Struggle to Set Boundaries in Your Relationships?

Whether with family, relationships, work or friends, if you struggle to set healthy boundaries, this article is for you!

Not setting healthy boundaries manifests explicitly in allowing others to place demands on you beyond what you feel comfortable with. At times it may be more hidden. For example, the negative way your partner talks to/ about you. Regardless of the exact situation, the reality for most people is that when they are not setting clear boundaries, they just don’t feel good about themselves.

The essence of poor boundary setting is that it is difficult asking for what you really want. Many of my clients identify that this is due to concerns around denial, rejection, or loss. The context of asking for what we want may be specific to one relationship or generalised to many. If the latter, it is worth considering how your sense of self-worth/ esteem is a contributing factor.

Struggling to set boundaries

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Ask yourself, “What don’t I want or like in this dynamic?”

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“What do you need?”

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Be transparent and assertive about that

Being assertive can be challenging if it is new to you. A simple model to follow is saying how YOU feel or think, what it is the other person is doing that you don’t like, and what YOU want. And always be specific. Here are a couple of examples to this model in practice…

Your colleague keeps giving you their work to do.

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“I don’t want to stay so late at work anymore to do someone else’s work.”

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“I want to leave work on time and do the work I am assigned.”

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Say “I won’t be able to help with that. I need to focus on my own assignments this week and leave the office at 5 o’clock.

OR;

Your friend makes fun of you in front of other friends.

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“I don’t like being made into the joke”

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“I need my friend to be considerate of my feelings and to feel comfortable in social situations”

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Say “I was not okay with it when you made me the joke in front of our friends. When we are together, I expect you to be considerate of my feelings”.

As with all new skills, this is a practice. Gold Coast Psychologist Tristan Abba can support you to hone this skill and other non-avoidance strategies like this. The more you do it the easier it will become and the better you will feel about engaging in it and yourself. Remember, the first time is often the most difficult.

Examples above adapted from Licensed Family and Marriage Therapist, Elizabeth Earnshaw

Coping with Anxiety and Stress this Bushfire Season

In the midst of Australia battling some of the worst bush fires it has ever seen, it has been impossible to avoid the media coverage of the events unfolding around our country. The click bait links to red skies, Armageddon like visions of people stranded on beaches and singed koalas been fed water by firefighters are unmissable. This all taking place not all that far from my home in the Gold Coast. It made me begin to wonder the cumulative effect of this on our anxiety and stress levels. It’s interesting also in the context of this new year time, when people have come off the back of depleted nervous systems following a week of excessive booze, unbalanced meal plans and dealing with Auntie Sherryl’s opportune comments over Xmas. At a time when anxiety is already potentially heightened from people’s own self-development expectations as a new year looms.

I notice the public riled up. Angry and blaming towards a government head as he is the easiest target to cast fear driven shame. Climate change becomes a daily conversation and everyone is an expert it seems. Now, before I give you some functional psychological strategies for this time of our lives, here are some ways you might be making your anxiety and stress worse this fire season.

1.       Trying to force people to agree with your climate change perspectives

2.       Avoiding everyone who seems anxious or distressed

3.       Surrounding yourself with solely anxious or distressed people

4.       Quickly borrowing solutions to the fire crisis from people you follow on social media or ‘experts’

5.       You act as though the apocalyptic view of Australia portrayed on histrionic media stations is actually true

6.       Using all of your energy to focus on raising others from their naivety and ignore your own needs and your family

7.       Focussing more on Scomo’s behaviours around people instead of your own

8.       Venting to others without first calming yourself down to a rational level

9.       Over-functioning for Australia or your immediate surroundings when you feel frustrated

10.   Convincing yourself that the Prime Minister must change in order for you to calm down

All of these are stop gap measures to relieve our anxiety or stress. But they do little to increase our capacity to endure and tolerate these experiences. These actions make us sensitive to dramatic news stories and distract us from being our best, more logical calm selves.

