The SWAN Project, Bristol offers low cost counselling for
people struggling with principally, although not exclusively alcohol addiction.

A crucial Bristol and wider community service that is currently struggling to survive in times where grants to cover public health programmes have fallen by 25% since 2014/2015: Telegraph, November, 2019.

Unusual for a service of this sort it offers long term therapy for clients
and seeks to get beyond the symptoms, to the bedrock experiences that have led a person to negotiate life with addictive coping strategies.

The 'addiction' is the attempt to self-regulate or in the parlance self-soothe; generally the trauma is care giving relationships that have not only been inadequate in containing emotions but that have also more often than not been abusive and neglectful (Aaronson, 2006). The treadmill of excessive drinking or any compulsive addiction behaviour, be it drugs, sex, food, shopping, gambling, might be seen by many as ‘the cause’ of a person’s difficulties, but the reality is these are choices that are consequences; ways of blocking difficult feelings, emotions, trauma and coping with anxieties and shame.

The Swan project offers the rare opportunity for people to explore, through long term counselling, their histories, and potentially heal from the often difficult life narratives, that they have been avoiding in their addiction behaviours. Pain that has been kept locked, can, in a safe relationship be aired.

It is a crucial service offering empowerment, self-change and the
opportunity for people to take back control of their lives.

I have LOVED working there. And through my own positive addiction of running would like to give something back, to an organisation that has supported my own self-development through my counselling training.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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