From the horse's mouth.

It’s been a while since I last wrote in here. I have been extremely busy working.

 I work with people who have a physical disability, using my psychological knowledge to support them. The physical disabilities I work with are far ranging, MS, ME, Parkinsons disease, brain injury, stroke,  epilepsy, to name a few.

 Did you know that 50% of people who have a stroke will then suffer from depression?

That coping with epilepsy can be so difficult, the amount of service users that apologize for having a seizure is incredible, it’s not possible to control having a seizure once it’s started; yet they apologize for it! My job is to help them with their stress levels, stress and epilepsy can go hand in hand and recognizing triggers can really help.

I’m constantly amazed by the fighting spirit of those that have MS, knowing how dibilitating it is and yet keep going. Having a good support system behind them really helps as depression, particularly situational depression is the killer here.

The joy I feel when I see a gentleman with parkinsons able to walk up the corridor and see the smile on his face!

 Got to go to work now!

Middle of June already! Been busy with work, life and everything else inbetween.

 Going to have a bit of a moan here. The British Psychological Society have brought in this Members List and publish it online. You can only access the list if you are a member but I’m still not happy about that. I rang them up and asked them, what about  confidentiality?  Well, they pointed out that it is written in the rules that they publish a list of members and previously all people had to do was ring up and ask if you were on there. Yes that was fine with me but now it’s published for all to see. They said that only members can see it and only my name and area is published. But what if there was a blip in the system? Anyone could see it! Not really very happy with that at all. Still, whoever it was on the other end of the phone insisted that it is part of the BPS rules that anyone could find out that I’m in the list of members. So it seems, tough luck!

I’m not worried about writing about it here as nobody reads this blog!

Just realized I haven’t written in here for a real long time.

 I guess I have been a bit down.  I have met many people over the years and I often suggest that there must be something to make them feel depressed. When you are in the midst of it though it is difficult to truly see what is going on.  I don’t have a great deal to be miserable about in the present, I have a good job, my family are ok and things are ticking along as they should be. Saying that though I have been doing a great deal of overtime and exhausted from doing so much. One way of coping is to use distractions, do something interesting that takes your mind off those all consuming problems that churn around in the brain at 2 am in the morning. Being busy and helping others fills a great hole for me.

 But there does come a time when we need to sit and think what is causing the sadness. I have been through a lot in my life but I have pretty much dealt with most of it. Yes, people do get low and not realize what is causing stress. I’m pretty good at doing relaxation now, slowing the breathing down when I’m racing up and down the corridors at work. These minor stresses pass soon enough.

Ah, but  on my day off today it finally dawned on me. I sat down in what I call my ‘thinking’ chair and decided to do some mindfulness techniques. I let the mind wander into realms of painful memories. The storm raged around me but I felt calm in the middle of the hurricane. And then it came to me. It’s one year since the death of a very close friend of mine, a wonderful psychologist who truly inspired me. He taught me much. Grief is so very painful but now I know why I feel so low at this particular time. Knowing brings understanding which inturn means we can cope better.

I have been wondering about life the universe and everything and how it is that I live in two worlds, or two different personalities if you will. The ‘in real life world’ and the ‘online world.’ Although I am finding those two worlds are getting closer together.

 I was filling out a Members survey for The British Psychological Society http://www.bps.org.uk/ and one of the questions there was asking where I get most of my psychological knowledge/information. There were only two options, one was the British Psychological Society and the other option was ‘other.’  Well yeah, I wasn’t going to sit there and list them all but it did get me thinking. I guess I go to the British Psychological Society to check on rules, regulations and ethics. I get rather a lot of emails from various divisions/sections/faculties of the society with the latest information on what’s happening. I even got to vote on national policy changes, it’s quite scary to think that little ‘ol me has a say on what happens for people in our country. I’m not going to say too much about that as it scares the pants off me!

Anyway, going back to the topic of where I get my day to day psychological information it does indeed come from the internet and of course, you guessed it, it would have to be Psych Central! http://psychcentral.com/ a wealth of information just with a click or two.

 Someone asked me the other day whether I was a therapist, I happen to be rather confused by that question. In real life my job title is rather odd and doesn’t tell anybody what I am. In real life I support people. On the internet I’m not a therapist either but I do use my psychological knowledge to help and support others. My professional organization is the British Psychological Society.

 A little psychologist, it’s not what I do, it’s what I am.

Well, I never knew www.linkedin.com was such a massive thing, 55 million professionals use it and how I never knew about it I’ll never know but then I don’t use facebook or anything like that. I have just joined https://twitter.com/ aswell and had to ask a few people what a tweet was!

 For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a flying horse on http://forums.psychcentral.com/ a wonderful mental health community where people give and receive support. I have been there four years now and known as the ‘Wisest Elder Ever’ with over 56,000 posts! That’s an awful lot of talking and mostly supporting people one way or another. I spend 80% of my free time there inbetween work and the odd bit of cooking and cleaning for my family. I used to take my notebook to bed with me but have learnt to limit my obsession with the website.

 I’m hoping this year to branch out a little more throughout the web and I have already made a start on that. Thanks to Doctor Henck’s invite, that got me thinking on spreading myself out a little more. Maybe I’ll start my own website one day…

2010 – Here we are! The horse has a blog and plenty to chew on…

 Well, I meant to write lots of tidbits and interesting information and wow everyone with my insights and such today but got side-tracked by something else.

I got invited to join something called ‘LinkedIn’ by a famous clinical psychologist called Henck Van Bilsen. He is one of the ‘bigwigs’ at the British Psychological Society. I am totally amazed and honoured that he chose little ol’ me to be one of his professional network buddies. If only he knew that I’m just a little horse with wings and hooves.

 I can’t say much more today as my brain has disappeared elsewhere, maybe the wisdom will come tomorrow…