Dealing with unemployment and financial pressures

Hi All,

This blog is going to address how we can help ourselves to deal with unemployment and financial pressures that are causing stress.

We have already seen the preparations that are going on in all the shops and shopping centres for xmas, places adorned with elaborate xmas decorations, everybody advertising the xmas party menus; it goes on and on and it seems to start earlier each year. In many ways this can feel a little surreal as there is an atmosphere of celebration which many people don't feel a part of.  We can find ourselves caught up in the whirlwind of it all and for many people it adds to the pressure they find themselves already under.  So I thought it might be a good idea to step away from all this pressure and excitement and explore how people can help themselves to get through this "festive season", while they are struggling with some very real difficulties like unemployment and financial pressures.

People who are unemployed at the moment are dealing with financial pressures and that is without a doubt.  However it's not just people who are unemployed that find themsevles dealing with financial pressures; even people who are in jobs are now finding themselves struggling to meet their financial commitments, struggling to pay bills from month to month.  Look at the latest figures for people who are struggling to pay their mortgages.

Firstly let's look at unemployment:
The affects of unemployment can feel devastating.  For many a job gives a purpose to their life, they may have spent years working in their particular job, trained, gone to college whatever it took to get there but at some level commitment, sacrifices and time and energy will have been involved.  A person's sense of self can be strongly connected to their career and job.  Having a job also provides that peace of mind that there will be a certain amount of money coming in to pay your bills each week or month.  So when this is taken away it can feel like our world has been turned upside down.

Financial Pressures
So many people are impacted by financial pressures so remember you are not alone in this.  Don't be afraid to look for support.  Talk over the impact and the struggles with family and friends, everybody will be affected so everybody will have to make adjustments.  Knowing where you can make savings is vitally important, prioritising and budgeting are essential.  Financial pressures can be a huge source of stress, so knowing how to understand and manage your stress is a very necessary skill in helping you to help yourself through this difficult time.

How can you help yourself:
Try not to let it overwhelm you - remember your strengths, remember when you have dealt with other crises in the past, what got you through those tough times before and try and get in touch with that resilient side of yourself. Don't give up; work on your motivation and know and understand what de-motivates you and learn now to challenge de-motivators.

When we lose something we naturally go into a process of mourning, this includes things like job loss and coping with a different lifestyle.  What really helps is to know that you are in this process and that there are things within this that you can control and things that you can't. Your self-care is one thing that you can control. Remember that your abilities and talents are still yours and remember and value what you have to offer. It may be a time when you can start looking at different courses or training to develop your skills further or maybe you might be interested in taking up another career altogether.

Here are some tips:

• Look after yourself, keep a structure on your day.
• Exercise
• Eat a healthy diet
• Look for support
• Set goals for yourself
• Spend time with family and friends
• Get involved in your community
• Understand your emotions and get support
• If you are struggling with finances get support
• Keep your sense of humour
• Value and appreciate the positive things you do have in your life

 A great website I came across recently with some great tips on surviving unemployment has some good clear advice and I would definitely recommend having a look: http://www.broadcaster.org.uk/section1/scenarios/unemployment.html

http://www.broadcaster.org.uk/section1/scenarios/unemployment.html

Rhttp://www.broadcaster.org.uk/section1/scenarios/unemployment.html

The Feel Good Factor!

The Feel Good Factor

Welcome to the new blog, the focus of this blog is to explore how to get the Feel Good Factor! The question of how we can help ourselves get The Feel Good Factor is something that could be particularly useful to focus on at the moment because of all the stress that people are currently facing in their everyday lives.

As we all know there are lots of self-help books out there, some good, some bad; I think as helpful as these books can be, the reality is that there is no one answer to this question and each individual has to work out for themselves what makes a difference for them, particularly in times of stress. Having said that, I am going to recommend a book on how to build self-esteem which has certainly been a big influence when writing this blog.

What do I mean by the Feel Good Factor?

