ABC Blog Post
15th September 2018
Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 2018
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Dr Jim’s Blog: Mental health is not just about childhood experiences;
Or current stressors; or badly managed thoughts…
Mental health is related to diet and nutrition, inner dialogue, physical exercise, re-framing of experience, and sleep science…Etc…
Introduction
In science as well as popular culture, the body and mind have long been pulled apart, and treated as separate entities.
And when they are treated as being connected – as in the modern psychiatric theory of ‘brain chemistry imbalances’ causing negative moods and emotions, the ‘brain chemistry’ in question is taken to be unrelated to how you use your body; what you eat; how well you sleep.
It is assumed to be ‘special brain chemistry’ – separate and apart from Lifestyle Factors – which can only be fixed by consuming dangerous drugs!
If you are interested in the impact of lifestyle practices on mental health and emotional states, then you will enjoy our page of information about how all of the ideas above are presented in our book about Lifestyle Counselling. We see this as the core of most holistic healing practices of the future.
In the immediate future, lifestyle counselling practice will be a novel service offering for counselling and psychotherapy clients who have realized that:
# the body and mind are intimately connected;
# that the body-mind is an open system, permeated by a whole range of lifestyle factors which can be managed well, or mismanaged,
# which results in excellent or poor mental health, physical health, and personal happiness.
In the pages of our popular book on lifestyle counselling, we have presented:
– a summary of our previous book about the impact of diet and exercise on mental health and emotional well-being;
– a chapter which integrates psychological theories of emotion with physical sources of distress – for the emotions of anger, anxiety and depression – and recommends treatment strategies;
– a chapter on the negative effects of sleep insufficiency on our thinking, feeling and behaviour;
– a chapter on how to re-frame any problem, using our Six Windows Model (which includes some perspectives from moderate Buddhism and moderate Stoicism) – but excludes the extreme forms of those philosophies of life!);
– a chapter on how to divine and assess the counselling client’s multiple sources of emotional disturbance, using our Holistic-SOR Model;
– and a chapter on how to set about teaching lifestyle change to counselling and therapy clients.
For a page of information about this book’s contents, including extracts, and the contents pages and index pages, please click the following link: *Lifestyle Counselling and Coaching for the Whole Person… by Jim Byrne***
And/or you could also look at our current range of six books on this area of counselling and therapy theory and practice: Books about E-CENT Counselling.***
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That’s all for now.
Best wishes,
Jim
Dr Jim Byrne, Doctor of Counselling
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services
Telephone: 44 1422 843 629
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Letting worries and fears about the future go round and round in our minds without expressing them in some way, is really bad for us and can affect our immune systems. Writing about what’s bugging us has an immediate therapeutic effect, and there is lots of evidence of its value.
If you wanted more details about the value of writing, then a really good book written by Dr Jim Byrne, details the benefits and research findings which show what a very effective technique it is. You can find it here: 
Charles Duhigg’s fabulous book about The Power of Habit is a fascinating read. It’s a very practical guide to changing our habits and is very straightforward, and helpful, and contains case studies which show the process of habit change from start to finish. It’s also got easily understandable illustrations. So, if you have some bad habits you want to eliminate, this book could be a huge help to you!
Our brains have developed the ability to create habits because they allow our brains to save effort, and to think more efficiently without having our minds cluttered with the mechanics of the many basic behaviours we have to follow each day.
The importance of craving!
And if they felt themselves weakening in their commitment, they changed their focus onto the rewards that they would get if they kept to their plans. This visualisation of the very real rewards they would get, kept them strong in the face of temptation.
As my own experiment, I wanted to establish a daily habit of exercising my arm muscles, to firm them up. Therefore, I set up a cue which is the start of the BBC TV programme “Pointless” at 5.15pm every day.
Duhigg includes in his book a summary of a valuable experiment conducted in 2007 by a German neurologist called Muellor. He and his fellow researchers at the University of Magdeburg, identified the specific part of the brain (the basal ganglia) where the habit loop is based, and recruited alcoholics who had been in rehab and had been unable to give up drink. They recruited five alcoholics.
Here is an example of the full process of habit change.
Conclusion
Dr Angela Duckworth is an Associate Professor of psychology, at the University of Pennsylvania. When she was in her second year of graduate school, she started researching the achievements of highly effective people in different areas of life: business, the arts, journalism, medicine, athletics, the law, etc.
Gradually, as the interviews with these highly successful people progressed, she was able to create a series of questions. These questions tried to gauge the extent of someone’s ability to keep going in the face of obstacles, and how passionate they were about their chosen activities.
From this group of approximately 2,500, there is a final group selected of 1,200 who are enrolled and admitted into the academy.
She also used the test at the request of the Chicago Public Schools Services, and she discovered, through administering the Grit Scale to the students, that the level of grit of the students was a more revealing measure of whether they would graduate or not.
After a number of years teaching, Angela Duckworth could see very clearly that “talent was not destiny”, and she decided to leave teaching for psychology, as she wanted to get really clear about the role that effort made in achievement.
When he was fourteen one of the specialist teachers decided to ask Scott why he wasn’t in a more demanding class.
This restriction continued until the day came when he decided to apply to the Carnegie Mellon University. He was fascinated by the concept of IQ and he wanted to study intelligence, so he applied for a cognitive science course.
But you can also grow your grit level “From the outside in”. This is done by having support from parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors and friends. They can make a great difference. Where would Mozart have been without his musical father? And where would Bill Gates be without a wealthy lawyer father, and – from 1968 onwards, as an 8th grader – unlimited access to a computer terminal at his private school? (So grit is very important, but so also is external support, and ‘door openers’ [or people who ‘allow you in’]).
Earlier today, I was discussing with Renata what I could write about this week. She thought it would be good to write about stress. But I have written a lot on the subject of stress, including a published book on the subject. However, Renata wondered if perhaps some of my readers often missed the point about the crucial importance of learning stress management skills, in the sense of this being a life and death issue. I asked her what she meant, and she said she could write out two statements which would alternately make readers’ hair stand on end – regarding the importance of stress management, and the dire consequences of ignoring their own stress warnings – and another piece that would fundamentally reassure them that they could resolve all their stress problems satisfactorily. So I said, “Okay; please show me what you mean”. She then sat down and wrote the two following statements:
According to The Times – Body and Soul supplement, page 4 – today, 28th June 2014, there was an interesting study on stress conducted two years ago by University College, London. It looked at the relationship between men in demanding jobs and heart disease.
You can immediately drop your stress level by deciding to take your control back. You can’t (very often) change your job – but you can change yourself! If you get a professional ally – a counsellor, psychologist, psychotherapist – they will work with you to give you real, sustained backing as you learn to manage yourself, and learn to control what you can control.
I (Jim) have been studying stress management as a discipline for at least twenty years, and in that time I have developed about eighteen main strategies for reducing physical and mental stress and strain. I have taught those strategies to hundreds of clients who have improved their physical and emotional health as a result.
To summarise my conclusions (presented on 7th anniversary of Dr Ellis’s death, on 24th July 2014): Albert Ellis was damaged as a small boy by the neglect he experienced at the hands of his mother and father. He was not actively loved, nor sensitively cared for. Indeed, he had to become a little mother to his younger brother and sister, when he was about seven years old, and onward from that point.
I have done quite a bit of work on the subject of Socratic Questioning, and certainly enough to satisfy myself that Socrates should never be used as a role model by counsellors, psychologists, psychotherapists, etc.
My own argument, following Nierenberg’s ‘Complete Negotiator’ approach, is to consider that questioning in counselling and therapy has certain instrumental functions, as follows:
Using this grid, we can see that a question can be in two parts; e.g., 1+3 – To cause the client’s attention to focus on a specific event/experience, and to ask them for some information about that event/experience.
I recently mentioned that I had acquired a copy of Kate Atkinson’s new novel. My intention was to read fiction for some part of each day – say 30 to 60 minutes – as a way to have a mental break from my tendency towards overworking.
I was deeply moved by the emotional tone of Kate’s book, but I was never able to express what I was ‘getting’ from the experience. It rattled some skeletons in the non-conscious basement of my mind, and sensitised me to some aspects of human suffering which were not previously in my range of experience – such as being a young woman, in her twenties, who is the victim of wife-beating and emotional abuse. (Reading Kate’s vivid descriptions of wife-beatings, and eventual murder, happened on top of recently learning that one woman in three will be beaten by her partner. What a world!)
Sue Gerhardt’s book – Why Love Matters – is a wonderful analysis of how affection shapes a baby’s brain, and the long-term implications of childhood experiences in relationships with early carers. She “…explores how the earliest relationship shapes the baby’s nervous sytem. She shows how the development of the brain determines future emotional well being, and goes on to look at specific early ‘pathways’ that can affect the way we respond to stress, and can contribute to conditions such as anorexia, addiction, and anti-social behaviour”.
I like to teach my clients M. Scott Peck’s definition of love: That love is a process of ‘extending yourself in the service of another person’. It is not primarily about ‘nice feelings’, although nice feelings normally flow from the process, especially for the love object. But, of course, what goes around also comes around – so ‘cast thy bread upon the waters, for it shall return after many days’. Or, as Albert Ellis would say, “The best way to get love is to sincerely offer it”.
Counsellors and therapists must have some ideas regarding how to relate to their clients. For example, do they respond from realistic forms of love; or from unrealistic forms of unconditional acceptance?
I awoke this morning thinking about the LinkedIn response to my post about ‘Conditional Love’ versus ‘Unconditional Acceptance’.
And there will be other points that also require a response.
And one of the ways in which Albert Ellis’s amorality took shape in his philosophy of counselling and psychotherapy was in his development – following Carl Rogers’ model – of Unconditional Self-Acceptance, and Unconditional Acceptance of Others (People). If we advocate unconditional acceptance of others, and we mean it literally, we cannot object no matter how badly they mistreat us. This ideology could threaten not just our comfort, dignity and wellbeing, but our very survival – and hence it cannot be accommodated within a real, living community: (as opposed to surviving inside the scattered brains of Rogers and Ellis!). And again, I have written extensive critiques of Rogers and Ellis on the topic of Acceptance and Regard:
About two weeks ago, I got an urgent phone call from a man in South Wales. He wanted to come up and talk to me about anger management issues. He had seen 
I taught Jack the errors of his way: of assuming that ‘might is right’, which is the lesson he had learned from his own violent father.
After about three or four minutes of crying, I remembered that there was a big baked potato with baked beans and a large Americano with cold milk waiting for me at Watergate Café. I smiled. Dried my eyes. Laughed out loud, and headed off into sunny Hebden Bridge.
Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Counselling and Psychotherapy, Hebden Bridge 