Therapy Questions & Answers

Keeping Well South East London is a hub with links to many external services. You can refer to us for an assessment, following which we can refer or signpost you to the most appropriate service based on your current difficulties. You will also receive follow up calls to check in and discuss interim support. Our website also has many pages of useful resources that can offer support in itself. In addition, we host a number of webinars aimed at supporting your current difficulties. 

There are different ways that you can engage with our service. Firstly, we have a lot of information and resources on this website that may be able to support you with your difficulties. Alternatively, we have clinicians available via the chat function if you would like some support navigating the website, or to ask any specific question. 

If you would like to speak to someone, you can request a callback or complete the self-referral form. If you decide to self-refer to our service, you will be booked in for a telephone assessment where the clinician will ask you a few questions to understand the nature of your difficulties. Based on what you share in the assessment, we will suggest relevant, effective, and evidence-based services and treatment options that might be helpful.  

After your assessment, we’ll offer to follow up with you to see how you’ve got on. We’ll usually be in touch twice, once two weeks after your assessment and again two weeks later. These calls will allow us to check in with you about how you’re doing, to see if you need any further support, and for you to let us know if you’ve been able to access the support you needed.  

There are different options and our job is to help you navigate all these options and direct you to the best support available. That could mean we direct you to services offering psychological support, local services or support within your organization, or a range of charities and third sector organizations who deal specifically with the issue that you are facing, whether it’s to do with your mental health or otherwise. Our aim is to offer personalized support, tailored to you. 

In short, yes, but the reason we do it is to support you as best as we can!

In order to offer you the most appropriate support, our clinicians need to have a thorough understanding of the main difficulties that you are currently experiencing. They will do this by asking a number of questions about relevant topics.  

If there are any answers that you are unsure of, or questions you feel uncomfortable answering, you can always share this with your clinician and you can work through this together. However, it is important to be as open and honest as possible to get you the right support. 

We are a confidential service and will not break that confidentiality unless we believe that you or someone close to you is at risk; or if we believe that your fitness to practice has been impacted. In this instance, we would then inform the relevant parties but will always discuss this with you first. 

Please read our Safeguarding Policy for further information.

Keeping Well South-East London is a self-referral service so people have to refer themselves.

If you would like to support someone with a referral to our service, you can help them to complete our self-referral form with their permission. If you are a line manager, you can support your staff member in filling the form together. Alternatively, you can direct them to our website to complete the self-referral form themselves. 

Additionally, you can contact a member of our team to support with the self-referral form. 

There are various indicators that suggest that you may benefit from some extra support for your difficulties. These indicators vary between individuals however it is useful to identify how distressing the problem is for you, and also how much it interferes with your life. Some useful questions to ask yourself include: 

• Has the problem impacted your quality of life? 
• Are you struggling to stop thinking about the problem? 
• Are you rearranging your life to accommodate this problem? 
• Are you noticing changes in your relationships, work, or school? 

If you are still unsure, you can send us a message using the chat box or refer yourself for an assessment with our service. 

Like a relationship with a friend, seeing a therapist involves conversing with someone, being vulnerable and maybe receiving advice. These aspects of therapy are, however, only a small part of the experience. 

Generally, leaning on friends and family certainly can be helpful.  That said, therapists are professionally trained to help you explore and discuss your difficulties and develop solutions to your particular problems. They have expertise in helping you express and evaluate your feelings, focusing entirely on you without bringing their own needs into the mix. 

Here are some aspects of therapy that provide long-term value and go beyond the kind of chatting you could do with a friend: 

• Learning how to better manage emotions 

• Challenging negative beliefs that negatively affect your life 

• Learning new perspectives on situations and people 

• Learning how to improve good relationships and avoid toxic ones 

• Identifying negative and positive behaviors, decisions and patterns 

• Understanding how your past is affecting the present 

• Reducing symptoms of mental illness 

• Preventing the development of mental illnesses 

• Learning therapeutic techniques such as breathing techniques and journaling 

• Learning to be more authentic and understand who you are 

But… sometimes and in certain types of sessions, you can bring family of friends with you. 