My understanding of feeling good is that we have self-confidence in ourselves, we care for ourselves, we love ourselves, that we respect ourselves and that we appreciate, accept and have a deep understanding of ourselves. In order to do this, we have to have a value and belief in ourselves; this doesn't only mean when things are going well but also at times when we are struggling or when we feel vulnerable or maybe having to manage some kind of crisis. For a moment let's look at what helps our mental wellbeing; there are three key themes to mental wellbeing: Resilience, Emotional Intelligence, Healthy Communication.

You will find some tips on some of these key themes in my previous blogs. In this blog though I would like to start looking at emotional well-being which plays a big part in looking after our mental well-being; we can start by exploring the idea of self-confidence and self-esteem. People who tend to have a good sense of emotional well-being tend to be self-confident; they manage their stress well, they are resilient, they have a good understanding of their emotions and know how to manage them, they are good at motivating themselves, they are able to relate and empathise with others and have good interpersonal relationships.

I think in order to know and manage our emotions we need to have a strong concept of self, with good self-confidence. I thought it might be worthwhile to consider what helps us to build our self-confidence and probably the first step is building one's self-esteem. First of all let's look at what is meant be self-confidence.

What is Self-Confidence?

Being self-confident means believing in yourself; having a strong sense of self-worth and a value and commitment to your beliefs and values. This can be relatively easy when things are going according to plan and we have every reason to feel good about ourselves. However if for some reason things go against what we plan and we find ourselves dealing with some sort of crisis, our confidence can take a bit of a battering. At times like this, we may start to criticise ourselves and this will only make things worse. This harsh critical voice is what we refer to as the "inner critic", I think we may all be aware of the voice of the "inner critic" that can go into overdrive telling you, "well I knew this was going to happen it was only a matter of time", " you should have known better", "this is all my fault", and I could possibly think of lots more and I am sure you could too! It seems a little weird but it is often the case that when we are at are most vulnerable we can give ourselves the hardest time and needless to say this is not going to help!

What we need is to be aware of our emotions, learn to understand and manage them. This is why I want to look at the area of self-confidence; it is about getting to know ourselves, accepting the good and the bad and learning to take responsibility for ourselves.

Building your self-esteem

Nathaniel Branden (1994) wrote a great book on developing self-esteem, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. He identifies and explores the Six Pillars that he feels are important in order to develop and build on for one's self-esteem and in turn developing good self-confidence. I believe that these pillars provide a very good structure for working on self-esteem issues and I believe they would be very useful to focus on:

• The practice of living consciously: Learning to live in a conscious manner, being very aware of the decisions and actions we take on a day to day basis.
• The practice of self-acceptance: Learning to accept the good and the bad, the ups and down of life. It is about facing reality learning to understand and manage our thoughts, feelings and desires.
• The Practice of self-responsibility: Learning to take responsibility for your mental and physical wellbeing, taking responsibility for the attainment of one's own goals.
• The practice of self-assertiveness: Learning to be assertive and have a good understanding of what this means, a respect for ourselves and others, while acknowledging your own beliefs and values, honouring your needs and wants and being able to respect these
• The practice of living purposefully: Learning to make our own goals and commitments and being responsibility for our choices, living purposefully and productively while cultivating the capacity for one's own self-discipline.
• The practice of Personal Integrity: Knowing what you believe and why, learning to integrate your convictions and ideas, when we go against what we truly believe it can cause conflict at an internal level and we can be very dismissive our ourselves which works against our self-esteem.

Self-esteem is shaped by internal and external factors; internal factors are our beliefs that we have developed about ourselves and external factors are the environment that we experience. We need to be aware of old messages that we have picked up along the way, patterns of behaviours that may be destructive and good awareness of self-care and lifestyle balance. Look back on the other blogs on life-style balance and building resilience, they might help. Also if you feel you need some extra support it might be time to contact a professional to get some help.

Click Here to see James Brown sing I Got You (I Feel Good)!

Next blog we will address the topic of Living Well

Getting Motivated

"Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." Brian Littrell http://thinkexist.com/quotations/motivation/

This week I am going to look at the area of motivation.  Motivation can be something that becomes really important for us particularly in times of difficulty, it is something that can easily be deflated in times of adversity.  The question is how can we learn to help ourselves to feel motivated even at times of great stress or difficulty.  Lets look at the whole area of motivation; what it is, why we need it and how we can help ourselves to feel more motivated.

