Pillar 4: Think - Mood Regulation with our Wellness Services

Take care of your mind, your body will thank you. Take care of your body, your mind will thank you.

Good Behaviors Before The Good Mood

Our fourth pillar in our counselling wellness program is a key area for our clients to foster a better understanding how doing (physical behaviors) and thinking (cognitive behaviors) play a significant role in our overall wellness. The average person has over 50,000 thoughts each day, and over 45% of our physical (cognitive as well) behaviors we perform each day are actually from instinctual and learned habits. With regards to how our thoughts and thinking about our thoughts affect our well-being, our wellness program explores many interesting facets of how a person thinks across the optimistic (positive) to the catastrophic (negative) spectrum with their work related - home related thoughts. Regarding our behaviors, our wellness program explores how a person behaves across the healthy (well-being) to the unhealthy (unwell) lifestyle spectrum with their work related - home related behaviors. In short, once we understand the range of healthy and unhealthy habits a person commonly does at work and home (what they do and how they think), a key goal in our counselling approach is not to primarily and solely get rid of a bad behavior (common counselling approach that not always works), but instead, we collaborate with our clients to develop healthy doing and positive thinking habits that overtime increases one's well-being. Simply put, building and sustaining healthy doing and positive thinking habits actually increase (not decrease) the opportunities to reduce or remove bad habits. In other words, having new healthy habits that actually fells good over longer periods of time (what we call satisfaction) is a much easier way to reduce or remove unhealthy habits even though those bad habits feel good temporarily (what we call pleasure).

Doing the Right Things Before Doing Things Right

We hope you have been able to read our three previous of four pillars wellness program highlights and that by now you can identify several behaviors (what we call lifestyle habits) that enhance our overall wellness, quality of life and longevity. Those lifestyle habits with over 50 years of combined research and clinical experiences have influenced the Centre for Stress Management to build our wellness counselling program around: rest - sleep lifestyle, work - life integration, and nutrition - movement mindfulness. The fourth pillar of our wellness program looks more closely at the second most common issue that causes poor health besides stress: unhealthy lifestyle habits. Habits can explain many reasons why a "dumb decision or act was committed by a non-stupid person." Remembering that stress causes over 75% of medical and psychological issues with our health, the unhealthy habits we have in our daily lives over time will increase the risk of dangerous stress that then increases a more serious health risk with our physical and mental states. Our Doing element in our Four Pillar Counselling Wellness Program focuses on certain unhealthy lifestyle habits we do when stressed at work or home, especially with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, work, exercise, sleep and relationships. In short, this part of our program helps our clients understand the "zen and science" of habits, how to develop new healthy habits and that many individualistic factors are required to sustain a healthy habit.

We Feel What We Think

Mark Twain said a most interesting about language over 100 years ago before the onset of the neurosciences: "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." Fast forward to today with the advancing field of neuroscience, to include epigenetics and neuro-linguistic programming [NLP]), the research is conclusive that how we think can have a direct and sometimes lasting effect on our emotional, cognitive and physical state. The negative, pessimistic and catastrophic thinking habits have historically been shown to be a key trigger for unhealthy stress as well as various cognitive and mental health disorders. On the other hand, those with realistic positive and optimistic thinking habits show greater positive well-being states and less illness and cognitive-emotive disorders. A key part of our Four Pillars of Wellness Counselling is reviewing with our clients their internal narratives (what they are thinking about their thoughts) and how those "narratives" impact their overall well-being behaviors and mood states.

Thought or Feeling

There is a interesting debate in the counselling profession along the same lines of the chicken and the egg: which came first, the thought or the feeling? The answer is quite simple when you think about it: "one could not exist without the other." The commentary that the underdeveloped brain in children and early adulthood is a "feeling brain" primarily due to the underdeveloped frontal cortex of the human brain has merit, but our clinical experience has shown children and teens can learn how to regulate their emotions and develop effective EQ skills. On the other hand, the mature adult brain is alleged to be the more rational - thinking frontal cortex brain that regulates emotions more quickly and effectively than teenagers. But again our clinical experience has shown there are adults who struggle with managing their emotions at work or at home with sometimes unhealthy and serious consequences. The common denominator is our cognitions, therefore we use an age-cognitive based counselling program that works on enhancing character strengths and internal locus of control for each client. We have seen over the years this approach to wellness counselling allows our clients of all ages to effectively manage unhealthy behaviors and negative emotions when life is not fair or kind. Processing emotions in our wellness program is important, but when attempting to prevent and/or reduce stress that causes unhealthy thoughts, feeling and behaviors, dealing with any type of work - life challenge from a realistic positive and optimistic thinking way empowers, not hinders, our well-being coping strategies.

Doing - Thinking Positive Psychology Counselling Program

The Centre for Stress Management's Four Pillars for Wellness Program are: Work-Life Integration, Movement - Nutrition, Doing - Thinking and Rest - Sleep. Our counselling program integrated in all four pillars is carefully designed where the most common cause for medical and psychological healthcare issues is addressed: unhealthy stress and illness that arises by our less than positive thoughts (with an associated feeling) and unhealthy behaviors. Our Doing - Thinking counselling program is a psycho-educational based set of positive psychology counselling sessions that increases our clients' insight on how the brain and mind work together with the way we think, behave and feel. Developing well-being habits with rest - sleep, work - life integration and movement - nutrition wellness pillars integrated with our positive psychology approach in Doing - Thinking presents flourishing opportunities for young and old alike. Drop us a note on info@stresshk.com and see how we can improve your overall well-being with learning how to develop a more mindful approach with how your thoughts and behaviors impact your mood/feelings. Simply put, our focus in all four pillars of our wellness counselling programs is to develop healthy habits or what we call "good thoughts lead to good behaviors" which in turn increase the chance for a better mood.