When is it OK for a therapist to talk about their pants? The answer is (I hope ?) right now!
Putting on my therapy pants!
My training was in Transactional Analysis. The ‘transaction’ is any interaction with another person, and one of the aspects that we ‘analyse’ is what ego state someone is in when they are interacting with someone else.
Too much jargon? Sorry. But ‘ego states’ is really shorthand for describing a way of being that is related to past experiences – and I love this model because it’s really easy to understand.
Eric Berne’s ego state model (1961)
There are three ego states – Parent, Adult and Child. When you’re in Adult, you’re operating in the here and now; it’s a useful state for problem-solving and for managing day-to-day concerns.
Your Parent ego state is influenced by messages from your parents and other care-givers or important authority figures in your life. It’s the voice in your head that says “Don’t speak with your mouth full”, “Always put others before yourself” – and various other instructions and accepted wisdoms for getting on in life. Many of these help you get on and be accepted in society, but this voice can tip over into criticism and an internal voice that tells you you’re only OK if you’re keeping people happy, for example.
Your Parent can be nurturing as well, with messages like “You’ve overdone it this week, you’ll get overwhelmed if you see too many people” that can help you take care of yourself – but that can also tip over into “Don’t run! Don’t do anything spontaneous!”
Image 5540867 from Pixabay
Then your Child. Your Child often adapts to the Parent by responding to critical messages, and sometimes rebels by behaving badly, for example eating or drinking too much.
But you also have a Free Child somewhere in there. And this is the part that gets excited when it snows………..or enjoys swimming in the sea……or doing some kind of fun or joyful activity. For some people, this little guy doesn’t often get a look-in. It has its roots in a very young you, before all that conditioning and learning how to behave, and its focus is itself and what it wants. Selfish in a completely natural and positive way, it’s a vital part of your wellbeing!
Image Amber Clay from Pixabay
“So what’s all this about your pants?”
(said nobody, as they’re relieved I’ve got off the topic).
WELL, I was reminded of the simple Parent Adult Child model the other day when I needed to buy some undies (long overdue because I hate shopping except when it’s for food). My internal conversation when I got into M&S went something like this:
? I need new pants. (Adult)
Which ones do I normally get?
? You won’t be able to bring them back. (Parent)
? Oh dear, I’d better make the right choice. (Adapted
Child)
Why do they have to change anything ever? This is too hard!
? Look at these red stripey ones! (Free
Child)
? These ones look right. But where are they
made? Have they got plastic in them? (Adapted Child)
? Perhaps I should try and get ones that are
comfortable for rowing in. (Nurturing Parent)
? I’d better get it right or it’s a waste of
money if I can’t return them. (Adapted Child/Critical Parent)
? Why don’t I try them on, there’s a fitting
room just here. (Adult)
? OK, so which are the most ethical and also
comfortable and right for every possible occasion? (Parent)
? Look at the stripey ones! I WANT THE STRIPEY
ONES! (Free Child)
Guess what? I bought the stripey ones. A daft illustration perhaps, but it gives a sense of how we can move between ego states from moment to moment – and it also shows how each state has their role to play.
Image Kalahari from Pixabay
People often assume when they first learn about this model that they should be in Adult all of the time. We’re adults, right? But actually, the reality is that our Adult is often contaminated by the Parent or Child getting in on the act and having a little battle with each other out of awareness. If you find yourself using the word ‘should’, there’s a good chance that you’re in Parent mode.
Image Lorraine Cormier from Pixabay
In the dialogue above, the Parent was, at least some of the time, concerned that I was going to be comfy in my new pants. That would certainly have been my mum’s driving message when she was buying pants for me when I was little, which I guess equates to ‘be sensible’ in my head.
The Free Child was reminding me that joy in simple things – red stripes
in this case – is OK.
So it’s not so much about it not being OK to be in our Parent or Child ego state, but it can be really helpful to increase our awareness of when we are being influenced by them – whether our response to something is based on the here and now or whether we’re being swayed by messages from our family history, or by beliefs of what keeps us safe from the imperfect logic we used to make sense of things in childhood.
One of my supervisors used to ask me – when I was feeling uncomfortable or unsettled about a choice I had to make “Are you making this decision from your Adult?” And that was really useful, because it would help me see that sometimes my decision-making was being influenced by a Parent-Child battle between ‘shoulds’ and beliefs of what I thought would ‘help people to like me’.
Much of the work of therapy is often about integrating these ego states into our Adult so that they can bring their own wisdom, experience and sense of fun into our day to day experiencing. When I’m working with clients, I’ll sometimes suggest that they pay attention to what’s going on in their body, as often this can tell us something about what their Child is wanting, or is afraid of.
And every day when I get dressed I smile when I pull out a pair of stripey pants. ???
Image Dara Nilrothanak from Pixabay
Reference: Berne, E. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York, Grove Press 1961.
Bah, humbug! A friend tagged me on a Facebook post – a video of Fascinating Aida performing their song which goes “Try not to be a c*nt at Christmas” (their asterisk). My response was that my own song would be more along the lines of “Why doesn’t Christmas just fuck off?” ……….so what is about Christmas that brings out my foul mouth and my prickly side?
Over the years, I’ve definitely developed more of my bah humbug side, and if the thought of Christmas fills you with nothing but joy – or if Christmas simply is irrelevant to you – then this may not be the blog for you! If you too find Christmas tricky, however, reading on may help you understand why you struggle.
I’ve noticed in recent years it’s become more socially acceptable to say that you don’t look forward to Christmas, or find it difficult. Personally, I’ve veered between extremes of love and hate over time and I’m surprised – AGAIN – when I realise I’m not sure how I feel about it.
There’s part of me, that in the last few years has simply wished that Christmas would Go Away, or that I could fall asleep for a month and wake up when it’s over so I don’t even have to decide whether it’s Good or Bad, and I recognise that these – along with the occasional “I HATE CHRISTMAS” running through my head – have much of the child about them, so there’s clearly something triggered in me at this time of year, even if I don’t know what it is!
But what I’m also noticing is that somewhere in this I seem to have moved towards an acceptance that Christmas is Difficult. As if instead of pretending it’s wonderful, I’ve decided that it’s awful, and I suppose I’m wondering if I – and those of you who struggle a bit at Christmas – can choose a different response.
What is it that makes Christmas a challenge?
Here are some of the reasons that seem relevant to me for why this can be a difficult time of year, and I’ll explore them more below.
Guilt over how one ‘should’ spend the festive period
Family dynamics are intensified
Financial stresses are increased
Juggling work pressures
SAD or winter blues
Expectations of self
Figuring out how to keep everyone else happy (and forgetting about self care)
Grief for lost loved ones intensified
Being out of usual routines
Environmental / climate distress linked to consumerism
Guilt over how one ‘should’ spend the festive period
There are lots of assumptions around Christmas. Even while we know that it’s not all about roasting chestnuts round an open fire while dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, and that the reality is more about the oven breaking down just as the packet of ready-made roast spuds is being opened, on a day that is too-warm-for-this-time-of-year and never gets properly daylight through the grey………….even while we ‘know’ that cognitively, there’s often a part of us that still holds the dream of a Christmas card within.
This can be equally so whether you grew up with the perfect Christmas gathered round the tree and are always seeking to return to that, or if your Christmasses were full of arguments and broken families, because chances are that you have a very vivid picture of what you missed out on, and part of you still wants it. So Christmas has some weight riding on it and there’s a good chance that it’ll disappoint – and you might blame yourself in some way for that.
Family dynamics are intensified
Ah, Christmas…….it’s all about family, right? Getting together and feeling the love……at Christmas there’s a good chance that many of us will be seeing family, and often quite a few in a relatively short period. Even with people with whom we have an apparently harmonious relationship, spending time in the family setting can trigger historic patterns of behaviour, perceived injustices and slipping back into family roles such as the black sheep or the golden child.
On the other hand, we may also be more likely to see people out of a sense of ‘duty’, when we’d really rather not. It may be the one time this group of family members gets together! This all takes its toll on our emotional energy, and can lead to us feeling shitty for reasons that we may not understand, especially if they’re pushing buttons from a time when we were very young.
Financial stresses are increased
It can be a particularly hard time for parents, if we think that Christmas should be a time of excess and generosity, and we’re struggling as it is week to week. Of course you want to give your child the best Christmas possible – everyone’s sharing the latest bloody John Lewis ad.
Parent or not, there’s often Christmas nights out to pay for on top of presents and we expect to eat more luxurious food than normal. And again, whilst we might be consciously thinking “but I know the most important thing is that I’m seeing the people I care about” we can still often be carrying expectations of ourselves and believing that those people will think we don’t love them if we don’t get them the right gift.
Juggling work pressures
The financial aspect feeds into this one too; for people who are self-employed the festive period can be a tight time with everything closing down or clients’ holidays meaning that they have less work. Alternatively, for people who work in industries that keep going right through without a break, there can be the added pressure of fitting shifts around getting together with friends and family who don’t have the same commitments, and for potentially working out childcare arrangements while children are off school.
