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Navigating life can be tough at times.

We may experience obstacles in life, which can be physical, psychological or emotional, and it really can feel like they have been sent to try us!

Finding our way through can be tricky and sometimes, it’s doesn’t feel possible to do this alone.

We might speak to friends who offer advice and their opinions, which at times can be useful and be enough for us to carry on our merry(ish) way. But there may be times when this is not enough or we find ourselves not wanting to speak to anyone in fear of being misunderstood or judged.

It is at times like these that counselling can be useful.

You might find yourself unable to find the words to describe how you feel. You might not know how you feel at all, which I can tell you from experience, you are not alone with this.

Finding ways to express ourselves can be challenging, especially if you have been told or taught that when you express your feelings it is not a good thing.

There are many different types of counselling, so you might wish to look up a particular modality based on something that you have watched or read online or in a book.

Alternatively, perhaps you’d prefer to choose someone to speak to that you like the look of. Just like in life, we are probably not going to get on with everyone we meet and so you are not necessarily going to ‘click’ with every counsellor you have an appointment with. The luxury of working with a counsellor in private practice is that you have the opportunity to choose who you speak with.

It’s OK to have an initial appointment or a few appointments to get a feel for the counsellor and the way you might work together and to take some time to reflect before making a decision to continue.

If you feel nervous, please know that this is not unusual and it can feel like a big step to reach out.

If you would like to contact me for an introductory telephone call or an in-person or online full counselling appointment, please use the contact form and let me know a little more about yourself and what days and times work best for you. I will get back to you as soon as I can (usually within a few hours) to arrange an initial appointment.

Better understanding our thoughts and feelings can take time. We first need to notice where the thoughts and feelings might be from.

It can be useful to understand that the confusion we often experience can be the conflict between what we TRULY believe in and what society EXPECTS of us.

Consider the time you last criticised yourself for doing something the wrong or for not being good enough at something – whose voice or words are they? A parent? grandparent? A bully at school or in the workplace? They may be someone’s but they’re probably not yours!

Learning to let go of other’s expectations of you and to recognise your own needs and wants can free you up to be your true, genuine self. This can lead you towards making choices to live the life you choose.

Mindfulness meditation training through a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course and / or counselling (talking therapy) can support you to do this.

Remember;

We are all work in progress.

Thoughts are not facts.

Life can be tough.

Go easy on yourself.

I wanted to share with you an artist whom I have met and whose work I really enjoy.

To read Michelle Turner’s story and to take a look at her beautiful gifts, please visit her website: michelleturner.art/collections/gifts

Being aware of what your body needs, physically is a good way of helping yourself through challenging times.

During this period of social distancing, you may find yourself working from home rather than the office. This could mean that you begin to feel the strain of sitting on an uncomfortable dining chair, staring at the laptop for hours on end, with the pressure to meeting deadlines with no team around you for support. You might feel tension in your body; shoulders, neck, and lower spine. At this point, as long as you are used to exercising in some way, it might be useful to do some kind of gentle stretching exercises. Within the PDF download, there is a link to a mindful movement called Qi Gong. This can be a very gentle but effective way of moving and tuning in to your body, allowing the blood to flow and the breath to lead the movement.

Until now, I was unaware that the NHS website also offers free resources for aerobic, pilates and yoga classes. The links for these are also within the PDF download.

Another important element of taking care of yourself physically, is your diet. Paying attention to what you are eating and when you are eating can help to improve medical conditions, digestive system and quality of sleep.

If you download the PDF, the links will take you to the NHS website and Inner Space Works website.

Choosing how you get through the next weeks and months is important and sometimes taking one day at a time is more than enough. This is not weak or failing. It takes strength and courage to acknowledge that you might need to temporarily slow down and perhaps ask for some support.

Dealing with practical tasks can be psychologically draining. Learning to take care of yourself and being kind to yourself is important (even though it may feel counter-intuitive!).

We all need it but do you allow yourself to think ‘out of the box’ or, when you look at the infographic below, do you only see the words “Loving” and “Care” and equate that to being soft and your brain switches off?

TLC is offering ourselves alternative ways of thinking and doing. New perspectives and approaches that may be useful, particularly whilst we are navigating our way through this Global Pandemic of Coronavirus, Covid19.

Life was tough, stressful and challenging before lock down. Now, we have layers of newly presented challenges.

