Hi and welcome.
Thanks for listening and for coming back to
our first ever episode of The Therapy Guy.
For those of you who listen to my
introduction, thank you for coming and tuning in.
For those of you who didn't, I'll introduce myself.
My name is Alan.
I'm the director of two mental health
companies based in Plymouth in the UK.
And these podcasts are based around your mental health,
what We Do as a service, how mental health
services can help you and obviously answer any questions
you may have or tell you about specific subjects
and interests and certain therapies.
So thanks for today. Here we go.
We're going to be sort of talking about why you
would consider going into therapy in the first place.
Now, there's lots of different reasons that people come
and visit and use a service like ours and
they range from the classic anxiety, depression, low mood,
those sorts of things, to things like addictions, OCD,
everything to do with relationships and all that. Sort.
The issue comes really is for a lot of
people, is they may be nervous or a little
bit concerned because they don't know what to expect
from a therapist and their therapy session.
Well, what I like to do today really is explain
the sort of benefits and maybe what you'd experience if
you actually attended a therapy session with a therapist, with
the aim of being able to support you, moving on.
So firstly, what you expect is some sort
of confidentiality agreement you're going to be talking
about in a relationship that you and the
therapist would have the clauses of the confidentiality.
There's certain types of clauses that can mean
the therapist can break your confidentiality at certain
times, but these tend to be in extreme
circumstances and the therapist should talk about this
and clarify everything that you need to know.
This isn't something that you
should generally worry about.
Most times, everything that you say
in a counselling session will be
completely confidential within that particular service.
It's an impartial.
So an impartiality to those sessions.
So rather than trying to talk to our friends and
our family, where we might philtre things, or where we
might feel under pressure because the friends and family might
try to make us feel better and at that time
we're struggling, a therapist is very impartial.
So what they're doing is they're listening to you,
they're hearing what you're saying and they're feeding back
different things that you can do, helping the ways
you could change your thinking and what we can
do together, working together around, enabling you to move
on in the right way.
This might include communicating with people around you in
a different way, but also it's all about yourself,
raising your self esteem, raising your awareness and understanding
of what is going on and why you're thinking
in the way that you can do.
What we tend to do with lots of people, we
tend to filter what we say so we'll tell them
we're feeling a bit down or a bit anxious, but
we struggle to actually explain the reasons as to why.
And we also don't really want to sometimes
explain the depth of those feelings to the
people who love and care for us.
A therapist will help you discuss all that.
Be open and honest and maybe for the first time
you actually get to talk to somebody who listens completely
to yourself and is not shocked or doesn't feel the
need to rush in to rescue you and fix everything.
So it really does encourage you to feel good, free to
say whatever is that is on your mind at that time,
and to discuss it in a private and secure way.
Lots of us obviously enter into therapy.
It's more and more common,
it's more and more acceptable.
Now, people have this perception sometimes
of who enters into therapy.
They have this classy or classic view of the
sort of people and I can tell you straight
away from my experience, whatever you're thinking, it's more
likely a far distance from the truth.
The people that I see are everyday
people just like you and me.
They range completely from people who may be from a
lower class or a bracket, on a wage bracket, so
they might be on benefits of some court, right up
to people with extreme amounts of wealth.
There'll be jobs, different areas in jobs, people who
may have manual labour, that sort of thing, all
the way up to people who are highly educated.
Mental health doesn't care about how much you earn,
it doesn't care about how many qualifications you got.
It affects us all.
So if you're worried about that sort of
thing or you're nervous about coming in.
Things that I would suggest is that you look
around your area for someone who might offer you
a free consultation so you can go along and
you can meet them without any pressure.
Without any financial cost or anything else.
And you can discuss and get a sense of who
that person is and whether they can actually help you.
I would ask what their specialisms are, what their
experiences and how they feel that they can help
you, and what the benefits that their service or
their therapy is going to bring to you.
In a future episode
we'll discuss different types of therapy because there's
a huge range of different types of therapy
that's available now and sometimes again, we can
get a bit confused about which therapy is
going to be the best for ourselves.
Whether it's CBT, EMDR, hypotherapy,
there's a whole range.
And again, our service offers all of these
things, so it's something we're experienced with.
If you have any questions or would like to give
us any feedback about what you'd like me to talk
about and any concerns or questions you have specifically for
yourself or something you might be related to or caring
for, please don't hesitate to get in contact. I'm here.
I'm a therapy guy.
This is your chance to actually express what you
need and for us to meet that need.
Like I said, in future episodes, we're
going to be getting guests in.
We're going to be talking about specific types of
therapy that may be to help you and give
you a further understanding of what they are and
the benefits that each one of those can bring.
So I look forward to you tuning in.
Again, I look forward to talking to you and for the
day I'm going to sign off as the therapy guy.
And I hope you have a great day. Bye.