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Traumatic Life Events and Compassion Focused Healing Approaches
Traumatic life event refers to significant event that bring actual or threatened physical and/or psychological harm to us or someone close to us. For example, natural disaster or accident that leads to injury or death, physical violence, sexual violence etc. Traumatic event can lead to intrusive re-experiencing, hypervigilance, avoidance behaviours and emotional distress. The symptoms…
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Coping with Lost Friendships: Emotional Healing
Who doesn’t want to be remembered and loved? It hurts when you drift apart with a friend and later realize that this friend had found a new social circle and together they seem to be having fun and doing all the things you used to do together. You try to recall why you drifted apart…
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Effective Goal Setting in Therapy
There is a saying that “everything will come to you at the right time.” However, waiting for our efforts to be rewarded could be an emotionally draining journey. In face of unknown and uncertainty, we all ask the question “am I doing the right thing?” Setting clear goals is particularly important at these moments because…
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The Power of Forgiveness: Healing Beyond Hurt
As a child, we were advised to forgive the sibling who accidentally broke our toy or the classmate who said mean words to us, because that is the right thing to do. When there is conflict, adults usually ask us to say sorry and explain that we should forgive others’ transgression. Growing up, even the…
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Understanding Anxiety’s Impact on Daily Life
Anyone who had experiences living with anxiety issues would be able to testify that anxiety and fear driven coping behaviours could make lives more difficult than it already is. In psychology, we call these the “unintended consequences” of fight-or-flight coping when our decision making process is dominated by the threat system. Excessive checking in response…
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Breaking the Cycle of Self-Criticism
I often tell my clients that based on my observation of people from so many different backgrounds throughout my career, most of us are experts in finding faults with ourselves: I hate myself for not doing better, how could I be so dumb, I am hopeless when it comes to sports… The sad fact is…
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Understanding Anxiety Through Compassion Focused Therapy
From a Compassion Focused Therapy perspective, our anxious self is part of the threat system functioning that strive to protect us from physical and social threat. It is most often triggered by unknown, uncertainties or reminders of negative past experiences. Sometimes, people struggling with anxiety might ruminate about events or become paralyzed with worries that…
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Managing Financial Anxiety When You Are Not Actually Broke: Tips for Balance
Topics like “how much do you need to retire comfortably?” and “how much do you need to earn to be rich?” are featured in the news from time to time. However much we might like to position ourselves as non-materialistic and soul-seeking, there is no denying that we need money to survive and to live…
Compassionate Living Psychology
Cantonese & English speaking clinical psychologist in Warwickshire, West Midlands/ Compassion focused therapy resources
Compassionate Living Psychology 