Do you feel confused, hurt, angry, no one is listening and no one cares? We care, and will listen. Contact currently offer four major counselling projects:
Lifeline Crisis Response
Telephone counselling service for people in crisis or despair. Lifeline also offers free face to face and telephone counselling, mentoring, befriending and complementary therapies.
Community-based counselling
Confidential counselling for people of all ages, based in a safe, local environment.
Further Education College and Schools Counselling
Some Further Education Colleges and Schools have invited Contact to provide counselling to students and staff. Check it out where you study, we may have a clinic on your campus. Contact can also provide whole agency or small group critical incident support on request.
Hard to talk?
Specialist Counselling
When it’s hard to find words to express how you feel we can provide Creative Art Therapy, Music Therapy, Drama Therapy or Play Therapy as well as more specialist support for minority groups such as same sex attracted young people, care leavers or young people involved in the justice system, from ethnic minorities or victims of violence or abuse.
Psychotherapy: Different Types Explained
Psychotherapy has many approaches and methods, from one-on-one conversations to therapy using techniques such as role-playing or dancing to help explore human emotions. Some therapists work with couples, families, or groups whose members have similar problems. Psychotherapy is carried out for adolescents, children, and adults.
Art therapy
Art therapy combines conversational therapy and creative exploration through painting with paints, crayons, pencils and sometimes through the creation of sculptures. Techniques can also include theatrical performances, puppetry, and movement. Sand therapy involves a method where clients select toys that represent people, animals and buildings and arrange them in a designated “theater in a box of sand” space. In a painting, the relationship of sizes, shapes, lines, free space, texture, shades, shadows, colors and distances reflects the client’s subjective reality.
Art therapy Derby works especially well for clients who have difficulties in verbal expression.
Art therapy is also suitable for trauma survivors, such as refugees, and people with learning disabilities.
Attachment-based psychotherapy
Attachment psychotherapy is a branch of relationship psychoanalysis that explores related emotional forms of attachment from birth.
This therapy builds on a theory that examines early childhood development and early attachments — safe, anxious, avoidable, ambivalent, or disturbed — in order to understand how the experience of problem attachments early in life manifested itself later in adult life.
By developing an attachment relationship with a therapist, clients have the opportunity to mourn past losses and to consider the impact of important relationships on their lives, present and past.
Behavioral therapy
Behavioral therapy is based on the theory that learned behavior as a reaction to past experiences can be forgotten or reformulated without focusing on the interpretation of unusual behavior.
This type of therapy can be used to help people with fears, addictions, obsessive and compulsive disorders. The emphasis is on getting the client to achieve goals and change their behavioral responses to problems such as stress or anxiety.
Body therapy
Body therapy encompasses a number of holistic approaches. In the context of this type of therapy, it is considered how the human body and its emotional, mental, spiritual, social and behavioral aspects of life influence each other. The whole complex of relationships between mind and body is taken into account.
Different types of body therapy can help address issues at different levels, including body, emotions, mind and spirit. Many psychological problems (eating disorders, depression, panic attacks) have an impact on the body.
Short-term therapy
In the context of short-term therapy, a variety of psychotherapy techniques are used. The emphasis is on accurate observation, the client’s natural data is used, and the temporary inclusion of faith in the incredible is encouraged to allow new perspectives and different perspectives to be considered.
The primary goal is to help the client view their current circumstances in a broader context. Brief therapy is considered solution-oriented, and therapists are more interested in current factors that are hindering change than in the causes of problems. Here, not one specific method is applied but different approaches, which can have the final result. Short-term therapy is carried out for a short time, usually in the planned number of sessions.
Cognitive analytical therapy
Cognitive analytical therapy brings together theories that explore the connections between language and thinking, as well as the historical, cultural, and social influences on human actions. Clients are encouraged to use their own resources and develop skills to change destructive behaviors and negative ways of thinking and acting.
This therapy is short term (16 weeks), structured and directed. For example, a therapist can ask a person to keep a diary. The therapist works with the client, focuses on changing behavior patterns, and teaches alternative problem-solving strategies. Attention is also paid to understanding the links between childhood behaviors, social influences and their impact on the client as an adult.
Dance movement therapy
Dance movement therapy is an expressive form of psychotherapy based on the belief that body and mind are interconnected. Through movement and dance, the client has the opportunity to explore in a creative way emotional, cognitive, physical and social cohesion.
Therapists work on the principle that movements reflect the thinking and feeling of each individual. Recognizing and justifying the client’s movements, the therapist encourages him/her to develop new emotional experiences, obtained through certain adaptive movements that contribute to solving psychological problems.
