New Blog at MoodMapping.com

This blog has moved to Wordpress - on my website! - yes I am sorry blogger -you have been a good friend
However I am continuing the bipolar blog on www.bipolarassociation.com
Also for more information about workshops for Moodmapping - go to
http://www.meetup.com/MoodMapping-Workshop-group/


Workshops are the first and second Saturdays of the month and every Tuesday evening, - email me to let me know you are coming along
liz at lizmiller dot co dot uk


                                                 

Workshops for 2011

MOODMAPPING ™

The dates of the workshops in the coming year are as follows, each one focusing on one aspect of mood mapping
5th February, Saturday - Bipolar and MOODMAPPING™
8th February, Tuesday - Teaching and MOODMAPPING™
19th February, Saturday - Anxiety and MOODMAPPING™
5th March, Saturday - Creativity and MOODMAPPING™
8th March, Tuesday - Team and MOODMAPPING™
19th March, Saturday - Procrastination and MOODMAPPING™
2nd April, Saturday - Bipolar and MOODMAPPING™
12th April, Tuesday  - Teaching and MOODMAPPING™
16th of April, Saturday - Anxiety and MOODMAPPING™
7th May, Saturday - Creativity and MOODMAPPING™
10th May, Tuesday - Team and MOODMAPPING™
21st May, Saturday - Procrastination and MOODMAPPING™
Maximum 10 people per workshop
The cost is £20 (Saturday) - £30 (Tuesdays) From 10 - 4.30 pm In Fulham
Booking - please email me the date(s) you are interested in attending

Mood Mapping - Available Now!! UK and International readers

Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller http://www.lizmiller.info/ www.lizmiller.co.uk www.moodmapping.com

Moods and Creativity Saturday's workshop

I have been sceptical about the relationship between mental health problems and creativity. For the most part - mental health is associated with poverty, difficult life events, and lack of opportunity. How this balances with a romantic view of the artist as a creative genius starving in the attic, dying for his art.

Nonetheless there is a link between creativity, poverty, depression, bipolar temperament
 
Saturday's workshop discussed creativity and moods. The bigger the moods, the greater creativity as long as you are in control of your mood. MoodMapping helps you manage your moods better, if you can increase your moods and stay in control you can harness your moods to your benefit. Creativity needs an quick mind, an ability to change direction and look at situations from different angles.  The ability to handle big moods distinguishes people who keep fighting and push ahead from those who succumb to life's challenges. Being overwhelmed by life events will not help you manage the inevitable crises in your life. Winners need to be able to carry on when everything around them crumbles.  However you feel, you have to keep trying and find a way to manage how you feel.

MoodMapping helps people be more objective about how they feel. This process can help you increase the size of your moods as much as it can help reduce them and make themm easier to manage. The trick is to get out of your comfort zones.

The next workshops is about team and moods - if you manage your own mood and if you can manage the moods of your team, you will win. The Apprentice shows time and time again, when you manage the mood of your team, you have a 90% chance of winning the competition







Mood Mapping - Available Now!! UK and International readers

 

(c) Dr. Liz Miller www.moodmapping.com

Employers and Bipolar disorder

Employers and bipolar

1 in a 100 people have bipolar disorder and it is becoming more common. This may be because Stephen Fry, following his documentary The Secret Life of a Manic-Depressive has made fashionable or it may be a real increase reflecting our increasingly chaotic lifestyles.

Last year GPs wrote 391 million prescriptions for antidepressants. This has doubled in the last 10 years and suggests that at any one time over 4 million people are being treated for depression.

Dr Liz Miller has studied mood, mood disorders, bipolar disorder and depression for the last 15 years. She has developed the Miller moodmap. This plots mood on two axes, how much energy person has and how good or bad they feel. The Miller Mood Map shows the four basic moods, Stress and Anxiety; Exhaustion and Depression; Action; and Calm.

According to the model developed by Dr Liz Miller, bipolar disorder means extreme, unstable and difficult to manage moods, while depression represents extreme exhaustion. We always have a mood, and most of the time we manage it well enough without outside help. Nonetheless, there are times when it may not be so easy to manage our moods. At this point we need to become more proactive and start looking at how we can consciously manage moods more effectively. This is where Moodmapping comes into play. Moodmapping provides a tool that enables people to map their moods, look at the causes of why they feel the way they do and look at strategies that will help them feel better. This not only improve their mental health and well-being but also improves people's ability to work effectively and efficiently.


A good manager and employer knows almost intuitively how their workforce feels. However it is no longer easy to spend the time with employees to get to know them as well as one would like. Moodmapping is a way enables employers to understand how people are feeling quickly and easily. Changes in mood come before changes in behaviour. We start feeling bad before our productivity drops off. By being more aware of their employees moods, it is possible to take action before the employee does themselves or the company damage.

If you have an employee with bipolar disorder or depression, 99% of the time he or she will work effectively, creatively and efficiently for you. However as an employer, you need to be aware of what look for and what do should someone's mood change dramatically. By planning for this in advance, and agreeing a course of action with your employee you can head off most disasters before they happen.

By understanding mood better, and how different people respond to their circumstances, it becomes easier to have a happy and productive workforce, than if you leave it until somebody has become seriously ill.

Above all you need to be aware of what happens when someone's mood changes. You see her behaviour change. Someone who is normally calm and happy may become quiet and withdrawn. Equally they may become overexcited, they may be staying late or leaving early. These changes in behaviour follow changes in mood.
The key is talking to your employee sooner rather than later, asking them what is happening in their life both work and at home and how they are feeling. Once you start communicating you can start managing what is happening.

As an employer you have a duty of care to make sure the work you expect employees to do does not make them ill. The most important step you can take is to be more aware of how they feel. Moodmapping is a quick and easy way to understand mood.












Mood Mapping - Available Now!! UK and International readers Click here for Blackwells Click here for Waterstones Click here for Play.com US readers: buy from Amazon.com Click here Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller http://www.lizmiller.info/ www.lizmiller.co.uk www.moodmapping.com

Diet, bipolar and moodmapping

 I am frequently asked what I eat. This may even come with a request for a meal by meal breakdown of my menu over the week. It always strikes me as a somewhat strange and personal question. Not least because I hope that no one is quite stupid enough to eat exactly what I do and expect to get exactly the same results.

We are all different although there are some general principles which I believed apply to everyone.

My rule of thumb is, nothing with a barcode!  that is if it does not look like food it probably is not food! 
 Factories do not produce food, they process material. I have a packet of cakes, made by  a well-known manufacturer, kindly given to me four years ago in my top cupboard. I still have them. They look exactly the same today as they did when they were given to me. anything that last that long without decaying is not food! it is some kind of weird material that does who knows what, to your insides. if it doesn't look like food it probably is not. Food comes from trees plants, vegetables and occasionally fish

In short Avoid processed food. If something similar not around 10,000 years ago then you probably should not eat it. I've never seen a Kit-Kat Tree, nor a fizzy drink come from anything other than a can.

I take omega three fish oils, and multimineral multivitamin supplements. I'm not certain there is any great buried in one brand over another providing you choose a reputable brand.


Usually these requests come after somebody has seen the programme Stephen Fry and the secret life ofthe manic-depressive. In the little bit of the programme in which I figured, Stephen and I are seen shopping in Borough market for oily fish. Stephen explains that I manage my bipolar disorder without medication.

Staying well with bipolar disorder depends on more than diet. living a healthy life is crucially important. This includes diet and exercise drinking plenty of water, making sure that one surroundings are as nice as possible, having a good social support network, having plenty of strategies to manage difficult situations and being able to do the kind of job and live the kind of life that suits your personality.

All of this is explained in the book Moodmapping by Dr Liz Miller. Self management is a frequent theme of our workshops on moodmapping.

The reason you may want to learn to moodmapping, is to increase help you increase your understanding of how you feel and therefore manage it better.

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. Moodmapping is a way to monitor your moods just as a diabetic would monitor their blood sugar. I do it so that you now, but it is difficult for me to imagine how I could possibly live without mood mapping. I use a wide range of healthy foods and no two days over the same. however every day I do check my mood at least once probably more frequently.

By knowing how I feel, I can manage my moods before they become extreme and before they become out of control. This enables me to live without bipolar disorder. After all bipolar disorder is only a name for extreme unstable unmanageable moods. And if your moods are reasonable stable and managed then I think it is fair to say that you have cured your bipolar disorder!

This does not mean that you may not have a vulnerability, in this area. Just as somebody who has injured their back, will always be vulnerable to a further back injury. However if they exercise, make sure the posture is good and avoid doing something that might cause further injury, there is no reason why they cannot live pain-free lives doing just about anything. 10 years ago I ruptured 3 discs! I now run four or five times a week, and as long as I do not lift anything heavy I am fine.

The next course is on Saturday 3 July and it would be lovely to seeyou there.

Mood Mapping - Available Now!! UK and International readers

Click here for Blackwells Click here for Waterstones Click here for Play.com  


US readers: buy from Amazon.com Click here Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller http://www.lizmiller.info/ www.lizmiller.co.uk www.moodmapping.comMood

Mood Mapping Workshop Sat 5th June 10.00 - 5.00pm Fulham

 

 

Are your moods holding you back? Do you have days when you feel you can conquer the world, followed by days when you hardly want to get out of bed?  Are there days when you have so much to do that you are overwhelmed, and other days when you can calmly work and nothing is too much trouble?

