Archive for category: Blog

I have an Auntie who at the age of 94 remains so amazingly positive. She has a natural habit of positivity that will not allow anything to get her down. She genuinely sees the things that happen to her as lessons for her to learn and listening to her she has certainly been tested in her life. She has a very strong faith that certainly underpins her attitudes in life. She has the positive habit.

Doubt and fear are both forms of anxiety and worry. We know that worrying is a habit as is being happy. If you are a worrier, or if you are happy, then you were not born like it, where did you learn it? These like all habits are the results of consistent persistent practice over time. Most habits are learned at an early age through observation. We observe behaviours, usually from our parents or siblings and then we practise them and make them our own.

What you feed grows and what you starve dies

Habits can be either cognitive or affective, they are what we think or what we feel. Some psychology suggests that we learn the thinking part first and that leads to the negative feelings of worry. Others would suggest that the feelings lead to the negative thoughts. For me me it can be either, though it is usually a mixture of both. 

Sometimes we just feel lousy, anxious or concerned but we don’t know what about. Carl Jung described this as ‘something within us yet outside of our control’. When we just feel bad we can search for a reason and attach a negative thought process to it that makes sense of it. Once we have attached the thought to that feeling they are forever connected so that when we feel it we think it and when we think it we feel it.

Mindfulness allows you to observe doubt and worry and not take it on board 

Odd as it may seem we can make anxious associations with the strangest of things it may be a banana or the colour blue, a sound, smell or the tone of someone’s voice. Once we have linked thoughts and feelings together they have a symbiotic relationship that is there forever unless until we wake up to what we are doing and uncouple them. 

Mindful practise helps us disconnect our negative links

The first step in developing mindfulness to overcome worrying is to become the observer of yourself, so that ‘I’ can observe ‘me’ thinking, feeling or doing. When we observe we can begin to see the distortions of our thinking feeling and doing that are creating our anxiety, worry, and stress. Often these are unconscious distortions that, through mindfulness, can become conscious and then we can deal with them.

So, first step is learn to observe your distortions…

Common Distortions

ref: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_self_help.htm (Thanks for the site guys, a great resource)

All-or-nothing thinking – black-or-white – Life or death. Where are always the shades of grey? Life is never black and white, there will always be a compromise, a third point of view, another way of doing it. It is only by standing back and observing our thinking and feeling that we can move beyond this fixation. Or we can ask other people for their perspective and gain further insight.

Overgeneralisation – “it will always be like this…I’ll never be able to…it always happens to me…” I call this scripting. The habit of thinking this way leads to repeated behaviours. Life becomes a done deal. As soon as I make these statements I am ensuring that they will come true and that my life will be forever blighted. If I wake in the morning with the idea “Oh no not again”, guess what kind of day I am about to have.

Negative focus – The magic of our perception is that we finely tune it so that we only see what we expect to see. This can be the glass half full or half empty. A clean car, with a patch of dirt, can be seen as filthy, a good person who make a simple mistake can be seen as bad and so on. When you tread in a soggy cow pat do you see that as a good opportunity to grow or do you get angry and beat yourself up? When we focus positively all and every experience teaches us about ourself and life. When life is faced positively there is no negative focus.

We don’t have problems we have learning opportunities

Discount the positive – This is magical because when we discount the positive we ensure that nothing will ever be any good.  We either come up with reasons why positive events don’t count. “I did well, but that was just dumb luck.” or ” I hate it when good things happen because that means that something negative is just around the corner”. This is the time to stand back, reframe your thoughts and feeling create a new script for the situation and say it out loud so that your ears can hear it. “I love when good things happen. It means there is more good coming my way”.

Jumping to conclusions – Even when what is happening is plainly positive we can make negative interpretations without any actual evidence and without even realising that we are doing it. We can act like a mind reader, “I can tell she/he secretly hates me.” Or like a fortune teller, “I just know something terrible is going to happen.” “I just know we are going to miss the plane.” Ask yourself the question why? Why should these bad things happen to you and not other people? Most importantly what evidence do you have of things working well? Observe the positive and repeat it to yourself as positive reinforcement.

