However, we know that we can be surrounded by people, yet still feel lonely. We may want to be in the company of others, yet struggle to be in our own company, or in our silence, not being in touch with our own worth, not really having a good relationship with ourselves. We may struggle with feelings of anxiety, meaninglessness and a sense of fulility. Counselling and psychotherapy can help with these issues.

Some people experience loneliness deeply, especially when they are grieving an aspect of their lives, feeling lonely in their inner pain, empty, alienated and isolated. Difficult and painful rejections from our past may compound our sense of alienation and isolation. This sense of being different can start in childhood and follow us around like a shadow. These painful and isolating experiences can be explored in the counselling and psychotherapy and it can be talked about what they mean to you. Counselling and psychotherapy can support you in overcoming your loneliness, alienation and isolation.

We also have a need to be deeply connected to ourselves, getting to know ourselves, learning to like ourselves and enjoying our own company or favourite activities. Some of es may well struggle with what to do with ourselves, feeling at a loss when alone, experiencing our loneliness as if we have a hole in our soul. It is valuable to reflect upon this in the counselling, helping to support you in staying in touch with who you are, living truthfully and being true to who you are at your core.

Feeling lonely, separate, alienated and isolated or disconnected from the world may point to existential anxiety and concerns. People sometimes experience deep loneliness or sadness relating to their very existence – that we are – we may have an existential need to belong or be part of something bigger than just our own selves. What this means for each person can be shared and explored in the counselling and psychotherapy.

We may explore your own needs, how to know and nurture yourself, care for yourself, so that you begin to belong more solidly to yourself, knowing who you are, where you come from and where you are going, in your own structure, anchored and grounded in who you are with your own reference points, alive in the world, your separateness and identity, taking ownership and responsibility for yourself, grounded in body and soul, in your inner being, living in ther moment and free to walk your own path in your own authority and agency.

You may be living in a country which is not your own and somehow missing your home although you left for good reasons. People sometimes have a sense of rootlessness; preserving your identity and where you are from may be important.

Some people may suffer from an identity crisis, feeling uneasy and awkward about who they are; we may have an outdated sense of how we are to be in the world; there may be a mismatch between what we present to thev wqorld and what is going on inside of us. Counselling and psychotherapy can help us explore the image or mask we present to the world as well as what is going on inside, how we feel and think deep inside ourselves.

We may struggle to be connected to our intrinsic worth, perhaps having forgotten who we are, that we matter and have a place in the world. For various reasons some of us may be confused about our own true identity, perhaps due to the roles we have taken on. We may believe we actually are this role. Life can be a bit like a drama or a play being acted out. Old roles may have become redundant. Yet living how we want to be, rather than how we should be may be challenging. The image we present to the world may be different from what is going on inside. Inside we may be feeling one thing, yet constantly show something else.

Psychotherapy and counselling may explore with you who you are at your core to gain a stronger sense of who you are, to start living more truthfully and being more real. Psychotherapy and counselling can help us explore questions we hold, facets of our personality which may need to be integrated and look at what makes up our personality, like our body, mind, feelings, sexuality, spirituality, creative or artistic imagination and curiosity as well as our unconscious motivations.

Some people may be tired of certain outdated roles in life, which may be draining their physical, emotional or psychological energies. They may long to be more real, genuine and comfortable in their own skin and authentic. This longing can be powerful, yet bring about fears of being too exposed. This may be linked to feelings of guilt or shame. People may feel that if they are just being themselves, people may not like them anymore, disapprove of us or get upset. They are then caught in a double bind of not wanting to upset people, yet longing to be themselves. Some of us have simply learnt to please others and continually seek approval. Psychotherapy and counselling can support you, at a deep level, at your own pace in being more real, if that is your desire.

Our personal identity can sometimes be constricted or restricted – be too small – and the bigger picture, all of who we are can be overlooked. We may have lost sight of or got disconnected with parts of ourselves, our inentity may be evolving, or needs to be explored further. We may be uncomfortable with our way of being in the world and long for a more authentic self to emerge, which might be more at ease with ourselves and others. Counselling and psychotherapy can help you struggle and find answers to these and other questions and help you develop a much stronger sense of yourself. It can help you with all the integration of all aspects of yourself and support you in exploring your own identity, your intrinstc worth and self-esteem, your own essence and presence. Deep change and transformation may occurr.

