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This is an excellent book for anyone interested in understanding how they can strengthen themselves mentally to lessen the impact of ‘negative life events’.
As many people are aware Raj Persaud is the youngest person in the UK to qualify as both a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist. You may be wondering what the difference is, however one of the first topics covered in the book is the difference between Counselling, Psychiatry and Psychology.
In addition to working as an NHS Psychiatrist at the prestigious Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals in London, Persaud is also regularly featured in the media with newspaper columns and TV appearances. This reflects his ability to explain mental health issues using everyday language we can all understand. This ability also extends to his writing. One of the reasons I recommend this book, is that it is easy to read and it avoids technical jargon.
A key concept Persaud discusses is that we can all take actions which can make us more mentally healthy in the same way as we can take actions to make ourselves more physically healthy. This concept challenges the traditional view that people are either sane or insane in the same way as women are either pregnant or not pregnant.
Persaud believes that most people, while they do not suffer from any recognised mental illness, can do many things to make themselves mentally fitter. This is an analogy we often use at Equilibrium, a healthy but unfit body is more likely to get ill than a healthy fit body. The same applies to your mental health, the fitter you are the less likely you are to get ill. Persaud states that best way to determine a person’s mental fitness is to observe how they behave in stressful situations. One of the things we do at Equilibrium is teach people how to improve their mental fitness to make them cope better with excessive life pressures.
The book focuses on encouraging people to take a more proactive approach to improving their mental fitness. Raj Persaud is not interested in exploring your childhood or past experiences, he is interested in the here-and-now and making people aware of what they can do to help themselves. His own methods involve the extensive use of Cognitive Therapy which involves understanding that what you habitually think about affects how you feel and react to different situations.
One comment he makes in the book that really caught my attention is that two of the most unhealthy jobs from a mental fitness point of view are a Lawyer and an Accountant. This is because both of them spend most of their time looking on the dark side of things. I was, and I emphasize was, an Accountant for 20 years and had the nickname of ‘Grim Reaper’. This was because I knew that if I didn’t cast doubt on potentially expensive projects or ideas, nobody else would. I now realise that thinking negatively can become habitual and does nothing for your mental fitness.
Alastair Taylor
Customer Service ‘Magic’
When
you go round the country speaking, eating and sleeping as I do, you get to experience the extremes of customer
service. Nothing engages my
emotions in quite the same way. I
am mystified, disappointed and sometimes infuriated by the ‘can’t do, everything
is too much trouble’ attitude.
Mystified
because I can’t understand why people don’t see the benefits. It’s genuinely satisfying to give good
service and to see the results (in my case, undying gratitude and loyalty). So there’s a personal benefit. And you can help someone, sort out a
problem, and build a relationship in the process, an interpersonal benefit. And last but not least, people like me
on the receiving end of good service will come back again and again and again
and love you to bits, a business benefit.
Let
me give you an example. We run
events now all over the country, in hotels, conference centres, institutes and
so on. But one venue we use shines
above all others: Reid Kerr College in Paisley near Glasgow. Now this is a cash-strapped F.E. College
providing educational opportunities in, sometimes difficult, circumstances. We can never be their main
priority. Yet it doesn’t feel like
that at all. They make you feel
special.
Nothing
is too much trouble. The facility
is great, and the service is wonderful, from the people helping you with the
organisation to the woman bringing the teas and coffees. Oh and the buttered scones (plain, fruit
and treacle mmmm!) made on the premises – and when I say buttered I really mean
buttered. And home made cakes in
the afternoon. We don’t ask for
these extras, they just provide them.
In terms of equipment too, nothing is a problem, and it’s all part of the
service.
What
makes Reid Kerr really special though is the people. True ‘magic’ comes from real people:
warm, friendly, helpful, funny people.
Perhaps it’s also the combination, the team that they have there. For all the customer service disasters I
have been on the receiving end of (usually in the most salubrious and
pretentious of establishments), going back to Reid Kerr restores my
faith.
Alan Bradshaw
SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER (S.A.D.)
S.A.D. appears in susceptible individuals as the days become shorter and the nights longer especially during October and November. Most of us do not particularly like driving to work and returning home in the dark, but for some individuals there can also be a marked deterioration in their performance.
For some, S.A.D. comes on quite rapidly, but for others it can be most insidious, creeping up on them, so that they do not realise they have it, just feeling they are more tired or needing more sleep, and thus not performing as well as usual. In reality they may be slipping into a partial hibernation state.
Quite a few individuals are diagnosed as depressed during the winter and are placed on antidepressants, but have in reality got S.A.D. Most antidepressants do not help with S.A.D.
