Woman and Child First

BRAVE online Self-Help Program for Anxious Kids

Developed by a team of Queensland mental health professionals over the last 15 years, the BRAVE program has now gone online with a program that can be used by children and young people with anxiety. This is an excellent resource on all levels of anxiety management, as demonstrated in the program's name and steps: B (body signals) R (relax) A (activate helpful thoughts) V (victory over fears) E (enjoy yourself).

BRAVE being an online self-help tool supports those kids and teenagers who are reluctant to go into face-face counselling and those who are in regional areas with little access to mental health facilities. But it's really for all kids who are struggling with this particular monster. It can be used with parent support (helpful for younger children who may have reading difficulties) or it can be entirely self directed.

Giving kids the tools to manage anxiety sets them up well. It gives them a gift that they can continue to use and modify as they get older. 

Trial it here.

Van Badham: Guts, Intelligence and Wit in Action

A conversation around domestic violence in Australia is finally being aired.  A woman is being murdered every week in this country by a partner or ex-partner. One of my favourite shows is Q and A - a TV production that invites audience members to question people of public note about current issues. This week, one young man whose sister had been stabbed to death with a meat cleaver by her partner last year asked the panel: How will politicians and the media play a better role in bringing about long-overdue cultural shifts, so tragedies like what happened to my family are not normalised?

Then it all turned nasty. Feminist writer Van Badham was planning to challenge another panel member (a Liberal Party politician) about cuts (around $100m) to community legal centres, where women who are fleeing violence are given support and legal advice.  She never actually got to do that because fish look-alike Steve Price rudely spoke over her with patronizing relentlessness and finally insulted her calling her "hysterical".

(Thus proving the questioner's concern about "long overdue cultural shifts"). Van's answer was fast though considered, smart as a whip and bloody funny. She said, "It's probably my ovaries making me do it, Steve".  

And that has created a huge social media storm where Van of course has continued to be verbally abused. She also continues to remain calm, fierce and upright and beautifully, intelligently vocal. An inspiration and a constant reminder of our need for those cultural shifts so that disrespect of women is challenged and then reduced into a dim memory.

Thank you Van Badham. You can see how it played out and you can Read her.

Oh, and here's Steve Price.

And here's a fish.

See?

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

I'll never stop loving this clip. If I'd been sitting in that audience I would have had my life change. I would have thought, "How can I be that cool when I grow up?" and I would have thought of ways.

Read about Rosetta Tharpe's life here.

  

Good Young Men on Domestic Violence

I'm running a program with a male teacher called GYM ( Good Young Men) for Year 5 boys. We kick the whole thing off by asking the boys about what they think makes a "good man" and we cover many things around that topic including domestic violence (DV). White Ribbon day is held annually in Australia and highlights this disturbing problem.

Our Assistant Principal sent me the video below yesterday knowing it would be very cool for our group. I'm so impressed by this piece of work. It's very moving, optimistic and frankly - it rocks.  It features beautiful young Yr 5 men from Bankstown Public School clearly stating their opposition to violence against women.  It comes out of a project run in south-western Sydney by BYDS (Bankstown Youth Development Service) and we are SO going to use it in our GYM group.

 

 

Hi All,

I've decided to open this blog up again after a long break from it. My enthusiasm has returned and I hope you find useful and enjoyable information here. Apologies for any links that are out of date and don't work - I'll remove them at a future date. Or at least I'll say that I will and then forget.

Thanks,
Alison

Headspace Australia: National Youth Mental Health

This is why I love working for headspace: there's always (a lot going on) for youth mental health in Australia, and it's always proactive and good. It's a great video.

 

Further Explorations in Treating Child Trauma

Well it's been a big year and I'm now working across three practices to happily mold around my move to the Gold Coast. It's great to be back to what I do best - counselling psychology - after a 6 month job working for a occupational rehab company. It also means I can restart my desire to expand all I know and do in Child and Adolescent trauma.

This time last year I was incredibly inspired by a training I completed with Dr Robbie Adler-Tapia (see below). Robbie is an expert on treating trauma in children, particularly with EMDR. I have had a great deal of success in reducing symptoms of trauma (anxiety, acting out, poor sleep etc) with EMDR, relaxation and self soothing strategies.

Now it's time to branch out and add to my repertoire of therapies and absorb some cutting edge thinking. So you can imagine how excited I am about attending the Childhood Trauma Conference in Melbourne next week. I have signed up for Pat Ogden's Masterclass: Wisdom of the Body, Lost and Found: The Role of Posture and Action in Predicting the Future.

This will be extremely interesting for me since I believe the body is not only important in storage of trauma and pain, but also holds keys to healing and releasing it. Kids developmental stage determines their cognitive (thought) levels so the body's language is vital.

My own experience of mime and yoga has given me lots of information about the potential of body work to closely and beautifully support any conventional psychological approaches when helping kids, so I await this masterclass with much anticipation.

I'm also looking forward to the other presentations I've enrolled into:

Connection before Correction: Supporting Foster and Adoptive Families to Manage
Challenging Behaviour Whilst Allowing Healing From Developmental Trauma (Kim Golding) and

Pretend You Feeded Me: A Developmental Rewind (Ed Tronick & Marilyn Davilier)

 Plus I get to have a few days in one of my favourite cities - Melbourne!

Children and Trauma

Last month, I completed a 2 day training with Dr Robbie Adler- Tapia from Phoenix, Arizona who is expert on treating trauma in children.  She's a gorgeous, down-to-earth woman and an outstanding psychologist. I felt very grateful to have been in her company and to be so inspired by her.

