How I work as a therapist

There are many many theoretical books written by great and valued people, from Freud,Carl Jung, Carl Rodgers, George Kelly, Melanie Klein, Eric Berne and many more, all of them explaining their theory as they see it. Each author seen as distinguished in their own circles and in some cases like Freud world wide.

I am not conceited enough to argue with any of their therapeutic approaches as being totally right or totally wrong. I see them more as an aide in my tool box of bits and bobs that will help the individual.

This of course from a purists point of view is sacrilege, as they would argue how could I be an effective therapist if I don't follow the rules of their particular training. Each psychological approach  having it's own set of criteria on how to be effective as a therapist. I wouldn't argue with this if the clients that go for treatment feel that they have come away from any one therapeutic approach feeling better.

Each form of therapy, such as Freudian Psychoanalysis, Transactional Analysis, Person Centred Therapy, Personal Construct Psychology, Gestalt or many other approaches have  much to offer. They are a  disciplined and serious form of training that can take many years to master, if ever, as we never stop learning.

All therapies have their own set of rules as to how it should work, all with different labels; transference, constructs, unconditional positive regard, boundaries, parent/adult/child, for example, to describe human behaviour or as techniques used to help facilitate understanding human nature.

And to the follower of each discipline they make perfect sense in their ability to explain the human condition and to work with clients to help them overcome whatever issue they have bought to therapy in the first place.

However, it is with the client that I start to identify that these approaches can cause conflict for me. Now I am trained in a psychological therapy, it took me four years of hard graft on top of two nursing qualifications in general and psychiatric nursing and years working as a counsellor and psychotherapist it get to where I am today. I have worked with the health service my entire working life, since I started as a Cadet nurse when I was 16 years old, over forty years ago.

What I feel with a grand passion is that not one approach works for all. That the therapy needs to fit the client  and NOT the client fitting into the therapy. At the end of the day the client group bring the same old problems to therapy, every day to every therapist. They come because the current experience of their lives is making them feel stuck and they are reacting to this 'stuckness' in a way that causes them pain and difficulty.Whether that is a  here and now issue, or because of the current situation  has bought up conscious or unconscious issues from the past that are now getting in the way of them functioning normally within the parameters of their own daily lives

All clients without fail come to therapy with the same issues, their individual stories are different, some definitely more harrowing than others, but their need to deal with their feelings is what brings anyone into therapy. Pain is pain, loneliness is loneliness, sadness is sadness, fear is fear. We all feel these things, we have our feelings in common. Although every persons psychological pain threshold may be different. So my ability, say to be happy alone, may not be the same for someone else. My barmy fear of spiders is someone else's love of spiders. But my ability to be frightened and to experience fear when I see spiders is someone elses fear of the cliff edge or men with red beards or whatever. Our subject matter makes no sense, our feelings of fear are the same.

What I believe is that when someone comes to me for therapy it is my job to delve into my tool box of therapeutic techniques and find whatever is in there to use for the individual person to facilitate change in them. So that the quality of their life is improved for them, by them, with my assistance walking alongside them. And that using a mixture of therapeutic mediums to put their needs first is going to be how I work with the personal needs of the indivdual, rather than getting them to fit into my prescriptive box of therapy

Therefore in my knowledge of therapeutic approaches I do feel that there are some that work really well to help explain to a client what is making them tick at any one time. So with any one course of therapy I would the parent/adult /child model from Transactional Analysis to explain how they are working in conjunction with their closest family members. I might move on to Personal Construct Psychology to get them to look at their constructs/characteristics and how those effect how they personally see the world. I could use CBT to help establish healthier patterns of behaviour in relation to dealing with their anxiety. Mindfulness would be included to get people to learn to live in the here and now, rather than remembering the past and dreaming about the future in a way that hooks them into anxiety. I would also be using Gestalt techniques to teach people really good and safe ways to let of their anger and sadness without them taking out their feeling at the wrong place and time on other people.

All in all I work with people to teach them to empower themselves to know that they have a psychology and that they can choose how to use it to either harm or help themselves. Which of course it goes without saying so are all therapists! But I want to demystify the process, I want my clients to have their own tool box to use in the middle of the night when the 3am gremlins are clutching at them and I believe that having a variety of therapeutic process to call upon allows each person to become their own facilitator and be healthy, rather than be dependent on the  powerful  but mysterious ways of some therapies. Cause one thing is for sure, when my clients wish I was around at 3am to help sort them out, chances are I'll be dealing with my own little gremlins with as powerful an exercise I can find in my own arsenal of techniques to get to grips with my own middle of the night terrors!

mean moody menopause!

This is for women of a certain age.

The age of knowing you're getting older, but still feeling young inside. The place where your body conspires against you to start making you aware of the passing of time. In other words, the dreaded menopause.

So we all know without doubt that we are going to suffer endless hot flushes, were going to dry up like old prunes and that we are going to be past any useful life...... Right!

Er, no actually.

Of course the first two of those things may happen. Some women will have full blown horrid flushes, others at the other end of the spectrum may perspire gently. There is no way of knowing what your lot is going to be.

But I'm not really writing this about the physical manifestations of the menopause, more, I want to write about  the emotional stuff we go through, cause till it happened to me I didn't know half the stuff that I was going to feel which came along to bite me on the butt.

However before discussing what we go through at the end of our reproductive lives, we need to look at  what happened in puberty....

I know it's a long time ago, but stick with it here.

There we were toddling along happily in our childhoods playing with our teddies and dolls. Enjoying being with our parents, being happy with our lot in life. When seemingly out of the blue, suddenly overnight we are turned into aliens from another planet.

