Making Sense Of...

For something to end, it must have been started at some point. In this episode, we look to the Gestalt Cycle of Experience to provide a framework, a roadmap that takes us through the different stages of beginning something to ending it. It provides a sense of the ideal ‘journey’ but usefully also gives us a sense of the many things that get in the way, the interruptions to the cycle that means that things we have started are left unfinished.

By developing an understanding of the cycle, we can better understand the impact of not finishing things. We can understand the importance of trying to finish what we start or perhaps not even starting something in the first place. Learning about the cycle can also deepen our understanding of ‘unfinished business’ and get us to start thinking about attending to it in whichever way we can.

Enjoy!

Covid-19 has drastically changed the way we live our lives. Such unexpected and extreme events have the potential to wake us up from our comfortable slumber and force us to examine how we live our lives. Many thousands are dying, some possibly people we know. Others are in categories deemed to be high risk. Most of us are being reminded of the fragility of our existence, of our own mortality, and many of us are using this pressing of the pause button to step back and think about how we have lived and how we want to live. A term we have heard again and again during these times is ‘authenticity’.

In this episode, we explore what it means to live an authentic life.

In this podcast we take a look at relationships in recovery, both romantic and friendship relationships. We ask what it is that makes personal relationships so difficult, especially in early recovery. We take a look at some of psychological theories that help us to understand and navigate relationships.

In this podcast we examine the important role critical thinking has in its relationship to how and why we make certain life decisions. At Foundation for Change, critical thinking pretty much underpins all of the learning we cover across all our courses and there’s an important reason for this. Learning how to question what we believe, understanding where those beliefs came from and the impact they have on us means we engage more fully with the world around us and make better life decisions. Developing critical thinking skills can help us live more authentic lives that are true to who we are.

History shows that the kind of political and social upheaval we have been experiencing since the outbreak of coronavirus is not new to human society; we have been here before. In this podcast we explore the idea of “history from below” which takes the approach of looking at the past through the lens of ordinary common people. It reminds us that there is more than one narrative to events than that told to us by those in power.

Cognitive dissonance refers to the feeling of our own thoughts being in conflict with each other. It also relates to the feeling of what we are thinking (and feeling) being in direct conflict with messages coming from outside, namely the government, media and social media. In this podcast we explore the concept of cognitive dissonance, look at some of the many examples that are causing it and have a chat about the impact of being in such unnatural and prolonged states of inner conflict for so long.

In this podcast we go right back to basics to explore Sigmund Freud’s theories about how our ‘self’ is constructed. We also look at the ideas that his daughter, Anna Freud, developed around the defences that we commonly put in place to protect ourselves when we’re faced with difficult experiences in life. Given what’s happening in the world at the moment we can all do with a bit of self-protection along with the awareness of how and why we might be seeking to do this.

This podcast looks at what people may be experiencing as loss during this time. We explore some of the different emotional responses to grief and loss and look at the various types of grief that have been described over time. The podcast ends with an introduction to some psychological frameworks that describe the different stages of the grieving process.

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