Mental Health Training

Apology accepted by Stephanie Lam.

Saying sorry can be a powerful plea for forgiveness, a humble act and a virtue. But when used too often or without thinking, it might not be such a good thing.

The word 'sorry', when used appropriately, can be packed with power. It can heal wounds and bridge divisions. Admitting you made a mistake and taking responsibility for it is not a mark of weakness, but a virtue. It would be impossible to go through life without ever causing anyone discomfort or upset, however, unwittingly.

Asking for forgiveness genuinely can be the stitch that mends and also shows the strength of character.

On the other hand, imagine what happens when sorry seems to be not the hardest word, sadly as Elton John sang, but the easiest?

When does an apology turn into a verbal tic or a rhetorical filler?

Or if it ends up being appended to almost any idiom - or becomes a conversation in itself.

Think of those interactions that seem entirely to consist of saying 'sorry'.

This deluge of forgiveness-begging might not seem to matter. It can be seen as a form of good manners, a way to soften what's said, the verbal equivalent of an emoji.

Maybe it's a way to deliver the truth without appearing too candid.

Yet if the insincere plea becomes overused, it could shift the meaning of the word. When uttered tonelessly or even aggressively, indeed, it then implies the opposite. In this context, sorry is not sorry at all.

In any case, overusing any word diffuses its strength. Its impact is lessened with each time it's unmindfully applied until it becomes insignificant.

Think about it: if you've no reserved word in your vocabulary, what if you want to make a heartfelt show of remorse?

If you've hurt someone's feelings and need to show them you care,

what's the point in saying the same word you've already uttered 20 times today?

The truth is, language matters, and making unnecessary apologies can undermine inner strength and resilience.

A supposedly innocuous, yet needless, request for absolution can then become a habit of presenting yourself in the wrong. It can even appear to beg pardon for the so-called inconvenience of daring to exist.

At the same time, it can be a habit that's hard to break if it takes root. I've caught myself in pointless sorries so many times, including apologising to a chair because you walked into it!

But perhaps, and you can start understanding when repentance is unwarranted, over time, it will become easier to hold back, hang on to one's self-esteem and keep this powerful word for the times when it's appropriate.

Check out your list of Sorry's

Try to recognize how other people's unnecessary apologies impact your judgments of them. It might be the same way they see you.

• Notice if you say sorry without thinking, how often you, do it, and why. These apologies might affect your sense of self-worth more than you know.

• Think of replacement words you might use instead of it, alternatively, is it necessary at all.

• Enjoy holding back on saying sorry, despite the discomfort you might feel.

• A heartfelt show of repentance can make a real impact. Think of times you've used this powerful word when it was truly needed - and how that felt.

Isolation is the “silent killer” affecting an estimated 8 million elders in the U.S., but it is an epidemic that often goes unnoticed and untreated.

On average, 40% of seniors are impacted by the isolation that comes with living alone and the resulting feelings of loneliness, increasing their risk for depression, dementia, and premature death.

What is isolation?

Isolation is the experience of being separated or cut off from other people. It is usually felt when an indi­vidual has minimal human contact, but it can also occur within an emotionally unsatisfying personal relationship. A few people may choose to be isolated and enjoy their solitude, but the situation is often regarded as unwelcome.

Nearly everyone experi­ences feelings of isolation at some time in their lives, if only for a short while. For example, when start­ing a new job or beginning at college, loneliness is common until new networks and friendships are made. Like the elderly and young moth­ers with pre-school children, some people may be at risk of prolonged spells of isola­tion in their own homes.

Isolation is often accom­panied by loneliness. People need relationships with family and friends to maintain a sense of self-esteem. 

Such networks provide warmth and support and provide shared interests and concerns. Without these relationships, loneliness may follow, with a result­ing loss of self-confidence and perhaps even the onset of depression.

Are loneliness and social isolation linked?

