Reigate Psychology Service

20/11/2023

Reigate Psychology Service (RPS) has some exciting news! 🧡🎊🎉

We're open as Reigate Psychology Service in AND in our beautiful new clinic, in the historic and beautiful village of which is North of in

RPS: In both locations provides a comprehensive for , , and of all ages.

We have availability now, to see you on zoom and for face to face work within our comfortable offices.


Modern therapeutic approaches are active and collaborative in nature.

The therapist works in collaboration with you to reduce the frequency and severity of any problems.

When using (for example) the focus of the work is on what is keeping the difficulties and problems going at this time, not looking for possible causes and/or earlier childhood experiences.
This is not to say earlier life experiences are not important to understanding current difficulties, but it is unlikely they are keeping any difficulties going now.

Therapy is often portrayed poorly in the media and we would never actually ask anyone to lie on a couch!

Our service is open, inclusive and welcoming to all people 🌈

A works actively with you, exploring how you are coping and finding out what is and is not helpful to you.

We cannot ‘mind read’ and can only help with difficulties people are happy to talk about.

Approaches include , and Focused with the emphasis, always, on the needs of the individual, within their own context.

See our for more details https://reigatepsychologyservice.co.uk

IMAGE: one of our therapists Victoria at work in our Bristol Service

24/06/2023

Does your teen find school attendance difficult? 🤔

https://www.facebook.com/100088528062608/posts/219075984386669/?sfnsn=scwspmo

Dr Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist, author and speaker. This page is not clinical advice.

18/06/2023

This is a banner which has been hung in at least three schools in York by the South Bank Trust, a MAT.

It is harmful to young people and their families, and it is dishonest.

1. This is not how learning works. Learning cannot be equated to minutes at school. Young people are not ‘learning’ every minute they spend at school, and ‘not learning’ every minute that they are at home. This under-values everything that young people do at home.
2. This is not how time works. You can’t add up lots of random five minutes and say that this is the equivalent of a day. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a rhetorical trick, a sleight of hand.
3. This is not how statistics work. Yes, we know that those who struggle to attend school also do less well in exams – but we don’t actually know that this is causal rather than correlational. Those who find school easier will also be those who find exams easier. Pressuring those who find school hard to get there five minutes earlier every day won’t magically turn them into people who find exams easier.
4. This is not how mental health works. Telling young people who are already struggling that the only way to get a ‘best start’ is attendance and punctuality at school is going to have a negative effect on those who can’t achieve this. Those who have chronic medical problems, or mental health problems. Extra pressure will make their problems worse, not better.
5. This is not how motivation works. They are trying to use fear to get children into school, but if a young person is anxious about school, using fear to motivate will make them more anxious. When a young person is struggling with their mental health and they come to see me, a psychologist, they will often say things like ‘I’m never going to amount to anything, because I can’t make it to school every day’. Or ‘I’m going to fail my GCSEs and then I’ll never get an interesting job’. They’ve been told this at school. They feel defeated by life before it has even begun.

I’d like to see the risk assessment which is done before putting a banner like this up. I can see that the MAT want to promote attendance, but any policy should be assessed for potential unwanted effects. We can’t assume that any intervention - even an apparently 'motivational banner' won’t have a downside.

The messages that we give our young people matter, and if we tell them that their chances of success are being damaged for life, they may just believe us. At a time in their life when they really need hope, we’re giving them the opposite.

It’s just not true. School isn’t the only place to learn, and young people can succeed in many different ways. We need to help our young people see a future for themselves, no matter whether they can attend school or not.

09/11/2022

Thank you so much for sharing this insightful piece.. 👇🏽

My kids have been watching Inside Out recently. It's a movie that takes place largely inside the characters' minds from the point of views of their personified emotions. Everybody has the emotions Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust.

If you haven't seen it in a few years, it really holds up amazingly -- there is sooooo much I could talk about about this movie from an OT and interoception perspective. I mean, as far as emotional intelligence goes, this movie just has layers and layers and layers.

One scene, though, majorly jumped out at me the first time I was re-watching it after having not seen it in years. I thought I'd write about it today.

Riley, the protagonist, is 11 years old. She and her family have just moved cross-country and are having a predictably stressful time (I say as someone who's moved cross-country many times and internationally once!) She has a terrible first day at school, but is embarrassed about it and doesn't want to tell her parents about it at dinner (partly because she thinks she's supposed to be "putting forward a happy face" for her parents' sake).

At dinner, her mom presses her for details about school, and she snaps back at her parents. Her father gets angry and "shows up" to the "fight" -- really he's the one who turns it into a fight, because he's distracted with his own thoughts and doesn't realize why she's being sullen and irritable, or that he could ask what's wrong.

What struck me in watching this scene was how Anger is the driving emotion in her father's mind, and he's the driving emotion in this scene -- but Fear is actually equally present in this scene and in the dialogue. It's almost 50/50 between Fear and Anger speaking for what the father does...which is yell at Riley and tell her to go to her room.

After having yelled at her and sent her away (fixing absolutely none of the problems she was having), Fear, in her father's mind, is relieved and cheering.

That struck me as so painfully honest about a truth about parenting. It even manages to make it funny instead of just painful.

He was afraid of being "disrespected" by what his child was saying. He was afraid of the unusual amount of "sass" that he was hearing from her. He was AFRAID.

Fear is the driving factor in a lot of my snap judgments and reactions as a parent -- fear, with anger on top, because fear feels too vulnerable to let drive by itself. It's only when I let myself pause that I can react with more honest or open curiosity about what's going on for the child.

[Image description: A screenshot from the Inside Out movie, from a scene within Riley's dad's mind. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are seated around a table. They all have mustaches, like Riley’s father does.]

14/10/2022

14/10/2022

01/10/2022

BODY SCAN: WHAT IS YOUR BODY TRYING TO TELL YOU?

Our bodies are on a never-ending mission to communicate with us on the outside, what’s going on on the inside.

But sometimes these signs are too subtle or we don’t pay them enough attention until they become something more serious.

Physical signs and symptoms are ways your body tries to alert you to deeper imbalances.

Taking the time to decipher the body’s codes is always better than simply popping a pill and hoping the symptoms just go away.

Ideally, we want to get to the causes of problems, not just suppress the end result of ill health.

But interpreting the body’s Morse code so to speak requires a deep level of body awareness that, like any skill, takes time and practice to perfect.

Useful resource - TED Talks video playlist: What is your body trying to tell you?
https://lnkd.in/dayuMbW

01/10/2022

Ways to slow down and reconnect with our little humans this autumn weekend 🧡🌱✨️🍂

If you’ve been struggling to connect with or enjoy your child, pick one of these and focus in on taking time to observe it this weekend. Just try to watch for when it happens and enjoy them and enjoy that about them. See where it leads.

[Image description: A screenshot of an Instagram post from conscious.parents. It reads,
“Slow down and notice your child’s:
-facial expressions when they laugh
-smile when you hold each other’s gaze
-courage to do ‘big kid’ things
-perspective on such a big world
-many ways to show you they love you
-excitement to see you after being separated
-deep involvement when doing something they love”

The Conscious Parents watermark is also on the image. End description.]

20/09/2022

To book one of our last few sessions of online support, available in the Bath and Bristol area, contact us via our website today;
www.reigatepsychologyservice.co.uk

15/09/2022

UPDATE >

We currently have some for online work and will soon have availability for face2face work - in the / area.

Please do contact us via the website if you're looking for support.

www.reigatepsychologyservice.co.uk