Counselling Corner newsletter – April 2023

Correction on last newsletter

We’re glad to get feedback! A reader from an international INGO correctly shared with us that it’s better to use the word “drug dependency” for people as the word addiction is stigmatizing.

Indeed, the use of drugs is often related to finding a way out to reduce the “mental pain” caused by depression, trauma and other mental health issues. We should show empathy and try to help and support people with a drug dependency.

We are still looking for an appropriate English word to indicate for activities that people become severely dependent on including social media, gambling, alcohol etc. And the same question for an appropriate Myanmar word as the word “စွဲလမ်းခြင်း” also sounds negative. Contact us for any suggestions 

stress according to phase in life

During the month of April, we’re talking about Stress according to life period. (Childhood, adolescence, pregnancy, retirement) as each stage in your life comes with changes that can cause additional stress.

It’s nothing to worry about, it’s normal and it keeps life exciting. Each stage in your life has new challenges. 

The famous American psychotherapist Irvin D Yalom wrote an excellent book about this topic called “the gift of therapy”. Over the years he repeatedly wrote updates on the book according to his own life experience and new stage in life. Reading the book prepares you for next big stages in life and how to dela with it and it’s also interesting to reflect back on your childhood and adolescence and realise how life is following certain paths.

During the month of April, Counselling Corner’s Tuesday Live talk, Wednesday workshops and Friday’s post will help you to pass smoothly through the next stage of your life.

Visit our centre to shop for this book and other books on mental health, psychotherapy or to buy the gift sets for people to do art or clay reflection at home. Or have a look at our online shop: Counselling Corner | shop

Behind the scenes – who counsels the counsellor?

Behind the scenes – who counsels the counsellor?

This month we take you behind the scenes to show you how we protect our counsellors and make sure they themselves stay mentally strong and how to ensure quality of counselling services.

Worldwide each professional counsellor has a supervisor to talk to regularly to ask advice on certain anonymous counselling issues the counsellor has come across during his sessions. The supervisors reflects and also advises and ask the right questions to ensure also the counsellors themselves don’t get a “secondary trauma” from all the stories encountered.

At Counselling Corner, we take the counselling profession very serious and each of our counsellor gets regular supervision from senior counsellors within our organisation or overseas. It helps our counsellors to stay mentally strong and continuously make the right decision in counselling of their clients.

Over the last 5 years of existence, we have trained over 200 people up to Advanced Counselling Skills training level with a focus on “person centred therapy” by Carl Rogers. We strongly encourage young counsellors, working in the counselling field, to find themselves an experienced supervisor to have weekly supervision session with. If you can’t find anybody yourself, get in contact with us and we see if our counsellors can help giving supervision.

Want to know more about supervision? Have a look at the Australian Counselling Association guide lines on supervision: ACA Supervision Policy – theaca.net.au

FAMILY WORKSHOP – 3 GENERATIONS

Family workshop – 3 generations

Keeping a family in balance is not always easy, especially in Myanmar. Living under one roof with 3 generations can lead to normal frictions and unexpected electricity power cuts only add more heat to a debate. During our individual sessions, we often see the younger generation feeling left out and misunderstood. This generation struggles to speak out about their feelings while still being respectful at the same time towards elders.

Creating a safe space to talk openly, listen carefully without any judgement is essential in challenging times to keep family bonds strong. Sometimes this doesn’t come easily or naturally as over the years of being together, certain negative patterns have grown strongly.

Counselling Corner started a new workshop especially for families to create more understanding and open communication amongst each other. The private family workshop uses natural clay to gets the ideas, thoughts and feelings flowing. After 20 minutes, our professional counsellor starts to let each family member express their feelings and encourages the rest f the family to listen without judgement and show empathy.

The workshop can be booked any day of the week and is held at a private air-conditioned space at Counselling Corner and can be done with up to 15 family members from any age. Total costs is 250.000 Kyats. Get in touch with us to book your private family workshop

Fill in the questionnaire for a follow-up study in mental health

Dutch university of applied sciences – we need your help to share and fill in the questionnaire

We would like to ask your help. Counselling Corner works together with the Dutch university of applied science in Eindhoven on a follow-up study to understand more about the levels of depression in Myanmar society. During an earlier study (see also here: www.frontiermyanmar.net) it showed that 25% of the population self-assessed being moderately-severe to severely depressed. 

We are looking for thousands of people across the country to fill in this new questionnaire using the international PHQ-9 method:

Please click here and take 3 minutes to fill in these simple questions.

We will hold a lucky draw amongst all people who filled in the questionnaire and you make a chance to win 100.000 Kyats

Getting motivated again after Thingyan: organise a challenge

Getting motivated again after Thingyan: organise a challenge It’s always difficult to get back on your feet after the long Thingyan Holidays or to get your team feeling motivated for the job. As the heat soars the productivity seems to go down. Counselling Corner can help and organise a physical and mental health challenge for your company. During a period of 6 weeks we organise motivational talks by Andy the Trainer and Aung Min Thein, founder of Counselling Corner. Each week a new challenge is given to participants to focus during that week on a physical or mental health exercise to be done. Each participant needs to share a “proof” of the exercise on a newly created company Telegram channel (or on Facebook). The result: -Individual people feeling mentally and physically strong -A stronger connection and team building amongst staff -Regained energy and motivation Get in contact how to organise a challenge for your company (any size from 10 till 1000 staff members is OK)

Read the Myanmar version of newsletter on our website Please do share / like and contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on the above or want to know more about our services. We want to make it easier for people to talk about mental well-being and we need help from all organizations in Myanmar to discuss mental well-being openly with your team and work on improving it. For inquiries, please contact us:  Email: talk-to-us@counsellingcornermyanmar.com  Phone: 09 785 074 173, 09 784 509 916