The Magic of Beginnings

The human soul is magnificent. In spite of everything, it rises.

Everywhere, I detect an eagerness to make the threshold of 2021 a pivotal place: a place where positive change begins.

In these confusing, contradictory and frightening times, that will require more than a little faith. It asks of us to look back and name what was lost, what was found and what began emerging, in the year that was 2020.

It was a watershed from which we appear less innocently and more acutely aware of our interdependence with each other and the natural world; as well as the fragility of life itself.

How can we play our part in such a way that it improves not just our own wellbeing, but also feeds into the greater good? 

Let’s thresh out the seeds for what we want in 2021.

Here are some questions to ask, as you set your intentions. These questions are based on our shared desire for more stability, an increased sense of control and a more joyful inner life, which will spill over and warm our connections with others. 

What Can You Leave Behind?

Many plants explode with life once you have pruned them hard. That can work for us too.

Think about which of your old habits or attitudes might have become cumbersome, and now detract from a life in which you more genuinely belong.

I would like to work on keeping my interior head- and heart-space free from the clutter of rumination – those repetitive, circular thoughts - or the turbulence of fear. Maybe you’ve been too accommodating to colleagues or family, leaving little time to top up your own reserves? Perhaps you easily default into unsatisfactory bickering or stick with unfulfilling relationships? 

Even a small unburdening will deepen your ability to attend more fully and consciously to the present moment.

What Would You Like To Cultivate?

How would you like to fill that cleared space in your head and heart, on your timetable or in your relationships? Have you been yearning to learn new things or develop practices like sinking into the stillness of nature?

I take with me the deep way in which kind people affected me last year, often with the lightest touch.

How would you like to touch those you interact with this year? What glow would you like to leave them with?

In Which Way Is Your Life Already Unfolding? Can You Respond To That Invitation?

Under the surface of what we witness, life is continuously renewing itself. Underfoot right now, new life is stirring. As John O’Donohue put it in his poem ‘For a New Beginning’:

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge. 

How is your life inviting you to move on? Have you outgrown your job? Has the time come for you to speak your truth? Maybe your values are changing?

Sometimes we have no choice in the matter. Life comes crumbling down around our head. But what do we do with a gentler invitation to leave a space that’s become too small?

I take a lot of inspiration from the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion and this beautiful poem by the Spanish poet Jiménez was quoted in one of their recent newsletters:

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing ... Silence ... Waves ...
Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?

2021 will not put an end to our personal difficulties or our collective human suffering. That is why my greatest wish for you is that you learn to deepen your ability to be on your own side; to feel safe and held by your own kindness.

We need courage to stay present with what is: kind companionship to ourselves, when times are hard, helps develop emotional agility and resilience. With the courage of kindness, we don’t need to disconnect and can face things head on. Self-compassion – the act of attending to your pain with great kindness – will help you stick with your resolutions for a better year ahead. 

At the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion they have taught the practice of self-compassion to over 100.000 people in just a few years. All research bears out that making a habit of self-compassion significantly improves positive states and reduces anxiety, depression and so on.

Ironically, the more we recognise and tend kindly to our own suffering, the more compassionate we become to others – within our own circle and beyond; the more aware in other words, of our shared humanity. 

May you hold yourself kindly, lovingly and generously as you travel through 2021!

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

A Lifeline in Uncertain Times: Making Peace with Change

We are six months in from that moment in March when the world came to its knees. Like an inkblot the coronavirus spread across the globe, leaving a trail of devastation and grief in its wake.

There are still times, even now, when I wake in the morning in utter disbelief at the magnitude of the change and destruction, wondering when we might be able to breathe again freely together; when we might shake hands, share hugs and take in each other’s presence without undercurrents of doubt and unease. (And I’m not even talking about economic recovery or a semblance of normality for those who have tragically lost people they love or, for those who stagger on with long-term aftereffects of the disease itself.)

The truth is that we don’t know. It might be quite a while yet.

So, what can you do to support yourself, bolster your resilience and make sure you don’t become a reduced version of yourself? It’s hard, isn’t it? But here is what I learned and how I will continue to support myself in the months to come.

Firstly, you might find it helpful to cast your glance back along the trajectory of the months past. Do you remember those slightly gung-ho early days of putting your best foot forward? Linking up for zoom dinner-do’s and online dance classes? For me that behaviour served to deal with the anxiety that hit me early on, when the world around me fell apart and we were ordered into lockdown. 

All well and good that ‘being positive’ stuff, but as time wore on, I couldn’t kid myself any longer. I was grieving. Grieving over so much loss: the loss of opportunity to fulfil my most elemental human needs for movement, connection and shared joy; grieving over our broken world.

When Brené Brown spoke to Dr Marc Brackett about holding contradictory emotions like anxiety and hope, he suggested that at this very difficult time the hope might be more of a regulation strategy, than a real sentiment or conviction.

What I have embarked upon for myself and encourage you to try out for yourself, might also be like a regulation strategy at the outset of our journey. I am convinced however, that with enough attention for our intention – for whichever regulation strategy we choose – we will eventually be able to straddle the truth of both realities at once. 

I would love for you to try and see what happens, but before we get there, here are a few more thoughts I’d like to share with you.

Once my grief subsided a bit, I felt exhausted. No amount of staycation has altered that.  I am still tired and far from feeling ‘fresh’ in the way I usually do with September on the horizon. I realise though, that this too will pass. It really will. And of course I’m tired. Everything on this planet is interconnected. How could we not be picking up on all the anguish and uncertainty around us, whether we know it or not. So, aside from the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things, there is nothing more certain than the constancy of change. That too, is a universal truth. Things change all the time, so part of the answer must be to make our peace with the uncertainty of this drama.

In her magnificent little book ‘When Things fall Apart: Heart Advice in Difficult Times’, Pema Chödron puts it like this: 

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

Well, it’s work in progress as far as I’m concerned. 

Finding Refuge – over and over again

The beautiful practice of finding an emotional sanctuary has been around in one form or another forever. It was recently brought back to my attention by Dr Rick Hanson and I am benefitting from it hugely. ‘Finding Refuge’ is like finding a mental and emotional watering hole or pit stop. Finding a place of refreshment and rest in your mind and letting the experience percolate right down into every cell of your body. (It helps that most of my readers have very vivid imaginations.)

With practice, we can do this ‘on the hoof’ - as it were. When overcome by sadness or anxiety we can literally create some more inner space and let in something good too. By staying focussed on the good, we can either redirect our focus completely or, at the very least, begin to change our relationship with the less comfortable experience.

Here’s how I practice this:

Think of people whose company you like. They need not be good friends, but it is important that you deeply value some of their qualities. Jot down some traits that come to mind: like patience, good heartedness, equanimity, kindness, joyfulness, gratitude or anything else you’d like to cultivate in yourself.

• Mark out 5 – 10 minutes on a regular basis and pick any quality that would really counterbalance any distressing feelings that get you down at the moment. Choose something you’d like to focus on every day for a week.

• When you begin the meditation, acknowledge any uncomfortable feelings that might be present. Let them be there without giving them too much attention.

• Focus on the person of choice and then the particular quality. Bring it to mind and the feelings this memory evokes in you. Does this process bring up sensations you’d like to cherish and hold onto? Stick with it for a few minutes, allowing the goodness to wash over you like refreshing wave after wave. Really feel that desired state in your body.

• Be curious about the changes to your inner realm. Does it expand, soften, change your perspective on the pain?

