Counselling, Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in Cambridge

A Psychotherapist is trained to Masters Degree level in either working with adults, or with children. Some Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists are also qualified to work with adults as this has been part of their training.

Psychotherapists will work with you in depth and over time to explore your way of being and your relationships with others. Together with your therapist, you will be curious about why you feel and behave the way you do.

You will also be encouraged to explore your past experiences and how these might play a part in the way you feel about yourself and the way to relate to others.

With this understanding about yourself, you can start to think and act differently in order to bring about change within yourself or in your circumstances.

A counsellor will usually work shorter term with a client and focus on a particular issue that the client brings to therapy. This could be grief, a recent breakup in a relationship, a difficult situation in your personal life or at work, and many other situations.

A counsellor with work with you to help you develop ways to manage and see your way through a difficulty.

A Psychotherapeutic Counsellor is a counsellor who has had additional training in psychodynamic theory, which originates from Freud, and focuses on unconscious processes and how these play out in feelings and behaviours.

Unlike a counsellor, a psychotherapeutic counsellor will have studied to either degree level or post-graduate diploma and their training will have been to work with either adults or with under-18s.

Clinical and Counselling Psychologists are trained in the science and research of psychology to post-graduate level, usually within the NHS. They are able to assess and label behavioural and emotional difficulties and they will work with you you to understand your difficulties and how to think and feel more positively about yourself.

Clinical Psychologists may lean more toward medicalised models, while Counselling Psychologists often prioritise meaning-making and relational depth.

A Psychiatrist is a medically trained doctor who has chosen to specialise in the field of mental health. You can be referred to a psychiatrist through your GP either within the NHS or to a psychiatrist who sees patients in private practice.

Psychiatrist will specialise in either adults or children and adolescents.

Psychiatrists are trained to work with either adults or with children, and they are able to formally diagnose and treat their patients, including prescribed medication.

Parent and Infant Psychotherapy is a specialised form of psychotherapy that focuses on the relationship between a parent and their infant.

The work involves being with both the parent and the infant together in sessions and exploring the healthy bond that is important for a child's emotional and psychological development.

This type of therapy includes helping with difficulties such as postnatal depression, anxiety, feeding or sleeping problems, and attachment disorders.

Couples Counselling is different to one-to-one therapy because the therapist will be working primarily with the presenting relationship between the two people who are in the relationship.

A couples therapist will have specialist training in being able to help you understand what each individual brings to the relationship and how you communicate with each other in order to uncover how difficulties have arisen and how they might be solved.

The couple isn’t always two people who are partners and includes two people who are members of the same family or who are friends or colleagues.

In Systemic Family Therapy, the therapist works with the entire family or relationship group to explore patterns of interaction, communication and behaviour that contribute to the difficulties the family is experiencing.

This type of therapy is carried out by a specialist psychotherapist and is helpful for understanding and addressing difficult relationships within the family as well as where a child or adolescent in the family is experiencing mental health problems.

Sometimes it can be difficult to understand why our children behave certain ways and why it is so difficult to try and help them.

Acting out behaviours can be disruptive for the whole family and some support in understanding what might be going on for them can be very helpful and can lead to improving relationships and positive communication within the family.