TSHP412: Time to Rebuild Community

What’s Coming This Episode?

The pandemic has brought us some tremendous lows, but it did also give rise to some fantastic community action. As our worlds shrunk, we were forced to explore our neighbourhoods and reconnect with our neighbours. How can we harness that before life returns to ‘normal’?

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Time to rebuild community

During the epidemic our ability to meet and interact with each has been severely diminished. I attended an online funeral on Monday and it really brought home to me just meaningless an online experience could be and feel compared with the actual smell, touch experience of actually being there. It was as though I was watching a film or a news report. It got me thinking about although technology is very clever and allows us to do so much it can leave us socially and emotionally impoverished. Then I was reading about the is growing evidence that the past year of lockdowns has had an impact on young children’s language skills leaving an increased number of four and five year olds needing help with language.

While the government is putting money into supporting these children there are many areas of their development that will be lost to them. Well, if not lost they will need to do some serious catching up. Alongside reading ability and language we have to add social skills. There has been less or no contact with grandparents, social distancing from friends and family, no play dates. Plus, the wearing of face coverings in public have left children less exposed to conversations and everyday experiences and facial body language. Children will need a lot of support from us all if they are to avoid the deficits that could well be affecting them right now and in their future development.

So, if that is true for the kids what about the rest of us. Many of our relationships will have become changed and some may be broken or fractured by the lack of nurturing that is required to maintain normal relationships. Some of us have felt completely isolated, some have become reclusive. Others have felt abandoned. As one client put it, ‘I now see my true value to people. Those that have cared have kept in touch and to others I have been completely forgotten. How am I supposed to go back to work with these people and pretend that we do have a relationship?’

This might be a good time to begin to rebuild relationships. Perhaps we need to catch up with friends and colleagues, check out how they have been doing and share our own experiences. These relationships have been and are the basis of our community and sense of being together. It can odd going back into the office after a two week holiday and that feeling of needing to catch up and get back in the groove. After months of lockdown and furlough it is likely to feel very strange.

It is good to remember that the key to rebuilding a relationship is listening. People need to talk and share as much as we do. Giving them the space to say what they need to draws them in and recreates their sense of value. In most cases they will then give you the value and ask, ‘what’s about you?’.

In the lane that I live there is an unused plot of land. Some of the neighbours have started a type of community allotment and suggested that I should come on over and bring a spade. This seems like the sort of project that will help rebuild the community around us after all being isolated and locked down in our bubbles.

So my resource for the week is to get out your address book, though these days it would be open your contacts, and decide who you need to contact. This might begin with a message or a call and perhaps a meet up. How much better will your working relationships be if you do a bit of rebuilding before you get back into the workplace?

Take care and start or keep talking
Sean x

TSHP411: Why do we no longer trust our sense of smell?

What’s Coming This Episode?

Our sense of smell evolved to tell us about the world around us. We could tell if something had gone off, was dangerous or poisonous. It told us about other people and about ourselves. Most of all our sense of smell evolved to keep us safe. So what’s gone wrong? We cover our smells with strange potions and wash away oils that our body produces daily.

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Why do we no longer trust our sense of smell?

Our sense of smell evolved to tell us about the world around us. We could tell if something had gone off, was dangerous or poisonous. It told us about other people and about ourselves. Most of all our sense of smell evolved to keep us safe.

Where has our smell gone?
For millions of years people smelled like people and no one thought that it was odd. People like other animal washed on a regular basis, perhaps not as often as we do now, but that was seen and experienced as normal and just as it should be. The ability to smell someone else was a valued and real part of communication. Smell is an emotional marker. We can smell fear, unhappiness, depression, anxiety, anger, frustration, illness and disease. Smell has been a vital part of evolution in all species since time began.

I was moved to think about this when researchers began to recognise that one significant sense missing from our online communication during Covid 19 was that we could not smell the person that we were talking with. Many animals have a highly developed sense of smell, dogs being the greatest example. We now have diagnosis dogs that can smell cancers and even covid. But something happened when we humans were taught that smelling like the real world and like real people was bad. We have chosen to suppress our natural scents with artificial chemicals. Sadly we now know that many of these chemicals are damaging our bodies, endocrine systems and some are even carcinogenic. Yet these false scents are pushed at us by clever media manipulators, big pharma and advertising capitalists.

In the 1950s of my childhood, in post Second World War of deprivation, it was normal for most people in the UK to have a bath once a week. There were no central heating systems and hot water was created through a coal fired boiler or an immersion heater. This did not stop them having a daily strip wash with water from the kettle. Some better off people had a wall heater such as an Ascot that could give you instant hot water. These were gas fed devices. The same was true with hair washing that for most was also once a week. Some clever wag invented the dry shampoo which was like talcum powder put on the hair and combed out. Useful for those of us with greasy hair. However, there were no anti deodorants and perfumes or the ability to have a daily shower.