• Before you finish, set an intention for yourself, to take a mini pit stop several times a day - however busy you might be – to top up on the quality that restores you and you would like to develop in yourself. This need only take one minute at a time. I do this every time I wash or sanitise my hands. These days, that gives me plenty of opportunity to practice.

Another way of choosing qualities you’d like to have more readily to hand, is to think of traits of your own which you would like to cultivate. Strengths or resources you know you have and which will serve you well in dealing with uncertainty and change.

You could also bring to mind – over and over – a particularly nourishing landscape. Go there for this practice and keep focussing on the changing physical quality of the experience. In other words: watch and stay with the pleasant feelings that arise in your body. Remember with repetition, you can change how your brain circuits are wired (neuroplasticity). This is exactly what you’re practicing – for the good.

Go well. Look after yourself and keep Maya Angelou’s words for difficult times close to heart: “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.”

BBC Radio Jersey Interview - How to Deal with Panic Attacks

Early on in the summer, I was interviewed for BBC Radio Jersey on panic attacks.

Listen to my interview to learn how to deal with panic attacks, or if you’d like to support someone you know who suffers with them.

Championing Neurodiversity and Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

To capitalise on the wide arc of talents and capabilities that come with neurodiversity, we need a fresh approach. Think of data crunchers with a myopic eye for details at one end, to big picture thinkers with an eye for pattern and connection at the other.

We need them all.

My colleague at ERC, Cathy Harris, and I were recently asked to co-author a white paper with PSI (global leaders in providing and nurturing talent in the workplace), on ‘Championing Neurodiversity and Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace’.

What a joy: to be asked to shed light on what it is like to have certain talents in combination with recurring challenges. When we recognise the patterns of this paradox, creative people can feel acknowledged, understood and offered a chance to get their needs better met. This leads to freedom, motivation and a more consistent expression of their capabilities. Everyone wins.

Download to read the full article and discover more about neurodiversity and the clear advantages that can help businesses.

Make January the launchpad for a fruitful 2020

A close friend, well into her 90s and who has therefore seen nearly 100 Januaries come and go, said to me recently that this is definitely ‘the lowest point in the year’. The only way is up.

New Year’s resolutions can reignite our hopeful hearts and give us the impetus we need to work towards changes – however small – to make our own lives more satisfying and the world around us a better place to inhabit.

With the help of other friends – all of them gardeners – I have started seeing my resolutions as a process, a way of tapping into something already underway and present, rather than a momentary decision to be grasped out of thin air.

The Process of New Year’s Resolutions

Spring comes to gardeners much earlier than it does to the rest of us. They are tuned into the stirrings of new life underfoot, long before others notice the ultimate display of spring flowers. They know where they want to put their attention and leap at the first shoots of green when these are barely visible to the naked eye. One friend wrapped herself around a birch tree in my garden and put her ear to the trunk, already excited at the prospect of hearing the sap rise up the tree in a few months time.

Another friend – to whom I am forever indebted – sparked in me the joy of winter gardening and in so doing she helped me deepen my New Year’s resolutions into a process. This, it turns out, is so much more fun than the ‘on your marks, get set, go’ approach that inevitably fizzles out somewhere in the year.

Thanks to her, I have been sweeping paths, trimming back dead foliage and sharpening the edges of grassy verges. She also showed me how to stand back and look at what’s already there and decide how to sharpen and enhance its look. We focussed on how it appears in juxtaposition and in context with other things. I loved how this made me see what needs to change, stay, be moved or removed - creating the guide to unearthing my New Year’s resolutions.

Prune and Enhance

When looking at the shape of a winter shrub – brought starkly in focus without its foliage – it becomes obvious how best to prune it. You realise which branches to reduce in size or remove completely, to enhance the entire plant.

By applying this process to my life and what it looks like, my New Year’s resolutions have become the chosen way to highlight aspects that have become overshadowed or underused and deserve better. I notice what I am enjoying, what brings benefit and continues to be worthy of pursuit.

Spending a few hours at a time tidying files and cupboards, is revealing abandoned interests and creating space for projects already under way as well as for me, to move more freely.

Thinking about what I do with my time – from day to day – and where I put my attention, has brought clearly into view how pernicious the mobile phone is; as throttling as bindweed can be.  I know I want to check in with my intention to reduce my time on it every day, for the habit to be curtailed.

What can you do?

What about you? Are you feeding your curiosity in a healthy way, or do you compulsively grab your phone too?

What attitude would you like to foster in a world that sometimes seems hellbent on self-destruction? Maybe offering kindness to ourselves, those we meet and those we seek out, is the best attitude to practice this year?

Or, perhaps we could rekindle our ability to truly listen to others once in a while. Being heard – by a real person - has become a rare commodity now social media and automation substitute the genuine exchange. There is no need to accept the erosion of our connectedness. We can decide to show up more and what better time to get the process under way than now.

Whatever you decide, let your resolutions be guided by your most authentic values in order to get a fair chance at growing into the best version of yourself.

I hope you give your New Year’s resolutions the opportunity to reveal themselves and that 2020 unfolds in fruitful and happy ways!

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Supporting Neurodiversity in Children

In spite of all the understanding now available about our different learning styles and calls for inclusivity, we are still a long way off from properly accommodating neurodiverse children in school.

In my recent interview with family therapist Miriam Chachamu, I discuss how to support dyslexic children in ways that will strengthen their emotional wellbeing and resilience.

You can watch the video here:

It is high time to reassess our educational system which is still too focussed and biased towards the learning style of some and thereby disqualifying large numbers whose talents and learning styles differ from the norm.

By raising our awareness and making room for difference, every community will be healthier and enriched.

Celebrating Neurodiversity on World Mental Health Day 2019

3 Top Tips for Emotional Wellbeing And How to Support Dyslexic Children

Neurodiversity is a new buzzword, particularly in business - and rightly so.

The high level of talents associated with non-typical thinking and operating styles give companies a greater chance of staying at the top of their game.

Unless though, we manage (1) to recognise the profile of people with this particular set of sensitivities, and (2) improve the way we support them, everyone loses out. Talented people are left to flounder, their valuable potential under-utilised, and most importantly their mental wellbeing severely compromised.

The heightened sensitivities that give creative people their edge, also make them the canaries in the coal mine. They feel stress sooner than others.

Neurodiversity refers to those whose greater than average creative sensitivities are simultaneously accompanied by a greater than average set of difficulties. Look out for a certain symmetry in these extremes. Talents can manifest in art, design, communication, technology, and so on.

Think also of the high numbers of entrepreneurs among this population. The difficulties too are varied and can encompass poor concentration, chaotic organisation and/or time management or inconsistent communication skills. The health warning: lack of understanding and poor support of neurodiversity, can lead to severe stress and mental illness.

3 Top Tips

As I write this, World Mental Health Day 2019 is coming up, so let’s use this as an opportunity to raise our awareness of neurodiversity – in others and in ourselves, perhaps. When we get impatient with chaos, poor listening or other shortcomings in ourselves and others, let’s not point the finger and dismiss, but stop instead, and wonder whether there is not more to this turmoil than meets the eye. Might it be related to talents somewhere on the creative continuum?

Here are 3 helpful things we can do, to significantly help creative people calm down. A less agitated brain immediately frees up space to think more clearly and feel more in control. Everyone will benefit from that.

1. Validate their experience

When we acknowledge someone by showing that we have noticed their struggle, effort and intention (irrespective of the outcome) they will automatically calm down. Recognition fosters a sense of safety.

2. Validate their qualities

Neurodiverse people can easily lose touch with their qualities and particular talents. Once we shine a torch on their resources we help bring them into being. We all benefit from being reminded of our qualities every now and then.

