Introducing the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal: Making Therapeutic Change Visible

Recognising Change Within Psychotherapy

How do we recognise when meaningful change is taking place within therapy?

Psychotherapy is a deeply personal process, and change is not always immediately apparent. Sometimes it may involve a reduction in psychological distress, while at other times it may emerge through a greater understanding of our emotions, a developing sense of authenticity, or a different relationship with ourselves and others.

These changes can be subtle, particularly when we are immersed in the experiences and difficulties that initially brought us to therapy.

As a UKCP Clinically Registered Psychotherapist and BACP Accredited Counsellor offering counselling and psychotherapy in Finchley Central, Hampstead Heath, Muswell Hill and online, I wanted to develop a resource that would help clients become more actively involved in understanding their therapeutic experiences.

This led me to create the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal, a private online space designed to help clients reflect upon their psychological and emotional experiences and explore how these may change throughout therapy.

My intention was twofold: to give clients greater ownership and involvement in their therapeutic process, while providing an opportunity to recognise and reflect upon their progress over time.

Rather than reducing psychotherapy to a collection of questionnaire scores, I wanted to create something that could complement the therapeutic relationship and support clients in developing a deeper understanding of their own experiences.

Bringing Together Psychological Measurement and Person-Centred Therapy

Through my clinical work within NHS Talking Therapies, I have considerable experience using standardised psychological questionnaires to explore symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Two widely used measures are the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), which assesses depressive symptoms, and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), which assesses symptoms associated with anxiety.

These measures can provide valuable information about changes in psychological distress. However, they are primarily concerned with identifying and measuring particular symptoms.

Within Person-Centred Experiential (PCE) Therapy, which is grounded in the humanistic tradition, I believe it is equally important to understand the personal meaning of an individual's experiences.

Therapeutic change may involve more than a reduction in symptoms. It may also include developing emotional awareness, becoming more authentic, recognising previously unexplored feelings, or discovering new meanings within our experiences.

The Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal was developed to bring together these different perspectives on psychological change.

The Personal Questionnaire: Understanding What Matters to You

One of the central features of the Client Portal is the Personal Questionnaire (PQ), developed by psychologist and psychotherapy researcher Robert Elliott.

Unlike standardised psychological questionnaires, the Personal Questionnaire is individually developed through collaboration between the client and therapist.

Together, we identify the particular difficulties, concerns or experiences that the client wishes to explore through therapy.

This collaborative process creates a personalised measure that reflects what is meaningful to the individual, rather than relying exclusively on a predetermined set of questions.

Clients can then return to their Personal Questionnaire over time, rating the extent to which these difficulties are affecting them.

Their responses can be viewed through graphs and tables, allowing them to explore changes in their experiences across successive weeks.

I particularly value this approach because it places the client's own concerns at the centre of the process, recognising that meaningful therapeutic change cannot always be adequately captured through standardised symptom measures alone.

Exploring Authenticity and Our Relationship With Ourselves

Another feature of the Client Portal is the Authenticity Scale, developed by Alex Wood, P. Alex Linley, John Maltby, Michael Baliousis and Stephen Joseph in 2008.

This 12-item psychological measure is grounded in the humanistic tradition and informed by Carl Rogers' understanding of authenticity and congruence.

The scale explores three dimensions of authenticity:

• Authentic Living: The extent to which individuals experience their behaviour as consistent with their values, beliefs and sense of self.
• Self-Alienation: The extent to which individuals experience a sense of disconnection from their own feelings and understanding of themselves.
• Accepting External Influence: The extent to which individuals experience themselves as influenced by the expectations and opinions of others.

Within a person-centred understanding of psychotherapy, these dimensions can offer opportunities for reflection upon how we experience ourselves and relate to the world around us.

The Authenticity Scale does not define whether someone is living authentically. Rather, it offers another perspective through which clients may explore aspects of their personal experience.

As with the other questionnaires available through the portal, responses can be reviewed over time, providing opportunities to recognise patterns and reflect upon possible changes.

Understanding Depression and Anxiety

Alongside the Personal Questionnaire and Authenticity Scale, clients may choose to complete the PHQ-9 and GAD-7.

These questionnaires are widely used within psychological healthcare and can provide an additional perspective on symptoms associated with depression and anxiety.

However, their inclusion within the Client Portal is optional.

Some clients may find these measures helpful in understanding changes in their psychological distress, while others may prefer to focus on the more individualised and experiential measures available.