Sometimes people are fearful of anger, other people’s or their own; they may have suffered at the hands of an angry person and vowed never to become like that themselves. Other people only have the role-model of an angry person and only know how to express their anger destructively, sometimes causing relationship difficulties, because of a quick temper, getting angry for no apparent reason, ranting and then ending up feeling shocked, confused, guilty, ashamed or lonely. We may find it difficult to express our anger without anxiety. This can lead to low self-esteem.

However, learning how to express anger more usefully, can be a valid, challenging question. Psychotherapy and counselling will enable people to get in touch with their anger in a healthy way, to acknowledge it and to express it constructively, rather than destructively. Exploring feelings of anger in their multi-faceted way can help people not to experience their anger in a one-dimensional or damaging way, so that we can then express ourselves in more controlled and purposeful ways.

Some people internalise their anger, taking it inside themselves, ‘beating themselves up’, rather than expressing it, ending up feeling bad or guilty. We may turn our anger inwards onto ourselves or become bitter.

Some people use anger to hide behind, to dominate, rather than be strong, because it only feels safe to continue in the role of the dominant person, as anger may give them a false sense of superiority, keeping people at a distance. The therapy can help you to build real strength and self-esteem from the inside, so that you are not dependent on other people’s opinion of you for your own confidence any longer.

Some of us have got into the habit of using our anger passive-aggressively, i.e. sulking or being silent, being slow or ‘difficult’. We can explore in the therapy how and why we have built up this defensive behaviour.

In counselling and psychotherapy, we may look at your anger style and explore together what makes you angry in the first place, what pushes your buttons which invoke your anger or rage; we may consider whether it is anger you are experiencing, or irritation, agitation or frustration and how this may connect with your earlier experiences of unmet needs or unrealistic expectations. Some people feel that it is not safe to be vulnerable, so they have become used to expressing their anger to cover up other, more terrifying feelings of weakness or shame. The therapy may help to contain your anger, so we are developing a capacity to be with our anger in a calm way. We may need to learn how to express difficult feelings sensitively, so that we can be assertive without being angry.

Professionals in finance or banking, the building and other industries sensitive to the economic downturn, face an uncertain future regarding job security. People who have lost employment are joining cues of people competing for the same few jobs..

In times like this, it is almost inevitable that even the soundest or calmest mind may experience stress and could feel unsettled.. For some, the stress might become overwhelming.. This feeling can manifest in many ways including sleeplessness, constant worry, anger, resentment, tearfulness, agitation, and could lead to constant
anxiety, a feeling of powerlessness and depression..

If you are suffering from some of these symptoms and they are causing you distress,
or if they continue without improvement, professional help from a trained counsellor/psychotherapist will most likely be the wisest investment to restore your emotional and physical health..

Further Information

When speaking with people who present with symptoms of stress, anxiety or depression, psychotherapists may uncover financial issues as a concern.. People sometimes report feelings of high levels of stress and anxiety associated with their financial commitments and monetary pressures.. We bear the brunt of financial responsibility for our family, and we identify at least a part of our success and confidence with our ability to provide for ourselves and our loved ones..

In times where one’s financial situation changes, financial pressures can be acute.. High credit card debts, difficulty repaying your mortgage, job loss, loss of business income, a reduction in retirement funds and a decreased value of investments can all have a very real impact on your lifestyle and financial security.. Financial pressure can also be felt
when there is a fear or threat (real or imagined) of financial instability..

Common emotional responses to these types of financial pressures include:-

• stress
• anxiety
• muscular tension
• insomnia
• feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness, helplessness
• embarrassment
• anger and angry responses
• withdrawing from friends and partners
• distress
• grief over a sense of loss
• feelings of sadness or despair
• depression
• and in severe cases, suicidal thoughts or actions.

