New age, new challenges

This profile article was published in the York Press on Tuesday, November 19th 2019

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/18033538.not-write-off---retirement-not-option-70-rita-leaman/https://alisonrussell275.blogspot.com/2019/01/

November's column (see previous blog) was published as part of a two page article about my real name personna, Rita Leaman.

It is now February 17th 2020 and I've taken time off from posting on the blog to reflect and consider how I feel about continuing with the blog. My final column was published on Tuesday, December 10th 2019 and will follow. 

©AlisonRRussell2019

Let the past go.

       
       The monthly column in the York Press. Published April 7th, 
       2014
              http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/health/11131659.Mind__body___soul__Put_the_past_behind_you/
       
       Plus added paragraph*.

April’s Column

There were times recently, when I felt as if I was being hurled around the universe in Dr Who's Tardis. No adventures in the future, but numerous trips, both physical and emotional, into the past. These included two funerals, a college reunion, a BBC5Live anniversary reunion, a grandson in a school concert playing a superb Beatles medley and the first Mother's Day after my mother's death last year.

Emotions experienced ranged from hilarity, laughter, poignancy, joy, sadness to tears. To my surprise, most tears trickled down my cheek at the school concert.

Over two weeks, I met some wonderful, inspiring, courageous, ordinary people. People who reminded me of past loves, hurts, adventures, successes, failures, hopes and dashed expectations.  And that's the point. Whatever the experiences, they were all in the past.

It was boys at the concert that really bought this home. Two hundred teenage boys full of expectations of a future, just as I was, when listening to the Beatles music in the 1960s.  Expectations of life that will turn out to be nothing like they may be imagining. 

I discovered as a psychotherapist, that the majority of reasons people become unwell with emotional health problems, is that they are endeavouring to change things in their life that cannot be changed.  Too often people want to change the past and get stuck in therapy, on medication or with addictive behaviours, trying to do the impossible or waiting for the impossible to happen.

          * It came towards the end of a residential study week for the   
       psychotherapy diploma in 2000. The subject under discussion
       was 'Spare Capacity'. The tutor explained that, as therapists
       we should make sure we had 'spare capacity' for the work we
       were about to undertake. Physical and emotional spare        
       capacity.  I would add ethical principles too.

       So it was in 2010, when three years of family illness elsewhere
       in the UK, a house renovation and move, a downsizing of the
       practice and writing about the subject matter of emotional 
       maturity, that one day a client sat in front of me and my
       feelings were ones of frustration. Frustration that the client
      wanted to cling on to the past, believing it would change. They
      were not ready to change the present and future.

       I went home and knew that I had no spare capacity left. No
       spare capacity to 'care'.  I knew that I shouldn't see clients
       anymore. I couldn't be true to my ethical principles and run an
       ethical practice.

       I still felt I could help people and loved writing. As a result
       in 2013, the book was published and it gives me a deep sense
       of satisfaction, when feedback confirms that I made the right
       decision.
  
      Reflection

Imagine a rainbow.

It could be a memory of a real experience, or a figment of the imagination. 

We become lost in wonder at the rainbow’s form and the spectrum of rich colours in a changing sky. 

We are momentarily entranced and we marvel at the rainbow’s natural beauty and its transient nature.

Our eyes wander to where the end of it disappears... The image fades. 

It was a moment of innocent wonder and curiosity. 

For a few precious seconds the intrusion of our everyday activities was excluded. 

No harm was done. In fact, we may even feel uplifted.

Now, let us imagine another rainbow. 

Again, we become entranced by it, but this time we concentrate on where the rainbow ends. 

We remember the stories and myths we heard as children. 

Is there really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? 

A pot of gold that would provide a resolution to all our problems? 

We want it, and we want it now!

Leaving common sense and reason behind, we chase the end of the rainbow, again and again. 

We keep trying, but the end is just out of reach and always unobtainable. 

We feel disappointed, frustrated and weary. 

Will we ever reach it? No. The pot of gold of resolution is the delusion in the illusion, but we continue to reach for and chase the end of the rainbow. 

In fact, the more we try, the more we can become deluded. 

We can become emotionally and physically unwell.

©AlisonRRussell2014

See beyond the clouds

The monthly column in York Press on Monday, March 10th 2014.
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/health/11065570.Body__mind____soul__See_beyond_the_clouds/?ref=arc

My husband was in a lift in an office building.  As the doors opened, a woman said, quite randomly, “ Aren’t birds wonderful? It doesn’t matter what happens to them, they always begin a new day singing.”  I’m not suggesting that human beings can get up each day with their hearts bursting with joy, despite awful events that may have befallen them the day before, but nature can make us think. There is much that provides each of us with the lessons of life and shows us what to do with our resources – if we want to learn from them. 

