Due to the devastating struggle for counselling in Cornwall, I’ve been having counselling with Penhaligan as the community mental health team is non-existent during the pandemic.
The devastating struggle for counselling in Cornwall has become so severe that I have struggled a lot as have many others during the pandemic.
This led me to seek out emergency crisis teams such as Valued Lives and Mind due to no mental health treatments or support available between 2020 and 2021.
I’m now into my third year of having no mental health support from the Community Mental Health Team, so I’ve had counselling off Penhaligon in Cornwall.
December 2018 was my last CAT therapy appointment at Bolitho House in Penzance, but since moving to South East Cornwall, I’ve had one assessment at Trevillis House.
The psychiatrist told me I would have to accept my original diagnosis, even though they feel it’s incorrect. I’ve been on a waiting list for coping strategy therapy since Summer 2019.
I contacted Value Lives, a crisis centre, after Christmas, and they put me in touch with a free service called Penhaligon counselling.
Within a few weeks, a lady contacted me, and I had one session. Unfortunately, she was unable to continue, so I was put back on the list.
After a week, a man contacted me to say he would be happy to give me some sessions via Zoom due to the pandemic face to face.
Penhaligon Counselling offers free or by donation counselling services from Cornwall College students who are training to be counsellors.
During my sessions, I have been looking at some of the exercises in my CBT and DBT.
Two Exercises that have stood out for me are the REST technique when you look at a situation and write it down and evaluate it.
At first, I thought when I’m angry or upset, I don’t see reason, and like many others, I lash out without looking at the bigger picture.
For example, I could be upset because someone hasn’t messaged me back.
Instead of thinking the person no longer likes me, I should be looking at other options, such as the REST technique.
The second exercise I looked at was emotions and how they link to behaviours.
If being generous makes you happy and is not met with the correct response, upset and anger come out.
When contacting the CMHS team at Trevillis House in Liskeard I was told that I hadn’t been contacted by them due to a lack of staff during the pandemic. So as sad as it is I’m not surprised when I read about the rise in suicides in the last year.
Have you or your loved ones ever tried these techniques? Did they work? What strategies work for you? Let us know in the comments below or on our social media pages.
Its important to keep moving your mental health forward as the country stands still with daily routines are disrupted due to COVID.
In the world prior to the pandemic, we were each in our routine, consistently doing the same actions .
Going to work, meeting friends, and doing the things important to maintaining our mental health (that might have been exercise, meditation etc).
As creatures of habit, when we find something that does a reasonable job, we tend to stick with it, even if it’s not the best possible option.
This is what marketing people call ‘satisficing’; where we take the first thing that we deem to be satisfactory for the problem we face, and we run with it.
With so many changes to our daily living, and a huge increase in time spent at home, the normal routine has been blown out of the water.
But what this does give us, if we use it wisely, is time and space to explore.
There will almost certainly be things you wouldn’t dream of giving up.
It could be that your morning meditation sets you up for a productive day, or an evening run helps you to clear your mind.
There is no need to drop them, but there is a chance to discover new options that ordinarily you wouldn’t have imagined.
As with anything new, it can be a little scary – new people, new environments, new things to learn, all of which can make experimenting with new things more daunting.
The best part of our current circumstances is almost every business has had to move online, or at least provide some form of online service.
This means you are free to try as many new things as you want from the comfort of your own home.
This is an opportunity to really go and explore as many different tools, approaches and methods to help you feel as good as you possibly can.
Although you can’t control the world on the outside, now is the time to optimise your world on the inside.
Have you thought dancing could be the energy and morale booster you’d love but have never quite made a class?
Have you heard arts and crafts help people to feel calm and grounded but didn’t quite get the equipment you needed to get started?
Or maybe you’ve wanted to stick to a 30 day yoga series but life kept getting in the way.
Regardless of the obstacles that prevented it in the past, if you act quickly, you can use this time to begin exploring new possibilities for how you can boost your mood and your body.
As well as pushing past the ‘satisficing’ barrier to discover alternative ways of keeping yourself feeling good, it also provides novel and interesting experiences.
So you get to find what feels good for you, while keeping yourself busy and your brain stimulated.
To get you started, all you need is to sit down with a pen and paper, and brainstorm as many ideas as you can.
Be creative, be unrealistic to start with, let your imagination run wild. As you do you’ll open yourself up to new thinking, and different, more practical ideas will flow towards you.
Once you’ve made your list, prioritise the most intriguing, and create a plan to start experimenting.
If one thing is for sure, you’ll be able to look back on this period and see it as the catalyst to moving your mental health forwards.
So as we approach the one year anniversary of almost constant disruption and uncertainty, we can all be forgiven for having some dips in our mental health.
Human beings are creatures of habit, and we really enjoy the feeling of certainty; from knowing you’ve bought the right house to picking your perfect life partner, that feeling of certainty helps us feel safe and comfortable.
How to keep moving your mental health forward
This is an opportunity to really go and explore as many different tools, approaches and methods to help you feel as good as you possibly can.
Although you can’t control the world on the outside, now is the time to optimise your world on the inside.
Have you thought dancing could be the energy and morale booster you’d love but have never quite made a class?
Have you heard arts and crafts help people to feel calm and grounded but didn’t quite get the equipment you needed to get started?
Or maybe you’ve wanted to stick to a 30 day yoga series but life kept getting in the way.
Regardless of the obstacles that prevented it in the past, if you act quickly, you can use this time to begin exploring new possibilities for how you can boost your mood and your body.
As well as pushing past the ‘satisficing’ barrier to discover alternative ways of keeping yourself feeling good, it also provides novel and interesting experiences.
So you get to find what feels good for you, while keeping yourself busy and your brain stimulated.
To get you started, all you need is to sit down with a pen and paper, and brainstorm as many ideas as you can.
Be creative, be unrealistic to start with, let your imagination run wild.
As you do you’ll open yourself up to new thinking, and different, more practical ideas will flow towards you.
Once you’ve made your list, prioritise the most intriguing, and create a plan to start experimenting.
If one thing is for sure, you’ll be able to look back on this period and see it as the catalyst to moving your mental health forwards.
Let us know how your mental health has been moving forward during the pandemic and lockdown?
Have you taken up any new hobbies or gone back to an old hobby?
