The Joy of Small Things

It’s well into Autumn now and sometimes it can be hard to remember the warm(ish) days of summer and those long evenings. As the days grow shorter and colder and literally close in, very many people feel unsettled and low at this time of year. Autumn often heralds the start of low mood and mild depression and doctors have recognised this and called it Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. It is thought to be linked to the lack of sunlight and it can be hugely improved by spending time outdoors or by investing in 15 minutes a day in front of a light box!

SAD or not, most of us could benefit from investing 15 minutes a day on nurturing ourselves. It is easy to start the gradual slide into a mild depression. It is easy to allow stressful events in our lives or an overload at work to engulf and overcome us. Sometimes life just throws the worst of situations at us and there is nothing we can do except to get on and go through it until things improve. But we do not have to slide down the slippery slope.

It would be easy to say that if we look on the bright side, count our blessings every day and meditate on flood victims and starving children that we would feel better about our lot. Yet such a Pollyanna strategy could as easily irritate. After all, there’s always someone better off than us and someone worse off, it doesn’t ultimately help our own self right now. The Buddhists, Zen masters and Taoists have a more realistic way of living; they practice “mindfulness.”

Mindfulness refers to being completely in touch with and aware of the present moment, as well as being non-judgemental to your inner thoughts or your experience at that moment in time. It is very much about accepting things as they are right at that moment and not analysing or evaluating your thoughts, just noticing them. It is gaining ground as a way of alleviating depression, anxiety and even post traumatic stress disorder. I talk to my stressed and depressed clients about mindfulness and about finding the joy in small things. It is far easier to notice small beauties than it is to force yourself into thinking that your life is perfectly fine when the reality is that you are going through a complete nightmare!
So if things are all too much, if it feels impossible to be thankful, if you can’t see the wood for the trees then focus in on the very small things that ARE ok, if only in that very moment. Noticing the beauty in a ray of sunshine across your kitchen worktop; seeing a vivid and beautiful colour; hearing an exquisite piece of music; finding a conker that sits perfectly in your hand; feeling the tingling spray from a shower in the morning. Just noticing, paying attention to, being mindful of tiny things at that very moment in time can be enough beauty and joy to help you through the day. We all have a basic human need for beauty and joy, to keep us content, to keep our mood elevated, raise the feel-good chemicals in the brain. If we can do this daily, even for a short moment, it will pay off in the longer term.

We can accept our thoughts for what they are; we can notice how we may feel overwhelmed, rattled, angry, sad. They are thoughts, at that moment, not a great predictor of the future to come, nor an analysis of the past, only the thought of a moment. After that thought comes another thought and we can experience it without dwelling on it or judging it. And if we practise noticing any moments or experiences of joy or beauty that occur, then how much more comfortable does this feel than allowing ourselves only the feelings of sadness. Try it, I promise it helps.

Very busy at HMcH HQ

Lots of Hs (aitches) involved there! But it seems like abbreviating things is the only way to get through all I have to do these days.

The phone has been red hot over the past fortnight and I have clients desperate to see me. So much so that it's tough to fit them all in. Tempting to book my son into a few more after school club sessions so I can accommodate them. But in a week where UNICEF has published a report condemning the British way of life for not giving our children enough of ourselves and our time, it's kind of put me off.

One thing that is not being abbreviated is my fitness sessions. My gym session with a trainer this week was so hard that I had the jelly legs and the flashbacks to my very first training session at my first unit in Germany. It was the fittest unit in the Garrison. The other subalterns had looked at me with pity when I told them which company I was joining. I was the only girl... And I was desperate after only the warm up! What a shock being thrown into circuit training with these fit young men, I couldn't quite believe how fast they were, how strong. I was a minnow in comparison. 12 years later I was diagnosed with asthma! What a laugh.

I could write something really clever now about mental toughness and how to develop it; about how to look on the surface as if nothing is a problem when all the time you are peddling like mad just to keep afloat; and about how EVERYONE is far more nervous and unsure of themselves than they look. I could write about how many of those incredible, tough, fit young men ended up crying on my shoulder. And then I could write about how many of my phone calls this week were from young men who get anxious and blush in meetings, presentations and interviews.

