We promised you that we’d share our experiences at the Mental Health Awareness Weekend 2013 (MHAW) with you. We’re a little late; ’cause we were catching up on some rest after the hectic preparation.
So here goes…
The Mental Health Awareness Weekend begins tomorrow, and we are looking forward to it!
For today, we decided to share with all of you a little memento that we’re planning to give away to those whom we meet tomorrow.
But first, some background about the memento…
Through our posts, we’ve been talking about how it is okay to seek help and how seeking help is a sign of strength, not of weakness.
We understand that even then, when you do decide to go in for counseling, you might have some doubts or apprehensions-
“What really is counseling?”
“What happens in these sessions?”
“Will it actually help?”
These are real questions and a lot of people we interact with do voice them as well. So, we decided that real questions deserve real answers; we asked some of those who have been in therapy with us, to share what therapy or counseling means to them.
The Inner Space Team announces a group session, ‘The Person behind the Parent’, on the 11th of March, 2012. We held one such session on the 20th of November, 2011 and felt the need to reach out to you once again with what we believe are important perspectives for every parent to consider. As a parent you have dropped your children off to classes, therapy sessions, have attended Parent-Teacher meetings, open houses, been called to school to hear complaints or praises, fretted, fumed, stressed and of course loved it to some extent.
Time to love yourself, we say!
Most parents seek guidance on how they can change the negative behavior of their children and encourage more positive behavior. We have held two workshops at Inner Space focusing on behavior modification addressing these concerns. Behavior modification is the process applied to enable the child and parents to methodically bring about the required changes. It involves setting up rules of actions and consequent positive or negative repercussions. Positive behavior gets rewards while negative behavior gets no rewards.
This is also what we often do in life naturally. However, more often than not we do it inconsistently.
The Inner Space team announces a parent group session on communication with children. In any relationship, we understand what the opposite person thinks and feels about us only through what they communicate to us, verbally and non-verbally. This is perhaps why ‘telling it right’ is very important in a parent-child relationship too.
The Inner Space Team announces a group session, ‘The Person behind the Parent’. As a parent you have dropped your children off to classes, therapy sessions, have attended Parent-Teacher meetings, open houses, been called to school to hear complaints or praises, fretted, fumed, stressed and of course loved it to some extent.
Time to love yourself, we say!
Tip 7: Be Mindful
I have spoken about mindfulness before, but I cannot stop raving about the benefits of this simple concept. Mindfulness, as someone said, is about paying extra-ordinary attention to ordinary experiences. Simply put, mindfulness is about being in the present completely and fully.
TIP 6: BELIEVE IN IMPERMANENCE
Nothing lasts forever
About the lows:
Do you believe that good things don’t last forever?
Unfortunately true isn’t it?
However, flipping the coin around you’ll see that even bad things don’t last forever!
I’m sure each of us has been through some difficult times. Times when life was so tough that it was difficult to smile, when each breath and each step took just too much effort. Remember the times, when you thought it was impossible to survive without a loved one, or to conquer this particular challenge, or to surface from this deepest low. Pause. See where you are now. You didnt just survive, you lived! The disaster passed. Life went on. You moved on.
TIP 5: Identify Irrational Thought Patterns
‘I should be loved by everyone for everything I do.’ How does this statement sound to you? Chances are it will sound unrealistic, irrational and almost impossible. How can anybody be loved by everyone for everything they do?
Let me introduce a situation here. You are at a party, exchanging pleasantries with other folk. You spot someone you know across the room. You generously walk up and say ‘hi’. That person however barely acknowledges you and walks away. How are you likely to feel? Are you more likely to dismiss it and say, ‘never mind, he must have been frustrated’ or to dwell upon how ‘disrespectful’ and ‘insulting’ a gesture that was?
We specialize in combining psychotherapy with deep wellness practices like mindfulness and meditation and creating a customized mental health plan for individuals and organisations.
We specialize in combining psychotherapy with deep wellness practices like mindfulness and meditation and creating a customized mental health plan for individuals and organisations.
A young woman from another country moved with her family to live for one year in a town near the monastery. When, in the course of the year she discovered the monastery, she would periodically visit to have discussions with the Abbess. The Abbess introduced her to meditation, which became very meaningful for the young woman.
When the family’s year-long stay was drawing to an end, the young woman asked the Abbess, “In my country there is no Buddhism and no one has even heard about meditation. How can I continue to learn and deepen the practice you have started me on?”
The Abbess said, “When you return home ask far and wide for who, among the wise people, is recognized as having the greatest ability to listen. Ask that person to instruct you in the art of listening. What you learn about listening from such a person will teach you how to further your meditation practice.
― Gil Fronsdal, A Monastery Within: Tales from the Buddhist Path
