How Can Counselling or Psychotherapy Help?

How you benefit will largely depend upon many things, including what you bring.  It is fairly likely however, that if you do benefit, you will experience something of the following:

Firstly, your brain will feel different.  As neuroscience tells us, (through the concept of 'neuroplasticity') good psychotherapy will re-wire it with new neuronal pathways, as the way you think and feel about things changes.    

Secondly, your nervous system will calm down.  The neurobiologist Daniel Siegel refers to this as the widening of your 'Window of Tolerance.'  This means that you are less likely to become stuck in 'fight/flight' or 'freeze' but more able to access your calm, grounded, emotionally-regulated self, especially at those tricky times in life.   

Thirdly, your life will change for the better.   I like to be reminded here of some wisdom traditions which maintain that although things can look fixed, stuck, they never actually stay the same.  Change of some sort is inevitable and in good psychotherapy it is possible to harness this positively.

Finally, I like to draw upon the the Serenity Prayer, (from a psychological rather than religious perspective) which reminds us that while change happens, it sometimes 'dances with' acceptance - of those things we realize we can't change.   This may sometimes bring relief among other feelings or a lot of grief.  It can be delicate work indeed.