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

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

Real men don’t cry?

They are four simple and yet potentially damaging words. They remain embedded in our culture where the expression of emotions, we are implicitly or literally told, should be limited to women and children only. We may revolt against this, relish the thought that a man can feel and share emotions and yet….watch the response of others to a crying man. Many will squirm and shift in their seats, especially other men. They will probably look away or change the subject. Anything to avoid the felt weakness of others being experienced.

Why? What makes emotions the domain of everyone but men? We start this process young. In parks throughout the Island you can hear parents imploring toddlers, especially boys, to ‘be brave’, ‘stop crying’. One client of mine recalled being told by his mother that unless he stopped crying she would give him something to really cry about. These are lessons we learn young, ways of being that are reinforced through popular media.

Our first response to someone’s tears is to thrust a tissue into their hands, men and women. There is a practical aspect to this but there is also a part of us that wants the crying to stop. Tissues are a practical way of achieving that. ‘I see your tears, take this and wipe them away’. So perhaps our relationship with crying is just not a good one.

And yet what do our tears say? We are sad; want to be left alone; are reaching out for support and a true expression of how we are at a given time. Put that way crying sounds important. In Therapy sessions I have found crying to be both painful and positive, sometimes in equal measure. Perhaps we should allow tears to flow and just be with that person. And maybe we should start with our children. 

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine.

Alone in a crowd

Sitting at Birmingham Airport over half term, where my flight was delayed by a couple of hours, I berated myself for not bringing my Kindle. It also gave me time to people watch, something of a passion for me. After the initial pleasure of watching children excited to be going on holiday, and couples clearly relaxing before flying off somewhere hot, I came to appreciate a very different group. This group was made up of individuals, sat or walking alone, and seemingly lost in the blur of activity. It struck me as odd; that a person could appear alone in such a melee of people and activity. So much happening, to be part of, and yet these individuals stood apart, alone in the crowd.

In our crowded world of open plan offices, social media, family and friends, to list just four pressure points of ‘busy’, can it really be conceivable that any of us can feel alone? It begs the question, what does alone really mean to us? Many of my clients talk of a crushing sense of being lonely and how this makes them feel when no one seems able to understand. They are always part of a group and yet that very fact makes the loneliness seem more gnawing, the impact so much greater and the result, to amplify the sense of being alone.

To understand that is to have experienced it. Loneliness is a state of being, a sense of self that denies context and logic. It simply tells us where we are in relation to ourselves and often without reference to anyone else. That is why it seems inexplicable to others, perhaps. That being alone cannot be cured by more people can be a revelation. It is certainly a first step to finding ourselves in this crowded world. Not being alone starts with the individual; it starts with ‘I’.

The toxic power of jealousy

I was sat next to a stranger recently eating lunch in the Royal Square. She had her mobile nailed to her ear, a growing expression of frustration and anger building in the tone of her voice. Although both she and the other person were getting louder I couldn’t hear both sides of the conversation, but from what she said the topic was clear. I started to feel intrusive, just sitting there, and so moved on, but I was struck by a few phrases she threw into her mobile as I left. ‘He’s just a friend. We reconnected on Facebook. From school. I finish all my messages with an ‘x’ so that means nothing’.

Walking away I heard the one word spat out with the power to pour fuel onto the fire: Jealous. In the appropriately titled song Jealousy, Neil Tennant asks: ‘Where've you been? Who've you seen? You didn't phone when you said you would. Do you lie?’ His questions captured the moment when the void of not knowing, not trusting, gets filled by the all-consuming feeling that the other person is cheating on you.

From where do we get this sense of jealousy? At what point does all that we trusted in the other person evaporate to nothing, replaced by the conviction that hitherto innocent actions and words in fact have a darker, hidden meaning? Perhaps the trust has been broken but it is as likely that, surrounded by life’s warnings that good things must be followed by the descent into disappointment, we brace ourselves for ‘failure’.

Sadly there is sometimes good reason for jealousy; partners can and do let us down. But we shouldn’t live in expectation of it. Perhaps there is the possibility that things really are good, that the other person wants only you and there is no need for jealousy. That possibility can feel very good.

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine February 2016

Healing from the heart

  The Dalai Lama has been speaking to me. A lot. He finds me through Facebook, Twitter, motivational cards, event posters and the occasional comment from a friend. He certainly has a good deal to say to me but always delivered with a chirpy smile on his face. The very epitome of grace and simplicity. You may well know the kind of posts and cards I mean: ‘When you wake each morning know the day will be a good day and banish those negative thoughts’; ‘Trust in yourself and let the light shine into the darkest places of your life’. Nice.