What is motivation?
Motivation is that excitement and energy we can feel about a goal we set ourselves or a new project that we take on.  It is a form of arousal, we have an interest in something and we want it to succeed so we are going to do all we can to accomplish it.

How we can increase our motivation?
There are a  few skills and common factors to be aware of in order to keep our motivation going, some of these are listed below:

• Setting a goal
• Making a plan or putting structure on a project
• Commitment
• Being flexible
• Know the benefits
• Putting supports in place
• Self-care
• Believe in yourself
• Rewards
• Know your fears and don't be afraid to challenge them

Be aware that we are all unique in how we approach things so what motivates one person may not work for another; this is why all of the above have to be explored by each individual and adapted to what  they want and need to help them feel motivated.

Another thing to be aware of is to have an understanding of what demotivates us.  I came across an interesting exercise in a book called The Big Book of Motivation Games by Robert Epstein & Jessica Rogers; they suggest an exercise called Target Practice. What they suggest doing is writing a list of what kind of things have a negative impact on your motivation. So get a piece of paper, divide into two columns and write down on one side the things that de-motivate you - on the other side of the page explore and think about how you can challenge this, what is your plan of action.  Maybe some of the earlier posts on this blog might help you, do you need to challenge your thinking, address your lifestyle balance, break a negative stress cycle.

So after you have identified what demotivates you, write another list about what motivates you.  The same book has another exercise called the "Bliss List", for this exercise you are invited to write a list of all the things you would like to do over the next week, or the next month - you choose.  They needn't be huge, but think about things that you might enjoy and haven't allowed yourself do in a while, e.g. meet someone for a cup of coffee, take a walk, go to the movies whatever you like,  it's your bliss list!  Then make a commitment to yourself  and make a plan to do some of these things over the next week and see how you feel.

These are a few quick tips on keeping your motivation going - hope you find them helpful!

References:  The Big Book of Motivation Games by Robert Epstein Ph.D. with Jessica Rogers 2001 p 47 & 177 

Developing Resilience

What is Resilience?

 

 

Resilience is the ability to "bounce back" after a time of crisis or stress.  It does not mean that you have not been affected or impacted by a situation or crisis, it just means that you have managed the situation and that you have not become overwhelmed or incapacitated on a longterm basis by it; in other words that we have learned to adapt to whatever this lifechanging event has been.

 

Why do we need resilience?

 

We need resilience because living and life continue to provide us with situations that we have to adapt to.  Life is full of ups and downs and resilience is about learning to manage these ups and downs, and understand how we let these impact on our quality of life.

 

How do I develop resilience?

 

People react differently to stressful situations, resilience is something that we can learn to develop. Resilient people tend to have certain traits such as; good self-awareness, good sense of boundaries, an ability to be creative, good self-motivation, an ability to learn and make the most out of any situation and a good sense of humour.

So to answer the question of How do I develop resilience? I believe we can develop resilience by allowing ourselves  to concentrate on developing these traits within ourselves and that is how we start.

According to different research on this topic there are several different valuable things that resilient people seem to develop and persist with even in the face of adversity:

• they will have a plan and even in the face of adversity they can stick with the structure of that plan and allow for flexibility
• they have a certain amount of confidence in themselves that does not become unhinged even when they are facing difficulties
• they have a good level of self-awareness and can address and understand their emotional reactions
•  they have the ability to be creative and explore many different options to whatever situation they are faced with.
• Good communciation skills
• Strong, caring relationships with family & friends
• They are aware of how they can increase their motivation even when times are difficult
• Good boundaries
•  Learn from past mistakes
• Take responsibility for themselves

The above list describes many key factors in how we might look at developing resilience, if we look at the list and see areas that we need to address, we can learn to develop these parts of ourselves.

