When is failure a success?
The news that Wimbledon High School for Girls, one of the country’s top independent schools, is holding a Failure Week brings neatly into focus what many of us feel about failure. It has a knack of hanging around in our minds far more than do our successes. And many of us see failure only in negative terms
Yet, without failure as a comparison, how would we know what success was? And if we didn’t, as the school suggests we should, take calculated risks would we spend our lives wishing we had done differently, hearing that persistent internal refrain “if only” echoing in our ears?
Building resilience – which includes developing a way of managing our feelings about failure – is an essential life skill. Everyone is likely to face numerous setbacks and knocks in their personal and professional lives – in families, amongst friends or in business relationships – which affect not only those relationships but also their behaviour, self-esteem and confidence. Their feelings about failure might also cause anxiety, worry or depression; it might increase their fears; or lead to irritability, mood swings or insomnia.
What would happen, though, if you were to reframe failure, or setbacks, as feedback? You tried something; it didn’t go as hoped; the result was that you learned why it didn’t work – gaining valuable insights that can guide you towards approaching challenges differently. Looking at some simple examples:
- at school: not passing an exam also indicates what you are better at or that one way of revising is better than another;
- at home: not achieving everything on your weekend to-do list could be a sign that some things are unimportant and should rightfully be dropped;
- at work: not winning new business or losing a client provides a chance to identify strengths, show where training would reduce weaknesses, improve internal processes, or build dynamic teams.
As the headmistress of Wimbledon High School says, it is “acceptable, and completely normal, not to succeed at times in life”. She wants to encourage her pupils to be courageous and learn the positives that come from failures.
We agree. Many people define themselves by their perceived failures rather than viewing them simply as part of life’s learning or refining process. By actively encouraging people to see their failures differently, whether at school, at home or at work, they might be able to expand their capacity for growth and resilience instead of being limiting by the negatives.
If you would like to learn how to build resilience, through counselling or therapy, so you can face failure from a different viewpoint, do get in touch.
08/02/2012 | Posted in Psychotherapy, Counselling, CBT,
What is counselling?
To many people, the term “counselling” is a catch-all phrase, a generality that encompasses all the talking therapies without singling out any one form of therapy. This is not necessarily wrong – but counselling is also a talking therapy in its own right.
Many people have innate counselling skills – good friends, for example, who have a knack for listening to what you are saying, posing questions about what you have said and giving you a chance to consider your own thoughts. And so it is with a professionally-trained counsellor, with the essential element of being dispassionate, standing apart from what you are saying and posing more-searching questions without fear of risking a friendship or damaging a long-standing relationship.
A trained counsellor will also not give advice – many friends can’t resist doing so – although a professional counsellor is likely to suggest courses of action for you to consider and might also recommend exercises for you to do between sessions. Professional counsellors will also guarantee you time in private – so you can speak openly – as well as confidentiality – there is no chance of gossip between friends. The structure of formal sessions with a professional is also more beneficial than ad-hoc chats.
For many therapists, straightforward counselling is one of the first therapies they study. They then go on, as have our therapists, to study other forms of counselling, expanding their skills to provide a broader range of services. In our case, we offer a blend of therapies to suit each client, always first discussing options with the client before agreeing an approach.
This holistic approach is called integrative counselling.
Counselling helps people deal with and overcome challenging emotional experiences such as depression, relationship difficulties, redundancy, bereavement, low self-esteem, eating disorders, the rollercoaster that is parenthood, stress – anything that affects your emotional well-being.
In addition to counselling, the therapies we provide at our London therapy rooms are: cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitisation reprocessing (EMDR), emotional freedom technique (EFT), existential counselling, Gestalt therapy, humanistic psychotherapy, hypno-birthing, hypnotherapy, integrative counselling, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), person-centred counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalytical therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and sensorimotor psychotherapy.
There is more information about each of these therapies on the What we do section of our website.
If you would like to explore whether counselling for depression, or any other emotionally challenging issue, would be right for you – and which form of counselling is likely to have the greatest effect, do get in touch. We provide counselling in London in two locations : Twickenham and central London (on Oxford Street).
