Archive for category: Blog

And, here we are again! The season of goodwill is upon us. Why do we need to wait for Christmas to offer our fellow human beings goodwill? What is the matter with 364 other days of the year? It gives a lot of meaning to the song “I wish it could be Christmas everyday”.

A friend of mine will hold his mother’s funeral on the 23^rd. The idea of saying have a happy Christmas seems completely wrong. For so many people Christmas is not a good time. It is a time when people revisit losses and bereavements. Some will be completely alone with not even a Christmas dinner to enjoy and there will be many in the cold on the street with nowhere to be.

Giving

Over all Christmas should, for me, be a time of giving. I see the over consumerism that we have developed leading to demands and critical disappointments. We cease to see the love behind the gift and only the gift itself.

But, how is it for you?

Happy time

Is it that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus? Or is it that you recognise the winter solstice and acknowledge the end of the darkness and the change to shorter nights and longer day as the light increases. Is it that you simply see this as time of sharing, perhaps with family and friends. A time of warmth and social connection. Is it that you see this as a time when you get wonderful presents and maybe that you also give wonderful presents, a time of giving and receiving.

Not so good a time

Perhaps this is not such a good time. It might be the first Christmas without someone. Maybe it reminds you of bad times in the past or negative childhood memories. Some people just want to be on their own at Christmas and get accused of being miserable if the are.

A really bad time

Someone who is homeless is unlikely to be reading this and maybe having the worst time of their lives. There are children in war zones, old people living alone, the poor, deprived and the needy. People who are terminal or coming to the end of their life Christmas might no be a very good time at all. Children in hospitals. Families with none or very little money.

For many people this is not the most wonderful time of the year

Getting the best

Whatever Christmas means for you and whatever your stating point what is the very best that you can get from it?

All the evidence would point to the physiological and psychological benefits that come from the act of giving. Giving may be to those that are immediately around you. It may be that you are able to contribute in some way to those around you that have so much less. Who in your street or vicinity is living alone and may really appreciate a Christmas dinner, a visit or a little present. It may be too much for you to invite people into your home but you can contribute to the homeless and those that have nothing with food, money, presents or time. If people are coming to you or you have a family to cater for creating a loving and welcome ambiance is a real act of love at this time.

If you have nothing material to give you always have love. The most precious gift of all.

What about you?

It is important when you look at the ideas of giving and loving this Christmas to look after yourself as well. What are you going to give yourself this Christmas? What are you doing for you this Christmas? The phrase ‘Charity begins at home’ starts with you. None of us can look after other people, whoever they are, if we do not look after ourselves first.

Time to consider what you want and what you need this Christmas as well as what everyone else wants and what everybody else needs.

Be happy and enjoy it

Take care

Sean

When I was young, older people seemed really old. At the age of ten a thirty year old person seemed old and anyone over fifty was ancient, after that they were the walking dead. How the process of ageing changes that perspective. At the age of thirty, ten years olds are children, at forty twenty years olds don’t know what they are talking about. By the time you get to ninety they must all seem so young, even those sixty year olds.

The weird thing is that, in the main, from the inside, whatever age you are, you do not feel any older. I am reminded of my adopted Grannie Edna who at the age of 96 told me how she was eighteen inside. She would say, ‘I am really eighteen it is just that this body doesn’t work properly’.

Ed, approaching forty, needed to do this podcast. He is feeling a bit different to the way he did ten years ago. I think that it is the turn of each decade that effects people. It is the years with noughts on 20, 30, 40, and so on that have the effect. Being 29 seems very different to being 30 just as 59 seems very different to being 60 and I guess 99 seems very different to being 100.

I don’t think that age has ever really been the problem that it seems to be today. Previous generations grew old and wrinkly and accepted that age was a natural process. In some cultures old people were, and sometimes still are, highly respected and revered. The current drive to maintain, at least the appearance of youth has devalued and denigrating ageing. Ageing these days seems to viewed more as an illness that needs to be treated rather than a process that needs to be understood and enjoyed.

The reality is that the ageing process begins at the moment of our birth and we can’t stop. It doesn’t matter how much we lift, tuck or Botox we are only ever changing what the outside looks like. The changes of ageing that are taking place below the skin are the ones that mark the passing of time and our age.

Some of us will be genetically programmed to age slower and/or live longer. For some both the quality and the length of life will be determined by life style choices. Others will suffer illness or trauma. If we look at this mindfully we come back to the same place…

…it is never what happens that counts but how we respond to it that is important.

