Could black and white thinking be hindering you from making friends, forging a career or finding a life partner? Many of us can get stuck in an old pattern of behaviour where a relationship or situation is seen as either all good or all bad and something that starts well…
As human beings we all have needs and wants (for love, attention and so on) and have likely worked out a strategy for the best way to have these needs met. Sometimes, a strategy that worked tolerably well in the past begins to work against us and we are left…
Throughout our lives we will all receive messages from other people about who we are and what we are like. Such information will have a major impact on the way we feel about ourselves. Positive messages will build our confidence whereas other, less favourable ones, might help us to regulate…
A recurring theme when working with communication difficulties is how to find common ground when one person approaches life’s challenges in a very logical, thinking way and the other is much more inclined to focus on relationships and feelings. How might counselling or psychotherapy help?
We will all face times in our lives when our world is turned up side down and the everyday routine we previously took for granted suddenly disappears. We might be left feeling powerless, confused and anxious. When we are distressed, it can feel very difficult to get the help we…
When somebody in a family begins to have a problem – e.g. an eating disorder, unexplained illness or difficulty leaving home – it is very easy for everyone else involved to pin the blame on this one person. They are the ones who “should pull themselves together,” or “stop upsetting…
Nobody wants to stay feeling stuck, sad, angry or confused. All we want is for these feelings to be magicked away – hopefully never to return. Rather than banish troublesome feelings, good counselling or psychotherapy helps us to understand where these feelings are coming from and sheds light on new…
In counselling and psychotherapy, we have the opportunity to ‘tell our story’ to someone who is able to hear it; someone who can help us think about it in new ways and support us while we are doing so. But what about outside the consulting room? What else can we do…
Panic attacks commonly bring people to counselling or psychotherapy. Usually, I am asked how to make them go away. Rather than simply treating the symptoms (e.g. through breathing techniques), I tend to look at the anxiety behind the panic attack as providing a warning or message that something is amiss…
Choosing a good counsellor or psychotherapist can be a daunting task. How do you know when you have found the right one for you? What factors can you look out for when you first meet? And what about after the first few weeks of working together?
