Mental Health Counselling with a Social Worker

Experiencing stress and overwhelm can become disabling, we can lose trust in our skills and ability to soldier on, problem solve and even cause a type of ‘analyses-paralyses’.

The CBT approach provides a step-by-step guide to help us disrupt the vicious cycle of negative thoughts and feelings that can make you feel trapped. It is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical experiences and actions are interconnected and helps you deal with the overwhelming problems in a more positive way by breaking them down into smaller parts.

CBT is a combination of psychotherapy and tangible tools and strategies to help you create a manageable way forward.

Pronounced “ACT”, rather than A-C-T, this type of psychotherapy emphasises acceptance as a way to manage negative thoughts, feelings, symptoms or circumstances through the concept of psychological flexibility. It also encourages increased willingness and commitment to aligning your actions and activities with your values and goals.

Without conscious awareness, we tend to react rather than respond and we are set up to become distracted by difficult thoughts and feelings about the past, present and future instead of being present and connected in the current moment. This can lead to low self-worth, low self-confidence and an experience of living on ‘auto-pilot’.

ACT helps guide you through the process of change by building self-compassion, trust in self and resilience.

This type of therapy is future-orientated by placing the importance on a person’s goals and strengthening their problem-solving skills. It is a highly collaborative approach between client and therapist with the purpose of solution-building around the clients goals or problems.

In a solution focused approach, the therapeutic process is focused on the inevitable and continuous process of change that occurs in a person’s life and aims to strategically and compassionately support positive direction.  

This form of therapy aims to separate the individual from the problem, providing space for reflection and externalisation of the issue to cultivate an individual’s own skills, values and problem-solving capacity to guide them through difficulties.

With this approach you are expert in your own life and together we will trace the history of the problem, understand how it is impacting you and discover outcomes unique to you, your values and goals.

This may include challenging old and unhealthy beliefs, rewriting unhelpful personal stories and deconstruction to help gain clarity and agency in your life.

Practicing mindfulness helps to build awareness and acknowledge your thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness is a practice that helps us cultivate greater and more objective awareness of how our emotional state is impacting our mental and physical health.

When we experience persistent stress and overwhelm our body and mind can experience flooding and go into automatic fight, flight and freeze reactions and mindfulness practice creates space for calmness and confidence so that we can steer ourselves back towards our thinking, feeling and behaviour in ways that honour our values, beliefs and goals.

This is a co-therapy approach which includes Labraspoodle, Groot and handler, Jade to promote engagement and motivation through inclusion of a trained dog in therapy sessions to support social, emotional and cognitive functioning.

The involvement of a trained dog in counselling sessions has been found to decrease physiological arousal and stress, reduce pain and anxiety in people with a range of health problems and provide motivation for change due to increased emotional wellbeing, among other amazing benefits.

Sometimes our therapy dog, Groot will play an active role in sessions and other times he may focus on being your support and comfort. He likes to play, have ear scratches and belly rubs and a cuddle on the couch – However you wish to connect with him is the right way to do so.

Please note, we don’t charge extra for AAT sessions however they need to be booked in advance so we can ensure that Groot is available. In the event that he is unwell, we will do our best to let you know in advance that Groot won’t attend the session, however the session can go ahead as scheduled without him.

Lastly, we prioritise the safety and wellbeing of both our clients and our furry companion so we ask that you follow any directions we provide to you, just as Groot has learnt to do.