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.
Suicide: Can Counselling help?
How therapy can help a suicidal person. First assessment of risk. Help the client identify reasons to live. Developing long term skills in wanting to stay alive. Four therapeutic approaches that maybe used are highlighted.
Failure - The fear around every corner
The fear of failure is one of the greatest draws holding a man back in life. The fear of failing at risky things like a new job or at passing exams etc. is perfectly normal. The problem is when you begin to identify yourself as a failure at life just because you have had failures in your life.
This self identifying yourself as a failure is devestating. It destroys your confidence in social situations, professionally, your role in your family. Simply put you don’t want others to know about your failures and you hide.
The way to shake off the failure mantra is to teach yourself first and foremost failing is normal. Everyone fails.
Repeat to yourself “I am not afailure, just because somethings in my life failed”.
Eventually you will then be able to develop ways to manage failure as it happens and to learn from it so as to decrease its risk of return.
And this is how I got my life back after Cancer?
Three months post-discharge from hospital. My cancer story seemed to come to an end. I was discharged from the day hospital. I had the internal tube removed that gave me chemotherapy during those 5 months as an inpatient.
While the significance of this was real, I truly was passed my direct cancer treatment. The cancer was gone, but my life was forever changed. I looked back, I tried to look forward, but in truth, I was still in shock.
Who's in charge of you, You?
My third cancer blog and the last one I wrote while still an inpatient. I may have had two cycles of chemo left.
By this stage, I was drained of anger. I still had my days, but it was getting me nowhere. I was pushing myself to choose to accept the situation, but to keep the hope alive of future reunions and restarts.
This blog focused on the effect of the loss of personal autonomy and knowing I was not in control. I questioned are we ever really in control of our lives?
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.
On being Diagnosed with Cancer
This blog was written when I was in the early stages of being in hospital, being treated for cancer, the 2nd half of 2020..
In many ways, this reads as a diary entry where I outline the events of my illness, starting with pre-diagnosis and ending somewhere after my first of six rounds of chemotherapy.
I delve into the emotional and physical trauma of that time. What gave me strength and what made me weak. Relational and spiritual issues are highlighted.
This is all in the context of the initial 2020 lockdown, which meant I had to experience this painful medical world alone.
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.
Violence in the Inner Man
Are men naturally violent? Is the aggressive response of men always a bad thing? There are lots of questions we have about men and violence. One thing that most will accept is that men are generally more aggressive than women and that this aggression can be very destructive.
The source of aggressive behaviour would seem to be partly learned through social expectations and partly biological through testosterone.
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.
Counselling and the issue of money
Counselling fees may seem to be an awkward necessity. Awkward because the client may be operating within a strict budget. The counsellor aspires to provide therapy to those who need it while ensuring they make a living.
This blog goes through the principles around setting counselling fees and how to manage them. The fee structure of Prevail is also introduced.
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.
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.
What Gets You Up in the Mornings?
What is the daily routine of life for?
Is it to make a success of ourselves professionally, to make an impact on the world?
Is the success of our life to be detemined materialisticly?
Or do we get out of our bed every morning to improve somehow the lives of those around us?
Is our value what others hold of us or what we hold of ourselves?
Hope
Hope is perceived as being essential but also as elusive. The hope for a better future plays a large part in motivating us to work through difficylt situations. Some may also say that been driven to achieve by a hope unfounded in reality can result a destructive end.
Whatever your views on the helpfulness of hope we all strive to have hope.
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.
Good Will Hunting
A discussion of how the film Good Will Hunting represents the work of counseeling. How does it effect your motivation to consider counselling for yourself?
Does Good Will Hunting present a positive or negative view of how counselling works?