Dr Zach Vogiatzis

Are you feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, loneliness, or a sense of being stuck? Perhaps you’re struggling with relationship challenges, work-related stress, or feeling trapped in patterns of low self-esteem and confidence.

You may have noticed yourself turning to unhealthy coping strategies like overeating, excessive drinking, or over-exercising. Or perhaps you’ve been dealing with physical symptoms like stomach pain, nausea, or fatigue that don’t have a clear medical cause. Stress-related conditions such as IBS, migraines, or other recurring physical discomfort might be making your daily life harder.

If any of this resonates, you’re not alone. Individual therapy can offer you a pathway to understanding the root causes of these challenges, while helping you develop healthier coping mechanisms and tools for lasting relief.

As a Chartered Counselling Psychologist with over 15 years of clinical experience, I specialize in providing high-quality psychological therapy both in-person and online. My approach is grounded in evidence-based practices such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT), and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP).

I have worked extensively in the NHS and third-sector services, treating a wide range of mental health conditions from mild to severe as well as helping individuals cope with functional and/or medically unexplained symptoms and stress-related physical issues. My commitment to delivering the highest standard of care means that I tailor each therapy session to your unique needs, ensuring you receive compassionate, effective support.

To learn more about my background and the therapies I offer, please visit my website: https://thepsychologyclinics.co.uk.

If you would like to book an initial therapy session, please contact me via email at dr.zach@thepsychologyclinics.co.uk or use the contact form on my website. 

Understanding Mental Health

Mental health is just as important as physical health, yet it’s often more challenging to understand and talk about. It encompasses our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences how we think, feel, and behave in daily life. It also affects how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

Mental health is vital at every stage of life, from childhood through adulthood. Everyone has mental health concerns from time to time, but when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function, a mental health condition may be the cause.

Common Signs of Mental Health Issues
It’s important to know the signs that might suggest someone is struggling with their mental health. Here are a few:
·      Feeling sad or down 
·      Confused thinking or reduced ability to concentrate 
·      Excessive fears or worries, or extreme feelings of guilt
·      Extreme mood changes of highs and lows
·      Withdrawal from friends and activities
·      Significant tiredness, low energy, or problems sleeping
·      Detachment from reality (delusions), paranoia, or hallucinations
·      Inability to cope with daily problems or stress
·      Trouble understanding and relating to situations and to people
·      Alcohol or drug abuse
·      Major changes in eating habits
·      Sex drive changes
·      Excessive anger, hostility, or violence
·      Suicidal thinking

Support and Treatment
If you or someone you know is experiencing these signs, it’s important to seek help. Treatment for mental health disorders is not a one size fits all approach. There are many different treatment options available, including:
 
•      Therapy: Speaking with a therapist can help you learn skills to manage negative feelings. You might also benefit from family or group therapy sessions.
•      Medication: Medication may help manage symptoms, but it should be paired with other treatments.
•      Lifestyle Changes: Sometimes simple changes in lifestyle, such as improving diet, increasing physical activity, and getting enough sleep can help.
•      Support Groups: Connecting with others facing similar challenges can provide a support network and reduce feelings of isolation.

Stigma and Mental Health
Despite its prevalence, there is still a stigma associated with mental health. This can prevent many people from seeking the help they need. It’s crucial to remember mental health issues are not a sign of personal weakness, and asking for help is a sign of strength.

Maintaining Mental Health
Taking care of your mental health can mean taking regular steps to improve your emotional well-being. Here are some tips:
·      Stay connected with people who care about you.
·      Keep physically active.
·      Develop a routine that includes activities you enjoy.
·      Manage stress through techniques such as mindfulness or meditation.
·      Set realistic goals and prioritize tasks.

Understanding mental health is the first step towards advocating for yourself and others. It’s okay to ask for help, and it’s important to talk about how you feel. Remember, you are not alone, and support is available.

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is a common feeling that most people experience at some point in their lives. It’s that sense of worry, nervousness, or unease about something that might happen in the future. For example, you might feel anxious before an important exam or job interview. This kind of anxiety is normal and usually goes away once the stressful event passes. However, for some people, anxiety can become overwhelming and interfere with their daily life.

When anxiety becomes constant or occurs without a clear reason, it may be part of an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders can make it hard to concentrate, sleep, or even enjoy time with family and friends. Common symptoms include feeling restless, having trouble sleeping, sweating, a racing heart, and finding it hard to relax. Some people may avoid certain situations because they fear feeling anxious. It’s important to remember that anxiety disorders are not a sign of weakness or something you can “snap out of.” They are real medical conditions that can improve with the right treatment.

If you’re struggling with anxiety, you’re not alone. Many people have found relief through a combination of therapy, medication, and self-care strategies, such as mindfulness and relaxation techniques. It’s important to reach out to a healthcare provider if anxiety is affecting your life. They can help guide you through the best steps to manage it so you can feel more like yourself again.

Understanding Depression

Depression is more than just feeling sad or having a bad day. It’s a medical condition that affects how you think, feel, and act. While everyone experiences sadness from time to time, depression is different because it lasts for weeks or even months and can make everyday tasks feel overwhelming. People with depression often feel hopeless, lose interest in activities they used to enjoy, and struggle with feelings of worthlessness.

