Are You Mindful or Mindless?

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Moment by moment, throughout our lives, we choose to invest our energy into being positive or negative. What we feed grows and what we starve dies. Do you choose to be positive or negative? Do you choose to be mindful or mindless?

Mindful people are always part of the answer.
When you are faced with an issue or a problem, perhaps it is for you or maybe for a friend or colleague, do you do your best to see the positive and attempt to make the situation better?

Mindless people are always part of the problem.
Of course it could be that you are so finely tuned into the negative that you always see the worst in every situation and end up saying things that make the situation even worse.

A mindful person always has a plan.
In response to difficult situations some people just go off half cock, headless chicken syndrome, and simply create more difficulties, because they do not plan or think ahead.

A mindless person always has an excuse.
Some people find other to blame, “it was not may fault”, ” I didn’t realise”, “It wasn’t me it was him”. We can always find an excuse or we can take responsibility for our action and who we are and choose to make it right.

Mindful people say: “Let me do it for you.”
When we all look after each other we can create heaven on earth. When you only look after yourself, to the detriment of others, we only create hell.

Mindless people say: “That is not my job.”
When we leave it to others and we expect them to get it right, then, no one’s needs get met. This is the height of mindlessness and the basis of most human problems.

A mindful person sees an answer for any problem.
When we do not have problems but we have challenges and opportunities, they can then lead to solutions and resolutions – life can change if we decide that it will.

A mindless person sees a problem to any answer.
Some people see that nothing is solvable, and that we only have problems, life is a road to hell in a handcart, it will never get better. This is a downward spiral to loss, depression and desperation.

A mindful person says: “It may be difficult but it’s possible.”
Mindful people never, never, never, never give up. Nothing is impossible everything can be solved, all can be achieved, life is good, anything can be solved.

A mindless person says: “It may be possible but it’s too difficult.”
Mindless people do not even give it a chance. They give up at the first hurdle. They assume the worst from the outset. They assume success is not for them. They concentrate and work on failure.

Mindful people see the past as what they learned, they challenge this, do not make it a habit and move forward.
Mindful people learn from what happened, they move forward and do not allow past emotional events to hold them back.

Mindless people remain attached to the past, become depressed and stuck.
Mindful people live in the present and purposefully and positively create their future. They get rid of the past through forgiveness and letting go.

Mindful people see their future with creative potential and positive expectation.
Mindful people see a positive future and bring it into their present and live it now. They assume that with positive intent all will turn out ok.

Mindless people see their future with fear, anxiety and negative expectation.
When we focus on negative futures and feel anxiety in the present we need to use mindfulness to live in the now and be happy. We can never be happy in the future. We can only be happy in the now.

Mindful or Mindless?
It is your choice moment by moment.

To be mindful, effective, and happy, you need to Live In The Present and treat everything that happens to you, whatever it is, as a wonderful opportunity to grow.

Life is good, if we want it to be.

Be Happy – choose mindfulness

Sean X

Struggling with Insomnia?

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When you go to sleep at night you enter a deep sleep cycle known as non rapid eye movement or NREM. This is followed by a dream cycle known as rapid eye movement or REM. The time between going to sleep to the end of the dream cycle varies between 1.5 to 2 hours depending on the individual.

These cycles continue throughout the night so that most people will get between three and four cycles. The first cycle is mainly deep sleep with a little bit of dream and the last cycle is mainly dream. It is assumed that the deep sleep is about body rest and repair and the dream cycle is about emotional rest and repair.

When people become emotionally disturbed the dream cycle eats into the deep sleep cycle. In the extreme people get no rest because they are continually dreaming. The result is that you feel more tired when you wake than when you went to sleep. This often leads to an increasing sleep pattern so that people may end up sleeping for sixteen hours or more each, but getting more and more tired.

This is the most common symptom in all depressive illnesses. For some the sleep state is difficult to enter and although fatiguing it is safe. However some forms of sleep deprivation or insomnia can become life threatening.

Fatal insomnia
The condition occurs when proteins called prions in the brain become misshapen. Similar to CJD they damage the thalamus in the brain. This is the part of the brain that alters systems in the body that induce sleep

The thalamus is linked to the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which controls unconscious actions. It regulates the body’s unconscious actions, including hormone levels, temperature, blood pressure and heart rate. In healthy people, at night, hormone levels alter and blood pressure is dropped to induce slumber. But for those with fatal insomnia, these actions don’t happen and so they remain awake, in a permanent pre-sleep state.