So what am I really saying here? That everyone gets anxious and nervous, everyone has at some time or other been tongue tied and that everyone just acts it out when they need to. So if you need to pretend, then do so. And if you get tongue tied, the person listening will have been in exactly the same place, and more than once. We're all human, all of us, all of the time.

Is it stress or too much to do?

Sometimes there really is too much to do in life. Which is why I am sitting here blogging about it, because I am bored with working and tidying and decided to write about it whilst putting my laptop back in my study.

Not only do I have a full-on day helping people, I then have to pick up a tired and often grumpy 3 year old from nursery. On arrival at home I have to coax him out of the car (safely) and get him into the house (safely) at which point I then have to deal with a bouncing and starving labrador. Trying to feed both 3 year old and dog without one of them imploding is a task in itself.

(Oh and add in the clearing up of dog sick at least once a week, in fact twice today)

After tea time, getting an even more tired small person bathed, teeth-brushed, toileted and into bed without ructions provides yet more fun and games.

So by 7.30 I am ready to start the rest of the day's work. Cooking a meal, clearing up, washing up, opening the post, checking emails, a bit of book-keeping, filing from the day's work and preparation for the next. Then after all that's done there is washing and house cleaning to do.

Sometimes I do wonder where I'm going wrong...

Social Conscience

I have done some interesting work recently, helping adult victims of child abuse. My clients were a young couple in their twenties, with 4 children under the age of 8, who had 3 different fathers. The children were the subject of court proceedings, with the objective of deciding whether to remove the children from the parents "under the category of neglect."

Both parents had been poorly parented themselves so they had no decent example on which to model themselves as parents. The man had been badly abused as a child. So while the court case had been adjourned, Social Services were attempting to improve the parenting skills of the couple in order that they stood a chance of keeping the children. They wanted to show the court that they had done everything possible to help the parents.

Now some would say that if they were incapbable of looking after 4 children, then the couple should lose the children and they should be taken into care and looked after properly and given a better chance in life. I will admit that I had a similar viewpoint. On closer inspection, it is not quite as simple as that. Firstly, it benefits Social Services to leave children with parents because a child in care costs a fortune. To place a single, simple child with no additional needs into any sort of care costs over £400 per week. Yes, per week! Care is VERY expensive for the taxpayer.

The second reason why Social Workers like to leave children with parents is that children in care tend to do badly throughout their lives. Most of the British prison population have been in care as children. Taking children away from parents is a marker for future social problems, which have to dealt with and paid for by the state. So the arguments for children remaining with families are quite persuasive - current cost, future cost and short and long-term wellbeing of the children.

So my role was to help these two parents come to an understanding and an acceptance of what happened to them as children. The aim was that they could move on from the trauma, enabling them to lead easier, happier lives. And Social Services aim then was to help them to learn improved parenting skills, once they had more of a blank canvas to work with. Someone who has been abused as a child has multiple problems and hang-ups that they have to deal with and they can often be quite traumatic.

The man in particular had been through a hell of a childhood and really had suffered, which was affecting him day to day. After several weeks of work, both individuals were feeling much happier and calmer. They both reported a great improvement in their relationships with each other and the children, they played with the children more and were more positive and optimistic in general.

I was absolutely thrilled. To have such a result for these people was fantastic for me and so rewarding. I saw both parents change for the better over time and I loved seeing it. Ultimately I don't know whether they will keep the children. I am just glad that I could play a small part in helping these people to enjoy their lives.

The Blog Post I wish I had written

The title says it all, but this blog post from Kim Ayres (Ramblings of the Bearded One) describes in one post what I am trying to achieve for you in my own blog. Please read it as I don't want to copy and paste, and I cannot take credit for Kim's work.

http://kimayres.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-for-you.html

You may enjoy his blog too.

New Year Blues?

I know it isn't New Year yet but everything that can be said about Christmas has already been said hasn't it?

Some years ago I met for the first time, one of those people who hates New Year. Until then I had not been aware of this substantial group. This particular individual explained that he found New Year depressing because it was an opportunity to look back over the year past and realise that he had achieved nothing, not moved on in life, not got anywhere nearer to reaching his goals.

