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/in Advice, Liza Belle, Personal, Poetry /by Leya5 Benefits of Therapy
/in Advice, Mindfulness, News, Personal /by LeyaTalk therapy is a safe space for open and honest dialogue between you and your therapist. While the overall goal is to identify and talk about issues causing your distress, therapy goes a bit deeper than that.
For a long time now, therapy has been a consistent guiding light for me. Therapy helped me transition from a life that felt overwhelming and unbearable to one that I enjoy living and thrive in – one where I know that I can overcome my anxiety even on my hardest days.
In working with your therapist to identify stressors in your life and understand their impact, you will also learn strategies and skills to manage your symptoms and move forward. If you’re on the fence about it or aren’t sure exactly why to go or what to say in therapy, I highly recommend giving it a try – or a few.
No matter what, we all could use an unbiased, non-judgmental, and knowledgeable person to talk to at times. So, if you ever feel lost on where to turn to, set up an appointment with a therapist. In doing this, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and the following five benefits of therapy will give you a clearer idea of what I mean.
Therapy helps with anxiety
Therapy is a highly valuable tool that helps treat patients with a wide range of issues and mental health conditions like depression, trauma, and OCD. And if I have not mentioned it straightforwardly enough yet, therapy is also a tool for dealing with the day-to-day challenges we all face as humans – something that anyone can benefit from.
That said, I want to touch on the most common mental health condition out there: anxiety. People who struggle with anxiety do not just experience moderate or high stress in understandable circumstances. Instead, people with anxiety feel unstable, irritable, or uneasy most of the time and for reasons they cannot always explain. This continuous state of fear can cause difficulty managing your emotions as anxiety begins to dictate your behaviors.
The first way therapy helps people manage their anxiety is by identifying the factors and underlying causes contributing to it. From there, they come to understand their emotions better and reach a place of acceptance before developing techniques to ease anxiety and effectively deal with it.
Therapy can improve your relationships
By this, I do not mean that therapy is a great resource for dealing with social anxiety or recovering from a tough breakup, although it is. But while some therapists specialize in family, relationship, and marriage counselling, any form of therapy can improve your relationships in general.
As you likely already know but may not always apply, better communication is key to better relationships. For this reason, therapists focus on opening the lines of communication between two or more people.
However, even if it is just you attending therapy, your therapist can help you see other perspectives and find balance in the way you communicate with people you care for. For instance, you might have a hard time opening up and being assertive to get what you need from someone; or, it could be the other way around, and you don’t realize the impact your assertiveness has on someone else’s feelings.
While therapists help people cultivate more positive and long-lasting relationships, they can also help you learn how to manage relationships with people you don’t want to keep around. Even accepting that it is okay to let go of relationships that aren’t serving you is a pretty big first step that you can accomplish in therapy.
By learning more skills to gain perspective and communicate, therapy can help you navigate all your current relationships to find greater fulfillment.
Therapy can make you happier
I realize that this a broad statement because, let’s face it, happiness is an ambiguous word. Not only can happiness emotions range from contentment to immense joy, but the things that make us happy vary for all of us, too.
No matter how you slice it, I think we can all agree that greater levels of self- acceptance and self-compassion make us happier. When you accept who you are, you will be more prone to take care of yourself and engage in healthy behaviors rather than succumb to negative self-talk. And the things you discuss with your therapist will help you find more self- awareness and understanding, which is always the first step before self-acceptance.
In other words, therapy is a great first step to a happier life. It is an opportunity to release your past, talk about your present, and foster more compassion for yourself moving forward.
Therapy can make you more productive
Have you ever noticed how you get more tasks accomplished or focus better when you are in a good mood?
We’ve established that therapy can make you feel happier, and the same chemicals, like serotonin, that your brain receives when you’re happy also signal you to learn more, work harder, and apply yourself.
My intention is not to say that you have to work harder to be happy or that what you are doing now is not good enough. Although, I won’t deny the fact that higher productivity is great for many reasons.
The more you strive for goals and succeed, the more accomplished, capable, and confident you will feel. Not to mention productivity gives your life a sense of direction. All of this can add up to a greater level of happiness, so if you think about it, happiness and productivity make up a positive and perpetual cycle.
Both happiness and productivity combined can help you advance in life, whether professionally or personally, and therapy is a way to identify your mental roadblocks so you can find effective solutions to overcome them. As you can see, therapy is not about directly helping people develop better wellbeing, but a tool that enables you to improve any areas of your life that contribute to your wellbeing.
