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The Eisenhower matrix is ​​a tool that can help you organize your professional and personal activities.  Make a list of your pending activities and with the help of this matrix, prioritize them.

This formula increases your organization and productivity.

There are 4 boxes:

1. Top left DO: Urgent and important tasks (that have to be done immediately, have a deadline that is about to end)

2. Top right SCHEDULE: Important and non-urgent tasks (goals that you like to achieve in the medium term, so working on them daily will benefit you at some time in the future).

3. Bottom left DELEGATE: Unimportant and urgent tasks (These are tasks that have to be finished, but you can delegate them to other people)

4. Bottom right DELETE: Non-urgent and non-important tasks (which can be deleted, because they consume your time and distract you from your goals, or you can postpone them).

Filling out the table takes some time, but it gives you clarity and direction, so at the end it increases your productivity and gives you the satisfaction of completing tasks on time and in a timely manner.

It is suggested to first start by eliminating the “non-urgent and non-important” tasks, so you can be able to more easily focus on distributing the rest of the tasks.

Many times, confusion arises when it comes to distinguishing between “important tasks” and “urgent tasks”. An urgent task is one that has clear consequences if it is not completed within a specific time. The longer it takes you to finish it, the more stress it generates and that causes exhaustion.  On the other hand, important non-urgent tasks do not require immediate attention, but their compliance and consistency lead you to achieve your goals in the future.

It is recommended to make different matrixes of personal tasks and professional tasks and put a limit of 10 maximum tasks in each matrix.

The holiday season is associated with joy, happiness, and family life. But for many people this season is full of stress, worry, sadness, loneliness… If this is your case, there are some recommendations that can help you manage this situation in a better way:

1. Identify and recognize your feelings, allow yourself to feel:

Not every moment will be happy and bright when you spend the holidays alone (or even when you spend them with other people), and that’s okay.

You may want to avoid anticipating how you will feel, but you can be ready to embrace however that is.

Making space for your emotions, even the less pleasant ones, can be part of the healing process that the holidays offer.

Maybe spending these days alone gives you space to express your feelings freely.

2. Be grateful: A gratitude journal is a great way to start.

 You can start by writing down all the things you are grateful for, from the most basic everyday things to the most existential. There are many benefits to establishing a regular practice of giving thanks.

Expressing gratitude can help you appreciate what you have, focus on the positive aspects of life, and see the good in others. It can also help you heal.

Practicing gratitude can improve your overall health and well-being, as well as help with feelings of loneliness.

3. Give yourself a gift:

We normally give gifts this season, but why not give something to yourself? The “gift” can be a thing or an experience, something you like, that gives you joy and peace.

4. If you feel lonely then connect with other people:

• Instead of focusing on the people who are no longer with you, let’s shift the focus to the people around you.

• You can call some friends you haven’t seen and organize a meeting;

• Attend a local event,

• Participate in volunteer activities for people who need different types of help;

• Help out at a local animal shelter;

5. Change your expectations:

TV shows, movies, and now social media are constantly showing you images of what an “ideal” holiday season looks like. Because of this, it can be easy to feel like you’re not up to par when spending the holidays alone.

But there is no single way to experience the holidays.

In fact, let’s think for a moment about all the ways people spend this time around the world. Not all cultures involve similar family gatherings, gifts, and rituals. People have found other ways to commemorate these dates.

Looking at the holiday season from a different angle can help you remove emotional pressure. It may be helpful to reevaluate your expectations of what the season will be like instead of what it should be.

What if this is an opportunity to experience something new and different? How would you approach it as an adventure? This doesn’t mean you have to approach it with a festive attitude, if that’s not how you feel. But it might mean seeing it as an opportunity to do and experience what you need right now.

If you’re going through a tough time, you might view the holidays as a time to take care of yourself and heal.

If you’re away from loved ones due to travel or relocation, you could see it as “the year I did something different” and perhaps immerse yourself in local traditions and events.

The exercise is to see these few days as a new experience that will not last forever. It doesn’t have to mean anything specific. It can be whatever you want it to be.

