Your group treatment

This seven session course aims to support new parents during a time in their life when they are experiencing significant change. Whilst being a new parent can be joyful and rewarding, it can also be a challenging time and we know that many parents experience difficulties with low mood, anxiety and adjusting to the new role. In this course, you will initially focus on developing an understanding of low mood and anxiety, and the links between our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours. You will be guided to build on activities week by week, gradually resuming activities you previously enjoyed. You will be supported to break tasks down into manageable chunks so that they do not feel as overwhelming. The focus of the course will then move to looking at how some patterns of thinking can be unhelpful. You will learn strategies to help you to disengage from and challenge these thoughts. You will also learn techniques to help you to reduce the amount of time spent worrying. The course concludes by setting new goals and putting a plan in place to maintain progress and manage setbacks. 

This is a seven session course for people who experience panic attacks. A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers a physical anxiety response despite there being no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening and when they occur you might think or feel as though you are losing control, having a heart attack or even dying. Some panic attacks are triggered by particular objects or situations, whilst some come out of the blue. People who experience panic attacks can find they start avoiding situations that seem to trigger their panic symptoms, and over time this can make it difficult to live their life to the full. This course will help you to understand your thoughts and behaviours in relation to panic symptoms, and to learn strategies and techniques to help you to manage and overcome them.   

This four session course is for people who are experiencing stress which they are finding difficult to manage. Stress is how we react when we feel under pressure or threatened.  A small amount of stress can help us to become energised to complete tasks, but too much can leave us feeling overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed by stress usually happens when we are in a situation that we don't feel we can manage or control. It can become a problem when it lasts for a long time or is very intense affecting our physical and mental wellbeing. This course will help you understand more about what stress is and you will learn strategies and techniques to help you better manage periods of stress in your life. Examples of skills you will learn include: how to understand thought patterns, recognise triggers, identify positive actions that can be taken, and relaxation or mindfulness skills. The course will conclude by helping you to recognise early warning signs that stress is becoming too much again and put a plan in place to maintain progress.

This seven session course is for anyone living with a long-term physical health condition or persistent physical symptoms of any kind. We understand that every long-term physical health condition is different, and people’s experiences of symptoms can vary. However, there are similarities in how living with chronic physical health conditions can affect our psychological wellbeing. The sessions will start with understanding how your physical health symptoms affect your life, and where there might be opportunities to help make life easier, more enjoyable and closer to how you would like it to be. This will involve looking at how you spend your time, how you respond to things that happen, and how you think about the future. You will learn skills and techniques to help you to work towards improving your quality of life, reducing feelings of low mood, stress and anxiety, and be helped to move towards accepting and adjusting to your health condition.   

This seven session course will help you learn how to overcome symptoms of low mood. You will learn about how periods of low mood can develop and are maintained, and the links between our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours.  You will be guided to build on activities week by week, gradually resuming activities you previously enjoyed. You will be supported to break tasks down into manageable chunks so that they do not feel as overwhelming. The focus of the course will then move to looking at how some patterns of thinking can be unhelpful. You will learn strategies to help you to disengage from and challenge these thoughts. The course concludes by setting new goals and putting a plan in place to maintain progress and manage setbacks.  

This seven session course is intended to help you to understand and learn to manage symptoms of excessive worry. A degree of worrying is normal, but for some people worrying can become too much and begin to have a negative impact on their quality of life. The course initially focuses on developing an understanding of worry and the links between our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours. The sessions will then support you to learn strategies and techniques to help you to reduce the amount of time spent worrying. The course will conclude by helping you to recognise early warning signs of anxiety and putting a plan in place to maintain progress.

Depression is characterised by feeling sad and hopeless and losing interest in things you used to enjoy. People with depression may also feel low in energy, lack motivation, notice changes to their sleep patterns and appetite, find their concentration is affected, feel irritable, feel worried and may have thoughts of wanting to hurt themselves. The lower we feel the harder it can be to problem solve or work towards a rewarding life which in turn can leave us feeling worse. 

In this ten session group, you will learn about how periods of depression are maintained. You will learn how depression affects your thoughts, physical feelings, emotions and behaviours. The group will teach you skills and strategies so that you can make changes that will lead towards improvements in your mood. The course will conclude by helping you to recognise early warning signs of depression and put a plan in place to maintain progress and manage any setbacks.

This group is for people who struggle with excessive worrying and anxiety. A degree of worrying is normal, but for some people it can become too much and begin to have a negative impact on their quality of life. When we experience anxiety and worry, we might find ourselves getting caught up worrying more often and for longer, with the same worries going round and round in our head. We feel tense and on edge, making it difficult for us to stay present or enjoy life. We might find ourselves constantly seeking reassurance from family and friends or putting things off. People who experience GAD can find it difficult to concentrate on things and can experience physical symptoms of anxiety such as muscle tension, headaches and nausea.

This nine session group will firstly help you to understand your worry and anxiety better. You will then be taught skills and techniques to help reduce worry and anxiety. Finally, you will put in place a plan to help maintain progress and manage any setbacks which may occur.  

This ten session group is for people who find social situations and being around people very anxiety provoking, to the degree that it gets in the way of enjoying life or achieving their goals. People with social anxiety often fear they will do or say something they think will be humiliating or embarrassing. It is more than just being shy and can make it very difficult to carry out everyday tasks such as speaking on the phone, going to the shops, or speaking up at work or when with friends.

In the group, you will first learn about the factors that keep social anxiety going. You will learn techniques and tools that work on the factors maintaining the social anxiety which will help to break the cycles. In the final sessions you will put in place a plan to help maintain progress and manage any setbacks which may occur. Although people with social anxiety can feel particularly worried about coming to a group, the group setting also provides an opportunity to practice social skills in the moment and when you see others working through their fears this can encourage and motivate you too.

This ten session group focuses on helping people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to develop a new relationship with, and a more effective way of responding to, their distressing intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours. This allows anxiety to reduce over time and for your life to be less affected by the problem. This is a very active group, which emphasises the importance of changing behaviour, rather than just ‘thinking’ your way out of OCD. It will support you to break the cycles that are maintaining OCD and to engage more fully with your life again. In the final sessions you will put in place a plan to help maintain progress and manage any setbacks which may occur. 

Mindfulness therapies bring together the ancient traditions of mindfulness meditation with the science of modern psychology. 

Mindfulness practice helps you to: 

• live fully in the present, rather than being stuck in worry about the past or the future 
• be more aware of patterns of low mood and stress, and respond to them skilfully 
• choose your actions wisely and take care of yourself 
• learn to accept yourself and your feelings, however painful, as this can make you less likely to suffer from depression and stress in the future 
• find calmness and equanimity within life’s joys and difficulties 

This nice week mindfulness course is suitable for people who have had previous episodes of depression and are currently recovered but wish to reduce the likelihood and intensity of future recurrences. It can also be of benefit to people who have long-term health problems and / or have developed chronic anxiety and react strongly to different forms of stress. The practice of mindfulness helps teach us to lead more creative lives, even when we experience chronic stress and/or long-term enduring illness.