Catastrophizing – It is easy to make a drama out of a crisis. Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen. “The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!” A classic is a medical diagnosis when we convince ourself of the worst outcome. In life difficult things will always happen. However, evolution and equipped us with some pretty good creative skills that enable us to solve problems. If you can make a cup of tea you are a creative genius and, if you make a cup of tea you can solve a problem. 

Emotional reasoning – This is when the feeling clearly comes before the thought and we seek to make a connection and association between the feeling and the thought. Just like believing that the way we feel reflects reality. “I feel frightened right now. That must mean I’m in real physical danger.” It might even be “she just told I am a bad person therefore it must be true.” Just because you feel something or someone says something it does not mean that it is true. Being able to observe your feelings and thought associations that you have made and questioning them rather than accepting them can lead to new levels of understanding and self development.

‘Should’s and should-nots’ – In my consulting room there are certain words that are banned. These are ‘ought, should, must and can’t, together with ought not, should not, must not’. Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do is like beating yourself up. Often these things are related to what other people want or need and may have little to do with meeting our own needs. It is good to look at why you believe these things, what is going on? Where did you learn to think that way? Could have been a parent or sibling? This is a good time to look at reframing your thoughts and feelings, update them so that they can now serve you better.

Labelling – I resist giving people a diagnoses. A diagnosis is a label and once we become labelled we become limited by that label, both in our owns eyes and in the eyes of others. My father labelled me as an ‘idiot’ and for many years I believed him. Later, in therapy, I realised that this was his issue and not mine and I relabelled myself positively, “I am clever and can do things”. Labelling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings such as “I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser,” just creates negative scripts that you will play out in everyday life.

Personalisation – This may also be described as taking other people’s stuff onboard so that it becomes ‘my’ issue when it is not. It is when we assume responsibility for things that are outside of our control. “It’s my fault my son had an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.” “its my fault he got lung cancer I should have stopped him smoking.” We can not live other people’s lives like they are our own.

Worry and Doubt

Worry and doubt comes in many shapes and sizes. Importantly all of the versions described above are all habitual behaviours and like all habits they can be changed. 

If you follow the Live In the Present course as set out in our blogs and podcasts you will soon realise that to change a habit permanently normally involves a ninety day programme of consistent and persistent determination. All habits can be changed.

When you suffer from worry or doubt it is a form of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Rumination on anything will make it bigger and bigger. It follows that rumination on positive things will lead to positive feelings and happiness. So…

don’t worry, don’t doubt, be positive and be happy

Take care

Sean x

Every January we have what is described a Blue Monday that’s is said to be the saddest day of the year. A questionable claim. But why would we get depressed at this time of year? Well we have just been through the joy of Christmas and New Year, probably have credit card debt to clear, have given up the booze for dry January and are trying to get back into work/school mode. Plus it is dark and cold and the summer holiday can feel a long way off. But hey ho this year we have even or weight on the blue shoulders because we have the ongoing Covid as well and we could throw in the BoJo nonsense for good measure. But it is not all bad. There is a good side to depression we just have to realise it.

Depression may be our brain’s way of telling us to stop, 

slow down and solve problems

There is a theory that suggests that rather than being a problem depression might be a specific behavioural strategy that we have evolved as a biological adaptation that serves a purpose. As Matthew Hutson agrees and explains in a Nautilus feature on the potential evolutionary roots of depression and suicidal behaviour , that the purpose of depressions might be to make us… 

…stop, understand, and deal with an important problem.

Figures for the USA, which are probably reflected in Europe, suggest that at any given time, about 5% of people report symptoms of moderate or severe depression. Major depressive disorder is now so common that at some point in life, one in six people  will suffer from it.

So why does such a debilitating condition strike so many people? 

The traditional understanding is that depression is just a breakdown in the normally working of the brain. This is seen as a chemical imbalance that is treated by chemical medication designed to balance chemistry, change mood and create shifts in  behaviours.

