Clare Slaney Counselling Home

28/3/2020

Memento Mori

When I was 9 years old my father died.

My mother, having had two heart attacks, was considered fragile, we lived with the unspoken knowledge that she was likely to die sooner rather than later, my father was the strong, capable parent. One day he went to bed with chest pains, my mother and I propped him up with pillows and I played at being a nurse, fussing about with sheets not really understanding what was going on. Two days later I kissed him goodbye as I went to school and that was the last time I saw him.

The hospital rule was that anyone under 13 wasn’t allowed on the ward and so while my mother visited I would wait outside. He died there and I remember emptying the hospital property bag, his false teeth falling onto the kitchen table, which was shocking proof that he was, in fact dead.

Many of us are going to repeat some of that experience very soon. We know that a four thousand bed hospital is being kitted out in London; a 5,000 bed hospital in Birmingham; a 1000 bed hospital in Manchester, with similar hospitals in Glasgow, Cardiff and possibly Belfast. We know that vast morgues are being built across the UK just as they have in every other country that C19 has touched.

We know it and we cannot bear to know it. The streets are quiet, the weather has been good and many of us are distracted by a sudden, unexpected and catastrophic collapse of income. But we all know that there is something much more fundamental coming.

Mothers Day was a hint for some families. Therapists tend to focus on the adult children of parents who couldn’t or didn’t care for them properly, but the pain of the many more adult children who didn’t experience neglect or abuse, and their mothers on Mothers Day was equally real. Some people stood at the end of a path and sang songs or held a little party that the grandchildren came along to while their Mother stood in the doorway with a cup of tea. Some Mothers were in care homes and not even that was possible. Fathers day is on June 21st, around a month after the peak of deaths from C19 has been calculated to fall.

Now, when a person gets put in an ambulance to go to hospital they may as well be taken to Mars. Most hospitals will not allow any visitors unless there are truly exceptional circumstances, such as a relative having dementia, and then one designated person may visit at the discretion of whomever is in charge. This is necessary to preserve life and it has a terrible human cost. Wherever C19 has spread people have died alone. They have already died alone in the UK, even in hospices.

Why am I telling you this?

Not to frighten you, although of course you’re frightened. I’m frightened. I’m telling you this in the hope that you will now do and say the things you need to do and say because for too many of us, a point will come when it is too late, and that point is around two weeks away.

Life is not a soap opera. If you spend any time working with people who are dying, that becomes crystal clear very quickly. Now, right now, is the time to think about what you want to say to the people you love, even the people you like. Make care and love your guide, even though there are things about everyone that are annoying.

You are thinking about what you want to say to them on their deathbed, what you want them to know when you are on yours.

The only reason you might want to spend a long time thinking about what you want to say is if you need to get past anger and resentment. Otherwise, write it down this weekend. If it’s on your computer, print it out. If everyone you know is well, you can come back to it over time and edit it but if one of you is feeling a bit peaky, it doesn’t matter that it’s not Shakespeare, phone them up or Skype them on Sunday evening, let them know you have something important to say, and read it out to them.

It doesn’t matter if you get choked up, say what you need to say. If they can’t bear to hear you say it, it’s OK, at some point they may be ready, and if they’re not ready by next week send them a letter.

Write letters for your children. Decide who you want to be their legal guardians, talk to that person or persons about it and put it in writing. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t advise you on the legal ins and outs of it but there’s lots of information on the net. In the UK on average every 30 minutes a child under 16 loses a parent. This average is going to change next week.

Make a secret collection of things for them that will remind them of you and keep it secret, the very last thing a child needs is to know that their parents are preparing to leave them. But if they want to talk with you about you dying think now about how you might respond. “Oh don’t worry about it, I’m never going to die” is not good enough.

Whether or not you have children it’s important to attend to the legal stuff too, like writing a will if you haven’t already, which will be a demonstration of how love fits in to your life. Too many people use wills to act out, never thinking that they will actually die. Sometimes this behaviour is a kind of fantasy, a dramatic and immature playing out of a dream in which the person writing the will gets the final upper hand. Sometimes this is abuse, continued even after death. If you’re the first kind of person, now is the time to grow up. If you’re the second kind of person, there’s nothing that will change your mind and your death will be as your life was.

