Buzzy or Fuzzy?

Why Anxiety and Depression are different sides of the same coin and why we must adopt a mind/body approach to our education, treatment and management of these mental health conditions.

 “But what are you thinking Dad?”

 I would persist as I perched on the end of the bed as he lay slumped there, staring at the ceiling, “nothing” would be his whispered response, “I just feel numb”.  My Dad has lived with clinical depression for 25 years and he is still trying to understand why he has it and how it works.

As a psychologist, trained and working in Cognitive Behavioural therapy or CBT, I tried desperately to help him to identify his irrational thoughts so we could uncover some of his core beliefs. But he gave me nothing to work with - if there are no thoughts, what can we do? There was nothing to analyze!

Over the last 25 years I have played a massive part in Dad’s mental health journey, there have been moments I have been dismayed and horrified at the treatments that have been offered to him and times I have been overcome with gratitude for the love and care he has been shown by some of our medical professionals.

I have also worked professionally in mental health and have been faced with my own periods of anxiety, burn out and depression.  There are many wonderful techniques we can learn and practice to nourish our psychological wellbeing (such as CBT) and for some, they may well be enough to stop and even reverse experiences of anxious and depressive responses to life’s challenges.

There is however, one big gaping hole in the way we treat and talk about mental health.

 This gaping hole is the body.

When we think of mental illness, we can think about broken brains. How much do we really know about the role of the body, when it comes to depression and anxiety? Surely there is wisdom in the word “depressed”, it sounds quite like “deep rest” to me (Jim Carey) – could it just be that it is our body asking for some down time?

 Did you know, more information travels up from the body to the brain than the brain to the body? And, as the primary job of the brain is to make meaning out of things, we often create stories (usually based on our past experiences) around the information that is coming up from our body.

“Tight chest? Must be nervous about x, y or z”.

“Churning tummy? It must be that this job/person/experience is not safe”.

Sometimes these body messages are spot on (they can point us to our values and our intuition) but other times they are very inaccurate. They can be a result of unresolved past experiences playing out in unhelpful ways in the present. If our past has been unsafe in some way, we, through no fault of our own, may unconsciously interpret that threatening email from a client as a life-or-death situation or that sideways glance from a stranger as a threat to our safety. In response to these events and our thoughts about these events, our body switches on its survival response (fight/flight) and because we are often completely unaware of it, we don’t turn it off. Many of us live weeks, months or years in this anxious survival state, until one day (depending upon our history and our genetics) it all comes crumbling down and we slide (or crash!) into clinical depression. The body has come to our rescue and slowed us down for us. It has slammed on the breaks and said “OK, REST! Now!”.

We must start including the body in meaningful ways when it comes to diagnosis, education and treatment for depression and anxiety. We need to learn how to accurately interpret these messages from the finely tuned (albeit sometimes out of whack) instrument that is our body.

As the body’s language is feelings, we must be educating ourselves and our children in this ancient language.

Intellectually, it makes absolutely no sense that those of us who experience anxiety are also more prone to depression – I mean they seem like the opposite thing! One is up, the other is down. One is future-focused, one is past – focused. Anxiety often carries with it thoughts like:

“What will happen if I fail?”

“It has to be perfect”

“It’s all going to go wrong!”

Whereas thoughts associated with depression are more along the lines of:

“I don’t care - what’s the point anyway?”

“I can’t believe I said/did/wore that!”

“I am so hopeless; I will never get anywhere/fit in”

Opposites, right? Yes, but intimately connected by one very cool system in our body – our autonomic nervous system (ANS) and specifically the vagus nerve. It is no coincidence that the pharmacological treatment for anxiety is often the same as that for depression. A very clever human by the name of Dr Stephen Porges has been able to explain to us, for the very first time, why anxiety and depression go hand in hand.  His theory is the Polyvagal Theory and I encourage you to do some of your own research into his work.

 Without getting too technical (to be honest I am still learning it all myself!), we have two branches of our ANS, both very important for our survival and thriving. The balance of these two branches may well be one way to define “wellbeing”.

The first branch is called the sympathetic nervous system or SNS, this is responsible for the very important survival or fight/flight response. Many of us perfectionists out there are very familiar with this branch, it is the one that keeps us alert and go, go, going. It can make us “buzzy” and incredibly productive, it can be fun and rather addictive spending time here. We need this system to survive (like to get out of bed and get going!) and stay safe (like jump out of the way of an oncoming bus) but unfortunately, for some of us (due to trauma, genetics or modelling by our primary caregivers) this system is stuck on “on” and we find ourselves in a perpetual state of stress and anxiety, not just in our brains (racing thoughts) but in our body (tight heart, brick in tummy, short breath) too.

The second system is the parasympathetic nervous system or PNS. This fabulous piece of artwork is responsible for the “rest and digest” functions in the body. When we are in a PNS dominant state we sleep well, heal well and digest well. We respond instead of react and we recover quickly from the inevitable challenges life throws at us.

 The bit of new information that we are only just now understanding is that the PNS has two of its own branches, both are important but sometimes inappropriately used; I’m going to call them the “Connect” and the “Disconnect” branches. Both help slow and settle a frazzled system, but they do it in different ways.

 We are born with an undeveloped “Connect” branch, we need to build it from scratch. We build it through interaction with our environment – from the modelling of our primary caregivers, from their touch, facial expressions and tone of voice. When they smile and speak softly and calmly, we are soothed and settled and we start to internalize the belief that the world is safe and, as we grow up, we can calm ourselves and recover quickly from stressful events. Awesomely, it can be toned through activities such as meditation and other mind/body approaches (yoga, breath practices, chanting etc.) as well as building meaningful relationships (which, cruelly, can be hard if we have had an unsupportive environment in our childhood). If our primary caregivers were stressed out themselves, our own development of this calming, soothing “connect” branch may be compromised.

 The “Disconnect” branch of the PNS, also known as the “shutdown” branch is wired into us from birth, it is our “default mode” and evolution has shown us that it is necessary for our survival. When we cry as babies, and our cries are regularly not attended to - what do we do? We shutdown. We switch off and we go to sleep. Our Disconnect PNS comes in and short circuits our over-activated SNS (fight/flight or stress) in an effort to help us to survive. It is like our “off” switch. Having this “off” switch activated some of the time is no big deal, in fact, we want it to be on a little bit, but we certainly don’t want it to be the dominant branch of the PNS as we certainly don’t want to be switched “off” all the time. This is often referred to as the “freeze” response. Frozen is certainly what depression can feel like for many of us. When we are in this state, we stop thinking (we get a fuzzy head), feeling, tasting, smelling, digesting, connecting with others and we can tend to either under or over-sleep.

And that, my friends is why my dear old Dad has no conscious thoughts when he is clinically depressed.

The “Disconnect” branch of his PNS comes on and his system goes into “shutdown” and, as far as his unconscious mind and his beautiful body is concerned, this is an issue of life or death. After a period of intense stress, his body is trying to help him to get out of fight/flight by slamming on the “freeze” function – it is trying to help. And this has been his unconscious habit for around 76 years. He disconnects for his very survival. This is not his fault or his choice, his body chooses for him. It is like pressing the “eject” button of a crashing plane, he just leaves his body. His body has needed to choose for him to keep him safe while growing up with an anxious/angry father and then choosing (unconsciously of course) adult relationships that kept him in this state of fight/flight. Sadly, we seem to choose the familiar over the healthy. He was always loved but his system never felt safe. Not as a child and not as an adult.

 So, this is the missing piece to my puzzle. This information changed everything for me when it comes to understanding why anxiety and depression often go hand-in-hand and why cultivating a sense of connection is such a powerful ally on our journey to wellbeing.

 Cultivating a sense of connection is such a powerful ally on our mental health journey

So what can we do to support ourselves and our loved ones to build capacity to self-sooth through engaging the “Connect” side of the PNS? We can do a lot! It takes time to tone the nervous system, but it can be done. Here are some ideas that continue to help me and I am sharing with my clients (and my dear old Dad):

-       Mindfulness – we need to spend time getting to know ourselves, our mind, our body and our hearts. Mindfulness is the loving light of awareness and through simply paying clear and kind attention to our internal and external experiences, we can make wiser choices to support ourselves and manage our stress response (and perfectionistic tendencies…just as an example!). We can become aware of our automatic thoughts and start to disentangle these from our emotions and our bodies. We can start to live in the beauty of the present rather than be at the mercy of the memories of the past.

-       Meditate – we have the science now that shows us that meditation fundamentally changes the way our mind/body/heart function. It, of course is not a silver bullet but it is an important part to our healing as it supports us to create our own internal place of safety and connection, our own refuge from the inevitable storms of life. We can become our own friend and we can remember the strength and sovereignty that is our birthright.

-       Body practices – do what works for you and do it consciously; yoga, tai chi, swimming, running – we have to come back to the power of the body and start to listen to her whisper. We can learn from her wisdom and start to heal the patterns we may have learned or inherited that are no longer serving us.

-       Relationships – “Connection, the ability to feel connected, is neurobiologically wired, that is why we are here” (Brene Brown). The quality of our relationships is the strongest predictor of happiness and wellbeing for us humans. This has been well-documented many times over. We now know why; through the “connect” branch of the PNS, other humans soothe our frazzled nervous systems and bring our bodies/minds/hearts back into balance. We move from buzzy and fuzzy to clear, calm and connected. In this digital world, we MUST make time to cultivate love, belonging and connection.We can also create a sense of deep connection within ourselves through mindfulness, meditation and self-compassion practices.

Dad’s relationships have always been strong, he has swathes of friends as he is a beautiful human who is funny and smart and loving. These relationships continue to be important to him and I have no doubt have been a powerful medicine to him over the years. My deepest wish for him is that somehow, someday, he can feel self-love. A love deep in his bones and one day feel a deep sense of safety and peace.

 This article is the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more for all of us (me included!) to learn but what we can do NOW is practice. We can love ourselves and each other madly and deeply, we can remember we belong to something bigger than ourselves and that actually, at the end of the day connection is all that matters.

 Check out my free meditations on Insight Timer and the YOU ARE LOVED podcast (via Apple podcasts and Spotify) – reminding us all that love is always available to us, if only we stop and connect to it.

Now is where it is at

How mindfulness might help Melbourne ride yet another lockdown

 “It all feels a little PTSDish” said a friend of mine as we debriefed about Melbourne’s latest lockdown. From the Beyond Blue website:

“Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a particular set of reactions that can develop in people who have been through a traumatic event which threatened their life or safety, or that of others around them. This could be a car or other serious accident, physical or sexual assault, war or torture, or disasters such as bushfires or floods. As a result, the person experiences feelings of intense fear, helplessness or horror.” 

PTSD is not a term to be used lightly, the condition can, has and does create living hell for many people across our precious globe. We cannot deny however, that for many, this “circuit breaker” lockdown viscerally brings flooding back a sense of fear, helplessness or horror.

We all know by now that our individual experience of this global pandemic is unique. No one has quite the same set of circumstances; kids/no kids, elderly relatives or not, more work/less work, domestic stressors, underlying health (physical and mental) conditions or all/none of the aforementioned. It is unlikely however that anyone, in the world, has got away with being unaffected by Covid19, for better or for worse.

How can mindfulness help us to ride this most recent blip? How can it help us to allow, inhabit and let go of some of the reactions that some might akin to PTSD? Well, mindfulness teaches us to be here now. Not replaying stories of the past or fantasizing (regardless of how alluring that may be) possibilities of the future. And research tells us (Killingsworth et al, Harvard, 2010) that when we live in the present moment – when we meet the actual life that is here before us, we are more likely to be happy.

And research tells us (Killingsworth et al, Harvard, 2010) that when we live in the present moment – when we meet the actual life that is here before us, we are more likely to be happy.

