Services

Individual Adult Therapy:

We offer a wide range of therapies to suit how you want to work. Within each model of therapy, your therapist will build trust and offer non-judgmental support and create a space where you feel safe to explore, in a way that feels right for you.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a talk therapy which works on the premise that who we are and how we behave has to a large extent been determined by a multitude of factors such as previous relationships, life events, circumstances of our upbringing and the dynamic of family we were born into and how we were raised. It is thought that what motivates us to behave or think in ways which have become unhelpful are deeply ingrained and entwined in our identity and so, a deep, uncovering type of therapy is required to detangle old from new, to identify coping mechanisms that may have been necessary in the past but are no longer helpful in your life today and begin living a more satisfying life.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a relational, exploratory approach to therapy that can bring about great healing, self-awareness and a possibility of freedom from what might be holding you back in your life.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a form of Behavioral therapy, where specific thoughts, behaviours or sensations are explored and challenged. This model of therapy is often more therapist led, and practical in its aims. The premise of CBT is that how we think affects how we feel which in turn will inform our behaviour. This interdependent relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviours can create cycles and habits of behaviour, or patterns of thought that can be difficult to break.

In collaboration, the therapist and client work together to uncover problematic thoughts or behaviours and the underlying beliefs that maintain them. From here, they use structured, evidence based methods to create change. This approach often uses psychoeducation to increase self-awareness and insight for the client into their patterns of behaviour and teaches new skills to empower the client to make necessary changes, replacing harmful and often destructive coping habits with more helpful ones.

CBT is often short term work, and can often be completed within 10-16 sessions. It may require clients to complete “homework” between sessions, where they would be encouraged to practice new skills or techniques in real world situations. The incorporation of homework into the therapeutic work aims to make new skills a part of the clients life outside of the therapy room. Continued practice helps to form strong new coping behaviours, encouraging the client to become “their own therapist” and utilise new techniques when they are faced with new challenges. For some clients this may lay foundations for better coping abilities and open doors to deeper, more relational work once this stability is established.

Children and Family Therapies

Play therapy

Play therapy is a type of therapy offered to children as young as 3 or 4 up to early adolescence. It can be helpful for all children as a way to explore their world, their emotions and their beliefs through imaginative play in a safe and containing environment. Together through their relationship, the therapist and the child can navigate and make meaning of difficult scenarios through puppet play, stories, art, clay modeling, providing an opportunity for the child to “play out” their thoughts and feelings. The special relationship the child has with their therapist can facilitate a new and sometimes healing relationship. The play therapist encourages and promotes positive associations with emotions and can support children and parents to use play to build and maintain strong emotional bonds. In Pathways, we believe that it is vital to work alongside the parents of the child attending play therapy, we do this by sharing information, providing advice and teaching new ways to engage with and model an emotional agility that they want to see in their child.

Couples counselling

Couples can at times find themselves in cycles of misunderstanding, where they feel unheard or unsupported by their partner. We often find ourselves repeating old patterns of behaviour, confronted with the same outcome and situation time and time again. You may be feeling that your relationship is not meeting your needs. Communication can often easily lead to the same arguments, and a lack of communication can lead to a difficulty in your sexual relationship or a loss of intimacy. In our current relationships, we often don't often take into consideration the dynamics of our past relationships and family history and how these may be influencing our expectations and why we are affected in the way we are by those we love. Couples counseling can provide a space to explore each individual and what they bring to the relationship from their past. Counselling can be a place to find out if the difficulties you experience together can be worked through and if a happier and more contented relationship can be reached.

Family therapy

Family therapy looks at how the individuals within a family come together and engage with one another. Where each person is as valued as the next and is offered a space where everybody is important, everyone is respected, and everyone is heard. It looks to understand what might be getting in the way of a family living together as a strong unit and works together to initiate the change needed to help a family thrive.

At Pathways to Change we work through a family therapy model that focuses on emotional and experiential processes where the therapy has a structure, collaborative goals and a clear road map to get there. It focuses on relationship development, identifying and repairing relational ruptures, building empathy, trust and a better way of communicating.

With this type of family therapy, there is no blame, only attempts to understand what is going on for each member of the family that might be getting in the way of building strong, secure dependable relationships within their family structure. We believe that each parent in the family unit carries with them their own history, where their own upbringing and bonds that they had with their parents affects the relationship they have with their own children and how they exist within the family. It is also recognised that parents are people with their own unique needs and stressors, goals and obstacles that they must navigate while working around the needs of others. We at Pathways to Change recognise parenting is a difficult job, and that parents try to do the best for their children in the best way that they can. We also acknowledge that we have learned to parent from our own upbringing and through this parenting we may not always have been given the tools needed to build the strong, secure, boundaried and consistent base that our children need to thrive in. At the same time we see that the children within the family are growing, developing and navigating their own external lives with their own stressors and their own needs.

Assessments

Assessments conducted by clinicians in Pathways to Change are a complex consolidation of a client's history, told by both the clients themselves and those close to them, behavioural presentations/ observations and results from objective evaluation tools. Assessments are offered to adults, adolescents and children who may be displaying behavioural and/ or emotional maladjustments and are seeking answers to the questions they or their loved ones might have. ASsessments can highlight a clients strengths and areas of difficulty and be a strong basis for building appropriate psychological interventions within the therapeutic setting and assessment of needs within school and work settings.

ADHD assessment

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects individuals differently, and so, diagnosing ADHD is a complex process that involves consolidating many different sources of information to separate ADHD from other conditions. Assessment will include client interviews, questionnaires and with children, possible observational sessions with the aim of gathering a full picture of the individual, the history of their symptoms, when they started, if they worsened, life events, family history etc. For children, this process will be scaffolded by parents and teachers to ensure we get a full understanding of the child's world. Assessment and diagnosis is followed by a full report and proposed psychological interventions which can also be also be provided by Pathways to Change.

It is important to note that if a Diagnosis of ADHD is received by a psychologist, and medication is a path you would like to take, your diagnosis will need to be reconfirmed by a psychiatrist to be prescribed medication.

ASD assessment

Autism can present in a wide variety of combinations and severity and so is referred to as a spectrum disorder for this reason. Some common difficulties may be a sensitivity to noise, repetitive behaviours, echolalia (repetition of words or sentences), interpreting social cues, and limited capability for eye contact. A child who experiences difficulties in social situations and with communication, and where they find it hard to build and retain relationships, may benefit from an assessment. The aim of assessment for a child is to assess their intellectual ability along with their individual strengths and weaknesses. We aim to understand more fully, the child's social difficulties and identify additional supports your child might needs and the resources that they may need. Assessment includes a number of stages, appointments and interviews;

• Parent and caregiver Interview The Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised (ADI-R)
• Play based assessment with the child  - Autism Diagnostic Observations Schedule (ADOS)
• Feedback appointment
• Full report