Tag: mental health

Winter Blues

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Winter can be a tough time for many people. Shorter days, colder weather, and social isolation can contribute to feelings of sadness, anxiety, and fatigue, and for those of us who have struggled with our mental health in the past this can often feel like a risky time for relapse. But don’t worry – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can be a powerful tool to help you navigate the winter blues and make sure that the only slippery slopes you slide down are the ones you choose to go sledging on!

Understanding the Winter Blues

The winter blues, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), is a type of depression that typically occurs during the winter months. It can manifest in various ways, including:

  • Low mood
  • Fatigue
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Changes in appetite
  • Social withdrawal

How CBT Can Help

CBT is a practical approach that focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours.

Here are some specific CBT strategies to help you combat the winter blues:

  1. Identify Negative Thoughts:
    • Mindful observation: Pay attention to your thoughts without judgment. Are they realistic or exaggerated? How are they making you feel? How helpful are they?
    • Question negative thoughts: Rather than treating your thoughts as facts, try to look at them with more of a critical eye. Are there any other ways of looking at the situation? What would a friend say if you told them you were thinking this way?
    • Challenge yourself to think more flexibly: Ask yourself what a more balanced and helpful thought might look like. If you could think this way, how would you be feeling?
    • Put this into practice: the next time this negative thought comes up, remind yourself of your more balanced alternative.
  2. Look after your Physical Wellbeing:
    • Healthy eating: Fuel your body with nutritious foods to boost your mood.
    • Regular exercise: Engage in physical activity to release endorphins and reduce stress.
    • Adequate sleep: Aim for a regular sleep routine to ensure your body and mind are well-rested. Spend some time thinking about how to make your sleeping space as calm and restful as possible.
    • Increase exposure to light: Spend time outdoors during daylight hours every day, even if it’s just for a short walk.
  3. Prioritize Self-Care:
    • Identify the barriers to self-care: what gets in the way of looking after yourself? Are these practical barriers, like time, money, or social isolation? Or emotional ones such as not feeling like you deserve to look after yourself?
    • Problem solve practical issues: break practical problems down into small chunks and tackle them one at a time. Don’t automatically discount any potential solutions, the most helpful idea might be one that you haven’t taken the time to consider properly before!
    • Practice self-compassion: Try treating yourself like you would treat a good friend. When it feels difficult to prioritise self-care, identify one small thing you can do to look after yourself, and give yourself lots of praise every time you manage to do this.
  4. Ask for Support:
    • Remind yourself: It’s always okay to ask for help.
    • Make use of existing networks: Reach out to family and friends, talk about how you are feeling, and ask others to help you to put the above strategies into action.
    • Professional support: If you’re struggling with your symptoms, please get in touch, we’d love to help.

Uncertain Times

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For many of us, these feel like uncertain times. Between the big things in the news (the climate crisis, elections, conflicts in countries around the world) and the everyday things (cost of living, decisions about jobs, health concerns), it can be hard not to feel like we’re facing a future where we can’t be sure of anything.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of uncertainty can feel very difficult for many of us, and we might find ourselves reacting in ways which have a significant negative impact on our lives.

Perhaps you have noticed your worries spiralling, taking up much of your time and energy? Or you might find uncertainty throws you into fight or flight mode, frantically trying to make things as certain as possible. You may try to control little things in your life in order to avoid thinking about the big things. You may feel very anxious a lot of the time.

Unfortunately, we know that while uncertainty is unavoidable, the way we feel about uncertainty often plays a big role in anxiety problems like Generalised Anxiety Disorder, OCD and Health Anxiety – and the more we see uncertainty as a threat, the more likely it is that we will struggle with these kinds of difficulties.

So how can we cope more effectively with uncertainty?

  1. Focus on things that are in your control (rather than hypothetical worries).
  2. Take advantage of opportunities to change your attitude to uncertainty – perhaps you know someone who quite enjoys being spontaneous, or not knowing what’s going to happen next? Ask yourself, how might they approach this situation?
  3. Make a deliberate effort to notice when uncertain situations don’t turn out as badly as you expected – or perhaps even when the result is a good one!
  4. Aim to slowly build up your tolerance of uncertainty – you don’t have to jump in at the deep end, instead ask yourself what is one small step you can take to dip your toe in the water. This might be as simple as trying a new food, or taking a new route home from work.
  5. Try not to criticise yourself if you find this difficult – our attitudes towards uncertainty are often learned from our childhood experiences, and take time to change. If you’re struggling, we’d love to support you – please get in touch.

Introducing EMDR at Lantern Psychotherapy

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We’re excited to let you know that we can now offer Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) at Lantern Psychotherapy!