C19 is a scourge but in taking us to the edge of the precipice and holding us there it is helping all of us discern what is more or less important. And still there are many people - including a great many therapists, we’re far from immune from this - who are in denial and distorting reality because it’s far too terrifying to endure. The odds are against you dying. If you're hospitalised, even ventilated, you may well come out again. But thousands of people are going to die, many of them will be in the prime of their lives, and even some of the very rich with all the access to private, high tech, constant, highly skilled medical care have already died. Ventilators just give the body a chance to fight back, they don't do the fighting.

Please do not wait until you or someone you love is being put on an ambulance stretcher before you try to find the words.

Think now. Talk now. Act now.

But if you find that you’ve waited too long and that moment is reached, “I love you, thank you” will be enough.

21/3/2020

Celebrating Mothering Sunday During the COVID 19 Pandemic.

Mothers Day tomorrow.

How might we mark Mothers Day when we have to remain separate from our mother, especially - and especially sadly - if she's over 70?

COVID 19 is making us prioritise what is most precious to us, and although the relationship between adult children and their parents can sometimes be difficult, missing Mothering Sunday is particularly poignant this year.

Here's a 4 minute podcast on celebrating Mothering Sunday when you and your mother have to be apart.

15/3/2020

Managing COVID 19 Anxiety

Anxiety has been the most widespread mental health issue in the UK for some years but it’s not surprising that everyone is experiencing it now that COVID19 has reached us. Information about this virus is emerging all the time, no one is an expert on it and experts on viral spread are in disagreement about how best to deal with it, so we just have to manage our own and each other’s anxiety as best we can. Here are some ideas based on the following principles:

Anxiety serves an evolutionary purpose
It alerts us to threats and gives us some tools to deal with them. If you’re an early hominid living on the Savannah or a modern human walking through town at night you need to be aware of predators and to be able to run or fight. Anxiety keeps you alert and offers adrenalin to aid you in dealing with immediate problems.

Anxiety limits the ability to make good decisions
People who bulk buy soap are preventing others from taking reasonable precautions and so increase their own likelihood of getting the virus. If you continue to come into work when you don’t have to you’re exposing your family, friends and everyone you come within 2m of to the virus. Anxiety causes over and underthinking.

Chronic anxiety becomes self-fulfilling
Worry becomes focus – we’re all doing that with COVID 19 – and our natural cognitive bias leads us to focus on what we expect. Anxiety becomes persistent, then intrusive, then disruptive.

Long term anxiety has serious consequences
For your general health and in particular for your immune system.

Anxiety is a public health issue
It's caused stockpiling - of toilet paper! People are fist fighting in supermarket isles, queue's are getting testy, well off people are consuming vast amounts of preservable food, too many retailers are price gouging, poorer people can't get enough provisions for 2 weeks isolation and foodbank donations have plummeted. Anxiety leads to fear which very early on emerged as xenophobia, and can create panic, especially in vulnerable groups who are already living on the margins. Suicide rates are high and young people as a group were expressing a great deal of stress before C19.

Here are some things you can do today

Change your social media use
It’s unreasonable to suggest that we stop using social media since it’s where the majority of us get our information about everything from, but we can consciously alter what we see and how often.

Consider muting words on twitter
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options

Snooze unhelpful accounts on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/help/538433456491590

Mute unhelpful stories on Instagram
https://help.instagram.com/290238234687437

Add accounts that you find soothing.
If you find conspiracy-led accounts soothing – many of us do because everyone likes to be told they’re right – try seeking something neutral, like cooking, decorating, art, Lego, anything that doesn’t tell you that They have a plan.

The Dodo always has happy endings and other nature-based accounts can be useful.

Learn something new
TED, podcasts and books are obvious replacements. Also take a look at free online courses
Future Learn
https://www.futurelearn.com/

Stanford
https://online.stanford.edu/

And many other universities
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

Think about rationing social media
and certainly your use of computers, phones and tablets, particularly in the evening.

Move!
Gyms may not be the best places to be right now but exercise helps sleep, cognition, and has a measurable positive impact on anxiety. Walk to the shops, get off the bus one stop before you need to, take the stairs, walk faster, extend what you normally do with your body. The NHS offers whole sets of free Pilates and other core strength videos for everyone, including elderly people.

