Addiction
Addiction results when a person takes a substance such as alcohol, cocaine or nicotine, or engages in an activity that activates the reward centre of the brain. The continued use can become compulsive and interfere with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work, relationships, or health. The addict may not be aware that their behaviour is out of control and causing problems for themselves and others. Engaging with a psychologist can help you to understand how addiction works and learn new coping skills to make other choices.
Pain Management
Chronic pain is often debilitating and sufferers live in misery, often unable to work and the pain also affects their relationship with loved ones. You may have been told that the pain is “all in your head”, however your pain experience is real. The good news is that because the pain centre is located in your brain, not the cells of your body we can change your brains wiring to reduce your pain experience. See more info on our pain page.
Relationship Therapy
If your relationship is troubled therapy can help you to resolve your problems, get back on track, or end the relationship well by minimising conflict. This is especially important if you have children or stepchildren. if you have a history of relationship dysfunction and are wary of entering into a relationships, psychotherapy can help you to discover your old relationship patterns and change to new ones. Therapy aims to promote strength within the relationship, improve communication, decrease emotional avoidance and decrease dysfunctional behaviour. If you are dating and finding it difficult and overwhelming, we can help to guide you into dating do's and dont's, including how to spot signs that you dating a narcissist, or recovering from narcissistic abuse.
Anxiety - Phobias - OCD - Social Anxiety
We all feel anxious at times however extreme Anxiety can be debilitating, can disrupt relationships, employment and stop us from achieving what we want to in life. For some it can lead to panic attacks, phobia's and efforts to control the anxiety such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Many of the ways that we try to manage our anxiety (such as over thinking) can actually make it worse.
We teach you the physiological and neurological mechanisms of anxiety and strategies to learn to manage your mind, turn off your sympathetic nervous system and turn on your parasympathetic nervous system. Anxiety responds well to psychological therapy and the treatment choice is cognitive based ACT therapy. A range of nutritional supports can be beneficial, check out our nutritional therapy page to view the research.
MBCBT - ACT - Psychotherapy
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviours, not external things, like people, situations, and events. Mindfulness is a Buddhist based practice that teaches you to be in the present, not in the past or the future non-judgementally. Mindfulness Based Approaches (MBCBT) are designed to deliberately focus one’s attention, the practice requires that one intentionally directs focus away from states of mind that would otherwise occupy them, such as frightening or worrisome thoughts, and instead observe and accept the present situation and all it has to offer, regardless of whether that is good or bad. Mindfulness approaches include mindfulness based cognitive therapy, (MBCBT), mindfulness-based stress reductions (MBSR), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). Mindfulness based approaches and contemplative approaches are becoming widely accepted methods for relieving symptoms related to many psychological issues and can be applied across many different populations and does not clash with any religious beliefs, in fact, you are already practising aspects of mindfulness without realising it.
Nutritional Therapy
We stock a range of clinical vitamins for the treatment of ADHD, Trauma and Mood disorders in children and Adults. For the past 15 years Professor Rucklidge at the university of Canterbury has been conducting clinical trials on the use of clinical vitamins for mood disorders, these results are extremely exciting and are heralding a new way of managing mental health treatment. These vitamins have also been found to be efficacious in Mood regulation after trauma.
Links to the research, endorsements by Harvard Psychiatrists and the Ted talk by Professor Rucklidge are below
Psychological Assessments & Reports
We offer a full range of psychological assessments for the following
Trauma Assessments
Immigration
Employment
Mental Health Disorders