Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife » Depression, Self-Esteem & Anxiety

Keeping Your Eye On The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Ruben — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:59:41 +0000

When times are hard… when times feel hard I find that focusing on some sort of tangible positive future helps me keep focused and keep going. For example, I go to sleep thinking of a convertible VW Beetle.

I love old VW Beetles and have had quite a few in the past. It would be lovely to have one again. Maybe one day I will. But for now it is impossible for financial reasons to even consider it. But as my business grows maybe once the debt is paid off and the costs of living are covered, maybe I could consider getting a convertible again.

Thank would be nice. It would be something to look forward to. So, therefore it keeps me going.

So for anyone who is feeling the pain of a situation that is hard, finding that ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and keeping that in sight as the reason why you are going through what you are going through would make a difference and help you not give up, I am sure.

Without that focus, that dream, you have less clarity of your direction and might be the cause of you either giving up your dream or not really understanding completely your direction.

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How To Believe In Yourself

Ruben — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:19:41 +0000

Tomorrow night I expect to close a deal that will create me an income. I feel confident that it will be the first of a few deals that large. Not bad considering. Well, considering a few things actually.

Like this feels like my first ever real success,
Like its the only thing I have possibly ever done all by my self,
Like I’ve been an entrepreneur for so many years yet never had a break like this,
Using the words “I feel confident” hasn’t been that regular in my vocabulary for too long.

Almost five years ago I left corporate life. Since then I’ve trashed through a few small business ideas that were playing rather than real businesses whilst I worked out what I really wanted to do with my life.

I got divorced. I got qualified as a counsellor too.

But underlying this all, I realised that I did not believe in myself. I would put up new business web sites but not want to promote them because I didn’t want the exposure.. how self destructive is that!!

I had formed a learned behaviour that everything I did was a failure.

I would also find it hard to complete any project, I would get bored as I got nearer the end, looking for the next new thing, convincing myself (very well I might add!) that the next idea was going to be at least twice as definite to make me an income as the last.

This all starts a long time ago I am sure but there were signs of this learned behaviour in some troubled waters I thrashed through starting in the late 90’s.

I escaped from a distructive boss in a large corporate. He was arrogant and ignorant. I couldnt trust him any further than I could keep an eye on which cubical he was currently slivering into (note: my opinion of most of my bosses doesnt get much better from nowon). So ‘escaping’ is not a good way to describe a career development.

However I got into product management which was what I had wanted to do for a long time. Still with business Internet services so I was happy and excited.

Except I got into a team managing a some high profile services just at the time when they were going to drop through the floor.

All my ambitions to turn them around went up in dust and I ended up with nothing. However, since I wasn’t tarred with the same brush as the rest of the team, I survived as the blue eyed ’survivor’ .

I spent a number of years (and a couple of other bosses who weren’t half bad actually) trying to create some services based on the fact that my corporate had contracted with another corporate to purchase a lot of their software and so was committed to doing something with all that software instead of just dumping it in the stationary cupboard.

So my services were less about market needs and more about my corporate accountant’s needs. I sold nothing but was very busy still.
I got little achievement and fulfilment out of any of this. It was a bizarre time because the team I was part of felt quite desperate and felt that doom was only around the corner for us all at any time.

This part of my life I can not remember much about my children growing up. My mind was somewhere else. I was thinking about survival all the time. “What would happen if” scenarios were consuming me.

It’s a pity that no one told me, or if they did, I didn’t listen to the guy who told me that it all just doesn’t matter and that if you really believe in yourself, you know that you can walk out of this mess and find something far more useful to do.

The trouble was, I didn’t believe in myself. I was never that confident. I had done well to hide it by being brash whenever I needed to look confident.

I got a call from a head hunter and was offered more money to do what I wanted in a smaller company that was going places. Sounded like a good break. I could leave all this poo behind and go do what I really wanted to do somewhere else.

I was off. New boss, nice chap, knew what he was doing so I could learn from him. 3 months later he resigned and I had an idiot for a boss again. A right wally.

During this time I got a new partnership service to launch but on the day we launched it my company split itself into two meaning that I went one way and my lovely shiny new partnership service went the other and so was doomed. I had spent so much time on that and put my whole reputation into it.

I was back again fixing other people’s muck ups. The marketing guys had signed a deal for a lot of software that they weren’t authorised to do. they got sacked and it was my job to make a service out of it (I swear I didn’t put that on my cv).

I also had to work on creating a service from a deal the sales guy had put together telling the customer that we would make a service from it.

The sales guy didn’t get the sack however. I also was the one later on to sit in a room with two dodgy looking guys trying to tell them the deal was now off and that the head of marketing was way way too busy to meet to discuss it any further with them.

I left the company before it left me (which unfortunately was what happened to a few who didn’t leave in time) and jumped into safe shoes at a larger telco corporate again.

These guys actually had money coming in so I felt very happy… for six months. That was the time it took for me and my great little team to loose our really nice boss who I thought I could learn a lot from (yes, you’ve heard it all before two paragraphs up).

I ended up with a “cowboy” (to quote a great person I had the pleasure of being the manager in the previous job) of a manager who just wanted to do deals with the prettiest faces and leave us all in the office struggling to understand what our jobs were.

I never really understood my job after that. He gave me team members who openly confessed to their inability to do the job yet my cowboy boss was too busy managing his next promotion to take any notice of the issues he was ignoring.

A few years on this guy had been given the shove out the door himself and now promotes himself as a consultant.. as most who get the shove seem to do.

But enough about him, what about me? failure after failure. Im sure that if it wasn’t 5 minutes to 1am I might be able to paint a completely different picture of these last corporate years.

I met some great people. I had a lot of fun. Things were exciting sometimes. But I do regret missing my kids growing up in that time. I look a pictures and don’t remember anything about those times.

This is why, by this time, I was ripe for giving it all up and taking a chance on having a complete life change. All that I knew was grinding to a halt.

I didn’t feel I had the qualifications, the age or the understanding with what was being thrown at me to make a success of anything. And, oh yea, another sales guy sold something on the promise that we would make a product out of it. He didn’t get sacked, and I got the job of trying to make a service out of it again.

So failure sort of feels like it follows me around. Or rather, there is no success for me.

This is why, when I begun to take the time to really understand myself, I realised that I did have a habit, or rather a ‘learned behaviour’ of expecting failure and not expecting any success.

So back to the present. In the past few weeks I have been in discussions with a business about doing business with them. The initial excitement was incredible.

I had no idea my little business could achieve such an opportunity. Then over a few conversations it seem to become more and more real.

I got to a point where I had to accept that I had achieved this all by my self.

I had created this business. I had worked hard to design and develop the business and promote it and present it in a way that would make it attractive and functional for clients.

It was all my doing. It took a long time and I had to believe in what I was doing was going to make a difference to me some day if I kept at it. I kept saying to myself, never give up. Keep going, keep improving it. Stay passionate, and when you aren’t passionate, find the passion in it somewhere.

But most of all, believe in yourself. Believe that you are owed a break. Believe that you deserve to have success.

Believe that success will come your way one day.

This will change thing for me a lot. It will prove I can believe in myself. It will prove the success is a real possibility and that I can plan to succeed and not plan to fail all the time.

Do you plan to fail or succeed?

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Depression Awareness A Casualty Of A Failing Healthcare System

Ruben — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:27:47 +0000

Here is an interesting article on depression suggesting that the awareness of depression is failing because of the health care system.

The article goes on to say, “Depression has become a spreading stain saturating our society. Close to 10% of the population will suffer from one form of depression or another. The result will trigger a ripple effect through families, businesses and everyday life. The backwash will claim relationships, quality of life, loss of income, and medical hardships. It will even result in the loss of life.”

Depression is certainly a disease of our culture and society in the west but we dont have the exclusive rights to is and many people across the world are affected by it every day. Our society and culture simply make things a hell of a lot worse. We complicate our lives, we focus on material ownership as if it makes a fundamental difference to our wellbeing.

resolving the issue of the large amount of depression in our society starts with changing ourselves as individuals from the inside-out. getting good therapy to enable us to understand ourselves properly and getting ourselves some priority on well-being rather than consumerism.

Disagree? tell me why below.

The article itself is located here

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Documented Postings: Midlife Crisis And Relationship Advice

Ruben — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:03:08 +0000

Midlife Crisis & Relationship Advice: Documented Postings

I recently found a forum for individuals or individuals with partners going through a midlife crisis issues and stepped in to say hi to everyone. I was amazed and a bit overwhelmed but the responses I got back. It seems like there are a lot of people out there trying to deal with their partner’s person going through a midlife crisis. Mostly women although by no means exclusively.

I spent a lot of time there and hope I helped a few people out. The responses I got were very positive and my thoughts go to these poor individuals. They were in the main very confused and felt very alone with what to do with their partner’s situation.

For most it seems the more they try to help and understand what their partner is going through the more they are rejected.

The problem is, and this is why I have set this site up to discuss both infidelity and person going through a midlife crisis, you can’t be sure what really is going on for an individual. A person going through a midlife crisis can be a mask for other plans for some whist for others its just a confusing ambiguous situation where no one, not ever the midlife’er knows what is going on.

I felt that I didn’t want to loose what I had said to all those people out there

And that it held true for so many would probably mean it could help others who come here looking for relationship advice.

Narcissism In A Person Going Through A Midlife Crisis

I started out by saying I had read a few posts and wanted to just say that from my experience a person within their person going through a midlife crisis is at a point where they can be very narcissistic but it doesn’t mean they will always be that way. The narcissistic lead change people were experiencing shocked them. This person they had been so close to for so long now was a stranger, and one who would at best be ambiguous and at worse clearly lie.

When you can separate a person dishing out infidelity from the person who is genuinely in a person going through a midlife crisis we need to understand that a person going through a midlife crisis is a cry for expression and fulfilment, how ever that may be shaped, and its something that you can not suppress.

My view is that a person is either going through a particularly narcissistic phase, or has always been narcissistic and has worked hard (or not so hard in some cases!) to hide it. In my experience narcissism comes out in mid life because it is about releasing the suppression (for what ever reason) a person has felt previously, OR, that their narcissism has always been there, hidden a little but perhaps more obvious from the outside of the relationship than from within.

In my experience and understanding, someone who really has always been quite narcissistic will always be that way. That’s how they developed from a young child, so its not going to be something that the person can change in themselves easily even if they a) could acknowledge they are overly narcissistic or b) actually wanted to do anything about it.

