Blog

General Well-being, Mental Health, Uncategorized

Sure, we are all in this together!

denise

In the midst of COVID-19, we are seeing everywhere that we are in this together and yes we are all in this world epidemic together, living every aspect of it, together. But really we are, each, living it, very, very differently. When I decided I wanted to write a post about the new norms of social distancing and isolation that we are experiencing at the moment, I had thought about writing about the different groups in isolation, single, with a partner, as a family, elderly, and single parents. The more I looked into different articles about this topic, I realised that there is so many more, and I am probably only taking in some of them.

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General Well-being

Learning a new language as an adult

denise

As a child growing up in rural Ireland, in primary school we were thought English and Irish, when I reached my final year of primary school as a pilot programme, we were offered the opportunity to learn French. I really enjoyed it and it was the first time the teacher complimented me, I still remember how happy it made me. I then started secondary school or high school. I continued to learn English, Irish and French. The French was the same I had learned the previous year, so, I got lazy and didn’t do much as I already knew it. When it came to the point that I had to learn I had the same teacher for French and Irish which made it hard to learn either.

The story goes on and I studied French for 5 years and came out of my final exams with a mere pass. In university I took up Spanish, I did enjoy learning it but did not fully grasp it. Fast-forward a couple of years and I wish I had paid more attention in my language classes and invested in them, Irish included. So about a year ago, I decided to take up learning a language as it is one thing that personally annoys me as a native English speaker, we expect the world to accommodate us, this may not be the case but it how I feel about myself anyway.

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General Well-being, Uncategorized

Positive in failure!

denise

Collins dictionary describes failure as “a lack of success in doing or achieving something”. Two questions you can ask yourself, are we meant to always achieve what we want? And why is failure a bad thing anyway?

If we always achieve what we want, how do we know if we actually deserve it and if it is what we want? When we talk about failure, we talk about the lack of success. But every situation has different angles to look at it. For example J.K. Rowling, widely known as the author of Harry Potter, one of the best selling authors of today, had her first book rejected by 12 different publishing companies. At the time, she was living on benefits and did not give up at the first hurdle of failure. She is now a millionaire. So, although the first 12 times she didn’t achieve what she wanted, she kept going. She believed that her time was coming and that sometimes you need to fail to succeed. One of the main skills I believe she displayed during this time was resilience.

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Food

What about baking!

denise

It is my most favourite thing to do in the whole world. Picture the smell of home-cooked food in your kitchen and the happiness you get when you share it with others. What is there not to love! I remember years ago, when I was living at home with my mother, I was working two stressful jobs at the time and baking cakes for people on the side. I was in the kitchen, exhausted, baking my second cake of the week, huffing and puffing because the icing wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do. She turned to me and started questioning me that if it was worth it if it made me so annoyed and frustrated. My response straight away was, yes.

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Mental Health

When the whole world becomes anxious!

denise

An estimated 275 million people globally suffer from some form of an anxiety disorder, that is not including the people who feel anxious and have not done been diagnosed. In my position as a counsellor I see many people who have underlying anxiety issues. It has now become the number one mental health issues in the world. With our mentality to get everything and do everything now has made us an even more anxious generation.

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Mental Health

Dealing with burnout

denise

The term burnout is being used a lot lately. I tried to explain it to a friend who I felt was reaching a point of burning out, and they couldn’t comprehend when I told them that I experience it from time to time, their response was someone like you wouldn’t experience that. It got me thinking a lot about it and the understanding people have of mental health professionals, as if we have a super power towards certain things.

The World Health Organisation explains that “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

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General Well-being

The secrets of being happy!

denise

There are so many books out there giving us all the magic formula of how to be happy, but what if you have tried it and it failed, does that mean that you cannot be happy? NO, it means that you haven’t found the formula that fits you, and maybe there isn’t just one formula that fits you, that you need to take parts of different ones and stick them all together. Then what if the formula you have tried and tested just isn’t working this time then what.

That is a lot of questions in an opening paragraph and I am sure you are wondering where this is really going. I believe everyone wants to be happy they just may have been wearing the wrong size shoe to take it on or are scared of what then if they do become happy.

So here are my steps to be happy for now, take them as they are or change them to suit you, if everything was black and white we wouldn’t have rainbows.

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