The decision remains with the client, reflecting the importance of personal choice and autonomy within the therapeutic process.

Making Therapeutic Change Visible

One of the central features of the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal is the opportunity for clients to explore their questionnaire responses visually over time.

Through an interactive graph, clients can follow changes in their psychological experiences across successive weeks. Individual questionnaires can be selected, allowing clients to explore different aspects of their emotional wellbeing, including psychological distress, authenticity and personally identified difficulties.

For those who prefer a different way of reviewing their experiences, the portal also provides a table view.

Clients can select individual points on their graphs to revisit responses from previous weeks, creating further opportunities for reflection upon their experiences.

Importantly, these visual representations are not intended to define therapeutic success. Psychological change is rarely linear, and fluctuations in questionnaire scores may reflect a range of experiences within the therapeutic process.

Instead, the portal provides an additional perspective through which clients can recognise patterns, reflect upon change and develop greater ownership of their therapeutic journey.

Supporting Client Autonomy and Choice

An important principle underpinning the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal is respect for client autonomy.

Although the portal provides opportunities to reflect upon psychological distress, authenticity and personally meaningful difficulties, there is no expectation that clients must discuss their questionnaire results during therapy sessions.

Some clients may choose to bring their observations into our work together, while others may prefer to use the portal independently as a space for personal reflection.

Neither approach is encouraged over the other. The choice remains entirely with the client.

This reflects a central principle of Person-Centred Experiential Therapy: recognising the client as the expert in their own experience and respecting their capacity to determine what feels meaningful within their therapeutic process.

A Private and Personalised Online Space

I also wanted clients to have a choice about how they access the portal.

When creating an account, I can generate a unique pseudonym inspired by the coastal identity of Beacon Bay Therapy, drawing upon elements such as gemstones, rocks and sand.

Clients can use this pseudonym alongside a password to access their portal without needing to associate an email address with their account.

Alternatively, clients may choose to provide an email address to receive reminders about questionnaires assigned to them.

The decision about whether to receive email reminders remains entirely with the client.

The portal is also designed to be mobile-friendly, allowing clients to complete questionnaires on their smartphones as well as on desktop devices.

This flexibility was an important consideration in developing the portal, allowing clients to choose how they wish to engage with this additional aspect of their therapeutic experience.

Technology in Support of the Therapeutic Relationship

Although the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal uses technology to support reflection and the exploration of psychological change, I do not see it as a replacement for the therapeutic relationship.

Within Person-Centred Experiential Therapy, the relationship between client and therapist remains central to the process of psychological change.

A graph may illustrate a reduction in psychological distress, but it cannot fully explain what that change means to the individual.

Equally, an increase in distress may reflect a complex and meaningful aspect of someone's therapeutic experience.

The portal is therefore intended to complement, rather than direct, the therapeutic process.

Its purpose is to offer clients another way of engaging with their experiences, while preserving their freedom to decide how, when and whether they wish to use the information available to them.

A Greater Sense of Ownership Within Therapy

Developing the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal has provided an opportunity to bring together my clinical experience within NHS Talking Therapies, my interest in psychological measurement and my commitment to the principles of Person-Centred Experiential Therapy.

My hope is that the portal offers clients something beyond the completion of questionnaires.

I hope it provides opportunities to recognise meaningful changes, develop greater awareness of emotional experiences and feel more actively involved in their own therapeutic journey.

Ultimately, the intention is not simply to measure psychological change, but to offer clients greater ownership of their therapeutic process and the freedom to explore what that change means to them.

Accessing the Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal

The Beacon Bay Therapy Client Portal is available to clients undertaking counselling and psychotherapy with Beacon Bay Therapy.

Access is provided through an individual account, with the option to use a pseudonym and password without associating an email address.

Clients can choose whether to receive email reminders and can explore their assigned questionnaires and progress through their personal online space.

The portal is intended to complement our therapeutic work, offering an additional opportunity for reflection, personal awareness and involvement in the therapeutic process.

If you would like to learn more about working together, you can explore my Counselling in Finchley Central page or contact Beacon Bay Therapy to enquire about arranging an initial session.

References

Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Baliousis, M., & Joseph, S. (2008). The authentic personality: A theoretical and empirical conceptualization and the development of the Authenticity Scale. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55(3), 385–399.

Elliott, R., Mack, C., & Shapiro, D. A. (1999). Simplified Personal Questionnaire procedure. University of Toledo. (Reference details to be confirmed against the version used.)