TSHP260: How to break up and remain friends

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Sometimes relationships come to an end. It happens every day. They tend to end with a bang – an explosive finale from which there is no recovery. But can they end well, with both parties still on good terms? It can happen, but rarely does. So what’s the secret of a good break up?

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean mentioned his book Waking Up is Hard to Do
  • Ed remembered one of his fave movies – Annie Hall

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How to break up and stay friends

We have visited this topic on several occasions for a variety of reasons. Usually this is in response to a request from a listener after the Christmas and New Year festivities that mark the beginning of the divorce season. That period just after New Year happens again at the end of the summer holiday in September. It seems that when things are a bit rocky the pressure of being forced together in, what is supposed to be, family happiness exposes the cracks leading to the decision to part. Most partings are acrimonious and how ever good the intention usually turn into negative thoughts, feelings and actions.

When I arrived to record this weeks podcast Ed greeted me with the news that he had split up! It was not from his wife Bethan, I am glad to say, but from his business partner. He seems quite calm about it all and not phased, though he was the one that initiated the split, I am not sure what his, now, ex-partner is/was feeling.

We began talking about the whole issues of breaking up and if it is possible to do so amicably. Well the answer has to be, ‘yes it is’, however in my experience, working with couples, it would seem to be pretty rare. We often talk about the emotion of hate being the pole opposite of love. It is as though the energy just becomes reversed and often the more that a couple had love energy between them when they we together the more they have hate energy between them once they are apart.

Many Brits have a problem with the concept of hate and hatred as the national characteristic of emotional reserve precludes the use of such a strong emotion leading to alternative concepts of ‘strong dislike’ or statements of disapproval and so on.

I have often seen couples who after valiant efforts to repair a failing relationship finally decide that it is time to call it a day and move on. At that point many couples will share their desire to make this a clean break but to do it in civilised and friendly way. They will talk about the importance of getting this right for the children and minimising any potential damage. They acclaim their desire to become and maintain a friendship that would be open, and in some cases more open than their existing relationship.

A few, and I mean very few, are able to do this. We do not realise what a valiant effort it is to put to one side the short comings that led to the split in the first place. With most couples and in most cases in a short time when it comes to the splitting of resources, houses, shares, pensions and so on, the cracks begin to form. And, sadly, in most cases it ends up becoming nasty, often vicious and all the good will goes out of the window as the gloves come off and the fight begins.

However it should be sad that when couple do manage to maintain a friendship or the appearance of a friendship the affects can be profound and ripple out to children, friends, family, in-laws and so on.

When couples split, for whatever reason, often the fiends follow suit and go with one of the couple, dumping the other one in the process. All these things effect any relationship ending. As you can see from Ed’s story we are not simply talking about personal relationships when we talk about breaking up. Certainly business endings can be messy as can redundancy, retirement and or job loss through ill health. I see the same problems being played out at the ending of all types of relationships be they business, retirement, redundancy in fact any separation right up to our experience of death.

What we often see as the process of grief and mourning is the same for most endings. First there is a disbelief that this has actually happened and the problems in accepting that things will never be the same again. Then come the emotions. Often the glue that holds relationships together is emotion, even business relationships. When the relationship becomes unstuck the emotion is released. I see it like the energy that holds an atom together. We have no idea how strong that it is until it is split and then we have all the energy of an atomic explosion.

The third phase is anger. Anger happens when the mushroom cloud of free emotion becomes coherent and focused and can be aimed. This is the point of destruction. This is when it becomes nasty.

It is possible to have a positive separation. However, it takes mindfulness, good will, being prepared to be honest, polite, to listen and not to argue, keeping your emotions under control, being amicable with no revenge, without any expectation. In all a tall order for anyone.

One Christmas I was invited to a big family meal. At the table was a woman, next to her was her child and on the other side of her sat her ex-husband. Next to him was his new wife. All four of them were talking and laughing and the best of friends. While it was good to watch it also felt very odd and in some way not right. Of course it was right, it was social expectations that made it odd.

Hey ho, take care, and if you do split try and make it a positive ending

Sean x

TSHP259: A Podcast About Privacy & Trust

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Everyone is talking about privacy at the moment… but generally it’s in the form of digital privacy thanks to some clever (and necessary) new data laws pushed through by the EU. Digital privacy is one thing (we’re updating our policy here at LITP of course) but why are some people more private than others? Is it a lack of trust? Did an event earlier in their lives trigger it? Let’s dive in…

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean uses unroll.me a lot… plus there are lots of cool password apps out there
  • Ed suggested a re-think of your privacy settings on the various social media apps you might use

Stay in Touch

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Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

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How important is privacy to you?

