Archive for category: Blog

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

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

This week Ed and I got to talk about one of my favourite topics, meditation. It has been an interesting issue between us for years. I think Ed would like to be a meditator but just can’t get into it. I guess the fact that I told him years ago that you don’t have to meditate to be mindful gave him the ultimate get out. But it is true. To be mindful is to be someone who is focussed on the present and what they are doing right now. Mindless people have minds that wander all over the place, worry about what was or what will be. Mindful people are calmer and more focussed and generally more effective as people in whatever they do. The way it goes for me is that you do not need to meditate to be mindful yet meditators develop mindfulness as a byproduct of their meditation practice.

Benefits of meditation include, lower blood pressure, less illness both physical and mental and the ability to deal with crisis and situations easier.

Anyway, I found an article looking at the reasons why people have problems meditating and some ways to overcome them. That reminded me of Ed so I sent it to him and we talked about it over on the podcast. In this blog I focus on some of the reason why it would be good to meditate.

First I have to say that I do not like the word meditation as it has too many connotations of a man in a loin cloth sitting under a banyan tree chanting to himself. If we use the phrase mindfulness practice it sounds more like something that you might do while at work or in an airport or mainline rail station.

Rie and I do ten day silent Vipassana meditation retreats. These involve ten days of meditation, eleven hours a day, one hundred and ten hours of mediation during the retreat. Afterwards we are met with a variety of responses. There are those that see us as heroic, having survived some great ordeal! Those that see us as idiots and are in total disbelief or understanding of why anyone would want to do such a thing, and there are those that nod with knowing and understanding.

The question that comes up again and again is why meditate? Well, there are a million reasons why. People that take the time and make the effort to do a ten day sit have many reasons as to why, I can only tell you why I do it and, what it is that I get from doing it and why I continue to meditate everyday.

The first is silence. The world is full of noise and very few people experience peace. From the moment that we wake there are radios, televisions, news, information, things to do, people to see, places to go. Each of us is required to process masses of information.

If you consider the world of your grandparents and great grandparents, there were few or no cars, no computers, no mobile phones, one channel on TV and, three channels on the radio. The only news was the newspaper and news took time to arrive. All things that had to be done took time and happened at a more leisurely pace.

Not so now. Information and information sharing is instant. When the planes flew into the twin towers we were all able to watch it happening in real time. In the Japanese tsunami we watched the waters rush across the land, destroying people’s lives, as it happened. As Syria is being blown apart and engulfed in live sapping chemical weapons we can see the effects immediately. We know about the war and the casualties the instant that they occur.

The bottom line is that the physiologically of the human body that flies jumbo jet and runs the biggest computers is little different to the one that drove the horse and cart several generations ago. People ask me if stress is real and I explain about the amount of information that we now all process and I say “yes”, stress is very real. But as in all things, it is not what we experience that is the issue it is what we do with it that makes the difference. You cannot be stressed without your permission.

The problem is that now we have so much to deal with, so much information to process, and it is easy for us to forget who we are and why we are here. We cease to hear our inner voice and cease to attend to our own needs. In meditation we still the mind, reduce the outside stimulus of everyday experience and, create the inner peace and silence in which we begin to hear the answers to our problems. For many, it is the only time that we might even realise that we have any problems to face.

Both Rie and I teach mindfulness programmes as either Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness Based Self Coaching or MBSC. As I do this work it becomes clearer to me over time that the real answers to our deepest questions are found within us not without us. All the theoretical teachings of gurus are nothing compared to the hands on, mind off, silence of inner knowledge and understanding that comes from meditation. It is truly life transforming. I see this all the time on the programmes when the common statement from participants is “why didn’t anyone teach us this when we were children?” It seems that many schools are now using Mindfulness sessions in the classroom. I read of one school that had stopped giving children detention and got them meditating instead, amazing!

If we were all to take just a few minutes each day to stop, breathe and be silent, we would literally change the world. This is because the effects of mindfulness and meditation are to give us increased insight and understanding, tolerance and equanimity, it allows us to respond rather than react. Most important of all it gives us choice. We can choose to be happy, we can choose to be miserable, we can choose to moan about life, we can choose to find solutions and so on.

Just taking a little time, be it a few minutes or an hour of meditation, we create a magic space of calm and relaxation that we rarely find in our daily lives anywhere else.

There are many options these day with apps blogs and courses online that enable us to learn how to meditate and develop mindfulness skills.

I have to give a shout out and thanks to Dave Potter at Palouse online who has created the most amazing resource and it is all free. He offers the complete Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course online. He has also added so many resources from Ted Talks to scientific papers and an extra session, week 5b that focuses on mindfulness and pain. Go take a look –

There are many benefits in doing the MBSR programme in a live group face to face but if you can’t get to one or can’t afford to attend one Palouse is amazing. Even if you have completed a face to face MBSR or MBSC programme it is still worth a look and enjoying the many resources that Dave offers.

Take care, be happy,

Sean x

This week on the podcast Ed and I dived into the issues of relationships and their boundaries. Having been asked, by a listener, to look at the concept of monogamy we expanded this idea to look at other common types of relationship that couples are now engaging in.

So having considered this, how would you describe your own relationship?

I know from working with many couples that often what people have and what people want or desire can be a very different thing. Yet, as a society we have settled on a model of monogamy as our social norm. Though most research suggests that a high percentage of people do have affairs though these are, in the main, hidden.

Where did monogamy come from?
Gamy comes from the Greek gamous meaning marriage. Monogamous means one marriage. In modern terms this would mean one partner. Monogamy in modern relationships also means to be faithful to that one partner. Which in turn means not to have sexual relationships or to be intimate with other people out side of the monogamous relationship.

