Addiction

You may choose to call it a craving, a fancy, a bit of a dependence but the truth is that anyone who becomes overly drawn to, or obsessed by any activity – whether drinking alcohol, taking drugs, over- or under-eating, shopping, gambling, sex or even doing good deeds – is trying to fill a void or block out something that is missing in their lives.
We’re much more likely to get caught up in addiction when important needs cease to be met, perhaps because of loss, caused by the death of someone close, a relationship ending, redundancy or illness, or by dissatisfaction arising from boredom or feeling trapped.

Sometimes such circumstances lead first to depression and then to addiction. Whatever the activity, it’s often an attempt at solving, or removing (temporarily, at least) a problem. However, anyone caught up in addiction will intuitively know that it’s a fool’s gold. The experience ceased to deliver on its promises a long time ago. An activity that once appeared enabling (e.g. a means of reward, connecting with others, or decompressing from stressful events) has now become disabling, giving rise to distress and concern at the power that it currently holds over your choices and subsequent freedom.

To get away from addictive behaviour, it is necessary to understand two things: the way our natural reward mechanisms work, and the way life should be constructed in order to receive the natural rewards that make addictive activities less attractive. Our work together will support you to:

Understand what causes and fuels addictive behaviour
Isolate destructive impulses that keep you locked in on autopilot
Ensure important emotional needs are constructively met
Develop new expectations for your life and the future
Find pleasure and fulfilment in new and meaningful ways
Develop practical skills for dealing with withdrawal symptoms
Learn to deal with stress or temptations that might lie ahead
Have a solid plan for relapse prevention

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Children and young people

Childhood is a time of continuous transition. Various conditions need to be in place for young people to develop healthily and excel. They need to feel secure, receive affirmative attention and learn to delay gratification. As their world expands, we hope our children will adopt increasing responsibility for their behaviour and learn to regulate themselves effectively. Often perplexing for all involved! As they get older, pressures related to school, peers and changing relationships often introduce new tensions and uncertainties.

And often, these developments emerge beyond the immediate remit of parental control. Such circumstances aren't easy to navigate. As a parent, you face a constant, updating catalogues of events to reflect upon - not to mention the juggle involved in managing your own life roles and responsibilities. Is it all worth it, I hear you ask : ) I hope so! Reassuringly, well-refined interventions and powerful strategies for helping you to manage your child (and yourself) are available to us.

Utilising extensive teaching and therapeutic experience across child age ranges, our work can integrate a wide range of points for support. We might support your child to:

Adopt healthy and long-lasting ways to engender self-esteem
Regulate difficult emotions and how to process them effectively
Deal with transitions related to school, peers and developing relationships
Become mindful of their influence and control in social situations
Develop resilience and optimism in the face of uncertainty and adversity
Nurture innate motivation for getting stuff done
Reduce stress and anxiety for calm and reflection
Implement realistic goals that encourage ownership and responsibility

Would like to book a session?

* P.S. If your child is between 8-11 years-old, you may also be interested in the Strive program - a ten-week learning pathway to nurture emotional health and well being.

Marriage and couples

Relationships represent all manner of difficulties, yet we can't live without them. Co-operation with others form the basis of our ability to survive. That's why conflict with our partner can be so distressing to confront. While all relationships have ups and downs, sometimes these become too much to reconcile alone. Perhaps you both have differences in processing emotions, or you quickly fall into blame and resentment when attempting to resolve misunderstandings. Your expectations of one another likely diverge. These differences can take a toll over time without a resolution at hand. If parenting, the longer-term impact of childcare will likely throw up new domains of friction.

Perhaps events in your own life - or relationship developments - have eroded a mutual trust that desperately needs restoring. Whatever the cause, transparent and effective communication is essential. It's here that sensitive and even-handed mediation can represent tremendous value in restoring trust. In each conflict, both partners will have concerns and frustrations to be aired. You will each be nursing a story about why the relationship isn't working - and what the other person should be doing to put things right. Yet, the capacity - on both sides - to adopt a constructive viewpoint is often limited. However, you can achieve progress if both of you have the requisite will and motivation.

