What is CBT

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a talking therapy which helps you to resolve problems by understanding how your thoughts, feelings, and your behaviours create patterns in your life, and helping you to break out of those patterns.  CBT is focused on helping you to understand how to work with these patterns yourself so that you become your own therapist.  For this reason CBT tends to be a short therapy only requiring a few weeks (unless the issues are long standing).

CBT is recommended in the NICE guidelines for treatment of many anxiety conditions as well as depression and sleeping problems.

An assessment session lasts 60 mins.  Bringing along a "problem list" of the issues that have been bothering you allows us to focus on these issues in the assessment to identify what is happening for you, where the problems might have originated and  what might be maintaining them.  After the assessment session we will begin into therapy with weekly sessions of 50 mins.  Therapy can be done online or face to face.  Research during the pandemic has found that therapy practised online is as effective as face to face, and has the advantage of being able to easily fit into your life, minimising time off work.

What I can help you with 

I am a registered member of the BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy), and I am trained to work with the following conditions (which may be in the perinatal period, or at another time in your life):

• General Anxiety Disorder
• Panic Attacks
• Social Anxiety
• Health Anxiety
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Single Incident)
• Depression
• Low Self Esteem
• Specific Phobia

If you have found this website and are not a new parent you may be wondering if I’m the right therapist for you.   You may even have been given my name by your GP, and be wondering how I can help you when this website is focusing on babies and feeding babies.  I usually work 3 days each week as a CBT therapist (including working in NHS primary care where I am helping with all kinds of mental health issues).  The rest of my week I work in breastfeeding support and the website you are now visiting is aimed at reaching those in the perinatal community, which is why it is focused on babies.  If you would like to visit my website focused on mental health outside of the perinatal period you can find it here:  www.insighttherapiesni.com 

I am experienced in working with all of the conditions above, regardless of whether you are a new parent or not.  

Perinatal Mental Health

The perinatal period is a vulnerable time for our mental health.  It is a time where relationships and family dynamics change, we take on a new identity as a parent, we have many new skills to learn while having disrupted sleep and hormonal shifts.  We may be struggling with feeding or baby care, or a baby who is very unsettled.  One in 5 new parents struggle with their mental health, and one in 6 subsequent parents.  Perinatal mental health difficulties can be experience by both parents / caregivers.  Postnatal depression is a term that is recognised in society generally, but post natal anxiety is often not discussed as much even though it affects many parents.  This may take the form of worry, panic, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, obsessive checking on your baby etc.  You might feel that something is wrong with your baby, or have thoughts that just don't seem to go away around their weight / development / health / sleep /  safety / or even around the influence of your extended family on your baby.  You may be feeling that you are struggling to connect or bond with your baby, or that you are doing something wrong or not doing a good enough job as a parent.  Many people feel like this, or struggle with their anxious thoughts, and many don't want to tell anyone in case a health professional thinks they aren't capable of looking after their baby.  In fact these thoughts usually mean that you are a very attentive parent, but you are just worried.  CBT can be an very effective way of dealing with these issues, and you can be assured of empathy and understanding in our sessions.

How we feed our babies can have a big impact on mental health in the perinatal period.  If you want to breastfeed, and breastfeeding is going well, it is very protective of mental health.  In fact you are half as likely to experience a mental health problem.  If however, you want to breastfeed but are struggling and not getting the support you need you are twice as likely to experience a mental health problem.  Parents tell me that in these situations they are often advised to wean their babies, even when breastfeeding is something they feel is very important to them.  This is one of the reasons I trained in CBT.  I feel it is important for parents to be able to access mental health support which is also supportive of their feeding choices (whatever they may be) and that any CBT interventions will be supportive of your breastfeeding and attachment needs.

CBT Fees