Counselling can provide information and new skills, support, insight and change. There may be experiences from your past that are causing you unhappiness. You may be concerned about your emotional wellbeing. You may be currently in a situation that is causing you to feel unhappy or anxious. You may be concerned about what the future holds. You may wish to develop your interpersonal skills or further enhance your personal, social and work relationships.

Counselling is about helping you find solutions for yourself. A counsellor listens, challenges and supports you. Family and friends can be a wonderful source of support and comfort, but may have their own agenda when listening to problems. A counselor can listen objectively and without prejudice and you know the information remains confidential.

Counselling - how can it help ?

The Counselling Network provides an opportunity for you to take time out to discuss your current concerns. You may be feeling unhappy or confused about a range of issues from the present, the past or you may be worried about your future. Feeling this way can make it hard to concentrate on other things or progress with your life in a satisfying way. Many individuals prefer not to discuss their personal issues with friends or family members or want a fresh perspective from someone who is not directly connected with the situation.

We provide a safe place to explore your concerns in a professional and confidential way. We also give you an opportunity to consider what changes you could make to improve your current situation and find the best way forward.

Relationships
Happy and successful relationships are based on understanding and negotiation. Understanding yourself, who you are and what you are looking for, is most important. Secondly, spending quality time with your partner, in order to appreciate who they are and what they want is essential too. Knowing what each of you bring to the relationship and expect from it is a good starting point for the process of negotiation.
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Grief
Grief is a natural reaction to a painful loss. It is a normal part of our emotions. Grief is most closely associated with the loss of someone through death - bereavement. Grief can also occur through major changes and losses in our live.
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Stress
Stress is the way we respond to change, real or imagined, in our lives. Stress is the way our bodies react to change and varies from individual to individual. If you think that you may not be able to adequately meet the demands of a task or a situation, you may begin to feel stress.

Unexpressed emotions, whether positive or negative, can frequently cause stress. Stress is not an intrinsically negative experience. The problem arises when our stress reactions impede our ability to make the most of our lives.

Anxiety
People's experiences of life's stresses are individual. They may vary in expression, scope and intensity. Your responses may range from mild worry to panic attacks, depending on many factors.
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Addiction
Addictions are always about pain and emptiness - trying to fill the void from the outside with substances and emotional highs that temporarily reduce the pain. Excessive - alcohol and other drugs, gambling, sex and food to name only a few are common ways of trying to avoid pain. Of course they ultimately increase the pain, not just for the person using - but for everyone associated with them.
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Trauma
Trauma is defined by both the event and the aftermath of the event. Characteristics of an event that make it traumatic include:

• outside own norm,
• outside individual control,
• unpredictable,
• potential of physical harm or even death.

Trauma can be experienced as a one-of event, such as an assault or an accident, or the trauma can be chronic, such as childhood abuse, war or domestic violence.
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Depression
It can happen to anyone at any time. It can be a problem at any stage in life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. There are many false and hurtful beliefs about depression, including,

• the person with depression can or should be able to just "pull themselves out of it"
• the person with depression is weak minded or mentally incompetent,
• the person with depression is being punished for some past transgression.

Depression is not a sign of weak will, mental incompetence, badness, divine retribution, or a character flaw.
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