At the moment, the gardens, hedgerows, fields and parks and beginning to burst into bud and flower. Whatever the winter provides, too dry in 2012, too much snow last year and too much rain this winter, vegetation springs to life again. It adapts. One of the reasons for the stoical, adaptable British character has been attributed to the weather. I recall my geography teacher telling us that, “Britain doesn’t have a climate, it has weather.”  Most weeks we have to manage thwarted expectations and just get on with it. Taking a niece to a theme park, we got onto a ride in the pouring rain. The attendant said, “do you mind if I ask, why do you come here on a day like this?” He had a point, but my reply was, “ because my niece is visiting, this is what we planned, so we’re just getting on with it.” Nature doesn’t blame and make excuses.

Outside can be our classroom.  Snowdrops are one of the most fragile flowers in the plant world. It is so easy to crush the stem, even with careful handling, yet they come through the earth when it’s at its hardest and coldest – they thrive in those conditions. A fresh dumping of snow can arrive, disrupting people’s lives, yet the snowdrop still survives.

A rose bed in winter can look a sorry sight, full of bare twigs. Cut them back, surround them in manure and a few months later, they produce colourful, sweet smelling, beautiful flowers. 

The sun is always in the sky during daylight; it’s just that sometimes cloud hides it. Taking off from an airport in the pouring rain and going up through the clouds never fails to lift my spirits. Rainbows too.

Reflection

This is an adaptation of a traditional story, which is a favourite teaching tale.  A man was sitting in a park, on his lunch break. He noticed a chrysalis on a shrub. He watched, fascinated and enthralled as he saw a butterfly begin to emerge.  After a time, the butterfly stopped moving. The man thought the butterfly was stuck and decided to help.  With the utmost care and very gently, he fully opened the chrysalis. The butterfly fell to the ground crumpled and dying.The man had failed to understand that nature had made the butterfly have to struggle to give it life and freedom.

©AlisonRussell2014

1st newspaper column on Wellbeing.

Just before Christmas 2013, I was asked by the York Press http://www.yorkpress.co.uk, if I would write a monthly column on Wellbeing for a relaunched Health, Beauty and Wellbeing.

It was published today, Monday January 13th. 2014. It was written using my real name, as the paper is a local paper and my practice was in York.

Newspapers and magazines are full of quizzes in January. Here’s another one about my life:

What have the following in common?

Managing the events after my husband became suddenly unwell in October.
Mislaying credit cards on Christmas Eve.
Seeing the damage done to peoples’ property in the recent storms.
Finding a diary from 1978, in a January declutter.

The answers are in reverse order. 

No: 4: Looking at old diaries can be a bittersweet activity. There’s a possibility of disturbing memories which are best left in the past. An entry for Wednesday, December 28th, 1978 read, ‘The shops are still shut.” Wow!, How did we manage with such deprivation? How did we do without all that stuff we needed? Except, for the majority of items, they weren’t needed at all. Just wanted and we went without them, because there wasn’t an alternative.

No: 3. On Christmas Eve, somewhere between a bank in town and getting off a bus at home, I mislaid my purse or perhaps it was stolen.  Cancelling credit and debit cards is easy. Frustration arises from receiving new ones through the post over a long holiday period. Even online banking is useless without a card by your side. Result? For over a week, I managed well on what was already in the house. I could have borrowed in an emergency, but I had everything I needed and only went without things that I wanted. 

No: 2. Conversations turned to how traumatic it must be to have your home damaged by extreme weather and what would we save, if given little warning. Laptops, photos, some books and records. While it would be upsetting to lose the furniture and furnishings, I know from previous experiences, that materially, what seems upsetting to lose, is nothing compared with life itself. Life is the most precious acquisition we have.

Which brings me to No:1. For a week in October, my husband’s life was all that mattered. The important plans didn’t matter. The vital appointments and meetings didn’t matter. My surroundings, clothing, bills, wrinkles, didn’t really matter. Life is what mattered. Medical staff, family and friends were precious too.

Reflection

Do you need something or just want it? The following may be helpful: 

I asked for strength and I was given difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for wisdom and I was given problems to learn to solve.

I asked for prosperity and I was given brain and brawn to work.

I asked for courage and I was given dangers to overcome.a I asked for love and I was given troubled people to help.

I asked for favours and I was given opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted.

I received everything I needed.

Adapted from a prayer by Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

©AlisonRussell2014