Ten Ways To Help Your Child Learn To Regulate Their Emotions

Emotional regulation is the ability to exert control over emotional responses. Just like walking and talking, children need to learn to regulate their emotions. Parents play an important role in helping their children learn to regulate their emotions. A child’s ability to successfully regulate their emotions depends on a number of factors:

1.   Biological factors such as the child’s health and development 

2.    A child’s temperament

3.    Environmental factors such as stress, stability, safety and security

4.   Parent-child interaction

Some children are more vulnerable to emotional difficulties, particularly where there may be a chronic health issue, developmental delay or disorder, or where they are exposed to environmental stress and threats to stability, safety and security. 

Whilst parents cannot change some biological factors and some children’s temperaments can be more challenging, here are ten ways you can help your child learn to regulate their emotions:

1. Validate your child’s emotions and help them understand that all emotions are normal and natural. Let your child know that you understand that they are feeling hurt/angry/disappointed or upset. Listening to your child empathically, and showing you understand how they are feeling, can help your child learn to manage difficult emotions.

2. Encourage your child to talk about their emotions. Being able to talk about both positive and negative emotions can help a child understand and manage those emotions. Help them be able to express their negative emotions in a calm and non-aggressive way. Being able to talk about emotions also reduces the need for them to act out their emotions through their behaviour and can help them feel more comfortable expressing their emotions in relationships.

3. Talk about your own emotions in an appropriate way - being open about your emotions can help children to identify emotions and be able to language emotions correctly.

4. Model emotional regulation to your child – show your child how you regulate difficult emotions. Being able to stay calm when your child is upset can help them learn to calm down. Talking to your child calmly about something that has happened, instead of yelling, can help them learn to stay calm and regulate their emotions in difficult situations.

5. Encourage your child to take slow, deep breaths when they are upset to help calm down. Having some space or doing a quiet, relaxing activity can also help them calm down. Apps like “Smiling Mind” have guided meditations for different age groups that can help with relaxation.

6. Teach your child positive self-talk. Negative self-talk is more likely to result in negative feelings. Examples of negative self-talk might be: “I can’t do anything right”, “It’s not fair”, “He/she did that on purpose”. Helping children substitute positive self-talk for negative self-talk can help reduce negative emotions. Examples of positive self-talk might be: “Everyone makes mistakes”, “I can have a turn another time”, “It was just an accident”.

7. Teach your child how to solve problems. Children sometimes experience negative emotions when they are faced with a problem they don’t know how to solve. The first step in problem-solving is to define the problem. Next, identify possible solutions to the problem. Evaluate the solutions in terms of possible outcomes and then choose a solution to implement. Finally, evaluate the result – how did it work out? Having a way of solving problems can help children be able to reduce negative emotions.

8. Help your child to recognise triggers for negative emotions and early warning signs. Being told “no”, losing in a game, or being asked to do an activity your child doesn’t want to do, such as homework or chores, can sometimes trigger negative emotions. Helping children practice how to handle situations that normally trigger negative emotions can help them regulate their emotions when those situations occur in the future. Intervening when parents notice their child looking grumpy, restless, tense or irritated to talk about what is happening, how they are feeling, and what they can do to manage the situation and their feelings can help prevent an emotional outburst.

9. Praise your child’s efforts to regulate their emotions. This can help them develop positive beliefs in their capacity to handle difficult situations. It is important to praise self-control and persistence, particularly in frustrating or disappointing situations.

10. Minimise stress, and ensure stability, safety and security. Stress can come in many forms, such as work, financial, relationship and illness. Minimising stress as much as possible can help reduce emotional arousal. Providing stability, predictability, safety and security at home can help children develop the emotional resources to manage more challenging situations outside the home. Ensuring adequate amounts of sleep, exercise and a providing a healthy diet can help support emotional functioning.

7 Steps for Tackling Social Anxiety

Social interactions are a critical part of day-to-day life, and an important part of what it is to be a human being. Interacting and connecting with others helps us to create meaningful bonds with partners and friends, further our careers, enjoy new hobbies, and add overall enjoyment to our lives. Having social connections has also been indicated to help us when experiencing difficult circumstances such as death, divorce, redundancy, moving house, depression and much more.

Sometimes, however, interacting with others is not as easy as we would like. Meeting new people, even good friends, can feel daunting. Social anxiety can thus be a crippling experience and impacts people in varying degrees. For some, it might mean not wanting to leave the house. For others, it could be a moment of hesitation after a friend asks them for a coffee or to go to a party. The degree to which people experience social anxiety can also change daily.

When we start to experience intense social anxiety, an unfortunate cycle can begin where it feels safer to withdraw than to get out and about. This pattern can become worse and more difficult to reverse over time – possibly leading to isolation and loneliness.

If you want to start enjoying the benefits that social interactions can bring to your life, try out the seven steps below to tackling social anxiety.

Important note: anxiety and stress – in manageable amounts - exists to help us to stay alert, perform demanding tasks and keep safe from physical threat. These steps are not aimed at avoiding feelings of anxiety completely, but to take the edge off or help ride out the feelings so that you can continue to live your life.

1. Learn to Breathe Calmly

Feeling anxious or stressed can change the way that you breathe. You might start to take short, shallow breaths or ‘over breathe’. Learning to breathe calmly can be helpful to slow down your breathing when you start to become anxious.

• Sit in a relaxed position, feet firmly on the floor, shoulders, chest and jaw relaxed.
• Take a slow deep breath in through your nose
• Hold for two seconds
• Let the breath out through your mouth
• Aim to breathe in for 4 seconds, pause for 2, then breathe out for 6 seconds – don’t get too bogged down by timing

It is important to practice this technique, and to practice when you are already feeling relaxed (when watching TV for example). If you practice when you are feeling relaxed, ideally if you start to feel anxious or stressed you will be able to use this technique easily. You might liken it to swimming – you wouldn’t want to be learning to swim if you are already drowning!

2. Engage in Relaxation

It is common for your muscles to become tense when you feel anxious for long periods of time. Engaging in a progressive relaxation of your muscles can assist in reducing this muscle tension. This technique involves purposely tensing different muscle groups in your body and then relaxing them. It is also a helpful technique to learn the difference between feelings of tension and relaxation.

a. Engage in some calm breaths as above
b. Tense muscle group for roughly five seconds – but not to a point of pain
c. Relax the muscle group for 10 seconds
d. Repeat muscle group if desired
e. Notice the difference in sensation in the muscle between tensed and
relaxed

Try this using the following muscle groups:

• Right hand and forearm
• Right upper arm
• Left hand and forearm
• Left upper arm
• Forehead
• Eyes and cheeks
• Mouth and jaw
• Neck – very carefully face forward then pull head back slowly
• Shoulders
• Shoulder blades and back
• Chest and stomach
• Hips and glutes
• Right upper leg
• Right lower leg
• Right foot
• Left upper leg
• Left lower leg
• Left foot

3. Investigate How Your Thoughts are Connected to Your Feelings

It can be easy to confuse how you are feeling with what you are thinking. Feelings and thoughts are in fact separate - thoughts drive our feelings. For example, it would be understandable to be in a crowd of new people and think to yourself “all these new people are making me anxious.” What is likely happening instead is that you are experiencing the thought “I won’t know what to say to these new people”, or “these people are looking at me” or “I’m going to say or do something stupid” and as a result of these thoughts you feel anxious.

