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.

 

Male Therapists in Decline – And Why This Matters

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Male therapist - An endangered species!

A recent newspaper article in the New York Times entitled “Need Therapy, A Good Man Is Hard to Find” confirmed for me what I had already observed informally over the years I have worked as a male therapist in Manchester. Us blokes are rare in this field. Whenever I go to a therapy workshop or have any training I like to carry out a survey of male/female ratios (I’m funny that way!). It usually works out to be somewhere around 30% men. So for every one hundred therapists only 30 of them will be men (by my completely unscientific calculations).

The article from the NY Times has an even smaller amount of men in the therapy field in the USA than this. It states that only 20% of all of the Masters degrees awarded in Psychology in the states are awarded to men. In the states only 10% of the members of the American Counseling Association are men. These figures highlight the seriousness of the situation and wake us up to the feminisation of the mental health professions.

Why Male Therapists Matter

So why does it matter? Who cares if there are so few male therapists around? Well, the answer to that has to be men. Men care. There is something about having access to a male therapist when you are a man that is important (and no doubt the same is true of female therapists for women). As a male therapist it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have a high percentage of male clients. Over the years I have been told by clients that I was chosen as a therapist because it just felt easier to talk about the issue they were bringing to another man, a woman may not “get it” in the same way, or it may have been too embarrassing to talk about to a woman.

Mens issues in therapy

The NY Times article also states that men find it much easier to talk about certain issues with a man. These issues include fatherhood, anger management, affairs and sex. A common topic for male clients over the time I have worked as a therapist has been what it is to be a man. What does that mean in a society where gender roles are increasingly disappearing and empowerment of women is paramount.

I’m not saying for a minute that all men seek a male therapist, many happily work with female therapists and, as argued in the Times article “a good therapist is a good therapist” regardless of their gender.
Some women, too, prefer male therapists. My female clients through the years have either chosen me because they wanted a man, or they just thought I was the therapist for them out of the hundreds listed under counselling in Manchester on Google and my gender was irrelevant.

Counselling is important for men

Men are the least likely of the sexes to go into therapy. This is something I have blogged about before and I very much want to change. Men, especially British men with their “stiff upper lip” approach to life, can be reluctant to seek help when they need it. This is true of physical illness, and even worse for mental illness. This makes access to male therapists for men even more important. If the only way in which a man is willing to seek help is to speak to another man then we have a duty to make sure they have that option.

What do you think? Does the gender of your therapist make a difference to you? Are you a therapist with something to say about this blog post? Please comment under the post below and let me know your views.

Dealing With Jealousy

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In this article I am going to discuss jealousy, where it comes from and a few of ways to deal with it. I have to start off by saying I have a bit of a soft spot for jealousy! If it wasn’t for my jealousy issues I would have never gone to a counsellor and it’s highly likely I would not be a counsellor now. Being a therapist is probably the most rewarding job I have ever had, and so I have a lot to thank jealousy for.

Having experienced jealousy to a high level first hand also makes this article easy to write. I remember clearly the incident that resulted in me seeking counselling. My girlfriend had bought some boots. I was furious and we had a huge row about it. This is how it panned out in my head. Boots -> she wants to look more attractive to other men -> she is going to leave me. It sounds crazy when I read it now and I look back with amazement at how worked up I got about such a small thing. It is also a testament to how great therapy is. Within a few weeks of counselling I was able to deal with the feelings behind the behaviour and I have never had a problem with jealousy since.

If we break jealousy down into its constituent feelings it looks like a mixture of anger and scare. I was angry that my girlfriend was attempting to attract other men (a contaminated belief on my part, she just liked the boots!) and I was very scared at the prospect of her leaving me. Here lies the heart of the problem with jealousy. Jealousy is often about feelings of insecurity and unimportance in the person feeling jealous. I felt that my world would end if my girlfriend did manage to attract another man with her new boots and I also completely discounted the fact that she loved me and wanted to be with me, she was not interested in attracting a new partner.

Dealing with jealousy.

Yeah, you guessed it; the first thing I am going to suggest is that you go seek a counsellor or therapist to work the whole jealous thing through with. Therapists are trained to dig around for your hidden beliefs behind the feelings and help you understand where they came from. By bringing this information into your awareness you will be much more able to change your thinking, feeling and behaviour and leave jealousy behind.

If you don’t want to go to a therapist then here are a few other suggestions;

  • Check with a rational friend whether your jealous feelings are about something real or imagined. Is your partner behaving in a way that is inviting the jealousy? If so talk to them about it and ask for the behaviour to change. Action/feeling statements can help here.
  • If you have identified that your jealous feelings are about you, not your partner then talk it through with your partner and ask for what you want. If you need reassurance that your partner loves you it’s ok to ask for it.
  • When you are having a jealous attack then ground yourself and bring yourself back into the now.  Read about a simple grounding technique here.
  • Appreciate that jealousy is basically fantasising about events in the future that have not happened and are unlikely to. Once more, the grounding technique can help you leave these thoughts behind and get on with your life.
  • Focus on your good points and distance yourself from the negative thoughts you have about yourself. You can use the diffusion technique I write about here to do this. This may help you challenge the thoughts behind the jealousy – that you are not worth being with in the first place.

Jealousy is not uncommon in relationships and I hope by reading this article you appreciate that it is a feeling that you can change. This will improve things for both you and your partner.

Good luck with it and if you need my help don’t hesitate to get in contact.