Therapy teaches healthy, lifelong coping skills
Last but certainly not least are the healthy coping skills you acquire from therapy. Coping is necessary to respond to all life’s challenges and problems. Sometimes all coping will feel like it is helping you to do is persevere. But if you continue to cope with consistency and efficacy using the tools you learn in therapy, you will ultimately move through and move on.
When your healthy coping mechanisms become habitual and take precedence over your unhealthy ones, you will feel more in control over your life. Keep in mind that nurturing skills and habits and achieving progress takes time, and so does therapy. It is normal if it takes a while to reap any of these benefits of therapy, which is one more reason not to wait any longer to try it.
Writing by Paul Marlow
“Paul Marlow is a mental health advocate who writes mental health help content to inspire others to find daily actions to get better. You can see more at his site for Never Alone”
Create Your Morning Routine For Mental Health Happiness To Start The Day
/in Advice, Mindfulness, News /by LeyaDoes this sound familiar?
You have a busy workday tomorrow and are planning out how the day will go. Where is the first place you take away attention from?
Does it look something like this…
Wake-up
Order coffee from the Starbucks app Run out the door
In a total of seven minutes, you have broken your brain into a dead sprint after being in a coma for eight hours.
This doesn’t sound relaxing, does it? I promise you, if it doesn’t sound relaxing to you, your brain and mental health also don’t vibe with this morning routine.
Allowing yourself to wake up 45-60 minutes before you need to leave the house will give your brain the time to function fully by the time you step out the door. Positively helping anxiety, depression, stress or any other mental health struggles you might be struggling with.
Here are 10 tips to creating your morning routine
1. Alarm
Buying a stand-alone alarm clock will allow you to put your phone to charge in another room at night, or at least more than an arm’s length away. Wake up 60 minutes before you need to leave your place of living.
2. Don’t look at your phone
Leaving your phone on the charger until your whole routine is complete is one of the main goals for your morning routine. It may only be 15 minutes or last a full 60 minutes, but the idea is not
to allow the stress of social media, emails or anything else to spike your angst or derail your focus.
3. Make Your Bed
Starting each morning off with an easy win like making your bed will give you positive re- enforcement the first 3 minutes of being awake. It should take no longer than 30 seconds to make your bed, so why not give it a try?
4. Cold Shower
There are a few ways to add a cold shower to your routine.
- The entire shower is streaming cold water (you are part of the 1% club)
- In your last 30 seconds of a hot shower, you throw the tap too cold and ride it out till the
end.
There are multiple benefits to adding this to your routine, ranging from a for sure wakeup to mental and physiological benefits.5. Drink Hot Lemon Water
Drinking hot lemon water as the first thing you digest in the day helps regulate natural bowel movements. Our gut’s health status can correlate with our mental health happiness.
Make sure you put the lemon juice in a short glass of water and shoot it, or add it to a large glass of medium to hot water. The acidity of the lemon in concentrated doses will harm the enamel around your teeth.
6. Meditate
Being a newbie, the act of meditating can be overwhelming. You will spend a lot of time wondering if you are doing it right and thinking about not trying to think.
For the first year of meditating during my morning routine, I would sit in the quiet of the morning with my eyes closed (sometimes open) and allow myself to take in the sounds around me while focusing on the moment.
Take this addition to your morning routine with a bit of humility. If you can sit still for a few minutes without having the desire to check your phone, I call that a win.
7. Coffee or tea
You have made it 60% of the way; that’s a big win!
This is when you can add in the comfort area of what a morning routine meant to you in the past… make a strong cup of coffee. Go through the process slowly and methodically. The act can be very pleasing and a form of meditation.
8. Journal
Now that you have your cup of coffee ready bring out your dedicated morning journal. Buy yourself a journal you enjoy the look and feel of, and this will be dedicated to writing only in the mornings. A few tips to what to write about if you get stuck are…
- Positive things that happened the day before
- Negative things that I can change that happened the day before
- What is on my schedule today
- A particular emotional event that occurred the day before
9. Breathing
It’s best if I let Whim Hoff describe this. All I will say is that this has been a welcomed new addition of 10 minutes of my morning routine during the pandemic. Breath in deep, exhale even deeper and don’t rush yourself through the breathing routine.
