Coping with a Stressed Nervous System

Alice Jane Muir was born in the 1950s, on an Ayrshire farm, the youngest of eight children. A love of reading and writing goes back as far as she can remember, with poems and short stories being a first passion, but she has been writing all her life. Her first writing success was at the age of 14, in a Charles Frank (telescope manufacturer in Glasgow) essay competition. After beginning work as a physics teacher, various humerous poems published in an award winning community newsletter followed, and then a place in the Scottish Open Poetry Competition in 1982. Further training in psychology followed and Alice was the first to use the term 'Stress Adviser' in 1994, creating and researching a bespoke training course for this new role. Hundreds of 'Stress Advisers' all over the UK and overseas have been trained by Alice since then. Her first book was a collaboration with GP and author, Dr Kenneth Hambly in 1997, 'Stress Management in Primary Care', and in 1999, she won the British Psychological Society Postgraduate Student Writer of the Year Award. Many books have followed mainly on subjects such as stress, relaxation and related topics. Two of Alice's comedy sketches have been broadcast on BBC Radio, and she has written a book on post-natal depression in conjunction with ITV's 'This Morning'. Alice is a Chartered Psychologist, qualified teacher of psychology, physics, science and mathematics, and is an experienced trainer, author, university lecturer and Life Coach. She is a member of the British Psychological Society, the General Teaching Council, the Society of Authors, the Association for Coaching, and is a Fellow of the International Stress Management Association (ISMA UK). Alice is currently Features Editor on ISMA's quarterly journal 'Stress News' and has had a regular 'Web is the Word' column in this journal since 2004.