Self-care is the buzzword that we hear all the time nowadays; it’s on social media, it’s on the news, it’s even in our workplaces. But what does self-care mean? We live in a culture where focusing on ourselves is often synonymous with selfishness; the implication being that if we are looking after ourselves then we are  not  looking after someone else. These things are not mutually exclusive; in fact, it is essential that we look after ourselves so that we can  take care of others. I have a mug that reads ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’, but how many times do I, like many others, find myself trying to do it all before I have ensured that my cup is full enough to give from.  Engaging in self-care At certain stages in our lives, the idea that we should engage in self-care feels so unachievable that the idea of it makes us angry and resentful; it becomes just another thing to add to the very long to-do list. When we are caring for young children, working and often looking after other family members, seeing where there might be anytime at all for ourselves is almost impossible. Especially when we see examples of self-care on social media that involve elaborate and extensive skincare routines, expensive trips to luxury spas or waking up at 5am to workout before the children wake up. These are not realistic or desirable for many people.  Re-framing habits So how can we re-frame self-care so that it becomes a habit rather than a burden, an essential rather than a luxury? Maybe by starting small. There are many aspects of our day that we rush through without thinking, or that we engage in whilst plugged into a screen at the same time. A cup or tea or coffee, that you actually sit down with, on your own, for 5 minutes, with no screen, no other task. You sit, you drink, you breathe, and you focus simply on the hot drink, on the quiet, on your breath. It’s only 5 minutes and the chaos may start again as soon as you have finished, but it was yours.  Mindful choices There are choices we can make to protect ourselves; don’t answer that work email right now, its 6.30pm and no catastrophe will happen if you leave it until the morning. Is it essential that you use the last 10 minutes of your child’s nap time to clean the entire kitchen, or could you use it to phone your friend who you haven’t seen in 2 months for a quick chat? And I know, it’s easier said than done. Will I gulp my tea down tomorrow morning whilst I answer an email, and dry my hair? Probably. But maybe I’ll think before I do it, and that pause might help me make a different choice.  Prioritising yourself When I talk to clients who are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, sad or alone, they are often not engaging in many self-care activities. But going to therapy, once a week for 50 minutes, is a huge act of self-care. What a valuable gift you give to yourself when you say, ‘I am struggling. I need help. I’m going to prioritise this need and spend 50 minutes of my week exploring myself, my experiences, my needs, my worries.’ It’s not self-indulgent and it’s not weak. It’s a way to fill your cup, so that you can head back out into your life and feel more equipped for whatever is coming your way.  If you want to start your journey to better self-care, reach out to book an appointment here.

How many times have you heard a bereaved friend or family member say this? How many times have you felt it yourself? It is such a common experience to feel that there is a time limit on how long we are allowed to grieve before those around us will reach their limit of compassion and want us to ‘move on with life’. Understanding the Pressure to "Move On" This can be compounded further when the experience of grief is linked to a traumatic or unexpected death, when your relationship with the person who died was fraught or complicated, or if the amount of grief you are experiencing feels disproportionate to the relationship you had with the person. I hear this, and many other variations, from the clients I work with all the time, and it also fits in with my own personal experience of grief.  Introducing the Pillars of Strength When I came across a model called the Pillars of Strength for grief by Julia Samuel, it really resonated with me. Unlike the models which describe stages of grief, which encourage the idea that people move through grief in a linear way, reaching similar milestones until they emerge at the other side, this model suggests that there are 8 pillars of strength which can support a person through the grieving process. Each pillar must be built slowly over time, and each pillar further strengthens the person’s ability to process their grief and begin to move forwards in their lives.  An overview of the pillars is:  Our Relationship with Others and Relationship with the Person who has Died Relationship with Oneself Ways to Express Emotion Time Mind and Body Limits Structure Focusing If you interested in exploring this in more detail, the reference to Julia Samuel’s website is at the end of the blog. Right now, I just want to spend some time reflecting on the pillars that stand out to me as being particularly relevant from a therapeutic perspective. Focusing on Emotional Expression As a practitioner of Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), expressing and processing emotion forms a key part of what I help clients to do in the therapy room. Emotions can often be perceived as a ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ feeling. Sometimes our minds and bodies work hard to develop coping strategies that help us to avoid experiencing these feelings. These coping strategies could involve practical things such as using activities to distract, or a withdrawing from or pushing away from the emotions; ‘putting them in a box’. These strategies can work well for a time, but eventually the repercussions of them can make themselves felt, perhaps through experiencing anxiety, detachment, angry outbursts or tearfulness.  