SAD or winter blues
Whose bloody idea was it to make Christmas at this time of year? Yes, culturally we associate Christmas with snow and dark starry skies, but winter can be a tough time for people with the reduced daylight hours, and some people also have low energy levels because of the cold. Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder can include low energy, trouble concentrating, fatigue, increased appetite, desire to be alone, greater need for sleep and weight gain. Whether you have a SAD diagnosis or not, you may be affected by low mood more in winter than the rest of the year.
Expectations of self
These can be hard to notice – we often assume that we should do and be a certain way without even being aware that these are assumptions – based on our family history, and then exacerbated by Christmas adverts and Hollywood. (I bet if we were all brought up on Mike Leigh or Ken Loach versions of Christmas movies we’d have a different perspective.)
I was brought up in a house where we always had lots of homemade sweets around and every possible foodstuff; 10 or more people descended on the house and yet it seemed there was still everything that anyone could possibly want. I carried that memory with me as I set up my own home and couldn’t understand why I found it a struggle to fit in making two different sorts of homemade fudges plus rum truffles and marzipan-stuffed dates, around working full-time in a busy job up until Christmas Eve. It took me years to pay attention to the fact that when I was little my mum had already been doing that type of Christmas for 20 years, wasn’t working outside the home – and may anyway have been fed up with the whole thing herself!
Figuring out how to keep everyone else happy (and forgetting about self care)
Are you a people-pleaser? Chances are that this part of you heads into overdrive in the run-up to Christmas. It’s only when I lived abroad for a while, and enjoyed Decembers that were pretty much as tranquil as any other month – because we didn’t know many people – that I realised that my ‘normal’ December seems to involve having to meet up with practically everyone I know, all in one month! “Oh, we must go for Christmas drinks!” Wait, I’m already having a busy month, but for some reason I feel I need to agree to making it busier thereby further reducing the time that I have to do the things that I’m the only person that expects them of myself anyway…………?
Grief for lost loved ones intensified
This can be relevant whether those people are missing through death or have moved away. For people who have families scattered all over the globe, Christmas can feel a very empty time, the equivalent of the little match girl gazing through the window into the candle-lit sitting-room of children gathered round a parent reading a story by the Christmas tree. You might also be grieving for the family or loved ones that you never had – a lost Christmas experience that never was. So Christmas can also be a very, very lonely time.
Being out of usual routines
Routines are great. They’re the scaffolding that our lives hang on, the stuff that we don’t have to think about that gets us through the day or week. For anyone who’s had times when they’ve felt their energy ebbing – physical, mental or emotional – developing self-care routines can be really helpful.
These can often be very simple things – a brief walk before starting the day’s work, 10 minutes planning the day, journaling before bed. They can take a little time to establish – and they can easily fall by the wayside when the rest of the daily routine changes. Kids are around all the time demanding attention. You’re not at work. Sleeping patterns are different. Often you don’t notice you’ve slipped out of healthy routines until you realise that you’ve already emptied the tank.
Balancing consumerism and environmental concerns
I spent years – and I mean YEARS – feeling crappy about Christmas present shopping, gradually finding ways of making present-shopping a pressure and a chore. At some point in the last decade, I added a new tradition to Christmas Day: the empty box to put the Christmas gifts in that, as soon as they were opened, I knew were going straight to the charity shop. And yet it still took me a long time to be able to say, at last, to all those people I exchanged gifts with: “I’m not getting you anything this year, please don’t get me anything.”
The effort and angst that was involved in giving myself permission to do things differently – because I was afraid, at some level, that people would think I didn’t love them – or wouldn’t love me – was enormous. I see lots of people this year struggling with the balance of wanting to demonstrate love but with awareness of the devastating effect that that ‘demonstration’ is having on the planet – and a lot of these struggles seem often to be focused on the fear of hurting others.
But what can I do about it?
Many of the above points relate to challenges that affect other areas of life, or crop up at other times of year, but there’s something about Christmas – with its combination of tradition, family scripts, media hype and cultural assumptions – that seems to roll lots of difficult shit up in one stinking bundle and rub our faces in it. A lot of people find it difficult to prioritise their own needs at the best of times, so a festival that is all about ‘giving rather than receiving’ can exacerbate this.
Interestingly, research indicates that emergency room visits for mental health reasons drop around Christmas itself – possibly because people at risk have others around them on Christmas Day – but that they rise again afterwards. See this article about it. This, for me, highlights that ‘Christmas stress’ speaks more about the whole atmosphere around the Christmas period rather than the day itself.
And it seems to me that the ‘remedy’ for this can be the same as at other times of year – but it can be harder to apply during this period. How can you listen to what your body’s telling you you need, when there’s a family row going on in the next room? How do you choose not to repeat previous unhelpful patterns when you’re thrown into the historic family setting that led to them developing?
I don’t have a simple solution to this. I struggle with it too. But I think it’s something that we need to continue talking about and I’m offering some suggestions to help you think about it below.
Notice
Make some time to tune in to yourself to get a sense of what your discomfort is around Christmas. Perhaps you think you already know quite well, but it might be something that you try and ignore because you feel you ‘should’ be looking forward to it. Making a few moments to just notice what comes up, not to change it, simply to acknowledge, can really help that part of you, that may be anxious or unhappy, settle a little.
Question
What are your beliefs around what Christmas is or should be? Have you stopped to consider whether these are realistic or achievable – or might they be rooted in some childhood fantasy? Does hanging on to them help, and if not how might you allow yourself to let them go?
Buffer
Give yourself buffer time if you can, to manage the emotional impact of seeing people. If you find yourself thinking “Well, the most efficient way of getting round these different sets of family would be drive to see everyone the same day”, stop a moment to consider instead what might be kindest to you? There may be certain people who really stir you up emotionally at this time, and if you can give yourself time to settle after you see them it could help.
Say No
It’s OK to do things differently. I often hear people say “We always do……” – No. You may always HAVE done something but it doesn’t mean you can’t choose to do it differently. You might find others would enjoy the change too – and if they don’t that’s not your responsibility. Let’s be realistic though – you may need to choose your battles here. There are going to be some people you find it easier to say No to than others, so keep reminding yourself the purpose of this is to conserve your own energy and wellbeing.
Think about what you want
What would you like to be different about your festive season and how might you get it? How realistic is it? Who would need to be involved? What would you need to do differently? If there are things that others need to do differently – think about what you can do for yourself, if they refuse to change.
Start a conversation
Talk about how you’re feeling about Christmas with someone. You might find they feel the same. Most importantly, find ways to talk about it with the people who are involved. No, I don’t mean saying “I hate Christmas and I’m sick of you getting me things I don’t want even after I’ve told you” – but perhaps it would be OK to start with something that feels relatively small and unthreatening. I really believe that this is a time when practically everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, focuses their attention on what others think or want, or makes assumptions about what others expect – so actually owning what YOU want can make a real difference.
Plan ahead
I’ve found that Christmas seems to have suddenly come upon me this year. I’m not sure some switch in my head doesn’t flip on 1 December. But that’s made me think of the advantage of thinking ahead next year – starting to make plans way too early because suddenly it may be too late. I’m not talking about plans for ‘getting everything organised to have the perfect Christmas’ – I’m talking about making time in January to reflect on how the last month was – and really thinking about what I might want for next year.
Be prepared to ‘manage’
Perhaps one of the hardest things to let go of is the belief that somehow if you can just change that one thing, then you’ll have a joyous Christmas. While hope can be a wonderful resource for change, some of the things you find difficult about Christmas may not be ‘fixable’ on your own, so it might be helpful to think instead of how you might manage Christmas in the healthiest possible way for YOU, including allowing yourself to be ambivalent about it.
Breaking with traditions
For those people for whom Christmas is a religious festival,
even where they find the secular bit a bit tricky, they may still celebrate and
enjoy the spiritual aspect of the period. If Christmas doesn’t have that relevance
for you then getting a real, felt sense of what you are celebrating may be
important to consider.
I often hear people talking about making their own traditions at Christmas. This can be a great way of escaping from misery-inducing family traditions that you were born into, the classic example being when starting a new relationship and agreeing that you spend Christmas Day together (not with the family of either partner).
But even with new ‘traditions’ we can set ourselves up to
‘feel bad about feeling bad’ – i.e. we establish our own rules on ‘what will
make us happy at Christmas’. We all change over time, as we get older and go
through different transitions. I’m thinking of establishing a new tradition for
myself – of checking in as the season approaches, to decide what I need this
year. A few days away where no one knows me? Helping out in a soup kitchen? A quiet
time with normal food and a long novel to read by the woodstove? I might even
surprise myself one year by choosing to host a full-on tinsel-and-turkey
gathering……you never know!
If you’re alone at Christmas, and would like company on
Christmas Day, check out Sarah Millican. She started the annual #joinin
campaign at Christmas, for people to hang out together on Twitter, rather than
alone at home.
I’m very aware that this blog is written from my own particular perspective on The Christmas Struggle and that I have my fixations and blind spots. Take some time to notice what you find easy or hard at Christmas time, how you manage challenges, and if there’s anything you’re thinking about doing differently.
Remember also that Christmas – or the run-up to it – could be a good time to reach out, to speak to someone. If something from this has struck a chord with you that you’d like to explore, please get in touch with me here or with another counsellor.
Oh – and if you like foul-mouthed Christmas tunes and want to enjoy Fascinating Aida’s song – it’s here .
