The mental & emotional health of our children and young adults

Over the course of this year, as a counsellor in Aberdeen, and a therapist in Dundee, I’ve treated nearly as many children and young people using Human Given’s psychotherapy as I have adults. Most arrive with anxiety-related symptoms - poor sleep, aggressive, cluster headaches, school refusal, over or under eating. Some are self harming or are suffering from depression. Most have had one if not many conversations with their school medics and their family GP. Some have already had therapy with varying degrees of success.

All of the children I see with mental and emotional health issues receive Human Given’s therapy from the first minute of the first session with me. It’s rare to still have a client with me after 4 sessions – although occasionally I’ve see a few for up to 6 sessions.

So what is it that Human Given’s therapy supplies to these young people that they’re missing out on elsewhere. Here’s what I think they’re benefitting from in the most part:

1. Deep listening: the sort of listening that rarely happens with parents because that’s just not most family designs. And it doesn’t happen with friends and peers because at 13-25 years old they’re simply not equipped with those life skills yet. So for many, the first time they get to sit down, uninterrupted for 60-90 minutes and just voice their thoughts, their ideas, their challenges, is in a therapeutic Healthy Chat. My job as much as is possible is to concentrate hard on the words, the tone, what’s being said, what’s being skated over; reflect back what I think I’ve heard; ask for more.

2. Releasing questions: the sort of enquiry that helps that teenager or young adult to recognise where they’re skilled; to link their multiple resources together; to see for themselves that where they’re at right now is not a dead end or a no-hope situation, but a chance to test their intelligence, self-discipline, communication techniques, powers of persuasion and reslience to a whole new level.

3. Practical knowledge: most clients, children to adults, who come to see me don’t have a working understanding of their own brains. They understand to some extent what learning and intellect is, but they’re fascinated to hear about the parts of their brain they can control consciously and the parts that control them without their knowledge. Knowing how it works helps to form a strategy on how to use it for the outcome they want.

4. Mindset expansion: when we change our approach to something, that thing changes. And if young people have one common trait it’s being creative about what else they could try. Working it out in a safe place, with an unattached-to-the-rest-of-their-life grown-up is mental medicine for most of them. (And reporting back their successes at the next session is mental medicine for me!)

5.  Mental & emotional rehearsal: this is the main fast-tracking piece of Human Given’s therapy and most often works because it delivers a speedy confidence lift to a person who, right in that moment, realises ‘I can’. When I take a young person through a process where they can literally see, feel and sense themselves achieving what they’ve talked about, it changes how they perceive themselves – and that’s powerful.

African-American social reformer, Fredrick Douglass knew his stuff when he said: “Its easier to build strong children than repair broken men”.   

Aware parents will keep on researching until they arrive at an answer for their children’s emotional and mental health & wellbeing. If that’s you and you know there’s something more that would benefit your child, niece, nephew or teenager of friends – genuinely consider calling me now at Healthy Chat. It’s what I’m here for.

For more info : http://www.healthychat.co.uk/

Human Givens – not all therapies are the same

Trauma is one of those emotional health areas that can impact our lives unexpectedly. Many of my clients have been in the armed forces and experienced active service; they may have witnessed or been subject to an act of If you were to Google ‘Counsellors in Dundee’ or in fact therapists in any city in the UK, you’d be faced with pages of choices. So how do you choose who you’re going to call first? And, more to the point, who can help you get the fastest, most lasting results?

At Healthy Chat we use a therapy call Human Givens. It’s called that because it integrates a great range of techniques proven to be effective in getting a person’s innate emotional needs met and thus bringing them back on track to living a fulfilled, happy life.

Here’s how the Human Given’s College explains why it gets such strong results fast:   
“We are all born with innate knowledge programmed into us from our genes. Throughout life we experience this knowledge as feelings of physical and emotional need.

