I believe that anger is a very important emotion and one that is given a bad name. Anger itself isn’t bad or wrong although it’s fair to say it may lead people to doing something that is. Sometimes anger is entirely justified, if someone has deliberately hurt you or someone you care about, you have a right to feel angry and I simply don’t believe people who tell me they don’t ever feel angry. Getting to know our anger is a useful process and this is the first in a series of posts about anger and how we deal with it.
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Because you’re worth it – Conditions of Worth and how they work
What are conditions of worth?
Conditions of worth are an idea that comes from Carl Rogers, the founder of a style of counselling called Person-Centred Counselling. Carl Rogers believed that every person has the means within themselves to ‘get better’ and that the Counsellor’s role was to walk alongside the client while they found the drive within themselves to do this.
Rogers said that conditions of worth are what we develop when we take on board other people’s values and ideas about how we should be. If they differ from what our inner desires and beliefs really are, it sets up a conflict and we experience tension and distress because, without really examining why we think the things we do, we are often unaware of what comes from us and what comes from other people around us. One of the things that might happen in counselling is working to uncover what these tensions are – this can sometimes bring an enormous sense of relief and, in turn, it can help us be better parents by stopping us imposing conditions of worth on our own children.
Continue reading Because you’re worth it – Conditions of Worth and how they work
The Practice of Mindfulness – Mental Health Awareness Week 2015
‘In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past is too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right’. Julia Cameron – The Artist’s Way
Since 2000 the Mental Health Foundation has run an annual Mental Health Awareness Week to try and raise the profile of Mental Health and Illness and remove some of the stigma surrounding them. This year’s focus was Mindfulness – a technique or way of being that can be taught and has been proven to have a positive effect on mental health[1]. Recent research indicates that it can be as good as anti-depressants for depression and, as it is a technique rather than a treatment, it can be used for a lifetime. Continue reading The Practice of Mindfulness – Mental Health Awareness Week 2015