A good way of identifying whether you are experiencing a thought or a feeling is to remember that feelings are usually one word, and thoughts are usually a sentence or a few words. For example, feelings might include sad, angry, happy, worried, confused, nervous, or scared. Thoughts might include “it was great to be able to talk to my friends”, or “I wish I hadn’t said that”. 

Being able to separate your thoughts from your feelings is important when tackling social anxiety. This is because when you are feeling anxious in a social situation, it is helpful to notice that there is step in between being exposed to that social setting and experiencing those uncomfortable feelings. What is happening is actually that you are likely viewing the situation, interpreting it based on your individual previous experiences, thinking about it in a particular way based on those experiences, and then experiencing associated feelings. In this way, the way you interpret your social surroundings can influence your thoughts, which then results in different feelings.

Practice examining different situations and identifying all of the different thoughts you might have in that situation. This way you can get an idea of the different feelings that might arise from those thoughts.

Try this scenario out as an example:
You are at the supermarket and see an acquaintance walking toward you. You look at them and smile. They look down at the ground and continue to walk past. What are some of the thoughts you might have in this scenario? What feelings are likely to be associated with these thoughts?

4. Challenge Your Ideas About Social Interactions

When experiencing social anxiety it is typical to see social scenarios and adopt unhelpful thoughts to go along with them. When looking at the example scenario above, based on your previous experiences and the way you interpret the situation, some associated thoughts might be:
“That person must hate me”
“I wonder if I look stupid”
“I must have something on my face”
“I must surely be blushing”
“Why wouldn’t they want to talk to me?”
“I must have done something wrong”
“I hope nobody saw them ignore me”
 

The feelings associated with such thoughts are likely to be unpleasant. You may be left feeling sad, worried, embarrassed, confused, or angry. A vital part in creating more positive or manageable feelings includes challenging these unhelpful thought patterns. It pays to remember - just because you created your thoughts in your mind does not mean they're accurate! It is really important to examine all of the evidence thoughtfully and critically before you start believing your unhelpful thoughts. Some good questions to challenge unhelpful thoughts include:

Have there been any other times where this has been true?
Have there been any other times where this has not been true?
Is this completely true all of the time?
What is some evidence that might contradict this thought?
If somebody else was watching this happen, what might they say?
What would I say to a friend if they were in this scenario?
Are there any other ways of looking at this scenario?
What would be the worst thing to happen if this thought were actually true?
What might be a more balanced way of looking at this?
What was the outcome last time I had this thought in this situation?
Would I have these same thoughts if I were less tired, hungry etc.?
 

After adopting some of this thought challenging, a more balanced thought following the above scenario might be: “That person did not acknowledge me, but they might not have seen me. Even if they did see me, they might be having a difficult day, or they might not have recognised me in this context.”

Creating a more balanced thought such as this is more likely to lead to more
neutral or positive feelings. Creating balanced thoughts will not typically come
easily though, so the key is to practice!

5. Create A Stepladder of Difficult Social Scenarios

It is understandable that if you feel anxious in social settings you would not willingly want to place yourself in these situations. In fact, you have probably come up with some really great strategies to avoid socialising without even realising it. Some examples might be scrolling through your phone while waiting at the doctors, having headphones on in public transport, making sure you have a close friend or spouse in unfamiliar settings, sitting in the backseat of a taxi, having a friend order your drink at a bar, making a booking online instead of over the phone, or standing close to the food table at the party. The problem is, the more you continue to avoid social situations for fear of discomfort or anxiety, the more difficult it will become when you eventually need to face these social situations.

Think carefully about all of the ways you try to avoid feelings of discomfort related to social settings. These might include the examples above, or be more obvious such as avoiding parties, avoiding trying new hobbies or avoiding other group activities. Now attempt to rate all of your uncomfortable social settings from 0-100%. A score of 0% represents no feelings of discomfort whatsoever, and 100% represents feeling as anxious as you could possibly feel - absolutely unable to stand it. Write down all of your ranked uncomfortable social settings in order from 0-100. Make sure to place some situations at the bottom that you already feel reasonably comfortable with (maybe scored 0-10%), such as ordering your daily takeaway coffee.

6. Tackle This Stepladder One By One

After some considerable practice following steps 1-4, you now have the tools to face your feared social situations. Calm breathing, relaxation, and thought challenging will help you to face each of the situations on your stepladder. This may seem like a daunting task. It is important to remember the reasons you want to tackle your social anxiety – is it to make new friends? Join a local sports club? Meet a partner? Or just leave the house more often? By starting small at the bottom of your ladder and exposing yourself to manageable social environments, you will learn that you have what it takes to face these difficult situations and others. As you work your way up the ladder and the situations become more uncomfortable, your anxiety will feel stronger - this is to be expected. Remember to breathe calmly, relax your muscles, and challenge your thoughts. By really sticking with it and staying in the situation, these feelings will diminish over time. The more you work your way up your ladder, you will begin to learn that you are able to stand the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety. Over time with  more and more exposure, those feelings will become weaker, and last for less time. 

Remember: the idea is not to remove anxiety altogether, but to learn that you can ride out the uncomfortable feelings so that you can continue to live your life. However, with enough exposure, social situations might bring not bring about anxious feelings after all!

7. Keep Up Your Progress

Keep exposing yourself to those uncomfortable situations! Celebrate your milestones! There will be setbacks, and some days will be more difficult than others. This is completely to be expected and does not mean you have failed. Think about reasons for possible setbacks – are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough exercise? Maintaining a healthy diet? Go back to the drawing board, what might be getting in the way? What strategies have helped in the past? If you begin to feel discouraged, just remind yourself that it likely took many years to develop these feelings of social anxiety, so it is reasonable for them not to disappear overnight. Remember to look at how far you have come already.

Be kind to yourself, breathe calmly, relax your muscles, challenge your thinking, and try again next time. Go back to the start of the stepladder or even back a few steps if you need to. Consistent practice will pay off!

Enjoy the fruits of all of your hard work – you’ve earned it :) 

Pro-tip: maintaining a conversation with someone else is only 50% your
responsibility!

Tackling the Dark Cloud of Depression

Depression can be an incredibly exhausting experience. By its very nature it can make a
person feel hopeless about change. However, there is a huge amount of evidence that
shows depression can lift. Today’s post will show you how to take the first steps to
lifting the dark cloud that is depression.

First, it’s important to know how depression is maintained. A consistent low mood begins to lead to feelings of fatigue, exhaustion and low motivation. This lack of motivation results in you cutting back on previously enjoyable activities, neglecting daily responsibilities, and leaving important decision-making to others. In turn you may feel worthless, guilty, numb or hopeless, and these feels only serve to exacerbate your low mood, and turn it into a depressed mood.

