How are you celebrating positive feedback?
Welcome to our February Newsletter. This month, I am asking myself, my friends and my clients: how do we celebrate our achievements in a healthy, balanced way? How much time do we spend sitting with positive feedback? How much space do we dedicate to asking for feedback in the first place? I work in a feedback-informed way in my counselling and coaching practice, yet in my private life, I still often notice moving fast away from positive feedback or even dismissing it with insignificant excuses.
My 2024 intention is to ask for feedback and allow myself to listen to it: sit for a moment in silence, let people speak and hear their thoughts – good or not-so-good. That feedback can not only be precious to our personal development but also can create a sense of relational safety in the world, which is designed to isolate us in tiny little boxes of our individual selves (at least, this is my impression at the moment).
So, this February and March, I invite you to listen to the feedback – verbal and non-verbal – and notice how that is for you. Or maybe even start asking for it more frequently and notice what is offered as a response. This can lead to incredible, powerful conversations with trusted people around us, so let me know how it goes.
In the meantime, we have finished all our training online, and we are taking some time to slow down and restore. I am currently investing a lot of my energy in setting up an eco-therapy group for the local counselling service, so my private practice continues without significant additions for now. Our Substack blog is now back on our main website, and our podcast continues, so I hope you will find a lot of support materials and inspiration there.
I wish you another good month!
My favourite topic this month
This month, I am exploring two therapeutic approaches centred around stories – Narrative Exposure Therapy for PTSD and bibliotherapy:
- Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading by Bijal Shah
- Narrative Exposure Therapy: A Short-Term Treatment for Traumatic Stress Disorders by Maggie Schauer, Frank Neuner, Thomas Elbert
- The Complex PTSD Treatment Manual: An Integrative, Mind-Body Approach to Trauma Recovery by Arielle Schwartz
If you have any recommendations on the topic, please let me know! Thank you!
Resources & Offerings
Today, I am sharing our free e-book on counselling preferences. We use this with our clients at various stages of the support journey, and you can also use it as a conversation starter with friends and family if you have challenges with communication. You can download the free e-book here.
Thank you for reading our Newsletter. Talk to us online, check out our blog and let us know what else you want to see here in the upcoming months.
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