Su Naseby Executive Therapist in Neutral Bay, New South Wales, Australia | Psychotherapist

Su Naseby Executive Therapist

Locality: Neutral Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Phone: +61 1300 761 255

Address: Suite 105, 153 Wycombe Rd 2089 Neutral Bay, NSW, Australia

Website: http://www.executivetherapist.com.au

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• Mental health service
• Psychotherapist

24.01.2022 He loves me, he loves me not ... Many of my clients want to unpack and heal the pain of a 'failed' relationship. Yes, feeling a relationship ending as a failure is a very common and painful experience. We usually put ourself (and our ex) under the microscope of our 24/7 rumination. We go over and over everything we said and did and why ... and we do the same thing with our ex, even though most of the time we don't actually know why they said or did those painful things. We se...nd ourself into a crazy spin of uncertainty at why we were treated so badly. It’s so unfair! The experiences the human brain hates most is uncertainty and unfairness. Humans (and other animals) have a biological urge to reduce uncertainty as a way of optimising survival, and survival is why unfairness is registered in the anterior insula part of the brain, an area associated with contempt or disgust reactions to bad tastes or smells. Obviously this is a defence against literally being poisoned, but it’s the same part of the brain that registers certain relationships as toxic. Brains are amazing. They are also pretty dumb when it comes to knowing the difference between a poisonous meal and a ‘poisonous’ relationship. Yes, some people or relationships do become unhealthy and even life threatening, but the large proportion of relationship aren’t life threatening. They only need help. The most common area a relationship needs help is in our communication skills. When we first meet we take the time to communicate as clearly as we can and overlook any out of character transgressions as a misunderstanding that isn’t personal. However once the ‘honeymoon’ period is over everything gets very personal. We slip into old patterns of relating and find ourself in a repeat performance of our last relationship. Generally the only time we get help around a relationship ending is when we have suffered long enough, but there are good reasons to unpack a ‘failed’ relationship so we can learn why things went wrong and how we can be mindful WHEN it happens again. Because yes, chances are it will happen again unless we learn what we need to learn about ourself and the ways we communicate. If this resonates with you here's an article I found for more reading: https://www.heysigmund.com/how-to-stop-old-wounds-from-ste/

24.01.2022 I'm always looking for new resources for my clients. My latest find is 'The Third Door' by Alex Banayan. It's been called a graduation book. I think it's much more than that. Yes this book will appeal to 18-25 year olds but the problem of not feeling passionate about the career you are involved in is something we can feel while we are studying or when we are starting out or when we've been doing it for years. I know this is true because I see a lot of clients who are in this ...place and it's got nothing to do with age! https://www.forbes.com//take-massive-risks-to-make-your-/

23.01.2022 Call 1300 76 12 55 I am offering COVID-19 safe appointments via phone, FaceTime, Zoom or SkypeCall 1300 76 12 55 I am offering COVID-19 safe appointments via phone, FaceTime, Zoom or Skype

23.01.2022 There’s no doubt we are living in changing times. The weird thing about change is; it doesn’t matter if it’s good change or bad change (or anything in between change), when it gets down to the change part, we don’t like it. Humans seem to have a natural resistance to change (it’s dangerous?). You might think the reason we don’t like change is because we don’t like unexpected ‘surprises’ however it turns out surprise actually releases neurotransmitters dopamine (motivation an...d pleasure) and glutamate (learning) to help us focus our attention, inspiring us to look at our situation in new ways. Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns says 'surprise' is important because "the brain finds unexpected pleasures more rewarding than expected ones, and it may have little to do with what people say they like." 2020 has been surprising (to say the least) and much of the change we have been experiencing has been thrust upon us. We’ve had little choice, but we can choose to respond rather than react. The origin of the word respond is from the Latin respondere meaning ‘to answer’ while the word re-act essentially means to do something impulsively, again. It was Albert Einstein who allegedly said, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results! So, I think we can agree that reacting probably isn’t going to help. We need to respond with a considered answer to these changing times. But here’s the really deep bit; What is the question? This might sound a bit left of field, but I want to tell you about Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles. Permaculture takes Whole Systems Thinking to help find the best solutions in the most unlikely places. The 12 principals are typically applied to agriculture but they cross over nicely into general life. The last principal Creatively Use and Respond to Change tells us we can make a ‘positive impact’ when we take the time to carefully observe ‘inevitable change’ and then intervene at the right time. Can you see what it does there? It is saying we need to use change as a resource because change is inevitable! It’s our right hemisphere that can help us see change as a resource rather than a stressful inconvenience or worse (once we get over our knee-jerk resistance). When we let go of what we think we know, or don’t know, about a situation we can discover we already have what we need to respond (answer) the call to change we have a lifetime of experience. Change, whether good or bad, is important for bringing vitality to our lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUTaGL1UzbM