Support from a professional counsellor/psychotherapist can help to ease the stress, anxiety and other symptoms associated with financial pressure or financial crisis.. Counselling could help to lessen the emotional and psychological impact of financial crisis by discussing the underlying cause of your symptoms and by enabling you to find your own techniques that may help to reduce or minimize the impact of your stress and anxiety..

Paradoxically, psychotherapy can help you save money in the long term, by investing in yourself, gaining inner strength, developing your relationship with yourself and thereby exploring what is really important to you, rather than being driven by status or indulging in ‘retail therapy’ to help you feel better.

Counselling with a qualified counsellor/psychotherapist is particularly important if you have been experiencing any of the above symptoms for an extended period of time, or if you are finding that they are significantly impacting on your relationships or way of life..

To enquire about professional counselling by an experienced psychotherapist, please contact me on: 01462 682843. I will welcome your enquiry..

Please note that I am not a financial adviser and cannot offer financial counselling or credit counselling..

• Your patterns of behaviour in the dynamics of your relationship or relationships.
• Your role in making your relationship or relationships strong and successful.
• The nature of any difficulties in your relationship.
• How problems have arisen and what may prevent change.
• Your hopes, dreams, beliefs, attitudes and expectations of your relationship.
• Identifying and managing your personal problems in your relationship.
• Your disappointments in your relationship and moving on from them.
• Sabotage, control or blame issues in your relationship.
• How to be an individual as well as part of a couple.
• How to communicate in your relationship.
• Underlying problems and early experiences.
• How powerful feelings like hurt, anger and fear impact your relationship
• Making sense of change and loss.
• Caretaking, dependency and co-dependency.
• Fear of commitment, rejection or abandonment.
• Trust and intimacy issues.
• Criticism and conflict.
• Envy, jealousy.
• Pregnancy, children and patenting.

We all want good relationships, because they are rewarding when they are good. A close relationship is important for our sense of emotional wellbeing throughout our lifespan. Our sense of identity and self-worth often depend on the strength of our relationships, but we may despair when they become problematic or fail. They may cause us stress, anxiety and depression or lack of confidence and low self-esteem..

A relationship is a dynamic system which continuously evolves during its existence. Like a living organisms, a relationship has a beginning, a lifespan and an end. A relationship may grow and improve gradually, as people get to know each other and become closer emotionally, or they gradually deteriorate as people drift apart, move on with their lives and form a new relationship with someone else..

Our relationships in the present may be influenced by our relationships in the past, especially the relationships we had in our family of origin, like with our parents and siblings or lack of siblings. Relationships at work may be influenced by what we had as our peer relationships at school..

It is worth being aware that most important relationships may bring up strong emotions, positive and negative. Relationships are not always healthy, especially when there may be an imbalance of power, abuse or co-dependency (codependency). Signs of trouble may be boredom, resentment and dissatisfaction and individuals may begin to communicate less. Loss of trust and betrayals may take place as the downward spiral continues. The final stage marks the end of the relationship, either by death in the case of a healthy relationship, or by separation..

Difficult relationships cause stress, anxiety and depression, but these factors may also cause relationship problems. Under pressure we may revert to familiar patterns: the family scapegoat may be quick to accept blame, the bully may become overbearing. People may simply feel they are being held back, pressurised to limit their social life for fear of consequences, for example..

A good relationship involves interdependence, as we tend to influence each other, share thoughts and feelings and engage in activities together. Most things which impact one person in the relationship will have some impact on the other. Continued growth and development will occur and mutual trust is important to sustain the relationship. A good relationship is also characterised by emotional intimacy, growth and resilience. There is a balance between focus on the relationship and focus on other social relationships. Self-respect and liking oneself are other important ingredients for a good relationship..

Therapy can help improve the way we relate to others and help us break free of old patterns. It may help us to have a better relationship with ourselves, which in turn may mean our other relationships improve. Especially if we suffer from lack of confidence, insecurity and low self-esteem, exploring our relationship with ourselves and others can offer the chance to examine our patterns of interacting, to allow us to lead healthier and happier lives as we learn new skills..

