Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

Counselling Stockport

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counselling StockportCounselling Stockport

It’s been a while since I have written a blog post and so I thought it might be useful to bring things up to date on what’s going on with me providing counselling Stockport.  I hope this helps those who are unsure of who I am or how counselling or therapy can help them.  In this post I also want to answer the most common questions I get asked about the counselling process.  Please email me using my contact form if you have any questions I do not answer in this post.

Who am I?

My name is Ian Tomlinson and I am a counsellor in Stockport.  I have run Manchester Psychotherapy for the last four years and enjoy being a therapist immensely.  I also work part time as a teacher in Secondary Education and feel that this fits very well with my role as a therapist.

Both jobs are about relationships, both jobs are about bringing the best out in people and both jobs require empathy, kindness and a good sense of humour.  It’s pretty common for therapists to work part time and this may well be something to do with the solitary nature of the job.  Full time therapists have the potential to be on their own a lot and need to plan strategies to deal with this.

For me, I have a close group of colleagues that I work with on a daily basis and around seven hundred little people that are very happy to “keep things real” for me!

Counselling Stockport For Individuals

My Practice is currently about 50% individuals work and 50% couples work.  I tend to work with people over a long period of time but I have worked with clients for as little as eight weeks and they have experienced massive change and not needed to come to therapy after that.

I guess this answers a commonly asked question, “how long will I need to be in therapy for?”  The answer is often “as long as you need to be”.

I have found with my own therapy that sometimes I am in the right place for it and it helps enormously and at other times I feel that I have taken what I need from it and it is time to stop.  You will know when the time to stop is right for you.

There are occasions where I will suggest to a client that they are ready to stop coming.  When we have worked effectively and made the changes set out in the therapeutic contract then it could be time to give therapy a rest for a bit and recalibrate.

What issues do I work with when providing counselling Stockport?

Again, this is another common quesiton from people who are interested in coming for counselling in Stockport with me.  I have dealt with a whole spectrum of issues, from depression, stress, anxiety, gender identity, anger management issues, jealousy and other’s I have probably forgotten to put in the list!

Often what a client comes with and what we end up talking about are very different.  This is because our stresses and strains can manifest themselves in a multitude of ways.

Men’s issues

I do spend a lot of time working with men and men’s issues.  Many men find talking to a counsellor challenging in itself, so to be able to talk to a male therapist takes some of the anxiety away.  I have blogged extensively about how rubbish us men can be at dealing with emotional issues and unfortunately it does cost us dearly.  Suicide rates amongst young adult males are the highest out of all other groups and the prison population is over 90% male.  The sooner we are able to learn that the most powerful men are those that can deal with their emotions effectively, the better.

I regularly work with sexual minority clients too.  Gay men and lesbians form a significant percentage of my client base and I am a gay affirmative therapist.  This means that I will never question an individuals sexuality and see gay and straight as normal as each other (what is normal anyway?).  I have a good understanding of issues faced by the LGBT community and am used to dealing with these.  It may be that sometimes, as a straight man myself, I need information from my clients to help me with understanding the finer details of an issue or situation, but I find I learn from all my clients and this is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a therapist for me.

How to start

So if you were to want to come to my counselling Stockport service then what should you do?  Firstly get in contact by ringing me on 07966 390857 or email me using my contact form.  From there we will have an initial meeting and I will ask you what brings you into therapy and how you think I can help you.  You will have an opportunity to ask me any questions you have about who I am or how I work and I will talk through the business contract and ask you a few standard intake questions (name, address, doctors address – the usual therapy stuff).

From there we will go on a journey together.  I won’t be telling you what to do or what to think but I may challenge negative beliefs you have had for years or give alternative ways of doing things.

With some clients I will be very structured and provide a clear framework, others require time to explore what’s going on for them and time to reflect.

Take a leap of faith – it may change your life.