3. Validate their need for freedom that comes from autonomy

For much of the time the neurodiverse population is asked to function on terms other than their own. Little account is taken of how they learn and create. All the more important then, that they have periods in the day that they are not accountable to anyone. Their sanity depends on it. Encourage them to get things done in their own way. As long as the required goals are reached, we are always more motivated if we can deliver the goods in ways that suit us best.

By looking out for each other and embracing (ourselves and) others completely – talents as well as imperfections – creativity can flourish.

Supporting Neurodiversity in Children

In spite of all the understanding now available about our different learning styles and calls for inclusivity, we are still a long way off from properly accommodating neurodiverse children in school.

In my recent interview with family therapist Miriam Chachamu, I discuss how to support dyslexic children in ways that will strengthen their emotional wellbeing and resilience.

You can watch the video here:

It is high time to reassess our educational system which is still too focussed and biased towards the learning style of some and thereby disqualifying large numbers whose talents and learning styles differ from the norm.

By raising our awareness and making room for difference, every community will be healthier and enriched.

Please explore the rest of my website for the many articles and resources I have made available to foster the neurodiversity that leads to creativity.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Create a New Beginning and a More Fitting Story for Yourself

Knowingly or unknowingly, we live by a narrative that we scripted ourselves - often too long ago - and perhaps under stressful circumstances.

How we see ourselves though, directly affects how we feel and the value that we ascribe to our lives.

Why not take a moment to check, update, and connect with a more fitting narrative?

September. It heralds the winds of change while kicking off a new season and a fresh start for many. As the summer gracefully fades away and the air sharpens, I sense an energy picking up wherever I look.

Excited, bright-eyed children make their way to school, kitted out in smart, new school clothes, polished shoes and a fresh set of books. Students are gearing up for their great leap towards independence, heading off with ‘starter packs’ and ‘UniKitOuts’.

A natural human instinct invites us to rise at the chance of a ‘new beginning’, an unwritten page – unblemished by past mistakes, misfortune or disappointment – an opportunity to start again and put our very best self out there.

For a fleeting moment in time we connect – however unconsciously – with the bigger person inside; with a different, more optimistic narrative of who we are and can be.

We are all born storytellers, as Emily Esfahani Smith reminds us in her excellent book The Power of Meaning. Whether we are aware or not, we identify with a narrative of who we are – kind, generous, talented, creative, good and successful; or more often: inadequate, imperfect, at fault or ‘less than’.

What about optimising this natural moment of change, to let go of ideas and notions that have served their purpose and keep us timid and small? We can shed the burden of a negative inner commentator and replace her with a more encouraging voice; one that is in touch with a more spacious and expansive story. Let’s be clear on what that bigger story is.

To help you along, I offer you my THREE STEP PLAN to spruce up your narrative and create a more fitting story:

1. PAUSE

Find a private moment and create some stillness.

2. CONSIDER and CHANGE

Consider

Have you ever thought about the story you tell about yourself, and therefore live by? Maybe it comes out in how you express yourself, what you do or perhaps don’t do?

How would you fill in the following sentence: “I am someone who always/never….” What are the absolutes you use to describe yourself?

How do you stop yourself from growing and developing?

Change

Now edit the script. What would be a more fitting narrative to live by?

Can it include that you are enough and OK as you are? Can it include references to connection and what you mean to others? Could it include a sense of trust in yourself and your ability to carry on learning, developing and contributing to the world?

Make a note of the story you want to tell about yourself and from time to time you might want to reread and if necessary, modify it.

3. MAINTAIN

Build regular pauses into your day and week. These need only be short but distinct moments when you check how your story bears out – both internally and externally.

How you (self-)talk

Become more aware of your self-talk, tendency to ruminate or internal chatter. Do you default back to the smaller and less fitting narrative and if so, kindly reframe and steer yourself towards a more encouraging and accepting attitude.

How you behave

Notice how the story you live by helps with bringing down barriers in your communication with others and how you more naturally rise to challenges; doing more justice to who you really are.

As they say: Sometimes in the winds of change, we find our true direction.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Protect Yourself against ‘Compassion Fatigue’

Last month I was asked to work with a group of healthcare professionals on ‘Compassion Fatigue’ - how to recognise it, even when it is creeping up, and how to develop strategies and practices to avoid it.

Compassion or, better still, Caregiver or Empathy Fatigue is rampant in our world. People who care and look after others – whether in their family, with marginalised people in society, animals, or in their capacity as healthcare professionals – go buckled under what feels like a never-ending tide of suffering.

For someone who is caring, selfless and generous, it can come as a nasty surprise when you find yourself relieved at the cancelation of a client; irritated, cynical or even increasingly indifferent to people’s stories of woe. It can be confusing too, as a caregiver’s sense of identity is often bound up with her warmth and interest in the plight of her fellow men and women. Who are you, if you’re not the kind person you thought you were?

Other symptoms of ‘compassion fatigue’ can stir up health anxieties, particularly when we don’t recognise the link with the caregiving role we take on in our lives. Think of difficulties with concentration, fatigue, abdominal pains, headaches or insomnia. The list goes on and until it hits us, it remains something theoretical that only happens to others. The drive that comes from our energy, motivation and focus on doing good, makes us feel invincible. Our attention is locked on all that needs doing, day in – day out; at the expense of caring for oneself.

The Health Service offers an interesting case study. Many patients experience the service as lacking in care and compassion. It can sadly leave us feeling distinctly uncared for.

This however, is in stark contrast to the individual reality of healthcare professionals themselves. Large numbers of them feel defeated by the weight of their task, utterly exhausted by the amount of people they see, the suffering they encounter and frustration at everything that gets in the way of doing the best job they can.

Compassion Fatigue, or secondary traumatic stress disorder, comes about when caregivers become over-exposed to the suffering of others. The body shuts down and disconnects the caregiver from further exposure. “That”, she says, “is that!”

What We Can Do

Caring makes us human. Feeling the pain of others as our own connects us, but what can we do to take better care of ourselves, so that we can wholeheartedly be and remain there for others?

I heard Brené Brown quote a priest who said: ‘if you don’t want to burn out, stop acting like you’re on fire’. How - you may well ask – are we supposed to keep warming others, without burning out in the process ourselves?

Good ideas abound, but make a distinction between (1) the practices that help rebalance and pace your life, and (2) those that help you deal with your response to what comes up in the heat of the moment, when you are heart-to-heart with the pain of others.

Feed Your Soul

Rebalancing your life requires you to reintroduce activities that allow you to disconnect and unplug from everything that links to your (main) caregiving role. Nature is a great healer. It reminds us of the relativity of things, shows us that everything is always changing and passing (even without our interference), and demonstrates that there are things we can control and others we simply can’t. It also energises and inspires us – it literally in-spires, gives us breath.

Spend time with people who feed and lift you. Good connections transform our state of mind.

Bring Compassion to the Moment

How is it that caring can cause so much pain? 

Recent research by the well-known Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and scientist Linda Singer has shown that when we empathise or ‘feel with’ another person their feelings become ours. The brain of an empathetic listener literally lights up the same pain pathways as that of the sufferer. The brain activity of the caregiver mirrors that of the patient. We also call this resonance.

So, even if you help the patient or client and their burden is alleviated, you will see another pained person and then another, and so on for years. No wonder that your brain can eventually close down. 

This state of burn-out or running on empty is better described as empathy fatigue. Not compassion fatigue. Compassion it turns out, actually alleviates the pain and when really experienced, lights up a very different pathway in the brain of the caregiver; one that actually energises her.

