Click These Links to remember these tools that aid wellbeing.

Your Therapeutic Rights as a Human Being

The Maslow Triangle

Feeling words to help work out how you feel.

16 Personalities Test

How to Listen Effectively

How to Breath Effectively

The FULL Sleep & Insomnia Workbook

The Cafe Personality Activity

Decoding Your Dreams using the latest Psychology Theories

Remember these Exercises we probably did which breaks down aspects of our external events.

• Your Wheel of Life, which broke down your life in to its areas.
• The recognising of others when they are rude, manipulative or abusive. Lots on the internet about this.
• The learning we did about meeting your own needs and boundaries about meeting the needs of others.
• The learning we did around being assertive enough to make, hold and keep boundaries healthy for you.
• Relationship Overview Exercise (about rating the relationship areas in relation to ther other person)

• Turn all communication devices to silent and do not disturb.

• Routine, relaxing before bedtime

• Warm milk or Ovaltine/Horlicks & a carboohydrate based snack can be good (biscuits, cereal, crackers, banana).

• Bath, Massage

• Avoid looking at games consoles or any screens 2-3 hours before trying to sleep. Screen protectors are OK, but the stimulation from just interacting with the devices can also prevent us getting to sleep.

If these things are not helping then more sleep focussed work can be done in therapy.

Remember to use YouTube recordings to help you relax and sleep.

NUTRITION & SUBSTANCES

REDUCE: Caffeine, over the counter medicines, Alcohol, Salt intake, Sugar

INCREASE:

Vitamin B’s- either eat more foods with Vitamin B's in or take a vitamin B complex suppliment.

EAT:

Regular meals and if this has been difficult lately, eat little and often. Even if it is just milk, yoghurt, fruit, toast.

DRINK:

Fluid Intake- Drink more Water & Herbal teas.

Learn more about nutrition if this interests you.

EXERCISE

Cardiovascular:

Walking, Running, The gym, Swimming, Cycling, Dancing,

(Obviously we don't always feel like this when were not in a good place, but even brief regular walking each day can be highly beneficial).

AND

Strength Building:

Gardening, The gym & Weights

Exercise helps burn off energy, excess stress hormones, irritation and improve sleep.

Sometimes its better to feel strong than aim for a particular size or body shape.

ADULT BEDTIME STORIES

Just type that into YouTube and zone out and maybe fall asleep to these highly medative recordings.

REGULAR MASSAGE or REFLEXOLOGY

Massage has many health benfits and there are different types. 
Indian Head and face massage, Full Body massage, back massage, Back with legs.  Massage using hot stones, aromatherapy oils which can be tailored to improe your mood or particular ailment.

REFLEXOLOGY is massage and maniplation of pressure points in the feet to prmote healing in different parts of the body.

For uncomfortable stress related physical symptoms like tight throat, nervous feelings in the body, shaking, nausea, insomnia, tension etc

Search for:

PMR- Progressive Muscle Relaxation. This can interupt the Fight or Flight response and the relaxatio involved promotes healing.

Click here to go to a popular one

YOUTUBE RECORDINGS

Access Self-Help on YouTube

Search for:

• "Adult Bedtime Stories" to help get to sleep

• "PMR meditations" -Progressive Muscle Relaxation -ideal for physical stress symptpms and Sleep

• "Hypnotherapy for Stress or Anxiety or Depression (You can type hypnotherapy followed by any word you like to see what you get)

These recordings are varied and there are many. Find voices you like listening to.

HYPNOSIS

Self Hypnosis is accepted by the scientific and medical commnuity as a healthy, healing, relaxing technique which can improve your mood, promote healing, health and wellbeing. It can improve the relationship between your body and mind and promote our inner sense of self.

You can access Hypnotherapy recordings on YouTube and they can talk you through the trace process. 

Search for

'Hypnotherapy for Stress'

or

'Hypnotherapy for healing'

or

'Hypnotherapy for energy'

CREATIVITY

Humans have a natural desire to create whether this is through cooking, sewing, music, web design, re-arranging a room, sorting a wardrobe or gardenning projects.

It is proven that using our creativity promotes wellbeing.

SENSATION SEEKING

Each person has a level of need in relation to sensation seeking and stimulation. If you've ha therapy with me you are likely to know where you sit on this scale.

This can not be ignored. If youre being too overstimulated for your level you may feel stressed, and if you are not getting enough your mood can drop and frustration can set in.

MUSIC

Play the music you like. Music can change a mood or you can put music on to match your mood.

Dancing to it in the privacy of your lounge can also be therapeutic.

INTERESTS AND HOBBIES

Men tend to have more hobbies than women but we do all have interests and hobbies. Here are some examples.

