Personal Authority

Hi all, 

I have been on a break from blogging for a little while, but back now and hoping to cover some topics that might be of interest to you.

The first blog in this series is going to be about Personal Authority.  I am going to look at what we mean by Personal Authority, how we develop and know personal authority and why it is of great benefit to know and understand personal authority.

What does Personal Authority mean?

Personal Authority is when we know and understand what is right for us.  It is the ultimate in assertiveness; we respect our needs and wishes and can convey these in a way that respects ourselves and the other.  However in order to have our own personal authority I believe we have to trust in ourselves and really and truly know yourself and what drives your behaviour, your actions, your thoughts and your emotions.

How do we develop our Personal Authority?

The first thing to do is to know yourself, start assessing why you believe what you believe.  What are your values and beliefs, how did you form those beliefs, what were the influences behind their development and do you need to reassess them for yourself, discover whose life you are actually living!  As we get to know ourselves we start to develop more trust in ourselves, we can accept and take responsibility for our decisions, our successes and our failures.  We develop our resilience and remain strong while facing our vulenerabilities, yet we can support and care for ourselves in order to work through and manage whatever life may throw at us.

Why do we need Personal Authority?

Well firstly because nobody can know you like you know yourself!  Secondly having your own personal authority is the greatest source of empowerment, it can ground you and give you a good foundation to work from.  Knowing your own Personal Authority puts you in the driver's seat of your life, you know that you have options and that you can make choices.

I will be exploring more on Personal Authority on this blog over the next few posts.  

Information that might help when going to see a Psychotherapist

A recent article in the Irish Times published results of some research that was carried out by the Irish Association of Counsellings and Psychotherapy regarding people's reaction to attending psychotherapy and counselling.   According to the article unfortunately there can still be quite a stigma around people attending counselling and pyschotherapy and it would seem that quite a large number of people would still be  "embarrassed" about going to counselling or psychotherapy.  It would appear from these results that the stigma is still alive but the good news is that  it is getting less.  It is disappointing to hear that the stigma is still there but probably understandable considering our history on dealing with mental health issues and how we may have learned or not learned to deal with our emotions.

I believe it is essential to start making the idea of pyschotherapy and counselling more user friendly in order to challenge the stigma and I believe the first step is always about getting information out there and communication started.  So for this blog that is my intention;  I am going to give a brief introduction as to what you might expect from therapy and this may help if you are thinking about going to see a counsellor or a psychotherapist - if you have any questions or would like some more information you can email me on anneb@johnstowntherapy.com

Firstly what is the distinction between counselling and psychotherapy, counselling will tend to be shortertern you will attend fewer sessions and the therapy will possibly be more solution focused, so someone who might find themselves dealing with stress, or facing a crisis may come to counselling because they need some extra help and support and need to  learn some skills to deal with a present difficulty.  Psychotherapy tends to be longer term and sometimes people who have had some counselling discover other issues that they feel they may like to explore more deeply and choose to continue on with  psychotherapy.  With counselling and psychotherapy the therapist can use a particular model such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or Solution Focused Therapy, your therapist may  use the title Integrative Psychotherapist to describe how they work and with this model the therapist will most likely integrate different types of models into their therapeutic approach, this could be psychodynamic, gestalt, existential and other therapies such as art therapy, visualisations, meditation - only if the client is willing and would find it useful to work in that particular way.

You can expect to  have a first meeting with your therapist when they will discuss with you how they work, explain confidentiality, and boundaries around the work.  It is also an opportunity for you to put forward what your expectations of therapy are and what you might like to achieve during the process of your therapy work.  Yourself and your therapist will agree on a time and day that suit for your therapy and then you will meet once a week with your therapist for the duration of your therapy, that will be decided on and reviewed bearing in mind the issue that you may be dealing with.    Don't worry if you do not have it clear in your head as to what your expectations or goals are as this can be part of the process in therapy that as you talk about things you may start to get some clarity on what you might like - having goals is not in anyway essential  - it's more about having the space to talk and get support for whatever you may be dealing with.  Therapy is also about exploring our strenghts and our weakness, discovering who we are, getting in touch with what we believe, exploring and staying true to your values and belief systems, becoming aware of our emotions and how they impact on us, and in turn building our motivation, resilience and self-confidence.  I heard someone describe therapy as "emotional maintenance" a place where it is safe just to explore their experiences and have a safe place to talk; somwhere that they can be themselves without fear of judgement and become more aware of how their emotions impact on them and how they can learn to support, understand and manage them.

One important thing to remember is that your therapy is unique to you, it is your own personal process so although there may be a structure to counselling and psychotherapy no one answer fits all and that the issue that you may bring to therapy will be explored in a way that is appropriate for you.  Therapy works best when you have a good therapeutic alliance with your therapist, which will give the space for a healthy,  productive and collaborative working relationship.

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.,