What is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a process designed to help improve your health and wellbeing. In therapy, you will be encouraged to talk about your life and experiences with a view to helping you learn more about yourself and your underlying thoughts and behaviour. This in turn can allow you to have greater choice over the way you are living your life, and can help you feel more able to make positive changes.
Psychotherapy sessions usually take place once, twice or three times a week, at the same time each week. This allows a trusting therapeutic relationship to develop, where you can feel safe enough to talk about yourself and your life. You will not be judged in the sessions, instead you will be listened to with encouragement. This might also involve challenging you to look at yourself and your life in different ways which you may not have already thought about. Psychotherapy is different from talking through problems with friends, and it is not about giving advice. It can be challenging and thought provoking, but can help give people far greater freedom and fulfilment in their lives.
People bring many different areas of difficulty to psychotherapy. This might include specific problems related to stages of life – such as relationship difficulties, divorce, worries about work, bereavement, feelings of isolation or alienation. It may also involve longer term significant underlying difficulties, such as depression, anxiety, general unhappiness with life, or issues around self-harm and addiction.