From the category archives:

Articles

Shopaholics: Retailium Extremis

by Janette Tombleson

Shopaholics - Retailium ExtremisShopping is fun ! It can promote social bonding and a new outfit always does wonders for your self esteem. But there is a whole new species being created in those malls.

True shopaholics develop retail habits that put other areas of their  lives in peril explains psychologist April Lane Benson, Ph.D., author of “To Buy or Not to Buy”. A great title , I must say so I read on…..

” they’re put on probation at work because there’re caught shopping online, or they’re working two to three jobs to pay off their credit cards” , oops sound familiar?  ” Their personal lives are in shambles because of the secrecy and the humiliation”.  Weeeeell, not me but I know someone who hides her shopping in the closet and brings them out one by one, ” this old thing? Oh no, I’ve had it for ages”.

Continue Reading

Live to eat or eat to live?

by Janette Tombleson

Did you see that programme on daytime TV where a reallly overweight person is matched with a really skinny person and then they swap diets? The sight of those two extremes facing each other was quite confronting.  It was interesting to find out how the attractive thin person with a ” to die for figure” was actually causing harm to her joints and other organs because she avoided the carbs in an effort to stay model thin. Continue Reading

The fish are on the boil!

by Janette Tombleson

As I was alerted to the cacophony of seagulls swooping over an unusual patch of  choppy waters, I strained to see the fish jumping haphazardly directly ahead of me. The sun mercilessly beat down, red hot on my face but I was mesmerized by the frantic activity under the skin of the ocean,  small fishing boats and lazy, luxury yachts were meandering closer and closer, curious to find out what the commotion was about.

Safety in numbers, fishermen say, so  fish ball together to decrease their chances of being eaten by bigger fish.  This made me think about real threats we all experience, how we manage to feel safe and what we  do to cope with danger.

Continue Reading

Child Counselling is not Kid's Play

by Janette Tombleson

They may be young and they may be small but children are very vulnerable to life’s stressors. Child counselling may make an incredible difference in how a child learns to accept, understand and deal with these stressors. Choosing the correct counsellor for your child is essential. Here are some of the aspects that need to be considered.

Choosing wisely

Just as not all adults are the same, it is no different with children. An important step in finding the right counsellor for your child is to meet and speak with them. Get a feeling and trust your instincts. No one knows your child as well as you do and you want to find the best chemistry possible.

Recommendations from trusted friends or school advisors are a good way of connecting with a reputable child counsellor.

Child counsellors must be able to deal with a child based on their age and developmental level. It would not make sense to treat a five year old as you would a 12 year old.

It is crucial for a good counsellor to possess the skills of listening and speaking. Be conscious of your childís reaction to sessions with the counsellor you choose, have them meet before the initial child counselling session.

Child counselling should incorporate the use of tools that children relate to such as toys, art supplies, books and dramatic play. Does the counsellor use these items when interacting with your child?

The reasons for child counselling are many, but include personal illness, family illness, sexual abuse, difficulty is socialization and learning.

Though there are many different approaches to counselling, one of the most respected and effective is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This form of therapy helps children to recognize that the way they think causes feelings which in turn become actions or behaviour. A good child counsellor will likely use many aspects of CBT in the treatment of children.

The main goal of counselling for children, as with adults, is to learn to cope with the issues they are facing. Children need to be given a chance to be heard. They need to learn that they have strengths and be able to build upon them.

In child counselling, these are the goals to be established between the child and the professional. Once that bond is formed and lines of communication and trust are created an avenue to healing can be built. We often forget how wise children are; they are intuitive, sensitive and absorb information like sponges.

Child counselling timed appropriately can mitigate problems later in life. Finding the right partnership between child and counsellor is the first and most important move towards that very goal.

Maintaining Emotional Health

by Janette Tombleson

We are all familiar and so very aware of the needs of our physical health. Somehow we have managed to overlook what it takes to maintain or achieve emotional health.

Emotional health creates a feeling that one is in tune with their emotions as well as their behaviour. Recognizing the signs of emotional well-being is an important step in knowing whether you are on the right emotional path or if you require a guiding hand.

