Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

Get Grounded

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manchester psychotherapy grounding techniqueIf you struggle with stress, anxiety or depression getting grounded is a great skill to learn. This is a technique I teach to my clients if I think it would be useful to them.  It’s a way of slowing your mind and bringing it back from the regrets of the past or the uncertainty of the future. The here and now is all we have. The past is history, the future fantasy. So next time your mind is racing follow these instructions:

Find a comfortable place to sit where you won’t be disturbed by others.

Sit upright with your hands on your lap.

Close your eyes.

Concentrate on your feet. What can you feel? Are they warm or cold? Is one foot warmer than the other? Feel the floor pushing on the soles of your feet.

Now slowly move up to your legs. How do they feel? Can you feel the seat pushing back on you? Do you feel any other sensations?

Slowly move up your body repeating the same method. Move from legs to your lower back, then upper back and shoulders. From there move to arms, hands and fingers. Move to your head.

When you reach your head concentrate on the senses. What can you taste? What can you smell? What can you hear?

For each part of your body take a couple of minutes to run through the procedure. Don’t rush, relax.

Finally, slowly open your eyes and allow yourself a few minutes to just be.

Hopefully you find yourself calmer, more relaxed and fully in touch with the here and now.

Dealing With Jealousy

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In this article I am going to discuss jealousy, where it comes from and a few of ways to deal with it. I have to start off by saying I have a bit of a soft spot for jealousy! If it wasn’t for my jealousy issues I would have never gone to a counsellor and it’s highly likely I would not be a counsellor now. Being a therapist is probably the most rewarding job I have ever had, and so I have a lot to thank jealousy for.

Having experienced jealousy to a high level first hand also makes this article easy to write. I remember clearly the incident that resulted in me seeking counselling. My girlfriend had bought some boots. I was furious and we had a huge row about it. This is how it panned out in my head. Boots -> she wants to look more attractive to other men -> she is going to leave me. It sounds crazy when I read it now and I look back with amazement at how worked up I got about such a small thing. It is also a testament to how great therapy is. Within a few weeks of counselling I was able to deal with the feelings behind the behaviour and I have never had a problem with jealousy since.

If we break jealousy down into its constituent feelings it looks like a mixture of anger and scare. I was angry that my girlfriend was attempting to attract other men (a contaminated belief on my part, she just liked the boots!) and I was very scared at the prospect of her leaving me. Here lies the heart of the problem with jealousy. Jealousy is often about feelings of insecurity and unimportance in the person feeling jealous. I felt that my world would end if my girlfriend did manage to attract another man with her new boots and I also completely discounted the fact that she loved me and wanted to be with me, she was not interested in attracting a new partner.

Dealing with jealousy.

Yeah, you guessed it; the first thing I am going to suggest is that you go seek a counsellor or therapist to work the whole jealous thing through with. Therapists are trained to dig around for your hidden beliefs behind the feelings and help you understand where they came from. By bringing this information into your awareness you will be much more able to change your thinking, feeling and behaviour and leave jealousy behind.

If you don’t want to go to a therapist then here are a few other suggestions;

  • Check with a rational friend whether your jealous feelings are about something real or imagined. Is your partner behaving in a way that is inviting the jealousy? If so talk to them about it and ask for the behaviour to change. Action/feeling statements can help here.
  • If you have identified that your jealous feelings are about you, not your partner then talk it through with your partner and ask for what you want. If you need reassurance that your partner loves you it’s ok to ask for it.
  • When you are having a jealous attack then ground yourself and bring yourself back into the now.  Read about a simple grounding technique here.
  • Appreciate that jealousy is basically fantasising about events in the future that have not happened and are unlikely to. Once more, the grounding technique can help you leave these thoughts behind and get on with your life.
  • Focus on your good points and distance yourself from the negative thoughts you have about yourself. You can use the diffusion technique I write about here to do this. This may help you challenge the thoughts behind the jealousy – that you are not worth being with in the first place.

Jealousy is not uncommon in relationships and I hope by reading this article you appreciate that it is a feeling that you can change. This will improve things for both you and your partner.

Good luck with it and if you need my help don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Anger Management – Self-help Strategies

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anger management self help strategiesIn the last post, I outlined some ideas about why some of people suffer from anger issues (if you missed it, just click here to catch up). In this post I will talk about ways in which you can manage your anger.

