Life can present a problem at any time. Studies have shown that traumatic childhood events affect our adult lives resulting in how we feel about ourselves, others and our home life. For some people the problems can appear in adulthood, leaving you confused and vulnerable. This is where counselling and psychotherapy can help.
Counselling and Psychotherapy is a talking therapy where you can explore your thoughts and feelings in a safe environment with a qualified counsellor.
Counselling can be helpful for those experiencing a recent problem where there is a need to make changes. It gives you the opportunity to talk about specific problems, a place to reflect and talk about your options. Counselling tends to be more short term as well as the option for long term.
Psychotherapy is helpful for those who have experienced emotional or physical distress early on in life, such as trauma, cruelty and abuse, family members suffering from depression, severe mental health issues or ill health, bereavement and not feeling loved. What we experience in childhood effects how we grow up, how we relate to others and ourselves, as well as the strength of our mental health. People who have experienced distress for many years have benefited from long term psychotherapy .
Sometimes in our lives we can be discouraged to talk about painful or uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Comments such as 'pull yourself together' or 'it's been a year now, you should have got over it by now' are unhelpful and can put pressure on us to think I should be coping now. In life there is not a time limit on when we should be feeling better. In counselling I will encourage you to share these thoughts and feelings, where you can experience support and acceptance in a non-judgemental way.
My Counselling and Psychotherapy Approach
My aim is for us to explore the background to any concerns or feelings you have, so that you can gain understanding of what might be affecting you now or from your past. This awareness allows you to talk about any feelings attached to concerns or painful events and creates the opportunity for you to choose a different way of being and seeing things in the future.
My counselling and psychotherapy approach is taken from several models to suit each client's need as we are all different. I mainly use the humanistic approach, with psychodynamic and cognitive models to inform my work. An Integrative approach creates flexibility in what you would like to focus on. The humanistic approach focuses on you as a person and what you want to talk about in your session. The psychodynamic model looks at how we relate to others and to explore any patterns that may have been influenced from an event early on in your life. And the cognitive model explores any unhelpful thoughts or beliefs you may have about yourself such as 'I am useless, I can't do anything' and tries to find what was behind it.
I do use aspects of Art Therapy in my work (by mutual agreement). For some clients, words can be difficult to say or explore. Whether through trauma, a learning disability or that you feel stuck...art therapy can be helpful in exploring your thoughts and feelings. I am also interested in exploring the dreams you have had, as I feel they can be insightful to you.