On the opposite spectrum, here are the opposite of these behaviours. People who manage these are more likely to be calmer as a population during challenging times.

1.       They develop their own balanced opinions on this situation over time instead of borrowing them from others

2.       They respond based on the facts rather than their (or others’) imagination

3.       They can be around climate change sceptics and Greta alike and feel able to think for themselves

4.       They try to self-regulate before asking to be reassured

5.       They can be flexible in their thinking around the fires, climate change, and yes, even Scomo

6.       They focus on managing themselves rather than changing others

7.       They accept that anxiety is a natural part of real psychological growth

Please take care fellow Australians whether you are immediately affected by the bush fires or not. Although I don't want to minimise the travesty of this fire season, I don’t think it is helpful to magnify it. This is not the end of our beautiful sunburnt country. There will no doubt be significant change from it. And I only hope that learnings will come to people with power from this experience. Right now, much is out of our control yet our reactions, our anxiety in the face of these situations can be helped.

I have no professional training on climate change, fire fighting, politics and indeed, the Apocalypse. Although reading between my satirical lines you may find a personal opinion on these matters, my intention was not to push one. I have the deepest respect for the firefighters working in their roles and the greatest of sympathy to those who have lost lives, loved ones, or their homes in these blazes.

7 Psychological Tips to Boost Your PT Sessions

This articles outlines 7 fundamental psychological strategies that can be easily applied to your gym sessions to improve your performance and get better outcomes. So get inside your own head for a moment to see how it can help you.

1. Awareness to thought. Building awareness to thought process is a key strategy in psychotherapy to help clients improve their mental health. What are you thinking just before going to the gym/ just before that next set? Are these thoughts negative and are they attached to a negative emotion? (“this is going to be a hard session” - dread/ laziness for example). These negative emotions can influence your personal performance or earlier, determine whether you even turn up to the gym.

Knowing your cognitive tendencies is a healthy process, even if your tendencies are negatively oriented. Avoid placing judgment on yourself for them, just be aware and notice how your thoughts have the capacity to subconsciously affect your behaviour. By bringing this subconscious into the conscious, you gain power by what you choose to do the next time this thought arises.

2. Challenging your limits. What limits are you placing on yourself during your gym session? Ensure that you are planning and tracking your sets or times and continuously aiming to improve them.

Achievement is one of the three fundamental behavioural ideals that balance a life of psychological wellness (the others are responsibilities and pleasures FYI). Working towards micro goals in the gym can be a fantastic way to build an ongoing sense of achievement in your life.

3. Challenging your thoughts. From your newly developed cognitive awareness gained in  strategy 1, ensure that your self-talk isn’t hampering your gains. For example, if you have a set of 15 bench press lifts to complete and you’re lying flat staring up at a bar, what is your internal dialogue?

a) Nothing
b) “I don’t know that I can do this” or “This is too heavy”
c) “I know I can do 12 at this weight. I’ll aim for that”
d) “I’ve totally got this down”

If your answer is:

(a) potentially it’s worth taking a bit more time on strategy 1. On the other hand, maybe your mind is clear at the gym and this could be highly functional to your performance (no intrusive thoughts = high level of task-oriented focus).

(b) you can no doubt notice the negativity here and, without judgement, maybe spend some time challenging these thoughts as they occur. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is apt for this process, though Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has some wonderful strategies to manage thoughts like these too.

(c) your limits are greatly defined by yourself. Always aim for what you want your body to prepare itself to achieve. Sure, you may not make it sometimes but that’s why your spotter is there, right? If you aim for 12, you’ll more than likely make that but those last 3 are going to be much harder to push out if your brain isn’t pre-warned that they’re coming.

(d) not surprisingly, this is exactly what we need more of in any potentially challenging task. Boost yourself up before you start with positive self-statements. You don’t need to believe them, just repeat them in your head until your actions meet your beliefs.