Practical Tips for Us

1.     Fact or Fiction? - Feel your feelings and then take some time to identify the thoughts/stories to which they are attached. When we notice that familiar feeling of say, dread come over us (the mere mention of home learning makes my tummy twist!) can we sense into the internal commentary that is running in the background of our mind?

• What are the thoughts that have come before the dread (or other emotion)?

• Are the thoughts based in fact, or are they just stories we are creating (usually based on our past experiences)?

• It can be helpful to sort the facts from our own internal fiction by simply asking – what is ACTUALLY happening here and now?

One sure truth is that everything changes, including us and we may be wise to attend to what is happening within and around us (and our kids!) now, rather than slipping back into what was true many months ago.

 2.     Meditate – Mindfulness meditation is not typically done to relax (while this can be a lovely and most welcome side effect), it is done to wake up to ourselves and our life as we find them – exactly as they are. The process of sitting in meditation and watching our wonderful mind ziz-zag, dance, belly flop or float all goes towards the process of building our self-awareness. It is only with self-awareness that we can navigate our life with wisdom – otherwise we can tend to mindlessly wander around bumping into the same old fears/beliefs or opinions. Smiling Mind and Headspace are my two favourite mindfulness meditation apps.

 It is only with self-awareness that we can navigate our life with wisdom

3.     Be Kind – Kindness really is one of our human superpowers. It engages a whole heap of fabulous neurochemistry in our brain and bodies and creates space for pure magic. Ways to be kind:

• To Yourself: Smile when you look in the mirror, give yourself a hug (for at least 30 seconds), put your hand on your heart and whisper sweet nothings; “I know this is hard, you are doing so well, you will get through this”

• To Others: Very simply, make the generous assumption that people are doing the best they can at any given time – it makes life better for everyone (thanks Dr Brene Brown). And then of course there are the simple and practical things we can do like; letting someone in front of us in traffic, dropping flowers to a friend or neighbour or checking in on a friend or relative via an impromptu phone call (I know phone calls can be terrifying where we have to speak to an actual person, but we are amazing and exceptional circumstances such as a global pandemic require us to step up and do these things!)

 Of course, however, mindfulness is not the answer to everything (in fact nothing is the answer to everything!) and if you do feel yourself being sucked into a hole of despair now, or any time, reach out for help. You are absolutely not alone in these feelings of fear, hopelessness or horror and there are people out there who understand and can help.

Beyond Blue https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ is a fabulous free resource that we have here in Australia or get along to your local GP for a referral to a mental health professional. We all have mental health, the same way we all have physical health, and we can each create our own personal recipe for wellbeing, of which mindfulness might be just one part.

Read the Goddamn Book

Navigating burnout through Self-compassion, Fact Checking, Rest and Boundaries

Burnout and I are very well acquainted.  We have danced together often and, if/when I forget all the things I know (and teach!), we still dance occasionally. It takes one to know one, and I am seeing the symptoms of burnout everywhere at the moment. In my friends, in my kids, in the dude who owns the local burger bar – all at different stages and all with slightly different symptoms, but all finding themselves in some kind of struggle.

As the bizarre year of 2020 continues to unfold, and we find ourselves faced with new and sometimes scary or overwhelming circumstances, I am noticing us struggling with the emotional ups and downs of this time. So many big emotions can leave our beautiful bodies exhausted and we can be left wondering “why am I so tired?”.

 We also find ourselves faced, well, with ourselves. There is very little to distract us from our own fears and neuroses or from the continual “what if?” thinking that whirrs and whirrs around our minds all day (and all night!). With very few answers and very little clarity on what the future holds - we find ourselves in these “thought loops”.  

I wonder if now might be a really good time to get to know ourselves and our habits more intimately – many of us have the time, if we make it. We can build our self-awareness through meditation, therapy, journaling, chatting to friends and loved ones – there are a lot of roads to the same destination.

 I would like to share some of the very specific things that continue to help me to manage my levels of energy and motivation. But first, here are some reminders of the things we may have heard before, but are worth mentioning again (you know, with COVID brain - we forget stuff!):

BODY

1. Activity - Exercise - 20-30 mins a day

2. Nutrition - Make sure our nutritional needs are sorted (try to reduce alcohol which is a depressant and coffee which is a stimulant - perpetuating the states of emotional ups and downs that we are trying to treat by drinking wine/coffee!)

3. Sleep – get 7-9 hours a night - Google “sleep hygiene tips”

MIND

1. Thoughts and emotions - track them and mind your mind. Which thoughts/emotions are we feeding?

2. Mindfulness - Try some meditation – download the Smiling Mind app, it’s free

3. Mindset - Cultivate a positive mindset – gratitude, kindness and awe are our superpowers

HEART

1. Values – remember the most important thing/s

2. Others - Connect to someone else every day – family/friends or even a neighbour

3. Self – take a few minutes a day to feel yourself in your body, to feel your ‘home’, you could even say a gentle ‘hello me’ and if you are feeling brave ‘hello me, I love you”

Now, here are the mental health heavy-hitters when we feel burnout arriving or looming. I have also suggested some little sayings (affirmations or mantas, if you like) that we may all like to bring into our minds and hearts to support us to ride these emotional waves.

1.     Self-Compassion – “I have my own back”

Many of us are so hard on ourselves. This is not our fault, setting high standards has had massive evolutionary benefits (like, being the most powerful species on earth!) but it also has its downsides (like zapping our vital energy when we continually berate ourselves). So, can we lean towards loving (or even liking) ourselves as much as we do our friends or our kids? Can we remind ourselves that we have our own back? That we have done and felt hard things before and we can do it again? Becoming my own best friend is the most radical and transformative thing I have ever done, it allows me to take care of myself. Please try it.

2.     Fact Check - “Is it true?”

Our beautiful minds create stories to explain the unexplainable – it is part of their job. I don’t know about you, but I am finding myself faced with many confusing or unexplainable things at the moment, like:

-       Being told to stay home and not see loved ones - weird

-       Wearing a sweaty piece of cloth on my face which is rubbing makeup off my red nose - embarrassing

-       Being a school teacher and debating with my kid about….too much to add in this blog

-       Preparing my 10000th meal in one day - annoying

So, when I find myself creating stories to explain these very odd circumstances like “I have no friends, life or career, I hate my clothes and I will never have time to myself again”, I stop and check the facts and the evidence.  Usually I have let myself jump on a train of catastrophizing or blaming - no wonder I find myself freaked out or bummed out.  So, to pull ourselves back, we can ask the simple question “is it true?”. Usually it isn’t and man, that is good news. Credit to Byron Katie for this magic question.

3.     Rest - “Read the goddamn book”

Many of us simply don’t know how to rest and rest is absolutely what our bodies need at the moment – to recover from 6 months of fear-induced adrenaline running through our system. Please allow yourself to rest. Do a Yoga Nidra deep relaxation (find one on YouTube or Insight Timer), take a nap or read a goddamn book. Do these during the day, walk away from the emails/phone calls/washing or children and take 15 minutes to rest.  The world will keep spinning without us – I promise.

 4.     Set Boundaries - “No, I value myself more than I value your opinion of me”

Listen to yourself and your needs and if something doesn’t work for you, say so and say no. This is a marathon, not a sprint, we need to keep ourselves well for the long run.

There is no denying it, things are weird, sometimes scary and often annoying but I do know, from my own experience, that we always have a choice when it comes to how we respond to the world and the challenges we face. Please take good care of you and your little people, love yourself stupid and rest like your health depends on it.

Minecraft and Dark Chocolate

How savouring, awe, gratitude and kindness might just be our superpowers to support us to navigate Covidland with more grace and ease

Honestly, I have always had a mild distaste for “positive thinking”. When I see those “Good Vibes Only” t-shirts, I think “But what about the bad vibes, where the hell do we put those?”

I can’t stand those rosy perfect people – you know the ones; always looking on the bright side. Everything is always great in their life, their kids are well-behaved, they love their job, they have time (and desire) to make wholesome nutritious meals for their family every night and they have perfect, perfect hair. I want none of it. I want to hear about the Full Catastrophe; the icky, murky, hairy stuff we don’t usually speak about. The stuff that is reserved for those private moments or journal entries. The secrets that are whispered in dark corners, after perhaps too much red wine.

I guess that is part of the reason I became a psychologist. I get to sit with people and help them to peer under their own veneer of perfection, in much the same way I have had to peer under my own over the many years I have lived with this body/mind/heart.

The thing is though, if we only focus on the icky, mucky, sticky stuff we probably only find more icky, mucky, sticky stuff. It is the way us humans are put together, we are hard-wired to focus on the negative. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have to look too far at the moment for the negative - it is right at my doorstep and my guess is, it is right there at yours too.

Our world is going through a pretty interesting time which means we are going through a pretty interesting time as, of course, we are all intricately connected. So, while I am absolutely not suggesting we all jump online and buy “Good Vibes Only” t-shirts, we do need to mind ourselves pretty closely to ensure we don’t get swept up into the spiral of negativity and whisked away to the Nether (sorry, my kids are playing way too much Minecraft and the Nether is a world – from what I can gather!).

So, how can we mind ourselves?

How can we keep going while, at times, it feels like the world is crumbling around us?

Now is the time to bring in our real superpowers; we need to feed the good, we need to search for it and when we find it, we need to savour it. It is there, it is just hiding in the everyday moments that, in the hustle and bustle of our pre-Covid lives, we may have missed and now, in Covidland, we can’t seem to find the good at all.

Feed the Feels

Savouring is one of my favorite mindfulness practices. It is simply feeling the good feels we naturally feel but feeding them – feeding the feels! So, in the morning, when you have your first cup of coffee/tea – practice savouring it, hang on to the good feelings and the pleasure a little longer than usual. You can savour the smile of your child, the spring in your dog’s step or the feel of clean sheets as you slide into bed. In fact I practiced today with 3 or maybe 4 pieces of dark chocolate (note: you really only need 1 but, who is counting?)

Awwwww with Awe

Most of us take ourselves and our lives way too personally and way too seriously. We think we are the centre of it all and all of this inconvenience we are currently facing (wearing masks, home-schooling the kids, not seeing our nearest and dearest….the list can go on) is personal. It is not, none of it is personal, it just is. A great way to regain perspective and remember our place is letting awe and wonder creep into our system. Awe and wonder are experiences that happen when we are faced with something greater than ourselves – nature is a great place to start. Go outside and spend some time being in awe of the majesty of the clouds or head into a park and bask in the glory of an old gum tree. If looking outside isn’t your thing, you might like to look inside and explore meditation. The unending expanse and limitless nature of our very own mind or the intricacy of our very own body are both indeed worthy of our wonder and our awe.

How Lucky are We?

My beautiful late mum had many catch phrases, but I think my favourite was “how lucky are we?”. She used to spray that phrase with great abandon; scones, jam and cream = “how lucky are we?”, lovely sunset = “how lucky are we?”, a great meal with friends = “how lucky are we?”. She certainly lived with an attitude of gratitude and I have no doubt her mindset served her well during many years of ill-health. Plenty has been written about the benefits of gratitude on our mental and physical health (a google search of “gratitude research” will yield a plethora of resources) so it is absolutely part of the heavy artillery we can all be drawing on right now. Again, not to ignore the pain we are experiencing, simply to see the whole picture of rich, beautiful, hard, funny life; the full catastrophe.

A Kind Connection

Did you know we have a whole network in our brain (and body to be accurate) that is there for the purpose of social connection? Did you also know that accessing this same network is one of the quickest ways to settle our frazzled nerves and spinning mind? How cool is that?! Now, connection really is the key thing we are all missing at the moment as we navigate Covidland. We might need to get a little creative to get our chemical connection kick – here are some ideas:

• Reach out to friends and family using different media;

o   send a text/snail-mail letter/email,

o   do a zoom coffee/drink or

o   drop off some cupcakes/cookies/bunch of flowers from your garden

• Make conscious choices about your use of social media – we go on there looking for a connection hit, but often leave feeling somewhat unsatisfied and sometimes even emptier than before.