My thoughts were instantly that this was one seriously depressing and depressed person! Well heavens, if you looked back at all your failures wouldn't you hate it too? I certainly would. This man had no perspective on what he HAD achieved. Maybe he had learned to cook macaroni cheese or discovered more about recycling or painted his kitchen, bought a new car, educated himself by reading a paper twice a week. I don't know what he had done but I know he had achieved something. But he wasn't acknowledging anything that he had done.

Perhaps some of our strategic goals might not have been achieved in full but let's not let that overshadow who we are and what we do and have done this year. I haven't achieved everything I wanted to and I haven't got as far with some goals as I wanted to get either. What I have achieved though has been an expansion of my hypnotherapy work, an excellent work/life balance and a deeper love for my small son. Those things are important and although I did not do the one thing that I wanted most this year, I will not be feeling depressed when the New Year arrives.

Take a proper look at what you have done this year. And if you acknowledge the detail then you will find achievments and positive change too.

Being Thankful

It's too long since I regularly "blogged" and I have lost many of my friends on the journey. But that's ok, perhaps I will make some new ones. I've not been in full health and there's a reason for that which I don't yet fully understand. Understanding will come though.

Today's post is about thankfulness and mindfulness. It will strike a chord with those of you who follow a religion. To others it will sound overtly "Pollyanna-ish" and perhaps some will want to scream at me. To let you in, I have been through all of those reactions so just accept your reaction fopr what it is. That's mindfulness.

So my subject is to be thankful. There definitely is something to be learned in every situation that life throws at us. When all is going our way, we rarely stop to consider what we are learning. Perhaps that is becuase the soul is not developing, perhaps it is too easy. When life is tough, sometimes a small voice nags us to understand that every part of life is a journey and that we will be picking up experiences and learning from them. Yet when we are in physical or emotional pain or mental anguish engulfs us, then how on earth can we take anything positive from where we are?

That's when the screaming voice can take over and want to cut down any self-righteous, patronising do-gooder who looks on sympathetically and tells us to "be positive."

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

But if you look closely, there is an ingredient missing from the recipe and it is TIME. In the thick of it, in the middle of the fight, all you can do is protect yourself from the blows and strike out when you get the opportunity. Only later when you analyse it with your coach and watch the video footage will you be able to gain the perspective you need to really learn from the mistakes you made in the ring.

So try this now. Look backwards in time and pick a time or situation or a person which you would rather miss out if you could play the film of your life again. With the perspective of time, examine the video footage and see if you can identify the positive aspects. What did you do well? But most of all, what are you thankful for?

I would rather forget and miss out the experience of marriage to my first husband but on so many days I have reason to feel thankful for the time we spent together. He taught me to cook! To cook real, fresh food and to experiment, to not be afraid in the kitchen. I still have the cookery book he patronisingly bought me the week before our wedding - it is a firm favourite of mine.

If I take this concept further and extrapolate the effect of learning to cook, I can thank my ex-husband for my health. Ten years of eating unprocessed, fresh food has doubtless had a positive effect on my health. It is a strange feeling to thank him for that but I cannot deny it.

Finding something positive in a bad situation liberates us from the negative emotional effects of that unfortunate experience. For some people there may be much healing required but the exercise of thankfulness can be a start.

Try that today.

Equilibrium

Lost my equilibrium for a short while. Had a wobbly blip. It happens, even though peeps think it doesn't. As I said in an earlier post, this is the real world and it's not quite as fluffy as we would all like. Anyhow, the status quo is mostly restored.

I was in London today and I managed to take a short walk in Regents Park. I loved seeing the wonderful old trees. I always feel very grounded by large trees; they are so old, it's as if the wisdom of the world is rising through their roots. I find the winter, bare branches look enables you to see their beauty best. It was quite restorative.

I was able to do a little people watching too, which I find is best in cities. I saw a few people who looked like the sort of people I might have been friends with if I had that sort of a city life and it got me thinking about the "turn of a sixpence" theme again. When I got my A level results I had dropped one grade which meant that I was no longer eligible for a place at City University in London. I was heartbroken. All I wanted was to escape my small-town country upbringing and get living!