Now, normal smelling people, that is people who actually smell like people and not like chemicals, are nolonger the normal everyday occurrence. Consider that when you can smell people who smell like people your level of communication and understanding is enhanced. When people are eroticised they give off the pheromones of arousal that means we know they are sexually attracted to us. In the modern chemical world perfumes are used to create an attractive smell. Many perfumes carry hormone taken from the sex glands of animals that can now communicate with another person that we are aroused when we are not and then we can’t understand why they wont take no for an answer.

Back to the 1950s and 60,s someone realised that making people not smell like people was big business. The first were the adverts where someone walked into a room funk of people and one person whispered to another ‘B.O’. B.O. stood for body odour. Within months people where rushing to buy the new deodorants. Next came the bad breath campaign. This culminated into the drive to obtain the ‘Colgate ring of confidence’.

As deodorants grew in popularity there developed a drive to tel women that to smell like a woman was a bad thing. Bring on the ‘Fem Fresh’. Now we were told that a vagina should not smell like a vagina but like a bunch of flowers. At the same time boxer Henry Cooper appeared on adverts for the perfume Brut ‘splash it on all over’ then we had ‘Blue Stratos’. The clever adverts now tell us that we have gone ‘Nose blind’ and that our house should not smell like us or like our houses but of chemicals that are now seen as acceptable. The thing that no one seems to have taken into account is how much our loss of natural smell would our could effect our normal everyday communication and understanding prof other people.

Back along in the 1960s we all burned incense sticks and cones until it was discovered that they were carcinogenic. Then we had candles followed by various oils burners and diffusers pumping pour chemical into our home environments. Oh, I should also mention the mass of smells added to polished and soaps and other chemicals that we use in our houses.

You may never have heard of Phthalates. These are really nasty chemicals that are included in most of the chemical smells that we experience every day. In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type II diabetes, low IQ, neurodevelopment issues, behavioural issues, autism spectrum disorders, altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. (The Guardian)

Health Effects of Phthalates
There is evidence that Phthalates cause s loss of fertility and prostate issues and cancers. When combined at low levels, some phthalates can act together to cause similar harm as seen with exposure to just one phthalate at high levels. Phthalate exposures in humans has been linked to changes in sex hormone levels, altered development of genitals, and low sperm count and quality.

How does phthalates affect the environment?
Some phthalates are bioaccumulative and have been detected in aquatic organisms. For example, BBP (Phthalates) has been shown to be toxic to aquatic organisms and may cause long-term adverse effects in aquatic environments. Studies suggest BBP may have endocrine disrupting effects in fish worldwide.

I guess that what I am saying is that it is okay to smell like you and not like a phthalate. You don’t see chimpanzees rushing around in states of stress because they smell like chimpanzees. I am not suggesting that we stop washing. It is okay to be clean but not chemically drowned.

Take care and enjoy your armpits

Sean x

TSHP410: Coming Out Of Hibernation

What’s Coming This Episode?

Lockdown is ending the UK and we’re all coming out of our shells. Some are doing it quickly and some are being far more cautious. What should we be thinking about as we emerge back onto our high streets and into the gardens (and homes, eventually) of friends and family?

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

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Coming Out Of Hibernation

Watching those crowds of queuing for shops, pubs and food outlets and then listening to the interviews its was as though we are coming out of a long dark winter into a new spring. That made me think about the normal winter blues and how happy we all are to see the sun again. So the question is, is hibernation normal for Hunan’s? Well, the answer is yes, but not sleeping like a bear. More like slowing down and losing some energy that we would normally get from the sun light. But, this years has been winter with knobs on as Covid has forced us to change our normal behaviours. WE have discovered that a Covid winter is is much worse than a normal winter.

So, the Covid winter is over. It seems to have been a long time coming as the warm weather stretches out before us. The clocks have gone forward and we need to enjoy this summer as never before. We have until the clocks go back in October to enjoy it. What wil you do with it? 

Getting your mood up

The effect of the lack of light has led to the inevitable drop in our level of Vitamin D, and a subsequent drop in our level of serotonin. This in a normal winter leads to feelings of down-ness often described as SAD syndrome. Sometimes I wonder why we bothered to move away from the equator where the levels of vitamin D are naturally high and SAD syndrome has never been heard of. This year Covid had added an extra layer and had an extra effect. Many people are more down they they would normally be at this time of year.