 

What is going on? In one sentence - your moods are getting in your way! The difference between those days, that are in all other ways the same, is not what is going on in your outside life, but what is going on inside you. And it is also probably true for you, that this has been going on for a while. And the problem is more likely getting worse than not, as the pressures around us increases, the pressure to perform, the pressure to keep your job and keep everyone happy around you increases year by year and even month by month.

 

This is the Miller moodmap.

How does that help?

 

The Miller moodmap forms the foundation of the moodmapping training. We believe that once you understand your moods once you know what is causing them, you can start to manage them. There are four basic moods,Action, Stressed, Depressed and Calm. These moods affect how you feel, how you think and how you behave. If you wake up in a good mood you know it is going to be a good day, equally if you wake up feeling anxious to know that the rest of the day may be difficult.

 

This is not rocket science! For the most part you already know everything you need to know and you already know what you should do.  If only it was that easy! Moodmapping takes what you already know, looks at it in a different way and helps you make use of it in a practical everyday sort of way. For example, feeling anxious makes people look at life in a negative way. On the other hand if you were suddenly to wake up in a calm relaxed state, you could look at problems in a calm relaxed way and in that state of mind work out the best way to solve your problems, and do it.

 

Mood mapping helps you get to that calm relaxed state into the mood for action that helps you to sort out your problems. It helps get you out of the anxiety depression loop that traps so many people in permanently negative state of mind. Above all it helps you understand how you feel and why you feel that way and what you can do about it. It also helps you know what works. There is no point persisting in doing something if it isn't helping! Moodmapping helps you work out whether or not something is working for you and helps you find something different if that's what you need. There are five keys to mood, your surroundings, your physical health, your relationships, your strategies and what you know and your personality. These five keys help you manage your mood and keep ahead of your game.

 

This Saturday you will learn how to moodmap and how to use this technique to help yourself and the people around you feel better.

 

Most of us do not have the time or money to see a therapist will personal coach regularly, we have to manage ourselves.  If you are a manager in the business, you have to help manage your staff, if you are a therapist your clients want therapies they can manage themselves.

 

Moodmapping is new and it is different. It is about helping yourself and helping the people around you. You start by learning exactly how you feel now, recording it, making a change and then working out whether you feel better or whether you need to do something different. Because unless you measure how you feel you can't be sure that you really feel better and that what you have done has made a difference.

 

You can give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. You can have therapy and feel better for a week. On the other hand, you can teach someone to fish and they can feed themselves. You learn moodmapping and help yourself feel better more energetic for the rest of your life. Even more exciting, you can teach moodmapping to the people around you, and they too can start to feel better.

 

This Saturday, you will spend the day with people like you want to learn something new and want to help themselves. You will do different exercises that help you understand how you feel now and where you are now. You get a workbook that can form the beginning of your own personal journal of self-management.

 

By the end of the day you will

- Know how to Mood Map
- Understand what causes Mood
- Learn strategies to change your mood
- Understand the effect of moods on the people around you
- Understand a little about extreme moods
- A brief introduction to personality

The workshop runs from 10 AM until 5 PM ,

The price is £80 and there are concessions available.

Please e-mail me at Liz@lizmiller.co.uk if you think you can be helped by a concession.

 

All you need to book your place is to reply to this e-mail and I look forward to seeing you on Saturday

For more information

 

go to www.moodmapping.com and sign up to our newsletter

 

and best of all see you this weekend!

 

 

With best wishes

Liz

 

Dr Liz Miller

 

 Mood Mapping workshop in Fulham this Saturday 5th June

Time: 10.00 - 5.00 pm
Location: Fulham - 38 Harwood Rd, Fulham London SW6 4PH 

Telephone 020 7736 6924 or 07957 489961

 

The nearest tube station is Fulham Broadway - (Wimbledon Branch of the District Line)

come out of the Mall, turn Right then left down Harwood Rd - half way down on your right 

Meetings on Tuesday

The next meeting of the Fulham self help group is on Tuesday - apologies to everyone who has emailed and not yet received a reply

Glad to say that now the snow is melted and the cats have recovered from my young's nephew's visit, normal service is resumed


Mood Mapping - Available Now!!

UK and International readers

Click here for Blackwells
Click here for Waterstones
Click here for Play.com

US readers: buy from Amazon.com Click here

Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller
http://www.lizmiller.info/
www.lizmiller.co.uk
www.moodmapping.com