Depression

Much is written about depression, much is discussed many opinions are held and to be honest I believe that as it affects each person so differently it is very tough to give an overview which is of value. 

However a good friend of mine copied this to me today and I thought it was well worth sharing, it's an easy to watch insightful view of what living with depression can be like, please give it a watch, it's worth it, and if just one person looks at it and says I think I understand that a bit better now it will have done a great job!

Thanks for reading !

http://www.upworthy.com/what-is-depression-let-this-animation-with-a-dog-shed-light-on-it?g=3&c=ufb1

Stress - continued ......

Stress  cont'd....

I was recently reminded of a story I heard about stress, and I wanted to share it here as I have personally found the analogy very thought provoking and useful, particularly if you are the sort of person who just keeps absorbing stress and expecting to be able to deal with it. 

I also use it when with clients who see there inability to cope as a weakness rather than just a sign that enough is enough!

A psychotherapist was visiting a big corporate organisation to give a seminar on stress management, at the beginning of the session she took a half full pint glass of water in her hand and showed it to the room. As you can imagine the delegates all started to prepare themselves for the glass half full glass half empty speech and so where quite surprised when she asked them to guess how much the glass of water weighed.

Various guesses were received from around the room as the delegates tried to work out how much the glass weighed , after a few minutes the psychotherapist said... of course it doesn't really matter what is weighs you know, but what I want you to think about is if I asked you to hold this glass with your arm outstretched for 2 minutes you all could quite easily, but what about 2 hours, or 20 hours or 2 days! The weight of the water would not have changed but it would have got a whole lot more painful to carry! It's the same with stress, if we can find a way to let is go it doesn't have to be painful but the longer we hold it the more likely it is to hurt!

I love this idea, it really does help to enable people to stop thinking of not being able to cope as being weak, when really it's just the you have held onto things for far to long !

So please find a way to let it go, it will be different for everyone as to how you do it , it could be massage, reflexology, counselling, exercise, being with friends, a long hot bath, it doesn't matter what you do, what's important is that you do it !

Stress! GRRRRRR and how to manage it!

Stress is good?

I often hear people saying 'I'm so stressed' it happens almost every day. Is that necessarily bad though? In the days when we lived in caves and speared wild boars for our diner stress often saved our life. The body's response to stress is to produce adrenaline and prepare us to fight..... or run for it, so in those days we caught our boar or escaped from the saber tooth tiger that was chasing us for his diner! The bust of energy was used up either by flight or fight.

These days however our stress levels are raised by very different things, a certain amount of stress  can be good as it gives us a burst of energy and keep us focused on the task ahead , such as taking your driving test or going to and interview for example.  However prolonged stress can be caused by life events such as workload, money difficulties, moving house, marriage, divorce etc. Often the problem we have though is the stress has nowhere to go, we don't need to have a physical fight or to run for it , we actually have to stay put and deal with our stressors in other ways!

Here are few simple tips on things you can do easily to help to cope with stress.

1. Learn to breathe!

When we get pressured or stressed our breathing tends to become faster and more shallow, try sitting quietly for a few minutes and changing your breathing.... the idea is to take longer to breathe out than to breathe in, so as you breathe in deeply through your nose counting to 5 slowly, then breathe out slowly through your mouth to the count of 7 , the aim is eventually to make your exhalation breath take twice as long as your inhalation breath, keep this up for approximately 3 minutes to start with and then return to breathing normally.

2. Go outside!

Take a little step outside your front door, breath the air, even if its rainy and cloudy just seeing natural daylight can raise your spirits and a brief walk can really help to lift your mood, just 5 or 10 minutes a day can really help. 

3. Get in touch with nature

Even in the centre of the city we can watch the squirrels jumping about from branch to branch or the birds flying above the buildings, take two minutes to look and see what you can see, I bet you notice much more than you think you will, try this exercise... find a patch of grass , in a local park or in your garden if you have one, take of your shoes and stand in your bare feet, feel how the earth feels, just for two minutes, feel your connection with the planet we live on! Go on I dare you ... feel better ?

