Year: 2021

My favourite resources: October – December 2021

My favourite resources: October – December 2021

Here’s another reminder about the purpose of this blog: I really want this blog to be a useful space where people can find all sorts of therapeutically relevant information, mixed up with a good dollop of personal reflections and ramblings with a sprinkling of humour for good measure.  I also want it to be a place where you can find links to all the resources that I share with clients, things that I think have strong therapeutic merit or that are innovative and really want people to see.

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The Christmas holidays edition

The Christmas holidays edition

 I can’t quite believe that I’m writing this week’s blog.  I feel like my body is still somewhere in about May of this year and the rest of me is still reeling from the topsy-turvy second year of the pandemic, lockdowns, vaccines, and restrictions.  It’s been quite a year and I know that there has been more than the usual amount of stress for us all to navigate in 2021, especially coming off the back of an already problematic 2020.

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The antidotes – empathy and compassion

The antidotes – empathy and compassion

This is a bit of a summary week following more conversations about shame – last week’s blog really seemed to hit home (click here if you missed it) – I really wanted to draw together some of the big concepts that really make a difference when we’re riddled with shame.

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Shame Spiral

Shame Spiral

 Shame can be defined as a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises in relation to the perception of having done something dishonourable immoral or improper (verywellmind.com).  Whilst it’s a negative emotion its origins play an important role in our survival as a species.  Without shame, we might not feel the need to adhere to cultural norms, follow laws or behave in ways that allow us to connect meaningfully to other humans.

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Connections Matter

Connections Matter

Australia holds an unenviable position globally as second-most medicated nation for depression and anxiety.  For a nation that is proud to punch way above its weight on the sporting field on the big stage like the Olympics, when it comes to mental health pretty unenviable position to hold.  And I suspect that in Melbourne and maybe Sydney after the last two years of lockdowns things might be worse now than ever.

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Get to burnout before it gets to you

Get to burnout before it gets to you

There’s been a LOT happening this past 18-months and we’ve all done our very best to keep going and hang in there through it all.  But I’m really struck by how exhausted people are as we re-enter the world and all its busy-ness, especially on the build-up to Christmas.  There’s a big difference though between exhaustion and burnout so this week’s blog is about recognising those early-warning signs and symptoms with a view to catching it before it depletes us fully.

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Get to know your nervous system

Get to know your nervous system

As a ‘bottom-up’ therapist, I spend a lot of time working with people’s nervous system.  That might sound a bit odd but I think it’s important I spend a blog explaining why this is so important, especially when working with trauma.

Our body reacts, and then our mind does the thinking.  This is why we might startle in fright when we see a hosepipe lying in the long grass on a summer afternoon (living in Australia) before we register that it’s a hosepipe, as opposed to a snake.    That’s because the part of the brain that develops earliest in life is the brain stem – the part of our brain that is responsible for keeping us safe.  The higher brain regions – the limbic system (responsible for attachment and emotional development) and the cortical brain (responsible for thinking, learning and inhibiting) don’t work so well if the lower part of the brain isn’t working very well, or is busy keeping us safe and well, or under real or perceived threat.

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Addiction

Addiction

Humans are designed to move toward pleasure and avoid pain.  It’s one of those instinctual drivers that has ensured our survival thus far. There’s a fairly delicate balancing act that goes on to ensure that we remain on just the right side each of them.  And in our modern-lives, rife with consumerism, with easy-access to so much that creates deep pleasure for us, is not surprising that there are not only increasing rates of addiction, but there is also a lot of attention on expanding research and new approaches to recovering from addiction.

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Navigating Re-entry

Navigating Re-entry

After 262 long days in lockdown, and five other attempts at this particular exercise, Melburnians should be experts by most normal standards at re-entering the world! However, as we have just spent our first weekend in experiencing relative freedoms I’ve been reflecting (while I was having my first swim back in the pool) on how interesting it has felt out in the world after such a long and intense period of time living with lockdowns – the restrictions on our daily living, our reduced time spend indoors and our limited contact with friends and family.  It truly has been an intense time.  We’ve all become accustomed to working from home, social distancing, mask-wearing and being socially isolated.  And we have developed a range of behaviours adjusting to these that helped us navigate the unusual set of circumstances that COVID-19 has brought us which won’t necessarily serve us as the world starts to re-open.

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Trauma is not what happened to you

Trauma is not what happened to you

I wrote a blog earlier this year (Click HERE to read that one) which was something of an introduction to trauma, a framework or a lens through which to make sense of what we mean when we use the term trauma.  Trauma is an interesting word because the official definition of it looks like this:

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