Specialist Therapies

“Most people struggle with understanding how they REALLY feel in any given moment.  We must reconnect with our hearts to find true peace, love and happiness.” – Craig Ing

The hardest thing about addiction is that it usually starts as a reaction to something but over time, the original reason gets forgotten and lost.  The “something” could be anything ranging from just trying to fit in with the crowd/social patterns, dealing with stress and pressure, trying to self-manage trauma, because your parent(s)/guardian(s)/role model(s) did it or perhaps just simply trying to rebel/proving you can.

These reactions are all symptoms of an underlying issue though.  Sadly it takes significant retrospective analysis to understand what the original reason was. Through my work I have found people start to use substances like alcohol, drugs, or glue or methods such as self-harming, as coping mechanisms because of either :

  1. insecurity – a lack of confidence or feeling secure creates a need for us to do things to become accepted (by others or by our own selves).  This acceptance can be gained through diversion (substance/method abuse) to enable being someone we are not (avoiding the real you) or doing something we would not ordinarily do (to fit in or prove we can).
  2. sadness – possibly the easiest one for most people to understand.  The most common way to deal with sadness is to cover it up, deny it exists and hope it will go away.  This is all to often achieved with the use of a substance, commonly alcohol or drugs.
  3. anger – substance abuse is a common anger management technique.  The user will try to manage their anger by “escaping it”, or temporarily “reducing it”.

With most of my Specialist Areas, it is understanding of the self, a change of behaviour and mental shift that produces the results.  However with addicts, the single biggest challenge they have is not mental or behavioural.  It is physiological.  The continued use of substances actually changes the addicts body and creates a new homoeostasis that means the body becomes dependent upon the substance.  So not only do we need to deliver the retrospective understanding AND the mental shift AND the behavioural change but the addict must also under go retraining their body.  Something commonly known as “cold turkey”.

Over my time working with addicts my programme has delivered successful permanent results helping those people suffering with addiction, transition to become non-dependent on their chosen substance or any other.

Bereavement and how we each deal with it is something that cannot be predicted.  It can only be managed once it is in full swing.

Every single person, regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs, deals with death differently.  What is even more important to understand is that each one of us will deal with each and every death we experience, differently too.

Such is the unique nature of bereavement, you would be forgiven for thinking there is no set method to deal with it.  That is not strictly true.

The first thing to understand is we can separate our physical reaction to a death to our mental and emotional one.  The next thing we must understand is that death of a loved one or someone we care about physically and emotionally changes us.  This change is often as hard to cope with as the actual loss of the person in question.

By reconnecting with the new you, whilst working through the emotional trauma of loss, we create a new you, in your new reality.

Depression is usually brought on by an event that has occurred in our life.  This event may not necessarily have happened in the immediate past and where a lot of therapists provide adequate mechanisms to cope with the symptoms they do not necessarily unearth the root cause.

Depression usually starts by the person ignoring their own feelings and/or physical reactions to that life event.  More often than not, those feelings or reactions that are being ignored are new or as a minimum, foreign feelings.  Denial or ignoring them is a defence mechanism that Human Beings are very good at using.  The problem is, whilst that coping mechanism works in the short term, we actually start to embed them into our own self.  Herein starts the imbalance within our bodies and minds.  This “conflict” of ignoring what we feel starts to depress our energetic state and so the downward spiral starts.

The longer this embedding lasts (which means the longer you deny or ignore your own feelings) the more at risk you are of becoming detached from yourself.  This detachment is what leads to an even deeper depressive state.

There is a global problem at the moment which is the quick-to-prescribe anti-depressant “solution”.  Anti-depressants by their very nature only help manage the symptoms of depression and cannot rectify the root cause.  By taking anti-depressants you may actually prolong understanding your own self again.

Reconnecting with your self, your emotions, and your thoughts is the best, most permanent way of managing yourself out of a depressive state.  Whilst in parallel changing the conversation around the root cause.

Any relationship problem, let alone a divorce is incredibly unsettling and made exponentially harder and more sensitive when our children are affected.  We put so much value on our relationships that when they become threatened it creates huge amounts of stress and anxiety.  Even when separation seems the most logical and  compassionate thing to do, it is incredibly hard to navigate through the emotional and psychological battlefield.

It is commonly said that communication is the key to a healthy relationship.  However broken communication or a lack of communication is a symptom of an underlying issue.   The most common root cause is honesty.  Not just where someone needs to be honest with their partner (for example having an affair), but most importantly honest with themselves.  By not accepting your own feelings in a relationship is the first problem that embeds itself.

I have kept couples together by reconnecting them with their own and each others feelings whilst creating mechanisms to manage the symptoms of a relationship fracture.  I have also helped couples separate amicably, including the creation and establishment of child care patterns and financial agreements.

If you are having difficulties with a relationship, please get in touch and I guarantee we can manage you through to your desired conclusion.

Terminal illness is different to my other specialist areas.  In the other areas, I usually only work with those suffering (unless it is a divorce or relationship fracture and there is a family to work with).  With terminal illness, I always work with the one who has the illness AND their loved ones.  Each and every case of terminal illness is different.  This is caused not only by the illness itself and the prognosis that it defines but also the individual and their circumstances.

Terminal illness affects the physical, emotional and the spiritual.  Most of my work in the past has centred around the emotional as this seems to be what most clients seek.  The emotional journey is expedited whilst the physical and spiritual take much longer to be adopted.  This is also true for those supporting the person suffering with the illness although they have a more immediate physical strain due to caring for the person.

Each and every client is vastly different as to how they personally deal the news of contracting a terminal illness and so to is the therapy they require.

Just like the cars we drive or the tvs we watch, sometimes we need to make sure we are working at our optimum level.  An overhaul to make sure we are on the right path and maximising our potential.

My Wellbeing programme uses Ayurvedic foundations to establish the right components of a general life programme.  This includes combining my personal programme with the following  :

  1. Dietary – using the knowledge developed over the last 5000 years, Ayurveda prescribes what foods we should not eat, eat more of and eat in moderation.  Having established your Dosha, we will embed the right foods into your diet.
  2. Physical – beyond simply encouraging physical exercise, getting fresh air and reducing reliance on modern technology, the physical interventions that I embed include daily use of simple meditation and mindfulness techniques as well as cleansing the body.  Based on Buddhism and Ayurveda, the programme outlines daily uses of natural products rather than the expensive commercial equivalents, for example soaps and moisturisers.

My clients are provided with a complete programme documented with easy to navigate sections so that they can immediately affect positive change in their lives.