Do I need therapy?

I often get asked, do you think I need therapy, will it really make a difference? And my response is simple, I think everyone could do with a bit of therapy. How can we not all benefit, from dealing with stuff and managing our shit?!

There are so many options too, I thought this week I would tell you a bit about the things I do, the stuff in my toolbox. If you were coming to see me for the first time, we would start with a really good assessment (to use a clinical word), this is basically where we sit down together and talk about your life.

The things you are most proud of, the stuff that hurts, what it was like growing up, any difficult stuff that comes up for you, the kind of things that trigger you, to remember about the past. I always think about this idea of time being like elastic, you can be bobbing along, getting on with things and suddenly, a smell/ a sound/ a conversation, can lift you out of the present and right back into that shit storm. I can speak from experience time can be like an emotional bungee, you feel like you’ve moved on, but then something reminds you (triggers you) and there you are, experiencing the sadness/ anger, whatever it is again as if it happened 2 minutes ago.

Now to a certain extent, that’s ok, it’s how life rolls, we are reminded of things and we are able to feel sadness, think of happier memories and move on with our day, but for some people, it’s really difficult to move on because the way the brain has processed it, isn’t quite right and they get stuck, being triggered often.

So what are the different things that I do that can help? So the things I generally do with people change, very dependent on the person and what they present with, it might start off with some education about the impact of stress on the body, how often difficult life experiences can get stuck and be held in a physical way, along with emotions like sadness/ guilt/ shame/ anger, the body can also keep the score, so to speak.

I rarely meet someone who doesn’t have any physical symptoms at all, it might be headaches/ fatigue/ stomach pains, but it’s different for everyone and whilst there are often similarities, I find that everyone is absolutely unique. After that I will do some work to help them feel more stable, day to day. This might include using some mindfulness practice, some hypnosis, where powerful protocols are used to release any blocks and I also might do some emotional freedom work, tapping on meridian points linked with the bodies rest and repair system to start impacting on some of those negative emotions.

Often referred to as psychological acupressure, this allows the body to reset and repair.  After that I will mainly use a treatment called EMDR (Eye movement desensitisation and re-processing), we have a terrible habit in the mind management world of naming things in a really complicated way and then shortening it to a 3 or 4 letter therapy. That treatment has 8 phases, and works quickly for people by focussing on elements of the difficult event, or the phobia, or the depression route courses, or the manifestation of the anxiety at the same time as doing eye movements, moving your eyes from side to side, it seems to get the left and the right brain communicating and with the beauty of peoples amazingly creative brains allows that difficult unprocessed stuff to become processed, easy to digest and stored in a healthier way. I liken it to a baby bird, and its food, it needs its mum to help chew the food (I don’t think birds chew, but you know what I mean lol), EMDR allows the difficult stuff to come back into working memory, to be looked at in a different way and then stored (digestible), in a healthy way.

As I said, everyone if different, some people might need some dialectical behavioural informed therapy (DBT, yeah another 3 letter therapy) first, to get an opportunity to learn skills in managing distress, regulating emotions and working out how to be in relationships, with themselves, the world around them and with other people. When you meet me, and we do the initial assessment I can usually give you an idea of what you need, how long it will take and together we make a plan. Sometimes people only can afford a certain number of sessions, but we can usually work out a way to make the most of the time we have and create lasting change.