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There is no perfect parent

admin — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 10:35:38 +0000

A key strategy for parents!

There is no perfect parent, the only solution and our most important obligation as parents is to take responsibility!

All of us who are parents know very well that no matter how much we want to, no matter how hard we try, there is no way we can avoid experiencing difficult situations with our children. We have all behaved in ways that we may have regretted or certainly knew we could or would have liked to have handled differently.

The question that arises thought, is now what? what could I have done in situations that went wrong and are now in the past. The solution is one and very basic. Repair!!!

We need to learn how to be good parents by learning to fix situations

Mending is the process where we go back to the moment when we lost connection and communication and took responsibility for what took place!!!

For a child it is an instinctive need to be able to adapt to the environment and circumstances. The way it does this is by internalizing the badness, i.e. the wrongness. This is because children need to feel that there is a safe environment. The evolutionary understanding of adaptation that happens automatically is that their environment is safe and good, parents are good. Therefore what is automatically internalized as an understanding is the belief that they are to blame, a sense of shame is created and a belief that they are to blame for the mistake and therefore do not deserve love but punishment.

They create an internal story that they don’t deserve love, that they are not good enough, that they are not lovable. This tendency to blame themselves makes them prone to too many mental difficulties such as depression, anxiety, and feelings of helplessness.

Therefore, as parents we must come in and fill in the missing critical factors in the events that took place so that they do not become traumatic for our children. Take responsibility and remove the guilt from the children. Restore truth, safety, connection and love. We take responsibility for what we did wrong, describe our feelings and behaviors, and recreate the scene with what we as parents should have done right! We acknowledge our vulnerability and our weaknesses and express them honestly to our children.

@Discover Growth Therapy/ parent counseling

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post There is no perfect parent first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

Four ways to better communication

admin — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:34:17 +0000

In order to learn to communicate better with the people around us, whether in our family, friends or at work, is to focus on these four principles:

External Observation:

We need to observe what is happening. What is it that we observe being said or done in the environment

Internal Observation- Emotion

We observe what is the emotion or feelings we feel in relation to what we observe being said and done

Needs

We identify what need is behind the feelings and try to express it as clearly as we can. It is very important to understand what our needs are in relation to the emotion we are feeling.

Request

We ask clearly what it is that we need done in relation to what is happening.

an example to understand this could be a mother and her teenage son.

She notices that he never picks up the clothes in his room and throws them all scattered around. The mother could say, when I see your room full of discarded clothes I get upset (Emotion) because I need to know which ones need washing (Need). Then she will express the specific request, i.e. ask e.g. could you put your unwashed clothes in the laundry bin in the bathroom?

These four elements, if we learn to express them and also to listen to them, are the beginning of a more emotional, non-judgmental and clear communication.

Source: “non-violent communication” Marshall Rosenbergask what it is that we need to happen in relation to what is happening.

@Discover Growth Therapy/ parent counseling

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post Four ways to better communication first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

Loneliness

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 17:51:51 +0000

The times we live in are characterized by disconnection, pain and political division. It is characterized by an inability to understand our fellow human beings, where we shut ourselves off from the desire to understand the views, stories and humanity of others.

This age of disconnection is literally killing us. Long-term studies have found that our lack of meaningful communication and connection literally takes precious time out of our lives and contributes to loneliness and isolation. Social disconnection is the cause of many mental disorders.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced loneliness as a global public health problem “as a universal threat” that affects the lives of not only older people, but increasingly younger people, especially since the pandemic era.

There has being a great change in the way we communicate nowadays. It has become rare nowadays to listen attentively and to want to understand our fellow human beings. Instead of desiring and responsibly inviting our interlocutor to express himself, we tend to shame, condemn or strip the humanity from those with whom we disagree. This leads us to stay in our prisons and refuse to connect with people who have different beliefs from us. This leads to us staying in our prisons and refusing to associate with people who have different beliefs from us. This means that we are not exposed to other ways of thinking or being and we further reinforce our own prejudices. Thus, we come to stereotype others, and we miss the detail and complexity that comes with the variety of identities that people have.

