THE BACKGROUND by John S Cheetham

Most people, at some stage in their lives, will experience difficulty in keeping up with the demands placed upon them. Being a full time or part-time member of the workforce, being in a relationship, bringing up and caring for children, attending to a family member with special needs, supporting ageing parents and dealing with the emotional, physical and financial demands of leaving a relationship results in an enormous drain on our personal energy and time.

What happens to us in the process of meeting all these demands? We can become more and more rundown, unfit, unwell, overweight and ineffective. Having little time or space for personal reflection or for meeting our own physical, psychological, emotional or spiritual needs results in us being ‘off the track’ from where we would like our lives to be.

We can dream of something better and more satisfying but, too frequently, there is no time to properly consider or to action the dream. Our clinical experience suggests that when people are ‘off track’ they can remain that way for long periods of time – even years. When a person is unhappy and confused or overwhelmed by the demands placed on them, they lose the ability to have confidence in themselves and their capacity to make real changes to their lives.

As situations in life deteriorate, negative emotions flourish. Frustration, resentment, anger, despondency and feelings of helplessness feed off each other. The result is that we can spend much of our time going around in circles. Nothing is resolved. Nothing positively changes and exhausted, we resign ourselves to a life of misery. ‘This is my lot”, people will tell themselves.

This CD Back on Track was born from repeated observations that people would become less ill and respond more quickly to professional support and treatment if, when experiencing distress, they could have the knowledge and skills to intervene in their own thoughts and emotions at the time that a crisis was occurring in their life.

It would be fantastic if we could all have a residential support system where we could talk through, clarify and seek guidance at our time of greatest need. That is really a dream. But the reality is that at your time of need you can start to do something positive to set up strategies for yourself to dampen down the negative emotions and turn yourself in a direction that will help you to get Back on Track.

The Presenters

	John S Cheetham MAPS John is a psychologist, author, broadcaster and founding director of the Student Achievement Centre and the Cheetham Consulting Group.
	Jason Hine MAPS Jason is a psychologist who has a special interest in assessment and counselling with children, adolescents and adults. He is Professional Director of the Student Achievement Centre. His team inspires students to master and implement steps necessary for success.
	Christopher Pearson MAPS Chris has a wealth of counselling and consulting experience in the areas of assessment, personal and relationship counselling and organizational training.
	Bill Palmer Bill is the Director of a Canberra-based consulting group specialising in personal and corporate coaching. Bill’s background is both the corporate and community sectors provides him with a richness of experience that he shares with individuals and groups Australia-wide.
	Dr Siobhan Pirola-Merlo MAPS Siobhan is an accredited parenting program facilitator and the author of a book on relationship management within the classroom. As a practising psychologist, she has a special interest in improving the coping skills in parents, children and adolescents.