


Dear friends,

-Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?

-That is the only time a man can be brave!

A Game of Thrones – G.R.R. Martin.





Take care and stay at home.



Covid-19: Mental Health Exercises To Face This Incredibly Challenging Situation No4


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Dear friends,

This exercise gives people the space to express some of their anger safely on a paper.

Think of coronavirus. Draw it on a piece of paper.

Call the coronavirus all the names you want.

Now tear it up however you please.

Tear it into strips or little pieces or any way you want.

Imagine that this piece of paper is your source of stress and anxiety. Tearing up the paper is very therapeutic!






Dear friends,








But the most important healer for me is the nature. My lavender calming pebble also helps me to overcome my negative thoughts and promote mindfulness. When I repeat the powerful affirmations often, and believe in them, I can start to make positive changes. When combined with meditation and forest therapy this can have multiple benefits.

●Reduces blood pressure and heart rate.


●Improves sleep.

●Strengthens the immune system.

●Increases energy and vitality.

●Increases sensory awareness and perception.

●Promotes a healthy body-mind-heart connection.

●Increases brain power and clarity of thought.

●Increases self-esteem, empathy, kindness and compassion.

●Boosts creativity and intuition.

●Calms the nervous system.

●Relaxes an overworked brain.



So, take care and stay at home.




My dear friends, hello!

The main causes of stress in the workplace:

  • Balancing multiple demands
  • Work overload
  • Lack of time
  • Inadequate resources
  • Inadequate administrative support
  • Inclusive classes
  • Student misbehaviour
  • On-going changes
  • Inadequate professional development

Meditation Wooden Pebble and Affirmation Bookmark

Rubbing on a Meditation Wooden Pebble will free your life from worries, stress and bring good luck. When combined with meditation, this can have multiple benefits.




How to create powerful affirmations:

  • Positive affirmations are always in the present tense.
  • Place your name in the affirmation
  • Positive affirmations only include positive words.

Affirmation Wooden pebble




Affirmation Stone






You can also visit my website: MANDALA DOTS FOR PLEASANT THOUGHTS

Love always,


The Best Technique To Help You De-Stress




Hello my friends!

Stress is one of the world’s largest health problems, leading to exhaustion, burnout, anxiety, a weak immune system, or even organ damage. Studies show that art therapy, coloring mandalas  and drawing in general, can minimize anxiety and combat negative mood. Art therapy is a form of therapy that encourages creativity and self-expression as vehicles to reduce stress, improve self-esteem, increase awareness and help remedy trauma. Psychologist Carl Jung recommended coloring mandalas (circular designs that can contain intricate patterns or symbols) as a therapeutic intervention to promote psychological health, as he perceived that drawing mandalas had a calming effect on his patients while facilitating their processing of thoughts and emotions.

Today, art therapy is recognized for its many therapeutic effects on aspects of mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well-being. As described by art-therapist Myra Levick, these include:

To provide a means to strengthening the ego.

To provide a cathartic experience.

To provide a means to uncover anger.

To offer an avenue to reduce guilt.

To facilitate impulse-control.

To help patients/clients use art as a new outlet during incapacitating illness.

In 1971 a radiation oncologist named Carl Simonton formulated a concept for cancer patients involving among other things the integration of art therapy. Simonton and his wife designed a strategic approach to attack cancer from all sides, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually with a host of progressive and relaxation techniques. In perhaps the most significant plank to bridge the fields of alternative and modern medicine, mental imagery and art therapy were employed as complementary tools to fight cancer cells and help rejuvenate the body.

Try the following theme:

Draw yourself.

Draw a picture of a part of your body you feel needs a special attention. Draw an area that you feel is perhaps a target organ of stress, for example a headache, sore back etc.

On another sheet of paper, draw an image of this same body region fully healed.

Use your imagination to restore this image to health through metaphor.


Draw a peaceful image


Draw how you feel right now. What emotions are you feeling right now? What does your anger look like to you? Try to visualize your emotions  on paper.

Art therapy is a portable form of therapy, and one that can be practiced alone without the support of a therapist.The beauty of art therapy is that it can be practiced for as long or little as you wish, depending on the amount of time you have. Just ten minutes of self-directed art therapy, every day, can make improvements to the quality of your day and to the levels of stress you experience.

Love always,

Vassiliki xxxx



Hello my friends!

