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Author Archives: Kate McLaughlin

1. World Mental Health day –  meeting the challenges of an unequal world 

   8th October 2021 8:00 am Leave a Comment

   Once again it is the time of year for us to acknowledge the arrival of the annually observed World Mental Health Day. This Sunday, the 10th of October, charities and organisations across the world are united in awareness and discussion around the nuances of mental health, and concern for the prevalence of mental illness. As in other years, the World Federation for Mental Health has stipulated a specific theme to observe. The theme for 2021 is mental health in an unequal world. 

   At JSA Psychotherapy, we are practiced at recognising and treating the various forms of mental illness that are present within our community, and have offered suggestions in the past for bolstering an individual approach to better mental wellbeing. As such, we have been able to recognise certain patterns over the course of our time in operation. Most often, we identify that our clients are suffering from mental health issues from within the more common groupings.  

   These include depressive disorders, where the mind shuts itself off from experiencing emotions, and particularly feelings of hope or possibility. It does this because to do so is too painful under the circumstances. Combatting this generally requires a reserve of trust and faith in the future, as well as a reason to overcome the depression. 

   Besides depression, the other primary cases we treat are those of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both are related to trauma, often complex trauma. Exposure to overwhelmingly distressing and terrifying experiences, and/or the looming expectation of them, leaves us feeling unable to cope with the potential to suffer similar experiences again in future. As such, we may develop a variety of adverse coping strategies to withstand these feelings.  

   Traumatic incidents will typically also leave fragmented remnants of the experience fully unresolved. This obviously contributes to anxiety and depression, by making you feel frequently or perpetually hopeless, numb and/or unable to cope. However, unresolved trauma also has adverse developmental effects. Through our work with the ChildTrauma Academy and their Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, we are aware that cognitive and social functions critical to healthy functioning as an adult are unable to develop fully while hindered by complex trauma.  

   As such, the more trauma a person suffers before the age of 26, the more likely they are to suffer from the inhibited development of essential components of higher thinking, emotional regulation, memory, learning function, social interaction and emotional attachment. Worse still, this phenomenon is exponentially more severe, the earlier in life that trauma occurs. 

   

   To relate this back to today’s theme, social inequality obviously affects the likelihood and severity of single event and complex trauma, and by extension, the threat that it will occur in future. Likewise, the more marginalised or isolated an individual is, the more their ability to cope with and recover from such trauma becomes, exacerbating their impact further. To relate this to the lived experience of people within the UK alone, systemic poverty, persecution and predation of all kinds serve to concentrate the trauma –and threat thereof- that people experience in intersecting and compounding ways, while debilitating the networks of support and individual resources necessary to withstand them. 

   Despite this, the majority of psychotherapeutic models for addressing trauma recovery all work within the framework of healing the client from past events that have so far gone unresolved, while preparing them for the future. Even the name post-traumatic stress disorder denotes a trauma that has now concluded. Crucially however, when the sources of trauma are those born from material inequality, that trauma is often ongoing.  

   As such, anxiety and depression responses may be considered as active coping mechanisms that the body and mind have in place for survival. The challenge of supporting a recovery from them as symptoms of ongoing external circumstances then, becomes much more complex and difficult to address. 

   This isn’t to say that there is nothing that can be done about them, but on a day such as this it serves to highlight the disparity that issues of social inequality construct, as well as how they form the underpinning core of everything related to the care and support of mental health issues.  

   For our part as a psychotherapy service, we are able to expertly and compassionately diagnose issues of mental illness and treat them with bespoke clinical support to the best of our ability. Within our practice specifically, this support is underpinned by trauma-informed methodology that acknowledges the developmental factors of complex trauma touched upon above. 

   If you are curious to learn more about our models of clinical psychotherapy, have a question for us, or would like to get in touch to procure our services, please contact us on 01282686345 or at office@jsapsychotherapy.com.

2. What Are The Benefits of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy?

   15th September 2021 3:59 pm Leave a Comment

   Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) is a form of therapy that involves spending the session in the company of one or more horses. As well as the therapist guiding the session, there will also be an accompanying horse handler to pay attention to the animals, making sure that the session is completely safe and structured for everybody involved. One misconception that people often have about EAP is that it involves riding the horses, or requires some familiarity with how to handle them. Actually, anybody of any age can find it easy and helpful to introduce working with horses into their therapeutic programme, and it can be performed 1:1 or in groups. But what are the benefits of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy?

   What’s particularly interesting and valuable about EAP compared to other forms of therapy is how useful it can be for developing emotional regulation skills. If somebody is coming into a session while carrying some unresolved emotional distress with them, EAP can be really impactful for helping to relieve it. One of the reasons for this is that horses are very empathic creatures. All horses have a powerful herd instinct. They can very easily pick up on the anxiety or distress of other creatures around them, including humans.  

