Manage Stress through Using Psycho-Dramas, Photo Collages and the 'Life Balance Wheel'
December 21 saw HSE hold its first psychology festival 'Offload FEST', in which specialists from the HSE's Psychological Counseling Center talked about the various different ways of achieving understanding, fighting stress and coping with problems. Below we list some of their very useful advice.
Share your problems,and resolve them using the 'Life Balance Wheel' method – in which you divide your life into separate spheres: health, work, family, etc. As soon as you see your life divided up like this that sense of 'it's all terrible' vanishes, and you start to see where the problems are. Then you can start to solve them.
Free your body.There's a theory that says that how we interact, our behavior and emotions are directly linked to how our bodies feel, and vice versa – all your body's stresses and strains are linked to things we are feeling. We suppress negative emotions but our bodies respond to them, tensing up, and end up almost wooden – but we stop noticing it. Two zones are most vulnerable to this, the neck and shoulders, and the base of our spine. Our shoulders carry the burden of our responsibilities, and the base of our spine takes the weight of all the resentment, anger, and fear. Psychological massage can help locate these knots of physical tension and free them from their emotional cause. At the same time, listening to these feelings can help the body relax. Yoga therapy according to Gert Van Leuween's Critical Alignment theory can also help. If you're interested in finding out more about that, then the HSE's Psychological Counseling Center can help.
Turn your problems into characters. We each have real-time dramas playing out within us. In these 'psycho-dramas' we are involved in an endless discussion with ourselves. Why couldn't I make a decision? Why don't I understand that person? How can I get out of this situation? All these questions have answers, which you can find if you split your reactions to particular themes. Turn your worries into characters, think up a script, and start the show. Visualizing problems can help us find answers to many different questions. Of course, you will not know exactly which faculty to enroll in, but you will understand why you couldn't decide.
'Photograph' your subconscious. With this method, you'll need some like-minded people to help. First, take a bundle of old newspapers and magazines with striking photographs and start doing a photo-collage. This will be the visualization of your wants and needs, reflecting what's going on in your head. Cut out the pictures you're drawn to, and create a general picture of your internal world. Discuss this with your friends, focusing on the feelings that each picture sparks in you, the life-events it's linked to, and listen to their advice and comments. This will help you systematize your thoughts and feelings, and you'll understand how they seem from the outside.
Watch a film, to understand yourself. Film has healing powers, if you don't just watch it with a bucket of popcorn, but use it to try to help you through your problems. Think of your problem, and watch the film as if you're in it. How would you act? What could change, if you were there instead of the lead character? Discuss the film with your friends, and explain the character's actions from your own point of view – and you'll get to know yourself better.
Look into the future. Look back at 2014, it's brightest moments and achievements. Then imagine you're already looking back at 2015, and remembering what you were able to achieve. Think about each sphere of life separately: health, career, finances, relationships, hobbies. This will help you build a clear plan for the next year, and to understand how to acheive your goals.
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Card File: Plurilingual Creativity
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Readers Found to Rely on Word Spelling Rather Than Sound in Reading
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Psychological Intervention Reduced Stress during COVID Lockdown
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