Dealing with Depression

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Depression

People tell me about being stressed when they are not, they are busy. People tell about having the flu when they haven’t, they have a cold. People tell me that they are depressed when they are not, they are a little bit down. The natural flow of human emotion is to be high and to be low. This flow is normal and may happen minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month. It may flow throughout the year so that people feel high in the summer and low in the winter. To feel a bit down from time to time is normal.

What is depression?
Try and visualise a flat line that starts in the present moment and goes on into eternity. The line represent the normal, normal feeling and normal actions, you might see the line as flatness neither happy nor sad, positive nor negative. Anything above the line is positive, happiness, joy and as it get higher euphoria, ecstasy and mania. Below the line is dullness, lack of motivation, inertia, unhappiness, misery, sadness, and depression.

Those described as manic depressive have fluctuating emotions between the highs of mania, through normality of the middle line to the lows of depression. There are many types of manic depression. Some are mainly high with a little bit of low, some mainly low with a little high and all other combinations between these two. Then there are is the issues of are these changes rapid cycling or slow cycling.

Depression describes an emotional state that exists below the normal line. As we all have up days and down days we all feel high and lows. Both mania and depression are the extremes of these normal emotional states.

The mind brain
The mind is the emotional and conceptual part of the system or the software of the system. The brain is the meat, or hardware of the system. Feelings are in the software and, the chemistry or endorphins of the brain, are in the hardware. Both effect each other. If we change the way that we think or feel we will change our brain chemistry. On the other hand if we change our brain chemistry we change the way that we think and feel.

Medication
Anti-Depressants change the brain chemistry that in turn changes the way that we think and feel.

Psychotherapy
This changes the way that we think and feel that in tern changes the brain chemistry.

Both medication and psychotherapy are relevant and will effect depression. In most cases of deep depression they will only work effectively when used together.

Clinical depression
This is when depression is the sole result of deficient brain chemistry. This requires medication, which may need to be used forever, just as if you have an insulin deficiency because you are diabetic you will need medication for life.

Reactive depression
This is when an event or experience effects our thinking and feeling and subsequently effects our brain chemistry. Included in reactive depression are bereavement, loss, hurt, separation and so on. Also there may be trauma and post traumatic stress. Both medication and talking therapies will be useful for reactive depression.

Repressed anger
This is not accepted by all authorities, though I often find it in my consulting room. Perhaps a manager or partner acts in way that creates anger within you that you are unable to respond to. The situation requires that you keep quiet and repress your feelings. Over time, as the anger accumulates, the negative feelings, that are unexpressed, eventually turn against you and are eventually excreted as depression. Therapy is an absolute must in this case. Also running, jumping, screaming and shouting to let go of all negative energy will be really useful.

Generally there are many issues of feeling down in life. Post natal depression, the baby blues, midlife crisis, bereavement, loss, being let down, and so on. In most cases when the situation remains unaddressed it will eventually become depression.

We all need to be aware of our emotional health. The self help tip here has to be that if you begin to feel bad, down or depressed do something about it. The more aware you become of your self the more you will be able to attend to your own needs and not get lost in the depth of depression.

Those that practice mindful meditation are least likely to experience depression and those that are depressed and begin to practice mindfulness will not only solve their problems quicker but will also reduce the levels of medication required to solve their issues.

Be happy and be mindful

Take care

Sean x

Intuition a blessing and a curse

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Intuition is the sixth sense that resides above cognition and below awareness.

When it is below awareness we call it ‘gut reaction’. Perhaps we meet someone and have an instant feeling about them, maybe that they are not so good. Yet we allow our cognitive mind to override our gut feeling. Other people have told us what a nice person they are, they have told us of the good things that they have done. So, we buy into it, get swept away, go along with it. Later on, when it all goes wrong, we remember that gut feeling. We might even become angry and frustrated with our self for not listening to that inner voice in the first place, and we decide that next time we really will listen to it, but do we?

There are skills that utilise this intuition below awareness such as healing and massage. The practitioner, in simply touching someone’s body, can ‘feel’, and feel is the right word here, all kinds of things about the patient. They intuitively know where the tensions are and can feel where the problems are and what is needed for them to be undone. Included in these skills might be reflexology, reiki, acupuncture, acupressure, moxibustion, doIn and even physiotherapy, chiropractics and osteopathy.

