Why Anger Is Good For Us

Anger is without a doubt the emotion with the worst reputation. It provokes more fear, shame and attempts at suppression than all the others put together. More than 1 in 10 people report having a problem controlling their anger but less than 50% of those actually seek help. However anger, like all the emotions that we experience serves a vital function, we have evolved to experience it to enhance our survival. Anger alerts us to threats to our wellbeing (physical and psychological) and then motivates us to tackle them. It is not the experience of anger that is ever problematic but it is the way that we respond to this experience or the way that we express our anger. The expression of anger exists on a continuum, with passive expression and aggressive expression lying at the extreme points. As with all behaviour, the extremes always lead to potentially detrimental consequences so it is important to try and discover the response that lies at the midpoint, in the case of the expression of anger, assertive expression. This response to anger allows the consideration of both the expressors and recipients needs unlike the extreme behavioural points where one is prioritised over the other. As Lyman Abbott said “Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry”.
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

How To Fail - The Most Important LessonTo Teach Our Children

Encouraging competition and achievement is the cornerstone of capitalism and the foundation upon which western societies are built and as a result our fear of failure is frequently the biggest obstacle that we face when embarking upon new challenges . However, every psychological study of enhancing success says that if you want to help people have confidence and succeed you need to focus on their efforts, not the results and that being prepared and equipped to fail or to make mistakes is the only way that we can learn, develop and succeed as individuals. Of all the things that are taught in school, how to fail, possibly the most important lesson in life, is rarely included in the curriculum.

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Excitement Can Be Addictive

Excitement can become addictive. For example, some researchers are concerned that children’s use of video games, particularly those that involve aggression, may be over stimulating the dopamine drive system. Each time the children score or a make a hit, their brains may be receiving little bursts of dopamine that stimulate their nervous systems. If you over stimulate the nervous system, when you withdraw the stimulant the person becomes easily bored, needing constant excitement to produce energy and they can become agitated and anxious if they don’t get their ‘fix’. Over stimulating the nervous system is dangerous at any age and can lead to addiction but it is especially dangerous when it occurs before the nervous system has fully developed.
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When Are You Most Likely To Need Counselling

“The only thing in life that is constant is change” and change is a necessary part of our development as individuals. However change involves swapping what is familiar with what is not. This can be very unsettling and if we lack confidence in ourselves, the people around us or feel that the world is fundamentally unsafe than we may be ill equipped to deal with the transitions that life often demands that we make. It is at these times that our Achilles heel (whatever that may be) is most likely to become exposed and hinder our path through the transition. It is therefore at these times that we are most likely to need some kind of counselling to equip us with the skills necessary for us to move through to the next phase of our lives. The following life changes or transitions will be encountered by most of us at some point:
• Starting school/university
• Starting a new job/career
• Starting a new relationship/getting married
• Having children
• Facing the end of a relationship /divorce
• Loss/death of a loved one
• Moving home
• Retiring
• Discovering sexuality

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How To Keep A Relationship Working

Relationship problems are often similar whatever type of relationship you are in. Here are some pearls to help you make it work over the longer term:

1. Communication

Talking about it is the only way to work something out. Human being are fundamentally inward focused and more importantly are not mind readers, if you don’t tell your partner what the problem is they won’t guess.

2. Compliment Don’t Criticise

Research has shown that the more the pendulum swings in the favour of compliments or criticism the more likely the relationship is to succeed.

3. Don’t Take Each Other For Granted

Express gratitude and appreciation as much as you can, if one of you feels they are being taken for granted this will quickly spiral into resentment, never an ingredient of a successful relationship

4. Compromise

In practical terms this involves the man accepting influence from his partner and the woman moderating her approach to seeking influence.

5. Accept That Sometimes You Are Being Unreasonable

Try not to become too entrenched in one position (e.g. martyr, victim) and try and step back and consider what you are contributing to the problem. Relationships involve 2 people, both of whom bring something to the equation.

6. Have A Life Outside Of The Relationship

Putting all of your eggs in one basket places an enormous amount of pressure on the relationship and leaves it feeling very 1 dimensional, after all, what is there to talk about if you are living in each others pockets!
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Are We All Just Worried About The Same Thing?

It seems that our greatest fears and worries and the mental health problems that arise from them are underpinned in the most part by one of two key concerns, either a belief in our own worthlessness or a belief that we will be abandoned by those that we love. The extend to which we all hold these core beliefs depends on our early experiences and their influence on us on an ongoing basis will be determined by whether or not these beliefs have been triggered by our current experience. These beliefs can be broken down into the following specific concerns:

For a Core Belief of Worthlessness -

No man/woman I desire could love me once he/she saw my defects.
No one I desire would want to stay close to me if he/she knew the real me.
I’m unworthy of the love, attention, and respect of others.
I feel that I’m not lovable.
I am too unacceptable in very basic ways to reveal myself to people.
For a Core Belief of Abandonment -

I find myself clinging to people I’m close to because I am afraid they’ll leave me.
I need other people so much that I worry about losing them.
I worry that people I feel close to will leave me or abandon me.
When I feel someone I care for pulling away from me, I get desperate.
Sometimes I am so worried about people leaving me that I drive them away. (Young & Brown 2003)The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

EMDR - Does It Work?

