There are many life experiences that can leave you feeling stressed, anxious or depressed and if prolonged can leave you feeling unable to cope and wondering where to turn. Without help your mental health and general wellbeing can deteriorate and you can feel isolated from others and the world around you.
EMDR is a powerful and effective psychological treatment method. This technique is mostly used in treating trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, EMDR is also effectively used for helping with a number of issues including: anxiety, phobias, complicated grief, addiction and chronic pain.
Whilst we may be able to understand experiences, or the events that have happened on a cognitive or intellectual level, the memories can be held physiologically and feel stored on a deeper level or in the body. This results in the memory effectively becoming 'frozen' on a neurological level.
With EMDR it is not necessary to talk through the details of the traumatic event or memory. This avoids any unnecessary distress or re-traumatising. The focus is on processing the memories gently and effectively in order to experience long-lasting relief.
EMDR (Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) is typically known for the treatment of trauma but is now being used to successfully treat individuals in a wide range of conditions such as depression, OCD, phobias and difficulties of self-regulation such as panic attacks and addiction.
People bring a wide variety of issues to therapy and I have listed some of the most commonly experienced issues here. This list does not cover everything though, so please contact me if you want to talk about something else and we can discuss it.
I have special interests in the areas of trauma in it’s various forms, bereavement and loss and working with the emergency services and armed forces.
Usually people feel relieved once they have made a start with Counselling, and often tell me at the end of their sessions that they wish they had spoken to someone sooner.
Depression is more than simply feeling unhappy or fed up for a few days. We all go through spells of feeling down, but when you are depressed, you can feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days.
By recognising and treating the symptoms of Depression and getting Counselling for Depression, it is possible to overcome depression and prevent it coming back. Expressing your emotions and talking about your feelings in counselling will help you to recover.
Unlike fear, anxiety can occur without an identifiable trigger, making it harder to understand and explain. Mild anxiety is vague and unsettling, while severe anxiety can be extremely debilitating, having a serious impact on daily life.
Anxiety is considered a problem when it starts to affect how you feel and behave, manifesting in physical symptoms which interfere with your ability to sleep or otherwise function.
Traumatic experiences are situations that are overwhelming, frightening and difficult to control. It can be helpful to process traumas with a professional Counsellor. If ignored or covered up, deeper troubles can surface later on.
Trauma counselling is designed around your individual needs, as an experienced Trauma counsellor I can target your traumatic symptoms whether they include anxiety, depression, guilt, sleep disturbances, flashbacks or nightmares.
During a traumatic experience, a person might feel intense fear, helplessness, anxiety or horror. These are normal emotions that someone might feel following a difficult traumatic experience but in people who develop PTSD, these feelings continue long after the original traumatic event has passed.
Many types of experiences may lead to PTSD including experiencing war, terrorism or natural disasters, being the victim of crime, being the victim of rape, experiencing childhood physical or sexual abuse, witnessing the death of another person or witnessing a serious road accident, the reasons are endless.
