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Gateway Counselling and Therapy Leicester
Gateway Counselling and Therapy Leicester
Safe Professional Counselling and Therapy in Leicester
Safe Professional Counselling and Therapy in Leicester
My Blog
Blog
Fifty Shades : Romantic or Abusive ?
Posted on February 16, 2015 at 9:09 AM |
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Counselling in Leicester with Gateway Counselling
Posted on December 6, 2014 at 6:34 AM |
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www.gateway-counselling-leicester.co.uk Tel. 0116 2120807 E-mail : [email protected] So what kind of issues to people seek help for:
Seeking Help Is Not A Sign Of Weakness It Is A Sign That, Very Often, We Have Tried To Be Too Strong For Too Long. If you or someone you know would benefit from counselling, then please do get in touch or encourage them to get in touch. The picture above is the back page of my brochure. If you would like a brochure or several brochures for yourself or your workplace, contact me. |
Things Mindful People Do Every Day
Posted on May 6, 2014 at 5:55 AM |
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The following is my version of a post my brother sent to me recently about Mindfulness, originally posted on The Huffington Post and adapted by me: Here are things mindful people actually do every day to stay calm, centered and attentive to the present moment. They take walks. "In our culture of overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, in which we're connected and distracted 24/7 from most things that are truly important in our lives, how do we tap into our creativity, our wisdom, our capacity for wonder, our well-being and our ability to connect with what we really value?" Arianna Huffington asked in a 2013 HuffPost blog post. Her answer: Solvitur ambulando, which is Latin for "it is solved by walking." Mindful people know that simply going for a walk can be excellent way to calm the mind, gain new perspective and facilitate greater awareness. And it's Free! They turn daily tasks into mindful moments. Mindfulness isn't just something you practice during a 10-minute morning meditation session. It can be incorporated throughout your everyday life by simply paying a little more attention to your daily activities as you're performing them. As the meditation app Headspace puts it:
They create. Mindfulness and creativity go hand-in-hand: Mindfulness practice boosts creative thinking, while engaging, challenging creative work can get you into a flow state of heightened awareness and consciousness. Many great artists, thinkers, writers and other creative workers -- from David Lynch to Mario Batali to Sandra Oh -- have said that meditation helps them to access their most creative state of mind. If you want to become more mindful but are struggling with a silent meditation practice, try engaging in your favorite creative practice, whether it's baking, doodling, or singing in the shower, and see how your thoughts quiet down as you get into a state of flow. They pay attention to their breathing. Our breath is a barometer for our overall physical and mental state -- and it's also the foundation of mindfulness. As mindful people know, calming the breath is the key to calming the mind. Meditation master Thich Nhat Hahn describes the most foundational and most effective mindfulness practice, mindful breathing, in Shambhala Sun:
They unitask. Multitasking is the enemy of focus -- many of us spend our days in a state of divided attention and near-constant multitasking, and it keeps us from truly living in the present. Studies have found that when people are interrupted and dividing their attention, it takes them 50 percent longer to accomplish a task and they're 50 percent more likely to make errors. "Rather than divide our attention, it is far more effective to take frequent breaks between intervals of sustained, one-pointed attention," Real Happiness at Work author Sharon Salzberg writes in a Huffington Post blog. "Debunking the myth of multitasking, we become much better at what we do and increase the chance of being able to remember the details of work we have done in the past." The mindful way, Salzberg suggests, is to focus on one task completely for a given period of time, and then take a break before continuing or moving on to another task. They know when NOT to check their phones (or play on Ipad's, computers, etc). Mindful people have a healthy relationship with their mobile devices and know when to use them and when to turn them off or leave them alone. This might mean making a point never to start or end the day checking email or maybe even keeping their smartphones in a separate room while they're sleeping, or choosing to unplug on Saturdays or every time they go on vacation. Especially important, not using phones, checking texts or playing games when you really should be listening and chatting to the other people in the room who came to see you! One unfortunate by-product of tech addition and too much screen time is that it keeps us from truly connecting with others -- as HopeLab CEO Pat Christen described her own aha moment, "I realized several years ago that I had stopped looking in my children's eyes. And it was shocking to me." Those who mindfully interact with others look up from their screens and into the eyes of whomever they're interacting with, and in doing so, develop and maintain stronger connections in all their relationships. They seek out and embrace new experiences. Openness to experience is a by-product of living mindfully, as those who prioritize presence and peace of mind tend to enjoy taking in and savoring moments of wonder and simple joy. New experiences, in turn, can help us to become more mindful. "Adventure can naturally teach us to be here now. Really, really here," adventurer Renee