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Issue 361 // Institute Inbrief
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Dear <<First Name>>,
Welcome to Edition 361 of Institute Inbrief. In this edition we showcase some of our most popular articles in 2021. We'll cover strategies to deal with the psychological impact of lockdowns, anger management techniques, considerations for counsellors working with diverse genders and sexualities, how nature impacts your mental health, managing therapist burnout, and much more. We hope you enjoy it!
Also in this edition:
- Certificate in Mindfulness Practice
- Best of 2021: Our Most Popular Articles
- Strategies for Helping Families to Enhance Resilience
- Dealing with the Lockdown Blues
- Quotations, Seminar Timetables & More!
Enjoy your reading!
Sandra Poletto
CEO, Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors.
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Diploma of Counselling
Join one of the most personally enriching careers.
There is no more rewarding way to help others than by providing emotional support that assists people get their lives back on track.
AIPC is the largest provider of counselling courses in the country. We have specialised in counsellor training for over 30 years. We have proudly helped over 55,000 people from 27 countries pursue their personal and career interests in counselling.
Our Diploma of Counselling is a journey of self-discovery, providing deep insight into why you think and behave as you do. And when you graduate, you will be extremely well prepared to pursue a career in counselling – employed or self-employed – enjoying our strong industry reputation and linkage.
As a Counsellor you will:
- Be truly passionate about what you do.
- Help people every day overcome challenges and lead better lives.
- Enjoy job security in one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country.
- Have the freedom of owning your own business.
Ready to start your Counselling journey, <<First Name>>?
LEARN MORE 
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Community Services Courses
Helping You Help Your Community
By gaining a qualification within the Community Services sector, you will be contributing to an industry that serves a very important purpose: to assist those with personal or relationship challenges. There is nothing more fulfilling than helping others overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. And there’s no better time to do that than now!
Diploma of Mental Health - learn more
Gain knowledge and skills to provide services to those with mental health concerns.
Diploma of Financial Counselling - learn more
Do you want to help others who are facing financial hardship?
Diploma of Community Services (Case Management) - learn more
Join one of the fastest growing employment sectors in the country!
Diploma of Youth Work - learn more
Do you want to positively influence the next generation?
Bachelor of Human Services - learn more
A flexible and affordable alternative to traditional tertiary education.
LEARN MORE
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Certificate in Mindfulness Practice
Teaching helping professionals how to implement a Mindfulness practice with clients.
The Certificate in Mindfulness Practice is a comprehensive program designed to assist helping professionals integrate mindfulness practice into their client work.
The course helps learners develop their understanding of how mindfulness became the phenomenon it is in the West today, and the key processes and concepts that underlie it. They then explore how a personal mindfulness practice can be developed, consider the research into the effects of mindfulness in various contexts and among different groups, and how different helping professionals have integrated mindfulness into their practice approaches.
LEARN MORE
Australian Counselling Service (ACS)
Access high quality, affordable mental health care.
AIPC’s clinical counselling division, Australian Counselling Service (ACS), provides high quality – and highly subsidised – counselling services.
ACS’s mission is to make quality mental health care services available to everyone. They achieve this by delivering quality care from just $49 per session.
You can book your first session here.
LEARN MORE
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Best of 2021: Our Most Popular Articles
Looking for some articles to read during the festive break? Below is a list of our 14 most popular articles for 2021. The list is ordered by the date the article was published, from January. We hope you enjoy your reading!
7 Powerful Strategies to Help Your Child Balance Their Brain Budget
It never feels good to blow your budget and go into overdraft. Yet, going into overdraft on your “brain budget” may be worse – much worse – than not balancing your finances. Neuroscientist, psychologist and author Lisa Feldman Barrett refers to your brain budget as the delicate balance between energy inputs and outputs associated with your brain. Energy outputs relate to activities that deplete your brain budget (expenses). Continue reading...