In good relationships both partners concern themselves with how they can help each other get essential physical and emotional needs met. With this framework in mind, our work together will enable you both to:

Quickly regain and maintain supportive rapport
Recognise disruptive behaviour patterns
Identify conflict triggers and implement effective interventions
Utilise the valuable resources that each partner brings to the relationship
Engage in joint problem-solving
Effectively manage setbacks together
Employ non-blaming communication styles
Maximise cooperation
Ensure the wellbeing of others involved (e.g. children)

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Stress

Stress results from a build-up of mental and physical pressures to a level that we find overwhelming. The amount and type of stress we can stand will vary from individual to individual. For instance, one person may get a buzz from talking to hundreds of people. In contrast, someone else will be a nervous wreck in similar circumstances. Each of us confronts different stresses in a lifetime – dealing with grief, job loss, relationship breakdown, serious illness, or the demands of caring for children or sick relatives.

We have to cope with challenging life changes, such as leaving home for the first time, taking on new responsibilities at work or settling down with a new partner. Even when these are pleasant developments, they can still take a mental and physical toll. When minor stressors accumulate or more significant events take hold, we may lose our ability to cope well. Pressure turns to stress when you feel defeated and lack drive and energy for the tasks in front of you. These are warning signs that something needs to change to bring down harmful stress levels if this sounds familiar. It's here that I can help you too.

Our work will ensure you develop the necessary, practical steps to:

Reduce excessive pressures in your life
Alleviate associated symptoms
Manage situations that exacerbate stress
Reset your coping mechanisms
Set suitable boundaries and expectations
Restore balance and calm
Implement strategies that prevent stress relapse
Regain control and ownerrship over daily life

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Anger

Do you feel powerless in the face of your anger? Terrifying to behold in others and overwhelming when it erupts in ourselves. Road rage, plane rage - even art-gallery rage - are becoming all too familiar terms. These are just some forms that over-the-top anger can take in modern-day life. Excessive anger can have an obvious trigger or may seem to jump out of the blue. Unpredictable and precarious. As work and relationships suffer, a lack of steady temperament can ruin lives.

Sometimes, it creeps up on you without you even noticing, building up momentum like a pressure cooker. This rapid escalation can badly affect your physical and mental health. After the initial discharge of frustration, you are left to repair and patch-up the fall-out from exhausting and emotionalan experience - it's a miserable, empty and (often guilt-ridden) feeling to reconcile. However, this needn't be the case. Indeed, there's much we can do to regain composure and return your responses to a place of control.

Anger does not come out of the blue, nor is it ever inexplicable or unmanageable. If anger is affecting your quality of life, it’s time to take charge. Together, our work will provide:

Important understanding as to the causes of disproportionate anger
Knowledge to inoculate yourself from excessive stress build-up
Insight into what triggers your personal anger and how to control it
Information on the myths about anger that we each must understand
A toolbox of effective strategies for calming down and dealing with angry people
Better communication and conflict resolution skills
Strategies that prevent resentments or annoyances from escalating into bitter or dangerous confrontations
Techniques to quickly implement calm with a level-headed perspective

Would like to book a session?

Depression

How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Far from feeling refreshed, you might wake up exhausted and feeling utterly unmotivated. As a result, it isn't easy to contemplate the day ahead. It may have started gradually. Maybe you became aware of feeling miserable or increasingly distant. The world appeared less colourful and engaging. Perhaps you can keep on working or doing your daily tasks. Still, you take less and less interest in social activities, and interaction with other people feels like a mountain of work. Maybe you can't remember what, if anything, you did half an hour ago.

Crossing a room may resemble battling through super-glue. Even simple tasks - shopping or responding to email - can seem too demanding to contemplate. Focusing and making decisions about simple things can feel overwhelming. At the same time, a desire to pursue (previously) life-affirming activities has drained away. It might seem as though you're looking at the world through the fog. Perhaps you feel strangely untouched by the negative or sad things that happen around you. Even if you have experienced (and overcome) depression in the past, you might still feel powerless to confront it now. These distressing circumstances represent (what seem to be) an inescapable curse. This experience should not (and does not) have to continue.

Until recently depression was little understood, yet key new insights into its causes and symptoms have made treatment easier and more consistently effective. Our work together will support you to:

Understand essential information about what causes depression
Have a clear explanation of your symptoms and what you can do about them
Build resilience to deal with grief and uncertainty
Understand why some forms of counselling can exacerbate symptoms
Manage bipolar depression from a psychological perspective
Tackle rigid thinking, negative expectancy and the pessimistic rumination that causes depression
Implement practical help to break the cycle and prevent relapse
Make an immediate positive difference

Would like to book a session?