I mean, what did our parents know about anything anymore? Who were those wondrous creatures called boys, why would we want to play with childish things, when we could have crushes on our latest pin ups? Why was suddenly that song SO IMPORTANT, that we had to listen to it over and over again as we felt the world was against us? And then just as suddenly we felt like small children again when there was nothing better than a hug from Mum or Dad. Till the next wave of hormones kicked in and the whole emotional cycle started again.

We as the adolescent girls weren't really aware of these patterns, it was just everyone else around us who were pulling their hair out at our behaviour. Which for any of you who have had daughters  will be able to identify with.

What tended to get focused on  coming to terms with our monthly bleed and any subsequent pain associated with that time. Everyone around us just tried to keep their heads down the week before when we were pre-menstrual!

And this is true of the menopause, the focus is on the physical again; the flushes, dryness, the wrinkles. If as much money was spent on helping women deal with the emotional fallout of the menopause, as there is on face creams the world would be a lot easier for women going through it!

So many women come to see me feeling they are going mad at this time. They don't understand why their emotional behaviour is so out of control, why they are so angry, why they are so forgetful, why they are so lonely, and most of all, why they are filled with so much self hate.

And until women reach this stage and go through it, it remains a huge secret. Possibly because most GPs are male or young women, so they either won't or haven't gone through it, and they only know about what the literature says, the physical symptoms and not about the emotional stuff.

I admit before I'd gone through it, I wouldn't as a therapist have had any idea that the collection of symptoms a women might bring to counselling could as simply be explained as the menopause. I would, and no doubt did, make a lot of heavy weather about what was going on for them.

Nowadays before I pronounce about some long hiding childhood issue being the cause of the current misery I will check the woman's menstrual history against her age. Obviously I won't use this with all female clients as that would be unprofessional,  if there are, of course, other issues that need addressing.

But if the woman reports any of the above symptoms I always take great pleasure in letting them know they are not going mad, but that their bodies are just doing what they first did at the start of their reproductive life. But that they probably weren't aware then to the same extent that they are now aware of their feelings. As the world then was such an exciting place, that they probably hadn't had much time for introspection in the way that they are having now towards the end of the reproductive cycle.

And this is also easily explained, young women are on the cusp of their future,life flows in front of of them in an unknown stream. They have expectations of their futures and dreams of what they will become. Menopausal women, are generally  frightened of the future, of feeling useless without their kids to care for, or the difficulty of getting to know their partners without the excuse of the children being the only thing to talk about. Of a future when only old age beckons and regrets of missed opportunities are more frequent than dreams of the future.

So this is much more a time of introspection than youth could ever be. And women being women take it out on themselves, rather on people around them, so get hooked into it being their fault.
And what we women need to learn is that it like puberty is just a stage we are going through, and as such has an ending. That the ending is only the end of the menopause, not of life, and that what follows is likely to be one of the best times of their lives.

It is a time women start to give to themselves emotionally. To allow themselves to have needs and to decide that those needs are as important as anyone elses needs and to therefore look after themselves.

Women are traditionally selfless in their care of others and the great thing I think about being post menopausal is learning that actually MYself matters, and that can be the outcome of getting to be a wise old crone. Rather than hooking into being a failure because we don't look (or hopefully act) like 18 year olds anymore. And that old age should be prized as a place of independence and joy in the simple things of life itself.

And once we as women know this about ourselves, and that the stage has just got to be got through, and if it can be accepted as just a stage, then a lot of the anxiety attached to that feeling of madness or self hate or whatever can fall away. And it can be hopefully seen as the start of the  next adventure in life rather than the end of a women's useful life.

How to forgive your parents for being your parents

When a child is born they are a screaming mass of humanity, totally dependant on their mother to work out what the cries mean. Whether feeding or changing or burping, the mother very quickly works out what the child's needs are, and does her best to meet them. The new born baby can only focus initially on the breast, but very quickly develops enough to take in Mum's eyes.

In the first two years of life the baby changes and develops incredibly fast. And all the while all they want is to know they are loved, safe and warm. A child comes pre-programmed into wanting it's basic human needs met!

By the age of two the baby has moved from the breast into wanting sweeties in the supermarket, and having the almighty awful tantrum if this need is not met. This isn't because they are 'bad' or greedy it's because they have yet to be taught self control, cognisance and rational thought. They are still an emotional bundle wanting those basic needs met. We have been taught, and will teach our children over time, to put their feelings away and we will reward their 'good' behaviour instead.

During the first five years of life the child puts his parents on a pedestal. They can do no wrong. All small children love mummy and daddy unconditionally and tell their parents they are going to marry them! They don't just do this out of love, they also do it out of survival. The child unconsciously knows that they need their parent to survive. So during this time of parents being perfect, patterns are set that affect all of us later in life.

Once the child goes to school and starts socialising with other children they start to experience other models of child rearing. Parents are still perfect but they notice and use other parenting models to try and extend their boundaries, as in Little Johnnie's mum lets him stay up, eat sweets and carouse all night so why can't I?!

Then human beings hit adolescence! And for the sake of argument, if Mum and Dad are Christian, meat eating, right wing voters, the adolescent will automatically become a vegetarian, left wing, atheist, just because they can, and their parents know nothing anyway! They also become incredibly self centered the world revolves around them. Which is just them growing up, and adjusting to becoming the people they will eventually end up being.