18.01.2022 In both my professional and personal life I’ve come to realise that a common source of suffering is a deep longing for freedom. Many of us feel trapped in this demanding ‘modern’ life that promises freedom as if it's a reward (usually when we retire) but freedom frustratingly remains just out of reach. Somewhere in the middle of our life we can begin to regret the wasted years, feeling despondent about failing to achieve our true potential. However, I believe freedom is our b...Continue reading

18.01.2022 Own Your Effort! Our relationship with work and play has been shaped since we were old enough to reach out for a building block. At pre-school age most of us were given the space to play whenever we wanted but once we started school suddenly there became a divide between play and work. Play became a reward for school-work, home-work and house-work. Once this conditioning hooked itself into our psyche it became reality.... A client recently said to me everything in my life is a chore, even what should be enjoyable! The problem is we are trained to measure our effort by external value. As soon as we extend a higher level of effort to what we are doing, we look for an external reward. As children we were rewarded for our efforts at school, sport, chores, and even our playful endeavours. If we enjoyed something enough to be good at it, we suddenly found our self being given compliments, medals or trophies, and even popularity. Our efforts and abilities became a competition, maybe with siblings or maybe with peers but eventually with the wider world. There is no benefit to blaming the loved ones who set us up this way, but there is benefit in acknowledging that work and play are not in opposition. The sense of play is in fact the rewarding feature of all effortful work. We need to cultivate a mindful attention to the present moment so we can appreciate the intrinsic pleasure of doing what is meaningful. We also need to honestly find the personal meaning imbedded in whatever we are doing. As adults, are we ever really forced to do the things we say we have to do? Nelson Mandela once said of his years in prison "I went for a long holiday for 27 years". Even in prison we have the choice to appreciate our life as our own. We do have choices, we just usually don’t like the perceived consequences of those choices. The judgements we would get from others for example. What’s the solution? We need to own our effort! It might feel like it, but our effort does NOT belong to others, it is not for sale. When we were children, we either used our effort to please others or to defy them. We did this because we were not free. No child is truly free because they are not capable of making a life for themselves. But as adults we are free to make a life for our self, given life has limitations. This is a mindset change. The key is in taking full response-ability for our self, for our choices, for our meaning, and for our effort. This link is to a great article and a wonderful podcast about one of my favourite books, and one that is at the core of my post today. Highly recommended. https://benjaminmcevoy.com/7-lessons-learned-mans-search-m/

17.01.2022 Why we need to redefine success! We can have pretty fixed ideas about who is successful in life and who isn't. We might think of people like Richard Branson or Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey. We tend to think these people just have ‘it’ and ‘it’ is a rare quality. I don't believe this is true. I believe we learn the characteristics for adult success as a result of our childhood relationships and the environments we grow up in. What we learn are Childhood Survival Strategies and t...hese personality traits develop over time, mostly as a response to fear. The fear of not making our parents proud; of not standing out from our siblings; of upsetting important care givers; of not being liked or loved; of not being chosen or left behind; and even fear of fear its self. Thankfully as adults we don’t need fear to learn how to succeed. We need a good strategy, reliable resources, time to put one foot in front of the other and a willingness to learn from our mistakes. Because we will make mistakes. When we are strategizing for our career or business successes, we need to regularly evaluate what is and isn't working. We need to refocus, redefine and even reinvent our goals to meet the inevitable changes. But most importantly we need to know what we mean by success, because chances are we are unconsciously defining success by outdated parameters. To redefine success try asking yourself What do I want to achieve? and then ask Why? and keep asking Why? until you arrive at an answer that surprises you. Something new you didn’t know about yourself. Then ask yourself Is this true?. The answer will be the key to your new definition of success, no matter if your answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This is best done as a written exercise. https://www.jotform.com/blog/problem-of-pursuing-excellence/

