It’s likely you are considering coming to counselling because of how you are feeling about yourself or because something important has happened in your life.

Counselling can help you come to an improved awareness of what is going on for you while helping you find better ways to cope. Counselling can also help you recognise and challenge the messages that have shaped and formed you into the person you are today.

These messages usually come from your family, school, work, religion, the media and other social institutions and they often bring with them notions of what is right and wrong. Conforming to negative and oppressive messages can leave you feeling that you have not been able to be yourself.

You might end up thinking you’ve made the wrong choices, drifted into a job you’ve no interest in, settled down with the wrong partner, put up with things you know you shouldn’t put up with or felt unable to reach your full potential.

Experiences such as trauma, bereavement, childhood abuse, early separation, emotional neglect, exclusion and bullying can increase suffering and distress and impact on how you might think or feel about yourself.

Unless you are able to confront these feelings and try to understand them, they can become imprinted deep within you and you can carry them throughout your life. The result is that you make the same mistakes over and over, get caught up in cycles of self-defeating behaviour and become unwell.

However, with the right support, adverse messages can be deciphered, scripts can be rewritten and assumptions can be challenged. You can enable change.

Counselling can act as a turning point in your life.