Your invitation to get in touch…
So, you might be curious about working together, but it can seem like there’s so much to consider; Will we be a good match? How do I make contact? What will happen when I do? What if I change my mind? Where do I even start?!
I’m hoping that this short blog post will answer some of these questions, and at least offer some reassurance for the ones I can’t answer here. Firstly, if you’re thinking about getting in touch, I’m sending you an open invitation to do just that! It can be so difficult to know where to start when sending that first email, text or DM- how much information to include, where to begin, what questions to ask… I get such a diverse range of initial contacts, and honestly, they’re all OK! Maybe you want to keep things brief and just express an interest, or you might want to start with a description of what led you to get in touch in the first place. Either way, and most places in between are fine with me. I will usually respond (as promptly as I can) with an invitation to join me for 15 minute free-of-charge telephone consultation, where we can talk a bit more about what you’re seeking help with, you can ask me questions and we can talk practical things like fees, attending sessions, paperwork etc.
The first consultation is invaluable for both you and I. It offers you a space to really get a feel for me and to learn more about how I work. It also offers me a space to get to know you a little better and to assess whether you’ve come to the right person or not. If I feel that there is someone else better suited to help you, I will make every effort to signpost you on to people or organisations that can help. However, if we come to the end of the 15 minutes and are in agreement that we could be a good match, then I might suggest that we book a first session. At this point, I’ll send you over my Welcome Pack, which consists of further information for you to read before the appointment- it covers important things like confidentiality, payment details and where to find my office (if we’re not working online). That first sessions is always offered on a non-obligation basis, so there is no pressure for you to book any more- I will leave the ball in your court by offering you some time to think about things and you can come back to me if it feels right. I won’t reach out or pester you with follow-up contacts. I also always charge my usual rate for the first session.
I’m hopeful that this snippet of a blog post helps to clarify some practicalities about the initial process we go through when we begin to get to know one another, as well as offering you a big welcome if you decide to say hello!
Blog: Working your way out of feeling stuck with inner conflict.
Most of the time when I’m working with people and we begin to explore the reasons that they have sought my help, we end up landing on an area of inner-conflict. This can sound like;
“I’m considering leaving my job/partner but I’m afraid”
“I have negative thoughts about myself but I want to feel more confident”
“I want to take better care of myself but I feel guilty”
“I want to work on my trauma, but I’m frightened”
…and so much more.
The way I understand inner conflict (both as a therapist, and as a real-life person that experiences it, too) is that we are each one person made up of multiple parts/aspects/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. Each part of us has different motivations, needs, desires, and even memories or emotions. So, there might be one part of you that knows how capable you are, and feels stagnant in a job where you’re no longer challenged. This part of you is ready to take the next step. There could also be a part of you that doubts your capabilities and feels insecure or frightened; it may be the part of you that hold the memories of times when you have heard from others that you are not capable, or times when you feel you’ve failed before. And so there lies the tug-of-war inside you that creates the uncomfortable push-pull. It can be super exhausting!
More often than not, what happens next is that we then get stuck. Inner conflict can be really debilitating because you might just become frozen. You might also become frustrated or angry- which can be directed out to others, or can come back in on yourself. Some people find that this feeling of inner conflict is completely anxiety-provoking. Because we are all individuals with our own histories, contexts, beliefs and experiences, we will all have different responses to becoming stuck when the parts of us are conflicted.
The way that we move forward from being stuck is, ironically, to stay still for a moment. This can seem counter-intuitive when everything about our culture tells us to keep moving, keep pushing, whatever you do- don't stop! But this constant movement can become toxic when it leads us to ignore what’s really happening in our inner worlds. When we are staying still, it becomes easier to listen to what is really happening within you. Once you’ve been able to hear what each part of you is saying, you can make a decision about what it is that you actually want to do. In listening to the part of you that is fearful about leaving your job, you will be able to hear that this part of you is remembering events, thoughts and feelings that you had a long time ago. You will be able to soothe the fear that this part of you holds, so that you can feel more free to take the next step in your growth as a person.
Having worked from this approach for some time, I’m well-attuned to listening out for inner-conflict when someone is describing what is happening to them. I hear it all the time! My role is to hold a space for you to be able to get closer to the different parts of you, get to know them, and open up a dialogue between them. Once this happens, I often see that the person I’m working with is feeling more relaxed- their shoulders drop, they breathe easier, and have a sense of hope where before there was only the hopelessness of feeling stuck.
