NHS Counselling
Andrea Marks, 22, a transportation consultant from St Albans sought professional help after a death in the family.
My younger sister committed suicide in September last year. I'd been trying to hold it together but I finally decided that everything was just overflowing a bit and I needed to sort something out so I went to see my GP about a month ago and he referred me to an NHS counsellor.
I'm currently three sessions into a six-week course. It's very much a talking therapy – the counsellor encourages me to discuss what's brought me here, which is mainly about my sister and my family. If I'm honest, I can't stand the woman I'm seeing. I find her too trained; she doesn't really react to anything I tell her and I've found it very difficult to open up to her.
What has happened, however, is that I've started being able to talk to other people about how I'm feeling instead of bottling it all up inside. Most importantly, I've started to talk to my parents about what's going on. Katy suffered from depression since she was fourteen but we never really talked about it as a family; I was always afraid that if we did it would affect the fantastic friendship that I have with my parents. Counselling's given me the guts to say, “We do need to talk about it. We do need to know what each other thinks.” My parents understand that now and know that they need to talk to me too; I've got the counsellor to thank for that because she was very insistent that it was something I should do.
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For me, it's not about talking to one person, it's about encouraging you to open up to the people you trust. When my sessions are finished I think it will probably be decided that that's enough for me. I've got what I need from it. Once you've broken the seal on your emotions it's easier to talk to people and carry on talking about it. Whatever problems I have with my therapist personally, the counselling's definitely shown me that.
Life Coaching
Kerry McIntosh, a 26-year-old corporate events organiser from Southampton was looking for ways to motivate herself to fulfil her ambitions
I got in touch with life coach Lynette Allen last year for some feedback about a book I was trying to write. She was very encouraging and offered to help coach me through it. During each hour-long session she'd ask me all sorts of questions to try and draw me out of myself. It made me really examine what I wanted to do.
The coaching has primarily been about completing a series of practical challenges, and while I hadn't been consciously looking for solutions to problems in my life when I started it's helped me get over emotional obstacles at the same time
I'd always wanted to run the London marathon, for example, and with Lynette's encouragement I decided to go for it. For over 10 years I'd had a problem with binge eating and was overweight. It made me feel terrible and had always felt like it was out of my control but training for the marathon finally gave me the focus I needed to beat it. I started realising that you need food to be able to run your body correctly – all my silly rules about what to eat and when disappeared.
I'd seen a counsellor before and all that did was make me feel worse – she was looking for problems in my childhood that caused me to overeat that didn't exist. I needed to look at my life in a healthy way rather than being completely obsessive about it and that's what life coaching did for me.
Before I met Lynette, my focus was always on what was wrong with my life instead of actually looking at what talents I had and what I could do. She pushed me to try new things. I never did finish the book but with her encouragement I fulfilled another ambition – I wrote and recorded a song. Even though I haven't done anything with it, I'm so proud of it; it's a symbol of what I can do if I put my mind to it.
I only had eight or nine sessions in total but it changed my life. I've lost two and a half stone, I'm in a happy relationship, but most importantly of all, she made me believe my own hype.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Humanistic Psychotherapy
Victoria Simmonds, 36, a doctorate student has been seeking long-term help for anxiety and agoraphobia.
I was first offered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) about five years ago. I've always set very high standards for myself that can be almost impossible to live up to and CBT aims to give you practical plans and strategies to help you resolve emotional and psychological problems that can be incorporated into your life.
I had been diagnosed with stress and unable to go to work on top of the agoraphobia I'd been suffering from for years so I was referred to a CBT specialist because I was told it would challenge my fears about what it means to be outside the house. She would get me to write on sheets of paper how I felt about something and to try to get me to come up with more helpful thoughts to try to stop my fears and anxiety, but I was so depressed I couldn't do any of it. I saw her on and off for about a year and I'd come away from sessions feeling terrible; it felt like I was just going through the motions.
In the end I found a counsellor myself. She was a humanistic psychotherapist and she was wonderful. Her approach wasn't about trying to change the things that happen in your life, but changing how you deal with them. Over two and a half years she helped me learn to look after myself more.
I was still seeing an NHS psychiatrist over this period and he put me on the list for CBT again. I'm about four sessions in and this time the woman I'm seeing is lovely. I told her what my reservations about the therapy were. The reason I think my dad's had a heart attack every time the phone goes, for example, is because that's actually happened seven times. So just saying “that might not happen” is utterly useless for me. I need to talk things through and she's taken that on board and adapts things to suit me.
I don't think it's a final solution to my problems, but as my therapist says, even if it can't take away the anxiety but it can make it more manageable. I've been having talking therapies since I was about 12 and I don't know think any one method is necessarily better than another. Getting professional help is really important, but it's more about compatibility and finding someone who's attuned to you intellectually; you need to find someone who understands what you're saying.
Homeopathy
Collette Murphy, 33-year-old commercials producer turned to natural remedies to help cope with stress
A couple of years ago I was feeling stressed out and overwhelmed by pretty much everything. I'd been working in the same job for three years and while I loved it, it was highly pressurised. I was seriously considering jacking it all in and running away! Plus it was about a year since the end of my last serious relationship and I was beginning to really worry that I wasn't meeting anyone I really liked.
When a friend suggested I visit her homeopath for help I thought she was joking at first. At that point I thought homeopaths only dealt with your physical health. I was feeling pretty rundown – I'd been compensating for feeling really unsettled emotionally by having too many late nights out – but I wasn't exactly ill. Still, I went for an initial consultation to see what she'd say.
It was amazing. The homeopath wanted to know what had brought me there so I talked to her about all the anxieties and worries I'd been having. She asked me about how I wanted to be feeling physically and emotionally and came up with a treatment plan – various changes to my diet and lifestyle along with homeopathic remedies and supplements to help get me back on track.
I've been seeing her once a month for the past two years and over that time I've really calmed down and been able to refocus my life. I'm convinced the remedies really do help but I'm sure that it's as much to do with the emotional element of seeing her; talking to her forces me to really examine and clarify what's going on in my head. I haven't made any huge outward changes in my life, but I'm happy with what I have. I'm still single but not panicking about it and I'm back on track with my career – I've been promoted twice! Life isn't perfect but I realise it doesn't have to be. Ultimately I'm pretty happy – and that's a lot more than I could say two years ago.
