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

When do we know we need help?

This is a question I am often asked. Not only by new clients but also by many of my counselling students, trying to understand if there is a universal sign that can help locate an answer. And it makes sense; how do we know that we need help?

Life can throw so much at us and frequently we find ourselves dazed and slightly confused. Perhaps we have noticed a sudden surge in anxiety or a reticence to do something but without being able to pin down why. Is this the time to seek help from a Psychotherapist? A portion of my work is with children and young adults and it seems that their experience of confusion can be multiplied ten-fold simply because so many emotions are new or felt in different ways.

Bound up with all of this there are often social messages. Messages that tell us we should be coping, that what we are feeling is not that bad; we just need to pull ourselves together and face it. Doesn’t everyone?

Working with a client at the end of last year I was struck by how powerful these messages can be. Especially when they come from significant people in our lives such as family and close friends. Meeting him for the first time I was immediately aware of the deep shame he was feeling. So many messages all telling him to cope; to deal with it. And yet here he was with me.

Perhaps there lies the answer to the question. We go to a doctor because the pain of a fractured ankle is too much or not seeking help, impractical. Can it not be same with our mental health. When the pain is too much or intrudes damagingly into our lives; perhaps that is the time to seek help.

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine

A painful release