Slowly then as the person hits maturity they stop rebelling just for the sake of it, and start making their own views usually based on their upbringing. Which is why so often we turn into our parents!!! But at this stage we'll not be ready to take that on board. As all young people reinvent the wheel,as what do their parents know about anything??

On reaching our twenties people are busy establishing themselves, starting their career, finding a place to live, meeting that someone special, and having children. No-one has time during this period to really think about their parents, except them perhaps being a bit of a nuisance!

The thirties find people consolidating their lives, careers, home, family and increasingly the parents are either useful in babysitting terms, but possibly becoming an emotional drag.

People can obviously resent their parents always, and many have huge emotional difficulties with them. But probably the majority of people do continue to love their parents, even if they sometimes find them aggravating. The guilt button is never very far from being pressed even for those people who get on with their parents. As in where we spend Christmas, for example, on our own, with his/her family. We rarely get to please all the people all the time in relation to our families.

It is however, in our thirties and forties that the biggest attitude change has to come in relation to our parents for us to be able to cope with what is to come.

We have to forgive our parents for what they have done to us!!!

What I mean by this is, that we have no choice about having our histories, what we have a choice about is whether be are a product or a victim of them. And if we hold our parents responsible for our adult selves, then there is work to do.

No parent ever has a child to ill treat it. The child gets ill treated as the parent doesn't know any better. Those children who are unfortunately battered to death by their parents were not born to satisfy the parents need for blood lust. The parent is just not adequate in relation to doing the job properly of child rearing.

And there by the Grace of God do we all go. I can still vividly remember the day when my eldest son was a few months old and he wouldn't stop screaming. I was stressed beyond the ability to deal with it. I was crying hysterically. I was also getting incrediably angry. I wanted to hurt my child, who I adored. I was in danger of getting him and smashing his head against the wall. But I didn't,I had the nouce to not do that. What I did do was drop him from the height of the cot bars onto the mattress in the cot, a distance of about two foot. Which caused him to cry even more. And at that point I was so shocked by what I'd done I phoned a friend for help. She was round within minutes. I was sitting at the top of the stairs she ran past me and comforted my son before dealing with me. Of course the minute he was picked up by someone calm he stopped crying ,and went back to his usual sunny nature. It was a salutary lesson for me about how very easy it is to loose control. And something I have never forgotten and use when talking to clients who have young children, as a way to share that isolation and out of controlness that all parents can feel when faced with small children.

But back to dealing with parents.

The thing any child has to identify, and this isn't usually possible until the 'child' is 40 something. Is that their parents did the best they could in bringing them up, even if that was crap. What gets in the way of this idea,is the perfection that the small child held their parent, that, putting their parents on a pedestal, that is an essential part of the small child's survival.

What has to be separated is that before their parents became their parents, they were human beings first with all the myriad of behaviours/beliefs/skills/ emotional development that make up every human being. Which will be based on their experiences as children and their parents before that.

Once we understand that, then we can forgive our parents for not being perfect. And that is essential for us as children of parents who are getting older every day. We may be expected to have an increasing role in their support and care. And if we haven't forgiven our parents for being themselves, then that job is incredibly tough as every time we are asked to do something our adolescent selves gets in the way with resentment and rage.

I had a wonderful happy childhood, I was a wanted and loved little girl. The problems in my life stemmed from 10 years of age all the way through adolescence. My parents didn't do a good job then of caring for me. I carried all the stuff from this time into my adult life. I was angry with them for being alcoholics and having mental health issues. They constantly pissed me off, none more so then having to speak to them on the phone every Sunday morning, without fail. It used to drive me nuts. To the point now that I phone my son up anyday but Sunday!

But at some point in my forties I remember being out walking my dog one morning. I'd been thinking a lot about my parents at the time. My mum had been dead several years, but Dad was still alive and causing me grief. And suddenly it came to me that THEY HADN'T DONE IT DELIBERATELY, THEY'D DONE THE BEST THEY COULD. The thought stopped me in my tracks, suddenly I understood they were human beings before they became my parents. And I suddenly let go of all the years of resentment I'd carried around about their supposed ill treatment of me. In effect I forgave them for not being perfect, which they never had been anyway, that had just been the place I as a child had put them to ensure my survival.

So now although I know my parents had 'faults' I understand these because I know their histories, and as a therapist I know how those histories would have affected their ability to raise children. And now when I think of my parents it ia always with love.

I am grateful for how they brought me up. I am grateful that I went through hell as a teenager. Because without their care of me, whether good or bad, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

And I would give an awful lot to have a phone call on Sunday

1ST TECHNIQUE

Techniques
With all this talk of why change, maybe it’s time for some techniques to help this come about. So here are just a few that you might like to consider.

