What is Talking Therapy?

Talking therapies are treatments which involve talking to a qualified therapist about your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. There are many different types of talking therapy, but they all aim to:

Give you a safe time and place to talk to someone who won't judge you
Help you make sense of things and understand yourself better
Help you resolve complicated feelings, or find ways to live with them
Help you recognise unhelpful patterns in the way you think or act, and find ways to change them (if you want to).

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Talking Therapy can help you manage and cope with:

Difficult life events, such as bereavement (losing someone close to you), or losing your job.
Relationship problems.
Upsetting or traumatic experiences, whether it's something recent or something that happened a long time ago.
Difficult emotions, such as grief, guilt, sadness, confusion, anger and low self-esteem.
Depression and anxiety.
Other mental health problems. Talking therapies can help with a range of diagnoses, and specific talking treatments have been developed for some mental health problems.
Long-term physical health problems.

Some people think that therapy is an extreme option, and that unless things get really bad you should try to manage on your own. But this isn't true. It's ok to try therapy at any point in your life, whatever your background.

In fact getting support from a therapist when you're not at crisis point can be really helpful – it might feel easier to reflect on what's going on, and could help you keep things from getting worse.