November is my birthday month and for as long as I can remember – or at least for as long as it’s been an option – I’ve always taken a day’s leave for my birthday. Now that I’m self-employed, that feels more significant than it did when I was taking a day of paid holiday entitlement, which has caused me to think about WHY I do it.
Birthdays are funny things, aren’t they? We can respond to
them in different ways, and feel differently about them at different times in
our lives. Some people see them as a reminder that they are getting older, and
thereby are inching closer to death – and that awareness of mortality feels
overwhelmingly negative. Sometimes birthdays bring up memories of loved ones
who have died or left, and the poignancy of being reminded of people who are
gone can cause us to feel that we can’t enjoy the day now that they’re not
there to celebrate it with us.
Me on my 19th birthday in student-land
Why celebrate my birthday?
Perhaps it IS a funny thing to celebrate – this accidental day when we just happened to arrive through no doing of our own, and I guess that’s why it’s a celebration – a celebration that I’m here! I’m important! I matter!
I’m the youngest child in my family, and grew up as a baby in a family of adults. Over recent years I’ve become aware of the beliefs that I’ve created for myself from that position, mostly around having to get things right because everybody else knows what they’re doing, working really hard at keeping other people happy (without really having the full knowledge of what it is that will make them happy) and particularly about having to know what to do without asking for help.
Knowing those beliefs are there doesn’t always stop me from being tripped up by them, but does help me tune in, when I’m feeling particularly shitty about a situation, to what baby Lucy is feeling, and acknowledging that – which helps me recover much more quickly.
Please yourself!
So it’s been nice to realise the flip side of that family role – that my birthday is a day when it’s OK to do just what I feel like doing – to be a child, to please myself. Because, for sure, I did get a fuss made of me on my birthday when I was little and probably got a bit of leeway into the bargain. I know – from the stories – that my late arrival was celebrated, and perhaps this is the one day when I know that in my body rather than just in my head.
My 18th birthday cake with 18 little marzipan piglets.
I had parties! With games! (Did you ever play that game that involved putting a hat, scarf and mittens on and then opening a bar of chocolate with a knife and fork?) And trifle! My big siblings came home from uni! I got good attendance at my birthday parties cos we had a big house that was popular for playing hide-and-seek, so some of that anxiety about whether other kids liked me was probably allayed too.
Birthdays are more than just birthdays
Chances are that for you, too, how you feel about your birthday is influenced by your family history – because you’ve been having a birthday for longer than you can consciously remember. Were there people who were missing at your birthday? Family arguments? Drunken fallings-out? Do you feel it’s OK to be made a fuss of? To ask for what you want? To be the centre of attention?
Birthday breakfast. Yum.
For me, it is, definitely, the day when my urge to keep others happy is at its least powerful. I ask for what I want for my breakfast (this year it was kaiserschmarrn – see picture). I get to choose what I want to do without recourse to anyone else. This year it was to have an outing to somewhere with good autumn colours (see my previous blog on the joys of walking outdoors) – I even relinquished the responsibility of deciding where! But equally it might have been to spend the day lying on the sofa reading (one birthday in my 20s I spent the whole day reading Tales of the City).
Only when I took a pause to think about it, did I realise how rare it is for me to allow myself to choose what I want to do completely without regard to others. And how important taking that day for me has been, over the years, because of what it represents in terms of letting me know I matter.
It’s all about me!
Now, these days, I’m actually not bad at listening to myself. At not planning the hell out of a weekend to maximise my productivity (whether that production be a clean house or a day out lifetime experience), but instead being OK with having a low-key time pottering about doing not very much of anything. So maybe the need to have a day that’s All About Me isn’t so crucial as it was in the past. But now I’ve realised that it has symbolic significance, I’m sure as shit hanging on to the habit!
On my birthday I take a holiday and I let that little child
within me out to play. What does it take for YOU to put yourself first?
A while ago I read an article in a therapy magazine which referred to the reluctance of therapists to undertake personal therapy. Then I saw a question on an online forum along the lines of “Should you be working as a therapist before you’ve got all your shit together?”
This made me reflect on my own thoughts and feelings about having therapy, how these have changed over time – and about being a therapist AND a client. This blog, rather than focusing on the ethical and professional reasons for therapists to have therapy, muses on those reflections.
I remember my very first taste of therapy training;
beginning a course in counselling skills. I remember making the decision that –
though it wasn’t a requirement at this level – I wanted to see a counsellor to
help me think about how the different bits of learning applied to me. It wasn’t
because I felt I had specific ‘issues’ (that catch-all word for so many things from
discomfort through to deep trauma) – I simply found I was thinking myself into
a fankle* when I fit myself into all the different theories or models I was
learning about – and boy, they certainly all seemed to apply to me!
I realised I was really good at thinking myself into a
mess (or a dead-end) rather than out of it, and that counselling could help me
find other ways of looking at things. That counsellor was an artist whose
counselling room was also her studio, and some of the most significant
learnings I made there stuck in my head as vivid visual images that just
couldn’t be conveyed in any other way. That experience has coloured the way I
work with clients and I will often offer images that come up for me as they are
speaking without ‘interpreting’ them. Those images can speak in ways that words
sometimes can’t, and add richness and depth to the work as we explore them
together.
I remember also saying to the trainer “I’m interested in
being a counsellor, but I need to get my own stuff sorted out first”. She
laughed – kindly – at the idea that there might be a point when I knew I was
Completely Normal. This was a revelation to me – the idea that I might have
insecurities, fears, areas where I lacked self-belief……..and yet still be able
to work with other people on their own struggles. Not long after, I read one of
the books of Carl Rogers (the founder of person-centred therapy) and was blown
away by his proposal that therapy wasn’t about ‘fixing’ people, and that in
fact, the word ‘fixed’ also implied rigidity and immobility: “a person is a
fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a
block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of
potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”
As I moved into the world of Transactional Analysis (TA) training, I recognised the influence of a very strong ‘Be Perfect’ Driver (i.e. perfectionist tendencies, fear of getting things wrong) and realised that my unquestioned belief, shared years before with that tutor, had been “I can’t do [whatever I want to do at that point] until I’m as Perfectly Mentally Healthy as [I imagine] everyone around me is.” And what’s changed since then, isn’t my fear of not getting things exactly right, so much as an awareness of that fear, and a kind of wry gentleness towards it. TA’s fundamental principle is: “People are OK” – and that includes me.
My internal conversation might go something like “Oh, there
you are again, Mrs Be Perfect. Worrying about getting this blog right. That’s
OK, I know you’re there. What would be the worst thing that happened if you
didn’t do it perfectly?” Much of this gentleness and understanding has come
through the personal therapy that I had alongside my psychotherapy training,
and of course it influences how I work with clients myself – my knowledge of my
own vulnerability is a strength.
That’s the thing about counselling counsellors; we are human
too. We suffer from exactly the same weaknesses, fears and issues as others.
Often we’re more aware of them because we’ve spent time bringing them to the
surface and that can be uncomfortable as well as useful – oh, for sure, sometimes
I’d like to be able to switch that awareness off! And sometimes we’re NOT aware
of them, and they have subtle influences on our work with clients which we may
only realise after the event – which is why it’s so important to keep
developing our own self-awareness. It’s a constant journey of personal growth.
As a therapist, the learning never stops. I see the
influence of my past therapists in how I am in the counselling relationship.
But I learn as much from clients as I do from training. It is a privilege and
an honour to share in the personal work of others, and for people to trust me
with their tender places and thoughts. That is as true for clients who are
counsellors as it is for clients from any other walk of life.
When I was training to be a counsellor, my therapist asked me “Would you be here if it wasn’t a course requirement?” I saw it as a luxury I was obliged to pay for, to ‘do my learning perfectly’ – and yes, I continued it for some time after my training finished, but I still excused the expenditure, to myself, in other ways – it would help me transition to a new job, it would help me prepare for the challenges of moving abroad. Yet those reasons were only part of the story. I hope that next time I enter into a new personal therapy relationship, I will choose to do so just for me, because I’m worth it.
*for non-Scottish readers, a fankle is a bit of a mess – think a tangled mass of string.
References
Berne, E. 1966. Principles
of group treatment. New York: Oxford University Press.
In the first part of this blog I talked about setting myself a challenge of using my bike every day for a week, in order to change my ‘transport habits’, and what I learned from that experiment. Now I’m going to explore what makes changing behaviour hard, and offer some tips that might help.
Why is it difficult to change behaviours?
Negative motivation: Take a moment to consider your own process when you plan to change something. Do you focus on the benefits? Or are there lots of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ that come into play? Usually when I think about doing things differently, it goes something like “I shouldn’t be doing X” or “I need to be better at Y” and there’s quite a punitive quality about it.
As an article by David DiSalvo says “Negative emotion may trigger us to think about everything we’re not doing, or feel like we’re doing wrong, but it’s horrible fuel for making changes that stick.” We need to find positive reasons to want to make the change rather than chasing ourselves with a big stick.
Oversized targets: Another problem is that we often set our aims unrealistically high or have huge but vague targets. The classic one is gym membership – forking out hundreds of pounds in an effort to shame or punish ourselves into getting more exercise or getting fit. 3 spinning classes in the first week after New Year, yeah! we feel great with how well we’re doing – then something happens that interrupts that momentum, we have a week off and then beat ourselves up for failing at ‘change’.
