Talking Therapies

 “Sometimes it’s hard to talk to family and friends and you just need that one person who takes the time to listen.”

 We offer a range of diiferent talking therapies to help you with mental and emotional issues like stress, anxiety and depression.

Treatment involves talking to our trained therapists bout your thoughts, feeling and behaviours in a safe non-judgemental way. By talking through issues, they will help you make sense of things and understand yourself better, including resolving complicated feelings, or helping you recognise unhelpful patterns in the way you think or act, and find ways to help you change them (if you want to).

Talking therapy for you…

Talking therapy has been a part of Summertown Clinic’s total health concept since the 80’s

Mental and Emotional wellbeing are an essential part of everybodies health status. The old conceptual idea that our bodies and minds were somehow seperate an unattached has long been dismissed. This often overlooked aspect of our health is more easily accesible than ever, and in a world that never seems to stop, having a moment to talk and appraise yourself is so important.

What is Talking Therapy?

Sometimes referred to as counselling, therapy, psychotherapy, or talking treatment, it’s the process of talking to a trained professional about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours often to help issues like stress, anxiety or depression.

Who can benefit from it?

Our Talking Therapists tend to see young adults and older clients often after they’ve been through difficult life events, relationship problems, upsetting or traumatic experiences, depression or anxiety.

It’s ok to try therapy at any point in your life though. 

What research is there?

There is a substantial body of evidence to support the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for a variety of mental health problems; depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, OCD, and PTSD.
Clinical Hypnosis, NLP, & EFT have less evidence to support their use.

Why us?

Abi and Linda, have decades of experience, and have worked with thousands of clients to help them achieve their goals too.

We have a private and quiet talking therapy room, where Abi and Linda work from.

 

Talking Therapies at Summertown Clinic

CBT & Clinical Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a valuable and effective therapy with which to address, release and resolve emotional and psychological issues, challenges, trauma and unhelpful habits.

Our Unconscious

Often, in its attempts to protect us, our unconscious can appear to be creating the opposite to what we consciously want. For example it can undermine, limit and cause us to self-sabotage. It can also raise our fears and anxieties to phobic levels, creating an avoidance of a particular activity or stimulus it perceives as dangerous, even though logically we know the opposite to be true.

Whilst our personal unconscious only ever seeks to promote our well-being it can at times be operating from out of date learning and interpretation.  This can result in an unhelpful processing of and responding to situations and experiences.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state of focused attention and physical relaxation which we can experience in everyday life. Have you ever been absorbed in a book or TV show and simply ignored what’s going on around you?  That’s a very similar psychological state – one of deep absorption and concentrated attention.

Hypnosis is not ‘mind control’ – you are always in control.  It is a state which many describe as being calm, relaxed and dreamlike, although it is not like being asleep as clients are aware of what is being said.

Clinical hypnotherapy is a collaborative process in which we work together to find what works best for you to activate your inner resources and achieve realistic goals.  Your hypnotherapist works using various relaxation and other therapeutic techniques, imagery and agreed therapeutic suggestions for change.

The basic premise of using hypnosis as a psychotherapeutic tool is that the conscious mind relaxes enough to allow change at the deeper unconscious level to bring about positive solutions.   Clinical hypnotherapy can therefore help you to find meaningful alternatives to your current unhelpful ways of thinking, feeling or behaving.   It can help you become more accepting of yourself and others and can be very helpful in encouraging personal development as well as unblocking your inner potential.

Using clinical hypnosis in therapy can enable an unconscious relearning process and an update and integration of helpful core beliefs and solutions which can then change our feeling states, behaviour and life choices.

Cognitive Behavioural  Hypnotherapy 

Uses a combination of both clinical hypnosis and the cognitive behavioural therapy model.  This approach enables us to identify our unhelpful ways of thinking and gives tools to change this for the better.

Using this approach we are able to deal successfully with the irrational fears and negative thinking patterns that prevent you from getting the best out of your life.

Our Talking Therapists

We have 2 talking therapists, but actually I think they should be called listening therapists because actually they’re even better at that!

Abi Strevens trained as a clinical hypnotherapist at the London College of Clinical Hypnotherapy at Imperial College, London, and is a member of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis.

Abi is committed to working with people, in partnership, to make the changes that allow them to live life to its fullest potential.

Linda is a Clinical Hypnotherapist who specialises in anxiety, including fears/phobias and confidence issues. She loves helping her clients to improve their lives by dealing with whatever is troubling them.

Linda also enjoys treating issues ranging from depression to weight control.

Treatment Pricing

Treatment is on a per appointment basis as below.
These prices are correct up at time of publication – for any information about concessions, please contact us.

First Appointment

The first session we get to know you and come up with a treatment plan. It involves taking your case history and getting to know your desired outcomes. In this session we are looking for solutions to the things you want to change, looking to what you want in the future rather than being stuck in the past.

The session lasts 1½ hours and doesn’t always involve hypnosis.

Follow Up Appointment

Each subsequent session (lasting up to an hour) might typically consist of:

  • Guiding you into a deeply focused state
  • The ‘therapy part’ of the session
  • Teaching you coping mechanisms, and self-help tools
  • Asking you to carry out work in between sessions to keep you on track to change.

Telephone Consultation

As face to face appointments aren’t always possible or desirable we’ve been doing online consultations which have proved both popular and effective.

The Zoom based consultation lasts about 30 minutes, and gives us the chance to assess you, explain what’s happening, and how you can treat yourself. This often involves advice and exercise prescription.