a post by Lori Deschene for the Tiny Buddha blog
When I look back at my life, I recognize that some of the most pivotal moments revolved around creativity and self-expression.
As a kid, that meant community theater. My first solo was “Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid. Though I felt incredibly insecure in my green spandex pant-fins as a fairly thick twelve-year old, I was able to tune that out when I made my way center stage.
It was just me, my heart, my voice, and the spotlight. And that song felt written for me, as I felt like an outsider pretty much everywhere at that time in my life.
Around the same time I found my passion for writing—my first foray into the world of self-help, actually. To deal with bullying at school and a difficult home life, I began writing myself a series of motivational essays, little things to boost my self-esteem in a world that seemed to want to tear it down.
It was fairly mortifying when I noticed the boys huddled in the cafeteria, laughing, while reading from my well-worn spiral notebook, which they had stolen from my backpack. But those essays weren’t for them. They were for me. And they helped.
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Showing posts with label self-help. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-help. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Wednesday, 22 November 2017
Researchers say you might as well be your own therapist
a post by Olivia Goldhill in Quartz with grateful thanks to 3 Quarks Daily
Self-help really can help (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
Seeking out the perfect therapist can feel as significant and difficult as finding a romantic partner. A study on the effectiveness of trained therapists versus self-help treatment, though, suggests that therapists are not as important as they seem.
A meta-analyses of 15 studies, published in this month’s volume of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, found no significant difference in the treatment outcomes for patients who saw a therapist and those who followed a self-help book or online program.
The researchers, led by Robert King, psychology professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, evaluated the outcomes of 723 patients who were treated for a variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and depression.
Continue reading
Of course in the UK you get what you are given (or not as the case might be) unless you are willing and able to pay but the ideas here may help when waiting for help. H.
Self-help really can help (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
Seeking out the perfect therapist can feel as significant and difficult as finding a romantic partner. A study on the effectiveness of trained therapists versus self-help treatment, though, suggests that therapists are not as important as they seem.
A meta-analyses of 15 studies, published in this month’s volume of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, found no significant difference in the treatment outcomes for patients who saw a therapist and those who followed a self-help book or online program.
The researchers, led by Robert King, psychology professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, evaluated the outcomes of 723 patients who were treated for a variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and depression.
Continue reading
Of course in the UK you get what you are given (or not as the case might be) unless you are willing and able to pay but the ideas here may help when waiting for help. H.
Wednesday, 15 November 2017
Be your own therapist? Fine – if you're up to the job
an article by Mark Brown for the Guardian
Self-help can be brilliant for those who are at least part of the way there, but we should be wary of any suggestion that it could replace therapy
Feeling that you are not coping is horrible, like trying to untangle shackles around you that instead pull tighter with every movement. We are supposed to be able to look after ourselves. Our culture lionises fighters; decision takers; people who know their own mind. We are comfortable in the hands of specialists such as hairdressers or driving instructors, yet many of us find the idea of using a therapist, a specialist in distress, to be strange and uncomfortable – an admission that we can’t sort out our own problems. People experiencing mental distress are often desperate for some kind of talking therapy, yet we still maintain a deep cultural ambivalence toward the concept.
This ambivalence is often reflected in research. Does therapy work? Do other cheaper things work better? The website Quartz recently published an article headlined “Researchers say you might as well be your own therapist”, summarising a paper that contrasts self-help therapy with therapist-delivered therapy.
The paper, a meta-analysis of 15 studies, contrasted cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) delivered by a therapist with CBT delivered through self-help activities, such as activities and exercises. CBT is defined by NHS Choices as “a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave”. It is provided as part of England’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, which began in 2007 and was recently written up with besotted love by the New York Times.
The authors of the paper “found no difference in treatment completion rate and broad equivalence of treatment outcomes for participants treated through self-help and participants treated through a therapist”.
Continue reading
Self-help can be brilliant for those who are at least part of the way there, but we should be wary of any suggestion that it could replace therapy
Feeling that you are not coping is horrible, like trying to untangle shackles around you that instead pull tighter with every movement. We are supposed to be able to look after ourselves. Our culture lionises fighters; decision takers; people who know their own mind. We are comfortable in the hands of specialists such as hairdressers or driving instructors, yet many of us find the idea of using a therapist, a specialist in distress, to be strange and uncomfortable – an admission that we can’t sort out our own problems. People experiencing mental distress are often desperate for some kind of talking therapy, yet we still maintain a deep cultural ambivalence toward the concept.
This ambivalence is often reflected in research. Does therapy work? Do other cheaper things work better? The website Quartz recently published an article headlined “Researchers say you might as well be your own therapist”, summarising a paper that contrasts self-help therapy with therapist-delivered therapy.
The paper, a meta-analysis of 15 studies, contrasted cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) delivered by a therapist with CBT delivered through self-help activities, such as activities and exercises. CBT is defined by NHS Choices as “a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave”. It is provided as part of England’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, which began in 2007 and was recently written up with besotted love by the New York Times.
The authors of the paper “found no difference in treatment completion rate and broad equivalence of treatment outcomes for participants treated through self-help and participants treated through a therapist”.
Continue reading
Thursday, 8 June 2017
Welfare rights, self-help and social enterprise: Unpicking neoliberalism’s mess
an article by Jessica Gerrard (University of Melbourne, Australia) published in Journal of Sociology Volume 53 Issue 1 (March 2017)
Abstract
Neoliberalism is often represented as a fundamental intrusion of individualism into post-war welfare policy settlements. This article seeks to unpick this understanding through a case study of the intersections between the welfare rights and self-help approaches of the homeless and community sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of social enterprise and The Big Issue in the 1990s.
First, I outline the development of a dedicated ‘homeless sector’ in the 1970s.
Second, the ways in which this sector developed in relation to challenges to state authority in social welfare is examined.
Finally, I explore the discursive intersections between the critiques of the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberalism and social enterprise.
I suggest the emergence of social enterprise is emblematic of wider claims to individual agency, while also interwoven with the rise of neoliberalism and the capitalist recuperation of self-help and welfare rights challenges to state strategies.
Abstract
Neoliberalism is often represented as a fundamental intrusion of individualism into post-war welfare policy settlements. This article seeks to unpick this understanding through a case study of the intersections between the welfare rights and self-help approaches of the homeless and community sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of social enterprise and The Big Issue in the 1990s.
First, I outline the development of a dedicated ‘homeless sector’ in the 1970s.
Second, the ways in which this sector developed in relation to challenges to state authority in social welfare is examined.
Finally, I explore the discursive intersections between the critiques of the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberalism and social enterprise.
I suggest the emergence of social enterprise is emblematic of wider claims to individual agency, while also interwoven with the rise of neoliberalism and the capitalist recuperation of self-help and welfare rights challenges to state strategies.
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