The fatigue in depression is different to normal fatigue. Unlike normal fatigue (e.g. after
running a race) where you need to physically rest, the fatigue in depression requires you
to do more activities to increase your mood. In fact, there is a strong body of research
that shows becoming more active decreases fatigue and increases your ability to think
clearer.

Now, when I say active, I don’t necessarily mean exercise (although exercise can help)!
As humans we need a balance of three types of activities. Those that bring us enjoyment
(or used to bring us enjoyment before depression hit), those that bring us a sense of
achievement or mastery and those that involve other people (socialising).

Here are some practical tips to start to tackle your depression head on:

Draw up a current week in your life

Are the activities you do boring, repetitive or anti-social? Are there large gaps in your
schedule that you fill with sleeping, gaming or watching Netflix? It makes sense then if
nothing good or exciting is going on in your life that you don’t want to get up.

Come up with two lists of activities you can do when you feel low
 

List one - For when your mood is very low (0-3/10)

Example list
Enjoyment – playing with my dog, going on the balcony and sitting in the sun, eating my
favourite snack
Achievement - getting out of bed, having a shower, changing clothes, making a tea,
putting my dirty cups in the sink, clearing my bedside table
Socialising - texting a friend, asking someone you live with how their day was

List two – For when your mood is flat (4-6/10)

Example list
Enjoyment – seeing a movie, going out for lunch, going to gym, reading
Achievement – cleaning my desk, doing part of an assignment, cooking a healthy meal,
paying a bill
Socialising – meeting a friend for coffee, talking to a loved one
Note: It can be useful to make tasks time limited not task limited (e.g. read for 15
minutes, rather than finish the chapter).

After you do an activity, check in with your mood.

How do you feel? Did you mood change? What activities helped you feel better? Do they
help your long term interests? Was there certain activities or times of day that made you
feel worse?

 

Remember: Action before Motivation

Your depression will want you to stay in bed, withdraw and wait for motivation to strike
before you get better. The problem with this is that until you start acting as if you are
better, you won’t get better. Motivation strikes after action. Think about when you last
did an essay or started an assignment. Did you feel worse before you began or towards
the end when most of it was done? Starting anything is the hardest part.

The voice in your head may say things like ‘this is too hard, it’s stupid…you should be
doing more’. Ignore it for now. You can have thoughts, but they don’t have to dictate
your behaviour.

By becoming more active you can see that you have some control over your mood and
even if your mood doesn’t increase every time, it gives you a different focus than the
depression and negative thoughts.

Creating Healthy Boundaries

All people have needs to be loved, feel safe, supported and special. Sometimes when these needs aren’t been met, it may be because we have poor boundaries with those around us.

Signs that your boundaries around your personal relationships may need some adjustment include noticing a decline in your physical health (poor sleep, headaches) and mental health (increased stress, anxiety or low mood) when you think about or are around certain individuals.

Some signs that others may not be respecting your boundaries include:

• You feel constantly criticized and like you can’t do anything right
• The person is very focused on how your actions impact them rather than you or your well-being
• The other person may take no responsibility for their own actions, instead blaming others for their difficulties
• They may put you in positions where you are financially vulnerable
• They may repeatedly interrupt you at inappropriate times and expect you to drop everything for them (when you are at work or at night time whilst trying to sleep)

Here are four tips for developing healthy boundaries with those around you:

1)    Begin to recognize your own feelings, needs and wants in situations instead of considering other peoples needs or feelings first. Before you think about the other person or listen to feelings of guilt, ask yourself: What do I want in this situation? Often we have an intuitive gut reaction, that is often ignored when feelings like guilt or wanting to please others comes up.

2)    Create clear and firm boundaries and don’t reward people for crossing them. If you have told a friend that you cannot meet up this week, but they keep asking, don’t give in after the fourth time. If you do, it reinforces their behaviour (that if they keep asking and pushing your boundaries then you will eventually give in). Examples of setting boundaries may include only replying to text messages after work, restricting the frequency and amount of time you give someone or telling them that you will not tolerate any verbal abuse or criticism.

3)    Provide information on a ‘need to know’ basis only. If you are surrounded by people who gossip (e.g. a parent, co-worker or friend) then provide information on a ‘need to know’ basis only. Just because your friends or family tells you everything doesn’t mean you must reciprocate.

4)    Respect yourself. Setting aside deliberate time each week for yourself will remind you that you are worthy of love and care. Your needs are just as important as others.

If you have a past pattern with poor boundaries, people may be upset or angry with you when you start to look after yourself more.   When you feel distressed or guilty after setting a new boundary, remind yourself that discomfort is a normal part of setting new boundaries. It doesn’t mean you were wrong to set a boundary. This guilt will ease in time.  Setting healthy boundaries may actually improve your relationship with this person long term. 

The Power of Self-Compassion

Everyday, millions of people around the world are facing a silent battle: that of self-criticism. Self-criticism is that negative dialogue in your head that criticizes your self-worth, plants seeds of doubt about your abilities and can cripple your desire to step outside your comfort zone.

Often the internal self-critical voice may have originally been external. If you listen carefully, it may have similarities to the way a caregiver, close friend or a teacher may have spoken to or about you.

Sometimes people who are self-critical have positive beliefs about being mean to themselves.  They may feel it motivates them to do better in life and prevents them getting a big head. However, if you look more closely you may see that self-criticism actually can paralyse you, make you feel bad and is often unfair (e.g. you may be making a global judgement about yourself based on one mistake in a specific area).

The good news is that you can alter the way you think to increase self-compassion in your life:

1.     Step away from debating whether the criticism is true or false. 

Instead, reflect and ask yourself ‘How do I feel when I talk to myself like this? How does it impact my behaviour? Does it lead me closer to or further from the life I want to live? Is it helpful or harmful?’.

2.     Think of how you would treat a close friend. 

Imagine a friend is going through a difficult time. How would you respond to your friend? What tone of voice would you use? What would you say and what would you do? Start practicing talking back to your self-critical voice in this compassionate voice (that you may usually reserve for everyone but you!).

3.     Be gentle with yourself physically.

Often when we are in pain we may feel it in our body. There may be a heaviness in our hearts, tension in our jaw, a sinking in our stomach. When you feel overwhelmed, take both your palms and place them over the part of your body that becomes triggered when you are self-critical. Close your eyes, take three slow breathes in and imagine the warmth of your hand spreading through your body.

4.     Acknowledge that it will take time to change this habit.

Think about how many years you have been self-critical. Change in our self-talk is definitely possible, but it is based on consistent, regular practice. At first, like any new skill, it will feel awkward, unnatural and difficult to believe. This is normal and it will take a few months of dedicated practice to shift.

Four Approaches to Any Problem Situation

We all come across difficult situations and challenging people.. unfortunately it's part of life. Although there is no magic wand to get rid of stressful circumstances (I wish there was!!), we can certainly learn to navigate these bumps in the road more successfully. By learning how to cope with difficulty better, we protect our own emotional wellbeing and make things easier for ourselves. 

