How to cope with change
June 25, 2008 by Megan · 3 Comments
Coping with change is an issue that drives many people to therapy. Me too! Lucky I’ve got two other therapists here to therapise me.
At Imaginif, we have begun the packing process, cleaning process, moving process and….. the insanity process. Agggghhhhhh!!!! There, that feels better 
because I am managing my emotion rather than allow my emotions to become overwhelmed with the constant and demanding change.
Change is somewhat scary and threatening to many. Just as emotions have to be managed, so too does change. If a person can manage to get out of bed and live this hectic life, then they are already managing. If they can manage life, they can manage change, because life changes: constantly.
To manage change, it needs to be seen as a task. The task is then broken into smaller tasks – little parts that can be worked on, one at a time if needed. The completion of each mini sub task is an achievement, an act of management, a success.
Change is constant in life; a good thing or we’d all die of boredom. Unfortunately, what is not always so good is negative thoughts (stinkin’ thinkin’) about change. If your thoughts are telling you that you cannot cope, then you may not. If your thoughts are telling you that you can manage this change by breaking it into small, easily achievable parts then you will no doubt cope with the change.
Moving, divorce and death are all changes that rate high on the stress scale. We are moving, we are stressed, but I don’t think any of us are contemplating divorce or death. Why? Because we are managing our change. We are coping with a stressful situation by breaking the days into smaller moving tasks.
Apart from coping with change, what is different at Imaginif?
Talk doctor Rebekah did the last training at 206 Jensen St yesterday. She still has some clients booked in but apart from that, we are preparing to move to our new premises at 30 James St.
Rebekah and I are both going to have some time off from scheduled appointments: no new counselling, supervision, training or consultations until we kick off at the new place on July 14. Talk doctor Fran (just back from a six week holiday in the Mediterranean) will be working on Palm Island for a week so she’s out of the office anyway (lucky woman – that’s a great way to manage ).
And….when we are firmly entrenched at 30 James Street, we are going to offer telephone counselling. Many people find it difficult to physically access a counsellor. Issues of access, mobility and often even depression or toxic shame prevent some people from thriving in a therapeutic relationship. We have heard this from the many people who ring or email and we are providing you a service that suits your needs. Talk doctor Fran will become the designated life coach telephone counsellor and sessions will be at half the rate of a face to face session. No matter where you live in Australia now, you can access the fantastic therapeutic services available at Imaginif.
Want to change manage your anger? Know this:
The Anger Volcano: Anger is a secondary emotion.
Play is children’s work
June 23, 2008 by Megan · 8 Comments
Play is an important, healthy and functional part of development. If children are denied opportunity for play their development becomes constipated.
Social Workers and Psychologists assess for age and development appropriate play tools and opportunities in child safety and family assessments. With age appropriate play comes risk management. Parents who spend time thinking about the range of activities and how to minimise risk around those activities generally have well adjusted children – children who are doing their job of being children.
Many parents also play. An accepted form of a mental health top up, play keeps us fresh, invigorated and in touch with our family priorities. In Cairns our opportunity for outside play is endless. A beautiful part of the world characterised by outdoor living, palm trees and ocean, our Muddy’s Playground is a place I love to go to play work at
I’m not sure who has the better time at Muddy’s Playground on the Cairns Esplanade, Master 12 or myself. One thing is for sure though – clean teeth is a must when visiting this park, kids. There are so many birds that it would be dreadful if a bird flew into your mouth and started picking out all the food! Master 12 wouldn’t believe it a possibility….until a bird started following him around! Risk manage around child safety and make sure you clean your teeth!
The kewl chicky babes from Three Times Kewl are coming to visit Cairns. I’ll be taking them to work – at Muddy’s. This is the range of outdoor, child safe, child friendly, development oriented play they can expect:
Bloggers meet in Cairns
June 22, 2008 by Megan · 2 Comments
Cairns Bloggers meet at Imaginif (30 James Street, North Cairns) on Saturday evening, 26 July 2008.
Family oriented for a casual BYO nibbles and drinks BBQ. (yes, you can bring the partner and the kids – at Imaginif, we encourage family inclusion)
5pm until you’ve all had enough of each other.
Imaginif will do the meats, salads, and sauces.
Come and meet your fellow Cairns bloggers, those interested in blogging, and help to create real time geeky social networks.
RSVP to Megan (from Imaginif) by Thursday the 24th.
Cairns Bloggers
- Andrew Griffiths
- Balloon with Hot Air
- Berry Baby
- Big Little Sister
- Birdwing Therapies
- Cairns Action for Sustainable Transport
- Cairns Blog.net
- Cairns Unlimited
- Have camera will travel
- Jean Burman (artist)
- Kaj Haffenden
- Knowledge Solutions
- Nicky Jurd
- nunyaa
- Psych Matters
- Spasmodic Dysphonia
- Tropical Passions
Does anybody else need to be listed and invited via trackback?