Dance movement therapy can be practiced individually with a therapist or in a group. The client does not need to be a trained dancer to benefit from this type of therapy, as movement is an integral part of our being.
Drama therapy
Drama therapy implies the deliberate use of theatrical techniques such as play therapy NI, theatrical games, pantomime, puppetry, speech techniques, myths, rituals, storytelling and other techniques based on improvisation and promoting the development of creativity, imagination, learning skills, intuitive understanding and personal growth. This therapy can be used in hospitals, schools, prisons, and other organizations.
Drama therapy provides opportunities for individuals or groups to explore personal and/or social issues in a creative setting, calmly reflect on existing beliefs, attitudes and feelings, and find alternative courses of action. The therapist encourages clients to introspect, reflect on and express feelings about themselves and others.
Existential psychotherapy
Existential psychotherapy helps the client to realize the meaning of life through the willingness to boldly face it and the problems associated with it. From an existential point of view, there is no essential or predetermined meaning in life, a person is completely free and is responsible for everything, so the meaning must be found or created. This can cause a sense of the meaninglessness of life, therefore this type of therapy explores the client’s experience of the human condition and seeks to clarify a person’s understanding of values and beliefs, expressing in a direct form what previously remained unspoken. The client is given the opportunity to live more original and purposeful while accepting the limitations and contradictions of human life.
This type of therapy is considered a serious study of what a person is in general, and often it entails a painful process of direct confrontation with those aspects of human life that people usually try to avoid.
Family therapy
Family therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on family relationships. It is built on the premise that the problem lies within the family as a whole, and not in the individual within the family. This type of therapy also includes couples therapy and systemic family therapy.
Family therapy encourages change and development. The emphasis is on how families interact with each other, highlighting the importance of a strong family for psychological health and well-being. Regardless of what is the source of the problem or who it is associated with, the therapist seeks to involve the whole family in the process of reaching correct solutions by looking for constructive ways in which family members can support each other through direct participation. An experienced therapist knows how to influence dialogue in such a way as to best use the strength and wisdom of the family as a whole.
(In this case, a family is understood as a long-term active relationship within a family, ties within which may be blood or not).
Gestalt therapy
Gestalt is a highly positive and practical integrative therapeutic approach. It means an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt therapy is a psychotherapeutic method that builds on the belief that people have a natural desire for health, but that outdated behaviors and dominant ideas can create blocks that interrupt the natural cycle of good self-feeling, thereby leading to interaction with others.
Gestalt therapy addresses what is happening at a given moment in time, making a person aware of him-/herself, his/her reactions and interactions with other people. The belief that being totally in the here-and-now creates the potential for the client to further experience, enthusiasm and the courage to live life to the fullest. The therapist working with this method monitors how clients avoid here-and-now contacts, how they avoid changes and certain behaviors or symptoms that the clients find undesirable or unsatisfactory.
Group analysis
Group analysis combines the results of psychoanalytic analysis with the study of interpersonal interaction in a social context. The goal of therapy is to achieve better integration of the client into his network of relationships, that is, in the family, collective and society. Group analysis focuses on the relationship between the person and the rest of the group. Group analysis can be applied in many areas of human relations such as teaching, learning and organizational consulting.
The theory is based on the premise that deep and lasting changes happen within a carefully selected group, the general composition of which reflects social norms. Group analysis views the group as an organic whole, and the therapist’s role is to support the group, which becomes a dynamic independent whole and functions within the framework of the socio-cultural context, which in turn affects the process.
Group psychotherapy
Group psychotherapy is a section of psychotherapy designed to help people cope with life’s difficulties and problems but in a group situation.
In the context of group therapy, a therapist works with a several clients at the same time. Although this group was originally created with the aim of reducing costs and increasing productivity, the participants soon realize positive therapeutic effects that could not be achieved with a one-on-one therapist. For example, interpersonal problems are handled well within the group. Group therapy can include psychodrama, body therapy, or constellations.
The goal of group psychotherapy is to support solutions to emotional problems and to help group members develop. Such interactions may not necessarily be entirely positive, as the problems clients have in their day to day life will inevitably be reflected in the communication within the group. However, it provides valuable opportunities for working through such problems in a therapeutic setting, where a generalization of the experience takes place, which can then be interpreted in real life. An experienced therapist knows how to select the right group members to support the group process.
Humanistic integral psychotherapy
Humanistic integral psychotherapy works with a full spectrum of influences that contribute to the development of a person and his/her relationship with other people and society.
