We can all feel stressed from time to time. However, if left unchecked, stress can become chronic and lead to various mental and physical health problems.
These are some of the mental and emotional effects of stress you may notice: feeling overwhelmed and quick to snap or get angry, low self-esteem and low confidence, feeling more sensitive and crying at little things, finding it hard to concentrate, lacking appetite, mood swings, avoiding certain people or places.
We have many techniques that can help you with identifying and addressing your stress and work with you to enable you to cope better with any future stress.
Anxiety
Unlike medication for anxiety, therapy can address the root cause of your anxiety. We can help you understand your anxiety, suggest ways of dealing with it and help you learn new coping strategies.
Anxiety can present in a number of ways – you may have physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating, dry mouth, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, breathlessness or needing to go the toilet more than usual. Other cognitive symptoms may include feeling overwhelmed, fearful, racing thoughts or distressing intrusive thoughts.
We can help you make sense of what is going on, help slow down the physical responses to anxiety, and work with you to find ways to manage your anxiety.
Depression
Feeling low from time to time and feeling depressed are very different. Depression is when you feel low for weeks or months and it affects your ability to do things and enjoy life.
Depression can affect people in different ways and doesn't always present as feeling sad. You could be feeling irritable, tired a lot of the time, not wanting to see family or friends, not enjoying things you previously got pleasure from. You may also lose confidence, and not feel motivated. It can make you feel hopeless and a burden on others. There could also be a change in your eating habits.
You may be depressed in response to something such as a divorce, a relationship breakup, having a baby or being a people pleaser and putting everyone else’s needs above yours. Sometimes you might not be able to think of a cause.
Whatever the reason, therapy will provide you with a place to express yourself to someone who will listen without judgement, help you explore your emotions and acknowledge them. Your therapist will then help you find ways of coping with what you are going through and suggest techniques and strategies to help you move forward.
Relationship Difficulties and Family Problems
Relationships are tricky to navigate whether it is with a romantic partner, work colleagues, a friend or family members.
If you are experiencing difficulties in any of your relationships, we can work together to unpick what is going on by exploring the reason for these difficulties. This may include exploring communication between both parties, understanding differences in your values, and your own relationship habits.
We will look at your boundaries in relationships and how you manage conflict to enable you to move forward with a new understanding of these relationships as well as tools and techniques to help manage them.
Bereavement/Loss
Losing someone or something that matters to us whether a loved one, a job, our home or our health, can make us feel confused and disconnected from our sense of self and make us question our lives. We can experience feelings of anger, isolation, sadness, depression, anxiety and guilt.
At Wings To Fly, we have helped and supported many clients through a variety of losses and so we understand that there is no right or wrong way to feel. There is no one size fits all when it comes to loss and bereavement. We will help you process and navigate your feelings, while enabling you to adapt to your new life.
Chronic Illness and Life-Changing Injuries
The psychological impact of living with any illness or injury shouldn’t be underestimated. At the same time as grieving your old previously healthy self, there is the reality of having to adjust to a new way of life. This can cause some people to isolate themselves further from loved ones for fear of them not understanding their illness – especially in the case of hidden disabilities such as chronic fatigue. Others may also question their value, especially if they have had to give up their job or make other significant changes to their life.
Therapy can help you come to terms with this change. It can enable you to accommodate and adapt to a new way of being. At the same time, it will also offer you the support to navigate the practical aspects of living with illness or injury.
Low Self-Esteem/Low Confidence
Self-esteem is how we value ourselves. As an individual, we can feel positive and confident in our achievements or we can feel negative and critical of our abilities, perhaps tending towards perfectionist tendencies. This can have a knock-on effect on many aspects of our lives – relationships with family and friends as well as work.
Therapy can help us explore where these feelings of inadequacy may stem from. On gaining this understanding, we can work on addressing the issue and starting to change the way you think and see yourself.