4. Relaxation

How do you relax? Exercise, read, listen to music, dance ? It really doesn't matter what you do, just that it works, find your joy and devote 5 minutes a day indulging yourself!

5. Baby steps

Sometimes things are so scary we put them off and end up with a great big pile of stressful stuff that we just have no idea where to start with so we avoid dealing with any of it, even going to the extent of tackling tasks we really don't enjoy just to avoid the scary pile of stuff we have built up. Don't attempt it all at once, make a list, choose the most important thing on it, and do that one thing, just one, not all, and when you have done it tick it off and give yourself a reward allow your self to relax before you attempt to cross another thing off your list!

6. Talk

Spend time with friends, connect and communicate with people, often when we are stressed and busy we neglect our social life and isolate ourselves, brooding and worrying alone, make time for a 5 minute chat with a friend, each day, share !

Hope these simple tips help I will blog some more later but for now.... I am off to relax!

©JaneHeron2013

Be your own best friend

Be your own best friend!

How many times have you caught yourself saying things like - that was stupid of me, I am so silly, I am a bit rubbish at xyz. In my experience I hear this a lot..... clients, friends relatives all talking themselves down.

 Now maybe its because we are 'British' and we don't 'big ourselves up'  - afterall nobody likes a big head do they? I have often heard the confidence of the American's described as arrogance and not really acceptable behaviour - but I love the fact that they can stand up and say I am great at golf, I am really good at my job or I play the piano really well etc.

How much nicer would your day be if you could accept that you had done well, achieved what you set out to, or at least gave it a good go!

I believe the first step towards changing this is to become aware of  it both in our minds and in our words, how often do we have a great idea and then talk ourselves out of it before we have even tried. Become aware of your thoughts , catch yourself telling yourself I can't to that because.... I am too old, young, fat, poor, not clever enough, not brave enough and change it to I can do that! Once you believe you can it's a much shorter step to I will do that and from there to I am doing it!!!

Watch your thoughts and change them, only this morning I dropped a spoon on the floor as I made my breakfast the words 'you stupid twit' were out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them , I made myself say out loud I am a bright intelligent person who just dropped a spoon!! I am changing the way I see myself , and you can too!

Next time you catch yourself telling yourself you are stupid/fat/ugly etc etc ask yourself this question.... would I speak to my best friend like that? No ? Then why speak to yourself that way?

Be your own best friend!!!!

Letting it go

Letting it go....

Let it go, time to move on , put it behind you -  how many times have we said that or worse heard that ! Even if its from a valued friend, and we know they are right,  just how helpful is it to hear this when your heart is breaking or you are still furious? And what does it mean any way .... Move on?? To where exactly?? And most importantly HOW!

I guess moving on means different things to different people, personally I hate all of those phrases and become incredibly frustrated when I hear them, personally I think they are empty words we use when we feel the need to say something but haven't a clue what to say (but that could be my stuff!).

I prefer to think of it as finding peace for now, but have found that this meditation/visualization is helpful if a particular emotion/person/situation is making it difficult for you to be peaceful!

Relax, and sit with you feet flat on the ground, imagine roots growing down through your feet into the earth, deep into the earth. Breathe , slowly and deeply , close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a field, on top of a small hill, feel the grass under your feet, it's soft, and a luscious bright green. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and as you walk to the top of the hill you can see beautiful countryside stretching out for miles around you. At the top there is an oak tree with a bench underneath it, take a seat and relax, after a few minutes  you notice to your side there is a balloon on a piece of string tied to the bench, you know that this is for you so you untie it and take it in your hands. You reach into your pocket and find a felt tip pen and write on the balloon, the name of the person/feeling/situation you wish to release or you want to ask for help with. You take the balloon and walk out from under the tree, out into the field, into the beautiful green space. You look up to the blue sky , and gently release your grip on the string on your balloon, watch it float up, further and further away from you, becoming smaller and smaller, so small that is a dot in the blue sky and then so tiny that you can now longer see it it disappears, lost in the atmosphere and with it goes your words leaving you with just a feeling of peace a serenity. Take a deep breath and sigh its time to return, walk slowly down the hill bringing your awareness back into your room, wiggle your fingers and toes, open your eyes , take a drink of water.... welcome back!

