Compulsive lying can destroy individual self-esteem and close relationships. Usually such crisis point are what lead people to contact me for help.

But, compulsive lying or pathological lying as problematic as they are in and of themselves, are really symptoms of a deeper problem. Usually there is either some kind of narcissistic wound, or a shame-based experience of which the liar is attempting to cover up sometimes by making themselves look good to gain approval and avoid disappointing other people.

It is a means of attempting to protect yourself from further shame and disappointment, which usually did arise at some point or another during childhood which may or may not be consciously recalled by the adult liar.

What is paradoxical about compulsive lying therapy and counselling is that during the psychotherapy, a compulsive liar begins to talk openly and honestly about their lying behaviour. This confessional aspect, when received by an unconditionally accepting therapist, can have a very deep and profound healing effect on the individual.

Over time, the individual can begin to view themselves in a similar kind of light of non-judgemental acceptance and even empathy and compassion. The rest of the work involves the repairer of early childhood traumas and emotional wounds which may have been many traumas of various forms of shame, embarrassment and humiliation.

Mindfulness therapy is another great way to help compulsive liars because it helps them at a conscious and unconscious level, to equalise themselves in their own mind with other people so that there is no more inferiority of superiority in their minds in the presence of other individuals.

Thus, if you are seeking individual psychotherapy or Brighton counselling and you are in the Brighton area of Melbourne, help is readily available. Even if you can’t get to brighton Melbourne, online counselling is available, via Skype. Get in touch if you’re ready to start unlocking the truth and living authentically.

With chronic pain, usually earlier attachment traumas and emotional wounds which had not been available to conscious awareness, suddenly become amplified and thus these individuals become very frustrated and angry with themselves, and just about everybody in the life. This idoess not exclude people such as carers and therapists who are trying to help them as much as possible.

Part of the anger can arise from having an impossible wish and desire to have somebody else fix them or get rid of their pain. But part of that lesson, although extremely difficult, is arriving at a point in which one accepts that they are going to have to live with their pain and instead of going from specialist to specialist they have to learn to be with their pain and manage the pain. This facing of reality can be so freeing because suffering can reduce enormously, if we accept that suffering is pain plus resistance, and when resisting/fearing/hating the pain stops, so can suffering. The pain itself is then experienced like a raw burn, so to speak,

Often this realisation serves as a terrible gift. Terrible in the sense that it’s so excruciating which you would never wish on your worst enemy. But it is nonetheless a hard lesson in that it teaches them that their old ways of thinking, and living and avoiding feeling, which actually lead to enormous suffering if not even their actual pain condition, can be reversed.

Fortunately, mindfulness therapy combined with hypnotherapy and counselling are amongst the most effective ways to learn how to manage one’s relationship to pain by sitting with and being with the pain in a non-judgemental and accepting way so that all the fear and anxiety and anger associated with pain diminishes. Then sometimes the experience of pain itself diminishes. This can take a number of years of weekly sessions to accomplish.

Letting go of magical thinking and working towards realistic therapeutic goals can and often does become profoundly healing for chronic pain patients when they have an empathically oriented psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and counsellor. It is important to have one therapist who is trained in both Eastern and Western counselling methods. Otherwise, seeing different therapists with different philosophical orientations can actually confuse issues and blur and make matters worse.

If you’re in the Brighton Melbourne area, help is really available. But if you can’t get to brighton for counselling and want to work remotely to manage your chronic pain, online counselling is available, via Skype.

There are a variety of causes for this problem. In my experience it usually arises from an attachment disorder such as anxious ambivalenct, anxious avoidant or anxious disorganised. Thus, the pseudo-relationship with food exists as a defensive attempt to compensate for what the binge eater believes cannot be possibly filled up through true open and honest intimate relationships with other people.

This does not mean that they haven’t had or don’t form intimate relationships. But it means that at some level they really don’t believe that they can have long-lasting meaningful close emotional intimacy with other people which can be fulfilling enough for them. Thus, a false sense of emotional nourishment begins to be attempted, and the myriad of physiological problems begin to arise from the binge eating behaviour.

Depression and anxiety can also be common within this population. It becomes a vicious cycle. Anxiety about losing control through binge eating, which ironically, is actually an attempt to gain control. And depression about the loss of control and the ensuing guilt, all feed each other in a vicious cycle of suffering.

As a counsellor and psychotherapist I frequently see people with binge eating disorder. Many of these individuals have tried conventional cognitive behavioural therapy and even hypnotherapy as attempts to stop the binge eating behaviour and other emotional contributing factors which they experience and try to cope with, albeit unsuccessfully.