   They’re also naturally inclined to try to help soothe those worries, and will encourage people around them to feel settled and safe together. We’ve heard it said quite often that in many ways, it can be easier to talk to a horse about your worrisome thoughts and feelings than it is to talk to a human. A big reason for this is that a horse isn’t going to judge you based upon why you say in the same ways you could be worried a person might. 

   Besides this, there are other ways that working therapeutically with horses can help people -particularly young or excitable children- to feel emotionally grounded. Besides being a naturally great way to help offload stress and worries, that emotional awareness also makes horses very prone to becoming wary and skittish when they can feel somebody nearby is being very energetic. Because of this, you need to be able to stay reasonably calm to engage with them at all. In practice, this means that being around horses in a structured, therapeutic environment, inherently both encourages emotional regulation and helps to support it when it’s difficult.  

   

   This sort of regulation and grounding is a really important foundation skill. On way of thinking about it could be as the trunk of a tree, with all of the other social and learning skills branching out of it. After all, if you struggle keeping yourself calm and grounded, then you’ll also struggle to think straight or get on well with other people. Being able to keep yourself feeling safe and calm is a complicated skill which can take time and patience to get used to. For some people who haven’t had many good chances to practice that, the best place to try is in an emotionally safe environment. Horses are perfect for providing that opportunity.  

   Because of this, therapeutic work with horses can make a huge difference in the lives of children and young people, because they are early on this particular developmental window, where practicing emotional regulation can make all the difference on the rest of the life skills they are learning. For this reason, we usually like to run group sessions of EAP for children in school or activity groups to try together. Besides being more cost-effective to arrange, having the horse there is just as beneficial for all people involved. However, being able to engage with EAP in a group does also bring its own benefits.  

   For example, those crucial social skills of emotional awareness mentioned above are necessarily put into play there among other humans as well. Also, when you develop those skills with same age peers, it’s easier then to take them away to similar environments without the horse. Put simply, learning to keep yourself calm and grounded enough that a horse will feel comfortable around you while you’re in a group with your classmates teaches you how to do the same thing for other reasons in a similarly busy social space. 

   There are many benefits of equine assisted psychotherapy that can help young people. If you are curious to learn more about EAP and our other types of clinical psychotherapy, have a question for us, or would like to get in touch to procure our services, please see our dedicated EAP page, contact us on 01282686345 or at office@jsapsychotherapy.com.
   

3. Youth Mental Health Day 2021 – How Trauma-Informed practice can help young people to #StrideForward

   6th September 2021 4:44 pm Leave a Comment

   Today (7th September 2021) is Youth Mental Health Day. Set up in 2020 by Stem4, a charity that supports young people to build positive mental health. This year’s Youth Mental Health Day theme is #StrideForward and focuses on how the past year has impacted young people and how they will stride forward and move towards positive mental health.  

   Over the past year and a half, the pandemic has brought distress, trauma and grief to all of us in varying degrees. Even for those who have not experienced direct bereavement or life-changing injury from the virus, the uncertainty, isolation and helplessness of this period are certain to leave a lasting impact on everyone, to say nothing of how this has made it all the worse for those who have.

   Young people, specifically, have plenty of their own unique issues that the pandemic have instigated or exacerbated. The already overwhelming pressure of schoolwork and exams being a familiar example that has only been further intensified by the disruption of quarantine. Indeed, leading statistics report that 1 in 6 people aged 5-19 have been diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point.

   Social isolation and confinement is challenging and upsetting enough for an adult, but as explored in previous articles, significant adverse life events experienced during early life and adolescence can have a marked detriment on cognitive and emotional development that may go on to cause exponential harm in later life. Much of the difficulty inherent in being able to move forward from this harm involves being able to recognise the exact nature of it, and to respond accordingly.

   Our usage of the NMT framework refines our practice through a trauma-informed lens, through which we are able to express with confidence and experience the quantitative impact that traumatic events such as these will have on developing minds. Fortunately, this model also enables us to pinpoint in exactly what ways the harm has manifested, and thus, what model of clinical psychotherapy to prescribe to recover from it in an adequately bespoke manner

   This is the same model which we incorporate within our involvement with young people in the care system through our sister company Life Change Care. Though the assessment and therapy techniques that we utilise here are designed to accommodate the high-end need presented by many of the young people in our care, such as those with chronic emotional and behavioural difficulties, they are designed upon foundational principles of development and trauma recovery that can apply to anyone in need of integrative support.

    

   Here at JSA Psychotherapy Limited, we specialise in many different forms of therapy to help support young people and their mental health. If you feel like you need some support with your mental health, or know someone who might, contact us today to see how we can help.

   

4. National Read A Book Day 2021

   8:00 am Leave a Comment

   Today (6th September 2021) is National Read a Book Day.