10. Affirmations
The morning solitude has come to an end. To break the silence, say a few gratitudes out loud. Affirmations are a great way to re-enforce positive thoughts and visions in your life. A few examples of what affirmations can be…
- I will not stress over things I cannot control.
- I lovingly do everything I can to assist my body in maintaining health.
- My life is full of amazing opportunities that are ready for me to step into.
- I’m free to create the life I desire.
- I have been given endless talents which I will begin to utilize today.
Take these ten steps and craft your routine, perhaps moving some of them around or adding some other additions that speak to you.
There is no wrong way to do a morning routine. As long as you are allowing your brain to adapt to its functioning form slowly, then you are winning.
*I have created a free 10 step email course helping you craft yours and work through the tough areas in starting your morning routine
Writing by Paul Marlow
“Paul Marlow is a mental health advocate who writes mental health help content to inspire others to find daily actions to get better. You can see more at his site for Never Alone”
Privacy Counts
/in Advice, News /by LeyaThe 5 most important things you must know about privacy before Camming
With so much innovation in the tech industry it’s hardly surprising that many companies are now offering you the chance to stream from any device and location. When all you need is Wi-Fi, there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping you broadcasting your cam life from anywhere, or is there?
The Law
Although the law in the UK (specifically England) states that it is not illegal to be naked in a public place, you can be prosecuted for causing another individual, alarm, or distress. Depending upon the place or circumstances, this could be termed as indecent exposure if harassment has also occurred. If it can be proved that you intentionally acted to cause upset and shock, this can become an offence.
Obviously, being naked doesn’t include acts of a sexual nature in a public place. The laws relating to this, in England and Wales, were changed in 2003. Whilst sexual activity in a public toilet is still an offence, sex in other public places is not. That is, unless it is witnessed or there is a reasonable chance at least 2 members of the public may see what’s happening.
Logos and Signs
This is an area where you are most likely to get caught out and whilst it may not involve a prison sentence, the inadvertent marketing of big brands, could land you in big trouble. The majority of large companies do not wish to see their brands associated with adult material in any way shape and form.
They have huge amounts of money at their disposal to sue and ensure convictions of anyone caught flouting these rules. If you are making money out of the broadcast, and get caught, not realising, or noticing branding in the background (or foreground) is not a defence in terms of the law. So, unless you have permission from the brand you must be extremely careful of what appears in your broadcast.
Easy enough when you are in the confines of your own space or studio but much more difficult to monitor when you are on the move, in a public place.
Location
If you decide to broadcast on your mobile device, somewhere other than the comforts of your room or studio, you should always check any local bye laws. Individual areas, such as towns, counties, or regions, may have laws specific to them.
Indeed, some properties, or areas have complete bans on photography or filming of any description and broadcasting via your cam, most likely falls into this category. You should make checks before you start broadcasting and where possible (and necessary) obtain permission beforehand. Though to be honest, you are unlikely to receive it for camming!
Background
It’s quite difficult to keep a track of everything going on in the background while you are camming as it’s normally live to air. You must however bear in mind it is your responsibility to ensure you are working within the bounds of the law. You may think it’s cool to start a cam session in front of a famous landmark (even with your clothes on) but it’s not! You need to remember that any live broadcast tells anyone watching exactly where you are, at that very moment. Any kind of privacy you may have built up for your adult profile will have been blown wide open.
For example, let’s imagine you are on a bus and you decide to have a quick cam session with one of your dedicated fans (who by the way is more than likely on his, or her smart phone). Just as the session starts the driver announces the next stop and immediately your exact location is given away.
Making a short video while you are on the bus, to post to your social media or fans site is fine but ALWAYS check the content before you post and preferably wait until you get home to do it.
Looking at your content on a big screen is always advisable and try not to focus on yourself, check out everything else in the shot. Just because you can’t see it on your smart phone, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
People
With the advent of facial recognition software, it’s even more important these days to ensure there are no random people in the background (or foreground for that matter). Identities can be located very quickly even with just a partial shot of a face. Most sites will insist that anyone in the shot is verified by them before appearing. Just because you are in a public place doesn’t mean the rules no longer apply.
If somebody comes into shot, you are going to have to either edit it or redo it, which is going to prove difficult if you are on live cam. You need to make absolutely sure that you are fully aware of what images you are broadcasting, at all times.
Above all, be CAREFUL, be SAFE and ALWAYS be AWARE.
Love Carla x
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