There is an intuitive psychic skill termed ‘psychometry’ that happens in the intuition below awareness. This is where the psychometrist can hold a personal possession and, by attuning to it, giving an insightful reading about the owner. Perhaps descriptive of personality, problems, forthcoming or past events and, solutions. Even readers of Tarot cards, crystal balls, sand and, runes are all using intuition below awareness. Probably the most acceptable practise here is the water dowser, or diviner, who is able through the medium of the dowsing rods or twigs to connect with a water source. Dowsing is also used to find minerals, oil and precious metals. People such as Uri Geller use this energy to bend spoons.

At the other end intuition above cognition often gets a bad press. This is the world of the ‘Clair’ or clear. To have clear vision is to be clairvoyant and is seen, by many, as a nonsense rather than a real sense. The clairaudient will hear. Not in the way that a psychotic hears voices but as a true inner voice that is meaningful and insightful and, usually, right. Then there is the clairscient who simply just knows. This is knowing without knowing, as though a file of information has simply been dropped into their head and they seem to have a depth of knowledge about us that defies our understanding.

We all have the sense of intuition whether it is highly developed or not, and, by the way, it can be developed just as a weight lifter can build a bicep. When it works we know who is on the phone before we pick it up. Or, we are thinking of someone and then they ring. Or we discover that something has happened to someone while they were in our thoughts.

While intuition is not held with much value by western psychology, that is often stunted by its obsession with cognition, or the thinking mind, eastern psychology holds it in high regard. The dot in the centre of the forehead represents the bindi, third eye, Ajna Chakra or pituitary gland, you choose. It acknowledges this part of the human mind brain system that is intuition. It is said that what you hold in your Bindi will come to pass. This suggests that the intuitive function of the mind brain may not simply be a passive recipient of information but might also be able to create, or tune into future events and experiences. This involves the higher or creative mind.

Imagination, creativity, intuition and thinking are all aspects of the mind that effect, and control, our perceptual experience. However, it is only the intuitive aspect of the mind that is passive, all the others are being active. Developing the intuitive mind involves mindfulness meditation. In meditation we learn to relax the bodily tensions, still the thinking mind and allow contemplation of the intuitive mind to flow. The developing medium or seer perfects these skills so that with practice they develop clearer and clearer insight.

Intuition and insight are both a blessing and a curse. We may not like the things that we see. They may be distressing or painful. Often those that develop such insight will feel separate and alone. There are few people who truly understand what the intuitive person experiences. The blessing is the magic of knowing the unknowable. This can be blissful and joyous, together with a feeling of connectivity to all of creation, beyond compare.

We all have some level of insight. When you see or feel things about others check it out and see if you can develop your intuitive gifts.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

Timeless Advice For All Mankind

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Buddhist texts are often so directly applicable to our experience of the modern world that it is sometimes easy to forget that many of them were written hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years ago.

One such text is known as ‘Advice from Atisha’s Heart’. Atisha was a very famous teacher and scholar who came to Tibet from Northern India at the request of the Tibetan King.

There he gave many excellent teachings and resolved the confusion which existed at that time about what was ‘true’ Buddhism. He taught a very practical presentation of Buddhadharma which allowed the Tibetans to practice all the stages of the path to enlightenment in a logical and understandable way.

This presentation is known as Kadampa Buddhism, and it is still practised today by millions of Buddhists around the world. When the time came to return to India, Atisha gave this teaching which has become known as ‘Advice from Atisha’s Heart’.

Since there is never a time when worldly activities come to an end, limit your activities.

This advice reminds us that if we want to make spiritual progress we need to make time for our practice. Although this advice is all given in a spiritual context, it is good general advice if we want to achieve our life goals whatever they may be.

We fill our lives with distractions and before we know it, we are at the end of our life and we have not made the spiritual progress we know we could have. People die with a full diary. We think that we will die when our work here is done, but it does not happen like that. We die when we have things to do tomorrow and the next week and so on. This advice is to remind us that since our worldly activities are unending, we need to consciously limit them.

Friends, the things you desire give no more satisfaction than drinking sea water, therefore practice contentment.

