Head to your social media sights today everyone because its Bell Canada’s Mental Health Day and Bell will donate money for every share of their posts.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153788427035953&id=590845952
#BellLetsTalk #depression
I too am slashing my rates for you guys out there :-
This year the Bell Canada’s “Bell Lets Talk” day raised 5.5 Million for mental heath programs across Canada which is amazing!
When reading this my mind was dwelling on the issue of Depression and just how many people and their families are affected by it.
Its a word we tend to toss around with ease but few will admit to being depressed, especially when it comes to the male of the species. Yet 1 in 5 of us will suffer from depression at some point in our lives and there are now some very effective treatments.
If left alone or ignored, it will slowly claim a persons being and maybe, even their life. Yet few of us seek help.
So what can we do about this?
First I feel we all need to change our thinking on Depression and what it truly is. It is not as simple as ‘feeling down’ and does not respond to innuendo’s of ‘being lazy’ or remarks of ‘pull yourself together man‘. I feel it is partly this sort of attitude that stops people (men in particular) from seeking the help they need. They feel there is some sigma attached, that they will not be seen as ‘strong’ if they admit to this.
As a coach I have worked with men suffering from depression. They have come to coaching rather than more traditional therapy often because of this shame. It seems that where they may find it hard to explain why they are seeing a Psychologist or Psychiatrist, they can admit to seeing a Life Coach without a public admission of weakness of any kind. Presumable this is because Life Coaches help people with many different goals, so the topic of illness is not mentioned. But also I feel it is because men are often not comfortable talking about their feelings or digging up the past and Coaching is about forward movement, which suits men’s problem solving natures.
Certainly many still need medication and doctor care and good coaches recognise and advise this but coaching seems to give men that outlet they don’t have………….someone to talk to, without the tag of being a looser.
Coaches don’t dwell on the past, they don’t try and ‘fix you’, we help you move forward from a place where you may feel stuck, unable to cope and very alone. Coaches help people to think about things differently, to open up new possibilities and this seems to appeal to men’s need to do something about it.
I want to get you guys talking, so I am offering an hour of my time for the greatly slashed price of
I look forward to hearing from you.
Coach Lin
Relationships
January is a killer month in the northern hemisphere! Not only do more people die this month but so do more marriages, partnerships and indeed relationships of all kinds.
Its that time of year when the stress and strain of yet another family christmas adds to our already stressed existence and we can soon find ourselves pushed to our limits.
We have been struggling all year to keep it together and then comes Christmas, into which we put so much hope and effort that even a small incident can ballon into a major event. Parents fighting with children, siblings with siblings and partners being pushed to overload. Add to that a bout of flu or a mishap and often the strain on a partnership that is already in trouble is simply too much and it ..just implodes. An argument that at any other time of the year may have been a normal squabble and easily overcome, can turn into a slanging match like no other, where insults and hurtful comments abound. The type of argument that just pushes us to the point of no return.
Family feuds also tend to erupt over the holiday with many fracturing seemingly beyond repair. January can be a sad time of year for sure.
So what can we do about it? How do we stop the inevitable? How do we survive the post Christmas fall out? How do we survive January?
Well I am not sure we can avoid it all, but I think we can certainly lessen the severity of the problems with a little planning and insight.
Along with all the rushing around preparing for the Christmas holiday (which is exhausting for most of us), we also need to be aware that in the northern hemisphere we are in the midsts of winter we are cold and *sun deprived! This leads to a multitude of very physical issues such as depression, decreased immunity and disease. Add to that the fact that we tend to eat and drink too much of the wrong things over the holiday and you have a receipt for disaster waiting to happen.
However, before we go slamming doors and packing suitcases, I feel we need to take time out. Time to get ourselves back to normal. Try not to act on that argument now, sit with it for a while and remember that the other person was probably also in a stressed place.
TAKE A BREATH! and let things settle.
Making life decisions in January is not a good idea, you are not yourself right now and you may just regret it for the rest of your life!
So don’t have that conversation yet, get back to eating & drinking healthy; start taking *D3 now (it will improve your mood believe me); catch up on sleep; get some fresh air when ever you can.
Get to that place where you feel like you are in control again.
Then and only then, should you begin to look back at that row and decide if it really was as bad as it felt at the time. Arrange to talk about it, tell the other person(s) how it made you feel or why you said what you did, admit if you were wrong and apologise for any hurtful comments.
If you are going to break up then let it be for the right reasons, not because you both said or did hurtful things at a time when you were not at your best. If you cant have that conversation, try writing it or think about getting professional help.
Ideally a relationship should not end with the slamming of doors AND not in January!
Good luck
Coach Lin
* D3 which our skin absorbs from the sun helps to keep us upbeat as well as improving our bones & immunity. For more on D3
Helping Hand - Life Coaching 