Talking to teenagers

Photo by Morgan Basham on Unsplash Anxiety lesson 6 – Expression of feelings Its not uncommon for people with anxiety disorders to withhold their true feelings. There are many reasons for this, one common one is the need to be in control and a fear of losing it. When feelings have been denied over time, anxiety can start to manifest. I wrote about this briefly in Anxiety lesson 1 potential causes https://helenharveycounselling.blogspot.com/2017/10/anxiety-learning-potential-causes.html Because people with anxiety/phobic tendency tend to be emotionally reactive and have very strong feelings, the expression of them is even more important for their emotional well-being. When I did my degree in Person Centred Therapy, it was a requirement that you checked in with yourself and others in the morning, also a portion of the day was dedicated to personal development. Again, this is a discipline that requires practice, to notice and name feelings and the memories/events that a

Yes, you can be anything you want to be, with hard work, exceptional luck, patience, persistence and natural skill…X-Factor auditions are full, how about the BAE systems apprenticeship? I went to a Christmas singing concert last week to watch my daughter and others sing 70’s and 80’s disco tracks as that was the theme of the concert. The concert was organised by the local singing school. They all did well, some as young as five braving the glaring stage lights to perform a song, I couldn’t do it. My daughter has natural singing talent, after the show she asked me for my feedback, I said she had done really well, although she could have given it a bit more oomph. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. The uncomfortable reality is… she practised the song at singing school for a few Saturday mornings, learning the lyrics and timing of the song but then she relied on the assumption that she would wing it, only practising for half an hour for the 3 days before the

Anxiety lesson 5 Negative thinking and self-talk Do you feel like you are putting on a mask, when you have all this anxiety and you don’t want the world to know? Do you have constant negative chatter going on? We assume that situations and not cognitions (your judgement of threat) is responsible for your anxiety. Anxious and fearful people are much more likely to overestimate the intensity of threat, which of course then leads to avoidance of situations. We do this by reinforcing the negative all the time with negative thoughts and self-talk. Negative thoughts and self-talk is automatic, we have hundreds of negative thoughts everyday and catching them as they run through your brain and looking at them closer is a very difficult thing indeed and takes a lot of practice. YOU CAN LEARN TO SLOW DOWN AND NOTICE YOUR NEGATIVE TALK With self-talk comes a whole host of other information that is lumped together such as images, memories and associations. Identifying sel

When was it that we agreed to buy the Adidas, and pay their mobile bill...without expecting cooperation. Appropriate for this time of year, when requests are frequent but a helping attitude is not. Back in the summer, a friend explained that they were trying to get a break down south at their parents with their two children, one 9 and one 14. The 14-year-old was refusing to go. My friend was asking ' what am I meant to do, physically man handle him into the car?' I looked over at the teenager son riding a £190 scooter with Nike trainers and Adidas tracksuit, talking on his iPhone 6 and said to myself “THIS IS ALL THE WRONG WAY AROUND” When did we start to feel so disempowered in the investment/return arrangement of our children? The teenager version of adult life looks like this. You leave for work 5 minutes before your meant to arrive there, you arrive and sit at your desk with your arms folded and your head on the desk. Every now and agai