Create Lasting Change together!

Separation anxiety is normal in very young children. Nearly all children between the ages of 18 months and 3 years old have separation anxiety, when separated from their attachment figures. And can seem clingy to some degree. But the symptoms of Separation Anxiety Disorder are much more severe. The essential feature of separation anxiety disorder is developmentally inappropriate and excessive fear or anxiety concerning separation from home or attachment figures. They have a persistent fear of loosing attachment figures and worry about their well-being or even death. Children with this mental condition express fear of being alone or not with the attachment figures, refusal to go out, away from home, to sleep away from home. They might experience repeated nightmares involving separation. This condition causes distress in social, academic and other important areas of functioning.

Children at an early age can find it intimidating and scary to work 1:1 with a psychotherapist. Therefore, preferred approach is parental coaching when dealing with the psychological, developmental and behavioral challenges of young children. The counselling sessions are held with the parents. In the 1st session the psychotherapist and the parents explore the challenges of the child and the next sessions the therapist is guiding the parents supporting the child development with games and other techniques, teaching the parents how to deal with the psychological and behavioral challenges, addressing all the improvement points together with the parents.

Low self-esteem is characterized by a lack of confidence and feeling insecure about oneself. Children with low self-esteem often feel unlovable, neglected, incompetent and awkward. They have a persistent feeling that they do not belong, nobody wants to be their friends, they often develop fear of failure.

Selective Mutism is a failure to speak in specific social situations with an expectation for speaking despite speaking in other situations. Children with selective mutism do not initiate speech or reciprocate respond when spoken to by others in social interactions. Absence of speech occurs in social interactions with other children or adults who are not their close family members or friends. This condition is also linked to severe social anxiety. Children with selective mutism refuse to speak at school, which causes educational and academic challenges. It can also interfere with social communication. Children with Selective Mutism are usually very shy, are afraid of social embarrassment, clingy, have negative thoughts, show withdrawal and general insecurities.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental disorder that begins early in childhood and can be observed from the age of 1,5-2 years or age. It lasts throughout the whole life. It can impact how a child learns, acts and interacts with others, communicates and socializes. It affects the friendships, relationships in general, ability to express his/her own emotions and feelings and understand their feelings and emotions of others. Through parent counselling, the parents can understand what is happening with their child better, learn how to deal with meltdowns, how to support their children in difficult moments and help them further develop socially and emotionally.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental health disorder that can cause above-normal levels of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors. Children suffering from ADHD have trouble focusing their attention on a single task or sitting still for long periods of time, which influences their school performance. Both adults and children can have ADHD. It changes over time, but it is rarely outgrown. Though ADHD is a chronic condition, the symptoms may manifest in differing ways as a person moves through life stages. These symptoms may diminish as the person grows older. Hyperactivity and fidgetiness may decrease with age. ADHD does not disappear just because symptoms become less obvious. Adults who had milder symptom levels of ADHD than children may have developed and/or learned coping skills for those symptoms to prevent ADHD from interfering with their daily performance.

Self-image is a mental picture of how people perceive themselves, both internally and externally. With a negative self-image, they focus on their weaknesses, exaggerating mistakes, failures, and imperfections. Self-image is important because the way we think about ourselves affects how we feel about ourselves, our abilities, our appearance, our achievements and how we interact with others and the world around us. Negative self-image can cause people to experience problems in their friendships and relationships, negatively affect their performance at school, university or their jobs, cause high levels of stress and lead to anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, depression, increase the risks of alcohol and drug abuse.

Eating disorders are illnesses in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating-related behaviors and related thoughts and emotions. They significantly impair physical health and psychosocial functioning. People with eating disorders typically become preoccupied with food and their body weight. Eating disorders mostly affect women between the ages of 11 and 40. There are tree most common types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The most commonly observed disorders comorbid with eating disorders are anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Panic disorder refers to recurrent unexpected panic attacks. A panic attack is an abrupt surge of intense fear or intense discomfort. The person having a panic attack, will usually experience accelerated hart rate, trembling, shaking, difficulty breathing, choking, sweating, dizziness, and chest pain. It can cause persistent worries about additional panic attacks, loosing control, having a heart attack. Though panic disorder is rare in childhood, first occurrences of “fearful spells’ are often dated back to the childhood. The course of panic disorder is often complicated by a range of other disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorders. Treatment helps most people lead normal productive lives.

