BACP Registered Personal Therapy - Bromley
Welcome to Talkthinkact Counselling, Bromley
My name is Sally Spigner, I am a professionally qualified, BACP registered counsellor offering short and long term psychotherapeutic counselling from a relaxed and peaceful office within my home in Bromley. I work with adults of all ages and also teenage clients, both in person and online.
I work in a person-centred way, you are in charge of your own counselling - how long it lasts for and which way you want it to go, and I also incorporate Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), positive psychology and mindfulness holistic approaches.
Let me help you to put your mind at ease. I understand that it has likely taken you a considerable length of time to decide to seek help, please call for a chat first if you need to, it is always good to put a voice to a face and might help to reduce any anxiety which you feel.
Talk - discuss your concerns in complete confidentiality
Think - process events which have happened
Act - calmly, assertively and with direction
Who needs counselling?
1 in 4 of us in the UK will struggle with mental health challenges every year. Suicide is the greatest risk to men aged under 50, with more deaths than by accident, illness or knife-crime. Mistakenly believing that they should be able to handle their personal problems alone, many people do not reach out for assistance despite being under considerable stress.
If you are finding yourself tearful, anxious or overreacting to day to day stresses and don't know why, angry at the slightest thing, or perhaps unable to make what should be the simplest of decisions, counselling can help you to regain your balance.
Consider the sessions as mental fitness training, in the same way that you might enrol in a gym for your physical health. There is absolutely no need for you to face your problems alone. For so long in the UK seeking therapy was considered a weakness. Thankfully this attitude is now changing as people realise that the real bravery is not running away from problems or doing nothing and hoping that they will go away. but rather confronting these challenges head-on.
What might counselling do for me?
Personally
Are you indecisive, overly anxious or depressed? Do you procrastinate over tasks which you know you need to do and miss out on opportunities because of this? Therapy can help you to learn to harness your mental energy, think more positively, become more assertive and actually start to ask for what you want.
Perhaps you simply feel as if life is passing you by, and that you are a passenger rather than a driving force in your relationships. Counselling can be a place where you put down guilt and shame over past events which you may have been carrying needlessly for years, and really think about what experiences you will take forwards. It can be a first step in starting to change your life. Can you imagine what it would be like to truly flourish?
Professionally
Are you overlooked for promotion because you don't have enough presence in your organisation, or losing employees and don't know why? Together we can re-energise your feelings about your career, start to plan a complete change in direction, or see how you might achieve a better work/life balance. We can discuss the threat of redundancy, getting the best out of your team, role play interview skills, identify strengths and weaknesses, start to call out workplace bullying or consider how you start a tribunal for constructive dismissal.
Family
Gain perspective on your family situation by discussing them with a counsellor completely unattached to the outcome, perhaps learn to speak so that family members will listen. Discuss your feelings about challenges with starting a family, start to establish boundaries where before there were none. It is important to recognise the challenges you had when you were younger and how they might still be affecting how you think now, we often downplay our childhood losses in the belief that 'others have it far worse', but your experiences will have affected how you view your world. Talking therapy gets you used to being more open with others and gives you insight into the way in which you think.
Relationships
Sometimes the way we are thinking about our relationships can be part of the problem we experience within them. We can bring insecurities developed during previous relationships into a new one and cause it to sour as a result. Having a confidential place to examine this can encourage you to resolve issues rather than constantly argue, ignore or run from them. It is possible to fall in love with your partner again and you can come closer together, or conversely you might need to get your head around ending a relationship which you have been struggling for a long time to leave. Our roles in relationships change as we age, from child to teenager, young adult to parent, perhaps on to becoming a carer for your own partner or parents. You might be exploring your own sexual identity or even considering gender reassignment. All of these types of relationship change are likely to cause anxiety as you pass through them, but can also be seen as opportunities for growth rather than loss.
Loss
There are many sorts of loss in life; moving home, divorce, injury, losing jobs, bereavement or stillbirth, loss of innocence or trust, losing touch with friends, losing our physical or mental capabilities as we age, loss of sex drive or identity around the menopause, death of our beloved pets to name but a few. Often we can feel that we have to put on a brave face for those who are close to us, so we might never acknowledge our own feelings of grief and despondency, therapy can be a safe environment in which you can let those feelings out.
Think of your counsellor as being your own personal cheerleader, yet also somebody who will gently guide you if your feelings about a situation have become skewed.