This first technique relates to our skill of beating ourselves up and thinking we are awful people. The list of things that is wrong with us, those characteristics that make us bad. Such as being stupid, ugly, daft, and all the mean words we can get to feel about ourselves.
It is so easy to think up a great big pile of nasty words that make us be us. But are they true?
Of course, the answer is no.
And are there any good qualities, when your full of self hate it is difficult to answer yes, but of course there are.
So how are these mythical good qualities going to be found?
Okay, let’s start with the one word that describes a characteristic that you have. The one I use when I do this is; Tactless.
I have an amazing ability to be tactless, to open mouth well before engaging brain. And for years have beaten myself up for not being anything other than tactless.
But for me to understand that I am tactless then I also have to know that I can be tactful.
So using your quality, write it on a piece of paper and then on a separate piece of paper write what your opposite of that quality, as in tactless/ tactful. Some characteristics are obvious as the above, but others are more difficult to pin down, such as generous, now my opposite might be mean, but that might not be the word you would use. That is fine as these words are your words and it really doesn’t matter if the opposite of funny is hamburger as long as it makes sense to you!
So with your two words, one in each hand stretch your arms out as far as they will go. Now what is obvious in doing this is that your body is in the middle of these two words. Which is exactly right!
When we are beating ourselves up we hook into a belief system that says we are only the thing that we hate and nothing else. This is not true, as in, I can be tactless but I’m not tactless 24/7, well at least not on a good day anyway!
We have ever changing characteristics, not as in we become different people every five minutes, more our mood changes. In that we can wake up feeling good and if the day goes wrong we can end up in a really bad mood. And our feeling will subsequently alter as to how we perceive things around us from our state of mind.
Going back to these two words say that the one in the right hand is 1 and the one in the left is 100, now ask yourself exactly what number you are in relation to that quality right now. What you will find is that you are, neither 1 or a 100. You may go either end of this imaginary line, but you won’t stay there. It is impossible to so do.
Let’s use the words Stupid and Clever here, now can you seriously tell me that you are 100% stupid all the time? If you are stupid all of the time, how come you understand what I’m asking you to do here?
You may have moments of utter stupidity, don’t we all. Equally you may be very clever but not all the time. My point is that we move up and down this register all the time.
Have a go with more words, don’t start with all the bad ones find a good quality you might have, and you will find that your body is in the middle of that quality all the time with little trips to both ends.
We are in constant flux of behaviour/ feelings/abilities. Such as knowing we can do our jobs, run a home, do the household budget all successfully, but then we get a new piece of equipment and suddenly all our brain cells are out to lunch as we no amount of making a shopping list actually matters when trying to work out how to use a new mobile say! But we wouldn’t beat ourselves up for this inability for long. If we couldn’t sort it we would find a child that could. We wouldn’t be filled with self hate because of our technophobic behaviour.
So why hate yourself cause some of the time you can go to the nasty end of the spectrum in one characteristic. You have a million other characteristics.
Think about your life, do you have friends, do you hang out with your family. Do both these groups of people like you or do they just hang around cause they feel sorry for you? I don’t think so, they are not so self sacrificing that they can be bothered with you if you are not worth bothering with!
So the people around you are there because they love and like you. They do not think that you are ‘stupid’ 24/7 they know you can sometimes be daft but not all the time.
So by doing this exercise and seeing that really you are in the middle of these qualities and not at an end, plus thinking about why others bother with you then maybe you could just stop beating yourself up for not being good enough or whatever. And maybe just start to believe positive things about yourself, just the way others do!

WHAT EACH CHAPTER IS ABOUT

I've been looking through these chapters checking out what I haven't written about and I realise that cause they are in no order at all and there are so many words it's difficult to know when one starts and another ends. So thought is might be useful to write a resume of what each chapter is about and then update it as I write new ones. That bit being the toughie!!!

So in the order they appear:

Anger, and why everyone needs a punchbag
an expanation of why we can't not have anger in life, but a way forward to fealing with our temper in a healthier way than hurting those around us.

I can't see me
This chapter focuses on what happens to women in their mid life crisis, how they get to feel invisible and what they need to do to change that feeling.

It has to start somewhere
Is I think the first chapter with a bit about everything to get a flavour of where this is going.

Panic Attacks and how to deal with them
This is strangely about panic attacks and how to learn to deal with them through three exercises and finding out why they are there in the first place.

Chapter 1, All we need is love
This is no longer chapter 1, probably 2. It is about learning to love ourselves as much as we love other people and not to be martyrs in life.

Sex and Relationships
How we use our sexuality in relationships, whether young or old.

Personal Responsibility
We are responsible for our own feelings and behaviour and this shows how we can take that on board for the better.

Passive, Aggressive and Assertive
There are three ways we display our behaviour, with no power- passive; taking someone elses power- aggressive; or being equal with all others- assertive. This chapter discusses the merits of learning to be assertive and what happens when we are not.

Dieting makes you fat
Looks at how the constant use of diets doesn't work and how if we can learn to eat less we can control our weight.

ANGER OR WHY EVERYONE NEEDS A PUNCHBAG

Anger is one of the most difficult things I get asked to help with. People want to stop being angry, they look to outside agencies to have some magic cure that will stop them losing their tempers. As if I had a bag of fairy dust that I could sprinkle on them and amazingly there would be no more anger, just a sweet placid person who was kind to their fellow man and animals..... Dream on!!