Give it a try, I hope it helps!

©JaneHeron2013

The rule of Ten !

When to fight and when to let it go!

Often in my life I have ranted and raved and wound myself up over all sorts of things , from the tiny little annoying things to fairly major challenges. Often though there comes a time when we have limited capacity for worrying and stressing and we really need to pick our fights carefully as we just don't have the energy to fight them all at the same time.

The rule of 10 is a useful tool to use when deciding just which of the nasty niggles you are going to let go and which of the nasty niggles you are going to take by the scruff of the neck and deal with. It works like this ..... is the annoying woman in the office bitching about you still going to annoy you in 10 minutes .... yes ? How about ten hours, or days? Will she still be important to you in ten months , what about ten years? This can certainly help to get things in perspective and if the niggle really wont be important to you in ten days time , maybe save your energy and let it go ? 

If however the issue is more serious and it is a question of moral values say,  that would bother you years later, if you don't address it and in ten years time you feel that you should have done something about it, then I would say go for it, take the bull by the horns and deal with it as best you can, fight your corner, give as good as you get and don't go away quietly.

Whenever I am faced with this dilemma now I ask myself, will I care in ten days time? If the answer is yes I grasp the nettle and deal with it, if the answer is no I let it go!

©JaneHeron2013

Rejection!

I felt compelled to write this today ! No one likes rejection, the emptiness, the I am not good enough, the it's not fair of it all can be too much to bear for some people.

I don't profess to have the answers and I am writing this having just suffered a rejection after a job interview , which I have invested a lot of time and effort preparing for, so this may come from a place of emotion rather than well thought out strategies for coping, however it does come from a place of extreme honesty and for that alone I think it is valuable!

So what do you do , when some one tells you they don't want you , what do you do with the hurt , tonight I choose to be grumpy and emotional, tomorrow I will look at the job and realise that it would not have challenged me and that actually my skills would be far better invested in a role that fits me perfectly and is not the compromise that this was!

I know that I was myself and if that was not what they wanted then it would never have worked, I won't change for anyone or anything as I am just fine as I am, the right thing will come along at the right time - I believe that -  so for tonight it's time to say F**k it and settle down to a nice Chinese take away!

Time to look after myself!!


Please do comment if this resonates with you !

Hi All

I have spent all day today, applying for a job, and as I filled out the long , long , long application form I took a break to write my first post here.

In this blog I want to share so thoughts on mental health and how difficult we sometimes find it to take an interest in out own wellbeing, hence the title of my blog 'fit your own oxygen mask first' ! I have found almost without exception that the clients I have worked with have struggled with their own worthiness and so I hope that this blog will reach out to anyone who struggles to put themselves first once in a while!

Most of us will have sat on a plane at sometime in our lives and pretended to be interested as the flight safety demonstration takes place but within that demonstration is a deeper message, fit you own oxygen mask before you try to help others, after all you are no use to anyone suffocating on the floor !

So with that in mind I am going to have a cup of tea and a chocolate moose before I finish the application form from hell!

What will you do today that is just for you ?

Top tip for today - drink plenty of water - whilst we a enjoying the heat our bodies can become rapidly dehydrated, in fact, if you are thirsty , you are already dehydrated. Dehydration can cause tiredness and headaches making it likely you will feel low. So drink water and be happy !

©JaneHeron2013(Complementarycare)

Hello and welcome to my blog!

Just setting things up and practicing formats here at first but check back soon to read my thoughts and ideas on mental health.

Thanks for visiting!