Please see our EMDR FAQ below for more information:

  • What is EMDR?

EMDR is a type of therapy which focusses on helping people with distressing memories. When we have difficult or traumatic experiences, our normal ways of processing and storing information in the brain can be disrupted. This can leave us with memories that feel more emotional than usual, and that continue to affect us negatively even after a long time has passed. EMDR aims to unblock distressing memories and allow us to store them properly, so that they are no longer causing problems in the here-and-now.

  • How does EMDR work?

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation – which just means stimulating both sides of the body in some way – to kickstart the brain’s natural information processing systems. This usually takes the form of eye movements, but could also involve you tapping both sides of your body, or listening to sounds in both ears.

We know from research that this process is effective in reducing the distress caused by upsetting memories, and although we don’t know exactly why this is the case, there are a number of different theories. For example, it could be that EMDR replicates the kind of information processing we do during REM sleep – when our eyes naturally move in a very similar way to the movements created in an EMDR session. We also know that concentrating on a number of things at once is difficult, and it may be that by splitting our attention between different sorts of tasks, EMDR reduces our capacity to focus fully on the upsetting memory and therefore makes the memory less vivid.

  • What happens in an EMDR session?

Your therapist will work with you to identify a target for the EMDR. This might be a recent traumatic memory, but could also be a difficult memory from childhood or another point in your life. When you have agreed together what memory to work on, your therapist will help you to practice bilateral stimulation – usually eye movements – and will take you through some exercises to make sure you are able to manage any difficult emotions that could come up during processing.

During a processing session, your therapist will ask you to think about your difficult memory whilst using bilateral stimulation. As you do this, you might notice changes in your thoughts, emotions or physical sensations. Your therapist will check in with you regularly about what is coming up for you, but you do not need to talk about your memories in detail.

  • Is EMDR just for PTSD?

There is a strong evidence-base for using EMDR as a treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, many mental health problems – including Depression, Low Self-Esteem, Phobias and other anxiety problems – have their roots in difficult memories, and EMDR has been used to treat all of these.

  • What does ‘EMDR Therapist-in-training’ mean?

To qualify as an EMDR Therapist, practitioners must have completed a 3-part training course in addition to their core psychotherapy training. All therapists at Lantern Psychotherapy have completed at least the first part of the EMDR training course, and are now eligible to provide EMDR under supervision.

  • Will I be hypnotised?

We know that EMDR can seem a little strange at first though, and it’s understandable if you feel unsure about it. But no, you definitely won’t be hypnotised! In EMDR, you are always in control, and if you want to stop, you can – your therapist will always discuss this with you before beginning any processing work.

Please get in touch with us if think you might be interested in EMDR or if you have any questions – we’d be very happy to talk to you.

Looking After Others/Looking After Ourselves

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When someone we love is struggling with their mental health, it can be hard to know how to help. We might feel anxious and out of our depth, worried about what might happen in the future. We might feel guilty, like we’re not doing enough. We might feel like we are going round in circles, and that nothing we do or say is right. We might feel sad about the change in our relationship. We might even feel angry and wish that our friend or relative could just ‘pull themselves together’.

It’s horrible to feel powerless when someone we care about is suffering. And so it’s easy to get sucked into trying harder and harder to make things better, using up more and more of our time and energy, and putting our own needs at the bottom of the list. Sometimes it might even feel like we don’t have a choice.

We’ve all heard about putting our own oxygen masks on first, right? We all know that if we don’t look after ourselves, we’re unlikely to be in the best position to look after anyone else in the long run. But even though we know this, it can be hard to put it into practice.

So how do we get the balance right? Here are some ideas:

  1. Remember your own emotions are valid, and important, whatever they might be. You’re allowed to feel them.
  2. Be there for your loved one when you can, whether this is to help out with something practical or just to listen, but don’t hold yourself responsible for their happiness – you can’t control how other people feel.
  3. Encourage your friend or family member to seek out and make use of other sources of support, or help them to do this if necessary. Don’t feel you have to do it all by yourself.
  4. Be persistent in providing opportunities for your loved one to improve their wellbeing – invite them out for a walk, or round for a cup of tea, or offer to go with them to do something they find difficult – but remind yourself that it’s up to them to take you up on these opportunities.
  5. Ask yourself what your oxygen mask looks like – what do you need to do to look after yourself or recharge? And then take time to do these things!
  6. Prioritise identifying and building your own support network – whether that’s family, friends, your doctor, a community organisation, or other services – and ask for help when you need it.
  7. Try not to criticise yourself, or hold yourself to impossibly high standards – you are human, and you are allowed to make mistakes.

Useful Links

Carers UK Website

Guided self-compassion exercise by Kristin Neff