On the 25th of May the European world changes and all those organisations and companies that keep records or our personal detail will now have to ask our permission to keep them and to explain on what basis they are keeping them. You may, as I have, been inundated with emails asking if you want to stay connected.

This change is true from large international corporations through to the local gardening club. The issues raised this week, as we at Live In The Present prepared to send out our confirmation emails to all those on our mailing list, was just how private do we need to be. Ed seems to have a completely open door policy where as I am a bit less so.

In this wonderful age of digital technology very little is private. All our details, even those of us that don’t want it so, are right there for everyone to see. Just Google yourself and see what you get back. Try putting in your phone number, look at the electoral role or your workplace.

I have spoken with several people who have gone onto sites like Tinder or similar only to find a family member, friend, colleague or neighbour bearing all. Anonymity seems a difficult thing to achieve.

Once you get into using social media you begin to advertise your life, relationships and family for all to see. This can make you open to approaches from fraudsters and chancers, advertisers and conmen or women, they now know what you are up to, who or what is important in your life.

One clever scam at the moment is for companies to send out mass emails asking if you want to remain on their list. Actually you may have never been on their least at all but you just click ‘yes ok’ and now you definitely are on their list and you have agreed to their conditions of practice and service.

The one thing that I am careful of is how I spend on line. If you use a debit card that is connected to your bank account a clever hacker can trace you transactions back and harvest your details, including passwords and pins. I have worked with several people who have had their accounts emptied and then had to fight with the bank to get reimbursed. However, if you use a credit card, that is not connected to your bank account, you do have protection and misuses will be reimbursed much easier.

The listening ear now seems to be with us. If I say ‘Hey Siri’ the iPad come to life, if I say ‘Alexa’ the dot comes to life. Now, if they can respond to my voice then they must be listening. The new questions is, ‘what are the listening to’ and ‘can other people piggy back on that and listen in as well’. There was a big issue when smart TVs came out in that they could not only hear but also see all that was going on in front of then.

There was a case recently reported where a couple had installed internal security cameras that had wifi capability so they could record the footage. Sadly, someone hacked into their system and their live was being displayed on line for many day until someone twigged and it was taken down. I guess if the Russians can hack the White House and influence the US elections then none of our systems are, or could be secure.

The issue for me is in accepting that our privacy is pretty much gone. You could avoid all forms of social media, the internet and smart technology but you are still out there on the system.

Ed and I both noted that we have each other on ‘find my friends’ and we can both log in and see where we are and what each of us is up to. Rie used ‘find my phone’ so that she knew when I was coming back from a run and could have breakfast waiting.

Over all, we now live in a digital age. We may be Able to limit, in some ways, how much of us is out there but we are, in reality, now all out there.

Take care be happy and use a credit card online

Sean x

TSHP258: Mental Health Awareness FAQ

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What’s Coming This Episode?

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week as I type this but in reality our awareness for friends and family that are suffering should extend 24/7, 356. Let’s dive in and discuss the ins and outs…

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

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Post Traumatic Growth (PTG)

Here we are in mental health week, the year goes by so fast.

I want, in this blog to consider if we can learn from what happens to us. Do we have the ability to change in a meaningful way? When I think about this it seems that the rules of our physical health also apply to our mental health.

Are we all mad or is it subjective?
We all have physical health. Some people’s physical health is good and we would describe them as ‘healthy’. Some people’s physical health is not so good and we would describe them as ‘unhealthy’. We all have mental health. Some people’s mind and emotions work well, what words do we use to describe such people?

Sane, happy, balanced, normal and so on.

Some people’s mind and emotions do not work well, what words do we use to describe such people?

Mad, unhappy, anxious, depressed, bonkers, lost the plot and so on

Physical health is a scale, a spectrum, a gradient or progression. Those at the bottom of the scale are unhealthy while those at the top of the scale are healthy. The blurred bit in the middle is that point where we cross from unhealthy to healthy. In reality throughout life we will probably cross that line several times from fitness to unfitness. We make life decisions that keep us predominantly or even permanently in the extreme of healthiness or unhealthiness.

Mental health works in exactly the same way. In this case the scale maybe seen as going from insane at the bottom to sane at the top, if those words work for you, or you might chose to use different ones. On this scale we also will move through the blurred bit in the middle and sometimes appear and feel sane and sometimes appear and feel insane.

On both these scales the blur in the middles is purely subjective. In the physical scale medicine tries to pin down the point where good health turns into bad health. The health services then try to nudge us into staying on the healthy side of the line. The line is forever moving as we are told that substances such as salt, sugar, fat, carbohydrates, and so on, are either good or bad for our health and fitness.

