Falling in Friendship

Tags

belonging, father, friends, identity, labels, love

Reading through my father’s memoirs again, one thing that really leaps out is how uncertain he was of his place in the world. He talks of finishing his degree at Oxford and not being really sure of the value of an Oxford education and the privilege that was part of it. He talks of thinking about careers and how money would help some of them to the extent of excluding him. He had friends who went on to do “great” things but he never did. He stood in the sidelines and might have had an important role more than once but it was always in the shadow, never in the light. The one time he tried to stand in the limelight,when he stood as a prospective parliamentary candidate, it didn’t work.

Money has given him a sense of security and he’s found it easier to belong to a country not his own than he does his native country. He has always felt that he doesn’t belong. He got told in his forties to get a proper suit before going for his formal interview. The one he felt comfortable was not appropriate for the role he was going to and he needed a pinstripe which is so not him. He has worked with powerful people his entire life but never been a recognised name himself. None of this self-doubt ever went away and I wonder how much of this insecurity he unwittingly passed on to us.

My father would say now that he knows exactly who he is and what he wants and that he’s living his dream, well until he returned to London he would have. My parents live in their own bubble, one that excluded most of the world which is why it was perfect.

Some of the anger I have over labels is that sense of not belonging. Whether it is connected to the amount of times I had to wave my passport at customs as a child, back in the good/bad old days (delete according to your politics) when that was a regular thing in Europe I don’t know. My parents were also totally wrapped up in the divided identities as Yorkshire v Kent, North v South, softie v tough. We had to choose where we belonged and we couldn’t belong to both.

Belonging was something that had to be earned and I never did. Not until I moved here, to my home of the last 17 years, did I feel I belong. Even now though I walk into my local pub and think that I don’t belong quite as much as someone who has been going there for 40 years or who goes 5 times a week while I merely turn up once or twice.

I will always, probably, doubt my ability to belong. It’s one of the reasons I still don’t speak half the stuff going through my mind on the course, because people may not want to hear it, may be bored, may disagree with me. I may not express my thoughts or feelings clearly and be misunderstood. I may upset someone. My default defence mechanism has always been to shut up and hide and I struggle to reverse that and speak out.

I also realise that while I knew all my closest friends are mavericks, independent individuals they are also honest and open. Forthright if necessary and blunt to the point of rudeness which may on occasion go over the top. But for all that they are complete individuals and totally different they all share that openness and willingness to communicate. My children are all honest and transparent for the most part. Sometimes I wish they weren’t but I’d much rather not like what is going through their heads than wonder what is.

I may never come out of my shell and own up to being me and not some preconceived or pre-arranged (tidied?) version of me, not in groups anyway. There are times when I feel I belong to another plant, such is my lack of identifying with other people’s experience.

But my list of friends with whom I can be as real as I want is getting longer and deeper. I am fortunate indeed to count them as friends and it really is up to me to keep those friendships going.

Tonight I am grateful for those people in my life who I am fortunate to love, truely, madly and deeply. Love ya!

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Diversity, labels and identification

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diversity, identification, labels, mis-identification

ActiveMinds

I came to a grinding halt when asked to list not just the ways in which people are divided (on race, faith, gender etc.) but to list all the groups of each category. This is what I worked through afterwards.

Not everyone gets included. If I label, or list all the groups of a category of people, such as faith, I can’t include everyone as there are faiths I haven’t heard of. Those people are excluded from the category unless I include a group called “and others” which at least indicates I haven’t included everyone but lumps minority groups together in a way that doesn’t value them . The others are the people who get forgotten.

Who creates the labels? Do people with a BAME or LGBTIQ label self identify as such? These two labels in particular are very much imposed from outside. I’m not sure whether one would label it white privilege but it is certainly a bureaucracy that imposes it and that bureaucracy tends to be white. On returning from an LGBT conference a friend commented that she had learned to call people whatever they wanted to be called, rattling off a dozen names.

