GENERAL Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Sarah Wiesendanger

How Counselling Helps with Five Addictions

We all lead difficult lives. Pressures of work, family and lifestyle can sometimes find us struggling to deal with certain situations and lead to addiction as a way of coping. Whether it’s you that’s experiencing the addiction or you are the friend or loved one of a person that has a developed an addiction, counselling can help discover the root of the issue and offer some solutions. Finding great counselling in Surrey will show you how you can move forward.

If you are experiencing addiction,by reading this you are taking the first step in getting rid of your addiction. When we become set in our ways and focused just on our own feelings, we may not be aware of the impact of our actions on others. Depending on your addiction, you may be taking the risk of financial ruin, permanent health issues or even death. It’s vital that you consider the effect that your addiction is having on your friends and loved ones. You may be surprised at just how concerned are of those that care about you.

There are many different types of physical and psychological addictions that can affect a person at any time. Identifying these possibilities is only the beginning but this means that the person experiencing these situations is hopefully on the start of the road to recovery.

Alcohol Abuse

When an individual has gone further than binge drinking; relying on alcohol to get them through strains of life, this may mean that they have developed, or are developing, an alcohol dependency syndrome. If untreated, alcoholism can affect every part of the body, with the potential to cause death. As any addiction, it’s common for a person to hide or ignore the fact that they are struggling.

Drug Addiction

If you are struggling with drug addiction, you may be unlikely to be aware of the impact it’s having on you and those closest to you. It may not be that you are continually physically dependent; however drugs can have both a damaging effect on your health and your attitude to your loved ones. Talking with an experienced professional on a one to one basis can help to find out the trigger behind your addiction and ways to overcome it.

Eating Disorders

There is such pressure in the media to be the perfect size and shape. For some people this can become a living nightmare. Not just affecting young girls, eating disorders can be experienced by men and women of any age. Counselling can help both the individual that is being affected in addition to their family members who may also be experiencing difficulty with coming to terms with their loved one’s illness.

Gambling Addiction

We live in an easy world. The introduction of the Internet has made it incredibly simple for people to gamble at any time of the day or night – without anyone knowing what you are doing. Before you know it, the threat of financial ruin can be upon you. Talking with a counsellor can help to tackle the reasons behind your addiction and how to deal with this problem.

Shopping Addiction

For some this may seem a trivial addiction. However if it has got to a stage where your urge to shop is taking over your life, it may be time to visit a counsellor. He or she will be able to help you identify the cause for your addiction in the first place and plan for a way to transform your life so that it’s no longer an issue.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

We compartmentalise so much of our lives. We have our home life, and our work life, our social life, and our sex life. We get advice from an expert in this field, and then in that. And sometimes we forget to consider the whole, to notice the effect one area of our life has on another. Sometimes we think we can be one kind of person in this part of life, and that kind of person in the other.

But it doesn’t work like that. It is, for instance, impossible to be a ruthless business person at work, and a gentle loving partner at home. Whichever of those personality styles is the most dominant, will spill over into every area of your life. And it’s the same with our health. As much as a positive and joyful attitude boosts your immune system and the wellbeing of your body, so does a fit and well-nourished body promote a calm, confident and happy mind. We need to attend to ourselves as a whole – heart, body, mind, and soul.

When we exercise, we release endorphins which makes us feel good in ourselves and about ourselves. In turn, this gives us the energy and impetus to meet wholeheartedly any challenges we may face in other areas of our life. Regular exercise improves blood flow to the brain and speeds learning, enabling us to stretch ourselves and meet our emotional needs for achievement, status, and greater purpose. A fit person is able to recover more quickly from surgery, and exercise is now recommended for cancer patients even during treatment.

What we eat also has a huge impact on our psychological and therefore emotional wellbeing. Many of us in Britain, and the West in general, suffer from “affluent malnutrition” which contributes to anxiety, depression, addictions, and many other conditions; it affects mood and emotional stability, and memory capacity. A famous Buddhist saying has it that: “Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and his pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.” Taking it one step further, many, many years later, the nutritionist guru Patrick Holford said: “You think what you eat.”

A study conducted in 2004, concluded that a staggering 82% of us in the UK become impatient quickly, 64% become anxious easily, 53% become angry easily, 44% suffer from depression, and 43% have difficulty concentrating. This is clearly an unhappy way for us to be living.