Since 2020, there has been a drastic increase of time spent on social networks. Through them you can communicate with other people or simply obtain some information (in the form in which the person who shares something “serves” us). The use of technology to keep in touch with your friends from a distance is the positive side of this epoch in which we live. But there is a fine line that if you cross you can become a “slave” of your phone.
Scientists have found a new term to explain this new phenomenon:
The FOMO syndrome (Fear of missing out). It’s a type of social anxiety with a feeling of being constantly connected to social networks in order to know what others are doing and not miss any details.
The immediacy that is one of the characteristics of the new technologies is what favors this possible obsession of always being informed. This phenomenon is further increased by the appearance of options on social networks to upload stories that disappear within 24 hours. That means if you don’t check you’re going to “lose” someone’s published story. Social networks use Neural Marketing Strategies – when things are fungible and have an expiration date, they engage the person more strongly.
We add more on that and the way the information is uploaded (images of happiness and fun), the person who stops doing his daily activities to spend time in the “virtual life”, in the passive way, feels bored with his personal life and lose focus on the essential things in life.
The key is to identify when you stop living your current life, you lose focus on yourself, your goals, activities, by spending time in your “Virtual Life”.
As adults let’s say that we have more tools to resist these temptations, but when it comes to adolescents and even more children, the possibility of developing this syndrome is very big.
Remember that the life you want to create and feel satisfaction are ALWAYS outside of your phone.

To evaluate yourself, pay attention to:
How much time do you spend daily on social networks?
Do you stop doing other things/activities/pending, because you are connected to your social networks?
Do you feel no satisfaction from your personal life, do you feel frustrated by comparing your life with others on social networks? Do you think your life is boring?

Anita Chukaleska psychologist, gestalt psychotherapist 09/09/2022

Knowing how to express yourself authentically, to be in harmony with your toughts, emotions and actions is the main goal in the psychotherapy and is the essence of the happiness and internal peace.

Anita Chukaleska, psychologst, gestalt psychotherapist

Postpartum depression is moderate or severe depression that are suffering some women within three months of giving birth. One of the main causes is the drastic change of hormones, but the social factors are no less important.

Let’s look at the somatic symptoms (physical or bodily) associated with depression:

• Tiredness and fatigue
• Increased/ reduced appetite
• Pain
• Tearfulness
• Personal neglect

After giving birth, it’s normal the restlessness, anxiety, irritability, even sadness to appear and they disappear in a few weeks after the birth. If these symptoms occur for more than a month, it’s considered as a postpartum depression.

To see this symptom in the perspective of a new mother we have to keep in mind several things. For example; Tiredness could be due to waking up at night for feeds, or nappy changes. But be aware that excessive worrying about the baby at night or not being able to fall back a sleep once the baby is sleeping, can contribute to tiredness and is not considered as a normal part of being a new mum.

In addition to the general characteristics, postpartum depression includes a series of conflicting feelings and situations in the mother-baby relationship, such as: experiencing negative feelings towards the baby; having little interest about the baby; having feeling of inability to care for the baby… …

When evaluating postpartum depression, I keep somatic symptoms in context. Are somatic symptoms due to physical reasons caused by pregnancy or postnatal recovery? Or are they a psychological component to somatic symptoms. I keep in mind the mother’s emotions. Has life lost its shine? Is her life a perpetual cycle of repeating activities from which she receives no satisfaction? Does her baby give her occasional satisfaction or is it difficult for her to find meaning and closeness with her baby? These factors point to depression.

The important thing is to note that the couple and the other close people are the ones who might notice the symptoms. Being inside the circle of depression does not allow to the mother to notice that what is happening crossed the line of the habitual adaptation of a change.

Talking about your feelings and the situation that you are dealing, psychotherapy may be the best option to overcome it. If is necessary medications can be prescribed like complement to the treatment. In addition, family and environmental support, as well as the person’s own attitude are also very important.

All this is complicated in these times of pandemic especially when it comes to help in the care of the baby, or spending time outside the house, which is one more reason to seek professional help.