The reason S.A.D. occurs more often at this time of year is that our eyes are sensitive to three bands of the ultra-violet spectrum, and when these bands are reduced a signal is sent to the pineal gland to produce less melatonin. Melatonin is the substance in the body that affects our sleeping patterns (and our need to hibernate).
In the days before electric light people semi-hibernated in winter, because as the days shortened there was less naturally occuring ultra-violet light, and they did not have an alternative. It was S.A.D. that was responsible for many of the suicides in winter in Scandinavian countries and led to the winter melancholia that shows in some of the literature and music. Today there are light boxes with special filaments producing these three bands of the ultra-violet so that through the eyes the pineal is stimulated to produce more melatonin.
The latest developments include special lamps with an angle poise type base and a miniature fluorescent type head that can be used in the office. These can cost about four hundred pounds, but can quickly pay for themselves with the increased performance in the most susceptible.
It is important to ask yourself if you or anyone in your family or office has it, as the difference treatment makes can be considerable.
In Sweden up in the Arctic Circle there is a small town associated with a mining community that has artificial suns from 8 am to 8 pm on pylons like at football stadiums and from 8 pm to 8 am people have ordinary street lighting and pull their curtains. This is only possible because of the profits from the high-grade ore.
Some people are also helped by St. John’s Wort. For dosage see the individual products. Anyone already taking an antidepressant should not usually take St Johns Wort as well.
By the way, melatonin lack is also a factor in jetlag and many Americans take melatonin tablets if they are frequently crossing time zones.
Ref: Archives of General Psychiatry (American Medical Association) December 1993 contains three articles on S.A.D., its prevalence and treatment.
Dr David Mason Brown
Here is the first story from a reader of In Equilibrium. Congratulations Tom Lithgow, last month's book is on its way to you!
"A number of years ago I had a
particularly stressful and difficult situation to deal with at work. The
situation was made worse by the fact that it arose immediately before the
Christmas/New Year break and, as a result, would have no resolution until after
that break.
I found myself waking in the early hours of the morning
unable to get back to sleep because all of the issues relating to my situation
kept swirling around my head but I was unable to bring them together into any
coherent order.
As luck would have it, I had started to learn Tai Chi a
couple of months earlier and one of these mornings I decided to practise my Tai
Chi rather than sit in a stupor drinking tea and watching off-peak TV. After I
had run through my exercises three times I found to my amazement that my head
had cleared and I was able to put my thoughts down on paper. It was as if I had
pressed the "reset" button in my brain. I was able to enjoy C! hristmas with my
family and subsequently went on to resolve my situation at work.
I can
only assume that the discipline of concentrating on the Tai Chi somehow frees
the conscious brain from thinking about the problem leaving the sub-conscious to
do the work."
Tom Lithgow
Do you have a story that you would like to send into us for the next copy of 'In Equilibrium'? Perhaps you have a good idea about combating stress at work, maybe you have an experience that you think others would learn from? We are looking for any of your experiences, humourous or deadly serious, signed or anonymous!
We will print the best story in the next In Equilibrium, if your story is printed we will send you a copy of the book we reviewed this month.
Is Your Glass Half Empty or Half Full?
As I am sure you are aware, optimists generally expect things to work out for the best, and pessimists expect them to work out for the worst.
A pessimist therefore has to bear the burden of persistent worry. Even when life is good the pessimist anticipates a turn for the worst.
The pessimist has the consolation of frequently being right, because life will bring us plenty of what we don't want, but the price they pay is anxiety, sadness and perhaps even depression.
From a strictly practical point of view, optimism is a wiser choice, because it allows us to give up worrying. A pessimist may be right but is usually miserable. When we face life optimistically, even when bad things happen, we can feel relatively OK about them, because we assume that conditions will improve.
Stop for a moment and ask yourself: How much energy are you giving to worry? Check your body for signs of tension and stress. Is your stomach in a knot, is your breathing fast and shallow? If the answer is yes are you engaged in negative thinking? Remind yourself to breathe more slowly and deeply and try to practise the art of positive thinking.
Practise sitting with an open mind, cut off the rumination about problems (See the Stress Tip In Equilibrium 12) .
If you have a solution to a problem write it down but resist the temptation to go over problems repeatedly when there is no apparent solution.
If you find you are unable to fix a problem, it might help to practise accepting conditions as they are. This doesn't mean becoming apathetic, but often people find it alot easier to see things from a different angle when they have let themselves accept a situation.
Once you are able to accept reality you may find yourself thinking about what you can learn from the experience.
Go to the Open Courses page on our web site for information on the content of our open courses. The dates for the next series of Open Courses are on the web-site now. We have dates for open courses in London, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.
You can download
our stress policy guide here for free!
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