Counselling Articles

We often try to improve our lives by setting and achieving goals. However, many people have poor goal setting skills, and set goals that are too grand or unrealistic. Despite their best efforts to make their goals a reality, they do not always get the desired level of success. Not knowing how to properly set up goals can sometimes lead to failure, and can create feelings which may impact self-esteem and motivation levels. After all, we feel what we think and we think what we feel. This is why knowing how to set proper, realistic goals that produce measurable results is essential.

Creating a goal is not always easy. This is partly because sometimes our issues blind us towards goal setting. However, our personal problems can provide an excellent starting point for goal creation. Turning something negative into something positive, i.e. a goal, is a wonderful starting point to overcoming personal issues.

If identifying a goal or life challenge is difficult for you, working with a professional therapist can be an invaluable aid in the goal creation process. The right trained therapist can help you identify what your problems are, how they are maintained, and how you may be able to go about changing them. Goals should be about personal empowerment, and what better way to boost your self-confidence than overcoming the challenges that life presents?

A technique often used by therapists that may be helpful in identifying personal goals is the “magic wand question”. The question goes roughly as follows: “If you were to have a magic wand, which would give you the ability to change the things you did not like and you would wake up tomorrow to your world as you would like it to be, what would be different?” Asking yourself this question can serve to identify possible goals on which you can work. (more…)

10 Suggestions to Improve Your Mental Health Today!

Having good mental health, or “balance” in our social, emotional, and psychological states, does not have to be complicated. The key to working towards this balance is to recognize that our lives are made up of several components such as work, social, spiritual, and family, to name a few. It is the sum of these parts which creates our daily existence. Striking a healthy balance in these gives us the sense of “wholeness” or good mental health. When we try to reap all life’s satisfaction out of one area of life, the other areas often become neglected and imbalance occurs which might lead to poor mental health. This being said, there are simple things that you can start doing today to work towards keeping, or improving, the “psychological balance” in your life. The following 10 easy steps are designed to help you find your own optimal “balance.”

The 10 Steps to improve mental health:   (more…)

Mindfulness: “Paying attention in a particular way: in the present moment, on purpose and non- judgementally” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Introduction to Mindfulness

Mindfulness has its roots in Eastern meditation practices which are thousands of years old. The influx of these great traditions into the West provided psychologists not only with an expanded view of the self and of human potential, but also with effective techniques for focussing the mind and managing negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Mindlessness

Many people spend much of their lives in a state of ‘mindlessness’ in which attention is allowed to freely wander from the present, swept away by whatever thought is arising at that moment – often ruminations about the past or fantasies about the future. This can be counter-productive, since focussing attention on the past and future can lead to feelings of guilt/resentment or fear/anxiety. Ironically, people often try in vain to resolve these negative thoughts by giving them even more attention and going around in a vicious circle (obsessions), or even acting them out (compulsions). (more…)

What can I expect during Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Treatment?

Although Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is increasingly popular, many of us are unclear about what it entails in practice. The format of therapy sessions usually varies according to which therapist you work with, but here is a general structure that many CBT therapists will follow:

STAGE ONE: Assessment.

Cognitive therapists will assess your current situation and ask about your past history. They may try to establish answers to the following questions:

• What are the main issues that are causing you difficulty?
• How do they interfere with your life at present?
• How long have these issues existed?
• What is your motivation level to want to change?
• How might your past experiences, family or peer, have a bearing on the current issue? (more…)