Are you coming? Leave me a comment here and do a post on your site to encourage other Cairns bloggers to come and join forces with us all.
The respectable addiction: Workaholism
June 21, 2008 by Megan · 11 Comments
My name is Megan Bayliss and I am a workaholic. Once I was proud of this because that is what my world expected of me, and I had developed the disease to please. Now I am ashamed of it and I struggle daily to keep on the straight and narrow. Last night, a kewl little blonde girl, reminded me that life is not all about work and that sometimes “cracking it” is an okay thing to do.
My second marriage failed because of my workaholism (amongst other things). It was common for me to be writing court reports on my lap top, in bed, at 3am. I spent little time with my family and I failed to hear and see the warning signs. I was disconnected from myself, my emotional intelligence and the people closest to me. I was a disaster waiting for a divorce to happen. It did, I crashed and I took two years out to beat my addiction.
I recovered. For years I stood up to the voice of addiction telling me to work harder, work more, work while the sun shines, work while the work is being offered, just work, work, work. One day, in the previous six months, the stronger voice of addiction snuck back in and drowned my ability to stand up to it. My voice of strength gave up and my old addictive patterns of workaholim returned. I have been working ridiculous hours and taking on more that humanly possible for an aging social worker. I have become disconnected from my emotional intelligence and my family.
But….I love work and I love busy. I love it far more than chocolate because I consume work every single minute of my waking day. Chocolate is no good for me, I know that and I have strategies in place to ensure that I do not become an obsessive chocolate eater. Why the hell haven’t I done that with work then if my style of work is more toxic to me than chocolate?! What sort of a dummy am I?
Today is the day that I again face my demons, that I become emotionally intelligent and I stand up to my pre socialised pattern of over working. I want to spend time with my family. I want to play Uno, I want to have time to go to the eco shop and ask about gray water tanks. I want to become the green child protection advocate that I always wanted to be, rather than the over working lefty daughter of a conservative family. My hard work somehow made my left thinking more acceptable. What a load of rubbish, rhetoric and cognitive dissonance to make my addiction appear nice!
I will not work today. It is the weekend! I will play Uno and Switch and maybe even bribe the boys to play Scrabble with me (see, ever the capitalist ). I will face that which I hate more than Tripe: housework. Imaginif is moving home and office and this one has to be packed and cleaned. In an effort to avoid that which I hate, I easily succumbed to the seductive moves of my old lover; workaholism. Go away workaholism, you may be acceptable in the failing eyesight of a capitalist society, but in my eyesight you are a killer, a perpetrator of child abuse and a part of me that I do not wish to have dominant.
I am stronger than the voice of addiction and the voice of a political ideology that rewards respectable addictions and hides child abuse. I am Megan; a mum, a wife and a lover of the natural environment. I am strong and I am emotionally intelligent.
Thank you to the golden child, Miss J, for helping me to re-perspect “cracking it.” I cracked it last night – I made a decision to stand up to myself and take responsibility for my happiness and health. Thank you J. I’ll go for a walk later on and take a photo of something nice in Cairns for you to fall in love with…and when you come to Cairns, I’ll take you to the beautiful spot so that we can all play there together.
Aussie Carnival Blog On Cairns
June 18, 2008 by Megan · 9 Comments
Welcome to the June 18, 2008 edition of
Carnival of Australia and Blog On Cairns.
My Carnival hosting tradition is to always begin with a post from the previous host: it is my way of saying, “Thanks for hosting and sharing in the success of the Carnival of Australia.” Of course last fortnight it was a sister Cairns business blogger who hosted: Keran from Birdwing Therapies. This fortnight, Keran gives us, Operation Centurion. Perpetrators and Pedophiles Being Arrested. This is something right up my ally. As child protection advocates both Keran and I are very conscious of online predators and we both share ALL information with the police if needed. As Keran says, “If you have any information which may lead to an arrest contact your local Police or Crime Stoppers“.
Blog On Cairns
What’s winter like in Tropical North Queensland? Steve and Maria from Cairns Unlimited have had one day where they had to wear long sleeves and trousers. Steve keeps a wonderful tourist centric blog and he says, “Winter in Tropical North Queensland is a far cry from the season that the southern half of Australia endures at this time of year. It’s 11:00am as I write this, and my trusty Cairns Unlimited thermometer tells me it’s 27 degrees (that’s 81 degrees American) which is not a bad winter’s temperature, I reckon”. I’m with you Steve…if it drops below 25 degrees, I freeze.