Good sleep does not just mean lots of sleep, it means the right king od sleep. Sleep affects our ability to sustain attention, learn new things, achieve our goals, perform in everyday life. If we compromise on our sleep, we compromise on our emotional state, our mood, our performance, and our interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, many people may experience problems with sleep, usually starting from adolescence and continuing in adulthood. Sleep disorders are often related to anxiety, depression, PTSD and other disorders. There are effective treatments for sleep disorders.

Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you perceive reality, think and act. Fortunately, it is treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness, loss of interest or pleasure in all activities, insomnia or hypersomnia, fatigue or loss of energy, diminished ability to think or concentrate, feelings of worthlessness. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function. Depression can lead to suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts if left untreated.

Low self-esteem is characterized by a lack of confidence, low self-acceptance and feeling insecure about oneself. People with low self-esteem and self-worth often feel unlovable, neglected, incompetent, underestimate their personal value and awkward. They have a persistent feeling that they do not belong and often develop fear of failure. Having low self-esteem or low self-worth is not a mental health condition, but they are closely linked and may lead to anxiety or depression.

Child abuse is when a parent or caregiver, whether through action or failing to act, causes injury, death, emotional harm, or risk of serious harm to a child. There are 4 main forms of child maltreatment: psychical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Possible signs of abuse are an air of silence, when a particular person is present, withdrawal or change in the psychological state of the person, insomnia, low self-esteem, aggressive behavior, a change of appetite, weight loss/gain, tearfulness, anger. Factors that may increase a person's risk of becoming abusive include a history of being abused or neglected as a child, physical or mental illness, family crisis or stress, including domestic violence and other marital conflicts, or single parenting. Any type of abuse can cause a mental disorder such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Anxiety disorders differ from normal feelings of fear, nervousness, or anxiousness. The main feature of anxiety disorder is excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events and activities. The intensity, duration and frequency of of the anxiety is out of proportion to the actual impact of anticipated events. The person experiencing anxiety finds in difficult to control the worry and to keep the worrisome thoughts from interfering with attention to task o hand. Children and adolescents tend to worry excessively about their competence or quality of their performance, while adults often worry about routine life circumstances. The focus of worry may shift one concern to another. Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect more than 25 million Americans. But anxiety disorders are treatable, and a number of effective treatments are available.

Self-harm describes any behavior when a person causes harm to him/herself, usually as a coping mechanism to relieve the emotional distress and/or overwhelming feelings. It can also be used as an extreme attention seeking expression. It usually takes form of cutting, burning, or non-lethal overdoses. However, it can be any behavior that causes injury, no matter how minor or high risk it might be. Self-harm usually starts to relieve the pressure from distressing thoughts and feelings. This might give temporary relief from the emotional pain the person is feeling. It is important to understand that this relief is only temporary because the underlying reasons still remain. Soon after, feelings of guilt and shame might follow, which can continue the cycle. This condition is frequently seen amongst adolescents though can also be noticed amongst adults who transferred their coping mechanisms from adolescence.

Self-image is a mental picture of how people perceive themselves, both internally and externally. With a negative self-image, they focus on their weaknesses, exaggerating mistakes, failures, and imperfections. Self-image is important because the way we think about ourselves affects how we feel about ourselves, our abilities, our appearance, our achievements and how we interact with others and the world around us. Negative self-image can cause people to experience problems in their friendships and relationships, negatively affect their performance at school, university or their jobs, cause high levels of stress and lead to anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, depression, increase the risks of alcohol and drug abuse.

Couple therapy provides couples with an opportunity to work through their most difficult or emotionally challenging problems. These problems can range from simple communication issues or significant disagreements to substance abuse issues and psychological disorders. If both partners are open to the counseling process, almost any troubled relationship can be saved. But this is a process, and there are no quick fixes. Both partners must be prepared to be committed to work through their problems and to take professional advice and guidance where necessary.

Eating disorders are illnesses in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating-related behaviors and related thoughts and emotions. They significantly impair physical health and psychosocial functioning. People with eating disorders typically become preoccupied with food and their body weight. Eating disorders mostly affect women between the ages of 11 and 40. There are tree most common types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The most commonly observed disorders comorbid with eating disorders are anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Bring up a family is hard, and it is completely normal for parents and children to have difficulties and argue from time to time. However, 1 in 5 families experience relationship problems which become overwhelming and start to affect the mental health of the family members, parenting skills and the well-being of the children. Family therapy is a type of psychotherapy designed to identify family patterns that cause behavior disorders or mental illness and help family members break those habits. Family therapy involves discussion and problem-solving sessions with the family.