Monogamy probably has its roots in the Abrahamic religions and was probably a socio-economic structure that enabled social organisation and control. Monogamy as a social structure creates social organisation and the development of laws, property rites and inheritance. Once there is a firm social structure the lineage of a family can be traced back to prehistory, following either the maternal or paternal line. The fact that we know in the UK who the next monarch will be is because there is a rule of law and a succession of family rites. However, all of the laws based in property and people all have their origin in the monogamous structure of society.

Serial Monogamy is when someone is faithful to an individual relationship while they are in it, yet they may choose to end a relationship and begin another one. Issues of separation and divorce raised another whole set of laws and rules to deal with changing rites of all those involved. It is probable that without monogamy and the subsequent social structure there would be no need for solicitors, lawyers and many of our courts.

Polygamy is a marriage with more than one person. Poly being the Greek word for many. This is usually one man with several female wives. It is rare to find one woman with several husbands. John Smith of the Mormon faith reputedly had up to 40 wives. In Islam, under both Shia and Sunni law, a man can have up to four wives. A woman having more than one husband is not allowed.

Polyamory, which is described as ‘consensual’ is to have loving, and often sexual relationships, with several people at the same time. This does not mean all at once but is having more than one ongoing relationship. In many Polyamorous relationships the various participant my never all meet. However, what occurs is all open and transparent so that all those involved understand what is happening. Those practising polyamory are often in one main relationship and have other relationships within, or around this.

Open relationship is when members of a main relationship have sexual relationships with other people though it may not have the same transparency as in a clearly polyamorous relationship. However it may include sex between three people, manage a trois or troism. Or there maybe multiple people involved, up to as many as are in an orgy.

Most animal species are polygamous except birds who often mate for life. As birds are directly descended from dinosaurs it may be that they were also monogamous and mated for life with the same partner.

Marriage had both a social and political function. Feuding families came to peace by joining together. Land disputes and empires were resolved and built on beneficial marriages.

Monogamy and reality
Research results vary a little but they indicate that fifty to sixty percent of people are unfaithful at sometime in their marriage or main relationship. Some genome research suggests that up to 30% of children may not belong to the father who is raising them as his own.

The selfish gene was described as the need of the individual to carryon their own genetic line therefore taking any opportunity on offer to reproduce. As we know that continuous breeding with a population, known as inbreeding, leads to a dilution of the available gene pool that can result in various genetic mutations. This happens in closed communities who for cultural or religious reason only allow for breeding with the limited group. As the strength of a species is dependent on cross fertilisation it would suggest that the selfish gene idea would support what we know about evolution.

Living alone in a committed relationship
I guess we need to shout our for the singletons. There is a growing trend for people to be in a faithful, monogamous relationship with another person who they do not live with. These people, usually termed singletons, maintain a serious ongoing relationship with a permanent partner but choose to have their own house or accommodation. The couple may spend time together in each other’s houses but also choose to be alone in their own space.

Celibacy
If are to take into account the whole gamut of relationships, many of which would have a sexual component, we should acknowledge the world of celibacy. The celibate is the person who chooses not to share themselves sexually with others. Celibates may have all kinds and varieties of relationships with all kinds of people. However they have, at some point, decided that these relationships will be non sexual and platonic. A platonic relationship is purely spiritual and not physical.

I guess there are many other sorts of relationships that could be added to this lists such as cyber sex and teledildonics. The issue is that whatever type of relationship you engage in they can mostly all be monogamous other than the poly relationships. Over all there is no rule and no book of words that will tell us the right from the wrong. It will always come back to ‘does it work for you?’ As long as each person involved agrees to and is happily engaged in what takes place.

So, however it works for you, enjoy your life and enjoy your relationship

Take care

Sean x

I have come to the clear conclusion that when we feel both happiness or unhappiness it is a matter of choice. Many people have become angry with me when I suggest this. They will tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about, that if I had to deal with their problems or live their life I would realise that it is different for them. They will say that they are not unhappy by choice and that it is due to the bad hand that life has dealt them or, the negative behaviour of other people in their life.

Well, in my work and my life I know this to be untrue…

…no one is ever effected by what happens to them…they are effected by how they respond to what happens to them.

In life we will always face difficult situations and difficult people. It might be that these people maybe colleagues, friends, family or even parents. They might be partners or siblings. Yet the same principle holds true.

No one can make us unhappy without our permission. No one can make us happy without our permission.

We do not have to stay with people, to remain in difficult situations, jobs, or social groups. You can do and be whatever you choose to be, and that is the rub.

Most people are not happy because they do not know what they want

When I ask people what they want, what they really, really want, they will normally say “I just want to be happy”. Sadly, that is not good enough. To create happiness you need to be specific about what happiness means to you. This often takes a great deal of thought and honesty with yourself. For many of us the concept that we can choose happiness is a concept too far.

The English language is full of phrases that are designed to get us to put up with what we have rather than go for what we truly want. Behind each phrase is a concept that tends to dictate behaviour.

“Better the devil you know”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“A Leopard can’t change it’s spots”…and so on.

When we use these types of phrases it often means that we are settling for second best and maybe even unhappiness.

The bottom line is that each of us, moment by moment, make decisions, not just about what we do and what we think but also about how we feel. When we become emotionally literate we are able to decide how we will feel about the events that we experience. When we choose to see problems as challenges, and challenges as learning points, we can choose to change unhappiness into happiness.

Take care and choose to be happy

Sean x