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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Everyday Life’s a Struggle for 25 Years and Younger

http://inthenews.springhillgroupcounselling.com/2013/01/14/everyday-lifes-a-struggle-for-25-years-and-younger/


People under the age of 25 are ‘struggling to cope’ with everyday life, says the Prince’s Trust.  Their recent survey claims that one in ten young people are now struggling to deal with day-today life.

Over 2000 16-25 year olds were surveyed by prince’s trust across UK.  They have discovered that those who are jobless and out of school are the most discontented.  Due to this they are the most unhappy, these are the people who are likely to have grown up without anyone to talk to and converse their issues with.

“I used to apply for jobs but after getting knocked back, it hit my confidence. I’d wake up and just not know what to do with the 24 hours in the day”, says Leon White, 24.  He is currently living with his family but his father passed away ten years ago and he left school without receiving any qualifications.  He dreams of a career in music, but has only recently been able to secure a full-time job in a hotel, after taking a hospitality training course.

The survey indicated that almost three out of ten people that were questioned said they felt their career prospects had been permanently damaged by the recession.

Government said they are not satisfied with the rate of employment while the level of unemployment is at its lowest since 2009.

A spokesman from the Department for Work and Pensions said: “Youth unemployment has fallen recently, and excluding full-time students, there are now 626,000 unemployed 16-24 year olds – the lowest figure since early 2009. But we are not complacent about the scale of the challenge we still face.

“Through our Youth Contract we’re offering nearly 500,000 work experience placements, wage incentives and apprenticeships over the next three years to help young people gain the skills and experience needed to get a job.”

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Counseling for Trauma Victims

http://springhillgroupcounselling.com/2013/01/09/counseling-for-trauma-victims/



Trauma is defined as “severe emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience” (The Cambridge Dictionary).  But trauma is also an extremely subjective experience because what may be traumatic for one person may barely affect another.
Generally speaking, when someone experience excessive stress that overwhelms ones emotional or physical ability to cope, this is being referred to as trauma.  Emotional trauma can be experienced by anyone even without the physical trauma but the two sometimes are often go hand-in-hand.  An example of this is when the wounds from physical trauma like the loss of a limb or a gunshot wound, while an obvious shock to the body, will eventually heal.  While all the emotional wounds and repercussions of the actual traumatic event are left to the person.
Symptoms of trauma 
Symptoms of trauma can vary from person to person.  A traumatized individual may suffer from one or several of the following symptoms. (list not complete)
  • upsetting memories such as images, thoughts or flashbacks
  • nightmares
  • insomnia
  • re-experience the trauma mentally and physically
  • emotional detatchment (known as dissociation)
  • individuals may turn to alcohol and/or drugs
  • stress/anxiety disorders
  • panic attacks
  • anger
  • despair
  • depression
  • loss of self-esteem.
Causes of trauma
  • abuse
  • violence
  • threat of abuse or violence
  • witnessing of abuse or violence
  • catastrophic events (war, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes etc)
  • witnessing/being involved in an attack
  • accidents (e.g a car crash or explosion’
  • divorce
  • job loss
  • death
  • mugging
  • armed robbery
  • rape
  • car accident
  • illness
  • failing an exam
  • losing valuable things
Trauma like any other illness can be cured.  When someone suffered from a traumatic experience, he/she can undergo trauma counseling.  Trauma counseling is appropriate for people who experienced traumatic incident.  In fact any event, whether shallow or horrible events can traumatized a person, anything that a person regard as negative and that changes his view or himself or the world.
Trauma counseling will help you in identifying and coming to terms with the feelings and emotions you may feel during and after a traumatic experience.  And because people handle trauma in various ways these emotions will also vary from individual to individual, but the most commonly experienced emotions are anger and fear.
Here are some ways the trauma counselor may use to achieve your healing process
  • Listening to what you are saying (and not saying)
  • Supporting your coping mechanisms
  • Exploring with you, and validating, your feelings and emotions
  • Supporting you to make sense of the incident
  • Preventing the use of suppression as a defense
  • Integrating the event meaningfully into your life
To get your life back on track and to move you from being a victim to being a victor, you must admit to yourself first that you need help.  This doesn’t mean that you are going crazy or that you are weak.  Everyone deserves healing.



How to Know if Depress During and After Pregnancy

http://inthenews.springhillgroupcounselling.com/2012/12/17/how-to-know-if-depress-during-and-after-pregnancy/


Depression is actually the most common complication during and after pregnancy although exact number of women that suffers from this is unknown.  Perinatal depression, it is the depression that occurs during pregnancy or within a year after delivery.



You may not recognize depression because some normal pregnancy changes cause similar symptoms and are happening at the same time that is exactly why it was not treated.  Tiredness, problems sleeping, stronger emotional reactions, and changes in body weight may occur during pregnancy and after pregnancy and these are also symptoms of depression.  For a lot of women, joyfully anticipated pregnancy and motherhood bring depression as an unexpected accompaniment.  Depression is not only risky for mothers but for their children as well.  During pregnancy, depression may result in poor prenatal care, premature delivery, low birth weight, and, just possibly, depression in the child.  Depression after childbirth aka postpartum depression can lead to child neglect, family breakdown, and suicide.  A depressed mother may fail to bond emotionally with her newborn, raising the child’s risk of later cognitive delays and emotional and behavior problems.



If the depression is detected soon enough, help is available for mother and child.

Signs of depression during pregnancy:

History of depression or substance abuse
Family history of mental illness
Little support from family and friends
Anxiety about the fetus
Problems with previous pregnancy or birth
Marital or financial problems
Young age (of mother)
Signs of postpartum depression or after giving birth:

Feeling restless or irritable
Feeling sad, hopeless, and overwhelmed
Crying a lot
Having no energy or motivation
Eating too little or too much
Sleeping too little or too much
Trouble focusing, remembering, or making decisions
Feeling worthless and guilty
Loss of interest or pleasure in activities
Withdrawal from friends and family
Having headaches, chest pains, heart palpitations (the heart beating fast and feeling like it is skipping beats), or hyperventilation (fast and shallow breathing)
After pregnancy, signs of depression may also include being afraid of hurting the baby or oneself and not having any interest in the baby.
Postpartum psychosis (seye-KOH-suhss) is rare and is need to be treated by the doctor.  It occurs in about 1 to 4 out of every 1,000 births.  It usually begins in the first 2 weeks after childbirth.  Women who have bipolar disorder or another mental health problem called schizoaffective (SKIT-soh-uh-FEK-tiv) disorder have a higher risk for postpartum psychosis. Symptoms include:

Seeing things that aren’t there
Feeling confused
Having rapid mood swings
Trying to hurt yourself or your baby


The problem with some women is that they do not tell anyone about their condition because they embarrassed, ashamed, or guilty about feeling depressed when they are supposed to be happy.  They may think that they will be judge as unfit parents, bad and not together mom but this can happen to any mothers.  Remember that your child is also at risk.  Seek for help.

7 Ways to Be a Stress-Free Workaholic


Saying it's a crazy, complex world out there is putting it mildly. The rate of technological change is staggering.
The constant bombardment of information and communication has us all on overload. And we're constantly
slugging it out in a brutally competitive global market.

If it seems as if you're locked in a downward spiral of trying to do more with less, it isn't you. It's for real. That
surprising array of macro factors creates stress on all of our businesses and on all of us. We try to manage it
as best we can, but at some point, things break. Systems break. People break. That's the nature of stress.

If you're an entrepreneur, you're well aware of the constant pressure to keep your burn rate down and stretch
capital investments as far as they'll go. And should the stars align and you gain customer traction, then you've
got the not-insignificant challenges of high growth and scalability to deal with.

Either way, there are times when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. And that means stress, big
time. Having lived through several high-growth companies, a few successful and failed start-ups, and 20 years of
executive management, I have plenty of great strategies for managing stress.

Work your tail off when you have to, not when you don't. Business happens in spurts. Always. Whether you're
 developing a product or growing a business, those long hours don't go on forever. It's OK to kill yourself for a few
weeks or months, as long as you chill out for a while when it's over. If you do it constantly, you're asking for trouble.

Learn to give up--sort of. When you're overstressed, overworked, and the ideas just won't come, try giving up.
Seriously, just call it quits, go home, go for a run, whatever. Once you relax, that's when inspiration flows--usually
when you're lying in bed half asleep or in the shower.

Strategize and plan. Here's a method for managing stress you're not likely to see anywhere else. When things seem
overwhelming, they're often the result of day-to-day inertia. To thwart the evils of the status quo, take a step back
and gain some perspective. Get some time away from distractions--just you or with your team--and brainstorm,
strategize, and plan. Have a nice dinner out. You'll be amazed at the results.

Mix business with pleasure. Whenever you're going through high-stress times, take your team out for dinner. Have a
few drinks. Take breaks and goof around. Yes, it probably takes longer to get things done that way, but I would argue
 that higher morale increases effectiveness.

Don't leave things for the last minute. Yes, I know you can't always control this, but if you can--and you can more often
than you think--give yourself a buffer. You'd be amazed how much more relaxed you'll be if you plan to finish your pitch
a day early or get to the airport a couple of hours before the flight.

Don't take it out on others. Leaders and managers, listen up. Maybe you can function at a high level, but if you're
simultaneously demotivating your team, then what's the point? And if you take it out on family and friends, you're just
going to end up lonely and depressed. If you can't handle the stress, find an outlet that doesn't include taking it out on
other living things.

Lots of outlets work--pick one or two. Caffeine can boost your mood and performance during the day. Wine can bring you
down and help you sleep at night. But you can't keep that sort of cycle up for too long. Learn to exercise, meditate, get
outdoors, build things, play Scrabble, talk to someone--whatever works, do it.

Look, if you want to be a workaholic, that's fine, be my guest. But at least learn how to be a high-functioning one,
meaning don't just run yourself and your team into the ground. If you're practical, you'll be effective.

Above all, learn to recognize the signs of burnout in yourself and your people. Downward spirals are hard to break out of.
And, if you're a leader, you'll take everyone, and maybe the entire company, down with you.