Positive Psychology for the Mental Health & Wellbeing of Men and Dads.

Counselling and psychotherapy services for men’s mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety, depression and addictions. I also have a special interest in working with Dads helping them through and out of the grief and challenges of separation/divorce

What can I help with?

Stress Reduction

Stress is normal and expected in everyday life. It becomes a problem when it negatively affects your life in one or more areas. Psychology can help by helping you understand yourself better and why you’re feeling stress more than you think is normal. I will teach you how to identify good vs bad stress and how to manage your mind and body better, so stress is reduced, and life quality is improved. If left untreated stress disorders can lead to burnout, depression, physical health problems and often coincides with excessive substance use.

Depression

It’s true that 1 in 4 people will experience depression. I believe that statistic may be higher. Many people may not even know it. Depression is a dark and silent condition. It creeps up on people and affects the way they think and engage in the world. The awful irony is that it affects people’s minds and behaviour in ways that make it (feel almost) impossible at times to do the things that would actually help. E.g. socialise more, think positively, hopefully, set goals and just engage generally with the world. As such, this is what psychology, and in my role, focusses on. Addressing the underlying patterns of negative thoughts and behaviours and take a positive and goal-focussed approach to changing negative thought patterns and engage socially and positively in the world. It is hard, I know, but if you’re at least willing to try then I will do my utmost to help you out of the depression cycle. I provide interpersonal, mindfulness and CBT-based therapies depending the individual.

Addiction

It’s not uncommon to drink, eat, gamble or do drugs to excess. People often abuse substances and overdo substances and things like gambling and eating for a reason. Only you know if your behaviour/s are problematic and are a form of ‘self-medication’. But if you think they may be, I can help. Psychology is a lot about, motivation, conditioning and reinforcement. I’ll help you unpack the reasons and maintaining factors for your usage or abuse. We’ll talk motivation and goals and strategies for harm minimisation, controlled usage or paths to abstinence. I will help you with CBT, motivation counselling, mindfulness and I believe that having stress reduction skills and setting goals are really helpful tools to deal with addiction/s.

Anxiety

Anxiety or phobias are often quiet simply an overreaction or irrational fear response to a trigger. Triggers can vary but are often people, situations, places, events or things. Psychology is well suited to help you with your anxiety by using a combination of mindfulness, relaxation training, cognitive and behavioural models for treatment. In some ways anxiety is normal and everyone gets a little nervous sometimes. But if your anxiety is persistent and affects your quality of life because you worry a lot and avoid people, places and situations then psychology can help stop missing out on things you know you can do.