Fiyaz Mughal

Working to your time requirements is important and time is valuable. That is why being flexible in my practice is important.

I work from 9 am to 6 pm, Mondays to Fridays and also run a weekend practice on Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm every second Saturday of the month.

I am flexible to work through Zoom/online facilities, via the telephone and also through face to face counselling sessions.

The flexibility that I provide in my availability and in accessing my counselling services, is meant to meet the needs of as many people as possible since I feel passionate about ensuring that people can work through therapy and have services available to them at times that also suit their needs.

You matter and your time matters.

People matter and you matter. My work includes helping clients with anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, ruminations, obsessions and stress. I also work on other areas and use various techniques to assist clients in achieving well-being. At the heart of my work is giving you a safe, supported and understanding environment within which we can explore and work through issues.

In today's world, the pressures that many of us are under are significant. Social media, being successful, being happy and ensuring that we feel valued and recognised means that stress and anxiety are never far away from us. Yet, it should not have to be that way, though the reality is that the anxiety and stress builds over time and we need ways of relieving and reducing them. If this is not possible then anxiety and stress exhibit themselves in ways that are distressing and which cause fear. This is why I am passionate about how therapy and counselling can help people to get through anxiety, phobias, panic attacks and stress so that they do not become a lifestyle obstructing set of issues.

Other areas of work that I practice and specialise on include identity, belonging, trauma, addictions, intergenerational trauma, boarding school experiences and religious impacts on mental and emotional well-being.

I work to try and integrate both the mind and body and for some people in their therapeutic journey, a sense of spiritual co-existence, so that a holistic approach to healing can be incorporated. Taken together, this may assist in long term change and a sense of empowerment and meaning in people's lives.

Additionally, as a refugee from Idi Amin's Uganda (1972), I understand on a very personal level what dislocation, identity, belonging and acceptance mean and how they can impact on emotional and mental well-being. I therefore have lived through how important identity, belonging and a 'safe space and place' are and why connections with others are key for our emotional and mental health. Who we are, matters.

I specialise in trauma work, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias and OCD, as well as on 'sense of self' issues such as 'identity and belonging'. How we view ourselves, matters.

Over the long term, anxiety can deplete bodily energy, create confusion, reduce focus and significantly affect self-esteem.

'Working Through Anxiety'

My work on anxiety will include taking a person centred approach where I bring in different modes of work to help someone gain an understanding about the internal risk scanning process of anxiety, the seeds of where it could have come from, how family dynamics also could have impacted on it, and destigmatising feelings, thoughts and emotions that may raise anxiety within individuals.

I also include practical tools and methods that individuals can use to reduce anxiety and stress so that they do not feel 'out of control'.  

'Honouring the Body'

My work also is based on honouring the body’s defensive systems that are aimed at protecting ourselves from danger, creating the opportunity to explore whether these defensive systems are over-reacting to internal or external body situations and allowing people to see and feel anxiety, not as a catastrophic threat, but as part of the body’s inbuilt defensive system that can be adapted back into balance and equilibrium.

'Relaxation Techniques'

I also work on relaxation techniques, visualisations and facilitating new ways of understanding, thinking about, managing and ultimately, reducing anxiety for people who have suffered repeated bouts of anxiety in their lives. This may have taken the form of high stress reactions, muscular tensions, panic attacks, phobias causing low moods, ruminations about fearful thoughts and recurring catastrophic thoughts that seem to carry on. It is also important to add that phobias may be attached to certain situations such as flying, travelling in enclosed spaces, health related fears, thoughts related to shame and even being in the ‘outside world’ (agoraphobia).

In the initial session, I may ask you to complete an assessment to understand more about the issue/issues that you are coming to therapy with. 

The initial session may also involve talking through a history of your condition and to get a better understanding of your health at the present moment.

Remember that these are your sessions, your time and your space.