The large majority of articles aimed at people who are feeling unhappy about their situation offer bullet point advice. Google “5 Ways to . . .” and you'll see that the first three suggestions based on collected UK searches are “Wellbeing” “Wellbeing NHS” and “Ways to lose weight.”
As the UK struggles under massive amounts of depression, anxiety, rage, fear and obesity, suffering people are desperate for answers. Organisations and too many professionals seem to think that making those answers dead simple, often to the point of naivety, is the way forward. Here’s why I won’t do it: 1. Your life cannot be reduced to 5 simple steps. You are a complex individual. While there are a number of similarities between many people who suffer anxiety/depression/anything else your anxiety/depression/everything else will be subtly different to every single other persons. 2. Statistics are used badly and scientists are fed up with it. Positivity is a case in point. Entire faculties are taken up with the teaching of a psychology model that is based on bad maths.There is nothing wrong with using techniques that will help you become slightly less unhappy, but they will not cure depression or even mild ennui. Mindfulness is another fashionable quick fix that neurologists despair over. You cannot learn techniques in a seminar that Buddhist monks take decades to become adept in. Becoming aware of when you become ungrounded and learning simple ways of returning to the here and now is excellent. But it’s not mindfulness. 3. You are not stupid. If you’re overweight you know that you need to eat less and exercise more. Why don’t you do it? Is it because you’re stupid? Is that why very intelligent people can also be obese? If you’re anxious or depressed you’ve done some reading around the subject and either changed the way you do things or not but find that you’re still anxious or depressed. Does that make you stupid, or are the authors of “5 ways out of Anxiety and Depression!” naïve? 4. You are not a machine. Diagnoses and official pronouncements of when people should feel better or worse change all the time. Overnight, people who were not diabetic became diabetic as the NICE guidance changed. The political climate has more to do with when people who feel unwell should feel able to return to employment than anything to do with healthcare. Entire populations can only be managed by making huge generalisations about groups of people, but populations are made up of individuals. 5. I don’t believe in shortcuts. Emotional distress, once biological basis are ruled out, is a signal that something is out of balance. Very simple techniques can help you cope with the most acute parts of distress but unless you make more profound changes it’s almost certain that you’ll crash again. Coming to counselling means that you’re ready to consider what’s happening in your life and that’s a philosophical endeavour. Philosophy is not something that old dead men do; it’s the foundation of all the different schools of counselling. We all aim to help you explore your own life so that you can make better sense of it – your own life, not anyone else’s - and then understand how you might make changes that suit your own personal situation. It’s taken you years to get here: it’s going to take more than an afternoon to make sustainable alterations that really fit you. If you could do that by ticking a few boxes then you already would have. (See 3. “You are not stupid.”) Google “7 Ways to . . . ” to see the magnitude of the problem: “7 Ways To Die” “7 Ways to Love.” All the millions of articles that pretend change is straightforward don’t seem to have worked. |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
August 2021
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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