In the meantime the way we can learn to look after ourselves is important and we can learn to incorporate things into our life that will help us cope along the way that will ultimately help towards developing resilience in ourselves:

•  Make sure to plan time out with family & friends or people that you enjoy being with
•  Eat well & exercise
•  Rest
•  Have some compassion for yourself
•  Don't be afraid to look for help and ways of managing your stress
•  Learn to appreciate the good things that you have right now in your life
•  Make sure to acknowledge what you have achieved in any given day no matter how small it might appear
•  Follow your passion
•  Sometimes it helps to de-clutter in order to help you focus & clarify what is important to you
•  Look for support & don't be afraid to get professional help

There are some great websites that you might be interested in having a look at to find out more about resilience:

http://www.mentalhelp.net/
http://www.mentalhealth.asn.au/search.html?searchword=resilience&ordering=&searchphrase=all
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx

That's all for this blog hope you find it useful, next blog I am going to look at motivation skills.

 

Why worry?

When I think of worry I always think of the brilliant Mr. Men stories, and the one about Mr. Worry who learns to control his worry and then worries that he has nothing to worry about -  this experience can be so true, when we let our worries get the better of us we can just move from one worry to the next, always finding something to worry about even if it is just worry itself.

Can worry be useful? as with everything I would say it has it's place but we need to keep a balance with our worrying thoughts.  We need to be able to control how much energy we are putting into worrying about something, if we don't we can just wear ourselves out.  I find the the more we worry the more anxious we get, the more anxious we get the less confident we feel and we can find ourselves in that Negative Stress Cycle that I talked about in the last blog, a never ending cycle of worry and negative thinking, feelings and behaviours.

No doubt when we find ourselves in a stressful situation it can provoke worry, the longer the stressful situation continues the more we worry.  It is quite understandable that we may want to get the situation resolved in some way and at times our worry can be useful as it might point us in a direction of trying to put things in place that will help us deal with the situation.

Worry is something we all do however when it becomes excessive it becomes a problem; we may find ourselves worrying about little everyday things and always anticipate a negative outcome.  If worry becomes excessive we need to address it.  It is about learning how to use it in a healthy way.

So what helps?  I came across a very useful book recently called Overcoming Worry - a self-help guide using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques, written by Kevin Meares & Mark Freeston.  It is a very useful guide in helping you to help yourself deal with worry, there are many exercises in it to help you challenge your worrying thoughts and beliefs, it gives good explanations as to how worry can become a problem and how we can use it in a healthy way.

A few questions that might be helpful in addressing your worry:

• What triggers worrying thoughts for you?
• Have you always been a worrier?
• Is there something specific that is worrying you right now?
• What are your beliefs when it comes to worry?
• How have you tried to help yourself with your worrying thoughts?
• Do you have fixed rules about worry?
• Could you imagine what it might be like not to worry?

Tips on dealing with worrying thoughts:

• Try to identify what is worrying you right now, if it helps and if there is more than one worry write it down
• Give yourself some worry time - It might be useful to allocate yourself a short amount of time (no more than 20 mins) to think about the plan you have to deal with your worry, get support if you need it.  If you find it coming into your head at other times put off thinking about it until your specified time
• Be realistic about the evidence, how true is this worrying thought right now and what is the impact of it - challenge negative thinking by keeping it real remember there are always two ways of looking at something
• Be aware of your thinking, do I think in black & white terms (distorted thoughts), or am I missing the grey areas here.
• Sometimes it helps to make a list of all your options, things that you can do to help the situation, again if you need help do not be afraid to look for support.
• If you have a longterm stressful situation, it might be an idea to distract yourself by going out to meet friends and not talk about the situation all the time, go to the pictures, take a walk or take up a new hobby.  Sometimes a break can re-energize you and things may look a bit brighter when you come back to work on it.
• Always keep things in perspective.  Prioritise and try not to stress about the little worries. (Powell Trevor, 2000 p 22)

References:   Kevin Meares & Mark Freeston, 2008 Overcoming Worry, Constable & Robinson Ltd.,

                     Trevor Powell, 2000 The Mental Health Handbook, Speechmark Publishing Ltd.,

Keep your thoughts and your thinking real!

This week I am going to look at the impact that stressful, anxious and or worrying thoughts can have on us phsycial and mentally.

When we are feeling stressed, it may be because of one very stressful event or there may be several more other stressors involved, if you are feeling that your stresses are having a negative affect on your well-being it is time to look at how you can help yourself manage them and you may need to look for extra supports to help you manage them.

