Who gets to define perfect?

 

I have been going to an early morning gym in the pursuit of fitness and fat loss. Not weight loss, mind you, there lies the ‘wrong attitude’ I understand. Fat is the enemy which I guess means the slow loss of weight I am experiencing is acceptable if rather demotivating. Whilst searching for the right gym for me, I scrolled through many Facebook posts from personal trainers showing the before and after shots of their clients. I decided these were not the trainers for me and shared my horror at the idea to a friend who asked why I cared what others thought. She was right, of course, my discomfort was as much about what others might think as it was about wanting to get fit. So why do we care?

Consider this context for many girls and women that form a view of how they should look based on some else’s view of perfection. Wikipedia defines one reason for a woman seeking Labiaplasty as driven by the ‘wish to alter the appearance of their genitals because they believe they do not fall within a normal range’. A normal range?! Who decided on a normal range that would see a woman, some as young as 14 according to one report, seek surgery.

Search for the term thigh gap and page after page of exercise tips will pop up assuming that it is essential for the perfect woman. It was mentioned on Naked Attraction, a Channel 4 programme loosely based on a dating concept where all participants are naked. Their bodies are viewed and commented upon as though meat in a butchers. Referring to the women, whose faces were still obscured, the presenter commented on how ‘clean’ they all were because they had shaved off their pubic hair.

These are powerful messages that are trying to tell women how they should look. The implication, it appears, is that failure to comply is to be subnormal, dirty, not perfect. Is it any wonder that body image is such a driver of anxiety and depression when the concept of perfect ignores the reality of being us, of being unique.

If you would like to know more about me and how I work therapeutically please click through here.

Is it time to stop all the wellbeing memes?

What do you feel about wellbeing memes? A fairly broad concept that can means your Facebook feed filling up with video, images and words. I am thinking here about word memes with a picture or image in the background. I ask because they seem to be increasing in number and right about now, I am guessing your social media accounts are full of Covid 19-related memes. Also because clients are mentioning how they impact them.

At first glance they seem quite harmless. Often meant as uplifting or affirming statements about ignoring the anger or cruelty in others; feeling better about ourselves because we deserve it, and so on. Therapy is in part about supporting someone to be emotionally and mentally where they want to be and this made me wonder if memes play a role in this process.

A quick global review of therapists’ pages on Facebook, for example would suggest that many feel memes have value. Given the hundreds of comments and Likes that these appear to generate perhaps there is some truth in it.

However, I have doubts. A University of Copenhagen study suggested excessive use of social media can create feelings of envy. That got me thinking about how we experience and engage with social media. The research found that constantly viewing images of the lives of others through Facebook induced ‘unrealistic social comparisons’ and a ‘deterioration of mood’.

What impact, then might be delivered by all these apparently affirming memes if they are, in fact, unrealistic? I question whether life, and the challenges we face, really can be tackled by just thinking positive thoughts. If I repeat a mantra that Happiness is when you feel good about yourself without the need for anyone else’s approval, does that become true for me. Does someone locked in a relationship of unbalanced power have the inner strength to throw off the shackles of mental abuse without support.

In a recent edition of a college campus newspaper in Philadelphia, Brittany Valentine goes further, to argue that 'mental health memes portray serious issues like depression and suicide as light-hearted jokes'. That they ignore the reality of psychological conditions that are experienced as life-debilitating.

In part I agree with her. I have never found life to be as easy as a meme can suggest. By pretending it is, there is a danger that we diminish the challenges being faced. To reduce better mental health to a few words and a picture seems dismissive and in that process we surely ignore the needs of the person. That is not to suggest that these memes should stop, to answer my own question. For others they are life-affirming and a pleasure to read in the moment, or indeed, as Brittany suggests, some can start a debate around mental health that is useful.

Rather it is to ask that memes are not considered the answer to the complex experiences of us all. How we make contact with others and the world around us. This is the realm of self-reflection and perhaps, when needed, therapy. 

If you would like to know more about me and how I work therapeutically please click through here.

How do you know if therapy is working?

We seem to live in a world where everything must be measured. Our children are tested to destruction and so are their teachers. So much to be checked, benchmarked and given some sort of agreed value. But can measurement be applied to therapy.

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that we want to know if therapy is of value. A very fair question given the investment of time, self and money that we put into the sessions. A good place to start is right at the beginning. You and your therapist will likely have agreed some objectives. In short, what do you want to get out of the work; things that will directly address the reason you came in the first place. 

The big areas to focus on might be a greater clarity about the challenges you face. You have a better sense of why you feel the way you do which might in turn impact your levels of anxiety or you find yourself happier. You may feel you are getting more out of life and that relationships that matter to you have become deeper or have greater meaning. Perhaps you find yourself engaging more with life, simple but often profound.

There are many goals in therapy, too many to cover here, but key perhaps is that you both understand your goals for the work. These may change over the course of the sessions, which is fine, but ultimately you are aware of a shift, that you are moving in the right direction for you.

If this ceases to be your experience then try talking to your therapist about your experience of the work. It might be time to move on and work with a different therapist and in a different way. What matters, though is you and how you want to measure your journey to find the experience of being that you seek.

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine

Therapy: what is it?