• Give your dog, partner, children, teddy-bear, rolled-up blanket or yourself more hugs than ever – at least 3 x 30 seconds per day is my recommendation, but feel free to double the dose!

Now, none of this is to downplay the incredibly difficult situation we are all in. It is important we feel the grief and loss that is right at our doorstep. It is also important we don’t get sucked into its swamp. Us humans tend to forget one of the capital T Truths that is as old as time – everything changes, this will too. We have no idea what will be on the other side of this experience, in the meantime, there is savouring, awe, gratitude and kindness (and a dash of Minecraft and dark chocolate thrown in too) to get us by.

Puppy School for The Mind

Training ourselves and our kids with kindness and patience to really meet the “full catastrophe” of life

 I was walking along the beach this morning (doing my arm exercises to rehab a dislocated shoulder – yes, I looked ridiculous) and saw a fellow coming towards me with a big dog. When the dog saw me, he stopped and started tugging on the lead and tried to get away.

We have a new puppy. Part of our learning in puppy school is that we need to introduce our pup to as many weird and wonderful things as we can, to get them used to the whole plethora of experiences they will face as life goes on for them in the world outside of their litter mates.

 The trainer suggested the following:

“socialize your puppy by introducing him/her to trucks, motorbikes, scooters, people in hoods/hats/masks, bikes, bins, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, people with walkers, people from different nationalities, people waving their arms around, prams, loud kids, running kids, crawling kids, friendly kids, big dogs, small dogs. And, every time they see something new, reassure them it is OK and then give them a reward”. Makes sense I thought. Good advice.

So, seeing this guy struggling to control his big dog when it saw a crazy lady whirling her arms around, I thought about puppy school and put my arms down and pretended to be normal person (quite hard for me really). As I came up to the guy and his dog and to show some compassion (you know, all in it together), I said “we have a new puppy and it is really hard to teach them to walk on a lead isn’t it?!”. He kind of looked at me sideways (possibly able to tell that even with arms by my side I am still not a normal person!) and then said “yeah, well if you hadn’t been waving your arms around, he would not have freaked out”. And we both kept walking. “Now that is interesting” I thought. He was blaming me for his dog’s poor behaviour….

 In my work at a university, we teach the students to train their minds in the same way they would train a puppy; firmly but lovingly. And after this morning’s interaction with this young fellow and his very big dog, I got thinking about how quick so many of us are to blame others for our own mind’s behaviour.

 “You made me feel….” “You made me do…..”

 The truth is, no one makes us think, feel or do anything. An untrained mind, much like an untrained dog, does not realise it has a choice. The fact is, it does. We always have a choice when it comes to how we respond to a situation. We absolutely cannot choose the situations we find ourselves in and we can pretty much guarantee that we will all find ourselves in less than fabulous situations in our life, but we can all choose how we meet each and every experience.

 Mindfulness meditation is like puppy school for the mind, body and heart. We expose our full self to all sorts of weird and wonderful things: memories, worries, sadness, fear, love, self-loathing - you name it, the “full catastrophe” to quote Jon Kabat-Zinn. And we do that in a kind and patient way. Much like a new puppy, we slowly learn that these things are all just part of a colourful life and they are not to be afraid of. They are to be inquired into with an open and curious attitude. When we approach ourselves and life in this way, even the most painful experiences can become a wellspring of knowledge and wisdom.

 The same goes for the way we parent our kids. If we protect them too much and don’t let them learn to navigate fear and boredom and sadness for themselves, we are depriving them of learning that they are capable to hold all of life – right within them.

 Of course, there are times when the most compassionate thing to do for ourselves is in fact to turn away, to avoid or even numb, to flick on Netflix or have another piece of chocolate. Sometimes stuff gets so big that Netflix and chocolate is actually the most appropriate response – until we are ready to turn towards it. The same goes for our kids – sometimes flicking on the television to quell the tears is the best thing to do. In much the same way, it would be negligent to leave a new small dog alone with a big untrained dog – it would simply do more damage than good. We can all deal with really big stuff, but only when we are ready and have some good resources to support us.

 So, as we venture into our own minds, hearts and bodies – can we meet whatever we find there with kindness? Can we reassure ourselves that we are OK and we can in fact handle this? We can handle all of this messiness of being human. The same goes for our kids, can we teach them that yes, their pain is big but they are bigger? The trick is, we all need to get to know our pain, in much the same way my new puppy needs to get to know all of life, so she does not freak out when she comes face to face with new and possibly scary things.

 And, if you see a lady walking along the beach waving her arms around like crazy, it’s possibly me. Please come and say hi.

Thank You, My Friend

She stands beside me and we smile,

Knowing we belong to each other,

Her and I, she and me.

She trusts me, with all of my funny quirks, so completely.

She rushes to soothe my bleeding knee or aching pride,

As I lie bruised and tired from rushing too fast or trying too hard,

She reminds me I am already perfect,

And, that they are too.

She shows me the purple clouds of the sunset,

And the sweetness in the tea,

And she whispers gently in my ear,

How lucky are we?

She waits patiently when I forget all the things,

As I often do.

And she lovingly welcomes me back home when I finally remember.

She stands beside me, inside me,

Always there to love and guide me.

She is pure, open, clear and kind,

She is my heart, body, and my mind.

She is me, she is you too.

We belong to each other,

So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Home Schooling - A Path to Enlightenment?

I have not liked most parts of home schooling.

This is mainly because the whole process has tugged on all of my perfectionistic and people-pleasing neuroses and lay them out for the world (and myself and my kids) to see. This only occurred to me while I was feverishly posting evidence of my grade 1s activity on the school app and then checking constantly as to whether the teacher had “liked” it. Oh my goodness. I am not in grade 1, why do I care what Catherine (teacher) thinks of me? Why do I care what anyone thinks of me?

I have come to believe that the only thing that really matters is what I think of me.

I feel like the last 3 months of my life have required me to dig very deep into my self-care, insight & emotional management tool kits, not to mention my interpersonal tools. It is like I have been on a very long, not-self-imposed Zen retreat. With a slightly irritable and irrational grade 1 Zen master whipping me as I climb a very tall mountain, in the rain, naked. THAT is how hard it has been, so so many opportunities for insight and development and so so many opportunities for crumbling into a puddle of frustrated and angry goop, right here on the kitchen floor. Of course, in reality, most of the time, it was my own dear mind who was the old Zen master. Dammit, those realisations hurt.

Someone asked me the other day “how is home schooling going?” I paused, she jumped in and said, “I am sure there are some lovely bits”. My response was a very definite “no, there have been not been many lovely bits, I have actually dreaded most mornings at 9am when we are supposed to start ‘school’. I have had to constantly check myself as to whether I am going too hard or too soft, I have had to constantly remember what really matters at the end of all this (mental health and connection!)  and I am currently measuring the success of my days in terms of whether I killed or divorced anyone”. She was silent (and perhaps a little shocked) and she finally said, “oh well, at least you’re honest”. I could tell she was a little disappointed that I wasn’t more up-beat about the whole thing, I mean, I am a psychologist and meditation teacher after all – aren’t I supposed to be positive? Or at least have my shit together?

I have spent a great portion of my life not being honest about my feelings and, pretending to have my shit together. As women, and especially as mothers, society demands us to be smiling and grateful and to just get on with it. Of course, I am grateful, my life is awesome but, that does not diminish my pain and discomfort. In fact, I have now come to believe that pain and discomfort is necessary for us to truly grow into who we are supposed to be. And that all of this avoiding of pain and discomfort does us as a massive disservice. We then pass down this way of seeing and being to our kids, which, in turn does them a massive disservice. We gotta teach ourselves (and our kids) how to ride the pain and discomfort that comes with being a fully functioning human, not how to hide it and especially not how to fix it.

 I think this starts when we are little girls, when we are taught to be nice and quiet and pretty and well-behaved. We swallow down our feelings (unless of course they are the “positive” ones like happiness and joy) and eventually, they lodge themselves in our bodies. The mind/body connection is alive and well here, I can assure you. Our anger or fear or shame sits in our gut, churning, churning, churning – largely unacknowledged or unexpressed. Angry women are dismissed as aggressive or neurotic, or lesbian (as if that were an insult).

If we do somehow manage to keep a lid on it, sometimes these emotions seep out, trickling and whirling as insecurities or irritability or unexplainable tears. We wonder why rates of burn-out, anxiety, depression and autoimmune disease are higher in women!

As my sister in law pointed out to me the other day, women are the biggest losers in this global pandemic. Women make up most of the part time or less-skilled workforce and they are largely the ones who have lost their jobs due to the economic crunch we all find ourselves in. They are also largely the ones who have been tasked with homeschooling the kids, putting their careers on hold, once again (and having the Zen-retreat-like experience described above). Please be assured this is not having a go at men. Men are bloody awesome, it is not their fault that we all live in a largely patriarchal society set up by and for men. However, is sure as hell is their responsibility to be aware of what is happening here and, to step in to support and work with the women in their lives, at home and at work.

And so, this is why I am so passionate about running my #mindfulwoman meditation classes every week via zoom. It is an opportunity for women to come together to support and grow and rediscover their awesomeness.  The awesomeness that may have been stifled by society and/or the way they were raised (no fault passing or blame here – just an acknowledgement of reality). No competing, no pretending, no fake smiling or “I’m fine – how are you?”. Just us. As we are. Passionate. Smart. Funny. Whole. Human.

And so, home-schooling ends for some of us next week. However, I know that life will continue to throw me many more opportunities for development and growth. That is what life does. Life wants us to grow into who we are supposed to be, not what we have been told we should be. One thing I am not supposed to be for sure, is a primary school teacher, especially not to my own kids.

Thanks for the memories home schooling, smell ya later!

Leaving home and being saved again and again and again…..

I was 15 and in year 9. He was 17 and in year 12.

I was dating and older boy (eeeeek!) and I felt so cool! Cool was not something that came naturally to me, it was something I desperately wanted to be but, have you met my parents? both not cool. I had no hope. Anyway, he was the best basketball player at school and with that came great prestige. We’ll call him “Matt” (because that may or may not have been his real name). 

One Friday night we went out for dinner with Matt’s parents (slightly weird, I know) and the plan then, was to go onto watch a professional basketball game. I felt so grown up and so excited that this guy must really like me – since he was introducing me to his parents. I remember sitting at dinner, describing in detail the raft making activity I had done at Girl Guides the night before. I was in total flow….I had three grown-ups enthralled in my description of how we built the raft, how we sailed the raft and how we capsized the raft. I actually remember having the conscious thought “wow, I am so uncool (I mean, I go to girl guides for goodness sake) and these people seem to like me anyway - unbelievable”. I was practicing being myself and it felt so new and so good. And even better, the feedback I was getting from “the world” (AKA Matt and his parents) was positive. After dinner we walked across the park towards the basketball stadium. Matt and I were walking slightly behind his parents. I remember the smell of the fig trees, the gentle glow of the street lamps lighting up the crisp winter evening, the warmth of his hand as he held mine. And then, all of a sudden, the unthinkable happened, he broke up with me. In the park, 20 meters behind his parents.

 A little piece of my adolescent self died that night. At that tender age of 15, I learned that actually, being myself is risky, people might leave me if I show them who I really am. Turns out, the break-up was nothing to do with me. Matt had kissed “Shannon” (who just happened to be the fastest runner in the school – damn sporty people sticking together) the night before and she had made him promise to break up with me the next night.

When I got home from that very awkward date (where I had to sit through a whole bloody basketball game with this guy who had just broken up with me AND HIS DAMN PARENTS) – I fell into my Dad’s arms at the front door and sobbed. I could see in his face the firm resolve to do everything he could to protect me from such pain in the future. His little girl was hurting and  he would make sure THAT would never happen again. Of course, this is a natural response from many of us parents, to protect our children from pain – however, I wonder whether it is misguided? Because what I inadvertently learnt from my Dad’s response was “pain is bad, I am weak and I can’t handle my pain therefore I must be protected from it” – and protected by a man, no less.

