the low-cost OTS service. You can find information on the cost of sessions in the next section.
Click Here To apply for an assessment appointment
How quickly will I be seen?
At present we can usually see you for an assessment within a week. There may need to be a wait before a suitable practitioner is available however. We try to keep this wait as short as possible, but it all depends on several factors:
Fees for Sessions
Low-Cost Service Fees
Fees for this service are in the range of £20-£45 per session. This service is staffed by trainees in supervision with us, newly qualified practitioners building their practices and occasionally by experienced practitioners with a lower fee place available.
Individual Counselling & Psychotherapy Fees
This is dependant on the practitioner. In Oxfordshire the average cost of therapy with an experienced practitioner is around £55 per session, and the range is generally from £45 - £90 per session.
Couples Therapy Fees
Couples Therapy is generally charged at a higher rate than individual sessions, from £60 - £90 per hour session.
Group Therapy
Group therapy is currently charged on a sliding scale from £20 - £45 per session. A session last for up to 2 1/2 hours.
Low-Cost Options
There are two main low-cost options:
Group Therapy
For many people this is as effective as individual therapy. Once you have gotten over the initial anxiety (common for most people) you will realise how effective and supportive it can be. You can read more about group therapy here on the main OTS website.
Low-cost Service
This service is mainly staffed by trainees on placement with us. The fees for this service help them to cover the cost of room rental and supervision. Toward the higher end of this scale, there can be places available with newly qualified practitioners who are still building the practice, as well as experienced professionals who offer some low cost work. Demand for this service can be high, and there may be a wait depending on factors explained here .
Couples Therapy / Counselling
If couples therapy, is to be of use to you, it often requires some time, commitment and cost, so it is important to find the right person. Exploring if couples therapy is the right course for you to take, and who you might work well with are the main purposes of an initial assessment.
In finding you the right person, there are many things to consider. Practicalities such as your availability and personal affordability need to be established, as well as whether you are prepared to travel for the right therapist, who may or may not be at the OTS-Witney Therapy Centre.
All people (and couples) are different, and the relationship you have with your counsellor is seen by most as the most important element in achieving a successful outcome. Different practitioners work in different ways, and have different personalities. These differences can be important in working with you as individuals. So whilst an expert car mechanic might be able to work with many different cars, it is not the same with counselling.
Additionally, some couples can often benefit from working on their own for a while before starting couples therapy, and an assessment can explore this also.
The assessment appointment will take about one hour, and is charged at £55 payable by cash or cheque. Couples therapy is generally charged at between £60 and £90 per one-hour session depending on the practitioner, and is generally either weekly or fortnightly. If it is fortnightly it often arrange for a 90 minute session to allow more space. Individual therapy is available from £20.
Click here to enquire
Family Therapy
Currently, most family therapists in Oxfordshire work within the NHS, so you maybe able to get a referral through your GP. We may be able to offer family therapy if all members are over 18. Please feel free to enquire.
Click here to enquire
Please choose from the following options...
Click Here For Room Hire
Click Here To join OTS-Witney or OTS-Oxford
Click Here For Supervision & Training
Click Here For Practitioner Events
Reasons why people contact us
People want to find a counsellor or a psychotherapist for many different reasons. Some want help with specific emotional problems such as depression, loneliness or anxiety, or they may wish to generally feel more alive. Some may have difficulty coming to terms with a traumatic or painful personal history. Others may feel stuck in recurring patterns that prevent them from feeling fulfilled, from connecting with others, or from finding meaning in their lives.
Sometimes people wish to find a counsellor or a therapist for help during a crisis, such as the end of a relationship, bereavement, divorce, redundancy resulting in loss of direction in life or other traumatic event such as rape, abortion or miscarriage.
Many of our clients tell us they contacted the OTS-Witney Therapy Centre in order to:
About the OTS-Witney Therapy Centre
The OTS-Witney Therapy Centre opened in 2004 to provide beautiful low-cost therapy room hire in Witney for psychotherapists, counsellors and complementary therapists, and to provide a range of counselling and psychotherapy services to the general public. We ensure all practitioners are fully qualified and insured.
Our Therapy Centre is in central Witney, just around the corner from the main bus stops at the top of the High Street. So we are well placed for people travelling from Abingdon, Burford, Bampton, Carterton, Eynsham, Faringdon, Oxford, Wantage and other surrounding towns and villages.
If you want assistance with the huge range of therapy options - approaches and types that are available, please feel free to call Justin Smith on 07977 126330, or email him here.
The PsychoEducational Blog
Welcome to our blog - To help develop our understanding of human nature and the challenge of changing how life is. We will add new thinking to this blog at the beginning of each month so you can check back for the next instalment!
There is a journey unfolding with our blog posts, so, you can start from the beginning here. We post the most recent month's blog below...
June 2025:Further Down The Rabbit Hole…
In the film, The Matrix, Morpheus famously says to Neo (the Keanu Reeves character),
"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
Long term and deeper therapy processes can be like this, when we really enter into a curiosity about the uniqueness of our own human condition and psyche.
One of the trickiest aspects of having a mind, is that it likes to be right and it often likes to be certain. Some folk are (I would say) lucky enough to have developed in such a way as to be ok with uncertainty, but many of us can feel anxious without it; it all depends on the influences on us in our early development.
The problem with this need to be right and certain, is manyfold, but let us just look at two aspects for now…
Firstly, we generally identify ourselves as our minds. When we refer to our bodies, perhaps holding up a hand, we would say, ‘this is my hand’, not, ‘this is me’. We talk about my stomach, as though it is something that belongs to us, but not us. Well, ironically we also say ‘my mind’ as in, ‘I have made my mind up’. So, we talk as though we are not mind, even though we generally think it defines us. But who are we if not mind and not hand, and not stomache. This is clearly a difficult philosophical question, as well as a difficult psychological one. I am not trying to give you or lead you to definitive answers, but to invite you to think about the complexity of you (and me). Because, when we develop our capacity to be curious in ourselves, in others and the relationship between us, we might learn something new. The more attached we are to our own dogmatic beliefs and truths, then we can learn very little.
It is hard to be this curious however, when we have strong reactions to each other - like in marriages (generally after some period of time), or in therapeutic relationships, again, generally after some period of time. But why does it take time before relationships really start to break down?
To answer this to some extent, let’s look at the second aspect of mind, which needs us to revisit some of the points made in previous months’ posts, that it seems more valid to contemplate ourselves: a) as having a multiplicity of parts/minds/self-states; and b) that we are predominantly unconscious of what is going on in ‘our minds’. When we are in conflict in ourselves, say for example between a desire to be fit and join the gym, or a desire to watch the latest episodes of our favourite programmes and ‘veg out’, then we have two different self-states battling for dominance; as opposed to when we are in conflict with another person, when we might be in one dominant mind or self-state, and the conflict is with someone else.
Given that the mind wants to be certain and be right, we often battle for dominance between one internal mind or state and another, or between the minds of two different people. And it is often a battle! Learning to be curious, and not so attached to being right and certain brings possibilities other than winning or losing the battle.
Learning to be curious rather than dogmatic is a skill we can learn and practice. Not doing so, relates to the question I posed earlier - regarding. ‘why does it take time before relationships really start to break down? The simple answer is, that we didn’t get enough practice in, in being curious, before it was too late, and the full blown war with years worth of ammunition (unresolved mini-conflicts) erupted! The less flippant answer, we will return to, next month!