Develop your human connections
We are social animals and don’t do well on our own. Speaking as a dedicated introvert I know that if I don’t speak to other human beings at least once a day life can take on a less realistic hue. Turn your attention to people you care for, ask what kind of care they’d like from you and let them know what kind of care you’d like from them. Talk to your neighbours. Make friendly eye contact – yes, it is possible in London – especially with people working in shops, bus drivers and other people in public service who cannot wash their hands as often as they might want to and are exposed to C19 in ways that most of us are not.

Do Good.
Being useful helps with all kinds of emotional problems. It’s instinctive.
If all you can manage is to make friendly eye contact with an unknown human being today, do that. Altruism increases your sense of connection and belonging, offers a sense of purpose and, if done with no sense of martyrdom please, reduces anxiety. If you can really follow through with an offer to shop for someone who will find it difficult, do that. Don’t offer if you can’t do it because the guilt you’ll feel isn’t worth it. You don’t have to be Mother Theresa to put some quality food, soap, washing up liquid, nappies or sanitary towels in the supermarket food bank box or the online order option. Pat a dog, stroke a cat, send a thank you card to your GP, take muffins to A&E, do what makes someone else feel warmer.

Rest
Few of us get enough rest. Now is the time to prioritise it. Tired people are anxious. Don’t go out in the evenings, don’t invite large numbers of people round, who cares if the ironing isn’t done? If, as many workers know all too well, your boss is unreasonable, really focus on whether it’s worth working under someone who is so unskilled. Life is short. Be careful who you let determine how you live it.

Mindfulness – meh. Meditation, yes, even if that’s sitting in silence with your eyes shut and listening to a clock tick 60 times. “Don’t get caught up in the how — just do.”

Anxiety is a reality at present, we’re going to have to live with it for a while. COVID 19 can help us prioritise how we live, the kinds of people we want around us and the kind of person we want to be.

If not now, when?

14/3/2020

Virus Anxiety

No one knows what's coming next with COVID 19 and everyone is anxious about what the future holds.

We look to Italy and that future looks fearsome. We can see the term 'herd immunity' being used incorrectly by our government and that doesn't instil a great deal of confidence. Most working people don't have sick pay; 15% of us have no savings at all; 1 in 3 of us have less than £1,500 in savings so taking time off work, even if you positively enjoy it as opposed to fearing what your manager will do, is by no means straightforward.

Here's the most recent government info on sick pay.

Grandchildren can't visit grandparents; elderly and unwell people are becoming increasingly isolated and wondering if they're going to be discarded if NHS ventilator triage is put in place; parents are wondering who will have to lose a wage if schools close . . . there are so many unknowns.

To date, this seems to be amongst the most comprehensive mental health page referencing C19, offering meditations, proposing actions and addressing anxiety, isolation, finances, parental concerns and, brilliantly, xenophobia - the dislike of people who do not look like you. The fact that they address this up front suggests this is not fluffy content generation.

It's US based so some of the information won't be relevant to UK-based people. But we're all anxious, we're all human. Let me know what you think about it.

3/3/2020

COVID 19 Policy

This policy is now out of date but I think it's worth keeping it up so that you can see how my thinking evolved.

All clients and I are now meeting online. The major issue is the change in responsibility for client confidentiality. Meeting face to face in an office is simple, meeting at home if you're not alone is another matter. If you're alone Skype is straightforward. (Zoom limits sessions to 40 minutes.) Some clients are taking the bike or car to somewhere isolated, stopping and meeting on WhatsApp. It's how clients who do a great deal of travelling access therapy.

Things are different but as we can see, as we're doing ourselves, people are quickly and effectively adapting.

COVID 19 is now " a public health emergency of international concern." I’m aware that people are anxious about it so these are my thoughts about how my clients and I might deal with it.

The best guess so far is that at its worst 1 in 5 UK workers – not people, the workforce – may be off sick at the height of the epidemic.

Most people who catch it have mild symptoms similar to a cold.

It begins with a temperature.
The cough is dry, not productive.
Many of us may not know that we have or have had the virus.

Find out more here .

If I get the symptoms of COVID 19

I will contact 111.
I will contact you to let you know.