12.01.2022 No Rainbow & Unicorn Therapy here! There are times when life tips all our dreams and plans upside down. Things get stormy and there’s not a silver lining in sight. This is when I get a ‘help’ email from a new client in crisis. This isn’t a time for what I call Rainbow & Unicorn Therapy. I believe we need to acknowledge the painful parts of life or the scary aspects of unexpected events before we can move on to finding solutions. We need to unpack the whole ‘guts and all’ stor...y, and we need to do that with another person who is compassionate but not emotionally involved. This is usually a huge relief and it’s often where I come in. Positive Psychology and its related modalities offer great coaching skills but using them successfully is all about timing. If we don’t understand why we are feeling what we are feeling, these ‘fake it till you make it’ approaches can have us making some ill-informed decisions that can set us up for failure. We might also miss out on important personal growth and the chance to strengthen our long-term resilience. We are more resilient than we know. Our resilience often hides beneath a ‘glass ceiling’ of self-limiting beliefs set up in childhood. Back then we had no idea of the consequences of our thinking, we only knew it made a bad situation better. The truth is self-limiting beliefs are protective devices we use to get through childhood. Even the best childhoods have reasons for limiting our true potential. So, when a new client in crisis comes to see me, we take time to unpack all the emotional ‘baggage.’ We use compassion and curiosity. We look for details that might seem irrational because there is always an emotional logic to everything we feel. Our feelings make sense once we fully understand where they come from and what they are trying to achieve. Then we can get down to finding solutions! Here's a testimonial from one of my satisfied clients; "I have been working with Su for a couple of years now. Su has help me transition from the corporate world to running my own consulting business. While I love the freedom, the famine and feast cycle of working for myself has been very challenging. Su has helped keep me grounded and to manage my own expectations, fears and anxiety I find with being self-employed. Su has helped me set realistic goals and has helped me manage my own self-criticism, she has enabled me to challenge my impostor within mentality. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be where I am now without Su’s support and wisdom!" ~ Scott Clarkson | Clarkson Consulting Services https://www.executivetherapist.com.au/

12.01.2022 Bulls Eye Goals v’s the Corridor of Possibilities One of the biggest concerns from my clients is a lack of passion. My experience tells me we all know what we’d like to feel passionate about, but we fear it’s stupid or selfish or a waste of time and energy. I recently got this from an ex-client; I’m living the life of my dreams!!! When you were like ‘what do you really want to do?’ I was embarrassed to say but I’m so glad I was selfish and did what I wanted. Thank you from... the bottom of my heart. As kids we dream about all kinds of cool things we'd do when we grow up but, when adulthood arrives, we lose sight of those dreams. During childhood our parents, family and teachers set our goals for us. Either implicitly or explicitly they tell us what we should do to BE most valued. These targeted goals are aimed directly at the bull’s eye of success, with promise of great rewards. Of course, making our parents proud is a great way of being seen and validated (particularly over other siblings). As children we might prefer to play rather than practice piano or tennis, but our young self is often eager to please and feel the safety of belonging in our family. So, we practise and prepare to hit that bull’s eye. We could even say our survival literally depends on it, since we were unable to provide and care for ourselves. As adults we often continue aiming for these pre-approved goals, or we might rebel, but either way we are still influenced by what others want for us while the source of our passion is buried beneath the need to prove our self. We lose sight of the freedom to dream! Bull’s eye targets don’t work so well for adults, particularly for long term outcomes, because we have adult responsibilities that syphon off the time and energy needed to refocus our aim when failure arrives. On the other hand, the Corridor of Possibilities means getting started on the dream BEFORE we feel perfectly prepared to hit our goal. The fact is we will NEVER be perfectly prepared. Goal posts move, especially if technology is involved (and these days most things rely on technology). Whatever you need to learn about your dream career, business or passion project you can only learn from inside the dream, not from the outside looking in. You need to stop planning and start doing!!! Here’s a vid from Chase Jarvis for a little inspiration. I recommend you check out his YouTube channel and podcasts. The main thing I love about Chase is his message that creativity is a process that can inform anything in our life we what to innovate. Creativity is so much more than arts and crafts. The creative process is in the act of doing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaMtg_C8zsY

