General Therapy

General counselling, contemporary CBT therapies and therapeutic coaching offered to help you manage problems due to:

• Anxiety and worry, feeling tense or restless
• Health anxieties
• Social anxiety and performance anxiety, fear of being judged or evaluated negatively by others
• Anger, frustration and irritability
• Stress, work issues and burnout
• Low mood and depression, lack of motivation
• Bereavement, grief and loss
• Non-death losses and Life changes such as changes in health, loss of relationships, redundancy, retirement
• Trauma and PTSD
• Self-worth and self-esteem
• Panic attacks and anxiety attacks
• Specific fears and phobias such as fears of animals, flying, fear of death (death anxiety) and fear of vomiting (emetophobia)
• Obsessions and Compulsions (OCD) – see OCD Therapy page

Why therapy?

Counselling and Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT) offer you a safe space to explore the challenges and difficulties you’re facing, help identify problematic thoughts and behaviours and change them into more positive, healthier ones. This can help us become more resilient and more able to navigate through life’s challenges.

OCD Therapy

Evidence-based cognitive-behavioural therapies (CBT) combined with exposure and response prevention (Ex/RP) therapy, metacognitive and alternative therapies to manage OCD. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterised by having obsessions, compulsions or both. Obsessions are unwanted intrusive thoughts, mental pictures or impulses that are upsetting and keep coming back.

Compulsions (also called Rituals) are actions people with OCD feel they have to perform to keep from feeling distressed (anxious, frustrated, guilty, ashamed, etc.) or to prevent something bad from happening. Most people with OCD have both obsessions and compulsions and can have more than one type of OCD. OCD often coexists with other mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD. OCD is a common problem and 1 person on every 40 will have OCD at some point in their life.

Some common types of OCD are related to:

• Contamination & Mental Contamination (fear of germs and contracting infections, leading to cleaning rituals, avoidance and other strategies to reduce distress caused by the thoughts)
• Harm-OCD, characterised by fear of hurting or killing self or someone, often a loved one
• Symmetry and Orderliness (placing items in a set pattern)
• Checking and Doubting (opening & closing doors, taps, checking emails and messages several times before sending, going back to places to check you haven’t caused an accident)
• Repeating actions (for example, always turning lights off 10 times)
• Thoughts-Only OCD, also known as Pure O, when people primarily experience obsessions only and seemingly do not engage in obvious, external compulsions such as cleaning. They may still perform mental or subtle compulsions (prayers, mental reviewing and reassurance, attempt to stop or suppress unwanted thoughts) to reduce the distress they feel. Pure O is often related to repetitive, disturbing thoughts around harm, sexuality, religion, morality or existence
• Sexual OCDs including paedophilic OCD (P-OCD) or homosexual OCD (H-OCD) related to having unwanted, distressing and repetitive thoughts and fears related to inappropriate sexual attraction to children or same sex individuals even if the person is not actually attracted to them.
• These thoughts are often followed by mental acts and physical behaviours in an attempt to reduce the distress caused by these thoughts
• Scrupulosity, Religious or Moral OCD (having unwanted, distressing thoughts and fears related to religious or moral issues, followed by acts and behaviours to reduce the distress caused by these thoughts)
• Relationship OCD (R-OCD) is characterised by having unwanted, distressing thoughts and doubts about current or past romantic relationships or partners, questioning whether you really love your partner or if your partner loves you, or questioning whether you’re in the right relationship, even despite the absence of real problems in the relationship
• Hoarding or saving things (old newspapers, tins of food, scraps of paper)
• Avoidance, reassurance seeking and negative self-beliefs are often associated with OCD. The most effective psychotherapy for OCD is CBT combined with Exposure and Response Prevention (Ex/RP).

Why therapy?

Do you ever get thoughts you don’t want to have? Do you feel scared to talk about these thoughts, in case they come true or that others would think negatively about you? Or because of the fear that your children may be taken away if you mention these thoughts to someone else? Do you try to stop having these thoughts, replace or suppress them in some ways? Do you do ‘rituals’ or pray, in response to having the thoughts, to reduce the distress you feel, or to compensate for having these thoughts? Do you seek reassurance from others that you haven’t done certain things or that you are ‘not a bad person’? Do you clean, wash, check things excessively? Do you go back to check and repeat actions a lot? Do you feel that you just can’t stop? Do these things take a long time to do, lead to exhaustion and interfere with work and relationships?