16/05/2011 | Posted in Counselling,
Tamara Drewe - Life, richly observed
It’s the hottest ticket in town, this film – with critics finding no fault and with film-goers emerging with smiles on their faces, two hours well-spent and at relatively low cost.
Based on cartoonist Posy Simmonds’ interpretation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, this is modern life in all its, well, harsh reality – wrapped in cotton wool amidst idyllic countryside scenery. It’s easy to sink into escapist, uplifting comedic fiction – which is the point of Tamara Drewe.
There are times – fleetingly – when you see your own life in front of you, flashing an “oh, that was me” thought onto your mind’s private screen before you sink back into the moment. The teenage angst that comes from boredom and unfulfillable dreams; the struggle with self-esteem and under-achievement; the unspoken anxiety about missed opportunities; the mask of ego; the compromise too far in relationships; and the way we retreat from difficult emotions and truths or handle depression and bereavement.
Many people choose films for their idealistic joy and rightly so. They take us out of ourselves, put a spring into our step and bring new energy into our lives – for as long as we let them. It would be wrong, therefore, to over-emphasise the dose of reality that underlies this funny romp through middle-class Britishness. But, if it stirs things up for you, talking them through with a psychotherapist or counsellor could help you regain whatever it is that the film makes you think you’ve lost so that you, too, can aim for what its brilliant actors provide – a welcome, if momentary, happy ever after feeling.
Read The Guardian's sharply-written review of this richly observed version of art imitating life: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/09/tamara-drewe-review
17/09/2010 | Posted in Psychotherapy,
How can hypnotherapy help weight loss?
Many people have become much more interested in the idea of using hypnotherapy for weight loss after the media and hype surrounding Lily Allen’s recent weight loss using a hypnotherapist. The singer dropped two dress sizes and said that thanks to hypnotherapy she had found all the motivation she needed to get to the gym, enjoy her workouts and avoid the foods that had previously been her downfall. So can hypnosis really work to help people lose weight and how?
Hypnosis works in many instances for weight loss because losing weight is not just about stopping eating. Many who suffer from being overweight are overeating for emotional reasons. For example, many eat because they feel stressed, have low self-esteem or use it as a coping mechanism. Hypnotherapists help people to replace these negative thoughts and negative cycles with healthier ones, which help us to make healthier food choices. New, positive processes are established that reinforce feeling good about oneself, such as going to the gym or coping in other ways - taking a long bath or reading a good book. In this way, people lose weight not because the hypnosis did anything to them physically, but it stopped the emotional need to overeat.
24/02/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Hypnotherapy for self-esteem
Many people are suffering from stress, feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. It is possible that these feelings are being felt more profoundly because of the current economic crisis. When we feel this way, it is possible to feel that life is passing us by.
Self-esteem is part of feeling self-confident and, when we lack in self-esteem or self-confidence, it can be hard to look for ways to help without thinking of years of drugs or psychotherapy. Hypnosis offers one alternative to these solutions.
Hypnotherapy has long been associated with helping people to increase their self-confidence, and consequently their self-esteem. Relaxing with hypnosis can help us get away from our day-to-day troubles and help with stress management. Hypnotherapy is notorious for being a quick therapy, partly because the hypnotherapist helps the client to change the way they think or feel themselves. The results all come from the client; the hypnotherapist simply helps them to find their own way.
When stress management becomes an issue, or someone is suffering from low self-esteem or a lack of confidence, there is no reason why just one or two sessions of hypnotherapy cannot help a person to turn their life around.
10/02/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Can hypnotherapy improve my finances?
Hypnotherapy can do and help an awful lot of things, but directly improving your finances is not one of them. However, it can improve your finances indirectly.
How much money you earn and the way your finances are organised depends on things such as:
- how you approach money and feel or behave towards money
- how you feel about yourself, your self-image and how you deal with your self-image or try to improve it
- your ability to motivate yourself in order to learn new skills, try new things and develop beliefs
- your level of self-confidence
- the amount of control and self-belief you have and how you believe this affects your lif.
