What we offer – one-to-one therapy

Guided self-help is a type of one-to-one therapy. You work through self-help material matched to your difficulties. A psychological wellbeing practitioner (PWP) supports you.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, often called CBT, is a talking therapy. It takes place over a short time. It works by helping you to change unhelpful patterns of thinking and responding to these thoughts. It's our most accessible types of therapy, with a large evidence base, meaning it’s very likely to work in treating symptoms of anxiety and/or depression.

Find out more about CBT on the NHS website.

Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy developed specifically to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

In symptoms of PTSD, trauma memories can remain unprocessed in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. This can cause continued distress, anxiety and lifelong difficulties for the individual. 

EMDR is a phased treatment consisting of:

• Assessment and identification of the worst part of the trauma memory
• Processing of the trauma memory
• Body scan and closure by talking through the original memory, after processing. 

The treatment uses movements known as bilateral stimulation (BLS). These allow you to process the traumatic memories by following:

• The therapist’s fingers
• A specially designed machine
• Or by tapping on hands or lap.

All 3 methods have the same effect of mimicking what occurs in a part of our sleep called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. 

EMDR focuses on distress held within the body, which allows the brain to heal naturally and process the trauma on its own. 

As this occurs, the trauma memory begins to heal. It moves from being an unprocessed memory to a processed memory that travels along the brain’s neuropathways. This allows distress to be eliminated, thus creating new adaptive and positive memory networks.
 

This counselling approach targets the emotional problems underlying depression. At the same time, it works on intrapersonal processes, such as low self-esteem and excessive self-criticism, which often maintain a depressed mood. 

The therapy aims to help you contact underlying feelings, make sense of them and reflect on the new meanings which emerge. This, in turn, provides a basis for psychological and behavioural change. 

The aim is to develop different, more positive ways of thinking about yourself that will bring about change. 

This approach can also be called person centred experiential counselling for depression.
 

IPT is an interpersonal treatment for depression. Interpersonal means that it relates to relationships or communication between people. 

The reason or source of the depression could  be one or more of these issues, which are called focal areas:

• A role transition: for example, going from full time work to being retired, becoming a parent, becoming single, becoming a carer. These changes can make you become depressed. 
• Grief: you become depressed because of the loss you feel when someone dies. 
• A role dispute: you become depressed because you have a negative pattern of interaction with someone else. For example, this could be a persistent bad relationship with a colleague or employer at work, or with someone you’re caring for.
• Isolation/sensitivity: you might have always struggled with making relationships, and so isolate yourself. Feeling that you’ve never belonged or fitted in can be a reason for your depression.

If you’ve got more than one focal area, you and your therapist will decide which  is the most relevant for treatment.

Part of the treatment includes improving connections with your current social network of friends and family, or creating new, positive relationships. So, you need to be willing to engage your network in supporting your recovery.
 

DIT is a 16 session therapy that has been specifically developed for the treatment of depression. It is a psychodynamic therapy, and so it considers how your early life experiences affect you now.

DIT helps address the problems that cause and maintain depression by looking at what underlies interpersonal problems, which are about relationships or communication between people.

Therapy focuses on identifying a repetitive pattern – developed when you were a child –  that contributes to interpersonal difficulties you have now. The therapy develops a capacity to understand oneself better through looking at relationships.

Demanding but effective

DIT is most effective when clients are really open to exploring their difficulties and what may be causing them. They will be helped to be curious about their state of mind, rather than be given advice and techniques.

It’s important to develop the ability to think about and express difficult and often hidden emotions, and to understand how our underlying mental state affects our behaviour. 

So, though it is a demanding therapy, clients are very positive about the outcomes, which may go on working long after the treatment has finished. 

A wide range of clients may be helped by this approach; what they’ve got in common is a commitment to attend and a wish to explore and understand themselves better.
 

Behavioural couples therapy (BCT) is an approach that can help both members of a couple with the emotional problems that can arise between them, especially when one or both are depressed. 

BCT aims to directly tackle depressed feelings by working on: 

• Relieving stress
• Improving communication
• Managing feelings
• Changing behaviour
• Solving problems and promoting acceptance
• Revisiting perceptions.

This therapy treats the couple as one entity and so both of you need to be willing to attend appointments.