Benjamin ('Beni') Fleischer

Benjamin (‘Beni’) Fleischer works from the belief that a person’s relationship with others and with life events ultimately reflects their relationship with themselves. He applies this credo through both his professional training and his own lived experience.

He frames the self as composed of revealed and hidden realms - the visible parts of life and the deeper influences that often feel unknowable, such as background, personality, family, community, religion, race, gender and sexuality. He helps people to approach those hidden aspects so they can appreciate themselves within the fuller context of their lives.

As people engage with these hidden elements they tend to become more aware, gain greater control and begin to experience real choice rather than simply reacting. He emphasises that life is meant to be lived, not merely endured, and that each experience - positive or painful - contains opportunities to grow that become visible with effort.

Talking about these matters can be difficult, but it is a practical route to uncovering those opportunities. His aim is to accompany clients on that journey at their own pace in a non-judgmental atmosphere. Having experienced a form of mid-life crisis himself, he values talking therapy for the way it helped him be more true to himself and understands what it is to hide, to feel lost and to face fears and move through them.

Although his practice is not exclusive, he focuses particularly on male clients aged 35-50 who are struggling with the mid-life years. He trained in integrative humanistic counselling and in spiritual self-awareness from a Jewish Orthodox Torah perspective, and he has counselled people from a wide variety of backgrounds during his work for the NHS. He works one-to-one with anxiety, depression and associated conditions, practises within the ethical framework of the BACP and receives professional supervision for his work.