Could depression have developed to help us?

Evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson first elaborated on this idea, called the “analytical rumination hypothesis,” in an article published in Psychological Review in 2009.

Their idea is that what we think of as a disorder is actually a way for our brains to analyse and dwell on a problem in the hopes of coming up with a way to deal with it. The researchers suggest it’s possible that a difficult or complex problem triggers a “depressive” reaction in some people that sends them into a sort of analytical mode. 

This intrigues me greatly because in the Ayurvedic model, my original training, depression was seen as a gift, as a way of our system telling us that something was wrong and giving us the chance to sort it out. This would explain the increased rumination that arising in depressive episodes. Along side this in and increase in dream sleep. The two phases of sleep are deep sleep (NREM) and dream sleep (REM). It is assumed that deep sleep is the resting phase concerned with repair of the body and dream sleep is an active phase concerned with processing experience and emotion. In depression the dream sleep eats into the deep sleep so that despite sleeping for long periods of time the person does not experience rest and may become progressively more tired.

The concept that depression might be and evolutionary adaptation rather than a mental disorder is not the main consensus of the mental health community. in reality it cannot be true for all depression. It would be true for those suffered get reactive depression in response to a trauma or traumatic stimulus. Even so this could still account for around 80% of depressive episodes.

The problem is that in most cases depression is not the cause it is the symptomatic response to the cause. In western medicine we tend to treat the symptom and pay little ot no attention to the cause. 

It could be that if we accepted depression asa gift and took the opportunity to undertake a self audit to enable us to get our lives back on track. Instead we treat depression negatively as a problem and medicate the symptoms and fail to deal with the cause. It would make sense that if alongside medication we engaged in mindful therapy we could speed up treatment and help to dissolve depressive episodes.

MBCT

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to deal with and overcome issue of reactive or repetitive depression. MBCT, is recommended by the United Kingdom’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of recurrent and reactive depression and has also been shown to be effective in treating the symptoms of anxiety.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

I know this is a subject that is very close to Ed’s heart. As we enter this new year let us do it safely.

Raising awareness of road safety seems so obvious and so necessary. There was a time when children were taught to ride bikes at school. This led to the Cycling Proficiency Test that was a test given by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. This training   served as a minimum recommended standard for cycling on British roads. We even got a shiny badge once we had passed.

It was superseded by the National Standards for Cycle Training, branded “Bikeability”, in England in 2007. 

I am not sure at how successful it has been as an announced was mad in 2020.

“The government has today (7 February 2020) announced all children in England will be taught the skills for a lifetime of cycling, as its Bikeability training programme is significantly expanded.”

If this was to be expanded in 2020 I wonder, with Covid, how many schools have actually managed to reintroduce cycling classes for their pupils?

From my own experience I have found that car drivers who stared off as bike riders when they were kids are generally safer and have a greater awareness of other road users when they get older. Awareness and awakeness is the key to reducing the risk to people using the road network of being killed or seriously injured. The users on the road include pedestrians, cyclists,  motor cyclists, motorists, their passengers, and passengers of on-road public transport, mainly buses and trams.

Important Traffic Rules To Follow To Ensure Safety While Driving

• Always wear a seatbelt.
• Avoid distractions.
• Do not cross the speed limits.
• Service your car regularly.
• Follow traffic signals.
• Maintain lane discipline.
• Be careful during bad weather.
• Maintain a safe distance.

The bottom line to all this is that we need to get out of cars and walk and cycle. It is then that we become in touch with the real environment rather than the metal bubble that we live in when we are driving a car. The research on the benefits of walking and cycling are legion. There is a measurable increase in wellbeing from feel good endorphins to cardiac function, cognition and being happy.  

As a kid on the council estate us kids would all tip out in the morning and thousands of us would walk to various schools. I guess that we were all street wise and new the rules of the road and that kept us safe. I am not sure at what point we decided that it was unsafe out there and that we had to take our kids everywhere in our cars but what we have created is generations of people who have never interacted in a simple way on the road and have only ever really seen it through the windscreen of a car.