Sometimes the labels are wrong. White-British is not an ethnicity. Whilst I will call myself white and own that as a label, British is a nationality not an ethnicity and shouldn’t be there. Moreover I self-identify as English, not British, and that’s not even an option. So I feel excluded every time I tick a box that isn’t me.

What is done with the data? Listing out labels always takes me straight to monitoring forms. This data may be used to show that a small charity is reaching the “hard to reach” communities but it may be used for other purposes. The official classification of faiths includes humanism as a faith, so cumulatively the number of humanists is being used to increase the number of people with religious beliefs, as opposed to people who do not believe in a deity. That is misuse of the data.

Who decides your labels? I was told last year by a work colleague that I was a Londoner, and couldn’t class myself as Yorkshire as I’d lived in London too long and didn’t have an accent. Neither of which has anything to do with how I self-identify. He had decided.

Labels require sub-labels. Christianity should be divided into Roman Catholic, Protestants and whatever else there is. Not to mention Anglican or not, the evangelicals and the weird small cults that don’t fit into any broader umbrella. Where do you stop?

What good is the label? If my room for rent advert says “No dogs, no Blacks, no Irish” then the intention is pretty clear. What are we doing with the label to justify its existence? Do we just assume a generic stereotype along with the label? Who benefits?

Is it white privilege to ignore the label? If I choose not to disclose my ethnic origin, or to put myself down as human, the odds are that I am not skewing the statistics much because I’m mostly in the majority. But if you are in a minority, let alone a small minority, that refusal may make a difference to the results and who knows what that means.

None of this means we don’t have to talk about diversity, or that it’s not important. We need to name race, nationality, gender, faith etc. as categories that divide us and we need to be increasingly aware of how they do so and challenge that division and discrimination, whether it’s on a personal or systemic basis. We need to challenge our own prejudices as well as other people’s. Positive discrimination is needed to help restore the balance.

But, we have to be aware of all the side effects of labels and the emotions they generate. This hasn’t really dealt with the anger that has come up for me but I still need to work it through.

Feeling More Positive

Tags

father's voice, placement, skills recording

I’m sitting here, waiting for my tutorial and my skills practice recording and feeling comfortably fine and am surprised with myself. As we went over the rules last week I so just wanted to get it over and done with and I still do.

This week has been a mess but it’s all been good.

I went for my first session as part of the evaluation procedure for a counselling placement and felt hugely relieved from it. It’s not going to be easy but it’s manageable. There are nine of us and we would be ending up working together so it’s basically a lot of normal group work and triads with observers who will determine whether we are satisfactory or not. It’s bizarre but I feel better able to cope.

I’ve also got an appointment for an “informal chat” with a second place and a third one to nudge so I’m feeling better about getting on with it although it all seems a bit of a massive mountain to climb.

I’ve done a bit more work on my assignment and am feeling better in some way about the impending deadline a month away as I will no longer have time to dither but will have to just get on with it. After this slow start the essays then come running in thick and fast so I can only hope that this wobble is on its way out.

I am very aware that all of this comes from a position of not liking being assessed and evaluated and validated and it’s all my father’s voice. My therapist said that I need to get better at telling his voice (at least) to fuck off. I raised my voice to him yesterday and told him he was being crass and he didn’t like that at all. I did hang up and feel both simultaneously proud and guilty but I will work on the guilt.

What the last few months have shown me is that I need to work on myself, to continue pushing on all fronts. Meditation and Pilates are now core (if you’ll pardon the pun) and working on sleep has been really valuable. Looking up mid afternoon slump has made me really think more about what I eat during the day and that has made a difference. Last night I was expecting broken sleep as part of anxiety over today and instead I slept straight through for six hours which is wonderful. That in itself shows how far I have come since my skills recording last year. But I still ned to push myself on minimising TV, increasing reading, whether course books or for entertainment, spending less time doing crap, more time outside, blah blah blah. The trouble with self-improvement is that one never gets there.

That all has to be balanced with the need to slow down, be more mindful and try and live in the here and now without always looking ahead and worrying about what else needs to be done, something I excel at. It’s all about balance. I do need an afternoon or evening meditation to help me calm all this down and to work a bit more on anxiety. So much to do, and so much about being rather than doing.