11.01.2022 What's your next step? I find many of my clients don't have too much trouble hanging up their shingle, so to speak, but moving from a sole trader business to the next step can be really challenging. You may be brilliant at what you do but there's only one you, and this limits your earning capacity. So where and what is the next step? I think of this process a bit like rock climbing. You start from a secure base of what you know and create a secure safety 'rope' so you can sta...rt exploring out of your comfort zone. You need to think creatively. Asking yourself, what if ...? The easiest and safest way to explore a 'what if' is to register a domain name that encapsulates the essence of your branching-out idea and to then make yourself a cheap (but professional) website. There are so many good options these days for doing this, like Wix or Square Space. Obviously you need to promote and market your new venture, and the best place to start is with your existing client base. Send out an excited email with an invitation to get involved. This might be a free consultation or a reward for referrals or a meet and greet. Often the biggest block is our own self doubt and fear of failure. This is where I can come in. We all have 'glass ceilings' of unconscious limited beliefs to break through. My job is to help my clients become aware and make plans to move through the fear. Here's an inspiring story from entrepreneurial success coach, B-School founder and author of Everything Is Figureoutable, Marie Forleo. https://www.onecommune.com/marie.

09.01.2022 Are you interested in how the brain works? I am (no surprise there). I think I'm hoping to find a kind of Brain Instruction Manual to help me make sense of life. I’m currently reading a rather hefty book titled The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. I’ve enjoyed a colourful Mardi Gras parade of insights about the ways and workings of the left and right hemispheres. FYI the right hemisphere is the ‘master’ and the left hemisphere is the ‘emissary.’ It’s true the le...ft hemisphere uses critical-thinking and the right creative-thinking, but for imagination and reason to be fruitful we need both hemispheres. Being in our right hemisphere is like being online with a computer, we are connected to the whole world of experience and possibility as it unfolds moment to moment. In contrast, being in our left hemisphere is like being in a library of non-fiction books containing some out-of-date information and some more recent ‘publications’ along with good and bad fiction, even a few classics, but it’s all from a definitive perspective. The left hemisphere is not 'wired' for new perspectives or experiences, that’s the right hemisphere’s domain. Applying this to how humans process belief; the left hemisphere is focused on facts and control, while the right hemisphere cares about relationship and experience. For example, you might be unsure if you believe the latest Covid conspiracy theory. Your left hemisphere is perfect for sorting out bizarre fiction from scientific facts. However when it comes to unpacking personal beliefs like "I am unlovable" or "pleasing others is more important than pleasing myself" or "I can’t ask for help, I must be strong", then our right hemisphere attitude helps us to rise above the past of childhood conditioning and into the present moment where we can see the forest, not just the trees. Negative self-talk is one of the most common underlying issues brought into my room. These out-of-date beliefs creates anxiety and threatens our healthy self-concept by utilising the brain’s tendency for negativity bias and the left hemisphere’s closed ‘book’ perspective. What we need is to practise discernment towards the whole picture, something best done with a calm peaceful brain that can access both hemispheres. That’s where mindful activities and meditation comes in, because these kinds of practices help bring balance to our brain activity. One of my favourite TED Talks is My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor who studied her own stroke as it happened! She also wrote a book about it. She realised in this experience that people can purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres, and find peace. https://www.ted.com//jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_insight