Sport, Health, Fashion, sewing, reading, making music, racing cars, riding motorbikes, animals, looking after pets, interior design, medical science, gardenning, woodwork, metalwork, trains, boats, caligraphy, amateur dramatics, flower arranging etc etc >infinity

WORK LIFE BALANCE

Some people have to be careful not to overwork or only work.  If we like what we do this can get addictive and we can lose balance in our lives. We will have looked at this in therapy but sometimes it's easy to accidentally find ourselves working too much.

SUPPORT NETWORKS

If you are struggling with an issue that has happened in life,  then choose a person to speak to about it.  You may find that one person would be good to talk about one thing but a different person to talk about another.

A problem shared really can be a problem halved, but only if you're talking to a suitable person.

ACCESS CULTURE & THE ARTS

Part of our lifestyle is about accessing culture and the arts.  This can be done on a small scale like sitting outside a cafe or something bigger like travelling to another culture and doing what they do instead.

GROUPS INTEREST / TEAM SPORT

As humans we thrive well when we are engaged in an interest where other like-minded people are into the same things.  This can be a sport like football, watching motorbike racing, skating, fishing and it can be interests instead of sports, like craft groups, rambling, bird watching, space observation, reading groups, bike riding, pet groups and the list is endless.

 LIFE STYLE

Regularly through life we need to attend to our lifestyles. How do we want to live and adjustments may need to be made.

Once we settle it is often the case that we are not content for long and are ready for change.

In relation to stress, if we have too much going on, see how we can reduce things down to more manageable levels, delegate to others or simply stop doing some of the stuff for others- without feeling guilty.

INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION

Each person has a level of need in  relation to intellectual stimulation and or learning.  This might be a psychological thriller one night, a documentary a different night or doing work on an online course or reading a book. 

Some intellectual stimulation might need to be got from other like-minded people and can not be got from anywhere else.  Find like minded people.

As humans are social animals being a part of the community and putting something back into it brings us a sense of position and worth.

As we get older this tends to get more important.

For Grandparents this is often energy that is put into grandchildren in some way.

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS

There is often pressure on us to do or attend things that actually, we would rather not do. 

In therapy we may have looked at your 'nightclub' and VIP group which comes into play here and also done some work around how to say no without feeling guilty or fibbing.

We may have looked at our personal need and tollerance of engagements, entertainment and desires in this area.

As humans we have an inner desire for change coupled with a deeper instinctive desire to stay the same and conserve energy and this comes from a brain/ mind process that says, if you're alive and survived this far, don't change anything.

Therefore change can also bring anxiety and /or excitement.

Sometimes however, change can be forced upon us by life and this is often a more negative feeling.

Remember that with every change there is loss and with every loss comes some change.

THE MID-LIFE CRISIS IDEA

Mid life crisis can happen at anytime in life and amounts to a realisation that we want something different from our lives. To have one, doesn't mean that what youre feeling you want to do is not right for you as others may suggest to you, but it does show you that you have a need for change and this may be big or small.

On-line Support Groups

It can be a good idea to join an online support group if you are diagnosed with a physical condition but they dont tend to work so well for a psychological or emotional or mental health issue.

The groups for physical conditions can provide signposting, information and support and sharing and reassurance from others who have or are experiencing similar things to you.

Self Help Books

Some are good and some are not but any kind of self help is good in general. It can educate us and provide some useful thoughts and skills.

Recommendations from like minded people can be particularly good.

Supporting Activities

Many physical activities can support ailments and also significant health conditions.

Some of these activities can include:

Yoga, Pilates, Thai Chi, walking, swimming, meditation, your favourite sporting activity, gardenning, dog walking, cycling or gentle exercises like stretching, weight bearing exercise, and general activity throughout the day.

Remember that much of what is out there on the public domain in relation to mental health and /or psychology can be helpful but it can not provide the solutions for more complex issues that are individual to each person. Their is a tendancy to label things and can not look at your individual full picture.

So make sure resources you use come from a quality source and not magazine type of articles and don't take information as black and white explanatins or solutions. But they can help us explore and point us in the right direction and educate us on some stuff.

LIFE SCRIPTS
We internalise experiences to make sense of the world especially when young and we form ourselves some scripts to live by but some are not helpful.  Examples like:

'All Men are Bastards'

'I never succeed in anything'

'My sibling is always better than me'

 'I'm not all that clever'

'I must be perfect at everything'

CONTENTMENT

Often we are searching for happiness, but actually its more likely that what we seek is contentment.

Humans are generally not content for long but the contentment within us that comes with the therapy you have likely done with me, is a more deeper sense which carries us while we ride the waves of life.

This is about validating ourselves and not looking to others. owning our behaviours and responses and being able to communicate effectively and meet our own needs in the various ways that we do.