Cutting the carbs

In the cold, damp and dark of winter we seek comfort that through evolution has been given to us by eating carbohydrates. In winter most diets become more stodgy as our level of carbs increases. The common access carbs is in cake, bread, pastas, puddings, biscuits, and so on. The magic is that carbs kick your brain into producing endorphins and serotonin that make you feel good which is why they are called comfort food.

Carbs = comfort

Now, lots of us have been doing then Covid 5k. That is not a run it is the amount of weight that we have put on during covid lockdown. Now we need to get moving, adjust the diet and get rid of it. The magic is that if you exercise out of door not only will you be burning off those calories but you will be building you vitamin D stores as well.

Just twenty minutes of raised heart rate will make your brain secrete happy hormone and endorphins that will make you feel happier. The drive from the health authorities is to get everyone walking for at least half an hour a day. If we all did this we reduce our levels of illness, improve our mental health, loose some weight and get happier. Of course it goes without saying that it would also save the NHS time and money.

Take a holiday

That is easy to say but harder to do. Our summer holiday give most of us the opportunity to reset our system and replenish our emotions. We could go away to the sun and get our endorphin hit that way though this year it may be all in the UK. For some it may even be a staycation at home. It might work better for us if this year we take our main holiday in the winter. Would it not make more sense to enjoy the British summer at home, even if it is a bit wet it still has long days of sunlight. Then next when it is dark and cold and the world has opened up again we could jump onto a plane and go somewhere hot and sunny. If we did that we would boost our Vitamin D in the winter, increase our serotonin production and keep our mood raised.

Time to get social

Many of us, either individually or as families, have been living like hermits. Now is the time to get out and meet people or invite people in. It would be garden first and then indoor meals and parties. We need to. Socialise, have parties, cook meals and enjoy the company of others. Being with others, sharing the feeling of belonging and sharing fun and laughter all increase our levels of happiness which also affects our brain chemistry and mood. They call it Hyyge in Sweden.

Make love

Did you know that normally when we have particularly dark and cold winter that birth rates can rise by up to 18%. We do know that good positive love making does raise the endorphins and increases happiness. It also helps us to keep warm on a cold night. However, the enforced lockdown of covid has led, in the USA, to the lowest conception rate for over one hundred years. Perhaps, after lockdown, with rising rates of serotonin people’s mood will rise and we may even see a post covid baby boom.

Speed up

Most of nature takes a break in the winter.  The one species that does not slow down, that carries on in a mad dash, is us human beings. Well not this year. I have watched so many people almost grind to a halt, doing less and less as the months have gone by. This has often been the symptoms of depression. Now we need to get going again. We need to do all those things that we have been putting off. Get out in the garden, cut the grass, paint those window frames. Strangely though many people now need to go and see relatives and friends some are scared and have developed a social phobia. We may still need to take precautions and be Covid safe b it we need to get a move on and re-establish our communities and society.

A normal winter could be our chance to rest and relax looking forward to the hoy of Christmas and the New Year. A time to gather around log fires and get Hyyge. A time enjoy the joy of story telling, socialisation, and developing family relationships and friendships. A time to play games and chat about life and sharing our experiences. The time to enjoy winter foods, puddings custard and cake. For many Covid a nonsense of all that.

It is time to step out of those winter clothes and as the last frosts of winter come to an end get outside, socialise, build vitamin D and have some fun.

Be happy and do what you need to ensure you enjoy your summer so that next winter you can enjoy the winter wonderland.

Take care

Sean x

A Path Travelled

This week in the podcast we had another guest, Alison Blackler a Transformational Mind Coach and founder of 2-minds who has just published her first book’, A Path Travelled. She has a very varied practice that spans from one to one coaching, corporate management coaching and working with offenders in prisons plus writing articles for the local press. 

Her book is written from her own experience of life and her experience of working with her many clients. A Path Travelled gives the reader an opportunity to review, question and adjust their life experience, through insights and exercises so that they can move towards their own fulfilment.

In every life, each person is on their own path. It is the path of life that goes from birth to death. The nature of the path, the route, and the terrain is, in many ways dictated and created by us the individual traveller. Most people never realise this and often remain on the path that they inherited from their the parents, class, nationality, ethnicity, orientation and so on. Much unhappiness in the world is the result of individuals trying to stay on paths that they do not really belong on. They may never realise or understand why they are unhappy. The current epidemic of anxiety and depression that swamps humanity is often the result of people attempting to live lives and stay in paths that are not good for them.

When people say things like ‘life is a bitch and then you die’ they describe exactly people being on the wrong path. The positive alternative might be ‘life is a joy and eventually and naturally you come to the joyful end of your path’. This can only happen when you are on the right path for you.