The blur on the mental health scale is the same and totally subjective. There will be times when we appear and feel insane and times when we appear and feel sane. The point where saneness changes into insaneness is in the eye of the beholder. The mental health services try to nudge us into staying on the sane side of the line. The thing is that in both scales the middle line is hidden. For me we are all insane and sane and spend our lives moving up and down the scale in reaction to events in life or in response to the changing chemistry in our brains.

On both the physical and the mental spectrums we are in motion, we are always changing, life is always changing, nothing ever stays the same. Often sanity is being able to observe the changes without being overwhelmed by them.

We know that the vast majority of people can effect their place on the physical scale through exercise, diet and positive action. There will always be those that have either a disease or a genetic propensity that encourages weight gain and/or ill health.

We also know that the vast majority of people can effect their place on the mental health scale through mindfulness, positive attitude and positive action. There will always be those that have either a disease or a genetic propensity that encourages stress, anxiety and mental ill health. The thing is, can we learn to be different or get better? The debate is on.

Post Traumatic Growth (PTG)
Rie and I were discussing Mental Health Week and relating it to the work that we do everyday. She mentioned a couple of articles that I have used as my resource of the week on the podcast. Both worth a read. One article suggests that in response to the traumatic events in life we learn to be different, that we experience post traumatic growth. The difference or growth is seen in a positive light as in we become more resilient, happier, more directed and motived and so on. The other article suggests that such changes are short lived and that people tend to return to type and that change is limited and in some cases people may even get worse. This second article hangs on what the researchers describe as a measure of happiness.

Can we measure happiness
The problem with psychology is that it is based in cognitive empiricism; it has to have a quantitative scale to measure things against. However, the experience of happiness is not cognitive it is emotional. You cannot measure a cognition with an emotion, a thought with a feeling, they are completely different things. Psychotherapy and mindfulness accept the subjectivity of feeling and do not need to measure the feelings of the person who is experiencing it on a scale other than that of the person’s current experience.

The argument in these two articles relates to the very thing that I have described in the scales above, we will move up and down the scales. The reason for the movement will normally either be pain or awareness. Either we have the awareness to initiate change or we experience sufficient pain emotionally, mentally, physically, and so on, that we are forced to change. Yet this can be a very repetitive process.

How often have we seen the yo-yo dieters who will continually cross the line as they put on weight and then diet to lose it only to put it all back on again. On the mental health scale we see people who will dip from happiness to anxiety and depression and back again.

It is not what happens, it is how we respond that counts
For the majority of people staying on the positive side of both the mental health and physical health spectrums is actually a choice, though often we do not realise that we have a choice. In most cases we simply react to the world around us. Mindfulness can give us the option to respond and not react.

Reactions are mindless – Responses are mindful

As our American cousins say,

‘We don’t have problems here we just have learning opportunities’

In response to both physical and mental trauma and/or diagnosis we can either grow and develop and see life’s experience as an opportunity to develop and learn or it overwhelms us and becomes a reason to retreat and close down.

When we are or have faced a trauma most of us will need help from an appropriate professional to enable us to understand what is happening and to get the best from our situation so that we can more to a stable resolution.

I would say that we can all learn and grow from what happens to us in life and that this can become a permanent positive change or development. However, it all hangs not on what happens but how we deal with it and that is the mindful part. In mindfulness we avoid instinctual reaction and choose to respond mindfully and get the most from every situation.

In mental health week we need to consider our own wellbeing and the decisions that we are making for our physical and mental health. It would also be good if we consider the wellbeing of others around us. Those that we live with, those that we work with and those in our community. Perhaps there are things that we can do mindfully that would be of benefit to ourselves and others.

Take care, be happy and healthy

Sean x

TSHP257: How to love the in-laws

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What’s Coming This Episode?

A relationship comes with many things, one of them being… more people! Building a relationship with your partner is worthwhile and takes work, but often we can forget that working on the relationship with his or her family can be just as crucial…

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

How to love the in-laws

It was like speed podcasting today. Ed was on a mission as he had to be at a meeting and I had arrived on my bike having left the car to be fitted with a tow bar to take a new bike rack so that we can go cycling in National Trust properties and Delamere forrest. And holidays can be even more exciting. This raised an issue that is connected to todays podcast and blog. The decision was do we get a two-bike carrier for just us two or do we get a bigger one so that when Pam, my mother in law, wants to come with us we can pop her bike on as well. So we decided on a three plus one. So we can take up to four bikes.

This week we had a listener email in and ask us to talk about In Laws and the magic of communication, or miscommunication that can occur when you meet your partners parents. The first thought in my head was the movie ‘Meet the Fockers’. Hey ho… I have heard that many stories about and from in laws in my work. In the comedy theatres they were always full of the mother in law jokes, remember Les Dawson?

In our case Rie does not have the issues of in laws to deal with and I am lucky to have Pam as my mother in law who is fabulous.

