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Cultivating Resilience: Building and Maintaining Healthy Habits

Building healthy habits and breaking old ones are crucial for managing mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Creating new healthy habits involves starting small, being specific, linking to existing routines, focusing on positive outcomes, consistent practice, and self-compassion. Breaking old habits requires awareness of triggers, understanding underlying needs, replacement behaviours, and patience. Examples of beneficial healthy habits for mental well-being include mindfulness, exercise, good sleep, healthy eating, journaling, hobbies, time in nature, breathing exercises, self-compassion, social connection, and self-Havening (a form of CPR for the amygdala). Self-Havening can enhance other healthy habits by promoting calmness and emotional regulation. The timeframe for habit change varies, and consistency is more important than a specific duration. To maintain new habits, prioritise them, find accountability, visualise success, focus on progress, reflect on benefits, adapt if needed, and embrace the process.

Overcoming Burnout: Simple Self-Help Strategies

Overcoming burnout requires a commitment to self-care and the implementation of simple, consistent strategies. Tools such as mindfulness and meditation can calm the mind, while self-compassion fosters a kinder inner dialogue. Gratitude shifts focus to the positive, and setting boundaries protects your energy. Prioritising self-care, practising breathing exercises, and ensuring adequate rest are fundamental for recovery. These tools generally require minimal effort to begin with, and while the exact timeline for noticing results varies, consistent practice over weeks can lead to significant improvements in managing burnout symptoms and enhancing overall well-being.

How can caffeine consumption affect anxiety levels?

caffeine consumption can significantly increase anxiety levels through its stimulant properties, effects on the nervous system, potential to mimic anxiety symptoms, interaction with pre-existing anxiety disorders, and disruption of sleep and body chemistry. Reducing or eliminating caffeine is often recommended as a strategy for anxiety management.

Coaching for Depression: An Overview of Approaches and Choices

Coaching for depression is a solution-focused method that empowers individuals to set and achieve personally meaningful goals. It is a useful alternative to methods focused on exploring feelings or thoughts and instead it focuses on action, strengths, and moving towards a preferred future. Other approaches such as mindful self-compassion, Havening, NLP, and lifestyle adjustments offer a variety of ways to manage depression. The best approach is one that aligns with an individual’s personal style, needs, and goals. It is important to remember that no single approach will work for everyone, and it can be helpful to combine elements from various approaches or to try different things until the best fit is found. Ultimately, the key to managing depression is to take positive action, learn skills, build a sense of hope and engage in life again.

How the Havening Techniques could benefit you.

Havening Techniques are a psychosensory treatment that uses touch to eliminate unwanted feelings from distressing memories and events, and promote  personal growth. The method is consistent with current neuroscience. Havening is a gentle, rapid technique that is easy to learn, can be self-applied, and has essentially no side effects. What are Havening Techniques used for?… Read More »How the Havening Techniques could benefit you.

Sleep and Anxiety: Reducing your anxiety by improving sleep

There is a strong link between sleep and anxiety. Lack of sleep can increase anxiety symptoms, while good sleep can help reduce anxiety. Inadequate sleep increases cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for the “fight or flight” response. High cortisol levels keep the body in a state of heightened alertness, making a person feel “on edge”… Read More »Sleep and Anxiety: Reducing your anxiety by improving sleep

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Clients sometimes ask me how much sleep they should be getting. What they’re really asking is “How little sleep can I get away with?” Here I want to look at the question from a different perspective. What do you gain by having ‘enough’ sleep? Then, how much is that for you? Studies have shown that… Read More »How Much Sleep Do You Need?