Friday, April 29, 2016

Excessive empathy can impair understanding.

A recent study in Germany enabled scientists to prove that people who tend to be empathic do not necessarily have the additional skills to understand people well at a cognitive level.

The study also discovered insight as to how the different networks in the brain are orchestrated, revealing that networks crucial for empathy and cognitive perspective do interact with one another, and in highly emotional moments

for example when somebody talks about the death of a close person

activation of the insula, (which forms part of the empathy-relevant network), can have an inhibiting effect in some people on brain areas important for taking someone else's perspective. This in turn can cause excessive empathy to impair social understanding.

Personally from a counsellor’s perspective there is a fine balance between empathy and cognitive understanding when entering into a client’s world and attempting to see things from their perspective.

“Is it possible as therapists to keep our empathy under control so it doesn’t run to excess?”
I think so... I feel a sense of duty of care to my clients to ensure my feelings don’t run away with me in light of their situations. That seems to keep my empathy in check and allows me to dip into it throughout the session.

After all, uncontrollable empathy can turn to sympathy which is not professional and in fact detrimental to client progress. Although it hasn’t happened to me yet, it’s possible that someone could just tip me over the edge with a sad story, and if I find my emotions too much to handle, I would need to seek supervision to guide my decision on how best to serve that client.

The study sees cognitive understanding and empathy as two different social skills, but the scientists proved they can affect each other and that heightened empathy around a person’s predicament can reduce your cognitive understanding of it.

That is certainly something we don’t want happening in Therapy! Part of the counsellors job is get a real understanding of what everything means to the client. The client can sometimes do an excellent job of describing their thoughts and feelings to the therapist, and our job is to read between the lines, and for that our cognitive perspective ideally should not be diminished by over empathising.

Growing up I remember getting very upset when I didn’t understand someone’s meaning. My emotion would start to swell at the beginning of a conversation sometimes in expectation of the fact that I wouldn’t comprehend. So I soon realised my excessive emotion was the culprit in my diminished understanding not my intelligence.
Was this the beginnings of me learning to control my emotion? Possibly.... Maybe that’s why I now feel I have a good handle on my empathy in therapy, allowing me to really listen to people.

So as counsellors, there are many good qualities and skills we should have, but perhaps it’s not just about simply having those qualities but...

How we use them and how we control them, after all, these are skills in themselves.

Ultimately our aim is to provide the most successful and productive sessions we possibly can for our clients.

If you or someone you know needs help, please contact Sam at Therapy for Life
Source of Scientific Research

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Mental Health help for children and parents

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We are a group of therapists who are also parents and we want to let parents and children know at your school that there is help for families locally.

We can help:
  • Teach communication skills.
  • Give parents and children the opportunity to discuss their worries.
  • Bring families closer together.
  • Discover what is causing bad behaviour and attitude.
  • Discover what is causing shyness and social phobias.
  • Improve concentration resulting in better school work.
  • Teach organisation skills to help with work load and motivation.
  • Find new confidence and self-esteem.
  • Find new goals and interests.
  • Increase self awareness.
  • Hold group meetings for students designed to help with stress.
  • Parent group discussion - tea and coffee mornings.
  • One to one counselling for children or adults daytime, evenings and weekends.


We have an office and meeting rooms in the University Gateway Building in Southend-on-Sea just off the High Street shopping area where we can offer to accommodate people, alternatively we can travel to the school if such arrangements are more convenient.

Our after class ‘De-stress and Wellbeing group’ for the children is very successful. The kids help and support each other and offer solutions to problems and dilemmas. Once a child knows their situation is normal, worries and stress start to diminish.

If any parents or children are interested in one-to-one or group sessions, please contact Sam at ‘Therapy for Life’ and tell us what you need.

One example of the sessions we offer is:
The after school ‘De-stress and Wellbeing group’ for kids at £5 each for 50 minutes. Especially good around exam time. Knowing how caring parents can be and how helpless they can feel with their own children, this is a solution that relieves so many worries for the whole family.
It can be held at the school or our offices in Southend

Parents pay upfront for 5 sessions at £25 (occurring once per week) for their child to attend. If a child misses a session, it’s no problem, the money carries over to pay for next week. It'll be the best £25 you've ever spent...  to see the difference in your child is magical.

If you are a parent or a teacher, we would be grateful if you sent this out to the parents/carers and teachers at your school to encourage the school to promote it. Your participation will show an immense amount of thought and care towards the parent’s and pupil’s and overall sense of wellbeing at the school you or your children attend.

Please check out our Website and read about us, and view one of our latest blogs:





Thursday, April 21, 2016

Essex counsellors come together to support each other and the public

Calling all Essex based Therapeutic Counsellors

Do you sometimes feel disconnected with the world of Mental Health?

Do you think opportunities are difficult to come by?

Do you sometimes need a source of support & information and a safe ‘go-to’ place to help with dilemmas?

Would you like:

  • A place to find local jobs, placements, courses, group supervision and CPD right here in Essex and reviews on them.

  • A place to source referral suggestions and Supervisors

  • A place to advertise your services and find the clients that need you.

  • An opportunity to tell us all what you want and need, with the possibility that Therapy for Life or one of the members could really help you out.

Therapy for Life Forum Sample Page

We at Therapy for Life understand (thanks to our new networking evenings held in Southend-on-Sea) that there seems to be a need to connect the local counsellors in and around Essex, particularly near Southend-on-Sea.
This will not only benefit our local counsellors but also the public accessing such a conscientious set of professionals.

So I welcome you to join the ‘Therapy for Life’ Forum.
It’s free to join and we encourage you to start posting as much as possible straight away, please share your knowledge and get involved (you can’t do anything wrong just go for it!)
We’ve given you a blank canvas to be creative, interesting, informative and helpful and in return you could receive real support and opportunities.

