Blog

Attempted Solutions & Long Term Effects

An important part of therapy can be learning that some of the things we do to avoid uncomfortable thoughts, emotions or sensations , although they may help short term, do not work long term and can even worsen them and cost you in terms of wasted time, energy, money and negative effects on your wellbeing and relationships.

If you use some of these examples below, therapy can help you do an analysis and replace these techniques with more effective and life enhancing coping strategies.

Distraction: (TV, shopping, bury yourself in work)

Opting out: (quit, avoid, procrastinate, withdraw)

Thinking: (blaming, worrying, rehashing past, fantasizing, self-criticism)

Substances /Self-harm: (food, drugs, suicide attempts, risk-taking)

Anxiety Prep

When facing an upcoming situation which is causing anxiety, it can often be very helpful for kids (applicable to adults too!) to prepare beforehand. Knowing some positive steps to take and what coping skills are available can feel very empowering and alleviate symptoms.

Support For Sensory Overload

Neurodivergent sensory overload can cause tremendous physical discomfort and emotional dysregulation. A few tips can be tailored to your young person’s specific needs.

Support For Eating

If your neurodivergent (or not!) young person struggles with eating non preferred food items, having a place setting as set up in the image can assist with communication and transition. In the first square place the non preferred food item (start with tiny amount and gradually increase over time), in the second, a preferred food item to motivate eating the first and then in the third have them select a preferred activity as positive reinforcement.

Adjusting To a New School Year

Starting a new school year can be a big deal for little people. Anticipation of new classmates, new teacher, new environment, new routines and new expectations can cause anxiety. If you would like your child to receive support before starting school the end of January or would like to know how you can support them before and during the adjustment period I would love to provide that guidance … feel free to contact me to find out more and book a session.

"Builder Uppers"

Sometimes neurodivergent children require a little more support in fostering friendships and other social relationships. One activity that we do in therapy is building block “build uppers” vs “knock downs” The blocks that have positive things to say to someone on them can be built up and those that are negative are put into another pile that gets knocked down. This is a concrete way of explicitly teaching them the right kinds of things to say that will allow them to develop and nurture friendships.

Coping With Change

Change can be difficult for young people. Whether a change in family circumstances, a move, or a new school, anxiety can surround not knowing what lies ahead. Talking through what is going to change, what they are worried about and some helpful things that they or trusted others can do to help better cope with the change can lend a sense of agency and empowerment.

Helping Develop a Growth Mindset

Something that many children struggle with in an educational setting, particularly if they are neurodivergent, is with negative self evaluation and comparing themselves to their peers. In order to help develop a growth mindset and a healthy self esteem, we do an activity called “what I can say instead” If for example, their internal dialogue is “This subtraction is too hard, I give up!” they might replace that thought with “This is hard, but I learned addition, so with practice, or trying a different way, I will get there.”

Daily / Weekly Planning

Our busy 21st century lives can feel a little overwhelming at times … one of the ways therapy can help is by collaboratively coming up with a written daily/weekly plan that works for you, taking the pressure off of having to remember things and enabling you to prioritise important tasks and keep focused.

Thoughts On Trial

Our thoughts are strongly linked to our emotions and behaviours, potentially

locking us into a cycle of anxiety and/or depression.

One helpful way we can learn in therapy to break this cycle is to put our thought

“on trial”. Looking at evidence for and against the thought, re-structuring the thought based on balanced evidence, and noticing how that impacts the strength

of our original belief and the emotion attached to it.

Calm Down Zone

Neurodivergent children and adults may find it difficult to regulate their emotions when upset or overwhelmed. One strategy that can be used is to collaboratively develop a “calm down zone” where they can decide it’s title, location, what calming things will be available in it and very importantly, when they will know it is time to go there. Empowering someone to be able to take control when feeling overwhelmed and addressing the issue early can go a long way to achieving positive outcomes when regulating emotions appropriately.

Healthy vs Unhealthy Coping Strategies

It is often helpful in therapy to evaluate the coping strategies you are using and their outcomes. Some are healthy (such as exercise) and some are unhealthy (such as substance use.) Talking through the impacts of different strategies and ways to overcome barriers to using healthy ones can leave you feeling empowered and able to take steps in a positive direction.

Screentime Rules

Societal changes have meant that children are engaging with technology from an early age. Even adults find it difficult sometimes to achieve a healthy balance in their lives, so establishing boundaries and limits as well as leading by example can be an important way to help children can maintain a healthy balance too.

