One of the biggest difficulties we face when trying to instigate change in our lives is protecting ourselves from the effects of the past and an imagined future. Even when the past has been somewhat dealt with, the brave new world known as our new future life can be difficult to deal with, hold many fears and lead us…
We all see the world in a specific way. Call it what you will…..paradigm …window on the world…frame of reference, it is all the same. It dictates to a large degree how we think, feel and behave in any given situation. It is our conditioning that we bring from childhood with all the positive and…
I have seen and read many articles about the two very recent high profile suicides that have unfortunately occurred. Due to the celebrity status of the people involved, the cases were given much publicity and debate as to how and why. If anything at all positive can come from this coverage, it is that the…
I do not watch much television these days. However, occasionally something catches my attention and Patrick Melrose has certainly done that. For those of you who are not familiar with the name, The Patrick Melrose Novels are a series of semi-autobiographical works by Edward St Aubyn. Set in the upper crust world of English aristocracy,…
There is an old assumption that whatever you tell a therapist, he or she will always “blame the parents”. Most self-help and psychology works that center on conditioning and change point primarily to the time when our caregivers had the most influence over us. This is not often seen as positive and is usually cited…
In recent years, there has been a massive increase in mental health issues across all genders, age groups and cultures. This is a problem that will increase and will probably get worse before it gets better. Many people go through life accepting their problems, seeing them as “normal” or as a an inevitable consequence of their job,…
In your lifetime, irrespective of advances in technology, you will probably not come across a more capable computer than the one you have in your head, your mind. Its capabilities are endless and mostly unknown to us. It has been said that we probably use about 10 percent of its given potential and if we…
Self-esteem is a big issue for all of us and we could all do with more. In therapy, it is one of the most sought after goals that clients put on their wish list. “I need to increase my self-esteem”, I often hear. Just how many truly know what they are asking for is questionable;…
Many therapeutic approaches deal with our thinking as a major part of the work needed to recover from our ills. CBT, especially, doesn`t look at events but how our perception of the event affects us. It looks at layers of thinking from automatic thoughts to core beliefs as an aid to this. CBT, however, works…
When we allow our thinking patterns to “protect” us , we often feel there is no escape, no matter how hard we try. These thinking traps are exactly that, thinking and behavior that are ingrained and seemingly impossible to shift. They subdue the Self and the true fears that we need to face. They “protect”…