Overall though, I’m in a better place. Now for skills recordings.

Prevarication Before Anxiety

Tags

anxiety, essay, prevarication

I was going to get up and continue with my first essay. I have put an hour into it so far and have been unable to face it again. I have done many other things this morning, none of them vital or urgent but I cannot face starting on the essay.

My mind freezes up and I can hear panic settling in. We are making the recording soon, after which I only have a few weeks to do the essay. The idea was to do the half of the essay which can be done before the skills recording. I haven’t managed that.

I have the possibility of a placement but it requires an assessment weekend and training days after that. I could be pleased but instead I’m considering how much time that is going to take away from me not doing my essay time.

Money is preying on me too. I ought to get back in touch with Benefits and pick up the argument where I left it but I cannot face it. Money worries me at the moment but I cannot do anything about extra work until the placement is sorted.

What I can do is worry. Worry about my ability to write essays which will come thick and fast between now and the end of the academic year. I am worrying about my placement, whether I apply for me or rely on this. I am worried about time, about sleep, about mid-afternoon slumping.

And then I worry about worrying too much. I can only let go of worrying when I busy my mind doing something nice and relaxing that isn’t really relevant. That in itself can encourage me to get out of the house for a walk which is nice and beneficial but I don’t come home and start on my essay.

What I need to do is have a bash at my essay, do some more meditation, especially with a focus on anxiety, and go for a walk when the sun shines (which it is now) and just stop doing everything but. My stomach might then settle.

Creating a Healthy Routine

Tags

evening, Get! Things! Done!, gratitude journal, mid-afternoon slump, morning, nutrition, routine, stuff

For all that I moan about fighting routine, I need that structure in my day.

Considering that I do not work full time and do not have to commute to a place of work, I find it amazing how little time I have that is well spent and how much I struggle to make the most of it.

One of the things I came away with from my last therapy session was the need to stop complaining about my lack of energy and to find a way round it. It stuck with me as being the fundamental truth of it all. I need to force myself to be able to think when my body says slump.

My focus on sleep is helping. If anything it’s making me realise that I do get more sleep than I think and changing my bedtime routine is helping but I’m not consistent enough. However I still have a mid-afternoon slump and struggle to come back from it in the evening because children come home and I get distracted.

I did what I could have done six months ago, but at least I did it now. I looked it up online. The widely agreed remedies to the mid-afternoon slump are:

• food – eat breakfast, eat protein and complex carbohydrates for slow release fuel at lunch, minimising fat and sugar, a nibble of dark chocolate
• fluid – drink more water (something I’m not good at) and watch the caffeine; looking at numbers, daily allowance (400mg) is about 10 cups of breakfast tea (40mg), with green tea being about 25mg, and white tea less, all of which varies widely depending on the tea
• take breaks – a change of scenery and activity, doing something physical, going out for a walk, ten minutes of sunshine, mixing it up.

I have been trying to do more in terms of taking breaks but I need to think better about food. Paying attention to diet in this way is not something I’m good at and to find sensible nutritional advice tends to require wading through all the crap.

Today I have started by doing an hour’s coursework before my morning Pilates and meditation, so my brain was fully energised to think and the activity stopped me being sluggish. This may be a better way forward and serves absolutely to put me first.

I have also started a gratitude journal on paper, which I dip into during the day but mainly keep for the evening. This is about counteracting all those negative conditions of worth and re-training my brain to be more positive. It quite simply means writing down a few things that I am grateful for and why, being as specific as possible. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.

My ideal evening routine consists of turning off TV and phone, getting ready for bed, having a good hour’s read downstairs, completing my gratitude journal for the day, having a short meditation, and going upstairs to bed and straight to sleep, pausing only to turn on my sleep monitor and sleep story.

For symmetry then, my morning routine consists of tea and a read with a bright lamp and some fruit, followed by coursework, Pilates and meditation in possibly that order. Breakfast follows before I get on with the bit in the middle which consists of everything else.