I think about the potential to clear a child's trauma and how that may free them up not only now but in adulthood. How's that for a concept?

That's a concept that keeps resonating with me. And for all the right reasons. I mean what's not to like about the potential to give that to a person?

Silver Linings on the Dark Stuff

Anyone interested in seeing a film that handles bipolar and depression with realism, sensitivity and intelligence will want to see Silver Linings Playbook. I loved this film. The sincerity and delicate humour behind it made me want to stand up and clap at the end.  (I didn't because I feared being sent to Baltimore).

For me, it's remininiscent of A Brilliant Mind, a story of a schizophrenic genius, played by Russell Crowe.

It's sincerity is relieving and inspiring.

When You Want to be Anonymous

Here are some great (Australian) links for young people who are struggling and need support and who want complete privacy.

Kids Helpline (web and email counselling)

eheadspace (email options as well as phone)

Lifeline Crisis Chat (8pm - Midnight 7 days p/w)

Be strong, 

Alison

The Everpresent John Laws on Child Sexual Assault

John Laws needs to retire. The background to this story can be neatly summarized by the Herald Sun's article here.  My viewpoint?

I am a psychologist who works with adult survivors of child sexual abuse. Comments such as those made by John Laws last week on 2SM are infinitely harmful to the healing process. These sensationalist reactions only confirm the inaccurate cognitions made by the child as s/he grows up. "It's all my fault" is the most common faulty belief that needs to be overcome. [NB.This can take years.] Apart from being cruel and insensitive, this form of (further) abuse is entirely frustrating to my work and to all the others in my profession who are trying to help people move on.

I've just submitted this to GetUp! in support of their campaign demanding an apology from John Laws himself, and then a committment from radio 2SM to educating their presenters in dealing with the subject of child sexual abuse.

Happy Woolloomooloo life, John.

Photo from Herald Sun

 

Teenage Depression

My work by it's very nature involves receiving secrets.  It's sacred information from the hidden spaces within my clients. The teenagers I see are beautiful, young and free. But those qualities are the last things that they themselves see if they are battling depression and anxiety. As they slowly approach me, with their intelligent caution they begin to share secrets. At times, I find  some of those secrets heartbreaking.  They speak of self hatred and isolation. Behind the shy smiles, there are beliefs of being ugly, dumb. There's something wrong with me.

Such is the truly monstrous nature of depression and anxiety. The turnaround is what we work towards. Sometimes it involves medication. But no amount of pharmaceutical support will ever be as good as the power of genuine self regard that is continuously nurtured. Refusal to believe any of these Black Dog* thoughts, a stubbornness, a determination not to be defined by this condition...These are the things to be inspired.

The great blessing for the young is that they are young. With their whole lives ahead of them, they can learn to take this Black Dog, tame it and keep it in it's rightful kennel. It can actually be a stunning opportunity - the meeting of depression and/or anxiety can be the whole reason for the growing of strength and true self esteem that can be taken into adulthood. 

I am always greatly moved and honoured when I am allowed into these secret places, these shadowy spaces. Once that door is opened I can sit down with my teenage pal and we can nut out the best ways of being kind and compassionate to the self first. Then we get to work out how  he or she can start to have some fun again and to grow who they are, in all their rebellious and wonderful youth.

*Winston Churchill's Black Dog was the name he gave his depressive periods.

Anais Nin: A Woman Speaks

I was a very young woman when I discovered the writer Anais Nin. She spoke in a language that enthralled and inspired me. Her fiction reads like poetry. Her lectures formed a body of work that described womanhood, feminism, world peace, psychology and art. All from the sweet and intelligent mind of the beautiful Anais.

She influenced much of my thinking into my 20's and remains an endeared hero today. Can you possibly imagine my delight in finding that Dangerous Minds have just today posted a video in which she (wait for it) speaks? I've only ever read her in these 30 odd years.

Is it true? Am I dreaming? Ah, Delight appears at my doorway.

Watch Anais Nin and her Feminist Heroes (And LSD) here.

Photo from These Little Words.

Books. They're Good.

I wonder why I chose to write a novel.

Counting now around 50,000  words, I find myself mumbling, as I clack away on the laptop, 'Nobody likes this. Nobody will ever like this.'

That no-one has read it yet remains irrelevant. The whole exercise makes me want to grind my teeth and hit a table with something. One of the cats perhaps? Yegads. It would  have to be stiff and therefore dead, so I don't go any further with that thought. 

But then I watch and listen to Neil Gaiman, and I smile (it's a happy, though stupid smile). I smile with hopefulness. As Inky at Inside A Dog notes:  This is the best idea EVER.  

It is!

Have a look and breathe it in.

Literature for YA (Young Adults) and kidlets is so much fun. Even if more than half of it takes place in your own dear deluded head, the whole idea is that you will indeed connect with other same-head types. Or at least talk with types who like a good story.

Ok then. I will soldier forth towards the thing I'm soldiering towards. Yes.

Vive le Neil Gaiman!

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Friday's Woman: Rita Levi-Montalcini

“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them."

Italian neurologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini, died last December age 103. 

"At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career," Levi-Montalcini wrote in her biography.

She went onto study Medicine and then went into research and won a Nobel prize for her work with Stanley Cohen in 1986. She was active, smart and lovely right up until her death.

"I can say my mental capacity is greater today than when I was 20, since it has been enriched by so many experiences," she said at age 103.