Perhaps one of the toughest questions a client can ask and not just clients. My counselling students often begin with that question; to start with a firm understanding of what therapy entails and what benefits it might bring. Makes sense to me. My experience of fear is that frequently it is dominated by the unknown. We are fearful of what we don’t know, what we have yet to experience. We fill those gaps with something we have read or heard from others and then, sometimes, with thoughts that can seem dark and foreboding.

My answer is often, initially at least, a disappointment: therapy is about the client so their experience of it is personal; in essence the client owns it.  So disappointing because it fails to fully remove the unknown element. To step into the therapy room and not know what this might mean.

It may help to hear that, as therapist, I don’t know either. At least I don’t know what the therapeutic process is going to be with a new client. Working without expectations can seem daunting but once I was used to that aspect to the work I found it liberating. No client is indicative of any ‘type’, I can honour the truth and individuality that is the person sat in front of me.

That may seem to contradict all of the experiences we’ve had in the past and probably the way we often treat others. All those stereotypes we use to try and make sense of the world and the people we meet. In therapy, though, assumptions can cloud the truth of who someone is.

Therapy, then is an open, quiet space into which you can walk and explore feelings, thoughts and experiences without the baggage of assumption. Therapy belongs to the client and I think that might just be definition enough.

Therapy: a big step

I received an email from a new client this time last year, a woman I will call Sarah. The subject line simply read Help needed. The message was not much more enlightening and I read it thinking it felt as though she was holding much back. I like to confirm details by email but for real contact I always suggest an initial session. An opportunity for us both to get to know one another. Therapy might be right for you but the therapist might not. Best to meet and for me to be confident that I can offer real and meaningful support.

I emailed back and suggested that we meet for a first session. Her reply both detailed and vague. She talked about how anxiety was ruining her life, dominating her relationships and her contact with the world. That the Christmas period had seen this get worse and she feared what the New Year might bring. She wrote with a rare clarity of self-awareness but underlying all of this detail was a plea for help; an end to the torment of being always alert, always anxious.

We agreed a day and time to meet. I sat in my therapy room waiting and re-reading her email. Just before our agreed time my mobile chimed. Sarah had been held up and, apologising profusely, told me she would not be coming. It happens, not often, but occasionally. Over the next two weeks we re-arranged sessions and Sarah gave new reasons for her being unable to turn up.

I wasn’t irritated but curious. Sarah and I were never to meet. We agreed two more sessions but they never happened. We ended the contact with her letting me know ‘life was too busy’ and she would contact me again in the future. She didn’t. Perhaps the New Year opened with an easing of her anxiety or maybe she was simply not ready.

I was left reminded that therapy can be a big step. Support for mental wellbeing are such easy words to write and hard work to reach out and accept. At this time of year the need for contact, to bring positive change to our lives, or maybe just to be heard, brings new clients to my practice. Whatever the reason I am glad that self-care is finally being seen as the norm and not an indulgence. 

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine

The deception of stress

             

                       

The damage that stress can do to us has been much reported. Not long ago the media was focused on workplace stress being experienced by States   workers, in particular those working for Health and Education. Much of that focus was on the potential impact of stress on the way they acted with patients and students. 

Last year the UK Health & Safety Executive reported that 43% of all working days lost were due to ill health. It seems unlikely that Jersey’s figures would be much different to this. The impact then, of something so widely experienced is significant. These are important considerations but perhaps they miss a very important element to these news stories. What about the individuals experiencing that stress?

The Stress Management Society make the point that stress is not necessarily a bad thing. It has worked well for humans over the millennia and in large part has been responsible for keeping us alive. Our body’s chemical and physical reaction to stress has got us out of some tricky and often dangerous situations. It is likely, then that society’s response to stress in others is driven by a deep-seated belief that we need to just deal with it.

However, for many stress can stop being useful and become toxic. It is no longer the servant of our need and can become the master bringing with it anxiety and depression, negatively impact our relationships and preventing us from being able to function at work and at home. Being told that stress is part of life is no help and support can be hard to find. That seems odd given how much stress is around us all.

The start to recovery is to acknowledge the stress and accept it isn’t necessarily something to simply deal with, alone. Seek help and begin a path to a healthier way of being.

What is a beach body anyway?

Passing a newsagent last month I was met by a striking feature headline on the front page of a newspaper. It asked: Have you got your beach body ready? Unfortunately, and somewhat randomly, there was a full length mirror on the side of a nearby shelf. I was swiftly able to make a comparison between the man in the couple pictured and me and make an equally swift conclusion that my body was indeed not beach ready. Actually I’m not sure it ever has been, given the evidence by which to make the comparison.

Walking back to my therapy room, though the power of that headline struck me. 

As you might expect the couple were young, slim, toned and well-tanned. The message then; this is the norm, perhaps even the required, look for the summer. And what a message that is. Perfection by some unknown judge is the objective and failure to reach this means you are not fit to be seen on the beach. That felt quite crushing.

Too detailed a conclusion, you might think. Perhaps. Consider what the message might be for a young man, late teens, surrounded by images of ‘buff’ role models devoting their time to achieving that ‘buffness’ in the pursuit of success. Where that success is defined not by what they can think or create but simply by the quality of the toned body they must display.

Where that image of the perfect physique is extreme it becomes illusory, unobtainable. 

A passion for fitness steps easily into being an obsession where the goal sought is always out of reach but always required by this measure of success. From this comes anxiety, depression through the perpetual pursuit of the unattainable.  We are so much more than one, spurious measure; we are the qualities that best tell the world who we really are. 

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine