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Gaye Morgan - Capital Mindset, Canberra (2025)

Manage thoughts and feelings and mindfully choose your actions, consciously and subconsciously to purposefully create life.

11/04/2024

Self-reassurance 🧡

"You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." - Louise L. Hay

In our previous post, we explained what self-criticism is and how it develops, but why is it so important to learn to cope with it?

Self-criticism, defined as the process of negative self-evaluation and self-scrutiny (Kannan & Levitt, 2013; Shahar, 2015), has consistently been associated with increased risk for psychopathology and poorer therapeutic outcomes. On the other hand, having a reassuring, encouraging, and compassionate attitude towards ourselves when things go wrong in life is related to increased resilience and better psychological health (Trompetter et al., 2017). The ability to reassure the self, reminding ourselves of our positive competencies in the face of setbacks has been found to lower depression symptoms in both clinical and non-clinical populations (Castilho et al., 2015; Kupeli et al., 2013).

Self-reassurance stimulates areas of the brain such as the left temporal pole and insula, linked to expressing compassion (Lutz et al., 2008), and stimulates a parasympathetic response - a downregulating system evoking contentment and safeness (Kirby et al., 2017). Consequently, practicing self-reassurance not only fosters a sense of compassion towards oneself but also induces a physiological state of calmness, promoting overall well-being and emotional resilience.

In fact, Petrocchi et al. (2018) found that self-reassurance serves as a buffer between self-criticism and depressive symptoms. Interestingly, self-esteem did not demonstrate the same moderation effect on the relationship between self-criticism and depressive symptoms. This indicates that despite a person's baseline level of self-esteem, practicing self-reassurance can effectively counter the negative outcomes of self-criticism.

In the post, we share 16 mantras to practice self-reassurance and cope with your inner critic.

09/04/2024

Sensible psychology 🧡🧡🧡

The reference book psychiatrists rely on to diagnose mental ill health is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association.

It is an amazingly powerful book. It can be and is used by psychiatrists to completely alter how an individual sees themselves and is seen by others. Labels, especially psychiatric labels, are often highly predictive of how we feel and behave and how others will treat us. The DSM is also used to inform the prescription of brain-altering drugs which many people may then find themselves taking for the rest of their lives.

We decided to create an alternative DSM, which we call the 'Sensible Psychology Dictionary'

At Uncommon Knowledge, we hold the view that the range of human psychological problems is actually quite limited, and that many seemingly different problems share common elements.

This is in direct contrast to the path psychiatry has taken over the last few decades, with more and more ‘official’ classifications being regularly added to the DSM. While it may appear cynical to link this with the tendency to treat every problem with a pill, we think it is important to bear in mind that it may well have been more influenced by profit incentives than by the real needs of suffering human beings.

The Sensible Psychology Dictionary was created with the intention of handing back control of our psychology to the people who use it so that people can throw away the labels they have been assigned and start seeing themselves as normal human beings again, with perhaps the occasional passing problem.

Even where the problem is more lasting and severe, we want people at least to be able to see it in the context of their humanity, rather than as an unshakeable – and unquestionable – dictum ‘from above’ that fully and completely sums them up.

Psychological knowledge used to be the domain of the wise men and women among us, and community and rituals developed to help people deal with their troubles and difficulties.

This knowledge belongs to all of us. Take a look and let me know what you think!

https://buff.ly/4ajXhcx

27/03/2024

Mindfulness helps you get out of your head and back into your body, living fully in the present moment. Here are some ways to practice mindfulness in everyday life.

Mindfulness meditation offers real and tangible results. By consciously focusing on your experience in the present moment, you learn valuable skills to help you get unstuck from difficult thoughts and feelings.

Meditation requires practice, but it doesn’t need a lot of time. In fact, you can easily work on these skills without adding anything to your to-do list.

Simply pick an activity, and then do it at half speed.

That’s it.

No sitting down. No closing your eyes. No quiet environment away from the children. Just you, here and now, at half the speed.

Here’s what this looks like in daily life:

- You can practice while taking a shower. Step into your shower as if moving in slow motion, and then slowly turn the k**b. Feel the water droplets on your skin and the change in temperature. Now pick up the shampoo bottle, and slowly massage the shampoo into your hair.

- You can practice while getting dressed. Slowly open the drawer, and consciously pick your socks for the day. Take the first sock and slowly pull it over your foot. Notice how the texture of the sock feels on your skin.

- You can practice while eating your breakfast. Slowly pick up your fork, and press it gently into your meal. Lift it up and then slowly take the first bite. Take your time to chew and then consciously swallow.

Whenever you do an activity in slow motion, you emphasize its physical and sensual nature. You automatically notice more facets of your experience, more of the richness and complexity even of “simple” actions.

You may want to challenge yourself to move in slow motion for 30 seconds. Then one minute. And then maybe even three minutes. It’s your choice.

By moving in slow motion, you will learn to bring your attention to your present experience and practice a skillset necessary to disentangling from difficult thoughts and emotions.

Whenever you get caught up in your own head, notice what you are doing, and refocus on the here and now.

___

You can find other practical tipps and techniques on stevenchayes.com.

26/02/2024

Brene says…In order to practice compassion, you have to be able to recognize the darkness in you and in other people…

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