You are Spirit

You are resilient, hopeful, and inspiring.

You have a lot of emotional, physical, and mental energy.

You nurture and nourish yourself.

You know that you need fulfilment and downtime if you want to be your best.

You stay present in every moment.

You don’t allow yourself to be distracted or flustered.

You appreciate the life you have been given.

You embrace all that is beautiful in the world.

But what about you? Are you mind, body or spirit? Click here to find out.

Most of the counselling work that Egan does takes place within a variety of organisations and institutions worldwide. He describes this work as his fourfold approach; consultant, coach, counsellor and confidant.  

In the first Chapter of his book The Skilled Helper, Egan describes what helping is all about, including the positive and negative elements. He also addresses the issue of whether or not helping is for everyone.

In the second chapter we are introduced to the helping model, which Egan refers to as the Skilled Helper Model. You can read a detailed description of this model by clicking here.

The third chapter focuses on the value of respect, the culture of helping and the value of client empowerment, an important element of any counselling relationship.

Part two of the book (chapter four to six) describes the power of active listening, basic empathy techniques and the art of summarising.

Part three (chapter seven to twelve) deals with helping the client to tell their story, reluctance and resistance from the client and how to successfully challenge.

Part four (chapter thirteen to eighteen) focuses on discovering what the client really wants, and what they are willing to do to get there, and finishes by discussing strategies for achieving these goals.

I would recommend this book to anyone studying to be a counsellor, it is usually standard reading on counselling courses, or to experienced counsellors who are serious about taking their skills to the next level. You can purchase the book by clicking the The Skilled Helper: A Problem-Management Approach to Helping to the left under ‘Links’.

Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas is lead author of the paper on internet dating, which shows that people looking for romance online actually behave very much as they do in face to face dating and relationships. “Our findings dispel the myth that people using online dating are that different than any one else who might find a relationship through friends, school or work,” Hall explains.

His team investigated over 5000 individuals dating online in search of long-term partners, from all walks of life and over a wide age range (18 to over 60). The survey included questions on personality traits such as openness, extroversion, education and income. “We also asked a series of questions on an important trait that we call self monitoring,” Hall says. “Self monitoring is about how we try to present ourselves in a favourable light to others, to make people like us.” Someone who scores as ‘low’ on self monitoring is extremely authentic when describing themselves in all circumstances, and those who score ‘high’ are more prone to so-called white lies.

What sort of white lies did they discover men and women tell? Click here to read the article and find out.

Do you agree with this research? What have your experiences with online dating been like? Do you think it’s a good way to meet people?

Witnessing simple acts of kindness has been shown to lift our mood and motivate us to do good acts.  How many times have you let someone out at a junction only for them to do the same thing for another motorist further along the road? I think the following story from help others also reinforces this:

Two years ago an African man from Malawi, Elias, arrived at my sister’s home in the rough, bush country of South Africa with nothing but the shirt on his back. He was hoping to come to South Africa to find employment in order to support his family in Malawi. Little did he realize my sister at that time was struggling to keep her body and soul together. Nevertheless, Elias was given permission to stay on the property with the understanding that she was unable to help him financially and he would have to find “piece work” employment to support himself.

As unemployment is rife, Elias was unable to find work immediately, so my sister taught him how to grow organic vegetables, sew and bake. Elias was keen to learn whatever he could to take the knowledge back to Malawi with him.

Elias finally found employment but my sister hit a bad patch. Being without transport, this was no joke when you are live 15–20 miles from the nearest shop through rough mountainous terrain. Despite approaching various neighbours in the area asking for a lift, no one was willing to assist her even though most were going into town at least once a day.

Early one rainy, cold winter’s Saturday morning, Elias arrived at my sister’s back door ready to walk to the shops for her. Touched as she was by this gesture, she had to tell Elias she had no money as she had not been able to get to the bank. His reply was, “I know ma’am, but I got pay so I will buy for you now.” Not taking no for an answer, Elias did a wonderful act of kindness straight from his heart.

I find it very difficult to understand how those of us that have much cannot help one another, yet someone with nothing and far from his own home, without being approached, so willingly gave his time and hard earned money. If you felt good after reading this story, ‘pass it on’ and do something good for someone today. How did it make you feel?

Approximately 1% of the population has, at one time or another, used self-inflicted physical injury as a means of coping with an overwhelming situation or feeling.

It’s important to remember that, even though it may not be apparent to an outside observer, self-injury is serving a function for the person who does it. Figuring out what functions it serves and helping someone learn other ways to get those needs met is essential to helping people who self-harm. Some of the reasons self-injurers have given for their acts include:

• Affect modulation (distraction from emotional pain, ending feelings of numbness, lessening a desire to suicide, calming overwhelming/intense feelings)
• Maintaining control and distracting the self from painful thoughts or memories
• Self-punishment (either because they believe they deserve punishment for either having good feelings or being an “evil” person or because they hope that self-punishment will avert worse punishment from some outside source.
• Expression of things that can’t be put into words (displaying anger, showing the depth of emotional pain, shocking others, seeking support and help)
• Expression of feelings for which they have no label – this phenomenon, called alexithymia (literally no words feeling), is common in people who self-harm.

People who self-injure often never developed healthy ways to feel and express emotion or to tolerate distress. Studies have shown that self-harm can put a person at a high level of physiological arousal back to a baseline state.

It’s natural to want to help people who self-injure develop healthier ways of coping when they feel overwhelmed, but it’s important not to let your discomfort with the concept of self-harm cause you to issue ultimatums, punish self-harming behaviour, or threaten to leave if the person self-harms again. Ideally, you should set boundaries to keep yourself feeling safe while respecting the person’s right to make his or her own decisions about how to deal with stress.

For more information about self harm, its causes and some common myths click here

Volunteers wore an unobtrusive recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) over four days. This device periodically records snippets of sounds as participants go about their lives. For this experiment, the EAR sampled 30 seconds of sounds every 12.5 minutes yielding a total of more than 20,000 recordings. Researchers then listened to the recordings and identified the conversations as trivial small talk or substantive discussions. In addition, the volunteers completed personality and well-being assessments.

As reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, analysis of the recordings revealed some very interesting findings. Click here to read the results. Do you generally participate in small talk or deeper conversations, or a mixture of both? Do you agree with the research findings?