: Colman Noctor
: The 4-7 Zone An easy and effective way to live a balanced life - and become your own therapist
: Gill Books
: 9780717197330
: 1
: CHF 20.60
:
: Lebenshilfe, Alltag
: English
: 320
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Become your own therapist with this life-changing method. People think that achieving balance means implementing big changes. But psychotherapist Colman Noctor has developed a simple solution. Get ready to discover the 4-7 Zone! Over many years in his therapy practice, Colman noticed a pattern: no matter the issue - mood, anxiety, eating, exercise or alcohol use - problems occur when people are doing too much or too little of something. Every one of his clients was in the 0-3 or 8-10 zone. By getting your life in the 4-7 zone, you will nurture your relationship with yourself, better negotiate challenges and discover a happy, harmonious way of living.

Dr Colman Noctor is a psychotherapist and a lecturer. He is a weekly columnist with the Irish Examiner, resident psychotherapist on RTÉ Radio 1's Ray Darcy Show and the author of the parenting self-help title Cop On. Originally from Blessington, Colman now lives in Carlow and has three children.

CHAPTER TWO


An Introduction to the 4–7 Zone


LEARNING FROM THE PEOPLE I NEVER SEE


The following paragraphs are an introduction to a strategy that will help you to manage your mental fitness, build your resilience levels and hopefully prevent you from ever needing to attend for psychotherapeutic support. As mentioned in the introduction to this book, I noticed that all the people attending my psychotherapy clinic were doing too much or too little of something, or a combination of both. And I found that in most of the advice I was giving to my clients there was a theme of encouraging them to regain a sense of balance in their lives.

It is common when experiencing difficult or stressful life events to believe that an extreme reaction or response is required. When we are experiencing challenges in our lives, the thought of having to respond to or manage these events is sometimes overwhelming, and so we may choose to ignore the need to make any changes, engaging instead in a state of avoidance. When I was trying to get an understanding of people’s struggles, I would ask them to rate their experiences or behaviours out of 10. This allowed me to get a sense of the extent of their behaviours and provided me with some insight into their own perspective on the problem. In some cases, it became clear that people were overdoing an aspect of their lives or underdoing another aspect, or a combination of both, which was compounding their difficulties and, in most cases, making the situation worse.

What became obvious and predictable was that the people who were coming to see me for help to overcome a psychological challenge in their lives were almost always functioning and rating themselves in the 1–3 or 8–10 zones. Nobody who came to me for help rated themselves as functioning in the 4–7 zone. I began to realise there was a pattern which suggested that the 1–3 and 8–10 zones could be understood as ‘the danger zones’ when it comes to our mental well-being, by default proving that the 4–7 zone was the optimal zone of psychological and emotional safety.

When you take a step back, it makes sense that the 4–7 zone is the safest place to be. When we are engaging in moderate feelings, thinking and behaviour, we are being rational and therefore least likely to become overwhelmed or disengaged. Most people who are experiencing emotional distress find themselves becoming overwhelmed, and engage in either obsessive rumination or avoidant disengagement. And no matter what the origin for the distress is, when the reaction is extreme it tends not to end well.

Many people who are