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Psychological Services

Mental health affects every part of our wellbeing and with that in mind we have expanded our services to include mental health professionals to give you all round care no matter what it is that is keeping you from thriving. Elsa is our core mental health therapist, but we are bringing in therapists with their own fields of specialization to better serve your specific need, so read through their bio’s and see who would best suit you and your condition. We are also running courses on long term conditions (LTC) as mental health is so severely affected by these and cause a significant drop in quality of life. These courses aim to give you back the power and control you may have lost through suffering with a condition that cannot be cured. From struggling to cope with day- to-day life to dealing with significant trauma, we have the tools to help you through these. See below for the different therapies offered and what they are best suited for. 

CBT

What is CBT?

The key idea behind Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is that what you think and do affects the way you feel. The CBT therapist will work with you to identify thoughts and feelings in the here and now in a situation to understand how, through no fault of your own, these thoughts and feelings can keep you “stuck” by the things you do to solve a problem and how that can inadvertently keep the problem going. The CBT therapist will work with you to help you find more helpful ways of seeing a problem, and identify behaviours that can maintain unhelpful behaviours and set up experiments to test new behaviours to find a more beneficial outcome.

ACT

What is ACT?

Acceptance and Commitment therapy is a third wave CBT mindfulness-based programme for overcoming stress, anxiety and depression. It does so by relating to your painful thoughts in a new way, so they have much less impact and influence over you. To make room for unpleasant feelings and sensations instead of trying to push them away, and as you do this they will bother you less, and they can “move on”.It is learning how to connect fully with the present, whatever is happening right now, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Connecting with your values, and making committed changes to what is most important to you to have a meaningful life, this provides direction and motivation to take action. ACT aims to increase openness to difficult experiences such as pain, as well as awareness of behavioural options, and to facilitate behaviour change processes that are in line with personal life values in the presence of these experiences. ACT has been shown to be effective in treating chronic pain. The British Pain Society recommends ACT in the treatment of chronic pain. Further, NICE guidelines for chronic pain recommends ACT for Chronic Pain. A review of recent psychological evidence says: Most of the evidence showed that ACT improved quality of life and sleep, and reduced pain and psychological distress.

EMDR

What is EMDR?

The mind can often heal itself naturally, in the same way as the body does. Much of this natural coping mechanism occurs during sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) utilises this natural process in order to successfully treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment which has successfully helped over a million individuals. There are now nineteen controlled studies into EMDR making it the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma, (Details on www.emdr-europe.org and www.emdr.org) and is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) as an effective treatment for PTSD.

 

What happens when you are traumatised?

Most of the time your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when something out of the ordinary occurs and you are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car accident) or by being repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g. childhood neglect), your natural coping mechanism can become overloaded. This overloading can result in disturbing experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being “unprocessed”. Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist’s finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field. Sometimes, a bar of moving lights or headphones is used instead. 

 

how does EMDR help and what does it involve?

EMDR can accelerate therapy by resolving the impact of your past trauma. It is not, however, appropriate for everyone. The process is rapid, and any disturbing experiences, if they occur at all, last for a comparatively short period of time. Nevertheless, you need to be aware of, and willing to experience, the strong feelings and disturbing thoughts, which sometimes occur during sessions. During EMDR treatment, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. This is not a form of hypnosis and you can stop the process at any time. Throughout the session, the therapist will support and facilitate your own self-healing and intervene as little as possible. Reprocessing is usually experienced as something that happens spontaneously, and new connections and insights are felt to arise quite naturally from within. As a result, most people experience EMDR as being a natural and very empowering therapy. 

 

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Our appointments can be easily booked online. However, if you have any questions about your condition, our treatments or anything else you would like to discuss prior to booking, give us a call on 07971 11 585 or email us and we'll be in touch asap!
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