Anxiety is a normal part of life. it evolved as an essential survival mechanism to alert us to potential threats. In our modern world, anxiety has many forms and is strongly related to stress. Thankfully, most stress and anxiety can be easily managed without drugs. In HG Therapy we show you how you can take back control to reduce the psychological arousal and reduce both the symptoms and severity of the anxiety.

Depression is usually indicated by a low mood and low energy levels, sleep disturbance, and a loss of pleasure or interest in usual activities, amongst others. It often sits alongside anxiety disorders, serious physical illnesses, or may occur after a serious situational event for someone. For some of us Depression can become entrenched or recur, sometimes more deeply than before. HG Therapists are trained in interventions designed to lift depression as quickly as possible and provide new skills for sufferers to reduce the risk and severity of relapses.

Stress is sometimes seen as essential for human progress, but there’s an important distinction between so called healthy stress, better called “stretch” and unhealthy stress and situations. Unhealthy stress results from a build up of mental and/or physical pressures that end up making is feel overwhelmed. Stress is a complex phenomenon that varies widely across people, but we have to be aware of when we personally sense becoming or being overwhelmed. This often arises when we’re not meeting our essential needs properly. It’s signal that something has to change and left unchecked it can cause significant physical and/or mental illness. Human Givens therapists are trained to help you break the cycle of stress, and start to address the unmet needs and environmental situations involved. We will help you build the necessary life skills to cope better and build the resilience to help you maintain control in the future.

As “social animals” hardwired to work with others in living our lives and getting our needs met, it’s inevitable that things may go awry and sometimes in a way that threatens our wellbeing or happiness. Or perhaps we find ourselves in situations where we struggle to maintain healthy and positive personal or professional relationships. I’ve undertaken additional training in Relationship Coaching and Conflict Resolution. Relationships, be they intimate, social, community, or work / business ones. They are central to meeting many of our essential and emotional needs. When significant ones go wrong, it can lead to distress and stress. I can help individuals deal with these issues proactively and possibility to help you meet your needs in a positive and healthy way.

Phobias are seen as a form of anxiety that produces a marked and persistent fear of a specific thing or situation. The fear or worry developed as part of human evolution to ensure survival, but in modern times most of thee situations or things are no longer a realistic or significant threat. A Phobia is seen as being an excessive or unreasonable fear or response and for some people the intensity and impact becomes intolerable and even distressing. Human Givens therapy offers a fast and effective intervention that is safe and non-traumatising. This intervention is a core skill for all HG therapists.

The loss of someone significant to us in life, a loved one or a close friend, or the loss of something that has been important in our life, like a loved animal companion such as a dog or a cat or horse, often causes grief. Whilst grief is an intense and unpredictable sadness it is also a miracle of nature. It is nature’s way of helping us to heal and to adapt to loss. Loss of child or a parent or a life partner represents the most challenging of life events. Alongside this, there are other challenging life situations that lead us to the same place such as the loss of someone through serious illness (eg, dementia or the impending loss through the diagnosis of a terminal illness or through addictions. The way we grieve varies across cultures, even with the UK and Ireland. Many of us are now far removed from the traditional rituals that evolved to help process and recover from loss. Human Givens Therapy follows what’s known as the Dual Process understanding of loss that is backed by modern neuroscience discoveries about how the Brain and Body work to help us adapt and heal from significant. I am trained in helping people cope with bereavement, grief, and loss and work with clients to establish a strategy and process for healthy grief and to heal and adapt in the shortest realistic time, though this varies greatly from person to person and with their unique circumstances.

Sleep is nature’s gifted superpower and for the most part it is overlooked most people as being central to our physical and mental health. In the Human Givens model of health and well-being, Sleep is an Innate Resource that helps us meet our essential needs and achieve our potential. When sleep is disturbed over a period time, the physical and mental health effects can be quite distressing. Poor sleep is associated with increased anxiety, stress, depression, and inflammatory pain conditions. HG Therapy can help you work out where the opportunities to improve sleep and sleep outcome are in your life and help you both define the plan to improve sleep and how to implement it within your life. Harnessing nature’s superpower can have significant impacts on you overall wellbeing.

All pain is real and it’s never “in your head” despite what people might say. It is true that pain is constructed in the brain from internal sensations and information, but many parts of the central nervous system are involved in this pain response.

All pain needs to be checked out by a medical professional.

Pain is known to be more intense and long lasting when people are worried, stressed, or depressed. and the way many medical conditions are communicated … “degenerative”, “chronic”, and so on … can act to heighten one’s emotional arousal about the condition and actually amplify how it is felt. The brain is a predicting organ, it’s how it keeps us safe, and if it’s predicting something to be painful it’s likely that it will be painful.

Medical Practitioners who work within the HG mental health framework have developed ways to tap in to how the brain really works in constructing pain and the arousal from it, to help people dial down the intensity and duration of pain flare ups. I can work with you, after consultation with your GP, to use psychological therapy aligned with the HG Model to help you manage your pain to reduce it’s persistence and help you accelerate healing or coping with it.