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.
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.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT is a combination of two psychological theories. Cognitive and Behavioural theories. CBT proposes that emotional change happens by changing the underlying thoughts that support them. To effectively change our thoughts, we utilise the behaviours that correlate with them.
This approach can be a trial and error, and is greatly helped by having a good understanding of your underlying beliefs that caused the thought to start with.
Self-discovery in a hiding tree
A tree near me reveals it secret every winter. The secret being that despite being on a small roundabout in a busy road it is the home of several nests.
My perception of this being odd indicates that I have a limited mindest of what is appropriate or expected behaviour. Surly the birds would use the hundreads of trees in the park on the other side of the road.
If I limit the behaviour of birds in this way how do I limit my own.