Promoting resilience and wellbeing

  I was listening to podcast yesterday with Dr Becky Kennedy, the author of Good Inside, and she said this “Anger is a sign that we have preserved access to our self-worth.”   When we have a high level of self-worth and we do not have access to the things we need we feel angry.   She talked about having a “healthy entitlement” to what you want and need which is intimately connected to feeling worthy. Psychologists often consider anger to be a secondary emotion.   Anger is often what we see when people are feeling any number of other emotions – shame, humiliation, grief.   Anger is often easier to express than shame or humiliation.   It is often easier to say “I’m so livid about what happen” than “I feel really ashamed about what happened”.   Brene Brown in her beautiful book Atlas of the Heart suggests that as many as 20 of the 87 emotions she identifies in the book are likely to present as anger.   How we manage our emotions is influenced by our upbringing.   In many households

  Imagine this scenario – your teenager goes to a party at the next-door neighbour’s and doesn’t get in until 2am.   Unfortunately, the next morning you are all committed to helping your sister move house and must be there at 8am.   We all know how this plays out…. and it’s not fun.   Sleep deprived teenagers (and humans generally) do not function well. It is now widely accepted that our teens need nine hours sleep a night.   It is also widely accepted that a large majority of teens are not getting anywhere close to nine hours sleep.   This is happening for a multitude of reasons.   We live in a culture that does not value sleep.   It is often perceived as the opposite of productivity and as a society this is what we privilege.   Slogans like “I can sleep when I am dead” and subtle (or not so subtle) competition about who worked the longest hours are everywhere.   And this is before we even begin to talk about screens and the very significant increase in sleep deprivation following t