It becomes an all-or-nothing belief, and as ‘all’ is an unfeasibly large goal we pretty soon end up with nothing. The smaller the steps, the better, when it comes to making changes, because even small steps move you forward; there’s a better chance of small changes sticking; and ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle’ (translation for non-Scots: lots of little things add up to big things).
Life challenges: Let’s not ignore that there may be additional factors which we have no control over. Changing to a healthier lifestyle when you’re a lone parent struggling to make ends meet and are trying to hold down 3 jobs, or when you grew up in poverty and neglect, or when you’ve survived civil war and have arrived in the UK and are fighting for your right to stay…….the odds are stacked against you. The impact of the environment you’re in is sometimes ignored in the individual-centred world of psychotherapy. It’s important not to discount the role that society and inequality play in our having control over our lives.
Habits: We tend to think we can ‘just make’ a change – mind over matter, perhaps – rather than thinking about the factors that support that change or prevent it. Remember what I said in the first part of this blog about my biggest learning being to make it easy? We are creatures of routine and habit, so no matter how firm our intentions are, once we slip into the daily routine it’s difficult to remember those intentions.
This is where planning and using reminders or alarms come in. Telling people what we’re doing and asking for their support can help too – rather than trying to do it all alone in the hope that we can then suddenly explode like a new-born butterfly in all our radiant changedness.
Stages of change
Prochaska and DiClemente introduced the Stages of Change Model in the 1970s to help understanding of what happens during the process of change. The model splits change into six stages:
Stage 1: Precontemplation. At this point I am in denial about there being a problem, or about believing that I have control over my behaviour; “this is just how things are”. Sometimes people come to therapy at this point because they know something needs to change but they’re not sure what.
Stage 2: Contemplation. I’m aware that there are benefits to making a change – but I’m also aware of the costs, so I have conflicted emotions about changing. In order to gain the benefits, be they physical or emotional, something will need to be given up, and this in itself can mean that this stage lasts for a long time.
Stage 3: Preparation. I’m experimenting with doing things differently in small ways and gathering information about what I need in order to make the change. For change to be successful, this stage needs to be given time in order to find or build supports and decide on specific goals before throwing yourself into action.
Stage 4: Action. I start direct action towards my goal. But did I spend enough time contemplating the change and preparing for it? Any positive steps taken at this point need to be reinforced by congratulation and reward to maintain the movement towards lasting change.
Stage 5: Maintenance. Having made changes, I’m avoiding reverting to former patterns of behaviour and continuing to reward myself for keeping up new ones. This stage takes time, and will be interwoven with…..
Stage 6: Relapse. Inevitably, I’m only human, and I relapse into previous behaviour. I’m pissed off and disappointed with myself. The key with relapse is to accept that it is inevitable and to use it to learn for next time – what triggered the relapse? What might help manage this trigger in future? This is a good opportunity to return to the preparation stage, especially if this was rushed through.
Is now the right time to make a change?
I’m very aware that it was relatively easy for me to try something different when I did; my circumstances at that time meant that I had some time to play around with – and so the last thing I want is for this to sound like I’m implying that changing behaviour is easy, or even that I’m particularly good at it! Context made it possible.
So it’s important to notice what may be going on around you that makes changing behaviour difficult – environment, friends, a challenging personal situation, poverty. That’s part of the precontemplation and contemplation stages.
But it’s also important to be aware that there is never going to be a ‘perfect’ time to change behaviour. Perhaps you can look at the reality of the behavioural change that you want to make and see if it can be broken down into smaller, more achievable – more affordable, simpler, whatever – chunks. Preparation. Then do it – and remember that relapse is part of the deal.
Ten tips to help you make and maintain a behavioural change
1. Set small and specific goals
Notice I say SMALL and specific. What’s small for one person may not be for another. My goal of using my bike every day was achievable for me that week because of circumstances. “I’m going to get more exercise” isn’t specific…… but rather than “I’m going to walk to and from work every day” you could start with “I’m going to get off the bus 5 minutes early and walk the rest of the way 3 times a week”.
2. Accept that you will relapse
Hold this in mind right at the start.
Being aware that, at some point, you will have a relapse in behaviour will enable you to be more forgiving of yourself when this happens, instead of thinking “I’m useless at this, I knew I’d never be able to do it”. Relapses help you learn what you could do differently next time.
3. Set times to review
Do you need to change the goals?
Make an appointment with yourself at the end of each week to check how you’ve done, and to notice what has been difficult. Maybe your goal was too big and you need to scale it down; succeeding with a small goal is more motivating than failing with a big one. You can always raise the bar later.
4. Consider how you’ll reward yourself
Positive motivation for change is more successful than beating yourself up for failure, as mentioned earlier. Think of a reward that you’ll enjoy but that won’t conflict with your goals (i.e. don’t give yourself a junk food reward for eating healthily!) – buy yourself the book you wanted, go and see a film.
Make rewards part of your plan.
5. Plan and prepare
You might be seized with enthusiasm once you’ve decided to make a change, but planning and preparation give you the best opportunity to succeed, just like they do with DIY tasks!
What resources do you need to make this change? Who or what might support you? And what might get in your way – be obstacles or triggers? Is there anyone you need to avoid?
Take time to think about where you can look for help.
6. Accept that changing behaviour is hard!
Most of us live by routines and habits – it’s normal and it makes life work because you don’t have to think about everything you do. But it means that we become wired to do things in a particular way, and that takes time to change.
When you notice what hasn’t gone well, try and catch yourself and reflect on a positive – rather than saying “I had an unhealthy snack two days this week” switch it to “I managed five days this week where I didn’t have an unhealthy snack”.
7. Track and review your progress
Keep a journal, or a food diary, or use an app on your phone. It can help to express your frustrations, and keeping track of the positives will help you recover when things aren’t going so well.
8. Ask for support
Remember you don’t have to do this alone!
Perhaps there’s someone else who might be interested in working towards the same goal and you could buddy up together. Or someone you know who might have skills or advice to offer. You might get in touch with a therapist if you need help understanding why you’re finding it difficult to make a change.
At the very least, sharing what you’re working towards means that your friend or partner can help, by encouraging you and giving you feedback when things are going well.
9. Reward yourself. ALWAYS.
DON’T SKIP THE REWARDS!
If you’ve done well, take a moment to pat yourself on the back and acknowledge the achievement, even if it feels uncomfortable.
10. Be compassionate with yourself
Don’t make it harder than it already is. Think of how you might support someone else who is trying to change their behaviour.
Can you offer that support to yourself?
What am I doing differently since ‘The Bike Challenge’?
Today, as I write this blog, is the first day I’ve got clients in the new room that I’ve rented in Edinburgh, and I’m cycling in. I chose this room over another because of its proximity to good cycle routes avoiding busy roads – even though it’s further from a handy bus stop (Make It easy). I know I’ll be tired when I leave to come home, but I’m hoping I’ll appreciate a different experience from my usual bus ride (Don’t compare apples and pears). It’s raining right now but I’ve got a change of clothing and I’ve packed some calories to make sure I’ve got sufficient energy both for my clients and for the cycle home. And I’ve looked out the bike lights – which I may need to elastic-band to my handlebars (Don’t do this at home, kids) in case it’s dark when I return (Plan and prepare).
(NB: I wrote this over a month ago. As I publish it today, I can look back at a month’s worth of Wednesday cycles where I’ve enjoyed the processing time on the ride home after seeing clients.)
I’m not using my bike every day. I need more practice to
really embed it as part of my routine and I’m mindful that my attitude may
change when winter weather arrives. But I’m incorporating cycling more into my
professional decisions – like the room hire, or arranging meetings – and I’m now
using it as a mode of transport more than the bus, which is a definite shift. Every
time I use my bike to run a quick errand it gives me a little lift. So I’m
pretty happy; and I’m going to reward myself with a new set of pedals, because
those pesky toe clips still don’t fit properly!
I’ve included some links to other resources below. If there’s a change you’re wanting to make in your behaviour, and you’re finding it difficult to get started, please get in touch with me. There are many factors that contribute to the habits that we find ourselves in, and you may find it useful to explore what these factors may be, for you, in therapy.
Saturday 8 June was the start of National Bike Week 2019. What a great opportunity for a post on my Facebook page encouraging people to get out on their bikes, I thought. I’ll say that I’m planning to use my bike every day this week.
That gave me pause, though – because if I was going to make a public declaration like that, I needed to actually do it! There’s a whole world of difference between exhorting other people to do something different for their self-care, and actually doing it myself.
I’d bought a new bike a couple of months earlier after deciding to try living without a car, thinking I’d use a lighter-weight bike more as a means of transport. But WHY hadn’t I used it as much as I’d hoped – even though I liked the idea, and the new bike? What was getting in the way of me doing that? I decided to make it A Project. I thought perhaps if I could track each day, I might learn something – from looking at the things that motivated me to use my bike, or the things that put me off.
And so it began.
The change-my-life bike challenge
I noticed there was sawdust on my bike seat……woodworm in the shed roof! I decided to cycle to the nearest place where I could buy woodworm treatment, about 4 miles away. Oh, but first I realised I needed to change the toe-clips on my bike, the ones the bike shop had put on were useless………oh and it looked like it was going to rain…….and where did I put my pannier? At least the bike locks were handy, as I hadn’t put them away…..