Sharp writes in Mindful Magazine. "To awaken to our senses. To embrace both our pleasant and our difficult emotions. To step into the unknown. To find the balance between holding on and letting go. And learn how to smile even when the currents of fear are churning within." They get outside. Spending time in nature is one of the most powerful ways of giving yourself a mental reboot and reinstating a sense of ease and wonder. Research has found that being outdoors can relieve stress, while also improving energy levels, memory and attention. “We need the tonic of wildness," Thoreau wrote in Walden. "At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” They feel what they're feeling. Mindfulness isn't about being happy all the time. It's about acceptance of the moment we're in and feeling whatever we feel without trying to resist or control it. Excessive preoccupation with happiness can actually be counterproductive, leading to an unhealthy attitude towards negative emotions and experiences. Mindful people don't try to avoid negative emotions or always look on the bright side -- rather, accepting both positive and negative emotions and letting different feelings coexist is a key component of remaining even-keeled and coping with life's challenges in a mindful way. As Mother Teresa put it, “Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.” We have a natural tendency to avoid sadness and crying, for example. This stops us from getting past grief. When we see someone else crying our natural tendency is to want them to stop crying and tell them everything is going to be ok. Mindful people know that it is ok to feel what we feel and to stay with others as they feel what they feel. (Interestingly, I think we often stop others from crying, not to make them feel better, but to make ourselves feel less uncomfortable. Good friends cry with those who cry). They're conscious of what they put in their bodies -- and their minds. So often, we shovel food into our mouths without paying any attention to what we're eating and whether we feel full. We ignore discomfort, hoping it will go away, even when it clearly won't. Some use alcohol, drugs, even porn, to numb what they feel. Mindful people make a practice of listening to their bodies -- and they consciously nourish themselves with healthy foods, prepared and eaten with care. But mindfulness is all about taking your time, paying attention to the moment, focus fully on what is happening and how they physically feel. Mindful people also pay attention to their media diets, are equally careful not to feed their minds with "junk food" like excess television, social media, mindless gaming and other psychological empty calories. (Too much time on the Internet has been linked with fewer hours of sleep per night and an increased risk of depression. I believe that each of us know exactly what we do that is unhealthy and we do it anyway. Maybe it is time to embrace a more mindful and healthy way of living. They remember not to take themselves so seriously. As Arianna Huffington writes in Thrive, "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." A critical factor in cultivating a mindful personality is refusing to get wrapped up and carried away by the constant tug of the emotions. If you can remember to laugh and keep an even keep through the ups and downs, then you've come a long way already in mastering the art of mindfulness. Much of our distraction is internal -- we ruminate, worry and dwell on our problems. But those who are able to maintain a sense of humor about their own troubles are able to better cope with them. Research from the University of California Berkeley and University of Zurich found that the ability to laugh at oneself is associated with elevated mood, cheerful personality, and a sense of humor. Laughing also brings us into the present moment in a mindful way. Joyful laughter and meditation even look similar in the brain, according to a new study from Loma Linda University. They let their minds wander. While mindfulness is all about focusing on the present moment, mind-wandering also serves an important psychological function, and conscientious people are able to find the happy medium between these two ways of thinking. It’s smart to question whether we should always be living in the moment. The latest research on imagination and creativity shows that if we're always in the moment, we're going to miss out on important connections between our own inner mind-wandering thoughts and the outside world. Engaging in imaginative thinking and fantasizing may even make us more mindful. Research has found that those whose daydreams are most positive and most specific also score high in mindfulness. |
Beauty, Cancer Awareness Selfies, Trees and other thoughts
Posted on March 19, 2014 at 6:50 AM |
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I have been thinking alot lately. It's a bad habit, but there you go. I posted this on my Facebook page today: And all over Facebook (and rightly so and long overdue) are selfies (self portrait camera photos for the FB newbies) of women without make-up, to raise awareness of cancer. Now I am not going to show any of those photo's because my female FB friends would kill me and I like living (you know who you are). But I think they look fantastic. This, apparently, is not a popular view. They, themselves do not think they look fantastic, quite the opposite, which is sad because they are great people and not stupid. One friend even said she would not go to the shops without make-up (but still posted a 'selfie' so well done). I do not want to live in a society where people (and I have to say, mostly women) think they look ugly without make-up. When did our self esteem become so caught up in this fakery that we cannot bear others to see our spots, blemishes and pale skin. Seriously? And the