We live in very difficult times.  Stress levels in the Anglo-American world are the worst for many decades, resulting in an epidemic of emotional distress – manifesting as depression, anxiety, panic and anger outbursts.  Mental health is in crisis.  Physical health is in crisis. (See *The China Study*, by Campbell and Campbell, 2006). The so-called high-tech health systems of the Anglo-American world are failing to maintain the health of our nations.

Sitting on the periphery of this mess is the legion of counsellors and psychotherapists, who have to decide where to stand on these developments.  But there are really only two places to stand.  One involves covering your eyes with a blinder, and soldiering on pointlessly. And the other involves waking up and doing something about this mess.

https://abc-counselling.org/2018/07/24/lifestyle-counselling-as-extreme-self-care/

Here is my ‘quick tutorial’ on how to apply E-CENT counselling in practice, drawn from my impressions of thousands of counselling sessions.  If I have to try to summarise ‘the process’, here is my best approximation to what the counsellor is trying to do:

# Build a relationship with the client, while trying to find out what they want and 
need.

# Get an outline of the client’s story – the ‘confession stage’ (in the Jungian tradition) – about the client’s presenting problem.

# Help them to explore their story, and to refine it, so it becomes more accurate – more complete; or more digested; more known. For example, help them to check if their story has been subjected to any deletions, distortions or over-generalizations. Help them to explore their story of origins and their story of relationships (to begin with).

# Help them to see that their stories (including their emotions about events) could be edited (‘re-framed’)[1] so that they are less disturbing, less painful, and more tolerable than they originally seemed[2].

# Teach the client that the quality of the story that they live inside of is strongly and unavoidably affected by their diet[3], physical exercise regime[4], relaxation and sleep processes, relationship support (adequate or inadequate), physical and socioeconomic environment, and social connections (good and/or bad)[5], etc.; as well as their inner-dialogue (or self-talk; mainly at non-conscious levels of mind).

# Teach the client:

(a) To dedicate themselves to reality at all cost![6] (Even though it is hard for a human to know what is ‘real’, because we automatically interpret every event/object on the basis of our prior, cumulative, interpretive, cultural experience.)

(b) To accept the things they cannot change, ...more... 

https://abc-counselling.org/

Murder is murder!  But some murders have the disturbing effect of banging up unfinished business from the past.  This is the problem facing Inspector Glasheen...

Inspector Glasheen stumbles upon a brutal murder which brings up his own childhood demons.

In Watling Town, on the outskirts of Dublin City, in 1964, he has to investigate the death, in bed, of a sixteen year old youth.  It looks to others like an open and shut case of ‘filicide’ – or the killing of a child by his own father.

But Glasheen’s unusual background causes him to see and feel this case differently.  He is, after all only half-Irish.  The other half is American Indian, and although his father brought him back to Ireland when he was just five years old, he has retained a lot of the ways of the Indian: the uncanny capacity for tracking and tracing; for sensing and feeling; for seeing the whole picture. The story begins like this:

24th September 1964

Michael Curran awoke to the sound of the mechanical alarm clock ringing violently, like the bell of a local fire engine. His head was pounding.  Picking up the clock...

https://abc-counselling.org/a-psychological-thriller-about-a-disturbed-family/

Although Dr Albert Ellis and Dr Tim Beck argued that our emotional distress is caused by our own thoughts and beliefs, in E-CENT counselling we argue that emotional disturbances are multi-causal phenomena.  Some of the causal factors determining our emotional state include diet, exercise, gut bacteria, self-talk (or self-story), environmental re-stimulation of feelings from the past, relaxation, meditation, current relationships, historic relationships, and general environmental stressors, etc.  Here is a brief insight into the gut-brain-emotion axis:

