It is recognised that there are many different types of abuse; physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, neglect, acts of omission, organisational and institutional. Any behaviour towards someone that causes deliberate harm or upset can be considered abuse. At‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’, abuse can be explored safely and empathetically.

Substance misuse, sex, gambling, criminality, shopping, food, alcohol, cleaning, internet addictions and others which are less common and not listed here, refer to difficulties in controlling certain repetitive behaviours to the extent that they have harmful consequences. At ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ all of these can be explored safely and confidentially with aim of introducing healthier, more effective ways of coping.

‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ acknowledges anxiety as being characterised by feelings of worry, fear and unease. Typically, it incorporates both the emotional and physical sensations; and is often associated with acute and chronic traumatic events (PTSD), all of which can be explored within a safe, therapeutic setting.

If you have experienced the death of someone who was important to you, you might be finding it difficult to adjust to the changes happening in your life.

Gas lighting, organisational, institutional and cyber bullying are all characterized by repeated and unwanted behaviours with the intent to hurt another person, physically or emotionally.At ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ feelings that bullying may provoke such as fear, guilt, shame, anger and low self esteem can be challenged and effectively dissipated.

Regardless of whether it’s yourself, a family member or a friend, a cancer diagnosis can bring difficult and painful feelings.

Discrimination is recognised as the act of making unjustified distinctions between human beings based on theirage, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual identity or other ‘categories’ to which they are perceived to belong. Individuals who have been discriminated against be that indirectly (prejudice) or directly (harassment) can address this at ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’.

When individuals dissociate, they become disconnected from themself and the world around them. ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ helps clients to recognises when they may feel detached from their body or feel as though the world around them is unreal. Everyone’s experience of dissociation is different. Dissociation is one of the many ways the mind copes with too much stress, such as during acute or chronic traumatic events.

Individuals who trust their own judgment and abilities, and value themselves regardless of imperfections or of what others may believe about them possess Self Confidence.‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’supports clients through an exploration of what may be impacting their ability to trust their own judgements; guiding them back to a place of self-integration and knowing.

Self-esteem is positive regard, which comes (in part) from other’s approval. Individuals may or may not be able to control this.If they experience a lot of criticism or rejection from other people, their self-esteem can suffer unless they support it in other ways. In such instance, clients of ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ can explore low self-efficacy, safely and confidentially, with the aim of healing the aspects of their self which have become fragmented, and are lacking in worth.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involves intrusive and obsessional thoughts, often followed by compulsive urges.

Stress is our body’s response to pressures from a situation or life event. What contributes to stress can vary from person to person and differs according to our social and economic circumstances, the environment we live in and our genetic makeup. Common stressors include change, experiencing something new or unexpected. ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ aims to assist clients in reasserting control over things that may be threatening their sense of self and triggering a fight, flight or freeze instinct.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that some people develop after being involved in (or witnessing) something traumatic.

A strong relationship requires constant care and communication.Certain traits have been shown to be especially important for fostering healthy relationships. Individuals needto feel confident that their partner is willing to devote time and attention to them. Both also need to be committed to accommodating their differences, even as those change over time. ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ can offer a space to explore any emotional break down of relational communication.

Self-Harm is any act of self-poisoning or self-injury carried out by an individual, irrespective of their motivation. Commonly this involvescutting, medication or purging. A wide range of mental health problems are associated with self-harm, including borderline personality disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and drug and alcohol-use disorders. Usually, these are triggered by stress, guilt, bullying, low self-efficacy and a loss of control. ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ provides clients with the safety and confidentiality to address such behaviours.

LGBTI individuals have been found to have an increased risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, homelessness, self-harming and suicidal thoughts, compared with the heterosexual population. This is particularly true of young LGBTI individuals,struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation and who may be experiencing victimisation, prejudice, discrimination or bullying. ‘People of Worth Psychotherapy’ supports clients at all stages of accepting and embracing their sexual identity, to explore their preferences and gender assignment in the safety of a confidential and non-judgmental setting.

Integrative Psychotherapy refers to the bringing together of the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person, with an awareness of the social and transpersonal aspects of the systems surrounding the person.

Also referred to as IPT therapy, interpersonal therapy is a structured, time-limited therapy that typically works intensely on established interpersonal issues. The underlying belief of interpersonal therapy is that psychological symptoms (such as depression) are often a response to difficulties we have interacting with others. The resulting symptoms can then also affect the quality of these interactions, causing a cycle. The thought process behind the therapy is that once a person is capable of interacting more effectively with those around them, the psychological symptoms can improve.

