Clement Djaja Counselling

05/05/2023

Because it's Friday morning

22/05/2022

Following the Men, Hardship and Triumph series of podcast interviews, this is the second series of Shooting the Breeze with Clement podcast called Men, Parenting and Triumph. In this series of interviews, Clement talks to different people to get their understanding of the difficulties that they enco...

15/03/2022

The summary episode of Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series where Clement and Robert Merrett discuss the common strategies the men in the series mentioned as part of their survival took kit.

Can be found in Spotify, Apple Podcast and other podcast providers or listen here

16/02/2022

In this final episode of the Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series, Clement shoots the breeze with Reverend Bill Crews AM. Bill is the founder and chairman of the Exodus Foundation, a charity that assists homeless and abandoned youth. The foundation ran the Loaves & Fishes free restaurant in Ashfield, NSW, which feeds 1000 people each day until it closed due to COVID March last year. It now provides free meals through food vans as well as providing dental, medical and welfare services for the homeless and needy.

Bill has received many recognitions including being voted Father of the Year, Humanitarian of the year, being included in the National Trust of Australia's 100 "National Living Treasures", named as one of Australia’s 100 most influential people, and was appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his over half a century of tireless work with the disadvantaged and with homeless youth. He was the subject of a documentary film titled A War of Compassion that came out last year, and he is currently hosting the radio program Sunday Night with Bill Crews on Sydney radio station 2GB the largest Sunday night listening audience in the history of Australian radio.

In this episode, Bill discusses his constant sense of being an outsider, his strained relationships with his father and later with his children, and how he was able to make ammends with them. He also talks about learning to trust as trusting allows him to take on challenges.

To listen to other podcasts in the series, go to clementdjaja.com or type "Shooting the breeze with Clement" on your favourite podcast app search box.

This brings me to the end of the Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series. I will do a final short episode tying up all the points that were mentioned by multiple guests which show that while individual people may have some ways of surviving difficult times, there are also some ways that seem to be quite universal.

I really would appreciate any kind of feedback from you so that I can improve these podcasts. You can email me on clementcounselling@gmail.com

14/02/2022

In this final episode of the Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series, Clement shoots the breeze with Reverend Bill Crews AM. Bill is the founder and chairman of the Exodus Foundation, a charity that assists homeless and abandoned youth. The foundation ran the Loaves & Fishes free restaurant in Ashfield, NSW, which feeds 1000 people each day until it closed due to COVID March last year. It now provides free meals through food vans as well as providing dental, medical and welfare services for the homeless and needy.

Bill has received many recognitions including being voted Father of the Year, Humanitarian of the year, being included in the National Trust of Australia's 100 "National Living Treasures", named as one of Australia’s 100 most influential people, and was appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his over half a century of tireless work with the disadvantaged and with homeless youth. He was the subject of a documentary film titled A War of Compassion that came out last year, and he is currently hosting the radio program Sunday Night with Bill Crews on Sydney radio station 2GB the largest Sunday night listening audience in the history of Australian radio.

In this episode, Bill discusses his constant sense of being an outsider, his strained relationships with his father and later with his children, and how he was able to make ammends with them. He also talks about learning to trust as trusting allows him to take on challenges.

To listen to other podcasts in the series, go to clementdjaja.com or type "Shooting the breeze with Clement" on your favourite podcast app search box.

This brings me to the end of the Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series. I will do a final short episode tying up all the points that were mentioned by multiple guesses which show that while individual people may have some ways of surviving difficult times, there are also some ways that seem to be quite universal.

I really would appreciate any kind of feedback from you so that I can improve these podcasts. You can email me on clementcounselling@gmail.com.

My next series of podcasts will be titled “Men, Parenting and Triumph” discussing issues that men deal with while parenting. Hopefully, like in this series, the interviewees in “Men, Parenting and Triumph” will have some good strategies they used that listeners can also use to make their lives easier and more meaningful.

https://www.clementdjaja.com/podcast/episode/e0819b81/men-hardship-and-triumph-episode-7-with-bill-crews-am

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZbGoZFZuH75cr6cUDbniw

14/01/2022

In this podcast episode Clement shoots the breeze with his friend Josh Creasey about his journey through his alcohol addiction, depression, being suicidal and finally receiving a diagnosis of BPD which allowed him to start his journey to recovery. Josh also discusses black & white thinking and the negative impact of social media.

To listen to this episode, go to https://www.clementdjaja.com/podcast/episode/db7d8fa9/men-hardship-and-triumph-episode-6-with-josh-creasey or search for Shooting the Breeze with Clement on your podcast provider.

29/12/2021

Coaching or Counselling?

I’ve been asked this question quite often. Personally, in my practice they tend to overlap.

So I’ll start with the similarities first;

• To be effective, both counselling and coaching need to have an environment where there is ample support and no judgement from the therapist and where the client has trust in the therapist. The client needs to be comfortable with having open discussions with the therapist.

• both seek to find insight into the issues that are causing the client to seek help by listening and asking questions. If what is causing the issues are some belief systems that are no longer working for the client, both will help the client to adapt them into what would work.

• both would try to grow the client’s resilience and to achieve life goals through attaining insight into themselves.

Now to the differences, and even with these there is quite an overlap!

• Coaching is working on what is stuck now that causes the client to not be able to achieve their goals where as counselling works on creating an insight into why the client have become stuck to begin with.