Secondly, if they are just going through a narcissistic phase, a natural thing I think within a person going through a midlife crisis I personally think you pretty much need to leave them to get on with it. If you try to stop them, then you are suppressing them and you will make things worse. If they don’t want to go and see a counsellor then there isn’t much you can do to make them. However, if they ever begin to open up to what is going on for them, that’s a good time to listen to them, but don’t expect them to tell all that they are thinking either. In this situation I think the most important thing is to let them get on with it but not at the cost of yourself and your family.

Spend some time working out how to better protect yourself, i.e. are you secure if the person suddenly just up’s and leaves? How will you cope? Try to work out some plan for independence and work towards becoming so. Also, keep your respect for yourself high. Just because they are ‘going through something’ doesn’t mean you have to accept infidelity or late night parties with mates downstairs whilst you and the children try to get to sleep for example. Keep yourself in contact with good supportive friends where you can too.

The situations I have experienced in others that I would describe as a person going through a midlife crisis are all unique but for one thing, they are the last straw in a lifetime of coping with something that is wrong for them. Unconscious and/or conscious the points that make their life wrong for them come out in the end because they can not continue with the way they are living. I have helped people to firstly recognise the situation (if they don’t know already) and secondly support them through the process and encourage them that what they are doing and experiencing is very natural.

If your person going through a midlife crisis partner is really willing to open up and share all their feelings with you then you have the chance to support them and work out arrangements and activities to help them, as well as you get through it.

I see a person going through a midlife crisis as being about someone’s issues and the effect it has on their personality, therefore its about understanding the person and matching that to typically what an person going through a midlife crisis is for people, but not expecting all people to experience the same things.

I understand for someone who is with a person going through a person going through a midlife crisis it is a very confusing and an upsetting time. It can knock your self-esteem and may drive you to depression. However if you can at least understand the situation or phenomena you are experiencing at least you will be in a better position to survive it yourself. Easing the transition of a person going through a midlife crisis can change what can be a disaster into an adventure.

Some individual’s partners sound like they were going through a vulnerable time and seem to be doing the best they could to support then considering how vulnerable & oversensitive they are. As your partner begins to distance themselves it is time for the suffering partner to find themselves as an individual and without their partner irrespective of what may happen in the future.

This thing has been forced on them so it probably feels like its so unfair, maybe everything was right and going well but suddenly it all changed. Now they have to do something and I think doing something for yourself is healthier than spending all your time thinking and worrying about a person that is only half communicating.

By reviewing your own identity you have the change to reset your own direction and maybe, even if your partner does settle back down at home, you will be in a better position to deal with your partner’s problems in the future and be stronger about the situation and what you really want from the relationship, and your own life and future.

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Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Catastrophizing Your Way Down A Spiral

Ruben — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:23:04 +0000

Catastrophising / Catastrophizing : Those negative thoughts that send you spiralling down.

I want to put some thought into the experience of catastrophising / catastrophizing because, if you understand it, you will be in a better place to accept it when it happens to you and not make decisions that are perhaps wrong for you because of it.

I tried to check before I wrote this that my understanding of catastrophising was correct but couldn’t find it in psychology.org nor socialpsychology.org both of which, I hasten to add are excellent sites if you want to read up more about psychology.

So here goes base on my experience.

Catastrophising is when you start to worry and it gets out of control, because one thing leads to another, and another…. And another until, in the end, you have your head in your hands, you are under the duvet cover and no persuasion from anyone will get you out of it. It’s pretty much the edge of a breakdown. You are overwhelmed yet you did it all by yourself. Congratulations. As if things aren’t hard enough as it is, you go and beat yourself up anyway.

Here’s an example of the thought process:

1. My partner has left me: How will I cope with managing the kids and the household bills?

2. I will be so exhausted I will have to take more time off work.

3. Then I will get sacked and wont be able to get another job because I am too stressed..

4. …which means I wont be able to pay the bills…

5. ..so I will loose my house..

6. ..and the children will be taken away from me because I can not house them !

7. ..and I will be left destitute and homeless on the streets!

So, in other words catastrophising is about being in a certain stressful state of mind where you mind floods with negative thoughts that, one after another build on themselves, much like a line of dominoes knocking each other over. The feeling gets worse the more your mind is flooded with the negative thoughts.

The situation can lead you to a breakdown where you are overwhelmed with critical issues you cannot resolve. However for many of us we can feel like we are catastrophising over less critical issues too. For example today I have many chores that have been building up over the past week. There’s a few I don’t want to do and a few that I have forgotten that if I leave too long will bite my rear soon enough. Then I start to realise I have forgotten to deal with a whole bunch of things that were on my to do list and then I’m in over my head with stuff to do, whilst trying to look after my kids, my home, my car needs a service and where am I going to get the money from for that? What if it breaks down, I wont be able to afford to pay for it this month and then I wont be able to use my car and I will be stranded… So you see, if we let it, it will get worse and worse.

The point here is if we let it. So how do we not let it?

Well, first, if we understand what is going on, then we can trigger ourselves into a behaviour that reminds us that this is our time to catastrophise. “oh dear its Monday, it must be time for me to catastrophise about my career again” for example.

Once you realise this is what you are doing you will then be able to warn yourself that your logical thinking head has just dropped off and you are now going to go through a period of spiralling down if you let yourself. Tell yourself, “don’t take yourself seriously for the next few minutes”.

The more you do this the more you will be able to control your behaviour and learn a new behaviour which is to discard the catastrophising and cut it off just as it starts. It may never go away and at times of great stress you will find it popping up and you will not be able to control it so easily but over time your wellbeing and your ability to cope with what life throws at you through challenging times will strengthen considerably. You can do this yourself, you don’t need to spend any money with any expensive programs or anything.

Try it out next time you feel like you are going into that tunnel. Think, “here I go again, what a waste of time”, or “right, time to ignore what I’m thinking for a few minutes” whatever works for you.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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What Is Social Anxiety?

Ruben — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:15:02 +0000

What Is Social Anxiety?

What Is Social Anxiety?

Social Anxiety describes the anxiety a person feels when within environments where many people are (e.g. bars, stations, offices.) Not to be confused with goraphobia, this is about feeling anxious about people in larger groups than one rather than being in open and large spaces.

They may feel seriously under confident in this situation whereas on their own, or with just one other person they will be fine and not affected by anxiety at all.

It is a separate anxiety and not related to others, although I would not be surprised to find that the same person felt anxious with other things or in other situations.

By the way, I recently suggested to a person in a forum that her partner might be suffering from a certain disorder.

On reflection I decided that even though by naming his possible condition may have helped her understand what was going on for her partner, the use of the word ‘disorder’ in the description is unhelpful.

A disorder will put shivers through anyone’s bones that is told they have, or are with someone who has it as far as I would imagine. So, because of this, I am going to try very hard not to use the word on DiscoverAid. Let me know if you see me use it and I will remove it :0)

The word ‘disorder’ makes things sound rather extreme so its best to understand you may recognise you suffer from a particular behavioural problem that isn’t necessarily a disorder at this stage but if not dealt with may become so.

Social anxiety hits us because we are unconfident with being in a social environment for some reason. So, what is the reason? Well that’s going to be specific to whoever you are and your own experiences in life.

Take for example someone I met. A successful friendly and popular man in his fifties. Put him in a social environment and everyone reminds him of his own inadequacies.

So how do you control it? How do you change?

Well, its not easy I know. But essentially you need to work on your own self-esteem as a priority.

Work with help guides and books, counsellors and online support forums to work out what specifically is your weakness and try to challenge yourself to work towards overcoming it.

For example, walking into a crowded room can be terrifying for someone with social anxiety. However walking into a room where a trusted friend is sitting will be much easier more often than not.

So, why not try walking into a mildly busy room with your friend?

Then try the same without your friend? If you are anxious about what people think about you, try entering a bar or room where no one knows you so if something goes wrong (and you and I know it wont, but that’s not the point) then if no one knows you, you can just walk out and never hear it talked about again.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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What Is Narcissism & What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Ruben — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:09:25 +0000

What Is Narcissism? And What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?

Narcissism is a trait of all of our personalities to a lesser or greater degree. It is the part of your personality that is selfish and thinks of yourself before anyone else. It is the side of your personality that only thinks of yourself.

Without it we would be unable to look after ourselves, but with too much of it we are unable to consider anyone else.

Getting the balance right for many is about questioning the roots of their personalities and the upbringings that developed them in that way.

For others narcissism, or rather, being narcissistic a phase they are going through at midlife when they have given up the fight to keep their needs and wishes hidden.

So what is narcissism? and how does it differ from a narcissistic personality disorder?

Disorders are serious things to label on people. But they help ultimately to create a path for healing and redeveloping individuals so that they can become successfully people in relationships and society.

Someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder will stand out from the crowd in society. Some will use the desire for love and turn it into a craving for power over people, perhaps becoming a head to their own business or organization.

Their inability to feel empathy for anyone being transferred into the culture of their organization and making it more ruthless, and perhaps more competitive and successful in the process.

So someone with a narcissistic personality doesn’t necessarily need to be a vulnerable neurotic failure in life. You will see this trait in many. But what makes it a disorder over a personality trait?

Narcissism As A Disorder

To start to understand narcissism as a disorder let me quote Wikkipedia:

“Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), is defined as a mental illness primarily characterized by extreme focus on oneself, and is a maladaptive, rigid, and persistent condition that may cause significant distress and functional impairment.”

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder )

If you or someone you know has at least five of the following traits as part of their everyday character then they would be classed as having a narcissistic personality disorder (partly taken from the Wikkipedia description linked above):

Pompous and feel they are more important than others,
Preoccupied with love and their own beauty and success,
Thinks they are special and can only be understood by a select few (elitism),
Needs everyone to admire and love them,
Believes they are owed something and are entitled to most things,
Takes advantage and uses others to their own means. Getting others to do jobs or errands for them,
Finds it hard to feel for others, lacking empathy. For example will not be considerate when someone is upset but expects others to understand when they are emotional.
Feels envy towards others but also believes others envy them,
Arrogant & brash behavior, thoughtless and inconsiderate towards others,

If you feel that a lot of that matches yourself or your partner then think about your or their background and upbringing for a little. Psychologist believe that people with a narcissistic personality disorder will have suffered when they were younger at key developmental stages where the influence of their upbringing has caused them to be how they are today in adult life.

