Why do people come to therapy?
People come to therapy for many different reasons and at different stages in their lives. Some clients come to us with specific symptoms or diagnoses like anxiety or depression, and others come facing relationship concerns, or challenges at different transition points in their lives, such as thinking about parenthood, marital difficulties, retirement and older age.
Therapists in our network have a wide range of skills and expertise in supporting people across the lifespan, with a wide range of psychological difficulties and challenges.
Typical concerns that people bring include:
- Anxiety, stress or panic attacks
- Anger-management problems
- Bereavement
- Child developmental, behavioural, educational or emotional issues
- Concerns about parenting, from babies to ageing parents
- Depression or low mood
- Early dementia or depression in later life
- Eating disorders
- Emotional or relationship concerns
- Family or couple problems
- Fertility problems and Family Planning
- Gender concerns
- Health or disability concerns
- Low self-esteem
- Neuro-diversity
- Obsessional disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pre- and postnatal depression
- Sexual, physical or emotional abuse
- Sexual difficulties or concerns
- Sleep problems
- Substance misuse
- Transitions: eg. adapting to marriage, having a baby, divorce, parenthood, retirement, bereavement
- Work-related concerns
What treatments do our therapists offer?
IPS therapists are trained in a wide variety of approaches to therapy, and are highly experienced working across the life span with individual adults, couples, children, young people, and families.
These broadly fall into the areas of Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT) and Psychotherapies.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT)
CBT-related approaches tend to be more active and symptom-oriented. They may include a focus on:
- Changing unhelpful behaviour (eg. exposure work; response prevention);
- Irrational beliefs (eg. Cognitive Therapy; Schema-Focussed Therapy; Dialectical Behaviour Therapy)
- Third Wave behavioural therapies that concentrate on the internal emotional context in which symptoms such as depression, anxiety or trauma are experienced (eg Mindfulness; Compassion-Focussed Therapy; EMDR).
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of talking therapies that aim to help the person understand and work through feelings and relationships that may lead to repeated, unhelpful patterns of relating to yourself or others. They include:
- Psychoanalytic psychotherapy aims to explore the deeper, unconscious thoughts, feelings and internal conflicts that often have their roots in childhood and may underpin psychological and relational problems and symptoms such as anxiety, low mood or trauma. This kind of therapy can be more intensive, offering multiple sessions a week, such as psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or less intensive, such as psychodynamic psychotherapy or counselling.
- Alternative psychotherapy models focus more on patterns of behaviour and relating, such as: Narrative Therapy; Systemic Therapy; Existential Therapy; Cognitive Analytic Therapy