Positive Psychology

When you only have yourself to talk to in between therapy sessions you wouldn’t be condemned if you think ‘not much is going to change in your life if anything at all. Oftentimes, even having to wait for 6 days between therapy visits, can seem like forever. Talking with family and friends about your crazy life challenges can be even more detrimental than helpful. Have you noticed that? So you just clam up and suffer in painful silence as you count down the days before you see your therapist again.

See if you recognise anyone you know below:

Scenario 1:

Bec enjoys collaborating with her therapist because while she is sitting across from her, her confidence increases. She really believes she can do what’s required of her when she gets home. But alas, when Bec gets home it seems that she has left her confidence and motivation back at the therapist’s office. Hello Quenza!

Scenario 2:

Casey gets a lot out of talk therapy and expresses how she feels in her therapist’s office. But, when she gets home Casey is so exhausted from opening up and letting it all out that the intervention the therapist gave her to practice at home doesn’t make sense to her at all. She wished she had paid more attention to what her therapist said. When she attempts the intervention ‘once’ it feels totally unnatural to her. Surely this can’t be right!  Hello Quenza! 

Scenario 3:

Josh is on the verge of giving up any hope of finding help. He feels it is pointless going out once a week to see someone about his problem. In fact, he feels that he can’t even leave the house anymore. 

No one understands him; how could they, they’ve never walked in his shoes or experienced the rejection he has been through for most of his life. Yet he wants so desperately to change; he wants to learn how to take better care of himself. He wants new friends and a girlfriend too. He dreams of getting fit, surfing, and jogging on the beach early in the morning before he goes to work. Going to work… that’s just a dream too.  If only he could find a way out of the maze in his head. His willpower is non-existent, his resilience is zilch and his environment is not helping him either. What little confidence he did have has deserted him. He feels doomed. 

Someone once told him that in order to change he had to learn how to think like a winner!  But he has no idea how to do that! Hello Quenza!

What is Quenza and how does it work?

Many people give up before a new psychological intervention has had time to take root and produce positive results either because they can’t feel any change in their lives, or they simply can’t afford therapy for more than a couple of times. Therefore, the window of opportunity, for a therapist whose philosophy is to ‘make herself redundant’ by achieving vast improvements in client responses to therapy by teaching them how to become directors of their own lives, can be quite small. That’s where Quenza comes into play.

Quenza is a personalised game-changer that empowers clients between therapy sessions by digitally engaging, assessing, and psycho-educating them for better outcomes in less time.

“It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed, after all, chances are that habit you are trying to shift, smash or reshape, has been rooted in you for a long time. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself time to experience the change in you; to feel the difference, the peace, the joy, the motivation within you then go out and tell the world how truly wonderful life is.” – Paulette Gee

We welcome the opportunity to introduce you to Paulette and Quenza. Please contact us at Mary Street Wellness Noosaville on 5449 7958 for your FREE introduction.

Have you been hearing or reading a lot about positivity, happiness, increasing your wellbeing, flourishing in life, and improving your quality of life, lately? You may have tried using your willpower, reciting affirmations, reading pop psychology books, and simply trying to ignore the unwanted negative thoughts in your head that keep going round in some unconscious loop that you can’t seem to break. Around this time you may be beginning to lose hope realizing that achieving a positive outcome is not as simple as it sounds.

In order not to lose heart let’s get to work on explaining why change cannot take effect without addressing the negative challenges we face in our day-to-day lives and how Second Wave Positive Psychology which, challenges both the positive and negative aspects of personal development to your advantage.

Second Wave Positive Psychology takes a more nuanced and balanced approach to the idea of wellbeing. Rather than focusing on the polarization of good and bad, positive and negative, the goal is to develop a more balanced approach that does not separate phenomena into categories but embraces the balance between the two (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2016).

The key element of this new wave is dialectical thinking. Dialectical thinking refers to a nuanced view of apparent opposites (like positive and negative) and the recognition that they do not exist in isolation from each other. Rather, both have a complex interplay that needs to be acknowledged and examined from a philosophical perspective (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2016).

For instance, wellbeing can be a dialectical process. It changes dynamically, so it does not remain the same or related to the same factor. Negative qualities can be tied to positive outcomes and vice-versa, so it is not always easy to just label one thing as good or bad, because it depends on the context. The division of positive and negative is subjective and encourages this division when one state is seen as good and another is bad when this might not be true (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2016).

Overall, Second Wave Positive Psychology views wellbeing as something much more complex than just a series of positive states. Distress can be tied to wellbeing even if it is counterproductive for it in some cases (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2016). It intends to be more nuanced and recognize that our experiences cannot be divided neatly into boxes but that each element contributes to something bigger than itself.

The Second Wave embraces the dark side of human nature and engages with philosophical topics on a deeper level. It is very concerned with concepts like meaning and how they can be incorporated into theoretical and practical aspects of this new approach (Sims, 2017).

Happiness and wellbeing are complex experiences that integrate light and dark elements (Lomas, 2016). Accepting and embracing this can give us a much more nuanced view of human nature. Trying to manage our states on our own can be super challenging. Knowing that you are on the right path can make a world of difference.

If you would like to find out how we could work together and if we are a good match for each other contact us here for a free chat about what you want to achieve.