Dream Sleep
If following an emotional disturbance dreams become very vivid and technicolor our rest is lost. When the dreams take over our sleep pattern we are discharged from sleep in the dream cycle and we do not get the rest from the deep sleep that we need. Although we may not remember what we were dreaming about, they still wake us, and unless we quickly write it down they are lost.

The difference between deep sleep and dream sleep is that if we wake in deep sleep we are groggy and may not know who we are or where we are until we orient ourselves. However in this state it is easy to go back to sleep. When we wake in dream sleep we are wide awake as though someone has switched the light on and we find it difficult to go back to sleep.

In this weeks podcast Ed and I talked about insomnia and sleep disturbance and suggest resources that may be of help. Improving and maintaining, your sleep pattern is fundamental to your emotional wellbeing.

Some ways to improve your sleep pattern are…

Do not eat of drink for two hours before you go to bed. Only go to bed to sleep not to read or watch or listen to anything. This creates an emotional association with the bed that it is solely for sleep. Avoid any drinks that include high levels of caffeine or tannin. Get at least half an hour exercise everyday, that means making your heart beat at an exercise rate appropriate to you age and health. Develop deep relaxation or self-hypnosis techniques. Mediate every day for at least twenty minutes. If possible take a siesta or a power nap.

Research suggests, people who have a siesta for about an hour have higher levels of serotonin, the well being endorphin, after their siesta than before. This is also true of the shorter power nap. We now question the emphasis on the Mediterranean diet as to the reason why people there live longer; it may be the effect of siesta as well as the diet.

One last thing using sleeping pills, draughts or drugs serve only to treat the symptom and not the cause. If your sleep disturbance is due to emotional disturbance the most effective cure is psychotherapy.

Take care, live in the present

Sean x

Why do we crave more?

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This week Ed and I were talking about the seemingly endless need that human beings have to always have more. This seems to become extreme at festive time like Christmas and Easter when we see people in the supermarket with trollies stacked high with food and other goods. It’s as though we are all preparing for a segue. Actually the shops are only closed for a day.

There is a sense in which the world has gradually got larger. Certainly with food we have gone from regular size, to family packs, jumbo packs and super size. The packs we buy and the people that we are, just get bigger. Then sadly we read the statistic that over 30% of the food that we buy ends up in the bin.

Not only size but also quantity. Just how many shoes, shirts, coats, bags, and so on do we each need. Ed and I renamed Christmas “Stuffmas” as we each have to find new places to store all the stuff that will be given to us on Christmas Day. So I say “if I can’t eat it or drink it, then I don’t want it” and now I have enough food, drink, biscuit and sweets to feed an army.

It is difficult because the things that are given are done so with love and it is important to learn how to receive as well as to give. I notice that each year more people tell me that they are not buying gifts or sending cards and that they are donating those funds to a project for the poor and needy somewhere in the world.

The need to have, buy, own, give and receive has become embedded in our social psyche. The increase of need and therefore production is the basis of a capitalist economy. Such economies see growth as their aim but they only grow when demand continues to rise. If you listen to the financial news the messages are things like…

“China’s economic growth has slowed last year to only 7%. This has suppressed the price of oil, which has dropped for $100 dollars to $30 a barrel. this means that people are now losing jobs in Aberdeen, Scotland due to the slow down in demand”.

In our system unless there is a growing population the existing population has to buy more to sustain the growth. In Britain we have a population decline. So the financial markets, some time ago, came up with a cunning plan to sustain the systems need for growth. This is called credit.

In the past the economy was stable and grew very slowly if at all. The price of a product remained the same year after year and so wages also stayed the same. Before credit generations of people saved up for what they needed and did not get it, or have it, before they could afford it. Credit allows us to have the future in the present, to live the future in the present, in the now.

Why do we Want to buy more and more all the time?

Buddha’s answer to overcoming the pain of ‘wanting’ is to let go of the future. Indeed to let go of anything that isn’t right here, right now. Credit stops us living in the present. With credit we always have one foot in the future.

I suspect that what we are looking at is an evolutionary need for more.

