Anxiety
Feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, lost, isolated, indecisive or lonely?
Do you compare yourself to others?
Knowing how to manage these experiences can provide some relief from our stresses and fast pace of life. Being prepared for certain situations and triggers to your anxiety are important in being able to increase your tolerance by facing,challenging behaviour and thoughts.
Social anxiety can be seen as a cycle, and knowing how to break this can be a way forward. By possessing certain beliefs and assumptions can lead to situations being seen as 'socially dangerous' and feel threatening. Counselling can provide the space to explore what is happening to you, and provide a place where you can feel accepted as a person to find ways, and tools to be able to cope with life, and to start to enjoy life again.
Depression
Feeling low, having an empty, numb feeling, being really tired, isolating yourself from others, are all long lasting symptoms of depression and affect your everyday life. Finding meaning and direction in your life is part of the healing process in the face of self- destructive experiences. Counselling can allow you to safely explore these difficult, painful thoughts which can lead to not wanting to be around anymore.
Having someone to support you, allowing someone into your life can make a real difference to you. Therapy can be an important first step to feeling better about yourself and being able to value others in your life.
By being able to understand where you are in your life, and how you got to this stage can be helpful in finding ways to manage and navigate a way ahead where you can go on to lead a more fulfilling life. By being able to create emotional bonds to those close to you, can then lead to a more meaningful and enlightened life. From understanding that your current state of being is due to circumstances, which have felt out of control, resulting in powerless and a demotivation to make change. Counselling can help you to view your world in terms of knowing what is in your control and to feel empowered by the changes you want to make, increasing your own resilience. This can help build a way out of a perceived dark hole.
Relationships
Relationships can be times of joy, happiness and also of conflict, disagreements and unsettled feelings.
We may find it difficult to navigate through some of these periods in a relationship. You may have thoughts of having loved too much, not loved enough, or feelings of guilt about distancing from the relationship of not wanting to hurt the other, but not knowing how to do this and to look after yourself too. Managing expectations can be important by knowing what we are able to change, and not thinking that we can change the other person’s behaviour. Taking responsibility for our own actions and knowing what we are willing to accept in a relationship can make a real difference.
An awareness of what is happening is often the first step in feeling able to be prepared for things, which may be occurring in cycles. Counselling is all about helping you to be aware of patterns which may be prevalent in your relationships. By being aware and being able to manage these, can give you the confidence and self-esteem to be able to think of alternatives which may be more helpful to you, and ultimately to you being able to form a close and meaningful relationship.
In counselling it may be helpful to look at how you communicate with those close in your life, which may reveal you or others playing games, which nearly always seem to end the same unhelpful way. You may feel that it seems to be your fault, feeling guilty for your actions, and taking on not only your responsibility but also that of your partner. You can consequently feel that you are the ‘bad’ person in the relationship or the ‘victim’, and no amount of trying to change your partner helps you to feel better about yourself or helps your situation.
In counselling there are different theoretical approaches that can help you in how you communicate in a helpful assertive way, which respects yourself and those close around you. This can be done by setting boundaries of acceptable behaviour to avoid this game playing, and increase your resilience and confidence to feel better about yourself and to help yourself to form heathy relationships.
How to Survive a Breakup
The number one rule is to ensure you take care of yourself, as there may be a time that you do get back together but this will be difficult if you have fallen apart and not in a position to do this. With a break up this may not be your decision, but that of your partner, so can be especially hard to accept. In a relationship there are two people, and if one decides that for whatever reason the relationship is not working for them, then without being able to change that person, this can lead to a very upsetting, frustrating and even angry experience. Remembering that the relationship is made up of two people, who take responsibility for their own actions and decisions can be something we don’t want to think about, and may want to do anything to try to make the relationship work. Sometimes there may not be anything else we can do if the other person has made this huge heart breaking decision to end.
If you are able to manage the care of yourself, respecting yourself and your needs you are valuing your life as important. You may have others in your life that rely upon you, such as children, and this may help to provide a purpose in the most distressing times. Thinking of what helps is a big first step in helping you to manage this time, such as eating healthily, regular exercise, meeting friends, and keeping to a routine. It is also not a time to try to push yourself too hard, as being kind to yourself when you are grieving the loss of your relationship may take time. You may feel more forgetful, unable to concentrate and more tearful than you normally are.
However, you can be in control of your thoughts and actions, and these can help you. The counselling process can help you on your journey to feeling better. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help you work out strategies to do this.
Using mindfulness techniques by being in the present, can help you feel more grounded, and tasks such as appreciating the moment, and being with nature, can provide you peace and tranquillity, and being a welcome break away from any obsessive negative thoughts. This can help during what can be an unsettling time of overwhelming feelings of change from being in a relationship to not.
Think now about what you would like, and take time out for you as you are important, and treat yourself to whatever this may be, which could be as simple as a walk, meet with a friend or just to spend time listening to yourself, and then act on this, and think that doing something different may be ok.
Bereavement
Bereavement can be a painful time for us when losing a loved one, who is now no longer in our life, which can be by death or loss, such as separation. We can be affected in many ways and all of us will react in our own way. We can go through many feelings including shock, numbness, anger and sadness, which are all part of how we react to grieving. It may feel that everyone has moved on, and why does it still feel so difficult and sometimes you feel guilty if allowing yourself to try and move on. Feeling guilty about being happy can cause problems by holding on to this sadness.. Feelings can become 'stuck' when we are unable to express ourselves which can lead to long term problems. Relationships may become stressful, and feel unmanageable when partners grieve in different ways. One partner may want to talk, while the other wants to try and continue with life, and appear to be trying to be ‘normal’ again. This can cause distancing in our relationships from a lack of empathy and understanding of how the other person is acting.