At any age you can have a young mind or an old mind. Our attitudes to ageing and our bodies, our experience and our happiness are not about our bodies it is to do with our choice to live happily or unhappily. Unhappy people can feel older and less able and allow themselves to become progressively less well and mobile and so on.

My advice to staying young is to remain engaged, remain interested, embrace life long learning and keep going. Get a hobby, start a business, do some charity work, learn a new skill, write a book, travel…whatever you do don’t stop learning.

If you continue to learn you will continue to create new brain cells. If you have new brain cells you will have a bigger and a younger brain. If you have a younger brain you will have younger ideas. If you have younger ideas you will live a younger life. If you live a young life you feel younger and stay younger, it doesn’t matter how old you become in years.

With the people that I see there are forty year ‘old’ people and eighty year ‘young’ people. The more I see the more I realise that age is a state of mind not a state of time or of body. As they say you are as young as you feel.

Take care and be forever young

Sean x

The theory of war is, for me, like the theory of evolution. If you believe in the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’, then, war makes sense. If, on the other hand you believe in evolution through co-operation then, war becomes a meaningless act of stupidity. The human dilemma seems to be co-operation versus competition. When football players take to the pitch, each team with their own followers, it is like a mini war with the victors and the vanquished. The creation of the United Nations, the European Community, the Pan African Congress and so on are examples of co-operation. The same is true about families that are either at war or in co-operation. This is also true for corporations, companies, public utilities, institutions etc, not to mention religions. 

It seems that there are always wars or rumours of wars at any time somewhere in the world. Can we say that war is a natural state of being for human kind? Well it is once we abandon the concept of co-operation. Currently their are conflicts in Palestine, Israel, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Hong Kong, Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, Cameroon, Ukraine, Venezuela and they are only those that I am aware of. It would seem that us humans are potentially a violent and warlike lot.  

Of course other animals do have conflicts and fights. Troops of chimpanzees live in a territory that they will defend. They may also attempt to take away territory from a neighbouring troop and create a conflict between the troops. Primates steal, attack, mug, rape and assault just like humans. When do such acts, fights, conflicts, or battles become a war? 

War, as opposed to a conflict, involves an extended period of fighting between, ethnic groups, regions, countries or other groups of people. A war generally involves the use of serious weapons, with organised military or militia with planned intent and goals. This may include terrorist or guerrilla actions. War is when a nation, or a belief group, be they political or religious enforces its rights, beliefs or demands on others by use of force. The force or threat maybe implied or actual, just like in bullying or coercion. 

Sometime war is well intentioned. I am sure that when the knights of the crusade went off to fight in the ‘Holy Land’ they believed that they were enacting the will of God and that is was a ‘good’ thing to do. The  same is probably true for the members of ISIS or conflicts such as the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Island. When Britain declared war on the Nazis it was done to stop something not to gain something.  Wars of liberation seem to be different to wars of conflict, colonisation, greed or psychopathy. 

War, to me, is a stupid waste of time, money and energy that creates pain torment and suffering. However, war has driven great inventions and scientific breakthroughs that would never have happened otherwise. The drive to discover the science that created the atomic bomb led to power stations providing energy and radioactive treatments in medical science that are becoming ever more refined.

To me it is all about awake-ness. When people lack awareness and are consciously deep asleep conflict, war and violence make sense to them. That is how they get what they want. When people are more aware and awake communication, cooperation and resolution makes sense.  

I experience the deep asleep people to go for evolution through conflict, the survival of the fittest, while  the more awake people go for evolution through cooperation. Therefore the deep asleep people attempt to resolve their challenges through conflict while the more awake people attempt to resolve their conflicts through communication.

When people come together in cooperation and communication we create peace, harmony and wellbeing. When people move apart in disagreement or an inability to communicate and compromise we create instability, insecurity and distrust. Doesn’t say a lot for Brexit and our deep asleep politicians.

I am left with the idea that until human beings wake up enough to realise that mutual cooperation, happiness and prosperity are available to all of us, if we choose to accept it, then conflict and war will be our natural default position.

Take care, be happy and create love not war

Sean x

What is memory for?

All sentient beings remember. Its primary function is that of safety. Memory tells us what is safe and what is a threat. When we are able to remember we are able to survive in safety. When our life goes wrong we can forget what is safe for us. It is then that we are in danger. We know that too much sugar is bad for us but when we go to the cake shop we forget this and we buy them any way. We know when things, people, or situations are bad for us but we conveniently forget it. This is also what happens with a hero in a dangerous situation. The hero runs towards the danger to save other people. Those that remember about danger are running away from it to save themselves.