Managing conflict is one of the cornerstones of improving relationships. It is not realistic to try and avoid conflict. Differences can be acknowledged with respect to allow people to co-exist in any environment. Individual counselling and psychotherapy can help to build confidence and self-esteem. The fear of saying ‘no’, of hurting or upsetting others can be overcome. Our own individuality, having our own needs can bring about conflict, disagreement and sometimes confrontation with others. We may have tried to avoid confrontations at all costs – even to ourselves, however sometimes disagreement and conflict are inevitable. How conflict is managed and our approach to others may need to be explored. Sometimes our fear of conflict or confrontation and what it may lead to can be out of proportion, as we imagine possible scenarios. We may fear disagreements, other peoples’ anger or indeed our own anger. We may not want to get upset or upset others. Being resiliant and assertive may be difficult for us and the therapy can offer support and possible ways forward.

During long-term counselling or psychotherapy, you will inevitably develop a better and stronger relationship with yourself, which makes for better relationships with other people. The relationship with the therapist can also become important and give you an opportunity to experiment with different emotions and patterns of behaviour, which might normally feel dangerous, but will in therapy, enable you to gain more confidence in your ability to handle relationships and their challenges.

We may believe that we should always be happy, rather than struggle to come to terms with accepting suffering as part of the human condition. We may put ourselves under pressure to always be happy, especially if we believe that we should be perfectly happy.

Some people continue to focus on the wrong things, which continue to make them unhappy. Learning to be more in touch with ourselves, getting to know ourselves better in the counselling and psychotherapy process can help us to find out what is important to us and beginning to do more of what feels natural and right can support our happiness or contentment. We may find that we tend to defer our happiness, waiting for the right moment, which never seems to arrive, so that we can never give ourselves permission to just be happy, moment by moment, thus being at ease with who we are, comfortable in our own skin. We may have restricting beliefs that happiness is about what we have, rather than what we are, that happiness is a destination, rather than a journey.

We may be experiencing sadness, which is not the same as depression; we may be sad when we are not feeling in charge of our own life; it can be a symptom that we need to complete processing painful events from our past, so that our vitality can be available in the present. That may have something to do with loss, grief and bereavement – unresolved grief.

The following is a list of some common symptoms of depression. It is unusual to have them all, but several usually may develop..

• Frequent or persistent low mood. Things often seem ‘black’..
• Apathy, loss of enjoyment and interest in life, even for things you used to enjoy..
• Deep sadness, sometimes with weepiness..
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, uselessness, hopelessness and helplessness..
• Poor motivation. Even simple tasks seem difficult..
• Poor concentration..
• Sleeping problems, insomnia or early waking..
• Lacking in energy, often tired..
• Difficulty with affection, including going off sex..
• Poor appetite and weight loss. Sometimes the reverse happens with ‘comfort eating’ and subsequent weight gain.
• Feelings of constant irritability, agitation, or restlessness..
• Symptoms sometimes seem worse in the. morning..
• Recurrent thoughts of death. This is not usually a fear of death, but a preoccupation with death and dying. Some people get suicidal ideas such as “life’s not worth living”..

Depression can be triggered by traumatic and stressful changes in your life. Examples include financial worries or the loss or break-up of a relationship, redundancy or starting a new job. Life changes and life transitions can all be followed by depression..

Depression is a complicated state of mind, with many different symptoms and causes which are unique to each individual. It can particularly affect people with low self-esteem, little confidence and negative thought patterns. They then quickly feel overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. Some people struggle with a negative self-concept and a perceived lack of self-efficacy. They may find it difficult to believe that they can influence events or achieve personal goals. During counseling and psychotherapy, it may be helpful to question and alter these negative thoughts, beliefs and behaviour patterns. This may perhaps begin to restore a healthier self-image and help to establish a new sense of potency and agency in life..

Sometimes depression can be due to unresolved grief over the loss of a loved one. Sometimes it can be due to the loss of another kind, like the loss of a previous way of life, status or health. Working through this kind of grief during counseling or psychotherapy can help a person to come to terms with a different life situation. This may lift the depression and enable the client to move on into the future..

In other cases, depression may be more deeply rooted in difficult and stressful childhood experiences like loss, neglect or abuse. Traumatic feelings may have been hidden and locked away. This can then leave a person with a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, futility or meaninglessness. In such cases the approach in counseling or psychotherapy is often in-depth, and needs to be gentle and slow and at a pace the client is comfortable with..

