Counselling For Health Anxiety

Repeating bouts of anxiety about the state of our physical or mental health is a common reason for seeking counselling. Despite assurances from the medical profession that there is nothing seriously wrong, we find ourselves stuck in a loop of hyper-awareness and fear. How might counselling and psychotherapy help?

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Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts

Most of us have experienced intrusive thoughts at some point in our lives. They often arrive at times of high stress and can fill our heads with unhelpful ‘what if’ scenarios and irrational fears that leave us preoccupied or distressed. Trying to make ourselves stop thinking in this way doesn’t…

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Change: Making The Unfamiliar, Familiar

When we come to counselling or psychotherapy we are usually looking for something in our lives to change. We talk things through and gradually new possibilities for being in the world come to light. However, for some of us, something is holding us back from making those changes. Could it…

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Men And Anxiety

What do you do if the very thought of talking about your anxiety with someone else makes you anxious? My guess is that you will hang on in there until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms such as panic attacks, fear of enclosed spaces (e.g. travel on trains and planes),…

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To Put It Another Way…

As human beings we are hard-wired to make sense of what happens to us. This is an important skill since good judgement about the world gives rise to emotional and physical safety. Sometimes, however, we might be continuing to interpret our current experiences based on skewed or narrow unconscious assumptions…

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Facing Our Own Mortality

We all know that we are born, that we live – and then we die. Mostly, we manage to deal with the fact that we are mortal and get on with the business of living. However, sometimes we can become preoccupied with a fear of death or anxiety about dying…

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How To Tackle Compulsive Behaviour

Compulsive behaviour can range from a need to have the tins in your food cupboard lined up in a neat row with the labels all facing the same way to full blown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In my experience, compulsive behaviour is often a strategy a person has found to…

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Setting Personal Boundaries

An old friend of mine had a habit of marching into my home and making the tea whenever she came to visit. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she would rifle through my kitchen cupboards while I stood in the doorway privately fuming.

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Whose Past Is In Your Present?

I frequently come across examples of how unprocessed feelings associated with a distressing event or circumstances are passed down through the generations causing pain and confusion long after the actual trauma is over. Often, we might be unaware that we have been (usually unwittingly) handed a negative experience of the…

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