What is mental health anyway?
October is Mental Health Awareness Month and today (10th October) is World Mental Health Day. And I find myself thinking about how we define mental health and what the impact of poor mental health is on our lives.
My favourite resources: July – September 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.
What is making you angry?
It feels like there’s a lot of anger about right now – living in Melbourne last week we saw some super unsettling demonstrations of anger by disenfranchised people in response to the extended lockdowns, mandated COVID-19 vaccinations, an enforced shut-down of the construction industry and probably a lot of other things too. And at a global level there’s so much to get angry at that the list would be unending.
How’s your relationship going during lockdown?
Globally, we have seen country after country navigate various forms of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some places, like here in Melbourne we’re still navigating it! And, all over the world, from Australia to the UK, to South Africa to Brazil and everywhere in between couples have found their relationships having to flex to adjust to a whole bunch of new relationship stressors. Let’s be super honest, we really weren’t designed to spend so much time confined in a limited space with the same people day after day, week after long week!
Becoming emotionally literate
Emotions.
Feelings.
Same, same, different.
It’s complicated because there are two words that we use to describe something that is often quite similar but also there are some important differences. And, given that as human beings we tend to find it SUPER difficult to articulate what our emotional state is (or what we’re feeling) I thought it might be useful to break this down a little bit.
Be here now.
Been thinking a lot this week about how much of a challenge it is for many of us to be fully present in the moment, as opposed to been drawn either into the past or dreaming of the future. And never has that been more of a challenge than for many of us right now navigating these seemingly unending lockdowns. When we are uncomfortable (as so many of us are in 2021) with the here and now we find ourselves longing for days past when we enjoyed freedoms and travel that we can’t access now, or we spend time drifting off to focus on all the things we long to do when things change.
Get Grounded
Grounding is something we can do when we find ourselves emotionally overwhelmed, anxious or experiencing a trauma re-triggering event. When we have experienced a traumatic event, it is fairly common that we might experience flashbacks or intrusive memories of the event or aspects of the event that can be very unsettling. Sometimes it might feel that we are back in the midst of the event, literally as if we were reliving the trauma, whilst other times we might find that our thoughts are a jumbled series of future-focused fears that other bad things will happen to us, and it feels impossible to stop the racing, escalating thoughts. It feels like anxiety, only worse. Other people have difficulties with dissociating – where they have learned to take themselves far, far away from their discomforting thoughts, feelings and sensations and they appear (and feel) very separate to the world. They can become disorientated, disconnected and physically numb.
Exercise and mental health
I’ve decided that whilst in lockdown write some blogs focusing on some aspects of health and wellbeing that significantly impact on our mental health but that sometimes don’t get enough air-time in sessions. Last week I wrote about sleep (click HERE to read that) and this week we’re going to talk about exercise.
Sleep and mental health
Sometimes I think my clients are doing some kind of internal eye-roll when I ask them, as I do most sessions, “so how has your sleep been?” It’s almost as if they think I’ve run out of things to explore and so I’m opting to talk about something really basic and dull! The thing is, we are beginning to fully understand the deeply important role sleep has in terms of protecting mental health and conversely, the significant negative impact that poor sleep plays in conditions like anxiety, depression, bi-polar disorder, ADHD, PTSD and OCD.
The Lockdown Rainbow Edition
This week’s blog comes to you on day 3 of Melbourne’s 6th lockdown. SIXTH. That’s bonkers! I was listening to a podcast today where the guys talking were joking about what the future generations would want to know about the “COVID years”. It was recorded last year following the end of Melbourne’s second (and painfully long) lockdown and there was a sense of hope and of being over the worst of the experience. Little did they know that almost a year later we would be in a strikingly similar situation. For people in NSW right now, I can imagine the world feels similarly heavy and uncertain.