The Science Behind Habit Formation
Oh, here we go again! You’ve got a wonderful new smart phone – or maybe a computer – with all the bells and whistles, but how do you make it work? How do you get from one screen or one app to the next? Chances are, the first day will involve a bit of brainwork; you’ll notice what happens when you push this button or come to that screen and you may feel slightly clumsy working it, but after a day or two, you will be so used to the new device that you will forget how the old one operated. So, from the brain’s perspective, what just happened? Continue reading...
Take the Mindful Path to Self-Care
Imagine a self-care strategy which relies solely on you. It can be done in a quiet space or on-the-go; it can take place individually or with like-minded others; and it can be flexible to your needs and circumstances. Furthermore, in a time when uncertainty never feels too far away, it is unlikely to become a casualty of lockdown or physical distancing. Within a working context, if utilised properly, this self-care strategy can enable you to become a better helping professional, as well as inform and improve upon your interactions and practices with clients. Welcome to the world of mindfulness. Continue reading...
EMDR: Background, Structure and Applications
In this article, we explore what Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is, how it works, which conditions are being treated with it, and what’s involved in each of its eight phases. A companion piece offers a snapshot of research conducted so far, outlines the main effects the therapy induces, and notes the requirements for EMDR certification, should you decide that it would be a useful tool in your therapist’s arsenal of techniques. Continue reading...
EMDR: What the Research Shows
Here’s a question: What therapy is fairly new to the scene, works in non-traditional ways, and is showing itself to be as effective as some gold standard therapies, but in less time? If you answered “EMDR” – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy – you are right – and you might have read our previous article on it. In that piece, we introduced EMDR as a somewhat new kid on the therapy block, having been “discovered” serendipitously by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. Continue reading...
Identifying and Managing Therapist Burnout
It’s a new year, we’ve all renewed ourselves with a fabulous holiday break, and we’re raring to go again, having said goodbye to the factors stressing us in 2020, right? Or maybe not. Much of the developed world has, at this writing, only recently come out of lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, and many countries are still in the middle of it as they battle a second or even third wave. The constraints made necessary by the virus have changed the world of both personal relationships and work, some say permanently. Continue reading...
Enhancing Wellbeing in the Workplace
The morning alarm jolts you awake, and you roll over to swat the snooze button – just like that, Monday has come again, along with another working week. You mourn the freedoms of the weekend and drag yourself out of bed whilst wondering why your alarm’s tone is so irritating. “I need coffee”, you think. “And I need another holiday soon.” Is this scenario familiar? For many people, the daily act of getting ready to go to work (or its Pandemic sister, login to work) can be daunting, especially for those whose workplaces lack measures to enhance (and maintain) staff wellbeing. But does it have to be this way? In this article, we explore how organisations can modify their working environment to foster wellbeing amongst workers. We start by taking a look at the factors that create a functioning workplace. Continue reading...
Understanding Diverse Genders and Sexualities
To work effectively with a range of clients, it is important for counsellors to understand the concept of diverse genders and sexualities and to reflect upon what these concepts mean in the context of their own practice and the client-counsellor relationship. Continue reading...
Strategies for Creating (or Destroying) Habits
In a previous article, we defined habits, looked at how they are formed (through the lens of Duhigg’s and Clear’s models), and then outlined the science behind them. According to James Clear’s Four Laws of Behaviour Change (2018), there are four steps to establishing a habit: cue, craving, routine, reward (Clear, 2018). This article is about how we turn the above steps into practical actions/advice that can help clients not only alter the way they do things, but also make the changes stick. Continue reading...
Busting Common Myths About Anger
Because it is so multi-faceted, misperceptions about anger abound, and the question arises: how shall we regard anger? How do we advise the client to think about it? Folk wisdom often would say that the best thing to do is just let it all out, but is it? Clients complain that they cannot control it, that the tendency to be easily angered is inherited, but again, is there evidence for that? This article expores common myths people tend to hold about anger, and factual statements following them that you can use to clarify for the client why learning to deal with problem anger is time well spent. Continue reading...
