Specialising in
Anxiety,Trauma,
Bereavement,Depression
and Couples Therapy
Anxiety
Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress, it is in us to 'keep us safe'. When we suffer with anxiety it is our body telling us that we are in danger.
A major event, or a buildup of smaller stressful situations that are part of everyday life, may trigger excessive anxiety. This could be a bereavement, family tensions or ongoing worry about work or relationships.
If your feelings of anxiety are extreme and last for longer than six months, then you may have an anxiety disorder, these include:
Panic Disorder
Phobia
Social Anxiety Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsion Dosorder
Separation Anxiety
Health Anxiety
Counselling will help you break down your issues into smaller ones, learning techniques for helping you to manage the anxiety. Therapy will look at changing your behaviour, which is never easy. Once you start this journey towards managing your anxiety, you will be glad you did.
Depression
Depression can happen to anyone, it does not discriminate, and happens to one in four of us over our lifetime.
An array of factors can make it more likely to develop depression including biological make-up, upbringing, or a reaction to life events. What keeps this going is how we deal with these things. The way we think and what we do affects the way we feel.
Mulling over things, asking ourselves why, thinking regretful things about our past, and what we should have done can make us dwell on these thought patterns repeatedly.
Physical sensations you may experience if you have depression are:
Tiredness, fatigue, lethargy
Difficulty concentrating or remembering
Sleep changes (sleep more or less)
Eating changes (eat more or less)
Loss of interest in hobbies, activities or sex
Counselling for your depression maybe the first time you have spoken about your problems with someone without them judging you. You will have a safe space to talk, cry, scream or just reflect. it is an opportunity to look at your issue in an alternative way by someone who can respect you and your opinions.
Relationships
Healthy and rewarding relationships can greatly improve our mental health and emotional well-being. However when there are problems or changes in our relationships, we can experience the adverse effects of this.
Learning to accept that a relationship has come to an end can be incredibly difficult and challenging, we can be left with many questions that we may find too difficult to hold:
Will anyone love me again?
Will this happen again?
Was it my fault?
What did I do to deserve this?
With many questions like this counselling can help you to explore how you might find ways to process the breakdown and loss.
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy is a specialised type of talking therapy where two people discuss together with their counsellor the ways in which they are relating.
It helps you to see what the current issues within the relationship are, and to be clear of what the goals are to enable you to bridge this gap.
Whilst in therapy you will explore past events (what bought you to be together) and gain new perspectives about each other and how you relate.
Couples therapy includes skills work and tools, this is to help with communications as well as to help you to do and think about things differently.
Couples counselling is not a place to blame the other, or to be avoid of emotions, it is a safe place to think about what we can or are willing to do to change.
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Trauma
Experiencing trauma in childhood can result in a severe and long-lasting effect. If this trauma is not resolved, there can be a sense of fear and hopelessness which carries over into adulthood, thereby preparing the stage for further trauma.
Emotional and psychological trauma can be caused by:
One-time event
An accident, or violent attack, especially if it was unexpected or happened during childhood
Ongoing Stress
living in a high crime neighbourhood, battling a life-threatening illness, bullying, domestic violence, or childhood neglect.
Commonly overlooked causes
Sudden death of someone close, breakdown in a significant relationship, surgery, a humiliating experience.
Counselling can help you to process the varying issues, and help you to think through the things you can do to help you to manage your thoughts and feelings that have become attached to the trauma,
Bereavement
Bereavement is the experience of losing someone that is important to us. The range of emotions we go through as we gradually adjust to the loss is characterised as grief.
Bereavement is not only attached to the loss of a loved one, it can also be the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, moving away to a new location, a decline in the physical or mental health of someone we care about.
There are 5 stages of grief
Denial: avoidance, shock,fear
Anger: frustration, anxiety
Depression: hostility, overwhelmed
Bargaining: Find meaning, reaching out
Acceptance: exploring options, new plan in place.
Not everyone goes through all these stages, some may experience a few, and others may experience these stages in different orders. Some may find themselves stuck in one stage.
Counselling will help you to recognise the stages of bereavement, grief or loss, and collaboratively we will work with the reasons you are acting and feeling differently.