Asking for help can often be the hardest thing to do when we are troubled. 

We all experience sadness, anxiety and depressed feelings sometimes. CBT has been recognised as incredibly useful at helping us sort through our emotions. Often the actions we take can be a direct consequence of how we are feeling, particularly when feeling overwhelmed or upset, which can lead us to make decisions that are not in our own best interest. We can use the tools of CBT to monitor ourselves and in effect become our own Counsellor. Through therapy and learning to use the toolkit of CBT we can become more aware of ourselves and understand why we are behaving in particular ways both positive and negative. For more info click here.

The idea behind CBT is to identify our triggers and learn to manage our feelings and subsequent behaviour, which becomes a lot easier with some insight into ourselves. 

Hello, my name is Gaye and I want to welcome you to Cbt2grow. I have a background in a variety of social care settings. I started off working in a Women’s Refuge in Dublin in the 1990s. I then moved on to the Homeless Sector. Both experiences gave me a big insight into how people manage stressful situations under extreme circumstances. I learned about the damage that violence and homelessness has on people and society. In short, it leads to a great deal of stress management which can go on for a long time after the initial threat has been resolved. This in turn can affect the children of the family who in turn may go on to replicate that learned behaviours into their future relationships. It was through this learning that I realised that patterns of coping are laid down by the behaviours we witness often as young people. These patterns or reactions can go unquestioned and be completely seen as “normal”. This can become very problematic later when those same young people are entering relationships with other people who haven’t had those same experiences in their lives.  

To elaborate a little further on the damaging impact of stress management taken to the extreme, this can lead to living in a constant state of “fight or flight”, even after the threat is gone. Being in a constant state of readiness that be very hard on the mind and body and can lead to anxiety and depression. The physical effects from living in that anxious state can impact your health negatively as well as a general sense of unease about your place in the world. For more info click here.