If you have a cough or cold.

I am very happy to continue seeing you as normal if you continue to come to work.
This is because you and I are more likely to catch any viral or bacterial illness from commuting than we are from sitting in a room with each other.

If either you or I have to go into home isolation for 14 days

Home isolation does not mean that you or I have the virus.
It means that we are waiting to see if the virus develops.
We can continue to meet online.

Limits to meeting online are
Your privacy:

you need to be confident that no one can hear what you or I say and that you will not be interrupted.
Ideally, you will be alone in your home. This may not be possible.
Headphones prevent others in your home from hearing what I am saying.
I will be alone in my home and I routinely use headphones for online work.

Our health:

If either of us is not well enough to work we will, as usual, give each other as much notice as possible.

How we can protect each other from COVID 19

As you know, most therapists don’t touch clients.
I’ll empty tissues from the bin after meeting with every client.
As usual, I’ll remove used water glasses from the room.
I have antiseptic (not antiviral) surface wipes in the room and you’re welcome to use them.
There is a national shortage of hand sanitising gel. If you have some, please use it, as I do.

The virus is spread via respiratory droplets.
There’s no evidence that it’s spread via tears.
I often have a tissue in my sleeve that I sometimes wipe my nose with.
I have rhinitis, a thinning of the lining of my nose caused by ageing.

Worst case

In the extremely unlikely event of me becoming seriously ill I have a therapeutic will.
This is standard practice for therapists in private practice.
If I become too unwell to contact you, a colleague will contact you to let you know and, if necessary, to help you get support.
In the extremely unlikely event of you becoming seriously unwell you are not obliged to let me know.
If you would like me to know, please feel free to tell me or to give my number to someone you trust and ask them to contact me.

Public health and confidentiality

It is possible that in the future, public health officials will need the names and contact details of people that someone with a diagnosis of COVID 19 has been in contact with.
This is not yet government policy and it may never be.
If this becomes government policy then I will give them your name and contact details but there is no need for me to tell them that you are my client.
You are, as always, free to tell anyone that I am your therapist.
If this becomes government policy you are not obliged to disclose that I am your therapist.

I’ll do my best to keep up to date on any changes in the information available about COVID 19 and change my policies as necessary.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy have guidelines for therapists that you may be interested in, here.

2/3/2020

COVID 19 Winter Gloom

Picasso "Tragedy"

After 3 weeks of storms winter is coming to an end. Londoners have been spared flooding but we’re all suddenly very aware of global climate change. COVID 19 is here and in the space of two days people who dismissed the whole thing as hysteria have suddenly realised that global markets have reacted ‘apocalyptically’ and that their own personal income will be impacted soon.

So much is out of our control that it can feel impossible to make any meaningful changes at all.

If you’ve read my blogs over the years you’ll know that I really dislike the whole pseudo science of positivity.

I’m with Laurie Santos, psychology professor at Yale, who teaches “Psychology and the Good Life,” proposing that by always looking on the bright side we ignore real problems and therefore real solutions. Imagining the worst helps us prepare for it.

Please listen to this uplifting podcast featuring Prof Santos and join her free course, The Science of Wellbeing, which starts today.

“In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change.”

We can’t change the weather or the spread of COVID 19. But we can address some of the details in our own lives that make us live with more fear and denial than is useful to us.

27/1/2020

Remembrance Is Easier Than Resistance.

I’m writing this on Holocaust Memorial Day listening to the testaments of Survivors and their families. Again and again, they talk speak about the deliberate cruelty of their neighbours, colleagues, peers and friends, of children, administrators, managers, of Kapo – the day to day prisoner-managers of concentration camps. Again and again, presenters insist that they focus on the genuinely heroic people who risked their lives to help Jewish and other people that the Nazis systematically murdered.

The voices of Survivors and their descendants take precedence on Holocaust Memorial Day, to preserve and honour the memory of those killed, to hear the generational impact of the Holocaust.

But this is published the day after because we also need to hear about the many more than 6 million people who allowed the holocaust to happen and positively participated in it.

The mother in law of a friend of mine kept her Nazi uniform in her wardrobe until she died. She didn’t have horns, didn’t goose step down the road, by all accounts she was a normal housewife until she died a few years ago.

