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 […]
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Doing the “Re” Thing this Summer
It’s that time of year again: the end-of-year project deadlines are looming, you’ve just found out when the in-laws will be visiting, and your inbox is clogged with ads flogging fares to everywhere from Madagascar to London. Yep, the holidays are coming. Hopefully you have made plans to get away, a commitment backed up by […]
- January 30, 2015
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- Personal Effectiveness, Stress Management, Wellness
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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 […]
- January 27, 2015
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- Clinical Mental Health, Counselling Therapies, Diagnosis & Treatment
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Good Things Come in Old Packages
Right from an early age, we get a clear message from the world around us that being old isn’t so great, at least in Western society. Our mothers worry about getting wrinkles and use day creams, night creams, vitamin creams and highly scientific, or perhaps natural and organic, concoctions to cover up the visible signs […]
- January 12, 2015
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- Ageing Issues, Lifespan Development, Relationship & Families
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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 […]
- December 23, 2014
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- Ageing Issues, Clinical Mental Health, Wellness
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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 […]
- December 15, 2014
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- Loss & Grief, Self-harming & Suicide
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Panic Disorders: Symptoms and Diagnostic Considerations
For most of the two percent of Australians affected by panic disorder, the onset was during their teens or early twenties. It is twice as common in women as men. Not everyone who has panic attacks will develop panic disorder, as some people will have just one attack and never have a recurrence. The tendency […]
- November 24, 2014
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- Clinical Mental Health, Diagnosis & Treatment, Stress Management
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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 […]
- November 10, 2014
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- Counselling Dilemmas, Counselling Theory & Process, Ethics & Legal Issues, Relationship & Families
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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 […]
- November 5, 2014
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- Counselling Therapies
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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 […]
- October 28, 2014
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Counselling Therapies
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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 […]
- October 14, 2014
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- Book Reviews, Counselling Theory & Process, Counselling Therapies
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Hard-wired to Connect: Mirror Neurons and Empathy
Many people have suspected for a long time that we human beings are designed to be able to experience things happening for another person: in good times or in bad. So we see a stranger clumsily bump their head on a low-hanging branch at the park, and we flinch, too. We hear that a friend […]
- September 29, 2014
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- Clinical Mental Health, Neuroscience
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The Reactions of Grief and Mourning for the Suicide-bereaved
There are perhaps few human events which generate as many emotions and as intense a set of reactions as someone ending their own life. We can divide the reactions into two categories: those which tend to occur early in the grieving, and those which are ongoing. In this post we explore the early reactions of […]
- September 22, 2014
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- Clinical Mental Health, Loss & Grief, Self-harming & Suicide
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WHO Report on Suicide Prevention
Every 40 seconds a person dies by suicide somewhere in the world. “Preventing suicide: a global imperative” is the first WHO report of its kind. It aims to increase awareness of the public health significance of suicide and suicide attempts, to make suicide prevention a higher priority on the global public health agenda, and to […]
- September 12, 2014
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- Clinical Mental Health, Multicultural Issues, Self-harming & Suicide
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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 […]
- September 2, 2014
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- Graduate Stories
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