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a type of talking therapy. It is a common treatment for a range of mental health problems, very commonly used to treat anxiety and depression, but can be useful for other mental and physical health problems.  

It is all based on the idea that thoughts, feelings, what we do, and how our bodies feel, are all connected. If we change one of these we can alter all the others. 

CBT is a very practical and collaborative type of therapy in the sense that it teaches you coping skills for dealing with different problems. It focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and actions. 

Watch the video below to make sense of CBT or check out the NHS Website for more information.

Both Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and counselling are forms of talking therapy that can be used to treat a range of difficulties, including depression and anxiety disorders.  

CBT is a more active therapy where therapists work with you to change your behaviour and thinking patterns in order to reduce the symptoms you are experiencing. On the other hand, counselling is less directive where counsellors aim to help you better understand yourself or process a situation in order to cope with those difficulties you face. 

Yes.  

Therapy is not just about face-to-face appointments. Many clinicians and many services offer sessions through online platforms or appointments by phone.  

Even though you’re not in the same room, the clinician can still help you to explore how you’re feeling, understand what you are going through and support you to make changes in your life if you need to. 

In almost every instance, therapy is absolutely confidential. Just like you would expect your clinician to be in a private, confidential space when no one can hear what you or the therapist are saying, this applies to you as well. You will have to make sure you have a space to ensure the conversation will be private and safe. 

Sometimes you may be assessed by a different person from the one you will have therapy with. However, in therapy, services endeavor to offer your sessions with the same clinician throughout treatment. In the rare case that the clinician will have to be changed during treatment, this will usually be discussed with you. 

There can be a lot of anxiety around a first therapy appointment, and that makes total sense. You’re embarking on a new journey, sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings with a total stranger, and, if this is your first time working with the therapist, it might all be new to you. 

For the first session and beyond, the first and most important thing to ease that anxiety is the relationship you have with the clinician. 

A few things the clinician could ask you during your first appointment:  

• Have you attended therapy in the past? 

• What difficulties have you been experiencing? What led you to seek help? What are your symptoms? 

• How is your home life and work life? 

• Do you have a history of self-harm or suicidal ideation? 

• What do you hope to get from therapy? What are your goals? What would you like to achieve? Whatever your goals are: communicate them to your therapist! 

• What do you want to accomplish in your sessions? 

• How have you been coping with the problem(s) that brought you to therapy? 

• How are your relationships or how connected do you feel to the people in your life? 

Above all, your therapist will want to gain clarity around why you’re seeking therapy and what your goals are. 

If you have had therapy before, try to think about: 

• What worked with the last therapist? Consider what you enjoyed about whoever previously helped you. Did they validate your struggle? Did they teach you skills to combat your stress and anxiety? Were they relatable? Did they share their observations? 

• What didn’t work the last time you saw a therapist? It’s critical to acknowledge what didn’t work during past therapy experiences if you have that info to work with. 

If you’ve never seen a therapist before, that’s totally fine! Focus on your goals and what you’re looking to get out of working with your therapist and go from there. 

It is very difficult to open up sometimes but please keep in mind that therapy is a confidential and non-judgemental space for you. The therapist is there to help and it is important to be as open and honest as possible.

That said, what you share is up to you! If your clinician asks you a question that you don’t want or feel comfortable answering, just tell them that you’re not ready to discuss it. You could have all kinds of reasons for this. The therapist will support you in opening up and will treat all information with confidentiality or, perhaps, you can circle back to that topic down the road when you’re ready.

Opening up can feel uncomfortable at first, but therapy is your space for you. 

But... Is it worth it to be blunt in therapy? Yes. While it’s true that it can lead to some uncomfortable moments, that’s where some of the most powerful work can happen. At the end of the day, you get out of therapy what you put into it. And if you allow yourself to be vulnerable and invest more in the process? You might be surprised at how much more you’ll get out of it.