Each of these affects the others and the most important one is the final point. How much control you believe you have over your life will directly impact on what you do and your finances and hypnosis can be used to help you develop your self-belief and self-perception. For example, clients have improved their self-belief and used this to gain more job interviews and opportunities than they had ever done, or believed they could do, in the past. Their self-confidence has shone and they have been able to share this with others.
08/10/2008 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
What can hypnotherapy help with?
As regular readers will know, hypnotherapy is a powerful tool using hypnosis for therapeutic purposes. But many people still associate hypnotherapy with stopping smoking and curing fears and that is it.
Hypnotherapy can be used for so many different things that the list is almost endless and hypnotherapists are finding new uses for it all the time. It can be used for almost any problem or situation where the body and the mind both come into play. Here are just a few of the issues that hypnotherapy has been used to help:
- sports – improving performance, anxiety, coaching, overcoming concentration problem, increasing focus, motivation;
- business – stress management, assertiveness, motivation and direction, problem solving and communication, public speaking, confidence;
- education – increasing concentration and focus, improving memory, exam nerves, study techniques;
- personal – increasing confidence or self-esteem, curing phobias and fears (whether of spiders, flying, heights, thunderstorms), anxiety and depression, insomnia, habits, addictions and other unwanted behaviour (nail biting, bedwetting, smoking, alcohol, drugs), sexual or relationship issues, eating disorders, shyness and blushing, pain management;
- health - chronic pain, hypno-birthing, IBS, snoring, dermatitis, asthma, nausea from pregnancy or chemotherapy.
Hypnotherapy promotes better health, well being and better life. For years, it was helped thousands of people in their every day lives.
22/09/2008 | Posted in Hypno-birthing,
Symptoms of depression
Depression is more common than you might think, however, it is also often misdiagnosed when people feel down or are going through a tough period in their lives. Here is a list of common depression symptoms. Many people do not experience them all but if you have a few of these it might be worth seeking some help. Depression does not always mean treatment through medication. Often, other therapies can also help, such as psychotherapy, CBT or hypnotherapy.
- Low mood almost all day, every day
- Loss of interest or enjoyment in activities you normally like
- Feeling weepy, bursting into tears uncontrollably
- Feeling guilty, worthless or useless a lot of the time
- Lack of motivation, even for the simple thing sin life
- Lack of concentration, even to watch tv, read or work
- Lack of sleep or waking up early and unable to get back to sleep
- Lack of energy, always tired
- Going off sex and affection
- Poor appetite resulting in weight loss
- Too much appetite resulting in weight gain
- Often irritable, restless and agitated
- Symptoms are generally worse in the mornings
- Physical symptoms such as more frequent headaches, chest pain or general aches
- Preoccupation with death or suicide, thinking about it a lot
18/07/2008 | Posted in Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, CBT,
Combating bulimia with CBT
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is generally thought of as being one of the most successful psychotherapies for bulimia, or bulimia nervosa. Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder where the sufferer will often binge on extremes of food and then force themselves to throw it up to prevent themselves from gaining weight. Many sufferers report a feeling of loss of control whilst bingeing and the purging is often their way of gaining back that control.
CBT, especially when combined with hypnosis, is a very effective and quick therapy. When dealing with bulimia, CBT aims to interrupt the old thinking processes associated with the issue, such as the preoccupation with food or weight, the 'all or nothing' thought process and the low self esteem that generally comes with bulimia. It also aims to interrupt the 'binge-purge' cycle.
Many therapists will ask their patients to keep a food diary and give feedback on the meal plans, triggers of thought processes, etc. CBT and hypnosis are used to challenge these old patterns. Around 50 per cent of bulimics are able to stop the binge-purge cycle using CBT. From the remaining 50 per cent, many show partial improvement and only a small minority do not respond. Sometimes, bulimia is a symptom of a food-obsessed family background so occasionally, family therapy is also recommended to decrease the chance of a relapse.
26/06/2008 | Posted in CBT, Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy,
