What we can help with
Depression
Our mood is something that always fluctuates. It not only fluctuates on a daily basis but also across the week and month, depending on numerous factors. There are things that we can do to help us to have as good a mood as possible and we can look at your lifestyle and help you to increase or focus on elements that will improve your mood.
For example, a healthy nutritious diet, regular exercise, manageable stress levels, regular pleasurable activities and a good sleep will all help us to have as good mood as possible. However, there are times when low mood tips over into depression. Depression not only influences our mood but energy levels and our desire to do things such as hobbies or to socialise.
We can work with you to look at all of the different things that may be influencing your mood - either in the form of normal fluctuating mood depression and provide you will strategies help you back on to the path towards feeling happier.
Anxiety and Panic
Although it is normal to experience mild anxiety many individuals suffer from debilitating anxiety that impacts on all elements of their lives.
Anxiety comes in all kinds of guises - social anxiety is where we find social situations very difficult to be in; phobias involve a fear of a particular thing, such as spiders or flying; agoraphobia is where we find it difficult to leave our homes or be in open spaces; work related stress can impact on sleep and our private life; Performance anxiety is where we fear public speaking; Generalised anxiety is where we can not stop worrying about a number of different things; health anxiety is where we fear that we have got or will get an incurable health related illness; and panic is where we become so anxious we find it difficult to breathe and think we are going to die.
We can help you to understand your anxiety and what is driving it and provide you with strategies to improve your quality of life.
OCD and Related Issues
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is where an individual carries out particular behaviours because the believe the behaviours will help to stop something awful happening in the future.
There are different types of OCD. Checking involves the need to check something has or has not happened. For example, checking that I have turned off the gas or checking I have not run anyone over. If I fear contamination then I will need to clean until I feel better or I will need to avoid the possibility of being contaminated. sy metry and ordering is where place things in order until they feel better. Ruminatiions or intrusive thoughts might involve believing that one is bad in some way. Hoarding is where people are unable to throw things away to the point that it impacts negatively on their lives.
We are able to work with all of the different types of OCD and help you to understand how to overcome your symptoms.
Trauma and Stress
Have you experienced childhood abuse or long-term abuse from a partner or boss? Or it may be that you were involved in an accident or saw something traumatic that you can not get out of your mind. You may have experienced trauma inflicted by someone, such as rape or torture.
As there are so many different types of trauma, treatment will always begin with a thorough assessment to understand how the trauma is impacting on your current life. It may be that you have nightmares or intrusive memories that you would like to reduce. Or it may be that you have lost faith in others due to the way you have been treated.
What ever the trauma and how ever it is impacting on your life, we can help you to reduce the intrusive symptoms, provide ways of reducing anxiety and help you to understand some of the beliefs you may have developed due to your difficult experience and help you to lead a better life..
Sleep Problems
Sleep issues impact on everyones life at some point and can be extremely debilitating. Either you have developed a sleep problem recently that you would like to nip in the bud before it becomes more of a vicious cycle or you have more long-standing sleep issues.
If we suffer from a lack of sleep over a prolonged period of time it can begin to impact on our mental health in terms of increased anxiety and lower mood. An assessment of what may be impacting on sleep issues is important because it may be something that you do not realise influences sleep that is the problem. We will look at day time influences, evening influences as well as actually what happens when you are in bed. We all need a good night's sleep and we can certainly teach you all of the latest research to get one again.
Health Psychology
Health Psychology encompasses a wide variety of health issues that impact on our psychological health. Examples of health , issues are, chronic pain, tinitus, dizziness, autoimmune issues or any health condition that leaves individuals feeling overwhelmed with trying to find a cure and depressed with how their lives have turned out.
Often people with chronic debilitating health conditions will carry out behaviours that actually make the situation worse. Some examples of this is where we avoid exercise because we feel exhausted; we may stop living because we become so focused on finding a cure; we may over work on days that we feel good and avoid activities on days we feel bad. We may begin to avoid pleasurable activities because we fear they will make the situation worse. As psychologists with can not cure the health issue but we can work with clients to help them to lead a more fulfilled life.
Contact
Get in touch to book a consultation
Office hours are 09:00 - 17:00 Monday to Friday.
​
We have some evening and weekend appointments.
​
Call 020 3488 2438 for an appointment or use the form below.