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Why is Christmas so bloody hard?

Lucy Hyde on 10 December 2019

Finding Christmas challenging LucyHydeTherapy

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.

Arthur Rackham Christmas 1 Prawny from Pixabay

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

Lucy Hyde therapy how to cope at Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde counsellor how to cope at Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde counselling how to cope at Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde therapist how to cope at Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde counsellor Coping with Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde counselling Coping with Christmas

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

Lucy Hyde therapist Coping with Christmas

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 .

Walk yourself happier: 7 ways in which walking can help your mental health

Lucy Hyde on 15 May 2019

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.

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - counselling for depression

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.

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - therapy for depression

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

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - online therapy for anxiety

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.

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - online counselling for depression

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

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - therapy for anxiety

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.

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - online therapy for depression

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.

mental health support by walking - Lucy Hyde - counselling for anxiety

Information & resources:

Find a walking group via the Ramblers .

Wellbeing walks in East Lothian .

Mindful walking practice .

Physical activity and mental health .

Walking for health minds .

10 Stress Management tips: go easy on yourself with some simple ideas

Lucy Hyde on 12 April 2019

Getting stressed about stress management?

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.

10 Stress Management tips - LucyHydetherapy - counselling for stress in Edinburgh

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

10 Stress Management tips - Lucy Hyde - online counselling for stress

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.

10 Stress Management tips - Lucy Hyde - counselling for stress in Edinburgh

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!

10 Stress Management tips - Lucy Hyde - counselling for stress

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.

Stress Management tip No 1 - Lucy Hyde - online counselling for stress

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’.

Stress Management tip No 2 - Lucy Hyde - counselling for stress

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

Stress Management tip No 3 - Lucy Hyde - online therapy for stress

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.

Stress Management tip No 4 - Lucy Hyde - therapy for stress in Edinburgh

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.

Stress Management tip No 5 - Lucy Hyde - online therapy for stress

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.

Stress Management tip no 6 - Lucy Hyde - online counselling for stress

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

Stress Management tip No 7 - Lucy Hyde - counselling for stress

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

Stress Management tip No 8 - Lucy Hyde therapy - counselling for stress

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.

Stress Management tip No 9 - Lucy Hyde - therapy for stress

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.

Stress Management tip No 10 - Lucy Hyde - therapy for stress in Edinburgh

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.

10 Stress Management tips - Lucy Hyde - therapy for stress in Edinburgh

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.

Start with a small step today.

Other information

Stress awareness month 2019

Tips to control stress

20 tips to tame your stress

Why breath exercises aren’t always the answer

Stress and sleep disorders

Focusing resources

Permission to be wobbly

Lucy Hyde on 22 February 2019

Acknowledging the impact of change

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.