Rochus Misch, Hitler’s bodyguard, died in 2013 unrepentant. Like many Germans of his generation he said that he knew nothing about the concentration camps, nothing about the abysmal brutality of his Party.

But then, so did America and Britain, as early as 1941

The picture that illustrates this piece is of Nazis on holiday. Ordinary, hard working taxpayers, respectable, intelligent, fun, family people doing a respectable, legal job.

The water in Germany wasn’t poisoned from 1939 to 1945 and it wasn’t in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, the Americas, Greece, Assyria, Serbia, Ukraine, Indonesia, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Northern Iraq, Darfur, China or Myanmar. The British weren’t suffering from insanity in South Africa when we set up concentration camps at the turn of the 20th century, or at Amritsar, Bengal or Kenya.

As a society, we always vote in favour of reduced State benefits and we all know about the hundreds of thousands of deaths and the endless grinding misery caused to the most vulnerable by austerity. The people most likely to vote in favour of this are least likely to be impacted by it. We know that it’s only when the more affluent are affected by things like the poll tax or cuts in tax credits and other State Benefits that they take these issues seriously, and only then does political change occur, because we believe that the poor are responsible for their own misery. The working poor can look down on the destitute and homeless. The disabled, who have suffered terribly under austerity, can scapegoat the mythical 'scrounger' someone who lies about being ill in order to live on £73 a week and be called in to endless meetings to prove how ill they are.

Every single one of us is capable, not just of allowing but of actively participating in causing terrible harm to people we don’t know, and sometimes to people we do know. The reason our prisons routinely produce career criminals is because in the UK we want all prisoners to suffer. It doesn’t matter if they’ve not paid their TV license or are 12 years old, if they’re mentally ill or destitute, if someone’s in prison we resent them having sufficient food. The death penalty remains very popular, and if you gamble put £5 on it being discussed in Parliament within the next 5 years. Very few of the people who want other people to suffer – not to be rehabilitated and returned to be useful to society, but to really suffer, often to be sexually tortured – would identify as sadists. Any number of people who want a return of the death penalty are highly educated, excellent company, good, friendly people who just want to kill other people.

5 days before Holocaust Memorial Day people we very recently chose to represent us voted to prevent refugee children being united with their parents. These politicians have huge public support, the same public who yesterday bowed their heads and shed a tear for people dehumanised by a State that also had huge public support.

Humans are pretty simple: if you’re in our gang you must be good or you wouldn’t be in our gang. Anyone not in our gang might be tolerable, but some will be our enemy, and many of our enemies are so unlike us that they can should be harmed and sometimes killed.

Some years ago the friendly husband of a lovely woman told me about his latest design, a belt with pockets for cigarettes and a lighter. “We’re aiming at 13- to 15-year-old girls.” He’d made entirely legal fortunes from this kind of business, getting his designs made in China or India, avoiding rather than evading paying taxes, resenting the minimum wage, and was welcomed as a good chap within his social circles. He was friendly, generous, and always found a silver lining to every cloud. 13-year-old girls – not girls like his daughters or the daughters of his friends - were things to make money from, as were the Chinese or Indian workers creating his cheap goods.

Don’t mistake pleasant people for decent people.

Annoying people who won’t shut up about how awful things are are the ones who get things changed for the better.

None of us is entirely innocent. Our success as a species is due to our innate, predatory aggression. If that statement horrifies you or makes you proud you may as well be horrified by or proud of walking upright on two legs. There’s no shame or pride in being what we are: mammals with sharp teeth and forward facing eyes who are also capable of great acts of generosity, sacrifice, even heroism, for people we care about. The work, certainly of therapy but perhaps of being alive, is about becoming as fully rounded as we can be, about being able to look at parts of ourselves we find difficult, shameful, even frightening, and accepting that they belong to us as much as the lovely, friendly, hard working, respectable, helpful, generous, caring parts.

Because that which we find unbearable in ourselves we dump on to others. And history endlessly illustrates where that leads.

28/1/2019

Certainty Is Not Synonymous With Truth.

Illustration by Dominic McKenzie

This morning a woman* on the tills suddenly dived into a monologue: “There’s no good news, I just wish Brexit would be over, we’ll wake up one morning and it’ll be done and we won’t notice any difference. We’ve got to stop all these foreigners from coming in and using our health service and being on benefits, we just can’t afford them any more.”