These feelings evolved over millions of years and, whatever our cultural background, are our common biological inheritance. They are the driving force that motivates us to become fully human and succeed in whatever environment we find ourselves in. It is because they are incorporated into our biology at conception that we call them ‘human givens’.

Given physical needs: As animals we are born into a material world where we need air to breathe, water, nutritious food and sufficient sleep. These are the paramount physical needs. Without them, we quickly die. In addition we also need the freedom to stimulate our senses and exercise our muscles. We instinctively seek sufficient and secure shelter where we can grow and reproduce ourselves and bring up our young. These physical needs are intimately bound up with our emotional needs — the main focus of human givens psychology.

Given emotional needs: Emotions create distinctive psychobiological states in us and drive us to take action. The emotional needs nature has programmed us with are there to connect us to the external world, particularly to other people, and survive in it. They seek their fulfillment through the way we interact with the environment. Consequently, when these needs are not met in the world, nature ensures we suffer considerable distress — anxiety, anger, depression etc. — and our expression of distress, in whatever form it takes, impacts on those around us.

People whose emotional needs are met in a balanced way do not suffer mental health problems. When psychotherapists and teachers pay attention to this they are at their most effective.

In short, it is by meeting our physical and emotional needs that we survive and develop as individuals and a species.

There is widespread agreement as to the nature of our emotional needs. The main ones are listed below.

Emotional needs include:

•     Security — safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully
•     Attention (to give and receive it) — a form of nutrition
•     Sense of autonomy and control — having volition to make responsible choices
•     Emotional intimacy — to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are, “warts ‘n’ all”
•     Feeling part of a wider community
•     Privacy — opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience
•     Sense of status within social groupings
•     Sense of competence and achievement
•     Meaning and purpose — which come from being stretched in what we do and think”

At Healthy Chat our primary focus in on helping each client get their emotional needs met healthily. Not all therapy is the same. Not all searches for ‘Counsellors in Dundee’ will lead you to Healthy Chat. I hope having read this though, that’s exactly what it does.



For more Info : http://www.healthychat.co.uk

Trauma recovery – keep it simple

Trauma is one of those emotional health areas that can impact our lives unexpectedly. Many of my clients have been in the armed forces and experienced active service; they may have witnessed or been subject to an act of violence; some clients may live (or have lived) with ongoing emotional abuse within a significant relationship. Whatever the issue, the knock-on effects of trauma can present in many ways. Here are some examples:

•     anxiety and panic attacks
•     hyper vigilance (where you pay attention to your surroundings at an exhausting level of awareness)
•     eczema and other skin complaints
•     breathing difficulties
•     challenges with meaningful relationships
•     outbursts of anger (recognised as too big for the incident that’s just occurred)
•     difficulty sleeping (tired and irritable each day)

This above list would been traditionally treated in 2 ways: firstly you may be offered medication (sleeping pills, emotion suppressants, anti depressants) to manage some of the physical symptoms ; and secondly you may be offered a series of counselling to talk through your trauma experience and to try to make more sense of it (which is good assuming it doesn’t require you to re-live those past experiences).

In Human Givens psychotherapy (which is the only therapy we’ll offer our clients at Healthy Chat ) our approach is simple and it’s also 2-fold:

1.      de-sensitise the trauma so that a client is no longer hijacked by their past experiences impacting their present reality. We do a powerful (and quick) piece of work on the very first session.
2.     re-equip the client to move on positively with their life. Here we work for 2 or 3 further sessions reviewing the parts of their life they’d now like to rebuild and move forward with - relationships, career, fitness, etc – and get on with designing and practicing some practical strategies to support that

Traumatic events are experienced by millions of people every year. Some a person may be fully aware of, and some may be blocked out of their mind for reasons of emotional (and sometimes physical) survival. In most cases a dramatic experience can’t be kept in check forever, so if you, or someone you know, is experiencing increasing difficulty in thinking clearly, managing overwhelm, or has unexpected outbursts of anger, it’s worth having a first conversation with a Human Givens therapist to explore whether a recent or old traumatic event might be the reason.