But I have a problem with these. In part I have a suspicion that the Dalai Lama didn’t say most of these things. Rather someone hopes the words are made powerful because they are attached to someone respected for their spirituality. My main problem is that the words seem empty. Working with a client in the depths of depression or anxiety I wonder how helpful it can be for anyone to suggest that all they need is to think happy to be happy. It belittles the challenges they face, sometimes just to get out of bed.

Friends surely mean well but I feel the power to shame in those words. Implicit in them all is that happiness is the responsibility of the individual. If you cannot cheer up you can only blame yourself for not trying hard enough, for not thinking yourself to happiness.

Perhaps, rather than sharing the supposed thoughts of the famous we just try to find our own. To know those emotions when we are with friends in pain, and to share them, straight from our hearts to their hearts. Tough, for sure, but real and real is often the most healing. 

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine.

How fast is fast enough?

Have you noticed just how fast everything has got? Post a picture on Facebook and within seconds friends are liking and commenting. So how fast could really be said to be fast enough for us?

I was flying back from England recently with EasyJet.  In the past queuing has involved a scrum for good seats for all but the very young and Speedy-boarders. Despite allocated seating now this throng of passengers around the gate persists. Strange because we all had a seat number. Why rush? I tried to resist the urge surge forward when called but eventually joined the pushing.

We reached the stairway to the tarmac in an orderly queue. I realised that the couple in front of me were elderly and struggling a little with the stairs. My heart rate now back to normal I paused at the top to give them space to make their way down. It was then I felt the first nudge in my back. Then a second followed by an insistent third clearly trying to push me on.

The craziness of this situation suddenly struck me; EasyJet don’t require passengers to board whilst the airplane is taxiing so we were not going to miss the flight. The seats were allocated so any chance at scoring the ‘magic’ seat were also not possible; so why the rush?

In truth the need to be fast is often pointless and actually part of a wider context of living that no longer values patience. We want everything now and in trying to get it we find ourselves walking over or through others, physically but also emotionally. We may not know why we must move quickly; we just feel we must. In that, we miss others and their needs.

This blog first appeared in the September Gallery Magazine as the Therapy Jersey column pg 67

How much self is in a selfie?

My Facebook news feed is any interesting place. Interesting because some of my ‘Friends’ are redefining the term interesting with pictures of their restaurant food taken. It is packed with sunsets and sunrises and many, many pairs of feet stretching out across a sunbed and sand toward clear, blue sea. And, of course, there is a never ending stream of ambiguous three word posts as they embrace the strange concept of Vague-booking. Primary amongst all these, though, is the selfie, an image of the person taken by the person. From holidays to bars, the office to the living room, the selfie knows no bounds.

What are they trying to tell me? Are they proving that they are there in case I doubted them or are they simply ensuring that that when they look back on a special event they are included in the visual memories? If either of these were true for all selfies then that would be fine; frequently irritating, but fine. The situations, though are often not special and the selfies rather desperate looking. A pained expression that says ‘don’t forget me’ rather than the implied ‘doesn’t this look like fun I am having’. What does the selfie achieve? Do we want recognition? To affirm we are included and remembered? Or is it about validation? To let others know we’re “out there” really living – all the time?

Perhaps, as we get closer and closer to more people through social media we are actually feeling a sense of disconnect. As much as we reach out to make contact with friends and family scattered across the globe we are feeling a break in that contact. So much social media posting, sharing and liking might actually be replacing real contact with a lazy deluge of virtual engagement. 

So, within this, where is the selfie, what is the purpose? In those slightly keen, maybe even desperate eyes, staring back at me through my Facebook feed I sometimes think I notice a pleading to be seen. Not viewed, liked or shared but just seen. Buried amongst all those updates some people are feeling lost and forgotten; just one more post in a long line of posts that talk about us but do not know us. The selfie says see me, know me and maybe even meet with me because I have lost contact with you.

Not every selfie is a plea, even when stressed from the end of a selfie stick. But it could be a prompt to seek some real contact, to reach out and connect with a friend and enjoy actually knowing them.

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine.

Would you like everything?

