General benefits
You don’t need to wait for a personal crisis to seek help for life’s challenges and/or emotional difficulties. The process of healing the wounds of the past and creating a calmer, happier life with more energy and purpose can begin now. Progress can be made in situations of bullying, personality clashes, life transitions (including adolescence, aging, the end of a relationship or changing jobs), problems with communication and/or intimacy or the desire to find more meaning and purpose in your life.
Emotional freedom
“There are those who discover they can leave behind destructive reactions and become patient as the earth, unmoved by fires of anger or fear, unshaken as a pillar, unperturbed as a clear and quiet pool.” The Dhammapada
If there’s too much stress, anger, frustration, anxiety, fear or even sadness in your life, we are here to help you discover the calm and joyful place within you that is waiting to be accessed. Have you ever wondered why people react differently to the same situation or similar circumstances? We can help you understand why you feel the way you do and how to process painful life experiences so that they don’t continue to impact on your life. By teaching you mindfulness (conscious awareness and acceptance) and working with ego and what 1950’s psychoanalyst, Carl Jung termed “shadows”, we can help you to gradually reduce the intensity of negative emotional reactions and help you reconnect to your joy and serenity.
Relaxed Parents
Being a parent can sometimes be hard work and frustrating. Would you like to be able to let go of the stress so that you can focus on the joy but still be able to enforce boundaries and consequences for your children’s behaviour – without losing your temper? Do you feel the pain of your children when they are suffering and would you like to help empower them rather than have both of you remain a victim to life’s circumstances and the behaviour of others? We can help you to use the difficulties that you experience with your children as opportunities to find the spiritual lesson behind your reactions, for your own personal growth and empowerment. When you find your emotional balance, you are less likely to pass your unconscious issues onto your children and can guide them more effectively through the ups and downs of their childhood. The aim is to help you have a “happier parenthood” so that you can parent calmly to create a happier, more loving, nurturing, productive and cooperative household.
Calm school teachers
Teaching children in a classroom is a unique and often frustrating occupation with high expectations from parents and principals competing with recalcitrant or distracted students unwittingly bringing their issues from home into the classroom. Many long-term teachers also experience burn-out or a sense of being stuck, finding it difficult to change professions.
Holistic counselling can help you address the stress surrounding both of these issues. We will practise techniques in mindfulness (or conscious awareness) to help reduce emotional reactions and then start the process of seeking the spiritual lesson (or unconscious message) within your experiences. This will enable you to teach from a more balanced and conscious perspective, particularly when handling the challenging situations – in the classroom and the staffroom.
The benefits of this work tends to also overflow into your personal life as you become calmer and less reactive.
Couples
Ultimately, loving relationships are comprised of two individuals and in many cases one person is more invested in seeking assistance or looking for change than the other. When this is the case, it can still benefit the relationship if the person most invested in change takes a look at their unconscious issues and uses the difficulties they are experiencing in their relationship for clarity, guidance and spiritual growth. With our current focus on working with individuals in relationships, you can begin working on improving yours right now, without waiting for the agreement of your partner.
Divorce/Separation
The emotional pain that accompanies the end of a relationship can be an overwhelming and leave you feeling shell-shocked and confused. You are likely to be experiencing a combination of grief, hurt, anger, uncertainty and confusion while trying to continue to function in the world. As you begin this next chapter of your life, we can offer support in coping with these emotions and in helping you grasp the spiritual lesson that lies within your suffering. Holistic counselling can therefore help you not only move on from this experience but also learn from it by teaching you to how to connect with the guidance of your inner world. You will have the potential to experience even greater levels of peace and happiness than before your break-up, as you learn how to practise unconditional self-love and acceptance and create a more conscious life.
Productive workers
Your workday stress can begin with the morning rush and continue throughout the day and is often exacerbated by your commute to and from work. The intensity of your stress will depend on your experiences during the day (or night, if you are a shift-worker) but usually you will be bringing the stress home. If you find you are snapping at your partner or children or regularly feeling the need to self-medicate to calm your nerves, we can work with you to significantly reduce the impact of the stressors you are experiencing.
As your emotions are your unconscious mind speaking to you about something you need to pay attention to in your inner world, we will help you work with any anger or frustration (or other negative emotions) you experience to find the unconscious message. This message will be a reminder to you about an aspect of your life or Self that you need to challenge or look at from a different perspective. This can help change your reaction to the stressor, so that you remain calm and composed in situations that would previously fill you with anger and frustration.
Depression and Anxiety
Holistic counselling offers an alternative to cognitive behavioural therapy and the medical model in treating depression and/or anxiety and we can also work in partnership with your medical practitioner if you are already taking medication. In your sessions, we will be looking at thought processes but also focussing on the emotions you are experiencing and honouring them as carrying a spiritual message for you. We will also work with your dreams and “shadows” to determine why your “soul is sad” or why you experience panic attacks so that these issues can be addressed. Sometimes it will be helping you find a sense of meaning or purpose in your life but the ultimate aim is for you to experience unconditional self-love and acceptance to that you can free yourself from the burden of these painful and confusing emotions and take back control of your life.
Confidence and self-esteem
As you discover more about your inner world in the holistic counselling process, unconscious beliefs, tendencies, needs and fears will be uncovered and with this increased awareness, you will have the opportunity to practise greater self-love and acceptance. As you do so, you will become more comfortable with expressing yourself freely in an authentic way, dropping the need to live up to the expectations of others and less concerned about their judgewments.
PMT and Menopause
Our unconscious mind speaks to us through our emotions and so when your hormones are on high alert (very sensitive to specific triggers) it is the perfect opportunity to work with you to determine the unconscious or spiritual message your emotions are carrying. When you consciously address the issues involved, the intensity of your reactions should begin to reduce.
Mid-life crisis
Mid-life can often bring with it a sense of emptiness or something missing from your life, along with feelings of being trapped. This can manifest as depression and/or anxiety and as this is emotionally uncomfortable, if you don’t know what else to do, your only option may be to distract yourself from these feelings. This is usually done by returning to the methods you used in your youth such as acquiring more (or newer) things or by ending/starting a new relationship. Often, this is only a temporary solution, with the discomfort returning later, sometimes with greater intensity, when the initial high from the distraction has passed. This is because the emotions you are experiencing carry an unconscious or spiritual message and if this remains below your conscious awareness, your unconscious will continue to try to get your attention. These are often messages to help you find more meaning or purpose in your life or tap into potential that has not yet been utilised. We can help you discover the real meaning behind the feelings you are experiencing by working with these emotions and other techniques such as interpreting the symbolic images in your dreams.