Anger is an essential part of our make- up, we need anger and it’s derivatives to be able to function. If for the moment we can distil the feelings we have into four; love, sadness, fear and anger we can see that if those four are at the trunk of the tree, with its roots going firmly back into our pasts, then all the branches on the top are a muddle of all those feelings diluted as the tree grows. The seasons represent the changing lives we lead; so that sometimes we feel clean and fresh and can tackle new projects. The summer leaf represents the working through and enjoying the fruits of those spring labours. But as we all know nothing is static so change comes into our lives again, maybe more difficult and we feel some loss whilst we tackle the oncoming rush of activity. This ends with the tough time when we are stripped down to the bone emotionally and there is only are essential self having to deal with whatever gets thrown at us. But life of course goes on and the cycle will be repeated over and over again throughout our lives.
So if we only have those four main feelings, and I believe those are the four we are born with, after all a new baby doesn’t have nuances of feeling, they are either happy and smiling and gurgling, or they are angry and sad and throwing all their toys out of their pram! If they are ignored then fear sets in and they react accordingly by getting withdrawn of whatever.
It is only as we grown that we get the nuances of emotion, but again I’m not sure we do, I think we get the nuances of behaviour, the stuff we are taught and trained to do.
Children are very black and white, there is right and there is wrong, and there is nothing in between. It is only as adults that the shades of grey are applied. Children know that it is wrong to steal, quite rightly. Adults also know that, but how come we have that towel from the hotel in our suitcase, or the roll of sticky tape out of the stationary cupboard at work in our desk drawer? These nuances of behaviour come about depending on how we see the world. And the acquisition of that towel or pen doesn’t even come into the radar of what’s right and wrong. We just think we all do it so it’s ok, never mind the cost to the hotel or the company you work for.
But this is not a discussion about the rights and wrongs of anyone’s behaviour, we all have consciousnesses and I leave it with all of us to decide on the level of that sort of behaviour is acceptable to each. As it’s not my job to judge, nor to give anyone a lecture.
To return to anger, if anger is at the base of a massive branch of feeling then what else shoots from it? Well if we didn’t have anger we wouldn’t have any drive, there would be no ambition, as it is these two things that get us out of bed in the morning to work. This doesn’t mean that we all need to have ambitions to be CEO of a national company, it may be we just have the drive to make money to put food on the table. So that is why we get up, not some taking over the world mentality, although the people that have that are valuable otherwise we would have the companies that make the world go round.
If we didn’t have anger then we wouldn’t know the difference between right and wrong. It wouldn’t matter how people behaved because we wouldn’t care. There would be no feelings of injustice inside us when people get away with whatever they are getting away with, whether that’s the sticky tape or massive financial fraud.
Would we have compassion if we didn’t have anger, and I don’t think we would, as caring for others outside of our loved ones is about a level of outrage at the injustice being down to our fellow man.
We certainly wouldn’t be able to have any armed forces, not that anger is used to train anyone, more to do with when a war starts people believing that their cause is right and wanting to defend it.
There are many examples of how we need our anger to motivate us in life, it’s just we don’t think about the feelings we are having as being necessarily related to anger in the first place.
But as I have already stated I think that this is the root of many feelings that make us up to being the people we are. So if I am correct, how can we do without it?
Of course when people say they want anger management they are not talking about these normal drives. They are talking about not being able to control their tempers.
To my way of thinking, it is very difficult indeed to give someone anger management, as one persons temper will not be the same as an others, there cannot be a one size fits all. What there can be though is an understanding of what affect that release of temper can have and a learning of healthier ways to channel it.
This loss of temper is what we treat other people to, that yelling at the next person in the pecking order. So man shouts at woman, woman shouts at kids, kids shout at younger kid and younger kid kicks the dog...... dog puts up with it and wags its tail!
Of course this is a very simplistic view and loss of temper can be a lot more damaging than that for all concerned.
But if we can stick with this model, without taking anything away from the horrors any one person can experience as a result of someone else’s loss of temper which I know can be totally horrific and in worst case scenario can result in murder.
Why do people get so angry, well there aren’t enough pages of paper to write down why anyone would get mad about the myriad of things they get angry about? So rather than make a list I want to assume that we all can get angry and show healthier ways to deal with that anger than metaphorically kicking the cat.
Let us assume then that the person who is going to lose their temper has had a rotten day at work, the boss has been a real pain, the work they’d spent hours doing had to be re-done. This meant they were late leaving, so the traffic was at its worst, the train is delayed because of a jumper on the track. They are supposed to be going out for a quiet meal with their partner that evening and it doesn’t look like that will happen. They get home and the kids are in hyper manic mood. There is no food for the evening because they were going out. So by this time depending on the person’s ability to deal with anger, they may be at screaming point.
Now into this equation put in their learnt behaviour from when this person was a child, maybe they witnessed rows from then, maybe they saw violence being used against another parent, so that a level of violence was seen as normal in their mind.
So walking into this chaos after the day they have had, makes them flip and they start screaming at everyone around, maybe they use physical violence to one of the people in the house, and so the roundabout goes on. And what should have been a pleasant evening escalates into an evening of horror for all concerned.
I could of course have written many other hypothetical examples, but sometimes it is just the day to day stuff that puts us over the edge. In that we may know we have unresolved anger issues related to our childhood, which most of the time we keep under wraps and learn to control our emotions by stifling those temper urges. But on this day our person who normally as a matter of routine carries around a complete arms length of anger and who when normally gets cross is able to just be cross in the moment was under so much strain this particular day that something snapped inside them and they were unable to control their feelings in any way.
