Mediation can assist a couple in resolving difficulties connected to child contact, finances, and property disputes following the breakup of a relationship with the assistance of qualified mediators. Aspire Family Mediators

Dec05

Reinforcing Boundaries and Saying No

by shgcounselling on December 5, 2020 at 1:11 am
Posted In: Springhill Group

It is often discouraged in our society to set off boundaries, to say no or to prioritize our own needs but it is time to learn that doing these things are not selfishness.  As we grow older from the time we were in our childhood, we were raised to be helpful and to look after others, repeatedly told ‘don’t be selfish’ or to ‘stop being so attention seeking, it’s not all about you’.

Self-sacrifice behavior is emotionally rewarding but can also be extremely damaging.  Know your limitations and the limitations of being to compassionate and sensitive to other people’s needs, you may end up straggling with your own identity, with what you want, need and what your boundaries are.  Not reinforcing our boundaries may cost you of the feeling overloaded, resentful and unfulfilled.  It is not healthy to say yes when really you want to say no.  You must learn to prioritize things and you must consider prioritizing taking care of yourself, especially if you have other people relying on you.

The air-plane metaphor, like in an emergency on an airplane you need to prioritize saving yourself first before other.  This explains why prioritizing your needs is not selfish but essential.

Homework – how to say no

Buy some time that will allow you to check in with yourself, it can hard to say no but instead try and get in the habit of not answering immediately. Instead say ‘I’m going to take some time to think about this’ or ‘I’ll call or text you back, I have to check if I can fit that in’.

Check in with yourself, reflect whether this is something you want to do and what affect it will have on your needs and wants.  Everything is difficult in the beginning specially when you feel disconnected from your feelings and needs, but over time it will become easier.  There are many mindfulness techniques that you can use to tune into yourself that I will talk about in a later article.

Consider your medium, if you are finding it hard to say no in person then why not say no via text or email.  If you feel nervous about saying no in person try role-playing what you want to say before hand with a sympathetic friend or counselor.  Then eventually you’ll get used to it and it will be easier.

The power of no, a small but complete sentence that can be very hard to say.  Practice saying it in the mirror repeatedly.  You’ll find that on repeating it’s just another word.  No scarier than any other.

Do not explain or apologize, be concise and there is no need to explain rather say ‘Thanks for asking me. But I can’t do that.’  You are opening yourself up to a negotiation by explaining thus giving the other person to persuade you.

Be kind to yourself, perhaps this will be hard and you won’t get this right the first time or even in the next times but that’s OK.  When you feel that you could have handled this situation differently try using it as a learning situation, not an excuse to mentally beat yourself up. It might feel uncomfortable at first, change often does. Learning to reinforce personal boundaries is a process not an end result.

 

└ Tags: , ,
Oct07

Mental Health Services Usage by People with Depression

by shgcounselling on October 7, 2021 at 5:23 am
Posted In: Springhill Group

A new study has found more than half the people in Ontario who reported they had major depression did not use physician-based mental health services in the following year.

 

“It’s concerning to us that many Ontarians with mental health needs are not accessing clinician-based care,” said Katherine Smith, the lead author and epidemiologist in the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael’s Hospital.

 

“Some people may seek non-medical types of support or care, such as clergy, alternative medicine, psychologists or social workers.  But we don’t know for sure, so the gap remains of concern.”

 

The study used OHIP data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. The findings appear in the journal Health.

 

A predictable one in four people undergo at one point in their lives from depression, which lessens quality of life, is linked with amplified disability and lower productivity at work.  More than twice as often as men women are diagnosed with depression.

 

Smith had set out to see whether gender plays a role in seeking mental health care.   As a general rule, about 10 per cent more than men women use mental health services, showing the fact they use health care services overall as much as than men.

 

More than half - 55.3 per cent - of people in Ontario with self-reported major depression had no contact with physicians for mental health reasons in the following year.  Additional research is needed to understand why, Smith said.

 

She said some ethnic groups may not be comfortable accessing physician-based mental health services or may prefer to use non-medical services. Stigma around mental illness may also deter some people, she said.

 

Men, as compared to women, have the tendency to delay seeing a doctor for minor mental health concerns, but will ask help as soon as a mental health problem reaches a definite threshold.

 

Among those with depression, she found the gender gap was small, only five percentage points.  Women were somewhat more likely than men to see a primary care provider for depression - 30.4 per cent vs. 24.6 per cent, except there was little gender difference in who sought specialty care, like from a psychiatrist.

 

Comparing to those people who could have had other mental health concerns without major depression, there was a significant gender difference: 21 per cent of women and 13 per cent of men had a mental health visit, a gender gap of 8 percentage points.

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
Sep04

Teach Our Children Well

by shgcounselling on September 4, 2021 at 2:50 am
Posted In: Springhill Group

There would come a time when you wish that every aspects of life is as easy as arranging the lines of seven-year-old students.  It is like kindergarten students are more behave than the outside world.  Does school really affect the way we behave when we get older and done with school?

Isn’t the concept of lining up, or waiting your turn, or listening while someone else is speaking, something that is supposed to be hard-wired from the age of five onward, thanks to attending school should be a basic and common etiquette for adults?  Are people “misbehaving” in the adult world was an effect of their schooling when they were younger.

If schooling does indeed have a significant impact on us up until our adult years, how does it manifest itself in the everyday world of being a “grown-up”? And perhaps more importantly, are we thinking of education as a means to a positively practical end as we leave school behind us?

Canadians were raising their children and how it was negatively impacting their ability to function once they’d left home to go to university or work. Do not “helicopter parent” your kid rather spend the entire time wondering if it was possible that some of the struggles being discussed weren’t a result of an education that had misfired in shaping these youngsters’ skills sets.

