Areas we work with

Abuse is any action that violates your human or civil rights. Abuse can take many forms and can take place in any situation. the abuser could be a stranger, a family member, a colleague or a person in a position of trust.

Abuse can take be any of the following:

Physical
Emotional and Psychological
Sexual
Financial
Verbal
Bullying
Neglect
Discrimination
Institutional or Organisational
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Therapy can help you heal by supporting you as you work through your feelings about recent or historical abuse. You can be supported in exploring how abuse has impacted on you and explore any related feelings such as anxiety or your self-esteem and trust of others.

“Addiction is manifested in any behaviour that a person craves, finds temporary relief or pleasure in but suffers negative consequences as a result of, and yet has difficulty giving up. In brief: craving, relief, pleasure, suffering, impaired control. Note that this definition is not restricted to drugs but could encompass almost any human behaviour, from sex to eating to shopping to gambling to extreme sports to TV to compulsive internet use: the list is endless.” Dr Gabor Mate

Addictions to alcohol, drugs (illegal or prescription), sex, pornography, gambling, eating or shopping, for example, usually start as coping strategies for escaping emotional pain. These strategies can develop into long-term habits which can get in the way of the lives of the addict and affect those around them.

At Oxford House Therapy we work with addiction with compassion and an understanding that this pattern of behaviour has developed in an attempt to cope with the complexities of life. Therapy alongside addiction programmes can help you explore your feelings around addiction and can help you to work through what may underlie your addictions and find ways to live without your addictions and regain your power.

Anger is most often thought of as an active explosive or dominating force but anger can also be exist in a quieter and more passive form. If not expressed anger can be turned in on ourselves or leak out in other areas of our lives and cause harm.

Anger often arises in response to experiences of loss, hurt, betrayal or injustice. Although it is often thought of negatively, it can be a helpful feeling, showing us the line between what we can and cannot accept. Some people act out their anger whilst others keep their anger inside and may not even be aware of it although it may show itself in other ways such as depression or low self-esteem.

Therapy can help you explore your relationship with anger and how you express it. It can help you become aware of what triggers your anger and help you find ways of expressing your anger in a way that is not harmful to yourself or others.

Experiencing anxiety from time to time is a normal part of life. However, sometimes worries and fears can be a constant part of your life, affecting what you do. Symptoms can include low mood, confidence and sociability or feeling frustrated and angry and can also be accompanied by physical symptoms such as palpitations, rapid breathing or sleeplessness. In a panic attack, these symptoms increase and you can feel very frightened and out of control.

Therapy can help you with anxiety and panic attacks by helping you to find strategies for managing these situations. You can also explore what is behind or triggering your anxious feelings and explore alternative responses.

The pain of grief and loss from a death or an ending or change in a relationship can be very difficult to bear and lasts for different lengths of time in different people. You may experience a range of feelings including numbness, denial, anger and sadness.

A therapist can help you navigate this difficult time of struggling with a bereavement or loss. Through a natural period of mourning and exploring your feelings of loss, it is possible to move through this experience and come to a place of acceptance.

A relationship is the coming together of two unique people with their different upbringings, life experiences and differences. This, together with the everyday pressures of life, make challenges in a relationship inevitable. Couples counselling and marriage guidance allow couples to work through these challenges.

Therapy can support both you and your partner to speak and be heard. It can also help you to see and respect each other’s differences, to communicate more effectively and to find ways of resolving conflict. Your relationship may change and deepen or you may decide it is time to end, in which case therapy can support you in ending positively.

It is natural to feel down from time to time. Depression, however, is when you feel down for a long period of time. You often feel helpless and feel that everything is bleak and too much effort.

Therapy can help you to find ways to manage your experience and to enhance your self-care and resilience. It can help you to explore the causes of your depression and your feelings around this and support you in finding alternative responses.

Families can throw up challenges whether in our family of origin, our current family, or our family-in-law. This can be due to the roles that we learn and play out which can get in the way of authentic and deep relationships.

Therapy can help you to become aware of these roles and patterns of behaviour and can help you practise communicating from an ‘adult’ position so that your relationships can develop and become more emotionally satisfying.

Our relationship with food is often deeply connected with our emotions and painful emotions can often be masked through comfort eating or depriving ourselves of food. If these ways of eating become habits, they can develop into eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia which can affect our lives in many ways. Body dysmorphia (having a distorted body image), which can develop from low self-esteem, can also have an impact on our relationship with food.

Therapy can help you to explore your thoughts and feelings around eating and the reasons for your difficult relationship with it. It can also help you to explore your relationship with yourself and to build your self-esteem, opening up the way to loving and accepting yourself and to developing a healthy relationship with food.

Identity is used to describe how we see ourselves as well as how others see us as some parts of our identity are visible and other parts are invisible. Different elements of our identity include our gender, race, sexuality, religion and nationality. Sometimes we can struggle with a part of our identity or with our identity as a whole and sometimes we can struggle with changes in our identity.

Therapy can help you to explore your feelings about identity and to work through its effects, such as the impact on you of discrimination or rejection related to your identity or the impact on you of identity change.

Parenting can be rewarding but it can also be fraught with challenges. The demands, responsibilities and expectations can sometimes feel overwhelming and painful memories from your own childhood may also be stirred up. Being ‘good’ parents often feels hard. Blended families can present particular challenges as the members adjust to their new family situation.

A therapist can support you during this time, giving you your own space in which to express your feelings and reflect on your situation and find ways to make the process more manageable. You may also want to explore how the way you were parented may be affecting the way you are parenting

Relationships with your partner, family, friends or in your job or elsewhere may not always be easy. Relationships are complex and dynamic and each one is unique.

Therapy can help you explore the reasons for difficulties in relationships, whether it be difficulties in communicating, with boundaries or with managing the differences between you. It can also help you to look at your relationship patterns, how these evolved and help you to find new patterns of relating to others.

Having low self-esteem is difficult for us as we can feel unloved, worthless, incompetent and can lack confidence and this can affect all areas of our lives. It can cause us to view ourselves and others unrealistically and can affect our relationships.

A therapist can help you explore your feelings about yourself and discover where these feelings come from. Therapy can support you in rebuilding your self-esteem by exploring other ways of seeing yourself and exploring how you talk to yourself and receive communications from others.

Stress can be healthy in small doses but sometimes we feel it is overwhelming us and this can cause anxiety and impact many areas of our life including our physical health.

Therapy can help you to explore the triggers and causes of your stress and help you to find ways of reducing your stress through finding new ways of managing and thinking about your life.

Suicidal thoughts and feelings can arise when you have the feeling that you are at a dead end and have no other options.

A therapist can help you if you have suicidal thoughts and feelings by supporting your immediate needs and listening to what is troubling you. Together you can find strategies to manage your feelings and determine what is causing them so that you can find alternative ways of overcoming your difficulties.

If you are in immediate crisis please contact

www.samaritans.org

www.befrienders.org

Change is a natural part of life and at times it can be exciting but it also involves loss and can be destabilising. Change means we have to leave our comfort zone and face new and often difficult challenges and this can leave us feeling vulnerable and alone.

Therapy can help you to explore your feelings around change, transition and loss in your life and can support you in your relationship with change and help you to strengthen your resilience. It can give you the space to work through changes that you are going through now.

Juggling life with work is not always easy and finding the time for everything we have to do and want to do can be a real challenge. Sometimes we can find that work takes over and this can affect our relationships with partners, family and friends and our time to relax and have fun.

Therapy can help you look at your work/life balance and explore what has created your particular balance. It gives you the chance to reflect on what matters to you and what your priorities are and supports you to in making changes where these may be helpful.