Here’s How To Do It

• Develop an awareness of your own physical, embodied discomfort that arises when you listen to the stressful situation of another. Do this regularly. The discomfort that wasn’t there before you spoke to the patient.

• Acknowledge what you are feeling. Locate it and name it. Just this act can help us calm down and become more present to the other person again.

• Breath kindness into your own ache, allowing it to be there and giving it some space. Meanwhile, keep focussed on the other person, without responding to any personal urge you may have to offer solutions or explanations. Just breathe into your own twitches and listen to the other.

• Breathing in kindness (or warmth, love or light – whatever works for you) for yourself and then breathing out the same for the other. In for me and out for you.

At the recent workshop with the team of healthcare professionals, participants were delighted with the comfort this exercise brought, and how it enabled them to stay more present with their patients.

I hope it can help you too.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Accepting the loss of dreams, aspirations and that of what could have been

We recognise grief as the inevitable pain of loss. The loss of a loved one, a relationship, a job, good health. Life as we know it, is over. This we realise, is the price that comes with love. Something real and tangible has gone and by grieving, we heal.

What happens though, when our loss is less tangible, like a dream, a wish or an ambition that never materialised?

The much-acclaimed writer and holocaust survivor Edith Eger, author of The Choice: Embrace the Possible, talks to Oprah of the pain of losing her childhood dream to become a dancer. Oprah weeps when she sees real maternal love; her tears are for the mother love she never had.

[ Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fauouBeIdGM ]

Losing what could have been

Someone else told me how sad he felt about the end of an unhealthy relationship. He was puzzled.

Why wasn’t he just plain relieved?

He underestimated the huge and generous investment he had made, how much he had given but, as importantly, he needed to accept his pain over the loss of what could have been. He had invested into a future that could never be, with that particular woman. She was not able to give what he had assumed and hoped for.

We know that grieving the loss of what was, eventually heals us. We are less familiar with the necessity of mourning what could have been. The pain of our unfulfilled dreams and disappointments can run very deeply. Our emotional investment in what we hope for, is often enormous. Losing the possibility of those things turning out the way we anticipated, is devastating.

Acknowledge, Accept and Heal

Unacknowledged sadness festers. This is what we call denial. Instead of diminishing pain, it imprisons us or, moves and sometimes shape-shifts. We might be destined to keep reliving it. Alternatively, it might take on another appearance like anger or anxiety. Anxiety at work for example, can come from not accepting a disappointment at home or that the career path one is on, was not the one you went to university for.

The gift of freedom only comes when we acknowledge our quashed emotional investments; really feeling the physical sting that lingers on when we bring our dashed hopes to mind.

By bring that pain to the light and allowing it space we offer ourselves the opportunity of true acceptance. By doing so, we heal.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Gratitude – ‘the new Prozac’?

I’m grateful for my garden and the beautiful blooms i get to enjoy

A chimpanzee who has been groomed by another chimp earlier that day is more likely to share his food with the groomer. If he has been helped by another chimp at some stage, that too will make him more inclined to reach out to his helpful friend.

This form of ‘reciprocal altruism’ is closely linked to what we experience as gratitude. It is in our DNA and evolved to function as a form of ‘social glue’. After all, without one another we do a whole lot less well.

Why is it then, that something so natural needs to be re-learned?

My guess is that it has something to do with the brain regions referred to as the TPN (task positive network) and the DMN (default mode network) – one needed for analytical reasoning and non-social problem solving (TPN), and the other involved in ‘empathic reasoning’ which includes social and emotional understanding.  Interestingly, they don’t easily work together. So, in our world which is heavily weighed towards the TPN, the habit of engaging the emotional, empathic circuit is slowly eroded or left dormant.

A small daily gratitude practice can have amazing results.

Research into the effects of a daily gratitude practice by Duke University and UPenn have compared it to Prozac with lots of wonderful side effects. Sleep and mood are improved; anxiety, depression and rumination are reduced; the immune system is strengthened, and lots more. The list is phenomenal; and all this by cultivating a natural resource.

Why do we find it so difficult to do?

Apart from the fact that our TPN is switched on for too much of the time, we also have a negativity bias wired into us. What happens when you receive a cascade of praise after a performance of some sort, with one critical voice in and amongst all that positive feedback? Which comment are you most likely to remember? As I heard a psychologist say recently: the negative screams out at us, while the positive only whispers.

So a gratitude practice will help to listen out for the whispers, every day, little and often, until we hear them as easily as the murmur of our own babies. Not only do we train to hear them, but we stop to feel the warmth it generates in our hearts; that is how the change happens.

✔︎ Three Good Things EXERCISE

This exercise was developed and used by Professor Martin Seligman in his studies, and used in studies at Duke University.

• Find a time within 2 hours of bedtime to think of just 3 good things that happened today.

• Write them down.

• If possible, make a note of your role in bringing them about too.

When I started doing this exercise I found it hard to think of 3 things to which I felt I had really contributed. It was much easier to think of my gratitude for bluebells, dappled light and people I love.

If you need a few prompts to get started, answer these questions:

• What unique qualities do you have that you’re grateful for?

• How has someone helped you in the past that you’re grateful for? (This might be a wonderful opportunity to take the time to say thank you in a special way.)

• What is one thing you appreciate about your health?

• Think of a close loved one and write 3 things that you’re grateful for about them. (You can go in to detail here about why these things are important to you and how it makes you feel.)

• What is something that you struggled with in the past that you’re now grateful for? What did you learn from that experience in your life?

• Name three things in your surroundings that you’re grateful for. It could even be the pen you’re writing with. The small things could even trigger larger ideas such as ‘I’m grateful that for the education I received in my childhood to be able to write with this pen''.

I suggest that both exercises are valuable. They both help us feel more connected to people and the world outside of ourselves, though the 3 Good Things exercise reinforces the experience that what we do matters, and that we have a role in shaping the world around us.

Being grateful for qualities, traits and skills of our own is also very worth doing. Particularly, if you have a tendency to be overly self-critical, it is a lovely exercise in self-acceptance and compassion.

As Brother David Steindl-Rast says, cultivating gratitude allows us to experience the ‘great fullness’ of life.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

5 things a psychotherapist wants you to know

I often find that I evaluate my life and connections, with myself and others, at certain times of the year – particularly in early spring and around the New Year. They are times for renewal, rejuvenation, to reset and to reconnect.

You might do the same.

Perhaps you’ve become aware that you wish to make changes due to some obvious signs of imbalance in your life which you hope to address; or, simply because you want to make a ‘good life, great’.

You may be uncertain how to go about this on your own, and perhaps you are considering working with someone to jump start the process.

On the other hand, the idea of ‘therapy’ can be intimidating and stops too many people from reaching out to get the support and encouragement they deserve.

Why?

It might be the fear of someone rootling around in your past, or anxiety about receiving confirmation of what we most fear: that we are in some way flawed. Or maybe you dread the thought of being trapped into years of therapy. Perhaps you have simply accepted that this is the way you’ll always be.

There are lots of reasons we don’t reach out, but with enough determination and aided by the plethora of resources available to us, we can move forward in our own time and in our own way.

5 things a psychotherapist wants you to know

Read the full Breathe Magazine article for free

Perhaps the article I was commissioned to write by Breathe magazine, will help you make up your mind.

In it I describe the positive ways you can work with a therapist, to look to the future and build on your resources, develop skills and improve ways to manage yourself and regulate your emotions.

As a psychotherapist who has been practising for over 20 years, there are five things I’d like you to know before you consider therapy. I hope they’ll help you decide.

Download the article and discover if therapy could be for you.

What are your thoughts after reading the article?