Some common symptoms of depression include feeling tired all the time, difficulty sleeping, or sleeping too much. You may also notice changes in your appetite, either eating too much or too little. Concentration becomes difficult, and you might feel like you’re moving in slow motion. In some cases, people with depression may even have thoughts about not wanting to live, which can be very scary and serious. If this happens, it’s important to talk to someone right away.

The good news is that depression is treatable. Many people find relief through therapy, medication, or a combination of both. Talking to a healthcare provider is the first step in getting the help you need. You don’t have to face depression alone, and with the right treatment, most people feel better and return to their normal activities. It’s important to know that asking for help is a sign of strength, and support is available to help you feel better again.

Understanding Functional and/or Unexplained physical Symptoms

Have you ever felt physical pain, fatigue, or discomfort and sought medical help, only to find that all tests return normal and there’s no clear diagnosis? It can be frustrating and might even feel like you’re being told “it’s all in your head.” However, this is far from the truth. Your pain is real, and it’s important to recognize the strong connection between your mind and body. The way you feel physically can be significantly affected by stress, anxiety, and other emotional factors. This doesn’t make your pain any less real—it just means that emotional and physical health are closely intertwined.

If you’re open to exploring this connection, there are effective ways to address the emotional stress that may be contributing to your symptoms. Working with trained professionals, you can explore treatments like talk therapy or stress management techniques. These methods focus on reducing the emotional impact on your body and have helped many people feel better, manage their symptoms, and regain control over their well-being.

Many physical symptoms, often grouped under bodily distress or somatic symptom disorders, can’t be fully explained by a medical condition and are often linked to psychological or emotional factors. Here are some common conditions that therapy can help with:

 • Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): Techniques like stress management can help control symptoms by reducing triggers.

 • Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS): Psychological therapies can improve coping strategies and reduce fatigue.

 • Conversion Disorder: Therapy helps patients explore underlying emotional or psychological conflicts that manifest as physical symptoms.

 • Other conditions: Including fibromyalgia, psychogenic movement disorders, sexual health issues, tension headaches, migraines, and unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms.

Emotional factors often contribute to medically unexplained symptoms (MUPS), so addressing these psychological issues is key to symptom relief. Therapies like cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and mindfulness-based approaches can help you:

 • Understand the emotional or psychological roots of your physical symptoms.

 • Develop healthier ways to manage stress, anxiety, or unresolved trauma.

 • Improve coping strategies to reduce the intensity or frequency of your symptoms.

Recognizing the role that emotions and the mind play in your physical health is crucial. If you’re experiencing unexplained physical symptoms, consider exploring how your emotions might be influencing your body. This understanding, coupled with the right therapeutic support, can lead to significant relief and improved overall health.

What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?

CBT is a talking therapy that aims to help people understand that the way they think affects how they feel and consequently how they behave. It also focuses how in turn their behaviour affects the way they think and feel. In other words, in CBT, a cognitive (evaluating your thoughts) and a behavioural approach (evaluating your behaviours) are combined to assist people in managing their problems in the present. Depending on the problem identified, a particular emphasis might be given to a cognitive or a behavioural approach in the sessions. For example, if you are struggling with a condition that triggers unhelpful behaviours (such as checking or cleaning rituals in obsessive-compulsive disorder), CBT therapy will mainly address the behavioural patterns.

Thereby, CBT operates under the premise that, by changing the way we think or behave when faced with a particular problem/situation, we can alter the way we feel. This model of therapy identifies negative thought patterns and/or behaviours, with the view to challenging them and creating more realistic ones. For example, if after a break-up you believe that ‘I’m a failure in relationships’, then you may feel anxious and low and start to withdraw. This behaviour, in turn, can lead to feelings of sadness and anxiety and consequently you avoid going out and meeting new people.

This vicious cycle of thoughts, feelings and behaviours can lead to isolation and increased feelings of unhappiness. Rather than accepting this negative thought pattern, CBT will help you to identify alternative ways of responding in order to disrupt this negative cycle. Instead of thinking that ‘I’m a failure in relationships’, you can choose to think about what has not worked out in this particular relationship, learn from it and move on. Thinking this way may lead to positive feelings and higher confidence, which can help you to open up to the possibility of meeting new people.

Unlike some other therapies, CBT is mostly embedded in the present. Whereas past events and experiences are taken into consideration, the main focus remains on current difficulties. CBT is usually a short-term therapy model varying from six weeks to six months.

What is Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP)?

ISTDP is an accelerated form of psychodynamic therapy that enables the rapid resolution of a wide-range of emotional disorders. ISTDP is an evidence-based psychotherapy that is strongly supported by contemporary clinical research findings. ISTDP techniques are particularly designed to resolve depression, anxiety, somatic (medical unexplained) symptoms among other disorders, as well as treat an array of self-defeating patterns and behaviours, many of which originate from troubled or unstable early life attachments. ISTDP helps people to recognise the relationships or situations that are anxiety-provoking and intensify their difficulties. While the immediate goal is to reduce anxiety and other mental health or psychosomatic symptoms ISTDP offers the option for resolving automatic negative relational patterns to allow for meaningful and long-term changes. 