For completeness, everything else consists of paid work, domestic paperwork, what little voluntary work I have, and course reading. Writing this floats around morning, evening and random which is why I’m not consistent. Sometimes I do a string of daily journals (8 minutes max) and others I do longer posts that take an hour or so, all depending on what is happening in my brain. Domestic chores and anything else gets shoved in wherever. Tidying up, sorting out and binning are also part of my longer term strategy to have less stuff (not just physical) but they take time too.

This is where it gets messy. Forcibly carving out time for self care, course and therapy means that everything else gets shoved into the middle bit, which happens when I’m slumping. Which is why I need to sort out my mid-afternoon slump.

I’m also worrying far too bloody much about getting all this done. I feel conflicted between being kind to myself and accepting that I can’t do all that I want to do just to keep going and wanting to Get! Things! Done!

So Frustrated

Tags

choppy sea, could do better, coursework, external validation, father, fear, introjects, liberation, therapy

I have this knot of fear in my gut and it barely unravels unless I’m really distracted.

Having talked to my therapist about lack of confidence I went back to college this week and talked about it in our triad session. I considered picking some other topic but decided to go with it. It was actually a really good session where she pushed me to say, not what I wanted to say but what I needed to say.

The next day however I woke up with this same knot of tension in my stomach and the same sinking pit in my head that I do not want to try and cross. My heart is pounding just writing this. Although my head has been busy with monologues running through it, now that it comes to putting fingers to keys it shuts up and is lost for words.

I am scared. For the first time in my life, other than having children, I am doing something that is just for me, that is a calling. I want to be a professional counsellor. It feels good and I think I can do well at it and actually help people. It is not a job that will do but it is more than that.

Last time I felt a calling to a career I was a teenager. That was a long time ago. I wanted to work backstage in theatre and went to drama college after leaving school. That all went to pot and it took me over ten years before I could walk into a theatre again, even as a mere member of the audience. I still haven’t got over it and probably never will. It was my dream escape from my father and I still wonder how it would all have turned out differently had I gone to a better college. I didn’t have time or space to grieve that loss, not properly. And here I am again, filling my head up with the idea that I can do something I want to do and be the person I want to be. My parents finally asked about the course, but their onely interest was whether there is a job at the end of it and that was it. If I fell down flat at it they would give that same disappointed sigh and remind me what a failure I am when I stand on my own two feet.

So some of that fear is anticipating a future loss that would have echoes with the past but that may not actually happen.

There is fear over writing the assignments. Because they are not just write 5,000 words on this topic but are broken down into small questions and paragraphs of answers, these are not “proper” essays and aren’t challenging enough, even though I find the idea of working on them quite hard. This is my father’s voice again, telling me that if it’s not as challenging as it could be then it’s really not much of an achievement and not worth investing myself in it. It is also the fact that by revealing myself in the essays I am opening myself for external validation and the result, in the eyes of my father and my last school, is simply “could do better”. External validation was always about showing what I didn’t know rather what I do.

The placement interview really threw me in terms of feeling judged and evaluated and found wanting. I don’t like it. Again it’s my father. His voice ran through our triad session as he kept telling me I’m not worthy for one reason or another.

I felt this session was powerful, as did our tutor who observed the second half of it. I felt, as our tutor commented afterwards, that my counsellor kept my nose to the grindstone and tried hard not to let me wiggle away. As I know from therapy, if I can wiggle away from the painful stuff then I will. I started wondering whether this style of therapy was what I needed rather than the more relaxed sessions I have with my therapist, something I will have to bring up.

There is also the fear of the big unknown. At the moment my life has a routine, however haphazard and a plan for the next two years which consists of getting on with the course, helping 4son finish school, getting a placement and maybe some other work. After that though all I can see is big waves on the sea. Not stormy, but big. And the choppy sea is empty. The future is unknown and a huge blank canvas. Once qualified I will get a job, somewhere and work towards accreditation. But what type and where and all those sorts of questions are total blanks. Yet I want to swim in that dangerous sea.

