The wellbeing navigator plays a key role in supporting your journey through FPSS.  They will be your first point of contact, providing a safe and supportive space for you and your family to share the impact of your experiences. They will work with you to collaboratively design a client-centred journey through the service. This may involve talking therapy, holistic or social support. They remain an ongoing point of contact during your involvement with the service to ensure you continue to access the care you need.

Counselling is intended to be an open and reflective space for you to work through feelings you may have about your experiences. Your therapist will work with you to explore the outcomes that would be most helpful for you and may use a range of therapeutic approaches to inform the counselling session, in agreement with you. Whilst open and non-prescriptive your therapist will still identify some goals you wish to work towards.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT is a therapeutic approach that looks at the links between thoughts, emotions and behaviours. Your therapist will work with you to develop a shared understanding of your thought processes about yourself, the world and others and the impact of your experiences on these, your mood and how behaviours may have changed. This understanding, and your goals, will shape how the treatment progresses, looking at ways to break any patterns that are keeping symptoms stuck.

Trauma Focused CBT (TF-CBT) is a specific approach within CBT to address symptoms arising from traumatic experiences. It uses an approach to go over events, in order to allow your brain to process these and update the meanings attached to these. This can reduce the frequency and intensity of trauma experiences such as flashbacks and nightmares.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy designed to help process traumatic memories.  We have an information processing system that seeks to naturally make sense of events. If this is blocked because of the devastating impact of traumatic events, EMDR can help to unblock and allow this system to naturally move towards healing. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (eye movements, taps or alternate sounds) alongside recalling a distressing memory, stimulating internal associations to process the memory and associated feelings. This allows memories to be less easily triggered, to be less intensely distressing and to change some of the thoughts associated with these. Researchers suggest this is a similar process to that which occurs during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.

Often relationships are strained by a significant loss. Couples therapy supports you to reduce obstacles within a relationship that result in feeling alone, distressed or make you feel irritable or angry with one other.

Couples therapy can support you to find new ways to relate to each other and gain a better understanding of your own and your partner’s feelings. Your therapist will be able to highlight the way in which your patterns of interaction affect you both and how this results in the distress within your relationship. This in turn can support you to better understand each other emotionally and practically, leading to a happier and more fulfilling relationship.

You may find that the loss your family has experienced is having an impact on your children. Our trained clinicians will ensure that sessions with children are comfortable and welcoming, and use different methods to enable them to work through their emotions. We can also support you as parents or wider family members to understand children’s grief reactions and how to support them through their process.

Experiencing loss and grief within your family can be life changing, and it can create a ripple effect of emotions around you and your family. Especially as a young person you will have your own unique experience of loss and grief within your family, and you may find the caring roles in your family feel different. For example, you may find that your parents/carers seek emotional support from you more than usual, or you may feel you need to care for younger siblings or other family members too.

You may notice feelings such as; fast changing emotions, tearfulness, anger, anxiety and sadness, headaches, sickness, lack of sleep or too much sleep, lack of motivation, not wanting to eat/eating too much. You may also just feel completely numb which can also be really frightening. We hear from many bereaved young people that feel as though they want to be away from the home all the time, or the opposite feel very frightened to leave the house. You may feel all or none of these things, and that is okay.

You might experience thoughts around suicide or self-harm in response to the huge events happening around you. Here are some key helplines for people your age who can help support you if you find you are experiencing these kinds of thoughts.

Papyrus https://www.papyrus-uk.org/
Childline UK (Under 19) https://www.childline.org.uk/
Kooth (under 25) https://www.kooth.com/
Samaritans 14+ https://www.samaritans.org/

Impact on the whole family:

When a family experiences loss and bereavement, each family member may react and grieve in a different way. This is common within families, as we all process our feelings in different ways.

You may also feel that you want and need to look after a family member, like a parent, carer or a younger sibling, and you may feel a lot of responsibility around this.

If your main carer/parent is struggling with their mental health in response to trauma and grief, this could mean they are not able to manage their usual day to day tasks and you might feel the need to support them with this.

If you become very worried about a parent/carer, and you are having to take on a lot of responsibility and care for them, here are some steps you can take to help yourself and your parent during this difficult time:

Talk to a trusted adult who can help, speak with someone at school or college, and you can use the following helplines:

Papyrus https://www.papyrus-uk.org/
Childline UK (Under 19) https://www.childline.org.uk/
Kooth (under 25) https://www.kooth.com/
Samaritans 14+ https://www.samaritans.org/
https://www.carersuk.org/

Impact on YOU

Grief can be a lonely and isolating experience, especially if you don’t feel able to reach out to your friends and others around you. It may make you want to spend less time with your friends, not enjoying activities as much as you used to, not texting people back or answering the phone when they call you, and you may find you may want to stay in the house a lot more, or feel fearful to leave your home.

You may also feel as though you want to be away from your home as much as possible, and spend more time with your friends. You may feel you want to engage in more risky behaviours such as alcohol, drug use or a change in your friendship groups.

You may feel all or none of things described here, because each experience is unique to you.

How we can help:

Here at FPSS, we can meet with you and your family to support you with your experiences. We are trained and experienced in working with people your age, and working with families as a whole.