Online
In the current sanitary crisis, I give all my sessions online. Continued therapy is a priority so that people can keep on receiving the care they need. People who suffer from stress are even more vulnerable in the time of a crisis, such as the COVID-19/Coronavirus crisis we are facing. Staying physically isolated can trigger feelings of loneliness, boredom, or stress. This is why it is a priority that therapists can keep on working online, to support and care for those who need it most.
For adults
In Belgium, over one million daily doses of antidepressants are used every day. In our small country, that means roughly one in ten takes antidepressants. Besides, in our country, the majority of the working population reports suffering from too much stress at work. As you can read, it is of utmost importance that we start taking care of our mental health. For adults, signs they may benefit from psychotherapy are:
- Ruminating – intrusive thoughts
- Low self-esteem and difficulty setting boundaries
- Having trouble recovering from a stressful event
- Panic attacks
- Social anxiety
- Problems falling or staying asleep
- Trouble focussing or procrastination
Even if you do not have severe symptoms, therapy can be a great tool to work on your overall well-being and personal growth. You can benefit from well-being counselling if you would like to get more insight about yourself, your goals in life, and ways to face potential challenges.
Children & youth
Most children do not know what therapy is. They also have more trouble expressing their needs than adults. Mostly, when they need emotional support, they will express themselves in an emotional way. Signs that your child may benefit from psychotherapy are:
- Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, nightmares
- Temper tantrums, moodiness
- Irrational fears, phobias, separation anxiety
- Difficulties making friends, no interest in play
- Unexplained aches, staying away from school
- Attention difficulties, low motivation
Besides these more severe symptoms, therapy can help children improve their social skills and emotional intelligence. Working with children will usually involve learning emotional vocabulary, reading emotions, roleplaying challenging situations, and projective techniques like play therapy.
Existential well-being
Existential well-being counselling is close to currents such as life coaching and positive psychology. It provides a listening ear from the smaller questions (“How do I keep myself motivated this school year”) to the biggest ones (“What makes my journey on earth meaningful”), with a positive outlook. Often, learning how to listen in can provide big keys to your personal growth. Together, we can look at your goals and find the steps that feel right to achieve them.
Emotional counselling
If you experience difficulty regulating, accepting, or controlling certain emotions, emotional counselling can help you. For example, emotion-focused therapy can be used. This type of therapy, as the name indicates, focuses on the emotion. It looks at emotions as valuable information, instead of as something you should eliminate, change, or ignore. We will not suppress them with behavioural techniques or analyse them with cognitive techniques. Instead, we will explore which emotion is here, why, what it has to say, and where it comes from. Emotion-focused therapy can help you understand, accept, and listen to your emotions. They can tell you what you need to become your best self.
Trauma therapy
Stress and trauma are a big part of my work, and something not many people know about. We usually think of traumatised people like people who have lived a huge, terrifying shock like war veterans or sexually abused children.
However, in practice, a traumatic event is defined much broader, as any event that overwhelms your capacity to cope with it. That definition also highlights that it is different for everyone. Trauma therapy is useful for people who feel like they have been stuck in past patterns or who have difficulty letting go of past hurts. Signs that someone may benefit from trauma therapy include the following:
- Emotional, visual flashbacks, intrusive thoughts about an event or period of one’s life
- Low self-esteem, shame, feeling “not good enough”
- Unexplained fears, anger, sadness
- Hypervigilance, a feeling that “something is wrong” or something bad will happen
- Feeling misunderstood, as if you do not belong
- A feeling that the world or self is unreal, detached
Trauma therapy cannot undo what happened, but it will give you tools to cope with unpleasant feelings, and help you process past emotions, so that they can stay in the past – where they belong.