Article: Loneliness and connection; finding nourishment in solitude
There are important distinctions to make between connection, solitude and loneliness. Connection and solitude are both states of being and could be opposing polarities on the same spectrum, whereas loneliness is an emotion that we all experience from time to time, and could feature at any point on that continuum. Loneliness is the feeling we get when we are disconnected from ourselves, or others. Thus, we can feel lonely when we are with others, and when we are alone. The paradox of “being alone with your self” is the only way to describe a certain kind of solitude that is nourishing; it is both disconnection and connection; being with and being without.
As people, we will all have different preferences for solitude and connection. One way to understand more about yourself in this regard is to find where you stand when it comes to introversion and extraversion: When you are stressed, do you tend to reach outwards for connection with others as a source of reassurance? Or are you more likely to withdraw into your solitude? If you sway towards the former, you may be an extravert. If it’s the latter, you’re more likely to be an introvert at heart. Dorothy Rowe describes these concepts in “Beyond Fear”. She asserts that introverts experience their sense of existence as organising, achieving, creating order, and that their greatest fear tends to be disorder, mess and chaos. Extraverts experience their sense of existence as connection with others, and most fear rejection and abandonment (cited in Ellen and Adrian, 2009). When we understand this, it is easier to see how some find solitude much more difficult than others.
Having said this, there is research that gives reason to believe that regardless of our introversion or extraversion, solitude just may not be in our genetic makeup. As a whole community, the human race is just one of three species of mammal that can be termed “eusocial”. “Eu”meaning true. According to Harvard Biologist E.O. Wilson, to qualify for this remarkable title, the species must live in multi-generational communities, practice division of labour, and exhibit altruistic behaviour, surrendering “at least some of their personal interests to that group” (as cited in Angier, 2012). In evolutionary terms, this self-sacrificing behaviour that we so often perform has ensured our survival and exponential growth as a species. However, along with our unparalleled success at surviving, what has also evolved is our technology. We are living within a connected-like-never-before culture where our smartphones, that we keep nearby at all times, contain online communities and are constantly reminding us of our obligation to connect. Several times a day, we are forfeiting our solitude in order to answer that call, respond to the text or email, comment, like, and share. Has our technological growth overtaken our biological evolution? It is no wonder that we can end up feeling guilty for, or even afraid of, not always being available for connection and also yearning for the solitude we so often fail at letting ourselves indulge in.
In Walden (1942), Thoreau said “I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude”. Virginia Woolf asserted that if women had been given peace and quiet and A Room of One’s Own, there would have been many more great female authors (1929). Michael Harris identifies three uses of spending time alone; “new ideas; an understanding of the self; and closeness to others” in his book Solitude (2017). Colloquially, we communicate our need for disconnection when we talk about our need to “get away from it all”, or for “me-time”. So, we know that it can nourish something in us, but we also have this evolutionary drive to be part of our community and moreover, to sacrifice our own desires and needs for the good of our species. We might also be extraverts and so our fears of rejection or abandonment can keep us constantly connected as a way to prevent time spent alone; we might worry that if we don’t respond to that text from a friend or a work email, that our relationships with these people cease to exist if we are not consistently available to connection.
So, there are benefits to both connection and solitude. However, the culture of omnipresent virtual connection has pushed us away from being alone and towards constant availability. In 2013 a study of American smartphone users found that 80% of users were on their phones within fifteen minutes of waking up (cited in Harris, 2017). This shows how committed we are to connection. It’s literally the first thing many of us think about when we wake up. But the question is; how committed are we to solitude? I think we need to find a better balance.
When was the last time that you were solitary? Truly solitary. No other person around, no phone, no internet. What is the longest period of time that you’ve spent in this solitude? Is it minutes? Hours? Days? I wonder how even thinking about being this alone makes you feel. Does it come with a stab of fear in your chest, or maybe the dull ache of dread in the pit of your stomach? Could that sensation be a yearning; are you curious?
I think that we do yearn for alone-ness whilst simultaneously our fear pushes against it. If you recognise the need for solitude, it is worth thinking about how you might also cope with it. A compromise might be to start to introduce small slices of true alone time into your day- refrain from picking up your phone for the first half an hour after you wake up. When you take a lunch break, set your device to do-not-disturb and come away from your desk. Take a walk alone, without listening to music or a podcast. Spend some time just day-dreaming. Research shows that when we suspend conscious thought in order to daydream and let our thoughts meander, a particular network of our brain becomes active- the Default Mode Network (DMN). It consists of various parts of the brain with astounding abilities: The medial temporal subsystem turns memories into mental scenes and imagery, a dorsal medial subsystem infers the mental state of others and observes one’s own, and the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex seem to create personal meaning from both internal and external sources (cited in Harris, 2017) This is all a very convoluted way of saying that daydreaming is anything but wasting time “being blank”. We are in fact allowing our brains to work in a way that more conscious, structured thought doesn't; making room for those “a-ha” moments and out-of-the-blue revelations.
