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We would like to tell you about our service. Who it is for. What to expect from us.

When planning for pregnancy and birth, women and their partners do not normally expect to be affected by long term negative emotional responses. If this does occur, it can be difficult to differentiate between what is a normal level of anxiety or depression, and what is not. Much depends on a person’s individual situation and experiences.

Problems that counselling can help with may include:

Planning for pregnancy and birth

Depression or high levels of anxiety during your pregnancy

Fear (terror) of child birth itself

Understanding your birth story

Birth trauma: a (fight/flight/freeze) response to your birth experience

Grief in relation to loss

Trauma response as the birth partner

Relationship difficulties following birth

Afterthoughts counselling service aims to:

• Help you understand and come to terms with your emotional and physical journey
• Deliver therapeutic help adapted to your needs
• Provide you with techniques and tools specific to how your symptoms present. These tools will also provide you with life skills to manage anxiety and depression symptoms now and in the future
• Provide treatment for the trauma response which aims to help to reduce or eliminate the need for your body to retain a switched on response to a threat that is now in the past which continues to be triggered in the present. The resulting change is most often immediately perceptible to the client

At Afterthoughts NI we have a small and growing team of counsellors who have been trained to work with birth trauma in this way. (90% of women report relief to symptoms using this particular model of care)