Road rage is a really god example of this, we wake up late, there’s no milk for breakfast, you can’t find a clean shirt, you’ve got an important meeting at work and you leave the house like a tightly coiled spring. And some doddery old man is driving at 30 miles an hour in a 40 mile zone. You are hooting the horn, flipping him the finger, trying somewhat recklessly to overtake and feeling it is all that stupid sod’s fault that you are late. The next day you get up on time, there is plenty of milk, your clothes are ready for you to wear and the boss is out for the day. You get in your car relaxed and ready to go, you get behind the same man, who is still driving at 30 in a 40 zone, but that’s fine you can enjoy the calm on the way to work.
Same situation but two very different ways of experiencing it, totally dependent on how your worlds is at any given moment.
Is there a healthier way to deal with these and all other situations where we get angry? And of course the answer is yes.
It doesn’t matter why we have rage, whether it goes back to our childhoods, because let’s face it all children have problem parents! In that there were always times when we didn’t think our parents did it right, which is why we change how we bring up our children so as not to make the same mistakes. It’s of course a salutary lesson to know that our children will be feeling the same about our parenting methods one day when they become parents themselves! Or whether, that anger seemingly relates to our partners, or our work colleagues, or even our children.
In Freudian terms he would suggest that anyone we have feeling about, negative or positive actually has echoes back to our childhood relationships, as we repeat the same patterns we learn at our parents knees with everyone else we come across throughout our lives. He calls this Transference. And he goes on to talk about counter transference when the person opposite you is also doing this and then we muddle along having relationships together. Obviously I have paraphrased Freud here rather badly. But it isn’t my intention for this book to spout psychological theory as I want you to be able to understand it and use it without having to resort to getting a degree first!
So how are we going to deal with our rage without hitting the divorce courts, or getting the sack from work?
Well if you’ve stayed this far then I’m hoping that you are starting to understand that anger is an essential component of life. But is not an essential component is taking that rage out on other people.
So what can we do?
The answer simplistically is to get a punch bag!
What has to be done is the knowing that anger exists in us and finding a none damaging way to let it go.
Anger is an emotional and a physical energy; just think what happens to us when we get angry, our hands go into fists, our jaws tighten and it becomes difficult to be as articulate as we usually might be, let alone any adrenaline that might be being released into the body to prepare for the fight ahead. Certainly when I’m angry the words that come out of my mouth are expletives and I’m incapable of stringing a normal sentence together. But I can swear fantastically well!
So finding a safe place to belt hell out of something and yell at it is the best way to let go of our rage. I regularly fell out with my youngest son, and rather than endlessly yelling at each other I learnt to go in the garage put on the boxing gloves and go and beat metaphorical hell out of him there. Really telling what a little so and so I thought he was, till I’d stopped being cross. I would then return into the house and he’s probably just say something to me, and I’d be sweetness and light to him because all my rage had pulverised him into a heap on the garage floor!
The important thing to do with rage is to use your body and your brain to let go of it, whatever method you find that doesn’t involve getting physical with another living creature. It could be pilling all the cushions you have in your living room in the middle of the floor, clearing a space getting down on the floor and starting to thump them, whilst at the same time start to say, why me? Or it’s not fair, or stupid...... and as long as you build your voice up whilst your thumping and getting to the point where you are screaming expletives you will feel better.
You could try tearing up cardboard boxes you have lying around in the garage, because they fight back! And remember to yell.
What you’re needing to do is something that lets go of this energy inside you but that isn’t creative, so stripping wallpaper off walls ( as long as it needs doing!) is another good one. Using a sledge hammer if there is a wall that needs to come down. Almost anything that destroys the rage inside you, even if you do create an awful mess; it is so much healthier than punching your nearest and dearest, or taking that anger out on you.
What do I mean by that?
Well not all rage is outward, a lot of times anger is directed inwardly, and we damage ourselves by holding on to our rage and that then manifesting in a stress related disorder. This rage will be a legacy of our childhood, stuff that we have never dealt with. Or sometimes it can be in relation to an event that happened in the past.
There have been some terrible manmade disasters in this world, such as the Lockerbie disaster, the Hungerford massacre, 9/11, and so many more. It always frustrates me when these terrible things happen when you hear that counsellors have been sent in. No one needs counselling at the point of the disaster; sure they need advice, on funerals. They may need de-briefing but counselling in its accepted sense is not required. What does happen though is some months or even years later after the event when life should be sorting itself out that people suddenly can no longer cope. And they are assailed by emotions that they believe they should have dealt with already. This is a very good time for some anger work to take place as they hit out their emotional pain and anger at what has gone on in their lives.
Of course not everyone wants to behave like a screaming banshee even if I know it will do them good. So another method, is to write letters not to be sent. Writing down our anger and telling someone what for is another very therapeutic tool. As long as the letter isn’t sent, which would cause an awful lot of trouble that no-one needs. Then writing down what a plonker someone is really works as a way to let go of rage.
Basically any method that uses the whole body and mind will work, digging the garden, running, smashing all your china, although that works out a bit expensive! The important thing is to be able to let the voice out of your head and not keep in inside going round and round driving you round the bend.
By starting to use these letting go methods then a great many of the sticking plasters used emotionally to keep us safe become redundant, whether those have been depression or compulsive eating disorders, or obsessional behaviour. They will all benefit from us letting go our inner rage.
After all if you were given a choice about hating yourself and destroying yourself with any of the stress related disorders or learning to shout FUCK at the top of your voice whilst beating hell out of your pillows whilst making the bed, which would you rather have?
Anger is part of us, we have no choice but to have it, what we have a choice about is how we use it. Whether we use it to destroy our relationships or ourselves, or whether we learn to stop fearing it and learn to let it go in a healthy non damaging way, well that is out choice.
There is always choice, and being a victim of our inner rage is not healthy for anyone.
Go on, run up and down stairs right now yelling the best swear word you know! And at the same time think about who you are yelling it at, whether it’s your mother/father/ partner or the guy that short changed you in the shops this morning. Isn’t that better than sitting stuck in a chair self hating cause you can’t deal with it.