During the conduct of humanistic integral psychotherapy, both the client and the psychotherapist are actively involved in the formation of the processes of assessment, correction and analysis of the results. This approach focuses on the importance of the client’s ability for self-regulation, self-fulfillment, responsibility and choice to facilitate the process of change. The psychotherapist helps the client to realize his/her potential. The therapist also takes into account the impact of the external world on the client’s internal world when assessing the importance of the social, cultural and political realms of experience.
Humanistic integral psychotherapy is available in various areas of the public, private and voluntary sectors and is suitable for individuals, couples, children, families, groups and organizations.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy uses hypnosis to induce a deep state of relaxation and altered consciousness, during which the unconscious mind is especially capable of accepting new or alternative possibilities and ideas.
In the field of hypnotherapy, the unconscious is considered a resource for achieving well-being and the development of creativity. When evaluating this sphere of mind through hypnosis, opportunities open up for building an orientation towards health in the body.
Hypnotherapy can be used to change a client’s behavior, attitudes and emotions, as well as to treat pain, anxiety, stress-related illnesses and addictions, which will contribute to personal development.
The British Council for Psychotherapy considers hypnotherapy to be a sub-division of hypnopsychotherapy. This means that any specialist registered with the British Council for Psychotherapy has the right to work with problems that are within the competence of the hypnotherapist, but additional training is required to work on a deeper level with more complex emotional and psychological problems.
Personal counseling
Personal counseling is based on the assumption that the person seeking support in solving a problem enters into an open relationship with the therapist, who allows the client to freely express their emotions and feelings. This type of therapy is also called client-centered psychotherapy or Rogers therapy.
Personal counseling is suitable for clients who would like to work out specific psychological habits or thought patterns. The therapist assumes that the client is the best judge of his/her own experience and therefore is able to achieve his/her potential for growth and problem-solving. The therapist, working in the context of personal counseling, provides an enabling environment to ensure that such potential is manifested through unconditional positive attitude and empathic understanding, which enable the client to come to terms with negative feelings and unleash the inner resources of strength and freedom to make the necessary changes.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis deals with the study of the mind, being a systematized body of knowledge about human behavior and a method for the treatment of psychological and emotional illnesses.
Regular psychoanalysis sessions create an environment in which unconscious patterns can be brought to a conscious level in order to subject them to change. The client’s relationship with the analyst has an important influence on the client’s unconscious behavior and itself becomes a central focus in which the client’s behavioral patterns are highlighted in the context of the real-time session relationship.
Freud’s psychoanalysis is a special type of psychoanalysis in which a person undergoing psychoanalysis expresses thoughts in words using methods such as free associations, fantasies, and dreams. The analyst interprets them in order to create for the client the correct view of solving important questions and problems in the client’s life.
Freud believed that unwanted thoughts from early childhood are suppressed by the unconscious mind but continue to influence our feelings, thoughts, emotions and behavior. These repressed feelings often surface in adulthood in the form of conflict, depression, and the like, as well as in dreams and creative activities. These unconscious aspects are explored in sessions through the intervention of the analyst, who speaks openly about the client’s painful defenses, desires, and feelings of guilt.
Relationship counseling
Relationship counseling helps people recognize and work through or reconcile troubling differences and recurring patterns of suffering in the context of existing relationships. The therapist explores the client’s feelings, values and expectations, engaging them in conversations, discussing solutions to problems, and considering alternative and new possibilities.
Relationship counseling is suitable for family members, couples, workers or employers in the work setting, professionals and their clients.
Mental health help and support services UK
If you are confused and need urgent support, there are lots of places you can contact NI:
Samaritans
Telephone: 116 123 (24 hours a day, free to call)
Email: jo@samaritans.org
Website: https://www.samaritans.org
Mind Infoline
Telephone: 0300 123 3393 (9am-6pm Monday to Friday) or text 86463
Email: info@mind.org.uk
Website: www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helplines.
Rethink Mental Illness Advice Line
Telephone: 0300 5000 927 (9.30am – 4pm Monday to Friday)
Email: advice@rethink.org
Website: http://www.rethink.org/about-us/our-mental-health-advice
Saneline
Telephone: 0300 304 7000 (4:30pm-10:30pm)
Website: www.sane.org.uk/what_we_do/support/helpline
The Mix
Telephone: 0808 808 4994 (11am-11pm, free to call)
Email: Helpline email form
Crisis Support: Text ‘THEMIX’ to 85258.
Website: www.themix.org.uk/get-support
ChildLine
Telephone: 0800 1111
Website: www.childline.org.uk
Side by Side
Website: https://sidebyside.mind.org.uk/about
SHOUT
Text: 85258
Website: https://www.giveusashout.org/
NHS England IAPT
Website: https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-psychological-therapies-service/