“Anyone who has ever felt nauseous or lost their appetite because of grief, fear or shock, knows that stress has an impact on the gut.  It has been more than a decade since animal studies began making the correlation between stress and changes in gut microbes.  The connection between stress, depression and anxiety is well established, and dozens of studies are now looking at how these conditions affect bugs in the gut.  The big questions – such as which comes first, the microbe shift or the depression – have yet to be answered. Because it’s a two-way street, though, it looks as if correcting the gut microbiome (or gut bacteria population, variety and balance JWB) could be a new way to treat depression”.  (Footnote: Dinan, T.G. and Cryan, J.F. 2013, Sept; 25(9): Pages 713-719: Melancholic microbes: a link between gut microbiota and depression?  Available online).
uotation from: Celeste McGovern (2017) Bugs in the system. What Doctors Don’t Tell You, Jan 2017, Pages 28-36).

Comment by Renata Taylor Byrne and Jim Byrne: Our way of understanding this new research is this: Food is probably going to prove to be one of the best medicines for emotional distress (all other things being equal – including general stress level, current relationships, historic relationships, regular physical exercise, sleep pattern, and so on.  Holistic. Holistic. Holistic!)  And supplementation with friendly gut bacteria, combined with eating the right kinds of foods will prove to be important.  Big Pharma’s drugs for emotional distress have proved to be a social disaster!

For more, please click this link: https://abc-counselling.org/diet-exercise-mental-health/

~~~

I have just begun to write a new psychological thriller.  This is how it begins:

Chapter 1: What hell is this?

1.

“A bitter heart devours its owner”.

Herero adage.

Michael Curran awoke to the sound of the mechanical alarm clock ringing violently, like the bell of a local fire engine. His head was pounding.  Picking up the clock, and switching the alarm bell off, he noticed the time – 5.30 am.  It had gone off half an hour early.  But he was glad to be awake, since waking up pulled him out of the nightmare he was submerged in, up to a moment ago. 

He swung his legs out of bed, and looked up at the crucifix on the wall opposite the side of his lonely bed, above the holy water fountain by the light switch.  Over to his left he could see his son Christopher’s blankets rising and falling rhythmically, as he snored through his drunken stupor.  The little drunken bastard.  Under the chair, to the side of Christopher’s bed, Michael could see the quarter bottle of whiskey which Christopher would slug down as soon as he awoke.  Sixteen years old, and already an alcoholic for more than two years.  And getting his booze money by driving a coal truck, below the legal age for driving.

Michael, who never drank alcohol, stood up on the cold lino, and began to scratch his chest and back, under the long-sleeved vest he always wore in bed.  He was sick of his life.  Sleeping alone in his cold bed, in the box room, for the past eight years, had been a great strain on his mental state.  He was depressed and angry – bitter - and he constantly felt an ache in his heart.  He was sure he would have a heart attack one of these days. ‘My heart is scalded with the lot of them’, was his constant mantra.

He put on his work clothes, and laced up his boots.  He knelt by the side of his bed and began to say his morning prayers.  He could not understand why God was tormenting him so.  He wife having sex with other men; his youngest ‘daughter’ not really his; extreme poverty; and this horrible wretch of a son - a degenerate alcoholic at sixteen years of age.  And Dermot, his oldest son, who was just eighteen years old, and the only son who really respected him, had left for England three months earlier, in the middle of June.  He prayed fervently for redemption; for release from his suffering.  He had always tried to be a good man; but he’d lost his farm, then his first job and tied cottage, then his wife, and his life revolved around working as a poorly-paid gardener for toffs in Dublin.

He went down the stairs with a heavy heart, as silently as he could, to avoid waking the house.  In the kitchen, he buttered two slices of homemade brown bread, put some jam on, and made a pot of tea.  In the front room, he sat at the table and read the unread parts of yesterday’s Evening Herald.

At 6.45 am he put on his overcoat and cap, put his bicycle clips on his trouser ends, and wheeled his big, black Raleigh bicycle up the hall, out the front door; closing the door quietly behind him.  Although there was still a whole week to go to the end of September, it was cold and damp that morning, and the light was gloomier than it had been just last week. 

Out on the road, he mounted his bicycle and pedalled furiously up the road, to raise his temperature, and then settled down to a steady pace, which would get him to his workplace in about thirty minutes.  He was in the blackest mood he had ever experienced.  He could not imagine carrying on with this farce of a life.  Perhaps this day the Lord would liberate him. Oh God. Why hast thou forsaken me?