Being a mother means learning to integrate this new role with your previous roles, as a wife, friend, sister, or coworker.

Having a baby is a fundamental and long-term change, and sometimes moms can have a hard time letting go their old image of themself. Setting new limits, new expectations of herself can help alleviate this pressure and allow her to integrate her new role as a mother.

Anita Chukaleska, psychologist, gestalt terapist 11.01.2021

As I mentioned in the previous article, the first step in the process of healing the wounds of your childhood is to RECOGNIZE your inner child. You can see this process as a process of self-discover. There are clients who imagine their inner child as a person. If that doesn’t work for you, you can try to remember anything from your childhood. It’s important to check if you’re still caring emotional baggage with those memories. They are emotions that are generated in the situations that cause strong emotions, discomfort and old wounds. If you follow the path back to specific events in your childhood, you can find the connection to similar situations in your adult life that provokes the same reaction.

 If you can imagine your inner child, try to notice how it looks and how it feels. You can start a conversation in which is very important to:

– Not criticize it

– Not compare it

– Not judge it

If it’s difficult for you to imagine and start a dialogue with your inner child, you can try writing a JOURNAL from your perspective as a child. From this work you can detect your belief system that you formed in your childhood and that still has influence in your decisions and actions. To connect more easily with your inner child, it can help to see your PHOTOS of the age that you want to remember or make a brief visualization to remind yourself how you felt at the specific age you want to explore.

MEDITATION is another method of connecting with your inner child. With meditation you become more aware of your emotions and you can notice easier when a specific situation chains your useless reaction. In the prelinguistic stage, children do not know how to express emotion through words, or many times they learn that they should not express some emotions (“negative ones”), because their parents are going to punish them. So, they learn to repress some emotions. With meditation, the specific emotion is recognized and give permission to your inner child to feel it. During the meditation you stay with the emotion, you accept it and in the and you let it go.

If you realize that your life is full of responsibilities and you can’t find time to relax, it means that you have lost your balance. Connecting with your inner child can sometimes help you to detect that very early in your childhood you became the “adapted child”, the responsible and concerned child. The lack of spontaneous and joyful experiences (games and activities) can be “recovered” now in your adult life. Planning time to resume activities that you like can fill you with energy and can help you to return your happiness, the harmony in your life, the ability to ENJOY FULLY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT (just like the children do). Make a list of everything you like to do, and plan at least 15 minutes a day to resume any of these activities (eat your favorite ice cream, listen, sing or dance to the song you like, play the social game you like … .)

It’s necessary to test which method works for you, and you can work it alone or together with your therapist, the sure thing is that the benefits of resuming this connection with your inner child are great and are definitely worth it:

• Self-knowledge;

• Self-acceptance;

• Better communication with the others;

• Release of your repressed emotions that actually release the whole energy that was kept, so you can use it for actions in the present moment;

• Being able to enjoy the present moment and much more.

Anita Chukaleska,

psychologist, gestalt psychotherapist 02.06.2021

The inner child is the childlike aspect of each person. It includes what the person had learned in childhood, before puberty. The inner child is described as a semi-independent personality that has big influence on the conscious part of the brain.

Many people have positive childhood memories with carefree, endless play, and unconditional love. Being in touch with these feelings is a great way to deal with different challenges in the adult life.

But not everyone has pleasant childhood memories. Many people have unpleasant associations. If you have survived some type of trauma, abandonment, neglect, emotional pain, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, it is likely that you have “buried” these memories to protect yourself and avoid feeling them again.

I would like to explain in more details the term post-traumatic stress in childhood. “Post” means that the trauma occurred in the past, in childhood and is over now. At this time you are not exposed anymore on the traumatic event. The traumatic event can be everything that for you is outside of your daily expectations, of the normal (of what is normal for you), which breaks your belief of justice, it is something that takes you out of “your comfort zone” and that’s why it’s a unique experience of each person. As we know the children’s abilities of perception, conflict resolution, prior information, are limited and still in development. It turns out that experiencing overwhelming emotions and not having the ability to process them causes the inner child to “freeze” at the stage where it experienced these emotions.