Very important advice because our desires are the main cause of us living unfulfilled lives. When we are thirsty it is tempting to drink sea water, but the result of doing so is that our thirst will increase. In the same way we can understand that when our desires lead us to obtain objects such as cars, watches, partners etc. our desires – far from being satisfied – only increase.

When we see something attractive we naturally generate a desire for it – to possess it or experience it. We work hard to obtain it, but when we actually do obtain it, we do not experience the satisfaction we expect, or if we do, it is very short lived. In fact all we have done is reinforce our habit of trying to obtain satisfaction from external objects. If we practice contentment, recognising that we have enough, we can experience peace of mind and create space and time for spiritual practice.

Words of praise and fame serve only to beguile us, therefore blow them away as you would blow your nose.

This advice tells us that although we may become beguiled with our own self importance when we are praised, these things are not real sources of happiness, only suffering. If we pin our happiness on being praised, then our happiness depends on others, and this makes our happiness very unstable.

Have no hatred for enemies, no attachment for friends.

This advice reminds us that we should not allow friends or enemies to throw our mind off balance. If we have an enemy, what makes them an enemy? It is our view of them that makes them an enemy. We focus on something (real or imagined) that we find unpalatable or unacceptable, and then exaggerate this until it is all we perceive when we think about the person. There comes a point when this perception is so intolerable that we feel the need to harm the person. This is anger. Normally we believe that the person themselves is horrible, but if we think clearly, we can see that the horrible person only exists in our mind, not ‘out there’.

Similarly, attachment in this sense means that we believe that the other person is an independent source of happiness. This other person ‘has’ happiness and we can get some happiness if we are with them/marry them/have a relationship with them. This is not the reality. What is really happening is that we have found something we like about the person and we have focuesed on it. We have exaggerated this quality until it is all we can perceive. Then when we think about the person we naturally develop desire, and engage in negative actions to acquire some happiness.

Atisha advises that we have no anger and no attachment. What is implied is that we have a warm friendly feeling for everyone. A healthy balanced view which allows us to react reasonably and not get carried away with misapprehensions.

Do not look for faults in others, but look for faults in yourself and purge them like bad blood.

We normally ignore our own faults and focus on the faults of others, but here Atisha advises the opposite.

This advice tells us that it is pointless to look for and dwell on the faults of others. If we look hard enough, everyone appears to have faults. This is a very negative occupation but if we are not careful we can spend long hours dwelling on the faults of others, steadily becoming increasingly negative towards them and deepening our bad habit of viewing others in a bad light.

Instead we should look within ourselves for our own faults and overcome them. We should not beat ourselves up over our faults, and we should never forget our good qualities, but it is important to have a realistic view of ourselves.

We should understand faults such as anger and attachment, and if we have these faults, we should understand how to overcome them, and then put these methods into practice.

More information about Atisha’s Advice and Kadampa Buddhism can be found here.

Why Do We Tolerate Intolerance

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It is said that the only thing that we should be intolerant of is intolerance.

Yet to be tolerant of intolerance can create the most destructive of emotions and actions. If a ‘Hitler’ were to emerge again today, someone who inspired others to kill another six million people in cold blood, would it be ok to tolerate this behaviour or should we go to war to challenge this? For me the answer is an undoubted ‘yes’. I don’t want to go to war and I think that killing, in all forms is wrong. But, yes, I would go and fight to protect the freedom of all.

One problem!
How do I know that I am right?

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter

In all cases of tolerance and intolerance there is the issue of which side are you on? If both sides believe that they are right, if both believe that God is on their side, they cannot both be right. So, how do we know what is the right thing to do, what should we be tolerant of?

For me, most cases of tolerance and intolerance are not cognitive they are emotional. It probably comes down to what do you feel? When you listen to your inner voice, to your intuition, you are probably as close as anyone can get to making sense of what is right and wrong and what is tolerable.

My inner voice tells me that all behaviours that harm other beings in any way are intolerable. This includes all forms of bullying, abuse, deprivation, manipulation, exploitation, and so on. In my world this means that the behaviour of many professionals from politicians, lawyers, estate agents, car salesmen and, most managers are unacceptable and intolerable. As a vegetarian I would include the killing of animals and the eating of meat, but this is just my own point of view.