And so, when pain came in my life, as it inevitably did because, you know “life is suffering” and all that jazz, I became very good at either avoiding the pain and therefore avoiding or leaving myself in the process OR playing the “weak” card and crumbling. I never knew I could turn right towards the pain. I never knew I had a choice when it came to abandoning myself and that, it actually could never destroy me, it could, in fact only ever make me stronger.

And so life went on, I crashed and burned, many times. I left myself over and over and over again. I turned to men to save me. I moved further and further away from my own wisdom – looking outside myself to be fixed, to be saved. Trying to fit myself into boxes that just weren’t the right size or shape for me. And then, I found mindfulness. I finally found an approach that did not require me to fix or change anything, in fact, it encouraged me to be who I really am – wholeheartedly! 

This is why I teach it. This is why I am so passionate about teaching it to woman. We can and must trust and save ourselves and we can and must teach our daughters and sons the same.

Oh, and I did bump into Matt again. It was when I was about 24 and I was on a catwalk, modeling lingerie at a wedding expo. I spotted him in the audience with his fiancé. He was balding.

Meditation and Mindfulness is NOT ENOUGH to get us through Covid19

Meditation and Mindfulness alone is NOT ENOUGH to get us through Covid19, but it sure can help……

The demon, standing at the old door, wailing that it needed it’s fix. It just didn’t want to be tamed. A warrior woman, wielding her sword, standing her ground and owning her power. She struggled and fought with the demon as he tried to wrestle the sword from her grasping hands. All of a sudden, her years of mindfulness training clicked in, the haze lifted, the stories stopped and her presence became broad and open. She could see what was really happening.

A mother, frustrated at her failed attempts to cut, yet another deal, with her 6-year-old to do his damn writing task. A child who just wanted to play one more (educational?) game on the device with which he had become obsessed. A desktop computer flailing in the doorway, uncertain of where it belonged. All of them upset and definitely not being their best-selves. Especially the computer, I mean, what is a desktop computer when not on top of a desk?

The warrior mother was me, the demon 6-year-old was my youngest son.

After the computer wrestling escapade, and my son and I had calmed down and apologized for our behaviour, I reflected. And I called my mates to hear their similar tales of iso insanity (isoanity?) and I jumped onto social media to see what everyone else was up to (I have a social media feed that I have carefully curated to nourish, not undermine, my happiness) and this is what I learned:

• We are all struggling (to different degrees for sure), teaching our kids at home is really bloody hard

• We are all tired and we have no idea why – we are confused, we aren’t doing much but we are so tired – what is wrong with us?

• Some of us cry, periodically through the day – for us, for our kids, for our world and we are too embarrassed to ask if others are crying too

• As women, we find ourselves back in the home, after pushing and dreaming and trying so damn hard to leave it – some of us are resentful and frustrated – where have our careers gone? Where is our freedom? Why must we swallow our passions to make way for maths lessons? Why is it us who have to put our lives on hold - yet again?

This is what I know:

• If you are experiencing it, there is an incredibly high chance other people are too. We are not all that different, you and I. Tell someone.

• We have the option to revisit our expectations and standards. We can ask “do the rules and norms that were in our families 6 weeks ago (pre-Covid19) still apply?” I mean, these are exceptional times, surely, we can make exceptions to some rules? Which rules or expectations do you need to review or tweak?

• When we are stuck in struggle town – one of the worst things we can do is fight it, one of the best things we can do is accept it. When we accept it, we get bigger than it, when we get bigger than it, we stop merging with it and we can, once again, access the wise part of our beautiful human brains (where we house our sense of humour, our creativity, our joy and our capacity for connection and gratitude).

• We are tired because worry and grief and trauma are tiring, so is anger. Big emotions are tiring, fighting big emotions is even more tiring. Can we find ways to express how we are feeling? Call someone to chat about it, write about it in a journal, meditate on it – do anything that works to remember we are not the emotion and that we are bigger and wiser than it. Don’t just bury it because life is messy with big emotions. Life is messy full stop. And the messiness levels have risen exponentially right now, let’s not deny it. Let the emotion out (perhaps just leave the desktop computers plugged into the wall – its better that way, take it from me). And nap, please take naps. Put the kids in front of the TV and nap.

• Women, by and large, are the ones taking on the “home schooling” and extended parenting responsibilities right now and no, this is not fair. However, this is where we find ourselves and the more of us who speak up and express how we feel the more likely things will start to change. Men are good, men love us and want to help us, we just need to teach them how. This is all new for them too. We have to start in our own homes if we want to change a culture. This is a damn big ship to turn around but we gotta start. Connect with other women (you could do that at my weekly Mindful Woman zoom classes). Support your sisters – we are stronger and braver when we are together – even via zoom.

• We need to dig deep on all of our self-care resources now, just the bare minimum will not cut it:

o   drag out the yoga mat and do some online classes,

o   grab an app to learn or revamp your meditation practice (go to the resources page for tips),

o   get out and exercise for 20-30 mins every day (even if that means doing star jumps or squats on your balcony),

o   write a list of 3 things you are grateful for (sounds poxy but we have the science to prove it works),

o   eat fresh nourishing food,

o   communicate with your team (family and friends) about how you are feeling and what you need.

And finally, know when you need extra help from a psychologist or counsellor and go to the GP and get the damn referral. Remember, self-care is not weak or selfish, it allows us to be our best selves (and potentially leave computers in their rightful homes!).

We can do this, I know we can. But let’s please be kind to ourselves and each other (hint: meditation can help build our kindness muscles).  And let’s, for goodness sake, lower our expectations of ourselves and each other. This will all pass and when it does, we want all of our relationships to be intact – they will be important to support us as we re-enter the world and go around madly hugging everyone.

 PS. You know that all of the tips in this blog are for me just as much as you – right? As the saying goes, we teach what we need to learn!!! And the learning continues……

A Loving Ode to Iso

 My legs are hairy,

My hair is grey,

Today feels much like yesterday,

All the days have blurred together,

And now we’re faced with crappy weather,

Zoffee (zoom coffees) catch ups are now a thing,

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

So much change can leave us reeling,

I’ve been nowhere but I have that jet lagged feeling.

This new reality is very weird,

My husband has even grown a beard,

Nowhere to rush to,

No need to wear clothes,

Nerf wars, “hey google” and craft is how our days go.

From this time, we will be forever changed,

Nothing will ever be the same,

We will have learnt kindness and patience and our deep connection

All because of this viral infection,

We are caring for the old, the sick and the lonely,

By staying grounded and becoming all homely.

We are slowing down and asking what matters

Our view of what’s real is in tatters,

The chasing, the striving, the pushing, must rest,

As humanity rises and does its best

To heal the pain and grief we feel everywhere

We reach out, we love, we show we care.

So from my grey haired, hairy legged house to yours,

Can we just embrace this pause?

Feel it all but stay so very strong,

And remember the loving to which we all belong.

Love without Strings

MINDFULNESS AS A POSSIBLE ROUTE TO UNCOMPLICATED LOVE

My relationship with my late mum was indeed complicated – as mother-daughter relationships often can be.

I always knew she loved me, however, at times, that love seemed to be coupled with a heavy dose of expectation. It felt as though I was expected to be perfect and when I was perfect (which I tried so desperately to be all my life), I was loved more.

Our relationship was one of push and pull. Of advance and retreat. It seemed to be pregnant with competition, it may sound Freudian, but I could honestly feel it. 

My dear mum had her own barrel of crap to deal with, I am not sure she had room on her plate (or in her heart) to deal with any of mine. It would be much easier for her if I were perfect; a nice girl, smart, kind, pretty – all the things nice girls are supposed to be. So, I learnt at a very young age to keep my troubles to myself, to keep my confusions, my traumas, my pain to myself. I worked through it, as best I could with poetry and with friendships, and later in life with approval-seeking and perfectionistic behaviour.

As mum became more and more unwell, she was confined to bed in her dying days. My brother, Dad and I nursed her at home – that is what she wanted, she didn’t want to die in a cold hospital bed. She wanted to die at home, with dignity, in the embrace of the man she loved so deeply.

Those final days together; as I made tea for the guests coming to say their last good-byes, as I put flowers in vases and coordinated the palliative care nurse visits, were some of my most cherished times I had with her. I guess, as we both knew time was scarce, we let our egos melt away and we allowed ourselves to just be together, in pure love. The familiar competition between us evaporated, the expectations ceased to swirl around me and, possibly for the first time – we just were, together. Two women, two mothers, loving each other, completely without strings.

 One morning, after listening to some recorded meditations, she looked up at me and said “I get it, I understand what you have been trying to teach me all these years, I have been nuts all my life and now its too late”. At that point we lovingly embraced each other, knowing it was too late to turn back but also knowing that she had glimpsed the possibility of how life could have been. That experience was one of the most profound and heartbreaking in my life and from it I learnt a lot.

As parents, I wonder whether we need to work on our own barrel of crap in order for us to be available to love our children in a free and open way. It is indeed very hard to see the beauty of the little being standing before us if we are looking through a lens of self-loathing or hatred or regret or fear.

My dear mum couldn’t love me freely, just as I was, as she couldn’t love herself, just as she was. Her body was ravaged by 40 years of ill-health, her dreams slashed because she was a woman growing up in an era where women were not encouraged to do much other than iron and cook and she carried many unresolved family traumas in the very cells of her miraculous body. She was angry with the way her life had turned out, those molecules of anger flooded her body and her heart and she simply slipped into survival mode. None of this was her fault, she did not know she had a choice – until it was too late and the cancer won.

This is the gift of mindfulness, it can give us a choice. It can help us to fall awake and see what is actually happening, rather than being trapped by the stories or opinions or beliefs we may have inherited or simply picked up along the way.

 So, for me now the question isn’t “how can I fix my children” the question is “how can I love and accept myself enough so that I can see the magic of the child before me?”. This question is not always easy to answer as we are so very habituated at getting in our own way and having our natural ability of clear seeing attention hijacked by our stories, but I think it is one that is worth asking over and over again.

Coming Home to Myself

WHILE MEDITATION CAN OFFER US CLARITY AND CALM, CONNECTION IS ITS GREATEST GIFT

 Let’s be honest. Most of us start meditating to fix ourselves – in some way.

 To fix our stress, our sleeplessness, our over-eating, over-spending. To perhaps fill that hole in the pit of our stomach that yells at us “you are not enough, you need to do more”.

When we approach our meditation this way, it becomes just another thing on our endless “to do” list. Another thing we “should” do to live well and be happy. What if we changed this? What if we looked at meditation as an opportunity to nourish ourselves? As a gift to ourselves (and the world). As an opportunity to find out what we are really about and then to live from a place of greater compassion and wisdom……..

 As I have written and spoken about before, I was a resentful meditator. It was just another thing I felt I should be doing and another thing I could beat myself up about for not doing. I was simply bringing the same approach to meditation as the one I had been practicing all my life. Work hard. Don’t give up. Do it properly. Achieve and ultimately, win. I fell in love with mindfulness as a technique because it offered me the possibility that actually, I didn’t need to fix anything, do anything, achieve anything.

However, over the years of teaching and yes, “selling” this technique, I have noticed the promises I have made my students and clients. Yes, your concentration and productivity will likely improve (clarity) and yes, your stress levels will likely reduce, and your sleep will improve (calm). These are clearly great benefits and we all need more of these in our modern life of 24/7 stimulation. To be honest though, for me, the greatest gift of mindfulness and meditation, has been a sense of befriending myself, a sense of coming home (this, my friends, is connection).