It started raining while I was out, and I got soaked. But…..I had plenty of time, it was a Saturday, I could get changed when I got home, I was already in suitable clothes for cycling and crucially there was the novelty feeling of having decided to make this ‘a challenge’.
I suggested to my partner that we ride to a nearby town to see an exhibition but he was feeling tired, so instead I decided to get a quick ride in alone and call in at the Co-op for some shopping on the way back. I was put off a little by thinking I ‘should’ be doing something with my partner because it was the weekend, but I felt full of beans and wanted the exercise – and once again there were no time pressures.
It was a beautiful morning and I had the familiar experience of flying along on the outer leg with the wind behind me (and then having to really push into the westerly wind on the way home).
Oh-ho! Back to real life, how do I incorporate cycling into the working week? I had a morning meeting in Edinburgh to see a room I might want to rent, so decided to cycle in – a round trip of around 23 miles. I was somewhat nervous about this as I hadn’t cycled in the city for years and the prospect of navigating traffic made me anxious. I was worried about arriving late and also about getting sweaty and looking unprofessional!
On the other hand, I had a flexible schedule that day so could leave plenty of time, and after researching routes found that much of the ride could be done on cycle paths. It seemed like a good opportunity for a ‘test’ commute – as it wasn’t a client appointment it didn’t matter if I was a bit windblown!
An unexpected drama came a third of my way in when my saddle came loose, and I didn’t have the necessary tool to sort it out. After swithering about whether to lock my bike somewhere nearby and take the bus the rest of the way I decided to carry on, getting on and off rather gingerly at junctions. I was heartily glad my route involved few busy roads. After my meeting I headed to the nearest bike shop where they kindly fixed my saddle free of charge and I had a much more comfortable ride home.
An easy day – a quick dash to the shop to get a sandwich for my lunch, a round trip of not much over a mile. It seemed a bit of a faff to get the bike out of the shed for such a short journey, but crucially, having been using it every day, the operation of getting everything together was pretty quick. I was wearing skinny jeans so no need to change clothes for this short ride, and I was there and back with plenty of time to sit and eat my lunch!
The weather was a bit rubbish but I had something to take to the post office. To be honest I might not have made myself do it on foot because of time required in a rather busy day. It was a lesson that I could get an errand out of the way really quickly in less than 15 minutes by using my bike.
I learned I could ride in wellies – after a fashion. It was a really miserable day, I had no commitments outside home and there is no way I would have got my bike out had it not been for having set myself the task of doing it. Once again a quick dash to the shop, but I felt a bit lost about the pointlessness of ‘the bike challenge’ as a project.
I was very conscious that I was just getting my bike out for the sake of it, and having to look for a reason to do so. However, I cycled to the library – only a mile or so away – and actually this was probably a perfect example of cycling making life easier. The journey on foot was a little too far to squeeze into my working day, but on a bike it was much quicker and I could pop the books into my pannier rather than having to carry them. I might not have finally got round to using my library without the bike challenge.
So what did I learn from setting myself the target of using my bike every day?
Make it easy.
This was my absolute No. 1 takeaway from this experiment, that I was reminded of every day. In order to change how you do things, you need to make it easy for yourself. We’d already changed the way we stored our bikes so that they were easy to get in and out of the shed quickly. In addition I’ve moved my pannier from an inaccessible shelf in a cupboard to near the back door ready for use and the bike locks are also on a shelf handy to grab. Now I can get my bike out and ready to use in a little over a minute.
Plan and prepare.
Don’t assume it is going to be easy until you’ve established a routine! So, I need to think about what to wear when I’m going to meetings, and I need to factor in the time until I get the hang of how long it takes to get places. Wearing clothes that mean I can quickly jump on my bike AND be appropriately dressed for work (leggings are my friend here) makes life easier.
Don’t compare apples and pears.
……….or bus journeys and bike journeys. You can learn to enjoy a different way of doing things. Particularly with the ride into Edinburgh I felt conscious of how long it was taking me. But the second time I did this run I was able to enjoy the opportunity of being out and getting exercise rather than focusing on whether I was using my time ‘efficiently’ (and actually traffic snarls aren’t a factor on a bike path).
This applies to other behaviour changes too; you need to acknowledge what you’ll lose by changing what you do, but you can also appreciate what you’ll gain.
Some investments are worth it.
It felt like an extravagance to buy a new bike – but a lighter bike made it easier for me to use it more (although things have improved, in the UK we have bike paths that involve carrying your bike up the steps of a bridge over a railway, for example).
If you can afford it, it’s worth spending money on things that will facilitate you changing what you do; e.g. buying a good pannier rack meant that it’s simple for me to carry stuff comfortably on my bike.
Ask for help.
Flippin’ heck, I can never be reminded of this one too often….. Only my saddle almost falling off pushed me into it; but of course cycling is a friendly world – and when I took my bike into Edinburgh Bike Co-op they graciously sorted it out instantly and free of charge. What’s the worst that could have happened? They might have said no, or have charged me a few quid. Big deal.
It takes time.
If you do something enough times, it forms a habit. But you HAVE to do it enough times, in order to remind yourself that this is how life is now. I decided at the end of the week to keep the ‘use-it-every-day’ practice going for another week to try and develop a routine. Since then other things have happened and I’ve been away, but I notice I AM using my bike more as it’s higher up my consciousness.
In the second part of this blog, I’ll be talking about why it’s difficult to change habits and behaviours, and – crucially – offering some tips on how to make and maintain changes.
If you’re interested in support for making changes, or just have questions, please get in touch with me through my contact page.
Pause for a minute. Imagine that you’re in a wood. It’s quite light and open, with space between the trees……those beautiful, spreading oak trees, with great branches like arms that reach out as if to enfold you in a safe embrace.
The sun filters through the leaves, dappling the ground below, and playing on your face. As you move you pass through shafts of light. You can feel its warmth. Pay attention to the sounds you can hear – the rustle of the wind moving the branches of the trees, the twittering of song from birds, invisible, in the canopy above you. As you walk along, you hear the scrunch of twigs and fallen leaves under your feet.
What’s that smell? Fresh and musty at the same time – damp earth and vegetation; perhaps it rained earlier or there was a heavy dew. And then behind that, a sweet perfume that comes and goes – you see a carpet of blue under the trees. Thousands of bluebells, their delicate smell massed together to reach your nose. Just take a moment to see, hear, feel all of that wonderful space of nature, to let it sink in to you. Let it feed your soul. Take a moment – before you come back.
Why walk?
When I was thinking about writing this blog, I imagined how I would describe why I like to walk outside. Everything I thought of seemed rather worthy……walking as something I ‘should’ be doing, part of that ‘must get your 5-a-day’ mentality. But when I thought of a recent walk – outlined above – I recalled all the myriad, tiny, experiences that happened in the moment, which combined to lift my spirits and nourish my soul.
That particular walk was an immersion in nature. Spaces like that are available to most of us, though to really get away from it all can be a challenge, especially if you live in a city or don’t have a car. But that doesn’t mean we can’t experience nature while walking – even in the town. In this blog I look at some of the ways in which walking, and walking in nature, can benefit your mental health.
7 ways in which walking can help your mental health
1. Walking helps your whole body
The most fundamental reason for walking helping your mental health, is that it helps your physical health. Our mind and body are intertwined – literally, given that the mind rests within the body.
I mentioned in my last blog (10 Stress Management tips) about the benefits of walking if you suffer from stress symptoms. Walking can help release some of the fight/flight hormones that build up when you’re feeling stressed. The simple act of moving in this way helps release the tension in muscles that may have become hunched and stiff. As you start to become more physically active, you will feel fitter and stronger, which can have the knock-on effect of improving how you feel about yourself. Remember, though – you are not competing against anyone. This is about you feeling better for your own sake.
2. Walking can reduce symptoms of depression
Physical activity stimulates the release of endorphins,
which can boost your mood in two ways. Firstly, endorphins stimulate a positive
feeling similar to the effects of morphine; with vigorous exercise this can
produce a ‘runner’s high’, feelings of euphoria – but even with mild to
moderate exercise the effect can still be noticed and can produce an energised
feeling, so that, counter-intuitively, getting exercise can give you the
feeling that you have more energy to tackle other tasks. The second way in
which endorphins can help, is that they diminish the perception of pain – so if
you are experiencing pain (assuming it’s not linked to the activity of walking)
then the release of endorphins has an analgesic effect which can help reduce
the discomfort you experience.
3. Walking can help you manage your thinking
Walking seems to help my brain work differently. That’s my experience – that somehow the act of movement stimulates my mind to work in a different way, and so if I’ve been ruminating about something where my thoughts just go round and round the same circuit, getting out there moving somehow shifts them off the train tracks (I’m not saying they never jump back on again, but a little derailing does help).
This may be because doing something physical requires a certain amount of attention by the brain – even if it seems pretty much instinctive – and therefore there’s a shift in focus which reshuffles everything else that’s going on in there. Indeed, as well as stimulating endorphins, as mentioned above, walking can alleviate the impact of cortisol – the stress hormone – by allowing its release through the body, which can reduce anxiety symptoms such as racing or intrusive thoughts.