Perhaps you’re confident you would like to explore ways of working together or maybe you have more questions to ask. Either way, please feel free to get in touch here ⤑

I work from my private practice in Woodchurch (near Ashford) in Kent. However, for some time now, I've been working with increasing numbers of people via Skype (or Facetime) as it suits certain types of of situations very well – including dealing with workplace stress and short sessions for parents to focus on specific difficulties as they arise.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Feeling Anxious for No Reason? Here’s what to do…

Anxiety - currently at record levels in the world of work - is a nasty slippery and contagious beast that, when not dealt with, can hijack and terrorise a person’s body and life. It can be so uncomfortable in fact, that it robs us of energy, vitality and attention for anything outside of ourselves. At worst, it can draw us into an isolated state of self-obsession. 

All the more important then, to find ways to relate to unfounded anxiety. Its urgent calls can easily draw you right in and before you know it, you’re anxious about feeling anxious for seemingly no reason and off you go, down the slippery slopes of fuelling the unwanted fire.

Start by double-checking that there really is no reason for your anxiety.

An intelligent, committed man told me that his mind was like a frightening replica of his smartphone. He was no longer able to pay attention, process information, nor rest his mind. He felt permanently agitated. But as far as he was concerned there was no reason to feel like this. His life is OK. Why the anxiety?

Luckily, he has an attentive partner who was one step ahead. She too found herself overwhelmed by waves of anxiety at very unlikely moments. Against all odds, she managed one whole evening without her phone, without the TV - just reading.  The next day at work she felt as though her brain had had a complete make-over.

As well as over-exposure to your phone, there are other things to look out for and deal with:

·      How balanced is your life? – Is there still enough time for your hobbies, friends, or ‘alone’ time, for example? When life is not nourishing us enough emotionally, the discomfort can start eking out through the cracks.

·      How easily do you pick up on atmosphere around you? - We are highly connected with each other and our environment. If you are fine one moment and anxious the next, it might be worth noting what has changed; who might you be with now, whose anxiety you are feeling (as your own)? Maybe there’s a fractious, agitated ambiance at work, which you occasionally really sense and pick up on as if it were yours?

·      The ‘novelty’ of stillness - It is not unusual for people who start meditating to report feeling anxious when they first bring their attention inwards. It is not the meditation that causes their anxiety but the ‘newness’ of stillness. When our brains have ‘nothing’ to do, they scan the environment for danger, getting us ready for fight, freeze or flight. This is part of our evolutionary programming. So, do these waves of anxiety present themselves when you take a mini break? 

·      ‘Backdraft’ - Many of us are adrenalin junkies. Stress has become the new normal and however uncomfortable, our brain is ‘happy’ with the familiar.  So, when things start going well for us, we might be unexpectedly knocked sideways by ‘backdraft’. This refers to the feelings of discomfort that arise when we let love, pleasure or success in; or even when we momentarily allow ourselves to feel ‘safe’. Because the brain is always comparing and contrasting, moments of ‘safety’ will make it bring up times from its great memory store, when you were ‘unsafe’. This process takes microseconds and often completely bypasses your awareness. You just feel the distress.

Is it important to know more? Usually not. Once you have checked out your phone use and made sure your life is on an even keel, these flash floods of ‘anxiety for no reason’ are best seen for what they are and dealt with kindly, in any of the following ways.

Try them out and discover what works best for you.

1.     Watch from up high

Name them, to tame them. Like finding a vantage point on the bank, from where you can look down on the turbulent river, try to take a step away from your uncomfortable feelings - while they are happening. Get a better perspective so that you can recognise and identify them for what they are. Once these feelings have been named, our emotional brain settles.

2.     Feel your feet

The panic we can get into when anxious, distances us from what is really going on. By focussing on the part of your body that is furthest away from your head – your feet, in other words – we can become grounded, quieter and slow down. Either feel your feet from the inside, on the floor or, move slowly and keep your attention on and in your feet. This simple exercise is a highly effective form of mindfulness: it focusses your attention and regulates your emotions. You calm down. Inexplicable waves of anxiety will pass while you are busy focussing your attention. 

3.     Exhale deeply

By focussing on making your out-breaths longer and slower than your in-breaths, you are intervening in the neurological cascade of events triggered off by the anxiety. The out-breath sets off your relaxation response. By focussing on making it longer than the in-breath, you are actively resetting and calming your nervous system. 

4.     Strong body posture

There are a number of body postures that generate feelings of strength and confidence. Standing tall – feeling your feet well planted on the floor – with your hands on your hips or raised from the shoulders straight to the ceiling, your anxiety will subside. Make sure to avoid a rigid body and of course, try combining with the deep exhalation or feeling your feet. Two minutes of this will change everything.

5.     Soften-Soothe-Allow

This beautiful little exercise which was developed by the famous researcher on self-compassion Dr Kristin Neff, is widely used to deal with our suffering or feelings of discomfort as they arise.

Once you have identified your feelings in your body – and it can be the fear of the anxiety - try to soften them and keep repeating the word ‘softening’ while you are doing this.

Soothe the emotions, keep saying ‘soothe’ in your mind and ask yourself what you need to hear. Maybe just something like ‘may I accept myself as I am’.

Allow. Repeat the word to yourself, while opening your whole body to what is there right now. You’ll be surprised at how soon it dissipates, once you allow it in. 

A final word of advice: experiment with these practices. Make them your own, find out which you prefer and remember to be as generous to yourself as you would be to a friend.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Want more resources like this? Sign up to my monthly newsletter below.

Do you have anxiety about going to work? Here's a Quick-Fire Guide to help you

---

Quick-Fire Guide: Overcoming Anxiety about Going to Work

Are you feeling a sense of anxiety about going to work?

Do you find yourself feeling anxious on a Sunday evening, or when you when you wake up in the morning, with the prospect of going into work?

Naturally, stress is a part of our working life (whether you’re employed or self-employed) and most of us will experience it at some point. However, feeling constantly anxious about going to work is harmful for your wellbeing and health – you should take this as a clear warning sign from your body that something isn’t right and your needs aren’t being met.

But, there are ways we can help redress the balance in your life so you don’t have to let your job be a painful daily experience.

In this blog, I will help you discover:

(1) that the cause of your work stress and anxiety is

(2) the ways in which you can tackle your anxiety and re-centre

This Quick-Fire Guide on how to tackle your work related anxiety, even if you feel that the job is not yet ideal, will allow you to regain a sense of freedom which always improves satisfaction and calms us down.

Free up 15 or 20 minutes, pour yourself a cup of tea, get out a notepad and let’s do some thinking... 

✅ 1 – What are the causes of my anxiety at work? 

There are many factors that can set off anxiety and even feelings of depression in the workplace. Sometimes the anxiety that shows up at work is caused by what’s going on at home. If you’re a working parent for example, unsatisfactory childcare arrangements can be enough to keep you on edge all the time that you are at work.

Here are three common causes of dissatisfaction that arise from the workplace itself.

Think about how relevant they might be to you.

A.    A Toxic Work Culture

Have you ever thought about the culture at work?

The sad truth for many people in our modern gig economy is that they are overworked, underpaid and their jobs are insecure. Room for dignity and respect is missing too; not so much because colleagues lack humanity, but because we find ourselves trapped in a system where shareholders matter more than stake holders, such as employees. 

Examine the turnover of employees in your company. That will tell you a lot about the value placed upon keeping workers and give you some idea of the limitations within which you operate.

Think too about whether your company invests in you by allowing you to continue learning and growing.

B. Permanently overwhelmed at work

If you feel overwhelmed by the sheer relentlessness and volume of the demands made on you, your inner alarm bells will be chiming for good reason. 

They are there to protect you.

A GP told me that the only small element of control left to her was when she opened the door to start her day. She began 20 minutes late every day. Opening the door to her patients felt like opening floodgates to an inescapable tidal wave. Time passed and she lived with her anxiety but became more disconnected from her patients, as a result.

What might be stopping you from giving your best at work? What are the ways in which you defend yourself? 

Often people are accountable for too much while ultimately not properly responsible for anything much. This prevents them from being able to organise and execute tasks in a way that would suit them best.

C. Work Isolation

Human connection is like food for the soul. It is not a luxury for in our spare time. When we give or receive real interest, kindness or other warm expressions of what makes us truly human, we actually calm down.

Information overload, targets and constant demands on the other hand, turn us into zombies: absent and disconnected from each other.

For all the time that we are preoccupied, hurried, clustered to digital devices we are not able to also be present with each other in the here and now. Any surprise then that without proper human connection we are left feeling isolated and anxious?

Consider whether you’re receiving enough human connection ‘nutrition’ whilst at work?

✅ 2 – Quick-Fire Guide: Overcoming Anxiety about Going to Work

It is never too soon to lovingly take your own life into your hands and build a framework that increases resilience and lowers negative emotional states.

Stress is the state we get into when the demands laid upon us are bigger or different, than what we think we can deliver. It arises when we are not treated with respect and our efforts go unacknowledged or when we feel a lack of justice in the way things are run.

Stress Buffer: Foundation Level

o     Make time for regular exercise to burn off excessive adrenalin and cortisol (that comes with the anxiety) while simultaneously producing feel-good chemicals like oxytocin and serotonin.

o     Get out of doors as much as you can, even by walking a bit further to get to the train or taking a stroll at lunchtime.

o     Learn to meditate or develop breathing techniques to calm down as the stress rises in the workplace.

o     Drink plenty of water.

o     Cut down on sugars and caffeine.

o     Disconnect from all digital devices at least an hour before bedtime and leave your phone outside of the bedroom.

o     Reduce your use of social media - it increases anxiety.

Advanced Level: Tackling Workplace Anxiety and Stress

1.Remember What Matters and Make ‘It’ Matter Every Day 

Stress and difficulties are an intrinsic part of life. They can even be good for us when they come in short term boosts and leave us feeling good about what was accomplished. Rarely, in fact, is anything worthwhile achieved without some accompanying stress. We worry because we care. 

Research also tells us that the extent to which our challenges are aligned with what we value, will determine our ability to handle the stressful situation.  

A film maker suffering from anxiety over unrealistic deadlines turned her attention to the stress it was causing her line manager. By reassuring and reminding her colleague of his greater worth, he calmed down, they felt more connected and the atmosphere changed. Together they became more realistic about the limitations they were under. They were able to opt for doing a ‘good enough’ job. 

The film maker values her work and how it educates and brings meaning into the lives of viewers. Circumstances beyond her control stopped her from doing the job the way she would like to. She also values human connection and friendship. By bringing this value more sharply into focus every day, as she stepped into the workplace, her anxiety subsided. She put a lot of conscious attention into the human factor which led to them feeling they were in it together. 

List some of your values and how they make your life worthwhile.

Is it important that you help others? Do you value family or connection? Maybe learning or adventure? You might need nature or art? 

Pick out one or two of your top values and see how you can align the situation at work with your values. Imagine how that will be and notice if to already changes how you feel about work.

If caring for others matters and you are in a servicing role, can you ask yourself what small difference you can make under the current circumstances. You may be constrained to perform your duties as you would like to, but you can still offer care or real human interest within the context as it is.

If doing things well matters to you, can you decide which things you will do well and for which tasks you’ll accept ‘good enough’?

If you are not receiving any acknowledgement for the efforts you make, it might be possible to offer just that - the recognition of others - to colleagues yourself. Show genuine interest in others and make the connection you are not getting.

2. Learn to Be Kind to Yourself

Because kindness and personal recognition are such an integral part of our mental health it is important to learn to offer that compassion to yourself. Your brain will respond very positively.

Start by tuning into your anxiety and vulnerability. Embrace them tenderly as you would a wounded puppy. Say to yourself that ‘this hurts’ and acknowledge how hard you try. Even the recognition that anyone would find this difficult, can bring great relief.

Keep asking important questions like ‘what can I learn from these difficulties?’ or ‘what do I need right now?’ 

Think about how concerned you would be if someone you love was suffering in the way that you are at the moment. Offer yourself that same kind concern for your difficulties. 

When we embrace our hurt, it no longer needs to call for our attention in the same way. 

Research shows over and over again how favourably self-compassion effects our emotional state and how it reduces anxiety.

3. Fill Your Spare Time Wisely

Once you are reminded of your values and what really matters, think about how you fill up your spare time. 

Can you free yourself up to fit in some more time in nature or with your family? Could you pick up that old guitar again? 

Sometimes a small change and conscious effort to reconnect with what feeds our soul, can cause a domino effect. I hope that just the time you put aside to read and think about this blog, are already giving you ideas about how to take back some control. 

When that happens, the anxiety reduces.

---

Still not sure where to start?

I hope this guide allows you to realign with what your core values are and that you begin to see improvements - both at home and at work. Sometimes however, it can be difficult to know where to begin when you’re so overwhelmed by everything. So if your anxiety persists, and you wish to seek further support, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

You can send me a message here and we’ll go from there…

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent. She also works with people around the world via online sessions.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Want more resources like this? Sign up to my monthly newsletter below.

National Stress Awareness Day 2018: Does High-Tech cause High-Stress?

The first Wednesday of every November is National Stress Awareness Day (7th of November for us in 2018) and it’s a perfect opportunity for us to be reminded to take a moment to really assess how you’re feeling as well as to hopefully encourage you to seek the advice and support you need on how to manage your stress.

Stress is a natural part of life but too much too often can be serious for your mental health and overall wellbeing. It's very important therefore, that we learn how to manage it. In today's blog I will explore this year’s theme ‘Does High-Tech cause High-Stress?’ and an important modern day trigger of stress - technology, whether that be your smart phone, social media, television, games or the internet.

• Discover how technology is causing your stress – creating deficits of really important aspects of what it is to be human.

• Read advice on how you can start taking a step back from the digital world and be more mindful when you’re online.

• Learn to recognise behaviours and triggers in yourself, allowing you to be a more conscious and conscientious user of the cyber world.

Living in the digital age of 2018, technology has become essential in all of our lives but it clearly has come at a cost to our mental well-being with it being a perpetual distraction from ‘real life’, affecting our sleep, robbing us of a healthy work/life balance and the constant social comparing you do by being let into other people’s ‘lives’ online.

Anyone older than about 35, can remember a time which predates the high-tech revolution. A time when you went to the cinema, walked over to the fixed telephone to pick it up, met people at parties and went to the bookshop to find a book. It was before we all lived stooped over a small screen, isolated from those around us. Life then, was in fact very differently paced. Closing the office door, also meant closing the door on your job for the day. Elements of our lives were more clearly delineated.

How can we all best use the power of technology?

The hi-tech explosion has exponentially changed everything. Who would want to turn back the clock on it all? It has revolutionised the way we work and communicate; it has brought entertainment, education and consumerism into the privacy of our lives. We literally have the whole world at our fingertips, for 24 hours of every day.

As it turns out, we have created ourselves a double-edged sword; it has the power to make or break us.