Throughout time there have been guides that we meet on our path that attempt to show us, the travellers, which way to go.  To suggests ways in which we might improve or develop our path. When we get it right we can follow a path, live a life, that is self fulfilling that makes us happy. Informally these guides have been the wise ones, who had insight and empathy, knowledge and wisdom. They were the shaman, guru, religious leader, scientists, philosophers, psychotherapists, coaches and so on. 

A guide is anyone who can see a bit further up the path than we can. Someone who can explain the likely consequence of our actions as individuals, as a society or as a race. Good guides and teacher encourage us to face up to problems and dilemmas. They ask us questions such as…

What has your path been like? Have you enjoyed it? Where did it begin? Why has it followed the course that it has? If you started out again on a path would you follow the same route? If ‘yes’, then, good luck enjoy it and do more of it? If ‘no’ then, how can you change it and ensure that the remainder of your journey is on a path that you might actually like and enjoy? 

The current iteration of the guide is the coach’. It is a growing trend in therapy. Good coaches enable us to reflect, question, enquire, resolve and move towards getting our lives right for us.

As long as we enjoy our path it is the right one to be on. When we wake in the morning with apprehension of the day ahead our path is probably not the right one. Perhaps time to go and see a coach.

Take care, be happy and follow your path.

Sean x

TSHP409: A Path Travelled continued, with special guest Alison Blackler

What’s Coming This Episode?

We were delighted to welcome back Alison Blackler to the show. Alison is a transformational mind coach, facilitator and author. Her unique approach helps individuals and teams to explore, recognise and understand why we think like we do. She describes herself as having a powerful toolkit to help to uncover the root of challenges.

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

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TSHP408: Breaking out – What have we learned from Covid-19 & lockdown?

What’s Coming This Episode?

Is it over?! Can we go out? Apparently so… lockdown is gradually coming to an end in the UK. It’s been a heck of a year and quite a cold, lonely winter for most of us. As we reintroduce ourselves to our friends, family and colleagues it’s time to have a think about what we’ve learned over the past 12 months. What will stick and what can go?

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

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Breaking out – What have we learned from Covid-19 and lockdown?

Are we out of jail? 

People tell me that being in lockdown has been like being in jail. Well, having worked in the prison service it has not really been like being an inmate more that some of out basic freedoms have been lessened. For about the last eighteen months we have been locked down, that is isolated, restricted and confined due to and because of the infective nature of the Covid-19 virus. This process of feeling trapped and having little control and then finding the sensation of freedom as lockdown is lifted is very much like the process we have been going through over the last ten podcasts. The Ten Steps of the Live In The Present book and course are all about letting go of negative past, establishing positive experience in the present and then creating what it is that we really truly do want in the future. 

Positive: The one thing that lockdown has given us has been the time to reflect an review where we are up to and what it is that we might like to do next. For so many people this has been a ,I’ve changing experience.

Why did this happen in the first place?

People have differing ideas as to what this virus has been about. Some people tell me that the lockdown has been a genuine effort by the authorities to limit the spread of a deadly disease and save as many lives as possible. Reducing the pressure on the NHS and other support services to ensure that those in the most serious need are attended to.

Others tell me that we have all been duped by an attempt to control ‘us’ by ‘them’. Who the ‘them’ is seems to vary depending on who I talk to. It is either a bid for global domination by forces that are sinister but hidden. A plan by the Chinese, the Russian or whoever to dominate the world.  A plot by big pharma to control us and them make even more money. A bid to take control of the planet and enslave us all. There are those that believe that the vaccines are seeded with micro chips that will lead to our brains being controlled by whoever, that varies as well. It goes on…

I have my own ideas as to how the virus started and also why we have responded in the way that we have. But, however and whatever we think about Covid-19 it is here. It is a pandemic that is mutating, it does kill people and it is very infectious. The world is full of viruses there have been the many millions that have gone before and millions that will come in the future. In my own lifetime I have seen the devastation of small pox and polio. As children we queued on the council estate to get inoculated. 

Positive: We have an amazing medical system. We have amazing scientists and unless this is all one big plot they are here to help us all at this time of crisis. 

At the moment we are looking at the freedom of leaving the jail of lockdown and moving back into a world of normal behaviour. I guess the world that we are coming out to is quite different to the one that we left behind when we went in. Businesses and jobs have gone, shops have closed and the way that we shop, interact and live will probably never be the same again. At the moment we don’t know how it will go, when it will be really safe to go on foreign holidays, cuddle people and party with friends. We have yet to learn about this new world and how we will interact with it. Some people will rush to social venues and party like crazy while some will sit back observing with fear and trepidation and may not socialise gain for years if ever.