These realisations and solutions to life’s problems that we might stumble upon whilst daydreaming in solitude can be looked upon as bonus material. Everyone deserves nourishment from solitude- whether you’re introverted or extraverted, in spite of the innate drive our species has to be self-sacrificing, and especially because Virginia Woolf says so. It is selfish, indulgent, and all the things that our altruistic nature and social norms discourage. I’d love for you to be radical in pushing against those and finding that nourishing, just-for-you space where everything slows down and something about life can relax.
References:
Author unknown, E. (2009), Are You an Extravert or an Introvert?[Blog] Ellen and Adrian’s Blog. Available at: https://dudleymont.blogspot.com/2009/06/are-you-extravert-or-introvert.html [Accessed 8th Feb 2021]
Angier, N. (2012), ‘Edward O. Wilson’s New Take on Human Nature’, The Smithsonian Press, April 2012 Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/edward-o-wilsons-new-take-on-human-nature-160810520/) [Accessed 8th Feb 2021]
Harris, M. (2017) Solitude, London: Penguin Random House.
Thoreau, H. D. (1942) Walden, New York, NY: The Classics Club.
Woolf, V. (1929) A Room of One’s Own. Reprint, London: Penguin Random House, 2019.
Article: Happy 1st Birthday to the Pandemic; How we’ve experienced collective trauma without our self-esteem buffers
At the time I’m writing this, the Covid-19 pandemic has been raging on in the UK for what feels like a life-time. Google tells me that the first confirmed case “arrived on 31st January 2020 (11 months, 2 weeks and 5 days ago)” (Wikipedia, 2021). We are hurtling at an alarming speed towards the first anniversary of the virus infecting someone in the UK.
Casting your mind back to pre-Covid life feels like a mental workout. So much has changed, and it’s nearly impossible to imagine leaving the house without your arsenal of hand sanitisers, masks and wipes. Watching a film or TV programme where crowds of people are crammed into a bar, shaking hands or hugging is jarring to watch. For those that have been working from home, leaving the house to go to work seems an alien concept. There are so many examples of the every-day routines and rituals that we have all had to change, adjust or refrain from completely.
But more than this; there are the deeper, relational effects of social distancing and the three lockdowns that we have endured as a nation. Prior to lockdown measures, the Understanding Society Survey found that 8.5% of people in the UK answered that they were often or always lonely. Covid Social Study data collected between 21st March and 10th May 2020 showed that this number had risen to 18.5% (What Works Wellbeing, 2020). You’ve probably heard a lot about loneliness in the media throughout the pandemic and it’s adverse effects on people’s mental, psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing.
I think loneliness is just the tip of the iceberg.
A less-talked-about symptomatic phenomena of the pandemic has been the existential trauma that it has caused us all. Often trauma is talked about from a neuroscience-heavy, biological perspective. This is useful, and we also need to understand the existential context of trauma; how it impacts our relationship with life, death and the meaning we make from them. Dr. Robert Stolorow talks about “the absolutisms of everyday life”: The things we feel we know to be true about the world, and whose validity is not open for discussion. Like saying “see you later” to a friend, or “see you in the morning” to your child. These statements and the way that they are not questioned helps us to experience the world as predictable, stable and therefore safe. Stolorow says that “It is in the essence of emotional trauma that it shatters these absolutisms, a catastrophic loss of innocence that permanently alters one’s sense of being-in-the world”. (Stolorow, 1999, cited in Stolorow, 2015)
If, like me, you were born and raised in the UK, we have grown up in a first-world country, where we can mostly rely on the safety-net of a welfare system and healthcare that is free-at-the-point-of -use, and where most natural disasters happen somewhere else, to someone else. A global pandemic causing at best, severe disruption, and at worst, death and first-hand trauma would have seemed incomprehensible to many of us just over a year ago. The absolutism that we can say “see you later” to your parents as you leave their house to return the next day seemed undoubtable. The absolutism of living in a country not threatened by a potentially fatal virus and economic peril was taken for granted. Until we got here; where the things we took to be absolute were shattered and the unquestionable “truths” were ripped away from us. For these last 11 months, 2 weeks and 5 days, the whole population has had to face the devastating realisation that nothing is certain, and very little is within our control.