When someone we know dies, experiencing and processing the emotions that come with this can feel overwhelming, but often this eases over time as we allow our emotions to be felt, and gradually the intensity decreases, and we grow around our grief as we move forwards in our own lives. Sometimes, however, this emotional wave feels too overwhelming; perhaps there is a complicated mix of emotions that feels too tangled together or maybe you assume the role of caretaker for others and simply can’t allow your own emotions space at that time. Whatever the reason, the connection with, naming and expressing of emotion is interrupted by your coping strategies and this pillar of strength is not able to be built.  Building Emotional Awareness in Therapy This is where an EFT therapist can help. Together, you and the therapist can start to become familiar with the emotions you are experiencing, building a picture of how you experience it in your body, what you tell yourself about what is going on for you, and gradually moving towards a place where you can connect with and experience that ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ emotion with the safety of your therapist. Experiencing the emotion in a new and corrective way is part of a process of integration, moving you towards a place where it no longer has the same impact on the way you experience it in the present.  The Body’s Role in Grieving This processing of emotion is both a mind and body experience. The body can hold and store emotion; consider the way fear is often described as being felt in ‘the pit of your stomach’. Similarly, your body sends warning signals of anxiety to us when we are in danger, or when it interprets an experience as dangerous or threatening, such as the ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ emotions associated with grief. For these reasons, tuning in to our bodies and listening to what they are telling us can not only help us to connect with emotions in a felt way, but can also help us to take action that will ease the impact of the experience. For example, fuelling our bodies in a way that creates a stable blood sugar level throughout the day, reduces the peaks and troughs of energy that can impact on how we are feeling emotionally.  Grief is Personal—Support Should Be Too In all, I like the holistic approach to working with grief that the Pillars of Strength provides. It leans into the idea that we are complex and unique individuals, and our experiences of grief will vary depending on how well supported we are by these pillars. For example, it makes sense that if you lack structure in your life due to fluctuating shift patterns or caring responsibilities, then you may experience grief differently to someone who is able to build structured routines into their day. This not only allows room for compassion for yourself and your circumstances but also offers ideas about changes that could be made that may support you with your grief process.  Further Reading and Support If you would like to read more about the pillars of strength then you can find more information here: https://www.juliasamuel.co.uk/8-pillars-of-strength . If you would like to read more about EFT then please visit  https://iceeft.com/ .  I am grateful to Julia Samuels for her thought-provoking model and the ways I can build it into my work with clients. If you would like some support working with your own grief then please get in touch via info@talkingtherapynorth.co.uk .

Understanding Emotions: More Than Just Feelings We all know what emotions are, right? We might describe them as our feelings, our responses to people and events in our lives. Some of these emotions are welcome for most people, joy, for example. Other emotions are not pleasant to experience, and in some instances can even feel dangerous or scary. This is a simplified way of looking and at and understanding emotion, and in many ways, underestimates the fundamental importance they play in how we function (or not function) in the world, both in our interactions with others, in how we understand ourselves, and in our behavioural responses. The Importance of Emotional Balance If life is lived in a way that denies emotions, experiences only a limited range of emotions, tries to suppress or avoid emotion, or in a constant state of feeling at risk of being overwhelmed by emotion, then this can be hugely problematic for an individual’s sense of wellbeing. In essence, emotional balance, which allows someone to access their emotions, regulate their emotions and use the emotion to acknowledge and articulate needs, is what therapies such an Emotionally Focused Therapy aims to achieve.  How Our Early Experiences Shape Emotional Responses As we are beginning to see, emotional responses are complex, and in many cases, our emotional responses to things are adaptive responses which we have learnt through our experiences, often through our childhoods and relationships with our early caregivers. This is the basis of attachment theory; secure attachment with a primary caregiver allows emotional responses to develop that mean that an individual is able to recognise and acknowledge their needs, send clear messages about their needs, reach out for and take in care, and give care to others. Attachment and Emotional Adaptation Sometimes emotional responses develop as an insecure attachment, due to the experiences and interactions we have with our early caregivers, other significant figures in our lives, or traumatic events that we experience. In these cases, when emotions are triggered, an adaptive response to these feelings may be avoidant; you withdraw, run away, minimize your needs, avoid connection with others. Alternatively, another adaptive response may be anxiety; you are on alert all the time and have high needs that you seek constantly to be met. Sometimes the response can be a combination of the two. The resulting experience of these adaptive responses, which worked well at the time when they developed, is a sense of isolation and ‘aloneness’ in the present when perhaps they aren’t working as effectively.    