Richard Taylor |

Sep
27
2007

Starting today I am going to discuss and illustrate seven foundations for psychological health. You could regard each foundation as an area in which you have to acquire certain skills for coping with the demands of living and for coping with change. What are we trying to achieve? At a general level the objective is to expand your psychological world through building greater flexibility while creating more possibilities for yourself. To achieve this it might involve: building resistance to anxiety and depression; reducing stress; accepting your thoughts, emotions and feelings and being prepared to move on; enhancing your relationships; developing flexibility in your thinking, and working more productively and creatively. Skill One – values. Let us get right into this from the outset. Take a pen and paper and undertake the following assessment in two parts. Step One: Rate on a scale of 1-10 the importance of the following ten valued domains of living, but first take note that not everyone values all of these domains. Some areas may be more important to you than others and some domains or areas of living may be important in different ways and different times at different stages of your life. The 10 areas are: (1) family, other than parenting and intimate relations (2) marriage, partners, couples, intimate relations (3) parenting (4) friendship (5) work (6) education (7) recreation (8) spirituality (9) citizenship and community activities, and (10) physical self-care. Step two: On another page make an estimate, using the same 1-10 rating scale, of how consistently you have lived in accord with those values over the past week. This assessment hopefully puts your whole life back into perspective or helps you to see the ‘big picture’. I often refer to having a helicopter view of your life circumstances as sometimes the experience of stress, anxiety and depression is pervasive and consumes all available energy. Look at the results and ask yourself the following questions: In what areas have I lost the freedom to act?; What are the obstacles to increasing or decreasing your commitment to these domains of your life, and what changes do you wish to make? During this exercise write down any relevant thoughts, memories, emotions, and other aspects of your experience that act as barriers to moving forward in any domain. For example, you may think that your excessive work hours are for your family’s benefit but your quality of life may be compromised. Through identifying your values you are more likely to realise the goals in life that really matter to you. All of this leads to some principles of time management that we will discuss at another time on this web site. The values exercise here asks you to be reflective, to take time out in order to be reflective and not simply be lost in endless activity. David Brazier has noted in his book Zen Therapy ‘When our stock-taking shows that what is revealed by our contact with the environment is in harmony with what we inwardly believe and value, we feel confirmed. When our experience (body) and beliefs (mind) disaffirm one another we feel disturbed’.

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