After all, it’s your input that will create more intrigue and make it great for everyone...

Check out the Categories and Boards for discussion, if you’re anything like our networking group... you’ve got a lot to say!

Look forward to hearing from you...

Check out the Forum 
http://www.therapyforlife.net/forum/
Copyright © 2016 Therapy for Life, All rights reserved.


Our mailing address is:
Therapy for Life
10 Elmer Approach
Southend-on-SeaEssex SS1 1LW
United Kingdom

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Saturday, April 16, 2016

Networking Evening Success

Thank you to all that attended our first networking evening last night, we had a group of around 20 turn up, luckily there was enough biscuits to go round (which is most important).

The great thing about these events is giving counsellors and therapists the opportunity to find work or placements, advertise their own events or courses and discover what's on that might be of interest to them.

This particular evening shed some light on what some of the more experienced counsellors felt was missing in the realms of support and connection locally...

It was put out there that there is a need for an online forum that delves into all aspects of mental health, primarily for local counsellors to benefit from, but also an access point for the public to ask questions and enquire from a large population of online counsellors. It would be the ideal site for counsellors to review courses, discuss ethical dilemmas, relay real life stories and experiences, advertise work, placements and volunteering roles, recommend certain services and find experts and specialists to refer to.

Therapy for Life will be looking into putting together such a site with advice and recommendations from our networkers, it would be beneficial to organise a brainstorming session with our web designer who can design the online forum for us.

We also discussed how so many of the interesting courses and CPD events always seem so far away and deter many of us in Essex from travelling there.

We shall look into this also, and utilise the conference rooms at Southend's University of Essex to run some interesting courses and hopefully get some guest speakers in.

So all in all a very productive evening, we shall run the next one in June, and see how we can really impact positively on mental health in Essex.

If you want to attend the next networking evening, just contact Sam at: sam.c@therapyforlife.net

www.therapyforlife.net






Wednesday, April 13, 2016

What would be the last straw for you to finally get some help with all that worry and anxiety?



Many of us trundle on in life with various life tribulations happening around us. Some people are unfortunate to have more negative events in their lives than others.
Why is that?
Are you just unlucky?

It’s possible that you really do have more unfortunate things happening in your life than most, but it could also be the way you perceive it all...

Do you find yourself often worrying or anxious about future events?
Do you find yourself imagining the worst?

If that’s the case, ask yourself...
 “What’s the worst that could happen?”

If you answered the question honestly with yourself, then ask yourself again

“If the worst does happen.... can I handle it?”

We humans are a resilient bunch, and quite often your answer will be...

“YES but it will be tough, uncomfortable, dreadful, scary, embarrassing and I’ll hate it... but I can handle it”

So, leading up to these events... how do you stop worrying about it in the meantime? 

The answer is by accepting that anxiety and worry is a part of our lives, and instead of avoiding the things that worry you most, find courage and face up to them head on with help and support.

By looking at events and situations as if through a friend’s eyes, what advice would they give you? What would they do in this situation?

By perceiving the problem as if from another person’s unaffected point of view, it gives us a moments ‘time out’ from the issue that is consuming us, and sometimes reveals new options and solutions.

It isn’t healthy mentally or physically for people to be in a constant state of worry or anxiety, but accepting that it’s part of life, and getting the help you need to reduce it to a manageable amount, is absolutely the best thing you can do for yourself. Afterall, all that worrying is taking up perfectly good hours that could be better spent feeling calm and happy.

At Therapy for Life we help you discover the root of your worry and teach you new techniques to get you coping and feeling better. If you would like to know more contact Sam for a friendly chat




Friday, April 8, 2016

Keeping Emotions tucked away leads to an unhealthy and unhappy you.



Emotional Constipation leads to Health Problems

When we don't allow ourselves to feel certain emotions, the emotional energy stays stuck in our systems. Stored emotional energy stagnates, creating build up and emotional toxicity. It is the emotional equivalent of constipation. For your gastro-intestinal system to function properly, it needs to have regular movements. Otherwise, constipation leads to all kinds of problems, like discomfort, headaches, irritability and eventually, a seriously toxic system. Similarly, the emotional system needs to have regular movements and releases, or it will also back up and toxify.

As emotional constipation blocks your system, it can lead to all kinds of problems from low energy and mild depression, to serious conditions and diseases like cancer.

Hidden Emotions and Addictions

When we push emotions down, they don't go away, they stay in our systems waiting to be expressed in some way. In order to keep pushing down what we feel, we often turn to numbing ourselves through some kind of addiction. We might numb ourselves with food, alcohol, sex, drugs, work, religion, etc. Potentially anything in the universe can be misused in order to avoid feeling our truth.

Hidden Emotions and Unhealthy Relationship Patterns

In order to deny certain emotions, you literally have to disconnect from parts of yourself. When you disconnect from your emotional truth, you also disconnect from your internal compass. Internally disconnected, you make choices that are not healthy for you. For example, you may form relationships with unsuitable people. Or, the people may be okay, but you form unhealthy ways of relating to them.

As you try to form relationships in your present life, hidden emotions can rise up to create constant roadblocks. Looking out through emotions stored in your own system, you see others through the lens of

old fears, old anger and old sadness

Then you try to play out these old emotions on someone new who is not actually the root cause of your emotional issues.

When we don't take responsibility for healing our emotional baggage, we expect too much of our relationships. We expect others to be more than loving and supportive.

Not taking responsibility for healing our own baggage, we demand our relationships become therapy to heal our past.


One of the greatest gifts we can give our relationships is to face and heal our own emotions. Also, one of the most powerful gifts we can give ourselves is to take a risk and find the courage to feel and heal...

If you or someone you know is in need of unlocking that emotion, please contact Sam or Jackie at Therapy for Life