Teaching is an emotional endeavor. Teachers may experience happiness when students accomplish an important task, frustration when students cannot grasp a concept, disappointment with lack of effort. Teachers try to regulate their emotions because they believe it helps them achieve their goals.
But one factor that is important is the intensity of the experienced emotion. The perceived intensity of anger and frustration episodes was associated with longer duration of the emotion episodes, intrusive thoughts, immediate actions in the classroom and doing something specific to cope. High intensity episodes were associated with changes in teachers’ classroom behaviors and may influence their teaching effectiveness. Teachers who reported high levels of emotions intensity were more likely to endorse the effectiveness of showing negative emotions and had lower levels of teacher efficacy than teachers reporting lower levels of emotion intensity. These high intensity teachers show their emotions more often in the classroom and are less likely to regulate their emotions, they have lower confidence in their skills to manage or teach effectively than low intensity teachers. So, there is a relationship between burnout and emotion regulation, so we will discuss two emotion regulation strategies which are associated with reducing negative emotions. In this course we will consider the following strategies the antecedent-focused strategies and those that are response focused.

Antecedent-Focused strategies

Teachers need to learn about their hot spots and try to develop cool nodes. Keeping an emotion teaching diary may help identify if there are common patterns in timing, situations and antecedents of intense emotion episodes. Once hot spots are identified, teachers can plan to prevent them. For instance, if a hot spot for one teacher is constant talking among students then she may change student seating arrangements to prevent student interactions.
Because teacher’s negative emotions are typically aroused when students misbehave or do not pay attention, teachers can learn to use specific management strategies such as have the class do a quiet activity or redirecting students in order to prevent situations escalating. Teachers report that reflecting during the difficult situations also can help them manage their emotions more effectively. Some teachers use appropriate humor and initiate classroom situations that enhance students’ positive emotions. They can also engage students in discussions about emotions, strategies for emotion regulation and the possible consequences of inappropriate emotion expression in the classroom.

Response-focused strategies

These strategies are characterized by the modulation of experiential, behavioral or physiological emotion responses late in the generation of the emotion response. The most commonly described response focused strategy during the emotion episode is suppression when a teacher tries to keep her face passive and not say anything inappropriate. This is often an ineffective strategy but teachers may find no other immediate alternative. Reducing the physiological response by pausing and breathing deeply is commonly used by teachers. Or stepping back from the situation during the immediate emotion episode and relaxing at the end of a difficult school day. Talking at the end of the day is a good strategy of many teachers.

Here are the 12 steps towards managing your difficult emotions and work stress
1.Make a note of any negative feelings you still have about your teaching role – outside as well as inside the classroom. Take notes of any resentment that you feel towards your school or your employers or your colleagues.
2.Describe your largest work stressor in detail.
3.List two other work stressors you are experiencing.
4.Identify how you respond to your specific work stressors. keep a stress diary, recording what causes you stress, when and where. Learn to recognize your stress signals, your symptoms. For example, When I write a book most of the time I feel anxious about the deadline. My thought is “I will never make it!”, So I work faster, I have headaches and sometimes I work longer.
5.Set specific and observable goals to respond more effectively to your work stressors. Be better prepared for them when they happen. It is better to make changes in one or more of the following areas:
a)You can change your thoughts, for example alter your perfectionist attitude.
b)You can implement healthy stress management techniques for example exercise or relax.
6.Pace and balance yourself
Take minibreaks throughout your day to reduce symptoms of tension and stress. In the following videos I will show you brief combination techniques which they need not take more than a few minutes and the payoff can be seen in increased mental alertness and productivity. Choose leisure activities that balance the unique stresses of your job. For example, as a teacher your job requires much sitting or mental concentration so consider a complementary leisure activity such as aerobic exercise or a school is a controlled environment so you need an activity such as hiking in nature.
7.When one reaches the stage of burnout, there is emotional, physical and mental exhaustion Asking your manager or headteacher for support when you need it can be a vital part of your wellbeing at work. By speaking about your concerns and feelings, your senior may be able to put things in place that will decrease your chances of burnout. Reach out to those close to you when you are feeling depleted. Talking things over is the simplest way to relieve some anxiety. Ask your colleagues, family and friends if they can offer support and guidance. Social support is a recognized way for people to deal with stress.
8.Go home on time. Be sure to get plenty of rest, avoid alcohol and cigarettes and eat properly.
9. Please separate your home life from your school life. Leave work at work. Do not work at home!
10. Be realistic in what you can accomplish compared to what you want to accomplish.
11. Make your class or your workspace more comfortable. Change positions. Achieving a good fit between you and the computer can make you more productive and your work experience more comfortable. Adjust your keyboard when you change posture. Relax and rest your elbows by your torso when you use your mouse. Have an appropriate illumination when reading your books or printed materials.
12.You can reduce your stress levels by laughing which lowers the stress hormones including cortisol epinephrine and adrenaline and strengthens your immune system by releasing positive hormones. Laugh alone when you feel something is funny. Seek out cartoons and comedy films. Look for the funny side of life and share it with your colleagues.

