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Mental health has been ignored and left unaddressed for a long time due to lack of awareness and social stigmatisation.
Covid-19 has bought to the fore the importance of raising awareness and professionally addressing the issue to enable people to be resilient and cope better.
Insightful Counselling & Training, started by Ms Reena Goenka in January this year, provides counselling and psychotherapy services for issues such as stress, anxiety, fear, phobia, trauma, depression, grief and loss.
Its team of four psychotherapists and a few intern counsellors cater to the needs of children, teenagers, adults, couples and families.
"All our counsellors have their Masters in counselling or psychotherapy," said Ms Goenka, who has worked as a counsellor with various organisations in Singapore over the past 11 years.
"They also strive to add additional tools and trauma processing techniques such as Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy or Brainspotting to heal the clients. Our team also uses techniques like Transactional Analysis to help with communication, family and addiction issues."
The counsellors, all Singaporeans, also use other therapy techniques such as Cognitive Behaviour, Psychodynamic and Hypnotherapy and are proficient in different languages such as English, Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, Hindi and Marathi.
Insightful Counselling will be starting group therapy sessions from the second week of October.
"We plan to facilitate group therapy based on the principles of Transactional Analysis and teach the skills of Non-Violent Communication," said Ms Goenka.
"The goal of our programme is to improve self-connection, transform judgements to statements of needs, strengthen communication and nourish relationships with partners, family members and others."
Group therapy has many advantages. It especially builds social connectedness among people going through similar issues, such as needing recognition, intimacy, attention and love.
Transactional Analysis works on the human personality and improvement of relationships. It helps improve behavioural patterns, communication and attitude.
Nonviolent Communication holds that most conflicts between individuals or groups arise from miscommunication about their needs due to coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt or shame.
These "violent" modes of communication, when used during a conflict, divert the attention of the individuals from clarifying their needs, feelings, and perceptions, thus perpetuating the conflict.
"We will be restricting each group therapy session to eight participants," said Ms Goenka.
"This is to ensure that each person feels heard and can process their inner wounds."
Insightful Counselling caters to all income groups.
"We also have a pool of trainee counsellors, who are completing their Masters, to meet the needs of people who cannot afford therapy fees," said Ms Goenka. "Our team will help you navigate through the difficulties of life." Insightful Counselling & Training is located at 308 Tanglin Road #02-05, Singapore 247974. Visit
www.insightfulcounselling.com for more information.
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