Mental Made Easy
Claire has been an ‘across-the-board’ counsellor for many years, dealing with many aspects of behaviour, health and trauma – and a wide variety of mental health issues. Her work has spanned over seventeen years of private practice, but in that period, several years of campus student counselling (which she will often cite as her greatest teacher!) as well as recovery centre facilitation.
Her extensive experience has also led to her researching the more severe mental health issues, and recently innovating and developing her own trademarked modality called Frequency Balance™, the “Gilchrist Method” to treat them.
Claire’s counselling has seen her treat adults, teens and children; individuals, couples and groups.
Her work, as with her coaching, has bordered on the extremely versatile, which she attributes to her student counselling days, in which, she says “I had to do everything! From study skills to career guidance, to learning proper diet and nutrition; to rape, unexpected pregnancies, abuse, grief, suicide and bullying; to mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, anger and mood swings – and other heavies like body dysmorphia and eating disorders for example.”
In her private practice, Claire has dealt with all of the above type issues, principally for adults and some late teens; and expanded her work to encompass relationship and family problems, inner child work, and transforming negative behavioural patterns.
She has also worked with children in many arenas (attaining confidence, improving social and communication skills for example); taught classes in which she facilitated techniques to help younger children cope with the more difficult life issues such as bullying; and worked as a youth counsellor, trainer, mentor and intervention facilitator for youth discussion forums.
Much of her other work with younger people has taken the form of talks and lectures to school/university/college classes on topics such as coping with first year University; learning how to freelance; CV/interview preparation for the job market, career guidance and personal power for teens.
From 2020 onwards, Claire’s counselling work took a profound turn towards only tackling the intricacies of what one could call mental health ‘disorders’. From seeing so many different types of people with different issues, the change was palpable.
Claire observes: “As lockdown took hold, obviously clients diminished, but as we went online for sessions, I realised that everyone coming to me had some version of anxiety or depression.
Seemingly these were the only issues to be dealt with – none of my previous diversity. And maybe it was the silence, the aloneness, the increased time on my own, but I started observing these client cases far more comprehensively between sessions than I would normally have had time to do. Noticing firstly, that there were always and commonly other symptoms present, like panic, anger, procrastination, avoidance or overwork tendencies; lack of focus, dyslexia and mood swings for example, AND secondly, such similar ways of thinking, feeling, acting, behaving and believing.
But many had only been diagnosed with anxiety – or depression. Later that year, my client base expanded, some people with ADHD, Dyslexia and Bipolar (diagnosed by other therapists they had seen), and again I noticed the commonality in having a glut of symptoms like anxiety, depression, panic, anger, scatteredness, mood swings; even OCD and body dysmorphia etc. and once again, these common, almost identical behaviours. Which to me, linked the mental health issues so often classified as separate, psychiatrically. It was as if these folk were all on a unique disorder ‘spectrum’ of some kind, defined by overlapping symptoms and common behaviours. Not defined by age, race, culture, even upbringing.”
Claire decided to run with this discovery, and her speculative analysis became private, intensive research with many clients having what she calls ‘the makeup’ to investigate this further. Via doing this (testing groups, holding interviews, researching clients and their families, facilitating at a recovery centre; running an intensive one-on-one, face-to-face intervention in the UK with a Bipolar client for two months in 2023; which included working with the family), Claire unearthed the beginnings of a whole new understanding of what she considers very related mental health issues, particularly certain types of anxiety, depression, anger, panic, non-focus, dissociative issues, eating disorders, body image problems – and particularly ADHD, Bipolar 1 and 2, OCD and even Dyslexia.
She then set out to look at uncovering the actual source of the relatedness – and found herself in a most exciting journey of discovery – which also entailed how to treat these issues far more effectively – at their source.
Fast forward!
It’s 2025. Claire does one-off counselling sessions for those in need but has effectively closed her one-on-one therapy practice to teach the modality she devised from her mental health research. After using it for several years with clients with ground-breaking results. Fresh, innovative and highly insightful.
Her trademarked therapy modality is called Frequency Balance™ The Gilchrist Method (and so much more can be found out about it on www.frequencybalance.co.za), but in a nutshell:
Frequency Balance™ is a modality to identify and treat any of the many deeply subconscious intrinsic behavioural patterns which can underly the related mental health issues mentioned above, and more.
Frequency Balance™ is also about treating the symptoms of these mental health issues with simple, easy, everyday tools which can be learned – to achieve and maintain stability. And to learn to easily self-stabilise. Hence, the title of this page: ‘Mental Made Easy!’
Claire’s innovative course on these tools is called ‘The Simplicity of Stability’ and can be found on her Frequency Balance website (www.frequencybalance.co.za) to download and work from.
And the book on the tools is on the way!
Don’t miss a chance to listen to Claire teach, speak or work with therapists she’s trained on this modality: it’ll open up your world. It’s a breakthrough in both diagnosing and treating mental health issues.