I ended up going to a very second choice small-town campus university which I was never entirely happy with. Then my life went in some strange directions and about 15 years later I found myself writing a letter to my Grandma that I was enjoying living in my new house but it was in the middle of a large town. Luckily I was right next to a park and could see trees outside my study window. I spent a lot of time staring at those trees that year and I longed for more grass and mud.

And so I realised that in fact I was a bit of a country girl. So every time I visit London I am faced with the image of what might have been and I honestly feel glad that it wasn't. Yet that one dropped grade held the key and I never knew. Everything would have been different and I would have been a very different person, and I am not sure I would have been happy shoehorning myself in to that life.

I am fascinated that small events in our pasts shape our futures so much. Who knows what I am doing right now that seems insignificant, yet could change the course of events.

I think the key is making the best of the hand we are dealt. It is not what happens in our lives that shape us and give us happiness, it is our responses.

Cake Philosophy

Picture if you can a dinner table with a few Army officers assembled and a few of their wives, oh plus little old me! It's only a few years ago, it's summer in Cyprus, no one is old or crusty or has a handlebar moustache. No one is over forty! One colourful and just a bit sexist character has been holding fort for most of the meal, entertaining the rest of us with much hilarity.

He then launches into a discussion of the wives left at home while husbands go off on exercises and tours. Imagine a public school accent, a little like Lieutenant George in Blackadder (the character is in fact a Lieutenant Colonel) as he said, "I don't know what they're on about really. If they get sad, just do what I tell my wife to do. Go bake yourself a cake and cheer yourself up!"

The sheer crassness and disbelief of this piece of advice had the table in stitches. Said officer was on a tour in Cyprus and did not have his wife with him but I would so like to meet her!

So it was that I found myself having a bit of a low day today. Couldn't concentrate, couldn't settle on doing anything. With David Eccles' (I can't forget him) advice having been ringing in my ears for over 10 years now, I tried out his philosophy and set to a Victoria sponge.

Now being a therapist, I think people believe I have the perfect life and am completely together and don't get bothered by anything, but hey, remember the real world? It is hard sometimes because I often find myself doing the very things I help my clients to stop. Eating the wrong things mainly!

So you should NEVER use food as a comforter. Food is fuel for the body, which tastes delicious. But the difference in cake making is the making. Baking a cake is creating something, an artisan skill, something which humans often don't do any more. We live instant lives, we buy things that factories or other people have made in bulk. That's what accounts for the rise in interior design programmes - we want to create. We want to make our mark, to see that we have achieved something physical which we can see.

So I made my Victoria sponge and great fun it was too. Until I found that the strawberry jam had gone mouldy in the fridge. Sigh. Ah well, I sandwiched it together with buttercream icing anyway and it tasted yummy! I haven't binged on it and I won't eat it in one go.

When I was a teenager I was in fact a demon cake maker but these sort of skills need practice and I am sadly well out of that practice now. But it was an honest and delicous effort and actually it has lifted me a bit.

The philosophy of sponge - try it for yourself!

Time on Time

Time is a much maligned concept in my opinion. We never have enough of it or it goes too quickly or it won't go fast enough. Time is an easy thing to moan about.

But time is wonderful too. It is a great healer when sometimes distance is all we need. Years ago I fell off a horse and injured my back badly. A year later I was still having treatment and more and more. Each treatment was more invasive than the last until I was booked for some injection under Xray. It didn't go ahead because the doctor had not returned from his holiday in California...

I then moved house and had to start on waiting lists and new doctors etc all over again. Except that I didn't bother. I just ignored my back and over time it healed. I learnt a valuable lesson then - to give the body time to heal. To leave well alone sometimes.

This works for the mind as well. The mind needs time to adjust to changes of any kind. Even many traumas can be healed with time alone. Most soldiers who have been traumatised on operational duties feel fine some months later despite having had high emotions at the time and having had no treatment.

It is something to consider sometimes. Do you really need treatment now or will you feel better in time? Giving yourself and your mind the gift of time can be a wonderful healing strategy.

Sick as a Dog

My dog!

My poor beautiful labrador has been really ill. In fact she still is a very poorly dog. I took her to the vets thinking she had a urine infection and the vet admitted her immediately, with severe jaundice! Several days later we were driving her down the M1 to a specialist vet hospital in Bedfordshire.

