Adults Counselling and Psychotherapy
Singapore
Adults Counselling and Psychology Therapy
People usually come for counselling or psychotherapy when they are experiencing a crisis or a mental distress, with the goal of relieving their symptoms and their distress. However, therapy is more than just symptom relief. Therapy can be a journey of self discovery, healing, personal growth and a path to leading a more meaningful and purposeful life.
Seeking counselling or therapy is a courageous step as you would need to talk about painful pasts or face parts of yourself or your life that you do not like. However, in the safety of a therapeutic relationship, therapy can be richly rewarding and enriching. Counselling and psychotherapy can help to uncover blind spots, unroot old beliefs that are affecting your life and renew your mind with truths of who you really are, your worth and your potential.
At Sylvia Tan Psychology Consultancy, we use evidenced based therapies for your psychological intervention and we will work collaboratively with you in developing your therapy goals.
We provide counselling for following issues:
- Childhood trauma
- Grief and loss
- Infertility issues
- Parenting difficulties
- Life transition
- Marital and relationship problems
- Divorce
- Existential issues
- Work stress
- Bullying
- Low self esteem
- Anger management
- Depression
- Personality Disorder
- Postnatal Depression
- Bipolar Disorder
- Anxiety Disorder
- Panic Disorder
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorders
- Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)
To find out more on the counselling and psychotherapy services we provide:
Types of therapy approaches we use
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of counselling that focuses on changing dysfunctional behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. It is based on the idea that your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all affect one another.
CBT is a collaborative therapy where our therapist works with you in a one-on-one session to identify unhelpful patterns of behavior or thought processes and find solutions. It is an evidenced based therapy for treatment of depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorder.
Schema therapy seeks to identify unhelpful patterns of thinking and replaces those unhelpful thought patterns (schemas) with more adaptive and healthy ones. Schema therapy integrates elements of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy and related approaches in its intervention approach.
Unhealthy or maladaptive patterns of thinking, negative beliefs about oneself are said to form in early childhood, particularly for those who have grown up in emotionally and physically neglectful households, or in households where parents were overly indulgent, and did not set proper boundaries.
Developed schemas developed during childhood are carried forward into adulthood, which can become limiting and maladaptive thoughts and behaviours in the person’s adult life, affecting their relationship and their emotional wellbeing.
Schema Therapy is found to be particularly useful for treating individuals with personality disorders, anxiety disorders and trauma related disorders like Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorders ( C-PTSD)
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a form therapy that is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) aimed at helping people who have difficulties coping with their distressing emotions. Its main goals are to teach people how to live in the moment, develop healthy ways to cope with stress, regulate their emotions, and improve their relationships with others.
DBT has been proven to be helpful in treating people with:
- Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
- Self-harm
- Suicidal behavior
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Substance use disorder
- Eating disorders, specifically binge eating disorder and bulimia
- Depression
- Anxiety
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidenced based approach which believes that healing of self comes with identifying and understanding the multiple sub-personalities or families within each person’s mental system.
These sub-personalities are said to be play different functions in self preservation which can result in maladaptive behaviours for the person, affecting their overall wellbeing or affecting their relationships with others.
There are parts of self that are wounded and hold painful emotions such as anger and shame, and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts.
The sub-personalities are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core Self, a concept that describes the confident, compassionate, whole person that is at the core of every individual. IFS aims to heal the wounded parts and restore mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Panic
- Phobias
- Trauma
- Substance use
- Physical health conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis
- General functioning and well-being
The Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy is a body-centered approach which combines somatic awareness with experiential techniques to promote psychological growth and transformation.
It believes that the body is the window to unconscious psychological material, and therapists work to help identify somatic indicators of unconscious beliefs and then bring these indicators into awareness and working with them to facilitate process of change.
Hakomi uses mindfulness in its approach and it is very gentle and nourishing work for those who wish to explore deeper parts of themselves. It is helpful in treating
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Grief
- Trauma
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-oriented therapeutic model specifically used for healing trauma and other stress disorders. The SE approach focuses on releasing trauma stored in the body and it is done by the SE therapist integrating body movements to help with the release of trauma and facilitate healing for person.
SE is said to be a bottom up approach in treating trauma. It is particularly useful for individuals who are in an emotionally “frozen” state.
SE is helpful in treatment of:
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Stress disorders
- Chronic pain
- Anxiety Disorders
- Depression
Counselling Psychologist
Sylvia Tan - Founder, Principal Counselling Psychologist, MPsych (SRP Registered)
Sylvia is a Counselling Psychologist practicing in Singapore. She holds a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology from Curtin University of Technology ( Perth, Western Australia) and is currently a registered counselling psychologist and a clinical supervisor with the Singapore Register of Psychologists (SRP).
After her graduation in 2002, Sylvia lived and worked in Australia for many years before her relocation back to her home country Singapore in 2014. To date, Sylvia has over 20 years of experience working in a range of settings both in Australia and Singapore.