Love always,

Vassiliki xxxx

2 tips to stop negative thinking

Hello my friends!

What are the typical ways in which you respond to the triggers you experience? When faced with a difficult situation, emotion, or decision, do you get caught up in thoughts that seem to seize control of your mind—for example, anxious, fearful or angry thoughts?

1. The key to changing your negative thoughts is to understand how you think now (and the problems that result) and then use strategies to change thoughts or make them have less effect.

Here is a more detailed explanation of the A-B-Cs of the systematic-thought-evaluation process, which lies at the core of CBT:

A—activating event: This refers to the objective situation or external stimulus—the event, occurrence, or specific incident— that triggers a cognitive response in the first place.

B—cognitive response: This refers to how you interpret and come to some conclusion—thoughts often manifested in the form of self-talk—about that event. This necessarily is a reflection of your personal belief system and the particular habit patterns of thought you have adopted and use instinctively every day.

C—emotional reaction: This refers to the distressing feelings that the thoughts in B automatically generate.

Research shows that you can rewire your brain to your advantage. This will lessen the possibility of ever experiencing a serious depression, or, should you have a relapse from a current situation, the odds are favorable it will be less intense and of shorter duration. It also shows you can rewire your brain to recover from traumatic brain injuries of various kinds. This ongoing research falls under the promising new science called neuro-plasticity. Neuroplasticity – or brain plasticity – is the ability of the brain to modify its connections or re-wire itself. Without this ability, any brain, not just the human brain, would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood or recover from brain injury.

In Stronger, George S. Everly Jr., Douglas A. Strouse, and Dennis K. McCormack compare humans undergoing stress and experiencing resilience to a rubber ball: In order to make it bounce back, you must put it under great pressure. The greater the pressure, the higher the ball will bounce back. Now to be clear, it’s not the pressure itself that causes the ball to bounce, but the construction and attributes of the ball under pressure. It’s what the ball is made of that really matters. The pressure serves as a catalyst for the rebound. We are like that rubber ball. Our character and attributes—our mental and emotional construction—determine how quickly and easily we will bounce back when challenges apply pressure to our life. And, yes, we can bounce back. Research on resiliency concludes that each person has an innate capacity for resiliency, a self-righting tendency. This capacity operates best when we have resiliency-building conditions in our life, but everyone, even those who grew up with hardships or who have dealt with prolonged or recurring stress, can harness their ability to bounce back.

One strategy that can help improve your outlook is to remind yourself of other challenges you’ve already faced and overcome. Writing down what you’ve learned about yourself from previous, difficult experiences, for example, how you’ve grown or what you’ve accomplished since, or perhaps even because of, a life crisis will empower you with belief that you can triumph in the face of adversity.  Thought diaries help you to identify your negative thinking styles and gain better understanding of how your thoughts (and not the situations you are in) cause your emotional reactions.

2. Learning to manage emotions and choose your thoughts through techniques such as yoga or meditation or by practicing mindfulness will empower you to maintain the perspective that you can survive or overcome. Research from Prof. Mark Williams from Oxford University showed that when difficulties arise in life many of us tend to get caught up in excessive unhelpful thinking. Sometimes people try to stop constant unhelpful thinking but we don’t have to try to stop our thoughts. A more effective way to ease all that internal noise, Prof. Williams teaches, is to pay attention to our direct sensory experience. In this way there’s simply little to no room left in our attention for all that excessive thinking. Coming to our senses calms the mind and grounds us in the present moment. To do this simply redirect your attention out of the thoughts in your head and bring your focus to your sense perceptions. Whether you’re in your home, at the office, in the park or on a subway, notice everything around you. Use your senses to their fullest. Don’t get into a mental dialogue about the things you see, just be aware of what you’re experiencing in this moment. Be aware of the sounds, the scents or the sensation of the air on your skin.

Please visit my new website, e-shop:

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My hope is that my new website is uplifting – a place you can come to and feel relaxed, calm and enlightened.
This website is about you and your emotional wellbeing – a place for peace and happiness.


Select a mandala stone, a mandala wooden pebble or a mandala wooden disc that appeal to you. Focus on the mandala and let it absorb all of your attention and RELAX. Take a few moments to breath deeply. Meditate on the circle and connect with your inner self.

Love always,

Vassiliki xxxx