The time-limited or ‘brief’ aspect of IPT therapy means that this type of therapy will always have an end date (around 12-16 sessions is considered the norm) and will focus on just a couple of key issues. For this reason, this therapy is best suited to those with identifiable problems.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that uses cognitive behavioral therapy methods in collaboration with mindfulness meditative practices and similar psychological strategies. It was originally created to be a relapse-prevention treatment for individuals with major depressive disorder.

A person enters person centred therapy in a state of incongruence, not consciously aware of their blind spots.  It is the role of the therapists to reverse this situation supporting the client to become consciously of aware of that which is unknown to them.  The founder; Rogers (1959) called his therapeutic approach client-centred or person-centred therapy because of the focus on the person’s subjective view of the world.

Chair work is a psychotherapeutic technique that typically involves the use of two chairs that face one another. The client sits in one chair and has a dialogue with an imagined family member or other person sitting in the opposite chair; alternatively, the client moves back and forth between the two chairs and speaks from different aspects of him- or herself.

Life Story Work: Life story work is a social work intervention with children and adults designed to recognise their past, present, and future. It is an overview of the adult’s life that will enable them to recall memories and understand their past. An adult who does not fully understand their history is at risk of developing an imagined story of fictional life events leading to a misplaced sense of identity. Often, life story work is written from the perspective of the Past-Present; although it has been suggested that exploring it in this way causes the client anxiety, as past issues may be too painful to come to terms with.

Therefore, it has been suggested that a new approach: ‘Present, Past, Present and Future’ be used as this allows the client to feel that their current place in life is secure. This symbolically encourages the client to feel contained by their therapist and professionals surrounding them. Furthermore, Life story work sets the scene for the identification of the target memories (present concerns) and touch stone memories (past memories) that will need reprocessing within Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): is a psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories identified within Life Story Work.

The therapist, working in collaboration with the client, will identify the target memories to be worked with and in what order according to the client’s emotional threshold capability. At this stage in the process the therapist further supports the client with identifying how a particular memory has impacted them through exploring the client’s negative belief system.  An exploration then takes place of how that memory has impacted their self belief, what they would prefer to believe about themselves in that particular memory and how through future templates they’d like to behave differently.

Cognitive Interweaves or Inner Child reprocessing will often be used within a client’s reprocessing journey, where clients feel let down in their own experience of being parented. The most widely used technique is ‘Parks Inner Child Therapy’; where clients will be supported with parenting the ‘inner conflicted’ child ego state of their vulnerable self. Please see Info on Parks Inner Child Therapy description.

During EMDR therapy the therapist will support the client to explore emotionally disturbing material, as described above, while supporting the client to focus on an external stimulus. Stimuli include therapist directed lateral eye movement; following a light, pen or therapist finger, which are the most commonly used external stimulus, but a variety of other stimuli including hand-tapping and audio stimulation are often used.

Stabilization techniques are also used within EMDR therapy at the start of the therapeutic journey (visualization meditation), within the processing phase when clients become too overwhelmed (EMD/breathing techniques); and at the end of the session within body scans.

Parks Inner Child Therapy (PICT) is a powerful and versatile visualisation-based therapy model. It is an evolving, cognitive form of therapy, with a foundation in basic Transactional Analysis, that incorporates Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to aid rapid positive change. Although PICT was originally created to specifically help people recover from the trauma and damage of sexual, physical and emotional abuse during childhood (such harm may have been caused deliberately, caused by neglect, or by inadequate parenting which was not intentional), PICT is equally effective for a wide range of emotional problems.

PICT teaches that the core beliefs we have about ourselves (our identity), about others or about the world are learned during early childhood, before we are old enough to determine if the information is correct or not.

PICT works on the premise that the ‘inner child’ (that one part of our unconscious where the memories & beliefs of childhood reside) who holds the original beliefs, can be communicated with and the limiting beliefs can be changed.

The PICT model assists clients to access specific information, through the unconscious mind, to identify the root cause of ongoing problems and unwanted behaviours. Then, using specific PICT techniques, the client’s ‘adult part’ (with direction from the PICT therapist) gives the ‘child part’ appropriate information, love and support – which are the three basic ingredients needed to create belief change. Consequently, changing the perspective for the ‘child part’ and enabling the ‘child’ and ‘adult’ part of the client to both gain positive and matching beliefs about self. Essentially, the client is guided through the unwanted feelings or behaviours to the desired emotional freedom. Within this process the ‘parent’ part is automatically learning new attitudes and skills to alter negative and destructive self-talk.