 Before I started on this journey, I wasn’t even aware of my internal critic – she had always been there, spewing a constant barrage of orders. Setting goals and demanding achievements – to demonstrate my worth to myself and the world. It was only when I sat down and started to watch the activity of my mind that I was able to notice her, my very own drill sergeant.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this drill sergeant of mine has been incredibly helpful. She has pushed me to work hard when I wanted to give up. As an adolescent, she stood by my bed at 5am encouraging me to get up for swimming training, reminding me that I needed to beat my arch enemies – Penny and Lauren. As a young adult studying psychology, it was probably her that got me through the statistics at university. As a new mother, she was the one demanding I get up for the 400th time in one night. The thing is however, her constant commands about having to do and be more, caused me to leave myself, over and over again. I believed that joy and peace and happiness and perfection could not possibly be residing within me. I had to go out and search for it in other places – in jobs or clothes or friends or food. I left myself and my own heart over and over and over again. As a result, I had nowhere to belong and nowhere to rest.

“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”

Brene Brown – Braving the Wilderness

Mindfulness and meditation continue to help me to come back home, back to my true self, back to my heart. I am reminded to connect to something greater than my internal drill sergeant (she is still there but just doesn’t drive the bus as much as she used to!) and to value myself as a perfectly imperfect human. For me, this is indeed a daily practice and one I now enjoy and look forward to.

So, if you are looking to start or deepen your own meditation and mindfulness practice, pay attention to your attitude, pay attention to your expectations and pay attention to the promises the teacher makes. The clarity and the calm may arrive and hallelujah for those, but it is the connection that we can never unlearn or un-feel, it is the coming home that we will carry with us forever.

But She Can Do It

COMPARING OURSELVES TO OTHER WOMEN CAN STEAL OUR JOY AND MAKE BURN OUT FEEL EVEN WORSE

 Last night I caught up with a dear friend. She was telling me all about how busy and full her life is and in the next breath, described the panic attack she had had only days earlier. Waking up at 3am, unable to breathe and feeling as if she were dying. Now this woman is amazing, strong, funny, smart, a mum and highly respected in her industry. We were at a bar, it wasn’t time for therapy and deep soul searching but the thing she said that got me thinking and really prompted me to write this blog was:

 “If she can do it, why can’t I?”

I remember having that thought, several times, just before I burnt out. I remember having that thought, several times, as I lay in bed, completely exhausted feeling not only like a failure because I “couldn’t do it” but feeling like failure because “she could”. That was me, 4 years ago.

Burn out can look a little different for everyone, but for most of us, it looks a little something like this:

·      Feeling drained, unable to cope or tired for no apparent reason

·      Headaches or digestive problems (can lead to weight loss)

·      Feeling disengaged at work or just not caring as much as you used to

·      Feeling irritable or even angry with your work colleagues/family

·      Disrupted sleep

Of course, if these symptoms persist for longer than a few weeks, it might be worth going to see your GP and working with them to determine whether you may benefit from a referral to a psychologist or psychotherapist. You could also check in with your organisation’s EAP provider (if they have one) for some additional support. We belong to each other and we do not have to go alone through this tough stuff that can come with being a feeling or sensitive human.

Over the past 4 years I have really deeply enquired into what happened for me when I burnt out, where did I get it so very wrong?

This is what I have learned:

We are all put together differently – we absolutely cannot compare ourselves to another person with any amount of validity. Us humans are so damn complex. We not only have all of our genetics and childhood experiences that have gone into making us into the women we are, there is also a whole lot of other stuff we are not aware of such as epigenetic trauma/emotions or even past life memories. As a result, each of us will have our very own and very unique recipe of wellbeing and success. The trick here is to slow down, listen, and stay in your own lane. We need to stop competing and comparing and just “do us”.

Play to our Strengths – we each have a unique set of strengths that make us excel in the workplace. Now the strengths I am referring to here are not just things we are good at but things that we like and that nourish us as well. Often, we find we may start to head towards burn out if we are playing outside of our strengths too often, doing work that we may excel at but that doesn’t naturally fill us up. You can check out the work of my friend Nikki Smith with whom I worked to learn more about my strengths. Nikki works with the Gallup Strengths Finder and leads her clients through developing a career that is more strengths based.

Connect to and listen to our Values – “The most important thing, is to remember the most important thing” (Suzuki Roshi). So what is that for you? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you want to be living? So few of us have ever had the opportunity to take the time to really reflect on our values. Because of that we often adopt others’ values and try to fit our beautiful selves into them and then wonder why it just doesn’t feel right in our body, heart or minds. Do your own values audit and consider what is your most important thing.

Define Success – In the depths of burn out, I was moaning to a friend “but I just want to have a successful career”, she asked me, “But Liv, what does success look like?” I started reeling off the typical characteristics of success that I thought were universal, you know: “to be well-respected” and “to make good money”, my friend looked at my wryly and she said (she’s also a psychologist) “is that really it? Isn’t it more about helping people in our line of work?” and the words “yes, yes” spilled out of my mouth and I could feel my heart opening and my body softening…she followed up with the next question “do you think you have ever helped anyone?” and my clear answer was “absolutely!”. Then the crazy and incredibly freeing realisation dawned on me “MAYBE I HAVE ALREADY HAD A SUCCESSFUL CAREER and I can stop trying so bloody hard now!”. That was a massive “ah ha” moment for me. So my question for you is, what does success look like for YOU? Not your parents or your cool friend or you school mates, you!

Honour our Body – Our body knows what is going on and some argue it has direct access to the deeper layers of our being, our soul and our life’s purpose.  It is trying desperately, often daily, to give us these clear messages, helping us to get back on track and follow the right path. That squeezing in the heart, that knot in the belly, they are messages to be noted and explored, not sensations to be repressed and simply breathed through (or brushed over with meditation!). Of course, for some of us, these feelings are remnants of unresolved trauma or something much deeper which may need to be addressed with medication or some form of psychotherapy. These more chronic issues aside, for many of us, we really do need to learn to listen to the whispers of our body and honour her messages.

 Put our Own Gas Mask on First – As women, we are trained to put everyone else before ourselves. We rush to work, we rush to pick up, we rush to the supermarket, we even rush in and out of yoga class (if we manage to prioritise the time to go!). Dr Libby Weaver refers to this pattern that is all too familiar as “Rushing Women’s Syndrome” and she purports that this (along with many other factors of course) is contributing to the rise in rates of depression, anxiety and chronic illness in women. Our bodies (that haven’t changed all that much since we were cave women) just can’t keep up. When we are unwell, we are of no help to others. Please, take some time to ask yourself – how can I keep myself well and balanced so I can better contribute to my family, my workplace or my community? Is there a way I can be setting firmer boundaries so others in my life (partners, friends and children included!) are clear of what is OK and what is not OK when it comes to how they treat me?

Review your Environment and Set Boundaries – Getting to burn out, usually takes two, both us and the organisations/group we work/live in. So, take some time to consider, are the requests being made of you realistic? Or do you need to set firmer boundaries? Are you working in an organisation that actually aligns to your values or are you being asked (usually covertly) to compromise these? Take some time to truthfully determine whether you are happy in the role/organisation you are in and if not, review your options.

Summary - Questions to Ask Ourselves

·   What is my personal recipe for wellbeing? What do I need in my day/week to be full of energy and thriving?

·   What are my strengths and how much time am I spending playing to them?

·   What are my values? Are my values aligned with the organisation I am working with?

·   What is my definition of success?

·   What is my body trying to tell me?

·   Can I reframe self-care to become important so I can better serve others (rather than a selfish activity)?

·   How can I set firmer boundaries, so others are clear when it comes to how I need to be treated?

Finally, burn out is absolutely not your fault so please do to put a layer of self-criticism over yourself for already feeling exhausted. Burn out is simply very useful information that perhaps there are some tweaks that need to be made to the way we are living and the way we are valuing ourselves and our time. And please, let’s stop comparing ourselves to our sisters, especially when we are not coping. Comparison of course can be inspiring and can help us to grow and learn if used wisely. It can point us in a direction we may want to go and give us tips when it comes to setting and achieving our career goals. However, very often “it can be the thief of joy” (Theodore Roosevelt) and you know what, there are enough very real joy thieves in our lives, let’s not add another one unnecessarily.

It's Both

HOW BEING MORE INCLUSIVE IN OUR APPROACH TO LIFE CAN REVOLUTIONISE THE WAY WE WORK WITH OUR EMOTIONS, OUR MINDS AND OUR BODIES

 I may be a slow learner, but I have come across something that has actually revolutionised my world – the idea of “and” as opposed to “or”. Very rarely is anything completely pure, it is usually a beautiful mixture of a whole lot of seemingly conflicting things – all mushed together in one big marbled messy stew of life.

 Now, this has been a very long time coming for me. I have always found it incredibly hard to work out exactly which “box” I fitted into. I never really seemed to fit anywhere, at its most basic level; this can be demonstrated by my taste in fashion.

 I remember growing up and being really torn between wanting to wear a tie-died petticoat and no shoes and a really lovely designer dress and Prada mules. I honestly thought I had to choose one style and stick with it. So, I did. I would flip flop between wearing twin sets one day and then opp shop gems another. Neither of these styles, in their pure form, felt authentic to me but I had no idea there was another option. Although, I felt, on a very deep level, like I was abandoning my true self to fit into a particular box and there was that gnawing sense of a lack of authenticity – or something akin to that, lurking in the pit of my stomach.

 And then one day, I realised, I am actually both. I can like both and I can combine both to create something completely new. I am the boss and I can create a whole new “box”. And, so I did. It started with fashion and now it has extended into other (waaay more important) areas of my life.

 So, working with the possibility that you too may be constrained by black and white, either/or thinking, I thought I would share some of my learnings across these areas. Of course, the general learning of “both” can go across pretty much every area of life, both personally and societally.

 Holding our emotions

We were holidaying one summer with friends. One day, the wife and mother of the other family was complaining about her husband (and father of the children). She felt he didn’t seem to be around much, he seemed to prefer to be at work or at the gym rather than with her and the children and when he was with them – he was distracted and snappy. I rather flippantly commented “so you don’t love him at the moment?”. She looked up from what she was doing and with a very serious look on her face she said:

“oh no, I never withdraw love, I always love him, I am just frustrated”

This was rather groundbreaking for me; it had honestly never occurred to me that we could feel two seemingly conflicting emotions at the same time. Love and hate. Happiness and grief. Gratitude and jealousy. It was some years later that I discovered mindfulness and then, it all made sense. I leaned that I am not my emotions – I am the sky and they are simply the weather (as the famous Pema Chodren quote goes). So, next time you feel consumed by an emotion, see if you can remember it does not need to take up all of you (or all of your relationship). By all means, let it be there, hold it, be curious about it, experience it fully but remind yourself that you can feel it all – the love and the hate, at the same time.

 Working with our mind

In my early 20s, at my quarter-life crisis, I read “You can Heal Your Life” by the wonderful Louise Hay. To be honest, my life wasn’t sick and really didn’t need healing, but I was not happy and felt a sense that something was missing. So, I studiously did the daily affirmations in front of the mirror. I would stand in front of the mirror and recite “I love and approve of myself” daily, for months. I imagined the life I wanted to be living, but it continued to feel artificial, as though I was forcing something. Then in my early 30s and, having abandoned positive thinking and affirmations as hippy dippy stuff that doesn’t work, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the idea that actually, we don’t have to “do” anything. I went from one extreme to the other! I now worked with acceptance (still getting the hang of this one) and non-judgement (always a work in progress) and spent many hours observing my thoughts and emotions, without doing anything in particular about them; all in the name of building my self-awareness. Then one day, this process of non-doing backfired. I had stopped actually listening to my intuition, my values and my heart and was just coasting along in a never-ending haze of acceptance.

As it turns out, we need both. We need both intention and attention. It is helpful to have a clear view of where we are going and what really matters (intention) but we also really need to stop and reflect on where we are first (attention). If all we do is manifest – we are never truly happy now, if all we do is sit contentedly in the now without assessment – how do we really grow?