Ιf we want to strengthen our relationships rather than destroy them, we must learn to ask questions rather than simply judge. We must become people who look for stories instead of positions, and values instead of opinions. We need to look within ourselves; to become curious about our past and our feelings, rather than constantly seeking information coming from the outside world, so that we learn to take responsibility for ourselves. To learn to listen, to understand and not to blame. Perhaps we need to learn to forgive ourselves and others as well. We need to rediscover our compassion and our humanity.

@Discover Growth Therapy/ communication and relationships

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post Loneliness first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

Anger is a protective emotion

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 17:49:19 +0000

Have you ever thought that anger can be a very useful emotion? If we discover the positive and protective dimensions of anger, then we will learn to accept a “difficult” emotion, to experience it in a safe and healthy way.

Think of anger as a dragon hiding in the garden of the soul, when something goes wrong, this dragon wakes up full of life and passion. We have been taught that anger is not a desirable emotion, that we should suppress it rather than experience it. This is because we know that an angry person is capable of doing terrible things, thus associating anger with dangerous behaviors. When we are around someone who is angry, we feel fear, for this reason we fear our own anger. In order to avoid reaching extreme situations, we ultimately prefer to do nothing under its influence and hide or deny it.

just because anger has the potential to lead us into dangerous behavior does not mean that it always leads there.

This dragon also has its protective side. It is like a guardian of our mental safety. When we feel that something precious is at risk, this dragon wakes up and guards our boundaries. He is the guardian that protects us from external threats, that warns us, that watches over us. So how do we recognize and manage paralyzing anger in an anger that motivates us to change our lives for the better?

The causes of anger are mainly two.

α) Something we want to happen but it doesn’t happen

b) Something that happens but we don’t want it to happen.

Anger does not always come from conscious awareness of situations but rather, from the survival instinct, our body reacts based on the latter. In other words, it often acts reflexively and therefore uncontrollably, and this can cause problems.

We therefore need to be aware of where it comes from and what it means to us; what it needs and how we can manage it. We need to be able to make the unconscious conscious. To discover the deep roots of anger and become familiar with it. This can be done in the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship. With psychotherapy we can get to the point where we do not fear the dragon of anger but adopt it as a companion in our life journey.

Source: the Monitor on Psychology, the journal of the American Psychological Association

@Discover Growth Therapy/ communication and relationships

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post Anger is a protective emotion first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

When parents are getting a divorce.

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:44:51 +0000

A few words from child-psychoanalyst Francoise Dolto.

Renowned child psychoanalyst Francoise Dolto tells us that when children live in a home where parents are in conflict or constantly arguing, they feel that their very self, their stability and their dynamism are threatened. Often these children show great anxiety and insecurity. They may also experience feelings of sadness and guilt as they believe that they may be the ones responsible for the conflict or separation of their parents.

They want to know if their parents will continue to fight or if they will put an end to it. Children are rational beings.

A divorce, despite its initial difficulty and disagreements, legitimizes the parents’ decision to go their separate ways and leads to a new status quo, thus freeing children from the atmosphere of conflict and unexpressed emotions.

For children, divorce is something mysterious because they often cannot fully understand the reasons behind it. They may feel confused, insecure and worried, but at the same time it is a solution for them as well. The situation for the child is cleared up provided everything is said clearly and formally.

But how does the child experience a divorce? According to F. Dolto there are three continuities in the child’s life:

The continuity of the body

The continuity of emotions

The continuity of the social

The continuity for the child is his body and his emotions. His body is built within a certain space and with the parents present. When the parents separate, if the space does not remain the same for the child, he does not recognize his own body. That is, its points of reference in relation to space and time are lost.

Conversely, if the couple divorce and the child is able to remain in the same space where the parents lived when they were together, a kind of mediation is created and the process of divorce becomes smoother for the child.

Otherwise, as the child’s body identifies with the house he lives in, when this house is destroyed by the absence of one of the parents or if the child has to leave it, he will experience a double disorganization: first in his body and then in his emotions.

Therefore, in a divorce there must be clarity, a smooth transition and certainly a great deal of attention to the child’s emotions. The main mistake parents make is to use the child as an extension of themselves to manage their own emotions. Which is very painful and destructive to the child’s psyche.