Part of a therapists training is to learn to hold a neutral face and non-confrontational eye contact and I was glad I had been using these skills just minutes before because I was amazed and then curious: what was going on for this woman? How far would she go? For how long?

She had quite a way to go. She was livid that her vote – the only vote she’d ever cast – 'was being ignored.' I learned about her family and how confident they were that we’d be just fine after Brexit because of our existing trade deals and because of the high status Britain has in the world.

I stopped the interaction at that point - smiling and behaving like a customer - for a couple of reasons. The person working beside this woman was black. For all I know he too may have voted to leave Europe, he might be in complete agreement about ‘foreigners,’ he might have been stone deaf, but for me the use of the word ‘foreigners’ was so powerful that I was no longer comfortable with how it might be impacting him. Secondly, the woman was beginning to move in an increasingly agitated way. There’s a way of being as a therapist that gives space which often fills with powerful feelings, feelings that we know to be only part of reality, and in the confidentiality of a boundaried space those feelings and words can be aired, held without judgement and examined. A shop queue is not that space.

The encounter troubled me deeply. What should I do? I could accept this woman’s monologue for what it was - unbearable distress - knowing that it was possible that the woman would be shocked at herself and not repeat it or, more likely, that someone would make a complaint about her. Where do my responsibilities to this woman, to the social contract and to my own conscience lie? Do I let her take enough rope to hang herself? Isn’t that how this works, that we push boundaries until someone pushes back?

I don’t know what the right thing to do might have been but this is what I did. I spoke quietly and without heat to another member of staff at the customer service desk. He took me seriously and although he apologised he knew I wasn’t looking for that. I didn’t identify the woman and emphasised how distressed she seemed, that I wasn’t making a complaint and that I didn’t want anyone punished. He said, “It sounds like she’s on the edge. If she’s feeling like that lots more people probably are,” and I relaxed. That took 5 minutes of my time and I was able to hand over my own anxiety to someone who was in a position to deal with the situation more meaningfully than I.

However we voted or didn’t vote in the referendum, whatever the rights and wrongs of it all, we are living through volatility unseen for generations and it’s exhausting. We are treating each other in hateful ways and there is very little that anyone can do about it because we seldom get the opportunity. And sometimes there’s an opportunity where we might not recognise it.

We don’t have to take refugees into our own home but we can understand that brown and black mothers love their children as much as we love ours, and imagine what it would take for us to put our baby into an overcrowded boat knowing that in the next few minutes they may drown. We don’t have to give all our possessions to homeless people but we can understand that homelessness, addiction and mental illness cost the public purse vastly more than social housing, and remember that social housing was originally for everyone, whatever their income, because that’s what a vast majority (the military more than any other section of society) voted for.

We can ignore racism, or confront it face to face, or make an entirely justified complaint. Or we can attempt to address the situation without aiming to make anyone’s life a misery. We can feel contempt for the 1 in 12 people who are holocaust deniers, and despair or understand that this was a poll of just 2000 people, and that it speaks to a need for much greater social mixing, every day, forever. We can clutch our pearls at the video that’s doing the rounds again of a 4 year old and his granny yelling “Millwall, fuck ‘em all, fucking black cunt,” for the camera and demand someone saves us from them. Or we can understand that this attitude is very far from unusual, that it’s held by people who are charming, polite, solid churchgoing members of rural communities who would not dream of uttering such profanities, and that this family are very likely to be the epitome of the much admired Hard Working Tax Payer.

Complexity is gruelling. There are seldom straightforward answers to anything. If concepts like “keep an open heart” help then use them but what you may actually be doing is approaching a problem logically and strategically, for the best possible, most sustainable outcome. It’s not as satisfying as knowing that the person causing you grief is a dangerous animal or an elitist libtard pervert but at the very least it keeps your options open. At best, it makes you a wiser, more rounded person.

Even if you get it wrong.

*I’ve aimed to fictionalise events sufficiently so that the people involved would not recognise themselves.

9/7/2018

No One Is Coming To Help

The estate management service is contracted to cut the grass every 2 weeks between April and October and now, having erased the last remains of desiccated vegetation two weeks ago, they're slicing into dust.