"As a general rule, stress only becomes toxic when we are exposed to persistent bouts of acute or chronic stress." (Dr. Harry Barry, 2010 p 38)

One of the ways to deal with the stressors is to break down the different stressors and manage each one separately; although all the stressors will  be connected at some level, one source of stress having an impact on another e.g. if there is financial difficulty, it may be affecting your lifestyle, you may be worrying about how you are managing to make ends meet; this may be causing stress within relationships and therefore having a de-motivating affect on how someone feels on a general day to day basis. 

It may be easier to look at the stresses you feel that are easier to manage first - small steps; it may take more time to tackle some of the bigger ones and you may need more supports in place to do this, but it's good to prioritise.  One of the ways to tackle these stresses is to understand what are the kind of things that are causing you stress right now, what I like to refer to as the "stress pot".  Would it help to make a list?  When you have figured out what is causing your stress, we then have to look at the way we are thinking about it, are we stuck in a place where we are continously worrying and overly anxious about something, being stuck with these worrying and anxious thoughts is not going to help us in how we manage the stress, it only makes it worse.  So it is important to address how you are thinking and if it is realistic?

The Negative Stress Cycle is a key plan for dealing with any stressor.  We can start off with the stress pot, there can be several items in the stress pot, these have an affect on our thinking, these thoughts have an affect on our feelings, and these thoughts and feelings in turn have an affect on behaviours.  All in all this pattern will only add to the stress, to the point that we only feel more stressed out so it is really important to know whether our thoughts are actually being helpful  to us - they may not be.  Here is a diagram of what I refer to as the Negative Stress Cycle:

In order to address your thinking one of the things to be aware of is how distorted thoughts can work against us; when we are feeling low in ourselves we tend to think more negatively and that is where the distortions can run riot.  Have a look at the list below and see if you can identify any of these thinking patterns:

Distorted thoughts that are not helpful:

• All-or-nothing thinking:  you think in black and white, good or bad with no middle ground. 
• Awfulising - catastrophising:  you tend to blow things out of proportion, over-estimating what might happen 
• Personalising:  you make tend to take too much responsbility for things that happen and readily blame yourself for anything always feeling it's "your fault". 
• Negative Focus:  you tend to forget your achievements, and always look at the negative - you tend to focus on a weakness rather than a strenght 
• Jumping to conclusions:  you believe you know what's going to happen next without any solid evidence, mind-reading, trying to predict the future are all ways of jumping to conclusions. 
• Living by fixed rules:   you are ruled by the word "should", you may have unrealistic expectations which will lead to unecessary feelings of guilt and disappointments. (T. Powell, 2000 p 76)

Challenge the Distorted Thoughts:  This is the next step, to break the negative cycle we have to start challenging the negative thinking patterns as well as looking for supports to manage the stress load.  Here are a few ways that you can do this:

• Look at the evidence:       What is the evidence to support your thinking?
• Alternative views:             Are there any other ways of looking at this situation?
• Impact of your thoughts:  Is the way I am thinking helping me, or making me feel worse?
• Thoughts:                          Are my thoughts distorted in anyway?
• Action:                              What action can I take that would be useful, finding supports that would help.
• What is the worse possible outcome:  How bad can it be?  Know your strenghts and abilities.(T. Powell, 2000 p 19)

Remember to learn to talk to yourself in a more positive way, if you have coped with stressful events in the past look at what might have helped you manage.  Try to remember your strengths and abilities, talk in a reassuring way to yourself, acknowledging things may be difficult right now but holding on to the hope that things will get better.   Healthy communication, addressing your needs and looking for support when necessary can all help to make stressful events more manageable.  Next Blog I will look at worry and how to address it.

References:  Flagging Stress by Dr. Harry Barry 2010 Liberties Press
                    Mental Health Handbook by Trevor Powell 2000 Speechmark Publishing Ltd.,

Stress

How do we define stress?  It can be defined as a demand on phsycial  and or mental energy.  There are different kinds of stress, some people work well under stress others find that they feel pressured under stress and it has a negative affect on their wellbeing.  We may be under short-term stress due to an important project at work or some other crisis that you know at some level is going to be short lived; that can be helpful knowing that it will be over and that there will be some resolution. Long-term stress may be more difficult to deal with.  However everybody copes differently with stress, stress can be healthy or unheatlhy if you are suffering because of unheatlhy stress there are a few important questions to ask yourself:
Do you have a well balanced lifestyle?
what is causing your stress?
how it is impacting on you?
how do you deal with stress?