Paul Dymond of Have camera Will Travel suggests that The more you edit the better you look. Correction Paul, you’ve got it around the wrong way for the majority of us amateurs – the more you professional photographers edit photographs of us, the better we look! Paul is actually referring to the blog presentation of edited photographs. In the age of digital cameras and blogs, Mum and Dad photographer have a penchant for putting all of their pics up. Paul suggests raising your own status as digital guru and only publishing your very best and edited shots. FANTASTIC shot of a Cassowary on the Daintree Road.
Mike Moore over at Cairns Blog is finally back to his regular blogging. In Drunk Driver, Mike shares a horrific picture of a drunk and sleeping driver smashing into a group of cyclists.
Introducing Luke Grange from Knowledge Solutions. Luke and his team offer all manner of Web-based information solutions and their new corporate blog focuses on Web 2.0 applications and the benefits of blogging as a business tool. On a more personal not, Luke was one of my rescuers in my near drowning experience on the Great Barrier Reef. I am eternally grateful to Luke and I encourage you to head over to his new site and giving him a little blog karma .
Did you know that verylongdomainnamesarefrustrating. Over at Nicky Jurd’s she urges new website builders to consider their domain names…preferably before you buy them! What does your business do? What does your domain name say about your business? Can your clients easily remember your domain name? An excellent little post Nicky.
Jean Burman, aka Billy the Kid, is a marvel. There were only three Cairns bloggers who used the power of the blogosphere to raise consciousness around the recent Childhood Hero Day. Two of those bloggers are child safety advocates and professional in the area. Jean on the other hand, deserves accolades and fanning with banana palms, because she does not make her living from child safety. Jean shares a wonderful story of being a childhood hero, with teeth and skin, in tact.
Nunyaa, our own little Flying Nun of Flying Fish Point (I don’t know if that’s where Nunyaa lives – it just fitted with the flying nun habit comment), raises some safety and control issues around the hotly debated OneSchool data base: Students on the Net.
Queensland State Government is planning on entering personal details including photos of every state school child in an online data base. Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools.
OneSchool rhetoric comes with a threat or two: it is non negotiable and students who do not supply the required information may well be refused a state education. Ummm, I just cannot see how that could ever happen.
I understand the reasons behind state education wanting such a data base but without the security needed (let along fast internet!) to protect such sensitive online information, the potential for hacking, manipulating and sharing information about minors, leaves me a little perturbed. At this stage, I am wanting to join Nunnyaa and say, “I prefer the old hard drive and paper files thanks Mr Welford.”
Andrew Griffiths wonders if Maybe it’s time to get mobile. There is no denying the massive growth in business to your door models. Andrew posits that the model will only grow and that traditionally sedentary business houses will begin to go mobile. I wonder if anyone has done research on the environmental impact of “to your door” business verses customers seeking out business at a fixed address.
Andrew asks:
Are there ways that your business could take your products or services directly to your customers? A few prime examples that I seen develop recently are:
1. Mobile battery sellers – they come to you when you get a flat battery.
2. Mobile mechanics – they come to you to work on your car.
3. Mobile dog washers – no more wet dogs in the car.
4. Mobile finance brokers – discuss your finance needs in your own home.
5. Restaurants – home delivery is becoming more popular by the day.
6. Hairdressers – many will now come to your home or office.
I have long thought Imaginif could make use of a mobile child therapy room (a mobile home/caravan sort of an affair) that visits the smaller towns around us once a week. Paul (my accountant husband) will cringe when he reads this and I know what he will say, “Stick to your business model woman and don’t plan anything else into the cash flow!”
Like sands through the hour glass, Melody (from Biglittlesister)and her family are taking beach advantage on the fine, but cold, days Cairns has experienced (have I ever mentioned that I hate winter!). In delightful artistic talent, the girls did a sand portrait of papa bear, Lyndon. Very Aussie! [Megan breaks into song] There was an old man who swallowed Australia.
Melody, the above sand artist from Big Little Sister , has a huge parent blogger following. Cairns businesses interested in marketing their family focused wares cannot do better than giving Melody a promo to review. A positive review from Melody will reach thousands of Aussie parents all heading this way for winter warmth. Ummm, what could Melody blog about – weekends away, family centric restaurants, resort wear, tours: the list and Melody’s parent influence is endless. Blog searches are fast becoming search engine in style. Indexing, easy home based seo strategies and huge visitor numbers means that blogs often come up before tradition web or information sites. If you haven’t got a blog on your website, you’ve got rocks in your head. Thank goodness you’ve got access to experienced bloggers who can parent test your product though.
Here are the other Cairns bloggers that I know off. Get to know them, encourage them, link to them and build a solid web of people in Cairns who get the enduring strength of blogging as a tool.
