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?
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.
Supporting the fragile
How do we support our loved ones when their mood is low and behaviour is very negative? We should not be affraid to engage with them anjust sit with them in their space.
We do not have to cheer them up, or help solve their problems. If they want company they mostly just want you to be there.
This maybe enough for them to share with you what pain they are dealing with and start to heal.
Managing a suicidal emergency
If you walk into what seems to be a suicide attempt the first thing to manage is your own shock. Positive, active, immediate interventionis are essential. Get medical support if needed. Assess the degree of suicidality and maintin a safe an area as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions and keep with the client until their risk has decreased or they are with somone else safe. Occupy the person and try to remove them from the location you found them in.
Small Picture Big Picture
About halfway through my chemotherapy, which I was on for 5 months in total, I was really struggling with accepting what was happening.
I accepted that my survival prospects were good, but I was angry with the life I was losing. Simply put, I just felt it was unfair. Additionally, I had lost my spacious, bright room, which had an access space before entering, making it very private. I was now in a dark, poky room which looked straight onto the main corridor.
I had a long way to go, and things seemed to be getting worse.
I took solace that the moment I was caught in was just that. A day would come when I would re-enter the fullness of life, I believed. I wanted to see the big picture.
Anxiety; Where fear takes over
Anxiety is one of the most common topics raised in therapy. It is a debilitating condition that prevents a person from engaging with life. It is closely associated with depression and often co-exist.
There is a strong medical connection with anxiety, therfore medication is often a first stage of treatment. Medication however can become a near permanent part of persons life. Many people do not want this and will prefer to resolve their anxiety through psychological work. Such work identifies the triggers and helps to delope coping mechanisims to lessen their impact.
Trauma in Life
Trauma is the emotional experience of hurtful events in our past. We can respond to trauma over the years by trying to ignore it or even forgetting about it. This is a common response to trauma that happened to us as children. Burial of pain can result in the person experiencing unexplainable, negative, cognitive, emotional and behavioural experience in later years. Trauma from earlier in life can be healed in the present day through the work of a therapeutic relationship with a counsellor.
Waiting; An opportunity or a frustration?
Waiting can be an opportunity to satisfy the calm mind or a frustration by stopping the body from running the race.
How you view waiting depends on the patience of your personality.
If you are impatient by nature, having to wait is an invitation to learn to use the time in a way that satisfies your desire to be productive in an active way.
If you are patient by nature, waiting gives you that opportunity to recharge and let your mind ponder more interesting things.