What is Counselling and Psychotherapy?
Many of our difficulties develop as a result of experiences in our earliest relationships, the way we feel about them and what we do with these feelings. Good enough relationships with our earliest caregivers are crucial to human growth and development throughout life. When relationships are safe, secure and supportive we feel confident, at ease with ourselves, others and life. When relationships have been insecure, abandoning or dangerous we may feel alone, unsure and frightened. Often we repress difficult feelings simply to get by in life.

Counselling and psychotherapy provide a secure environment and an opportunity to look at what might have been buried and never acknowledged. It offers you the possibility of making sense of unsuccessful behaviors, such as sleeping problems, addictions or eating disorders, or a sense of meaningless in life. In Therapy and Counselling you can articulate and express these feelings sometimes for the first time.

Counselling
This is generally considered a relatively short-term option where a specific problem may be looked at over a period of a few weeks or a few months. This might be a problem at work, a one off relationship difficulty or a recent bereavement.

Psychotherapy
This is a longer term-option with the intention of making sense of chronic difficulties such as mood swings and anxious feelings, destructive relationship patterns, drug and alcohol misuse or problems with food. In psychotherapy you work with your psychotherapist to reflect on your past and present relationships and work through your emotional distress. This makes it possible to become more aware of the anxieties and conflicts underlying your emotions and your actions and to look more clearly and productively at yourself and your relationships with others. Psychotherapy is sometimes known as the ‘talking cure’.  Through talking it aims to help you understand your feelings and how you think about yourself, others and your life.  Psychotherapy is not about the psychotherapist giving advice but, through getting to know you, helping you work out how you might want things to be different and to create that change.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
This approach is sometimes also called psychodynamic pschotherapyy. It assumes that painful experiences and relationships from the past affect the way we think and behave in the present. This can happen even if the link between past and present is not obvious. A traumatic experience that has happened at some point in your life might have left you feeling overwhelmed. Also a climate of emotional or physical neglect will shape your feelings about yourself and others now.

The relationship
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy is an ongoing process. It offers you a secure and confidential relationship with your psychotherapist in which you can come to a better understanding of yourself; a space in which you can explore yourself and the meaning of your symptoms and feelings. A therapy session is not an everyday conversation. It is a private space where you can talk openly about yourself.  This is not always easy; it can take time to develop enough trust in the relationship to feel safe.  Another way of looking at is to see therapy as a journey, which you undertake jointly with your therapist. The journey is yours; the therapist is your witness and companion. What emerges on this path depends on your life history and your willingness to make sense of it all.

How can it help?
The aim of psychotherapy is to enable you to share important experiences of your life.  Talking about feelings and thoughts, which  you may not have been able to express before can bring a sense of relief.  Knowing that you will have a regular, confidential and safe space can ease the sense of being on your own and help you to develop the capacity to create change in your life.

Who can be helped?
Psychotherapy can help a wide range of emotional difficulties that affect adults including: depression, concerns about your capacity to parent, bereavement, eating problems, phobias and obsessions, self-harm, addictions, anxiety, abuse or trauma, identity confusion, relationship breakdown and feeling lonely and abandoned.

You may decide that Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy is for you if one or more of the following apply: you feel unhappy and depressed, anxious or confused, you cannot bond with your baby, you find it hard to make or keep satisfying relationships, you cannot make sense of your life, you suffer from physical problems for which there is no medical explanation, but which may be an expression of emotional pain.

What is the next step?
In an initial consultation you can talk about the issues that concern you and ask any questions that you may have about psychotherapy. You will then be able to consider what would be an appropriate course to follow and decide if counselling or psychotherapy is the right course of action for you at this point in your life. Fees are discussed and agreed on.

Therapy usually takes place once a week  (sometimes twice a week) at agreed times and on a regular basis. The content of the sessions is confidential unless there is concern that you may harm yourself or others. Sessions are generally held at the same time each week and last fifty minutes.

To book an appointment call Monika on 07879 674425

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