Hi-tech is seductively addictive and most people now spend more time with the their smart phone than with their significant other. We are leaving the 3-D realm in droves to take up residence in the virtual world, and as we do so we pay a very high cost - to both our mental and physical health. 

To turn the tide on this stress epidemic we must educate ourselves better about how the digital world alters our internal life. Crucial to our wellbeing, we are now discovering, is how much and in what way we use our devices.

Is the ‘internet’ hijacking your emotions?

Digital connectivity significantly raises the emotional temperature. Experts recognise anger as the most viral emotion online. Since we are more likely to share news that makes our blood boil, online platforms exploit this in their design, spreading more anger inducing material.

News messages are reported with a spin of indignation. A ‘win-win’ you might say for the platform who cashes in on the circulation of angry news, and the individual who will gain on what is called social capital: more shares means more ‘likes’ and a very temporary feeling of self-worth.

The anonymity and distance we experience online, also reduces the barriers to expressing our rants there. Normal social checks are no longer in place. We don’t feel the type of embarrassment online that we would if we were in a group of (real) people. For many, the online world is also experienced as an extension of their inner world or imagination, where anything goes.

So, as we increasingly express ourselves through the lens of heightened emotions, our thinking becomes more black-and white, which again feeds into stress. If things aren’t right, they are absolutely wrong.

Are you feeling more insecure the more time you spend online?

As the threat to our physical bodies has subsided over the course of the evolution, we now place a disproportionate amount of importance on our self-image. One off remark from someone, and we’re spiralling.

If we let ourselves mindlessly consume a daily diet of other people’s rosy-tinted, happy and successful lives, it is easy to become negatively affected. The amazing tales of other people’s perfect lives, feed directly into our ever-growing insecurities. 

Are your emotional needs going unmet?

Just as we need a balanced diet to stay well, we need an array of interactions with the real world to stay mentally (and physically) healthy. Examples of this type of essential nutrition are: real life interactions with others, whole body learning or time spent in nature.

If we pursue one activity to the detriment of others it is inevitable that our unhinged life will cause us pain. And who can argue that we have collectively become addicted to the digital world?

Are you suffering an ‘empathy deficit’?

As mammals, physical touch and nourishment from being with each other is vital for our survival. Excessive digital consumption leads to desensitisation. We lose the ability to pick up on non-verbal cues and create what Dr Helen Riess of Harvard University calls an ‘empathy deficit’. We stop being able to feel each other’s suffering and chip away at our humanity.

Relationships are complicated and messy. Staying in a relationship is something we need to work at every day of our lives. Exchanging one-liners and disappearing off the scene if it is no longer convenient, undermines our tolerance of each other.

Are you losing touch with nature and the physical world around you?

We need to exercise our bodies for health, get outside - for wind in our faces, blue skies, green trees - and have alone time disconnected from external stimuli to create self-awareness and process our experiences.

If we skimp on these essentials we become emotionally undernourished which leads to stress, anxiety, depression and so on. 

Are you suffering from an attention deficit?

The quality of our lives and our humanity itself is closely related to our ability to pay sustained attention to one thing at a time.

Digital technology enables us to consume so much information and at such speed, that without proper self-awareness it all just moves through us without ever fully being processed. It leaves us in a state of increased agitation and dissatisfaction. Compare it to mindlessly having eaten a very large bag of crisps.

Worse than that, the process of multitasking the way we do online, eventually fragments our ability to pay attention. Maintaining mental continuity becomes increasingly difficult. The energy needed to disconnect from one topic and start up for a new one, eventually wears out our ability to focus.

3 practical ways to take better ownership of your time spent using technology

How can we reduce the stress that comes from the unbridled use of our technology?

1 – Become more Self-Aware

• Let’s start noticing how much time we spend on our devices, what exactly we do there and how we behave on social platforms - what we share and how we acknowledge each other’s humanity.

• Have the courage to recognise how it might raise animosity in you, feed your insecurity, stop you getting on with other things, affect your relationships and fragment your ability to pay attention. (When for example were you last able to read a whole book?)

2 – Increase Important Connections

• Populate your life with real people and spend face-to-face time with them. Human relations are complex, messy and rewarding, but they need a lot of practice and curiosity. They require of us to tolerate the pain of rejection or not knowing what’s going on and to remain curious. Making the journey through choppy waters together only serves to strengthen our bonds.

• Get out into nature as often as you can. Expose yourself to the elements and leave your mobile device at home.

3 – Exercise restraint

It is worth a mention here that Silicon leaders of tech have admitted to deliberately designing platforms to be addictive, and are also on record as saying that they severely restrict their children’s use of the devices they helped create.

• Cap your time, particularly on social media platforms and when there be AWARE: What are you doing? Are you mindlessly going with the flow, or is there a plan?

• Who are you communicating with? Leave the room or reread a heartfelt post, before sending it off into cyber space. Think about how you might feel receiving it. Acknowledge the humanity of others. 

• Just as you wouldn’t eat between meals, avoid grazing on your smart phone all day. Have  proper digital free periods daily. 

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you feel as though technology (your devices, the internet, social media, TV or games) are adding to your stress or anxiety? Which of these tips will you take forward with you to practice this week?

Let me know in the comments below, and please do check back in with me to let me know if smarter use of technology has had a positive effect on your emotional health!

---

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

World Mental Health Day 2018 – How can self-compassion help our mental health? (Audio)

Whether it's stress, anxiety, depression, anger - it’s always accompanied by high levels of emotional arousal, or fight-flight-freeze. This is an activation of that part of the brain that is intended to protect us.

Self-compassion is a beautiful tool which, when practiced regularly, can transform your life and down regulate high emotions. It has a huge impact on your resilience. 

In audio I discuss:

• What Self-Compassion means

• How Self-Compassion works and how the ‘attitude’ towards your own suffering affects us physiologically/emotionally

• Practical tips you can apply to your own life

---

UPCOMING WORKSHOP

Self-care for Therapists and Healthcare Professionals

Building Resilience through Self-Compassion

SATURDAY 20TH OCTOBER 2018 – REGENT'S COLLEGE, LONDON

This workshop will not teach you to lead a balanced life. You already know how to do that. Instead it draws on your greatest resource to truly help you maintain your buoyancy and replenish your emotional stores, in a sustainable and deeply transformative way.

You will learn to mobilise your natural gift of compassion towards yourself in an embodied and experiential way.

Suffering from a major setback in your life? My thoughts on recovery

What do you tell someone suffering from a major work setback? 

I was recently asked to answer this excellent question on a public forum. 

Well, what do you say? And do the same principles apply when the traumatic event occurs in your private life, or in that of a child? I think they do and even with many types of loss - though I’d have more to say on bereavement - and here’s how I would respond.

Attend only to how the other is, right now

Firstly, I wouldn’t tell them anything. I wouldn’t try to fix it or say that things will be OK. However strong the urge to reach out and help relieve another person’s pain immediately, my hard learnt lesson has been that well-meant ideas offered too hastily, can make people feel less understood and even more alone. You end up pushing them away.

I would start by just being there with them, acknowledging how painful it must be and offering them kind and compassionate attention.

When we acknowledge someone’s painful experience with compassion, they calm down and soften up. It is a powerful way to help people feel connection and care and offers them the safety of really landing in their pain and becoming present with what is. You indirectly show them how to hold their own grief, with compassion and kindness.

This is the moment when something shifts. They start to calm down enough to be able to think more clearly and take some suggestions on board.

Attend to their emotional needs

Now’s the time to help them take a step back and see the bigger picture; to be reminded of what really matters in life, and how much more there is to call upon.

·     Our closest family and other social connections are key in troubled times. Their support is vital for our emotional nourishment.