The estate managers make soothing noises and nothing changes.

Everyone is fulfilling the terms of their contract.

And you can bet that if they didn’t there would be residents who demanded that they do, because they’ve paid for the contract to be fulfilled.

In the years that I’ve seen clients, both as a volunteer counsellor and in private practice, it’s been clear that people want to do their best which for a huge majority means fulfilling their contracts and avoiding trouble. They work full time on a part time contract, take on more and more work, don’t let their team, clients, boss or family down all the while becoming more and more frustrated, exhausted and despairing.

Underneath these behaviours is often a fear that they will be seen to be not even deficient but just different and different is bad. All too often they have a boss who is putting pressure on them to do more. Never mind that their boss is also under pressure, the burden just gets passed down.

There’s no good end to this. People get ill and go off work: if they’re employed they at least have the backup of sickness legislation, if they’re self-employed they lose income hand over fist with very serious implications. Teams have to take up the burden of an absent colleague, customers have to wait and vulnerable people’s services become less functional until they become harmful.

Blame rears its head. People who have followed policies and made all the right noises cannot be to blame; look, here are all the boxes, ticked. People who have become ill may well be to blame, particularly if that illness isn’t physical or if a physical illness is invisible. Slipped discs, irritable bowel syndrome, stress, migraines, well, anyone can make them up, right? Looking meaningfully at the causes of stress, of illness, doesn’t pass through anyone’s mind while finding and getting rid of a scapegoat makes everyone feel better for a month.

‘We’re not getting the support we need,’ is a truism. I can’t think of one group of working people who is. Because what almost every working person needs is less work.

I mean it.

Healthy people of working age in the west are most likely to find satisfaction by working an 8 hour day, sleeping for 8 hours and doing what they want for 8 hours. That’s well established and we are simply not prepared to take responsibility for it, waiting like a damsel in distress for someone to come and rescue us. Worse, growing numbers of people embrace the performance of martyrdom finding perverse pleasure in and measuring their worth by their public suffering.

There’s a reward in being seen to be faithfully ploughing on, not letting anyone down, being good. Being very, very good. That’s fine, go giddy with masochism, but be aware that you’re doing it and take responsibility for it.

People who don’t get gratification from overwork are directly and adversely impacted by people who do. An organisational culture of virtue/performance overwork can begin with just one person, becomes normal then expected from everyone. A good manager isn’t one that goads their teams to further work but who has the confidence and wisdom to say, “Mary, John, I can see that you really want to do your job well. But that means taking the time to go home and relax. You’re putting other people under unnecessary pressure. We’re working for the long term here, sickness and burnout are avoidable costs to our business.”

Yes, absolutely easier said than done. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. It just means that you treat people respectfully rather than like a herd of abused donkeys. You don’t overload your business. You don’t take on work you can’t fulfil without brutalising yourself or your workforce. You accept that there are endless numbers of people who need help and that your power to help them lies more in your vote than in your ability to work an 18 hour day.

While we wait for the entire culture of the UK to alter you may have to take your life into your own control by making long term plans involving seeking a new job, retraining, moving, all kinds of profound and stressful changes. You may have to lose money. You may very well lose status.

Genuine self respect will lead to people treating you with genuine respect and that is worth more than a title and a 50-hour working week. You’ll have your price, everyone does, and balancing your financial needs against your long-term wellbeing is a delicate matter. The sooner you begin the sooner you’ll find a better, more satisfying way of living.

But you have to begin.

16/5/2018

Mental Health Week Is Only As Good As You Make It

Stress is the theme for this years Mental Health Week and there are announcements across media including a Mental Health Minute across commercial radio and the BBC performed by royals, Lady Gaga and Judy Dench.
Huge amounts of time and money have been spent on trying to get us to take stress seriously, from luxe adverts to hard legislation.

But we won’t.

We won’t because if we could we would but some of us are in a situation where if we were to we’d start to fall behind on the mortgage, rent or other essential payments.

We won’t because we don’t have the necessary backing from managers who in turn are unsupported. The internet is absolutely heaving with research around how management can make the workplace less stressful and techniques that individuals can use to manage personal stress, and as a nation we are dropping like flies. That's because workplace stress is seen as a badge of honour and these techniques are like using a water pistol to put out a fire.

