Dr Ana Mootoosamy

I have been helping people through their trauma, depression, anxieties and more for several years, and have written many articles about this. Making the decision to come to therapy is one of the most difficult things to do – admitting that you need help, especially for your mental health, is a very tough step to take. After many sleepless nights, swamped by thoughts, or finding life unbearable, it might be difficult to know where to turn to. When things feel overwhelming, it is important to have hope that change can happen. It may not be instant, but change will come, and coming to therapy can be transformational. In our first session, I would ask you to tell me what brings you to therapy today, and I would ask you more about your physical health and important events from your life history, from infancy to the present. I do this because our mental and physical health are intimately linked – it is extremely unlikely that your mental health would be unaffected by your physical health and vice versa. Mental and physical health, mind and body are a continuum, and if the health of one improves, then so will the health of the other We come to therapy because something is happening now that is too difficult for us. The important thing to bear in mind that we are not a product of just the here and now – what we are today is a result of a million events that have made and shaped us over our entire lives – all these things add up to the present and can affect us in ways that we may not realise. The power of the psychoanalytic approach is that we look beyond the obvious and look deeper into the distress, and in this way, by looking directly at the causes of pain, instead of papering over the cracks, we can start to move towards genuine change.