Columbia Valley Counselling
Centre Society
"Creating Healthy Employees, Families, and Communities"
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Centre Society "Creating Healthy Employees, Families, and Communities"
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EFAP
RAP Your Employee
& Family Assistance Program E-Mail Newsletter
EFAP
RAP SPRING/SUMMER EDITION 2008 - Volume 3, Number 4 SIMPLE COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL STRATEGIES FOR COPING WITH EVERYDAY LIFE: By: Sara Clark, BA (Psych) “I
am an old man and have known many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
Mark Twain ***************************************************************************************************** Many of you may have heard
the term Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive Restructuring) as a means of
addressing personal mental health challenges, but have dismissed it as sounding
far too complex to be useful. After
all, many of us feel far too busy just getting through our day with work,
family, health and household demands to even think, let alone to change
the way we think! Cognitive-Behavioral
strategies are, however, very simple and common sense and upon reflection many
of you may realize that you already use them and have likely taught them to your
children and/or learned them from you parents. Most simply put the
philosophy of the Cognitive-Behavioral Approach is what you think affects
the way you feel (physically and emotionally), and how you feel affects
the way you behave (act). Logically
if/when faced with everyday challenges, we think negative, critical angry or sad
thoughts then we will likely feel anxious, sad/angry, hopeless and
“stressed” our bodies will feel tense, shaky, or “wound-up” and this
will be reflected in the way we behave (lashing out, impatient, teary). The Cognitive Behavior
Approach asks us to identify situations which have caused us distress and
identify the thoughts you have when they are occurring.
How these thoughts made you feel and how those feelings impacted how you
behaved. The therapy or
restructuring part consists of both the understanding of how our thoughts effect
our feeling and thus behavior and the purposeful replacement of damaging
thoughts with new more rational coping thoughts.
Furthermore, learning to recognize the signals affect the negative
thoughts of distress our body is sending us and then implementing purposeful
body relaxation strategies (deep breathing, muscle relaxation) paired with the
new positive coping self-statement (“I’m okay, Rome wasn’t built in a
day”, “one step at a time”) will make coping with everyday life challenges
both large and small much more manageable. Now let’s put this in
practical everyday terms by demonstrating its application in coping with a
common real-life situation:
A. The Situation: i.e. it is a weekday morning and you are rushing to get the kids ready for school on time and yourself ready for work. Your 6 year daughter wants her hair “just so”, the lunches aren’t made and you still haven’t had your shower! B. Your Thoughts About the Situation: i.e. I'll never make it! I'm going to be late for work! The kids will get a late slip, Miss Smyth will give me a talking to, I’m such a loser! Susan Brown is never late, her kids are always perfect and she is thin and has perfect streaked hair! I look a mess! Hannah is sooo fussy about her hair, I can’t take it!!! C. The Resulting Way You Feel: i.e. Physically shaking, heart pounding, jaw clenched, etc. Emotionally very anxious, out of control, sad and inadequate sub-standard and depressed. D. The Resulting Way You Behave: i.e. snap at kids, lose your temper, and yell, things take even longer because your behavior is agitated and you can't find needed objects (like the lunch kits!) or complete tasks in a timely fashion.
Overall
Result: The kids arrive at school just on time, but are sad/angry and agitated.
You feel similar and head off to work feeling overwhelmed and your day is
only just starting. All day at work
you feel badly about how you dealt with the kids and you wish you behaved
differently. *Sound
Familiar?:
Now let’s focus on your negative irrational thoughts about the
situation and very deliberately develop more positive rational thoughts
to replace them (positive coping statement) i.e. “I’ll never make it” –
stay calm, you’re okay, one step at a time.
We always make it in the end “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
“I’m such a loser” – you’re doing your best, you are a good
parent, so what if you aren’t perfect. Next come up with a
few simple relaxation strategies to pair with your positive coping statement,
i.e. deep breathing, relax jaw, relax neck and shoulders. Do a system’s check. Practice
implementing the “pre-selected positive coping thought” paired with the
simple relaxation strategies whenever you face challenging everyday life
experiences large or small! As with
most things, your technique will improve with practice.
You may even find yourself becoming the calm, reasonable person you
always knew you were! Don’t be
surprised if your family and friends start quoting your coping statement back at
you! Just this morning I prompted
my son to get ready for school, he replied “well mom, Rome wasn’t built in a
day”! CVCCS has numerous great resources on the cognitive-behavioral approach and we encourage members to use them. Resources are available to all members and individuals do not have to be involved in counselling to access them! Simply call or email our office and we can make arrangements for you to borrow these resources.
SPRING IS IN THE AIR! By: Frances Rhodes, Administrative Assistant I was just looking outside my office window - the sun
is shining on my face and thinking life is great, people walking with a spring
in their step, everyone looks full of energy and happy to be outside. Springtime is a time of renewal – all around us we can see signs of nature being revitalized. March, April and May are perfect months to take stock of where we’re at and where we want to go. Just like nature’s gardens, we too require careful tending to fully blossom and create a happy, healthy life. According to the Canadian Mental ealth Association - When it comes to our mental and
emotional health, this is a good time to take a close look at how we deal with
stress and difficult events and assess our frame of mind – are we enjoying and
appreciating our environment and the people in it? This is a time for you to spring into action and revitalize and renew your mind and body! Wishing everyone a safe, happy and healthy summer!!