Loneliness and social isolation are different but related concepts. While loneliness can be closely related to social isolation in many people’s minds, social isolation can lead to loneliness, and loneliness can lead to social isolation. Both may also occur at the same time.

People can experience different levels of social isolation and loneliness over their lifetime, moving in and out of these states as their circumstances change.

Loneliness and social isolation also share many factors that increase the likelihood of people experiencing each, such as deteriorating health and sensory and mobility impairments.

Loneliness and social isolation during the COVID-19 Period?

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness and social isolation were prevalent across Europe, the USA, and China. The situation has only worsened with the restrictions imposed to contain the viral spread.

However, there is a high cost associated with the essential quarantine and social distancing interventions for COVID-19, especially in older adults, who have experienced an acute, severe sense of social isolation and loneliness with potentially severe mental and physical health consequences.

The effects of loneliness

Everyone at one point or another experiences' loneliness, and like all feelings, its causes are unnumbered. You could spiral into a vortex of loneliness from anything: stress, loss of a loved one, a tragic event, or feeling isolated from friends and family. 

Feeling alone doesn’t equate to loneliness. It’s important to understand that distinction. You should always separate those two states of mind because alone time is a good thing. It’s a great thing.

How does isolation occur?

The anonymity of modern, urban living gives rise to much loneliness, espe­cially where people live in high-rise housing without community facilities. People in rural areas are also prone to isolation, as meeting places are few and public transport is limited.

Women seem to be more at risk than men, as they are more likely to be tied to the home, caring for children, with little access to social outlets.

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Mindfulness, No-Mind and Choiceless Awareness

Imagine what it might be like to be an animal such as a squirrel. A squirrel doesn’t have worries about the dynamics of their workplace, about debt or about their relationships. Squirrels don’t have their head in the clouds daydreaming about what might be… They don’t have regrets, and they don’t have delusions.

Instead, a squirrel simply experiences the world as it is. Hyperreal across all the senses, squirrels simply take in the world around them as it happens and react on a dime.

This is something that a lot of people aspire to, as they believe that it will make them happier and help them to enjoy the world around them more. But just as important and just as valuable is the incredible benefit that this type of presence and mindfulness has in terms of athletics.

Bruce Lee and ‘No Mind’

An aspiration for many martial artists, including the legendary Bruce Lee, is to reach a state known as ‘no-mind. No-mind effectively means that you are reacting without thought, purely on instinct. Instead of experiencing your surroundings, thinking about how best to respond and then reacting; you instead react without pause or consideration.

In martial arts, this state of no mind is accomplished through rigorous training. By simply repeating the same block over and over again, you eventually reach a point where your arm moves to block without any need for you to consciously command it to do so. Likewise, by repeating the same punch over and over, martial artists can reach the point where they’re able to punch perfectly.

At this point, they have strengthened the neural pathways required to deliver the perfect technique, and thus it reaches the point where it is really second nature. Many athletes in other sports achieve similar performance when they are completely engaged with what they are doing, and this is often called a ‘flow state’.

As you might imagine, then, the practice of mindfulness will only enhance your skill as a combatant and as an athlete. And in fact, there is a similar term used within the context of CBT: ‘choiceless awareness’.

Being Aware of Your Body

Just as mindfulness and meditation can help you to improve your physicality, so to can being more physical help you to be more mindful. This is because focusing on our bodies will take focus away from our monologue. Simply try being aware of your distribution of weight, of your breathing, of your temperature – and you’ll find that instantly you become far more ‘present’ and much closer to mindfulness and choiceless awareness.

How to Use Mindfulness With CBT

Mindfulness is the practice of ‘getting out of your own head’ and of simply being rather than constantly thinking, worrying and stressing. While mindfulness is a common part of many meditative practices, it is also an integral part of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). More specifically, mindfulness is used for ‘cognitive restructuring’ which is an aspect of CBT concerned with the ‘reprogramming’ of thoughts.