This whole journey for me consists of:

• becoming single;
• quitting smoking;
• getting therapy;
• blogging;
• accepting that I am a decent parent;
• certificate course;
• daily meditation;
• daily Pilates;
• currently working on sleep;

My listener pointed out that I was terrible at giving myself credit as this is a long list of worthy achievements. Not in my father’s eyes was my immediate thought. All this can be summarised as liberating myself from my parents’ shackles, or introjects, or conditions of worth. It’s about becoming free and I am not yet free.

I Feel Better

Tags

alone, confidence, transformation, validation

It is amazing how, despite recognising that I provide the only validation that should matter to me, I still need external validation.

It is not amazing really as lack of self confidence means that I do not trust my own views on how well or ill I am doing. I do of course immediately believe my inner critic and struggle to get past it.

I have in the past few years gained confidence in my parenting ability and I am aware of how strong that makes me feel. That confidence has yet to transmit itself to the rest of me.

I mentioned to 3son that I was struggling with confidence with respect to course and his response was typical, basically telling me to stop whining and get on with it.

My therapist was much more empathic and said some lovely things about my writing here But still it comes down to I’m intelligent, I’m capable, get on with it.

So I went home and spent an hour vomiting words into my first essay, no look up, no referencing, no research, just thoughts, and sent it to her so that she could give me some nice external validation to keep me going, aka a pat on the back.

I still struggled but felt so much better for having started.

Talking to 3son made me realise how alone I can still feel in all this. I went out with one of my course peers and talked about it. She was supportive but didn’t know me well enough to be magic. My friends are supportive but don’t really understand the transformation that I am going through. I don’t feel that I am about to emerge from my chrysalis as a butterfly but that is the image that comes up.

Crisis of Confidence

Tags

confidence, diploma, pressure, self-awareness

It came to me yesterday after writing that post, that what I was suffering from was a crisis of confidence.

I am not sure that I can complete this diploma. I am not sure I can become a professional counsellor, that I will be good enough. I am not even convinced I can finish this first year.

I am certainly not sure that I can run a household, look after my children, work, look after myself and all those other things that are part of life as well as study.

This qualification, this path to having a fulfilling job, a career even, may be the biggest thing I have ever done (children excepted, children always excepted) and I’ve suddenly got scared.

I think that during term time I was too busy getting on with it to really pause and notice how I felt. I knew it was more intense; I knew I felt the course had levelled up more than I expected; I knew I felt a greater pressure. I think the placement interview revealed some of this to myself as well as the interviewers; this is partly why I have been so slow at chasing other placements.

I felt a sudden overwhelming relief as this all dawned on me last night. I wasn’t getting depressed again. I wasn’t having what could be an annual struggle with darkness or the winter or cold. I had enjoyed Christmas and wasn’t feeling under pressure so the relief at realising that there was a cause behind how I was feeling and it all made sense was intense.

I am not sure what I am going to do about it. I will of course take it to therapy and to my tutor but I am well aware that my lack of self confidence is huge and that it is something I need to work on. It niggles away at all aspects of life but this is the most destructive.

Fighting Routine

Tags

daily, forgiveness, kind, mefirst, routines, self-care

Every morning I have to fight with my routine and myself.

If I had to be out of the house first thing to commute to work I would have a minimal routine that I’d just plough my way through on automatic pilot, but I don’t. I work from home and I work part time, so I do not have to make sure that I get eight hours (or more) of work a day.

And yet I feel guilty if I’m not at my desk by 9am getting on with work like convention dictates. No matter how many conversations I have had with myself about the lack of need to be chained to a computer, I still feel that I am not doing my part, that I am not being productive enough.

Telling myself I am still de-stressing from years of wound up tensions, from childhood to marriage to parenthood to being single, all of these cumulative stresses and strains which have taken a physical and mental toll on me, none of these really enable me to forgive myself, which is what I really need.