Hiding the pain does not help you to heal. Instead, it often arises in your adult life and can manifest as distress in your personal relationships or difficulty in recognizing and meeting your own needs. By working on the healing of your inner child, you can help yourself get to the root of these problems.

Anita Chukaleska, psychologist, gestalt psychotherapist 26.05.2021

Cutting is a form of self-injury: the person literally makes small cuts in his body, usually the arms and legs, the stomach …

Normally the cuts are kept secret for a long time. The cuts can be easily hidden under the long sleeves.

Self-injury usually begins around the age of 14, but lately the starting age has been moved lower starting at age 11 or 12.

The reason teens cut themselves can be difficult to understand, parents often mistake cutting with suicidal behavior. On the other hand, sometimes adults try to downplay the problems teenagers have or think they are just a phase, but if is left untreated, this compulsive reaction can persist throughout life. Sometimes with maturity adolescents learn other mechanisms of managing emotions, but in other cases that does not happen.For teens, cutting helps them control their emotional pain. They may be trying to deal with intense pressure, some kind of pain, or they may be dealing with feelings that seem too difficult to bear. Some teens cut themselves because they want to release their feelings of sadness, rejection, or emptiness and don’t know another way to deal with them.

Some people self-harm as a short-term release to deal with complicated emotions, for example if they if they’re being bullied or experiencing anxiety or depression.

Many of these children are sensitive, perfectionists, overcomers. Self-harm begins as a defense against what is happening in their family, at school, reaction to bullying. They feel like they have failed in some area of ​​their lives, so this is one way to take control.

For many children, it is the result of a repressive home environment, where negative emotions are hidden under the rug, where feelings are not discussed. Many families send the message that it is not acceptable to express sadness or anger.

When the adolescent feels emotional pain, causing himself physical pain, it literally “helps” him not to feel the emotional pain so overwhelming.

Many children have a hard time dealing with situations and people that make them angry, they don’t have appropriate role models to learn to say no, to defense, to confront the people, they really don’t think they’re allowed to do that, especially the girls. But if you cannot stand up for yourself, it is very difficult to survive in the world in which it is absolutely necessary to set healthy limits.

To start with the treatment it is crucial that the adolescent recognizes that he has a problem, that he needs to stop.

The goal is to start to communicate and open up. Babies do not have the capacity for language, so they use their behavior, no verbal communication. These adolescents return to that preverbal state when they self-harm.

Working on their self-esteem and self-respect is a fundamental goal of the treatment, to gain self-confidence, to take risks in confrontation, to change the way they see themselves. If you can’t put limits on the other person’s behavior, confront them, you can’t like yourself.

When kids decide they don’t want to cut themselves anymore, and get stressed again, they have to be able to handle stress as it arises, they can’t succumb to cuts. People who can find some alternative way to handle stress will eventually leave this behavior.

Cutting can provide temporary relief from these feelings, but the thing is that the underlying problem, the reason for cutting still exists. Cutting does not solve the problem, but only masks the problems and can lead to various other complications.

If you’re into cutting, know that there are healthier ways to deal with problems than cutting yourself. The first step is to get help with the problems that led to the cutting. The clients who have stopped cutting say that after they open up about their feelings, they often feel a great sense of relief. If it’s too difficult to talk, try writing your feelings in a journal.

Second step is to identify what is causing the cut. Cutting yourself is a response to the stress and pain in your life. Try to find out what the cause is and the ways you can deal with it. This can be difficult; Consider talking to a therapist or counselor for help. The professionals are trained to help teens cope with pain and distress and can help you express your feelings in an appropriate way. We can also show you better ways to deal with the stresses.

Remember: you are not alone, the first step is to ACCEPT that you need help and DECIDE that you want to learn another healthier ways to manage your emotions and face the challenges that life contains.

Anita Chukaleska, psychologist, gestalt psychotherapist