ICAN'T SEE ME, mid life crisis and it's effects

There comes this terrible point in our lives when we realize that we are invisible. This is mainly an age thing, but I guess it can be applied for anytime for any reason. It’s almost like joining a secret club.

Now in our life times we join lots of these. We usually don’t know about them till we are in the middle of some experience and realize that we are not alone, when prior to that whatever the experience has been, has been endured alone and we can feel isolated and lonely as we are surely the only person ever to be feeling as we do right now.

The times that are the most common for this feeling are this are when we first have a baby. When we start to become menopausal. When we loose people around us, whether to ending relationships or death. The latter has been dealt with in a more detailed chapter of it’s own. So I want to focus on the experience of menopause.

But before doing so, just a few words on what having a baby feels like. I am not looking at this experience from an angle of post natal depression, more from a place of normality.
That is not saying that post natal depression is abnormal, more that when a woman has her first child the experience is so extreme emotionally and however well prepared she is in terms of having all the necessary equipment, crib, clothes, whatever that she can feel very alone, even when surrounded by family and friends.

The deep emotion of bringing a life into the world, even though she has had 9 months to prepare does nothing to prepare for the feelings at all. In exactly the same way that when told to rest up during pregnancy, because she will need her energy for coping with a baby, makes no difference to actually dealing with the tiredness of the sleep deprivation that dealing with that baby will actually feel like.

So as this new mother struggles to deal with the day to day tasks involved in caring for her new baby, she will be aware that however many books she had read, how many other woman she had talked to prior to birth, she had not been ready to assimilate this information now flooding through her self. This information can be better described as love!

We all generally make assumptions that we will love our children, but until we have that child present in our arms no amount of preparation will be the same as the actual feeling that takes over us. That is, this new capacity to love in a way that is beyond our comprehension prior to the baby’s arrival. And it is only when that baby is there that this emotion occurs. Of course many women have a sense of love during their pregnancy, but this is on the whole very different because of the intensity of this totally wondrous experience.

One of the most precious memories I have is having my mother around long enough in my life to be able to share this knowledge of being in this secret society with her. In that prior to my having my eldest son, I had always sighed in slight exasperation when my mothers love leaked out over me, in that “Oh Mum’ sort of way when I thought she was being soppy. Having my son, made me profoundly aware that I knew exactly why now she was that way. It was unconditional pure love. The love for me that allows me to say that the only people I would willingly lay my life down for are my to sons.

Now if that is the wonder of a secret society then the menopause at the start is most definitely not.

There we all are woman, who have been through all the angst of teenage relationships, more mature ones in our twenties, and at some point may have settled down with a partner. We may have had children, we may have had a career, or nowadays most likely both. As it is rare for there be enough money in any home for woman not to have worked to contribute to the household coffers in this day and age.

We go through are thirties not thinking about the future other than most often in terms of bringing the children up. We enter our forties, quite often with a feeling of dread. As if getting to the Big 40 will suddenly mean a massive change the day we turn it! Which as we find isn’t strictly true.

But what does happen as we go through our forties is we start to become more invisible to people around us. Our families take us for granted. When was the last time your partner looked at you with the same degree of lust that when you first met? Now if that still happens then you have a rare relationship indeed and should cherish it. But for the majority of people we have settled into a routine of behaviour when we react to our partner, maybe built on affection, maybe on contempt.

If we have made this far in a relationship, we now enter the most dangerous time for it’s survival. We get to a point at which both men and women ask themselves is this it? Is this what I’ve got to look forward to for the rest of my life? And people start to question whether or not it is worth staying in the relationship as it is. The easiest option at this point is to have an affair. That will certainly stop being invisible in it’s tracks. You’ll feel sexy, vital, attractive and lustful. Whatever state your long term sexual relationship had been, having an affair and you can rediscover your sex drive big time.

Or another route is, and this is particularly true of women, who have gone from being their parents child ,to the husband’s wife ,to their children’s mother, only to decide that suddenly it is time they did something for them. University’s and colleges are full of women of a certain age retraining. Finding out that they do have a brain, it having rotted over soggy cereals for the last few years. This is another way to beat the invisibility as women learn to value their brains and the skills they are learning.

Go to any Graduation ceremony and watch the pride on the faces of all those women , who three years previously ‘knew’ they couldn’t ever get a degree!
But if you don’t do either of these things, and neither is compulsory! Then the invisibility blanket starts to surround you. Walking down the street, it’s no longer the majority of the 40 something women who get a second glance. Certainly youth don’t see us, they push past us as if we don’t count. You can start to get discounted in queues in shops, you don’t matter cause you cannot be seen.

It is a shocking revelation to women, and so what do we all do, we start chasing youth, we buy into products that will get rid of our wrinkles, give us fresh skin, make us look young again. And at it’s most extreme we have plastic surgery.

Now I’m not knocking any of this, I put expensive face cream on, I lather the body lotion on to give me soft skin. And I can’t say if I had the money that I wouldn’t have a face lift. I’m just pointing out that, this is why we buy into it.

We also go the gym, take up sports, start walking. Now obviously we are also doing this to keep fit, to stave off out bodies crumbling totally, but you can’t tell me that if you make differences in your body through exercise that you don’t walk taller down the street, have more confidence, feel better about yourself. And in so doing suddenly start getting noticed again. This then increases your feelings of self worth, and you find heads turning to check you out. And I won’t believe any woman who says that she doesn’t care about being noticed.

Being noticed , not being ignored is the fundamental drive of our lives. If we were ignored as a baby we would not have survived. Our crying to let someone know we were hungry or uncomfortable was got us here in the first place. So being part of the society you live in is vital. Being ignored is a living death.

This being invisible, has to be challenged, not by us donning miniskirts and bright red lippy, well unless we want to do that. More we have to look to our own resources.
Obviously if we are using outside agencies, an affair, a college course then we are half way there. But if we are not, we have to find a way to make sense of these feelings.
We do matter and the person we need to matter to most, is ourselves.