Although I do see many individuals who have anger issues I am going to focus on do-able strategies you can be successful with without the help of a therapist in this post. If you want to tackle the route cause of the anger which may be buried somewhere within your childhood, I would recommend you work with a therapist to support and guide you in this process – it’s what they spend years of their life training to do.

Step 1 – Stock take your anger

It’s difficult to sort any problem out on your own unless you know the extent of it. If you were in financial trouble and wanted to get yourself out of debt, doing an audit of your spending would be a good idea. What are you spending your money on? Where can you cut down on spending? How much do you owe in total? The same holds true for anger. Keep a daily anger journal. Focus on the following things:

  • Who is stimulating angry feelings in you?
  • What situations cause you to feel angry?
  • What other things trigger anger for you?
  • What thoughts are going through your head when you feel angry?
  • What physical sensations in your body do you feel (e.g., chest feels tight, headache arrives)?
  • What do you do when you feel angry?

Step 2 – Analyse your journal for patterns

You are looking for common themes. If you know when you are likely to feel angry and can tell the signs of oncoming anger you can take steps to move around the problem. It’s like avoiding a hole in the road. If you know it’s coming up you can change lanes to avoid it or take another road all together.

Step 3 – Break the anger down into phases

Chances are your anger will involve different components all of which you will have written about in your journal. These components are as follows:

  • Cognitive – your thoughts
  • Physiological – how your body feels
  • Affective – the emotions you feel
  • Behavioural – what you do

You have the power to catch the anger when you notice any of these components come into play. These components usually go in a predictable order too. We are going to go back to Johnny from part 1 of this post. Johnny can see the following pattern:

Johnny sees others not measuring up to his unrealistic expectations -> Johnny feels the adrenaline pumping in his body and his muscles feel tight – > his anger starts to rise -> Johnny starts shouting and pointing aggressively

Step 4 – break the sequence

This is the tough part! Make a choice now. Do you want to sort your anger out or don’t you? Don’t mince – commit! Think about what it’s costing you. Do you want to keep paying or do you want to change? If you truly want to change you can hijack the negative pattern at any of the stages:

  • Cognitive – Are your thoughts about what should happen realistic. Be aware of the “Parent” words you may use in your head. “should”, “must”, “have to” are all words you have probably received as Parent messages from your caregivers as you grew up. The reality is that there is no one way of being or doing things as long as you hit your target. If Jenny at the office chooses to leave her work to the last minute and then furiously type it up at the end of the day, that’s ok as long as she gets it done. Also remember that your thoughts are just thoughts. They have no power. It’s what you do that counts not what you think. Thank your mind for the thoughts that have come into your head and decide to behave in a calm way. I discuss this as a technique in much more detail in my post on anxiety.
  • Physiological/affective – Your body and your emotions can both be soothed using similar techniques. It’s a bit of a cliché but it really is about counting to ten! If you have time you can use a grounding technique to bring yourself under control and back to the here and now. If you don’t have time and you feel the red mist rising then breathe, count to ten slowly and remember that long term anger is bad for you and you don’t want to do it that way anymore.
  • Behavioural – Do it differently. You feel like kicking off but it’s getting you nowhere and causing you problems. If you can, explain to the other party that you are feeling angry and you need to take yourself away to calm down then do it. Go for a walk, refocus, hit a pillow or other (non-living) soft object to get the energy out or do something else that is going to allow you to calm down. If you can’t get away then a great way of dealing with it is to express it in a straight way without shouting or screaming.  Tell the other person how you feel using action/feeling statements. Johnny might say to his boss “when you give me work to complete at the last minute I feel angry so I would like you to build reasonable deadlines into your requests”. That might sound a pretty challenging statement but it’s miles better than “bloody hell, you want me to get this done by tomorrow? Are you joking you idiot?!!” and less likely to get you sacked. To read about emotional literacy you can read my book review of Claude Steiner’s book.

Easy eh? Well, no it’s not – but it’s all doable if you commit to it. You are not going to get it right all the time. There will be some techniques you like better than others. You may want to use a combination of them all and go with the flow using the technique that seems most appropriate at the time. Understand though that you can change. You have the power. Good luck, and if there’s any way I can help, just get in touch.

If you are interested in coming on my anger management course please click this link to read more about it or phone me on 07966 390857.

What do you think of the techniques mentioned here? Do you use any of them now? Are you unsure about how to do it? Ask your questions or make a comment in the box below.

Image: Stefano Valle / FreeDigitalPhotos.net