by Bill Sheate
It’s Mental Health Awareness week (15-21 May 2023) and the spotlight is on ‘anxiety’.
How can CBH help you with anxiety whatever walk of life you are in?
CBH draws on tried and trusted evidence-based techniques for managing stress and anxiety, for changing your approach to stressful situations and building greater psychological flexibility for long-term resilience. Below I’ve provided the links to just a few of my popular blog post topics, the things that often initiate people seeking out therapy or support. If something resonates for you don’t hesitate to get in touch to arrange an assessment and conceptualisation session - no obligation to further sessions. But it might just help you to understand better what is going on and why. Clients often find that first session can be so helpful and therapeutic in its own right…… [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
A lifelong skill
As an academic and as a therapist I’ve observed over the last couple of decades a steady decline in students’ general ability to take notes. Why might that be and so what? Well, note taking is a skill that previous generations took for granted because we had no choice – in a lecture we were never given handouts let alone copies of slides or the option to watch it again (or for the first time) on video! You had to filter what was important and what was not. And so, the skill was learned through years of practice; learning by doing …... [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
Why a PhD is different….
As a therapist specialising in stress and anxiety in higher education I get to work with lots of PhD and other postgraduate research students who at times find life tough to navigate. I also run a range of resilience skills training workshops to help build greater self-efficacy among such students.
Doing a PhD is a bit of a weird lifestyle; you get to research something you're interested in for typically 3 to 4 years, writing it up as a thesis to then be awarded the title 'Doctor'. During that time you usually have a degree of freedom to manage your own time and develop personal ownership of your research project, even if it is part of a bigger research programme. But there are several things that can predispose a PhD student to experience difficulties along the way, or find it difficult to respond to these difficulties with sufficient psychological flexibility. Here are just some of those most important key factors…… [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
Getting back to just 'being' in person. . .
Meeting people face to face and not just through a screen can be quite rejuvenating. Why is that?
Screen time of whatever sort requires quite a different type of concentration, something many of us will have discovered during Covid-19 lock down. It's what we call ‘focused attention’ rather than ‘broad attention’. Focused attention is what we do when we do tasks . But focused attention is also what happens with anxiety, and also often involves tension in the body, as you focus on the screen, or the people in the videos, trying to read signals and body language in two dimensions. It can feel tiring and draining of energy, because it is…….. [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
A new paper explores this…….
Thiermann U, Sheate W (2020), Motivating individuals for social transition: The 2-pathway model and experiential strategies for pro-environmental behaviour and well-being Ecological Economics (2020)
Is there a link between mindfulness and sustainability? Well, there is certainly an ever-growing literature in this field trying to explore it.
Ute Thiermann (a PhD student of mine at Imperial College London) is exploring this and we have just published her theoretical framework for understanding what might be the complex web of relationships between mindfulness and pro-environmental behaviour…….[Read more]
by Bill Sheate
Who am I?
For many at university it's a first real opportunity to explore your own sense of self or identity - who you are as an individual. And away from assumptions and expectations of you by longtime friends and family, or even of yourself in that previous context.
So what is important to you? What are your personal values, approach to work/life balance, hopes and dreams, sexuality; what motivates you - what are you passionate about?……[Read more]
by Bill Sheate
What do we mean by self-awareness?
Increasingly educational psychology recognises the importance of students developing self-awareness competency - the ability to reflect on one’s own role in society, to be able to evaluate one’s actions and to deal with one’s emotions and desires.
Typically, this involves five key aspects: ……..
