How Can Counselling or Psychotherapy Help?
How you benefit will largely depend upon what you bring. It is fairly likely however, that if you do benefit from working with me, you will experience the following:
Firstly, your brain will feel different. As neuroscience tells us, (through the concept of 'neuroplasticity') good psychotherapy will re-wire it with new neuronal pathways, as the way you think and feel about things changes.
Secondly, your nervous system will calm down. The neurobiologist Daniel Siegel refers to this as the widening of your 'Window of Tolerance.' This means that you are less likely to become stuck in 'fight/flight' or 'freeze' but more able to access your calm, grounded, emotionally-regulated self, especially at those tricky times in life.
Thirdly, your life will change for the better. I like to be reminded here of some wisdom traditions which maintain that although things can look fixed, stuck, they never actually stay the same. Change of some sort is inevitable and in good psychotherapy it is possible to harness this positively.
Finally, I like to draw upon the the Serenity Prayer, (from a psychological rather than religious perspective) which reminds us that while change is possible, it may involve a dance with acceptance. For while it takes courage to change the things we can change, for those we can't, it needs acceptance. Sometimes knowing this brings relief and sometimes a lot of grief. All of this delicate understanding can take time to emerge.
So looking more specifically, here is a list of one or more things that you may gain from psychotherapy
- Feeling much calmer, less ‘triggered,’ by previous situations, people etc.
- Viewing yourself and others with greater kindness (compassion)
- Feeling more hopeful about yourself and life, with a decrease in apathy, despondency etc.
- Feeling more present, grounded, in touch with your body, and less numb to life.
- Feeling energised, able to structure and make good choices for your life
- Feeling a greater sense of physical wellbeing, sleeping better, having a better relationship with your bodily symptoms.
- Having deeper insights or understanding about yourself, others in your life
- Having new perspectives which feel helpful
- Able to learn new skills, for relationships, work or approaches to life.
- Having a clear sense of responsibility for your life and what this means
- Finding deeper meanings to things which previously had just felt painful
- Understanding the things you can and cannot control and having an acceptance around these.
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