Over time we lose memory 

In general psychologically we remember things because we are emotionally connected to events, people, things or situations. This means that the connection is relevant or important to us. When things or people cease to be relevant we forget who or what they are. This may seem difficult for the person who we forget, it may seem that they are now not important to us. Often the reason that we forget is overload and we have so much to remember that we forget who people are. 

Do you easily remember people’s names? I have an issue in the NHS. I have covered over 10,000 staff at any one time. They all know my name, there is only one of me, ‘hi Sean’. I look at them and `I can know the face and I can know their life story but their name escapes me. Praise the Lord for the identity badge.

However, sometimes when we lose memory it is because we have structural decay. This can be due to age, life style, illness or trauma. The white matter in the brain is the tissue that connects the grey matter, which is the hardware of the brain. Issues of dementia are when the structure of the brain is breaking down.

How far back can you remember?

What is your first memory? how old were you? Our earliest cognitive memories normally go back to around age 2 to 3 years old. Most of us can remember these early years. Prior to that age our memory is not cognitive it is emotional. We may not be able to remember what happened to us in a logical or visual sense but we can remember what it felt like at that time. This includes anxiety, anger, fear, happiness, security and so on. These memories create the foundation of our emotions and feelings later in life and our ability to attach and detach in our relationships. 

Often when we feel generally anxious, or angry, sad or happy and we say that is just the way that we are. Well it is not. It is simply what we learned to be when we were little, maybe in even this early phase before we could cognitively remember.

As we get older, once the cognitive mind gets going, it get organised. The structural memory of the cognitive mind is like an attic, that is full of boxes of memories. It is a repository of information. Just like a regular attic some people’s are neat and tidy others look like a junk pile. It is just like this inside of our minds.

When people start to cognitively decay the boxes in the attic can get turned over. There is confusion and the contents of the boxes can become mixed up. People may actually say things like “a leopard can’t change its stripes can it?”, or they start to call you the name of your mother, or some unknown person, this is confusion. 

Also some memories can get lost, they are in a box hidden at the back of the attic. This can be lost in the memory system or in some cases become false memory syndrome. Often we do not know whether what we are remembering is real or not, or was it a story that someone told us?.

Therapy and memory

Some therapies are good at releasing trapped or lost memories. Analytical hypnotherapy is the therapy that intervenes in memory most effectively. Aversive hypnotherapy is described as suggestive. What that means the therapy is putting something into a memory box in our attic. For example, if someone smokes cigarettes then perhaps we can include the memory of sweaty socks or burning tyres into the memory box, so that every time they put a cigarette in their mouth they experience that horrible taste in their mouth they are averted from smoking.

Analytical therapy is about taking stuff out of the memory boxes. If people have inappropriate associations. perhaps rice pudding has been included in their sex box. This means that there needs to be rice pudding involved for them to become eroticised, then the therapy is about taking the rice pudding out of the memory box. 

Unwanted memories happen as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks that can become problematical. Such emotional memories happen after trauma, post traumatic stress and if not resolved post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. In this case memory is visual and emotional. Therapy involves desensitisation or rewinding of the problematic memory.

Advertising and propaganda are about aversive and suggestive memory. They seek to change the memories of the population. Just now we are in the throws of an election that involves politicians attempting to get us to relive past memories, this is either nostalgia or fear. Or create future memories of their descriptions of a utopian future. This is hope, expectation and belief.

Ageing

In older age most people feel the loss of their memory to some extent. When people become demented this can become extreme. However even in dementia people do not lose their memory, we never lose our memory. What we lose is our a utility to recall. For many years I worked in an elderly mentally ill unit. Some of the patients were living in demented spaces for many years, unable to recall who they were, where they were or who anybody else was. To all intense and purpose their memory had been completely destroyed. Yet, in virtually every case, before each patient died they became fully aware of who the were, where they were and they knew all those around them. This could have been for a few days or a few hours before their end. This suggested to me that for each of these people their memory was completely intact. The problem that they had was their inability to recall anything.

We now know with neuropsychology and the neuroplasticity that you can maintain a good memory and a good brain if you look after it and if you service it well. It is the classic if you don’t use it you lose it. We need to exercise our brain through mental activity, tasks and things like reading or better still life long learning – ‘never, never, never, give up’.

The last point is that we are each able to create our future memories. Thoughts become things. When we wake everyday we decide how the day will be. We are creating it in advance. This is forward memory. If we decide that the day will be bad then we are right and it will be. Equally if we decide that the day will be wonderful we are also right. In creating forward memory “thoughts become things”. We have a choice.

You can decide if your life will be good or if your life will be bad and then do the things that let you play that out. 

Take care be happy and think positively about the day ahead…Thoughts become things!

Sean x