How we have helped people

WPF Therapy has helped many people as the real life case studies below show. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Hannah is a student in her early twenties. Separation from her family has not been easy. She is worried about her parents' volatile relationship and  concerned for her younger sister who will now have to witness her father's violent outbursts and abuse of her mother without her older sister's support. Hannah tends to find those in authority, particularly men, difficult to relate to. She understands how this links to her problematic relationship with her father. Hannah's boyfriend, who still resides in her home town, is reluctant to continue the relationship. This is unsettling her and making it hard for her to focus on her studies. Hannah has come for therapy to help her through this time of transition and to support her in her new environment.

Jean is 70 and had come to WPF feeling exhausted by disturbed sleep and early waking for the past six months. She thought she might eventually have to start taking sleeping tablets.  She admitted to feeling rather depressed "But what can you expect when you get old?". Coming for therapy has given her a chance to talk about her life in a way she hadn't expected. "We're not supposed to talk about dying these days. We're supposed to look on the bright side. That gets very lonely". Yet being able to think and talk about her deeper anxieties, particularly about ageing and dying, has helped her find a new energy for living and recognise more of the meaning of her life as lived. She has avoided medication, is sleeping better and has felt confident enough to join a local reading group. "I knew there had to be more to life than sitting in front of the telly!"

Anna started therapy because of depression which involved a conflictual relationship with her dying father.  She has also suffered from OCD after a divorce and loss of employment. Therapy has helped her to be more assertive with her father.  The depression lifted as a new resolution was found. Anna has also started to tackle her long-standing OCD habits.

Dave started therapy following treatment for addiction to painkillers.  He'd stopped taking the tablets, but carried on lying to people as he'd done previously to hide his habit.  He feared that he would lose his partner and his family. When we analysed the lies, we were able to see that these were Dave's way of avoiding criticism. Dave found that there were other, better ways he could choose to manage his feelings.

Mary
It was only after several months in therapy that Mary could begin to talk about the distress she felt at her loss of sexual attractiveness, which she blamed on her depression and her medication. At 60, she felt she ought to be 'past it' and that she would be ridiculed for her worries. She is typical perhaps of older people who feel they must conform to an expectation and feel trapped by a stereotype that they cannot recognise. Mary needed to talk about her feelings about ageing on her terms, the losses that mattered most to her. Once attention had been paid to these feelings, her depression began to ease and her doctor was able to reduce her medication. Therapy enabled areas of Mary's life, which previously seemed to her taboo and unacceptable, to be explored with interest, sadness and also humour.

Josie came for therapy for help her with anxiety and depression.  She was a high achiever, but had begun to find it impossible to reach her potential. Josie was helped to discover how she was using controlling mechanisms to manage her anxiety.  She realised how these had contributed towards her previous anorexia. A shift occurred when we considered this repeating pattern of thinking and behaviour and its causes.  As a result, Josie was freed to think and behave differently.

Maria came for therapy to help her depression.  She spent hours every day on the internet with no motivation to leave the house. Therapy helped Maria to become more self reflective. The internet sites she was using confirmed her belief that 'crimes' (her negative feelings) must be 'punished' (locked away). During her therapy, Maria was able to face and address the shame she felt about herself and  through this her depression lifted.

Karen was finding it too hard to cope with juggling work and parenting and she felt her life was out of balance. She was overusing alcohol and comfort eating and she found herself involved in frequent arguments with a close family member. She always arrives promptly for her therapy session. She cries in every session, and each session carries a bleakness as she sits in isolation. Karen described the emptiness of her childhood and her unhappiness at being a mother. Her therapist is aware that she has had many therapists and therapies before. The work inches along, as did the days when, as a child, she was left with only a television for company. A year goes by and progress is slow..... but Karen does come every week, and though from a distance, she reports feeling somewhat nourished by a session.

Another six months goes by. Karen's therapist notes the beginning of a real connection that goes hand in hand with her beginning to gain some awareness of her inner world. They speak about the fact that to change is to take a risk. The work is starting to move.

John is someone whose qualities of discipline, diligence and orderliness, qualities often admired in older people, had served him and others very well in his working life. Yet his retirement at 65 had shaken his world. His duties, which had once seemed so onerous, had also provided a structure and a routine, and a means by which to feel in control and appreciated. Without it he realised how insubstantial his life felt to him, with little hinterland of interests or friendships. John was encouraged to refer himself for therapy by his GP, concerned by John's poor appetite and weight loss. He is being helped by a therapy that respects his qualities, yet is prepared to take seriously his regrets, and to address issues previously buried by work.