Choosing A UK Counselling Services

I am often asked, when clients attend for the first time, about the ways UK counselling and counsellors work.  They have seen depictions on tv, mainly of American counsellors and may think that we work like that, a variation on the psychiatric doctor-and-patient relationship. 

I am quick to reassure them that we don’t work like that at all, that the counsellor and client in the UK counselling relationship is one of two equal partners, striving to improve the wellbeing (or perhaps tackle a specific problem) brought by one of them.

Some clients are anxious lest there be long periods of silence in the session, maybe a previous counsellor has held the silence and not spoken.  But I reassure my clients, if they mention this concern about quiet moments, that I am considering one of two things at such a time.  Is the client looking at me and wanting me to say something (which, of course, I would) or is he or she deep in reflective thought, mulling things over, giving me little or no eye contact, in which case, I would be interrupting. 

The general tenor is conversational, it is a dialogue between the two people present, not some kind of tense stand-off.  My role is to help my client feel comfortable as soon as possible, relaxed enough to feel able to talk about the issue(s) that brought them along and, really important too, fully heard.

Once that early rapport is established, the real work begins.

Cognitive Analytic Therapy

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) was developed by an American psychiatrist, Aaron Beck, who noticed that many patients were stuck in negative beliefs.  This led to behaviours that reinforced the thought in a circular way.  An example of this could be, ‘I am a loser’, which belief discourages the person from applying for that better job or entering a competition.  So, the ‘loser’ self-tags remains in place.

What Beck did, was to identify for patients their circular thought behaviour patterns and discuss with them an alternative scenario, what if?  What if…you were a winner?  How would you behave today, tomorrow, next week, if you were a winner, instead?  Of course, the patient played along with Beck’s ‘game’ and found that, on a serious note, it really made a difference to how they perceived themselves.  That there were choices and they weren’t stuck.   With practice, these patients altered these negative core beliefs.

Terms used in Cognitive Analytic Therapy include Traps, Dilemmas and Snags. 

The therapist uses everyday language, to discuss the patient’s current beliefs, behaviours, choices and areas of ‘stuckness’ and in this way, can unlock the vicious circle.

Pam Gully offers CAT to any client who is really hard on themselves, who seems to embrace a really negative set of self-beliefs that make them unhappy and unfulfilled.  Often, by carefully uncovering the core belief and gently suggesting that they, together, turn the belief on its head, this makes a real difference, in just the way it did with Beck’s patients.

Help for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Gosport

Trauma is an over-used term.  Every week in the newspapers we can read about a celebrity being allegedly traumatised by poor film reviews or being snubbed by a leading director.  But trauma is so much more than an insult, a slight or being temporarily distressed.
Trauma, in psychological or in psychoanalytic therapy terms is a deep level of distress that originates in severe emotional harm.  For example, one person may be traumatised by childhood abuse that leaves an emotional legacy of mistrust and fear.  Another person may be traumatised by a serious vehicle collision, especially if trapped in the car in a dangerous position for an extended period.
Military people, although highly trained, maybe traumatised by repeated exposure to danger, day after day, without sufficient time to recover in between.
Trauma is, in a way, unfinished business.  The brain simply cannot process and put to memory an experience that is so frightening, so worrying and so overwhelming.  The feelings and fears become stuck as though in a saucepan, really to boil up again and demand to be attended to.
At some stage, usually when life is beginning to go well, the sufferer will feel upset and perhaps frustrated that s/he is suffering flashbacks to the frightening event, a replay in the mind, or other symptoms including nightmares, avoidance of certain reminders or of people.  In this instance, the person may be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.  This requires a period of counselling, together with CBT, to help the person to process the distressing memories in a supportive and clinically capable environment.