Psychotherapy with Mindmatters
Difficult experiences throughout life, and especially
during childhood, can have on-going effects on:
- how we think,
- how we feel, and
- the way we relate to ourselves and other people.
Some of the impact of difficult past experiences
may be straightforward to understand. Sometimes there may be personal consequences of which we are
less aware. We can then find ourselves feeling and behaving in ways which we don’t like and don’t
understand, but which we seem unable to change.
How can psychotherapy help?
Psychotherapy aims to help us to understand ourselves:
- who we are as individuals,
- what our life experiences and our relationships mean to us, and
- the ways in which our particular experiences may be affecting our lives.
Many personal and relational problems originate through early experiences
of relationship with a primary care-giver and in the family, and then become established through
patterns of relating with others (e.g. at school). It is not surprising therefore that relating
regularly with a therapist can be an effective means of treating these difficulties.
Some people find
these booklets from the MIND online bookshop to be helpful
when considering psychotherapy.
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What is psychotherapy?
The psychotherapy provided by Mindmatters is a ‘talking treatment’. Psychotherapy involves an
on-going conversation with a trained practitioner. The psychotherapist aims to help you make sense of issues that are troubling you,
which can lead to significant personal change and development. Psychotherapy is something you take an active working part in, rather
than other kinds of help and support which are prescribed or given.
The type of psychotherapy offered by Mindmatters depends on your needs.
Consultation sessions with the psychotherapist provide an opportunity to assess together what type of therapy may be most suitable.
Mindmatters offers psychotherapy for adults over 18 years. We provide a number of types of therapy:
- Individual psychodynamic psychotherapy (once or twice weekly appointments)
- Individual Jungian analysis (three or four times weekly appointments)
- Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT, usually twice weekly appointments)
- Couple therapy and family therapy, based on either psychodynamic or MBT principles
- Parent-Infant psychotherapy, and
- Group-analytic psychotherapy.
Both brief and longer-term psychodynamic therapies are available.
What happens in psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy aims to provide a nurturing environment. Individual sessions last for 50 minutes and
are arranged according to your needs and circumstances. All therapy
sessions are held at regular intervals, at least once-weekly, and sometimes more often depending on your specific situation. You and the
therapist will agree an initial number of sessions, with a view to further on-going therapeutic work. This working alliance is reviewed
on an ongoing basis.
There is usually
no agenda or formal structure to the content of sessions. Important ways of accessing therapeutic
help come from:
- the ongoing regular commitment of the client and the therapist,
- talking with and listen to one another, to establish and maintain the therapeutic relationship,
- speaking about personal difficulties,
- allowing the current experience of the therapeutic relationship to become evident through honest,
spontaneous and direct communication about feelings, or
- exploring and coming to understand these personal experiences, with the help of the therapist.
Over time, clients begin to reflect on and gradually recover from
difficult life experiences. In this way, psychotherapy provides an opportunity to see ourselves
from other perspectives. Gradually, in day-to-day life and within therapy, old patterns of
relating can be given up and new ones can be developed.
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