Going to a counsellor or therapist in Stockport can require serious bravery.  I can remember skulking around the front door of my first therapist, not sure of what I would find but with a deep need to talk to someone about things that were going on for me that were causing me great anxiety.  I could see myself repeating the same negative patterns in my life and I was fed up of shooting myself in the foot.

Therapy changed my life.  It gave me a new way of seeing the events that had taken place and a new way or relating to the most important people in my life.  The counselling I had made such an impression that I got interested in the subject and here I am, nearly twenty years later, helping others change their lives.

So take a leap of faith, give me a ring on 07966 390857 and make an appointment.  I get that you may be nervous and I can assure you that I will look after you throughout the process.

How has counselling made a difference to your life?

If you are reading this post having experienced counselling please comment below and let me know how it made a difference to you.  What was the key moment for you?  What would you say to others who are unsure about picking up the phone and making an appointment?

If you have any questions about me and the counselling Stockport service please get in touch and I will get back to you qucikly.

 

Anger Management – The Theory

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anger management the theoryAnger as an emotion has had a great deal of bad press through the years. It’s one of those emotions that people shy away from and never really use to describe anyone in a positive light. Anger is, however, just another emotion. It can be very useful to us in certain circumstances. We all know and have had very memorable experiences of the “fight or flight” response that kicks in when we are under threat. Anger in those circumstances can really save our bacon. Anger also gives us the energy to change things when we are just not happy. We might need that rush of adrenaline and that “sod this, I’m going to sort it out!” kick up the backside to pull us out of unproductive situations. Why then if anger is so good, do we need anger management methods?

Like all things, when you have too much of something it can make you sick. Too much anger can……

  • destroy relationships
  • cause us to be judgmental and intolerant of others
  • get us into conflict, verbal and physical, with others
  • react in an out of proportion manner to situations
  • compromise our immune system which leads to us getting poorly more often and for longer
  • give us a banging headache
  • Result in us withdrawing from others and maybe physically harming ourselves

Having taught in schools for many years I’ve seen a lot of angry boys. And I mean a lot! I have also taught girls who have incredible difficulty managing their anger and can out anger any lad with ease. Anger is not by any means limited to males but there is no doubt in my mind that it is one of the safest emotions to express as a male around other people. I was almost tempted to write “around other males” in the last sentence but unfortunately females are complicitous in the promotion of anger in males too. My experience working with eleven to sixteen year olds is that an angry boy is seen as acceptable and kind of cool in a scary way and an angry girl is seen as slightly mad!

This gives a first clue as to where all of this anger comes from and brings us on to the Transactional Analysis concept of racket feelings.

Ian Stewart and Vann Joines book “TA Today” has a very clear definition of what a racket feeling is, they define it as;

“A familiar emotion, learned and encouraged in childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving”. (page209)

So how do certain emotions get encouraged in childhood? Let’s take little Johnny (could be little Jane too). When Johnny falls over at the age of five he cries. His mum tells him to pick himself up and carry on paying little attention. When he feels scared of going to school for the first time he gets told to “pull himself together” and not be so silly. When he plays happily with his brother he is largely ignored by his parents. When he kicks off, screams and shouts and starts throwing his toys around the room he suddenly gets a lot of attention. Multiply this by the 1825 days little Johnny has had these indirect messages from his parents and I’m sure you begin to see my point. Angry = attention.

With a racket feeling in place, it becomes difficult for us to access the authentic feeling we are really having. Back to Johnny (bless him). As an adult when Johnny feels scared he is going to be made redundant from his job he can’t do scared very well because he has not had much practise. It’s much easier to feel angry, so without even thinking about it that’s where he goes emotionally. Result = he gives his boss a mouthful and gets the sack.

When he feels sad that his relationship has broken down he’s not sure how to do sad either so he easily switches to anger. Result = he feels furious at the situation and punches a wall, breaking his hand in the process.