4. Visualising. Visualising is a well established psychological performance strategy. It works because to a certain degree, your brain doesn’t know the difference between actually engaging in an activity and simply imagining the experience. Psychologists rely on this minor brain flaw for many interventions we adopt. So if you visualise yourself completing that next block run in record time, as far as your brain is concerned, it believes that you can do it. Now you just need to get your body to keep up!

Start each session during your warm up visualising what it is you are about to do from start to finish. Then again before each activity, visualise your gains before you begin.

5. Breathe. Physiologically, the regulation and timing of your breathe is key to performance in the gym. You’ve probably been told this and if not, you’ve likely noticed it yourself. But while your muscles’ cells are sucking up the maximum oxygen they can with every breath you take, your brain is often depleted. Our body has evolved to direct blood and oxygen to where it needs it most, and at the gym, it’s more likely to be your biceps than your head.

By regulating your breathing through slowing down your breathe out, you also have the capacity to help your brain deal with any negative intrusive thoughts all the while reducing the experience of pain that you are enduring. Experiment with this just before the next time you are about to begin a set. Deep breathe in to the count of 3 or 4, slow breathe out for 4-5. Then return your breathing to as it normally would be in the activity you are doing.

6. Reflective practice. Reflecting on the progress and changes that occur in our life as a result of our actions allows us a sense of empowerment. It also gives us the capacity to fine tune our goals and improve our overall mood.

Environmental re-evaluation provides us with the opportunity to periodically check-in on how our gym habits are affecting us physically (our body) and socially (how are we in relation to other people from our gym practice?).

Self re-evaluation provides us with the opportunity to periodically check-in on how our gym habits are affecting our self-confidence, our self-esteem, and our emotional state.

Taking time to notice even small positive changes occurring as a result of a healthy habit like going to the gym is a great motivation boost to continue with the behaviour. Try regularly practicing re-evaluation just before your scheduled gym times and notice how your motivation and mood changes as a result.

7. Sleep. This is an essential prerequisite to any mental performance. If you want to apply any of the above to the best of your ability, sleep is a no-brainer. As an adult, we require between 7-9 hours of sleep per night and if you are a teenager, then boost this to at least 8-10. Caffeine is not a replacement for sleep people!

Evidence shows that our cognitive and physical performance dramatically declines with sleep deprivation and can be improved with an increase in quality sleeping hours. In one study of elite basketball players for example, by increasing sleep to 10 hours every night over 5-7 weeks; reaction times significantly decreased and sprinting pace increased as did shooting accuracy.

Further reading

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press-release/national-sleep-foundation-recommends-new-sleep-times

https://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2004/03000/Strategies_for_Personal_Trainers.5.aspx#

https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article/13/2/215/1936333

Gibbs G [1988] Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford

Mah CD, Mah KE, Kezirian EJ, & Dement WC (2011). The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 34 (7), 943-50

Psychotherapy can make you richer - especially if you are a man...

Ha ha… If for no other reason guys… :)

https://theconversation.com/psychotherapy-can-make-you-richer-especially-if-you-are-a-man-107628?platform=hootsuite

Repost: How to approach to battling perfectionism & self doubt

“Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning

See the below link for a wonderful article describing the fundamentals of perfectionism and overcoming this debilitating trait…

https://psychologycompass.com/blog/battling-perfectionism/?platform=hootsuite

Another Reason Why Not to Use Your Phone in the Toilet

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Admittedly, there are a hundred million germy reasons why we shouldn't be using something in a toilet that is designed to go near our face. Despite this though, various surveys report that up to 75% of people admit to regularly replying to text, checking social media or even using their phone to talk to people whilst on the toilet! Now, I don’t fall into this statistic and am pretty shocked by this figure so I thought I would add just one more reason not to for those who do. That is; your brain.