Psychoeducation and help from an expert is needed to protect the child and their emotions.

@Discover Growth Therapy/ family counseling

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post When parents are getting a divorce. first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

Be curious not judgmental

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 23:35:25 +0000

We usually limit our understanding of curiosity by talking about it as a force for retrieving information. Most see curiosity as an exclusively mental pursuit, rather than one that can stir our hearts and spirits. If we observe children, we can see how curiosity works, since it is essentially how they develop language and communication skills.

Curiosity can offer us a lot. “Deep curiosity” is the curiosity that calls to us as a force to create meaningful connections and conversions. It is the means to strengthen our relationships with ourselves and others, helping us to better deal with disagreements, revitalize decades-old marriages, or heal from old hurts or traumas.

Curiosity motivates us to ask questions that invite detail and surprise. Instead of asking “What do I need to do to make money?” or “How can I get the other person to agree with me?” we ask “What are my needs and desires?” or “How can I gain a deeper understanding of the other person’s views?” This kind of curiosity is an act of love-love for ourselves and others-and it is a practice that can lead us to deeper well-being and lasting relationships. Remove yourself from the equation. One step in the evolution of curiosity is to learn to embrace curiosity not as a threat to our identity, but as a way to discover ourselves and connect with others.

Understand that curiosity is not just about others. We often think of curiosity as a way to understand others, but it is equally important to use it to understand ourselves.

Free yourself from your preconceptions. Our biases can get in the way of our curiosity. We need to acknowledge these biases and try to put them aside so that we can see the world with a new perspective.

Try to inspire curiosity in others. Curiosity is contagious. When we are curious about others, we can encourage others to be curious about us. These simple steps can help us discover a deeper curiosity and use it to create relationships based on mutual understanding and respect. This doesn’t mean that we have to agree with everyone or let them take advantage of us, it means that we can approach differences and difficulties with an open mind and heart, and find ways to unite rather than divide. In the end, this can lead to a life full of adventure, pleasure, and meeting people who inspire us and trust us.

Source: translation by Scott Keoni Shigeoka, Bridging Differences Fellow for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

@Discover Growth Therapy/ family counseling

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post Be curious not judgmental first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.

Life in 7 verbs.

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 23:49:00 +0000

In life we learn to love and to be loved, we learn what love is by how we are treated by the people who raise us and care for us, especially in the early years of our lives. Most of us wonder why we relate in certain ways.

Have you ever wondered how you perceive love and caring? To speak the language of relationships we need to understand what some key verbs mean to us. That is, to understand how we learned what these verbs mean from how we were taught by our adult caregivers (parents, teachers) through their behavior.

First, the verb “ask”. Many of us do not believe we have the right to ask for the good things we desire. It’s as if we have a treasure within us but are ashamed to ask for the map that will lead us to it.

Then comes the “take”, which is at the heart of pleasure. If we get something, it means we believe we deserve to enjoy. “Give”, in its positive dimension, is equivalent to giving gifts, attention, care, help. In its negative dimension, we may give to avoid a conflict.

And of course “share”. Sharing implies reciprocity. If we have grown up in deprivation we may interpret it as a threat. But if we have grown up with a sense of abundance, it comes naturally to us.

Then there is the “I refuse”. Many times we are afraid to say no; we may not even know we can’t refuse. But in doing so we deprive ourselves of a yes.

And finally, “play”. Play is related to creativity, to being present and safe. We live as we played as children!

Behind these words lie basic questions of human life. Did those who cared for us care about our needs? Were they teaching us to deprive or to accept? To dare or to fear? Did they teach us that we were worthy or that we were never good enough?

These concepts are formed as we grow up and as we gain experience. By understanding these concept, we eventually realize the reasons why we are who we are today. But realization also gives us the ability to change and shape these concepts as we wish today.

Yes we can!!!

@Discover Growth Therapy/ family counseling

Georgia Kryparakou

Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist

The post Life in 7 verbs. first appeared on DGTherapy DGTherapy Mental Health.