Archives

Beating the Holiday Blues

You gaze with disgust at the mountains of dirty laundry, tossed casually next to the half-unpacked suitcase. You feel fidgety – unable to settle into your normal routines – life seems grey, and you are dreading work. Chances are you have a condition that hits most eager travellers: the post-holiday blues. Today is about how […]

CBT in a Nutshell

We can broadly define CBT as a combination of cognitive and behavioural therapeutic approaches used to help clients modify limiting, maladaptive thoughts and behaviours, ones that are often inconsistent with consensual reality (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979). The basic premise of CBT is that troublesome emotions are difficult to change directly, so CBT targets […]

What Can Depressed Seniors Do to Alleviate their Own Depression?

As a counsellor/therapist, doctor, allied health professional (or just a caregiver) of a depressed older adult, you are undoubtedly wondering what you can do to encourage them to help themselves. The following list is a compilation of strategies and tips culled from sites specialising in caring for the depressed elderly. You may wish to discuss […]

The Ten Commandments of Grief Counselling

Suicide is a significant public health problem, and properly supporting those left behind — the survivors — is a challenging but significant contribution to the wellbeing of the whole community. If a suicide-bereaved person wound up in your therapy room, what counselling tasks would need to be worked through with them? In this post we […]

Counselling Dilemma: An Aggressive Partner

Kaya and Mark have been in a relationship for a little over a year now and are attending couples counselling. Halfway through the session, the therapist asks for more information about the fights they are having. Kaya reports that Mark recently pushed her into a wall, and that he sometimes viciously pulls things like her […]

CBT Techniques: Cognitive and Behavioural

In CBT, verbal techniques are used to bring forth the client’s automatic thoughts, analyse the logic behind the thoughts, identify unhelpful assumptions, and examine the validity of the assumptions. Assumptions, once identified, are open to modification, which can occur by asking the client if the assumption seems reasonable, by having the client generate reasons for […]

Emotion in Motion

If you look at the Oxford Dictionary entry for the word ‘emotion’, you will find it is a noun, a thing, described as follows: A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others: she was attempting to control her emotions: his voice was shaky with emotion. Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished […]

Book Review: Introduction to Counseling

Kottler, Jeffrey, A., and Shepard, David, S. (2015). Introduction to Counseling: Voices from the Field. (8th ed). Stamford, USA: Cengage Learning. Introduction to Counseling — Voices from the field (8th edition) by Jeffrey Kottler and David Shepard is an introductory textbook for students beginning the journey to becoming a professional counsellor. Now in its eight […]

Graduate Story: Angelie Miaco

AIPC Graduate Angelie Miaco shares her story… “Studying at AIPC was definitely a choice in life that I will never forget or regret. The lecturers and teachers modelled exceptional care, excessive knowledge, as well as being so supportive in all areas of learning. It was excellent to see that they were not only there to […]