Heralded as a 'miracle cure', EMDR has an almost cult like following amongst some practitioners. Maybe it our wish to believe in the existence of a quick fix magical solution to our problems or just our fascination with the Victorian parlour trickery but few psychological treatments have received such remarkable attention, especially in the absence of a solid evidence base of it's effectiveness. Numerous controlled studies show that EMDR ameliorates symptoms of civilian PTSD better than doing nothing, but not a shred of good evidence exists that EMDR is superior to exposure-based treatments that CBT therapists have been administering routinely for decades. Paraphrasing British writer and critic Samuel Johnson, Harvard University psychologist Richard McNally nicely summed up the case for EMDR: “What is effective in EMDR is not new, and what is new is not effective".
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Why Our Worst Fears Lie in Anticipation

“Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.” – Honore de Balzac

Don Draper reflects on this pessimistic tendency that we all share in the TV drama Mad Men and it would seem that this inclination to convince ourselves that the worst case scenario is our reality is part of an evolved threat/self protection system. This tendency which can also be understood as the 'better safe than sorry' approach has actually been designed to improve our chances of survival. Basically if we are in lion country and hear a sound in the bushes, we could assume that the noise is caused by a lion and run before seeing one. Nine times our of ten, our sense will be wrong - it wasn't a lion in the bushes but a bird. However, this mistake means that, while you might have lost some eating time that you can easily make up later, you are safe, whereas you can't undo a mistake in the opposite direction: underestimating a potential threat and becoming a predator's lunch. So our brains are actually designed to make mistakes to protect us; it will make assumptions rapidly, not caring if it is wrong. It can quite naturally overestimate threat and danger, reckoning that it's far better for you to run away from a possible lion ten times, nine of which are unnecessary, than to remain the one time when you really do need to run.
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

How To Be A Good Parent

In order to be a good parent to our children we must be able to place them (and their needs) at the centre of our world. This will involve at times ensuring that our own needs are meet in order that we may then met theirs. However, if as children we have not had this experience in our relationship with our own parents it is very difficult for us to move out of the way and allow the next generation into this position i.e. if we have not had our turn as the central characters in the family play it is very hard for us to step back into a supporting role.

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The Self Critical Voice

Key Features
The Self Critical Voice is a global negative self view that is unconditional and pervasive. Manifesting as schema level cognitions and coping responses, it is a key feature of a range of problems including eating disorders, chronic depression and personality disorders, in particular Narcissism, playing a pivotal role in the development and maintenance of these problems and also driving therapy interfering behaviours (Linehan 1993; Waller et al., 2007). However, despite its fundamental role in these intractable problems, the Self Critical Voice has received little attention, either in terms of formulation or treatment. This paper therefore aims to clarify the principle features of the Self Critical Voice and suggest a way of formulating its pivotal role in intractable problems that will facilitate treatment.

The Self Critical Voice is a particular train of thought that bullies, criticises and undermines the individual creating intolerable emotions that, in the absence of alternative coping strategies, are dealt with through the range of maladaptive behaviours (e.g. social withdrawal, bingeing, self harm, and self defeating interpersonal strategies). The thoughts generated by the Self Critical Voice are crude and repetitive and are accepted by the individual as absolute truths. Core themes of the Self Critical Voice include accusations of the individual fundamental worthlessness, predictions of imminent rejection by others and inevitable failure, themes reflected by the Young's (1990) schema domains of disconnection and rejection and impaired autonomy and performance .

Manifestations in intractable problems

The Self Critical Voice is a key feature in a number of severe and enduring problems including depression, eating disorders and personality disorders, in particular Narcissism. It is pivotal not only in the development of these problems but also in their maintenance over time. For example in depression the Self Critical Voice will initially trigger feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and helplessness via allegation of fundamental worthlessness (e.g. “you are a useless, defective waste of space”) and will then interpret the individual's behavioural responses to these feelings (e.g. withdrawal, acceptance of mistreatment by others) as evidence to confirm its initial assertions thus re-triggering the depressive cycle. Overtime the existence of the Self Critical Voice and it's increasingly well established links with depressed mood and behaviour will guide the way the individual's processes information gradually reinforcing this experiential pathway until it is more influential than alternatives, resulting in the individual's unquestioning acceptance of the validity of the Self Critical Voice and the existence of a chronic and persistent depressive state.

In eating disorders the Self Critical Voice is similar to the concept of Core Low Self Esteem one of four mechanisms formalised in Fairburn et al.'s (2002) transdiagnostic model that co-occur with the eating disordered symptoms in a subgroup of patients with more entrenched pathology. Fairburn et al. (2002) focus primarily on how the global negative self view obstructs change. Firstly by creating a lack of belief in the patient’s own capacity to facilitate change (i.e. undermining a key principle of cognitive behavioural therapy; becoming your own therapist (Waller et al. 2007)). Secondly by driving them to achieve in their valued domains as a way of coping in the short term with the negative affect that it creates, thereby making change in these area extremely challenging. They also highlight its self maintaining quality (via cognitive biases). Less emphasis is placed on its role in the development of an eating disorder, however, its capacity to generate negative affect suggests that the Self Critical Voice will be pivotal in the development of an eating disorder for the subgroup that find such negative affect intolerable (e.g. Fairburn, Cooper & Shafran 2003, Corstorphine, Mountford, Tomlinson, Waller & Meyer, 2006).

The Self Critical Voice is also evident in individuals presenting with narcissistic traits, specifically narcissistic defences employed to maintain self esteem (O’Brien, 1987) (not the inflated self esteem identified in classic descriptions i.e. core narcissism, Waller & Campbell in press). To avoid the negative self perception and self blame generated by the Self Critical Voice, the individual switches between the defences of the Narcissistic Abused Personality (‘poor me’ defence) where others are perceived as demanding and lack in sympathy and the Poisonous Pedagogy (‘bad you’ defence) where others are criticised or attacked. Both of these defences alienate potential allies and friends thus impairing functional relationships and reinforcing the Self Critical Voices accusations of defectiveness and unloveability.
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Depression Is A Form Of Self Protection

Despair is a form of self protection when protest doesn't work. Positive emotions and feelings of confidence and the desire to explore, search and seek out must be toned down because this aspect of the protection strategy is designed to stop the individual signalling and moving about in the environment when to do so is dangerous. It is saying 'Go to the back of the cave and stay there'. Ancestors of ours who in certain conditions got somewhat depressed and 'dropped out' for a while may have survived better than those who carried on regardless.

The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

An Insight Into How Our Minds Works

One day, an old chef was walking by the river with his grandson, thinking about what wisdom to impart to the boy. He told him that our minds are like the river: ever flowing. But within the flowing waters are different currents, and so it is within our minds. Inside himself, the old chef said, he can sometimes feel two wolves: one is gentle and kind, and is a peace seeker, while the other is angry and aggressive. The grandson looked at the old man in wonder and asked, 'Who will win Grandfather?'. The old chef responded: 'The one that I feed'
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Meet The Real Life Barbies

The Mail Online has recently reported on the Internet craze that sees teenagers turn themselves into freakish living dolls. Dr Gray (Consultant Clinical Psychologist at The British CBT & Counselling Service) commented when interviewed by them:

'At any age placing too much value on physical appearance can be potentially detrimental to a person’s self esteem and sense of self worth devaluing importance traits and characteristics and undermining what is truly valuable about a person. However encouraging this practice in children and adolescence who are still in the process of developing their self image can have particularly disastrous consequences including anxiety, depression and eating disorders as they inevitably fall short of the unrealistic images digitally created in the media.

Equally concerning is why these images have been created and for what purpose. Distorting and/or enhancing pictures of children so that they appear older and more sexual surely crosses the line between how we should treat the children in our society and how we should not'
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Guidance on Sexual Minorities

There are 2 documents that are available via the BPS website, that may be of interest to DCP members.

The first is the recently launched guidance on sexual minorities – Guidelines for psychologists working with therapeutically with sexual and gender minority clients

http://www.bps.org.uk/news/new-guidance-sexual-and-gender-minorities-available



The second is Working with Interpreters in Health Settings.

http://www.bpsshop.org.uk/Working-with-Interpreters-in-Health-Settings-P710.aspx


The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Our Early Experiences Define Us

Our early experiences define us. It is during our first few years of life that we develop an image of ourselves, others and what to expect from them and the world. At the root of many depressions & anxieties is an inner experience of aloneness & separateness from early sources of care, comfort & love.

The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

The British CBT & Counselling Service - New Clinic To Open In London

The British CBT & Counselling Service is to open a new clinic in London this month based at The Fulham Health Clinic, 286 Munster Road, Fulham SW6 6BQ. This clinic opens following the success of existing clinics in Richmond (Surrey) and Clapham (SW12 )

The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Who Is The Most Vulnerable To Mental Health Problems

Western societies greatly exaggerate rank difference between humans, dividing us into the ‘haves’, ‘have nots’ & ‘have lots’, with the ‘have nots’ being at greater risk of physical and mental health problems & of being either the perpetrator or victim of certain types of crime.

The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service

Why Enough Is Never Enough

Evolutionary Psychologists suggest that our brain have evolved to cope with scarcity not abundance which is why we struggle to say 'no' and know when 'enough is enough'. Add this to a marketing industry that spends billions on ensuring we are never content.....

The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service