Counselling in its purest form helps individuals to identify and work on the areas of distress, confusion and complexity in order to improve their day-to-day functioning and overall quality of life.  It is seen in the most part as a move towards self-care and healing.  Further to this, with the right therapist, it can be nurturing, supportive and self-enlightening, culminating in greater clarity and understanding.  Counselling can, therefore, facilitate better decision making, improved self-confidence, beliefs and a more balanced approach to life.

The areas to which counselling can support are limitless.  Beneath is just an example of what Infinite Possibilities Counselling is trained to facilitate you to address:

Trauma  

Trauma is a term used to describe the challenging emotional consequences that living through a distressing event can have for an individual. Traumatic events can be difficult to define because the same event may be more traumatic for some people than for others.

It can include an emotional response to terrible events such as:

• An accident
• Crime
• Natural disaster
• Physical or emotional abuse
• Neglect
• Experiencing or witnessing violence
• Death of a loved one
• War, and more.

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Abuse  
Abuse is when someone causes us harm or distress. It can take many forms, ranging from disrespect to causing someone physical or mental pain. Abuse is always unacceptable. Everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. No-one has the right to abuse other people. Abuse can happen once or can be something that happens over weeks, months or years. It can be accidental or deliberate. Just because there is no injury that someone can see it does not mean there is no abuse.

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Personal Problem Solving

This is an important skill for your mental health and wellbeing. Whenever you have an issue, decision or disagreement playing on your mind, and you’re not sure how to approach it, you can feel stressed and your mood can be affected. Talking to someone here at Infinite Possibilities Counselling, can help to identify possible solutions and provide a safe space to work them through to implementation.

Bereavement

This refers to the experience of losing someone important to us. It’s characterised by grief, which is the process and the range of emotions we go through when we suffer a loss.  Emotionally we can be devastated by this and find ourselves experiencing many different and complicated emotions.  At times it may also affect our physical health too.

We all experience bereavement in different ways and there is no right or wrong way to feel.  The complexity and rapid change in these emotions can at times feel confusing and devastating all at the same time.  Grief does not always have to be associated with end of life.  It can also be attributed to situations such as:

• The end of a relationship
• World events
• Loss of a job
• Moving location/house
• Changes in physical and mental health

Phobias

A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal. Phobias are more pronounced than fears and can develop from having an amplified or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.  As well as limiting day to day functioning, persons living with phobia can find themselves experiencing high levels of distress and anxiety.  In order to try and minimise the impact of the phobia, the person may organise their lives around avoiding the thing that is causing them suffering.

Self-Harm

For many self-harm is a deliberate act that can incur injury, however it is not intended to cause serious or life-threatening harm.  This may be hard to fathom when a person has, for example, taken a razor blade to their arm or swallowed a poisonous toxin. (Please refer to https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/about-self-harm/ for a more comprehensive list of self-harming behaviours).  For the person concerned, it helps with the expression of something that is too hard to put into words.  It is the act of being able to turn invisible thoughts or feelings into something much more visible and tangible.  It enables complex emotional pain to be transformed into a physical pain therefore reducing the overwhelm of emotional thoughts and/or feelings being experienced in that moment.

At times, self-harm can foster a sense of being in control and reduce the feelings of numbness, disconnectedness or dissociation from particularly traumatic and distressing memories.  It has become their ‘dysfunctional friend’, something that is always at hand and can be relied on.  For others, it may act as a form of punishment, the feeling that in some way they deserve this self-inflicted pain or indeed it may just be a cry for help.

Either way, for those struggling with self-harming behaviours and for those closest to them, the dangers associated with this type of coping strategy, regardless of the underlying reasons behind it, are far reaching and could ultimately become unintentionally fatal.

Panic Attacks

These can be described as a brief yet intense period of anxiety which causes the physical feelings of fear, such as:

• Racing heart
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Trembling and muscle tension

Their frequency and unexpectedness send the person into immediate panic often with no external threat being present but nonetheless to the individual experiencing these symptoms, something has triggered within them causing these uncontrollable and often extremely uncomfortable reactions.

Anxiety

Anxiety touches all of us at some point in our lives.  A certain level of anxiety is to be expected given it is a natural human response that is experienced when we feel we are under threat or indeed worried, tense or afraid.  Generally, it is experienced via our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations and then subsequent actions, which can include things such as panic attacks.  It is when these feelings begin to overwhelm and cause us difficulties that it is perhaps time to seek help with it.

Through psychoeducation and the teaching of coping strategies and grounding techniques amongst other skills, your anxiety will feel much more manageable and less debilitating allowing you to look forward to the future without fear.

Generalised Anxiety and Depression(GAD)

According to the NHS, GAD is a long-term condition that causes you to feel anxious about a wide range of situations and issues, rather than one specific event.  People with GAD feel anxious most days and often struggle to remember the last time they felt relaxed.

As soon as one anxious thought is resolved, another may appear about a different issue.  Symptoms vary from person to person but can include overwhelming fears, worries or restlessness.  Concentration, focus and sleep can feel impossible at times as well as periods of dizziness and heart palpitations.

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders themselves are a type of mental health condition which is characterized by a severe disturbance in eating behaviours and subsequent thoughts and emotions. Click here for full Eating Disorders information

Depression 

At its most basic, depression is a mental health problem that involves having a low mood or losing interest and pleasure in things.  The day-to-day enjoyment that we once experienced has for whatever reason been replaced with a lack of motivation, energy and concentration, causing us difficulties to do even the simplest of tasks.

Suicidal Thoughts

Suicidal thoughts or ideation is the thought process of having ideas or ruminations about the possibility of completing suicide and ranges from the odd fleeting thought to actual detailed planning.  It is important to note that most people who find themselves having suicidal thoughts do not go onto make suicide attempts, however, it is considered a risk factor. Sadly, anyone can have them but that does not mean there is anything wrong with you.  We can experience suicidal thoughts for many reasons.  This can include loss, trauma, past life events, health or financial difficulties.  Excess alcohol or drug use, challenges around gender and sexual identity, being bullied, feelings of aloneness and low mood can also be contributing factors.

The key thing for someone experiencing these difficult thoughts is to recognise that there is help there and even just the ability to talk through what is going on in your head, without judgement or criticism, can alleviate these sometimes debilitating states.  Please contact us

Addiction

Materialising from when a person begins to have strong physical and/or psychological needs or urges to do or use something.  In other words, it is a dependence on a substance or activity/behaviour, even at the cost of causing you and/or those closest to you harm on a daily basis.

It’s possible to be addicted to anything.  Some common are addictions listed below:

• Alcohol
• Smoking
• Drugs (prescribed and non-prescribed)
• Gambling
• Social media
• Food – leading to disordered eating
• Work
• Shopping
• Computers and gaming

Whatever the addiction, eventually we lose control and find ourselves becoming dependant on it just to get through our daily lives.