How Cognitive Restructuring Works

The idea behind cognitive restructuring is to deconstruct a patient’s beliefs, thought patterns and feelings regarding certain matters in a bid to improve mental health.

For instance, then, cognitive restructuring is often used to help combat phobias. When someone suffers from a phobia, often they will find themselves having illogical thoughts regarding that trigger. If you’re deathly afraid of heights, then, you might find yourself worrying that you’ll fall off – or even worrying that you’ll feel compelled to jump.

Of course, in most cases, neither of these things are going to happen. Likewise, we have no reason to be afraid of spiders – even if we do find ourselves worrying that they might ‘jump into our mouths’.

Cognitive behavioural therapy restructures these thoughts and beliefs and replaces them with healthier ones.

The Steps

The first step in cognitive restructuring is to assess the nature of your thoughts and to identify the specific damaging ruminations that are leading to your health problems.

This is where mindfulness comes in as an incredibly powerful tool: simply sit quietly and allow yourself to experience your thoughts as they occur, taking note of what they are and letting them drift by ‘like clouds’.

Likewise, you might assess the kinds of thoughts you often find yourself having when you are in situations that make you phobic.

From there, you can then begin the process of cognitive restructuring. You do this first by using ‘thought challenging’, wherein you simply ask yourself how likely your beliefs are to be accurate. Are you really going to fall if there are railings to keep you safe?

A more advanced strategy is ‘hypothesis testing’. Here, you simply test your belief through exposure to your fear. If you’re afraid of speaking in public because you think people will laugh, try purposefully allowing yourself to stutter while speaking to a large audience and see what happens.

Finally, use more mindfulness as you go about your day to simply remind yourself of your new beliefs and to keep your heart rate low and your mind calm.

Why Mindfulness is the Perfect Antidote to Modern Living

As much as many of us choose to overlook it, there is a lot of wrong with the way most of us currently live our lives. We evolved in an environment completely foreign to the world we live in now and adapted to gain abilities and traits that in many ways leave us unsuited for our current environment.

We sit in chairs all day long gaining weight, we eat processed foods, and we face constant stresses from work, from our relationships and from our finances.

What’s more, we are constantly in demand and constantly ‘plugged in’ and ‘stressed out.

Our phones are always ringing, texts are always coming in, we get a new e-mail every two minutes… And even when most of us aren’t working or being bothered, we have a near addiction to technology that means we’re still unable to really decompress.

Is it any wonder that mental health problems are so rife?

Using Mindfulness to Escape Modern Stress

This is probably a big part of the reason that mindfulness is so popular right now. Mindfulness simply means directing attention purposefully.

Sometimes this will mean focusing on our thoughts (in an objective and non-judgemental way) but in other cases, it will mean simply being more present and focusing on our breathing and our environments.

Either way, the idea of mindfulness is to enjoy the calmness and to stop the incessant chatter of our minds. When you are completely engaged with the world around you, or when you decide to disengage with your thoughts, it provides you with relief from stress and from fear – and instead allows you to simply relax and recover.

Mindfulness for Concentration

What’s more, practising mindfulness is also the perfect tool for improving concentration. Mindfulness forces you to develop a ‘mental discipline’ that is sorely lacking for many of us today. Too often, most of us have 20 things vying for our attention. While we have allegedly become better at multitasking as a result, we’ve also become much worse at focusing on one thing for extended periods. This makes it harder for us to read a large passage of text for instance, or to work without feeling the need to continuously check Facebook.

Again, mindfulness is the perfect tonic. Here, you are tasked with focusing on your environment, your thoughts or your feelings for an extended period of time. And as such, you improve your own focus and mental discipline.

Meditation is something that we’re constantly being encouraged to use. Every self-help guru, every highly successful individual and even many athletes trumpet its many benefits and the research too seems to back up its value.

So why don’t more people practice it?

The main problem for most of us is that it’s really rather daunting, obtuse and complicated. Meditation is ultimately about reaching enlightenment and inner peace, right? Sounds a bit heavy for a Friday evening!