I’ve often found that the more simple a process is, the more we can trust it. Like:

•     Food: fruit, vegetables, meat (or not) & carbs in their natural form (if you’re reading dozen’s of ingredients its probably not a great choice) – keep it simple
•     Fitness: run, swim, walk, dance, move, enjoy. Step out of your house and get your heart rate up for 20 minutes. That’s it – keep it simple
•     Friendships: this feels good – do more of it; this feels like a chore - do less of it – keep it simple

Simplicity is the hallmark that a product or service can be accessed by many – a ‘more for all, less to none’ approach.

With trauma recovery, there is now enough scientific evidence to show that Human Givens therapy is the simplest, fastest solution for those who want relief from their trauma experiences. At Healthy Chat our success comes from having you living happy, fulfilling, motivated lives in as short a time frame as possible.

Trauma recovery – book at Healthy Chat now. And keep it simple!


For more Info : http://www.healthychat.co.uk

Medication – do your research

One of things I like to get clear on from the outset of working with a client is whether they’re taking medication – and if so, what is it and what effect does it have. Whether they’re emotion suppressants (for depression, grief, overwhelm, complex life change), sleeping tablets (stress & anxiety), pain management (migraines, cancer, post-ops), or nausea drugs (eating disorders or addictions)  - every single one of them has a wider impact on a person’s body than simply the remit it’s being taken for.

Some years ago I moved my practice from London to Aberdeenshire. Shortly after that I was introduced socially to a delightful and smart woman who, over a period of about 18 months, went from no medication to an increasingly-complex cocktail of at least 8 different types of pills daily - initially to manage depression, then weight gain, addiction, liver challenges, thrombosis, and on and on – until she died in hospital asking to be taken out of there because ‘ … all of this is too much’ (the drugs … not her life).

Go back to the beginning of that chapter, her depression began by not having access to her son because she was in conflict with her ex-husband. They had shared custody, however the husband didn’t always allow her the access she was due at weekends; he wouldn’t show up at court when she tried to hold him accountable through the present family law system; and he would speaking critically of the mum to the son further distancing them. In accumulation, this was the driving force for this woman’s stress, which in turn lead to an appeal for medical help and a first introduction to the anti-depressants and sleeping medication.

On many occasions I’ve had first conversations with clients that go a bit like this: ‘I realised it was serious when I went to my doctor and was perscribed with anti-depressants. I’m sitting here staring at them and I don’t want to start down this route … can you help?’. Ordinarily these clients will see me twice, perhaps 3 times, additionally-equipping themselves in each subsequent session, and then they leave and move on confidently with their next life chapter.

Most of us have an instinct about whether we really need:

•     a weight loss drug – or some nutritional advice and a tribe to exercise with
•     a sleeping tablet – or a meaningful, professional conversation to reduce our stress and work our best first choices
•     a pain suppressant – or some great physiotherapy and some genuine rest from our work or exercise regime

I’m not sitting here as a therapist in Aberdeen or as a counsellor in Dundee saying all medication is evil – far from it. I’m saying that in many cases heading to a doctor for advice is a great first step, and in many other cases it’s worth the time and effort to research whether there are alternatives to a pharmaceutical prescription that may help you more convincingly and faster without impacting your physical body in ways none of us fully understand.

Most of us at some point have taken time to understand the general nutritional or calorific content of our meals; how much more important is it that we do at least the same with the chemical content of our medication. Or even better, spend a few hours investigating the benefits a great nutritionist, physiotherapist, counsellor, massage therapist, bio-energy healer, acupuncture professional or chiropractor can offer you.

In this Human Givens therapist’s humble opinion, the more responsibility each one of us take for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, the more likely we are to live longer, happier, choice-filled lives.



For more Info : http://www.healthychat.co.uk