She has had loads of medication, a prescription diet and ultrasound scans etc. She has chronic liver disease! And yet we didn't even know she was ill. Her test results suggest she should be a very sick dog, yet she was bouncing around as usual.

We thought she wasn't coming home ever again. It was terrible. I had no idea what it is like to have a sick animal. She came home on Christmas Eve thank heaven and is doing ok. Not recovered, and never quite will but improving.

I am so attached to her. I don't want to think about her not being here. It's been such a shock.

You know that your pet is going to die before you do. You absolutely know it but to be faced with it suddenly was not funny. I really didn't think she was coming home again. And every moment with her now is a bonus, every walk is precious.

It IS time to change

Well it is for me anyway, and BIG change.

Business is closing! My cherished dream, my dream of owning my own business, which I have had since I was 14, is going up in smoke. I was asked today how I felt about it. I am over the wailing and gnashing of teeth and "poor me" now. I am still sore however because my dreams have not materilaised.

What I do know is things happen for a reason. There is a reason why even though I don't know it. My business was not destined. My partner has pulled out on me, otherwise I would have steadfastly kept on going. In this situation I have no choice however and that is why I believe this path was not ultimately for me. I was very upset but now I going with it, going with the flow.

Strange that that was one thing I advocated in an earlier Blog post! And now I am being forced to live with it. Is that irony? Or fate? I don't know but it IS growth for me. I am really growing right now.

I can feel change. I have a slight unsettledness within me. Change is in the air, it's all around me. The last time I felt this, I was pregnant and I knew that in a few months time my life and my feelings within it would change for ever. It was not a bad feeling, just a knowing within me. And I have it now.

6 weeks ago, a gypsy passed by and was desperate to read my palm. She flattered me, "You have such a lovely face," she said. She told me some things which made no sense - I will be prosperous in business and property next year. And how? Business was not looking good and property did not figure. I kept it to myself. Just a couple of weeks ago we decided to move house. My husband instigated it, not me, it came out of the blue.

And now the business is closing too. Yet today I met someone with whom I may strike up a new business alliance. Didn't I write elsewhere that luck is not luck, it is keeping open to opportunity and taking it when it comes. Is this the prosperous relationship that I need to forge?

So much change in the air. It doesn't feel bad, only neutral. Where will these winds of change take us? I'm keeping open.

The Map is not the Territory

This is a saying that NLP Practitioners like to use. What they are saying is that you draw your own map but the evidence for is it totally subjective, it is your evidence and yours alone. You may describe yourself as shy and lacking in confidence. Yet no one who knows you would say this about you. You are self-assured and engaging in social situations. So what is the truth? Are you shy and lacking in confidence? Well how could that be so? It is certainly not what the evidence suggests, and that evidence is what everyone else sees, a social charmer perhaps, easy in company. So if all your friends see you as confident and you alone think you are shy then the overwhelming evidence is that you are confident.

It is a way of looking at things in another light. Hypnotherapists call this "reframing."

Check out your internal evidence. It may be less persuasive than you at first thought.

It IS time to change

We should embrace change because it means we are not standing still. If we stand still the blood stops flowing, the system and chi stagnates and we can become ill. This is true also for the soul.

Change is stimulating, change forces us to look beyond self-imposed barriers and to re-assess. Even what seems like a negative change will have a positive aspect, particularly if you look for it, particularly if you want to find something positive. How many of us can say that about our lives? DO we really embrace change? Or do we just muddle along through, grumbling as we go? Do we always look at change in a negative light?

I wrote the above words for my Newsletter and it struck a chord and got me thinking. I don't embrace change, I know I don't! And yet I know how good it is for us. I know how my life would flow so much more smoothly if I accepted change more easily. Rigid thinking is what gets us into ruts and upsets and disappointments in life. Accepting what we have and what we are given by the universe means life is more comfortable.

Always striving for what we don't have is tough. Not that we shouldn't strive for excellence, and there is nothing wrong with a clear goal and a determination to get there. But life does not always go as we had thought it would. It is dealing with the unknowns, the knock-backs and the curved balls that throw us. If we only accepted and embraced the change at those points then how much anguish we would avoid.

That's my resolution for the coming year - "Embrace the Change!"