It’s important to keep this into perspective. I’m sure if we all look through a list of personality disorder traits (what ever the specific disorder is) we will come out convinced we have that disorder. It is, as always the degree of those traits that qualify us as having a disorder.

Narcissism is seeded within the first 18 months of a child’s development and also whilst a person is within their teens.

It is within the teen years that narcissism can take permanent root if the child is not given a healthy environment that provides a balanced view of themselves.

Teens are seen as narcissistic much of the time because of their self-indulgence in the development of their identity. So it is not always simple to understand the affect that narcissism is really had on a child unless you have known them for many of their developing years.

It is hard to separate the amoral narcissism of a developing person to that of one developing a personality disorder. However it is seen as the excessiveness of the narcissism that gives a good indication of the likelihood of a disorder being present.

Where Does Narcissism Start?

You might see some narcissistic traits in your partner that doesn’t fully qualify them for a narcissistic personality disorder but at least helps you understand what you are dealing with in terms of their selfishness and its possible root cause.

For example, the youngest child in a family may be at risk of being overly narcissistic because they are ‘always the baby’ of the family and are always ‘cuddled’ and adored by all, even into their thirties and beyond!

I am aware of my own youngest child and spend much time comparing her behavior to her other sisters.

I see that she loves being the youngest and can often try to get her own way by being ‘cute and sweet’ which can aggravate other adults around me.

As a parent it is so easy to overcompensate for the loss of their real mother and spoil them with things that give them a short burst of gratification but its not so easy to change direction with this behavior when they turn into teenagers.

In their teens, we are more narcissistic. For some, because of traumas in their lives they never fully develop out of these teenager narcissistic years. More naturally teenagers are for the first time in their lives coming to terms with the physical & mental maturing that is happening to them. It is hard to separate the natural narcissism of a teenager from the affects of a vulnerable under confident person who has been deprived unconditional love and support in their early years.

“It is widely acknowledged that suffers of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPD) tend to be brought up in unempathic environments. In such an environment it is the parent’s (or primary carers) wants and desires that are catered to as the child develops, where the child’s real needs are largely ignored.”

(source: http://www.echo.me.uk/npd2.htm )

So what this is saying is that in most cases the parents or carers create the environment for the child to develop their narcissistic personality disorder. A child’s parents could be, for example, abusive alcoholics, sexual abusers, or in fact have their own narcissistic personality disorder.

Conversely, they could be over-loving parents who see no fault in their children and make great efforts to protect their child from blame of behavior, always accusing the other child of being the problem.

I have seen how a child can manipulate a mother by exaggerating a situation to get more sympathy to make them feel wanted, at the cost of the other children who are branded the problem.

Here are some situations that at an early age contribute towards developing a narcissistic personality disorder:

Parents spoiling the child: never saying no and always saying yes to their needs. Some parents always give when they are compensating for something else such as the break-up of a marriage.
Parents pressure and use the child to support their own self-esteem. Where a parent has a low self-esteem they can use the child to boost their own, for example a father wanting a boy child to play football to support their own failed ambitions on becoming a professional football player or the mother wanting her girl child to become the next Hollywood star.
The child can ‘never do any wrong’: refusing to believe the child could do what others are telling them. Finding excuses to give them a way out from the responsibility and blame of their actions or not wanting to believe what their child is doing. The result is the child doesn’t get corrective behavioral action and believes they can do what they were probably supposed not to do.
Parent’s don’t set and stick to boundaries so that child is never clear what is right and what is wrong. The child becomes confused and doesn’t know how to behave since it only depends on the mood of the parent whether an act is right or wrong on a particular day.
Similar to the above, parents can use love conditionally and so when the child is naughty love is taken away. Some disordered parents will use love to get their own way with many of their needs described here. The child is left not knowing if they are loved or not, being vulnerable and feeling very insecure. Since only the emotions and feelings of the parent are important, their own feelings are neglected and not developed at key stages.
Praising a child excessively and not balancing this with constructive criticism. Always telling the child they are fantastic without offering them opportunities to consider their own areas of development, i.e. things they don’t do so well that would be good to work on for personal development.
Parents are manipulative and the child learns and uses them as well. The child becomes manipulative of others at an early age and whilst other children are amoral they become used, and even abused by the narcissistic child.
Serious emotional abuse by parents towards child: Parents who are very unstable themselves through their own disorders will probably transfer some or all of their disorder to their child although the results may look different in the child at a later stage.
Some parents can also seduce their child, using them as an alternative to their own failed relationships. This can be subtle and not in any way physical to have an effect on the child.

Take a look at narcissism such as echo.me.co.uk for a story of one person’s life in a family that was controlled by individuals with narcissistic personality disorders. Wikkipedia also has a good reference that will give you a deeper understanding about narcissism but described as a disorder as opposed to a personality trait.

Therefore everyone, to a less or greater degree, and depending on where you are in your life, and what is happening to you, will feel narcissistic in some way.

So recognizing your own or your partner’s excessive narcissism at a certain time or as part of your or their normal everyday being will help you to understand a lot about the issues you face within a relationship and making it successful.

Psychologists believe that whilst excessive narcissism is one way of qualifying for a personality disorder they also believe that if you didn’t feel or use your narcissistic side on occasions you wouldn’t be balanced and healthy.

For example, if you ’t look after yourself and put yourself first once in a while, then others (perhaps more narcissistic) would take advantage of you. Providing yourself with boundaries enables you to look after yourself.

Having boundaries is about balancing the needs of yourself with the needs of others that you choose to care for such as your partner, family and friends.

On some days you may feel overwhelmed by the issues that those around you push on you. At that time it would be healthy for you to take time off alone, get your own space. Here is when your narcissistic side steps in to protect you.

Narcissism In Your Midlife Crisis Or Your Relationship Break-up

So in the context of relationship break-ups, infidelity and divorce you are going to be feeling emotional and will need your narcissistic side to look after yourself. Also, whilst going through a midlife crisis you will be feeling very confused at times about things and will need to take time and space to figure things through possibly at the cost of spending time with family and friends.

Many people I speak to tell me stories of partners who have gone through a midlife crisis or left because they are separating and have subsequently ‘gone off the rails’ and have become completely self-indulgent and can consider no one else. It seems to me in these cases that this is a natural phase of breaking up within someone and finding yourself again, and enjoying that independence that comes with it. However, as with everything in life, excessiveness often tells another story.

Additionally I hear of some that have finally escaped from suppressive relationships where the other partner sounds as if a strong sense of narcissism was part of their everyday way of living.

In these cases these individuals are escaping from a partner who has maybe abused them or at the very least suppressed them because of their own narcissistic personality disorder.

In these cases it is useful to understand narcissism a little deeper and as a possible personality disorder. In this way you will be able to understand why you act like you do, or why your partner or estranged partner does.

If you can understand why, then you will be able to act to minimize the effect on you either through choosing counseling or if with an estranged partner, how to minimize the disruption the person can cause in your and your family’s lives.

Summary

I will take one more quote from Echo.Me.co.uk’s own experiences of narcissism which I think puts this all into perspective at Discover Aid:

“..there is nothing you can do to change the Narcissist, the only one you can change is yourself to either accept your life with them or move on to a life without them.”

(source: http://www.echo.me.uk/books.htm#AboutYou )

It’s a shame to think that a full narcissistic personality disordered person will unlikely have the ability to acknowledge their own disorder but instead will continue to destroy the personalities of others. Its up to you to decide if you want to be emotionally destroyed by such a person.

Please also note that having a disorder doesn’t make you a bad person, it means you or the person concerned need to acknowledge they have a disorder that hinders them living their life successfully over a long term. If they seek out and sustain psychotherapy for your disorder they certainly will have my respect. If they avoid help, they have my pity.

A fascinating article on narcissism is located here.

If you have any experiences of narcissism then I would be pleased to hear from you.

Guy

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What Is Narcissism & What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Ruben — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:09:25 +0000

What Is Narcissism? And What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?

Without it we would be unable to look after ourselves, but with too much of it we are unable to consider anyone else.

Getting the balance right for many is about questioning the roots of their personalities and the upbringings that developed them in that way.

For others narcissism, or rather, being narcissistic a phase they are going through at midlife when they have given up the fight to keep their needs and wishes hidden.

So what is narcissism? and how does it differ from a narcissistic personality disorder?

Someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder will stand out from the crowd in society. Some will use the desire for love and turn it into a craving for power over people, perhaps becoming a head to their own business or organization.

Their inability to feel empathy for anyone being transferred into the culture of their organization and making it more ruthless, and perhaps more competitive and successful in the process.

Narcissism As A Disorder

To start to understand narcissism as a disorder let me quote Wikkipedia:

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder )

Pompous and feel they are more important than others,
Preoccupied with love and their own beauty and success,
Thinks they are special and can only be understood by a select few (elitism),
Needs everyone to admire and love them,
Believes they are owed something and are entitled to most things,
Takes advantage and uses others to their own means. Getting others to do jobs or errands for them,
Finds it hard to feel for others, lacking empathy. For example will not be considerate when someone is upset but expects others to understand when they are emotional.
Feels envy towards others but also believes others envy them,
Arrogant & brash behavior, thoughtless and inconsiderate towards others,

Narcissism is seeded within the first 18 months of a child’s development and also whilst a person is within their teens.

It is within the teen years that narcissism can take permanent root if the child is not given a healthy environment that provides a balanced view of themselves.

Where Does Narcissism Start?

For example, the youngest child in a family may be at risk of being overly narcissistic because they are ‘always the baby’ of the family and are always ‘cuddled’ and adored by all, even into their thirties and beyond!

I am aware of my own youngest child and spend much time comparing her behavior to her other sisters.

I see that she loves being the youngest and can often try to get her own way by being ‘cute and sweet’ which can aggravate other adults around me.

“It is widely acknowledged that suffers of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPD) tend to be brought up in unempathic environments. In such an environment it is the parent’s (or primary carers) wants and desires that are catered to as the child develops, where the child’s real needs are largely ignored.”

(source: http://www.echo.me.uk/npd2.htm )

I have seen how a child can manipulate a mother by exaggerating a situation to get more sympathy to make them feel wanted, at the cost of the other children who are branded the problem.

Here are some situations that at an early age contribute towards developing a narcissistic personality disorder:

Parents spoiling the child: never saying no and always saying yes to their needs. Some parents always give when they are compensating for something else such as the break-up of a marriage.
Parents pressure and use the child to support their own self-esteem. Where a parent has a low self-esteem they can use the child to boost their own, for example a father wanting a boy child to play football to support their own failed ambitions on becoming a professional football player or the mother wanting her girl child to become the next Hollywood star.
The child can ‘never do any wrong’: refusing to believe the child could do what others are telling them. Finding excuses to give them a way out from the responsibility and blame of their actions or not wanting to believe what their child is doing. The result is the child doesn’t get corrective behavioral action and believes they can do what they were probably supposed not to do.
Parent’s don’t set and stick to boundaries so that child is never clear what is right and what is wrong. The child becomes confused and doesn’t know how to behave since it only depends on the mood of the parent whether an act is right or wrong on a particular day.
Similar to the above, parents can use love conditionally and so when the child is naughty love is taken away. Some disordered parents will use love to get their own way with many of their needs described here. The child is left not knowing if they are loved or not, being vulnerable and feeling very insecure. Since only the emotions and feelings of the parent are important, their own feelings are neglected and not developed at key stages.
Praising a child excessively and not balancing this with constructive criticism. Always telling the child they are fantastic without offering them opportunities to consider their own areas of development, i.e. things they don’t do so well that would be good to work on for personal development.
Parents are manipulative and the child learns and uses them as well. The child becomes manipulative of others at an early age and whilst other children are amoral they become used, and even abused by the narcissistic child.
Serious emotional abuse by parents towards child: Parents who are very unstable themselves through their own disorders will probably transfer some or all of their disorder to their child although the results may look different in the child at a later stage.
Some parents can also seduce their child, using them as an alternative to their own failed relationships. This can be subtle and not in any way physical to have an effect on the child.

Therefore everyone, to a less or greater degree, and depending on where you are in your life, and what is happening to you, will feel narcissistic in some way.

Having boundaries is about balancing the needs of yourself with the needs of others that you choose to care for such as your partner, family and friends.

Narcissism In Your Midlife Crisis Or Your Relationship Break-up

Additionally I hear of some that have finally escaped from suppressive relationships where the other partner sounds as if a strong sense of narcissism was part of their everyday way of living.

In these cases these individuals are escaping from a partner who has maybe abused them or at the very least suppressed them because of their own narcissistic personality disorder.

Summary

I will take one more quote from Echo.Me.co.uk’s own experiences of narcissism which I think puts this all into perspective at Discover Aid:

“..there is nothing you can do to change the Narcissist, the only one you can change is yourself to either accept your life with them or move on to a life without them.”

(source: http://www.echo.me.uk/books.htm#AboutYou )

A fascinating article on narcissism is located here.

If you have any experiences of narcissism then I would be pleased to hear from you.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (pt2)

Ruben — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:21:40 +0000

Introductory Self-Esteem Article; Part Two

Part One of this Self-Esteem Article Is Here

So What Can You Do About Your Low Self-Esteem?

Well, there are some very good sources for self-esteem help out there. I will be reviewing some here at DiscoverAid but some that come to mind are Self Esteem & Confidence forum at uncommonforum.com & utexas.edu. There are some good books (see the list in the column on this page) as well.

These will help you identify a voice inside your head that tells you that you are not good enough, or confirms to you that you haven’t done well enough. It’s that same voice that knocked you down that is now embedded within your own self.

But it is not the real you! It is holding you back from being who you really are and achieving all that you really want to achieve in life. Be a successful sports person? Date the partner of your dreams? Get the job you have always wanted? Why can’t you achieve these things? Are you really not good enough or have you just not got the confidence to strive for what you really want in life?

The first thing you need to do is:

Hear The Voice

Take some time to realise you are listening to a voice that is telling you bad things. Its not like you have a demon that is telling you to murder someone, its simply something in your head that makes negative comments about your self, what you are doing and what you are capable of doing. Its almost as if it pretends to be part of you so that it can stay hidden and survive. Once you have found the voice that is telling you to doubt yourself you will be able to recognise it again and again.

Consider some challenges. Think of some things that you might doubt yourself able to do. As you approach the challenge listen to yourself listen to what you are telling yourself and you will eventually find the voice and be able, over time to separate it out from the real you and identify it as something that is not you and is there purely to hinder you and stop you doing what you want to do well.

Find The Source Of The Voice

Take some time to wonder where the voice came from. Is it your father and / or your mother? Is it an older sister or brother? It happened only because of their own weaknesses, their own vulnerability. No one who is strong and balanced themselves needs to knock others down. Only the weak who need to feel good by knocking others down do so. The bully at school would only bully because they are being bullied themselves, by an older sibling or parent for example. Make peace with them in your head. Pity their weakness and promise yourself that you wont let their experience in life effect you being able to achieve what you want to do with your life. Consider what could happen if you don’t fight against the voice. Consider being 50 years old and still feeling weak to the point of under performing.

Get Around The Voice & Challenge It

Now that you have identified the voice and know its origin, or even if you don’t really know the origin because you may have come from a family culture where everyone knocked everyone else down, now is the time to work out how to push it aside.

Tell the voice times have changed:

“I am actually worth it”

“I am an interesting person”

“I am worthy of love”

“I can achieve what ever I want to given my own inner powers of determination”

“Nothing should get between me and my dreams”

Challenge the voice,

“Why can’t I do what I want to do?”

“So what if I don’t achieve the first time, I will be back and try again and learn to do better each time I try”

“Why do you want me to fail?”

“Your comments are irrelevant”

“Your comments don’t help me”

“Your comments are wasting my time”

When you are involved in challenging yourself and you begin to hear the voice confirming your imperfections counteract them by saying these alternatives:

“You could have done better”	“That was better than last time, you are improving!”
“You mucked that up”	“I shall remember to work on that bit again before next time”
“You see? You are no good!”	“What went wrong? Who can I get advice from who has succeeded with this?”
“You are never going to make it”	“Somehow, someday, I WILL make it and no one is going to stop me”
“You are useless”	“I’m going to work out what I need to do to make this happen if it takes me 1000 attempts!”
“You are not worthy of love”	“I am a passionate person who deserves love”

Again, try to think about challenges where you can test these responses out. Work on some projects that will help you begin to show to yourself you can succeed. Don’t try for Everest today, begin with a local hill and then go find some mountains.

Learn To Celebrate Success And Compliments

A good test of how well you are doing is listening to yourself when someone gives you a compliment. If you find accepting a compliment hard it is because you don’t believe you are worth complimenting. So that’s your inner voice again saying (for example), “don’t believe them, they must be after something, you’re not worthy of compliments”. Think about what it might be like to stand and be clapped by an audience, to get praise from your parents or your siblings because of what you achieved.

Celebrate who you are with the achievements you have made. Go out to dinner, treat yourself in some way, make an event of it!

Be careful returning to those who have knocked you down before to show them what you have achieved. Just because you have developed and proved yourself doesn’t mean that they have too. You might find your best achievement is thrown back in your face and results in you feeling just as bad as before.

Don’t forget; don’t let their vulnerability become your vulnerability and failure. Forget looking to them for praise that may never come. If it does come some how and some day consider it a bonus. Look to develop relationships with those who can respect others and you. Develop these relationships so that you can both receive and give positive encouragement and praise for your life’s challenges.

Summing Up

Like I said at the start of this article, it’s only natural to have some self-doubt about our abilities. So your self doubting voice will always be there somewhere, and depending on what challenges you have, and depending on how well you are, how tired you are, how hard it is to achieve what you want to achieve.

But what you need to do is minimise its effects on you. By doing so the voice will change from an eagle sized mouth perching on your shoulder to a small sparrow twittering quiet irrelevant things to you that you aren’t actually listening to anyway.

More thoughts about self-esteem can be found at soberdesigners.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (pt2)

Ruben — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:21:40 +0000

Part One of this Self-Esteem Article Is Here

So What Can You Do About Your Low Self-Esteem?

The first thing you need to do is:

Hear The Voice

Find The Source Of The Voice

Get Around The Voice & Challenge It

Tell the voice times have changed:

“I am actually worth it”

“I am an interesting person”

“I am worthy of love”

“I can achieve what ever I want to given my own inner powers of determination”

“Nothing should get between me and my dreams”

Challenge the voice,

“Why can’t I do what I want to do?”

“So what if I don’t achieve the first time, I will be back and try again and learn to do better each time I try”

“Why do you want me to fail?”

“Your comments are irrelevant”

“Your comments don’t help me”

“Your comments are wasting my time”

When you are involved in challenging yourself and you begin to hear the voice confirming your imperfections counteract them by saying these alternatives:

“You could have done better”	“That was better than last time, you are improving!”
“You mucked that up”	“I shall remember to work on that bit again before next time”
“You see? You are no good!”	“What went wrong? Who can I get advice from who has succeeded with this?”
“You are never going to make it”	“Somehow, someday, I WILL make it and no one is going to stop me”
“You are useless”	“I’m going to work out what I need to do to make this happen if it takes me 1000 attempts!”
“You are not worthy of love”	“I am a passionate person who deserves love”

Learn To Celebrate Success And Compliments

Celebrate who you are with the achievements you have made. Go out to dinner, treat yourself in some way, make an event of it!

Summing Up

More thoughts about self-esteem can be found at soberdesigners.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt1)

Ruben — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:03:42 +0000

Introductory Self-Esteem Article; Part One

It’s only natural to have some self-doubt about our abilities. In fact I think its part of a healthy balanced person, much like having a little dose of narcissism. It’s almost like an ingredients list for a good cake, too much or not enough of the right things will mean the cake might taste too sour, or too sweet.

A weak self-esteem will be the cause of you knocking yourself down when you try to achieve anything. I recall some lovely stories of children who were blessed with supportive parents to the point where they knew no fear. One child would launch itself off the top of the wardrobe because they knew a parent would always be there just in time to catch them whilst the other would walk up to the largest meanest looking stranger to chat to them.

Such innocence doesn’t seem to last too long in life. We have nasty things called parents, and vicious monsters called teachers as well as hideous things called brothers and sisters. They are all there to challenge us, to stop our plan for world domination and to ensure we know full well our place in the pecking order.

Too much of this knocking down can, as we know, get us all down. Constant knocking down eventually gets under our skin and enters our own personalities. “Yes, they are right, I’m never going to be as good as my big sister” or “there’s no point in me trying for that competition, Dad never thinks much of my ideas”

From our early years until we are very old we can suffer from the effects of being knocked down by others, even if it happened many, many years ago. It becomes part of the way you look at the world. I can affect you that much that it taints what you see and what you do with your whole life. It becomes a voice inside your head that criticizes you, that says, “see? I told you that you couldn’t do it”

Try to work out where it is in your head. Go on your way today doing what you normally do in your life but be aware and listen out for the voice. Eventually you will find it in your head telling you that you cant do something, or you won’t do a good enough job of something. The voice drives some to become obsessive in their ways to try to prove to the voice that they are wrong. But for most of us it’s like a thumb, keeping us down, stifling our performance and abilities to succeed.

Someone I knew, (I shall call him ‘Roger’) came to me calling it a disability. I became to understand why he called his low self-esteem a disability was because quite simply, it disabled him from succeeding. For instance in a shooting competition, when the pressure was on him he wouldn’t be able to perform well.

Whilst he was relaxed he could achieve enough to win any shooting competition. He was a farmer, and a successful one at that! However during a long period in his teens as he begun to work along side his father he begun to realise how much of a threat he seemed to be to him.

His father became depressed at the same time and begun to knock Roger down or not praise him for any work or activity he took on. Roger kept quite and never said anything, so it never stopped. Until one day when Roger’s father retired. His father stopped knocking him down, probably because of his own low self esteem wasn’t threatened any more by him, and maybe because he begun to realise how hard he had been on him.

By this time Roger had grown into a man yet he found his confidence would be weak under certain circumstances and he would find he couldn’t achieve under pressure. He recalled being embarrassed whilst at a family event when all eyes turned on him as he was publicly told off. Now, whenever he needed to stand up in front of many people to talk, he found it hard to do so and would make many mistakes.

Roger gives us a good example because he is successful, he is handsome, he is tall and he is around 50 years old so has a lot of life experience. Yet he still suffers from low self-esteem. Why?

Roger, like many of us have been affected by a lengthy period of knocking down. This normally is due to our parents / guardians or brothers / sisters since they are individuals who are normally with us for long periods during our significant early personality development period.

Essentially what happens is that if someone knocks you down, and/or doesn’t praise you for good as well as guide you when you do not so good, you eventually take their opinion on as your own. You ‘internalise’ it. It becomes part of your personality that says, “actually, yes, you aren’t very good, you can’t achieve or succeed”

Part Two of this article is here

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt1)

Ruben — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:03:42 +0000

Roger gives us a good example because he is successful, he is handsome, he is tall and he is around 50 years old so has a lot of life experience. Yet he still suffers from low self-esteem. Why?

Part Two of this article is here

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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Change Your Vulnerable Low Self-Esteem Into A New Confident You

Ruben — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:14:54 +0000

Do You Feel Vulnerable? Fragile Like a Piece Of Glass? Your Self-Esteem Needs Strengthening

With all that a midlife crisis can thrown at you, your self-esteem is bound to take a drop. You might not feel so confident and feel lacking in many ways. Add to this a relationship break-up, time off from work for illness or a breakdown and you are probably going to feel as low as you might ever think you could get.

The trouble with a mid life crisis and all that goes with it, possibly a relationship break-up, infidelity, depression or adjustment disorder, is that it leaves you broken. That is probably going to be the place you will stay until things get better and you take some steps to building yourself up again.

Self-esteem is important for our mental health and wellbeing. We cannot function as positive people and have a successful fulfilling life if our self-esteem is low, or vulnerable at any time.

So how do we get some self-esteem back again? Here are some of the more popular reactions people have to a low self-esteem:

What People Typically Do To Resolve A Low Self-Esteem

Typically people look for quick fixes, physical fixes, and materialistic solutions.

Trouble is, they are only quick fixes. They don’t last. Sure, you may choose some cosmetic surgery that will last you ten years, or a car that will last you five. But what you are missing, what you are hiding is that you need to deal with your self-esteem issue from the inside – out, not the other way around.

What you need to do is look at yourself as a person, the whole person. Take some time to think about what it is about you that is so bad, so unattractive.

List these things and look at them as individual points to be worked on.

So for example, maybe you feel you look ugly. Question this. By who’s standards are you saying this? How much does this matter? Does it affect your daily life so much? Are the people who are around you so shallow that you feel your attractiveness is such an issue? Isn’t it time you replaced these people with others who really understand and appreciate you for who you really are?

On that point, who are you really? Do you really know? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to express yourself and be happy with just being you? With no mask? No make up? No pretence and act to make you look and feel important?

Look at people around you as you go through your daily life. Look at those who put across their importance and their status to you through their car, their jewellery, their voice, and their job. Are they telling you in so many ways, “I am important” ask yourself: why do they need to make such an effort to impress on you this? If they were really that ‘important’ or valuable to the human race, wouldn’t it be clearly obvious once you had met and got to know them?

Those that try too hard to impress try too hard because they have a low self-esteem.

Those that don’t try are more genuine and real people. They don’t need to try because they don’t need others to be impressed with them. They are happy with who they are irrespective of how others see them. They have a value to themselves that leaves them content and have a strong sense of self and a strong self-esteem.

So you see, even confident looking people can sometimes be hiding a low self-esteem.

How To Build Your Self Up From A Low Self-Esteem To An All-Time High

How hard and down on yourself you have been throughout your entire life. Have you ever been positive about yourself?

Have you ever had a strong sense of your own self worth. You might need more help than just working things through yourself.

Perhaps your parents or a particular parent was hard on you, never giving you encouragement or praise, or worse knocking your down or even abusing you.

People who have been brought up in a critical and non loving way like this can often find that their identity has developed to match the critique of their critical parent.

At mid life, if not earlier, it is a good time to reconsider your self worth and work through this with a good experienced counsellor who can help you review and reset your self worth and so build you a strong and reliable self-esteem.

Additionally, maybe its time to consider why you feel strong some days and others, or in certain situations, feel completely vulnerable. This is normally due to having an overly narcissistic personality. This could be helpful to you to understand what is really going on for you. We all have, or should have for our own self-preservation, an element of us that is narcissistic. Yet too much is not healthy for you and can leave to a very disrupted life.

The description narcissistic’ tends to be used to accuse someone of very selfish behaviour. However if you are of a particularly narcissistic nature, you will possibly not understand what is going on for you since you have been brought up in a particularly emotionally hostile environment that has driven you to cope with the world around you in this way.

You need to identify the voice inside you that harshly criticizes you. Fight back, tell him/her that they are wrong. Ask yourself who is this person? Is it really part of me or a voice that others have put on me, perhaps my parents were or are critical of me, perhaps that’s the voice I hear. Perhaps its time not to listen to that anymore because it doesn’t do me any good and it is not useful to me anymore.

Successful people with good self-esteems ignore and blank out any self-doubt. They develop a way to ignore the knocking down of one’s self and make efforts to keep reminding themselves that they can achieve what they want to achieve.

Abuse: make steps to protect yourself from emotional or physical abuse. Easy for me to say but don’t forget, most abusers are cowards and are fighting their own low self-esteem. Work out a way to get some respect, make it hard for them to take control of you. Look for ways to remove them from your life as much as possible or all together. Whoever they are and what ever their role in your life is, they are not doing you any good. They are doing you harm. Remove them and you remove your pain.

Successful people with good self-esteems will not accept others praying on them and find that those that try have little affect. Bullies and abusers often will not try to prey on a person who has a good self-esteem because it is obvious they will not win in breaking them down. They will look for people who look weak. They will look for those with a low self-esteem that they can prey on to feed their own emptiness.

Stop trying to be so perfect. Perhaps your upbringing taught you that you can only be the best. That is wrong. Being the best is fine for the competitive spirit.

Successful people with good self-esteems balance perfection against other goals, which ensures that the real value of an objective is met as opposed to seeking something that perhaps has little value.

I believe we should all strive to not to be the best but to be our best.

If we don’t make number one, work out why? Is the number one the wrong place for you? Are you looking at the wrong target for yourself? Should you be looking elsewhere to excel at something you are really passionate about? What else can you who can you get to help you make your own personal number one.

Once a failure always a failure. Failure can have its toll on us, it gets under the skin and changes our expectations of events to come so that it can get to a point where you are expecting, and preparing for failure.

Successful people with good self-esteems see failure as a positive lesion in what to avoid the next time they try something. For sure the next time they do it, they will probably avoid the same mistake and get better at what they are trying to do. Never give up, they say, keep on trying until you have mastered it.

Now is the time to reinvent yourself.

Now is the time to reinvent yourself. Find your niche and work out what it is that you do well and do better than most around you. Perhaps its time to re-skill to boost your self-esteem, fuel your motivation and get your self excited again.

So whatever it is, find yourself something, a new way of life, a new career or even a hobby that is going to give you that drive and motivation. This is going to give you a better self-esteem that having an affair or wearing younger people’s clothes (if you can fit into them!!). This is going to make you a success again. Your own view on your self worth will be boosted. For sure, many will also think and say the same. The change in you will be noticeable and many will tell you.

Visualize what success and a sound self-esteem looks like to you. Avoid dreaming about you on hot beach with expensive jewellery or driving down the freeway with the latest convertible.

Think about how it must feel to walk into a bar holding your head up high thinking, “yes, this is me, I am comfortable with who I am, I am loved by those who really know me. I am worthy of love and am a good friend to those that deserve me”

We need to feel good about ourselves and we also need to feel that others see good in us too.

That doesn’t mean we all have to go and take a month off to fix broken bridges and help run medical centres in impoverished lands (although if more people did, the world would be a better place!). It doesnt mean we need the approval of others to the point where we change our characters to fit in with their own outlook on life. Its about being genuine, being who you really are and finding that people like and accept you for who you really are.

By doing good things for others we can get a great feeling of having made a positive impact on someone’s life and also can see, possibly, the effect of those good things, and gain some positive feedback from the person themselves.

It means that we need to integrate as humans. Integrate into each other’s lives and be there for each other. Provide some happiness to each other.

Be considerate and feel good about being considerate and helpful to others. Holding open a door for someone who might find that door harder to open than ourselves. Small things like this can help others and help us to feel better about ourselves in the process.

More Thoughts On Having A Low Self-Esteem:

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt1)

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt2)

Tell me about your own self-esteem story. Post it below.

Guy

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Are You Depressed Or Are You Suffering From Adjustment Disorder?

Ruben — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:32:53 +0000

Are You Really Depressed?

Be Careful What You Label Yourself As

We use the term ‘depressed’ a lot don’t we. It seems that some days there is always someone around who is a bit down. Some days we are up, some days we are down. We are all like that, that’s what makes us individuals. We are a product of our society and the stresses of that can make things feel too much sometimes. But does that mean that we are a ‘bit depressed’ or are we just feeling low?

Naming something ‘depressed’ makes it sound serious. But is there really a place for using the word ‘depressed’ so much? Well, a close friend of mine is quite passionate about this. She feels that the word ‘depressed’ is well over used and it should only be used at a time when someone we know is clinically depressed.

The difference is, when we talk about people we know as being a bit depressed it is meant to mean they are down about something, feeling low, run down.

When a psychologist describes someone as being depressed they mean they are clinically depressed which is a very different thing.

I think it is important to talk about this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, depression as part of the feeling of a midlife crisis is about feeling low rather than being clinically depressed. So here at DiscoverAid we aren’t talking about clinical depression, just the conflict of feelings and the experiences that midlife present to you that affect your mood over a long period of time. So if you feel depressed, or others tell you that you are depressed, perhaps you need to not make things worse for yourself until you have seen your counselor or doctor.

Secondly, by understanding that you in fact may not be clinically depressed, just feeling very down about something or things that are challenging you, you may be in a better frame of mind to work on your recovery. Clinical depression will need the support of your doctor and others. Feeling depressed is something that you can help yourself with by looking at good sources of help online (such as here at DiscoverAid) as well as take some quality time out to meet regularly with a counsellor to work through what is making you feel this way and what can you do to recover from feeling so down.

Lastly, I wanted to say something as a way of introduction about Adjustment Disorder. I was advised to make mention to Adjustment Disorder as something that in some cases is actually what people are feeling when they think they are depressed.

Let me ask you this. You are here because of the topics around depression and midlife crisis perhaps. Perhaps you are trying to understand it and work out what can be done, or find others who have had the same experience. Let me ask you if you have, as part of your current situation felt at least one of the following:

Feeling tearful, sad and/or hopeless,

Feeling anxious, nervous, fearful or worried,

Feel like breaking rules such as getting drunk and driving, violating the rights of others,

Feel like withdrawing socially and isolate yourself.

Things that trigger a midlife crisis will trigger an Adjustment Disorder, perhaps that behavior you are feeling today that might sound like it should be called a midlife crisis is in fact an Adjustment Disorders.

You see, an Adjustment Disorder is triggered by things such as a loss of a partner, the loss of a job, having a financial change that causes a number of things to change in your life like moving to a new house for example. They all create the need to adjust to a new lifestyle or setup that maybe too much for you at this time of your life.

Other things that may trigger an Adjustment Disorder may look from the outside to be a minor thing, but for you, it may be significant. For example, I recall finding out an old band I used to play in had spent the last 17 years very successfully creating albums and film music. The significance for me was that I had chosen through my own lack of confidence and self-esteem to walk away from the band and music for quite a time. Had I been more confident or had good support my life would have been significantly different and I would have followed a dream rather than play things safe. I can never change that choice so many years ago. Little did I realize how much of a change to my life it might have had. This is a good example of something that happened to a person that made things around them look very different. I spent hours looking at my life and myself in a completely different way. In fact, everything else was the same, but I had changed, my life had changed considerably.

Pretty much from then on I was on a mission to try to not make the same mistake again, which was a good outcome. However before I got to this I went through a number of months of feeling tearful, sad and feeling like I wanted to just get drunk every night. My self-esteem went right down again, but this time I worked a way out and my dream to make music again and even make some money from it became a goal that I have now achieved.

So, are you really depressed? And if you aren’t, are you suffering from an Adjustment Disorder? This article is meant to only be a taster. The best way for you to move ahead in most cases with anything that feels like a midlife crisis is to meet regularly with a counselor to work things through.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Commonly Asked Questions About The Link Between Depression And Infidelity And Marriage Break Up

Ruben — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:53:22 +0000

Commonly Asked Questions About The Link Between Depression And Infidelity And Marriage Break Up

I am asked by readers about the connections between their experiences and a midlife crisis of some sort or another and felt it would be helpful to put together, and expand over the months on , my brief thoughts on these issues. This may help those searching on the Internet to find this answer too and draw them to the right articles here.

"can depression cause infidelity?"

Firstly, If you are suffering from depression, particularly for a long period of time it will be hard for your partner too. If they feel their needs are not being met then they will struggle to enjoy life. If your relationship is such that given this extra challenge your partner looks elsewhere for enjoyment of life then yes, depression has caused infidelity however it will only be the ‘last straw’. If your relationship is not strong enough to survive the depression then maybe its not meant to survive long term. Perhaps it is, or always has been superficial. Maybe its time for you to think back and consider what depth of a relationship you have had, and perhaps look to see when else you or your partner have been unwell, how did you cope then?

Secondly, If you or your partner have an affair as a result perhaps of depression then I wonder if you are looking for an excuse rather than a reason for the infidelity. Again, you have to look at how strong your relationship is and has been. How have you coped in the past with hard times with your partner? for example, when money was not so available? when one of you were sick for a week or more? how did you cope then? did you care for each other then? do you enjoy being together or always look for others to be included in social times?

I feel this sound pretty judgemental. I do understand however that given the most extreem conditions people will be driven to do things they may never consider doing. So given even a strong relationship and mutual respect but experiencing a feeling of hopelessness some of us will be vulnerable to look for support elsewhere. this support may evolve into something more emotionally stronger and become, without any relisation, an affair. If someone is so desparate I think it is understandable that this can happen. If someone is particularly vulnerable because of the desperateness in their life because of their partner’s ill health they may look to others for emotional support. So not all infidelity is calculated and narcissistic, sometimes its just about the situation and the vulnerability that we can all experience sometimes, and a lack of awareness of seeing it coming and managing to respond to it.

A Break up of Marriage Due to Depression

This is a more generic occurance, not perhaps related to infidelity but still raises the same issues. If the depressed partner can not offer any support to the non-depressed partner then the non-depressed partner will struggle and find life hard. Under normal healthy conditions a person would not be attracted to a depressed person. A depressed person is lacking in personality, there is no spirit or life within them so living with a person like this is like living with a different person than the one you chose to live with.

If the healthy partner becomes convinced that the depressed partner is not able to heal themselves either through their own efforts or with the help of others then they may feel there is little point in being with someone who they do not understand or recognise.

If they decide the situation is hopeless then there is little point in them staying, there maybe a will to look for a way out, or (as above) become vulnerable to infidelity.

Depression hits at our personality. If there is a glimer of a wish to heal one-self then that glimer could be your only chance to build yourself back up again and be the person your partner loves. Only when you are well can you make sound decisions. Look for professional support from counselors.

Download My E-Book On

How To Survive Infidelity & Divorce

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Depression Triggered By A Midlife Crisis

Ruben — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:45:04 +0000

Depression Triggered By A Midlife Crisis

Its at the time of year when the dark winter evenings set in & we see less light that most of us begin to feel down and gloomy. Generally we tend to migrate inside more and so get less fresh air. As humans we are naturally expecting to hibernate a little too, as we would have in our distant past, spending more time sleeping and so conserving energy whilst there is less food for the taking.

Because there is less hours of light a day, and what light we get is weaker, the natural colours of our environment are duller. In rural areas the contrast is greater as there is more colour in the summer time, most of which is lost in the winter.

The near the poles we live on earth the darker, and colder, will our winter be. Depending on our age and physical health we will feel the effects of the cold more on our bodies.

So if you are feeling not so good about your life anyway, your marriage is on the rocks, infidelity has invaded the peace of your home or you are dealing with a midlife crisis you are possibly so continuously fed up that you might be better described as depressed.

If your low feeling continues for long periods it will start to effect many things in your life. Your work life and your home life will be affected by being depressed. Your ability to make decisions and interact socially will become weaker.

The combination of a midlife crisis and the darker nights can make winter the hardest period of the year for many. Whilst the sun is out and warm maybe you can cope with the midlife crisis you are experiencing because natural light and the warmth of the sun are important fuels for the human body and spirit. It will enable you to see more optimism in your situation than compared to the dark cold and wet nights of winter.

A midlife crisis can be about indecision. It can be about a conflict of feelings and not knowing what to do, or where to go to solve how you feel. Commonly, individuals are in relationships that are hindering them in some way. Perhaps as you’ve got older you have felt that the relationship is wrong for you but you don’t know how to move ahead to address this issue. Its never that easy, children and loyalties will complicate the decision. Influences from outside such as family pressures as well as perhaps even a threat of abuse if you try to do something about your situation will put you into a corner with no clear way out.

You might begin to wonder what the point is of your life and begin to loose hope in your situation being resolvable, finding no way to move on. Whilst you feel this way it is not always easy to make decisions to do things that will enable you to get out of your rut.

When you are really feeling down you are beyond being able to make a decision about the most basic of things let alone work out what to do with your life. So to move on you need to get yourself better first, you wont be in a position to make a good decision until you are feeling more positive and not depressed. Getting better is about building yourself up again to become functional and able to make good decisions and follow them through.

First though, you need to feel better and able to take on the responsibility to change your life and move out of a midlife crisis successfully. Decide logically how you can take a small step each day, however small it is, towards making your future brighter. I understand it is so easy to sit and watch TV all day, watching the sun rise and set again. Think about whether when the best time of the day for you to get up and do something, maybe in the evening? Or after you have had a meal perhaps, or just when a friend has popped around to see how you are.

Decide what you want to do to move ahead. Maybe this is something you can talk through with someone so that you can share the hard decision making process and get a little support from someone in a way that means you are taking control for your life.

Use these following ideas to help to get out of the dark thinking times into brighter, more optimistic feeling times that will help you even more start to climb out of the depressive pit.

Perhaps choose just one a day to see what the effect is for you. Experience it and write the feelings down if they are positive and read them again when you are looking for positive encouragement.

Try One Of The Following Today

Go for a Walk (ignore the weather)

Get your coat, hat, scarf and gloves. Wrap up warm and go for a walk. Get out into the open, look up at the sky even if you cant see any blue sky, go to a shop and buy some chocolate or something else for a treat. Go buy a new pair of shoes perhaps. Don’t go too mad as this might become a bad habit!!

Come home, make yourself a hot drink and sit in front of a fire or radiator and write about how it was for you. Reflect and ask yourself, did it make you feel better?

If it did, think about what specifically made you feel better, perhaps it was the smile you got over the counter at the magazine shop maybe?

If there wasn’t much in it for you, try to think about what you could do to make it better next time. Don’t give up. Try to get out again tomorrow.

Listen to some comedy on radio or TV

This is easier than getting out in the cold is this for sure. However laughing is well known to help people who are feeling depressed and down cheer up and lift their spirits.

Get out and meet up with someone you know.

If you arent quite up to meeting a larger social group (see below for some ideas) you might want to just have some cosy time with someone you trust who is able to take some time out to natter for a while.

Try to talk about things that aren’t too complicated or hard to engage in (i.e. avoid talking about your situation too much, and avoid other subjects that you feel could be too taxing for you).

Talk about what you might like to do in the summer, or for your next day out somewhere. Try to ask more questions of the other person rather than have to answer many questions coming your way. Listen to them and enjoy their company.

Talk and laugh, ask them what makes them laugh and see where they get their joy. Meeting and integrating with other people is known to help people move out of a depressive state.

Once you do this a bit more regularly and are on the mend, perhaps these people will be able to offer their own advice on how to move on with your midlife crisis. After all, in the context of this article, it’s your midlife crisis that has triggered your depression.

Consider a hobby or other activity that is not too taxing or complicated.

Go and browse the magazine selves to see what interests you. Maybe there will be something there that draws you out of your isolation and into an interesting and new space where you meet interesting new people and have a common interest to talk about. People often love advising ‘newbie’s’ of a sport or hobby.

Surviving each day by prioritising and breaking down your daily activities

Sometimes dealing with what the post throws at you might be too much for you. Try to break it down and prioritise. Look at what you need to do and consider which is more important and try to focus on that. If you need to, ask for help with it. Perhaps you need to apply for something, a tax return for which requires you to complete a long and detailed form can feel daunting. Perhaps if someone can help you for 20 minutes this task will be behind you and not feel like a brick wall in front of you.

Over time, things will improve but don’t expect to wake up one day feeling completely changed.

If you are really dysfunctional you will need to get yourself to a doctor for a full diagnosis. Your doctor may subscribe you with drugs to lift you out of depression and support you for the duration of the prescription.

However once you stop taking the prescription you may be at risk of falling back into a depressed state again because you have not resolved your inner conflict that your midlife crisis is formed around. If this is where you find yourself it is a good idea to seek out a good counsellor in your area and commit to work with them with all that is within you.

If you have any experiences of depression that you would like to share with others here then I would be pleased to hear from you.

Guy

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Choosing a Counselor / Psychotherapist That’s Right For You

Ruben — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:31:25 +0000

Choosing A Counselor / Psychotherapist

This is the second of two articles on choosing the most important people you will need when going through a divorce. The first article which focuses on lawyers or solicitors is here.

Whats The Difference Between A Counsellor and Psychotherapist?
A question asked many times I fear. A psychological education unit head was once heard saying, “to your clients you are a counsellor, at parties you are a psychotherapist”. I don’t think Ive ever heard it better explained. However, some forms of counseling are based on deeper and more analytical methodologies that contrast with other more lighter approaches which more fit the description of counseling as an easier access service to the harder deeper analytical methods I would personally consider psychotherapy. counseling is about supporting someone through a trauma whereas psychotherapy is about understanding what is really going on for someone. Anyway, that’s my personal view today at twelve minutes past two in the afternoon.

counseling & psychotherapy as services have a good name to some and a bad name to others. As much as with any craft there are good examples of craftsman and bad yet counsellors & psychotherapists also struggle with a fair bit of bad publicity because of the denial people have over needing counseling & psychotherapy services. This tends to lead into counsellor bashing as a way to protect themselves from any attempt by helpful observers to guide them that way. A classic I once heard was when confronted with the truth by reading back a person’s own disturbed arguments when they rejected their children, “I don’t need a counsellor, all I need is my clairvoyant”. It’s a pity their clairvoyant wasn’t able to warn the individual of the mess their life became, and the challenge to the person’s children as they grew up.

In some countries around the world counseling & psychotherapy is more accepted and the benefits are well known. However in others (particularly in the UK) it is seen as a failure and perhaps even something to snigger about when it’s heard someone has been seen going to the local therapist unit. However, sadly, counseling & psychotherapy services have never been so widely needed than in today’s society.

When I moved from corporate life into counseling & psychotherapy & psychotherapy I recall the surprise on my ex-colleague’s face when I said I was having counseling & psychotherapy. She was surprised at my honesty. Admitting you need counseling & psychotherapy is not normally a well-publicised thing. In fact, the course I was attending required that you took counseling & psychotherapy and it certainly made a difference to my ability to counsel others because of the self-analysis that I undertook. I firmly believe that everyone should take some counseling & psychotherapy at some time in their life, and in particular, around their mid life. Avoiding this is missing out on an opportunity to review yourself and set you up for making the best of the rest of your life.

OK, so enough about why counseling & psychotherapy is so great (now I would say that wouldn’t I!) lets discuss a counsellor as a professional service that can help you overcome the grief of a relationship break-up and work out what you can do to avoid it happening again.

I also want to make something else clear. counseling & psychotherapy isnt about being with someone who will agree with everything you say and tell you the other party is all to blame. A good counsellor will challenge you to look at yourself too. Your counsellor should look for ways for you to consider yourself and why you act the way you do.

So, firstly, what sort of counseling & psychotherapy is available?

Being Counseled by a Friend.
Well, as much as a good friend will tell you ‘warts and all’ friends are by definition emotionally attached to you and so will not be in the best of places to give you an objective viewpoint. They may try at worse to rescue you by saving you from this horrible relationship and collude with you that its all the other person’s fault. this sort of colusion may put you back years or indefinately when there is an opportunity to get to the bottom of what is really happening for you and your estranged partner. Your friend may take you out for drinks and support you, but dont expect a friend to be a counselor.

Free Counseling & Psychotherapy
Often run by well experienced counsellors, free counseling & psychotherapy can be very helpful, especially at times of financial uncertainty. Additionally these associations normally take a specialist route, for example, relationship counseling & psychotherapy and domestic abuse. So you will find a lot of support and experience for your particular situation. The only problems with this I feel is that you may not get enough of their time because they will be limited in terms of how many sessions they can afford to offer and because of this more deeper self analysis to help you understand yourself probably wont happen, leaving you maybe with more questions than answers about why you are where you are you now. So depending on your needs, free maybe making things harder for you.

Online Counseling & Psychotherapy
If you look across the Internet you will see lots of different online counseling & psychotherapy services. Some with some high tech gadgets such as ‘whiteboards and conference rooms with web cams and so forth. By using these tools some aim to replace what can only be achieved in a face-to-face therapy session. However, for some clients I do understand that this is the only way in which they want to communicate with a counsellor. That’s OK, as long as you are motivated and will offer up all within the sessions. Online counseling & psychotherapy can also help some to move towards face to face counseling & psychotherapy over time too. Overall, if it works for you, then it’s going to be helpful to you. I offer my own online counseling & psychotherapy service here.

Watch out for large automated counseling services that use templated responses to speed up the service and keep the labour costs down. You deserve to be treated like a real person, so get yourself a real person to support you.

Private Counseling & Psychotherapy
A paid service that is offered within a safe and secure environment that is integral to the therapeutic process.

Private counsellors and psychotherapists either work from home or in units that are either co-operative or privately run therapy centres. These should be safe and comfortable without being too personal. Likewise, if a counsellor / psychotherapist works from a home room, the room needs to be absent of anything that helps the client personalise him or her (such as pictures of family members, golfing bags in the corner etc).

A good way to source counseling services would be to check out an online directory either for a specific issue such as Family & Marriage Counseling that could be located at www.counsel-search.com or find out the local associations in your region and contact them for suitable local counseling specialists.

Different Types of Counseling and Psychotherapy.

There are many approaches to counseling clients. Here are some key ones you may come across. It is important that you understand that not all counsellors are alike in their methods of counseling and psychotherapy, it could make a fundamental difference to how successful your sessions are.

Humanistic / Person Centred / Gestalt / Rogerian
This bunch are, from where I sit, somewhat unpopular these days. However Karl Rogers, the father of Humanistic methodologies was a great counsellor. These models focus on the client being able to find their own solution to their issues and as such, require a client to be in a fairly decent place to be able to start this. If however, you are somewhat traumatised by what is happening to you and people around you, you may not be in a place where you can do your own analysis without someone pushing you a little here and there to open your mind more. Unfortunately Humanistic therapist I feel are often used-used, hence the bad reputation of many.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT is very popular right now. Maybe it wont always be popular. However it’s a well structured and used methodology for getting people to change their behaviour through therapy. A great example of this is agoraphobia or claustrophobia and provides a very supportive way for people to resolve many acute issues that people start to feel at some time in their life. This could be something that rises within you at a point of mid life trauma. You may find yourself unable to travel on trains because of a train accident you had many years ago, and now as you mature, with other stresses in your life, this could come back to bother you.

I have an almost amusing (oh ok it is amusing) anxiety myself I will share. I have a scare on my shin where the skin is thin and I don’t like it being knocked because it may bleed more easily than other places. At times of greater stress in my life I have feel very uncomfortable wearing short trousers with no socks such as in the summer. I almost could feel it hurting.

Nowadays you will be glad to hear I am fine about it. Really, Im fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, lets move on.

Brief Therapy
Brief therapy focuses on helping you move on quickly and get you back to coping with day-to-day living. This may work for you, and you will normally only have around 6 sessions, so if you are juggling children and your job you wont have too much lost time. However it may be not enough for you, so be aware of this. Additionally, there are many specialist theorists out there who will offer a one-day catchall therapy session.

Examples include calming people down and changing their behaviour through hypnosis. Amazingly there are many examples of these therapist solving people’s more acute social problems however I am not convinced (nor are the therapists themselves) that the issues a person comes with wont eventually return. However they do help people and it may be a great way for you to get something fixed and get back to living your life, however it wont help you solve anything about yourself that has got you to where you are today, so expect this to be a band aid for now.

Taking all that into consideration I don’t think that Brief Therapy is something that will help you in the context of mid life traumas. Mid life traumas are about coming to mid life and then having issues, which is really about trying to work out how you got here as part of resolving things, not just putting together a program to fix the problem that is being presented by a client.

Freudian / Jungian
These two gents are fathers of modern psychotherapy yet there are some therapists that will offer a pure approach to psychotherapy from either Freud or Jung. My personal view? Lots has development has taken place since these guys did great things. Plus they were products of their own time, particularly Freud who was quite affected by the Second World War in terms of how it influenced the development of his theories.

Psychodynamic
Ive left this to last because it is my own core model. So be warned, I have an opinion!

Psychodynamic counsellors, or rather psychotherapists use a number of techniques to understand and present to clients why they are who they are today, based on their past experiences. Psychodynamic therapists will not attempt so much to mend you but to make you aware and understand yourself so that you can choose if you want to continue to act the way you do.

Psychodynamic therapist will put a lot of time into understanding your past and upbringing to then compare and contrast with your behaviour today. For psychodynamic therapists the past has a lot to tell of someone’s present and raising this into your consciousness is a careful and gentle task.

Psychodynamic therapists will work with you over longer periods of time to understand you and all that touches your life to paint a picture to present back to you. This form of therapy will be best positioned to help anyone who is at a mid point in their lives and is looking to work out their past as well as their future.

Times can be hard when memories and experiences have to be dragged up again that you hoped would never have to be talked about again, but the very act of doing this will ultimately help you enormously.

Summary

So, in summary, a psychodynamic model is best suited to a mid life triggered trauma of some kind because it is a time in your life when you should be reviewing yourself and understanding yourself. It may be the first time you really get to understand yourself too. Don’t miss the opportunity.

Oh and yes, therapists do tend to use a range of models as a way to suit what is presented by a client at any moment. So you may find a mix going on but essentially, you need to understand what your therapist’s core model is before you choose to start your therapy with them.

What is useful is looking online at all the therapy websites nowadays. Particularly the private therapist websites. I don’t have one myself (at the time of writing) because Im not looking for more clients (other than a small few I can gain via my online advert here.) But they will give you a good idea of what is available online as well as, hopefully what is available more local to where you live.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Choosing a Counselor / Psychotherapist That’s Right For You

Ruben — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:31:25 +0000

Choosing A Counselor / Psychotherapist

This is the second of two articles on choosing the most important people you will need when going through a divorce. The first article which focuses on lawyers or solicitors is here.

So, firstly, what sort of counseling & psychotherapy is available?

Private Counseling & Psychotherapy
A paid service that is offered within a safe and secure environment that is integral to the therapeutic process.

Different Types of Counseling and Psychotherapy.

Nowadays you will be glad to hear I am fine about it. Really, Im fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, lets move on.

Psychodynamic
Ive left this to last because it is my own core model. So be warned, I have an opinion!

Summary

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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Depression (mood) At Midlife; An Introduction

Ruben — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:59:54 +0000

Mood Depression At Midlife.

At midlife (wherever this may be for you can actually depend on who you are) depression can set in for a range of reasons around adjusting to the changes that life has for you. It is also confused with Adjustment Disorder which is also very common and, as described in its name, is a condition that is affected by having to adjust to situations that are put on you that may feel uncomfortable.

Depression (not clinical depression) can be triggered by a range of issues at midlife, which can turn a midlife transition into a midlife crisis. In fact, a number of these issues will sit alongside one another causing the conflict and confusion normally the path for depression to occur.

Take a look at the following situations and issues and see if you have any that are bothering you right now:

Empty Nest Syndrome: your children have now left or are pretty absent in your family home. This might give you a feeling of emptiness and uselessness now you have no children to look after and support.

Loss of child bearing abilities: If you are very maternal you may feel a loss for your life if you can not bear your own children anymore.

Career slowing down: you may feel that your career, and your qualifications have taken you as far as they can. You might be bothered by seeing younger and newer faces in your business quickly catching you up or overtaking you. There seems to be no recognition for experience and all that seems to be rewarded is long hours and new ideas. You feel there is a risk you will be the next out the door and you don’t really know what alternative careers or jobs there are that will not be a step backwards.

Ageing: Each day you look in the mirror and see signs of ageing that were not there before. You feel young perhaps, but you know you are older because of how the younger people in your life treat you.

Physical ageing: you are well aware of the ageing of your body because it tells you regularly! you can not do the things you used to do, even though the spirit is still there.

Lost Youth: you are missing your youth. You look old but still want to play and have fun, yet you worry about doing yourself an injury now.

Missed Opportunities: you can see now how much you lost in your past. A missed opportunity that could have taken your life on a different path altogether. Perhaps somewhere much more exciting and more fulfilling. If only you had taken that choice.

Regrets On Life Achievements: you wish you had done more by now. Time seems to have slipped away and you’ve not had time to sit down and think about it. Each year floats by and you just aren’t doing as much as you hoped you would by now.

Relationship Issues: Your relationship is dulling, you are moving apart from your partner. Perhaps you are also changing into different people. Where once you had a lot in common, now there seems to be more that keeps you apart.

Disillusioned: you are feeling there must be more to life than what you have done so far, even though your achievements have been fulfilling it now feels everything has been superficial. There must be more to life than this.

You might feel like all the above, and more are what is going on for you right now. Below are some articles that may help you at DiscoverAid.com . Work through the ones that interest you and see what you can do to make a decision about your life and moving ahead positively. Make a change today and work through your transition in life bit by bit. It takes time but it may be the most exciting experience you have had.

Depression Triggered As Part Of A Midlife Crisis

Are You Really Depressed?

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Self-Esteem At Midlife; An Introduction

Ruben — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:58:36 +0000

Self-Esteem At Midlife.

At midlife your self-esteem has many reasons to take a knock. Your physical being has perhaps lost some of its appeal and maybe you relied on that to gain success in the past. Either way, your self-esteem is going to take a few knocks as you see the youth of today doing things you only wish you had a chance to do again whilst you begin to visit the doctor a little more regularly.

Below are some articles that may help you at DiscoverAid.com . Work through the ones that interest you and see what you can do to make a decision about your life and moving ahead positively. Make a change today and work through your transition in life bit by bit. It takes time but it may be the most exciting experience you have had.

Do You Have A Low Self-Esteem?

Low Self-Esteem: Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down?

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Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife » Depression, Self-Esteem & Anxiety

Keeping Your Eye On The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

How To Believe In Yourself

The trouble was, I didn’t believe in myself. I was never that confident. I had done well to hide it by being brash whenever I needed to look confident.

So failure sort of feels like it follows me around. Or rather, there is no success for me.

I got to a point where I had to accept that I had achieved this all by my self.

Believe that success will come your way one day.

Depression Awareness A Casualty Of A Failing Healthcare System

Documented Postings: Midlife Crisis And Relationship Advice

Midlife Crisis & Relationship Advice: Documented Postings

Narcissism In A Person Going Through A Midlife Crisis

Catastrophizing Your Way Down A Spiral

What Is Social Anxiety?

What Is Social Anxiety?

So how do you control it? How do you change?

What Is Narcissism & What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

What Is Narcissism? And What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?

For others narcissism, or rather, being narcissistic a phase they are going through at midlife when they have given up the fight to keep their needs and wishes hidden.

Someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder will stand out from the crowd in society. Some will use the desire for love and turn it into a craving for power over people, perhaps becoming a head to their own business or organization.

Narcissism As A Disorder

It is within the teen years that narcissism can take permanent root if the child is not given a healthy environment that provides a balanced view of themselves.

Where Does Narcissism Start?

For example, the youngest child in a family may be at risk of being overly narcissistic because they are ‘always the baby’ of the family and are always ‘cuddled’ and adored by all, even into their thirties and beyond!

Narcissism In Your Midlife Crisis Or Your Relationship Break-up

In these cases these individuals are escaping from a partner who has maybe abused them or at the very least suppressed them because of their own narcissistic personality disorder.

Summary

What Is Narcissism & What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

What Is Narcissism? And What Is A Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?

For others narcissism, or rather, being narcissistic a phase they are going through at midlife when they have given up the fight to keep their needs and wishes hidden.

Someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder will stand out from the crowd in society. Some will use the desire for love and turn it into a craving for power over people, perhaps becoming a head to their own business or organization.

Narcissism As A Disorder

It is within the teen years that narcissism can take permanent root if the child is not given a healthy environment that provides a balanced view of themselves.

Where Does Narcissism Start?

For example, the youngest child in a family may be at risk of being overly narcissistic because they are ‘always the baby’ of the family and are always ‘cuddled’ and adored by all, even into their thirties and beyond!

Narcissism In Your Midlife Crisis Or Your Relationship Break-up

In these cases these individuals are escaping from a partner who has maybe abused them or at the very least suppressed them because of their own narcissistic personality disorder.

Summary

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (pt2)

So What Can You Do About Your Low Self-Esteem?

Hear The Voice

Find The Source Of The Voice

Get Around The Voice & Challenge It

Learn To Celebrate Success And Compliments

Summing Up

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (pt2)

So What Can You Do About Your Low Self-Esteem?

Hear The Voice

Find The Source Of The Voice

Get Around The Voice & Challenge It

Learn To Celebrate Success And Compliments

Summing Up

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt1)

Low Self-Esteem? Why Do We Knock Ourselves Down & What Can We Do To Stop It Happening? (Pt1)

Change Your Vulnerable Low Self-Esteem Into A New Confident You

Do You Feel Vulnerable? Fragile Like a Piece Of Glass? Your Self-Esteem Needs Strengthening

What People Typically Do To Resolve A Low Self-Esteem

Those that try too hard to impress try too hard because they have a low self-esteem.

How To Build Your Self Up From A Low Self-Esteem To An All-Time High

I believe we should all strive to not to be the best but to be our best.

Now is the time to reinvent yourself.

We need to feel good about ourselves and we also need to feel that others see good in us too.

Are You Depressed Or Are You Suffering From Adjustment Disorder?

Commonly Asked Questions About The Link Between Depression And Infidelity And Marriage Break Up

Commonly Asked Questions About The Link Between Depression And Infidelity And Marriage Break Up

"can depression cause infidelity?"

A Break up of Marriage Due to Depression

Depression Triggered By A Midlife Crisis

Depression Triggered By A Midlife Crisis

Try One Of The Following Today

Choosing a Counselor / Psychotherapist That’s Right For You

Private Counseling & Psychotherapy
A paid service that is offered within a safe and secure environment that is integral to the therapeutic process.

Private Counseling & Psychotherapy
A paid service that is offered within a safe and secure environment that is integral to the therapeutic process.