Counselling
There are a wide range of issues which people bring to counselling and everyone brings their own unique life experience, meaning making and personal journey goals. Below are some of the issues which counselling can help with.
Low Confidence and Self-Esteem
Our self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves and a low self-esteem tends to generate low confidence. When suffering from low self-esteem we can think badly of ourselves, comparing ourselves to others and falling short. We can continually second guess ourselves and use a lot of energy worrying about what other people think about us. This can be an exhausting experience leading to low energy levels and it becoming increasingly more difficult to interact with others. We can also experience being invisible to others with a sense that we are disconnected, lost and the world is moving, happening around us, yet we are static or powerless. We can feel low and bad about ourselves who can leave an uncomfortable gap between how we are inside, how we would like to be, and how we show ourselves to others. Counselling can help you understand where your low self-esteem originated from and understand how it is implicating your life today and help you heal and re-build your self-esteem so you can have a happier and more energised life. |
Anger Support
Anger itself is not a problem – although we can be brought up to think that it is. It is a normal human emotion and can be closely linked with our passion. Not all anger is unhealthy – it helps us stand up for ourselves and to hold our ground. However, getting angry can prevent us from solving problems and can be disruptive to our relationships. Anger can be a form of defense against being manipulated or controlled helping us stand up for who we are. Anger and irritability can also motivate us to take action against injustice. We may also have anger so deep that it is hard to articulate. Expressing anger in a healthy way can be challenging for many of us. Some of us may be triggered with anxiety when connected to our anger which could result in becoming more and more wound up until something needs to be released and then we snap. Managing anger can be really hard especially if you are unaware of the relationship you have with anger and what its root cause is. Repressed anger can also not be healthy and can materialise in our lives through poor health, anxiety and other emotional challenges. It is important to know that anger is a healthy emotion when communicated in a respectful and relational way, it becomes unhealthy when it is expressed through rage. Counselling can help you better understand your anger so you manage it, rather than it managing you. |
Anxiety
The emotions of stress, fear and anxiety can be very overwhelming and leave you feeling entirely caught with a sense of helplessness. These feelings can initiate the flight, fight or freeze response in an attempt to feel safe. At times, the intensity of which we can feel these emotions can be disproportionate with the event that has taken place and can incapacitate us. We may have learnt to hide our anxiety from others, pretending that all is well in our world, even though inside we are in turmoil. We find it difficult to manage these emotions and can feel taken over by it fretting about the past, worrying about the future and not being able to live in the present moment. Living like this can be exhausting and familiar with a sense of not knowing any other way to be in the world. In counselling, we can explore what the triggers are and how our reactions serve us and limit us in our day to day lives and general well being. The focus is on understanding and regulating the stress, fear and anxiety in order to open up more space for you to experience your life more fully. |
Addictions (internet, sex, alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, gambling)
The word addict can be thrown around freely for a multitude of activities which is a shame as it minimises what for some can be a very distressing reality. Being labelled an addict isn’t always helpful and what is more important is understanding what the repeating behaviours is offering the person and what it may be trying to cover up. We may have an emotional attachment to our addiction of choice which helps us be able to be in our lives and/or cope with something that has been long repressed or hidden away. Through counselling, we can understand more about the addiction, how it is trying to serve you and how it is limiting you, moving you away from being managed by your habit to being in charge of your addiction. |
Depression
Experiencing ups and downs is part of being a human being. There can be a stigma attached to asking for help when we are feeling depressed based on our culture, the perspective of others and society. A solution for depression is often medication which has its place and also can overlook actually addressing the reasons for the depression. There can be pressure to cheer up and be positive when inside we feel the complete opposite and feel utterly alone. Through counselling, we can explore what you are experiencing, how it is impacting on your life and helps you find a way through it. |
Feeling Lost or Stuck