Imagine that you are part of a hunter gatherer family. The man is out hunting for meat and the woman at home in the cave looking after the kids and the in-laws and going down to the bush to gather nuts and berries and to the water source to fill the pots and pans.

While in the wood the woman sees a large nut tree ready for harvest. Does she only take what she needs to feed her family for that day? Or, does she take more than she needs so that on a day when there isn’t that much food around they can still all eat? This situation also creates a social dilemma. Is she takes more than she needs there will be less for other woman’s families in her community. However, it also means that other families will take all the nuts and there may be none left for her family when she next needs to gather.

This dilemma has several effects.

It creates a need in us to hoard, just like people at Christmas with trollies piled high, but also the food that is wasted, like our 30% that goes in the bin. It also becomes the beginning of commerce as the canny woman takes more than she needs and then sells it, or barters it, to other woman who do not want to, or can’t be bothered to go down to the bush themselves, this is like our shops and supermarkets.

Of course there will be the day when someone has nothing to barter so they give you a signed note saying that they owe you a hen or a bag of nuts. This eventually becomes money. When the barter becomes longer and I have to wait for the returned barter to next harvest, this becomes credit. And if my compensation for waiting so long for my repayment is that you pay me more than you owe me this is called interest and suddenly we have a banking system, a loan system and maybe even loan sharks demanding even higher rates of interest.

The same is just as true for the man getting more meat than his family needs, or having more skins to trade than he needs.

If you look at the need of groups to hoard, be they families, communities, countries and so on, it explains why there are people starving in the world and there are the have’s and have not’s in society. The bottom line is that when we share, when we look after each other, there is enough to go around enough for all and everyone’s needs are met.

The problem, as I see it, is that from the point of view of social evolution we are still back in the mentality of the hunter-gatherer hoarders. It is only when we see others as our self that we look after their needs as well as our own. As long as they remain “them” and not a part of “us” we will take what we need to not taking into account the needs of others.

Be happy and share what you have

Take care

Sean X

The Power of Introversion

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The Universal Balance

The whole of creation is a duality of energy that forms a balance, two halves of a whole. This energy is expressed in many ways:

Male – Female
Yang – Yin
Sun – Moon
Day – Night
Pursha – Praktitti
Consciousness – Unconsciousness
Positive – Negative
Light – Dark
Active – Passive
Introvert – Extrovert
IQ – EQ

This list of universal opposites is endless because this principle is in all aspects of creation, therefore it is in all things, science, philosophy, psychology, everywhere you look.

In western society we place predominance on the importance of extroversion. Many westerners see the doers, the go-getters, as the model to aspire to. The life and soul of the party the socialites and the celebrities are on the front pages and on the TV in Big Brother and Get me out of here. People use Facebook and other social media to express themselves as extroverts to a greater, often world audience as they live their lives out on-line.

Programmes such as Come Dine With Me and Four In a Bed, caters for that extrovert need for a little fame, to be “that person” who was on the telly.

Along with this is the extrovert expressions of fashion and wealth. Having the right house, car, handbag or accessory. This seems closely followed by the need to change body appearance with hair dyes, piercing, lip fillers, Botox and boob jobs. The self-adornment of visible tattoos, like all adornments, is shouting out “look at me”.

If extroversion is seen as so important then how do we view the introvert?

Extrovertion is the active energy that goes out and does things. Introvertion is the energy that is the passive, solid foundation of society. Often these opposites work together. “Behind every great man is a great woman”. Take the gender out and it means behind every great extrovert is a great introvert. It works all the time, Chief exec = extrovert PA = introvert.

When the extroverts have finished beating each other to death the Introverts go onto the battle field to attend to the wounded and clear up the mess.

The confident introvert
We should not confuse introvertion with lack of confidence or a passivity with lack of action. Consider the cocktail party. One person comes into the room, the extrovert, in a big way, loud and maybe brash. The sound behind their actions is “I am here, I am important, pay me attention, show me that you care about me”. On the other side of the room a person sits quietly observing and hating to others. This is the introvert. The sound behind their actions is, “I do not need to display who I am to gain the attention of others, I am comfortable with my self”. Extroverts need to get their validation from the ‘outside in’ and introverts get their validation from the ‘inside out’, they don’t need others to tell them that they are ok.