Tolerance is always a bias. Perhaps it is working for the best results for the majority that is as good as we can get. Perhaps at an individual level, our responsibility is to question what we feel, what we do, why we thing what we think? If we listen to our inner voice we can get it right for our self.

Think about your intolerance and how it effects other people. You may need to check your attitudes out with a therapist to enable you to understand where you are.

Take care be happy

Sean x

Bye Bye, Anxiety

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It follows that anyone who lives in states of anxiety cannot be living with happiness, the two do not go together. The chances are that anyone who is experiencing levels of anxiety is not living in their own present. To be truly happy you need to be living in your now. Holding onto past happiness is nostalgia and hoping for future happiness is anticipation. Holding onto past unhappiness is depression and anticipating future unhappiness is anxiety.

Anxiety is a state of being when your conscious mind travels forward to an imagined and often fearful future event that, may never, and probably, will never take place. In anxiety the experiences of those images are in the present, as though they are happening right now. Those who do not, or have not experienced anxiety will often have problems understanding this. Platitudes such as ‘pull yourself together”, “stop being stupid” and “look at how good your life is” don’t really help.

Learning to stop looking negatively into the future is a part of the solution to anxiety. After all in most situations there is really little or nothing for any of us to worry about. It may seem completely obvious to tell the sufferer to live in the present, to “be here now!” Yet this can be experienced as the impossible task because the sufferer is living ‘their’ present. It is just that their present happens to be dislocated into an imagined future.

In my work, whether they are individuals, couples or referrals through an occupational health department, at least 60% of what I deal with would be termed anxiety or the symptoms of anxiety. Anxiety is the product of the emotional mind and no amount of talking therapy will resolve feelings. We need to look elsewhere for a lasting solution.

Anxiety itself is not a bad thing. It is an emotional response that has kept us all safe throughout evolution. To have an awareness of, and raised alertness to, dangers around us, is a good thing. However, to have continual anxiety about the future that we live in the present is termed Generalise Anxiety Disorder (GAD), the key is in the word ‘disorder’. It is this disorder that people mean when they say they have anxiety.

Anxiety comes in several forms…
Ordinary anxiety is normal and useful, even helpful and keeps us safe.
Reactive anxiety is responsive to an event such as an accident, assault, or bereavement.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is when anxiety can seem to be all around us.

Ordinary anxiety is completely normal, transitory and keeps us safe. Reactive anxiety will normally require some therapeutic intervention and may take a while to resolve, though it will resolve eventually. GAD has completely different issues and will normally require medication and some therapy, though often with GAD talking therapies such as short term CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) will have a limited effect. The trick with anxiety is not what you think it is but what you feel and more importantly what you see in your imagination.

Anxiety disorder is itself completely irrational though it is completely visual. To be fearful of a future involves being able to visualise it. It is the imagination that is the problem. People with anxiety disorder have good imaginations. Those with poor imagination cannot visualise a future to be fearful of. The key to resolving anxiety is in positive visualisation.

For example if you fear flying when you think about your coming holiday what you are really doing is visualising getting to airport, getting on the plane, imagining the take off, the turbulence and the landing. Most of all you may imagine the plane crashing. You can feel the fact that you will be several miles up in the air and that there is nothing beneath you, As you rehearse these images your limbic system releases chemistry that creates the physical symptoms of anxiety in your body. It is important to realise that no cognitive process has taken place. None of this is about thinking it is all about feeling and feelings related to the images that are in your mind.

When the anxious person learns to use their imagination to visualise a future that serves them well, one that they might actually look forward to, they reduce their symptoms of anxiety eventually eliminating anxiety all together.

I say this to as a person who has suffered anxiety disorder. Who attended talking therapies and failed to overcome anxiety disorder. Who eventually discovered visualising therapies, overcame anxiety disorder and has subsequently helped thousands of people to do the same.

When you realise that to have anxiety disorder requires that you have a good imagination to be able to visualise those things that trigger your symptoms it follows that the solution to your problems is to change the images. Visualisation works well because it is playing to their strengths. What was the problem now has become the solution.

