Counselling and Psychotherapy

Counselling and Psychotherapy, whether it is given as a face-to-face counselling in an online setting, is, literally, therapy for the psyche. To an extent, it is true that any constructive work that is designed to help you feel better about part of your life can be considered as psychotherapy. Most of the time, the work is ‘client-centred’ – that is, the work that is done and the way it is done takes account of how your particular personality works in your world and the outcome that you desire. It does not involve somebody seeking to impress upon you a set of ‘rules’ or ideas that they themselves consider to be correct or seeking to make you do something you don’t want to do.

A lot of the time, online psychotherapy is every bit as effective as a ‘live’ session; not only that, psychotherapy online has the advantage of being easier to access and some people will find it more comfortable to discuss intimate issues without having to ‘look someone in in the eye’. There are some situations, though, where face-to-face consultation is strongly indicated if the best results are to be found; where we consider this to be the case, we will advise you accordingly.

It is important to remember that a good psychotherapist is completely non-judgemental and will seek only to help you achieve that which you wish to achieve, or perhaps act as a ‘mentor’ or guide to help you find a solution to your difficulties.

For many people the first benefit of using our service is to be honestly and genuinely respected in a safe non judgemental relationship. For others there will be a sense of ‘relief’ just from telling their story and from taking the first steps to address their problem.
By no means is the following a complete list of symptoms and by no means will everyone get all of them, but as a guide, you may be experiencing one or more of…

• Sleeping a lot or sleep disturbance of some kind
• Irritability or unexpected “volatile” behaviour
• Always feeling “down” or pretending to be OK
• Fear or permanent readiness for trouble
• Isolation (emotional or otherwise) or separateness
• Strained relationships (at work or home)
• Loss of self-esteem or feeling “useless”
• “Emptiness” or feeling “flat”
• Weight increase or decrease
• Excessive drinking or other substance use
• Jumpiness or easily startled
• A wish to hurt (others or yourself)
• Lack of hope, optimism or vitality
• Intruding memories or flashbacks
• Different kinds of phobias
• Trappedness
• Mood swings or very “black and white” thinking
• Difficulty in making decisions or trusting intuition
• Avoiding behaviour (tasks, people or certain situations)
• Suicidal thoughts

Of course you must remember that we all experience some of these symptoms some of the time and they must be kept in context. If any of the above trouble you too much or if you don’t know what to do about them you could check them out with us.

Categories of problems
This is not an attempt to categorise you, but instead to categorise some of the problems that you might face. You are not perceived as a category yourself.
You can assume that we have already encountered the problems listed in this section.

• Marital or close relationship problems
• Work-related stress
• Depression & Anxiety
• Drug & Alcohol problems (yours or theirs)
• Abuse (emotional, physical, sexual) –
• Violence, bullying or neglect in many forms.
• Bereavement and grief and other forms of acute loss
• Post-Traumatic or Prolonged Stress problems
• Behavioural problems (giving or receiving)
• Being “stuck” in lots of different ways
• Problems without a known cause
• Coming to terms with making a big life decision