We live in a world which is constantly on the go. I watched a TED talk recently by Manoush Zomorodi, a tech podcaster and boredom specialist (what a title), who reports that people in today's society succumb to their bored urges very quickly indeed. According to Zomorodi, people check their emails on average 74 times a day and switch tasks on their devices 566 times a day (from a conversation with Professor Gloria Mark). Often just because they are bored. Now, I don’t know what population make up this statistic but I think that it is likely further enabled by the socially acceptable electronic device within reach to us almost all of our waking days. Our phones are so much more than just a phone and offer so many forms of boredom-quashing entertainment. Our brain is adapting to this and goes along feeding a never-ending evolutionary-driven thirst for stimulation. But at what cost? Zomorodi goes on to say that when we look at brains in times of boredom, they are not doing nothing. Quite the opposite. Our brains are busy consolidating memories, developing creative ideas and solving problems through the formation of new neural connections. Similar processes occur during sleep hence it's necessity in mental wellbeing. Having downtime (being bored) actually maximises our creativity, productiveness and cognitive potentials.

Zomorodi’s talk made me think. How can we create more downtime from our devices? Are there any alone times in your lives where you allow yourself to just be bored? For many, boredom is emotionally uncomfortable so they keep a tight and busy schedule so as to avoid it. Loneliness, anxiety or unresolved grief quite often emerge in times of boredom. In my personal case, I reflected on my alone time. I have two young girls so don't get much of this I'll admit when I'm not writing or have tasks I've set myself to complete. But i don’t feel uncomfortable with boredom per se. At first I started to think outside of the work environment but even when I'm running I am listening to Spotify. I considered re-taking up swimming recently and as I did, began Googling waterproof MP3 players to avoid the tedium of the black line I remember too well… and this was about the time I thought of the humble toilet.

I began reflecting on Yuval Noah Harari's writing and the many tales from history of revolutionaries of humanity and knowledge who had realised their greatest ideas whilst sitting on the pot. The toilet has been a place of quiet solace, barren of interpersonal contact for the majority of human civilisation... Until now apparently for an astonishingly large percentage of people.

Readers, I encourage you to cherish your time of boredom whilst sitting on the toilet. A space where you may routinely forget any expectations society has of you, or perhaps you may ponder these. Regardless of where your mind goes, let it go there. Seize this time of boredom instead of your phone. If not for e Coli, then for your brains.

How To Choose The Perfect Gift

Does the following scenario sound familiar to anyone? It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve had a really busy week and you receive a reminder on your phone (or from your mum) that it’s your partner’s birthday tomorrow... Anyone?

Well, maybe your memory is better than most. Anyway, despite the title sounding like I’m about to launch into a multiplatform commercial promoting anything and everything, this is not what I’m writing about today. Instead, I wanted to share a tool with you that you can use to make sure that you forever (and in the next 24 hours) show your love to your partner in the most attuned way possible. 

This tool is so great that it can be adopted with any sort of gift giving, not just with your GF/BF/ husband/wife but with your friends too - it just might take a bit more effort and deeper insight into understanding them. It is also absolutely vital for parents.

If you haven’t heard of The 5 Love Languages, it is essential reading for anyone wanting to improve their relationship. The book is readily available as it was written some time back though it is still relevant and accurate and easily implemented into real life. The premise is that there are 5 primary love ‘languages’ or ways that love can be given or received. The disconnect that so often occurs in relationships and gift giving is that the way that one partner habitually gives love does not align with their partner’s way of receiving love. This is something that is so commonly heard in counselling with clients speaking about their spouses.

So, what are the 5 love languages? Well, according to the researcher Gary Chapman, they are;

Words of Affirmation - using words to affirm other people

Acts of Service - where actions speaks louder than words

Receiving Gifts - when receiving a physical gift makes you feel most loved

Quality Time - giving / receiving undivided attention

Physical Touch - for this person, nothing speaks more deeply than appropriate touch

Within the 5 Love Language website you can complete the quiz to determine the extent to which each of these love languages apply to you. Reflect on these for a moment if you like now. At the times you feel most loved/ most cared for, what is it that the other person is doing/ has done? Contrastingly, what do you tend to do when you want to show the people closest to you that you love them? Be honest with yourself here - don’t let the illusory-superiority bias get in the way of your responding (no-one is judging if you really only feel truly loved when you receive expensive gifts. There is often a familial explanation as to why we feel love a certain way and this is perfectly okay). 