Positive: The pandemic has made us review our relationships and the importance of community. Families have reconnected and communities come together. The incidence of people showing that they care bay raising money and sim pole acts of kindness and caring have been everywhere – amazing!

I am not sure that anything that happens in life is accidental and suspect that the universe works with intelligence. I would suggest that the things that happen in life are, to the awake mind, learning opportunities that we can benefit from. To the asleep mind they are just problems. When we encounter problems or obstacles in our path the awake mind finds solutions, learns, grows and moves on. The asleep mind seeks to find something or someone to blame, holds grudges, protests and embeds their minds in bitterness and seeks retribution.

This all leads me to ask a few questions. These questions have been the subject of much of my therapy work undertaken over these last 18 months. This has been a process of people needing face themselves and their relationships including their relationship with themselves and how they will deal with their future. Some people have, in response to the pandemic, contracted and drawn into themselves or into groups of nationalism  or even smaller groups of identities of colour, race, creed, belief and so on. This attitude only serves to create mindsets of ‘us’ and ‘them’ leading to further antagonism, unhappiness and the continued fracturing of humanity. On the other hand others have chosen to expand their attitudes and horizons and move outwards. They have found ways to support and help others, ensuring that people’s needs have been met. People have been fed and looked after.  Ultimately these people are ensuring that those who need and desire the vaccine have access to it wherever they are in the world rich or poor.

If we all look after each other we will all be okay

Q 1) What was your Jail?

The jail of lockdown never really existed it was and is in our heads. Thoughts become things. I get it that some people have had, what I call, Covid burn out but over all kit has been an easy ride for most people. We have been housed, fed, been warm and flooded with entertainment. Unlike previous generations who during pandemic and wars were totally confined with no resources and no ability to communicate or to know what is going on we have been able to keep in touch with loved ones friends and family and the world at large through our amazing technology.

Positive: Our technology is amazing. I am writing this on an iPad. I don’t know how it works and in many ways I am in awe of it and it’s abilities. On this eleven inch screen I can watch films and TV, listen to the radios, music, audio books and podcasts, I can play games, talk to friends anywhere in the world. I can work, see clients anywhere in the world. I can find new recipes and even plan what I will do when this is all over. 

I know that many people will now say. ‘Well what if we didn’t have technology or were too old to understand it and use it?’. I get that. I was so happy to see people repurposing their unused tech for families that did not have devices allowing kids to attend school online and the families to get connected. Perhaps our learning in this might be that we should ensure, where possible, that older people do have the opportunity to become tech savvy. One interesting idea that this realises is should the internet be treated as an essential service just as we do with electricity and water?

Q2) What does it mean to you to be out of jail?

What will you do now? Will you return to your work place? Will you rich to the restaurants and pubs, head for a holiday, meet with family and friends?

Just as animals come out of winter hibernation into the new days of spring we are coming out of the darkness of lockdown into the light of freedom, albeit in increments. What does this mean to you? What will you do next?

Many of us have being doing the Covid 10K. That is not the run it is the 10K that we have put on in weight by being inactive, eating/drinking too much and not moving enough. 

Positive: you do not have to recreate Groundhog Day, you have choice. Some choices you may not have realised before lockdown. Now is the time to start again and decide what you do next. If you go back to the Ten Steps Course the issues is what do you really, really, really want? That takes me to my last question…

3) What have you learned?

Learning is an ongoing process. So, even if you feel unsure of what lockdown has taught you now maybe the time to sit and review it. What has been good? What has been bad? What could you have done better?

Life is about learning. 

When we stop learning we die either actually or metaphorically. 

I have worked with many people who have used this time of lockdown to review and audit their lives. This has led to decisions to change their lives from finding a new job, selling a house, ending a relationship, starting a relationship, deciding to retrain or go back into education, taking on new interests and hobbies, exercise regimes, weight loss programmes and so on.

Positive: This is the most important part of human consciousness, we are learning machines, it is just that we don’t realise it. Through consistent and persistent behaviour we can become whoever and whatever we want to be. As you read this you are the sum total of all that you have learned since the moment of your birth. What you decide to learn now will create what you will become in the future. The only limit is your imagination.

The world is what you make it

So the world has changed and we can now choose to work together, support each other and create a better world to be in. Or, we can slip into recrimination and bitterness that has, too many times, driven the human race to wars, suffering and destruction. 

As you come out of lockdown we have choice. You can adhere to rules and limit infection or forget the rules and see how it goes. The choice is yours to make.

Whatever your choice be happy and smile and enjoy your freedom

Take care

Sean x