Subrideo Blog

Although we would expect there to be some political bias to the report, Liberal Democrats have highlighted the issue of massively long waiting times for community mental health services in some areas of the country.

The BBC have reported on this worthy news item and have spoken to someone at the sharp end of it's issues. Paul Davidson, 50, from Gateshead was told he would have to wait three-and-a-half years to see a psychologist. While waiting for treatment, Mr Davidson, twice tried to commit suicide, suffered from panic attacks and he states that he was "...walking the streets screaming my head off...".

As with many people who suffered from depression, he regularly visited his doctor and was prescribed antidepressants, however these did not seem to help. Doctors seem to be in a huge dilemma with this subject. On one hand seeing more and more people with anxiety and depression yet being unable to offer them any therapeutic help other than antidepressants.

According to NICE guidelines they should offer talking therapy as a first port of call, however if this isn't available for a long period, then it's no wonder that the UK's reliance on antidepressants is increasing. The BBC report that more than 31m prescriptions for drugs such as Prozac were issued in England in 2006 after an almost continuous rise over the last 10 years.

This story is bad enough in it's own right, however as a company offering fast effective treatment for depression, we have tried to offer our services to the NHS. However, the process seems at best to be unknown to staff and so far, we have been unable to add ourselves to the official register which a doctor would utilise. So, while ever there are gaps in our diary for one to one sessions, it is criminal that there are people out there like Paul suffering unnecessarily for such a long period of time.

To read the BBC article on this, go to here.

Dr Kate Middleton has obviously had a lot of experience of helping people with eating disorders. This book is empathetic to those reading actually with a disorder and yet is also full of simple but effective approaches to help someone with an issue of this kind.

There are many books out there on this topic, however I found this book to be particularly useful as it is so obviously based on real experiences rather than theoretical approaches to a condition. The author gives an insight into the mind of the person, both at the beginning of the condition and throughout their journey, including how recovery may have it's ups and downs and how this is best dealt with by someone looking to help. It gives useful advice to a parent who has a child with an eating disorder and helps them to understand why they may not, in this case be able to directly help. It gives great advice as to how to initially approach the subject of getting help and how to tackle those difficult conversations.

As a therapist, I found this book a real insight into the mind of the person, rather than a list of tools and techniques and it is therefore a much more valuable book than maybe I first realised. It will enable you to build rapport with your client by talking about the condition in a way in which they recognise, it will help you gather the right information, set realistic goals, agree a strategy and if you're a hypnotherapist, it will help you create a hypnotic session which really relaxes your client and helps them move forwards towards a healthier eating pattern with renewed motivation and drive.

I shall be using this book as inspiration to help create metaphors which can either be used in a therapeutic session or for people with eating disorders directly to help reframe where they are. Here is one I found recently noted by Professor Janet Treasure of Gresham College, UK:

"We (the therapist/carer) try and make sure we are in the middle position, what we call the dolphin position, where we can nudge someone into safety. Another metaphor that it is useful to remember is that someone with an eating disorder is rather like somebody at sea, and their eating disorder is like a life belt. It is a solution for them and it makes them feel safe, so they are not going to take that off unless they can be in a position of more safety. This is the way we have to try and nudge people into recovery."

If you would like to browse eating disorder metaphors and many more, check out our free metaphor repository

If you would like to purchase this book, you can buy it easily from Amazon

Thank you for reading, and take care

Juliet

A recent study by the University College London shows that there is strong evidence of how work stress is linked to the biological mechanisms involved in the onset of heart disease. Dr Tarani Chandola, a senior lecturer in UCL Epidemiology & Public Health and the lead author of the study, said: "Stress at work is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) but the mechanisms underlying this association have remained unclear until now." The study found that stress can lead to CHD either directly, by activating stress pathways controlled by the interaction between the nervous system, the endocrine glands and their hormones (neuroendocrine mechanisms), or indirectly via its association with unhealthy lifestyles.