A "bump in the road" can come from any area in life. Just how big the bump it is however, is often up to us.

There are essentially four ways we can respond to a problem situation.

1. Leave/Avoid the Problem (if possible) 

This is not as easy as it sounds, and is a tough decision to make. But sometimes, ending the relationship, letting go of a toxic friendship, or leaving your job can be the best way to look after yourself. It's about deciding whether your quality of life will be better if you do leave. You can't know for certain whether this is the case, but you can make a prediction based on past experience. 

2. Accept the Situation & Build Tolerance

This is sucking it up. Coming to a place of acceptance that it is what it is, and learning to live with it. Again, easier said that done. But there are many skills you can learn to work towards acceptance. 

3. Accept What is Outside Your Control & Change What Can Be Changed

I.e. - your behaviour! It is a hard lesson to learn that you cannot control what other people choose to do, along with a whole bunch of other variables. What you do have control over is how you choose to act. Draw the boundaries of your control and act in line with the person you would like to be (even if other people choose poorly!!). This may involve working on your communication, practising assertiveness, changing how your spend your time. (Ideally,  you can work towards practising both 2 & 3  together).

4. Stay, Give Up & Make Things Worse

This is what using no skills looks like - staying in a problematic situation, not doing anything to improve it nor practising acceptance. This option makes things infinitely harder for yourself and others. Ruminating, arguing, worrying, analysing, getting angry, depressed or anxious. This leads to attempting emotional control strategies that also make things harder in the long run - turning to alcohol, drugs, television, shopping, self-harm or food. 

There is no right way to act - by reflecting on what you want the outcome to be, you can decide which approach is going to take you in the right direction. A clinical psychologist can help you develop the skills that make navigating problematic situations much smoother... think of it like servicing your car - we help adjust the suspension so you don't feel the bumps in the road so deeply. 

Remember, the bumps will always be there. Sometimes we just need to get better at handling them.

Managing Stress

Learning to handle stress in healthy ways is very important. Fortunately, it is easy to learn simple techniques that help. These include recognising and changing the behaviours that contribute to stress, as well as techniques for reducing stress once it has occurred.

The following tips can help you look after your mind and body, and reduce stress and its impact on your health.

1. Identify Triggers

There are often known triggers which raise our stress levels and make it more difficult for us to manage. If you know what the likely triggers are, you can aim to anticipate them and practise calming yourself down beforehand, or even find ways of removing the trigger. Triggers might include late nights, deadlines, seeing particular people, hunger or over‑tired children.

2. Establish Routines

Having predictable rhythms and routines in your day, or over a week, can be very calming and reassuring, and can help you to manage your stress.

Routines can include:

• Regular times for exercise and relaxation
• Regular meal times, waking and bedtimes
• Planning ahead to do particular jobs on set days of the week.

3. Spend Time With People Who Care

Spending time with people you care about, and who care about you, is an important part of managing ongoing stress in your life.

• Spend time with friends and family, especially those you find uplifting rather than people who place demands on you.
• Share your thoughts and feelings with others when opportunities arise. Don’t ‘bottle up’ your feelings.

4. Look After Your Health

• Make sure you are eating healthy food and getting regular exercise.
• Take time to do activities you find calming or uplifting, such as listening to music, walking or dancing.
• Avoid using alcohol, tobacco or other drugs to cope.

5. Notice Your Self-Talk

When we are stressed we sometimes say things in our head, over and over, that just add to our stress. This unhelpful self-talk might include things like: ‘I can’t cope’, or ‘I’m too busy’, or ‘I’m so tired’,

6. Practise Relaxation

Make time to practise relaxation. This will help your body and nervous system to settle and readjust. Consider trying some of the following things:

• Learn a formal technique such as progressive muscle relaxation, meditation or yoga.
• Make time to absorb yourself in a relaxing activity such as gardening or listening to music.
• Plan things to do each day that you look forward to and which give you a sense of pleasure, like reading a book.

Diets Don't Work

The science is well and truly in – diets don’t work! While going on a diet may give you results in the short-term, the change is both stressful for the body and unsustainable in the long-term.

If you are above the most healthy and comfortable weight for you, there is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight. However, it is important you go about it in the right way – to look after your emotional and physical wellbeing and make changes that both work with your lifestyle, and are sustainable.

The number of fad diets and conflicting advice (because it’s a multimillion dollar industry!!) is so confusing it can be easy to be overwhelmed. If it was simply a matter of knowing about nutrition and exercise, there would not be as many people struggling with their weight today. There is much more to the picture, and that is where psychology can help.

Here are my seven top tips (backed by science) for achieving and maintaining your most healthy and comfortable weight:

1. Focus on Healthy Behaviours

Evidence shows that it is healthy behaviours, rather than the achievement of any particular weight, that determines optimal health. So set small goals that fit in to your lifestyle and are in line with your values. 

2. Every Body is Different

Genetics, metabolism, age, gender, hormones, blood chemicals, attitudes, beliefs, past behaviours, how we feel about ourselves and the amount of activity we do all influence our weight. And these variables affect everyone differently. Stop comparing yourself to others, and focus on accepting yourself and achieving the most healthy and comfortable weight for you.

3. Forget About Numbers

There are so many reasons why having a ‘goal weight’ is unhelpful. Aim for specific, individual and sustainable changes in behaviour instead, like increasing your activity or level of mindful eating.

4. Track Your Non-Hungry Eating

Some non-hungry eating is completely appropriate and normal. However for many people, eating in the absence of hunger can be a significant factor contributing to being above their most healthy and comfortable weight. Simply paying more attention to the reasons you are eating can be a powerful step forwards in changing your relationship with food and weight.

5. Ditch the Moral Dimension to Food

There is no such thing as ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food. Thinking in those terms sets you up for the restrict/binge cycle, adds unnecessary emotional stress and destroys self-love. Instead, think about how your body uses food and work towards establishing what is the most appropriate eating pattern for you.

6. Savour Your Meals

As much as possible, try to sit down and eat your meals and snacks slowly and without distraction. Put your cutlery down between mouthfuls, and treat eating as an opportunity for mindfulness – relishing the sensory properties of your culinary experience!

7. Be Patient 

The journey towards achieving and maintaining your most healthy and comfortable weight can take time. Surround yourself with reliable sources of information, supportive people, and loads of self-compassion. 

If you’re struggling in your relationship with food and your body, a clinical psychologist can support you with the knowledge and skills to help.  

Top Five Self-Care Tips

You can’t always control the circumstances that life throws your way, but you can control how well you take care of yourself. Taking proper care of your body, soul and mind can keep you in optimum shape for handling stress. The following are some important basic self-care strategies that can keep you functioning well and ready for life’s challenges.

1. Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is very important for your emotional and physical wellbeing. Lack of sleep can make it harder to handle stress. Unfortunately, responsibility, worry and stress can make sleep more difficult. CBT can assist with sleep, by helping you to take control of worry, and get through relaxation techniques.