Paradoxically, if we try to avoid our anxiety by denying it, our feeling of panic can be compounded. When we struggle to respond appropriately and constructively to the inevitability of everyday events, our anxiety can become of a more neurotic nature.

Anxiety includes some the following conditions:

• panic attacks.
• nervousness.
• fear of
  • failure.
  • competition.
  • conflict.
  • rejection
  • decision-making.
  • social situations.
• Phobias like for example
  • social phobia.
  • claustrophobia.
  • agoraphobia.

These conditions can be extremely alienating. Fear of social interactions with others is often to do with feeling evaluated by others – social anxiety. This can become a difficult and painful problem which is sometimes chronic in nature and may cause people to withdraw or isolate themselves..

The counselling and psychotherapy can help deal with low self-esteem by building up a healthy self-confidence, a confidence which comes from the inside, so that your feelings of self-worth  are no logner dependent on how others view you, which feeds into insecurity.

Someone who suffers from excessive anxiety might also experience it as a sense of dread or panic. Although panic attacks are not experienced by every person who has anxiety, they are a common symptom. Panic attacks can come without warning, and although the fear is generally irrational, the perception of danger is very real. A person experiencing a panic attack will often feel as if they are about to die or pass out..

Anxiety is often a future-oriented mood state in which one is ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events. This may suggest that there is a distinction between future vs. present dangers that divides anxiety and fear. General existential anxiety is also common..

Physical symptoms can include palpitations, chest pains, faintness, sweating, shortness of breath, hyperventilation, choking and nausea.

Fear can keep us from taking risks, we can become immobilised, our curiosity becomes diluted, we don’t fully live, always choosing the predictable, ending up feeling isolated and lonely. Continuously fearing outcomes can be exhausting and draining. The fear can be a sign that something in us needs attention, which the counselling and psychotherapy can explore with you. We may find out what other feelings lay behind it. When fear begins to lose its grip on us, more psychological energy will be available to take risks and be more creative in our lives.

Existential anxiety – inevitable to all of us, this is about our daily existence – that we are alive, difficulties embracing suffering which is part of our human condition. Neurotic anxiety – persistently arousing our nervous system, resulting in ongoing, internal tension and relentless pressure.

Coping with stress, fear and anxiety can be a lonely and isolating experience. I have worked with many clients who have suffered from debilitating anxiety. With anxiety, counselling and psychotherapy needs to explore and address the underlying issues before coping strategies are put in place, otherwise improvement is only temporary or incomplete. This may include some of the following interventions:.

• Providing you with a secure attachment base and emotional support through the therapeutic relationship, which provides containment..
• Helping you explore and understand your condition based on your own unique situation and history.
• Helping you explore and understand your symptoms..
• Helping you explore and understand why your condition developed..
• Helping you to face and tolerate your fears..
• Helping you to manage and understand panic attacks..
• Helping you to develop assertiveness skills, to manage your life better..

Counselling and psychotherapy for Anxiety can then help you to develop your own coping mechanisms in order to deal with your anxiety and strategies to overcome negative thinking patterns.. The relationship between you and your counsellor or psychotherapist is important here in helping you to develope and strengthen a more containing part of yourself, which can hold, tolerate, nurture and be with your anxiety.

Losing a loved one is a devastating experience. It often means we are in a state of complete sorrow. Sometimes the pain can be worked through with the support of family and friends and at other times professional support is required..

Every individual’s bereavement journey is different. The goal of bereavement counselling is to get you to a place where you can remember the loss with less pain, while also feeling comfortable reinvesting in your future life..

Many people, who are in the throes of a deeply felt loss, feel that they are going crazy, but grief, which is very normal, brings with it a set of common symptoms..

Physical symptoms may include some of the following:

• Hollowness in the stomach.
• Tightness in the chest.
• Tightness in the throat.
• Oversensitivity to noise.
• Breathlessness.
• Weakness, lack of energy.

Some of the following emotions may be experienced:

• Shock.
• Numbness.
• Anger.
• Guilt.
• Sadness.
• Anxiety and Depression.
• Loneliness.
• Fatigue.
• Helplessness.
• Yearning.
• Relief.

