Counselling Services

WHAT IS COUNSELLING?

counselling/ˈkaʊns(ə)lɪŋnoun

• The provision of professional assistance and guidance in resolving personal or psychological problems”.

The ‘Talking Cure’ has been well known for centuries as an effective support tool when you are feeling depressed, anxious, stressed or just wishing to make changes in your life.

Talking therapies are treatments which involve talking to a trained professional about your thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

We will aim to:

• give you a safe time and place to talk to someone who won’t judge you
• help you make sense of things and understand yourself better
• help you resolve complicated feelings, or find ways to live with them
• help you recognise unhelpful patterns in the way you think or act, and find ways to change them (if you want to).

“Sometimes it’s hard to talk to family and friends and you just need that one person who takes the time to listen.”

What can therapy help with?

Therapy can help you manage and cope with:

• Difficult life events, such as bereavement (losing someone close to you), or losing your job.
• Relationship problems.
• Upsetting or traumatic experiences, whether it’s something recent or something that happened a long time ago.
• Difficult emotions, such as grief, guilt, sadness, confusion, anger and low self-esteem.
• Depression and anxiety.
• Other mental health problems. Talking therapies can help with a range of diagnoses, and specific talking treatments have been developed for some mental health problems.
• Long-term physical health problems.

Some people think that therapy is an extreme option, and that unless things get really bad you should try to manage on your own. But this isn’t true. It’s ok to try therapy at any point in your life, whatever your background.

In fact getting support from a therapist when you’re not at crisis point can be really helpful – it might feel easier to reflect on what’s going on, and could help you keep things from getting worse.