I recognise that we are all individuals going through the grief process in our own ways, some of us having more support than others, some more able to express their thoughts and feelings, some more unwilling to do so, and needing to try and get back to life’s responsibilities, such as work.
We may go through many stages before we are able to feel that life can be lived again, and to be able to recount happy memories. There will always be times that we find difficult, such as family occasions, and birthdays of our lost loved one. Healing from a loss can take time. Having someone alongside you at times, which can feel very lonely to be able to explore your loss, and the effects this has had on your life. To find a way to help you to be able to start adjusting to your changed future.
I currently work at Cruse as a supervisor in a voluntary capacity, having previously worked there as a counsellor. I am able to offer a sensitive, supportive space for you, and I have knowledge of the grieving process, and how this may affect us, to help you to navigate a way through this unknown territory, which can appear frightening. Having someone to work with by identifying an approach to help you, which will reflect your personality, values, culture, beliefs and those influences in your life from family, close friends, which make up you as an individual.
It may seem you have no meaning or purpose to your life, and having an empty feeling can make the future a frightening place. Looking at making changes in your life, as part of adjusting to a new life without your loved one may seem like a huge step too far to take. Moving forward can be so difficult. Remembering your loved one as still being there for you in some form, whether that be by thinking of what they may be saying to you in those times you most want to reach out to that person, can bring real comfort. When recalling memories and thoughts relating to that person can initially bring pain and suffering, but finding ways to help these be meaningful and positive ones can be a real step forward in the bereavement process. Counselling can help you in coming to this place.
When trying to cope with bereavement, you are more likely to experience anxiety and stress related illnesses, such as sleep and stress related work disorders. This can happen, and understanding this can help you with your experience of bereavement, and find your own coping strategies, and support you on your journey on either a short or longer term basis.
Addictions and Dependency
Addiction is a dependency upon a particular substance or activity. Due to this being a habit or pattern overwhelming other areas in life this can cause problems by neglecting relationships and yourself. You may now realise that this drug did something for you, which was different from the way it affected others. A party or going to the pub was useless without a drug such as alcohol. Despite trying to control this compulsion nothing may work, and if the addiction is severe, this can be a disease, and receiving the right help is paramount. Do you find that you never experience the same pleasurable experience as your first drink or drug? You may be searching for this, but the experience becomes less and less pleasurable, and actually involves negative and harmful consequences.
Mental health problems can arise such as depression and anxiety, when feelings and emotions have not been expressed or dealt with, which may have been due to a bereavement, a traumatic or abusive situation/relationship preventing this from happening. It may have felt unsafe or wrong to have these feelings at this time, or you were unable to understand what was happening, and want now to have this time to have this understanding to help manage and cope with your feelings and emotions.
Alcohol and drug addiction is often referred as an artificial connection to a substance rather than to an actual real life connection to a human. In counselling having this human connection can be the start to help replace an artificial connection to a drug, which can be the beginning of your journey to a new healthy lifestyle showing the benefits to having human support. This can be built upon to help other relationships in your life, whether that be with your partner, husband, wife, daughter, son or other important person.
The 12 Steps programme used by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) can be incorporated within counselling. Support groups provide meetings locally, and are a constant emotional fellowship, allowing you to take each day as it comes, which is very much the approach I would use.
The first step is the awareness that you have a problem, and this is how counselling works also by helping to step back from life, and have a safe place to see the extent to your dependency, and by doing so I can help work you find a way forward, which is right for you. You may have tried cutting back and seen this as not working for you, so this may not be an option. If you have not then we can work towards this to see if this may be possible. To help you see the extent of your dependency it is helpful to see how you are dealing with relationships in your life. Do you find that you are often blaming others when things go wrong? Things would be ok only if …
Counselling helps you to be able to change the things that are in your control, and seeing a blaming attitude as not being helpful in your life, as other people are not within your control. We can look at what you can do to help you take more control over your life, and with this to be able to take responsibility over your actions, and this will help you to feel better about yourself, and allow you to see what is important in your life, and what you want to do to help this to continue.
There are other dependencies and addictions regarding eating, gambling, gaming, social media, sex and love and smoking, which can be helped by working with you to help you gain awareness as to the extent this affects your life, and ways to manage, by adopting coping mechanisms, to help with expressing your feelings, and discovering your basic beliefs, which can be self-destructive. You may find you are behaving in vicious cycles, which perpetuate these addictions from your unhelpful thoughts about yourself and others.
Counselling can help by involving other family members within the process, as change will involve them too. The focus is on you, and we would agree prior to arranging a session involving another person, what you feel would help, and how this support can assist with you being able to implement these changes to your life. Often there is guilt and shame surrounding dependency and addiction, and by involving others in your life can help manage these feelings, which are often deep rooted, and can be hard to change, but are often the triggers to addiction and dependency. These can come from our upbringing or from circumstances later in life, which we have felt ‘bad’ about, and have not been able to move on from. These feelings can prevail to act as obstacles to our growth as fulfilling human beings, which prevent us from being the person we want to be. When we act in ways we want to see ourselves, rather than using an artificial justification to hide behind, we can truly enjoy and find meaningful relationships and activities to be involved with. Counselling can help you on this journey, and towards one of looking forward to having the life you want.