Visualisation therapy can be found through a therapist who understands the emotional mind and the part that the imagination plays in anxiety. You may find the solution through psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, deep-guided relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness. Visual therapies are a positive and effective alternative to straight talking therapy and medication.

Take care, be happy and not anxious

Live happily in your present

Sean x

Midlife Crisis

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What on earth is a midlife crisis? What is midlife come to that?

Well, when it comes to timings, in theory at least, it has to be happening later these days. In previous generations people were lucky to live to 60, then the 30s would have been midlife. Now as we are all moving towards living to the magic 100 the 50s and 60s have become the new 30. In psychotherapy we are now suggesting that the people who are 60 and over are about 20 years younger than the previous generation. That is, people at 60 are doing what their parents were still doing at 40. I guess the timing of a midlife crisis is a moveable feast.

Midlife crisis is a term first coined by Elliott Jaques he suggested that it occurred somewhere between the forties to early sixties. He looked at it as being points, or periods of change and transition in life. However, there seems to be little evidence that the midlife crisis is in any way a universal phenomenon and seems more to do with the industrialised and urbanised western culture rather than the agricultural societies of Africa and China.

I have a theory that is born out of developmental psychology in the school of analytical psychotherapy. It is this…

… at around the age 3 to 4 most of us have set our gender role and identity. By this age we understand the concepts of male, female, mother, father, brother, sister and so on and we understand where we fit in these patterns. We have also developed internal working models, or inner concepts, that enable us to make sense of our percepts, or what we perceive to be out there. A concept is like a box full on information that explains things. So in the mother box will be all the information that we have gathered about what a mother is. So, when we see those things ‘out there’ we know what they are. We have concept boxes for things, people, roles, talents etc.

I guess it is fairly obvious that if the things that end up in the concept boxes where mixed up we may have some odd ideas. Let’s say that when we were gathering information about mothers, to fill our mother concept box, our mother was always beating us with a stick, then we are unlikely to be able to perceive a woman out there as a mother, unless she is carrying a stick and beating people with it. It also follows that when we grow and become a mother we might feel that beating people with sticks is a part of the deal that we have to do to be a real mother. Anyway, I digress.

After our basic concepts have been established at around the age of 4 we enter what is termed the ‘latent’ period. This is where our focus moves from being self-centred to attempting to build and understand relationships. This phase is also termed ‘socialisation’. It is not until we reach adolescence that the early concepts gathered at 4 years are re-examined, re-evaluated and, if required, re-built.

It is in adolescence that we challenge all the basis assumptions that we took on early in life. This also means challenging the beliefs of our society, religion, culture, family and so on. Often this includes experimentation with various versions of our-self until we find one that feels comfortable, that we can own into adult life. Growing your hair down to your knees, or dying it green, or hanging your face with cutlery, or getting tattooed, travelling, experiencing and experimenting are all a part of the adolescent phase. It seems to me that those people who don’t go through the rebellion of adolescence, those that do not question the current order and challenge their early concepts are vulnerable to a mid life crisis.

When people have a mid life crisis, go ‘off the rails’ or ‘lose the plot’ they are normally doing things that they would normally have done in adolescence. Their behaviour often appears out of place belonging in adolescence not in middle age. We can all be vulnerable to midlife crisis because we all, or at least most of us, failed to do all that we could have done in the adolescent phase.

Avoiding a midlife crisis

Most people that I see who are in midlife crisis are those who feel stuck where they are and are seeking change and new experience. The mother when the last child leaves home. The man in his mid fifties who still has a mortgage to pay and children at Uni who need supporting. Often it is those who have had enough, they have run out of steam, motivation and energy. Over all they need some fun, excitement and new experience.

To avoid a crisis make sure that you are enjoying life and experiencing new things and having some fun. When we learn to express our-self and enjoy who we are and where we are, then the need to do something drastically different tends not to happen.

Be happy and have fun

Sean x

Procrastination

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Even when we are doing nothing we are doing something. To the person who always needs to be busy, someone who meditates or simply stops long enough to enjoy the view, may be seen as a procrastinator. Yet, perhaps it’s the person who is being still and apparently doing nothing who is seeing the real world and making the breakthroughs in science art or literature.