   The point of National Read a Book Day is to take a few moments during the day to sit down and read a book.

   Reading can be very beneficial for your mental health and wellbeing. It allows us to challenge our perspectives, escape into different worlds, broaden our imaginations and is known to reduce stress.

    

   What books have we been reading?

   We’ve comprised a list of the books that our staff have currently been reading:

   

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

5. Is Equine and Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy Effective?

   21st July 2021 4:05 pm Leave a Comment

   The use of animals in therapeutic intervention is becoming more and more popular in modern professional practices but is equine and animal-assisted psychotherapy effective?

   Animal-assisted psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy that involves animals, typically horses, in the client’s recovery process. For many people, interacting with animals has often demonstrated itself to be an excellent way of regulating emotions. This makes the process of engaging with therapy much easier as a result. This is especially true for clients who struggle to engage with talking therapy.

   The reason that animal-assisted therapy is so effective is because animals such as horses and dogs are empathic enough to easily pick up on how a person is feeling. As such, they provide support in a way that is inherently non-judgmental. Since animals can only communicate using nonverbal means, this also makes them great counterparts for assisting clients with preverbal trauma to access and convey their complex emotions.

    

   Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

   

   Equine therapy is a highly specialised and effective form of therapy which  involves clients working with horses, a therapist, and a horse handler.

   Horses are herd animals with a pronounced flight instinct. This means they will pick up on a client’s stress and discomfort very quickly. If the horse chooses to retreat away from the client, it is likely that they are picking up on something from them that is making them uncomfortable. This can be a great reflection tool for our clients in considering the nonverbal messages and body language they are communicating.

   Similarly, this deep sense of empathy causes the horses to want to be with their human companions and help them to resolve emotional distress. They can often achieve this by serving as a blank slate for the clients to project their feelings onto.

   At JSA Psychotherapy, we are fortunate enough to have access to a 10-acre equestrian facility including fields, stables, an arena and our own horses.

   Our horses regularly prove to be extremely popular with clients, but we understand that some people are wary and unsure around horses so as an alternative, we also run therapeutic sessions involving other therapy animals such as dogs and chickens.

    

   Other Animal-Assisted Psychotherapies

    

   

   While equine therapy is the most common and popular form of animal-assisted therapy that we deliver, we also offer dog assisted therapy and chicken assisted therapy as alternatives.

   The type of animal chosen for this animal-assisted therapy is personal preference and depends on how comfortable the client feels with the different animals.

    

   Dog Assisted Psychotherapy

   Our dog assisted therapy can take place in many different ways. This could be in the form of dog walks outside the practice or having the dogs join the sit-down sessions.

   We currently have two therapy dogs – Dottie and Ruby. Dottie is a 6-year-old Jack Russel terrier/pug cross and Ruby is a labradoodle, and the newest and youngest member of the team at just 11 weeks old!

    

   

   Their presence during clinical psychotherapy can work wonders to help our clients to practice mindful thinking. It can also help them to achieve the emotional regulation necessary to get the most out of their time with us.

    

   If you want to find out more, have a look at our dedicated equine and animal-assisted psychotherapy services page.

   If you think you might benefit from our equine and animal-assisted therapy services, contact us today.

6. Top Tips for Dealing with Loneliness

   15th June 2021 12:25 pm Leave a Comment

   This week (14th to 18th June 2021) is Loneliness Awareness Week. Hosted by Marmalade Trust, this campaign aims to raise awareness of loneliness and get people talking about how to recognise and resolve it.

   Loneliness is sometimes stigmatised, which can make it difficult to talk about, but the past year has been truly challenging for everybody. This unifying experience of national lockdowns and restrictions on our social behaviours as well as prolonged isolation has caused many people to struggle with feeling lonely, making now the perfect time to talk about it.

   If you are or have ever felt lonely, we want you to know that that’s ok and provide you with our top tips for helping you cope with those feelings. Carry on reading to find out what they are.

    

   What is Loneliness?

    

   

    

   Feelings of loneliness might be related to missing a specific person that you are separated from, or you might be lacking the support of a wider social network. Loneliness can be experienced differently by different people in different circumstances, however, in a broad sense, loneliness is when you feel disconnected, isolated and distanced from others. Feelings of loneliness often come in waves depending on the situation or circumstance.

   Loneliness can be self-perpetuating, so the more lonely you feel, the more isolated you can become and this is part of why it can become stigmatised. It is important to remember that it is completely normal to feel lonely sometimes and there are people out there to support you and help you overcome those feelings.

    

   5 Tips to Help with the Feeling of Loneliness

    

   Top Tip 1: Be Kind to Yourself

    

   

    

   It is easy to be hard on yourself when you’re feeling lonely. Feeling ashamed of or uncomfortable with your circumstances can make you feel like there is something wrong with you – but remember that feeling lonely is normal and nothing to be ashamed of.