Knowing that there are alternative ways of approaching tasks and situations can help us to manage the situation differently and perhaps to better manage ourselves.

Try offering yourself some TLC and see what happens. Below are a few suggestions for how you could change things up in a practical way.

Are you structured or unstructured in your approach?

Jon Kabat-Zinn created the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Course in 1979. Now, it is widely used as a method of calming the mind and body to manage our automatic, emotional reactions to external factors. Within this article, Kabat-Zinn explains the essence of mindfulness, learning to understand the relationship we have with pain; emotional and physical. The Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Course is Secular, meaning that it is not related or connected to religion or spiritual practice.

“With others, he pioneered an eight-week mindfulness-based stress-reduction course at the University of Massachusetts Medical School for patients with chronic pain, harnessing the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation as taught by the Buddha, but with the Buddhism taken out. “I bent over backwards to structure it and find ways to speak about it that avoided as much as possible the risk of it being seen as Buddhist, new age, eastern mysticism or just plain flakey,” he says.”

“Kabat-Zinn had been meditating since 1965, but had no compunction in playing the Buddhism right down. “I got into this through the Zen door which is a very irreverent approach to Buddhism,” he says. He talks a lot about dharma, the term for the Buddha’s teaching, but he’s not a Buddhist and remarks that to insist mindfulness meditation is Buddhist is like saying gravity is English because it was identified by Sir Isaac Newton.”

“The UMass Stress Reduction Clinic opened its doors in 1979 and taught people with chronic back pain, victims of industrial accidents, cancer patients and sometimes paraplegics. Kabat-Zinn has defined mindfulness meditation as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”. By focusing on the breath, the idea is to cultivate attention on the body and mind as it is moment to moment, and so help with pain, both physical and emotional.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/22/mindfulness-jon-kabat-zinn-depression-trump-grenfell

It’s no wonder we’re all exhausted! – We are mostly caught up in cognition!
Just reading through LinkedIn posts this morning – questions, answers, opinions, planning, doing, sorting, organising. I just wanted to shout out “STOP!!!!!!!!”

Cognitive processing; processing thoughts, busy-ness in the mind, layers of external input, interaction, distractions, reactivity. We need to do this to plan and complete tasks, but not ALL the time.

I have always been one of those people who could very easily keep going, like a Duracell Bunny but, when the batteries ran out, I’d be good for nothing! I have found the value of mindfulness meditation to be the ability of recognising my alert system, so I am alerted BEFORE the batteries run out!

I am interested in people and intrigued by what motivates individuals to keep going on and on…until burnout strikes. Better still, I am interested in guiding people through mindfulness training as a method of preventing burnout!

The value of mindfulness is also having the ability to become your own observer, noticing the black hole of depression approaching, which can prevent the downwards spiral. Or, noticing the build up of anxious thoughts and feelings, which can help to prevent a panic attack.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not on a “mindfulness solves all problems!” mission, but I always write and talk from my own personal experiences and those of my clients and scientific research. I appreciate that what suits one person may not suit another. However, I do truly believe that to understand whether something works for you or not, you need to experience in practice, not just from reading about it or theorising.

Through mindfulness training, the first and possibly most important element learned, is shifting out of the mind (cognition) and into the body (the felt sense). Within the Bodyscan practice, you learn to purposefully shift your attention around the body, each part in turn, and to be curious and interested. This can be an odd experience for some, and for others, it comes as a huge relief! Having a teacher to reflect your experiences with is useful and can be an important part of the training.

As I write this, I notice thoughts in my mind of how this may sound utterly crazy to some and why would anyone want to do this? People have better things to do with their time! The benefits of learning mindfulness can be practical and profound and, not always what you first imagine or expect. Be prepared to learn a new way of being human!

On a practical level, if you don’t like the idea of attending a group retreat or course, you can also learn how to integrate Mindfulness into your life with me, on a 1-2-1 basis, from the comfort of your own home via Zoom/Skype.
If you’re intrigued but not yet ready to take the leap, take a moment to sit, with feet on the ground, body on a chair, hands resting on legs and breathing. Not needing to do anything other than to sit and observe.

How does that feel?

I have heard various responses during courses; horrendous, difficult, twitchy, “I can’t do it!”, relaxing, interesting, nice, a relief. Did you experience any of these or different?