There is a simple sheet we use in therapy to be filled in and kept at home can ease the battle over screentime by letting the child know what timeslots they are allowed screen time and indicating which important / non -screentime tasks need to be achieved in order to earn screen time.

Being firm and consistent with these expectations will increase the chances of successfully helping your child keep a healthy balance between screentime and other activities.

ADHD Executive Function Hacks

Navigating life with ADHD can be challenging, in therapy we can tailor make some hacks that work for you to help you remember important things and feel more organised, improving your stress levels and relationships. One example is “chore charms”, plastic bracelets with a chore tag attached … put them on your wrist and then put them in a jar as completed.

My Anger and Others

One of the ways anger in children can be helped is having them consider how their anger impacts their parents, siblings, friends and teachers. By helping develop this empathetic viewpoint, it can be used as a strategy (think about how an angry outburst would impact others before it happens) and helps redirect their emotions and behaviour.

ADHD Focus Plan

One of the key tools for managing ADHD is coming up with a plan for focusing on a task that works for you. This might involve breaking the task into smaller parts, creating a schedule and setting reminders, eliminating distractions, planning for unavoidable distractions, gathering needed supplies and other physical preparation as well as imagining the positive outcomes of completing the task (including how good you will feel!)

Passive, Aggressive and Assertive Communication.

:-) On a serious note though ...learning and practicing how to be an assertive communicator in therapy can help ease anxiety, depression and low self esteem as well as having an incredible positive impact on your personal and professional relationships.

Strengths Spotting Exercise

When struggling with depression, anxiety, or low self esteem it can be very difficult to recognise and acknowledge our positive internal resources. It is often very helpful to do a strengths exploration exercise whereby I help clients list their strengths in their relationships, professional life and personal fulfilment, examples of specific times your strengths helped you in these areas of life and think of new ways you can use these remembered strengths going forward.

Linking Feelings And Appraisals

When we realise that the meaning we give to a particular situation can give rise to distressing thoughts and emotions, some honest and realistic assessment of the situation and brainstorming possible alternative meaning has potential to change the way we think and feel thereby alleviating uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.

The Cycle Of Anxiety

The cycle of anxiety explains how while avoidance of people/places/things or situations that bring on symptoms of anxiety can bring short term relief, in the long term avoidance leads to the anxiety being even worse every time we have to face our fear. Some helpful strategies such as being guided through relaxation techniques, behaviour experiments, thought analysis and graded exposure can help towards long term relief of symptoms and improved quality of life.

Time Management Tips

Use a to do list / appointment book … writing things down ensures you do

not forget anything and reduces stress by dropping your mental checklist.

Prioritise tasks … tackle the most important and quickest tasks first.

Break large tasks into smaller steps to reduce overwhelm.

Limit or avoid distractions where possible to help focus.

Schedule buffer time between tasks to alleviate the stress of running late.

Allow imperfection, don’t end up neglecting other responsibilities by being caught up with having to do everything to perfection.

Unhelpful Thinking Styles

Mental Filter - focus is on one part of a situation and ignore the rest.
(Usually focus on the negative and ignore the positive.)

Jumping to Conclusions - assuming we know what someone else is thinking (mind reading) - making predictions about what is going to happen.

Personalisation - Taking 100% responsibility for external events.

Black & White Thinking - seeing only one extreme or the other of a situation.

Should-ing and Must-ing - placing unreasonable demands on yourself
and others can sometimes create unrealistic expectations.

Overgeneralisation -taking one instance in the past or present and
imposing it on all current and future situations. “You always … "

Labelling - making global statements based on a specific
situation even though many examples aren’t consistent.

Emotional Reasoning -basing your view of situations or yourself on the way
you feel. (Feeling bad is is evidence something bad will happen.)

Magnification/Minimisation - magnify positive attributes of others and
minimise own positive attributes /explain away own positive characteristics.

Catastrophising - viewing a situation as awful even though the reality
is that we do have the resources to help solve or minimise the problem.

Tips For Handling Aggressive Behaviour

Not knowing how to address a child’s aggressive behaviour can feel very overwhelming and stressful. Although we go into the individual, complex

situation n a lot more depth in therapy, there are some general, evidence

based tips that have been shown to be helpful.

Set expectations. Write down family rules, agree on them together and put them somewhere prominent where they can be referred to.
Do not become aggressive yourself as children are inclined to model their behaviour on what you do.
Don’t try do “talk things out” when the child is still angry, wait for an appropriate quiet moment once their anger has diffused.
Calmly discuss the aggressive behaviour and how they could have responded in a safer, more acceptable way.
Co-Parents must stick together and be consistent in their approach.
Rewarding positive behaviour is usually much more effective than punishing aggressive behaviour.

