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