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What is Psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is a process in which a therapist helps clients to tackle psychological difficulties and mental illness that are causing distress. Psychotherapy provides a safe and confidential setting where clients can talk openly with a professional who is trained to listen attentively. Therapists use psychological strategies and techniques that are evidence-based to enhance clients' self-awareness, self-regulation and self-acceptance, change or manage behaviours and promote wellbeing.

 

 

 

What is Counselling Psychology?

Counselling psychology examines human issues in a wider context promoting health, personal growth, diversity and equality. Counselling psychologists apply psychology and research-based techniques to working collaboratively across a diverse range of human problems. These include helping people manage difficult life events such as bereavement, past and present relationships and working with mental health issues and disorders. Counselling psychologists explore underlying issues and use an active collaborative relationship to empower people to consider change and to grow. 

Counselling psychologists are trained in a various types of psychological approaches that can be tailored to meet each person's needs. The aim is to reduce distress and suffering, enabling choice and promoting change. It is based on a confidential, non-judgemental and warm professional relationship with a genuine and caring professional. Counselling psychologists offer people a space for self discovery, to explore a particular problem or life situation, understand and manage feelings, thoughts, behaviours and patterns of behaviours. It does not involve giving advice or directing a client to take a course of action but it helps clients to have a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

 

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy explores unconscious or underlying conflicts that are at the base of some problems. It gives central importance to childhood events and experiences, family relationships and sexuality. It aims at helping the client to become aware of such conflicts, affect, suppressed ideas, repetitive patterns that lead to relationship difficulties, low self-esteem, self-loathing, self-sabotaging and issues with the body or a cycle of self-destruction. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy states that alleviation of symptoms and improvement of mental distress can be achieved through making unconscious content conscious. The unconscious is a psychoanalytic concept that refers to a phenomena related to the dynamics of the psyche (mind) in which some ideas or memories and whole experiences appear to be pushed into hiding, because they are too painful  or too threatening for the conscious mind. This type of therapy is usually a long-term process as exploration of the unconscious requires the work with defences, dreams, fantasies and resistance in the attempt to make sense of the hidden material, associated feelings, and current and past experiences. Despite requiring more sessions, psychoanalytic psychotherapy searches for the roots of problems which may lead to long lasting and significant changes. 
 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT understands that people's emotional reactions and behaviour are strongly influenced by their cognitions (thoughts, beliefs and interpretations about themselves and situations). CBT is an evidence-based type of therapy that believes that problems arise from exaggerated or extreme versions of normal processes. It tends to focus on current and specific problems and situations, identifying Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs) that are associated with low mood and maladaptive behaviours. One of the crucial steps in CBT is to help clients stop swallowing their NATs as if they were undisputable truths, so that they can step back and consider their accuracy. CBT also seeks to modify Dysfunctional Assumptions (DAs) which are the self-imposed conditions of living that are related to their NATs. DAs often take the form of conditional 'If... then...' or statements such as 'I should', 'I must'. CBT is usually of short duration in comparison to other types of therapy, being active and interactive. It is particularly successful for the treatment of depression, anxiety, bulimia, phobias and Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) is a theoretically grounded, empirically supported and structured process-experiential humanistic therapy that focuses on accessing and using emotions to help people deal actively with problematic situations. This type of therapy supports the idea that emotions are fundamentally adaptive in nature and that they point at what is significant, enabling the person to take adaptive action towards change. People who have problems regulating emotion can be overwhelmed by strong, painful feelings or become numb and distant from their emotions. They may fear to experience any type of strong emotions as they associate that with loss of control, suffering or past traumatic experiences. EFT assesses and processes dysfunctional emotion responses that interfere with effective functioning facilitating the experiencing of such emotions to increase the person's coping ability and to enhance awareness of inner emotional needs. EFT is indicated for clients who have experienced abuse, trauma, depression, domestic violence, crime-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), psychosomatic problems, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and unresolved relationship issues.

Relational Psychomotricity

Relational Psychomotricity is a type of therapy that stimulates children’s relational capacity, the socio-emotional and psychomotor adaptation through playing, interacting with the therapist, objects and other children. The therapy is based on free playing however sessions follow a structure to manage time and space. Materials used include balls of various sizes and colours, boxes, ropes, blankets, paper, hula-hoops, balloons, etc.

 

It aims at helping children that have difficulties with:

 

 

Behaviour

  • Aggressiveness

  • Boundary difficulties

  • Anger outbursts

  • Fear

  • Clinginess

  • Self-esteem

  • Attachment problems

  • Hyperactivity

Socialisation

  • Inhibition and shyness

  • Isolation

  • Insecurity

  • Passivity

  • Tension

Learning Difficulties

  • Creative expression

  • Motor coordination

  • Cognition

  • Attention

Emotional Regulation

  • Anger outbursts

  • Stress

  • Insecurity

  • Trauma

Trauma Therapy

The Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) a model for Trauma

CRM is a body-oriented therapy for complex trauma and any form of emotional stress. This model was designed by Lisa Schwarz and integrates various forms of therapies to facilitate reprocessing of neurobiological material encoded in the nervous systems. For more information please access: http://comprehensiveresourcemodel.com/

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is an evidence-based psychotherapy treatment for trauma created by Dr Francine Shapiro. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to access and reprocess information towards more adaptive functioning. For more information access: http://www.emdr.com 

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