When Emotional Responses Become Problematic If any of this may be sounding familiar, then Emotionally Focused Therapy could be an effective model for you. So how would a therapist help with these adaptive responses to emotions that are causing you distress? First and foremost, it will be about creating a place of safety within the therapy room, and between you the client, and the therapist. How Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Can Help Together, you will work towards starting to understand how you experience emotion, the meaning you make of it and your responses to it. This can be scary. Some emotions feel ‘‘frightening, alien and unacceptable”. Your body doesn’t want you to feel these emotions because it has learnt in the past that there is a threat there if you do. This makes complete sense; it is an adaptive response to a very real, felt sense of threat and danger in early life. That’s why the therapy is slow, follows your pace, and is collaborative; the therapist is with you in the experience. Gradually, the emotion and emotional response is broken down, processed, and experienced again in the present, but this time with a sense of safety, provided through the secure attachment with the therapist, or, as therapy progresses, with the reassuring presence of an older, wiser self. It is not about re-living a trauma, recovering traumatic memories, or re-writing history; it is about re-processing the emotional response so that your body can learn it can respond in a different way.   The Power of Reprocessing Emotions in Therapy The impact can be powerful, and once access to emotions is increased, and a client begins to be able to acknowledge their needs, they can start to reach out and ask for care, but also be able to receive it from others; the result is an escape from the isolation, the ‘aloneness’, which is often the experience of an individual who has developed an insecure attachment.   Take the Next Step: Exploring EFT If any of this resonates and you would like to talk further about how EFT may be able to help you then please contact me through the website.     Reference  Johnson, S and Campbell, L. 2022. A Primer for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFIT). New York and Oxon: Routledge

What to Expect in Your First Therapy Session If you have made the decision to come to counselling or therapy, you probably know that there are things you need to talk about. Knowing how to articulate those things, where to begin, or how to convey complicated experiences and feelings can feel really overwhelming, especially in your first session. For some clients, the first session feels like a release, and words pour out as months, years or sometimes a lifetime of feelings finally have a space to be shared. For other clients, the words can’t be found. Maybe they feel like the weight of what has happened is too much to put into a few sentences to a stranger. Sometimes the thought of finally talking about things that have been unspoken can by truly terrifying, because what will happen when those feelings and thoughts are out in the world? All of these experiences and anything in-between are common and understandable. So where do you begin? Understanding the Different Approaches to Therapy Therapy and counselling can come in many different forms. Each will have its own model and structure of working. For some, the first session will be a more formal assessment with directed questions which aim to uncover more about your background, what has led up to this point, and what the goals of therapy may be. Other models, such as person-centred counselling can have a more informal approach, where the client is in control of how the session unfolds and what they would like to bring. Either way, your therapist or counsellor has one main aim for that first session; to build trust. The Importance of Trust in Therapy In person-centred counselling the therapeutic relationship underpins everything that will happen in therapy, and as a client, you need to feel safe, accepted and heard in that first session. You can set the pace, share what feels appropriate and take time to allow the trust to build between you and your counsellor. I allow information from the client to unfold naturally, and allow them to choose where they would like to begin. If this feels uncomfortable for the client, then thinking about how it actually feels to be in the counselling session can be a good place to start. Often a client will have a complex history of experience, but that may feel too much as starting point, so beginning with the ‘here and now’- how are you being impacted in your life currently – can also be a useful way to ease into what a client has been experiencing. Similarly, thinking about what a client would like to be different can also help to uncover what some of the current issues or hurdles are in their life currently. What to Keep in Mind During Your First Session Crucially, remember that there is no ‘right answer’ to how a session should go, no expectation of how much will be shared, no judgement of how a client presents or behaves. One session is not going to ‘fix’ a problem, or provide all the answers, but if at the end of the session you walk out feeling like you were listened to without judgement, received an empathic response to what you shared and feel comfortable with the idea of returning again to continue building on what you started, then that is a successful session.