We won’t because being overworked has become a virtue. A significant number of us work over 45 hours a week and Londoners work, on average, three weeks more than people who live outside of London and we’re proud of it.
On average men work longer hours than women and women do countless hours more housework, childcare and emotional labour. If you’re not constantly on the go, and your children are not in several after-school clubs as well as doing homework then WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I’m proposing two things:

You have more choice than you know.
If you don’t stop to think about this you will be forced to by illness which will cause you to come into contact with the DWP. If you think you’re stressed now read some of the stories from people who are humiliated and made destitute and suicidal by the DWP.

Increasing numbers of us have moved from stress to burnout. The difference? One can make you ill. The other can devastate you. Working conditions in the 1840’s to 60’s were horrific with 12 hour days and 7 day weeks, 5 year olds working and people sharing beds on a shift system but people got on with it because they had to. Happily, we have much better choices. We just don’t take them.

Like ‘mental health’ ‘Wellbeing’ is overused to the point of meaninglessness, reduced to chocolate, bubble bath and gin for women, exercise and material acquisition for men. You might get a five minute buzz from these things but they’re not going to save you. Your boss is not going to save you. The law is not going to save you from your boss unless you are very, very rich in which case you can afford to walk away from your job. Our political landscape is heading swiftly backwards in time and we are encouraged to vote to harm ourselves.
Here are 3 meaningful opportunities to avoid burnout and limit stress:

1. Join a Union.
Get over any derisive feelings you may have about flat caps and whippets, ask yourself who benefits from you having those derisive feelings, and join an organisation that will represent you if you are treated badly by your employer. Whether your employer recognises a Union or not is irrelevant.
If you are an employer, ask for Union input. Get over any fearful feelings you may have about three day weeks and militant wreckers and discover how Unions can make your life better and your business more robust. Look to Germany where Unions and employers work together routinely, respectfully and productively. High staff turnover and unsafe working practices cost businesses avoidable losses.

2. Discern how status is making you anxious.
It’s not unusual to not be able to tell who is very high status because their self esteem is such that they don’t care a great deal about what they look like or what car they drive. It’s genuine nonchalance not overcompensation for feeling unable to advance; their self-worth isn’t affected by their hairstyle or suit, by being seen to be having a wonderful life on social media or going out with the boys every single evening.
If both of you have to work in order to cover childcare costs or to pay for two cars consider how much being employed is worth financially and in terms of status to you as individuals. Could you both work part time? Or is it important to your social standing to be seen to be employed?

3. Explore how you think about other people.
There’s an element to many peoples’ personality where we are willing to suffer as long as we can cause people who are weaker than ourselves to suffer; it’s called 'Punching Down’ or ‘The Crab Bucket.’ We will embrace the identity of Hard Working Tax Payer because we hate scroungers on benefits. We would rather do without something that is in our grasp than help someone else get something. This grudging approach to life has its roots in fear and feeds on hate - and fear causes the release of adrenaline. Yes, immigrants exist. Yes Islamic terrorism is real. Yes, people on benefits cost £109.8 billion. And immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take, terrorism in the UK has never been lower (while rates of domestic violence are greater) and old age pensions account for nearly half of welfare spending, benefits for working people take up almost the other half and Jobseekers Allowance is up 1% of the total.

If you know these facts and still feel angry or grudging about immigrants, Muslims or people on benefits you will suffer from a kind of confusion called cognitive dissonance which is a type of stress. You can choose to make large areas of your areas less stressful just by thinking carefully, logically and with an open mind which is precisely what counselling is. Learning to think in this way, to consider complexity, to deal with nuance, to recognise that you don't know what you don't know is much harder than it sounds which is why we need people to help us. And it’s absolutely worth it.

NB My levels of stress went through the roof when the comparisons graph image totally refused to be embedded in the text. After half an hour I gave up. This doesn't mean I'm a quitter and have failed and should keep going until it goes right. It means the software is playing up and it's out of my control until someone else repairs it. It means that I believe you're an adult and can cope with imperfection. And it means that my life is worth more than obsessing with something that won't work. So is yours.

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