Your Personal Pit Stop

Are thos new year resolutions looking a bit ambitious? Maybe they were. Feeling guilty about not hitting diet or gym targets?

Help is at hand…

Let’s consider, for a moment, a motor car. If you drive it to the limit of its capacity, for long hours at a time, for a week or even ten days, then at the end of that time, if you want the usual efficient performance from it, a service would be advisable.

January is the month for your personal pit-stop. In February, you will feel a lot more ready to tackle the gym – and there will be plenty of room in it by then.

Christmas break ---------------------January----------------------February

Self-indulgence---------------------- Self-care---------------Self-improvement

So, in the first month of the new year, it is good to treat yourself gently, putting back the care and attention that may have been ignored in the run-up to Christmas.

Ease yourself into regular meals, with no gaps of more than six hours, which may require planning, particularly for those of you who work irregular shifts.

If you seldom eat breakfast, see whether you can tease your reluctant appetite by having a mouthful of toast or cereal – not a whole portion at the beginning. Gradually increase your breakfast over the month. Incidentally, having breakfast will not put on weight (if this concerns you), it will speed up your metabolism and lessen the urge to over-indulge at the other end of the day.

For exercise, rather than going from ‘couch potato’ to ‘gym bunny’ in one leap grunt, this is the month to take the stairs instead of the lift, walk to the local shops instead of drive and look for small ways to increase your mobility during the day.

If you suffer from sleeplessness, this attention to increased movement during the day and evening is likely to help.

Another aspect of self-care that can be addressed in January is friendships and social activities. If you had a guilty feeling about sending Christmas cards to people you meant to see in 2009, then this can be a great time to follow up with an arrangement to meet. Now that you are not in a stringent routine of self-denial, meeting up with friends will be simpler.

Finally, personal care. Even if your finances took an intense battering last month, one of the ways to help improve your sense of wellbeing is to have something to look forward to, in the near future. If you wait until you have time off to see what you feel like doing then, sometimes the day can fall flat – but planning ahead for activities that cannot be rained or snowed off, can lift the working week.

Enjoy your January!

Creeping Christmas Dread.....?

If Christmas is generally a bleak time for you, it can feel harsh to be among brightly coloured lights and smiling families who are looking forward to their seasonal rituals.

I read about a couple who are going to close the curtains, turn off the tv and put on their MP3 headphones until 'all the fuss dies down', as they put it. That kind of opting out may seem like a solution, but I couldn't help wondering if it might heighten the sense of not belonging to their community?

Others who have an equal sense of dread and an urge to escape all the forced jollity are taking a different tack this year.

We've suggested, that in order to avoid painful memories of Christmas past, that our clients can choose to decide that no more of their Christmases will be tainted by their past experiences and to help them start afresh we've suggested that they reinvent Christmas for themselves this year.

It may not be your preference to dress a tree with coloured lights, but what about marking the midwinter week with a new ritual, one that you begin this year, and that can become your new Christmas to fine-tune each year, one that will give you joy?

First, take a little time to imagine some of the better days that you have had in your life. What did you enjoy about them? Did they involve other people, other places or other experiences? Could you replicate any elements of these experiences this Christmas? It might mean that you buy yourself a few items through December, some special tea or coffee, a book, a scent, a textured cushion and a CD, perhaps and save them for Christmas Day. That would be a real treat for your five senses.

By focussing on your preferences and becoming increasingly comfortable with your own way to spend Christmas, there would be less of a sense of not doing it right, or being left out.

However you choose to spend it this year, I hope that you have a good one.

Are you a slave to ‘should’?

When we are young children, adults around us will often teach good behaviour by using the word ‘should’.  Here are a few examples.

You should brush your teeth every morning and every night.

You should wash your hands after you have been to the toilet 

You should thank your friend for that nice present.

You should try to put on your shoes by yourself.

We learn to obey these shoulds because we like the smiley parent or the happy teacher faces.

This serves us well for years, while we add new shoulds regularly.  But when adulthood dawns, it is so easy to automatically have a very long list of shoulds and just obey them automatically.

We are very aware of them and often try to ignore the quieter prompts of want, need or prefer.

It is good to re-examine that list of shoulds regularly and see how many of them you still believe.  Some of them will still be relevant to your life now, but others don’t fit with the person you have become.   Challenge them.  Change them.  Dump them.

Once you act according to your own needs, wants and preferences, whilst still having regard to those of others, you will no longer be a slave to old shoulds.  This is a very life-enhancing exercise and I commend it to you.

Is the Recession increasing your anxiety?

Since August 2008, we at Charterhouse Counselling have noticed that many more people are coming forward for help with Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour or OCD, as it’s commonly known. OCD is an anxiety disorder that responds very well to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). 

An example of Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour is someone making repeated checks. For example the person might withdraw £60 from a cash machine, put it in their wallet, walk away from the machine and then repeatedly worry that they had left the money in the machine, needing to check their wallet continually or walk back to the cash machine to check that they had picked it up.

OCD often begins as a way of feeling safe in the world, and gives the person a sense of order or control, yet it can quickly take over and becomes an anxiety trap. People suffering from OCD often feel as though they are going mad or that they are the only person in the world so intent on this checking.

In fact it is estimated that 1-2% of the UK population suffer from OCD at some point in their lives.

Counselling is best described as supportive psychological help that is non-judgmental, optimistic, open and honest, and, above-all, kind. It can be used as a short-or as a long-term measure.

CBT is more structured, tends to come with some agreed ‘homework’ or some actions to practice between sessions, and helps change an attitude or behaviour that the person is stuck in – and wants to change.

CBT helps to recognise and remove the stuck behaviour, caused by OCD and the counselling within the session renews the sense of safety that was lacking in the first place.

At Charterhouse, the counsellors who offer CBT always provide supportive counselling within every session. We do not believe that simply focusing on the problem is enough. We believe that it important to support, encourage and even challenge the behaviour if necessary.

So we hope you can see that, OCD is not a life sentence and, let us reassure you that once you are through it, you are extremely unlikely to suffer from OCD again.

I'd be interested to hear your insights on OCD or CBT so please comment, or if you’d be interested in articles on other subjects just let me know.