Counselling and Psychotherapy offers a confidential space where you can explore, express and untangle aspects of yourself that may be painful, uncomfortable, or confusing. It may help you to speak to a person who is impartial and separate from your friends or family.

People choose to have counselling or psychotherapy for a number of reasons:

• Specific reasons, such as depression, anxiety, stress, eating disorders, anger management, relationship problems, addiction, work-related issues or for support to move on from the lasting effects of a traumatic experience. Traumas may be one-off incidents or cumulative events such as being abused as a child.
• Feeling stuck with feelings of unhappiness about aspects of your upbringing; this may be related to the experience of a difficult relationship, emotional deprivations or as the result of complex dynamics within the family constellation.
• Finding yourself stuck in the same kind of relationships or repeatedly experiencing the same struggles in life, feeling the same emotional pain time and time again, yet not quite knowing how to change and move on from this unhappiness, or why this keeps happening to you.

In a counselling and psychotherapy session, clients talk about their personal thoughts, feelings, worries and stresses; the therapist encourages further exploration of this whilst listening to accept, affirm and acknowledge a client’s personal experience, alongside a non-judgemental attitude. Throughout this process, the therapist is able to understand how these thoughts and feelings relate to a person’s past to gain insight into the roots of their behaviour.

Everyone in the world owns their individual life experience, so rather than offering advice like friends and family, counselling and psychotherapy supports the client to enrich their self-understanding by connecting and making sense of their present experiences with the personal events that have occurred throughout their lifespan. This insight can then provide the client with the opportunity to reflect on their way of being in the world and to explore different options thereby opening up the possibility of leading a more meaningful and fulfilling life.