There will be extroverts who aren’t confident and introverts that are, but you get the point?

The two paths of Buddhism
I have seen this is in Buddhism but also in other disciplines. There is the school of thought that lives the extrovert life out in the world working with others and the introvert path of prayer meditation and often isolation. To the western mind the active path of working with others seems to make sense. While the inner path of contemplation can be seen as non-productive. If you have read ‘The Secret’ or have looked at quantum physics, mindfulness or neurological psychology you will already have realised that consciousness through thought and intent can directly effect the physical matter around us, including our bodies. It is not simply a genetic issue. Those that appear younger than their years do so because their thoughts are still young, they are open to learn. This is the living example of “thoughts become things”. Quantum physics also suggest that our thoughts and feelings are directly effecting the thoughts and feelings of others both positively or negatively. If you spend your day working in a negative environment you will eventually become negative yourself.

The consciousness mind bank
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the father of Transcendental Meditation (TM) maintained that if six million people would all meditate at the same time the effect of their positive mind bank would be strong enough to effect the destiny of human consciousness and the state of the world.

Six million is a lot of introverts having an active effect.

Like most things they work best in balance. We are composed of both qualities and we are balanced when we use both appropriately. We need enough extrovertion to do what we need to do actively and enough introvertion to feed our inner being.

Be balanced and be happy

Sean X

Struggling for Willpower? This might help…

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What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

According to JW von Goethe if you never start what needs to be one you will never finish if. An evident truth that we often avoid through distraction and displacement.

New Years resolutions require that we let go of all the emotional baggage that we are carrying from last year, to enable us to move forward into the New Year and our new achievements.

Once you decide on your resolutions your goals will become within your reach. In fact once you know where you want to go and what you wish to achieve then achieving them is a simple process. It just requires commitment and action on your behalf. The following steps might help you on your way…

1: Have clear goals – be sure about what it is that you specifically want to achieve.

2: Write it down – when you write something down you are reinforcing your intention to achieve in your conscious mind.

3: Focus on one thing at a time – don’t allow yourself to become confused and overloaded, or distracted.

4: Pick your tasks logically – make a plan and stick to it.

5: Ensure that your actions serve you well – Ask your self “What can I do right now that will bring me one step closer to my desired goal?” as often in the day as you can.

6: Educate yourself – Make sure you develop the knowledge and skills required to complete your goal.

7: Keep it simple – start with simple tasks, worry about the difficult ones once you have started.

8: Ask advice from and listen to other people – Anything else that you need to know can be learnt on the way.

Start now – don’t leave it until tomorrow

Review and adjust – check if you are making progress? If not review what you are doing and adapt it.

Be persistent and consistent – until the goal is completed.

Any one can achieve anything if they approach it in the right way and remain persistent and consistent in their efforts.

Happy New Year
Enjoy your achievements

Sean. x

New Year 2016

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You Can’t Have New Beginnings Without Endings

Each New Year we talk about new beginnings. About how we need to look forward to the year to come, make resolutions and build the future that we want and desire. For many of us this never really happens and each year becomes the same old, same old as years slide seamlessly one year to the next.

I have become more aware of how my clients, and come to that all of us, are forever hampered in our attempts to go forward because we are attached to the past. Unresolved emotional pasts are either holding us back like anchors on a cruise ship or we are left dragging them around like an iron ball on a chain. In either event struggling against an immoveable anchor or dragging an extreme weight is tiring and debilitating leading to fatigue and ultimately depression.

This has a huge physical and emotional impact on our ability to live in the present, enjoy who and where we are, and leads to many physical and psychosomatic conditions. Some estimates suggest that up to 60% of visits to primary care are for emotional not physical problems. Yet these emotional issues are treated with physical medication to deal with the physical symptoms rather than more appropriately making referrals to psychological medicine.

Symptoms such as depression, tiredness, fatigue, M.E. Chronic fatigue, the various forms of myalgia, muscle tensions, back ache, headache, asthma, skin eruptions, insomnia, disorders of the gut…I could go on forever, are either totally, partially, are at last exacerbated by our overloaded emotions and our inability to let go of what was and embrace where we are in the present.

