Dealing with unhelpful (self-critical) thoughts

Beautiful sunrise in the mountain

Categories for Stress management techniques

Dealing with unhelpful (self-critical) thoughts

A few ideas here on dealing with unhelpful, self-critical thoughts, if we find ourselves giving ourselves a hard time, beating ourselves up more often than is good for us. We’re looking here at separating ourselves from our thoughts, and acknowledging for example that: -💭thoughts are the stories we create and tell ourselves – 💭we are not our thoughts – 💭we don’t have to believe our thoughts – 💭self-critical thoughts are opinions, and there are other opinions  When…

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Why it pays to be optimistic

A few ideas here on practicing optimism, even when we don’t feel like it, to develop and bolster our resilience, for the good and not-so-good times. (Not always easy of course to assume an optimistic…

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Managing our Chimp

I’ve spoken a little here before about managing our Chimp, and the estimable Steve Peters’ ‘Chimp management’ mind model (© Prof. Steve Peters © Graphics Jeff Batista). I’m returning to it now to provide a…

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‘A Path through the Jungle’ book review

I’ve been working through ‘A Path through the Jungle’ by the estimable Professor Steve Peters with several clients, and I’d like to recommend it here. Professor Peters is responsible for the best-selling ‘The Chimp Paradox’,…

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Our ‘fight or flight’ stress responses

I wanted to share the enclosed as I’ve found it fascinating what our sympathetic nervous system – there to protect us – can do for us, and to us (or I suppose more precisely what…

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Self-talk and self-compassion

I very much enjoyed running a training session on Monday last for a local mental health peer support group – Depression Xpression, based in Reading and Wokingham in Berkshire – entitled ‘Preventing and Managing Stress’,…

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You and Your Stress: Stress symptoms exercise

This exercise is in the form of slides – on the Slideshare platform – just click on the pic to take a look. This exercise aims to enable us to ‘normalise’ the experience of stress…

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A technique for dealing with social anxiety and shyness

I’m enclosing here a link to a 6-slide excerpt from a group training session I run, entitled ‘Understanding and Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness’. (It’s on the Slideshare platform). It suggests a simple and straightforward…

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