We can sometimes find ourselves unsure of where we are in our lives and even how we got there. We have a sense something needs to change and yet can’t see the wood from the trees. Perhaps we have a sense that we have lived our lives not wanting to grow up being reliant on others or perhaps have always strived to reach a certain point and when we get there, it wasn’t what we thought it would be and we wonder 'what now'. This can be an overwhelming, frustrating and confusing place to be and it can be difficult to see a way forward. We go through many transitions in our life, the most commonly known is mid-life transition (crisis). As we go through these different stages we can lose our way, feel like we are drifting along with no purpose , stuck in a situation which feels wrong or like we have missed out on something important. We may feel stuck in life, stuck with certain, familiar feelings, maybe feeling low, depressed at the exclusion of other feelings. Perhaps we are stuck because we only see situations as problems, holding on to past failures or successes, struggling to let go of something, waiting for something to happen. We may be stuck in our old wounds, guilt, shame, unhelpful thoughts and beliefs. Counselling can help clear the way and help you have a better sense of how you got to where you are , where you want to be and help you connect with your internal resources to bring you back to yourself and move you forward. |
Grief and Bereavement
There are many aspects to grief and everyone has their own unique experience with dealing with their loss. Perhaps the grief is about the loss of a loved one, someone close to us that played an important role in our life, or letting go of a strongly held belief, pain, wound and/or trauma. We need to go through our own grieving process and the length of time it takes to be with grief and to mourn in a way that is appropriate for us. Unfortunately different cultures and society have expectations on how grief should be handled, which can result in us not being able to grieve properly leaving unresolved emotional pain and loss deep inside of us. Grieving can be cut unnaturally short through your employer's bereavement leave policy or by the attitude of those around you. Bereavement is a natural process and it can be one of the most painful experiences we have. Each of us has a different way of grieving - sharing our grief & coping with it in our own good time. Someone may have died recently or some while back or perhaps the loss of an unborn child or what could have been. Grief can impact upon us deeply and through counselling you can be supported with your grief in a spacious and meaningful way. |
Relationship Challenges
How easy do we find it to set clear boundaries or can our boundaries be flexible or easily removed. When we were younger we learned how to have boundaries and how they would be respected. If our boundaries were ignored, disrespected and trampled over, then we may find it difficult to be able to have boundaries now. This can result in others running our lives whilst we struggle to have personal boundaries to protect and support us. By being able to have boundaries we open up more space for us to enjoy relationships and events in our lives, whilst being able to be connected to ourselves and our needs in more challenging moments. Counselling can help explore boundary issues, providing understanding on why it may be difficult and helping you break through to having more personal power. |
Sexual Difficulties
Sexual difficulties in a relationship can sometimes be an indicator that there are other emotional challenges and unfulfilled needs within the partnership. It can also be because of our history which has generated certain beliefs around sex or possible fears. We may desire to be more sexual and intimate and not know what is getting in the way – we just know something is. There are a multitude of reasons why we may be having sexual difficulties and this can be a very confusing time in which we can turn on ourselves and feel like there is no way forward. Through counselling we can explore what is underneath the difficulties, whilst holding and supporting any possible shame, guilt or frustration being experienced. |
Unhealed Wounds
Freud said that human beings are insatiable which means that it was virtually impossible for parents to meet every need that we had growing up. With this, all of us have experienced hurt and some have experienced a traumatic event or multiple events. Some of these hurtful experiences would have been too hard for the child to handle and therefore as adults we may continue to live from this hurt place in our way of being. In nearly all families there is a spectrum of healthy and unhealthy dynamics resulting in wounding that we carry with us every day in our lives. We may have felt neglected, abandoned and abused resulting in finding it difficult to trust now. The aspect of us that was wounded, would have formed ways of coping which would have served us well as a child and possibly is limiting us now relationally with others and ourselves. With these deep wounds, we may try to ignore them, bury them or be overwhelmed by them. There can be familiar triggers which re-activate the wound resulting in us feeling off balance. Some of these wounds may never entirely go away. Through counselling we can gain a better understanding of our wounds so we can start to heal and be better equipped to manage the triggers, using the resources you now have available to you as an adult. |
Work Life Balance
Our work can provide a great sense of joy and meaningfulness in which we derive a great sense of purpose and genuinely love what we do. Yet some of us can get caught up in the work trap in which what we do is who we are. Our work and career defines who we are and how we feel about ourselves. Our self-esteem can be tied up with our achievements at work and how our peer and managers perceive us. This is a vulnerable place to be in which the solidness of personality structure is dependent on the response of others. We can worry about work, putting everything we have into it at the cost of our self and loved ones. We can become so wrapped up in our work that we are not able to enjoy things outside of our work or take our work with us through conversation to every interaction we have. When we find ourselves being defined by our work, it can be a very challenging, painful and confusing time. Through counselling we explore why this has happened, what you want to change, what the future could look like and how we can help get you there. |