Mind Matters

13/12/2024

Therapy enables bringing subconscious behaviours - the kind that we do on autopilot ‘before we know it’ - into our conscious awareness so that we can have access to, intervene and change the problematic behaviours to break the cycle of habituation.

10/12/2024

Therapy is not about helping you, it is about ‘helping you help yourself’ to move further along the spectrum to a more happy and healthy self.

06/12/2024

What’s the reward of being an emotionally regulated person?

03/12/2024

At we have honed a *unique* counselling approach:

💚 Psychoeducational
💚 Grounded in empathy and positive regard
💚 Insightful
💚 Evidence based
💚 Outcome oriented
💚 Non directive

29/11/2024

At we have an integrative style that borrows techniques from different schools of psychotherapy, proven to be effective in addressing the ‘presenting problem’ by focusing on the root cause or the ‘actual problem’.

17/09/2020

17/09/2020

24/04/2017

- Counselling is an investment in yourself to rid you of the emotional debris that you are carrying within you which may be affecting you adversely and holding you back in life.

www.mindmatters.sg

24/04/2017

Move over EQ. What's Your RQ?
Your RQ or resilience quotient is essentially your level of emotional wellness, arguably the number one determinant of mental health and wellbeing in life. Simply put, emotional wellness is our ability to meet our emotional needs effectively & constructively, to respond resiliently to daily stresses and strains and to be able to take responsibility for our thoughts & actions. An important element of emotional wellness is having positive regard for oneself and others which is the hallmark of 'healthy' self esteem which in turn determines the overall quality of our life experience. So, where do you stand on this all important scale? Take our short self assessment to find out. You may want to consider getting a close confidant or your significant other to rate your responses to get a more realistic assessment!

http://www.mindmatters.sg/emotional-wellness.html

04/04/2017

: FEELING BLUE - 10 SIGNS YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION

Have been feeling more ‘down and out’ than ‘up and about’ off late? Almost all of the symptoms of depression on their own are experienced by everyone at one time or another. However, if you have been dealing with five or more of the following symptoms on an ongoing basis, affecting you adversely, impairing your daily functioning i.e. being unable to work or interact with others, you are likely to be suffering from clinical depression. Depression has both physical as well as emotional symptoms including:

Sleep disturbance: in the form of hypersomnia - excessive sleeping
as an escape from dealing with things or insomnia - an inability to sleep - resulting in being tired all the time

Change in appetite: be it experiencing a loss of appetite resulting in
fatigue and weight loss or compulsive eating to sooth your ‘emotional hunger’ with food binges

Being on edge: getting easily frustrated or angry as a result of experiencing high levels of tension and fatigue making it difficult to cope with the normal stresses and strains of day to day life

Lack of interest and loss of libido: marked by a sense of apathy no longer finding pleasure in activities that you once enjoyed, including s*x

Lack of focus and concentration: resulting in ‘brain fog’ or unfocused thinking leaving you feeling disoriented and scattered affecting your ability to make choices and decisions

Feelings of worthlessness/hopelessness: having persistently negative thoughts about life in general and yourself in particular, typically fuelled by a sense of low self esteem

Withdrawal from social interactions: preferring to shut yourself off from the world by limiting contact with friends and family and avoiding company in general

Feeling mentally and physically lethargic: with no energy to get through the day dragging yourself through the motions and just getting by somehow

Frequent aches and pains: including headaches, stomach aches, muscle pains which are often psychological symptoms disguised as physical symptoms caused by chronic stress, worry or anxiety

Feeling a sense of foreboding and anxiety: characterised by an impending sense of doom manifesting in the form of panic attacks or crying jags for no apparent reason

Even thought opinions on the line of treatment can be varied it is widely held that depression is a result of chemical imbalance in the
brain caused by a multitude of reasons, leaving you compromised, adversely impacting the quality of your life, with your self worth being on an all time low and your emotional vulnerability being on an all time high. Recognising the telltale signs and seeking professional help in the form of counselling and therapy is the first step in dealing with depression.

http://www.mindmatters.sg

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04/04/2017

: STRESS MANAGEMENT DRILL - HOW TO STRESS LESS

Stress is a part of daily life - meeting deadlines, paying the bills and dealing with challenging situations in the professional / personal sphere are some common sources of stress that we all live with. But when stress becomes crippling i.e. it interferes with day to day functioning, keeping you from going places and doing things you need to do, that's when it becomes an issue. More often than not, we get stressed out if things aren’t going ‘as per plan’ and the uncertainty of how things will pan out. Unchecked stress can negatively affect your mental, emotional and physical health and can cause interpersonal and relationship issues. You need to take steps to control your stress instead of it controlling you! Here is a simple drill to not let stress get the better of you:

- Acknowledge that you are stressed and that you need to manage it before it consumes you

- Identify the cause of your stress and what the likely stressors are

- Separate the real problems from the imaginary what-ifs

- Solve what’s solvable and park what’s not

- Break down the problem into smaller to-dos and start ticking things off the list to get a sense of control

- Keep a diary of stressful feelings and note down the triggers

- Break the debilitating habit of worrying about the past and
fretting about the future by reminding yourself that both are out of your sphere of influence

- From time to time switch off from external stimulus such as emails, text messages and social media to give your mind a break

- Manage your time better by learning to prioritise and delegate

- Identify the ‘counterfactual’ thinking that is at play fuelling your stress, the ‘if-only’ thoughts that have no bases in reality such as if-only I had done this or if-only I could do that

- Find an outlet for your stress by airing your worries/concerns in an
emotionally safe environment with friends / family or seek professional help if need be to put things in perspective

- Make some ‘silly time’ by doing recreational things that make you crack up

like watching a funny movie or stand up comedy. The best antidote to cracking up with stress is cracking up with laughter as it releases the feel good hormone endorphin which combat the stress hormone cortisol

- Physical health and stress levels are closely related so eat right, get enough sleep and get regular exercise so that you are able to cope physically

The fact of the matter is stress doesn’t come directly from one’s circumstances, by and large it comes as a by product of the way one thinks about them i.e. stress is a result of one’s mental interpretation of a situation, so in effect it comes down to addressing our thinking. Often the same situation will affect people differently stressing some people out and not others. The difference is not what the ‘non- stressed’ are doing as much as what the ‘stressed’ are doing – the latter are allowing their fears to highjack their feelings while the former are not letting the ‘what-ifs’ and ‘if-onlys’ play on their mind by doing a reality check on the issues at hand and limiting their thinking to the things that affect them in the here and now. Awareness of this is the key to breaking out of the chronic stress cycle.

http://www.mindmatters.sg

copyright mind matters counselling singapore