The real question for many people then is where to start.

This article will provide you with a good starting point and help you with your first meditative experience. From there, you should feel a little more confident to try it again in future…

Some Tips to Begin With

The first tip is to set yourself a timer for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a short enough amount of time that most of us will be able to fit it into our busy schedules and by setting an alarm you prevent yourself from having to keep checking the clock to see how much longer you have – this is not conducive to meditation as you might imagine.

The next tip is to sit comfortably in a chair or cross-legged. You don’t want to lie down for fear of falling asleep, but you should be comfortable.

Focus

The next thing you’re going to do is to focus. This can mean focusing on your breath or repeating a mantra (a word of your choice) over and over. This will be your ‘anchor’ and you will come back to this whenever your mind starts to wander.

If you struggle with these anchors, another option is to watch a flame. Lighting a candle and watching it can be a surprisingly effective form of meditation.

Just ‘Be’

Now just ‘be’ for 10 minutes. The mistake many people make here is to try and force themselves to have a ‘still mind’ devoid of thoughts. This is almost impossible for a beginner and will lead to nothing but stress.

Instead, we’ll take the mindfulness approach of simply letting the mind wander.

When it does, make a note of it and simply focus back on your anchor. This removes the stress and gives you a safe environment in which to practice directing your attention inwards. The same goes for itching and coughing – just let it happen and then return.

Try to repeat this three times a week for a couple of months and see what happens… You’ll be glad you did!

Mindfulness is a term that gets thrown around a lot at the moment, and which is often hailed as some kind of ‘solve all’ for every kind of problem under the sun. Mindfulness is part self-help technique, part clinical tool and has lately grown to spawn countless e-books, courses and evening classes. But what precisely is it, and how do you define it?

Mindfulness: An Explanation

Boiled down to its essence, mindfulness is the observation of one’s own thoughts and emotions. In other words, it means stepping back and then simply being aware of what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking and what you are experiencing. This can then in turn be used to help treat a wide range of different psychological problems and to generally improve your psychological health.

The reason for this is that it brings more attention to the way that we handle various different events and to how our thoughts and emotions normally control us. This then in turn allows us to anticipate them, to deal with them, and ultimately to prevent them.

For instance, someone who deals with social anxiety will likely have a number of ruminations that contribute to their symptoms. These might include worries that they will ‘make a fool of themselves, that they will be laughed at, that they will stammer…

Many of these thoughts are likely to be inaccurate, but it is only by being aware of them that it’s possible to manipulate them, to rise above them or to suppress them entirely.

Uses of Mindfulness

When used to combat such conditions as social anxiety, mindfulness can be seen as a clinical tool. Specifically, it is an important part of ‘CBT’ or ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This is a psychotherapeutic approach that involves the practice of essentially replacing and reprogramming underlying thoughts, beliefs and ruminations.

At the same time, though, mindfulness has also long been a part of other meditative practices. Here, the goal can often be somewhat different. In this case, the objective is to be more aware of the present moment in terms of the sensations, the sounds and the emotions. By practising this, they can eventually become more ‘present’ at the moment and better able to react to what’s going on around them without judgement and without the constant ‘brain chatter that so many of us experience.

Mindfulness is a broad tool that too is used in a number of different ways. In almost every scenario, though, the true end goal is to be aware of the present moment and to find an inner calm that often eludes us.

Submissive behaviour is the tendency towards being passive and willing to yield to others. It involves being overly obedient and quick to give way to the demands of others, letting them make decisions for you.

 Most of us are submis­sive at times, depending on the behaviour of other people, or the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves.

We accept we cannot always have our own way, and make a judgement to be passive. However, some people continually submit to others, and refuse to stand up for themselves. They often feel they are being taken advantage of, but do little to alter the way they behave, thereby allowing this cycle of submissiveness to continue.