08.01.2022 We can all have pretty fixed ideas about who is successful in life, and who isn't. Social media sharpens these skills. We might think of people like Richard Branson or Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey (or ever else is trending on our news feed). We tend to think these people just have ‘it’ and ‘it’ is a rare quality and we probably don't have 'it.' [ 342 more words ] https://sunaseby.wordpress.com//why-we-need-to-redefine-s/

07.01.2022 Therapy isn't always the answer. Many of my clients come to see me because they're struggling with depression, anxiety, low motivation and brain fog. They usually identify problems at work, in relationships or in any number of distressing life events as the cause of these conditions. My job as a coach is to inform, inspire and encourage my clients to manage, resolve and get through these difficult times, but I like to go one step further. I like to assist my clients to develo...p the more robust resilience that can be found in what's called Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC). Interestingly TLC can also stand for Tender Loving Care which is actually the mindset I coach my clients to have for themselves. In fact only today I gave my client a discount off my fee so that she would actually go to a bathhouse as part of a self care day she really needed but was resisting doing. Often TLC refers to dietary changes but I take a broader holistic view that includes optimizing exercise, relaxation, play, mind, sleep, nutrition and learning something new - particularly with other people and even better if it involves using your body in new ways, like social dancing or playing an instrument. There is a lot of research supporting this holistic approach as key to building resilience and living a long healthy life. Life's challenges are always easier to manage when we are firing on all cylinders! Here is a great website with terrific resources and a great app tool to help you identify and build easy to achieve Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes that will empower you to live well. https://www.theneuroplan.com//the-connection-between-educ/

06.01.2022 This month I experienced deep loss. Sometimes loss announces its imminent arrival and other times it lands with a shock. I experienced both. No matter how loss enters our life, we feel it deeply. When things fall apart, we often try to cope by sweeping away the broken pieces or by trying to piece everything back together, as if nothing’s happened, but loss changes everything. Every deep loss is a small dying. To truly heal we need to integrate the experience of loss into the ...wholeness of who we are in this life. Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold to make them stronger and more beautiful. It is also a powerful metaphor for healing loss. We don’t need to start breaking and mending cups or bowls to benefit from the principles of kintsugi. Just looking at a beautiful kintsugi bowl helps us to understand how putting our brokenness back together is a slow and layered process, with our resulting wounds as precious scars that ultimately make us stronger and more beautiful. You know how I love working with metaphor, it’s such an effective way to by-pass the rational mind and speak directly to our emotions, it is a ‘heart tool.’ Metaphor lights up our imaginative right hemisphere, balancing our tendency towards a left hemisphered rational perspective of problem solving. This is important because experiencing loss and grief is not the sort of problem to be solved with rational logic. We need to trust the path our emotional logic sends us on. In my journey of healing, I experienced how some good-hearted friends and family wanted to smooth over my apparently irrational feelings, feelings such as self-blame. I had to explain to them that I needed to explore these feelings safely and out loud with them, rather than in painful over-thinking. Self-blame is common as part of the ‘bargaining’ phase of the Stages of Loss and Grief, as developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. Together these stages Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance becomes the glue that brings us back from brokenness to wholeness. My wanting to blame myself was my way of searching for meaning and finding my story. As I navigated my way through these painful stages; I cried, wrote in my journal, went for long walks, reminisced and honoured my beloved ones I missed, I wrote poetry and ate comfort food, but most of all I let myself feel the fullness of the grief of loss. In trusting this process I am feeling less like a shattered mess and more like a beautiful kintsugi bowl. https://www.azumiuchitani.com/kintsugi

