Counselling and psychotherapy
What is the difference between counselling and psychotherapy?
Both are talking therapies that address personal issues but differ in their depth and focus. Counselling often addresses specific problems or life changes in the short term some people build these sessions in as part of their lives as a way of improving their mental health and well-being.
People seek counselling for many reasons including anxiety, depression, trauma, navigating relationship difficulties experience in life transitions grief/bereavement or addiction. Additionally, some seek counselling for personal growth, building life confidence or addressing specific behaviours they wish to change.
People seek psychotherapy for similar reasons but this might involve more in-depth work to raise awareness in understanding patterns of behaviour. It will usually take place over a longer period.
Psychotherapy can help people develop healthier coping strategies, delving deeper into unconscious patterns and past experiences, and will look at the impact on current thoughts and feelings. Psychotherapy explores unconscious drives, childhood experiences, and their influence on current life challenges.
Couples Counselling
Commitment:
Both partners must be willing to invest the time, effort, and commitment required for the therapy to be effective.
Early Intervention:
Addressing issues early can prevent them from escalating and becoming more difficult to resolve.
What it can do:
- Improve Communication: Teach new strategies for communicating effectively, helping partners to be heard and to truly understand each other's perspectives.
- Resolve Conflict: Provide tools and techniques for negotiating disagreements, finding compromises, and addressing issues like trust, jealousy, or differing goals.
- Increase Understanding: Help both partners understand each other's behaviour patterns and the underlying causes of conflict, fostering empathy.
- Heal Wounds: Offer a safe space to address past hurts, rebuild trust, and work through issues like infidelity.
- Facilitate Separation: If staying together isn't the healthiest option, counselling can help couples navigate the separation process in a more constructive and less painful way, especially when children are involved.
- Guide Towards Healthier Relationships: Help a couple build a happy, healthy, and secure relationship, provided both individuals want this and are willing to put in the effort.
What it cannot do:
- Be a Magic Cure: It is not a quick fix or a guarantee that the relationship will be saved or "fixed".
- Change a Partner: A counsellor cannot force or change a partner's personality or deeply ingrained behaviours.
- Provide Answers or Take Sides: Counsellors are independent and do not have personal answers or opinions about the relationship; they do not take sides but help the couple work things out.
- Fix the Relationship for You: The therapist guides the process, but the couple must do the hard work, make the commitment, and be honest and courageous.
- Solve External Problems: While it can help a couple navigate stress from jobs or other external issues, it doesn't solve those problems directly, but rather helps the couple manage their reactions to them.
Couples counselling £75 per session
Counselling