You may have some of the following thoughts:

• Preoccupation with the loss.
• Hallucinations.
• Disbelief.
• Confusion.

You may experience some of the following symptoms:

• Insomnia.
• Loss of Appetite.
• Social Withdrawal.
• Dreams of the deceased.
• Avoiding reminders of the deceased.
• Searching and calling out.
• Sighing.
• Restless over-activity.
• Crying.
• Treasuring objects that belonged to the deceased.

I have had many years experience of helping people with their bereavement journey, coming to terms with losses of many kinds. Grief, although normal, can manifest itself differently in different people. Some people mourn and move on easily, while others can get stuck. This may mean that grief can turn inwards into depression and despair. This can be an extremely lonely and agonizing experience..

Counselling and psychotherapy can help with:

• considering whether mourning has turned inwards, to depression and anxiety.
• understanding the grieving/mourning process.
• exploring areas which might restrict letting go and moving on.
• helping resolve areas of conflict.
• helping to adjust to a new sense of self.

Healthy mourning may include the following stages:

• understanding and accepting the loss and what it means to you.
• working through the difficult pain of grief.
• adjusting to a different life.
• letting go.

Bereavement counseling helps you to cope with your loss, work through your grief and begin to heal. In my experience, grief is a very personal process, and just as each individual is unique, so too is their grieving process.

Talking about the loss can be healing and helpful and allows you to adjust to your new life with all its positive and negative changes. Any loss has to be acknowledged for us to move forward. Healing means coming to terms with the loss and bereavement, psychologically and emotionally. This means we can then allow life to continue with adaptation to change, not forgetting or wiping out the memory..

Our self-confidence and self-esteem are closely linked. If our self-esteem gets punctured, we then lack confidence. Healthy self-esteem is about how we value our-self and should not be affected by what we perceive others think or feel about us. As our self-esteem plummets, so does our confidence in social situations. We then may feel invisible, disconnected, lost and powerless. There appears to be an uncomfortable gap between how we are inside, how we would like to be and how we show ourselves to others. We may be preoccupied with worry about how to be with others as we are overtly concerned with how others see us – we care too much what others think of us. Therefore, we tend to prefer to show ourselves as we would like to be seen, rather than as who we really are.

We may have learnt to go along with things, comply with what others want, yet secretly resent it, because we are forsaking who we really are by not living truthfully. Fearing criticism or rejection, we opt compulsively to please others, needing to seek approval, often frustratingly at the cost of our own hopes, dreams or desires. In our relationships we may allow ourselves to be undermined, becoming compliant, apologising and going along with things.

Sometimes we can switch between these two extremes: compliant on the outside, flashes of anger on the inside, often misdirecting it against our partner; this is how low self-esteem can affect our relationships, if we behave in self-destructive ways. We may feel envious or rageful towards people who we believe are superior to us or jealous of the attention they are getting. We may feel frustrated because we are not living up to our full potential. We may allow previous experiences, wounds or failures to make us doubt our future abilities. When we are captured by doubt, we find it hard to believe in any solutions. Making the choice to trust ourselves may be a challenge. The therapy can support you in moving towards your own self-trust and encouragement, so that other possibilities can open up.

We all need recognition for our internal growth, yet when we become over-dependent and continuously seek approval from others by compromising our own way of being in the world, we are then loyal to others, but not ourselves; this feeds into our low self-esteem. Searching for direction, we may have become overly dependent on guidance from others, struggling to trust our own sense of agency. We may have difficulties being in touch with our own hopes, dreams and desires, prefering to follow external authorities, yet not feeling comfortable with that – helping to strengthen you in expolring and finding your own path in life may be part of the work in the counselling and psychotherapy.

Being shy and sensitive for some of us can be so painful and limiting in our relationships, work and social situations – the therapy can offer support for our vulnerabilities and help explore the root causes. Fear of failure, or overtly worrying about outcomes or what people think of us can inhibit our approach to life and its challenges. We may define who we are by our performance or the outcome, rather than our effort or ability to be in the moment, relaxing and quietly enjoying something without constantly believing we are missing out on something. Ppsychotherapy can be supportive and alongside you with these struggles.

