STRESS & ANXIETY
Talking to a professional counsellor about the stress and anxiety in your life can have an amazing therapeutic benefit. In a safe, non-judgmental setting, you will be guided to organise and rationalise your thoughts and emotions and negative thinking will be challenged. In addition, hypnotherapy can help you reprogram your subconscious mind for permanent effective coping mechanisms and implant rational messages to find healthier and more positive ways of dealing with difficult situations. In situations where the stress and anxiety are being caused from past traumas - EMDR can be used to fully process and clear the trauma to alleviate the presenting symptoms.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER & TRAUMA
The fight or flight part of our mind often holds on to traumatic events. This can be in order to protect us from putting ourselves in the same danger again, or because the stress they cause us consciously means we are unable to process them properly. The result is that these events get stuck on a repeat loop in our subconscious mind, dictating all of our thoughts and behaviours, often forcing us to have flashbacks and nightmares - reliving those events with as much trauma as when they first occurred. EMDR therapy is one of the few recognised therapies for treating this life-long debilitating condition. Together, we will work through those traumas in a safe, controlled way, to uncover, process and treat them, freeing you to live the life you deserve.
RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
Relationships take hard work to maintain and often life challenges even the strongest of ties. It is hard to look objectively at what is happening and why. Having a professional counsellor to listen and understand will help you look at things in a more impartial way; help you take control of situations and interactions and make healthier, more rational and less emotive choices. You can also attend as a couple with your partner to facilitate productive communication and learn how to work better together to improve your relationship.
DEPRESSION
Depression is sadly an all-too common issue for so many people. It casts a seemingly unbearable shadow over our lives and makes us believe there is no way out. Using a combination of integrative counselling and psychotherapeutic techniques, we will help you re-organise your thoughts, re-frame and challenge your negative thinking and arm you with coping strategies and awareness to help you face up to and deal with overwhelming emotions.
LOW SELF-CONFIDENCE & LOW SELF-ESTEEM
Lacking in self-confidence or having a negative self-image can hold you back in all walks of life. Messages given to us from the day we were born right up to the present are all stored up in our subconscious mind and set us on the life path we feel we deserve. Realising what path we are on, challenging ourselves as to whether that is the right path for us and getting rid of negative, limiting beliefs gives us the self-belief, the strength and the power to change.
WEIGHT LOSS AND EATING DISORDERS
Food and what we eat can often be used as a form of self-harm or self-defeating behaviour. Our weight and what we eat is an all-consuming concern for many people. Sometimes we use it as a means of controlling our lives; other times we feel it actually controls us. Together, we will you help find the reasons and irrational beliefs behind those thoughts and behaviours to help you understand and control them.
OBSESSIONS & COMPULSIONS
Being obsessed about something is often a manifestation of something lacking in other areas of life. It can act as a distraction to prevent you from having to acknowledge something that may be painful. OCD is a form of taking back some control and keeping anxiety at bay. Working with parts, we can help find the damaged part these behaviours are trying to protect and work to heal and release it from the past trauma it is still carrying. No longer having a damaged part that may get triggered, the protective parts (OCD, obssessions) no longer need to carry out their self-defeating behaviours to try and prevent that from happening.
FEARS, PHOBIAS AND PANIC ATTACKS
Being afraid to go somewhere or do something from a deep-seated fear can ruin your life. Both EMDR therapy and Hypnotherapy are powerful and effective tools to help rewire the mind - firstly by finding the traumas that instilled the phobia in the first place, then clearing the mind and body of that emotional response by processing the trauma, and finally, by installing healthy responses and powerful coping mechanisms for future exposure to the initial trigger.
QUIT SMOKING AND EMOTIONAL ADDICTIONS
We often tell ourselves not to do something, even while we find ourselves actually doing it. On a conscious level, we know it is bad for us and want to stop, yet we seem powerless to override the subconscious pull. Hypnotherapy can help get rid of the positive messages your subconscious has about self-defeating habits and plant new ones, so you feel differently towards them and actually lose the desire to do them again*. (*For drug and alcohol addictions, I will only treat people who are on an addiction programme simultaneously)
SELF-HARM AND OTHER SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIOURS
Hurting or damaging ourselves is often an outward expression of the pain and confusion that is going on inside of us. Physical pain or discomfort are often more understandable and easier to identify and cope with than the psychological – and so in theory easier to control and deal with. Together, we will help you discover and understand what is going on at the deepest level and find healthier ways of dealing with it.
(*For drug and alcohol addictions, I will only treat people who are on an addiction programme simultaneously)
BEREAVEMENT
Losing someone or something we love or need turns our world upside down. We can find ourselves completely lost, feeling alone and like there is no reason to go on. Often we can question whether the grief reactions and emotions we are experiencing are even normal. Understanding the process of grief, what to expect and how to cope in the darkest of times, as well as having a safe space to work through those emotions and share them outside of your support circle can help you negotiate your loss and find a way through. I offer you a safe, compassionate space to work through your pain, your memories - good and bad - and stay with you on your journey through to a place where you can find meaning and acceptance again.