BACP Reg. Personal Therapy in Bromley & Online
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 and I work from a relaxed office within my home in Bromley. I work hard to make this an approachable and confidential space for adults of all ages and also teenage clients, working both in person and online. You won't find judgment here and do not need to feel intimidated in any way.
My counselling is both person-centred, you are the person in charge of the pace at which we work, 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 can have taken you considerable time to decide to seek help, please call for a chat first if you need to (or ask me to call you if you have difficulty making calls!), 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. Believing that they should be able to handle their personal problems alone, many people do not reach out for assistance despite being under considerable levels of stress. We never make good decisions in those circumstances, if indeed we make decisions at all.
If you are finding yourself tearful, anxious or overreacting to day to day events 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 appointments as mental health training, in the same way that you might enrol in a gym for your physical health. 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. There is absolutely no need for you to face your problems alone.
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 even 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 you 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 why you think the way you do.
Relationships
Sometimes the way we think about our relationships can be part of the problem we experience within them. Have you brought insecurities developed during previous relationships into a new one and caused 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 fought too long to save. 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. As relationships change this can be an opportunity for growth rather than loss, you need to be giving yourself positive inner dialogue in order to surf these waves.
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.