Therapy or counselling offers you space to talk in order to explore your thoughts, feelings and behaviours in a safe therapeutic confidential environment.
Any issue can be explored together, helping you to change the things that can be changed and come to terms with the things that cant.
It allows you to talk to a professional who is trained to listen, explore and offer honest feedback.
It is not about giving you advice or telling you what to do – rather it focuses on empowering you to reach the best outcome for you.
This is a very personal process. It can sometimes be necessary to talk through painful feelings or decisions and at times it may make you feel uncomfortable. However, many people report feeling much relief after these difficult feelings are shared and reprocessed. In the longer term therapy should enable you to feel much better about living your life fully present.
Imagine your mind as a overfull cupboard that has had lots of clutter thrown randomly in over the years. Therapy enables you to remove each item carefully, examine it, fold it up neatly, reprocess it, and then put it back. As each item is neatly folded (reprocessed) there is now much more room in your cupboard for new information and experiences!
It usually requires a number of sessions before it starts to make a difference. However there are some instances where one session is enough.
It is different from talking to family and friends and, although this can be very useful, there can be things we don’t want to share with people close to us or they may be part of the issue!
Therapy offers a time and a space that is just for you to talk about those issues that bother you.