beauty industry is fake. Even the women and celebrities in magazines don't look like the women and celebrities in magazines. Vogue stated yesterday that people don't want to see ordinary women on magazine covers. Vogue, incidentally, do not make their fortune from selling magazines to women ... they make their fortune selling beauty adverts to advertisers ---> you, my female friends, are being sold to beauty advertisers. You are the commodity, the object, not the magazine. Vogue make over $4million per magazine selling you to advertisers. When does it become time to say NO! You may or may not know this, but I work with children with disabilities and complex health care needs. It's a great job (most of the time) and I love it. And I can say without any fear of contradiction that every single one of the children I work with is beautiful. Not because of the clothes they wear, or the make-up (which most don't wear and some do in moderation).When they smile it lights up the room. When they cry it can be heartbreaking. They are beautiful because of who they are, whether others see it or not. I love spending time in my back garden, or at the local parks. As well as being very relaxing, if you sit quietly, look around and reflect, there is a great deal to be learned from living things. Life and living things persevere. They sprout, grow, blossom, die, regrow. We see it all the time that we forget what a miracle it is. Some things are colourful, others not so bright but still a vibrant part of nature. It all interacts and works and thrives. Naturally. Learn from the butterflies (and the humble Caterpillars that will become even more beautiful but do not know it). Learn from the trees and the lavender and rosemary, the fish, even the birds. You are a part of this wonderful world. Shine for who you really are. This is my selfie, for cancer awareness: Regards, Garry |
Man in The Mirror
Posted on February 6, 2014 at 9:54 AM |
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I am not a huge Michael Jackson fan, but please don't hold that against me, because I think that the following is one of the most amazing videos and songs ever written, especially from a 'personal change' point of view. Enjoy ... |
Ten Things That Stop You From Being Amazing
Posted on February 6, 2014 at 9:44 AM |
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I friend gave me an article in The Metro this week about Life Coach, Michael Serwa, and the following impressed me so much I thought it was worth sharing (edited and expanded slightly) : Ten Things That Stop You From Being Amazing: 1. You worry too much about what other people will think. Other people are too busy worrying about what you think of them to be thinking about what you are doing. Or to use Will Smith's words: 'stop letting people who put you down control so much of your life.' 2. You are in a career you don't really like: Seriously, change it. Do you really want to look back from your deathbed and see yourself in a career you didn't really like? Take small positive steps towards what you really enjoy doing. 3. You try to do everything yourself: Don't. Learn to delegate or prioritise as much as you can so that you can free up time to do things that you really enjoy doing (and then do them) 4. You wait for something or someone to motivate you: Stop waiting for someone else. Find something that excites you, something you enjoy doing. That is what really motivates you. (if you are stuck, work out what it is that you do instead of the things you should be doing but don't want to). The reality is, no-one else can motivate you to do something you don't want to do. 5. People around you bring you down: On average we have five people we spend most of our time with. Choose those people wisely. No-one needs negative nellies in our life. Challenge them about it or spend less time with them. Also, perhaps, work out why you gravitate towards people who are bringing you down. 6. You put other people's happiness before your own: Work out what makes you happy, what makes you smile, and do more of that. Your happiness will be contagious and other people will be attracted to it. You can still help others, but not at the expense of your own happiness. 7. You don't know where you are going: You have no sense of direction, no purpose, no reason to get out of bed in the morning. What is it that you want to do. Where is it that you want to go. Set goals. Take actions. 8. You blame other people and circumstances for where you are: The truth is, life can be very unfair. But this is your life. Take responsibility for it and, basically, bluntly, stop moaning about it. You will feel better if you do something about the parts of your life that you are not happy about. Then you wont need to moan about it. 9. You are living with regret about the past or unrealistic expectations about the future: You cannot change the past, so grieve for it, cry if you need to and then move on. You don't need to forget it, but don't let it keep you in the past. And be realistic about the future. Especially, there is no Santa Claus, no magical solution to your problems. Don't wait for a lottery win before you decide to do something with your future. Act Now. 10. You are your own worst critic How many reasons do you have in your own head for why you can't do something. Stop criticising yourself (why do that to yourself?). Stop comparing yourself to others (they may appear confidant, but they struggle just as you do). Most of all, Be Kind To Yourself. I hope this helps. I found it very useful. But please, I beg you, don't use this list to put yourself down. Use it to motivate yourself. and I stand on the last words of point ten: Most of all, Be Kind To Yourself. Regards, Garry. |
Alternatives to Self Harm
Posted on November 30, 2013 at 6:31 AM |
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