Understanding our before and after
Often the emotional symptoms that I refer to are related to loss, hurt and change. Such events create a before and after. Before the event we had an identity and after the event we have an identity but they are different. Nostalgia is when we keep looking back to the past, and crave for that past to be our current present. This can never happen. It is this deficit between what was and what is, that is the feelings of loss that lead to these depressive symptoms. For many years nostalgia was seen as an emotional disorder.

Returning to the pain
Nostalgia was coined by Swiss physician Johannes Hoffer in 1688, and for years after that, nostalgia was considered a disorder, according to The New York Times. Hoffer called nostalgia a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause,” the Times reported. The term comes from the Greek words for “returning” (nostos) and “pain” (algos).

You can see from the above that our looking back is often painful. Either we are reliving painful experiences or feeling the hurtful loss of good experiences. Either which way looking back often leads to feelings of pain in the present hence the tendency for it to create depression.

When we lose people, become divorced, retire or are made redundant, or when we are subject to unwanted change, as in when the workplace undergoes re-organisation, or perhaps we have been the subject of an accident or event that has been life threatening, each can lad to nostalgia “returning to the pain”.

These days we view nostalgia as a warm feeling for a safer and happier past, the good times that were. Yet even in this there can be the seeds of depression. As societies and organisation’s change, often a revolution rather than an evolution, we hanker for the old order that was, to our eyes, so much better than what we have now.

Creating endings
What I am saying is that we tend to fail in our attempts at creating our New Year resolutions because we are held back by our unresolved past. The steps one, two and three, in the Live in the Present book are designed to deal with this and my book, ‘What’s That In Your Attic’ is about cleaning all the rubbish out of your head. On the basis that you can only create effective new beginnings once you have created endings, perhaps you might consider putting your attention to letting go of what was before creating what will be. If you are struggling with unresolved past issues or suffering from the types of psychosomatic symptoms that I have described above you might benefit for some psychotherapy.

And for those of you who are now reaching for your keyboard to tell me that your symptoms are not psychosomatic and that they are a diagnosed disease, condition or syndrome with a name, I am not saying that all illness is psychosomatic, but that the symptoms of your physical illness will be exacerbated by your emotional wellbeing and health or by the lack of it. In letting go of the past you are assisting the natural healing of your body to do its job.

Be happy, let go and move forward.

Sean x

How is Christmas for You?

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Here Comes The Sun

Last weekend I went to the supermarket and I was wearing sandals and a tee shirt… Something is wrong! It should be cold, I should be wrapped up with a scarf and gloves and trying to keep warm. When the scientist predicted the idea of global warming they suggested ‘warm wet winters and cool dry summers’, they were right. As the people of Cumbria prepare for their third flood this year and those of the equator dig deeper in the well to find more water, it is not odd for us to feel that the world has gone mad.

The cycles of mother nature may have nothing to do with global warming and the role that mankind has played in warming the planet, who knows?, but there is something odd happening out there.

But Christmas is Christmas and the solstice is the solstice.

Following the darkness of winter, that has its depth at the winter solstice and the longest night, comes the lightening, as the days draw out. This sense of the light coming to dispel the darkness has been ever present in the psychological cycle of the year. The festivals of Solstice, (Yuletide), originally the three days around midwinters day, December 21st, was gradually superseded by Christmas or ‘Christmastide”. In some parts of the pagan world the festival of ‘Yule’ lasted for twelve days, which became the twelve days of ‘Christmastide’.

For many of us Christmas is a magical time for our children whose excitement and expectation is wonderfully infectious. The tree full of lights sparkle in the darkness and many streets are so bright that they must be visible from the moon.

The magic of these festivals, at this time of year, is in the realisation of the coming of the light back to the world. Psychologically this is the development of awareness and understanding, as the light dispels the darkness, or symbolically, good dispels evil. The symbol of the star shining over Bethlehem, as the light shining in the dark, is the same as the Chinese symbol Yin and Yang or the Hindu symbol of Hatha, both showing the relationship between the duality of consciousness and unconsciousness. Consciousness is the light that illuminates the darkness of unconsciousness.

Christmas is, at its best, a time of light, of increasing awareness, of love and joy, of acceptance, and giving. The gifts given to Jesus were represented in pagan ‘Yuletide’ by the gifts given by the farmers, and the people at the Yule feast, often these were animals that were sacrificed to God as an expression of gratitude for the coming of the light in the New Year.