These are tough questions to answer on your own admittedly and so I do recommend taking the quiz. 

“Now, back to giving the perfect gift to my partner” I hear you say. Well here’s the thing. As you may have realised by now, your partner may have a set of love language preferences that are distinct to yours. Because of this, what you would most appreciate is not necessarily going to be what they really need. The perfect ‘gift’ might not actually be something physical that you need to go and buy. Instead, it might be something as simple as sitting on Burleigh Hill with your partner for some time together - no phones - just you and them spending quality time together. Or perhaps if you have a partner with words of affirmation as their primary love language, a written note filled with complimentary words and how much you love and appreciate them in your life might be more attuned. In acts of service, perhaps undertaking the house chores or family duties that are usually left to them. This might not sound so romantic to you, but for those who really love receiving acts of service this absolutely touches their heart. There are a myriad of ways to express each of the five love languages - it is limited only by your imagination. 

From here, the key is to now understand what is/ are your partner’s love language/s.

Short of asking them to take the quiz (this is a great idea and a wonderful conversation to share in a relationship BTW but if you’ve only got till tomorrow maybe don’t let it out of the bag that you haven't thought of what to gift them yet)... Instead, reflect now on the times when your partner seemed most content / pleased with your actions. What is is that you have done in the past? What is it that you do regularly that it seems they really appreciate? What did you buy for them/ organise for them / do for them that they seemed to really love you for? Take some time with this - write a few notes - and when you've come up with a few answers, take a look at these various things and see which love language category they might fall into. It might be more than one - that’s normal - but one often stands out more than the others. 

Showing love goes far beyond a yearly present as I’m sure you know and it is all those small acts on a regular basis that, if correctly attuned, can go a long way in promoting relationship wellbeing. I hope that from the reflective activity above and The 5 Love Languages concept you will be guided towards finding the most ideal way to show love to those people in your life who matter most. Shops are open late tonight right?

Take care all :o)

www.tristanabba.com

*Image courtesy of Pixabay

Choosing your career

Okay, be prepared, the linked article is a long one but it is wonderfully written and engaging. 

Tim Urban uses simple explanations to describe the complex processes a person is faced with in choosing a career today. Such a great read. I'm not going to summarise the article here but suffice to say there are some brilliant metaphors including a yearning octopus who I love.

"The world is easy—you’re difficult. If you find yourself continually not executing your plans in life and your promises to yourself, you’ve uncovered your new #1 priority—becoming a better kindergarten teacher. Until you do, your life will be run by a bunch of primitive, short-sighted 5-year-olds, and your whole shit will suck." Tim Urban

The above quote is going up on my wall for sure!

Perhaps my favourite aspect of this whole article though is the realisation that no matter what you choose during your career path, there will always be at least one part of yourself that will not be wholly satisfied. This is okay. This is a fundamental aspect of our human nature. Accept this, and the reality of your life choices become a lot easier.

Enjoy the read

Tristan  

Returning to practice soon!

I have had the most incredible past year travelling the world, learning new things, challenging myself in new ways, struggling with new internal processes. It's been great. It's been hard. This is life - always a balance of both. All cliches aside, I genuinely feel like this past year changed me as a person significantly for the better. This will no doubt roll into my professional life and I am really looking forward to this.

I'm returning to work in October 2018 at the new Lives Lived Well Specialist Centre (formerly Banjara) in Burleigh Heads. I considered a few other options but at the end of the day my heart won out with a familiar environment and an encouraging network already in the community.

I found the above quote the other day and I've rarely read something that describes me so perfectly when I am at work. My inner voice of judgment is dropped and each of my clients are 'trees' that I get to see for who they are and understand the unique set of life events that have shaped them as people. It is this paradoxically peaceful serenity from my own busy mind that I love so much about the counselling room. 

Contact for an appointment or for more information about my approach. Look forward to connecting or catching up soon. 

Tristan :)