Wow. The Western world looks pretty different to when we last met on these pages.
I know that everyone and their mother is posting advice on how to keep calm and live radically differently. I don’t want to add to the overwhelm.
So I’ll keep this brief and highlight some brand-new research on HOW to engage with all that good advice; to wit, you can combine just two strategies to deal with everyday stress;
I’ve been thinking about ambiguous loss and grief lately.
(Yes, FUN TIMES.)
My thoughts were sparked by two articles; the first, on how middle-age is impacting Gen X women (spoiler alert: badly. REALLY BADLY). The other, a letter writer wanted to feel like her single life is enough (spoiler alert: even the ‘agony aunt’ who responded struggles and fails to cultivate this feeling).
As someone who, Venn-diagram-speaking, is slap-bang where these two overlap, they made interesting reading.
And by interesting, I mean .. the other thing. Continue reading “An uncertain kind of loss”
When it comes to therapeutic modalities, I’ll admit: I’m a bit of a magpie.
I spent October attending a collective trauma online summit and another on the clinical application of compassion; I have various books on mindfulness, self-compassion and connection, and am becoming increasingly drawn to Compassion-Focused Therapy.
(Basically, if it helps folks to be kinder to themselves, I’ll wander over and give it a sniff.)
So I was pretty excited to attend Rich Bennett and Joe Oliver’s introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy recently, complete with a copy of their book, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques. Continue reading “Does it help?”
I came across something by accident recently, and its succinctness has absolutely blown my mind.
It’s the acronym HALT – which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.
Hungry: Do I need something physically or emotionally?
Angry: What’s causing me to feel this way?
Lonely: Am I having difficulty connecting with others?
Tired: When was the last time I took a break? Continue reading “HALT! Are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired?”
I experienced a lot of thinking at the beginning of this week.
Nothing major happened; my mum’s doing well after fracturing her shoulder through a fall a couple of weeks ago, and I’m doing well after going up to look after her. Continue reading “When less is more”
So it’s been a week of love – a #LoveWeek, if you will. And I hate to be a Debbie Downer on the last day, but I need to acknowledge the elephant which may or not be residing in the room.
To wit: love isn’t for everyone.
Now don’t get me wrong, it clearly is. Come on. Love makes the world go round.
(OK, at the moment it’s money, which probably explains the shit creek we’re in.)
But when I say love isn’t for everyone, I mean: some of us have given up on love. We’ve lost hope. Continue reading “LoveWeek #5 – For those who’ve lost hope”
In an ideal world, of course, relationships would be easy. You’d find someone, fall in love with each other, and POW! – the “happily ever after” of fairytales comes true.
(The clue why they don’t is in the word “fairytales”, FYI…) Continue reading “LoveWeek #4 – When the going gets tough…”
If love and relationships are a “collaborative work of art”, some of us need a partner to create with.
With the acceptance of online dating and the rapid rise of apps, we have more choice than ever. And with that choice comes indecision, disatisfaction and for some of us, overwhelm.
Between the advice to ‘settle’ and “marry him already” and the endless advice on how to “find your soulmate”, how do you choose who to spend your time with? Continue reading “LoveWeek #2 -Looking for love”
Today’s New Year’s Day: a fresh blank page of a year stretches before us, ready for us to write whole new stories.
Stories which, if they’re to be truly new, involve the unknown, take us further than we’ve gone before, involve the risks of both failure and reward. Continue reading “Risky business”
I discovered the very NSFW website of Girl on the Net via Twitter a couple of summers’ ago.
It was at the height of women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and assault on public transport, and her blog post on the subject On Your Power remains a compelling must-read (I shared it with a male acquaintance recently; it both shocked and enlightened him).
The powerfully vulnerable comments beneath a recent guest blog raised the spectre of loneliness, a topic I’ve written about before here and here. I was moved to contact GotN, who kindly published my guest blog last Friday. Continue reading “Only the Lonely – for Girl on the Net”
Let The Love In 