If you break down the word Pro = forward, future… Crastinus = tomorrow

For many, procrastination simply means to delay. That does not make the person lazy they may simply be the type who considers before they act. However, that does not mean that there aren’t people who are really lazy and do as little as possible. Sometime the feeling of procrastination is an emotional barometer that tells you whether what you are doing is what you should be doing. It will help you discover what it is that you really want from your life.

Imagine that when you wake you are about to go and do something that makes you feel good. Do you have problems getting out of bed? Well no. Now, imagine that you are waking to a day full of things that you don’t want to do. Do you have problems getting out of bed? Well yes. We often see procrastination as a bad thing but it might just be that our need to procrastinate is our system trying to tell us something.

‘The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up’.
Author Unknown

In the west we tend to be driven by what is termed ‘the Protestant work ethic’. Most people work long hours to the exclusion of family, friends and their own life and fulfilment. Yet very few people actually like their work life. I work with thousands of people who wake on a Monday with the dread of another week in their workplace. They would rather be doing anything else. Procrastination does not always mean to do nothing, doing something else instead is often termed displacement.

‘Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment’.

Robert Benchley

Displacement activity is something that you do to avoid doing what you don’t want to do, or a way of dealing with a difficult situation. For example a rabbit that is cornered and is about to be eaten by a fox and knowing there is now escape will displace this energy of fear into the activity of washing itself. Charlotte in her blog post suggests that displacement activity might actually be productive and fun.

In psychology, procrastination refers to the act of replacing more urgent actions with tasks less urgent, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time.
Wikipedia

The clue in this definition is ‘enjoyment’. The protestant work ethic goes alongside with ideas like ‘life is hard’, ‘life is earnest’ and ‘everyone has their cross to bear’. Well I don’t buy any of that, I am in the school of life should be fun and life should be fulfilling. It seems that we have no problem finding the energy to do things that we do want to do, things that make us feel good. While, those things that we don’t want to do, sap our energy and take away our motivation.

My approach to life is that when I feel the need to procrastinate or displace, I look at and enjoy the process, and at the same time I look at what I need to do with my life so that I feel engaged and connected and restore the balance between what I need to do and what I want to do. This is often described as ‘work life balance’. Ed and I will be talking about this topic in one of the, soon to be released, audio podcasts.

In the end if you are living the life that you really want the issues of procrastination and displacement do not exist because you are enjoying and fulfilling yourself in the present moment so that getting out off bed on any day, even Monday is never a problem.

‘The best way to get something done is to begin’.
Author Unknown

That comes back to what do you really, really, really want to do with your life. Until you answer this question you will be forever procrastinating and displacing. Becoming aware of when and why you procrastinate will help you answer the question of what do you really want. So there may be times when procrastination is really something we should celebrate.

I’d like to procrastinate but I can’t be bothered

Take care and live in the present
Sean x

Fifty Shades – The Movie!

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I guess that it had to happen. The movie industry has hit another all time low and, we now have Fifty Shades the movie. I decided that it was timely to revisit the blog that I wrote at the time of the publication of the first book and reading the movie reviews it would seem that the movie would appear to be as bad as the book, hey ho, and two more to come, goodie.

Fifty Shades has a Facebook page that shows nine million likes and that makes me, and my views on Tantra, Sex, Orgasm and Meditation at least, a potential minority. My books, courses and therapy are all about people discovering themselves in the most positive way.

My working world encompasses therapy for those who are both the subject of sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as dealing with the perpetrators. The victims are mainly women though men are also victims of sexual abuse and violence. Just as the perpetrators are mainly men, women can also be violent and sexual abusers.

For me Fifty Shades asks us all a question – “What is it that turns you on?” From where I see it we seem to be at a point in the evolution of human consciousness where we are confused between eroticism, violence and love. The neurological issue is that the centres in the brain that are activated by pleasure are also those that are activated by pain and here the confusion begins. Unless you are awake to the inner workings of your mind/brain you can create unhappiness for your self and for others.

Inside your mind/brain there are a millions of concepts. A concept is like a box full of information. It is your internal collection of facts and ideas, normally termed a paradigm that enables you to explain to yourself what you experience in the world, these are termed our percepts.