When working with couples in relationship therapy the in law issue can be a big one. Two things to consider…

…when you have a relationship with someone it is never with just them alone they come with baggage. That might actually mean kids from previous relationships, siblings, parents, extended family and so on. When we take someone on as a partner we are taking on their family as well. It is so good when everyone gets along and has good relationships. Ed is in a magic position in that both sets of in laws get on so well that they spend time together. It is great to attend their family get togethers and to see and feel everyone getting on so well.

However this is not always the case and I deal with a multitude of issues with couples that come from the way that they were brought up in their natal family. Often there is an in law mismatch. This can be based in race, colour and ethnicity, in class or caste, in perceived intellectual or status positions and differences, financial or the Mrs Bucket based snobbery.

Are you gaining a son or losing a daughter?

When your child meets another person they also meet another family. How do you feel if they chose to spend more time with them than they do with you? Do you feel that you have gained another child into your life who is enhancing your family? Or does it feel that you have just lost your child to the other family?

Different cultures and religions will have prescribed ideas as to how and what happens once children get married. Often the two family cultures and ideas do not mix and the ‘other’ family can be seen as the enemy rather than friends.

Do we become our parents?

Take a good look at your partner parents. The chances are that your partner will become more like their parents over time. When I was young I was always told to look at a girls mum because that was what she would end up like. I guess that she could just as easily ended up just like her dad. I reckon that when it comes to our parents that we either end up just like or reject it all and become the opposite.

More importantly it is becoming aware of the values and ideas of the other family and deciding if they match with yours. People come to grief over differences in ideas about money, parenting, fidelity and friendships, in fact all those things that we might do feel or believe differently to our partner and our partner’s family and that might include politics and religion.

It is all to do with families and in laws are our family. We have just taken them on with our partner. It is not so much ‘love me love my dog’, as ‘love me love my parents’. When you do life is so much easier.

Take care be happy and love the in laws

Sean x

TSHP256: The Sound of Silence

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Silence is a funny thing. For most people, it simply doesn’t exist. As soon as we’re awake the TV or radio is on and the phone is pinging away with notifications. So why have we arrived at this place where so many of us are desperate to fill every available slot in our diary with *something*? Pray silence please…

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

The knowing silence can be a teacher

On the podcast this week Ed and I were asked to talk about silence. Avoiding the desire to just sit in silence for half an hour, we looked at what it means to avoid noise.

It made me laugh because I had just come off line talking with someone who had just completed a Vipassana ten day sit. This includes being in noble silence (this is not talking and no eye contact) for ten days and 110 hours of meditation. When you first do something like this the first few days can be very difficult because most of us cannot keep our mouths shut. Even when people are alone they talk to themselves or add some form of noise in the form of media.

In the silence I hear the answers to my problems

How often do you avoid silence? How often to you fill your world and your ears with noise? Why do you need to not attend to the inner voice?

Think about the average day. Often we will wake to the noise of an alarm clock and, step straight into the busy-ness of life. Maybe that’s meeting the needs of the kids, getting them to school and there maybe animals to be fed and not forgetting our selves and our needs.

In the shower we might have music playing, then over breakfast the television or radio is telling us the news. On the way to the kids school and us to work, or where ever, is the radio/music on in car. Once we get to our destination there is then the noise of the day. And so it goes on until our head once again hits the pillow, though often that time may not be silent either because the noises of the day can often still be ringing in our head and may even intrude into our dream world as well.

I have been on many silent retreats and meditation courses. To begin with it was a shock. I found the silence difficult and needed to say things and have people say things to me, as if in someway it would prove to me that I did actually exist. It was as though I needed other people to validate my existence. In the silence, that is the rule of most programmes, I would begin to hear another sound, it was the sound of myself.

Once the noise of the outside world stops all that there is, is the inner noise. All the bits of me that I had been avoiding by filling my space with the noise of life or other people’s problems, suddenly assert itself and shout “me too”. Then the letting go begins. Often an emotional out pouring or abreaction

After a few days on a retreat I settle into the true silence, and something that I have come to know as “The Knowing Silence” would engulf me in a warm sea of energy. And in that peace of external and internal silence I would begin to hear the answers to my problems.

By the end of the programme, or course, when we are allowed to speak again, I often feel like I don’t really have anything to say. And, as I go back into the world I have the heightened awareness of the meaninglessness of most sound, most conversation, and most media. With it comes the realisation that for most of us external noise is the thing that we use to avoid facing up to and, dealing with our inner needs.

So how about today you try to find somewhere quiet, sit, close you eyes, relax, let go of the world and, just for a few minutes, listen to you. You might be surprised at what you might hear! Possibly even some answers to your problems or issues.

Take care and be happy

Sean x