Although I work with most mental health concerns, I specialise in trauma, dissociation, anxiety and self esteem.
Trauma
Trauma can happen to anyone at any age and cause lasting psychological, physical and emotional problems.
Sometimes it is hard to connect what you’ve been through with the trauma label. Trauma is an event which causes you to feel scared, unsafe, distressed, helpless, powerless, shame, rejection, numb or detached/disconnected.
Some examples of trauma include: a car accident, work accident, natural disaster, combat, life threatening or life altering illness, physical assault, sexual assault, emotional abuse, financial abuse, domestic violence, childhood neglect, childhood physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse and childhood emotional abuse.
It can be a single event (acute trauma), reoccurring event (chronic trauma) or a combination of many different traumatic events (complex trauma).
After a traumatic event you can experience a range of different emotions (anxious, overwhelmed, upset, angry, shame, guilt) and your body can have physical symptoms (racing heart rate, shaking, sweating, rapid breathing etc) in different situations. This can cause you to feel like you’re no longer you anymore. You can feel like you are no longer safe. You can no longer trust people. You can no longer trust yourself, your opinions or your judgements. The world is no longer a safe place to be. It’s unpredictable and you have no control over your life or yourself. This change in your perception can be very frightening.
Trauma is not a life sentence.
During the therapeutic process you will learn what is happening to you, why it is happening and how to recover and move on. The therapeutic relationship is your safety net and is non judgmental and compassionate at all times. For more information about trauma please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.
Dissociation
We’ve all experienced times when we are watching a good film or reading an engrossing book and we lose track of the here and now, of reality around us. That’s dissociation – it’s perfectly normal and healthy. However, there are different levels of dissociation.
There are many symptoms of dissociation which can feel alarming and very scary. These include: feeling like you are in a dream, feeling disconnected from your body or from the world around you, feeling numb, spacing out, not being able to remember chunks of time, becoming aware of yourself in a place but not knowing how you got there or finding items you bought with no memory of buying them.
When you experience these symptoms it can cause problems in your relationships, your work and other aspects of your life.
You are NOT going mad. As terrifying as it may feel, dissociating is the brain’s way of coping when it perceives there is a real or potential threat. Your brain is trying to protect you from danger. It thinks it is helping you.
During the therapeutic process you will learn how to recognise your triggers, how to cope in the moment, how to preempt when it may happen and what to do to minimise the impact. There are three dissociative disorders in the DSM 5 – dissociative amnesia, depersonalisation/derealisation and dissociative identity disorder. By learning why it happens, what happens and what you can do about it you feel more in control of your body and the experience becomes less threatening. As a result, the intensity of the symptoms decrease and they have less of an impact on your life.
To learn more please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.
Anxiety
Everyone feels anxious at different times. It is a healthy human response. Anxiety Disorder is different and there are different subsets.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder is when you feel anxious most days about a wide variety of different situations. You find it difficult to control the worrying and it is difficult to relax. To learn more please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.
Social Anxiety Disorder is when you are anxious in social situations. It isn’t the same as being shy. You are anxious talking to people or being in groups. You are anxious before and during the event and analyse your performance afterwards. To learn more please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.
Health Anxiety Disorder is when you are are anxious about getting ill or fear you are ill. You constantly need reassurance you are healthy but that doesn’t decrease the anxiety. To learn more please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.
Self Esteem
Self esteem describes your self worth and how much you value yourself. If you have low self esteem you may doubt the value of your opinion, feel like you’re not as good as other people by comparing yourself to others or be self critical about how you look or your character traits. For more information please click here. To contact me to discuss how I can help you please click here.