- Berry Baby
- Cairns Action for Sustainable Transport
- Kaj Haffenden
- Psych Matters
- Spasmodic Dysphonia
- Tropical Passions
Business
Des Walsh ate before he wrote, A Book I Must Have for Doing Business in China over at deswalsh.com. A delightfully serious, humorous, and humble reflection of how unChinese Des may have been, he has now whet my appetite for the book as an entree to Chinese business culture as well. Des, did you know, in China they don’t call it Chinese food. Amazing! (12 year old is looking over my shoulder groaning at my jokes)
Family
GP presents Innkeeping Heloise Style posted at Innside Montana-Your Home at the Range, saying, “Innkeeping ‘Heloise” style here in the US of A. Cheers maties” What a laugh. Thanks GP, that tickled my non cleaning elbows.
PlanningQueen presents 10 Ways To Save On Your Food Bill posted at Planning with Kids, saying, “With higher food prices looking set to stay, here are some easy steps you can take to save on your food bill” Planning’s posts are always super sensible and parent practical. I wonder if not feeding the kids would ever make one of your lists PQ? My 12 year old son is in danger of not being fed because he and his friend are eating me out of my wage! I keep offering them Tripe but they don’t seem to want that! My serious money saving food tip is to put a cup of rolled oats in with mince – yummy, healthy and doubles dinner
The three times kewl Alison was tagged for a meme by Cairns based Melody: Six question meme. The diversity of lodgings, employment and preference always amazes me when I read personal memes. Alison has been a circus performer and now operates a menagerie and young people home. She is also an amazingly intelligent young woman who lives her life around inclusive and non discriminatory practices. A rare bird, Alison will be in Cairns late July and I intend to have a Bloggers Meet so that you can all meet Alison too (she is a regular reader of several blogs that participate in Carnival of Australia).
Food
The wonderful Jeanie presents Cannelloni Comforts! posted at Jeanie in Paradise, saying, “How to g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y extend your child’s eating horizon!” Jeanie, that was very clever and the pics are divine. One of my kids was a true, pie addicted, Aussie. The only food he would eat had to be wrapped in pastry and end with the work “Pie.” We wanted soft Tacos for dinner. I told Master Pie Face that they were Mexican Pies He loved his Mexican Pies and still eats pie bread (tortillas) to this day.
Personal Development
Belongum presents If ever there was an apprenticeship in Ironing… posted at Belongum’s Weblog. What a laugh – this single post explains the risks associated with ironing.
…when you’re ironing in a hurry, with only your undies on! Don’t let anyone fool you – for all the burn resistance cotton might have over anything resembling polyester, it still hurts like a bastard when that’s all that happens to be between your iron (on it’s ‘Linen’ setting), and any patch of skin that might reside between your belly button and where the top of your legs are! If it’s not that, it’s the steam – do I really need to explain those particular hazards in detail any further? I thought not! The ‘dangle factor’ aside folks; I’m afraid I have to tell you that ironing in your duds, isn’t necessarily a healthy thing to be doing – but ‘needs’ tend to necessitate all manners of odd behavior.
Belongum, I am an Army brat – starch and ruler bred. Nowadays though, I am an environmental safety officer (self appointed) and ironing is a high risk and environmentally black task (aka, I let my husband do my ironing. Can’t wait to witness a mishap like yours hehe).
Sport
R.Pettinger presents Australian World Harmony Run posted at Sri Chinmoy Centre News, saying, “On April 27th, the Australian World Harmony Run team began an epic journey around the entire coast of Australia.” Congratulations to the runners and the organisers. Social understanding is something I strive toward and I fully encourage such projects. Thanks for submitting this to the Carnival of Australia.
Travel
Our Red House presents Our Red House: Wilson’s Promontory: Landscapes posted at Our Red House. What beautiful clear pictures. It doesn’t even look cold. While I am often focused on the northernmost tip of Australia, this post comes from the southern most tip of Australia. How cool that our Carnival spans from one tip to the other. Thanks for joining us in the Carnival. We ruin fortnightly so please do come back.
Fancy a trip to Japan in a virtual origami boat? No. Then how about sending an origami boat to the the Prime Minister of Japan: Join the mass online protest against whaling in the Southern Ocean. Activism and social change is within easy reach of us all. Join The Body Shop Activist in a few virtual paper folds and help to create a sustainable future worth having grand kids for.
That concludes this edition. Any takers for hosting next fortnight? If not, the Carnival will run here at Imaginif again.
Submit your chosen blog post to the next edition of Carnival of Australia and Blog On Cairns using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. You must be Aussie (no matter where you live in the world) or have a post about something Australian. I received a lot of spam this edition and some posts that I could not work out the Aussie connection. If you are an overseas Aussie blogger and it is not obvious on your About page, please let me know you are Australian.
Links back to the Carnival are always appreciated and act as positive marketing for our collective Carnival.
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