   It is important to be kind to yourself. Look after yourself and take some self-care time to do the things that make you happy. Taking a bath, reading, dancing or singing to favourite songs. You can also start a project to make something or learn something new.

    

   Top Tip 2: Reach Out and Surround Yourself with People You Love

    

   

    

   When you recognise that you are feeling lonely, try not to isolate yourself. Contact your friends and family and ask for a catch-up. You don’t have to talk about feeling lonely if you don’t want to, but just making a connection with someone can help.

   If you don’t want to talk to someone you’re already close to, try to make new connections by joining groups that have similar hobbies or interests to you or volunteer in your community.

    

   Top Tip 3: Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

    

   

    

   Social media in particular can make you feel lonely or inadequate whilst you’re scrolling through pictures and videos of other peoples activities. Remember that social media feeds are heavily curated, and those filtered moments that people choose to share are rarely a true reflection of the entirety of their life.

   Take social media breaks if you are finding it difficult to stop comparing yourself to others or practise gratitude to connect with the positives in your own life instead.

    

   Top Tip 4: Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Rest

    

   

    

   Sometimes you might find it difficult to switch off, but it is so important that you do. Rest allows you to heal your body, reduce stress, boost creativity and productivity and enhance your decision-making capabilities.

   Getting enough rest and having good sleep hygiene, in particular, can help give you the necessary energy to take good care of yourself, to reach out to others and to make healthier choices.

    

   Top Tip 5: Get Support With Your Feelings

    

   

    

    

    

   If you’re feeling lonely, speaking to a therapist is a healthy choice. When you’re feeling vulnerable, having your feelings validated makes a big difference and talk therapy will not only help you to feel connected and supported but will give you coping strategies to move forwards.

   Long-term loneliness can lead to a number of mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, self-harm behaviours and stress can increase the risk of developing physical health problems too. Connect with us on 01282 685345 or check out our contact us page and we’d be happy to help.

7. What Kate Did

   12th May 2021 10:30 am Leave a Comment

    

   I can hardly believe that it’s been an entire month since I began my apprenticeship with JSA Psychotherapy Ltd! It has flown by, and I’ve learnt so much already. To celebrate completing my first month, here’s an update as to what I’ve been up to and what’s coming up for me in the future.

    

   What Kate Did Before JSA Psychotherapy

    

   Before joining JSA Psychotherapy LTD, I completed a Level 2 apprenticeship in Business Admin with a focus on marketing, which is how I knew that I wanted to go into the marketing industry and complete a higher-level apprenticeship, to gain both the knowledge and experience of digital marketing.

   My previous apprenticeship allowed me to dip my toes into the marketing waters. It gave me experience within social media marketing, which I am so excited to be bringing to JSA Psychotherapy LTD – I have already started implementing my already existing knowledge into the company’s social media channels, so make sure you check them out to keep up to date with what’s going on!

   Before I started here, I was nervous, just like anyone else would be when starting a new job, but my determination and passion to make this role my own allowed me to become part of the team straight away.

   It’s always daunting being the new person, especially when you’re beginning your career journey and don’t know everything there is to know about the industry, but the team has welcomed me so warmly. From the moment I stepped through the door, I felt like I had been here for years.

    

   What Kate Did in her first month at JSA Psychotherapy

    

   From the second I sat down at my computer, it’s been non-stop learnings. From Kanban boards to email marketing, my first four weeks here have been full of learning opportunities that I’m sure will stay with me throughout my entire marketing career.

   During my first week, I learned how to use MailerLite, which is the platform JSA Psychotherapy uses to build and publish the JSA Magazine, which you can subscribe to here. I also learned how to access and report on the analytics from our marketing emails.

   Along with MailerLite, I learned how to use Eventbrite to upload training courses and workshops, so make sure to keep an eye out for any upcoming courses that will be on there. I also dabbled in WordPress and uploaded a blog, which you can read here.

   Towards the end of my first month, I began learning more about the analytical side of marketing, using Google Analytics and I even did a brief social media report for the team. I’m looking forward to delving deeper into analytics. I find it such an interesting topic and can see how valuable a part it is in the marketing toolkit.

   Not only have I began learning so much about marketing, but I’ve also learnt so much about JSA Psychotherapy, my new colleagues and have really settled into my new role.

    

   What will Kate do in the future?

   There are endless opportunities for me to get stuck into, like creating online courses, marketing campaigns and expanding our social media reach even more. I’ve joined JSA Psychotherapy at such an exciting time filled with growth and new adventures and I’m really looking forward to the times ahead of me.

   Keep up to date with what’s going on by following us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and why not check out some of our other blogs while you’re here?