Changing your brain – inside the therapy room

Nicole enters the therapist’s room and grabs what she calls her hugging pillow. She admits to being nervous about sitting with a stranger to discuss her mental health.

He is 31 years old, lives in London and works as a chiropractic assistant. She suffers from anxiety when she drives.

“There are so many things that quickly go through my head,” she says.

“How far is it? What is the route? In some way I forget how to drive.”

She suffers from panic attacks and her fear of driving means that she is constantly canceling the plans.

But, in the course of the six sessions with the Owen psychotherapist or

Every week, one in six of the United Kingdom population experiences mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, and every year more than 1.2 million people seek help from the NHS conversation therapies service, and many more pay for private support.

This form of therapy is most commonly used for anxiety and depression, but can also help with a variety of other problems, including dysmorphia of body image, obsessive compulsive disorder and post -traumatic stress disorder. It does not work for everyone: research suggests that a third of people do not benefit.

The BBC has followed 12 people, presented in the Change Your Mind series, Change Your Life, who recovered six therapist support sessions.

Therapists have used a combination of different conversation therapy approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapy that focuses on changing the way we think and behaviors, along with other techniques to improve relationships and process trauma.

What reveals is surprising: how understanding and learning to handle the mind have the power to transform lives.

“You are not stuck with the brain you have,” says Owen O’Kane, who has worked in the field for 25 years.

He describes his work as the detective work: “People come with what seems to be a reasonable story, but the interesting thing is that history and emotions do not coincide. I suppose what we are doing is digging a little.”

During his sessions, Owen deepens Nicole’s anxiety. In a moment she cries. She admits that in the past she has “completely hated” herself. She cares about what people think of her and is socially anxious: “I don’t feel good about being there. I could say something wrong. I need people to like it. “

Owen asks why he feels like this: “As human beings like pleasant emotions. We like to feel happy, joy, be in love.” But he says that some people try to avoid or suppress emotions such as fear, fear and sadness, and that can cause anxiety. Instead, he says that it is healthier to accept and accept them as insurance.

When people get to that point, he says, they begin to feel empowered: “They realize that they will not be rejected.”

Speaking outside the therapy room, Nicole says: “I am surprised. He obtained my number immediately. I would see vulnerability as something negative, but it is not.”

When asked to describe herself, he uses words as a child, reflective, determined and enthusiastic: “I am not a bad person,” he tells Owen.

She says she has learned a lot: “The most important thing is that I discovered that it was a girl for me. That was really open.”

Owen says that this is typical of many people who treats: “When people arrive at these crossroads, when they wake up and realize what they are doing, that is a moment of gold dust for me.”

James also learned to think about himself differently thanks to therapy.

A 39 -year -old father who works in finance, struggles with anxiety and, in particular, care about making work mistakes. That fear is so weakening that it does not make it work sometimes.

He has been supported by Professor Steve Peters, a psychiatrist who explains perfectionism is at the root of his problems: “If we believe it is the end of the world if we make a mistake, it paralyzes you.”

James was once an athlete, played semi -professional football and competed in athletics before specializing in the Bobsleight.

I was training for evidence for the Great Britain team when he had a stroke eight years ago: “With a change of change, I lost everything,” he says.

“It made me feel a minor man.”

Now he fears having a lower performance at work and losing his job.

James’s belief system is the course of the sessions, Professor Peters explains the key.

First, give some seemingly simple tips: “Put your feet on the floor, stop and walk,” he says.

Focus on the basic task of moving, in the case of James in motion to get to work, allows someone trapped in catastrophic thought to block the negative thoughts that prevent them from doing something.

In later sessions, James and Professor Peters explore what could be behind his problems. James tells Professor Peters about his childhood and how his father would criticize him to push him to improve.

Professor Peters explains how James believes that to please you cannot make mistakes and the devastating blow he suffered at an early age has caused an absolute desire for things to never be wrong again.

He tells James that he needs to do “peace with himself” defining himself not by performance but for values ​​and behaviors. Hey asks James to describe himself and James replies that he is a worker, honest, attractive, friendly and as someone who would put others first.

On the course of his sessions, James’s way of thinking changes: “I can look in the mirror and feel my value and my hemth,” he explains.

Anjalee’s struggles are somewhat different. They relate to a traumatic event in childhood: his mother died suddenly when he was 15 years old.

Now a mother, with three children under five, has presented emotionally.

She has insomnia nights, a tight chest and feels emotionally disconnected. It is worse than any physical pain, says the 34 -year -old: “Becoming a mother has reopened everything I have tried to suppress.”

His first birth was particularly traumatic. She developed sepsis: the condition of which her mother died: “I thought he was not going to survive,” she says.

His psychotherapist, Julia Samuel, explains to Anjalee that she has not been able to process what has happened and, as a result, the trauma has stayed with her.

When his mother died, Anjalee was in the middle of the exams and had two younger brothers, leaving her without time to cry.

Julia suggests the desensitization of the eye movement and reprocessing therapy, which uses movement to help people process and recover from distressing events.

Julia asks Anjale your worst memory and she describes how her father tried to save her mother’s life making chest compressions in her home until the paramedics arrived. His mother was hurried with Anjalee with the hope that he would return. She never did.

Anjalee says he has never talked about this within anyone. Julia asks Anjalee to cross her arms against her chest and start breathing deeply and hitting, imitating the wings of a butterfly fluttering. She speaks through memory and how the images in her head are changing to more positive.

Julia says that this type of treatment is particularly effective when it is a single traumatic event. A memory, he says, can act as a block.

Subsequently, Anjalee talks about how his symptoms have easy and the satisfaction he now feels.

“My therapist helped me to reconnect with the 15 -year -old girl I had silenced. I began to process the trauma that persecuted me. Now I understand the pain as the other side of love.”

May duration, BBC is sharing stories and advice on how to support your mental health and well -being.

Go to bbc.co.uk/mendalwellbeing for more information.