05.01.2022 Investing in Gold! Finally, things are shifting as lockdowns lift. Life is opening up again. There will be aspects of this lockdown we will gladly discard, but there will also be a lot of gold we will want to keep. Almost all my clients talk about the benefits of living in lockdown. One client, who had long talked about trialling working from home, has now done it, likes it and wants to keep doing it once or twice a week. Lockdown for another client has seen the return of his... creative self. He realised his pre-lockdown routine of chasing down work as soon as one job finished didn’t leave time for creative personal projects. One client’s husband started doing the shopping during COVID and she wants him to continue with that. Another recognised she had been a perfectionist hyperperformer pre-lockdown but now, after three months of technical hiccups and Zoom scheduling nightmares, she realises it’s safe to fail and has become more self-accepting and less stressed. For myself, I am still taking my weekly bushwalks that I started when lockdown hit. I’m also loving the freedom (for myself and my clients) of offering both Telehealth and face-to-face sessions, what is more I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how great it has been to teach my students via the online platform rather than on campus. Lockdown has also help me break through my resistance to doing full yoga sessions at home. This is some of the gold I plan to keep as my life moves forward. What has been your lockdown gold and how do you plan to keep it? Now you know what it feels like to have a little more gold in your life, it’s important to repeat these experiences until they become a new habit. You won’t always feel like doing it but, if we want more long-term gold, we have to invest the time and energy to help it grow. https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/05/personal-habits/

04.01.2022 Do you ever feel guilty for feeling guilty? Mark Manson, author of the best selling self-help book The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck, calls this the ‘feedback loop from hell!’ My mother put me onto this book. At first I was dubious (I must admit to judging the book by its title), so I got the audiobook version in case reading it turned out be a waste of my time. As it happens I was very pleasantly surprised. This is a great self-help book, and I have gone on to recommend it... to many of my clients. It’s not so much what Mason says that is so good, it’s the way he says it. I love the way he seamlessly weaves clever rhetoric and psychological theory with personal life stories, and a hint of down-to-earth spirituality. I admit that the beginning of the book has way too many gratuitous ‘f*ucks’ for my liking but that dials down after the third chapter or so. The book’s title is catchy, but it’s also a bit risky in that people could get the wrong idea about what he means by ‘giving a f*ck.’ You might think the book’s title should really be The Subtle Art of Being Indifferent, but no. Manson says not giving a f*uck is not indifference but being comfortable with being different, and I would go even further to say it’s sometimes about being comfortable with being the same. Why do we care about the things we care about? There’s no getting away from the fact that life has problems, but that doesn’t stop us trying. Manson explores how indifference is actually avoidance, and when we actually care about our struggles our suffering becomes meaningful and often lessened. So the key is not to try to eliminate our problems (because these challenges help us to grow) but to choose our problems! We all struggle with the problem of success (or not being a success), but success isn’t really the problem. The problem is putting a lot of time, energy and often money into a ‘success struggle’ we don’t really care about, when we’d rather be doing something we enjoy. Manson agrees, he says what produces lasting success is our ability to enjoy the struggles associated with working towards our success. What do you enjoy? What do you r e a l l y enjoy? What stops you from doing what you enjoy? Here's a great interview with Mark Manson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCp5mu9P13Q

01.01.2022 "I don't want to stop drinking, I just want to control it!" This is one of the most often said comments in my therapy room. Most people who seek addiction therapy have tried everything they can think of to control their drinking, and failed. And this is when I like to quote Albert Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."... It takes a lot of commitment, awareness, acceptance and courage to change our thinking. Our behaviours will follow. I do actually believe it's possible to create a new relationship with alcohol. One that doesn't involve using alcohol to; change the way we feel about ourself; get rid of feelings we don't like; to fix problems that have nothing to do with alcohol; or improve/enhance the reality of life. "What's the point to drinking then" I hear you say ... Human beings have had a long history with alcohol. Research has discovered there was a single genetic mutation that occurred 10 million years ago that endowed our human ancestors with an enhanced ability to break down ethanol (alcohol), which is why there is evidence of alcoholic beverages throughout human history. It could be said that alcoholic beverages have developed as a by-product of civilisation, but it is not central to it. A key question to ask ourself is, "has alcohol become central to my life?" To change our relationship with alcohol we need to be prepared to change our self. That's where I come in. A non-abstinence-oriented approach might be the best approach for you, but you won't know unless you try! https://www.addiction.com//a-new-definition-of-recovery-b/