We need to both work WITH our mind (accept where and who we are) and ON our mind (cultivate more wisdom, love and gratitude – or “grow the good” as Rick Hanson puts it).

Start where you are, pay attention, be present, be clear and keep your feet firmly on the ground. Practice mindfulness and meditate your little heart out if you are so inclined. Then, set your intention for what you would like in your life and watch for signs that you are heading in the direction (such as better sleep, improved relationships, clearer thinking etc) and change course when you need to. It is all good and the path, especially when it comes to the management of our mental health is incredibly personal. Finally, be wary of any teacher/psychologist/coach who tries to tell you there is only one way – I used to be one of these people (a slightly fanatical meditation teacher!) and honestly, we can serve you best by being a point of reflection and accountability – you are the only one who knows you, listen to you.

Managing our physical health

Health issues run in my family. My dear mum suffered with cancer 3 (or was it 4?) times and she struggled with a range of other auto-immune disorders. When, at 34 I was diagnosed with my own auto-immune condition (rheumatoid arthritis or RA) my own journey of healing and acceptance began. To be honest, getting RA was probably the thing that saved me, it was certainly the reason I took a deep dive into my own mindfulness and meditation practice. It was my body yelling (incredibly loudly) that something was not right, that the way I was living was not serving me well. Over the past years I have flip flopped between a 100% blaming attitude towards my genetics and early childhood (“it is just the way I am put together”) and a 100% blaming attitude towards myself and the way I have lived, thought or eaten (too much stress, too much negative thinking, too much sugar etc). After 9 years of exploration, and kind of tiring internal and external battles, I have pretty much come to the conclusion, you guessed it, that it is, indeed, both.

There is BOTH the genetic/early childhood learning component and the environmental/behavioural component and this realisation has allowed me to shift from blame to responsibility. Yes, some people can cure themselves with enough kale juice and deep meditation while others, need to add medication and deep interpersonal connection into their healing recipe and will still not slide into remission or be symptom free. Through this blossoming realisation of “both”, I have managed to make the massive shift from “fault” to “responsibility” – it is not my fault I have RA but it is absolutely my responsibility to manage it as best I can.

In conclusion, our very human tendency to think in absolutes, to be seduced by judgement, at the expense of inclusion, can create some real challenges for us – especially when it comes to managing our health. At the same time, if all we do is pay clear and accurate attention to what is happening, without weaving in a healthy measure of intention setting or effortful change, we may end up coasting along in a semi-superficial stage of fabricated bliss, missing out on all of the beautiful authenticity of being human. By accepting the marbling together of seemingly incongruent experiences, our world can open up and we can either create brand new boxes or get rid of the boxes all together. I vote for no boxes. Here’s to a box-free future for all!

Mindfulness and Meditation for Parents

A RADICAL ACT OF LOVE FOR OURSELVES AND THE WORLD

How can we make space in our busy day for our own nourishment? 

Modern parenting is hard. We have so much information coming at us all the time when it comes to what we “should” be doing to ensure we raise balanced and well-adjusted adults. Sign them up for “this” extra-curricular activity, read “that” book, watch “this” TED talk, do more, be more. We are so inherently uncomfortable with the struggle or discomfort of parenthood (and any discomfort, to be honest) that we seem to be constantly seeking to fix or numb the situation by any number of antidotes.

Firstly, we need to become discerning when it comes to where we place our attention when it comes to how we parent. We need to choose the philosophies or experts that align with our personal values and then build on our inherent wisdom that way. We are wiser than we give ourselves credit for, often, we just need to learn to see clearly to access that wisdom. We know, there are many routes to the same destination (and in this case, the destination really, is children who are thriving – but not at the expense of broken parents) and for us to be prescriptive about which way is “right” is foolish. However, from my personal experience as a daughter, a parent, a psychologist and a meditation and mindfulness teacher, I truly and wholeheartedly believe the best thing we can do as a parent is to build our own capacity for self-awareness and then choose to live and to love consciously, rather than automatically. Meditation is one way for us to build this capacity. And yet, in our busy lives, full to the brim with so much richness and activity, it can be really hard to find the time to, basically, do nothing.

 So how do we do it?

Valuing it more than the laundry

So many of us barrel through our days so mindlessly, that we are not even aware of where our attention is at any given moment. This is absolutely not our fault. It is a small glitch in our evolution and one that can be worked with and even rectified. By becoming aware of where our attention is, we can actually choose where we would like to place it. This choice can become conscious and can be guided by our own personal value system.

 Imagine this, it is the evening, the kids have gone to bed, the house is finally quiet and you slump down on the couch to watch TV and attack the epic mound of laundry that has been piling up over the week. This point in time is a moment of choice, we can either watch TV and fold, we could go to bed and read (or sleep!) or we could mosey over to our meditation cushion and simply watch our breath, feel our body, open our heart or do whatever we do when we meditate. It is all about how much we value each activity. We might ask ourselves, what is the best way I can spend my time right now? Or What is the most important thing? Whatever it is, do that. Often we will actually find that the laundry can wait until tomorrow, the kids can even burrow through the mound and find clean socks in the morning.  Better still, leave it on the couch and see if someone else does the folding for you.

 The shift comes when we start to value our own self-care and our own ability to wake up and bring choice and freedom into our lives, over other seemingly urgent tasks that are simply calling to us with the voice of conditioning and habit. When we step outside of the conditioning we may have inherited or learned, we can choose how to spend our time, we can choose with wisdom and with heart.

 A radical act of love

Self-care is not selfish. When I make time to meditate, I am a more grounded and present and more loving parent. The same goes for physical exercise, cooking nutritious food or leaving the kids at home to go out to see friends or a film or play. When we become a parent, our need for nourishment doesn’t simply disappear – we are still human. I don’t know about you, but I certainly need more in my life than just my kids (as grateful as I am that they are in it). So, I will always remember the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn:

“Meditation is a Radical Act of Love”

I can’t guarantee exactly what he meant by that but for me it means: meditation is an act of love for myself and therefor love for my kids AND love for the greater community. The more centered, present, loving and “mindful” I can be, the better I am able to contribute positively to myself, my family and my community. It all starts with us, we are the ones we have been waiting for, but to remember that, often we need to get out of our own way.

 Choosing a time that works for you and your family

The time of day I have meditated over the years has varied as my children have continued to get older. When they were little babies, I was often too tired for a long formal meditation practice (as I would nod off the minute I closed my eyes) and so I prioritized sleep in those moments I could steal. Now, they are much older and can entertain themselves for a time.

 When our kids are babies – 0-6 months

Sleep when you need to sleep, don’t meditate. When we have babies, we can use this time to really practice being mindful and present with them – both of us are nourished by this practice. Our baby can become the object of our typically distracted attention as we become engrossed in their eye colour, the shape of their ears or the wrinkles on their little hands. As our mind wanders to our “to do” list or other plans or worries, we can gently bring it back to our baby. When we do this over and over again, we start to learn the typical places our beautiful minds go and can start to become familiar with our own internal territory. This will till the soil for our growing consciousness as parents. “Mind the Bump” is a free app I helped create that has some great practical tools to help us through this age-group.

 6 months – 2 years

When my kids were in this age-group, I would meditate either before they woke up in the morning or while they napped in the middle of the day (if I was at home).

 2-5 years

As we sadly say good bye to our midday naps, we may need to either start getting up before our kids or asking a partner to watch them for us so we can sneak in our morning meditation practice before the day begins. I know what I am about to write is not PC at all but, we could even pop on a couple of episodes of “Peppa Pig” and sneak to our meditation cushion. I mean, they are probably watching it anyway so why not make the most of this time to nourish ourselves rather than do laundry?

 5 years +

I will never forget the time I wanted to sneak into the study for a midday meditation and I told my oldest son (5 years old) that he needed to entertain himself for 15 minutes. I think I set up blocks, puzzles, drawing or something for him to do. About 5 minutes into my meditation, I started to hear a gentle bump against the study door…bump….laughter….bump….laughter…I wasn’t sure what it was and everything in me wanted to get up from the cushion to see, but I continued to sit. So I decided to simply include the “bump…..laughter” into my meditation. These sounds were just like the thoughts that were coming and going in my mind or the dull ache in my knee that was starting to make itself known, they simply contributed to the moving landscape of my meditation. When the time was up, I gingerly went out to see what was going on – he had been making paper planes and throwing them at the study door and then falling into fits of hysterics. I was teaching a class not long after this experience and I remember including that insight into my teaching – everything that happens in our awareness can simply be included into our practice.

These days, with a 6 and 10 year old, I get up early-ish and meditate most mornings, either while they kids are asleep or waking up (they know not to disturb me unless someone is bleeding!). Sometimes my meditation happens after school drop-off or in the middle of the day, sometimes in the evening. I do find however, that my day tends to run more smoothly when I spend, even a few minutes, centering myself in the morning.

Parenting is wonderful and hard and tiring and exhilarating – all at once. Meditation is a wonderful addition to our kit of resources. To welcome meditation into our lives in a meaningful way, we need to be flexible with how we do it but value it enough that we prioritise it over the thousands of other tasks calling to us. And you know what? By modelling this nourishing activity to our kids, we can only hope that they build their own practice of stopping, of noticing of expanding and of loving – the world sure could do with more of that right now. More radical acts of love I say. 

Connection to Ourselves and Each Other

WHY WE WANT IT, WHY WE ARE NOT GETTING IT AND HOW TO GET MORE OF IT

“We are neurobiologically wired for connection”
Dr Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness, 2018

We will go to almost any lengths to feel connected to something - anything. If our relationships with ourselves and others are unsatisfying we may search for it in other ways – through alcohol, drugs, food (especially chocolate), shopping or social media. The communities that may have traditionally offered us this connection have all but gone. Our neighbourhoods have changed – fences are higher, people are busier, and fear is rampant.  Perhaps it used to be the church that offered a sense of belonging, then maybe we looked to corporations to provide that community for us. Now, for many of us, the very human face to face connection we all crave has been replaced by the unfulfilling vortex of social media. On the surface, we are “more connected” than we ever have been, however the flimsy tech-enabled lure of “Instabook” often leaves us feeling more unsatisfied and lonelier than ever. It is no surprise that rates of depression and anxiety are increasing (WHO, 2014), as we become more and more reliant on technology and less and less connected to ourselves and each other.

Working in mental health and wellbeing for over 20 years has been one of the most rewarding and challenging parts of my life. When I reflect on the hundreds of individuals and organisations with whom I have worked, connection has been the most pivotal component in predicting the efficacy of our work together. Our ability to connect with ourselves and each other appears to be one of the most important skills we can learn and something we need to consciously foster in our world if we are to tackle the mental health crisis we are facing.

The concept of connection officially revealed itself to me as I was attempting to efficiently “package up” the clear benefits of mindfulness. I came up with three: Clarity, Calm and Connection. The first two were really obvious and scientifically validated hundreds of times over. Mindfulness helps us to think more clearly, to focus more effectively, to be more creative and to chill out. The Connection piece was more nebulous and less discussed but at the same time, possibly the most profound shift I personally experienced as a result of my own mindfulness and meditation practise.

Connection has two components; connection to ourselves and connection to others. Both are important. Connection to ourselves sounds like it belongs in a sentence with “peace, love and mung beans”, let me flesh it out a bit for you.

Connection to Ourselves

We may as well get to know ourselves (and dare I say, like ourselves), we are with us every day and every night whether we like it or not, it seems wise to spend some time investing in this relationship. The crazy thing is, few of us have any idea how to do it – and, if you are anything like me, we don’t even know that it is an option. This is where our mindfulness and meditation practice can come in. Through our meditation we start to learn and really understand that what makes us “us” is something bigger and more powerful than our thoughts and emotions or even our body, intellect or personality. It is that ineffable part of us that is always there, always steady, always calm. It can become the warm embrace of our very own best friend, there with us all the time.

