TSHP207: How to move on from a relationship

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What’s Coming This Episode?

The end of a relationship isn’t much fun, particularly if it was completely unexpected. It’s a time of deep reflection, and one when reassessment of our lives is needed. Let’s see what Sean and Ed have to say…

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Love is a Drug

In this weeks podcast Ed and I have revisited the topic of splitting up. We had an email which effectively was saying ‘how do you get over it and move on when someone you love has left you, but you are still in love with them. Relationship counselling is an active part of the therapeutic world and not everyone survives the splitting intact. Generally breaking up is hard to do but it doesn’t have to be that way if we realise the addictive nature of our love because love is a drug.

While it may be true that all psychological and emotional change starts from the same place, this is forgiveness or letting go, it just might a bit too raw at the outset to consider this.

Love addiction
Imagine that you are addicted to nicotine, maybe you have smoked twenty a day for many years. What you have done is taught you body and mind/brain system to tolerate and become dependent on the nicotine that is now included in the system. When you stop putting nicotine into your body system it then demands it and gets angry if it is not satiated. The ‘what you feed grows’ part of the problem is that if you focus on “i am going to have a cigarette” you are feeding the problem. However, it is also true that if you focus on the opposite “I will not have a cigarette, I will not have a cigarette” then you are still feeding the problem. The weirdest thing of all is that even if your mind tells you that it is wrong to smoke, if your emotions tell you that it smells and tastes horrible, you mind/body sustenance will still demand a cigarette. Your system is addicted and wants more nicotine.

When you meet someone and you fall in love your mind/brain creates the chemistry that makes you feel wonderful, you are in the grip of the love drug dopamine. Just as with nicotine you teach your system to tolerate and then become dependent on love, just as the smoker is dependent on nicotine. If the object of your love is withdrawn you will feel it’s loss as a craving. You are a love junkie.

If you are attempting to overcome nicotine addiction you have to go through the process of teaching your body that it does not need nicotine to feel ok, you have to take the nicotine out of the body/mind system so that it has a new normal and the addiction/craving abates.

If you are attempting to overcome love addiction you have to go through the process of teaching your body that or does not need the love to feel ok, you have to take the love/dopamine out of the body/mind system so that it has a new normal and the addiction/craving abates.

Removing temptation
When you come off a drug you need to avoid people that are using the drug because it will easily tempt you back. This often means changing your social circle and avoiding places where people will be using.

When you come off love you need to avoid the source of the addiction and anywhere that it might be. This often means changing your social circle and avoiding places where the source might be to tempt you back.

When ridding ourselves of love we will often need to come off social media, maybe block people or restrict our access. We may need to delete numbers and addresses to get as clean as we can.

We the need to go through the process or reformation as we establish this new strong sense of being who we are without the drug. Then we are clean.

Reintegration
Once the addiction has been removed and we are truly clean we may be able to be in the presence of the source of the addiction and not be tempted to use again.

Have you ever had the experience of going through the heartbreak of a split up and then, many years later, you meet that person again and something odd has happened, we now think, “oh my God whatever was I doing with that person?” Once the addiction has gone so has the craving we no longer need it in our lives.

Getting clean is a process
People talk about time and often we refer to the two year cycle which is common to many people. However it is easier to think in terms of process rather than time. The quicker we process the less time it takes.

After all is said and done we create our own dependence through our own addictions. We do not have to be addicted once we mindfully see what we are doing.

The only thing that I can see is a useful addiction is unconditional self regard. Self love is not arrogance it is the foundation bedrock of who we are. Strong foundation = strong person.

Be happy

Sean x

TSHP206: Why do we crave recognition?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

A listener sent us a message wondering why he seemed to crave validation. The issue stemmed, he thought, from childhood but has developed into more of an issue later in life. It got Sean and Ed to thinking so they sat down to talk about the subject of recognition and validation.

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Recognition

The word ‘Recognition’ means to re – cognate. So what is cognition? Cognition infers the mental (not emotional) action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought. The word thought is important here. We need to distinguish thought or cognition from feelings or emotions. Cognitions are not emotions – thoughts are not feelings. Yet, attached to thoughts are feelings. It is as though the thoughts are the structure or skeleton and the emotions are the covering or flesh of the cognition.

In psychotherapy we seek to enable change. Cognitions are structural and mainly fixed. Some might use the word factual. What that really means is that in therapy we do not change the structural or factual nature of the experienced self, or the recalled memory. What we change is the emotional connections to those cognitions; we change what we feel about our thoughts.

If a cognition is a thought or a memory then when we re-cognate (recognise) it is the thought plus the added current emotional interpretation that we put upon it. When I see your face I search my cognitive filing cabinet to re-cognate who you are, we call this recognition. I recognise you.

The emotions that I relate to that cognition may vary or even be inaccurate. Let’s say that I saw you last on Friday. At that point I have an emotional experience of you. I had feelings about you that told me how I feel about who you are. Now, today is Monday and I see you again. When I search my filing cabinet to re-cognate you I assume that the feelings I had about you on Friday still apply now on Monday. Though they may not be accurate because you may have had experiences over the weekend that have changed you in fundamental ways so that my feelings about you are no longer accurate or appropriate.

