learnt behaviours

Apologies, why?

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How many times do you think you need that apology, you get it and yet the behaviour continues?
This is often a theme in a therapy sessions, where a client cannot get past the hurt they are feeling until they get that apology from their loved one, their friend or their colleagues. However, then the behaviour continues, maybe the same, maybe slightly different.
Where are you now? Where are they? After all they have apologised for what you asked for.
Sometimes the only way, is for you to change your behaviour and in that they can learn to change theirs.
We cannot expect others to change, to learn or to grow, only you can do that.
How much is that apology really worth?

Mental health in schools.

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Maybe this needs to be done from an earlier age.

Teachers you should not be afraid to talk about issues such as suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. If you are then why?

So how to help the children? How can you support them?

Why not try to bring a counsellor into the classroom to give a talk. See if you are able to run small groups for your vulnerable children or a drop in session.

Remember this is not just high schools and sixth form students who need to access support or know and understand mental health. It has been reported recently in the news that some children as young as 3-4 yr olds are struggling with issues of self harm, when this starts from an early age it may escalate if help is not given.

Our primary school children need support from professionals as well as sixth form. If we can help a child who is going through issues at 8yrs old, they may cope better by 16, if they are left they may have learnt unhelpful distructive coping mechanisms which are harder to break.

Teachers, teaching assistants, head of years and head of schools need to be making some allowances for children’s mental health. Teaching them these important lessons as you may be the person this child may turn to in their hour of need.

Click here for more information about Counsel me

Traditions

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So if you have read any of my recent blog posts you will most likely remember my spring cleaning blog from a couple of weeks ago.

Well here we are going from the miserable and lost spring and jumping straight head first into summer, and hasn’t it arrived quick.

I don’t know about you all but I started off my week in Leicestershire wearing a woolie jumper to work then yesterday found myself in a mini heatwave totally unprepared!

Yes I know it was all over the news!! But come on how many times has it been wrong? So I was caught out.

I follow a family tradition, don’t ask me why, but I do, every year in the spring I pack my winter clothes away into storage and out comes my summer stuff and vise versa.

For me I find it kind of cathartic, washing away the last season and getting ready for the next block. Ie warm vs chilly. Christmas season vs summer holidays.

My mum used to put her clothes away as did her mum and now do I. A family tradition that has passed down to me.

So yesterday I decided to have a therapeutic cleanse of my wardrobe, deciding what really does and doesn’t fit? What I actually do and do not wear, and what I will wear this year.

For me this was like washing away the emotions of the previous year, putting the emotions away with last seasons clothes. Challenging myself as I reflect over the positives and negatives of the previous months.

It was my time to take a little bit of positive control to make some choices for the future about me.

This gave me the chance to think about me as a person, about family traditions and how behaviours are inherited, whether healthy or unhealthy. Often this is without our knowledge.

Learned behaviours can cause us to stay in certain thinking patterns through life.

There is thought that we learn from parent’s, grandparents, teachers, friends, siblings, TV and nowadays the internet.

All of these modes of learning show the child examples of behaviour to observe and imitate for instance masculine and feminine, good and bad, angry and sad, positive and negative and so on.

Talking therapy can help to work through these emotional issues. You may be dealing with learned behaviour throughout your life, not realising that they are infact somebody else’s issues and not actually yours. You don’t have to carry them around any more.

click here to learn more about how counselling can help you.