Are you afraid of public speaking? Does that fear make you limit yourself in your professional and/or personal life with ‘avoidant behaviour’? Does that fear affect your performance if you do find yourself in a situation where you have to do it, preventing you from preparing well and giving your best? Cognitive behavioural training / … Continue reading
Many of today’s mental health experts are recommending Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as a first choice treatment for pretty much all emotional disorders – stress, depression, anxiety, anger management etc.– rather than medication, or spending years undergoing the old style Freudian ‘shrink’ psychiatry. This blog is a free resource to help you to understand and … Continue reading
When stress becomes a disorder, it causes a shift in thinking to a negative distorted bias. When this happens, your distorted thinking is largely the cause of your feelings and behaviours – events and situations only influence them, no matter how challenging… If our thinking defaults to a negative and distorted view, we are going … Continue reading
We are always constructing reality every bit as much as we are perceiving it… … theories suggest that a person is not ‘stimulus-bound’ – or in other words, that a person does not just reflexly respond to events and situations, instead he selectively interprets and processes the information according to his own core beliefs and … Continue reading
Introducing the ‘ABC’ Technique of cognitive behavioral therapy. If we cannot ‘catch’ our negative automatic thoughts, (how we are explaining things to ourselves, literally), then we cannot examine and challenge them. CBT gives you homework and exercises designed to guide and mentor you in the process of identifying unhealthy distorted thinking, and reframing it to healthy … Continue reading
Evolution produced us: today’s fabulous human beings. But… there are a few design flaws. And some primitive automatic responses we’ve been saddled with that often do more harm than good these days. But we can learn to understand and control them with CBT… What is ‘fight or flight’? When we perceive a threat, our bodies … Continue reading
Do you suffer from musterbation? Is it always ‘must‘ and ‘should‘ and ‘ought‘ with you? This is a phrase coined by the renowned father of CBT, Albert Ellis. Musty thinking is a classic recipe for general anxiety and unhappiness. In psychotherapy it is also known as inflexible ‘DEMAND THINKING’, and ‘RULES FOR LIVING’. Let’s take … Continue reading
As a freelance trainer, I teach a workshop called ‘Making Choices’ for the unemployed. The flexible modules include theory and application of the latest proven methods and strategies for great psychological health (more specifically the self help components of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), and an introduction to MindMapping, a wholebrain colour and imagery mapping skill for … Continue reading
The following is a commissioned article I wrote for the Dublin City Enterprise Board: All reports indicate that the global downturn is escalating incidences of anxiety and depression in people – not just for those who find themselves unemployed, but also those who remain in an unstable workforce – unsure of what is going to … Continue reading
Is your stress taking over? Here’s how to find out, and fix it. Thousands of Irish people who are suffering from elevated and dangerous levels of stress as a result of the economic crisis are in danger of developing anxiety or depression. The dangers of stress are not widely enough understood – people need to … Continue reading