2. Eat Well

Are you too busy to sit down and enjoy a meal? Eating nourishing food regularly can make a big impact on our ability to cope with stress. Eating is important – things like too much caffeine and sugar can contribute to feeling agitated, on edge and nervous. Making time to think about what you would like to eat and taking time to sit down and focus on the experience of eating can do the opposite, helping us to calm our thoughts and remember to live in the present. 

3. Exercise Regularly

Exercise can be great for you physically and mentally. It provides a stress release and keeps your body healthy. It also helps your body release endorphins, which increase your feelings of overall wellbeing. 

 

4. Maintain Your Social Support

Social support is one of the most important buffers against stress. Friends can provide practical help, give you ides and perspectives and listen to you when you really just need to talk. When we are under stress it’s easy to let our social networks dwindle, all we have to do is stop making calls and stop accepting invitations. Building them up again and developing new networks takes more energy but it’s worth it. 

 

5. Find Time For Your Hobbies

With heavy responsibilities hobbies may get moved to the end of the long list of things we need to do. Finding even short periods of time to spend on the activities you have enjoyed in the past is important. You may not be able to find time to attack the whole garden at once, but giving yourself 10 minutes every few days to get a little bit done can improve your mood, so that it feels like you have more time available rather than less.

Make some time that is just for you, doing something that you really enjoy. Take 10 minutes to sit in the sun with the newspaper or make time for a haircut. Remember, improving your mood and coping by looking after yourself is not ‘selfish’, it’s good for you and for those around you.

Four Tips for Building Resilience in Kids

Most parents would love their children to grow up to be resilient. Resilience is associated with being able to bounce back from challenges, cope with stress and express their emotions effectively. However, kids aren’t born with a manual and the overwhelming (and often conflicting) amount of parenting strategies online and from well-meaning friends or family can make navigating this area particularly tough.

Fortunately, we have done the work for you and gathered four strategies that promote resilience:

1. Good enough is good enough

This is one of the most important message for your child to learn, and promotes positive self-esteem. Your child needs to learn that they can impact the world, and that their efforts are good enough.

For instance, if you ask your child to make their bed but then you re-do it because it isn’t neat enough or if you ask your child to do their homework but then you read over it and change their work, ask yourself‘‘What message is my child getting about themselves if I do this?’’ Often the message they receive is ‘’What I’ve done isn’t good enough’’.

Of course doing this once or twice is harmless, but if this is a consistent pattern of ‘re-doing’ chores or ‘re-editing’ work, it can lead children to feel helpless and to stop trying altogether or to feel they are not good enough and promotes perfectionism to try and be ‘good enough’.

2. Listen to your child

It sounds simple enough, but often when we think we are listening to kids we are either problem solving (‘’Have you tried talking apologizing to Emily?’’) or providing reassurance (‘’Don’t worry, this won’t matter next week, it will be fine.’’)

To really listen you need to stop what you are doing and use validating statements (‘’That’s so difficult… you had a hard day….how disappointing, no wonder you look sad.’’) If your child doesn’t want to talk, then just sit with them (rub their back, allow them time to respond, do an unrelated activity together or let them know you care and you’re in the next room if they want to talk it over).

3. Promote problem solving and decision-making

It can often be tempting to problem solve your child’s problems yourself, as it can be quicker and you may have an effective solution. However, this robs your child of the chance to learn one of life’s greatest skills.

Instead, when your child comes to you with a problem ask them ‘’How can we tackle this?’’ Where you can, let them talk and try to come up with their own solutions (no matter how silly!). Your relationship is the safest place in the world for them to experiment and try new ideas. It can help to ask them what they think someone more capable would do (e.g. an adult they know, a friend they admire or a superhero character) and to brainstorm as many ideas in five minutes that they can!

4. Control your own emotional responses

There is no doubt that children often know how to push their parents’ buttons! But it is vital that you learn to control you own emotional responses to their misbehaviour. Children will copy what you do, not what you say, so if you yell, swear, emotionally shut-down or smack, they will pick up on this and copy you when they get upset.

Instead, try to count to 10, leave the situation temporarily (e.g. say you need to go to the bathroom) or talk to an adult about the situation to blow off steam. 

How To Really Listen

Communication is an essential life skill, and is so important in developing and maintaining meaningful relationships. Consciously or unconsciously, we’re constantly sending messages to others in a variety of ways.

Effective listening is an often ignored but absolutely vital skill in relationships, and can be a game changer when it comes to difficult or emotional conversations.

Good listening enhances your relationships, and makes success at work or school more likely. Poor listening sends the message that you don’t care, that you’re not interested in what the other person has to say, or that you’re self-absorbed.

Real listening is more than just being quiet while the other person is talking. It involves four distinct intentions:

·      To understand what the other person is saying, without imposing your own judgments.

·      To enjoy your interaction and appreciate that the person is sharing a part of himself or herself with you.

·      To learn more about the other person, including the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions

·      To help, which involves paying particular attention to ways in which you can assist the person or provide support.

LISTENING BLOCKS

Everyone is prone to “listening blocks” that prevent you from really hearing people. Once you become aware of your listening patterns, you can more easily avoid the blocks and become a better listener.

·      Comparing – When you’re busy comparing yourself to people who are talking to you, you’re not hearing them. Instead, you’re trying to figure out if you’re as smart, as good-looking, as funny, as tough, and so on. Regardless of whether you’re making positive or negative comparisons, you’re not focused on hearing the other person. It’s easy to get caught up in how you measure up to others in particular settings or situations. That’s human nature; we can’t help but compare ourselves to others. However, we can bring awareness to noticing when it occurs and then not let it get in the way of listening well.

·      Mind Reading – When you’re mind reading, you’re paying less attention to the actual words people are saying and too much attention their tone of voice and body language in an effort to figure out their thoughts and feelings. For example, you may find yourself imagining what the other person is thinking about you instead of listening to what the person is saying.

·      Rehearsing – It’s tempting to start thinking about crafting your own response to others while they’re still talking. But when you do that, you’re likely to miss out on important information that they’re trying to communicate to you.

·      Filtering – You know you’re filtering if you consistently pay attention to some things more than others. For example, you may be less interested in the content of what others are communicating than figuring out whether they’re in a good mood or a bad mood. Some people filter for material that’s critical of them, some for compliments, some for a particular topic that interests them, and so on. Filtering can also involve excluding some types of information, leading people to listen selectively, ignoring remarks that are of little or no interest to them.

·      Judging – If you’re too quick to pass judgment on people, you won’t hear what they’re actually saying. Be careful not to judge people on their appearance or what you’ve heard about them. Stay open to the content they’re communicating, rather than dismissing them because you have preconceived notions about them.

·      Daydreaming – This is a particularly problematic listening block because when you’re daydreaming, you’re completing focused on other things, not the person in front of you. You won’t be able to make a valuable connection if you’re tuned out.

·      Identifying – This listening block can grow out of a desire to connect about a shared experience. But when you’re too busy focusing on how your experience relates to what others are saying, it starts to become more about you and less about them.