Years back, things are better.  Today, students were being pushed through despite not having passed exams then blames the education system for not being the same as it was years before is a bit too get-off-my-lawn.  Before schooling seemed rigid and wildly archaic, meaning learning is far more than any generation.  Perhaps it was just a case of an education still being a good fit for the society it hoped to produce at the time.  Or maybe education is an organism in a constant state of flux, and sometimes the growing pains of one generation will greatly benefit the one coming up behind.

It all comes down to what a country/people/group wants an education to be.  The students should be more confident and self-aware.  They must think critically to be able to utilize deductive reasoning, to problem solve and so on.  Teach them skills that soon will be able to grow with them, and will evolve into useful tools for navigating their adult lives.  Success is not measured out in numbers on a chart and letters across a table.  The problem is we are all misbehaved, we can all sit nicely in a circle, raise our hands, and wait for our turn to talk.

 

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
May08

Anger Management: How To Deal With Anger

by shgcounselling on May 8, 2021 at 5:43 am
Posted In: Springhill Group

Everyone gets angry once in a while if we are mistreated or feel we have been “wronged” and it is a normal and healthy emotion, you have to handle it appropriately.  What we need to emphasized on is what we do with this anger.  It is time to seek help when you feel like your anger is not doing any good with your day to day life such as work, relationship, ability to achieve your goal and many more.  Anger management’s goal is to learn methods and new ways to control your anger.  Many people who suffer from this condition come to seek help to deal with their problem but most of the time, fear, resentment, and unmet expectations that are the root causes for their anger.  Trough counseling the problem is addressed and the anger soon dissipates.  After, the client is able to be aware that they do not have to be controlled by their anger.  One more thing is that they are not being the “victim” of others or society but rather they are responsible for their own actions and behaviors.

 

Some people just wouldn’t want to show their real self so they stick with the reputation of an angry person or sometimes it is their way to resent from other people from getting too close to them.  This may result to people afraid of you or if not disrespectful of you.  Communicating your needs and frustrations in an productive and respectful way people will tend to listen more just to learn about your needs and frustrations.

 

As stated earlier, anger is a normal emotion.  The objective is to deal with the underlying issues and feelings indentified with anger.  And the next goal is to learn healthy ways to deal with this emotion.  Some may think that letting the anger out is healthy until they realize that the have secluded themselves from the people around them like relationships to partners, children, co-workers and etc.  Added the fact that this can have a very negative impact on the way others see and treat you.

 

For some instances, this type of behavior might be modeled from past experiences from family members seen while growing up.  You can do something to cut the cycle before your children might end up having the same problem and before you isolate yourself from others.

 

Is it uneasy for you to compromise and acknowledge you’re wrong at times? 

 

Accepting that you are wrong and compromising can be hard at first but consider that you cannot for all time get your way by being the loudest and most demanding. It does nothing but pushes people away.

 

Are you afraid to let your guard down and allow people to truly see you for who you are? 

Other people are saying that if you wanted to achieve anything you must be aggressive, tough and in control.  Anger can have a repealing effect and sends you spiraling out of control.

 

Do you believe that no matter what, you always have to be right and opinions and viewpoints of others are a direct threat or challenge to you?  Oftentimes we get mad because we observe behavior in someone else that we see in ourselves.  This brings up sentiments that we do not desire to appear at or deal with.  Underneath the anger may be hurt, disappointment, trauma and resentments.  It’s vital to become aware of how your body is reacting to feelings of anger.

 

If you sense your self get tense, “see red”, find yourself clenching your fist and jaw, have trouble concentrating, find your breathing to be rapid and fast then maybe it is really time for you to seek help.  There are numerous other physical ciphers but these are a little you may notice.

 

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
May02

Strengthening The Marriage

by shgcounselling on May 2, 2021 at 1:35 am
Posted In: Springhill Group

Couples with thriving young children and struggling marriages aren’t a new sight in therapy office.  It can be a real challenge to shift from a married couple to married couple with kids.  Arguments and little fights can be healthy sometimes and couple without kids had the plenty of time to attend to their relationship while now that kid’s are present, their needs alone can leave both parents drained and exhausted. This could mean that at the end of the day couples will feel tired and no time for each other.

There are many reasons why divorce happen but one possible reason is parents tend to get overboard attending to their children while neglecting their responsibilities as a husband or wife.

Most of the parents can only have their alone time after the kids are in bed.  And what make things worse after your long day is both of you has barely the energy to even ask how each others day went because you cannot even pull up the covers.  When you reach this point maybe you are in the edge of your relationship.

It will help so much if couples will find time for each other; it is always a good idea to have a day for the parents alone.  Weekend mornings can be a good time whereas stress of the work week recedes and before the daily demands of the children start stacking up, couples sometimes find their best opportunity to shift into a mode where they can focus on each other.

It is also important to talk to your kids and explain that parents need time for each other too.  To make them busy, think of possible and safe way to make use of their time.  As soon as a couple acquires some uninterrupted time together, now other challenges appear to happen such as how are they going to use this alone time well.

Try not to do the following:

  • Never compare, do not weigh against whose life is harder
  • Do not complain and tell your partner the s/he doesn’t give you what you need
  • Expect your partner to instantly feel like being sexual
  • Give up on intimacy and plan the children’s week together

Some good ideas consist of:

  • Take turns listening to each other.
  • The listener tries to empathize and understand without trying to solve the problem
  • Massage each other while listening to nice music
  • Take turns appreciating yourself while your partner listens and smiles
  • Take a walk together in a beautiful place
  • Take a bath or hot tub together
  • Whatever you do, focus on being together
  • Pay attention to each other
  • And consciously try to say things that build a sense of connection.

Treating to your relationship in this technique is one of the most excellent things you can do for your children. And for sure you will enjoy it yourself!

└ Tags: , , , , , , , ,