When considering a healthy lifestyle balance it might be helpful to use the diagram below - there are a few suggested areas that you might like to think about - if the titles don't fit feel free to choose different ones, it's your wheel!  The idea is to have a well balanced wheel, see can you identify areas of your life that need addressing.

The next area to look at is how unheatlhy stress is impacting on you; Trevor Powell (2000) in the Mental Health Handbook identifies 6 areas of our lives that can be impacted by stress these are; Emotional, Mental, Health, Physical, Behavioural and Organisational.  We can start to suffer mood swings, over-react to situations, have difficulty in concentrating, be negative towards ourselves, start suffering from headaches, Irritable bowel syndrome, back pain, fatigue, may find it difficult to relax, excessive drinking and smoking, job dissatisfaction, absenteesism, the list goes on.

So how do you deal with stress?  Powell (2000) talks about one of the first ways of dealing with stress is to understand it, know your limits and plan if possible if you are facing a stressful period, what do you need to put in place for yourself.? Building a good support network is crucial, know who you can talk to, family, friends, and don't be afraid to seek professional advice if you need it.  Developing a healthy lifestyle is also a good idea, take time to exercise make sure to eat a well balanced diet.  What do you do to relax, plan breaks, and maybe think about taking up a hobby for enjoyment.  Planning and putting a good structure to your day can be helpful when dealing with a heavy stressload.  Our interpretation of stress is also important, are we thinking about it in a realistic way, or could we be mis-interpreting something.  Next blog will look at how we break the Negative Stress Cycle.

References:  Powelll Trevor, 2000,  The Mental Health Handbook revised Edition, Published by Speechmark Publishing Ltd., (p 103 - 129)

Recommended reading:  Flagging Stress, Toxic Stress and how to avoid it by Dr. Harry Barry

Crisis and the impact of change

In Ireland at the moment we are in the midst of a crisis and many changes have already taken place and without doubt we can rest assured there will be more.  It has been very difficult for people who feel that many of these changes have been imposed on them and that it was out of their control.  There has been much talk and debate about the way out of this crisis; however at times this seems to compound our worries and our anxieties rather than alleviate them in anyway. 

 With all this in mind I have decided to write a blog which I hope will be of support to people at this present time.  I too have been impacted by the recession and have witnessed and heard from many other people who have been impacted and have had their own unique experiences.  I am very interested in working with this issue and hope that this blog will be a source of help for people who are currently finding it difficult to cope with the current crisis.

A time of crisis is a time of change, with all change there will be gains and losses.  When we are in the midst of a crisis it can be difficult to keep perspective, we can be facing changes that we have not wished for or chosen and maybe finding it difficult to adjust.  As with any crisis we can have many emotions and may in fact feel very overwhelmed at times; we may feel anxious and worried, we may feel angry, we may also feel stressed out and not really sure about how things will eventually turn out.  With all these worries we may start to lose confidence in ourselves and others. 

“Not all transitions are smooth and those that hit us hardest are the ones we did not choose and that come to us uninvited as upheavals and disruptions of the very structure of our lives” 
Emmy van Deurzen 2009 Psychotherapy & the Quest for Happiness p 105

The thing to remember about a crisis is that it does come to an end, and how we look after ourselves in that crisis is of the utmost importance.  What I will write about in this blog is how people can learn to help themselves cope in a time of crisis and change.  I will look at issues such as stress, anxiety and worry, with tips on learning to manage these thoughts and worries.  Look at how even at times of crisis we can put a structure in place to help us through looking after all the different areas in our lives - a healthy lifestyle balance.  Building supports is equally important, as often when people are in a time of crisis they can become very isolated; knowing what help is available and how you can access that can be very helpful.  Other things that I will write about include looking at building up and developing resilience and lastly tips on how to keep your motivation going.