·      Advising – Like identifying, advising is often based on a desire to connect. Unfortunately, it can make others feel like you’re too focused on trying to offer a solution and as though you aren’t allowing them to finish communicating their entire experience of the situation.

·      Arguing – When you’re focused on promoting or defending your opinions and beliefs, it’s difficult to make genuine connections with others. Arguing alienates people because it sends a message that you’re not open to understanding their point of view and what they have to say.

·      Being Right – This listening block is a huge obstacle to connecting with other people. It’s hard to learn from others or grow in terms of your beliefs and feelings if you aren’t open to other people’s opinions.

·      Derailing – This listening block involves quickly changing the topic to avoid criticism or talking about something that makes you anxious or upset. Sometimes people derail conversations by making jokes or distracting comments. Of course, this gets in the way of making a meaningful connection with others.

·      Placating – You may do this is an effort to be liked; agreeing with everything the other person says or does. However, it’s difficult to connect with others if you’re focused on making sure they feel good. If you’re placating, you aren’t tuned in to or examining what the other person is saying.

We all get trapped by listening blocks, whether we do so knowingly or unknowingly. The first step to improving relationships is to bring awareness to the things that are getting in the way of clear communication. What are your primary listening blocks? What are the situations or people associated with them? What situations or places do your listening blocks come up most often?

With practice, you can largely overcome these blocks and become a better listener. This will result in more interesting, satisfying, and meaningful interactions with the people in your life.

This content has been taken from Communication Skills for Teens by Michelle Skeen.

Managing School Refusal

School refusal occurs when your child has significant absences from school due to emotional difficulties such as anxiety or friendship issues. School refusal can result in your child falling behind academically and socially, and can create conflict at home.

When children and teens avoid situations due to anxiety it can make it much harder to give new things a try in the future. Fears are stubborn and they don’t go away until we stand up to them.

The following steps can assist your child getting back to school. Remember, they will still feel nervous going to school, but a certain amount of anxiety in life is normal and we all need to learn how to do things we find unpleasant or difficult. This is how resilience is built.

Gradual exposure

• Develop a ‘stepladder’ from easiest steps (e.g. sitting in the school parking lot with mum for one hour then going home) to hardest (e.g. going to school full time) with your child. This way they are gradually exposed to going back to school and are less likely to be overwhelmed.
• Brainstorm how to break the ultimate goal down into small steps, with each step being a little more difficult than the last. A useful place start with the step-ladder is to work out what your child can already do (e.g they can do half days with no problems).
•  Ask the child to give each step a worry rating (0 – not worried at all to 10 – most worried you’ve ever felt).
• Resist move too quickly up the stepladder – children need to feel confident at each stage before moving up. Repetition is key. It’s also okay if each step doesn’t go perfectly. This teaches your child that even if what they fear were to happen, it isn’t the end of the world.

Rewards 

• Rewards are an incredibly important part of developing a hierarchy. For each ‘step’ your child works on there should be a meaningful reward that you have come up with in collaboration with your child.
• This can be activity based (having a sleepover, getting to choose take-away for dinner, getting to play on the computer for longer than usual, going for a surf with dad) or material based (tokens, favourite snack after school, clothing, make-up, new book, nails done).
•  Remember, you are asking your child to do something they really don’t want to do. It’s like telling them we are going to remove a tooth without anaesthetic. Rewards can soften the fear of going back to school and make compliance with the hierarchy more likely.

Praise them for facing their fears

• Ultimately we want to change how they view of themselves, from someone ‘who has anxiety’ to someone ‘who has anxiety but doesn’t let it get in the way of living their life’ 
• Get your child involved in other activities outside of school to build up their self-esteem and social skills

No technology on days your child stays at home

• For a moment, put yourself in your child's shoes….you find school hard, boring or lonely. Would you rather go to school everyday or stay at home and watch Netflix? Technology can be a huge contributing factor in why it is so hard to get some children and teens back to school. Whilst at home, it is wise to take away their phone, laptop and TV privileges from 8am until 3:30pm.

Toilet Training Toddlers

Toilet training is one of the earliest tasks a child will learn, helping them to demonstrate independence in the early years. Children's successful mastery of toilet training is also a milestone in achieving independence for families. Most importantly, children can take pride in their very real accomplishment of learning to use the toilet just like a grown-up.

Signs of Toilet Training Readiness

• Your child is healthy with no medical condition or medication that could affect bowel or bladder function

• They can go 2 – 3 hour periods of dryness between nappy changes during the daytime

• Your child indicates when he/she is wet or dirty

• Your child shows an awareness of when he/she is doing a bowel or bladder action

• Your child helps with their own dressing and hand washing routines

• Your child shows an interest in the toilet

• They have words for “wee” and “poo”

• Your child can follow simple instructions

• Your child responds to, or understand rewards and/or praise

 

Parents Checklist for Readiness

• It feels like the right time to start toilet training

• I have the time to commit to toilet training

• I have support from family and my child’s other care providers

• I have been able to access resources and equipment that I need to give it my best go

Laying the Foundation

• Setting up the environment: Start talking to your child about going to the toilet. Showing them where the toilet is

• Selecting easy clothing: trousers with elastic waistbands instead of buttons and zips.

• Maintaining consistent communication: Choose the toileting words you’re going to use – for example poo, wee or pee. Work out the procedure together and make sure your child understands. For example, you might say: “When you need to go to the toilet, come and tell me and I’ll help you”.

 

Rewards and Reinforcement

• Praise and rewards are essential to engage your child’s interest and motivation to try again with toileting

• Smile, hug or clapping hands. Use a sticker chart or small treats to reinforce positive behaviour on the toilet.

• Rewards need to be phased out as your child’s level of independence increases

Remember that toilet training takes time. Try and stay consistent with your approach, and know that in time your child will master their ability to go to the toilet on their own.

Managing Emotions

Emotions can be described as a “conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes in the body”.

Many things such as life events, thoughts, medications, other drugs, foods, physical illness, and spiritual experience trigger emotions.  So, emotions often communicate to us about things happening in our life, whether they are internal events or external ones.

In Mindfulness training there are many strategies for coping with emotions that enhance our distress tolerance when emotions overwhelm us. These strategies are know as Distraction, Self-soothe and Improve the moment.

DISTRACTION

With Activities

• Engage in exercise or hobbies; do cleaning; go to events; call or visit a friend; play computer games; go walking; work; play sports; go out for a meal; have a coffee or tea; go fishing; chop wood; do gardening; play a board game.

With opposite Emotions

• Engage in emotional books, music or movies.  Be sure the experience creates different emotions.  Ideas: scary movies, joke books, comedies, funny records, religious music, upbeat songs, going to a shop and reading funny greeting cards.

With other Thoughts

• Count to 10; count colours in a painting or a tree, windows, anything; work puzzles; watch TV; read.

With intense other Sensations

• Hold ice in hand; squeeze a rubber ball very hard; stand under a very hard and hot shower; listen to very loud music; put rubber band on wrist, pull out and let go.