We may be feeling emotionally insecure, nervous or uneasy, believing ourselves to be inadequate, especially when we compare ourselves with others. When we are feeling insecure, we may be shy, persecuted and become withdrawn and avoidant or controlling. This may lead to isolation and alienation.

More deeply rooted feelings of low self-esteem are present when we cannot recognise our own value as a person. The signs of low self esteem are different for everyone. They could include some of the following:

• not feeling good enough.
• not feeling likeable.
• not feeling successful.
• feelings of anxiety and depression.
• making self-disparaging remarks.
• unable to accept compliments.
• difficulty saying ‘no’ to others, need to be liked.
• comparing yourself negatively to others.
• feeling powerless and helpless.
• needing a lot of reassurance.
• being easily influenced by others.
• excessively seeking to please or receive praise or attention
• being withdrawn or uncommunicative.
• being over-sensitive, taking things to heart.
• blaming others for our own problems or failures.

Learning to develop trust, putting faith in who we are and in our own path in life may become important to us. Believing in and honouring who we are and our own strengths can be strengthening in itself, supporting us in difficult times. Self-respect, getting back to our core self, honouring our true identity, our honesty and integrity can reflect our values and beliefs without necessarily having to persuade others.

Empowering ourselves in the decisions we make can become important to us, feeling that we have our own agency over our life. The counselling and psychotherapy will help us to feel more comfortable in our own skin, so that we are satisfied with our personality, abilities and limitations; this may build up our confidence so that we are at ease with the relationship we have with ourselves and therefore with our relationship with others. We no longer have to fake a ‘false modesty’, pretending that we are easy-going, that nothing really matters, when in fact it does. The therapy can look at how we can build our confidence, become our own person, empower ourselves so we can be strong inside. Learning to appreciate our own abilities leads to being self-assured and confident through self-acceptance and self-reflection.

We may be seeking more inner freedom, to express ourselves, what we want, how we feel, rather than waiting for permission. Feeling secure enough to take charge of our anxiety to take risks, stepping outside our comfort zone can help us grow and achieve. We may want to change our attitudes, we may be willing to risk  learning new things, becoming open to new possibilities, trying them out, practice using them, until they become familiar and our own. Counselling and psychotherapy may help you explore your attitude to risk; you may want to be more in touch with your exploratory sense of curiosity. We may struggle to be assertive, being used to contol or manipulate situations, so that outcomes are predictable and safe.

Some people may be seeking courage to make decisions, act more assertively and be more visible in the world. In the counselling and psychotherapy we may explore how you may improve your confidence, build your self-esteem, develop and nurture a healthy inner life and develop a good relationship with yourself, being more in your own authority, which will help improve your other relationships.

The therapy may include exploring how you can access more of your own resources, creativity and ways you can appreciate, validate, support, assert and nurture yourself, so you don,t end up selling yourself short.

I have had many years experience of helping people improve their self-esteem. Psychotherapy and counselling can help those suffering from low self-esteem and help develop a sense of self to ensure a more fulfilling life. This could include identifying and re-evaluating your negative self-beliefs, reviewing your value system, helping you to develop your own coping strategies and enabling you develop and build relationships..

In some cases low self-esteem could be as a result of a difficult past. This may need to be talked about, negative and difficult feelings and experiences worked through, to encourage a stronger sense of self and develop a stronger identity..

Self-esteem is the extent to which we value ourselves. Good self-esteem is important for us to function in the world. Our self-esteem is made up of how we value ourselves physically, i.e. our image, how we rate our abilities and talents and how we evaluate our successes and failures. It is about valuing and loving ourselves despite our human flaws and imperfections. It is about accepting ourselves just as we are. How can this happen? By taking the opportunity through talking about ourselves to a psychotherapist who will help you to relate more deeply and more fully to yourself; by improving your relationship with yourself, your relationship with others can also improve..so that it will be true self-esteem, i.e. you are not dependent on what otherrs think of you to give yourself value as a person. The relationship with your therapist is also important here and can be explored.