For many of us, this deeper part within us has been forsaken for others’ beliefs and opinions and sometimes even values and goals. We think the voice in our head is actually our voice but, we may find that it is often that of (often well meaning) primary care-givers, ancestors or even society itself.

The following section of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” describes this beautifully:

……….but little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do-
Determined to save the only life you could save

Over our journey into adulthood, we have often so habitually abandoned ourselves, that we don’t even know who we are anymore. We can’t hear our own voice for all the chatter from friends, family and society – all telling us who we should be and what we should have. We chase the next “shiny thing” in the hope that will finally make us happy when in fact it can do quite the opposite, as the goal posts seem to always be changing. Johan Hari, in his excellent book “Lost Connections”, 2018, discusses the tendency many of us have to adopt “junk values”. He argues that it is in fact our pursuit of goals such as wealth, fame and beauty that can contribute to our rising states of depression and anxiety and he suggests that we take time to discover our personal value system, rather than simply slipping on any old one “Instabook” or the Kardashians happen to be selling that week.

Connection to Others

 Of course, once we realise that we are not our thoughts (or body or emotions etc.) we may start to entertain the possibility that actually, we are connected to everything and everyone around us. We are an integral part of the hum of the human race, we are one little thread in the tapestry. My breath is your breath – we share this experience of being human. We have evolved as social beings, we need each other to survive – we even have an entire part of the brain dedicated to attachment and relationships. Johan Hari suggests that rates of depression and anxiety are increasing not because we “have broken brains” but because we are “animals whose needs are not being met”. Global levels of loneliness are rising (Brown, 2018) – we must find our way back to each other.

In 2015 I was part of a team to set up a yoga, meditation and fitness studio. We studiously did all of our planning and market research, we knew meditation was the next big thing in the wellbeing space. We created out muse and developed our brand, we fitted out the studio and recruited our team. We thought we were setting up a wellbeing studio – it turns out however, the reception area (where we served complimentary tea and bubbly water) was the most frequented room in the studio – our guests were simply desperate to connect. We had set up a Connection Studio.

 Since 2013 I have offered a range of workshops to my corporate clients. At one time – there were three on the “menu”; Clarity (problem solving, decision making & creativity), Calm (stress management) and Connection (leadership, teamwork & compassion). Overwhelmingly, my clients chose the third workshop – even though they did not quite have the words to describe it – they sensed connection was what their organisation was hungry for and they were always right.

Imagine if we could get out of our own way enough to authentically connect with other people in our lives – at work, at home, and in our communities. We could simply start by putting down our devices and looking people in the eye. Consider the positive impact we could have in our pursuits to care for the environment with more wisdom when we really understand, on a deep and personal level that we are living in an intricate and vulnerable system and that our very survival depends on our behaviour.

“Connection” will be the word for 2019/20 – I can feel it in my bones.

Wonder Women

THE ROLE OF MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION IN SUPPORTING WOMEN TO BE EVEN MORE WONDERFUL

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Modern women are just amazing. This is the first generation we have been told we can have it all – we can step up and have our fathers’ successes BUT we need to still maintain our mothers’ responsibilities (ref. Dr Libby Weaver). As a result, we are working tirelessly from the minute we wake up to breakfast to children to work to children to dinner and then often to work again on the couch with a heat bag and a cup of tea…we then fall into bed exhausted at night and get back up again to do it all again the next day. 

Dr Libby Weaver has come up with a syndrome to describe the lifestyle of the modern woman – she calls it “Rushing Women’s Syndrome” – where we are dragged from one demand to the next – not even allowing ourselves time out to do nothing in the car or on the train or bus – using that time to make phone calls, answer emails or listen to the latest podcasts.

Now, some of us can do this. There are some true wonder women who can and do, do it all with some ease. There are even some, I am sure, who love the busy and frenetic life they have. However, the vast majority and certainly the women I seem to meet in my line of work, are only just keeping it all together, but the cracks are starting to show: they are not sleeping well, their temper is flaring, they are moving further and further away from their partners or they are getting sick more and more often…..

 So what is going on?

The current climate is a result of so many factors, here are a few:

Feminism - It is a result of the great successes of feminism (while there is obviously still a long way to go when it comes to equality in many areas) that women are now sitting in boardrooms and running companies and even countries. Hooray for this, about time.

Technology - broadly has a lot to answer for – the fact that there is no clear division between work and home these days has helped to create an ongoing cycle of a 24/7 need to respond and deliver. We never really “go home” anymore – we are always “on” and for those of us who need to take some down time, it just is not there organically anymore.

Social Media – the habitual and mindless competition and comparison of what women are doing and how they are succeeding is RIGHT there – right in our face while we are sitting at home in our stained tracksuit pants with chocolate dripping down our chin, already feeling less than glamorous – only to have her there in her fab Prada suit and red lippy and then that little voice echoes to us “why cant I have that, be that, earn that?”

No Family or Village - The breakdown of the family system and the “village” means we are relying more and more these days on paid childcare of some kind to look after our kids – with that comes very little flexibility so when kids get sick or the date for a client’s workshop changes, it takes more effort to juggle everything.

 So, in summary, we are doing more, more often and with much less support than previous generations. Our beautiful bodies and minds just can’t keep up with this pace and something has to give. Often, sadly it is our health – be it mental or physical – or both.

In 2013, I was part of the team to set up Australia’s first mind and body studio, I went into partnership with 4 amazing people and we worked hard to set up a “mindfulness studio” where we offered mindfulness based yoga, fitness and meditation. We opened in April 2015 and were voted one of the best studios in Australia within months of opening, we were ON FIRE! The catch was that it was a 7 day a week business and, given I was the mindfulness and meditation partner and this was very new to Melbourne back in 2015, the workload was unforgiving. Now, I was terrible at setting boundaries and saying no… so I just kept taking on more and more and saying yes to more and more….all the while…my brain AND my body was talking too me….the thoughts were “Liv, this is too much, you need to slow down, you haven’t seen your kids in a week….” but, as I became so adept at managing my thoughts, I would “notice the thought and let it go”…what I didn’t do, was FEEL into my body, until it was too late. I completely burnt out and ended up in bed by Oct 2015. In Jan 2016, I listened to my heart and my body and decided to leave the partnership as I couldn't give the business what it needed and still be the present and engaged parent I wanted to be. It was the hardest decision I have ever made but, my body and my heart thank me every day – my ego is still recovering though….

What I learnt:

 Mindfulness and meditation are important but they are not all we need to be doing to look after ourselves in the current climate – we still need to exercise – often, we still need to see our girlfriends and we still need to sit down and eat (at least one meal a day!) to really get the nutrients out of our food.

 I needed to reconnect with my body – to listen to my gut and my intuition and treat myself like a “whole person” – not just a brain and then a body that is dragged around after it.

 So what do we need to do? 

1. Set firm boundaries

We need to stop saying “yes” to everything, we need to stop seeking approval of others and we need to stop, listen to our gut and from that place that is deep and strong within us – we need to say “no, thank you, but no”. This is new for many of us, as girls, we were never taught to listen to our own inner voice – we were taught to be quiet, to be pretty, to be polite and to seek approval.

2. Change the rules

This is brand new territory for all of us, we ALL (women and men) need to make it OK for men to pick up more of the family and domestic duties. We need to sit down as a family and divide the tasks – rather than leaving it all to the woman to manage. The other mummies in the park or at kinder need to include the daddies in the play dates and invite them over for afternoon tea too.

3. Stop Competing and Comparing and instead Connect and Collaborate

As humans, we part of us is wired to compete and compare, it has held us in good stead as far as our survival as a species goes however, these days with the added impact of social media, we may need to work at tempering this a little bit. What has happened to the sisterhood girls? We need to ask our friends and family for help, we need to reconnect with our community.

 4. Fall in love with ourselves again

We need to learn to trust ourselves again and maybe if we trust a little more we can try a little less. We can stop seeking approval from others and simply do our work and then step back. All of this trying is totally exhausting.

5. We need to let go of our own vision of ourselves as wonder woman

As I was sharing the outline for this article with my husband, he smiled in his beautiful supportive way and he said – “the other thing is, you need to allow yourself to let go of having to do everything yourself” – we need to let go of our own vision of ourselves as wonder women.

How can we do this?

Well, given I am a meditation teacher and a mindfulness educator, part of the answer for me lies in building our general levels of awareness. We need to build our awareness across two areas; the external world – what is actually happening?  And the internal world – what are we actually thinking and feeling?

External Awareness

We need to see clearly the actual external situation we currently find ourselves in – are we doing more than our fair share? Can we ask for more help from our partners/friends/family? What is actually happening here? Am I being taken advantage of or not?

Internal Awareness

We need to learn to really connect with our internal world. What is important for me? What is my body and my heart telling me in this situation? Of course we cant always be guided by our body and our heart but my general rule is (now!) if you get the same message a few times – you should probably listen.

 The rules and the landscape have changed my friends so we need to change too. If we don’t, we are just going to keep getting sicker, more marriages will break down and the anxiety rates in our beautiful children will just keep rising.

 None of us really knows the answers, we are all just making it up as we go along and we are really the only one who knows the answer for ourselves.  Just because she is working 5 days in her power suit and sits on all of the kinder fundraising committees and still makes organic bread with free range ham sandwiches for Jimmy for kinder – it doesn’t mean you have to keep up.

 Let’s cut the crap, if not for our health and ourselves, for our children.

 In all of this, I think the best gift we can give ourselves and our children is the capacity to come home, to come back to the place inside us that has always been there – the place that is clear, calm and connected. It doesn’t matter how we get there, what matters is that we get there – often. By living and working and parenting from this place of clear seeing awareness we can fall in love with ourselves again and come back to each other. We will all be better for it.

A Real Superpower

MINDFULNESS TO HELP US ALL TO RIDE THE WAVES OF LIFE WITH MORE EASE

Originally posted 2016

We were holidaying in Queenscliff recently and the opportunity came up for me to have 1 hour to myself – my youngest took himself off to bed for a midday nap. Ahhhh peace, it must have been the 1-hour of running along the beach and the 1.5 hours of up hill scooting we had done in the morning. No, I really didn’t mean to exhaust him, honest……

During this nap time, my eldest (7 years old), was complaining he was bored…. And I tried to explain to him that being bored was OK and really, part of life. That he should practice being bored well as, when he is an adult there will be large chunks of his life that are boring but necessary, like putting petrol in the car, lining up at the bank and paying bills online.

Needless to say, he wasn’t really interested in my philosophy at that point and he snapped “its OK for you, you have that super power”….which one I thought? Gosh, I have so many! So I asked him…”what do you mean”….and he responded, “well, you have the power that allows you just to sit out here and watch the clouds and do nothing, I don’t have that power”.

I tried to explain that we all have that power; we just need to practice it. Again, he was really not interested in hearing mum rant on (again) about how accessing the natural clarity, calm and connection within all of us was a basic human right. After helping him to come up with an imaginary game to play with his Shopkins, I stopped and asked myself “what are we doing to our kids?”. The constant entertainment we are providing them today – the iPads and TV, the phones and toys. Are we robbing them of a basic life skill? Of knowing how to be bored and just doing nothing? Just playing for the sake of playing, with no agenda, hidden or otherwise?

Now, I am absolutely not saying that we should stop all technology – as my dear husband (who works in tech and TV) points out to me, it is here to stay now, we may as well embrace it and of course I agree. I just wonder, what is, or more accurately, what will be the cost of this 24/7 stimulation generation we are raising? Are we raising adults who will be so disconnected from their bodies and the present moment experience that they will have no way to understand or sit with less pleasant emotions like boredom? Will this generalize to other human less pleasant emotions like sadness or worry? Are we just teaching them to numb out from a very early age by shoving an iPhone in their face when they don’t get what they want? In later years, will the iPhone be replaced by something more harmful like drugs or alcohol? I have absolutely no idea, I am curious though. I do know though that time doing nothing does feed our spirit, it does nourish our body and it certainly feeds our creativity.