So the existential picture is not looking great, and thus is changing the way that we see ourselves as individuals. The absolutisms deluded us into believing that we were in control of everything, and that we lived in a part of the world that was invincible, impenetrable and omnipotent. During this pandemic, we have had to face just how wrong we were. Ouch. To add salt to our collective wound, we have also had to cope with the shattering of those beliefs without the usual “buffers” that help us to continue on with a solid sense of who we are. I call them self-esteem buffers because they are the things in our lives that we use when shit hits the fan, and they remind us of who we are, and that we’re OK. Our buffers used to be work, socialising, partying, physical connection with friends, family and lovers, school/university, shopping, getting beauty treatments, going to the gym, spa days, playing group sports, and many other things. Even if we were experiencing a collective trauma anyway, the gentle chugging along of our absolutisms in the form of these buffers would be reminders that we are OK and the world around us is OK. Not having these buffers to gently nudge against as we slide down the slippery bowling alley of Pandemic Life means we just keep gathering speed, crashing painfully into everything, feeling bruised and injured.
If there is one thing you take away from this article, it’s that this is a collective experience- it’s happening to all of us. Some people still have some buffers in tact, and this can make a rough journey gentler. Others have had less buffers than ever before and are feeling every bump and scrape. It’s all relative and it’s all valid.
References:
Stolorow, R. (2015) ‘A phenomenological-contextual, existential and ethical perspective on emotional trauma’. To be published in Psychoanaltyic Review 102(1), February 2015. Available at: https://icpla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Stolorow-R.-A-Phenomenological-Contextual_Existential.pdf. (Accessed 19th January 2021)
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2004, July 22). FL: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved January 19th 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_Kingdom
What Works Wellbeing (2020) How has Covid-19 and assocaited lockdown measures affected loneliness in the UK? Available at: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/COVID-LONELINESS-2020.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2021)
Blog: Me, Myself and I Self Esteem Workshop: An Insight
Searching “#selfesteem”on instagram gives you an overwhelming 2.1million posts. Snappy posts that say “Be the type of person that you want to meet”, and “The lion does not turn around when the small dog barks” (?!).
The BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) website gives you 2,382 articles on self-esteem. They are likely to be better informed than the instagram posts, granted. But what does it all actually mean?
Self esteem is the new buzz-word. A thing we’re all supposed to have, build and increase. We’re told if we have the magic wand that is “self-love” then we will be happier, find our soul-mate, boss our careers, have amazing bouncy hair, clear skin, be slim and therefore beautiful.
I’m not buying it.
At least not the social-media, picture perfect version of self-esteem anyway. In order to find a real sense of self-esteem, we kinda have to throw all that stuff in the bin and start from scratch. Start with you. Finding your self-worth isn't going to happen because you’ve read every single article, book and post or watched every TikTok there is on the subject. There absolutely is use, by the way, in filling your social feeds with accounts in a more self-esteem conscious way. i.e. unfollow every account that endorses toxic “diet pills” or hunger suppressants. Unfollow every account that you compare yourself to. Follow people that have bodies that don’t look like the ideal beauty standard. Follow accounts that aren’t about people’s bodies at all.
But what about you? Is that not what self-esteem is really about?
The confusion of self-esteem and confidence causes the many misconceptions we have about self-esteem. They are two separate ideas. When the proverbial lion doesn’t turn around to the barks of the small dog, it’s because the lion has confidence in itself- perhaps the confidence to know that the dog is smaller and not a threat, maybe the lion thinks that the dog is stupid, not worthy of it’s attention. This is the trouble with confidence- it’s an external mechanism and one that can result in hierarchies, rigid boundaries and even unkindness.
Confidence is also often about our capabilities and the things that we can do out there, in the world. Self-esteem is that internal sense we have that, even when we’re not doing anything, we are still of value; inside. If self-esteem were a lion being barked at by a small dog, it would turn around and acknowledge the small dog. It might even recognise that there has been a time when it was a lion cub, learning to roar. It would be able to face the small dog’s barks knowing that it can cope, survive and be resilient enough to still be the big lion.
(That was the last big lion/small dog reference, promise).
So when I talk about self-esteem with the people I work with- 1:1 or in the MMI workshop- I’m taking things a step further than confidence. We are delving into that space in you that informs how you feel about yourself. How this looks will probably impact your relationships, body image, career and friendships, but that’s sort of a bonus. As women, we are used to everything about our lives being dissected, pulled apart, analysed and criticised- are we beautiful enough? are we kind enough? are we bad-ass enough? do we do enough care-taking of others whilst also taking impeccable care of ourselves all of the time? do we care enough what others think, or do we care too much? I could go on…
The point is that doing this work has to be just about you- it must be selfish. And that’s not a bad thing! I want you to be more selfish- if you were, just imagine what might happen. What would you spend that time and energy on if you gave yourself permission to be more selfish? You might start that project you’re really passionate about, get a new job, go travel, change up your friendships or relationships, or maybe you’d just dye your hair the colour you’ve always wanted to. Whatever it is, as long as it’s completely for you, that’s coming from the space in you where you’ll find your self-esteem.