I started to think about what the 80-year old me might say to myself about this pandemic and living through this period of time. I was to imagine being an 80 year old version of myself and if that version of me was sitting sharing a cup of tea with someone and they wanted to know about living through the pandemic and what I had learnt from it, then what would it be? What things would I have learnt through it?

To be able to reduce stress, you need to be able to maintain some degree of control and predictability. Other ways of reducing personal stress can be via maintaining social connection to supports. We know that those who maintain connections to people or groups will often live longer than those who are socially isolated

Why are you here on Earth? What are you meant to be doing? How can you make a difference in their lifetime? You can’t just manufacture purpose in life. You can, however, work at increasing more of it.  

I’ve recently been referred a client who rang me and asked me if they could ask me some questions. I told them something I say to all my new clients: “I may not necessarily be your cup of tea”. And this is important, because how clients choose a counsellor or therapist is very important, and there’s some criteria I have used in the past to identify for myself whether a counsellor I was seeing was the right fit for me.

What was discovered in the research was that the assumptions we make about our partner and whether they did or didn’t do something is what is called an attribution pattern. Basically, this relates to whether you judge your partner’s behaviour through jumping to conclusions or through thinking through their possible choices.

Niksen. This is a concept designed by the Dutch that means spending time doing basically nothing. The art of Niksen is spending time avoiding being productive or achieving, so putting aside time to simply be rather than doing. In reality what does this look like? This might mean putting aside five to ten minutes to just gaze out of a window or look at a piece of furniture in your room and allowing your mind to wander.

Here are four positive keys to remember and try to practice together in your relationships to better the way you understand each other and care for each other.

When we fail it has an impact on our self-esteem and we feel negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and shame.  It depends on how we cope with the self-esteem hit in relation to (1) whether the failure impacts our future performance, (2) whether we face failure and accept we may do better next time and (3) accept that it is useful to fail for future success. 

It is very normal for couples in long-term relationships to argue - and arguing in itself is not an issue.  Conflicts are necessary as a partnership involves two people who will have different emotions, concepts and values. These need to be negotiated regularly.  The issue is HOW to argue.

By dealing with chronic pain myself through migraines, I understand the pain that is often separate from the actual pain. It’s the pain of constantly having to catch up when you’re well and relying on others. If you suffer from chronic pain, there are three aspects of self-compassion that you should embrace, discussed in this blog.