4. Walking puts you in a different space
Well, duh, of course it does! It makes sense that the environment that you’re in is going to have an effect on your mood. Just think for a moment about how you’d feel if you’re sitting in a room with no windows and the walls painted grey, compared to sitting in a sunny space with a view over a sparkling sea. Where you are can also have less obvious effects connected to your (sometimes unconscious) associations – perhaps being in your house recalls a big argument that you just had with someone close to you, or all the maintenance tasks that you need to get done, for example.
Ideally I’d transport myself into the bluebell wood I mentioned earlier, in the blink of an eye. But it doesn’t need to be that extreme a contrast. Shifting yourself out of the space that you’re in can help shift your mindset. You can try this by simply going outside and consciously imagining those worries or preoccupations lifting off your shoulders and floating off into the greater space that surrounds you. I’m not pretending that they’re going to be gone forever, but allowing their release for even a short period of time can help boost your mood and improve your resilience to deal with them when they return.
5. Walking can help you connect with others
Walking with someone can give you the opportunity to talk about things that are bothering you in a neutral environment. For some people, ‘being alongside’ as they talk can be easier than talking about a difficult subject face to face. It can be a really helpful way of offloading – as with the last point, you can ‘let all this stuff out’ into the wider space rather than in the confines of a room. Or the flipside – when you’re walking with someone it’s OK not to talk, too, and just being in company with someone can improve your psychological health by meeting your need for human contact. Humans are social animals and we need to connect.
Walking can be a way of making new contacts and friends – for example through walking groups. There are many of these around the country geared to all ages and abilities, for example, where I live there is a fantastic local organisation that runs wellbeing walks. There’s some links at the bottom of this article.
At a basic level, walking helps you connect with others, in the opportunity it gives to say hello, smile, nod to the people that you pass as you’re out. Even these little contacts have a positive effect on your wellbeing and to a fundamental need for recognition by others.
6. Walking can help you connect with yourself
In contrast to the social benefits, walking can also help you to soothe yourself. Getting out for a walk allows the opportunity to take some time for yourself and pay attention to how you are away from the hurly-burly of whatever else is going on in your day. This isn’t just about escaping from stressful situations by absenting yourself from them – although that may also be relevant – but more about taking a few moments to notice how you are, in the moment, as you walk.
Walking can give you a chance to be mindful, for example by
bringing your attention to the movement of your arms, legs, feet, and noticing
any stiff or sore points. By walking mindfully you can connect to the
environment around you, as well as your body, and give yourself a rest, even
briefly, from what’s going on in your head. There’s a link to a mindful walking
exercise below.
7. Walking can be a way for you to commit to caring for yourself
There is lots of information around on how exercise is good for you mentally and physically……‘not getting enough exercise’ can become another stick for us to beat ourselves up with. But equally, the way we exercise often changes through our lives as our bodies change, and sometimes it is only when we experience an injury that we realise that our bodies aren’t machines that we can just keep on pushing.
Walking is a non-aggressive way of getting exercise. It gets the heart going, the blood pumping, the limbs moving, and with less impact on your joints and muscles than running or working out in the gym. It can help you sleep better, especially with the added effect of getting out in the fresh air. As we age, and if we have other added issues (physical or emotional), our bodies take longer to recover from illness or injury. You’re less likely to experience an injury when out walking than with most other forms of exercise. Yes, you might want to run a marathon – but perhaps your body isn’t ready for that yet. Rather than noticing what you can’t do, in walking perhaps you could look after your body; by valuing your body you are sending a subliminal message to yourself that you are important.
The equality of walking
Walking is cheap. It doesn’t require a gym membership. You don’t need to be an athlete. A little is better than none. If you’re a wheelchair-user you can still get the benefits of being outside, though you may not have as much opportunity for physical exertion. Even in a city you can connect with the natural world…….through gardens, and trees, and birds.
It’s important to recognise that you may not be well enough, physically or mentally, to walk at the moment, in which case reading this blog may well be frustrating! If this is the case the last thing I want to do is add to your burden. Walking isn’t possible for everyone, and if you’re not sure, I suggest you check with your GP. There are other ways that you can look after yourself and prioritise your needs, to your own level of physical, mental and emotional ability right now, and listening to your body may the best way to get some clue as to what those ways might be.
How can I motivate myself to walk?
With the above in mind, if you’re not walking at the moment and would like to but are struggling to find time or motivation to do it, here are some suggestions:
Be realistic and start small. Don’t push
yourself to get out for an hour’s walk every day. If time pressures are a
factor, start by fitting small walks into your day – 5 minutes after lunch, or
getting off the bus a stop early.
Do it with someone else. Buddy up with a friend
or join a group if you think making a plan with someone else will help motivate
you. I’m hoping to launch a walk-and-talk therapy service soon, to offer the option
of counselling while walking.
Focus on you. Don’t compare yourself with what
others are doing. You don’t need to compete with anyone – even yourself. Take
each day as it comes. One day where you get out for a walk is one day more than
none!
Most importantly – be kind to yourself.
Sometimes you won’t feel like going outside your door, and if that happens
allow yourself to recognise that that is just one day, and that tomorrow may
well be different.
If I reflect for a moment on what walking means to me, so many things come up. When I walk I have space to get a little distance from whatever is going on, right now, in my life. Sometimes small things that I experience while I’m out walking can make a real difference to my day – hearing the first swifts of the summer screaming overhead, for example, can bring me a fleeting moment of joy that I reflect on throughout the day.
I feel connected to the rest of the world by the response of
my senses to what’s around me, whether that be the sound of the sea or the
taste of wild garlic I pick for my dinner. I feel connected to people, partly
through encountering them when I’m walking, but also because some walks trigger
memories of other people in my life, including those no longer alive, and for
that I am grateful. All these myriad, sometimes tiny, sometimes fleeting
experiences as I walk combine to……to what? Well, usually, to make me feel, in
some way, better.
Searching online for ‘stress management’ brings up A LOT of advice and tips. Sometimes in itself that can be stress-inducing – “Oh bloody hell all the things I should be doing / need to do before I’ll feel better!” – which can add to the sense of pressure we feel.
My aim is to, first of all, reassure you that stress responses are normal – there isn’t anything wrong with you; and secondly, to remind you that you can do something about how you feel, and it’s OK to start small. You don’t need to get self-care right all the time. If you’re feeling stressed, the last thing you need is to think that there is yet another thing you have to fit into your day, or ‘get on top of’.
What is stress?
Well, it’s a bit hard to define because the word stress is used to describe both a cause and a symptom. People talk about being under stress, or feeling stressed, or having workplace stress. What I mean here by stress is the reactions that we have to what we perceive (consciously or unconsciously) as difficult or challenging situations or environments.
Stress symptoms are the body’s reaction to feeling threatened, when hormones are released that allow it to act so as to prevent getting hurt – the ‘fight/flight’ response. The heart rate increases, muscles tense ready for action, blood pressure rises (to get the blood where it needs to go), breathing speeds up. But there are very few situations in the modern world where we need to fight a bear or escape from a lion, so while a stress response causing you to slam on the brakes to stop hitting a bus is useful, a stress response to being asked to work an extra shift at work isn’t. Those tense muscles and racing heart become a problem when they can’t find an outlet.
What causes a stress reaction in one person may not affect another. Look at two people in one workplace doing the same job; one of them might not be able to sleep at night because of work stress; the other might be quite happy to go home at the end of the day and forget completely about work until 9am the next morning.
I’m not saying that if you feel stressed by work you’re
somehow to blame – after all, maybe you work for a shitty employer. Maybe you
work in a very pressured environment and there are lots of stressors around
you. Maybe there’s just a hell of a lot going on in your life. But – you can
cultivate a different attitude to most stressors. It doesn’t remove the pressures around you, but
crucially, it helps you feel better –
you’re alleviating stress.
Me and stress – old friends
What do I know about it? Well, I’ve a history of stress –
essentially workplace stress, I guess, though I never defined it. My feelings
of stress, as they built up, became intertwined with anxiety and depression,
and my typical pattern would be to withdraw when I felt under pressure. I felt
that contact with other people would prevent me from being able to hide that I
wasn’t coping and I needed to maintain control at all costs. ‘Coping’ is a key
word here; clearly I was coping – in
that I was still functioning day-to-day – but ‘coping’ wasn’t a happy place.
I would overthink things – trying to think myself out of a situation; I would distract myself thinking I might ‘forget’ how rubbish I felt; and I sort of lived in fear of the future, feeling that things could only get worse. Every now and then I would have a meltdown when the rigid keep-clinging-on-at-all-costs shell just couldn’t hold it in any longer, and that would give a brief relief until things started building up again.
The knowledge that other people, working in the same,
demanding, environment as me WEREN’T stressed didn’t help; understanding it was
my problem that I needed to do something about – no matter how supportively
expressed – added to my sense that I really wasn’t able to function properly as
an adult.
How I de-stressed myself
So how did I change it? Various things – too many to remember. Some were small, but there was something about getting a little movement that started the ‘change’ ball rolling, until over time it gathered momentum.