“GO WITH THE FLOW” - HOW TO LIVE LIFE FREE OF STRESS AND ANXIETY - By: Nilo Moller, CEAP, EFT-ADV - Counsellor
Accommodating the water A Taoist story
tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a
high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers
feared for his life. Miraculously,
he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls.
People asked him how he managed to survive.
“I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me.
Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it.
Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl.
This is how I survived.” * * * * * I think that we have all known of people who have seemed to
journey through life with few cares and worries. They are the ones who have been defined by their ability to
“go with the flow” or “roll with the punches”, seemingly able to deal
with whatever comes their way with little stress and a kind of unflinching
optimism. Many sages, spiritual teachers and philosophers have
expounded on there being really only two major and oppositional emotions –
LOVE and FEAR. And the
“River of Life” has been a metaphor in many traditions as to how we travel
this journey from birth to death. Imagine
yourself in a boat floating through life. At
times, the waters are calm, and you are feeling at peace.
At other times you encounter raging rapids that provoke anxiety and a
sense of emergency as events around you tend to spiral out of your control.
So, you try to turn your boat around as you paddle your oars madly
against the stream, only to exhaust yourself. Then there are other occasions
when you encounter a big rock in the middle of the stream when you feel
“stuck”, maybe panicky, not knowing how you are going to negotiate yourself
around this block. Those individuals who are best able to go with the flow,
who are best adept at managing “the stuff of life”, stress, anxiety, etc.,
share many of the following techniques which I would like to share with the
readers of the EFAP Rap, because learning to go with the flow has the potential
to immediately improve the quality of your life.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. A.A. Milne, Pooh’s Little Instruction Book.
WHAT’S
GOING ON IN THE HEADS OF YOUR TEENAGERS?
By:
Laura Anderson, MSW. BSW, RSW
How many
times have parents asked themselves and their teens that question?
Thanks to new technologies in medical imaging, we now have some
surprising information about the development of the brain during teen years that
helps answer that question. This
knowledge can make a real difference in how we view and parent our teens. We
used to think that all significant brain growth occurred in the first five years
of life. It is true that 90-95% of
brain development is done by age six. But,
we now know that the most advanced part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex,
develops during the teen years. This is the part of the brain that helps to calm emotions,
make good decisions, control impulsive behaviors, set priorities and recognize
and respond appropriately to other people’s emotional states.
When the frontal lobes of the brain haven’t yet developed enough, it
can lead to risky behaviors, poor decision-making, thrill seeking, explosive
emotions, and a seeming lack of empathy for others.
Seem
familiar? These are the challenging
characteristics we often associate with teen years. The good news is parental influence and teaching can
profoundly influence their child’s brain development, much like in the first
few years of their lives. The time and energy you spend on this during the teen
years can really pay off. So, what
can you do? As
one step, I would encourage you to read a book called “Yes Your Teen is
Crazy”, by Michael Bradley. Dr.
Bradley is a psychologist and well-known media speaker on teen issues.
His book has won numerous awards and contains wonderful information that
helps parents understand and work with their teens. He discusses the adolescent
brain and the physical and social influences of the teen world.
He presents many strategies for effective parenting and addresses
challenging issues like drugs, sex and dating, making and enforcing rules, peer
pressure, etc. In one
chapter, called “Surviving Your Kid’s Rage”, he discusses ways to handle
those emotional outbursts that often seem to come from nowhere and have
devastating consequences for the parent-teen relationship.
Bradley identifies how your child’s rage can create so many difficult
issues for the parent, such as triggering our own past experiences with rage,
feelings of dislike for our child, loss of control and disliking ourselves for
feeling powerless to handle things well. Most
often, we respond to our kid’s rage with our own anger/rage and therefore
reinforce rage as acceptable behavior. We miss important opportunities to help our kids find a way
out of those extreme emotions and to learn good ways of self-control.
This is the time to help those developing brains hardwire more
appropriate behaviors. Among the
tips that Bradley offers parents for dealing with these situations are: -Refuse to
talk if the outburst continues. -Don’t
handle things on the spot. Try and
withdraw and give your kid a safe space to get back some control. -Don’t get
physical and don’t let your teen get physical.
Dr. Bradley has some good tips on how to do this. -Later, when
things are calm, preferably the next day, ask to talk to your child about the
incident. Then talk only about your
part, what you learned, how rage makes you feel, what you would do differently
etc. -Ask what
needs to be done to correct the damage (especially if other people were
affected). The
idea is to teach your child that we can learn from mistakes. You would be modeling strength, maturity, forgiveness, and
would be teaching respect, not fear. In Bradley's words, “Fear shuts down
communication, respect opens it up. Respect
allows teens to copy and incorporate your ideas, values, and morals”.
Those seem like wise words and important messages for all of us.
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