Signs of Good Emotional Health

* A sense of purpose
* A desire to live life to the fullest
* An ability to have and maintain relationships with friends and family.
* A sense of general contentment
* Good self-confidence
* An  ability to balance work, family and recreation
* The skills to handle lifeís ups and downs

At some time in everyone’s life, there are challenges that arise creating emotional turmoil. No one is free from emotional stress; it is all part of living. There are times however, when the balance and our ability to handle transitions throw us off course.  A sense of being overwhelmed, tired, lost and disinterested seems to take over.

During these times it is so important to reach out for assistance from a trained counsellor. Professional psychological counsellors are trained to deal with these issues and can be an immeasurable help.

Interview and meet with a counsellor to get a feel for “the right fit”. Ask about the methods they use in helping their clients to overcome their struggles. There are many different psychological methods of treatment such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, that help you to be in tune with your thoughts and feelings, giving you control of how  you handle them. This can be a very empowering tool.

Remember that good emotional health does not mean the absence of hard times it is more about the resilience and skills which enable you to handle them. Build upon your strength by caring for yourself as a whole person, one who has both physical and emotional needs. The two parts, emotional and physical are interdependent and therefore what is good for one is likely good for the other.

Maintaining Emotional Health

Eating well balanced foods and exercise help to promote both the healthy mind and body.
Make time to spend with people who you enjoy and enrich your life.
Take some down time and relax
Do not be afraid to ask or seek out help if you need it. Allow yourself to experience and feel emotions. Burying them will never work in the long run.

Emotional Health is something to be understood and nurtured; with good emotional health, life will hold endless possibilities and paths. Just as you would seek a professional if your physical health was not up to par, do the same for your emotional health. The right counsellor will get you back on track and give you an objective listener to speak with and that is something we could all use in our lives.

Grief Counselling, What to Expect

by Janette Tombleson

Losing someone we love is without doubt, one of the most painful and challenging experiences we can go through as human beings.  We often need help in dealing with the array of powerful emotions that grief elicits, and that’s where grief counselling can be a very helpful tool in enabling a successful healing process.

Grief counsellors understand that the experience of grieving is not only about feeling sad.  There are many other emotions that come into play and are equally, if not more powerful and difficult to handle.  The most common emotional responses to grief are:

* Denial
* Anger
* Guilt
* Depression
* Loneliness
* Sadness
* Bargaining
* Acceptance and Hope

Grief Counsellors Are Experts on the Grieving Process
To get to the final stage of grief and to start experiencing feelings of acceptance and hope, we need to fully process all the other feelings first.  This can be really difficult to achieve on our own and we may find we “get stuck” in one emotional state such as anger or depression.

This is where grief counselling can really help us.  Grief counsellors have experience with dealing with grief on a daily basis and will fully understand and empathise with what you are going through.

Explore Your Emotions
Your grief counsellor will help you explore your emotions and feel the full force of them in a safe, open and non-judgemental environment.  He or she will guide you through all of the feeling states, otherwise known as the stages of grief, and help you acknowledge and accept each feeling as it arises.  It’s only by going through this process that we can finally overcome the pain of grief and start moving on with our lives.

This process can take anywhere from a few months to a few years depending on the person.  There is no set time span for grieving, it simply takes as long as it takes.

Understand the Impact of Previous Experiences of Loss
The experience of grief can also throw up previous issues of loss and bereavement that were not fully processed at the time and this is where grief counselling can be of the most help.  If we have unresolved issues around grief lurking in our psyche, when we lose a loved one, we often get a double whammy.

Not only do we have the pain of our current loss to deal with, but the pain from the previous experience will also bubble up and fight for attention.  When this happens the emotions associated with grief can become overwhelming.

Receiving unconditional support and guidance from a skillful professional who offers grief counselling, will enable you to manage and accept these overwhelming feelings and help you move on from your loss.

Inner Peace is in Your Control

by Janette Tombleson

Inner peace, the term itself promotes a sense of calm. Imagine what it would be like to control your thoughts; allowing your whole body inner serenity.

