There are many reasons why people seek counselling. Talking therapies are proven to contribute to the recovery of thousands of people.

Everybody experiences low mood from time to time, but for some of us it becomes more persistent or troublesome, perhaps interfering with our everyday lives, and preventing us from achieving a sense of satisfaction and balance in our lives.

You may have already sought medical advice, or you may just want to start to talk through some of the issues that are beginning to interrupt the flow of your day.

There are some specific names for these; some are more serious illnesses than others. The key thing is that there is no sliding scale in terms of when it is the right time to seek counselling.

Looking for counselling from a professional qualified counsellor does not necessarily mean that you have no one else in your life to listen to you and provide you with love and support. However, talking this through with a qualified counsellor is an opportunity to talk to someone who will listen to you, won’t judge you and will help you to work things out for yourself.

Often, with our best interests at heart, our friends and loved ones naturally want to solve our problems for us. But to ensure a long term strategy, we need to identify these coping mechanisms for ourselves.

I have worked with people who have felt that counselling could help them overcome a number of challenges, whether that meant helping them cope to live with a medical condition or manage the stresses of caring for someone,  or that they may have had a highly stressful job or just felt overwhelmed by the pressures of living in a modern world and juggling many different roles and responsibilities in life.