·     Absorbing hobbies and the process of learning skills can also take our attention away from the pain and help us re-inhabit our larger selves. 

·     Exercise - however shattered we are - is a great way to change how we feel.

By attending to our human needs more fully like this, we naturally put our pain into perspective. Though it may not immediately be diminished, you are expanding the rest of your life and creating a sense of spaciousness.

Encourage them to look for new meaning

Major setbacks or traumatic events can be so devastating because they simply don’t fit in the narrative of our lives. They literally shatter our assumptions about ourselves, others and the world around us, as psychology professor Janoff-Bulman describes in her book ‘Shattered Assumptions’. Our strongly held views about the world as safe, predictable, just, benevolent and so forth no longer hold true. Who are we, now that those certainties turned out not to be true and we’ve discovered that bad things happen to good people?

As nature has it, the majority of us find new meaning and growth through our suffering. This is called posttraumatic growth, but is by no means a linear path, nor does it always take away the pain. The paradox is that suffering and setbacks can hugely increase our appreciation of life and the people in it.

 

As the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously said, even when everything has been taken from us, we still retain the last human freedom of choosing our attitude.

 

So, I am inclined to ask people to look back to earlier setbacks and childhood disappointments - even if they were smaller in size - and be reminded of how they coped and perhaps became bigger, wiser versions of themselves in the process. Often setbacks pave the way to opportunities we didn’t know we had.

When working in the BBC many years ago, I was declined the promotion I expected at my annual review. In my fury over the injustice of the situation, I resigned there and then. Going down in the lift after the interview, in a discombobulated state, I explained the situation to a man I vaguely knew. By the time we reached the ground floor, I had the position I was after.

Although I hesitated to draw on this all too jammy an example of what I mean, it does illustrate the point and shows that the course of our lives really isn’t linear. 

I would encourage people to tolerate the discomfort of ambiguity, of not knowing what will happen, and always be open to the possibility of surprises that are better than what your mind can think up. 

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

(Audio) Why can it be so difficult to snap out of angry behaviour?

In our stressful modern world, inappropriate expressions of anger are becoming more and more frequent. When anger flares up uncontrollably or chronically, it indicates that our lives are out of balance and is a sign that we need to address the angry behaviour.

Often, we can find ourselves trapped in this angry place and have a really hard time getting ourselves out. It can be an addictive state to be in and because of the brain's natural negativity bias, sometimes we really have to focus in order to break free.

If you find yourself easily hooked by your anger and are having difficulties snapping out of this habit - you are not alone!

So why do we like to bask in this rage when so often it has negative consequences?

Discover Why You're Having Trouble Snapping Out Of Your Angry State 

In my recent conversation with Catherine Robson about anger and the creative mind, we explored many components of anger and Catherine asked an important question that I believe many people will also wonder: why is it so difficult to snap out of angry behaviour?

Listen to this extract of our conversation to hear my answer.

It is also important to say that angry outbursts are not a reflection of who you are, but rather a clear sign that your life is currently out of balance. 

Before you listen, remind yourself that dealing with anger requires courage, because under its hard feelings and hard-bitten inclination, sit softer and more vulnerable feelings and they can be very scary to face up to.

If you enjoyed this extract of our conversation, then you'll find much more in 'A Guide to Understanding Anger' in which I explore why and how anger can manifest in our lives – as well as further practical ways to deal with excessive anger and a guided meditation to help you break old, unhelpful patterns. 

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.

Want to Improve Your Communication Skills? Learn to listen!

As a social species, our relationships bring us our greatest joys. They also bring us our greatest sorrows, alas.

Communication is the interface through which we are brought into relationship with each other - with our most intimate circle, friends, colleagues, neighbours, communities and society at large. It is the glue that binds us and gives us a deep sense of belonging, togetherness and meaning. When we feel heard, that is; for when we don’t, we feel isolated and alone.

Yet, in spite of its crucial role in our mental and emotional wellbeing, we take communication surprisingly for granted. We often remain ignorant about how it works and how vital the face-to-face element is. We might have been taught a few manners, or be naturally kind, interested and generous, but the increasing amounts of time we spend on social media alters our brains and therefore us - and not for the better when it comes to being present in relationships.

Communication is always reciprocal 

It is the face-to-face and to-ing and fro-ing that changes us both. Authentic communication requires an openness and willingness to be changed, or better still, to be transformed in the process. It asks of us a ‘willingness to be flexible, open, soft-bellied enough to be moved by the truth of the other’, as Zen priest ‘angel Kyodo williams’ puts it.

What does this mean practically and where to begin, if we want to improve our everyday communication? You might want to be a better friend or, improve the quality of your communication in the office.

There are many components to genuine communication but if we focus on listening alone, everything changes massively. And, even if you already spend your life listening to others - does it ever exhaust you? Has it ever led to symptoms of burn-out? If so, you can learn to listen more actively, more ‘compassionately’, in a way that will energise you as much as the person you are with.

How to make your communication genuine 

Deep listening is an embodied process.
Be present - in your body - so that you can ‘hold a safe space’ for the other.

Learn to create an inner spaciousness.
Sitting upright, feeling rooted through your seat and feet. Breathe comfortably and notice what arises when you listen in this way.

Empathy alone is not enough.
Although your talking partner may enjoy being listened to sympathetically, real listening requires more. It asks of you to notice and tolerate whatever arises in yourself. This can be an urge to jump in: to save the other from his suffering; or, to offer (your idea of) great solutions.

How easily listening becomes a mere staging post, where you wait for your turn to speak. Sometimes that urge to respond, to say something, is more immediately about getting away from the discomfort that comes up in us, rather than about helping the other.

Embodied presence allows us to notice what happens in us; to notice that we are stirred. The pain we feel can be a reminder of something similar that happened to us, and/or a genuine picking up on the pain of the other.

Either way, effective listening allows us to accept and to hold our own discomfort kindly whilst listening to the story of the other in an open-hearted way. No interruptions at this stage.

Saying nothing can speak volumes

I heard a mother refer to it, to her 10-year old child, as a ‘tea and biscuit moment’. When we fully accept what’s going on in ourselves as well as the other, in other words, when we make space for us both in this way without the urge to change anything (just yet!), the dynamics of the communication change. The other person feels held and heard.

The mother I mentioned created space for the child to share his enormous suffering. ‘God had made a mistake and given him the wrong body. He had meant to be a girl.’ The mum just listened. She offered no immediate solutions, nor did she fill the silence with words. But what her child did hear loudly and clearly were her unspoken words that said ‘I will always love you’.

Be under no illusions here. You can be as warm, talkative and enthusiastic as you like - but the quality of our communication is hinged on our ability to listen: to attend to the other with compassion.

Compassion - like love - offers space within ourselves to allow others and their opinions, interpretations and predicament to be as they are - in this moment.

This is a practice, as much as a tool, for which we don’t even need to ‘like’ the other. Tuning into ‘what is’ like that, puts you directly in touch with the vulnerability at the heart of our shared humanity.

Real listening is always a gift: to yourself, as well as, to the other. It transforms communication from a turn-taking exercise, to a co-created, jointly experienced relationship.

---

About Renée

Renée van der Vloodt ( M.A. , FHGI ) is a psychotherapist and coach – and has had a private practice for over 20 years, which is now based in Woodchurch (near Ashford), Kent.

Renée works with children and adults as a coach and therapist to help them overcome life's challenges and emotional difficulties including stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anger or addictive behaviour.

Renée is a regular contributor to Breathe Magazine and the author of the CD Calm the Chaos of the Creative Mind.