It is possible. The ability to teach your mind to focus on specific thoughts and images can bring you into the here and now and keep you from regrets of yesterday and concerns of tomorrow. The concept of mindfulness used in meditation is built on this skill. So, how do you go about keeping your mind on positive thoughts when it seems to have a mind of its own?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, is a way of learning where your feeling and reactions come from, knowing the source is the first step in taking control. Professional psychological counselling with someone, who is trained and skilled in using this method of therapy is the best place to start.

A client learns to become aware of how their thinking in turn causes an emotional reaction, which then produces some sort of reaction. CBT helps people learn to catch negative thoughts before they manifest as negative feelings and reactions, enabling them to turn off the noise, creating different thoughts that offer inner peace.

The result of learning these skills can bring the sense of quiet within the mind and body. The result is a change in breathing and heart rate, which enables calmness to take over where stress had control.

It is important to understand that change does not happen overnight. Dedication and perseverance are needed to learn the skills of being mindful and bring in inner peace. Anyone can learn to find inner peace at anytime of their life. It is more a matter of realizing that inner peace is hiding beneath all the stressors, that have formed around it. Peeling away those layers is an incredible journey in self awareness.

What does Inner Peace Feel Like

Have you ever watched young children playing? By looking at them laughing and running around, you would think they don’t have a care in the world. The truth is they do. Children have stressors too, but what they also have is an ability to live in the moment. They can let go and be happy and in doing so, it releases endorphins and lends to that feeling of peace and happiness.

Adults can do it as well. It is within the control of each individual to release feelings of fear, aggression, and stress and replace them with feelings of calm, quiet, and serenity; all feelings associated with inner peace. You do not need to be rich, beautiful, or brilliant. What you do need is the wonderful feeling that comes from being content with yourself.

Why choose relationship counselling?

by Janette Tombleson

There ís no way to get around the fact that while our closest relationships can bring us security, love and companionship, they can also be a minefield of conflict, challenges and disagreements!  None are more so than the intimate relationships between couples. Relationship counselling can aid communication and enable couples to overcome serious areas of conflict in the long term.

Areas of Conflict
There are a whole host of topics that can cause conflict in a relationship, see if you can recognise any:

* Parenting Methods
* Sex
* Money
* Politics
* Religion
* Other Family Members
* Outside Interests
* Housework
* Jealousy

Sometimes an inability of the couple to resolve one or more of these issues means that the future of the relationship can be threatened.  This is where relationship counselling comes in and can be extremely helpful.

Resentment & Responsibilities
When we’re in the ,first flourishes of being in love it can be impossible  to imagine that there will ever be a time when we might need to see a relationship counsellor.  As time goes on though, and more responsibilities are heaped onto the relationship such as debt, parenting and running a house, those initial feelings of being deeply in love can get overshadowed by arguments and resentments.  If these are left unresolved they can eat into the positive aspects of the relationship.

It’s important to note at this point, that not all conflict is bad! Conflict between partners is inevitable and healthy.  Furthermore, when it is managed well, it actually strengthens the bonds between you and your partner.

Communication Problems
It’s really about how disagreements and conflict are addressed in the relationship. If you can talk about any aspect of your relationship honestly, openly and respectfully, then you are unlikely to need help with your relationship.  But when we reach a stalemate with our partner and resentments have escalated into an ongoing struggle, deciding to go into relationship counselling is a very healthy and positive step.  At the very least it means that you both want the relationship to continue, just not in it’s current form.

A skillful relationship counsellor will be objective, help you communicate your real thoughts and feelings with each other and will not take sides.  He or she may help you explore the roots of the conflict which could have come from experiences in your respective childhoods, rather than a fundamental problem in your relationship.

Good relationship counselling will help you heal your relationship by teaching you how to be really honest about your deepest feelings, anxieties and insecurities and also teach you to respect each others differences.  It will help you to  listen properly to each other and stop assuming you know what the other is thinking or feeling, which underlies many relationship breakdowns.

Deciding to choose relationship counselling is definitely a step in the right direction!

Discover Emotional Freedom and Discover Your Real Self

by Janette Tombleson

Can you imagine a life filled with joy, energy and inner peace? Where each day is a pleasure, and full of satisfying experiences? What if you could transform and clear the build up of negative emotions lurking in your body and mind and discover emotional freedom?