Counselling Immigrants in Australia: Context and Clinical Considerations
If you are a counsellor, you will always be faced with the challenge of counselling someone who comes from a different culture. So, what do you do if you feel you are unequipped to take these clients on? Will it be too difficult to work with someone who speaks a different language, or who comes from a vastly different culture? How can you be sure that you are giving them the assistance they require? Should we avoid these clients, or refer them elsewhere? Continue reading...
Anger Management: De-escalating Anger
Would you know what to say or do in order to de-escalate from a client – or anyone – threatening to harm you if they don’t get what they want? Would you know – if all else fails – how to keep yourself safe in a violent situation? In this article, we share with you a set of responses for dealing with an angry person – safely – at each of seven levels of anger. Continue reading...
Finding Meaning: Masculinity in Crisis
Many young men seek counselling because they feel lost. This happens especially in today’s world, where the boundaries of how a man is supposed to behave are shifting rapidly. This article articulates some causes and concepts that can assist counsellors in understanding masculinity, so they can help men find meaning in the modern world. Continue reading...
Nature’s Effect On Mental Health
If you’ve ever been stressed, anxious, or just feeling a little blue, you know that it can be tough to find the motivation to get out of the house and into nature. But several studies have found that being in nature for even short periods of time can have a positive effect on our mental health. How is this possible, and how can we most effectively reap the mental health benefits that nature offers? Continue reading...
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Strategies for Helping Families to Enhance Resilience
If you are supporting a family in transition, you may perceive huge differences between them and the characteristics (named in our previous article) as belonging to resilient families. If so, you may be wondering: “So how do I help move my struggling family down the continuum towards greater functionality?” We address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Supporting a positive self-concept; Encouraging effective parenting; Creating supportive contexts.
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Procrastination: What Your Client Needs to Know
95% of us procrastinate (Steel, 2010) – accruing negative consequences – despite having recognised for 500 years that we do it! Yet even modern psychological science still does not have definitive answers for why we procrastinate, or ironclad solutions for how to stop. If the client sitting in front of you is lamenting all the negative consequences he’s had for engaging in this habit, what can you tell him to help? What does he need to know to change his behaviour? This article looks at recent research illuminating what’s behind this most irritating habit, and the approaches that may help deal with it.
READ MORE
More articles: www.aipc.net.au/articles
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MHA Credential Courses
Take a deep-dive with some of the world’s leading mental health & wellbeing experts. Learn new skills. Connect with peers. Earn a Digital Credential.
MHA Credential Courses are self-paced, deep-dive, content-rich (20+ hours of learning) programs led by internationally-renowned experts.
Each course is meticulously crafted and contains a range of learning resources including video lectures, peer-reviewed articles, case studies, workbooks, assessments, practical activities, and more. Credentials are 100% self-paced and accessible on-demand, so learners can start at any time and progress at their own pace.
Upon completion of an MHA Credential Course, you are issued with an MHA Digital Badge (an internationally-verifiable digital credential) and a professional development (CPD) Certificate of Attainment.
Currently offered MHA Credential Courses include:
- Disaster Mental Health Counselling
- Applied Positive Psychology: Finding Mastery & Flourishing
- Science and Practice of Wellbeing
- Evidence-based Parenting: Raising Children to Thrive
LEARN MORE
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Have you visited Counselling Connection yet? Our official blog has over 500 posts counselling, psychology, self-growth, and more! Make sure you too get connected. Below is a link to one of our popular blog posts.
Dealing with the Lockdown Blues
Nobody likes being inside on a beautiful sunny day; but lately, as we’re sure you’ve noticed, some state governments – as well as some other countries – have been mandating people to do so. For some, this situation offers a welcome break from work, more time with their families, and other holiday-esque perks. For others, however, this curb on social interaction is proving to be a significant catalyst for mental health concerns. In this article we discuss the detrimental mental health effects of lockdowns, and strategies to deal with it.
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More posts: www.counsellingconnection.com
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"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it, "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." The real fear should be of the opposite course."
~ Gail Sheehy
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