Depression and low mood can make it difficult to function in your day to day life. Depression can be exacerbated by many factors including unhelpful thinking, difficulty managing emotions, unhealthy lifestyle choices, childhood patterns, and challenging relationships. Therapy may help to identify and address any contributing factors to your symptoms. If you want to find out more about some factors that contribute to depression, you can read the article here.

Anxiety can come in many different forms including social anxiety, specific phobias and fears, and excessive worry and rumination. For some, anxiety can be debilitating enough to stop you from living your life to the fullest. For others, anxiety has been a constant companion, so much so, that it seems a normal part of life. Whatever degree of anxiety you experience, therapy can help by equipping you with the tools to manage it and identify the factors which make your anxiety worse.

By nature, humans are social creatures, which means that relationships are an integral part of our lives. Having healthy relationships goes a long way to contributing to our wellbeing. However, many of us have not learned the skills necessary for having healthy relationships. As such, we may find ourselves experiencing difficulties in relating to other people, whether with partners, friends or work colleagues and this may increase our stress and discontentment. Therapy can help you to navigate through difficult relationship stages with more skill and confidence.

Many of us struggle with sexual and intimacy issues. We may feel shame or embarrassment admitting our struggles to ourselves and others. We often assume that everyone else has it all worked out when it comes to this arena. This can make us feel alone and we may start to wonder whether there is something wrong with us. Whether you feel anxious at the thought of intimacy with anyone else, your libido has hit rock bottom, you don’t enjoy sex and want to change that, or you and your partner shy away from talking about sex, therapy may help.

So many of us struggle, often silently, with low self-esteem and self-confidence. This affects how we think and feel about ourselves and can impact different areas of our life including our ability to succeed at work and in relationships. Therapy can help provide insights into the factors that lower your self-esteem and equip you with the tools to feel better about yourself.

Although grief and loss are natural aspects of life, as a society we often struggle with grief when we experience a loss of any kind. We feel grief in response to many experiences including the loss of a loved one or pet, the end of a relationship, the death of a long-held dream, and when we transition from one period of life to another. We often feel rushed in our grief process as those around us struggle to see us in pain and want us to be free of it before its natural progression. This can make us feel alone and that no-one understands us. For those that have experienced grief of some sort, therapy can help support you through the process.

Some of us may find ourselves frequently feeling irritated, frustrated or angry in our daily life. It can feel like our emotions are out of control and this may start to impact our relationships, particularly if we behave in an aggressive manner. Therapy can help you identify some of the sources of your anger which may include unhelpful thinking patterns, unexpressed needs and desires, difficulty with boundaries, or long-term and unhelpful patterns of coping.

Those of us who struggle with perfectionism usually place high standards on ourselves and then feel disappointed when those, usually impossible, standards are not met. This can lead to anxiety, depression, stress and burnout. If perfectionism is contributing to some of your symptoms, therapy can help you to identify and address this.

During particular periods in life we may find that our emotions have a strong hold over us. It can feel like riding a rollercoaster, one minute you feel alive and joyful, the next you feel depressed and despairing. This can be exhausting in the long term for you and those around you. Therapy may help to identify and address any factors that may be exacerbating your symptoms and equip you with tools to better manage your emotions.

Many of us transition through life in stages. We move from adolescence to adulthood. We are single one moment, and coupled up the next. We become parents overnight. We retire. Each stage can bring with it a sense of excitement but it can also bring increased anxiety or stress and sadness at what no longer is. Therapy may help you to navigate and integrate these stages as you journey forward.

Perhaps you’ve been in a career for many years and feel called to do something else but are unsure as to what that might be. Perhaps your job is no longer fulfilling and you want something that speaks more profoundly to your sense of purpose and is more closely aligned to your values. Whatever the reason for contemplating a career change, therapy can help you explore what has been and what might be.

Given that most of us spend a large portion of our energy and time at work, any discord within the workplace can lead to symptoms such as stress, anxiety, burnout and depression. Therapy may help equip you with the skills required to navigate any distress in the workplace and can support you through the process.