Circle Of Control

Often stress, anxiety and depression can stem from feelings of

not having control of a situation (or perception of having very

little or no control.)
The circle of control exercise involves categorising worries into the

appropriate circle of either no or very little control, some influence but not entirely control or mostly/entirely control.

This is a visual way to put things into perspective but also a first step of

taking action. We brainstorm ways in which we can break the no control

and some control items down so they can move further in.

An example might be we cannot control they way our boss interacts with us but we do have control over how we respond. We also look at the some control and most control items and how they can be broken down into parts that can be moved further out. (It is important here to be realistic and not to expect yourself to control things that arenot actually under your control.) We also look at what concrete steps can be taken with our most control items.

This exercise can leave us feel more empowered and give us a positive

direction to move in, helping to alleviate some of the unpleasant

symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.

Using Empathy

Parents often seek support around a child ‘s difficulty accessing empathy

leading to negative behaviour and outcomes.

In order to work toward development of empathy, in therapy, the first steps we take are to work on recognition of emotion in self and others, moving to teaching and practicing emotion regulation skills. We can then model and role play different situations using play, art, or discussion and completion of an activity such as the one below to practice recognising how someone else might feel. (I change and individualise the examples in this activity by using actual situations the child has experienced or that have been discussed in therapy to make it easier for them to connect and understand and make it very relevant for them.)

Some ways parents can support development of empathy in children are:

Model empathy in interactions with child and others.
Provide opportunities for children to practice empathy.
Help children develop self-regulation strategies.

Bullying ... What Is The Truth?

Children are very concrete thinkers and often, the most difficult and painful part of being bullied for them is taking what the bully says to be true. This cam be a core reason for the anxiety, sadness and low self-esteem that results. In therapy we discuss how although we have limited control over the unkind things a bully might say or do, we do have control over how we think about ourselves. The pictured activity can help a child put things into a more balanced perspective … we discuss and find concrete evidence that contradicts something unkind the bully has said. Although this unfortunately may not stop the bullying, it can be one of the steps to help the child feel better about themselves and the situation, leading to more appropriate and helpful reactions.

Responsibility Pie Chart

Sometimes anxiety and/or depression can result from taking on an unhealthy and unrealistic load of responsibility for a situation. This exercise, where we talk about an initial belief, examine evidence and fill in percentage of causal factors can put the belief into a more accurate and realistic perspective, thereby helping to modify the emotion surrounding that belief. The goal is not to diminish, devalue, or not own your responsibility but to take a healthy view of the broader picture and then take steps towards addressing what you have control over.

Decision Making Tool

Sometimes making important decisions when in a highly emotional state or in stressful circumstances can feel overwhelming, or even contribute toward anxiety and depression. This simple tool used in therapy for decision making is a way to examine the costs and benefits of making a change versus not making a change ... sometimes having something visual and laid out in writing can lend some clarity to the decision process (for example, let us say once completed, you notice a lot more benefits to making the change versus not making the change) and provides a step by step and logical to way to work around the emotions or stress of the decision making process and leaving you feeling lighter and with direction to move forward.

Behaviour Analysis

It is very common for clients to seek counselling with concern about a behaviour, whether their own, their child’s or behaviour relating to someone else in their life. One of the first steps towards positively addressing the situation is often a behaviour analysis. This involves examining what typically happens just before the behaviour (the trigger), during the behaviour and immediately after the behaviour the consequences). Observing and identifying such patterns then enables someone to either adjust what happens before the behaviour or adjust what happens as a result of the behaviour in order to make a change to the situation. Working through these steps in counselling and brainstorming options for addressing triggers and / or consequences that will work best for you can be extremely rewarding and empowering.

My "Why"...

It often assists clients to connect with a counsellor if they identify with their lived experience, so this is a little about “My Why”…

I loved the experience of working from a strengths-based and solution- focused perspective as a teacher for neurodivergent children (and children with a variety of other special needs) and supporting their parents. My desire to go into counselling stemmed from my own mental health journey with hearing loss, anxiety, and depression, and learning how to harness a few of my own neurodivergent character quirks in a healthy and productive way. Learning the skills to help address the challenges life presents and the ability to share those has let to my passion for creating a safe space and being present for my clients (whether children, their parents, or adults) with empathy, non-judgement and honesty. I look forward to connecting with you!