Wow – this month has whizzed past- a blink and you've missed it
experience. I am really happy that the
days are getting longer. There are two
events of note this month
Firstly - the Chinese New Year!
This is meant to be very auspicious one as it is the year of the Dragon
and I have read that is expected that
the population of China will dramatically increase as couples strive to give
birth to a baby during this year - I hope they all have lots of have fun
trying! I was born in the year of the horse and of course that is a wonderfully
auspicious year as well!
Now not many of you may know that this week is it also Australia
Day. I have very mixed feelings about
this day. I grew up innocently
celebrating it to mark the foundation of the modern state of Australia. People are on their summer hols or coming back
from them and preparing for the new school year starting in February. No it is not weird! I find starting a school
year in September weird!
It was only much later I discovered another very different view – a much
darker side. Many in Australia now refer to January 26th as Invasion Day – the day when persecution of
the indigenous people really got under. As an Australian, I think it is as
important to acknowledge this part of our history as it is to mark the
Holocaust in Europe
That dreaded essay is finally grinding to completion. My poor supervisor was subjected to my angst
about it and she suggested that I think of it like a stained glass project –
that I put all my ideas down on different bits of paper and lay them all out on
the floor and move them around to form patterns of groups of similar
ideas. That quite appeals to me because
I have all sorts of wonderful sentences and phrases in my head and I sit at the
computer and they seem to just fly out the window, no matter how hard I shut
it. She suggested that I quickly get
those ideas down somewhere else away from the computer so I capture them all.
Sometimes I really do despair though.
You would think that having got this far I would feel confident writing
my coursework but every time I struggle, give myself a really hard time and end
up feeling like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Funnily though, I have never missed a
deadline although as the deadline draws near I fear something will happen so
that I wont be able to pull out of the
bag this time. I think I need some
serious therapy!
There is a brilliant book I have discovered called ‘The Worry Cure Stop
Worrying and Start Living ’ by Robert L Leahy. After prescribing it to one of
my clients on the advice of my supervisor, I decided I really should read it
myself and I found it so useful and I have been working on distinguishing
between productive and unproductive worry.
In his introduction, the author says (p.35) the worst ways to handle worry are:
- Seeking reassurance
- Trying to stop your thoughts
- Collecting information
- Checking over and over
- Avoiding discomfort
- Numbing yourself with alcohol, drugs, and food
- Over preparing
- Using safety behaviours
- Always trying to make a good impression
- Ruminating- chewing it over and over
- Demanding certainty
- Refusing to accept the fact that you have crazy thoughts
So if you would like to know more – you’ll have to read the book. If you
are a worrier it is well worth it. Two
of my clients said that before they read the book, they thought they were the
only ones who thought so weirdly and it was very reassuring to find out that
lots of people thought similar things and there was something they could do
about it.
– back to the essay fuelled by
my newly acquired productive worry techniques!
NB: No , I am not on
commission to any book publishers!
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