HG Newsletter - December 2019

In this issue:

• Time, please!
• Final Call
• HG Gift Vouchers
• Helping Humanity Thrive
• Guidance for therapists
• Enjoy your Children
• A Christmas Carol
• One last thought...
   

‘Tis the season to be jolly… the purpose of seasonal festivities the world over is to congregate with kith and kin, celebrate the year’s harvest (whatever that may be), share nourishment, and exchange gifts. In our pressured lives, the gift of sharing time and attention is likely to be much more vital, in terms of our emotional needs, than any tangible present, and this is a theme that crops up in several of this month’s items. 

December also heralds the distribution of our biannual HG Journal , the ideal way to keep up with the latest research, news, ideas and more – and the last day of 2019 is also the deadline for presentation submissions for our 2020 Conference.

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Time, please!

Have you ever eaten when in fact you were thirsty? Or bought a pair of boots when in fact you were in need of attention? I imagine many of you will recognise the first scenario - we often mistake thirst for hunger - but you might baulk at my second suggestion - retail therapy as compensation for loneliness?I’ll hold my hand up to that, and to a third case of misdirectedintention: dropping off a token gift for someone, or posting a card, in lieu of spending a bit of time with them.

Our need for human connection and attention exchange is an aspect of our human givens that I have been witnessing, feeling and considering a lot recently... [read article]

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Final Call – for presentation ideas

Time is running out if you'd like to submit suggestions for giving a presentation at the 2020 HGI Conference next May.  If you have a proposal, please send it to: [email protected] as soon as possible – the deadline for submissions is 31st December!

And if you'd like to attend the conference, you can register your interest here.

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HG Gift Vouchers

Here’s an idea: did you know you can give HG publications, downloads or courses as Christmas presents!  Contact the HG office for more details and to arrange your vouchers.
Tel: +44 (0)1323 811662 or Email: [email protected]

Christmas Break

Please note that the HG Office will be closed from Tues 24th December until Wed 1st January 2020, reopening again on Thurs 2nd January.

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New guidance for therapists

On 4th December, the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry launched new 'Guidance for Therapists' around working with medicated clients.

The comprehensive guidance is a collaboration between psychologists, peer support specialists and psychiatrists. HG Therapist Marion Brown contributed to the ' Resources' section (Appendix) – with links to the human givens approach “tools” of 7/11 breathing and visualisation.

An article in Therapy Today (Dec 2019) discusses the implications of the guidance. This is invaluable information for all therapists, but a member of the Let's Talk Withdrawal group adds some words of caution:

"...there's been a movement towards psychotherapists being encouraged to learn more about psychiatric drugs and withdrawal so that they're better able to support clients/patients who take medication and/or want to withdraw. I feel [this is] a promising start, but it really isn't telling therapists about just how horrific withdrawal can be.  I'm also concerned in case doctors know that therapists have this guidance and take less responsibility for helping their patients, especially since therapists can't help with the medical side of the withdrawal process." 

Mad in the UK provides an excellent podcast clarifying the advice in the guidance, which is well worth listening to. 

A shorter version of the guidance and other training are currently being developed and will be released as they become available.

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Helping Humanity Thrive

In her regular blog, HG therapist and tutor Denise Winn has recently written another richly insightful article for Psychology Today, highlighting the trouble with unhelpful diagnostic terms and emphasisiing the efficacy of the human givens approach in focusing on the person and their experiences, needs and resources, rather than on any medical labels they may have been given

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Enjoy your Children

HG therapist, family therapist and HG tutor Miriam Chachamu ’s YouTube channel: ‘Enjoy your children’ is packed full of fabulous help for all parents, guardians and therapists who work with children, delivered in her inimitable energetic and engaging way. 

Miriam’s HG one-day workshop Understanding and improving children’s difficult behaviour, is next available in London on Tuesday 12th May 2020 and places fill fast, so book your place now.

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A Christmas Carol

In the run up to our festive season, have a read of one of our archive articles in which James Tapper (clinical psychologist, neuropsychologist and human givens therapist ) offers us his intriguing interpretation of 'A Christmas Carol', Charles Dicken’s top selling story of 1843. As James concludes:

“Something about the story struck a universal chord. Could it have been Dickens’s intuition that certain emotional needs must be met for individual and societal mental health, and that helping people identify and meet them is the most realistic and meaningful of therapeutic goals?”

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One last thought

​​​​​​​“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own."

Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, writer and founder of Taoism (601BC-unknown)

 

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