Welcome to my world . . .

I love my work, but then again I have many passions. I describe myself as a creative soul who is ridiculously enthusiastic about many varied things from exercise to making photo books, to crochet, gardening, family, cooking, travel, kayaking, strategy games, sewing or just chilling out doing mindfulness to name but a few. For some days of the week, I live in the world of my psychological practice, immersing myself in all things psychology, other days trying to find the balance between work and my personal life.

At times days are inextricably interwoven, and my experiences of each day create an opportunity to uncover something new. I describe myself as a sponge for new information. I also relish the opportunity to pass on what I learn both through my own pursuits and also from those I work with. As such this blog affords a unique opportunity to share what works for others and myself. Formal university training cautions around self-disclosure but I believe it is what makes one relatable and establishes that human connectedness that we all yearn for.

As an introduction I cannot go past the incredible benefits of the written word. We entertain a plethora of thoughts on a daily basis, some 50-60,000 apparently, of which I understand some 80% are negative (protective I believe). I am not sure how that was figured out but that’s an awful lot of thinking. Consequently the vast majority of these thoughts are also ones we have had before!!!!!

So you can see how we can get STUCK in our thinking. So to literally get out of our mind and into our life, writing it down makes great sense. Somehow we write differently to how we think; even if we write what we think, it takes on a different measure when we see it on paper. We can literally step back and view it through a different lens (call it a re-frame). Sometimes that’s as much as it takes, to consider there is another way of looking at it. How refreshing, kind of like a refresh on your computer.

So, my encouragement is to get writing as I am beginning to do right here. I am a huge stationery shop fan, but also love my cheap Woolies exercise books for my own personal daily journaling (lots of my clients get these). I will share my own journaling techniques in a subsequent post. Writing daily grounds me, helps me to see another perspective, cathartically gets the thoughts and feelings out, teaches me something new, assists my self monitoring, and acts as a source of reflection over time. It is now a habit…..which may lead to my next post!