Helping those bereaved by suicide
Helping others grieving a suicide is a demanding task as it affects you aswell. However by coming to terms with your own loss you can help thoes more directly affected. Familiarise yourself with the experiences of grief the bereaved is having. There are general and specific suggestions to folow.
Overall encourage hope that they can learn to live with a lessintense but still real grief.
My approach to coping skills for emotional pain
Working with thoughts, emotions, behaviours and sensations of the body, (TEBS), is the approach I use in therapy. The client is encouraged to identify how thoughts drive our emotions and physical sensations.
To reduce or learn to live with our emotional stress is done by practicing alternative positive thoughts. These thoughts have to be supported by associated behaviours.
Do we need another hero?
Heros; do they play a constructive role for us today or are they just wasteful distractions?
When you consider the prevalence of heroes through out time we have to acknowledge there seems to be an inherent need for them in our psyche.
Do they provide us with an inspiration to overcome our own obstacles? Are they a role model for us to achieve greatness in our own lives? Do they provide hope when all else seems lost?
Therapy Story Time
Identifying the negatives in your life story that have led to the problems you experience today is a key part of Narative Therapy. This model of therapy encourages clients to creativley set a new course for the direction of their life.
Gardening: It Grows You
Gardening, good for the body, the mood and soul, or so they say.
What is it that makes Gardening so attractive for people? What makes it good for us?
If it is so good for us what is it that holds us back from going out into the outback, our own wilderness?
How can we get over our barriers to creating our hideaway. our oasis of calm?
Ireland: Don’t you just love it?
A discussion on what it means to be Irish in modern Ireland. How sharing a common place and experince of living here along with our cultural heritage is what defines us.
It is good to like being Irish as we are Irish.
Counselling: How it Begins
A walk through how James starts and maintains a counselling relationship with a client.
The work of counselling from the first query to the final steps of finishing.
Nurture your Inner Child
Relieving childhood fun does not mean you become a child again. It does not mean you abandon all adult responsibility and common sense.
Reliving childhood fun does mean you are alowing yourself to remember what was good in your youth. You are recharging your batteries to deal with your adult realities.
there can also be healing in remembering that your youth was not all bad.
Now, what else is there?
What we hope for the future may or may not happen.
What we place our hope in now in the present, and building upon that is the hope that matters.
Don’t wishfully just hope that someday it will all be alright.
Use today to build a better tomorrow.
Is Christmas good for you?
Many people just don’t like Christmas. It’s not that they are Ba Hum Bug, they just don’t care.
There can be genuinely understandable reasons for this. So can a person who is just not into Christmas enjoy Christmas?
How do you have a happy time over Christmas when you’d rather it just didn’t exist?
Loss and Rememberance
The death of a loved one is the greatest trauma we can go through. Death is not the only sever loss we can experience in life. The counselling process with loss is slow and a process of learning to understand the experience and the emotions from the loss.
There are tools that you can use to help with the loss. Also many theoretical models exist to help you understand the process of working with your grief.
Prevail’s approach to the porn debate
Porn is a pervasive part of our society. That said, it rarely comes up in the counselling room. That reflects how accepted it is in our culture. But still, the debate exists as to whether it suits you.
Some argue that porn is destructive for genuine sexual relationships and that it isolates people. Others say that porn plays a productive part in their relationships and helps educate them about the practicalities of sex.
Perhaps the context for discussing porn is not about physical enjoyment but the actual purpose and nature of sexual relationships in the first place.
Counselling when you are a person of few words
A reason some people stay way from counselling is because they are intimidated and believe they would not know what to talk about.
This can be overcome as a trusting relationship is built up between her and the therapist. Usually after 2 or 3 sessions the client is comfortable enough to engage therapeuticaly with counselling.
Indiana Jones and the Idol of Eternal Youth
When is old too old? The perceptions of the last Harison ford Indiana Jones film were that Ford was too old to play the role. According to our cherished memories, yes, he was.
But why can’t we let our heroes grow old?
Do we hold to a belief of eternal youth that is offended when we see our action heroes become slow and weak?
Surely we can believe, as Indy did, that there’s life in the old dog still?
Money: The yes you can attitude
Managing money is a key life skill. Lets be honest we do need a degree of financial security.
We can have issues with being controlled by or overspending money. Money mismanagement has negative effects on relationships/marriages. It is a key skill in learning responsibility.
Winning Gold in life's Olympics
Can we achieve greatness in the ordinary? Yes. Sometimes just getting through the mundane can be a great achievement in its own right. Do you believe this? Does it sound like pop psychology?
Whatever you may think about it I encourage you to take on the great adventure of going for gold in your own life story.
Happy Anniversary?
Should we mark let alone celebrate a negative anniversary?
If so how?
It is a matter of personal choice how a person should remember an anniversary. It can be a celebration of thankfulness of survival. It can be a time to take stock and allow yourself to be reconciled with what you may have lost but also to be greatful for what you have the increased significance it has for you.
Struggling with bereavment by suicide
This blog looks at the experience of losing a loved one to suicide. What are you to expect from such a loss? How can you look after yourself in the immediate and long-term experience of the loss? How to develop hope for your future while still having sadness for the person you have lost?
When Humanity goes Ape
Has humanity evolved from being the hero to becoming the vilan in recent years? In my view the planet of the Apes films reflect that it is now appropriate to say they have.
Has our perception of ourselves as a race become more muddied and negative over the decades. If so Apes films still present a view of humanity that is hopeful.
Words to the broken hearted
Positive quotes about our ability to overcome adversity. While such quotes can seem over;y simplistic they can still spur us on to better things.