Why Consider Therapy?

Understanding Yourself: 

Therapy provides a safe space to explore your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. It helps you gain insights into the patterns of your unhelpful thinking or unhelpful behaviours. By understanding how and why you learned these thinking styles and unwanted behaviours, you can learn to forgive yourself. You might then discover healthier coping mechanisms that could lead to better outcomes and a happier life or stronger relationships.

Managing Stress: 

Life’s stressors can take a toll on mental health. Stressors include anything that you feel places pressure on you to do something, be somewhere, keep up, get things done, earn money, achieve more, provide for others, deal with feelings, interact with people, work in a team, be in charge, be responsible, work to a deadline, or take care of people.

Stressors can be motivating when we have the energy and capacity to face them and successfully manage them. However, sometimes stressors can feel too much, too many, all at once, and completely overwhelming especially if we compare ourselves to others or have unrealistic expectations. Therapy equips us with tools to manage stress, anxiety, and overwhelm and reset those expectations so that we can succeed.

Improving Relationships: 

As humans we innately need connection and belonging. We exist in relationships with others and while these can be very fulfilling and heartwarming, sometimes they can be tough going. Relationships include our family dynamics, our friendships, and our love relationships.

Family dynamics might include number of siblings, stepfamilies, blended families, co-parenting, generational patterns of behaviour, personality types, unresolved disputes, perceived wrong-doing, or communication breakdown.

Friendships can be lifelong and incredibly fun and enjoyable, but at times they can also be one-sided, taken for granted, over-stepping, or unavailable.

Love relationships go through many stages usually starting out very well and naturally changing as we get to know each other better. We may begin to take each other for granted, start to find those cute things annoying, disagree about how things should be done or what is more important, miscommunicate and argue, or stop communicating altogether.

Whether it’s family dynamics, friendships, or romantic relationships, therapy enhances communication skills and rebuilds our emotional intelligence to deal with challenges with how we interact in relationships.

Healing Trauma: 

Some of us get through life reasonably unscathed by traumatic events, however most of us will experience some kind of trauma in our lifetime. We refer to the bigger traumas as ‘big-T trauma’ (with a capital T). Big-T trauma can be catastrophic or harmful events such as abuse or violence, chronic illness or pain, divorce of parents or self, sexual abuse, major accident, disability, grief or loss.

We also refer to ‘little-t trauma’ (with a lower-case t) which are smaller events which may be ongoing for a long time, or over time still continue to impact our wellbeing in a negative way. Little t-trauma might include being excluded, not belonging, feeling invalidated, repeatedly put down, or incidents that were less catastrophic but still upsetting and continue to bother us for a long time.

Both big-T and little-t traumas can have a negative impact on our wellbeing when current events remind us, or trigger us to think of the trauma event from the past. This constant reminder can change the way we respond to the current event; we may over-react or be vigilantly watching for any danger of it happening again. We may not even realize why we overreact or get upset at seemingly small issues. Past trauma can make us behave differently or keep others at arm’s length. Addressing past traumas in a safe environment allows for healing and growth.

Self-Compassion: 

We all have strengths, and we all have weaknesses. We have parts of ourselves that we can feel good about, and we all have parts of ourselves that we would rather not let anyone see or know about. We may even feel guilt or shame for things we have said or done, or things that have been done to us that were outside our control.

It can be incredibly empowering to learn and focus on the best things about us as a person. It can build positivity, resilience, and scaffold us to try new things, and encourages us to become the best version of ourselves.

It can be incredibly calming and relieving to learn about our darker side; to understand it, accept it, heal from it, and let it go. No doubt our negative attributes are there for a reason, and we can choose which parts to keep and which parts are no longer serving us well.

Learning to be self-compassionate is learning to be kinder to yourself, which builds resilience, and fosters self-acceptance. This can improve how we love and forgive ourselves which has a wonderful ripple effect on the people around us.

Why Choose Mind and Matters Psychology? 

Located in Rockingham, Mind and Matters Psychology is a new private practice, currently with NO waitlist! We are dedicated to supporting you on your mental health journey. Whether you’re navigating depression, anxiety, grief, or seeking personal growth, Francine is here to guide you toward wellness.

Take the first step toward a healthier mind. Reach out to schedule a session and invest in your mental well-being. Remember, seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Call or text 0408156854 or enquire online on our contact-us page.