Anxiety

A degree of anxiety is normal. It helps get us motivated to act. For instance, before a big speech or exam, it would be unnatural not to feel any of its symptoms, such as racing pulse, dry mouth, sweatiness and shallow breathing. But too much anxiety can be problematic. Initially, your worries may have focussed upon realistic and understandable concerns - financial troubles, health concerns, job uncertainty or relationship issues, etc. - yet then started to spiral out of control. Or your anxiety may have no clear origin. Perhaps it manifests as an ever-present feeling of being wired, tense or somehow exposed.

The accompanying out-of-control thoughts may leave you feeling hyper-vigilant and unable to relax. When rampant, anxiety can quickly become as disabling as any chronic illness. You may experience overwhelming, unrealistic fears or worry, panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive behaviours or post-post-traumatic stress reactions. All of this means that you have stopped living your life as you would like to. But anxiety is not all-powerful and inexplicable. Anxiety is easily manageable (and can be conquered) - when you know how.

Anxiety comprises three elements: the physical sensations you experience, the emotions you have whilst experiencing them and the thoughts that go through your mind at the time. In working together, we will focus upon the critical skills for reducing anxiety and placing you back in control. Our work together will support you to:

Separate yourself from anxious feelings
Relax more effectively
Improve sleep for restoration
Reduce irrational fears
Identify and control negative thinking
Utilise wider perspectives
Harness the positive power of your imagination
Cope effectively in uncertain situations

Would like to book a session?

* P.S. You may also be interested to check out Anxiety Master - my specific support to help you regain control for a calm and confident future.

Phobias, panic and PTSD

There are two kinds of bad memories. Some fade slowly so that a year or so later, your impression of the event in question is no longer intrusive. It quietens over time until you can recall it as an ordinary narrative memory about some unfortunate incident in the past. But traumatic memories do not fade in the same way. As time goes by, they may become worse. This development occurs because the brain has an emotional alarm system designed to keep us safe. When people suffer from panic attacks, phobias or post-traumatic stress, it is because the system has gone into overdrive.

The subsequent distress can be deeply unsettling. If left untreated, a person may continue to experience strong emotional reactions at inappropriate moments. If you recognise this, you are likely aware of the miserable and life-restricting impact of such conditions. For instance, you may avoid certain situations and feel unsafe in everyday encounters. Or experience intrusive flashbacks or recollections that lead to anxious and debilitating thoughts. Whatever your experience, this should not be the case. You deserve to overcome past events and live a more satisfying and complete life again.

Even the most severe phobic and post-traumatic stress symptoms can be successfully reduced and removed (and faster than you might imagine). In working together, we will:

Utilise safe, non-intrusive treatment methods to confront the issue at source
Share information that provides a clear understanding for your experience
Utilise evidence-based techniques to remove the power from your emotional distress
Learn to deeply relax, enableing you to access your strengths and resources
Lift the excess weight restricting your enjoyment of experiences
Ensure that you are able to rejoin places or situations that you might otherwise avoid
Cover the techniques you need to move forward with confidence and independence

Would like to book a session?

Addiction

You may choose to call it a craving, a fancy or a bit of a dependence. Yet anyone who overly relies upon an activity – alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, gambling, sex, etc. – hopes to fill a void or block something out that is missing in their lives. When critical emotional needs remain insufficiently met, addiction can arise. Perhaps due to loss, caused by the death of someone close, a relationship ending, redundancy or illness, or by dissatisfaction stemming from boredom or feeling trapped.

Such circumstances may first lead to depression and addiction. Whatever the activity, it's often an attempt at solving or removing (temporarily, at least) a problem. However, anyone caught up in addiction will intuitively know that it's a fool's gold. The experience involved long ceased to deliver on its promises. An activity that once appeared enabling (e.g. a means of reward, connecting with others, or decompressing from stressful events) has become disabling. As such, you might feel distressed and concerned at its current power over your choices and subsequent freedom.

Understand what causes and fuels addictive behaviour
Isolate destructive impulses that keep you locked in on autopilot
Ensure important emotional needs are constructively met
Develop new expectations for your life and the future
Find pleasure and fulfilment in new and meaningful ways
Develop practical skills for dealing with withdrawal symptoms
Learn to deal with stress or temptations that might lie ahead
Have a solid plan for relapse prevention

Would like to book a session?