Many of these people are understandably acting against their best interests, seeking an immediate fix or a magical fix for their problems. But when they are willing and ready to face and work through their deep-seated issues in an experiential, courageously trusting way with a professional psychotherapist, they can almost always transform their problematic thoughts and feelings into opportunities for growth and change. Thus, through the therapeutic relationship and eventually other close relationships they can start to allow themselves to be nourished in a variety of different healthier ways.

If you live in the Brighton Melbourne area, help is available by face-to-face counselling to stop binge eating. In fact mindfulness therapy can help enormously which is something else available in Brighton, Melbourne. Or if you can’t get to Melbourne or Brighton, or prefer to work remotely, online counselling is available via Skype.

Firstly, many clients initially assume that professional counselling and psychotherapy is just talking. And how can they be expected to know any different? But the reality is, a
professional psychotherapist and counsellor will spend a lot of time thinking about the person, and will be informed by therapeutic expertise and experience in light of the presenting issue and past history of the client.

Furthermore, with professional counsellor, for example if you were to obtain counselling in Brighton or Melbourne counselling, you can reasonably expect to get a lot more than you would with a close friend. Although they may try to be objective, a close friend acting as therapists, is actually creating a dual relationship with you in which friendship boundaries and therapy boundaries become blurred. This can significantly compromise the friendship in later years, and render you more vulnerable and unhappy.

Similarly, an ethical psychotherapist or counsellor would never enter into a friendship relationship with the client. This enables the professional relationship to be safe, secure and unconditionally accepting without any threat of ruining the relationship. Whilst there is a monetary component to professional therapy, the experience must be emotionally unconditional. A professional counsellor and psychotherapist can offer a significantly containing corrective emotional experience for individuals suffering troubled behaviours and difficult emotional experiences.

If you are seeking professional help of counselling in Brighton or counselling in Melbourne with an insight oriented psychotherapist, help is available.

Cannabis use can contribute to paranoia, distorted view of self and others, and even anxiety disorders and depression. Long-term use could even lead to psychosis of schizophrenia.

Cannabis also has the influence of distorting short-term memory and distorting one’s view of reality at which time apathy may settle in and after a session people may decide to quit, but feel very guilty. This guilt, although possibly understandable frequently cements the problem even deeper.

Fortunately, there is a different solution to banging ones head against the wall and continuing the cycle of drug use and guilt, loss of confidence etc.

It’s not so much the approach as it is the combination of approaches that can be very effective to stop cannabis addiction.

More specifically, the combined mindfulness therapy and counselling and hypnotherapy series of interventions can be markedly beneficial for individuals suffering cannabis addiction. In fact, it could be easier than you think. In addiction, getting a structured routine, and building positive activities into structured days can help too.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s a lot easier than trying to do it all by yourself or worse, with willpower alone. A secure therapeutic counselling relationship can help replace the need, or more accurately the perceived need, to use marijuana.

In Brighton Melbourne or online via Skype, counselling services are available, as well as hypnotherapy and mindfulness therapy services to help you take back control of your life.

Addictions arise in many guises. There are countless addictions. Addictions to sex, materialism, drugs, gambling, body image, and countless other general addictions plague our materialistic, narcissistic society. Cultural influences aside, we all have our own reasons for struggling with various vices.

Addictions are misguided attempts to regulate and manage how we feel. More specifically, they usually developed as an attempt to avoid feeling something. Be that the depression, anxiety, or countless other troubles, avoidance feeling always leads to feeling worse than the intended avoided behaviour.

Addictions are our replacement attempts to mask and deal with our earlier childhood attachment needs. And it is to feel in control, secure and held. Many people with serious addictive behaviours struggle to develop genuinely felt connections and intimate relationships with other human beings.

That is why, 12 step programs have a lot of value to many addictive behaviours. Individual psychotherapy and Buddhist psychotherapy in particular, coupled with hypnotherapy and various counselling approaches with one therapist can actually help addicted people to develop healthy dependency needs and reduce and eliminate their maladaptive addictions.

If you live in the Brighton, Melbourne, area I can help you overcome addictions if you are ready and willing to work through your issues. Or if you can’t get to brighton, we can have online counselling sessions via Skype.

Until you live with a phobia, and it’s very difficult to appreciate just how debilitating and terrifying specific phobia can be on an individual’s quality of life.

This suggests that you are remarkable learner. But also probably have an overactive imagination when it comes to your specific phobia. Don’t feel foolish. Phobias are extremely common, and often developed during childhood and get worse as we get older when left untreated.

But because specific phobias are so obviously present, such as when your heart pounds and you feel so powerless and terrorised, it is rather clear to people and their therapists when change occurs. In other words, specific phobia treatment is a lot less complicated in most cases than say, treatment of general anxiety disorder or major depressive illness.

Whilst are so many different forms of counselling, psychotherapy, NLP, hypnotherapy, a meditation exercises, the best approach is the one that is tailored to combust works to you as an individual.

