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First Avenue Counselling

COUNSELLING IN BILLERICAY, ESSEX

About Counselling

jigsaw puzzle of head with piece missing and key

Counselling , also referred to as psychotherapy, is a form of talking therapy. Unlike psychiatry, which involves trained doctors using medication management as a form of treatment, psychotherapy focuses extensively on treating emotional and mental suffering in patients with behavioural intervention.

For many, just having someone to listen to their problems can be enough. But imagine if that person listening had undergone years of training, enabling them to interpret your thoughts and feelings, helping you to re-arrange them into a more rational and cohesive pattern and actually assisting you in challenging your current behaviour patterns to make your issues much easier to deal with.

It's about being able to have a safe and trusted environment where you feel comfortable to share whatever is going on for you, problems, concerns, areas you’d like to personally develop. Essentially, it’s time for you to just be you, free from any form of judgement.

"Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength" - Sigmund Freud

What Conditions Can it Help?

Professional counselling can assist you in coping better with a diverse range of issues including (but not limited to):

counselling for depression, for anxiety, counselling for suicidal feelings, for bereavement and loss, loneliness, difficulty with relationships, self- esteem and confidence issues, anger management, stress, alcohol and substance abuse, eating disorders, O.C.D and many other issues. It also assists with general growth and personal development and life and career transitions.

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What Benefits can be Expected?

For many of us, we believe our life would be better if we could only change the people and situations that cause us so much upset and anxiety.

Of course, it would be both illogical and irrational to believe that this is possible. However, with the help of a trained counsellor, it is possible to challenge our way of thinking and develop the ability to view these people, situations and even the environment around us from a different perspective. Counselling can introduce you to a new set of values, help you assess your own self-defeating behaviour and negative thought patterns and actually give you the tools to successfully deals with all that life throws at you.

"Surrender to what is, let go of what was, have faith in what will be."

Why is your dog happier than you?

dog and person with boots

Now the lucky ones among you may say 'he isn't!' and others may not even have a dog........

But I think we can all agree that, generally speaking, dogs wag their tails a lot which means they are very happy creatures.

And they are happy because they live in the present moment. They are not depressed about what happened yesterday - or anxious about what may happen tomorrow - they are simply fixed in the hear and now.

Let me give you an example. Imagine it's pouring with rain and you have accidentally left the dog out in the garden for the past two hours.

He may be wet and miserable but, when you finally let him in, he won't grumble or whine - he will simply be very happy to see you and be back inside.

Now imagine if you did that to your partner or best friend. After two hours of standing out in the rain are they really going to be happy to see you? I doubt it. And there are very good reasons why that is and why we simply do not behave like our dogs (or any other species on the planet, for that matter). But I will happily discuss that with you during our sessions and explain why maybe we should all be a little bit more 'dog'!


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