Is therapy for me?
Therapy can often be helpful when attempting to deal with issues that you encounter in your everyday life
While unhelpful thoughts and behaviours can affect your ability to overcome personal challenges, therapy can enable you to see new possibilities, develop strategies for coping with issues and redesign aspects of your life so you can focus on a more positive future.
How therapy can help
Therapy can offer you help with stress, anxiety and its effects and harmful or unhelpful habit patterns, including addictions and insomnia. The possibilities for personal growth and achievement are significant once you discover the course of action that is right for you.
At times, demands placed on you will feel greater than your ability to cope. Excessive stress can take its toll on your physical and emotional wellbeing. A tendency towards anxiety, coupled with real-world pressures such as work, family, health or relationship issues, can be extraordinarily difficult to handle.
Some anxieties are related to particular situations, such as the fear of flying, public speaking, examinations or a driving test. Others are more general and may originate from childhood experiences or traumatic events.
Help is here. You can learn to regulate your physiological response so that you feel more relaxed and comfortable. New insights can allow you to perceive and deal with situations more positively.
You may be repeating a self-destructive or undesirable pattern of behaviour that you really want to stop. Smoking, excessive drinking and disordered eating patterns are habits that are often deeply-ingrained and can be very hard to change.
In treatment, we will explore the needs you try to meet with your unwanted habit, then find better ways to meet those needs. Breaking unwanted habits may involve a combination of mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy, and hypnosis, helping you to make lasting changes.
Nerves, low self esteem or an inability to focus can sometimes get in the way of success. Don’t let a lack of confidence, fear of failure or feelings of inadequacy hold you back. With some assistance, learning new techniques can provide the boost you need to fearlessly pursue your goals.
Children can have a variety of anxieties, which may cause significant stress for you and for them. Poor sleeping patterns, bedwetting, comfort-seeking behaviour and confidence issues can be overwhelming. However, children and young people respond well to treatment and can sometimes make changes more quickly than adults.
It is helpful to meet the parent before seeing the child and when working with young children a parent is always present. Teenagers can be treated alone provided there is parental consent.
Approaches
All forms of therapy and counselling provide a professional relationship in which it is safe to explore difficult and painful emotions and experiences, including feelings of anxiety, depression or trauma.
My aim is to help you to become free from the restrictive effects of the past, be better able to deal with the present and to shape your future as you choose.
Treatment is based on your needs and the nature of the problem you are dealing with. As therapy is a collaborative venture, we will plan this together, identifying approaches that may be useful to you.
The deep state of relaxation experienced during hypnosis provides relief from stress and tension, facilitates the resolution of deep-seated emotions or trauma and bypasses conscious resistance, allowing you to change old habit patterns and see new possibilities with greater clarity.
The British Medical Association approved hypnotherapy as a valid medical treatment in 1955, as did the American Medical Association in 1958.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) examines the effect of habitual patterns of thinking on your mood and state of mind, in order to help you modify automatic but unhelpful responses for more constructive ways of perceiving and responding to events. CBT can help you overcome a wide variety of difficulties including depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
This approach will encourage you to try out new ways of handling things and to take an active part in dealing with your issues. A great deal can be achieved in a few sessions by helping you to understand your capabilities and resources. We will be focusing on solutions rather than problems in order to help you take back control of your life.
This is a guided, problem-solving approach that aims to help you to work out your own solutions. You will be encouraged to explore your thoughts, feelings and experiences in order to resolve issues and move forward in a constructive manner. We will examine the reasons for your responses and feelings, and explore alternatives.
