You may have received a formal diagnosis for a personality disorder such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) or for a mood disorder such as Bipolar.  Or you may have a developmental disorder such as Autism.

Whatever your specific diagnosis is, it is likely that certain aspects of living are intensely challenging for you and it is probable that you feel “different” from the majority of people in your life which may lead to anxiety, loneliness and a lack of confidence in relationships.  You may find it difficult to make friends and may struggle generally in communicating with other people.

Talking with a counsellor may help you to feel less isolated and may help to increase your self confidence as you are able to communicate and express your thoughts and feelings.  Together you may discover ways in which you can learn to better manage some of your own behaviours as well as the more challenging aspects of your life.

Bipolar Mood Disorder Counselling

I was so confused yesterday.  I felt fantastic in the morning, I had this great big smile all over my face and the day was going so well…….and then it was as if somebody switched the channel in my mind and I became very fidgety, unable to settle, with a feeling of needing something but not knowing what.   I kept eating and wanting to pick at things.  I couldn’t switch off from the gloomy feeling all around me.  My partner thinks I am crazy so I try to hide how I am really feeling from him.  I think I felt better not trying to talk about it and I felt so grateful when it was time to go to bed and sleep.  I just wanted to be different again.  I can’t believe I can feel so differently in the space of a few hours…..I don’t want to be like this, I’m fed up of struggling with all the changes, so unpredictable, so out of the blue.  Why can’t I be normal like other people.  I’m so aggressive and out of control at times – I constantly change my mind about people – I’m loving and trusting one moment and making lots of plans……and then I suddenly change what I think and start worrying about how to get out of plans.  I’m driving myself insane.  I can’t bear being me at times and I don’t want to live like this. (bipolar)

When you are sensitive, your mood can easily change.  Just a thought or something you hear or see, can be enough to trigger you from your current mind-set into another one.  Within a day you might experience extremes of happiness and sadness or excitement and depression, all within close periods of each other.  And if you do experience rapid mood changes like this, maybe you berate yourself for being so emotionally labile and so different from other people around you who may seem to have more consistency in their moods.  Perhaps you feel angry with yourself or frustrated that you respond so strongly to life events and other people in this way.  You may feel ashamed at times and deeply saddened by your different mind-sets.  You may feel very alone and fragile at times and maybe you withdraw rather than trying to communicate with anyone.  You may struggle to find balance in relationships with a partner or family members and you may judge yourself harshly.  It is likely that you feel destabilised by the shifts in mood that you experience, worrying about how you are going to be and whether you are going to be able to manage in different situations.  And maybe you feel hopeless and helpless and possibly its been like this for you over quite a long time…

How Can Therapy Help

Firstly you can be honest with a therapist and communicate the nature of the reality you experience without being judged.  This can often be a huge relief to someone who might have been trying to hide their changing thoughts and feelings from others, finding this an immense strain at times.  If there is somewhere where you can feel increasingly relaxed and able to talk about life experiences, then this can be a platform upon which you can start to learn about yourself and how best to approach your fluctuating mind-sets.   Dialectical Behaviour Therapy may be very useful to you as it can provide you with specific skills to help you manage challenging situations.  There are 4 key modules, each with a number of skills that you can learn within therapy sessions, that can start to improve the quality of your life as you become more practised in using them.  The most challenging part of the treatment is being patient with yourself as you challenge old behaviours and introduce new ways of managing life situations.  Here’s a little information about each of the 4 modules:

Mindfulness

As your mind responds very quickly to triggers influencing your corresponding mood, this is a very important fundamental part of treatment since you will learn to work with your mind through specific routines that will increase your capacity to direct your attention away from painful or troubling thoughts to help settle your mind and allow you to find balance.

Emotion Regulation

This module heightens your awareness of the way in which your body reacts to stressful situations and as you become more deeply in-tune with your own inner and outer body responses, you can learn to enhance your body’s capacity to withstand stress and minimise trigger responses.

Distress Tolerance

When you are in crisis moments in your life, feeling extreme in some way, it is vital that you learn to avoid taking any action and to be able to hold yourself as if in “pause mode” so that you can create the space for yourself to calm down.  This module will teach you some short-term skills for surviving crisis situaitons.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Finding balance within important relationships can involve being careful and considered about what, when and how you communicate with others.  This module will provide you with support in learning how to build and improve relationships and how to increase your personal happiness through relational behaviour.

Since Dialectical Behaviour Therapy was successfully devised by Professor Marsha Linehan in response to her own extreme mood fluctuations, you may feel inspired and encouraged to try this form of talking therapy, so that it may help to change your life too.

Autism

Imagine a world in which you struggle to make decisions and where new or unexpected things leave you close to panic.  A world in which you know you are different from other people despite being equally capable, where you may be extremely sensitive about some things and where you worry a lot of the time…

…about people, because you can’t easily gauge how they are feeling or thinking

… socialising, especially when you are doing something new and

…about decisions involving food or clothes for example, so you end up having narrow choices because that makes life easier for you.

People who are autistic process information in a way that is different to the majority and therefore interpersonal connection can be challenging, unless you are able to explore this together and be open to understanding your different perspectives.   Autism can be isolating because of these issues and a person can find themselves feeling low and insecure with little confidence to try and improve things, for fear of making a situation worse.

If you have found your way onto this page because you are autistic and are struggling to find balance and happiness in your life, it may be helpful for you to talk to a therapist about your difficulties within the non-judgemental context of counselling.  This may help to decrease any sense of isolation you may be feeling and provide space to explore the challenges you experience on a daily basis within yourself and with others.  Counselling may also become a place where you can develop skills to minimise the impact of overwhelming feelings you may be experiencing as well as helping to improve your ability to communicate well with others.  You might see counselling as an opportunity to “test” different methods and to receive support as you experiment within friendships and/or a relationship.     

Partner, Friend or Parent

If you are the friend, partner or parent of someone who is autistic, perhaps you are finding it difficult to be close because of endless tension and disagreements that limit your capacity to be happy together.  Since your brains process information in very different ways, it is possible that you fall into the same situations of conflict over and over again, which may leave you both feeling frustrated and unhappy.  It is probable that you have never fully explored the impact of your fundamental differences and the extent to which this might be impeding your ability to be in a fulfilling relationship.     

At The Hove Counselling Practice, you can find support for individual issues as well as relational ones.  Having an initial assessment is an opportunity to understand more about our approach and how this may enable you to find greater stability, balance and happiness in your life.