The law of perception is that you cannot have a percept without a concept. So in your head there is a dog box (Concept) that contains all that you have learned about dogs. When you see a dog (Percept) you can look in the dog box and know that what you are experiencing is a dog. You know it is not a cat because it doesn’t fit into your cat box.

Among all the concept boxes that you have there is your sex box. What is in your box? Let us say that in your experience rice pudding becomes a part of your sexual experience you may find that rice pudding has slipped into your sex box(Concept) so that you cannot feel sexy or become eroticised unless rice pudding is involved in the act (Percept).

When people attend psychotherapy the work is about removing unwanted things from concept boxes or putting missing items in. This maybe more obvious in the common problems of stress, confidence, phobias and so on, it is commonly true of your sex box.
It would seem that according to 50 shades, many people have violence, domination and submission in their sex box, nine million at least, according to Facebook!

As a therapist I would say that if you are turned on by 50 shades have a look in your own sex box and ask yourself why? If you need to dominate others why is this, where did it come from? You certainly did not come out of the womb that way, you learned that behaviour and pleasure. In the same way if you need to be sexually or physically dominated and become submissive, or if violence is related to you satisfying your sexuality, from my point of view, you probably have a problem. Perhaps a few sessions of psychotherapy would help you resolve what is, really, a disorder.

As far as the movie goes the reviews would suggest that it is as badly written, boring and wooden as the original book.

Take care

Sean x

Influential People

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Who do you remember the most?
Which people have influenced you most? (Might be good or bad)
Are there people that you would thank for their influence or effect on your life?
Perhaps there may be people that have had a direct effect on the way that you think and feel, or on the very things that you do, or have done, with your life?

My teacher, (I recoil from the concept of Guru) and one of the most influential people in my life, would say…

To the awake mind everyone and everything is a Guru
But only if you are awake enough to see it

The influence that we get from another person maybe positive or negative. A person’s behaviour maybe so bad, that they teach you how not to act. My father was both one of the greatest influences in my life, in all senses, thinking, feeling and doing, but he was also one of the most negative people I have ever known.

As I look backwards over life I am aware of so many people that have effected who I am. So in the spirit of gratitude I need to acknowledge and thank all of them, all the people that I have ever met and have worked with because they have all taught me so much. Even my father who was a musician and without that influence in early childhood I do not think I would have done the many things that I have done with music and performing.

Once I begin to look at it there have been so many. My school teachers, brother and sisters and, of course my mother, my aunts and uncles, friends and enemies have all played a part in the creation of my thoughts, ideas, emotions and actions. Wow, aren’t people amazing?

The most profound people are those that I see as my teachers. They stand out for me as those that taught me meaningful things, some of which I would like to term spiritual, though they were not religious, and philosophical, and they we not dogmatic. They taught me things about the game of life, and about some of the rules needed to play the game in a fulfilling way.

I have attempted to add to that store of information and pass it on to those that have crossed my path. I work on one simple principle…

If we all look after each other we can have heaven on earth right now

I realise and acknowledge that I have come to that conclusion through the teachers that have influenced my thinking and my work. I also acknowledge my own learning through experience and the hard work of living a life and trying to live it the best way that I can.

If I have to decide on someone who has been the greatest influence on my life it is a simple monk, a Brahmin call Ramaji. His voice, ideas and understanding live in my head as a constant point of reference. His training that was Ayurvedic and Yogic is the basis of my life philosophy and my training as an Ashtanga Yogi that came a long time before my Western psychotherapeutic training.

So, who influenced you the most?
What are the loudest voices in your head?
Where do they come from?

I guess the other side of that coin would be who have you influenced?

Take care be happy acknowledge the good influences in your life and try to be a good influence on others.

Sean x

I love me, who do you love?

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Us Brits are not good at blowing our own trumpet. We can have real problems in understanding the difference between positive self-acceptance, which is really self-love, and arrogance or being up your own backside. Now, I think this is really sad because self-esteem is essential for so many things in life. From allowing us to be happy and successful, to having a robust immune system.