Women have tradition­ally been seen as being prone to submissive behaviour, both in their personal and professional lives, allowing themselves to be constantly dominated by family members and/or business colleagues.

Individuals with eating disorders (anorexia nervosa) and bulimia nervosa are also consistent with significantly higher levels of submissive behaviour, which has been observed within this population and related to the severity of their symptoms. 

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There’s more pressure than ever before to get things right in every part of your life, to be perfect. Gadgets, apps, and advice on how to be your very best all the time surround us. But that’s such an illusion. No one can be perfect; it just isn’t humanly possible.

It’s great to set the bar high, to go after challenges and stretch yourself. But you can’t expect to win at everything all the time. Sit back for a minute and consider the benefits of embracing imperfection.

1.    You’ll be happier

Perfectionists carry a LOT of emotional baggage from trying to look as though their entire world is 110% wonderful all the time. They’re at a higher risk of depression and anxiety, and hardly ever content with what they have.

Embrace the messy, flawed parts of your life and yourself, and you’ll be happier and way less stressed.

2.    You won’t fear failure so much

Accepting imperfection means failure shrinks back down to being just another aspect of life. Perfectionists tend to take failure personally. It becomes a catastrophe and something that defines their sense of self. But accepting that to make mistakes is human means you see failure as an opportunity to learn, make the necessary changes, and move on.

3.    Embracing imperfection makes you a nicer person

If you’re comfortable with imperfection, you won’t be so quick to criticize and judge others. And that will make you a much nicer friend, colleague, and family member. You’ll be less likely to blow your fuse at trivial things, you’ll cut people slacker, and relationships will be calmer and more rewarding.

4.    Your self-esteem will grow

People who accept their flaws and quirks and are less likely to be hard on themselves when they make a mistake. Perfectionists are usually their own harshest critics; their self-esteem is fragile and easily crushed. Acknowledgement of your humanity means you’re less likely to feel guilty or ashamed when you make a mistake or don’t reach your goals as soon as you might have liked.

5.    You will inspire others

Imperfection is the keynote of being a human. It's how we learn and progress and connects us. That's okay, and gracefully accepting the ebbs and flows of life will make you someone peoples look up to and admire. Your kids will see that you value them more than that vase they broke. It's more important to spend time with them instead of asking if they've done their chores.

Have you ever thought about having a mentor? Mentors can be useful for many people; students, employees, entrepreneurs, or even just in your personal lives. Below are some of the main benefits of having a mentor.

They’ll Give You Advice

As you work towards achieving your goals, chances are your mentor will have some advice for you. And when selecting a mentor, you should choose one who has been on a similar journey as you for this reason!

When you come across something that you aren’t quite sure how to handle, don’t be afraid to contact your mentor as they can help you overcome all sorts of obstacles.

They’ll Encourage You

Besides just guiding you on your journey, a good mentor will also encourage you every step of the way.

And encouragement, especially on the days you may not be feeling so great about your journey, is essential when it comes to staying on your path! A good mentor will know the right methods to encourage you and to keep you on task!

They Will Give You Feedback

Another great thing about mentors is that they will also give you feedback on how you are doing. This can be helpful because it can be very difficult to judge yourself or the things that you are doing.

A good mentor will also help hold you accountable and let you know when they think you are doing something that isn’t great for you or your journey.

They Will Help You Network

A good mentor probably mentors a few different people, and while this may have you thinking this is a bad thing, this isn’t true at all. If you get along really well with a mentor, then chances are you will get along with the other people he or she is mentoring, and this can expand your social circle.

Additionally, your mentor may have some contacts in your field that could help you with everything from finding a job to a new house or even just telling you where you should have dinner!

There are so many reasons that you should have a mentor in your life. But some main benefits of having a mentor are that they can guide you through your journey, encourage you to stay on it, and give you feedback when you may be getting a little lost.

A mentor will also provide invaluable experience when it comes to expanding your network.