How we can help you
Information to help you choose the counselling you need
If you'd like some advice on choosing the right counselling for your needs please contact Andrew
Individual counselling
Are you affected by the use of another?
Misuse of alcohol or substances impacts on our lives, family life, relationships, work, our sense of who we are, our individuality, our sociability.
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Together we can explore goals and strategies either to reduce
drinking levels, maintain abstinence or prevent and manage
relapse. It’s our aim to help you decide what suits you.
Or you may just want to talk to someone about why you are drinking and how it is affecting your life. Perhaps it is taking control and having a negative impact on those around you – your work, your relationships, your health, how you feel…
You may be affected by someone else’s dependency on alcohol and would like to talk to someone about its impact on you.
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Many family members, and especially parents, ask themselves if something they have done has caused drug/alcohol use and commonly experience guilt. Many regret past actions or reactions. However, it is vital to remember that the other is responsible for the choices they make and for their behaviour, including whether they use drugs and alcohol. Only they themselves can make the choice to drink alcohol or use drugs and only they can decide to stop.
Never the less it can be extremely distressing to see a family member struggling with alcohol or/or drug misuse and feeling powerless to help.
It can often be useful to explore this by working together to find new awareness, understanding and alternative behaviours.
Relationships affected by alcohol
Is there a family member or someone you care for struggling with alcohol and/or drugs?
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When someone has an alcohol or substance misuse issue, it doesn't just affect them, it affects the partner too. Sometimes it can even feel like it affects the partner more than the user.
We work with both partners to help them begin to understand the complex relational patterns they each have within the relationship, to express the impact and to begin to change some of the more unhelpful patterns to allow positive change.
Many people believe that if the one they care for could just stop drinking, everything would be ok. However, the reality is that as one person's behaviour changes it creates changes within the relationship. These changes can leave everyone feeling unstable and unsure how to behave, communicate or move on. We support relationships by creating a space in which these issues can be thought about, where feelings can be expressed and where strategies for moving forward in a new way can be implemented.
People you care about affected by alcohol
For someone who is in a relationship with a partner or family member who depends on alcohol or substances life can be very difficult. Most family members are unaware that their enabling behaviour helps the one they care for maintain their alcohol and/or substance misuse.
What can often happen is that by giving care to someone in order to protect them we also prevent them from looking at the consequences of their behaviour.
Without alternative strategies this can leave us feeling unable to effect change, this impacts on our self-esteem and we can feel we dislike the person we care for and also ourselves for doing so.
Our Qualified counsellors can offer you a therapeutic space in which to talk about the challenges you face.
Alternatively, you and your partner or family member could seek therapy together.
It's not just about alcohol
Alcohol can become a means of managing other difficult issues in life, our counsellors understand this and will work with you to explore not just alcohol or drug consumption but any other areas you feel are impacted on by alcohol or drugs.
Life events happen to us all and sometimes this can be unbearable. In using alcohol to alleviate some of these feelings we become reliant on a strategy that’s ultimately not serving us well.
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Stress at work
Relationship difficulties
Family breakdown
Domestic violence
Depression
Anxiety
Bereavement
Experience of historic abuse
Insomnia
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Our counsellors understand this and will be able to help you in any of these areas.