In Brighton Melbourne counselling and hypnotherapy and NLP are available treatments for specific phobias. Self hypnosis recordings are also recommended to help manage feelings between sessions. A specific phobia can be dealt with rather quickly comparatively, with the right blend of counselling and hypnotherapy with a season therapist.

Buddhist psychotherapy, which partly incorporates mindfulness therapy, is all about not change. In other words, it is about developing self acceptance, and enhanced self-awareness, through nonjudgemental moment by moment tracking of internal and external experience in the present moment, without an express intention to change. It is further elaborated within this framework, that, our intense yearning for change, or in other words not wanting things to be as they are, are precisely what leads to suffering in the first place.

More traditional forms of Western psychological counselling approaches and hypnotherapy, stressed the importance of the opposite philosophy, namely, achievement and change at all costs. On this extreme, we can see a narcissistic preoccupation with change, like a rabbit hole or a rat race, or a bottomless bucket that can never be filled. That’s right. An endless loop of chasing one’s tail or trying to quench an impossible thirst but always getting thirstier and thirstier in the process.

As you might have guessed, one approach is no better or worse than the other. Both have a lot to offer and both have possible limitations. An integrated balance is crucial. When you choose a counsellor, psychotherapist or hypnotherapist, make sure that they are trained and experienced in a discipline which meets with your broader philosophical worldview regarding how change will occur for you. Then again, if you are extremely outcome driven in your life, and find it difficult to just be, you may benefit from a more contemplative and relaxed approach, such as Buddhist psychotherapy of mindfulness therapy which cultivates self acceptance and trains you to be a human being, rather than a human doing.

Melbourne’s Adam Szmerling works out of Brighton and is trained in both Buddhist psychotherapy, and Western forms of counselling. He is also a trained hypnotherapist in both Ericksonian and traditional methodologies. He integrates the best of East and West to provide his valued clients with whatever they need in collaboration with him., whether that be change, self- acceptance or both.

What is fascinating, however, is that meditation and yoga, and more recently and specifically, mindfulness-based approaches to meditation, have begun to seep their way into the psychotherapeutic arena.

Mindfulness meditation is a lot more than just sitting down like a Buddha, although mindfulness did originally derive from Buddhist psychology and philosophy. Mindfulness-based counselling approaches involve moment to moment intentional awareness to present moment experience of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, behaviours, relationships, and any other here and now experience without any form of criticism or judgement. This does not mean, that judgements do not arise later, but when they do, they usually are a lot more sound and clear than they would otherwise be.

Commonly however, a mindful stance is not the same thing as a directive approach, say cognitive behavioural therapy. This is true. But mindfulness approaches can be integrated with hypnotherapy, for example in an altered state of consciousness ie. trance, encouragement for people to become more mindful of their own internal unconscious phenomena and experience, which can be materialised.

Counselling and psychotherapy can also be either direct or nondirective. If one wishes to apply the 2500+ years of wisdom from Buddhist psychology, or mindfulness-based meditation, to psychotherapy, one needs a deep appreciation both in experience and in theory of Buddhist psychological practices in mindfulness, as well as Western psychotherapeutic understandings.

Thus, in integration becomes possible. With integration patients have a much wider potential for self realisation and overcoming suffering. Buddhist psychotherapist Adam Szmerling practices counselling in Brighton Melbourne. He also practices hypnotherapy. He blends hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, counselling, and mindfulness therapy uniquely for the aim of assisting his patients to overcome suffering.

Problem? Absolutely! Why? Because an addiction is a symptomatic trance, or an attempt to feel different, but without a real relationship or real human connection.

This is why 12 step programs and group therapy can work extremely well to help people develop secure attachment bonds with other human beings. Furthermore, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and counselling relationships with an individual can also greatly enhance addicted persons control over his or her life.

More specifically, an addicted individual can most certainly begin to replace their addictive destructive tendencies, within a secure and safe therapeutic relationship. It does take time. Many addictions seem to serve the illusion that a quick fix, or instant gratification, can somehow lead to lasting happiness. This is a lie, and needs to be drastically challenged.

So-called addictive personalities, are inadequate explanations for what cause addictions. Why? Well first of all, let’s say out of 100 addicted people that I have worked with over the years, all have had very different personalities. Personality genes just don’t cut it. It seems to be problematic earlier attachment bonds and experiences with primary caregivers which seem to pave the way for switching off emotionally and thus relying upon addictive behaviours, substances, or even destructive relationships as misguided attempt to regulate how we feel.

Fortunately, addiction counselling in Brighton Melbourne is available. And if you can’t get too brighton Melbourne, or prefer to work remotely, you can have online counselling for addictions via Skype.