I have never been a lover of dark cold winters, and to know that the darkness is behind me and that ahead is the lighter warmer time of spring and the heat of summer becomes the light at the end of a tunnel.

Perhaps, the issue is that I am in my darkness walking towards my light. My winter leads to my spring. This time of the year is my symbolic emotional and spiritual ending and rebirth in the new beginning of the New Year.

We all deserve a new beginning. We all have the right and the power to make our lives good and right.

Enjoy the lightness and love of your festivities, be happy and merry

Have a wonderful Yuletide and a meaningful Christmastide

See you in the New Year

Sean x

Life long Learning

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Never, never, never give up!

When I was a child we had fireworks every November 5th. On the box were written the instruction “light the blue touch paper and retire”. Later this was developed to “stand well back”. Now, I think that is what people do when they embrace the idea of retirement, they stand well back from life and for many this is the beginning of the end. Life is about learning; learning is living and, for most of us living and learning is working. It is engagement.

The other day the children laughed at me when I referred to a spider as a person. The spider, female in this case, from my point of view, has rights just like you and me. Some people become spider phobic but all she, the spider, is doing is living and doing her work, living her life.

All beings work. Everyone on this planet from ants to elephants work. Working is engagement in the process of living. Essentially this means getting up in the morning and going about the business of finding food, creating shelter and safety and raising the next generation. We are all at the same thing.

Working and living should be the same thing…

Some of us, perhaps all of us, also play. Dogs obviously, primates definitely, the horses when I go for my early runs are playing chase around the field, maybe even ants have down time and play. The essential is the working, because without engagement in the work process we die. Food and shelter are fundamental, they are essential work.

However, compared to all the other people on the planet human beings are different in two ways. The first is that we have a much longer childhood, not maturing until we are twenty five years old, which is a hugely non productive, non working time, supported by parents and society, however this does allow for much longer brain development and evolutionary advantage. We also have money.

Money has a unique effect for humans. We no longer need to work like all other species doing essential work. We are able to do abstract things with our time and collect tokens (money) for doing it and exchange these for food and shelter and safety. So for many humans the concept of ‘work’ has become very different. Someone who writes or paints or produces cars or, is a nurse or carer, does not do essential work, other people do it for them.

The strange thing is that those among us who do essential work become ever fewer and fewer to the point that if the majority were required to become essential workers they would not have a clue how to go about it. The plethora of TV programmes about groups of people abandoned somewhere like an island and having to survive is testament to this. Both practically and socially many fail.

Now then, when you live the ‘normal’ life of an essential worker, which must be within the rhythms of nature and season, it is a life long task. Any species that decided they had had enough and stopped doing their essential work would die, simple. Yet socially and financially human beings have created this retirement, when they stand back from life, cease to be productive and survive. I guess I should qualify that statement with reference to the industrial world and the west. There are many countries where social welfare does not exist.

There is a strong case for not retiring.

Reasons not to retire

1: We know that it is in the process of engagement and life long learning that new brains cells are created and that people remain younger.

2: When people become physically less active and more sedentary they develop more diseases.

3: Those that maintain a working function maintain and develop social relationships and maintain a sense of belonging.

4: Most productive people have a stronger sense of self and self-esteem.

I could go on, and on. I guess one big one that has hit the western industrial world is that supporting retired people costs much more money than anyone ever expected and we can’t afford it. This is where the money token idea begins to breakdown.

I know from my own clients that the people who continue to work, and I see many people still at work in the seventies, even If that work is voluntary, yet regular and committed, have higher levels of self esteem and enjoyment, have a stronger sense of purpose and value. They stay younger longer.

At what point do we stand back from life, do we retire? For some people this begins at fifty and for others it never happens. My definition of success and happiness is waking with a smile on your face feeling that you have something that you truly want to get out of bed for something to go and do that if both meaningful and fulfilling. For many, this is called work, though many do not realise it until they retire.

Whether you do it for money, or the love of it, don’t stand back, remain involved and engaged in the process of life and living. I promise you that you will be happier.