I mean it; would you like to be able to buy, consume everything you want? Why not? We are bombarded from all directions by people keen to tell us we are living in a consumer age. The government even suggests that we can support our struggling economy by purchasing stuff. Shop local and we re-invigorate St Helier and breathe new life into retail right across the Island. It sounds like a win-win scenario: we can buy everything we want and society is enriched and generally a good deal happier. Is there really no downside to this?

Well, yes there is. Actually it can be quite a large downside that is the beginning of a chain with the power to bring sleeplessness, anxiety and depression. Let’s take a step back. Did you follow the events of Black Friday, the day of pure consumerism and materialism that welcomes the American Thanks Giving holiday? I was struck by a short interview with a man in London holding onto his very wide screen television with the grip of Samson himself. He was asked why he had struggled so hard to secure the discount booty. His response was telling. Said through a laugh he admitted he had no idea. His family had wide screen televisions in all their rooms. Then he paused and said: ‘I guess because there was a queue and it was so cheap. I had to get it no matter what’.

Research shows that whilst we continue to chase these seemingly pointless materialistic conquests no concurrent benefits have been found for our sense of well-being. In fact the reverse may well be the truth. A never ending pursuit of ‘things’ we do not need, that clutter up our lives and deliver only short periods of pleasure, feeds a sense of disappointment. An objective that always remains out of reach to buy our way happy. Whilst materialism can drive us to mental unhappiness it can also hide low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth. We seek solutions to these in the ring of tills with little hope of success.

Next time you are confronted by a seemingly irresistible bargain consider this: what is my reason for buying it? Pleasure, need, the joy of giving or something else? If we can understand that we are one small step closer to the mental health we deserve.  

This article first appeared in Gallery Magazine.

Why do we hate fat people?

What does fat mean to you? It’s a very loaded term but one we deploy with frequency so it must have some collective definition; some meaning that makes sense to most us. That meaning, of course, is not usually a nice one. When we call someone fat we are not paying them a compliment but generally mean to wound.So what makes us so angry with people who are overweight? Why do we feel the need to shame them and point out what we see as their shortcomings? Likely the answer lies in a combination of historical representation, collective social response, and our experience of ourselves and those closest to us.Four hundred years ago, Rubens was happily representing women in a diversity of sizes and shapes. As art has turned to photography to represent the ideal, those represented have got thinner and thinner until we reach the now infamous Size Zero. Gluttony is often cited as a sin, a weakness, an inordinate desire to consume more than we need. Dig a little deeper, though and the sin is more withholding food from the needy and could be interpreted more as selfishness than simple greed. So the historical link is not as clear as it might seemThere are good health reasons for watching our weight with doctors linking specific conditions, such as Type 2 Diabetes, with a high BMI. Anything that supports our health saves money for the health service, and ultimately our taxes, and it keeps us alive for longer. Regardless though it does not explain why society wants to wade in and point a critical finger at those who appear to ignore the danger in which they are placing themselves.Society seems fairly fixed on its view. Fat people are funny, they are the butt of a plethora of gags. Gags we accept in a way that racism and sexism increasingly, and encouragingly, is not. Perhaps it the last safe bastion of cruel humour, an outlet for the final vestiges of our nastier sides.Or perhaps they represent something of ourselves that we do not want to admit. An underlying and occasional urge to eat until we can eat no longer. To sit in front of table groaning under the weight of food and just pig out. That feeling of indulgence can be the ultimate small act of selfishness. A joy in the doing and the source of such guilt when it is done. The pure greediness of it, of eating so much more than adults ever let us eat as children, is a pleasure that only hindsight can spoil.Considering these influential elements in isolation or combination perhaps goes some way to explain our loathing of fat people. However, in amongst all this projected guilt, misinterpreted teaching and archaic humour is a misunderstanding of why many people eat too much. So many of those we class as fat, those we scowl at as they tuck into a packet of crisps in front of us or ‘flaunt’ their size as they sail past us on motorised scooters, are not eating out of greed. They eat as a form of self-medication and self-soothing due to low self-esteem or any number of behavioural issues. They may do this because of traumatic events in their lives or damaged and cruel childhoods to name only two. They are not filling their faces; they are filling voids and re-enacting learned responses. So often what we hate, we misunderstand or fear in ourselves. 

Maybe consider these thoughts the next time you feel that hate welling up inside:

People are so much more than their weight

We can all punish ourselves but cope in our own way

Try seeing past the size to experience the person

Understanding is harder than condemning but so much more rewarding

This blog was first published in Gallery Magazine Jersey