MAP Counselling
Counselling Areas

Some individuals seek counselling, with the sole purpose of self development. Personal growth can mean different things to each of us; the process by which we arrive to achieve this can also be very individual, because we are all unique. MAP counselling can help you to explore and uncover the stages in your journey and support you to gain further insight, enabling you to take steps towards achieving your personal goals. It may be that you want to change something about yourself or your circumstances, you may need help in making a difficult decision, or you may need to just talk out your feelings with someone who can listen and help you to make sense of things.

By definition we are “sexual beings” and naturally this spills into a number of different areas in our lives and can cause issues for us with our sexual identity, sexual preferences and can even affect us physically as well as emotionally leading to sexual dysfunction. When this part of our lives is affected it can put considerable pressure on our relationships, creating a lot of confusion and shame, which can impact on our self confidence and the way we see ourselves. MAP counselling can support you to explore any of these issues in some depth, allowing you to speak openly and freely about your experiences of sex, whatever they may be.


“I feel depressed” is a term used to describe occasions when we are feeling down or “blue” and it is common to experience these feelings at some time in our lives; symptoms such as lack of energy and motivation, difficulty sleeping, and wanting to withdraw can surface, however if these symptoms continue over a prolonged period of time, thoughts become distorted and negative patterns of behaviour form, where we can focus on everything wrong with our lives and we negate anything good or positive.

MAP counselling can support you to “break down” and examine your thoughts and feelings, enabling you to get a sense of how your thought processes become distorted, working towards replacing negative thinking patterns with more realistic ones. This will allow you to build further resources and help you to manage what comes up in your everyday life. If you are being treated for depression by a doctor/specialist, it would be really helpful if you could mention this as it would allow MAP Counselling to gain any additional information needed in order to tailor the counselling to suit your needs. No contact will be made without your consent.








The use of art in therapy and counselling is not new, it is a very powerful medium and helps us to unlock the unconscious mind and bring to the forefront aspects of our thoughts and feelings we may not be able to otherwise tap into with speech alone.

There is no creative ability needed to participate therefore you do not have to be a great artist. Art therapy is a process that unravels and develops, using a combination of mediums, such as plastacine, paint, feltips, crayons, pencils, paper, shapes and colour.

There are two ways of experiencing art therapy, for a counsellor to interpret your art work or for you to interpret your own art work. At MAP counselling you are encouraged and coached to interpret your own work.

Using this method of art therapy has proved to be, in terms of client feedback, empowering and valuable as the individual is given the space to make the connections themselves and understand the “where’s, why’s and how’s”. From a practitioner’s point of view, there is also less room for misinterpretation.

Art therapy is available both online and face to face. For online counselling you will need the use of a scanner or other means to convey your art work over the internet.

MAP Counselling can support you to use art therapy in conjunction with your counselling and allow you to experience an alternative way of expressing your thoughts and feelings, enhancing your counselling experience.


We all experience some levels of anxiety in our lives, anxiety is nature’s way to alert us to danger and protect us from harm. Anxiety becomes an issue when it ‘takes over’ and gets in the way of our everyday lives, stopping us from completing daily tasks; it can have a great impact on our lives. Anxiety can affect how we think about ourselves, others and situations, where we may avoid people or things around us. Prolonged levels of anxiety can cause a lack of self confidence, anger and depression. MAP counselling can help you to pinpoint your anxieties and break them down, in order to give you a better understanding of how they impact on your life and MAP counselling will also help you to explore ways of managing the anxiety in order for you to move forward.

In some cases anxiety can become so powerful that the body reacts physically, leading to panic attacks. Panic attacks present strong physical symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, sweating and difficulty breathing. These symptoms can lead someone into believing they are having a heart attack and this in itself can be extremely unsettling, creating added fear and anxiety. MAP counselling can support you to understand how and why your panic attacks become triggered, working with you to find the necessary tools to manage your panic attacks.





Addiction is a behaviour that has got out of control, which leads to a compulsion to take part in certain activities, such as drug taking, drinking, gambling, eating, smoking and having sex. Individuals who are addicted become dependent on their behaviour physically or psychologically as a means of coping, either or both can come into play. Physical dependency presents itself when there is a fear associated with experiencing symptoms of withdrawal, such as pain. Psychological dependency presents itself when the individual uses their behaviour to try and avoid their feelings or thoughts, which can sometimes be unconscious, as in the case of a past trauma. This dependency fuels the addiction to continue.

MAP Counselling can support you to identify the processes that occur with your addiction, such as how to recognize and understand your triggers. This will enable you to look at how patterns are formed and continue to be repeated, giving you the tools and therefore options to make changes.

Stress is something that we all experience in our day to day lives and it can affect us all very differently. Interestingly, we all need a certain amount of stress in our lives to motivate us to get things done, which in turn enables our body and mind to run at its optimum level. Stress only becomes a problem when it starts to affect our ability to perform tasks, in other words the stress is so great that it outweighs the resources we have to cope. Prolonged levels of stress can take its toll on us physically as well as emotionally and increase the risk of disease and infection. It can also contribute to memory loss, anger and depression.

MAP counselling can support you to identify the effects of stress and enable you to examine the triggers involved; helping you to find other ways of coping so that you are better equipped to deal with issues that present themselves in your daily life.



Anger is a healthy human emotion that is commonly misunderstood as being negative. Anger can teach us a lot about who we are and how we react in situations, therefore it provides us with a lot of valuable insight and is nature’s way of protecting us from attack or threat. Anger becomes problematic when it takes control and is not managed appropriately, leading to destructive behaviours such as domestic abuse and road rage.

MAP counselling can support you to explore your anger safely, helping you to recognise how anger can turn into rage. The differences between rage, passive and assertive behaviours will be explored and the triggers to your anger will be uncovered allowing you to find other more helpful ways to express yourself.





Trauma affects everyone differently and can occur as a result of us experiencing an extraordinarily stressful event, such as a natural disaster or a physical assault. Other experiences such as a bereavement or ending of a significant relationship can also be experienced as traumatic. Symptoms such as flashbacks and nightmares can create further fear and anxiety and prevent healthy functioning.

An important factor that determines whether or not something is traumatic depends upon how we experience it. Therefore it is not necessarily the event that causes the trauma but how we process and interpret it.

MAP counselling can support you to explore, in a safe way, how your experience of trauma affects you now. This will allow you to gain valuable insight into how your thinking and behaviour can create trauma and contribute towards keeping it alive. Coping strategies will be explored, enabling you to start gaining some control over your symptoms and your life after trauma.


Concerns surrounding body image can affect anyone at any stage of their life, men as well as women are affected. We are constantly bombarded with Images from the media about dieting and what is an 'acceptable' body shape.

Issues arise when there is a compulsion surrounding food and we feel unable to control how we use food. Over-eating, purging or extreme dieting, are symptoms that develop, increasing when we are under stress and mask other underlying issues; which can be either conscious or unconscious. Therefore an eating disorder is not about having a problem with food but how food is used.

MAP counselling can support you to examine how issues surrounding food control and impact upon your daily life. Thought processes will be explored, allowing you to understand what triggers certain behaviours. This will provide a platform to explore, in more detail, issues that have contributed to your compulsive behaviours and created an eating disorder to develop.


Relationships are inevitable and are an essential part of our social interactions with others in everyday life. There are professional relationships such as with our work colleagues, intimate relationships such as with lovers or partners and those of which we are born into such as with our parents or siblings. Our past and present experiences, beliefs and actions all relate to how we form and keep these relationships. It is not unusual, therefore for disagreements or conflicts to occur, creating problems which affect our communication with one another, leading to unhealthy patterns that can become difficult to break.

MAP Counselling can support you to explore how you relate to others, examining your expectations and perceptions of those around you, including yourself and how these factors impact on your current relationships. Unhelpful patterns from the past and present will be explored in order to facilitate a better understanding, focusing on what did and did not work so well. This will provide a platform from which to create changes in other relationships.

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