INDIVIDUAL THERAPY Edel Dewhurst CBT and ACT Therapist
Enabling you to see your problems more clearly.
Individual Therapy is about giving yourself time for self-reflection in a safe space. What you bring to therapy is unique to you. Your early life experiences and subsequent life events are important in gaining an understanding of how you are in the present, especially when you have had difficult moments in your past. In ACT, as in CBT, we formulate this picture together, collaborating on what we both think may have been crucial life points that have impacted you.
In your sessions with me, you’ll get to press pause for a while, to slow down and open up. From this vantage point you’ll gain the knowledge and understanding you need in order to identify emotional and behavioural patterns that you have carried with you through the years.
Some of these patterns may have become unhelpful, in that they served you in the past but they are no longer working well and could be the source of your problems now. You, as the client, are the expert on your own life and I am here to support you by providing insight and structure to the process.
Therapy will enable you to see your problems more clearly, and to find ways to make the changes so that you can live authentically according to your values.
MY APPROACH What is ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)?
ACT is all about helping you become the best version of yourself so you can live a full and meaningful life.
In our sessions, we’ll work on skills that help you deal more effectively with difficult thoughts and feelings. Instead of getting caught in a struggle with them, you’ll learn how to make space for them—with curiosity and compassion—so they don’t hold you back.
ACT puts a strong focus on values—what truly matters to you. When you get clear on what’s most important in your life, it becomes easier to make choices that move you in that direction.
This approach helps you build something called psychological flexibility—the ability to face life’s challenges while staying connected to who you want to be and the life you want to live
Of course, change is not always the whole story. Having worked in a Neurology department for several years with people with epilepsy and other neurological disorders, I saw how acceptance can be as necessary as change, especially when we have a long-term health condition or we experience loss in various ways.
My own ACT journey began a long while ago, having encountered a situation that I couldn’t change. Living in that situation felt uncomfortable. Through ACT, I was able to look at it more clearly, and see how it affected me. Acceptance of the situation, a willingness to be with it in a different way, enabled change. This empowered me and I was able to use this experience to gain greater clarity and make choices based on who I wanted to be and what I wanted to stand for.
