Introduction
My name is Risuna Mathebula. I am a board-certified Counselling Psychologist qualified at the University of the Witwatersrand in a Master of Arts in Community-Based Counselling Psychologist. I completed my internship at Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust in Kew, Johannesburg providing therapy in the psychodynamic/psychoanalysis approach and psychoeducational assessments to the community of Johannesburg especially Alexandra. During this this time I have worked extensively with grief, attachment, depression, anxiety, PTSD, childhood trauma, abuse, addiction, delayed development, post-partum depression, family dynamics and personality disorders, separation and marital conflict.

Once qualified, I worked at Nontsikelelo Rajuli Psychology Practice providing trauma debriefing counselling and administration of medicolegal psychological assessment in medical negligence and RAF assessment. I worked extensively with EAP in companies to provide a holistic and healthy working and personal environment for individuals. Moreover, I have worked at a girl’s high school dealing with issues like self-harm, attachment issues, ADHD and depression as well as anxiety. This included dealing with teachers and parents to providing a well-rounded treatment for high school teenagers. I have been in Private Practice working with individuals, couples and children in therapeutic approaches such as Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, CBT, Narrative therapy and solution focused as well as family systems. I work to challenge various issues through understanding cognition in a practical way as well as understanding the root causes to change behaviour.

Services

Childhood trauma therapy and Attachment theory work
Childhood trauma is an incident experienced or being experienced by a child that brings up emotions of fear and is dangerous, violent or life-threatening. The following are examples of childhood trauma:
• Psychological, physical, or sexual abuse
• Community or school violence
• Witnessing or experiencing domestic violence
• Sudden or violent loss of a loved one
• Physical or sexual assault
• Neglect
• Parental addiction
• Divorce
• Serious accidents or life-threatening illness
Therapy can assist by identifying and changing different attachment patterns, core beliefs and negative thinking to develop a different perspective. It can assist with challenges with interpersonal relationship and attachment to other people. It can allow the client a space and opportunity to express and deal with unconscious and repressed feelings, unconscious defence mechanism; and it can assist in developing coping strategies and communication skills

Depression

Depression is a real and debilitating psychological disorder and one should receive psychological treatment. There are some specific consistent indications of presence of depression:
• Depressed mood, sadness, tearfulness or irritability;
• Changes in appetite or weight, either an increase or decrease could be significant;
• Changes in sleeping patterns, either insomnia or excessive sleeping;
• Social withdrawal and lack of desire to be with other people;
• Decreased desire to take part in activities that were previously enjoyed;
• Decreased sex drive, if appropriate.

There are different types of depressions that may have many causes and express or manifest differently in different times. A psychologist will be able to diagnose the type of depression and create a management plan that may include referrals to other health professionals in conjunction with psychotherapy. Therapy can assist by identifying and changing the negative core beliefs that can contribute to depressed thoughts and feelings. It can assist in changing negative thinking patterns and developing different perspectives. It can allow the client a space to express and deal with repressed feelings; and it can assist in developing coping strategies and communication skills.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a debilitating disorder that has many different forms, and can vary from mild to severe and debilitating. It can take the form of generalised anxiety; social anxiety; phobias; or even panic attacks. There are some signs that suggest that anxiety is becoming problematic in three environments such as the home, work, relationships or school:
• Worried thoughts and feeling that are disproportionate to the situation;
• Difficulty controlling anxiety, trouble relaxing, or intrusive worrisome thoughts;
• Sleep disturbances;
• Irritability, concentration difficulties, or feeling easily worn out;
• Anxiety accompanied by physical symptoms, such as rapid heart rate, sweating, shaking, difficulty breathing, or chest pain.
These symptoms are likely to occur in specific situations or can be triggered by certain things or events; or they may occur without an obvious reason.

Anxiety involves a complex interaction between the brain, mind and the body, and treatment needs to address the anxiety on multiple different levels. Therapy can assist to challenge and change the beliefs and thoughts that trigger and perpetuate the anxiety response. Most feelings are activated by thoughts, which cause the release of chemicals in the body and the brain. If you can develop skills to alter your thinking patterns, you can change which chemicals are released and therefore change the way you feel both mentally and physically. Therapy can also teach you breathing and relaxation techniques to reduce the physical anxiety symptoms.

PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is serious and critical mental health condition in which individuals experience a variety of symptoms following exposure to a traumatic experience whether directly or indirectly such as car accidents, muggings, high jacking, traumatic death/loss, sexual assault, abuse, natural disaster and many more. These may include:
• Flashbacks
• nightmares,
• Unwanted invasive thoughts
• Anxiety
• Avoidance of person, environment and objects
• Changes in mood and thinking.

Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence is the term for when an individual’s brain processes, learns, and/or behaves differently from what is considered to be “normal”. There are Types of Neurodivergence including Autism, ADHD, OCD and others. Therapy can help with socializing and social skills, as well as repetitive behaviours and organisation and planning. It offers space for individuals to be able to cope with their challenges and understand themselves better. It can mitigate their challenges with avoidance and reactivity, and more importantly emotional regulation.

Grief and loss
Bereavement refers to the painful of having experienced the loss of a loved one. It most often refers to the time after a loss when emotions are at their most profound. This experience is marked by intense grief and enormous sorrow. The following symptoms may manifest different in different individuals:
• Shock
• Anger
• Guilt
• Sadness
• Numbness
• Cryng
• Shame
• blame
Therapy can provide a space of the exploration of different emotions and the type of relationship and attachment that the individual had with the loss of that loved one. It assist with a holistic mourning process that deals with emotional regulation and healthy coping and defence mechanisms.

Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders are defined by personality traits that can be troubling and challenging enough to create problems with relating to other people in healthy and holistic ways and can lead to significant distress or impairment in important areas of functioning. There are types of personality disorders which includes Borderline, histrionic, avoidant and personality disorders. Therapy offers space to help people to understand and have insight to the aspect of their problems that are internal to themselves by changing maladaptive and socially undesirable behaviours, including recklessness, temper outbursts, social isolation and lack of assertiveness, as well modifying problematic personality traits like dependency, manipulativeness, distrust and arrogance.

Alcohol and Gambling Addiction:
Addiction occurs on two different levels, both of which create intense and almost irresistible urges and craving to repeat the substance use , even in the face of over whelming negative consequences to health, finances, relationships, etc. Physiologically addiction to a substance is when your body adapts itself to incorporate the substance into its normal functioning so you may experience severe withdrawal symptoms when the substance is not consumed or behaviour not done. Psychological addiction is when your brain creates an instinctual connection between the sunstance and the experience of pleasure or alleviation of physical or emotional pain.

In order to overcome addiction it is essential to get medical and psychological help. Therapy can assist in overcoming addictions by:
• Identifying triggers and warning signs for drug use;
• Changing unconscious beliefs and conscious thinking patterns;
• Improving life skills and daily functioning;
• Creating support structures.
And by addressing:
• Relationship problems;
• Self-esteem issues;
• Underlying emotional pain, trauma, or psychological disorders.

Life issues:

There is still a lot of stigma around seeking psychological help, there remains a social perception that therapy is a last resort that a person turns to and it is often accompanied by shame that a person is not strong enough or that they are weak. Many people feel that their issue is not severe enough to seek therapy. The reality is that small problems can create bigger problems as everything is a system and often times as system is run by smaller agents, and therefore the sooner an issue can be dealt with, the better. Therapy can assist you to deal with the problem so that it does not continue to create future difficulties. It can assist you to deal with any underlying feelings or beliefs that may have contributed to the development of the issue so that a similar issue does not develop in future.

Family therapy:

Family dynamics and intergenerational interactions have a crucial impact on individuals and can be a filter that creates life-long self-perceptions and beliefs about the world. Families are often the source or protective agents of our deepest insecurities, conflict within families can be exceptionally hurtful and difficult to cope with. Family therapy can assist in creating and promoting healthy communication and understanding as well as conflict management within the family. In family therapy, individual members can also develop an understanding of the origins of their relationship patterns that may be affecting other relationships or may affect future relationships with friends, spouses or children. Moreover, Family therapy can lead to the exploration of intergenerational trauma and parenting styles that might lead to dysfunction and mental disorder

Finding a lasting relationship:

• It may be that you struggle with finding the right person or have trouble developing intimacy;
• Or it may be that you find it easy to fall in love, but staying in love is the problem;
• Or you it may be that you repeatedly choose partners that hurt and reject you.
No matter where your issue lies, difficulties finding or maintaining a healthy and lasting relationship almost always stem from childhood dynamics. Even the best parents cannot be perfect, and our early attachments create unconscious patterns of relating that we tend to play out in endless self-fulfilling prophesies. Understanding and changing the beliefs that you developed in early life can allow you to change the template through which you view relationships, so that you can choose a more appropriate partner and develop a healthy lasting relationship.

Marriage or couple therapy:

Marriages and long term relationships inevitable encounter times of conflict. In these times we have a choice: to allow the conflict to fester and destroy the relationship; or the work through it and grow both individually and as a couple. The problem is that we often cannot see our way out of the miscommunications or negative patterns that have emerged in our relationships.
In marriage counselling you can:
• Learn speak in a way that your partner will be able to hear you, and to listen in a way that you can really understand them
• Learn to see each other’s motives clearly
• Work through hurts or betrayals in the relationship and rebuild trust
• Work through past relationship hurts and rebuild your ability to trust
• Work on childhood triggers that create unhelpful reactions to your partner
• Improve your self-perceptions of what you deserve in a relationship
• Change unconscious negative perceptions or patterns that damage your relationship