BABCP registered CBT and Interpersonal Psychotherapist Rebecca Mead

I’m Rebecca Mead and I am an experienced Psychotherapist offering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) to individual adults. My background prior to being a psychotherapist is in mental health nursing. I have been working in the NHS for the past 18 years, and continue to do so.

I have been a qualified CBT therapist for 10 years and am accredited with the BABCP. I am also a qualified in Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) and accredited with IPT UK. Both of these treatments have been recommended by NICE guidelines (the “Bible of treatment” in the NHS). Throughout our lives we can experience difficult times and various stressors that sometimes get on top of us and we need a little help to get through them. Therapy can provide that. Psychotherapy can help to increase self understanding and self awareness and give us tools to manage life. My training and extensive experience will enable us to explore your problems together and, at your pace, we will collaboratively explore ways for you to make changes and move forward. For psychotherapy to be effective it is important that you can connect with your therapist, feel safe, comfortable and understood. In other words the relationship is just as important as the approach to therapy. I believe that warmth, kindness, compassion, empathy, openness, and a willingness to be alongside you are valuable aspects of the therapeutic process. I want you to feel hopeful that your future can improve.

What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?

CBT is about exploring the connections between the way we think, how we behave, our emotions and the way we feel physically. During times of distress, we can think differently about ourselves. Thoughts can become negative and unhelpful; this can result in us feeling even worse and we may then behave in a way that prolongs our distress. Consequently we can become trapped in unhelpful cycles. CBT enables us to unpick these cycles and understand how we might inadvertently maintain our difficulties. Once we have understood the problem together we can apply CBT strategies to help manage the difficulties by changing the way you think and behave. This can lead to a major improvement in how you feel and live your life. You will also have a toolkit of CBT strategies to use in the future.

What is Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)?

IPT is based on the premise that there is a relationship between the way people interact with others and their psychological symptoms. So difficulties in our relationships can affect our mental health and our mental health can affect the quality of our relationships. The main focus is on relationship problems and on helping you to identify how you are feeling and behaving in your relationships. The benefits of IPT include: improvement in relationships, including relating to others and communication, learning to cope with emotions and life changes, problem solving, processing loss and grief, and overall an improvement in mood and psychological distress. These treatments are not exclusive. However some people may prefer the structured approach that CBT offers and others may prefer the IPT focus on relationships. For further information on IPT, please see our page on this approach here. I am experienced in working with a wide range of psychological and emotional difficulties:

Anxiety – a number of different anxiety disorders including: Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) – worrying about everything, feeling anxious all the time; Panic Attacks; Health Anxiety; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); Social Anxiety – worrying about how other people perceive you, feeling shy; Phobias – including vomit, heights, confined spaces, etc.
Stress – could be specific for example at work, or more generalised;
Life changes– for example changes in circumstances such as redundancy, breakup of relationship or other life event that has affected how you feel;
Relationship difficulties– this can be with a partner, family members or friends. There can often be difficulties within a significant relationship where the relationship has become ‘stuck’ in arguments or disagreements and this can affect mood. Alternatively when there are difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships this can leave us feeling very alone and isolated.
Morbid Jealousy;
Low Self Esteem– this might relate to long standing problems going back to childhood;
Depression– including low mood and or general lack of interest in life;
Post Natal Depression (PND);
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD);
Issues of loss– such as bereavement (when you don’t seem to be healing from loss of a loved one and are struggling to adjust), loss of health, work, redundancy, loss of a role in life.