Gudrun Frerichs, PhD

The Symptoms of Grief

When a person is faced with a significant loss his/her world has lost all its familiar reference points and the future is an unclear, unfamiliar, and frightening nothingness. Without being able to control one’s emotional and physical states, the person is overwhelmed with intense and unsettling emotions that often follow each other in quick succession. In contrast, others might not feel anything and remain in a state of numbness.

What Helps When Your Are Grieving?

Losing someone or something you have cared about deeply is a huge blow to your SELF-system. You might as well look at it as a SELF-crisis. At a time like that it is of utmost importance that you reduce the stress by making sure your physical and emotional energy does not get depleted.  Looking after your physical and emotional well-being in times of grief and sorrow is one of the most important and useful steps you can take to help yourself. You can look after your emotional health by finding ways to express your feelings.

When Grief Becomes Complicated

The normal expectation of the grieving process is that after a while grief is no longer all-consuming and the person is creating a new life without the person or something that has been lost. That doesn’t mean that the sadness about the loss is going away completely. Whenever we are reminded of the loss, we will feel grief about the loss. However, this feeling is expected not to take over a person’s life.

Mental Health Diagnosis Causes Poor Medical Care

A recent research has caught my attention, because it reflects experiences that I have made in my clinical practice many, many times about the discrimination clients experience when they need medical care.  The University of Leister was involved in a research programme that investigated the quality of care. They found out that

The study by a team of researchers led by Dr Alex Mitchell from the University of Leicester Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine, warns that medical care delivered across most branches of medicine to those with a mental health or substance abuse diagnosis is of inferior quality to the usual standard of care. This important systematic review showed widespread inequalities of care in those with mental health problems.

If this is your experience as well, how about sending a note/email/letter to your health ombudsman or even Minister of Health with the link of this research attached?
People With Mental Health Problems Receive Inadequate Medical Care, Study Suggests

The Importance of Reflective Practice

In the context of client work the reflective practitioner has to ask him/herself continuously: “Who is the person behind the professional label and what does he/she bring to the table”? Such self-reflections are necessary to assure that practitioners do not get caught up in their own past experiences when approaching those they are working with.

To do so practitioners have to thoroughly question what their contribution to a certain incident is. This ability to step back and into the ‘observer’ position is also known as becoming the observing ego. It allows practitioners to closely examine the interactions between themselves and the client. How are your affective, behavioural, and cognitive experiences contributing to a problem situation?

Change Your Mood With Your Body

One thing is sure there are a whole lot of depressed people in this world. You can easily spot them when you observe people while sitting at the beach, waiting for the next bus, or sipping a wonderfully brewed Moccacino.

How will you spot them? They usually are walking hesitantly rather than striding confidently, avoiding looking at people, slouching with their upper body, having an earnest face or frown, and staring at the ground. The body expresses the person’s inner state and, equally, perpetuating it. You can try this out right now. Sit with your head down, letting your shoulders slouch forward, breathe shallow, maybe let a sigh. You can NOT NOT feel low of energy and depressed.

Love as Cure

Love is a cure for many ills people can fall prey to in today’s society. We know so much more about this through research in the last 20 years into the neurological development of people from birth onwards. Growing up in a loving and caring environment allows for the development of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem while at the same time enables the development of brain structures for the regulation of emotions and distress. Lewis, Amini, and Lannon presented a strong argument for love being the most important factor for well-being in their book “A general theory of love” – certainly a must read if this topic interests you.

Love is a Human Need

“From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body’s physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become”. (A General Theory of Love, by Lewis, Amini, Lannon, p.viii)

What is Love?

Robert Sternberg explains that love exists in interpersonal relationships that are characterised by intimacy (closeness, connectedness, and bondedness), passion (romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation), and by commitment (the decision to remain with each other, share achievements, and make plans together).

10 Instant Stress Buster

In line with the topic of ‘Stress’, that has been the focus of my last newsletter, I would like to share with you ten of my favorite stress busters. They are easy to apply and you don’t have to go to large expenses. By the way, it is for the reason of high expenses that I havn’t included shopping as a great way of dealing with stress.