Yue Wang
Counselling & Psychotherapy
Psychological Therapy in London: English and Mandarin Counselling/Psychotherapy for Mental Health and Emotional Well-being
Anxiety
If you’re struggling with anxiety, you’re not alone. Nearly half (49%) of the UK population have experienced anxiety in the past five years, according to our 2023 Public Perceptions Survey. It’s the UK’s most common mental health problem.
What is Anxiety? Anxiety is a feeling of worry or fear that is a normal response to a range of different situations, particularly about things that about to happen, or we think it could happen in future.
It can present in many different ways and experienced through our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. Thoughts: You may find same thoughts are coming back to the same worries frequently, or you stuck in a loop, problem even gets exaggerated without seeing any way out in sight. Feelings & Sensations: including an increased heart rate, dizziness, short of breath, muscle tension , hyperventilating and wanting to going toilet more.
It's common to feel anxious at times, particularly normal to experience it while coping stressful events or changes. However it can become a problem when it starts impact on your ability to live your life as fully as you wish, significantly interfering with your day to day life and relationships.
How counselling can help with anxiety? The counsellor can support you to explore what you're going through and why you feel as you do, to look at the causes of anxiety and fears, any underlying issues, anything triggers, unhelpful thinking patterns that you might be having? Then will focus on developing tools that enable you to break the worry cycle and to develop a different relationship with your anxious thoughts and feelings.
Depression
Depression is a mental health problem that involves having a low mood or losing interest and enjoyment in things. Most people go through periods of feeling down, often these feelings happen for a reason and pass on their own. However, when you feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days, and the intensity becomes very bad and starts interfere with your daily life, that might be depression.
Depression can present in a number of different ways. You may experience depression by having symptoms:
-
Psychological symptoms: eg feeling hopeless and helpless, having low self esteem, feeling sad all the time, not enjoying anything, difficult concentrating and remembering things
-
Physical symptoms: eg feeling tired, loss of appetite, moving more slowly, think slowly, talk more slowly, lower sex drive
-
Social symptoms: eg avoiding contact with others, getting into difficulties with your relationships, losing interest in doing things you usually like doing
The symptoms range from mild to severe. At its mildest, you may simply feel persistently low in spirit, while severe depression can make you self-harming or feel suicidal, that life is no longer worth living.
Depression is usually a symptom and not a cause. The reasons for feeling depressed are different from person to person and can be manifold. For some of us, a combination of different factors may cause our depression. Or we may find that we become depressed without an obvious cause or trigger. Reasons may include for example trouble in a relationship, isolation, lack of self esteem or assertiveness, family history, life events, traumatic experiences, neglect or abuse in childhood or excessive worries.
How counselling works for depression. In the counselling process we aim to understand the root causes of depression first and then consider what can be done to address the symptoms. You will learn to identify self-destructive traits of thoughts and patterns of behaviour which sustain depression.
Relationship
Relationships are at the heart of most counselling or psychotherapy sessions. Emotional difficulties are likely to impact your relationships, as well as relationships creating emotional difficulties. These may manifest in the form or anxiety, anger, frustration, sadness or a whole range of other emotions. In therapy you have opportunity to explore what you are experiencing in your relationships and how these feelings, thoughts and behaviours may be perceived differently and changed.
Your behaviour or thinking about current relationships usually has its roots in past relationships: with your parents, other family members, old friends, experiences at school or with former partners. You develop patterns of behaviour over time and base your thinking about other people on the earlier experiences you have had. Once you can understand these relationships better it will be easier to transform your current relationships. Therapy helps to look at these old patterns and to work out how these patterns may be changed in the present so that you feel better about yourself and can develop more satisfying relationships with people.
Are you experiencing?
-
Feel uncomfortable in social situations
-
Current relationship is troublesome
-
Would like to be in a relationship but struggle to find a partner
-
Past relationships were not what you hoped for
-
Often get into difficulty with others
-
Struggle with building friendships