During ISTDP treatment clients are encouraged to pay moment to moment attention to their feelings as well as helping them to regulate their anxiety that life events or relationships may trigger. If anxiety or emotion tolerance is not high, clients will learn how to regulate their anxiety before any emotions can be experienced and worked through.

What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)?

EMDR is a unique, evidence-based, psychological treatment model designed to process overwhelming feelings, thoughts and images associated with memories of traumatic events. EMDR was initially developed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma. However, recent clinical research has shown that EMDR can be effective for any psychological disorders where disturbing memories are central such as panic disorder, phobias, complicated grief, performance anxiety and OCD.

During EMDR treatment, thoughts, emotions, memories, images and sensations associated with the traumatic experience are processed through bilateral eye movements. More specifically, the therapist uses a hand motion technique to guide the client’s eye movements from side to side, similar to watching a pendulum swing. This helps the client to remain anchored in the here-and-now whilst processing the effects of the traumatic memory. Thereby, thoughts and feelings that are associated with the traumatic event are replaced with more positive ones which in turn decrease overall distress and enhance emotional well-being.

Overall EMDR therapy aims to:

• Reduce the impact of the traumatic memories
• Help you to reduce levels of stress, anxiety and hypervigilance
• Reduce feelings of isolation, hopelessness and depression
• Help you to cope with day-to-day routine better and regain normality in your life
• Increase enjoyment and pleasure in your activities and relationships
• Increase self-esteem and confidence

What can I expect if I receive EMDR?

• We will agree on key traumatic memories that you want to work on
• There will be some repetition of this process which is part of the reprocessing experience
• I will continue to work with you and focus on specific memories until the intense affect associated with them has decreased

EMDR can significantly accelerate the healing process after a traumatic experience. The number of sessions required will depend to the complexity of the psychological difficulties being dealt with. In general, the more isolated the traumatic memory being treated, the shorter the treatment tends to be. EMDR is designed to be used as a stand-alone process, but can also be effectively integrated with other therapeutic approaches.

What is Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT)? 

DIT is a structured, short-term, individual therapy. DIT targets specifically symptoms of anxiety and depression and helps to improve how people function in their relationships. More specifically, it aims to increase people’s awareness on their current emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression, and how they are linked with what is going on in their relationships. DIT focuses on identifying and addressing problematic interpersonal patterns that may be traced back to early relationships and are repeated in current ones.

DIT could help you develop healthier ways of being in, as well as coping with, important relationships in your life. The main principle of this therapy model suggests that psychological distress overall dissipates when people are able to address relationship issues more effectively.

With the DIT approach, you’ll be actively encouraged to reflect on what you think and feel about yourself and others, aiming to enhance your awareness of your interpersonal difficulties. This new awareness will help you to identify problematic relationship patterns, which in turn could support you in addressing them more effectively while, at the same time, relieving your symptoms of distress and enhancing your interpersonal functioning.

What is Psychodynamic Therapy?

Psychodynamic therapy encompasses the work of all analytic therapeutic models, from the classical Freudian psychoanalysis to contemporary analytic models such as relational psychoanalysis. Psychodynamic therapy has been clinically applied to a wide spectrum of psychological disorders with a wealth of research supporting its effectiveness.

The core principle of the psychodynamic approach asserts that current emotional difficulties may have their origins in early experiences. It suggests that unresolved past experiences and conflicts remain in the unconscious and can influence one’s behaviours and relationships in the present. Therefore, it aims to bring unconscious experiences into consciousness, helping the individual to develop deeper insight and awareness of deep-rooted feelings and memories that can influence their behaviour and relationships. Exploring one’s thoughts and feelings about past and present experiences as well as the connection between them enables unresolved conflicts and distressing symptoms to be processed.

Psychodynamic therapy can be particularly helpful, but not limited to, with deeper-seated issues such as:

• Bereavement and loss
• Chronic stress and anxiety
• Low self-esteem and low confidence
• Persistent depression
• Recurrent emotional and/or behavioural problems
• Relationship difficulties

Psychodynamic therapy can also be very useful to people who are curious about themselves and how they operate in relationships. Therefore, psychodynamic therapy can be beneficial and lead to increased self-awareness and confidence, better relationships and a greater ability to manage stress.

Fees: £120 per 50 minutes session. Please note that my fees are benchmarked against other similarly trained psychologists.

I am registered with most health insurance providers such as AETNA, AVIVA, AXA, BUPA, CIGNA GLOBAL, VITALITY & WPA.

As with all psychologists I require notice of cancellations in order to avoid a charge. The cancellation policy is 48 hours for the initial appointment, and seven days for ongoing sessions.

Therapy sessions are 50 minutes long and occur once weekly at the same time and location unless otherwise agreed.

Email me at dr.zach@thepsychologyclinics.co.uk to arrange a consultation today. For more information you can visit my website http://www.thepsychologyclinics.co.uk