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Tips On Dealing With Anxiety

12/07/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

www.studio10salonsuites.comtips on dealing with anxietyTomorrow never comes, yet we wait until tomorrow for happiness, fulfillment, intimacy and closeness.  How many times have you said something like “when my anxiety reduces a bit I’ll make more effort with my partner” or “when I feel less stressed I’ll stop smoking/drinking/shouting” (insert as appropriate)?  But tomorrow never comes.  The problem with “when” statements is that they usually tie up your goal so tightly that you never reach it, a bit like one of those big balls of sticky tape that are impossible to unwrap.

The truth is that you can have feelings and take action that has value in your life and moves you closer to your goal.  You can feel anxious and make effort with your partner and you can feel stressed and live a cigarette free life.

Now here’s the rub, this may well generate anxious thoughts for you (I guess you could see that one coming!).  Anxious thoughts are OK if we recognise them for what they are, just thoughts.  They are not truths and they are not us.  Thoughts tend to come and go.  They are a bit like the annoying pigeons that hang out around my flat.  I can watch them come and go and mostly they don’t bother me.  Sometimes they will try to climb into my windows and sometimes they wake me up at 5am making an almighty dinn, but they are essentially harmless.  I can choose to let them bother me, shake my fists when they stare at me through the windows, or I can simply acknowledge their existence and carry on with whatever I’m doing.  The defusion technique I previously blogged about is a great way to do this distancing with your thoughts (read that post here).  The benefit of this way of living is that you get to do things that move you towards your goal and learn to make room for your feelings.  After you’ve done this a few times you get better at it.  As you get better at it you start to feel more contented with life and need to do it less.  It’s kind of like accepting your anxiety, stress, sadness or anger allows it to move somehow and slowly ebb away.

So this is a call to action.  Decide what you want out of life and plan how you are going to get it.  Then look at all of the anxious, scary, angry or downright irrational thoughts your mind is churning up, thank your mind for trying to protect you, and get stuck in with achieving them!

I help people who suffer from anxiety in my counselling practice in Manchester.  Ring 07966 390857 for an appointment.

Filed Under: Self Help Techniques Tagged With: clinical psychology, closeness, dealing with anxiety, emotions, human development, psychology, stress, symptoms

Get Grounded

30/06/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

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.

Filed Under: Self Help Techniques Tagged With: angry, anxiety, anxious, depression, grounding, grounding techniques, here and now, stress, struggle

Why All Teachers Should Learn Transactional Analysis

22/05/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

teachers should learn transactional analysisI am a lucky man because I work in two areas that I enjoy and find fascinating. These are the vocations of teaching and psychotherapy and I love it when they come together. This is lucky because they come together frequently. In fact they’re rarely apart. Teaching is about relationships. Psychotherapy is about relationships. They are made for each other.

There is an unfortunate trend in education over the last few years. We seem to have moved away from relationships and towards “measurable outcomes”. We can measure a child’s IQ, CAT score, SAT score, GCSE grade, AS level etc etc. but it’s pretty hard to put a number on how happy he or she is at school and whether he feels cared for, nurtured, respected, inspired or safe. My argument is that all of these things are essential before any learning can take place. Once they are secure then the child may fly. She can feel safe enough to have a go, make mistakes and learn that it’s OK. Then real learning begins.

Who inspired you?

Look back at the teachers you found inspiring at school. Were they the ones that marked your homework on time? Was it the way in which they set work for you that you remember? The thing that we remember about our special teachers is how they connected with us. How we felt when we were with them. I remember clearly how I felt with my English teacher when I was I kid. I felt valued, inspired and special and I loved going to English lessons. For most homework assignments I would do the minimum just to make sure I didn’t get into trouble (typical boy). For my English teacher I would write reams!

So what’s all this got to do with Transactional Analysis? In order for a child to learn anything within the classroom setting you need a good teacher to facilitate the process. Teaching is a demanding, stressful and high pressured vocation where the humanness of the teacher is often forgotten by all parties. This is regularly demonstrated by excited children running up to teachers during the school day to tell them “I saw you in Tescos”! Yep, teachers have to eat too! As teachers we often forget that we are human too and we are not our jobs. We take poor behaviour in our classrooms personally, feel stressed when we are being observed (mention Ofsted to a teacher and they tend to react as if they are to be visited by the grim reaper to have their very soul brought to judgment) and find it difficult to unwind in the long holidays we are endlessly lambasted for.

How can Transactional Analysis help teachers?

Transactional Analysis offers teachers a way of understanding what is happening on a social level within the classroom and within themselves. It provides a map, a framework to start hanging experiences on.

Here’s a list of a few features of transactional analysis and how they can be used by teachers;

  • Ego states – once understood, teachers can figure out what’s going on with their thinking, feeling and behaviour in the classroom and choose to respond rather than react.
  • Transactional Analysis Proper – teachers can use their knowledge of TA proper to keep irate children (and parents!) placated, cut dead unproductive conversations and make their points seem clear during lessons.
  • Strokes – the understanding of the stroke economy makes the poor behaviour of some children more comprehendible and encourages teachers to be positive in their classrooms as a method of behaviour management. I’ve done a lot of work with students explicitly discussing strokes and the stroke economy, they find it fascinating too!
  • Games – there are many games played out in the classroom including “Do Me Something”, Wooden Leg”, “If It Wasn’t For You” and “Now I’ve Got You, You S.O.B”. If teachers understand them they can avoid them or at least be aware when they enter into them and avoid the negative payoff for themselves (for example, that common feeling of hopelessness that teachers can feel, or feelings of anger) and for the students.
  • Scripts – understanding our own script helps us language why we wanted to be a teacher in the first place and gives us permission to pursue our vocation from a positive place.

My examples above barely scrape the surface of the uses of TA within teaching and there are many more aspects of TA such as the drama triangle, the OK corral, script matrix, discounting that are also very useful.

By learning Transactional Analysis a teacher can gain more insight to how human relationships tick. They can make more sense of the behaviour they see around them and put it into a wider context. Transactional Analysis provides a language to explain why certain classroom management techniques are going to be more effective than others and gives permission for the teacher to retain humanness in the face of adversity.

Transactional Analysis brings greater awareness into the classroom and with this comes options and the possibility of doing things differently.

Filed Under: Transactional Analysis Tagged With: change, interpersonal relationships, stress, stroke, transactional analysis

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