Fiona Owen Psychotherapy

07/12/2019

Wellness Counselling

Many clients contact me when they are in great distress or in crisis and when the crisis has faded they continue on with their lives. Some of my clients recognise that, like going to the gym for physical fitness or visiting the dentist for oral health, metal health check ins can be supportive to maintain mental wellness. These clients check in from time to time for a top up of support and the benefits are that there is less likelihood of falling into a crisis situation again due to awareness and keeping their mental health in good shape. The therapist becomes the co constructor of meaning making with the client to ensure optional possibilities of maintaining wellness despite the events that inevitably come into all of our lives.

As counsellors we all have someone to turn to as a support person. Even the most experienced counsellor will have a professional go to person. In life the fortunate among us will have good support from family and friends, however even the best of this type of support is not the same as a professional supporter. As with a fitness instructor a wellness supervisor for the whole of our mental health well-being is able to offer a different type of aid and support.

Sometimes knowing back up resource is available is enough and visits become less and less frequent. This is ultimately an aim of the counsellor, ie to make themselves redundant. That does not mean however that the role of wellness supervision needs to stop. Often people have spurts of getting really physically fit and maintain that fitness until something happens to interrupt the routine and the fitness is easily diminished .

Checking in for a tune up is something we are all familiar with in a number of areas, the dentist is the obvious example and prevention is always better than having to deal with the fallout of not having properly maintained good oral health. If we wait until we have a tooth ache chances are the consequences will be much greater. Checking in with ourselves to review our state of mental health can prevent crisis and ensure we are taking the best care that we can. A wholistic approach to wellness is in my view essential and this includes our diet including supplements for optimal health, our exercise regime, our social system our mental health and our spiritual wellbeing.

Have you had a tune up recently?

28/08/2019

Trauma is at the heart of most ( if not all) mental health issues. Often people look at the outward issues that are a result of trauma, such as anger, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive behaviours and addictions.Treatment of these outward issues will be made more effective when the underlying trauma can be processed. Eye movement desensitisation reprogramming ( EMDR) has been proven through many studies to be a useful process to assist with the treatment of trauma. In order to not have the trauma made worse during the exposure of the image of the trauma clients need to be able to self support during the process of the reprogramming . The Emotional Freedom Technique, often called “ tapping” used in conjunction with EMDR is a good combination as tapping has been proven to help reduce anxiety and emotional pain. I use both techniques and am finding some really good outcomes for trauma recovery.

12/01/2018

These signs are clear once you look for them

05/01/2018

Hello all! Hope the festive season treated you well :)

Check out my new blog post on emotional and psychological trauma to gain a better understanding of management and healing of emotions...

Growing up with a depressed or alcoholic parent; losing a parent to divorce or other causes; or enduring chronic humiliation, emotional neglect, or sexual or ph

13/12/2017

Hi everyone I thought today I would just share a little bit about my work with EMDR. I have been using EMDR with clients for nearly a year now and have seen some amazing results. This process can be used on single event trauma, like a car accident or on extended trauma experiences. One of my long term clients recently decided she was going to finish therapy at least for now. She reported to me that the EMDR was an important part of recovery for her from years of being disconnected from herself and from her loved ones. I am so delighted that I have done the training and am now part of the national association EMDRAA and am able to offer this approach to people who are suffering. I really recommend training, if you are a therapist or looking for a therapist who offers EMDR if you are living with trauma.

08/12/2017

Hi all, hope your week is going well! If you have time this Friday afternoon, take a read of my new article on attachment for insights into how your attachment style may be affecting your life and relationships!

Your attachment style could be influencing your life and relationships in dissatisfactory ways without you even realising... Attachment is one part of the relat

08/12/2017

Before I say anything about EMDR I thought I would just give you the briefest outline about how EMDR is believed to help with trauma memories.
What is EMDR?
The mind can often heal itself naturally, in the same way as the body does. Much of this natural coping mechanism occurs during sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Francine Shapiro developed Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 1987, utilising this natural process in order to successfully treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Since then, EMDR has been used to effectively treat a wide range of mental health problems.
What happens when you are traumatised?
Most of the time your body routinely manages new
information and experiences without you being aware of it.
However, when something out of the ordinary occurs and you
are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car
accident) or by being repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g.
childhood neglect), your natural coping mechanism can
become overloaded. This overloading can result in disturbing
experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being
"unprocessed". Such unprocessed memories and feelings are
stored in the limbic system of your brain in a "raw" and
emotional form, rather than in a verbal “story” mode. This
limbic system maintains traumatic memories in an isolated
memory network that is associated with emotions and
physical sensations, and which are disconnected from the
brain’s cortex where we use language to store memories. The limbic system’s traumatic memories can be continually triggered when you experience events similar to the difficult experiences you have been through. Often the memory itself is long forgotten, but the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually triggered in the present. Your ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can therefore become inhibited. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way.
Adapted from

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01/12/2017

My daughter Helen made my website and page. My thanks to her for her help. Now I have to figure out what will be of interest to people. I am excited about the training I have been doing especially around working with people who have experienced trauma. So maybe I will start with writing a bit about this amazing process called Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR). I’ll update you soon. Thanks

29/11/2017

Hi Everyone! Please check out my new website fionaowen.com for more information about my services. Thank you :)