SELF-SOOTHE

With Vision

• Buy one beautiful flower; make one space in a room pretty; light a candle and watch the flame. Set a pretty place at the table, using your best things, for a meal. Go to a museum with beautiful art.

With Hearing

• Listen to beautiful or soothing music, or to invigorating and exciting music. Pay attention to sounds of nature (waves, birds, rainfall, leaves rustling). Sing to your favourite songs. Hum a soothing tune.

With Smell

• Use your favourite perfume or lotions, or try them on in a shop; spray fragrance in the air; light a scented candle. Put lemon oil on your furniture. Put potpourri in a bowl in your room. Boil cinnamon; bake cookies, cake, or bread. Smell the roses.

 

IMPROVE THE MOMENT

With Imagery

•  Imagine very relaxing scenes. Imagine a secret room within yourself, seeing how it is decorated. Go into the room whenever you feel very threatened. Close the door on anything that can hurt you. Imagine everything going well. Imagine coping well.

With Prayer / Meditation

•  Open your heart to a supreme being, greater wisdom, God, your own wise mind. Ask for strength to bear the pain in this moment. Turn things over to God, a higher being, Mother Nature, or the universe.

With Relaxation

 Try muscle relaxing by tensing and relaxing each large muscle group, starting with your hands and arms, going to the top of your head, and then working down; listen to a relaxation tape; exercise hard; take a hot bath or sit in a hot tub.

Sleeping Well

Are you having trouble falling asleep, getting back to sleep or having difficulty getting up in the morning? If so, you are not alone. Approximately 35% of people report their sleep as ‘poor’ or ‘only fair’.

The benefits of getting a good nights rest are endless. Sleep is associated with having a better mood, lower levels of anxiety and depression, better skin and physical health, as well as improved concentration and driving ability.

On the flip side, having ongoing difficulties with sleep is associated with some pretty nasty consequences. These include memory problems, moodiness, depression, hallucinations and increased risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take today to improve your sleep:

No Napping

Napping in the day may be satisfying at the time, but often means that you aren’t tired enough to go to sleep at night. Consequently you go to bed late despite the need to get up early for work or school. The next day you may feel exhausted, take a nap, and the cycle continues. The most useful thing you can do to improve your sleep is to get up at the same time each day and to stop napping. Within a few weeks your sleep pattern will improve. If you feel tired then splash your face with water or go outside and stand in a cool breeze. If you have to nap make sure it is before 3pm and less than an hour.

No Caffeine After 3pm

Did you know that although caffeine’s strongest effects are felt 30 minutes after drinking it, it takes 6 hours to leave your system? In fact, research shows that consuming caffeine less than 6 hours before bed reduces sleep by one hour. Caffeine can affect how long it takes to fall asleep and how many times you wake up a night. Remember that caffeine doesn’t just mean coffee. It also includes caffeinated drinks (coke, energy drinks), dark chocolate and some teas (black, green or white tea).

Avoid Watching the Clock

Checking the clock when you are having trouble falling asleep can cause anxiety. You may have thoughts like ‘I’ve been awake for 2 hours now and only have 4 hours till I have to get up!’’. This can make it harder to fall asleep. Remove or cover any clocks in your room at night and keep your phone out of arms reach.

Restrict Use of Technology Before Bedtime

When it starts to get dark, our bodies begin to produce melatonin, which makes us feel sleepy. Often the light from technology(often called ‘blue light’) can disrupt this production of melatonin as it tricks your brain into think it’s still daytime. If you need to use your phone in the evenings, make sure you turn down the brightness and use an app that filters out the ‘blue light’ your phone emits.

Write Down Your Worries

Due to our busy lives, often the time when worries come to surface is at night. Instead of letting worries go round and round in your head like a washing machine, write down your worries as they arise and set aside 30 minutes each day to work through and problem solve them (e.g. at 7 pm in the evening). Make sure you limit your worry period to 30 minutes or less, and that you reward yourself after your worry period (e.g. eat your favourite food or watch your favourite TV show).  It should be noted that excessive rumination (dwelling or worrying about negative events) can be a symptom of depression or anxiety. If you feel this may be the case, it is important to speak to your GP about seeing a psychologist to help you cope.

Remember that that if you have had difficulties sleeping for a number of years, it will take a few weeks or months of adhering to the above advice for your sleep patterns to change. You’re re-training your brain and body. The good news is if you follow the advice mentioned above, it is possible to change negative sleep patterns for good.

Managing Procrastination

Most people have experienced procrastination…putting off work that needs to be

done and instead engaging in more enjoyable activities like watching Netflix,

sleeping, eating, seeing friends or watching paint dry! Procrastination can be

defined as the act of delaying a task, and whilst research shows 95% of people

admit to procrastinating, 20% are deemed chronic procrastinators (Ferrari,

O’Callaghan & Newbegin, 2005). These are people who procrastinate at school, work,

home and in their relationships.

People procrastinate for all different reasons. Some people have a fear of failure

or being criticized for their work, some people feel fatigued or unmotivated

when faced with work and others would just prefer to constantly engage in more

enjoyable pursuits. What all of these reasons have in common is that facing a

task makes you feel discomfort – boredom, irritation, despair, exhaustion or

overwhelmed. We procrastinate because procrastination often initially relieves

this discomfort. We distract ourselves and feel instantly better. The difficulty is,

when we procrastinate too much then the work we have to do piles up and

snowballs, meaning there is a smaller amount of time to do a larger amount of

work and we will feel even worse in the future.

Here are three strategies to help you overcome procrastination:

ACTION BEFORE MOTIVATION:

If you procrastinate, you probably wait for motivation to strike before you begin your task. You

may also realize that motivation rarely strikes. Often we need to take action and then

motivation will come, instead of waiting for motivation to take action. Once you begin a task

(even if you don’t feel like it), your motivation begins to build. For example, once you’ve made

yourself read your essay question and develop a plan for each paragraph, you will probably

find the essay seems less overwhelming, and you will have more motivation to continue

working.

"Once you begin a task (even if you don’t feel like it), your motivation begins to build."

To test this out - Set a timer for 15 minutes on your phone or laptop. Get out the

task you have been avoiding and work on it for 15 minutes straight. After 15

minutes assess whether you want to do another 15 minutes or not. Afterwards,

make sure you give yourself a small reward – you just began your work!

BREAK DOWN A TASK INTO SMALL STEPS:

Often people who procrastinate see the task they to complete as huge and overwhelming.

Examples include needing to clean the whole house, write an entire thesis or essay or prepare

for a massive exam. Often breaking large tasks into small bit-size pieces can reduce how

overwhelmed you feel and can increase satisfaction and motivation when you complete each

step.

"Breaking large tasks into small bit-size pieces can reduce how overwhelmed you feel."