I asked for help. I went to the doctor and got a
prescription for anti-depressants. To this day I don’t know how much of the
effect was the drug and how much the realisation that I could ask for help, but
my mood lifted enough that I was able to make use of a great CBT workshop with
a local community organisation, which helped me look at how my thought patterns
would get into a downward spiral – and how reflecting on these could help shift
me out of disaster mode. This worked for a while, and when I slipped back again
it didn’t take me as long to reach out – I’d done it before. I started to talk
to people about how I was feeling – even my family!
There were a couple of major events that happened in my life which jolted me enough to shift my priorities slightly – stressors in themselves, but they pushed me to check the reality of how much what I was stressing about really mattered. I was also lucky to have really solid support from my partner.
And then, longer-term, I was offered the opportunity of a counselling skills course and that pushed the ‘change ball’ onto a different path. Surprisingly, I found it OK that I had an extra thing in my week – because it shifted my focus slightly, and some of the other stuff began to look a bit smaller.
The greater understanding that I had of how I dealt with problems enabled me not only to make slight changes, but crucially my own therapy also helped me notice when I was giving it that double-whammy of beating myself up for beating myself up! Psychotherapy training is great for helping you understand the ‘why’, but in personal counselling I started to heal the anxious child within me, who made those decisions to protect me, and I supported them to make different ones.
It’s that which has enabled me to look after myself for no other reason than because I AM IMPORTANT. And even being able to write that in a blog is a sign of what a change there has been. I’m not going to pretend I never feel stressed now. But I recognise it and I take steps and I feel better sooner. I take some of the small steps that I’ve outlined below and in doing so it reinforces the commitment I’ve made to look after myself.
STOP right there!
It can be the hardest thing to STOP! To stop and take stock. Stress can produce a sense of an unstoppable hamster-wheel that speeds up and escalates and encourages you to believe that if you can only do MORE, run FASTER, work HARDER then you’ll feel more in control. But stopping really can help. If you’ve stopped long enough to read this blog: Well done! That’s a start!
The 10 stress management tips I’m sharing here are things which help me. I hope some of them may be useful for you.
Stress Tip No. 1: Manage your time gently
When you feel stressed you might have a sense that there’s just not enough time to get things done. But often we contribute to this by setting ourselves to-do lists that are simply unachievable in the misguided idea that we’ll get more done that way, and this adds to the sense of pressure.
The sense of achievement at having successfully met a goal can be energising, and the positive attitude gained from this leads to us being more ready for the next task. So, if you are a list person, write your normal to-do list. Then put aside HALF the items on it; given that you won’t have time to do them anyway, they can be moved to another day.
Then take ONE most important item from the list and focus on
that at your most productive time of day. For me, this is first thing in the
morning before coffee-time. For others it might be in the evening. But the most
important thing deserves your most attentive time.
If you still didn’t manage everything on your halved to-do
list – golly, you’re really putting
pressure on yourself. Try cutting it down further. Be a bit gentler with
yourself, huh? You’re only human.
Stress Tip No. 2: Practice saying No
This is a tough one for a lot of people. I get that, it’s
hard for me too. And it’s hard because most of us know that this is an
essential skill; when we say No we might feel guilty, when we don’t say No we
feel ‘bad at self-care’.
So I don’t want to dwell on the validity of saying No – that actually, only saying Yes to the things that we have time and inclination to do well is better both for us and the person asking us. Instead I’m suggesting that you notice what you could have said No to, and reflect on how you might say No next time, and that you start with the small stuff, those you feel ‘least guilty’ about. Saying No to small requests might feel it won’t make that much difference to your stress levels, but the important thing is getting yourself in the habit.
And when you say No, don’t make excuses why. At the very most just say “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” You don’t need excuses to look after yourself.
Stress Tip No. 3: Slow your breathing
Breathing deeply is beneficial for releasing stress, partly because the ‘fight or flight’ mode that we find we’re in if we’re stressed tenses everything up and we end up breathing high in the chest. However, taking deep belly breaths can be almost impossible for some people if they’ve got out of practice doing this, and it can actually be triggering for some people who have a history of trauma.
Instead, start by focusing on slowing your breath. Deep breathing can come later. Next time you’re feeling under pressure, stop for a moment. If necessary set an alarm on your phone for 5 minutes. You can afford 5 minutes.
Sit back in your chair with your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap.
Close your eyes, or look down at your hands.
Imagine yourself somewhere that you find peaceful or relaxing.
Breathe in for a count of four, then out for a count of four.
Notice the feeling of the breath moving in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Repeat.
If you find your mind drifting to your to-do list, just notice that, and say “Yep, I know you’re there” and then bring it back to that peaceful place.
Stress Tip No. 4: Drink water
Dehydration can increase levels of cortisol (the stress
hormone). Essentially dehydration is stressful for the body because it’s
deprived of what it needs to function well. Dehydration affects the flow of
blood to the brain which can lead to feeling fatigued. Sometimes we can also
mistake hunger for thirst – so if you feel like you need a snack to keep going,
take a drink of water first.
Perhaps you forget to stop long enough in your busy day to even notice that you’re thirsty. So before you settle down to work, get yourself a big glass of water and put it somewhere within your line of vision. That way you’re more likely to notice it’s there. If you work on the run, take a bottle and set an alarm on your phone to remind you to take a drink. Even stopping for the few seconds it takes to reach out and take a sip will shift your body position slightly, which is good too.
Stress Tip No. 5: Reflect on what you ‘need’ rather than what you ‘should’
What do I mean by this? Well, one of the things that we can put ourselves under pressure with, is all the things we think we should be doing. I look out for that word ‘should’, because it’s a real signal that someone is self-critical and has high expectations of themselves. Next time you think to yourself “I should be doing X”, reword it to “I COULD be doing X” – this way there’s less of a burden on you.
Then ask yourself if you WANT to do it. Ditch one ‘should’ from your week and add one thing that you enjoy – whether that be spending time alone, or spending time with people – whatever you need. Trust your instinct and if you hear a little voice saying you’re being selfish, say “I hear that you think I’m being selfish and that makes you feel anxious. Right now I’m looking after myself.” Because you are.
Stress Tip No. 6: Take a walk
The symptoms of stress are a flight or fight response which
is geared towards activity – preparing you to run away or to defend yourself.
Often people find that a really good workout after a stressful day can release
a lot of the tension they were feeling.
The thing is, we can get caught up in what we’re constantly being told about optimum levels of exercise. All I want to say here is “A little is better than none”. If you keep telling yourself you ‘should’ join a gym or go to Zumba classes but you just don’t know where to fit it in, you’re piling more pressure on yourself. Instead, start by fitting a 5 minute walk into your day. 5 minutes after your lunch or after a particularly difficult phone call. You’ve got time to do that. You can build it up from there, but with that 5 minutes you’ve made an active decision to look after yourself. Well done!
Stress Tip No. 7: Cushion your day
Create a buffer around your day by detaching from your phone
for 30 minutes at the start and end of your day. Is the first thing you do on
waking up check your phone? When your mind and body are still coming to, you
are more open and vulnerable, and seeing upsetting news stories, or being
reminded of family politics, can affect you more deeply.
Being constantly connected can add to that a feeling of time
pressure, that you need to ‘keep up with things’ – but ask yourself, what you
are checking your phone FOR? Think about ways that you can take care of
yourself without resource to the outside world. Perhaps you could start your
day with a 5-minute meditation. Or read a book with your breakfast. It’s OK to
protect yourself at your most vulnerable times.
Stress Tip No. 8: Do things that make you laugh
Laughter can help you relax; a big belly laugh gets the whole body moving, can dissipate some of those accumulated stress hormones and relieve tension. Laughter has many physical and mental benefits and is a way of strengthening connections with other people
Watch a silly film or TV programme. Reconnect with someone who makes you laugh. Even just pretending to smile and laugh has been proven to have health benefits – why not try that right now?
Stress Tip No. 9: Focus
Inner Relationship Focusing is a practice that can help you manage your stress levels. It encourages you to pay attention to uncomfortable feelings rather than trying to change them and it’s surprising how that alternative to trying to push a feeling away can really bring a change in itself.
As an example, imagine you’re feeling a tightness across
your chest as you worry about getting a piece of work finished. You try and
ignore it because you need to get on with that bit of work! Instead, you can
sit and pay attention to that tight feeling and develop a relationship with it.
You get a sense of what it’s trying to tell you (this feeling might be
associated with something you internalised as a child on having to get things
done or working hard). And because you’ve ‘listened’ to it, it relaxes a little
and lets you carry on with what you’re doing in a less stressed way. There are
similar practices and methods; Focusing is one that works for me and you can
teach yourself to do it with free resources (see the end of this article).
Stress Tip No. 10: Find a therapist
OK, you got me – therapy isn’t a quick 5-minute stress tip. But you can spare 5 minutes to look for one! Speaking to someone unconnected with the rest of your world can be really beneficial to get an understanding of why you are feeling so stressed – and what you discover might surprise you.
There may be good reasons that you are feeling stressed, especially
if you’ve had a number of changes in your life in a short space of time, and a
counsellor can support you to recognise that what you’re feeling is normal and
not weakness.
On the other hand, often we look for reasons outside us to blame our feelings of stress on, and while there can be all sorts of very real external factors that contribute to why we feel under pressure, actually working on how we manage our response to these is more helpful in the long run. And we can take control of our own behaviour and responses – whereas we can’t always control what goes on around us.