Take care be happy and keep on learning

Sean x

When Kids Fly The Nest

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This week a listener, Angela, sent us a message…

“My daughter is in her second year at university and I miss her terribly. I realise I gave her the wings to fly and I want her to use them but it’s hard sometimes. I am better this year as I have done it once already but a podcast would be helpful as I find when we take her back to uni we are a bit flat but then get over it with work keeping us busy but then about 4 weeks after she has left I am jumping in the car to go and visit her as I miss her too much to wait longer than that. I find though that each time I have to say goodbye instead of getting easier it gets harder.”

This is normal, yet mainly for women. We often seek to understand the difference between men and women. Well, one difference is that a man’s life can be more constant, where as a women’s life changes at rites of passage. Women get married and change their name, they have children, the last child is born, the last child goes to school, the last child leaves school, the last child leaves home.

The majority of people identify themselves by what they do, not by who they are. How do you answer the question “who are you?” For many women the role of mother is a life-filling task. When the last child leaves many women feel crisis, often termed “empty nest syndrome”. I see many women as clients who are dealing with re-discovering themselves or maybe even discovering themselves for the first time.

I also deal with women who have hung onto their children for fear of being alone. I also see children who have been over parented and find themselves unable to be fully functioning adults. A crisis that can become extreme with the death of the dominating parent. The bottom line is that when we over parent we stunt the development of our kids by wanting them always with us.

In ‘The Prophet’ Kahlil Gibran writes…

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Sting sung, “if you love someone set them free”. This is never more true that when we look at our children. To allow our children to grow and develop we need to set them free from our own needs, fears and constraints.

Looking at attachment theory, by John Bowlby, we identify that those people who have a fearful attachment with others, and therefore fear letting their children go, probably have damaged attachment issues themselves. In most cases such people need therapy to resolve their own attachment issues from their childhood.

So, think about it, is there anyone that you are holding back, stunting or over parenting? Remember if you love someone set them free!

Take care and be happy

Sean x

Falling Out of Love

/1 Comment/in /by

Jo sent in a message requesting a podcast about relationships that she suggested was from a male point of view. Having spoken to some male friends she came up with two analogies that describe a certain male way of looking at relationships. I suspect that it is not simply males and that many females have similar attitudes and behaviours to men.

Jo said…
“I have an idea for a podcast mainly for women. About how people view relationships, you touched on it a few weeks ago. I have been asking men how they view them and have collected a few analogies…

Egg and chips is nice but you don’t want that every night because it’s unhealthy

You chase a bus to catch it but once you’ve caught it there’s no need to chase it anymore.

Can you advise on changing conditioned thinking when it comes to relationships?”

As a general idea, as I have said on previous podcasts, I do not understand what the majority of women are doing with the majority of men. When I work with couples it is almost always the male figure that is the problem. Not in all cases but in most. I guess I could say that this only applies to the couples that come to see me or couples that seek therapy, I do not know, but in my work it is normally the man.

There is a book “Act like a lady think like a man” by Erica Gordon

In the book Erica recommends the 90 day rule as propounded by Steve Harvey…

“Often referring to sex as the “cookie”, Steve Harvey suggests that women keep the cookie in the cookie jar for a probationary period of 90 days, causing men to have to prove themselves, work for and earn the benefits.”

This is of interest to me as you will gather from the podcasts that we know it takes 30 days to build a neuro net to accommodate a new habit and a further 60 days to lodge it into our long term memory. I call this the Mind-brain relationship.

What he is suggesting is that in a lasting relationship we need to get beyond the thrill of the chase, which is powered by the endorphin dopamine and avoid the subsequent feeling of boredom by developing a bonded oxytocin relationship. Oxytocin is the endorphin that creates a bond between mother and child, couples, families, communities, societies and even the whole of humanity.

In our rush (dopamine) to get married/live together we fail to do the tuning in, the engagement, the foreplay that allows for the development of oxytocin.

What we describe as the Honeymoon period is dopamine, what we describe as a committed ongoing relationship is oxytocin. Those that become addicted to the thrill of dopamine can easily become serial philanderers as they go from one relationship to another to get a dopamine high.

Because people’s expressions of love are different, the ways in which we each create dopamine and oxytocin will vary. Through communication we have a better chance of meeting each other’s needs and creating lasting relationships. Though we all need dopamine, we all need a bit of woo in our lives, dopamine and woo equal excitement and fun.

What are you doing with your partner that is fun?

Be happy, have fun and create some dopamine

Sean x