But how do we know whether a feeling is a racket or genuine? As I said at the beginning of my post, anger can be useful and is just as valid as any other emotion, so when does Johnny know when his anger is a racket and when it’s authentic? Here’s some ways you can tell:

  • Racket feelings come from a not OK place
  • Racket feelings don’t solve the problem
  • Racket feelings come from the Child ego state
  • Racket feelings involve a discount

“All very interesting,” I hear you say, “but how do I sort out my anger issues?” You can seek out a properly trained counsellor who can guide and support you with your anger issues. I see clients with anger issues regularly and use a step by step approach to helping with anger. But you don’t have to go to a counsellor –  Read my self help plan here and get your life back.

If you are interested in coming on my anger management course please click this link to read more about it or phone me on 07966 390857.

Why All Our Emotions Are Important

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our four emotionsAs a therapist I spend a great deal of my time talking to clients about their emotions. For some clients this is no problem, they live in an emotional world. For others I can ask what they are feeling and I see a look of confusion descend. Some of us are good with emotions; some of us are good at hiding them. We all have them.

I can remember the first time I came across the concept that there are only four emotions. It was explained to me that humans are happy, sad, angry or scared. Eric Berne, the father of Transactional Analysis even dismissed anger as a racket feeling, which would leave us with three. The explanation continued with the statement that all other emotions are a combination of the four. Jealousy, for example, is a combination of anger and scare. Boredom is just another way of saying we feel angry.

Whilst I agree that this is a blatant oversimplification of the vast emotional spectrum we experience, I like the simplicity of it. It’s a great way of getting to the bottom of our feelings and reduces the chance that we will use language to deny our real feelings. It’s like saying you are annoyed when really you mean you feel angry. Anger feels much more genuine and is more likely to lead to constructive change. It moves away from the passivity of “annoyed”.

All emotions are OK and all have a valuable part to play in keeping us on an even keel. Here’s a quick rundown of what they do for us:

Happiness

This one, I don’t have to explain! When we feel happy the world is great, everything is fine and we want for nothing. Unfortunately though, there is a common misconception that this is how we should feel all the time. Imagine if we did. Happiness would become normality. How would we then distinguish the great times from the rest of our lives? Being happy all the time is an unrealistic expectation that, ironically, decreases the chance that you will feel happy because you become angry at your lack of happiness! I’m going to stop there with that one because I’m tying myself in emotional knots!

Sadness

This is the bad boy of the gang. No one likes to be sad. Sadness has got a bad press (I feel sad for sad). Sadness gives us permission to slow down, do less, withdraw from the world and do what we need to do in order to successfully get on with our lives again once we ready. We may have heard bad news, been let down or even lost someone close to us. Sadness is there to give us time to sort this out in our head. It’s OK to be sad. It’s useful and just as important as happiness over the course of our lives. Give yourself permission to go with it and it will pass, and you will have grown.

Anger

Anger can give us the energy to change situations that are pissing us off! The rush of adrenaline, the focused mind, these could save us from harm or pull us out of bad situations. Anger is readily embraced by some, hence the need for “anger management“, but for all of us anger can result in change for the better if used appropriately.

Fear

Fear keeps us safe and protects us from dangerous situations. Fear can also hold you back from doing all things in life you’d like to. In therapeutic terms it’s important to distinguish between fear, which is rational and from the Adult ego state, and scare, which is from the Child ego state. It’s that scare, which kept us safe when we were kids, but can be a block now we are adults. During the process of therapy, many people learn to let go of those scary feelings about issues we have echoing from our childhood and move on with our lives.

I make no apologies for repeating this next statement; all emotions are OK. They are all equal. When they get out of balance we may need help to adjust. Too much of any of them might not be useful for us and could lead to depression, anxiety or anger issues. But pushing our emotions away just moves those feelings inside and they manifest in other ways, often through physical illnesses or stress. So don’t deny them, be with your emotions and they will serve you well.