When counselling, I often encourage people to focus on what
they are doing well rather than what they’re not doing, and to consider how they can be kind to themselves,
which can then resource them better to deal with the strains of everyday
living. Get in touch with me if you want to find out more.
These are just some suggestions for managing feelings of stress. There are plenty of others and there are additional references and sources of information below. But start small; if you give yourself the target of a major life change to ‘escape’ stress, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
Remember – stress reactions don’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. But if you don’t pay attention to them they can take over your life and drain it of its colour. While external factors contribute, stress responses are an internal process, and you can make choices to do things differently and take more control. You will sometimes slip back – and that’s OK, because if you’ve made changes once, you can do it again, and practice helps you get better at it.
This week I’ve been thinking about transitions and changes. This is partly because of a transition in my own life – I’m about to move house and move country, and having done it (in the opposite direction) two years ago, I’m keen to acknowledge the effect that this is likely to have on me. And someone very close to me has also had a very big change in their life, and so it’s brought into sharper focus the impact that change can have on us.
I wonder whether there are certain changes that culturally we ‘expect’ to have a bigger impact than others – whether we’re ‘allowed’ to be rocked more by one event than another, and in the same vein whether we therefore permit ourselves to ‘feel’ more in response to one change than to another. If I apply this to myself, when my mum died, I think I was really good at grieving, for want of a better way of putting it. Somehow it seemed uncomplicated; I’d got lots of messages from people that it was OK to start crying at random moments (and I did), I sought out hugs from people (sometimes to their surprise), I accepted offers of help gratefully. On the other hand, when I moved to another country, while part of me thought “this might be a bit tricky”, another part was very much focused on the idea that I was lucky to have this opportunity and therefore it would be ungrateful or weak to be discombobulated by the experience – viewing myself as an entitled middle-class snowflake fussing about a first world problem.
Thankfully I’ve got better in recent years at voicing my discomfort, and a number of conversations with people helped me recognise that, from an outsider’s perspective, stopping working for the first time in my adult life, leaving my home, friends and family and moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language, had the potential to be quite challenging. That didn’t quiet the voice inside me, that told me I ‘should’ be better at living the dream – “Oh for goodness sake, embrace the challenge!” – but it did help me pay attention to what fears or anxieties that voice might be trying to drown out, and to learn a lesson about allowing myself to find the change difficult.
These are fairly significant changes. But changes that, on the face of it, may ‘look’ small, can still have a big effect, yet we have a tendency to dismiss them – “it’s not worth getting upset about”. The problem is that in telling yourself something isn’t worth getting upset about, there’s an implicit message that by being upset, there’s something wrong with you. So then not only are you feeling uncomfortable, you’re feeling ‘bad’ for feeling uncomfortable – a double whammy.
There can be all kinds of reasons why you might find a particular change difficult. It can upset your routine, which is what gives structure to how you function day to day. It can tap into deep-seated fears or decisions that you made as a small child of how your life ‘should’ be – decisions that you might not be aware of consciously but that direct how you live your life as an adult. It can trigger memories of past experiences that were traumatic in some way. (Years ago I remember getting a small promotion at work. I knew I ‘should’ seize this as a career opportunity, but the offer triggered memories of an earlier experience in another company where I had been given more responsibility, little support and eventually was disciplined because I was isolated and didn’t know how to speak up. Is it any wonder I didn’t welcome the promotion with open arms?)
Perhaps most importantly, it’s hard to think of any change that doesn’t bring some loss with it. A new baby is cause for celebration, but it can also mean a loss of freedom and control for the parents. So there may be a part of us that is experiencing grief, even when a change may be perceived as positive.
It’s important, too, to pay attention to the cumulative impact of changes. In my example of moving countries, there were a number of linked changes – job, social connections, language, environment – but sometimes we experience lots of little unconnected changes that, added together, can really rock our foundations. Maybe you move jobs. Oh, and your best friend just had a baby. They couldn’t be around for you when your pet died two months ago, or when your sister moved away from the area. We might see some changes as positive or dismiss them as unimportant – but that can mean ignoring or minimising the effect they have on our equilibrium. Imagine yourself standing in a boat, and having three waves knocking into you from three different directions, and how that throws you off balance. It’s all very well people saying ‘the only thing that doesn’t change is change’; knowing that doesn’t help when you’re in the middle of it! I’m not saying change is bad – sometimes things are as they are, and we can’t stop change – but acknowledging the effect of it can help us adjust.
Just take a moment, now, to reflect on a change that you may have experienced – big or small – and to sit for a few minutes with your mind on that change to see what comes up for you. What is or was the impact of that change on you emotionally, physically, mentally? Do you allow yourself to feel that impact or do you push it away? Can you offer yourself some compassion for feeling off-kilter? Is there something you can do, for yourself, gently, to ease that feeling?
If you give yourself a hard time when you find things difficult, therapy can really help you unpick those feelings that you feel you ‘shouldn’t’ be feeling and can give you more understanding of, and compassion towards yourself. It is OK to find change hard and to take care of yourself through a transition. Maybe you can give yourself permission to be wobbly.
This week I’ve been fighting a bug. (You don’t need to feel
sorry for me, I’m doing a great job at that.) As I decided each day whether to
go ahead with client appointments I’ve been reflecting on what was The Best
Thing To Do – for me and for my clients. Never an easy one to figure out, this
is even less clearcut with online work when the factor of “Is it in the best
interest of my clients to be infected with my snotty bug?” is removed. And I
don’t have the additional effort of hauling myself through the cold to a rented
room in the city.
I’ve been remembering an article I read when I first started working with clients which spoke of the ethical requirements of self-care. That as therapists we have a professional obligation to look after ourselves so that we are in the best possible position to look after others. At the time I read it this was gold for me; if I had a duty to look after myself it meant that I would do it, as I could circumnavigate the internal messages that told me I was being self-indulgent.
Doing self-care ‘right’
The downside of my interpretation of this requirement is that my tendency to ‘do things right’ then kicks in, in the area of self-care, too; I find myself asking myself if I’m short-changing clients by working when I’m not 100% in peak physical and mental condition (i.e. coming down with a cold). That battles against the belief that my clients need me, that I’m letting them down by cancelling. (As counsellors we sometimes forget that our clients continue to live and function OK the other 167 hours of the week that we’re not with them.)
I’m sure my perspective is skewed by being inside the therapy world, but sometimes it feels to me that counsellors are particularly demanding of themselves and each other in the need to do things right. Counselling attracts people who care, who want to do well for others, who want to ‘make people happy’. But sometimes we can be blinded to the value of making mistakes, of having to make a judgment call in a fuzzy situation. Black and white decision making is so much easier!
Is it OK for counsellors to have needs, too?
Self-care isn’t all chocolate cake and scented candles, as has been pointed out before. In this context – of whether or not to cancel appointments – it’s not just a question of feeling sorry for myself and curling up under a blanket. Even where I may have felt anxious in anticipation, often I feel energised after an appointment – something about being so focused on that person, about being allowed a little way into their world, about our relationship, about the magic that happens in therapy. Is depriving myself of that feeling self-care? The total focus that I bring to a counselling session means that sometimes I feel as I’m ‘coming back into the world’ afterwards. It’s therefore an opportunity for me to be centred on something other than feeling under-the-weather – surely a form of self-care?
And as therapists we often feel uncomfortable talking about the reality that our work is also our livelihood – we don’t like the idea that we’re charging people a fee for ‘being nice to them’. (Reframe: therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself.) We need to make a living, and I would be dishonest pretending that potential loss of earnings isn’t a factor – financial survival is self-care too. There’s a practical business aspect to this though: we need to be ‘good-enough’ therapists otherwise our clients won’t come back. If we’re putting ourselves under pressure or making a habit of working when we’re not up to it, that won’t help the bottom line.
Giving it our best guess
All of the above comes with the caveat that we need to not push ourselves to extremes – either of overwork or of self-care! As an example; today I felt I was functioning at 85%; I went ahead with the appointment; I did feel I had more energy afterwards but I knew also that I had recovery time, a buffer of a few hours before the next client.
I have worked in jobs where I would go in when I was feeling rubbish – ‘presenteeism’ we called it in the HR world – because there was stuff that I could do that took less of my energy, and because I believed I had to ‘look keen’. I’ve also worked in jobs where I really needed to be 100% fit to cope with the demand of the role. Being self-employed, the only person I’m fooling is myself, and I just need to make a judgment and make the best of the situation.
As a therapist part of my work is modelling behaviour to the clients I work with. What am I modelling if I feel like shit and go to work anyway for the sake of my client? That the other person is always more important than the self, that I have to rescue them?
Sometimes there’s no formula
Instead I need to check each day as it comes with the information that I have; am I fit enough to work? And check at the end of the day; was I a good-enough counsellor? If some days I decide I would have been better taking the day off, that’s information for the future. And that way I’m modelling what it is to be human, that there are very few black and white decisions and that being human is good enough.
***As a footnote: the week after I wrote this, the bug really kicked in, totally flooring me. At one point I started to wonder if I would ever be well again. This was a good reality-check to my musings; there was no way I could have worked in that state – I could barely even think, let alone ‘focus on my client’. It was a reminder that sometimes there are black and white decisions!
