Our minds and bodies are built to tolerate a lot, but, from time to time, we all experience
some form of imbalance or disequilibrium. This is completely normal and even necessary for personal growth. However, things can get a bit too intense, sometimes.

Say your company is reorganizing – meaning more work and fewer hands! At home, your teenage son is a slob who sleeps all day when he is not in front of a screen. You suspect your spouse is cheating on you. There is no one you can talk to about your life fears, so you find yourself spending a large part of your diminishing energy keeping the facade in
place.

You get the picture? Now see where this can take you. You start worrying about your performance, in general, but particularly at work. Afraid of losing your job, you stay late to compensate. Going home, or meeting friends (they are probably laughing at you behind your back) doesn’t seem like an option. Your new routine becomes: leave work late, stop for a quick one, or a few – to help your insomnia, you tell yourself. Crash when you get home. No dinner, it is too late, besides you don’t feel like dealing with your family’s disapproval (who do they think they are anyway? Why are you working so hard for such losers?!). You fall into a fitful sleep. Suddenly, you are wide awake. It is four a.m. Your mind is racing. You can’t switch it off in order to go back to sleep. You panic about things that are not really within your control, you struggle to find a way that will help you remember some of these thoughts in the morning, then, just as you begin to dose off again, the alarm clock rings in the new day! You feel drained and slightly hung-over. What was it you wanted to remember in the morning? Your memory draws a blank and your head starts thudding rhythmically, in unison with your pulse.

Breakfast is a silent affair. You gulp it down, slightly nauseated. Your son –at table at your insistence (we need some discipline around here!) – slouches over his plate, irritating you. You leave in a hurry to get to the office, your refuge. Your concentration is shot, due to hang-over and lack of sleep. You are impatient with everyone, they avoid eye contact with you. You try to steal 40 winks sitting on the toilet – your chin in your hands.

Towards afternoon, feeling slightly better, you start organizing your day. The others leave, ignoring you. You stay late. Ten o’clock you renounce, go for a
quick one, get drunk.............

Before you know where you are, you have dug yourself into a deep, dark place. This out-of-balance feeling is often referred to as “stressed out”. Balance is dynamic and one often swings right back to health with no further problem. However, most of us endure
more of these out-of-balance periods with declining vigour. Some push on as though the imbalance didn’t exist. Others surrender and succumb to fear, inertia, depression, burn out, or worse – depending on personality, learning and genetics. In either case, a vicious cycle is established, and before long, there is an escalation of stressed-reckless-risk-taking behaviour, or obsessive-compulsive-workaholic behaviour, or even tuned-out-disinterested passivity – among many other possible variations. Your colleagues, friends and family may indeed abandon you, you may lose your job and your mind – exactly as you had predicted!

Your eating, drinking, worrying and sleeping habits become chronically disrupted, affecting your health. Isn’t it only reasonable to try and prevent overloading to dangerous levels of imbalance? Our lives today demand high levels of efficiency, structure and energy. To cope effectively, we need
• Good habits
• Regular, restorative rest and exercise
• Relaxation routines
• Awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses
• Time in reflection
• life and career structure

Psychologists help people
Balance is what psychologists offer so that one functions optimally professionally, socially and relationally, and adjusts emotionally, intellectually and physically.
Most of us would, quite naturally, seek the services of a dentist to maintain good oral health, regularly

go for a medical check up at the doctor’s office, call in an electrician to inspect power installations at home, or take the car for servicing. We know that maintenance is the first step in prevention. It seems unwise to think that your psychological well-being is not as important. One of our most basic beliefs is that our MINDS define our humanity. YET we put off seeking for help when it comes to the most complex of organs, our brain, and
the most intricate of systems, our minds, which together make up our mental health. We minimize the danger signals, or ignore them – often until it is too late. Early recognition and understanding of your individual signals of stress can go a long way in preventing poor mental health and enhancing the quality of life.

Pure commonsense and self-preservation should tell us that suffering when there is help available, seems defeatist. Psychologists use specific methods and promote skill learning
Mental fatigue, stress, problems and disorders can be avoided, controlled, treated and even cured, through healthy thinking, restructuring, and awareness. Research shows that: 50% of us, at any given time, suffer from stress, depression, worries, and other signs of mental imbalance. These are the kinds of figures we should not ignore.

Most illnesses, including somatic illness, are either started, maintained or aggravated by our psychological attitudes. We have witnessed how thinking positively can make a great difference to the outcomes of people with HIV+ status. Positive thinking is based on a sense of control, which is a psychological concept. Counselling techniques are based on cognitive behavioural therapy, a psychological method. Changing the way you think can have a positive effect on you, whether you are suffering from sleeplessness or cancer. In other words, our thoughts influence our conditions! And we can control our thoughts! In a way, Abraham Lincoln was right: most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be! Prevention is better than cure. Learning how to prevent is learning a vital set of survival skills for the world we live in today. Once learnt, you can apply these skills to other areas of your life. In light of this, it would seem absolutely unnecessary to struggle in the dark, in secret.

It seems unwise to think that your psychological well being is less important than everything else. After all, one of our most basic beliefs is that our MINDS define our humanity. Suffering from:

• Sleeping problems, from thoughts keeping you awake (like a TV you can’t turn off)?
• Drinking to switch off, but now a bit worried it is too much (doing drugs, over-indulging in prescription medicines)?
• Worrying all, or most of, the time?
• Conflict with colleagues, friends, family?
• Fear of losing control, lack of structure, loss of direction?
• Feeling underappreciated, angry, depressed, oversensitive?
• Low self-esteem, boredom, low selfassertiveness?

Communication, concentration and attention problems?

Need:
a sounding-board for career-planning or selfdevelopment?
to learn to structure, focus and plan to overcome feeling disorganised?
Contact a psychologist and make an appointment for a completely confidential chat that could just be