We are at a really interesting point in our evolution, both as humans and, more specifically, as parents. We are raising kids at a time where there are really no parenting rules, anything goes. We have access to books and research that pretty-much support any parenting model we choose to follow: strict rules vs. more lasaiz fair, full time day-care vs. full time stay at home – really anything is OK and it is up to each family to work out what is best for them. And this is how it should be.

One thing hasn’t changed though and that is our core job as parents, which is (among many many other things) to prepare our children to be citizens of the world, to be able to contribute to the world in some way and to support them to live to their full potential. As we know, the “dark” parts of life are often the bits that can help us to learn and to grow most profoundly (such an unfortunate phenomenon this one!), as the quote goes, “we cant get to day without going through the night”.

What will happen if we don’t give our kids the opportunity to experience sadness or disappointment or boredom?

Life is hard and beautiful and hard and we need to equip our kids with a whole tool kit to support them to thrive and feel strong, regardless of what is going on. So, in my effort to help myself and anyone else who would like to listen, I have jotted down a couple of tips to support us to allow our kids to experience the whole rainbow of emotions – rather than just the shiny bits and you know, that really is a super power.

 1. Explore it

When they are feeling sad or worried, ask your child to explore the feeling. Where do they feel it in their body? Can they make room for it rather than fight it? Can they breathe into it and really feel it? Can they allow themselves to hold it gently, as if they are holding a precious flower or gem? Can they see that they are not the emotion, that it is something happening to them? They may even like to experiment with asking the emotion or feeling what it needs right now.

 2. Colour it

Ask your child to describe their feeling in colours or shapes – this can help them to express how it feels using words they are more familiar with. The risk here is that they become really annoyed and just throw something at you!

 3. Celebrate it

When they express either “positive” or “negative” feelings (from a mindfulness perspective, we tend not to assess feelings as good or bad) say, “that’s great, you are feeling, that means you are human and you are alive” or “how lucky are we that we get to feel all of these emotions – lets explore them together”.

If you ask me, we all do have this superpower, in fact, I believe it is our birthright. Sometimes, however, we just need to be reminded and, so do our kids.

Mindfully Mum

FINDING CLARITY, CALM AND CONNECTION WITHIN THE CHAOS OF MOTHERHOOD

Originally posted 2016

Becoming a mother was one of the most exciting and challenging roles I had ever accepted.
The job ad read a little something like this:

“Are you in your 30s, in a serious relationship, already have a dog and looking for the next step?
Join our growing organization and find your real purpose!

We are seeking capable, intelligent and loving women to join our flourishing group. You will have some prior experience with children and relatively strong pelvic floor muscles.

You will be rewarded with long, warm snuggles, unconditional love and affection and a sweet smelling sleepy baby. You will enjoy shopping for cute baby clothes, knowing smiles from strangers and compliments on the cuteness of your offspring.

You will experience satisfaction from your new role and will feel fulfilled and challenged. Working hours are flexible and uniform typically consists of yoga pants and baggy t-shirts.

Apply at applications@mummeup.com.au”

And for some women, the reality of the role may, in fact be very close to the job ad. For me, they were quite different…… Yes, there were (and still are) occasional long snuggles and some shopping for cute baby clothes and there are absolutely elements of satisfaction and intense meaning that this role has brought to my life. However, the flexible working hours did not turn out to be quite as flexible as originally promised and my manager (the child, not the husband) seemed to be very unpredictable, totally incapable of taking accountability for his actions and very unsure of what he really wants! Not to mention the tears (from everyone) and the feelings of loss of identity, loneliness and life focus. Questions like “who am I now that I am a mother?” “when will I ever have time for myself?” “How does she manage to do it all and I can barely manage a shower?” and “Am I doing this right?” made regular appearances in the chatter of my mind. Thank goodness I discovered mindfulness, just in time. Just as I was becoming completely disengaged and a little resentful, mindfulness reached out and tickled my curiosity. It may have just saved me from losing all of my marbles…

MIndfulness - The definition

The formal definition of mindfulness is “Moment to moment, non-judgmental awareness” (Jon Kabat-Zinn) but I quite like to think of it as “being open and curious to what is actually happening, rather than what we think is happening”. As mothers we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about what is happening, rather than taking part in what is happening. It is this constant chatter of our very busy minds that can get us into trouble and distract us from engaging wholly in our own lives.

Mindfulness is a skill that can be learnt by anyone. It is nurtured simply by paying attention with an open and accepting approach. It involves removing our judgment (black and white thinking – good mum/bad mum etc) and applying the compassion and acceptance we may typically reserve for other, to ourselves. Sounds simple hey? And it is but simple doesn’t mean easy.

Nurturing this skill takes practice and commitment as we are literally rewiring our brain. We are gaining insight into our thought patterns and habits and deciding whether they are useful for us now in our current lives and in our current roles. Through this process we introduce the element of CHOICE to our experience and bring a greater degree of clarity, calm and connection into our existence.

Our mindfulness skills can be developed through formal practices such as meditation, yoga or relaxation exercises or informal practices such as simply paying attention to what we are doing. We can fold laundry mindfully, we can brush our teeth mindfully, we can listen and engage with our kids mindfully, we can even wipe their little butts with awareness! Research tells us “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind” so our task is to reign in this wandering animal and use it for good rather than allowing it to use us for evil (such as freaking out because the nappy is not on perfectly straight!).

So how does performance in the motherhood role look when we approach it with a greater degree of mindfulness? By simply bringing awareness to both our internal (thoughts and feelings) and external (behaviors) experiences, we can examine them with more clarity and make the executive decision as to whether they are contributing positively to our existence. Are they enhancing our relationships or slowly destroying them? Are they boosting our self-esteem or stripping them? And ultimately, are they contributing to our happiness?

Tips for finding more clarity, calm and connection

1 The “Now What?” Meditation Inspired by Denise Roy (Momfulness)

You know those times you are trying to get your kid in the car, running late for a meeting and still trying to eat your toast and your kid decides he would prefer to sit in the front seat rather than his seat in the back? It is during these times that this practice is particularly useful. All it takes is three mindful breaths.

1. First Breath – connect with your internal strength and ground yourself (stop the crazy spinning thoughts!)
2. Second Breath – tune into your kid – what is going on for them? Are they tired, hungry, not wanting to go to school today?
3. Third Breath – Ask yourself – now what? How do I need to be in this moment? What is going to help me here?

2 R . A . I . N

This is a handy practice to use when you feel like you have lost many of your marbles and would quite like to gain a little more clarity and perspective in a situation you are finding stressful. It is a four-step approach and uses the acronym R.A.I.N:

R – Recognize your experience (“ah…I am feeling anxious”) Where am I feeling it in my body? how do I know I am anxious?
A – Allow it to be (“hello anxiety my old friend”) Can you breathe into it and allow more space for it to be there? can you let go of any belief that this feeling is bad or wrong?
I – Investigate the possible learnings (“what are you telling me anxiety?”). This stage is REALLY important, it may be here you gather more information about your values or even your own personal childhood traumas that have triggered you. This is not just a “head thing”, we are not just thinking about it, we need to tune into our body here. This takes practice and meditation is a great place to do that.
N – Non-attachment and Nurture (“I know I am feeling anxious but it is just a feeling and it does not need to overwhelm me as I know it will pass”) and then we show ourselves some loving attention: “I know this is hard darling, I know you are trying your best”, this can be facilitated by stopping, breathing deeply (especially elongating the exhalation) and putting our hand firmly but softly on our heart area (giving ourselves and our body a little loving snuggle).

Hopefully these tips will bring more clarity, calm and connection to your role as a mum. It is a wonderful job and we are incredibly lucky and blessed to have been successful in our application and as long as we don’t let our minds (and all of the expectations, worries and irrational beliefs) run the show – I believe we can continue to find meaning, satisfaction and fulfillment, even in the sleep deprived chaos of it all!

Girl Troubles – Where do they come from?

A MINDFUL APPROACH TO MANAGING THE COMPLEXITIES OF BEING FEMALE

Originally posted 2015

I am terrible at maths.

I blame Miss Drummond – my third grade teacher. She spent more time shaving her legs in class than she did teaching, and believe me, when it came to multiplication, subtraction and especially division – I needed lots of teaching.

My maths difficulty aside, after some very rough calculations – I estimate that around 70% of my close female friends, across both America and Australia are on anti-depressant medication. 70% does seem rather high, especially when we are talking about a group of well-educated, intelligent, creative and passionate woman, most are in long-term relationships, many are mothers, some have busy and rewarding careers but they are all battling the troubles of anxiety and depression. Of course, the other possibility is that being a psychologist I am attracted to interesting, complex and slightly mad people in my life so my sample group is significantly skewed. Regardless, I sense there is a bit of a problem so I ask you what is going wrong? Why are these women needing to turn to medication to ease the chattering of their minds? What can we do as a society to ease some of the a) stress of being a woman and b) stress on our medical system as a result of the number of women seeking treatment and medication?

I wonder whether the following areas could be woven into both our formal education system as well as our parenting classes:

1. Build Emotional Management Skills
Research tells us that women are likely to be more emotional beings than men – with this comes great strength (emotional intelligence) and some weakness (greater incidence of anxiety and depression when these emotions are not well managed). What are we doing to support women to manage and leverage the plethora of emotions they are genetically wired to experience? Science tells us that practicing mindfulness can enhance both emotion regulation and feelings of general well-being. The implementation of formal “awareness and observing” practices into both school and home life would be an invaluable addition to all.

2. Develop Relationship Skills
In my thesis (gosh the stats were a grind), I found that one of the biggest predictors of girls’ happiness is the quality of their relationships. What are we doing to support young girls and teenagers to manage the complexities of their relationships? I sense that woman are evolutionary wired to invest time and energy in relationships, however it may be possible that our prehistoric mind has trouble managing the complexities our modern era have introduced to us in this area.  

Practicing mindfulness can help us to build deeper a connection within ourselves – to learn to love and accept ourselves as we truly are. It can also free us to build deeper and more genuine connections with others so we feel truly supported in this wonderful journey of life.

3. Set a Realistic Standard
The messages women are sent today about their role in society are so mixed and so complicated. I believe it is actually harder to be a woman now that it has been at any other time in history. According to the “pretend world” of media we are supposed to be the perfect wife/partner, be in great shape, have no wrinkles, be in a successful career, have well adjusted children, be a good cook, have a clean home, have lots of girlfriends and a fabulous wardrobe. The reality for most of us is that all of these combined are simply unachievable, something, somewhere has to give. And so we turn to medication because we are not living the perfect life we feel like we “should” be living. It is only the likes of Angelina Jolie (who we all know is a little bonkers anyway) who may be able to pull all of these off, but I am sure she does it with a lot of help and probably a great therapist.

Sadly, other women can be our worst enemies too. We can be so harsh on each other, some of us paint the picture that we do have it all together, leaving the rest of us feel inadequate on some level. Come on girls, what happened to the sisterhood?

So, as a women and a mother (of 2 boys!), I believe it is our role to do the following for our girls:

• Teach them that it is OK to be vulnerable – after all that is how we build deep connections within ourselves and with others (refer to Brene Brown’s wonderful TED talk on vulnerability)

• Help them to clarify their values and live within these – that is where true, deep happiness comes from

• Encourage them to set their own goals rather than be guided by others’ expectations

I believe women have the capacity to really shape and shift the state of the world as we live in it today. They have the emotional intelligence, the great relationship building skills and the drive to succeed that will support us into the next century. We just need to support them to manage these strengths more effectively. And, as far as my maths skills go, I have accepted I have strengths in other areas and have employed a great accountant!