So learning to take ten minutes in the morning for meditation last year has been a struggle. It has been a struggle because it forces me to put my self-care first, and this in itself is a first. Now I am adding my Pilates to it. I am also trying to add my journalling to the morning as I find it difficult to find the energy in the evening. All this takes time and despite waking up at 8am in the holidays it’s often getting on for midday by the time I have done all this and had breakfast, washed up and tidied up, ready for the day.

Wow, midday and I haven’t even started work. What I have done though is taken care of myself first which is more important, and something I need more practice at doing. I’ve always worked, whether it’s been going out for interesting or soul-destroying employment, or whether it’s getting four small people dressed and out of the house in the morning. But taking care of myself is something that I am only now beginning to seriously learn how to do and to incorporate it into my daily life. 2019 is my fiftieth year and it’s about time I learned to look after myself.

Yet I am still judging myself by external standards that say I should be doing 8 hours paid work a day. I struggle to do 3 and that includes domestic paperwork and the other odds and ends that aren’t paid employment. I still feel that I haven’t earned the right to spend time on myself. I hear how wrong that sentence is and yet it is the truth.

I am trying to be kinder to myself. Before the house filled up for Christmas I turned the heating up by two degrees because I was tired of putting on extra layers and having cold hands. All those years of my father telling all of us to simply put another jumper on if we’re cold. At 16 degrees it’s still colder than most people enjoy but it feels luxurious to me.

I have also broken my self-imposed rule to not read the same book twice that I haven’t broken since 2008 and am really enjoying reading The Dark Tower, one of my all time favourites. It’s helping me get lost in a book again, which is something I was losing.

This week sees the transition between holiday and routine, with 3son back at work today, 2son and 4son on holiday still until next week. It will be interesting to see how the morning’s tensions work out when the earlier mornings impose themselves, whether anything that I have learned over the holidays about looking after myself stays with me.

End of Year Assessment

Tags

assessment, intentions, New Year

• I have gained my Certificate in Person-Centred Counselling.
• I have incorporated a daily ten minute meditation into my routine and am currently on a streak of some 130 days without a break.
• I am incorporating Pilates into my daily routine in the same manner, doing at least ten minutes daily for 27 days this month. I have committed to the point of actually paying for it.

These are the big, measurable SMART achievements.

1son tried a new direction which didn’t work out but at least he tried. 2son has moved school successfully although he still has a long way to go. He is more self-aware than he used to be. 3son has left school, got an apprenticeship and is happy. He hasn’t sorted out the stuff that he will need to one day but he is otherwise good and developing. 4son aced his GCSEs and is moving forward with his A levels.

My four sons are all moving forward and have all grown up immensely. I no longer feel they’re a heavy weight or that I always have to be the parent. We are more equitable and although we all still spend hours stuck in our own worlds we come together and share activities, fun, nonsense, and occasionally an intelligent conversation. I have become more accepting that I am a decent parent and that is harder than it sounds.

I am also grateful for the all the lovely people in my life, especially for all my close friends who listen to me and make me laugh.

I have become more inward looking, learning to search for the quiet and the calm, to listen to my mind and my body. I still fight to do one thing at a time rather than multitask but I think my awareness of what is going on in my mind and body has shot up. Meditation and Pilates has certainly contributed. I have developed the beginnings of understanding of complex trauma and how it may relate to me. 

Therapy carries on: I’m now in my third year with my therapist. I often feel I need to push myself further to get more out of it. Sometimes I feel that’s my father speaking and sometimes I feel it’s true. I currently do not feel I am getting enough out of it but I also suspect that’s because I’m not achieving goals I haven’t and cannot set myself.

Whilst I am enjoying my Diploma course it is also currently terrifying me, with the additional pressure currently seeming barely manageable.

I do not set resolutions for the new year. Instead I always roughly think about where I am and where I’m going on a termly basis, as that is the chunk into which my time gets divided.

My intentions for the future are:

• to improve my sleep pattern and my daytime lethargy
• to practice longer meditations, at least occasionally
• to continue with Pilates
• to work on Complex PTSD workbook
• to continue with therapy and to consider dissatisfaction
• to get on with course, placement and all that goes with
• to get out of the house more.