So, the question now has to be - how can we manage stress better in our daily lives? One thing you could start by doing is taking a look at the Samaritans stress down day web site. The Samaritans are asking everyone to take part in stamping out stress on the 1st February using their big green furry slippers or by taking part in stress reducing activities. While the green furry slippers do look good, here are a few simple things you can do to reduce stress in your lives:

Get a good nights sleep
Sleep is the absolute key to our wellbeing. When we dream, our brains close any emotional loops which have been left open throughout the day. This, together with our cells being rejuvenated and our immune system boosted means that we wake feeling energised and ready for a new day.

7-11 Breathing
This is a special type of breathing, not into your chest but deep into your tummy or diaphragm which is below your chest. The important thing here is that the out breath must be longer that the in breath. This causes stimulation of the part of your nervous system responsible for relaxation. This is a basic law of biology and if you breathe in this way then your body will have no choice but to relax.

Brain dump
Keep a daily diary of anything which you find yourself mulling over, throughout the day, note down each item as it comes and goes. At a specific time of day, give yourself permission to go through the diary and prioritise each item and identify a specific task to enable it to not appear in the diary again. This may simply mean a quick phone call to a friend, writing a letter, joining that gym or whatever has been on your mind. In addition, if you are finding specific area's reappearing, you may find that utilising a therapeutic tool or technique to be advantageous. These could include:

• Hypnotherapy session
• EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
• NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)
• Life coaching
• Other forms of counselling

For more detailed information on stress and how to effectively manage it from a Humans Givens perspective, see our free stress management fact sheet.

If you would like to see just how stressed you are why don't you head over to the stress down day web site and take their on-line stress test. Why not buy some big green furry slippers while you are there.

Studies in the past have shown how our names can subconsiously impact our life outcomes, this is called "Name-Letter Effect" (NLE). So, a Tom is more likely to buy a Toyota, move to Tooting and marry Tonya, than is Matt, who is more likely to buy a Mazda, move to Manchester and marry Mary. This is generally more known to be the case with people who indicate unconscious self-liking and generally high level of self esteem.

This is all well and good, but if your initials just happen to be associated to negative outcomes, can this detrimentaly impact your life? This is a huge question and in a recent study undertaken by Leif Neilson and Joseph Simmons from the University of California, they have shown how from Law School to sports performance, the names we are given can have bizarrely detrimental consequences.

So what letters do we associate to failure and success? Let's take a look at how we are graded throughout our education, generally these are A, B, C and D grades. So if your intials are C or D, how did you perform at school compared to your peers with initials A or B, or those with unrelated initials? Amazingly, an analysis of 15 years of MBA students' grades at a large American University showed that students with the initials C or D achieved significantly lower grades than students whose initials were unrelated to grade scores, and students with the initials A or B. This was the case, especially when students liked their initials.

Another study showed how far-reaching these effects can be. An analysis of 392,458 lawyers who studied at 170 law schools showed that as the quality of law schools declined, so too did the proportion of lawyers with the initials A or B who had attended.

The study also showed how NLE can impact sports performance. For example in American baseball, an analysis of strike outs (failing to hit the ball three times in a row) from 1913 to 2006 showed that players whose first or last names began with K suffered significantly more strikeouts than other players. Why? Because in baseball scoring, K is used to denote a strikeout - "For players with this initial, the explicitly negative performance outcome may feel implicitly less aversive," the researchers said.

This is incredibly useful research, especially for individuals looking to break down barriers to achieving their own success and also for those who are coaching, both in sports, academically and therapeutically.

If you are experiencing these or other barriers to performance, why not check out our one to one sessions, where we will help overcome these obstacles and put you firmly on that the road to success! Or, if you are a sports professional wanting that extra special boost, why not check out our peak performance workshops.

If you would like more information on this research, you can download the pdf at http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/01/affection-for-our-own-names-and.html

Take care,

Juliet

Hello and welcome to the all new Subrideo Blog!

We shall be reporting on and giving our views on new and exciting research which could impact therapeutic techniques and how we see the mind-body connection. We will also be completing reviews on what we are currently reading, listening too and watching. As well as all this we will keep you up to date on what's happening in the Subrideo camp, including new training courses, our very own book publications, radio and TV interviews, articles and the launch of our new downloads website. So this is where it's all happening - why not choose to receive updates by RSS feed to make sure you aren't out of the loop

Take care,

Juliet and Lee