Emotional freedom combines knowledge from psychology, neuroscience, energy work and spirituality to provide a holistic approach to overcoming our negative emotions and replacing them with positive emotions such as hope, energy, courage and compassion. Learning emotional freedom can truly create a life free from worry, fear and anger.

For many of us, our days are characterized by feelings of frustration, hurry, worry and anxiety, as we rush to complete all the tasks and responsibilities on our “To do” lists.  For others, negative emotions such as depression, exhaustion and feeling constantly overwhelmed have completely taken over, which subtly and perniciously reduce their ability to enjoy life.

Learn to Trust Your Intuition
Becoming emotionally free requires that we learn to trust ourselves and our intuition without hesitation and develop a strong relationship with our body.  When we are fully present in our body and not floating off in our minds, we can pick up the subtle cues that our body is providing to guide us and which gives us very valuable information.

Listen to Your Body
When things are not going well for us, we often ignore our body intuition because we don’t want to change or don’t know how to change. For instance, we struggle to get out of bed every morning to go to a job we don’t like or doesn’t satisfy us.  We might have more headaches and increasingly feel more and more exhausted.  This is our body telling us that this situation is not working well for us and  that we need to do something different.

You can practice listening to your body and your intuition right now if you choose.  Make a conscious decision to feel your body right here and right now.  How are you sitting?  What is your breathing like?  Are there any areas of your body that hurt or are uncomfortable?  What emotion are you experiencing right now?

What is your body telling you? Do you need a drink or something to eat?  Maybe a walk around to stretch your legs?  Do you feel sad, or hurt or excited?  Or some other emotion? Listen to the wisdom of your body and do as it is asking. As a result of taking notice of ourselves we are able to shed negative emotions and attain emotional freedom.

Build a Relationship with Your Body
This process of listening to our body is sometimes called “checking in” and the more frequently we do this, the stronger our relationship with our body becomes.  It also enables us to refocus our attention and makes us conscious of being fully in the present moment.

When we listen to, and act on, the cues from our body, the end result is that we move further away from the aspects of our life that do us harm and closer towards those things that are good for us.  Trusting ourselves to do the things that support and benefit us in the long term creates a deep sense of emotional freedom.

How to Choose a Great Counsellor

by Janette Tombleson

Making the decision to get counselling is a courageous step to take.  You’ve committed yourself to making a worthy investment of your time and money for your personal growth and development.  But this is only the first step.  How do we choose from the counselling services available to find one that meets your needs so that you gain the most benefit from your sessions.

Once you’ve identified a local counsellor, it’s time to give them a call or drop them an email – and interview them!

Experience
The first thing you should be looking for is a counsellor with as much RELEVANT experience as possible.  Enquire if the counsellor has experience and knowledge of  the issue you want to work through, perhaps some accreditation in that field.

Qualifications
The counsellor you choose must have at the very least, a recognised Diploma in Counselling.  While a degree is not essential, it will be advantageous if it is in a related field such as psychology or social work.  Ask if the counsellor is registered with a professional body  – this is also a positive sign that the counsellor follows a standard code of ethics.

Price
Unless you have plenty of disposable income, the price per session may be a big consideration for you.  Ask the counsellor what their rate per session is, and whether any government rebates might apply to their services. Medicare will often cover professional counselling services if the client has been referred by a doctor.

Good Fit
This is probably the most important aspect of choosing good counselling services.  Do you feel that this is a person you could trust and be open with?  Trust your instincts because you need to be able to build rapport with your counsellor to get the most from it.

Psychological Approach
There are various theoretical models that counsellors can be trained in so choose the one that most suits your own personality. Counselling models include:

* Psychodynamic
* Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
* Person Centred
* Emotional Freedom Technique
* Gestalt

You may want to do a little research to understand the differences and similarities between these models.

Consultative Approach
Finding counselling services that operate in a “Team” situation is worthwhile, as many psychologists and counsellors have particular fields of expertise.  It is an real bonus if their members of their team with whom your counsellor can liaise if necessary (while, of course, safeguarding your privacy).

← Previous Entries