Counselling and Psychotherapy

There is a lot of confusion around the terms Psychotherapy or Counselling. They can quickly conjure up images of someone trying to get inside your head, trying to "catch you out", or simply someone telling you where you have gone wrong in your life and giving you advice on how to make things better. All of these do not capture the essence of counsellor or psychotherapy.

Psychotherapists/Counsellors are trained to help the client through the emotional distress they are experiencing and help them find a place where they become unstuck & discover new experiences and choices.

To see our counselling & psychotherapy services please click here.

Counselling is a process that can provide opportunities for individuals, couples and families to work towards living in a more satisfying and resourceful way. Working through painful or difficult situations with a trained professional can increase our understanding of personal or relationship problems.

Counselling provides a safe, confidential and supportive environment in which to explore the feelings and relationships you have about your past and present life experiences.

What is Psychotherapy? Psychotherapy is a process in which the client embarks on a journey of self exploration. This often includes dealing with issues such as early childhood trauma, low self-esteem, depression, anger and anger management, stress and stress management, and anxiety, to name just a few. The goal of psychotherapy is to help the client explore these situations and feelings in a safe and confidential environment so as to better understand resulting in overcoming these difficulties. Ultimately, the aim would be for better understanding and acceptance in the client of themselves, their lives & their relationships. This usually results in better ability to cope with difficult situations, an awareness of healthier choices and a better overall quality of life. Psychotherapy generally would be a more holistic approach using different methods to access and work with the deeper emotional and psychological issues. Most approaches would incorporate the mind, body and spirit into the work. People experiencing depression, low self-esteem, anger management, anxiety, despair, grief or sadess etc may choose to visit a psychotherapist to deal in a constructive way with these feelings.

What's the difference between Counselling & Psychotherapy?

Counselling is often useful for people who experience problems due to changes in their lives e.g. loss of a loved one, need support around overwhelming feelings or are unable to make necessary life decisions.

Psychotherapy addresses deeper layers of the personality like early childhood trauma and it's effect on a person's identity through exploration and analysis of a person's life patterns like self destructive behaviour, deeply felt unhappiness or persistent relationship problems and will be at the heart of a safe and trusting long term therapeutic alliance.

Crisis Intervention in contrast to counselling or psychotherapy is a short-term solution . It's only aim is to bring the crisis to an end and guide the client back to normal functioning. It also involves a review of the coping skills used to deal with the crisis in order to prevent a new crisis developing