What I Can Help With
People come to therapy for many reasons.
Sometimes you know what is wrong. Something has happened, a relationship is in trouble, anxiety has become hard to live with, or you have lost someone important.
At other times, it is much harder to explain.
You may feel stuck. You may not feel like yourself. The same problems may keep coming back. Or life may look fine from the outside, yet you know that something is not right.
You do not need a diagnosis or a clear reason to come to therapy: we can start with what you know and work from there.
Grief and loss
We grieve more than death. We can grieve the end of a relationship, the loss of health, a home, a job, a friendship or a future we had pictured for ourselves.
Some losses are clear to other people. Others are private and may never have been fully seen. There is no right way or set time in which to grieve.
Therapy gives you a place to speak about what you have lost and what that loss means to you.
Relationships
Some of the most painful parts of our lives happen in our bonds with other people.
You may keep choosing partners who cannot give you what you need. You may find it hard to trust, fear being left, avoid conflict or stay in relationships long after you know something is wrong.
Perhaps you give too much and find it hard to say no. Or you keep people at a distance even when part of you wants to be close.
We often repeat ways of relating long before we know we are repeating them.
Therapy can help you notice these patterns, understand where they came from and find out whether you still need them.
Change and times of uncertainty
Even changes we choose ourselves can unsettle us.
A new job, becoming a parent, children leaving home, moving country, the end of a relationship or reaching a new stage of life can raise questions we did not expect.
Who am I now?
What do I want?
Does the life I have built still fit me?
At times like these, therapy can give you room to think without rushing towards an answer.
Anxiety and worry
Anxiety can feel like living with an alarm that rarely switches off.
You may worry about what could go wrong, go over past talks in your head, or spend hours trying to make the right choice. You may find it hard to rest because there is always something else you should be doing.
For some people, anxiety is easy to link to a part of their life. For others, it seems to come from nowhere. Therapy gives us time to look at what feeds your anxiety, what tends to set it off, and what it may be linked to in your life.
The aim is not only to feel less anxious. It is also to understand why anxiety has such a strong hold on you.
Depression and low mood
Depression does not always look like deep sadness.
You may feel tired, flat or cut off from life. Things that once mattered may no longer bring much pleasure. You may withdraw from people, struggle to get started or feel that every task takes more effort than it should.
Sometimes there is a clear loss or event behind these feelings and sometimes there is not. In therapy, we can begin with how life feels now and slowly look at what may sit beneath the low mood.
Trauma and painful past experiences
Some experiences stay with us long after the event itself has ended.
You may know this through fear, shame, anger, numbness or a strong need to stay in control. You may struggle to trust other people or find that certain events bring back feelings that seem far stronger than the present moment.
Not all painful experiences are easy to name as trauma. Some come from what happened to us. Others come from what we needed but did not receive.
We can look at these experiences at a pace that you can manage, while also paying attention to how they affect your life and relationships now.
Low self-worth and self-criticism
You may find it much easier to see what is wrong with you than what is good.
Perhaps you compare yourself with others, question your choices or feel that you must work harder, achieve more or please people to feel that you are enough.
The voice that judges us can become so familiar that we stop asking where it came from.
In therapy, we can become more aware of that voice, understand what shaped it and begin to question whether everything it tells you is true.
Identity and feeling lost
There are times when we no longer know who we are or what we want.
You may have spent years caring for others, meeting other people's needs or building the life you thought you were meant to want.
Then one day a question appears: What about me?
Feeling lost does not always mean that something has gone wrong. At times, it can mean that an old way of living no longer fits.
Therapy can give you time to find out what matters to you now.
Suicidal thoughts
There are times when emotional pain becomes so hard to bear that death can begin to feel like the only way for it to stop.
You may have thoughts of suicide without wanting to act on them. You may feel ashamed or afraid to tell anyone what is going through your mind.
I have several years of experience working with people who have suicidal thoughts, including my work at Maytree, a respite centre for people in suicidal crisis.
Therapy can give us a place to speak about these thoughts openly, understand what lies behind them and take your safety seriously.
Dreams
Dreams can bring strange, vivid or troubling images that stay with us long after we wake.
I have advanced training in dream work. If you are interested in your dreams, we can explore them as part of therapy.
I will not tell you what a dream means or use fixed meanings for its symbols. We look at the dream together and ask what its images, people and feelings mean to you.
Dreams can sometimes show us another side of a problem or bring our attention to something we have not yet been able to put into words.
Dream work is always your choice.
If you do not see your experience here
This list cannot cover every reason someone comes to therapy.
You may not have a name for what you are going through. You may even wonder whether your problem is "big enough" for therapy.
You do not need to work that out before contacting me.
Our first meeting gives us a chance to talk about what is happening and whether I am the right person to help you with it.