Psychological Issues A – Z
Understanding your psychological and mental health needs
The information below focuses on some of the psychological issues that I am regularly asked about and can offer support for.
Anger Difficulties
Anger is a core human emotion. It helps us to protect ourselves from threat and danger by creating an urge to fight. In low levels, it helps us to express ourselves and motivates problem solving. However, when anger becomes uncontrollable, it can make us misinterpret situations and may lead to aggression.
Anxiety Disorders
Our bodies reaction to threat and danger, anxiety helps us to protect ourselves through fight or flight. It is a functional emotion that can develop to be problematic. Anxiety can take many forms, including social anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder and phobias.
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar Disorder is characterised by regular changes in mood, moving between depressive and manic episodes. These cause extreme fluctuation in a person’s emotions, energy, and ability to function. A depressive episode may include strong feelings of sadness and hopelessness, whilst a manic episode can include excitement, overactivity, delusions, and euphoria.
Depression
Sadness is our minds way of telling us that we need to retreat and look after ourselves, as a way to process some kind of loss in our lives. Depression occurs when we get trapped in this sadness, leading to overthinking, feelings of hopelessness, despondency and wanting to withdraw from life. It can feel like it comes out of nowhere. Different types of depressive disorders include major depressive disorder and dysthymia.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder | OCD
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder. It is made up of two parts: Obsessions, which are unwelcome thoughts, images, urges and worries and Compulsions, which are repetitive activities that someone will complete to try and reduce obsessions and anxiety. Often, underneath OCD is a need to have some control over life, especially if this is lacking in other areas.
Personality Disorder
A personality disorder is a deeply ingrained dysfunctional pattern of thinking, feelings and behaviour. This causes excessive stress and problems for an individual, which make it hard to function in everyday life. Such behaviours are persistent, pervasive and problematic. There are ten different Personality Disorder types, with the most well-known being Borderline/ Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.
PTSD is a reaction to experiencing a traumatic event. To gain a diagnosis of PTSD, the person will have had to have been exposed to a trauma which involved death, the threat of death or serious injury, or a threat to their physical safety. Symptoms include re-experiencing the event, avoidance and hyper arousal.