We have to be kind to ourselves, we have to learn that by looking after ourselves other people will not take us so much for granted. Being taken for granted starts in us, not other people. We start when we begin a relationship and set up our behaviour as the carer of our partner. How many women take on the roll of buying, sending his family Birthday cards? How many women, remind their partners to phone their mothers. How many women, hold down a full time job and still manage to know whether his favourite shirt is clean? How many women, act as a taxi to their children’s social life. How many women cook as many different meals as there are people in the house as no-one will eat the same thing….. The list is endless and the answer is WE DO!!

What happens when we do this to ourselves, when we treat ourselves as lower in importance than the mouse in the skirting board, is that oddly enough we get treated with the same amount of respect as that mouse would get, that is, none.

So a vicious circle starts, of neglect of ourselves by us, then by others then we follow that up with feeling more and more that we don’t matter. This effects self esteem, confidence, dignity, and ultimately happiness. If we feel like a drudge, then we behave like one and get treated like one big time.

To change this really horrible cycle we have to start with us. It doesn’t work wanting someone else to look after us, if we don’t do it first. Why should anyone else bother, if we continue to be full of self hate, whatever they tell us about being loved, important and all other such like stuff.

As an example lets just look at getting a complement. Someone says something nice to you, say about your hair, or outfit. When you are full of self hate you dismiss the complement as your hair needs cutting, or this old outfit.

Lets just stop and look outside you for a moment here, why has that other person said something nice to you…. Have they got nothing better to do, are they trying to get in your knickers, is it just sport to wind you up? Or, is it that when someone gives us a complement they are reaching out a hand to us and saying I like you, and I can’t say that. But if I say something good to you, you may notice that actually I’m ok too and think I’m good enough to be your friend.

That is what people are doing when you get a complement nothing more or less. They are NOT trying to increase your self hate, they may not even know you have it. So next time someone says something nice to you, how about saying Thank You. Not only have you then received a stroke to your battered ego but you make the giver of the complement feel good. Cause they feel validated in their opinion of you. Which lets face it here, is never going to be the same opinion you have of yourself.

Going back to starting to learn to be kind to yourself as a way to feel better and increase your self worth, esteem and confidence.

One of the things that really works is a hit list of treats that you have just for you that are not of any use to other people. It could be treating yourself to a half hour with a magazine and a large cup of your favourite coffee. It could be buying some fresh flowers. It could be booking a manicure /facial/ massage. It could, if you felt you really deserved a real big treat could be a new handbag.

The list is endless of lovely things you could do for yourself, if only you would let you! Maybe it is time to stop caring for everyone and sacrificing yourself. No-one needs a martyr who doesn’t matter. Start mattering… to you, and then miraculously others will start to treat you better too. After all, if you start to feel that you matter, what do you want to hang around people who treat you like dirt for?

So as you slowly start to change it has a knock on effect with the rest of those around you.
Just try saying the word NO now and again. Your teenager wants another lift and wants it now…. Say NO, but because you don’t want to go into aggressive mode as already discussed, then you opt for an assertive touch, you explain why it can’t happen that exact minute and that you will do it in 10 minutes or whenever suits you.

Doing this has a miraculous effect on your self esteem, suddenly you are no longer the dogsbody, you matter. You of course always have. The family couldn’t do without you, or wouldn’t want to be without you. They have just taken you for granted because you have let it happen.

Now you have started this change in the home, your confidence is given a shot in the arm and you can start to look at other areas of your life and start the same process there. After all why shouldn’t you think you are OK, or even gorgeous, or wonderful. Who except you says you can’t?

Confidence or rather lack of it can be turned round, Just think about the word itself, CONfidence, all you have to do is con yourself that you can do something difficult and allow yourself to know that it will be scary, you might make an idiot of yourself… but so what, so does everyone else.

We all, everyone of us do or say stupid things and wish the earth would swallow us up. We can hold on to our mortification for a very long time if we let ourselves. It’s part of being a martyr again, “Oh look I’m so stupid and did such a stupid thing, how can anyone think I’m worth anything?” Except that if we dared to ask the people around us that we thought we had been a pratt in front of they wouldn’t know what we were talking about. That I can personally guarantee!

When we do this to ourselves the words that need to spring to our lips are, get over it, it’s human nature to say the wrong thing some of the time, and even the Queen/ Prime minister/ or put in any name of a person who you’d think would never do something as silly as you! And know that they have all done just that more than once in their lives.

The other things you can do to help boost your self esteem, are if it’s not shifting is to go to your doctor and ask to be referred for counselling, to join a group to learn assertion, to start learning something like a computer course, massage, sign language. Anything really that pushes you a bit, but not so much that your fear takes over and you sabotage going as your sure to be the only stupid one there.

Right! If it’s a beginners course in anything at all, it’s just that, a beginners course and everyone going is doing so cause they don’t know something and want to learn about it. The course will not be full of people who are just waiting for you to join so they can make fun of you, it really isn’t.

All of the people on the course will be using the same three letters as you need to, they are CONing themselves that they can do something scary, just like you.

The first time, you do anything new and unfamiliar it will be frightening. But once done for the first time it will never be as scary again. The number of people who come into my counselling room scared of how I’m going to be or what I’m going to say is huge. By the end of the hour when I check how they are feeling, without fail they will all say, that they are not as frightened as before they came. Now that of course is nothing to do with my abilities and everything to do with confidence growing in my clients as they relax into the session.

To sum up, the more you care about yourself, the better you feel. The better you feel, the more confidence, self esteem and assertion you have. The more other people will notice you, and in a good way. So what have you got to loose? Nothing, except being Mrs Invisible. No competition then is there?