Too much people-ing!© (To be honest I probably didn’t invent the term people-ing but humour me.) Christmas is the time when we can find ourselves in the company of folk that we don’t see often or spend long periods of time with. Throw an intergenerational mix into the pot and it’s a recipe for high levels of social anxiety…which can …
Grief at Christmas – handle with care
In my last post I shared a quote that described Christmas as a magnifying glass over our feelings. If things are going well it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but what if you’re grieving a loss? The pressure to feel the joy of the season can be an even greater challenge. 🔍🔍🔍🌲 Remember there is no timeline for …
‘Be quiet and do as you’re told’. What are conditions of worth and how can we change them?
‘Be quiet and do as you’re told.’ So I did, because that’s how ‘good girls’ behave. And I carried on doing that for decades because I believed it. In a perfect world, we would all be loved unconditionally, but in reality, love comes with conditions. From an early age, many of us have been surrounded by messages from the authority …
Letting go
A couple of years ago I rescued a banana plant. It was sitting on a bench at the garden centre with some other bedraggled specimens ‘going cheap’. I was still mourning the loss of a beautiful tree fern that had succumbed to the frost earlier in the year (rather, I had neglectfully not covered it). It was early autumn so …
How to cope at Christmas
‘Christmas comes but once a year’. It’s a line from an 1851 poem by Thomas Miller. No doubt Christmas festivities were very different in the 19th century and probably only lasted a day or two. Now, the Christmas ‘season’ begins as soon as shops have taken down the display of pumpkins and replaced them with cards and tinsel. It’s …
Soul searching
How is it with your soul? No, I’m not asking about your extensive collection of Aretha Franklin LPs but you – your soul. (Perhaps you’re already running for the hills from this kind of talk but hang around). What do I mean when I talk about ‘soul’? Does it have to be ‘religious’? Try a quick Google and you’ll discover …
Grounding techniques – what are they and how can they help when I’m anxious?
As a child I was a big fan of comics and one of the comic strips I always looked forward to was called the Numskulls. It was based on the idea that there was a team of little beings who lived in the brain of a person and from their headquarters, each department operated different parts of the body. Whilst …
Burnout.
‘You’re burnt out’. The doctor barely looked up from his computer as he updated his notes. Unspoken rage coursed through me. Burn out isn’t a diagnosis. Burnout feels like a weakness and I felt like it was my fault already. Rage at him was quickly followed by shame. How had I got here? I’d got my degree while working and …
You can heal the unfinished business from the past
Shame, fear, a sense of worthlessness, – these emotional wounds are carried by some people every day as a result of past experiences. Those wounds can feel so raw and overwhelming that ignoring it, running away from it, seems like the only option. Confronting that pain head on doesn’t seem possible. As time goes by it may diminish, or be …
MEN-tal health
MOVEMBER (that’s not a spelling mistake!) has become the month when some men choose to ditch the razor and sport a beard – or for those feeling even more daring a moustache, but what’s the point? The aim is to draw attention to men’s health – physical and mental – to encourage a conversation, a conversation that might save a …
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