I guess that the bottom line is that we each create a structure in our minds of how we see the world that we use to make sense of what we experience. We then assume that the way that we see the world is the way that it is, it becomes our known facts. Yet, the world is always changing, nothing ever stays the same, everything changes, everything moves on.

When we re-cognate or recognise something we assume that we know what it is. We believe that we know it, that our feelings and beliefs about it are real, permanent and fixed. Those that are mindfully aware realise that every time we experience anything it is a new experience. We call this “beginners mind”. Then we meet every experience as though we have never had it, seen it, or been it before. The experience in this present moment is unique. To be unique means that no two experiences of the same thing could ever be the same thing. Change will always make them different.

Let me be clear. It might be that cognitively they may be or appear the same. Emotionally they are never the same because emotions can change, develop and grow.

At the outset the difference between what I think and what I feel may not be clear. We can confuse thoughts and feelings. Yet, they are fundamentally different. You could not measure a colour with a ruler because length and colour are totally different things. You cannot measure a thought with a feeling or a feeling with a thought. You can observe what you feel about your thoughts and observe what you think about your feelings.
This magic mix of thought and feeling gives us the wonder of our senses, perceptions, discernments, awareness, apprehension, anxieties, fears, learning, understanding, comprehension, enlightenment, insight, intelligence, joys, happiness, reason, reasoning, thinking, feeling and even consciousness.

To truly understand our recognition we need to be able to mindfully observer the interplay between our thoughts and our feelings. Then we need to observe these recognitions with beginners mind and question why we feel the way that we do.

This will relate to all external experiences but more importantly our experience of our self. When you look at you, when you recognise or re-cognate what are the feelings that you put on those cognitions? How do you feel about you?

If you do not like what you are feeling it is time to change it. That is mindfulness.

Be happy and recognise the good stuff

Take care

Sean x

TSHP205: Is walking good for the soul?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

There is overwhelming evidence that when we move our bodies we also feed our mind and give extra support to our brain. Can moderate exercise add up to a happy mind? What else can a good walk teach us?

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TSHP204: Why is the grass always greener on the other side?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Wouldn’t it be great if we lived here? Wouldn’t my life be perfect if I was with that person? Yep, the grass is always greener folks. Or is it? Why do we crave what we don’t have? Is it healthy or should we be looking for contentment with what we have?

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

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Good things in my neighbourhood

So, a client says to me, just as an aside, “why is it that we go on holiday to get away from where we live and the people who live where we holiday are going somewhere else for theirs?”

The idea of needing to get away would suggest that where we are is never really good enough. I get it that the act of taking a break, of doing something different, is stimulating and often relaxing but the question got me thinking about do we appreciate where we are and what we have? Are we able to enjoy the space that we live in?

I am reminded of the amount of time when Rie and I have been driving around Europe and have been spellbound by views and vistas. Yet there are many times when we have noted that we have views like this where we live. There is a beach on an island in the Florida Quays that people go to every evening to watch and marvel at the sunset. It’s a lovely sunset. But, when I watch the sun going down over Hilbre Island and the Welsh coast I am stunned on a daily basis.

I live on a peninsula named Wirral. It is known as the insular peninsula mainly because people, once they arrive, never leave. I know many people born in Wirral that have never travelled anywhere else, not even for a holiday. I note that those that do manage to leave often return after a few years as though they have been drawn back by some invisible elastic umbilicus that will not let them truly leave.

Wirral sticks out into the sea with estuaries either side. There is the river Mersey between Wirral and Liverpool and the River Dee between Wirral and Wales. Both estuaries empty into the sea so at the top end of Wirral there are beaches, and all the fun of the holiday trade. There seems to be a balance here of industry, residential and holiday occupation and accommodation.

Where do you live?
How well do you know your own area? What do you know about its history? The month on May is local community and history month, maybe a good time to get to know where you live?

I have lived all over the world and only came to Wirral with work and stayed because of Rie, and now I can’t think of a better place to live. Like most of the British I feel that the weather could be warmer and that the sun could shine some more but all in all, I live in heaven. Within minutes I can stroll down to the beach. In twenty minutes I can be through the tunnel and in the centre of Liverpool. In twenty-five minutes I can be in Chester and in forty minutes into the mountains of Wales. The motorway system that runs through the middle of Wirral connects us to the rest of the UK and through to Europe.

Once I became interested in the Wirral and began to look around it I found places that are gems. There are areas of richness and poverty, areas of beauty and the not so beautiful. I discovered that Paul Hollywood’s dad had a bakers in Wirral, that Lillie Savage was brought up here and Wirral has been home to Ian Astbury, Ian Botham, Chris Boardman, Fiona Bruce, Elvis Costello, Dixie Dean, Daniel Craig, Chris Farrell, Austin Healey, Paul Hollywood, Simon Rimmer, Eric Idle, Paul O’Grady, John Peel, Patricia Routledge, Harold Wilson, Glenda Jackson, the list goes on forever. And there was a Viking parliament in a place called Thingwall apparently a corruption on Ing meaning assembly and Voll meaning field- Amazing.

Anyway, I digress. My advice to you is to get to know where you are. Don’t become blind to what is around you and certainly enjoy your holidays in foreign parts but maybe begin to understand why people from other parts of the world might like to come to where you live for their annual holiday.

Take care and be happy

Sean x