From my practise of, and readings about, meditation and its wonderful ability to reduce stress, promote better sleep, develop better relationships, and encourage a calm and content state of mind, I know how important it is for us to train our minds. After all, we wouldn’t expect to have a well-honed body, able to perform at an optimum level, without undergoing a workout programme. But training the mind in isolation is not enough if we want to live a life of psychological and emotional wellbeing; it is vital that we also attend to our nutrition and give ourselves regular exercise.

Recommended reading: “Optimum Nutrition for the Mind” Patrick Holford

To find out how life coaching with Sarah could support you in living a more balanced life, please contact Sarah.

Five Reasons to Seek Relationship Counselling

Whether you’re married or in a relationship you may find that you are in a situation where life is not going quite as planned. Some couples find that they are able to talk together to resolve any difficulties, however it may be that your relationship has reached a point where outside professional help can be incredibly helpful.

By contacting an experienced Relationship Counsellor in Surrey, you will be able to explore the issues in your relationship and look at ways of overcoming them. Make sure that the counsellor that you choose is experienced in this area and is a member of a Counselling Body such as HGI.

There is no perfect answer to recovering a relationship. Some couples may find, that with all the best counselling in the world, they will not be able to find a happy medium and sort their relationship out. The best solution may be for you both to go your separate ways. However unless you give Relationship Counselling the opportunity to help you will certainly never know.

Staying Together for the Sake of the Children

Children are intuitive and often understand more than we may think they do. They will quite likely be able to see if there is a problem in your relationship. Yes, a child does need both parents, and they also need their parents to be able to relate to each other in a respectful and trusting way. Whether you stay together or not is a difficult decision, and it can often be helpful to talk things through with an independent counsellor.

Following an Affair

Whether you were the person who had the affair or you’re struggling following your partner’s affair, this can be a difficult situation from which to recover. Relationships are all about trust. Counselling will look to find ways so that you can move forward from this situation and regain a sense of trust between the two of you.

Lack of Communication

Sometimes we can be too close to a situation to see what the real issue is. It’s at these times that speaking with a neutral person outside of your relationship can be particularly beneficial. Perhaps your relationship has become more of a friendship rather than a sexual relationship. Counselling provides a safe environment in which you can both talk about your feelings and thoughts regarding the relationship.

Living in a Negative Relationship

Accusations and negativity within a relationship can be as damaging as a complete lack of communication. They often lead to a lack of respect, and respect needs to be the bedrock of any good relationship. Spending time as a couple with an accredited HGI counsellor can give you the opportunity to transform your relationship for the better.

The fizzle Has Gone

Working at a relationship can be extremely difficult. We all have a different focus in life. We work in different patterns, have differing needs and wants. Perhaps you both work in very challenging roles, over long hours. Demands from a hectic lifestyle and busy family life may mean that you have little, if any, time for the physical side of your relationship. If you find that the sexual element has gone from your relationship, there’s still hope. Talking to an experienced counsellor will give you an opportunity to find out what the issue is and to rediscover the sparkle in your relationship.

Five Stages of Bereavement – How Counselling Helps?

Losing a loved one is one of the most difficult and harrowing experiences to cope with in life. Bereavement can affect people in any number of ways.

If you’re in Surrey, local specialist bereavement counselling can help you to discover coping mechanisms and gain reassurance following the loss of a loved one. After a loss you may experience several stages of bereavement, such as denial, anger, wishing it could be otherwise, depression, and acceptance. Being able to talk through whatever you’re feeling and experiencing with a bereavement counsellor, and to be heard without judgement or criticism can be enormously healing. Your counsellor is there to help guide you to the coping mechanisms that will deal with your individual situation.

It’s important to be kind to yourself. Some people may find that it’s easy to move on, however others may find it more of a struggle to carry on with life and find inner peace. Bereavement counselling will gently help to guide you following your loss. There are five stages of bereavement that most people experience. Sometimes, people move through them sequentially, and others may skip a stage, then return to an earlier stage before moving forward again; it is different for everyone. An experienced counsellor will help you to recognise how bereavement is affecting your life and show you ways to deal with your feelings.

1. Denial

Even if you know that someone is incredibly poorly and close to the end of their life, it can be difficult to prepare yourself for their death. The shock that can be experienced after the loss of a loved one can have a huge impact on your life and your family and is totally understandable.

