Andrea Larkins Clinical & Counselling Psychologist

Feeling depressed can make it hard to deal with daily life and relationships. You may feel a deep sadness that won’t subside, lethargy, lack of focus or perhaps you feel numb and not really present in your life and relationships.

Therapy can provide support and coping skills as well as the opportunity to uncover the reasons the depression has developed at this point in your life. By addressing the underlying issues you can feel improvement in your symptoms, have deeper self knowledge and you can make meaningful changes in your life.

Having severe levels of anxiety may mean you are experiencing excessive worry, physical tension and even panic attacks. Just getting through each day can be a huge struggle, you may be avoiding valued activities or perhaps you are finding it difficult to be really present in your relationships. You may suffer due to a harsh inner critic and self limiting beliefs about yourself.

Therapy can help you in feeling supported, provide strategies to cope and can help you to develop insight into the combination of factors that have led to the anxiety developing at this point in your life. Therapy can also help you find more balance in your thinking and your emotional life through emotional processing and by developing deeper insights into self defeating thoughts, self punishment and avoidance cycles. There can be a focus on identifying what’s most important in your life and moving towards engaging with these aspects of your life, rather than being controlled and limited by excessive anxiety.

Having unresolved issues from your childhood such as emotional neglect or abuse can mean that you struggle to connect with your emotions, to find some peace within yourself and you may find it difficult to fully engage in your life and your relationships. You may feel a lot of worry and stress within family and other relationships or you may feel numb and lacking direction and a sense of meaning in your life.

By exploring your childhood experiences and current difficulties, you can develop a deeper understanding of the impact of the lack of emotional support and/or abuse on your development, your attachment style and relationships and in your life now more generally. The therapy will also help you to address the neglected areas of your emotional development so that you will have a healthier engagement with your emotional life, improved self worth, greater clarity and direction in life and a better ability to express yourself and set healthy boundaries in your relationships.

The pain of grief and loss is an unavoidable part of life and can come in many forms. Perhaps you have lost a loved one through death, a relationship or friendship ending, or you are facing a circumstance or realisation that is crushing or painful. You may feel strong, powerful emotions, great difficulty coping with life’s demands, or more of a disconnect from your emotions and your relationships. You may be aware of new questions emerging about your life and its meaning.

Therapy can provide emotional support, a place to share your story, your pain and confusion. Therapy can help you to find ways to live with your loss and opportunities to grow at this very difficult period in your life.

You may be feeling confused or dissatisfied in your relationship over some time and aren’t sure what to do. Perhaps you are feeling a lack of engagement and connection with your partner and you aren’t sure how to seek to address this with them. Or you may be certain that you want to leave your relationship and are scared about taking the next step. Perhaps you have concerns about repeated patterns in your relationships and choice of partners.

Therapy can give you a safe place to share your experience within your relationship and feel understood and supported. You will also develop deeper insights into the relationship dynamic and greater clarity on what isn’t working. The next step is to use these insights to make carefully considered decisions about next steps, it might be to initiate discussion with your partner about your concerns, or to be more assertive or to ask them to attend couples therapy. Or it may be to be supported in therapy as you go through the process of leaving your relationship.

Having low self worth can mean you struggle to seek out what is important to you in your life, perhaps because you don't feel worthy of being loved, or you feel you are worth less than other people, or you have a deep fear of failure or humiliation. Maybe you even feel so much self loathing that you believe you are undeserving of joy and so can't enjoy life's happy moments. For some people their sense of self worth and self esteem is too closely linked with things that are external, such as high achievement, status, competition, seeking approval or appearances and so when they hit a setback or what they perceive as a failure they can be highly vulnerable to stress, depression and even despair. 

Therapy can give individuals the opportunity to recognise the negative impact that low self worth is having on their mental health, relationships and quality of life. The therapy may explore the origins in childhood of these self sabotaging patterns of thinking and behaviour, and will work towards developing your ability to have a more compassionate relationship with yourself and your emotions so that you can be more resilient and live a more fulfilling life. 

Life is full of ongoing shifts and transitions, both internal and external. Examples of life transitions that people make seek help for in therapy may include: adjusting to the changes of adult life such leaving school or university, moving in with a partner, leaving a relationship, becoming a parent (or seeking to), exploring change in one's career, physical changes such as perimenopause/ menopause or chronic health problems, moving to another town or country, supporting ageing parents and adjustment to retirement. Of course there are many more these are just examples. Whilst many life changes may bring positive feelings and personal growth there are often challenges in the period of adjustment which may cause significant worry, confusion, isolation, stress and feelings of loss.

Therapy can help by giving you the opportunity to reflect and process your feelings and thoughts about the changes in your life which you are developing or which circumstances have created. We can explore the hopes you have for this change in your life, develop further clarity and also address the complicated feelings which may be showing up for you through this time. We can explore barriers both internal and external to making behavioural change which will better support you in this time of transition.