Finding Help When You Need It You know that something isn’t quite right. Maybe you have been feeling low for a really long time. Perhaps the things that used to make you feel better are no longer working. You may be experiencing conflict or a breakdown in your relationships. Whatever it is, all you know is that you are not happy, and something needs to change. It’s not always easy to acknowledge that things in your life are not quite as you would like them to be. For some, this comes with a feeling of failure; why haven’t you been able to ‘win’ at life like everybody else seems to be doing? Sometimes there is a guilt that despite trying so hard, you don’t have the tools to help yourself. For others, there is the fear of opening a lifetime of worries, feelings and experiences that you have been working hard to forget or leave in the past. All these feelings are normal. You are not alone. Why Mental Health Should Be Treated Like Physical Health If you had a physical health problem, you probably wouldn’t think twice about going to the doctor and seeking help and support. Why don’t we treat our mental health in the same way? Sometimes life can throw some really challenging events at us, sometimes it is a gradual build-up of stressors and experiences that over the days, months and years become too much to manage on our own. However you have got to this point, there are people who can help. How to Find the Right Help for You So, you know you would like help, but how do you find it? How do you choose what will be right? The answer is to reach out; contact therapists, talk to them, ask all the questions you have, and get a feel for whether they are someone who will help you to feel safe enough to begin to lay down some of the heavy emotional burdens you have been carrying. A good therapist will assess your needs and take time with you to consider whether they can offer what you need, and if they can’t, they will signpost you to somewhere that can. A good therapist will be warm and open, they won’t pressurise you and they will place you at the centre of everything they do. The Importance of the Therapeutic Relationship One of the most important factors for effective therapy is the therapeutic relationship; the relationship between client and therapist. Therapy is a collaboration which is built on trust, empathy and non-judgement. Once that relationship is developed it creates a space where the client feels safe to share and explore, and the therapist can hold what the client brings. Spend time finding someone who can do all this with you, who will walk alongside you as you work through your problems, feelings and experiences. What to Expect Before Your First Session You’ve acknowledged you want some help and support, you’ve chosen your therapist and it’s time for your first session. How do you feel? Nervous; relieved; defensive; fearful; excited. All these emotions and more are to be expected before a first session. But therapy is about one step at a time, so take that next step into the session and begin your journey.

Hello Internet! As I write this, my first ever blog, I can feel own anxiety is rising! Yes, that’s right, we psychologists are no strangers ourselves to such visceral experiences. Why? Well, because like everybody we’re human. It is to be expected though, right? When we put ourselves in the ‘firing line’ so to speak, of other peoples’ gaze, evaluation, judgments, and possible rebukes, it triggers a primitive, protective response in us. The Roots of Anxiety This goes back a long way; when early humans were roaming the earth with sabre-toothed tigers and cave lions round every corner, being visible was a great risk to physical safety; every second counted when it came to surviving the predation of such beasts. We therefore developed a sophisticated alarm system to alert us to the dangers in the world. This, we now call anxiety. Modern Anxiety: The Same Alarm System, Different Threats Of course, there are no longer the same physical threats to survival that there once was, there are some to be sure, but most of our anxiety responses are now triggered by internal threats or relational conflicts, yet the purpose of anxiety in such contexts remains valid and the same – anxiety is our alarm system and our drive to action. So, anxiety serves two vital purposes in our lives, it tells us that there’s a problem and it tries to focus our minds towards solving that problem. So why do so many of my clients tell me they just need anxiety to STOP! Well, it’s understandable when we consider that anxiety feels… well, absolutely rubbish! Thoughts vs. Anxiety Common opinion holds that worrisome thoughts ‘are’ anxiety, but such thoughts might be better understood as our attempts to think our way out of anxiety (which of course doesn’t work and only serves to perpetuate it; hence people believe that thoughts are anxiety). In actual fact, anxiety is a physiological, bodily response – i.e. symptoms like muscle tightness, a roiling tummy, an urge to go to the toilet, a constricted throat, a dry mouth, dry eyes, excessive sweating, a tight chest, restless legs, going floppy and losing motivation, experiencing brain fog, ringing in the ears or tunnel vision. All these are anxiety symptoms and, like I said, they really do feel… RUBBISH! Our Natural Tendency to Avoid Anxiety It makes sense then that we would try to avoid such pain, if at all possible, right? Especially since ignoring these symptoms now does not result in being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or cave lion! So, over the millennia, we have learned as a species to quiet the bells of anxiety, to find ways to distract ourselves and thus avoid the pain that comes with it. This short-term solution can be helpful in making us feel better… in the short term. But, just like your bedside alarm clock, if you mute it, it will come back on after a time and get louder and louder and louder until you finally take notice. The Dangers of Trying to Eradicate Anxiety When anxiety gets louder, it gets more painful, and that is why in more recent times anxiety has become a mental health disorder, something problematic in people’s lives, and something that many clients and therapists are striving to eradicate from people’s experience.  To me this is utter folly – to try to get rid of somebody’s anxiety is a) simply not possible, and b) it would rob them of their drive and their alarm system. A Healthier Approach: Reclaiming Control Over Anxiety My approach is to help people to pay attention again to anxiety, to not be afraid of it, and to not shy away from the minor muscle tension that comes with the first whisperings of an anxiety reaction. If people can successfully pay attention to themselves again in this way, then they can reclaim control over their lives. Their anxiety response can then alert them to other feelings that need attending to, such as anger or sadness, and it becomes a useful tool in getting their needs met once again. I hope this initial blog helps in some way to develop your understanding of and relationship with your own anxiety, and I will endeavour to further harness my own to bring you more insights in future posts! Until the next time. Dr Steve Hoole CPsychol AFBPsS Clinical Psychologist & Director Talking Therapy North