I think that in the end road safety comes from education and in this case it is learning from doing. We need to walk our kids to school, cycle to them to the shops so that they can see what it is like to be a road user – not just a car driver or passenger.

So, maybe our collective New Years resolution should be to get out of the cars always and cycle and educate our kids to become good a responsible road users.

Happy new year and travel safely

Sean x

As we have gone through November and December this year I have found myself wearing sandals and a tee shirt… Something is wrong! It should be colder than it is and I should be wrapped up in a scarf with gloves and trying to keep warm. We are walking around the Marine Lake and I am wearing sunglasses. We keep saying to each other that ‘the weather is good today’ or is it? Is it really good for our winters to be getting so warm?

When the scientist predicted the idea of global warming they suggested ‘warm wet winters and cool dry summers’, they were right there. As people prepare for the floods  from the various storms this year the sand bags are out and people are fortifying their defences. Yet at the same time there are people on the equator digging ever deeper wells in order to find more water. It this odd? Has the world has gone mad? Or, is this the reality and the beginning of global warming.

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 is happening.

But Christmas is Christmas and the solstice is the solstice.

It is time to see the growing light of the lengthening days and shortening nights. 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 magical time for our children who’s excitement and expectation is wonderfully infectious.  The tree full of lights sparkle in the darkness and many streets seem so bright that they must be visible from the moon. We love the light in the dark. It is like fireworks that give the burst of light against the darkness of the sky.

Symbolically, 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 illuminate 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 of 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, individually we all have life issues that need to be resolved or worked through. The resolution of these is our journey from our darkness towards our light. Our emotional winter leads to our spring that in time will become the fullness of summer. This time of the year is my symbolic emotional and spiritual ending and rebirth in the new beginning that will become 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 and consciously let past go and allow yourself to move forward.

Have a wonderful Yuletide and a meaningful Christmastide

See you in the New Year

Sean x

Guest Post by Alison Blackler

And probably one of our biggest challenges. Most adults spend much of their life in an intimate relationship. Relationships are potentially satisfying. They protect us from loneliness and can improve our mental and emotional wellbeing. However, they can be challenging, and many different issues can cause couples disturbances. There are obviously arguments, fights and power struggles, but there are also stress-related reactions to each other, leading to further problems.

Challenges can build up in a relationship over a period of time, increase in frequency or create difficult consequences. The job is to work out what is acceptable and what is not. Each person’s relationship is unique, just like the people in them. Couples can experience turbulent phases, which can lead to much needed changes, or the relationship may become too difficult to continue. Relationships can feel stressful, and our aim is to consider the wider perspective. 

Keep in mind that any behaviour can happen with a varying degree of discomfort, and it is for each couple to decide what is acceptable. For some, it can look like a relationship is easy and natural, although there is usually work and commitment aplenty. When relationships work well, there is give and take, respect, honesty and positive regard. With the right balance of compromise and flexibility, it is vital to allow each person to flourish within the relationship. This all sounds so idealistic, and the reality of life and, indeed, relationships, make this an interesting journey. Life is full of experiences, some of which work well and some not so much. 

Many of challenges can be useful to help us grow and develop. If everything were plain sailing, our personal journey would probably be limited. While we clearly need some time of stability, we learn the most from challenging situations. The trick is to see these as a chance to change rather than as a negative experience. Relationships take work and commitment, though focusing on yourself first is critical. This understanding gives peace and clarity. 

Almost all couples will have misunderstandings, conflicts and disagreements. We will each do things that annoy the other. It is fair to say, ‘all relationships take work’. However, we must not get confused with those that leave us exhausted and drained. It should not constantly feel like hard work. There must be a balance and knowing this balance can make all the difference. Being in the wrong relationship is no one’s fault; it can be an honest mistake. When it is a real challenge is when you and a partner are essentially mismatched. There is no way to change or reconcile — the best thing to do is to recognise it for what it is and get out as compassionately as possible. Challenges and issues may occur within any relationship. There is no judgement as the complexity of a relationship can mean that it will hit challenges. The idea is to look at things from a different perspective to see if there is any need for change, whether that be yourself or both.

Ourselves 

It is right to say that the biggest challenge we face is the relationship we have with ourselves. This then influences any relationship with another person, particularly an intimate one. We are often focused externally and see problems with these relationships, rather than looking internally at ourselves.

When you have a difficult time with your own thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours, relationships with others will be equally challenging. This can be where the root cause lies.   

Most relationships can become like a habit. It is natural and inevitable that the two people become relaxed and settled with each other further into the relationship. While this is great for relationships that have enough good habits, it is very damaging when the bad behaviours have become the norm. 

As humans, we have an innate desire to be liked, loved, fit in, and are not keen on upsetting another person. Our behaviours are often driven by this need, which does not always end well. It is vital to be able to understand yourself first before you can try to decipher how someone else is thinking or behaving. 

It is key to remember that everyone is not thinking and feeling the same as you. Knowing this helps you to adjust your expectations and improve relationships with others. When it starts to go wrong, we rely on our own interpretation of a situation and use this to put meaning onto another. The key to a healthy relationship, especially an intimate one, is to notice your own behaviours, be brave and admit your flaws. Sometimes these are only obvious through viewing your behaviour alongside someone else. As you get to know them, you often learn more about yourself through their different ways of being. When you are aware enough to realise this, it pushes you to change, even though at the time it may feel awful.

We are all unique

Our uniqueness comes from so many different factors, so there is no wonder that we are often on a different page from one another. Through our upbringing, our experiences, our past, we all have our own story to tell, although the way all these experiences are processed makes it even more complex. This interpretation can get in the way when we are communicating with others. As incredible as we are, we have many challenges which are not necessarily echoed in the animal kingdom. We are limited in our ability to truly understand others: why others do the things they do, why others say the things they say and what they actually mean. Some situations, and even conversations, can feel like a mystery. This is because we all process and interpret everything differently. Each person can interpret the same situation in another way even though on the surface, it will look the same. The description of the situation can appear similar; same place, same time, same day, although a different interpretation. There are traits that look, sound or feel the same, although the actual experience is unique.

Interpretations

The human mind is wired to experience the world as we believe it to be. This means that our minds process and store information from a situation and then uses this information to make sense of the present moment. Remembering this helps us to understand why we all interpret differently and where conflict can often lie. The mind is an association-making machine. This means that in any situation, each person will retrieve their associated information stored within their mind in an attempt to make sense of the current situation. Sometimes this associated information is unhelpful and even irrelevant. This explains how the same situation can and will be interpreted differently.

Each person’s memory and interpretation of the situation is 100% right for them, but the problem lies in the fact that each person thinks the same! This is often at the root of most disagreements. With this in mind, we assume that the other person has experienced the same as us. Most people think that we see to believe, but we actually believe to see. The mind has altered the memory of the images to be as we believe them to be, and we then believe that this is what we originally saw. Our minds do the believing, not our eyes. When we each have this happening, this can lead to the chance of a different interpretation.

Communication

All communication has two parts: a sender and a receiver. The sender has a message he or she intends to transmit, and this is put into words or actions which is believed to best reflect what is in their mind. But many things can intervene to prevent the intended message from being received correctly. Given our tendency to hear what we expect to hear, it is easy for people in conflict to misunderstand each other. Communication is strained, and people will, most likely, want to hide the truth to some extent. The potential for misperceptions and misunderstandings is high, which can make a resolution more difficult. With this understanding, we can start to see a different and complex perspective of why communication is such a challenge at times. What we have not mentioned yet is that the part of the mind which interprets information first is the emotional part. It is said this emotional response is five times quicker than anything rational. Immediate responses are often unwarranted or inappropriate. So, when our initial response to everything, literally everything, is an emotional one, and each person has their own model of the world, it makes for an interesting dilemma.

This text is from A Path Travelled – How to Make Sense of Relationships by Alison Blackler