CORE BELIEFS & COMPLEXES

We may have done work on your core beliefs.  We all have them and some may have been unhelpful ones such as:

'I an unloveable'

'I'm not good enough'

'I am not worthy'

'I am worthless'

'I am not important'

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

This is often a very powerful lesson in psychotherapy and can be life changing in our relationships and how we interact with other people.

So this involves our modes of:

Authoritarian Parent

Nurturing Parent

Adult

Free Child

Obedient Child

We are likely to have looked at this in therapy if it was relevent and helps us to understand parts of ourselves and others and choose to make changes in how to interact with others.

THE DEVIL AND ANGEL ON OUR SHOULDERS

Remember your learning about 3 of our main internal psychological parts where the Id is your instinctive part wanting to meet our desires regardless of anything else, our Superego being like our conscience which desires to 'do the right thing' (often a lot like our early parental voice that we have internalised) and the Ego which is our thinking part which tries to reduce conflict between these two because it can create anxiety.

(And remember everyone else has this going on for them too and each person has individual degrees of moral compasses and personal values and beliefs).

Here is a video reminder, copy and paste this onto Google.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vs8uE8_02EId, Ego and Superego

OUR INTERNAL PARTS

In therapy you may have done some work about the dirfferent parts of you / your psyche / your mind that function to manage life.

Remember these parts and at any time you can reassess how we balanced them and you can continue to work on this balance as you continue through life.

PERSONALITY & SELF UNDERSTANDING

Hopefully through therapy you learned a lot about yourself as an individual and worked on your own neurosis's, personal proessing, triggers, and how your history bought you to where you are now.

Your belief systems, your life script and how these feed in to how you function. Hopefully we worked on altering some of these processes to serve you better.

This can be an endless journey that you can step into at any time through your life as you develop through lifes stages.

NARCISSISTIC TYPES OF DEFENCES

Black and White Thinking

This involves believing that things are literally one way or the other. A person is good or bad. A food is good or bad. People's bodies are perfect or revolting. A person must be a certain way and not anything different. In therapy we hopefully will have addressed some of your own black and white thinking processes and created many more grey areas.

Projection

To avoid seeing your own faults but to project them onto someone else instead. For example calling someone out for expressing frustration or being stressed when you don't deal with stress or frustration well yourself and so you don't like watching others do it.

PATHOLOGICAL TYPES OF DEFENCES

Denial

A refusal to acknowledge reality because its too threatening, including denial of own negative, inappropriate, harmful or difficult behaviours.

Delusional Projection

Delusions about external reality, usually of a persecutory nature.

Distortion

A gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs. For example believing oneself to have a higher level of importance than other people, believing others are .

*

IMMATURE TYPES OF DEFENCES

Regression

To regress to behave or think at a younger age so as to feel better. Like a child may start wetting the bed after finding out their parents are having a new baby.

Somatization

To have a real physical ailment so as to avoid a situation for example getting a headache before an exam.

Introjection 

To act and behave and look like someone else one admires can be easier than presenting as oneself.

Fantasy

To retreat into a fantasy world so as to avoid reality despite the person not being pathologically delusional.  For example to pretend everything is wonderful and everyone is lovely and nothing bad exists, or to believe one is always watched over or follwoed by unseen entities like angels or demons.

ANXIETY /STRESS BASED DEFENCES (NEUROTIC)

Intellectualisation

To intellectualise about a situation is to use our thinking brain to summarise about a situation so as to avoid anxiety provoking emotions or connection with others on an emotional level. For some this becomes a big part of their way of being which can at some point cause relationship issues and, or anxiety or depression issues.

Passive Aggression

An indirect way to be angry at someone and make it known to them, without the skill set to express anger directly and effecively.

Repression

When a feeling is forced from consciousness because it is considered socially acceptable. For example when a child has to repress anger to appease parental /carer/societies aggression or diapproval.

Isolation of effect

This is where an emotional response seems absent or inapproriate EG not showing devastation at the funeral of a loved one but remaining straight faced and appearing to have no reaction.

Rationalization

To use Rational to explain away something that is indesirable.  EG After an unsuccessful job interview, 'I didn't want that job anyway.

Minimization

To reduce something to something of lesser value so as to make it fit with what we would orefer. EG Girls don;t get headaches, or 'of course youre OK' or 'Youre making a mountain out of a  molehill'

Undoing

Disassociation

To remove oneself from reality of a situation to protect ones psyche, emotions or physical body.

Displacement

To be annoyed, angry or irritated at something or someone and to take it out on someone else (rather than to direct it to where it should be in a mature way)..

Confusion

To become 'confused' when something is becoming intollerable and you don't want to deal with it or hear it.

Conscious Suppression

This is where someone channels a socially unacceptable trait or desire into something more acceptable like someone who likes playing with fire, becomes a firefighter as a job. 

Humour

To make jokes about something so as to deal with some negative feelings. Like joking about death