When we first feel unwell with pain we may rest ourselves, perhaps taking time out from our usual activities. Hopefully we recover and gently resume our actvities. But what if the pain doesn’t go away, when the weeks and months and sometimes years pass with no significant reduction in pain?
Often people who experience chronic pain have greatly reduced actvities, and many people can become unemployed and socially isolated. Continue reading
I have written in a previous blog about relapse prevention plans. Once a person is feeling better, no longer unduly anxious or clinically depressed, it is important to look at ways of keeping well. This can include how to respond if the anxiety re-emerges or the mood dips again, but hopefully we can go further than this and consider what for us constitutes living well. Continue reading “Staying Well”
When we seek help for our psychological distress we may hope the outcome will be a return to our “old” self. This may happen, but some of us may become changed, in a good way.
The term “kintsugi” means ‘golden joinery’ in Japanese and refers to the art of fixing broken ceramics with a golden lacquer resin. Broken pots which have been fixed using kintsugi are often thought to look more beautiful than before the breakage, and often their value is increased too. Continue reading “Beautiful Restoration”
Dorothy Rowe, well known for her books on depression, says ‘If you make happiness your goal, then you’re not going to get to it. Philosophers have been saying it for thousands of years. The goal should be an interesting life.” Continue reading “Happiness will come when it comes”
I am not even going to honour this question with an answer. However, what I will say is that it takes a great deal of courage to admit to ourselves that we are struggling and then also to admit to others that this is the case. Continue reading “Is anxiety or depression a weakness?”
CBT can be used on different levels of “depth” depending on who is using it and the problem for which it is being used. Essentially it is a way of understanding how a problem works and the ways in which this problem is maintained, thus enabling us to work out ways of working with the problem. Continue reading “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)”