To test this out - Take a task that you have been putting off. Let’s look at an

example. Say you have an English essay due in two weeks. Your steps may be as

follows: Read the question, work out what resources you need, gather resources

from class notes, gather quotes from assigned readings, plan the topic of

paragraph 1, 2 and 3, write paragraph, 1, 2 and 3, write the introduction, write

the conclusion, read over and edit essay and submit to teacher. An overwhelming

task has been reduced to 14 more manageable steps.

BITS AND PIECES:

A common situation with people who procrastinate is that they set aside a chunk of time close

to the deadline to do the whole assignment. When that time comes however, the person often

end ups up feel so overwhelmed by the task at hand that not much work gets done and the

person has often underestimates how much time the task really requires. Often doing work in

bits and pieces is more productive.

"Often doing work in bits and pieces is more productive."

To test this out – For a few days, whenever you have 20 minutes here and an

hour there, try to work on a manageable step of your task, rather than waiting

for a huge chunk of time to get started.

Ferrari, J. R., O’Callaghan, J., & Newbegin, I. (2005). Prevalence of procrastination in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia: Arousal and avoidance delays among adults. North American Journal of Psychology, 7(1), 1-6.

Grief and Loss

At some point in our lives we may experience losing someone close to us, or we may experience a challenging life event that can cause us to feel a sense of grief.

Grief is our response to loss. It is the normal, natural and inevitable response to loss, and it can affect every part of our life, including our thoughts, behaviours, beliefs, feelings, physical health and our relationships with others.

Grief is an individual experience

Everyone grieves in their own way. Your grief is unique to you, and as long as you are not causing harm to yourself or those around you, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ways to grieve. We do not always know how people are grieving simply by what we see. Some people are open and expressive with their grief, crying, and wanting to talk, whilst others are more private, may be reluctant to talk and prefer to keep busy. Other factors, such as culture, gender and belief systems can also influence the ways that people grieve.

Life grows around grief

It is a common myth that people ‘get over’ grief. The reality is, a part of us will always grieve the loss of our loved one. With time, the pain will lessen, but the sorrow we feel will always be a part of us. When people grieve they are coming to terms with what has changed in their lives. There is no ‘return to normal’; rather, we have to learn to live around a new kind of normal –re-learning the world and re-learning ourselves within it

Strategies to help manage grief

• Keep a diary or journal.

• Create a memorial – do or make something to honour your loved one.

• Develop your own rituals, e.g. light a candle, listen to special music, make a special place to think.

• Allow yourself to express your thoughts and feelings privately. Write a letter or a poem, draw, collect photos, cry etc.

• Exercise – do something to use pent-up energy, e.g. walking, swimming, cycling, gardening.

• Do things that are relaxing and soothing.

• Some holistic or self-care ideas that may assist include meditation, distractions, relaxation and massage.

• To help with sleeplessness: exercise, limit alcohol and caffeine and try to maintain a routine, especially around bedtime.

• Sharing with other people can reduce the sense of isolation and loneliness that comes with grief.

• Allow people to help you; don’t be embarrassed to accept their help. You will be able to help someone else at another time. It is your turn now.

• Talk to family and friends; sharing memories and stories, thoughts and feelings can be comforting and strengthen your connection with your loved one.

Helping Your Teen Manage Mean Girls

Adolescence is a time when belonging and approval from one’s peers becomes paramount, as teenagers individuate from the family unit and develop their own identity.

Unfortunately, when there is so much at stake, the temptation to step over others to get to the top can be all too alluring.

Games of power and control are endemic within adolescent peer groups, particularly for females. Males tend to rely on physical strength or humour to determine the pecking order, whereas the hierarchy amongst girls is established through interpersonal interactions and communication. Social exclusion, gossip, the silent treatment, belittling and conditional friendship are all weapons girls may use to reinforce their own sense of inclusion and value.

Too often I hear statements like: “Girls will be girls” and “It’s just a phase.. they’ll grow out of it”. But the truth is, this kind of behaviour extends all throughout the lifespan! Isn’t it better to help your teenagers learn to cope with the nastiness, so they will be equipped to manage it in adulthood? And why should we accept and normalise this behaviour? Can’t we teach our girls to fight against relational aggression, to create a culture of women respecting women and building each other up?

So what can we do to help teenagers navigate the minefield that is the adolescent social milieu? Here are my top tips:

Breathing For Anxiety

Often when a person experiences anxiety they notice changes in their breathing.

These changes can include breathing faster, feeling a tightening or pain in the

chest area and feeling dizzy or light-headed.

When we breathe, we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

Typically the average person takes about 10-12 breaths a minute. How many

breaths per minute do you take? Set a timer on your phone or laptop, try not to

change your breathing from normal and then count your breaths. One breath is

counted as breathing in and out.

If you’re breathing more than 10-12 breaths per minute you may be subtly

hyperventilating. When we breathe too much air in, the balance between oxygen

and carbon dioxide becomes disturbed. We end up with too much oxygen and

too little carbon dioxide.

If you’re breathing more than 10-14 breaths per minute you may be subtly hyperventilating.

This reduction in carbon dioxide signals to our blood vessels that they are

getting more oxygen then they need. The blood vessels try to help us by

constricting and narrowing so that we don’t get too much oxygen in our brain. A

side effect of this narrowing of the blood vesicles in the brain is that we feel

dizziness or light headed. You may feel like you cannot get enough air in. In fact,

the problem is you have too much oxygen. Although this feeling is unpleasant

and intense, it is completely harmless.

Although for the most part breathing is automatic, the good news is we can also

control it consciously. For instance, think about the fact that you can hold your

breath whilst underwater. The unpleasant (but harmless reaction) will go away

once the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide are rebalanced.

The following strategies can be useful for reducing hyperventilation:

Building Positive Body Image

Body dissatisfaction has almost become a cultural norm in Western society. Body dissatisfaction is the top ranked issue of concern for young people (Mission Australia, 2016). Body image issues affect people of all ages, and have increased worldwide, especially with the acceleration of technology.

This pervasive problem is concerning, because overvaluing body image in defining ones self-worth is one of the risk factors which makes some people less resilient to eating disorders than others.

Our media culture perpetuates unrealistic and highly edited images of the ‘ideal’ body. We are exposed to 5000 messages per day that reinforce the thin ideal. How do you feel about your body after scrolling through your Instagram feed? Eric Stice’s research has developed a pathway from the media portrayal of the thin ideal to the development of eating disorders. Exposure of the thin ideal in the media leads to the internalization of this message in  80-90% of individuals (whether they’re aware of it or not). Body dissatisfaction then develops as a result of this in 80% of those individuals. It is estimated that 5-6% of the population develop a clinical eating disorder, with body dissatisfaction being the biggest predictor.

People experiencing body dissatisfaction can become fixated on trying to change their body shape, which can lead to unhealthy practices with food and exercise. These practices don’t usually achieve the desired outcome (physically or emotionally) and can result in intense feelings of disappointment, shame and guilt. Ultimately, the endpoint can be an increased risk of developing an eating disorder.

The key to a healthy relationship with your body is a balanced approach to food and exercise

Developing a positive relationship with your body is such a critical process for fostering wellbeing. Here are our top tips for building a positive body image: