Muriel Cooper
Psychologist in Mornington

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The most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself. Be careful how you talk to yourself.

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Don't leave it too late to take action on your stress. Be alert for warning signs, so stress doesn't get out of control.

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Be mindful, stay present and keep your composure. Don't panic. It will pass.

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A healthy sense of self-control is very important to physical and mental health.

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The mind is the observer. Saying “It's my brain doing that, it is not me,” can set you free.

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A great deal of our mental unwellness begins with stress, which becomes anxiety and depression.

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Our survival brain is on overdrive. It’s easier to be happy when we calm it down and are mindfully present.

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Anxiety comes out in the body. You may control your thoughts, but stress and anxiety will still affect your body. Care for your body.

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If someone is there ask them to hug you and soothe you. If there is no one there, hug and soothe yourself.

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Muriel Cooper, Psychologist

Muriel Cooper

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.

Can happiness simply be a choice?

Smiling woman giving thumbs up sign

Memes on social media assure us that happiness is a choice. But is that really true? Often we see this as a glib cliché. For someone whose life is affected by stress, anxiety and depression, those words can seem like a cruel joke. When you're in the depths of depression, saying you can simply choose to be happy can seem downright insulting.

But can you get to a point where it is possible to choose to be happy?

Few people are naturally happy. Our brain is not wired for happiness, it's wired for survival and that means stress and fear. Most of our thoughts are automatic and most of them are not happy or positive. But if we make fearful, negative thought patterns automatically, can we learn to be happy, and how do we do that?

Happiness is usually a multi-faceted project and not a quick or easy fix. You need to work on it.

Here are some steps to developing the ability to choose happiness and to organise our lives to give us the maximum chance of happiness.

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