Welcome

Individual Therapy

Is your life not quite where you would like it to be? Are you struggling with relationships, life stage, or career issues? Are you trying to solve these problems yourself, or perhaps with the help of family and friends, yet still feeling stuck or misunderstood? Do you find yourself slipping into familiar patterns or roles that hold you back ? Or you may be feeling isolated and alone.

I work with individuals undergoing various personal challenges, and have a number of ways in which I can proceed and have a number theoretical orientations I follow. The aim is to find a way of working that suits you. It can be just a space to allow you to talk. We can set some goals that we can revisit in a number of sessions, or we can leave it open ended.

Sometimes however talking will only get us so far. For example, if you are lonely, we can explore patterns of relating, history of social anxiety or low-self worth, automatic negative and critical thoughts, or even unconscious defence mechanisms carried over from childhood. However ultimately you will continue to feel lonely until you meet someone you connect with. So part of the process has reflect this and will normally involve a plan of action at some stage.

Occasionally clients arrived wanting a ‘quick fix’, and although I can sympathise with these sentiments, in reality there are no ‘quick fixes’, if there were we wouldn’t need therapists. And equally the notion that the therapist is going to offer some deep insight or light bulb moment, which will suddenly unlock your way of thinking, is unlikely. Therapy is in many respects a process of making you aware of what you already know, of connecting you to the aspects of yourself which have been blocked off or thwarted due to past experiences, and ultimately of accepting who you are.

Couples Counselling

Have you ever felt unheard by your partner, stuck in bickering arguments which only seem to get worse? Do you feel isolated from the person you are "meant" to be closest to? Or a partner has had an affair and you feel the trust has gone ? Or perhaps is your relationship is hanging in the balance and you don’t know which way to turn ?

It is normal for one partner to be more interested in seeking support than the other. In couple counselling however, no sides are taken and both participants can expect (and indeed are expected) to be respected and listened to in a non-judgemental environment. I always ensure that both partners get a chance to share their responses, in order to help facilitate greater understanding and also model of way of talking that can be replicated outside the counselling room.

We all bring our personal histories into our relationships, and sometimes that can cause difficulties in our relationships. We often do not even know how much we are responding to old ways of relating to others, which are no longer appropriate or helpful. How we have grown up in our own families, where we learn to relate to others, is often very important.

But equally it is important to understand conflict within a relationship can stem from more than mal-adaptive attachment styles. Often therapist tend to down-play the practical issues, but maintaining a healthy relationship, running a harmonious household particularly when children are involved, takes a lot of hard work, negotiation and difficult decisions. It is easy for once harmonious communication styles to break-down into petty arguments and hostile behaviour under the pressure of being in each other’s space. Therapy can provide an opportunity to work out the finer details in a neutral environment and gives each party a chance to heal relational ruptures and discuss unmet needs.

Therapy for Depresion & Anxiety

Depression and anxiety are two of the most common mental health issues yet in many ways they can be the most difficult to overcome. As many as one in four of us experience either depression or anxiety at some point during our lifetime yet often we won't ask for help from friends and family, deciding to struggle on in silence.

Depression

Although a seemingly simple question, ‘Am I depressed ?’ can be very difficult answer. However there are a number of indicators. Depression is much more than feeling a ‘bit down’ or ‘low’ occasionally, perhaps as a reaction to bad news, or some temporary difficulty in your life or at work and it tends to be a consistent feeling over a number of weeks. If you would like to know more about how I work with depression click here.

Anxiety

Anxiety is more than just worrying. Anxiety can persist whether or not the cause is clear to the sufferer. Anxiety can make a person imagine that things in their life are worse than they really are. They can become obsessed with “what if’s”, and fears for the future can make them think they’re going mad. You may see your anxiety as something sitting in your mind, taking over your thinking: “Why can’t I stop thinking about that?”; “I am always imagining bad things happening”; “I can’t stop worrying.” Anxiety can also develop into phobias or panic attacks which in turn have the effect of escalating your anxiety itself and can have severe impact on you day-to-day life. Click here to find out more.

Work Related Stress

Stress — of the right kind, at the right time, and in the right amount — can help you achieve objectives in life by stimulating your thought and creativity, and providing the energy boost you need to improve your performance. But if stress is maintained at a high level for too long, the exact opposite happens.

When you start being adversely affected by your stress, you may try to plug the gaps in the quality of your output by working harder and in turn becoming even more stressed, which actually leads to a poorer performance over time. All too often, we feel we must just keep our heads down and carry on with the job in hand despite knowing deep down that we are struggling.

Addiction

The path leading to addiction can take many forms. It might be a behaviour you once managed for a long time, but now quite suddenly you cannot, or it may have crept up on you, finding yourself slowly having to take more or a substance, or engage more in an activity that originally made you feel better. And as that need has became stronger, and more harmful, you have found yourself becoming dependent, planning your life around this activity, ultimately it may have tipped into addiction and you find yourself unable to stop. Therapy can help at any of these stages.

Addictions can often evolve from underlying, unresolved issues. This can either be crippling low self-esteem, a constant barrage of internal negative voices, or perhaps a traumatic experience from which you cannot seem to escape.