~~~

https://abc-counselling.org/a-psychological-thriller-about-a-disturbed-family/

How to Write a New Life for Yourself: Narrative therapy and the writing solution

by Dr Jim Byrne

Daily journal writing can raise your personal awareness in a “nearly magical way”, as well as reducing the hectic pace of life and making it “more balanced and manageable”.

In my book on expressive writing, I have included more than twenty exercises for dealing with a broad range of problems and goals.  The first two deal with daily planning and reflection.  The third deals with a start of the day system of ‘stream of consciousness’ writing.

I began using a daily journal somewhere in the mid-1990’s, and I’ve found it to be a wonderful help in digesting my day-to-day stresses and frustrations; generating solutions to my practical and emotional problems; and coming up with creative ideas for blogs, article, books, and business innovations.

However, I have noticed a recent resistance in myself to the writing of ‘stream of consciousness’ in my journal – which means, writing whatever comes into my head. Sometimes I do it.  And sometime I resist doing it.  I seem to prefer doing some of the more structured writing activities from my book; such as exercises designed to achieve a particular goal; or to manage my emotions; to plan my time; or to produce a particular piece of work-based writing.

On the other hand, Julia Cameron (in her book, ‘The Artist’s Way’) advocates stream of consciousness writing on a daily basis – every morning.  And this is mainly a form of open-ended, self-reflective writing, as opposed to specific goal-directed writing – (although goal setting and review can come out of it).

About six weeks ago, I was reading something by Dr Jim Loehr – in Timothy Ferriss’ book, ‘Tribe of Mentors’ (which Renata was reading at that time) – and I tripped over something which reminded me of the importance and value of self-reflective writing as such:

“The daily ritual of self-reflected writing has produced priceless personal insights in my life”, writes Loehr.  “For me, daily writing heightens my personal awareness in a nearly magical way.  I see, feel and experience things so much more vividly as a consequence of the writing.  The hectic pace of life becomes more balanced and manageable when I intentionally set aside time for self-reflection.  I am able to be more in the present in everything I do, and, for whatever reason, more accepting of my flaws”.

~~~

I found this statement to be very motivating, and so I have been doing stream of consciousness writing every morning since that day; and it has paid huge dividends.  I have produced some wonderfully creative ideas; resolved some significant problems; and I discovered that my life was being strained by two psychological drivers, or insistent injunctions: “Hurry Up”, and “Be Perfect”.  Because of becoming aware of those drivers, I decided to work against them; to defuse them; and to rewire myself for a significantly less stressful life.  I now write an affirmation every morning that says I do not have to hurry up, and I do not have to be perfect, and this has had a hugely calming effect upon my life.

I also use some of my own exercises, from my book, How to Write a New Life for Yourself; and I and getting a lot of value from this daily journal-writing activity.

So, if you want to develop a cumulative collection of personal insights; creative ideas; personal growth gains; and greater self-acceptance; the thing to do is to make sure you write at least a couple of pages of ‘stream of consciousness’, or personal reflections, every morning, before the commencement of your working day.

Three pages would be even better; and this is a great way to process stressful life events; and to produce creative ideas; and to solve your practical and emotional problems.

This stream of consciousness process is just one of the more than 20 writing processes described in my book, How to Write a New Life for Yourself.  There is a writing process for most of your likely personal and professional development needs included in the main text.

For more on this subject, please click the following link: https://abc-counselling.org/how-to-write-a-new-life-for-yourself/

~~~