Working with each client is always different but here is a tentative template for how our work would look like: 

1) The work starts with exploring your experience of anxiety and how it impacts your life.

2) We will then try to clarify if there is any particular life pattern or external event that causes the higher levels of anxiety.

3) From here we progress to understanding what is the emotional dynamic behind the anxiety. Remember, anxiety always has a reason but it’s fine if you don’t know what that could be when counselling starts.

4) Once you’ve gained this understanding of the internal processes that lead to anxiety, the last stage of your journey will be to decide what changes need to take place to improve your life moving forward. 

The overwhelm goes away

You will still feel anxiety – remember, is a human emotion – but it will be at manageable levels. You might still feel nervous about being in an open space or speaking in front of a room full of people, but that won’t stop you from doing it.

You will learn how to use anxiety in your favour, as an ally rather than an enemy.

Exploring the anxiety enables you to understand the internal struggle anxiety flags. Think about yourself like an ancient city that has soldiers up on its walls. They shout when the enemy is coming, which causes turmoil in the city. But wouldn’t you prefer to understand their shouts, so you can take shelter and protect yourself?

Your decision-making process will benefit from this awareness.

Rather than anxiety pushing you to choose one option, you will make decisions after a realistic assessment of the pros and cons. And you might decide not to change anything. But you’ll not stay in the same place just because you are anxious about changing.

Others have learned how to cope with anxiety. I believe it is possible for you too.

All it takes is a step and a helping hand.

No therapeutic journey is the same but the following process might help you get an idea of how we are going to work together. 

1) We will start with exploring the onset of your depression.

2) The following step would be to understand your experience of it, and how depression impacts your life.

3) Then, we shall progress into exploring the emotional dynamic underlying your depression. It is always helpful to check if there are potential patterns of intensity – i.e. it gets worse around holidays, a celebration, or winter months. You’ve now gained an understanding of the psychological processes that led you into depression in the first place and continue to fuel it today.

4) Gaining awareness of what was going on internally will lift the depression to a certain extent. In addition, you might need to set some things straight moving forward. And that is the last stage of your journey: we will define a vision of how you want your life to look without the depression and what actions are needed for that to become reality. 

You will regain the vitality you long for and deserve.

You’ll have ups and downs just like anyone else but you’ll have the energy required to take ownership and deal with the challenges rather than drift along.

You will see improvements in both your mental and physical health.

This will enable your growth across different areas of your life – from relationships to your career and your presence in the community.

You will gain a new strength – knowing yourself better.

Through the process of mapping out the depression’s emotional dynamics, you will gain a better self-understanding. This awareness is a strength you’ll take with you into the future.

The root cause of addiction is different from what you might think. When thinking about addictions, we often think about the object of the addiction – the drinking, the gambling, the pornography, the eating etc. But this is just the external manifestation, which has the purpose of pointing us to the existence of an underlying emotional issue. Addictive behaviours have the purpose of numbing away the feelings and anxiety underneath. Dealing with the behaviour without addressing the underlying issues increases the chances of relapse.

Addictions are irrational. Although in the beginning the addictive behaviour served the purpose of generating pleasure or easing pain, most clients struggling with addictions speak about enjoyment being long gone. Despite admitting that their addiction causes damage and pain in their life, they feel compelled to still engage in their addictions. The addicted client, as well as those around them, are left wondering about the reason for them continuing to engage in the harmful behaviour.

It is not easy to accept having an addiction issue. Probably the most challenging blocker in the process of healing is the denial of having an addiction issue. However, we cannot heal that whose existence we are not ready to admit. Accepting that we are dealing with an addiction – and not some “one too many” random mistake – is the only starting point for the client to achieve long-term healing.

Addictions have long-lasting effects. It is not clear whether addictions are caused by physiological aspects but it is clear that addictions cause physiological damage. It is scientifically proven that structures of the brain and the body suffer changes as a result of long-term exposure to substance addictions. Sexual dysfunctionalities are related to pornography addiction. These are just some examples of what is already known. Take action before it is too late!

Old Vs New Circumstances. Recently there has been an explosion of potential addiction objects –pornography, online gambling, and video games did not even exist 50 years ago. Drugs or sex existed but were far less accessible. Although these are just the external aspects of addictive behaviours – and not the underlying issue – an increase in potential outlets has not been particularly helpful.

Old Vs New Perceptions. Back 30-40 years ago we would think of someone addicted to a substance as someone whose life was a shipwreck. Nowadays we come across the term „functional alcoholic”. You can replace „alcoholic” with any other addiction object. It refers to someone who struggles with an addiction but manages to go on – at least for the time being. But their capacity to keep things “under control” enforces the denial. Since they compare themselves to that perception of the „shipwreck addict” they grew up with, they will tell others and themselves that they are nothing like that.

Each therapeutic journey is different but the steps I propose below might be useful for you to get an idea of how our work could look like:

1) We will start by exploring your addictive behaviours and how they affect your life. It is crucial to pinpoint how the addiction is impacting your life so you can understand why it needs to go. We all have addictions– coffee, sports, etc. – but we allow them in our lives until they start wreaking havoc. In this initial phase we will also work on the behavioural side: putting a stop to the addictive behaviour during the initial stage of counselling is a must and I will support you in finding the best way to do so.

2) Determining the underlying cause of your addiction is the major next step of the treatment. Addictions are ways of dealing with unexplored emotions. Trying to work only with the behavioural side – drinking, gambling, etc. – might help in the short term but won’t make a difference in the long run. Understanding the emotional landscape and the feelings fuelling the addiction will lead to a decrease in the urge to engage in addictive behaviour.

3) Defining new addiction-free ways to deal with emotional experiences and designing safeguards. You have gained awareness of yourself and you know what was underneath the compulsion. This will enable you to deal with emotional hardships in a more mature way moving forward. Designing safeguards is quintessential for fighting addictions. Avoiding circumstances that could lead to relapse is a very good example of that – i.e. people struggling with alcohol addiction might want to consider avoiding going places or in groups where alcohol is consumed.

Gaining back ownership over your life

One of the characteristics of addiction is that you feel compelled to engage in it. Even if in the beginning this behaviour brought pleasure, this was no longer the case after a while. But you kept on. Your life started to revolve around your addiction and it felt like you had lost the freedom and autonomy to decide. Understanding the emotional conflict underlying the addiction will help you stop engaging in addictive behaviour and get back ownership of your life.

Improved relationships & health

Addictions always impact your relationships and health. It might be a direct impact or a knock-on effect. Addictions will stop you from doing the things that you enjoy with loved ones. It might push you into doing things that you dislike and hurt loved ones. Time, energy and engagement are required for any relationship to exist. The same applies to taking care of your physical health. But little is left if most of it is eaten up by the addiction. The knock-on effect can also appear in your finances. Almost all forms of addictions have a financial cost associated with them. Financial struggles are one of the main reasons for couples breaking up and for stress-related health issues.

Eliminating the addiction will give you back the time and energy that should go into building long-lasting relationships, spending time with those you love, enjoying the things you like, spending your money as you wish and taking care of your body.

Self-awareness, less suffering, and less anxiety

There are a lot of „external” reasons why giving up addictions is desirable. But in the process of healing your addiction, you will gain something just as important – awareness of your emotional struggles and where these stem from. This will lead to deeper self-knowledge and acceptance of yourself rather than trying to avoid and run into the addiction. When you learn to identify your emotions and accept them rather than push them away, you will see the levels of anxiety dropping.  You will know what is happening and even if that is not always enough to completely avoid suffering, at least you will not be overwhelmed by it.