|
Are you looking for some help or a way out from your difficult feelings, or from upsetting thoughts that you cannot control?
With 10 years experience of working in mental health in the NHS, I currently work as a Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist in an NHS service in London as well as working privately. My NHS work entails working with adults with moderate to severe and often complex mental health problems.
Due to my NHS experience I am accustomed to working with people with different backgrounds and a variety of difficulties. My clinical psychology training means I am able to look at and understand people’s problems from different perspectives and tailor a treatment to suit their needs.
Clients often tell me that they find themselves feeling at ease and able to share difficult and sometimes embarrassing and intimate stories of their inner worlds, without fear of judgement or rejection.
Anxiety Related Problems
Anxiety is designed by nature to be unpleasant, it is responsible for having kept the human race alive. Unfortunately, whilst most of the time this is adaptive and serves to protect us, it can often also be what holds us back and causes distress.
Mood Related Problems
When we talk about mood, we usually refer to how we are feeling. Mood “disorders” are those that refer to how happy or sad we are. This can be depression, dysthymia, bi-polar affective mood disorder.
Other Problem Types
There are types of problems that people experience that do not always fit neatly into a box or under a label. Sometimes you are more aware of a problem due to not functioning as well as you hope in a certain area of your life.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
As is mentioned in the About Me section of this website, CBT is one of the therapies I provide. This is the main approach I take when treating people. I am currently the CBT specialist in the NHS service I work for. As well as using the approach with clients I supervise other psychologists in the delivery of CBT.
As well as gaining an understanding on how thoughts, feelings, behaviour (including urges) and physical boldly sensations all affect each other, CBT involves learning skills to manage some of these elements. The ultimate goal is to learn how to manage how you feel, by doing something to your thoughts, physical sensations or your behaviour. Sometimes people want to change their behaviour, but this is usually determined by a reaction to a feeling they have had.
Low Mood
Many of the people I see are experiencing low mood as either their primary or secondary problem. Together we could work out what to work on.
Low mood is something most people have experienced at some point in their lives. For some it is something they can shrug off and get “just on with things”. For many others, it lingers in the background but rears its head now and again. For more others still, its presence can be all encompassing and debilitating and can become part of that person’s identity. Low mood, often called depression, usually accompanies other mental health problems such as anxiety. Sometimes one becomes low due to anxiety preventing them from being able to do the things they want to do. Low self esteem is usually part of this package too. Sometimes it is not immediately clear if depression and low mood are the main problem or if they are secondary to other difficulties. If they are, then tackling these can often lead to a natural lift in mood anyway.
LGBT
I believe that my work and life experiences have put me in the privileged position of being able to work with and understand people’s problems within their individual context; be that their background, gender, sexuality or culture.
I am a gay man that was brought up in a straight culture with an Italian background. This has given me insight into what it is like to grow up with pressures on you that do not match who or what you are. Both culture and sexuality bring a certain set of expectations and stereotypes that influence ones view of themselves and others’ views of you.
Even if your problems are not directly linked to your sexuality, I find that many LGBT people prefer to see a professional who themselves is LGBT as they know that they can talk openly and without judgement.
Mindfulness
The About me section also mentions Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. This is a fast growing approach in the UK health sector and is used to help people with all sorts of difficulties. There are different variants of Mindfulness, including Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. It is becoming more common in the workplace and even in schools.
The main component of Mindfulness is meditation. The idea of this can often put people off until they find out a bit more about it. Most people have a preconceived idea of what meditation involves or represents. Mindfulness is about living in the moment and getting as much as possible from each moment. Many of people’s problems are fuelled by their minds being in the past or the future. Taking a moment by moment approach helps people appreciate things in their day to day that they usually miss. It also helps to relate to your thoughts and experiences in a different way.
OCD Type Problems
I often find that people turn to order and cleanliness as a way to manage how they feel. Sometimes this is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and other times, it just looks like OCD. With time and the right questions we can unpick and work out the function of this behaviour for you.
OCD has had quite a lot of media coverage with certain programmes on TV showing sometimes quite extreme cases. Most people have an idea of what they think OCD is. It is a term that is quickly used when someone likes things to be ordered and tidy. I tend to find that if the behaviour is there, but without there being worry thoughts about bad things happening, then the function of the cleanliness is something outside of OCD.
I am accustomed to working with people with different backgrounds and a variety of difficulties so contact me today!
Service Categories
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
|
|
 |