2. Anger

When you experience the loss of someone very close to you, your pain and grief may be felt can be felt in many different ways, both emotionally and physically. This will be entirely individual, often with different family members experiencing different emotions. Some people may cry for days, some may become completely withdrawn, and many will have strong feelings of anger to manage.

3. Bargaining – wishing it were otherwise

So much can happen so quickly in the days, weeks, and months before your loved one dies. There are often many decisions and adjustments to be made (sometimes very quickly), emotions can be high, and thinking not always at its sharpest. However, in the time after your loved one’s death, there can be all too much time for reflection, and it’s very easy to say to yourself: “if only we had sought a second opinion…”, “if only the doctor had…”, if only the doctor hadn’t…, “if only I had said…” Whether you’ve lost a lifelong partner or someone not quite so close, the loss of that relationship is certain to have left a void in your life. As you deal with the emotions following their loss, you are likely to find that you may need to find ways to adjust. This is all perfectly normal, albeit incredibly unsettling. Talking through your feelings with a counsellor can be very therapeutic; helping you to explore how you’re feeling and how to deal with your emotions.

4. Depression

People who have been bereaved often find that they are so upset that they can’t sleep, or can’t get out of bed in the mornings, that they lose all motivation to look after themselves or others. Whilst depression can be a natural part of grief, it can be worrying and you may find it helpful to talk these feelings through with an independent counsellor who is able to reassure you and help you move through this stage of bereavement.

5. Acceptance

If you have just lost a loved one, the idea of life going on as normal may seem a far-off thought. Your loved one will always remain a part of you, but over time you will find that your life grows around your memories, that you find some inner calm despite your grief, and are able to move forward in your life.

Living one day at a time to combat anxiety

So much of our lives can be spent re-living the past, or in the mists of the future that we don’t really enjoy where we are. As children, we long to be more grown-up, and then we think things will be better once we’ve finished all that study and all those exams, when we have a life-partner, when we get that promotion, that different job, when we have children, when the children are grown up…when we retire. Suddenly we’re old, spending large portions of time in nostalgic reverie and…wishing we were younger!

We could do with remembering the words of Alice Morse Earle: “yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”

If we do, not only will we get vastly more enjoyment out of lives, but it will go a long way to reducing any habit of worrying. Living life in day-size chunks is a great way to contain worry. If we concern ourselves with only what needs to be done today, most things can be endured. And, if we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by fears of, say, the past repeating itself at some time in the future, we will likely find each of our days being a great deal more productive; paralysing anxieties will dissipate. We do not want to get to the end of our lives, and be able to say the same as Michel de Montaigne: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”

When we dwell on the past, we are much more likely to create similar situations over and over again: our brains work hard to fulfill our expectations. We get more of whatever it is that we focus on. Usually our worries about the future our drawn from our experiences in the past. If we allow ourselves to focus on those, again we are condemning ourselves to repeating that past. To free ourselves, we need to imagine new possibilities, and then consciously let go and focus on the present, on what needs to be done now as a first step towards that newly-imagined possibility.

To find out how Sarah can further help you to combat anxiety, please contact Sarah.

Smiling is Good for You – Create Emotional Wellbeing

Even a forced smile encourages your body to produce more oxytocin, the “feel good” hormone. Here’s a short meditation visualisation to promote your sense of emotional wellbeing. If you’re not a visual person, you can simply sense or imagine in any way you can. (more…)

STORY OF THE GOLDEN BUDDHA – the inner being

I heard this lovely story from Tara Brach:

In the hall of a monastery, was a huge Buddha statue. It wan’t particularly attractive, as it was only made of clay, but the monks cared for it and did their best to show it off by painting it.

However, about ten years ago, it was exceptionally hot and dry, and the statue began to crack. A curious monk, wondering how the statue had been constructed, decided to train his torch into a crack. He was amazed to find a golden light shining back at him. The same was the case when he moved round to another crack.

The monks were intrigued, and decided to carefully break through the clay. Sure enough, within they discovered what is now the largest golden Buddha in southeast Asia that had been covered in clay to protect it from pilfering or destruction during times of war.

And the truth is, we can do the same. We protect our inner being, our true essence with a protective mask, a personality we feel is required of us by the world, but it’s not really who we are. So that now we may have some excavation work to do, to discover our true nature.