Mrs Gisela Oates, BSc

My therapy practice includes: • One-to-one counselling with adolescents from 10 to 17 years old. • One-to-one counselling and psychotherapy with individual adults and couples. • Addiction counselling for persons experiencing substance misuse or abuse or behavioural difficulties. • I work with families as a group with parents and children together. Systemic family therapy can be facilitated with any of the above categories as part of an individual’s therapy if the need arises. A three generational Genogram will be compiled for most case histories. Reality Therapy / Choice Theory {RT / CT} and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy {CBT}: These are collaborative, practical and problem oriented approaches to emotional problems whereby the client and therapist work together towards understanding difficulties in terms of their relationship between thoughts, feelings, bodily responses and behaviour. Reality Therapy / Choice Theory: Facilitates a client to recognize their basic needs and their current behaviour(s), which are disconnecting them from their important relationships. The process enables the client to identify what they want and to choose a different behaviour so that they can reconnect with those close relationships. This is a wonderful and appropriate approach to working with children and adolescents, adults, families, and couple counselling. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Is the most widely researched therapy. CBT is a form of psychotherapy that combines cognitive {thinking} and behavioural therapies. It facilitates the individual to become aware of their distorted thinking {known as negative thoughts} and belief system {known as schemas} patterns. CBT challenges these schemas and negative thoughts and in turn changes how the client thinks and feels. The behavioural difficulties, and the connection between behaviour and thoughts, are recognized by the individual and this helps motivate change. Addiction has many definitions. Varying definitions typically include a need for the individual to avoid intolerable reality with an ongoing, compulsive and life damaging relationship with a mood altering substance or behaviour. Examples include alcohol and drug dependence, compulsive gambling, eating disorders, addiction to such processes as sex, work, overspending, and extreme exercise. Additionally, those in addiction become progressively “hooked” over time and find that they are unable to successfully stop or cut down despite bringing considerable pain into their own lives and into the lives of those who care about them. "Addiction professionals typically view addictions as falling into broad categories: those that involve the overuse of chemicals such as alcohol & drugs, those with an over involvement in a behaviour such as gambling, or involvement in a destructive relationship with food combined with significant body image issues. It is also important to note that individuals frequently have more than one addiction, such as addiction to both alcohol & nicotine or to cocaine & sex". {Addiction Counsellors of Ireland 2015}.