Esteem vs arrogance
There is a very simple way to understand this. People that have arrogance do actually have posi-tive self-esteem but they are looking to you to tell them that they are ok. Imagine this scenario. There is a party, a gathering of people to celebrate an event or simply a social occasion, you get the idea. There are two people that are a little different to all the rest. One is sat quietly in the cor-ner having a meaningful conversation with someone else. The other makes a grand entrance that is loud, demanding attention and getting it. Which one is the most confident and which once feels small and insignificant?

Well, people that make lots of noise, who are larger than life and, demand attention are those that need other people to tell them that they are ok. They need the attention to give themselves value and to convince themselves that they are actually worth the skin that they stand up in. The person who is quietly getting on with life in the corner has self-esteem that is within them. Their value comes from the inside out; they do not need anyone else to tell them that they are ok.

In many ways we live in a world of opposites. Those of us that need to make lots of money, to ob-tain expensive possessions, the rich and famous are those that feel the least for themselves and lack self esteem. We often make the mistake of believing the opposite. We tend to believe that those who appear successful do so because they are full of self-esteem. You will find the most in-secure people, lacking self-esteem in spades, among the rich, the famous and those that we term celebrities.

To have positive self-awareness of your skills, qualities and to be open to accept your failings and, to have the awareness to be getting better at being a human being equals positive self-esteem.

What do we teach our children?
We, as a society, whether we are parents or not, have a responsibility to teach the children around us to have value in ‘who they are’ and not in ‘what they have’. In a materialistic society it is easy to mistake possessions for personal value and real self esteem. So many programmes on TV from “the house wives of…” wherever to “Big Brother” often show us the worst kind of people, with the worst moral and ethical values assuming a sense of self importance of the cost of the possessions that they have.

How is this for good self-esteem
I had dropped off my lovely mother in law, and was driving back to the house, so I switched on the radio. It was BBC Radio 4 and a man was being interviewed. He made a clear statement that he had worked out that he needed £20K per year to live on so every penny that he earned above that he gave away to charity. “Wow, how amazing” I thought. Apparently there is a whole movement of business people in the City of London, and other areas, who do exactly the same thing. This is amazing on so many levels. The fact that these people are not shouting about it and making a big deal, they are just simply doing it, This suggests a high level of self esteem that does not require any accolades or praise from others, they just do it. The second thing is that these people realise that their self-esteem does not come from turning their money into possessions to display to oth-ers.

There are times in our society when we need to display. I can rarely attend a business meeting in shorts and a tee shirt I need to be in a suit to be seen as credible by my peers. This kind of fancy dress is playing a societal game that for me is ok, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.

Relative deprivation
Unless we wake up to what we have and develop some gratitude for how lucky we are it is easy to feel deprived. If everyone in our street has two cars and we only have one we may begin to feel a sense of relative deprivation. Psychologically and emotionally such things can lead to symptoms of depression, GP visits and medication.

On the radio programme I was talking about before, the interviewer went on to discuss a website where you could put in your income and your circumstances and it would tell you where you ranked in the rich list of the entire world population. One shocking statistic was that if you are in Britain liv-ing on the minimum wage you are still in the top 10% of the world population in terms of monetary richness. Apparently someone Face booked this information and has been hit by a tsunami of neg-ative responses. For me this information is a wake up call to us all.

We, in the West, are very privileged, and those among us that really do have nothing or very little should be supported properly.

Anyway, I wander, self esteem comes from within. It is an expression of how we feel about our self and not about what we have or what we can display to others. If you feel deprived you may need to create more wealth, change your job, adjust your living situation and there is nothing wrong with aspiration. However, it does not matter how many material things you manage to accumulate un-less you feel good about you and who you are, you will only be miserable in comfort.

What you might benefit from most is some therapy to develop your self esteem rather than money and possessions to hide behind.

Look in the mirror every morning for the next one hundred days and say out loud to yourself “I Love You”. If you can’t do it you have little self-esteem. But, if you do it for one hundred day it will be-come a new habit that is inner self-esteem. Because, guess what, self esteem is a habit just like smoking. None of us popped out of the womb with positive or negative self esteem. The way that we feel about who we are is what we have learned to be – maybe time to change.

Be happy, think lucky and, keep looking in the mirror!

Remember, I love me, who do you love? It is real, charity begins at home. When I can love me I can also love you.

Take care

Sean x