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
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.
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.
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.
Perfectionism involves a sense of needing to do absolutely everything perfectly and then expecting that of others as well. Not as well as you someone else can do within the time and space you have - NO. PERFECTLY. Humans were never meant to be perfect - we are flawed by nature and that's what makes us so wonderfully human.
It seems ironic that I put off writing this article for weeks. I was busy caught up in life and trying to keep balance – well, that’s at least what I told myself as I did other things repeatedly other than write this. So, do you ever wonder what that procrastination is about? Often we think procrastination is about laziness or poor time management. However, it seems that isn’t the case.
When there is conflict within a relationship we often feel that there is something wrong with the relationship or something wrong with us. This, however, is not necessarily true, as conflict is a way to enable change and to work through issues that invariably come up when two people are trying to share a life together.
