Muriel Cooper, Psychologist
I'm Muriel Cooper, a fully registered psychologist in Mornington, specialising in Stress, Anxiety and Depression.
The Talking Room serves clients on Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula.
About my therapy. I specialise in Stress, Anxiety and Depression (the SAD cycle), but I also deal with most psychological and emotional problems.
I use Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, and psycho-education (knowledge is power!). Presently I'm most interested in Mindfulness and brain-based therapy - teaching you techniques based on using your mind to train your brain. I'm also interested in Meditation and Relaxation.
I regularly write articles and newsletters on these subjects, I run workshops and classes on 'Mindfulness and Brain Training' and I'm also available as a public speaker. If you are interested in these areas of mental health, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter. Subscription is free, there is no obligation, you can unsubscribe at any time, your privacy is protected and I do not include any advertisments for any products or services in my newsletters.
Contact me to make an appointment. Here are my fees and services, and here is information on Medicare rebates. Call your fund for details of health insurance rebates.
I welcome your input into this web site and invite you to contact me by email or make a comment on the site. All comments are hosted only on this site and are not broadcast or distributed to any other comment stream. All your contributions are valued as long as they're relevant to the point and aren't aggressive (please). We can all learn from each other.
Thanks for visiting. I hope you find the material on this site helpful.
Your emotional language
How your emotional language causes or relieves stress
Imagine you are a caveperson living in a small group or tribe of 15 to 20 people. There are pests like fleas, and we need to keep our hair from getting too long or tangling. Then we have aches and pains that feel better when someone strokes us. Also, if people in our group or tribe take the time to do this and we feel good, we feel valued, we belong. If we were not included in grooming, it usually meant being sent to the edge of the group. This resulted in less food, less protection, and less attention, and so we were much less likely to survive.
Being groomed could mean the difference between life and death. Our brains release rewarding chemicals to make us want this type of touching more, like the hormone of bonding and romantic love, oxytocin, and also, endorphins and enkephalins.
Now imagine that your group or tribe is growing larger and larger. The average size of a human group is now around 150 people. Even if you live in a large city alongside millions of people you will still likely know about 150 of them, family, friends, colleagues and others. There are not enough hours in the day to physically groom everyone. We need another way to feel bonded and stroked.
It's thought that our complicated language developed as an adaptation to solve this problem. So we verbally groom (as well as using physical touch). Today, instead of the tribe, we rely on our mate, or we pay people to physically groom us, like massage therapists hairdressers, physiotherapists, and even sex workers.
But this complex language has become a double-edged sword. The words we use and the tone of voice we deliver them with can be extremely stressful. It's considered one of our most significant stressors.