If you find yourself experiencing personal distress which is affecting your everyday life, counselling may be for you. Counselling can help you navigate through dark, uncertain times in your life. It can help improve your relationships with those closest to you as well.
Good self-care can provide relief from short term personal distress and minor issues, however longer lasting symptoms may benefit from professional help.
In today’s ever-busy society an ever-increasing number of adults (and children) are living with symptoms of psychological distress, unfortunately many are not receiving any treatment.
Thankfully today there is greater focus on and provision of counselling and mental health care. Counselling is becoming more accessible than ever before, you can find help in your workplace, your school or university, via the NHS and charitable organisations. There is also a growing network of private practice counsellors able to offer therapy sessions face-to-face, online and by telephone.
What Is Mental Health?
Mental health involves how we think, feel, act, and interact with others. It relates to our ability to make personal choices and face challenges. Being mentally healthy helps us to develop and sustain positive relationships with ourselves, work colleagues, friends and family.
Good mental health enables us to lead satisfying and productive lives, and help others to do the same.
Mental health has physical impacts on our well-being too, people with psychological distress having a greater risk of various diseases including heart disease and Type-2 diabetes, also with a higher probability of substance use disorders such as alcohol and drugs.
What is Counselling?
Counselling aims to address and help improve emotional and behavioural well-being. It can be provided as an alternative to medicine or be used alongside medications and other mental health treatments.
There are a wide variety of counselling modalities, some more suited to certain types of persons, psychological state or personal issues.
Counsellors use talking therapy with patients, offering sessions of counselling within which the counsellor and client work together to identify and address personal issues and troubles which the client wishes to understand and resolve. Counselling can also be offered to couples to try and address relationship problems.
Counselling aims to help a person understand and learn about their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours and how these factors influence their lives. It can help the client to reframe their thinking and responses to everyday life and relationships, through greater self-awareness and coping strategies.
Counselling can bring about relief and hope when it becomes difficult to maintain positive emotional well-being on your own.
Counselling Approaches.
- There are many different types or ‘approaches’ of counselling, each using differing concepts and techniques, but all talking therapies aiming to help the client towards improved self-awareness and emotional well-being.
- Gestalt therapy
- Person-centred therapy
- Humanistic practice
- CBT (Cognitive-behavioural Therapy)
- Dialectical therapy
- Interpersonal psychotherapy
- Psychodynamic therapy
- Integrative & Pluralistic practice
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing)
Counsellors and Psychotherapists in the UK are guided by several professional membership associations which aim to provide current and relevant information to the public, and to encourage quality and safety of counselling services provided by their members. These membership associations are fantastic resources for members of the public to learn more about counselling and to find counsellors local to them.
BACP (British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy) www.bacp.co.uk
NCPS (National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society) www.nationalcounsellingsociety.org
UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapy) www.psychotherapy.org.uk
HGI (Human Givens Institute) www.hgi.org.uk
BPC (British Psychoanalytic Council) www.bpc.org.uk
Conditions in counselling.
Every person (adult and child) seeking counselling comes with their own unique experiences and needs. Counselling can help you manage many conditions including:
-
- Anxiety
- Adjusting to major life changes such as divorce or relocation
- Addictions (alcohol, drug, gambling, sex)
- Bereavement
- Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
- Depression
- Dealing with or recovering from a major illness
- Eating disorders
- Grief
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Social anxiety disorder
- Stress
- Relationship problems
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Symptoms of psychological distress.
- Lingering and persistent symptoms can be an alert for seeking professional help, common symptoms to look out for include;
- Difficulties focusing & concentrating.
- Loss of interest in activities & hobbies.
- Trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep.
- Isolating yourself from friends & family.
- Sudden & extreme loss or gain of weight.
- Unexplained physical pains and discomfort.
- Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, or helplessness.
- Thoughts of hurting yourself or others.
Finding a Counsellor.
Finding help may seem daunting, but there are wide ranges of resources available. Work and education settings may offer mental-wellbeing provision for staff and students. GP’s are able to make referrals to both NHS services and third-party counselling agencies. Individuals can seek help directly with the NHS for emergency and non-emergency help and support NHS talking therapies – NHS (www.nhs.uk). Counselling directories of membership associations such as the BACP provide contact details of counsellors nationally and regionally (www.bacp.co.uk/about-therapy/using-our-therapist-directory/)
If you are in a crisis, you can phone the NHS on 111 for immediate support.
Adapted from ‘Counselling for Mental Health’ by Jeanna Smiley (2022), access from https://www.verywellhealth.com/counseling-for-mental-health-5220424