Good sleep does not just mean lots of sleep, it means the right king od sleep. Sleep affects our ability to sustain attention, learn new things, achieve our goals, perform in everyday life. If we compromise on our sleep, we compromise on our emotional state, our mood, our performance, and our interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, many people may experience problems with sleep, usually starting from adolescence and continuing in adulthood. Sleep disorders are often related to anxiety, depression, PTSD and other disorders. There are effective treatments for sleep disorders.

Low self-esteem is characterized by a lack of confidence, low self-acceptance and feeling insecure about oneself. People with low self-esteem and self-worth often feel unlovable, neglected, incompetent, underestimate their personal value and awkward. They have a persistent feeling that they do not belong and often develop fear of failure. Having low self-esteem or low self-worth is not a mental health condition, but they are closely linked and may lead to anxiety or depression.

Panic disorder refers to recurrent unexpected panic attacks. A panic attack is an abrupt surge of intense fear or intense discomfort. The person having a panic attack, will usually experience accelerated hart rate, trembling, shaking, difficulty breathing, choking, sweating, dizziness, and chest pain. It can cause persistent worries about additional panic attacks, loosing control, having a heart attack. Though panic disorder is rare in childhood, first occurrences of “fearful spells’ are often dated back to the childhood. The course of panic disorder is often complicated by a range of other disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorders. Treatment helps most people lead normal productive lives.

Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you perceive reality, think and act. Fortunately, it is treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness, loss of interest or pleasure in all activities, insomnia or hypersomnia, fatigue or loss of energy, diminished ability to think or concentrate, feelings of worthlessness. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function. Depression can lead to suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts if left untreated.

Self-harm describes any behavior when a person causes harm to him/herself, usually as a coping mechanism to relieve the emotional distress and/or overwhelming feelings. It can also be used as an extreme attention seeking expression. It usually takes form of cutting, burning, or non-lethal overdoses. However, it can be any behavior that causes injury, no matter how minor or high risk it might be. Self-harm usually starts to relieve the pressure from distressing thoughts and feelings. This might give temporary relief from the emotional pain the person is feeling. It is important to understand that this relief is only temporary because the underlying reasons still remain. Soon after, feelings of guilt and shame might follow, which can continue the cycle. This condition is frequently seen amongst adolescents though can also be noticed amongst adults who transferred their coping mechanisms from adolescence.

Anxiety disorders differ from normal feelings of fear, nervousness, or anxiousness. The main feature of anxiety disorder is excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events and activities. The intensity, duration and frequency of of the anxiety is out of proportion to the actual impact of anticipated events. The person experiencing anxiety finds in difficult to control the worry and to keep the worrisome thoughts from interfering with attention to task o hand. Children and adolescents tend to worry excessively about their competence or quality of their performance, while adults often worry about routine life circumstances. The focus of worry may shift one concern to another. Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect more than 25 million Americans. But anxiety disorders are treatable, and a number of effective treatments are available.

The essential feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PRSD) is the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to one or more traumatic events. The traumatic events could be childhood abuse, physical attack, sexual violence, exposure to war, natural disasters, sever motor vehicle accident. The disorder may be especially severe when the stressor is interpersonal and intentional. The traumatic event can be reexperienced in different ways. Usually the person suffers from recurrent, involuntary and intrusive recollections, irritable behavior, anger outbursts, persistent negative emotional state, feelings of detachment, problems with concentration, sleep disturbances.

Child abuse is when a parent or caregiver, whether through action or failing to act, causes injury, death, emotional harm, or risk of serious harm to a child. There are 4 main forms of child maltreatment: psychical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Possible signs of abuse are an air of silence, when a particular person is present, withdrawal or change in the psychological state of the person, insomnia, low self-esteem, aggressive behavior, a change of appetite, weight loss/gain, tearfulness, anger. Factors that may increase a person's risk of becoming abusive include a history of being abused or neglected as a child, physical or mental illness, family crisis or stress, including domestic violence and other marital conflicts, or single parenting. Any type of abuse can cause a mental disorder such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).