Convincing Ourselves

Self-efficacy, confidence in one's own ability to create change, undertake behaviors, is essential for optimum mental health. So much so that it is a major marker for depression. In fact, while doing through the literature on psychological fir aid for disaster and trauma survivors, I came across building self-efficacy, of a community or an individual, as an important part of the rehabilitation process. So how does one go about building self-efficacy, especially after one has gone through immense failure and loss? Staying the realm of psychology only, one can go down the route of regular counseling, and even hypnotherapy or EDMR, which has shown great success for trauma victims. However psychological first aid adopts a more behavioral approach. Building self-efficacy in such a case is best developed through a series of practice situations, given to a survivor (or even a community). It could be as simple as collecting water or cooking food. However, these practice sit

I recently came across the idea of Energizing Meditation (EM) in the "National Council for hypnotherapy Journal SUMMER EDITION". The protocol has been proposed by Howard Baron, a retired management consultant, whom I believe still dabbles in workshops and corporate training. While traditional meditation is about staying mindful and relaxing, Energizing Meditation (EM) aims to converse and boost one's energy. Basically, you are to feel 'energized' after an EM session. Howard has an interest in managing oneself under highly stressful situations, and I can see how he came up with the protocol in order to ensure managers and leadership can function in the best manner when confronted with difficulty (we are talking oil spills and disasters here!). Given Howard's background is in management consultancy, I feel Energizing Meditation (EM) is worth looking into. The protocol has been deliberately keeping very open and flexible because he rightfully believes