• Coaching tends to be more action and goal oriented (hence focusing on potential) whereas counselling focuses more on coping and solving problems (ie. working on acceptance of the self and life)

• Coaching tends to be more present and future focus, counselling past and present focus.

• Coaches tend to challenge the clients more whereas counsellors tend to be more supportive.

~ See full article and explanation at my website www.clementdjaja.com
~ Link in bio

12/11/2021

A new episode of The Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series is now out. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and https://www.clementdjaja.com/podcast/episode/e31280b9/men-hardship-and-triumph-episode-5-with-ian-seggar

In this episode, Clement shoots the breeze with Ian Seggar who owns and runs The Learning Experience International, a successful boutique global management consultancy firm. Ian is an experienced international facilitator and conference speaker who consults in leadership and personal and business effectiveness. He has authored award winning training courses and seminar content over the last 25 years for clients across the world, with an audience that ranges from board level to junior staff.

Ian discussed surviving through moving to Australia without his family, having to rebuild his business from zero to what it is today and the experience of losing most of his life saving through a trusted person.

This is a series of interviews with men as a resource for other men navigating the minefields of modern life. The men interviewed in this series talked about the difficulties of their lives, how they got through them and looking back, what strategies they used to survive the hard times.

A summary of his strategies and what he learnt are listed below;
1. to see times of turmoil as the times when you experience your greatest growth
2. when going through difficult times, put your head down, keep fighting, and look for opportunities
3. to ensure that you don’t catastrophise the worse-case scenario (which is easier if you live a simple, fulfilling life)
4. to not get your identity hung up on having the spoils of wealth, what’s important is camaraderie (relationships)
5. to understand that success is only important because it gives you options
6. to focus on and appreciate what you have, as opposed to always chasing what you don’t have
7. when facing difficult decisions, imagine that you are somebody else and give that person advise on what decision to make. This is because it is easier to give good advice to others than to yourself
8. to have a confidant, somebody who you can bounce fears/concerns with
9. to never be too complacent. Some fear is necessary and good
10. to reframe/reposition a difficult situation, don’t allow it to define you, then find the positives in the situation
11. do not lie to yourself, be real to yourself. If you are real with yourself, you’ll know when you are in a low point
12. to always have a purpose/goal because this gets you through tough times
13. adversity gives you purpose!
14. if you do not know your purpose, explore and find it
15. to know that there are always people out there who care
16. to differentiate between success and purpose. One can be successful but still be unfulfilled because they have not found their purpose

If you are interested in Ian's book Ten Minute Tactics please register your interest on tenminutetactics.com
FB: www.facebook.com/tenminuteman/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/the-ten-minute-man-476b291b1/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tenminute_man/
Twitter: twitter.com/tenminute_man/

12/10/2021

The Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series is a series of interviews with men as a resource for other men navigating the minefields of modern life. The men interviewed in this series talked about the difficulties of their lives, how they got through them and looking back, what strategies they used to survive the hard times.

In this episode, Clement shoots the breeze with Raf Sanchez, the director of Go Dance, a latin dance school in Sydney, Australia. Raf talks about growing up in a family with domestic violence, leaving home at the age of 15 and relying on life as a parent.

Raf also discusses his strategies for dealing with mental health issues, drug and alcohol, and his dream project to break the cycle that turns today's victim of domestic violence into tomorrow's perpetrator.

A summary of his strategies and what he learnt can be found on

The Men, Hardship and Triumph podcast series is a series of interviews with men as a resource for other men navigating the minefields of modern life. The men interviewed in this series talked about the difficulties of their lives, how they got through them and looking back, what strategies they used...

06/10/2021

Is Anxiety Bad?

The quick answer is (and the answer that everybody hates) ... it depends!

The ability to worry, to feel anxious, is what makes human the top of the food chain. It allows us to prepare for action, to anticipate potential threat and to create solutions. Unfortunately, for a lot of us nowadays, our worry is elevated for many reasons. Day-to-day stress, financial concerns, COVID uncertainty, inability to deal effectively with conflict, these are just a few of the reasons I hear from my clients.

Take a look at the Worry spectrum in the diagram below. There is an optimum range somewhere near the middle where the worrying is productive and useful (the green zone). This is where we would ideally like to be.

We may think that the more to the left the better we would be. Should we not strive to be where we are "totally carefree" on the far left of the line? Actually no. Too much to the left where we are far too complacent and not worry about anything at all is dangerous! While we may not have the problems that an overly anxious person have, we will have a set of problems of our own. Imagine if I am a farmer and I don't worry about when to start planting for the next season. Or if I am far too chilled out to start that big assignment even though it's due next week.

For a lot of people, the problem is being more on the right side of that green zone. We worry so much about what's going to happen, whether it's about our jobs, or about our ageing parents or whether we'll end up alone that we can't stop ruminating, catastrophising and losing sleep.

We plan, re-plan, have multiple to do lists, constantly multitasking. No wonder we are exhausted! Being in a constant state of high anxiety takes a lot of energy! Farther still to the right, you start seeing symptoms like panic attacks, phobias and obsessive-compulsive behaviours.

What I do with my clients with high anxiety is work together to get back closer towards the green zone. The closer we are to it, the more you are able to enjoy the now. Worrying is living in the future and missing out on the present.

As the late John Lennon once said,
"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans"

If you are interested in reading other blogs and podcasts of mine, they are available on my website clementdjaja.com.

Talk soon.