Promoting resilience and wellbeing

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad or happy”. Ludwig Wittgenstein in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart If you take a moment to stop and think about how you are feeling you will often come up with one of three words happy, sad, or angry.  This is the average number of emotions named by over 7 thousand people in Brown’s research.  Surprised? I was. It made me wonder about all the other emotions, frightened, joyful, disappointed frustrated, bored … where were they.  In her brilliant book, Atlas of the Heart, Brown identifies 87 emotions and is emphatically clear that this is not an exhaustive list.  So why do people, on average, identify just three? Brown suggests that we use these three emotions, happy, sad, and angry to categorise our experiences very broadly.  And this makes sense to me, often when I feel frustrated, I will label this as angry....

    Low mood is complicated.  It has been the subject of thousands of clinical studies and all sorts of contributing factors have been identified, biological, psychological, social, behavioural…..     One of the theories I find particularly helpful when thinking about low mood comes from Stephen Ilardi, a professor of clinical psychology in the United States.    He suggests that low mood can be understood in the context of our stress response never having the opportunity to switch off.  As you know our brains have evolved with a survival system commonly referred to as the fight/flight/freeze (FFF) response.  This system evolved because for much of our time on this planet our ancestors were trying to survive in very hostile environments.   A typical scenario might look something like this, we come out of our cave and immediately spot a sabre-toothed tiger.  Our FFF system is activated, we fight or flee, the threat pass...

  So, we all know the scenario, we have a child who is completely overwhelmed by whatever big feeling has shown up – anxiety, frustration, anger.     Their lid is flipped and their body is surging with a whole host of neurochemicals.   This situation can feel very overwhelming and often we feel stumped about how to respond. The most helpful thing in this situation is connection.   Connection is OUR SUPERPOWER in the face of any overwhelming emotion because until your child feels connected and their lid is back online it is almost impossible for them to follow what you are asking them to do.  Shouting or shaming will further activate the threat response ensuring the thinking brain remains offline while warm words and physical connection sends a message to the brain that they are safe   - this calms down the neurological surge in their bodies and essentially helps our kids to move from “I am in danger” to “I am safe”.   And this doesn’t need to ...

Are you the oldest, the youngest or in the middle? And does it matter? The honest answer is we don’t know.  While there are certainly traits and possible advantages and disadvantages of birth order most research now suggests that inherited temperaments have more influence on our personality than our position in our families. Although interestingly the research also suggests that we as parents have more influence over our children’s experience of their position in the family than we previously thought.  So, holding all of that in mind what do we know about the statistics on birth order First born I guess the first obvious thing we know about first born children is that they are the only children who have the full attention of their parents even if this is for a very short period.  The oldest child tends to be the most responsible of our children, often working hard to do things well.  They see their parent’s competence and want to copy what they see.  From this p...

  Ever wondered how some people just seem to have good habits, they manage to run three times a week, eat a healthy salad for their lunch, stay connected with their friends, practice the piano every day…. you get the picture.   In my last habits blog I wrote about the importance of choosing something so small that it sits just above doing nothing at all and the fundamental importance of consistency over intensity.   This time I want to think about how we can set our environments up for success. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear, suggests that “you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”   What this essentially means is that our environment plays a significant role in shaping even the most minute of human behaviour.   In terms of creating a new habit Clear suggests 4 laws that increase the likelihood of theses habits sticking around ·        Make it obvious ·    ...

  I have been thinking and talking a lot about trust this year and as 2022 draws to a close I wanted to share Brene Brown’s beautiful trust metaphor.   Something I have found so incredibely helpful both personally and professionally.     I often work with parents and partners who are battling with trust.   For parents they often desperately want to allow their teenagers more freedom but feel unable to move away from the “I will allow them when I can trust them” And similarly for partners, they will often feel sad about the lack of trust in their relationship but feel powerless to move towards change until there is more trust. We all identify trust over and over again as something that is fundamentally important to us. And yet our understanding of trust is unsure. Brene Brown often quotes Charles Feltman who defines trust as “choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else”.   You let someone on your team know that...

  John and Julie Gottman just published “The seven day love prescription”.   For the past fifty years these world-renowned researchers have been researching love and relationships.   So much interesting data has emerged from their research but their general philosophy, based on decades of research, is SMALL .   They suggest that “tiny little doses, every day is what it takes to make a healthy relationship. Why? Because that’s exactly what a relationship is – not one big thing, but a million tiny things, every day for a life time ”.     So, what does this look like in reality? PRACTICE . According to the Gottman’s, love is not a feeling but an action.   They suggest that being good at loving other people is a skill that we can all get better at with practice.   Sometimes when we think about connection in our relationships, we think about date nights or a weekend away without the kids.   And because we think about connection in these...

Dr Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist based in the US, has coined the term Most Generous Interpretation. This concept stems from the basic idea that we are all good inside. Adapting this concept creates space for us to be curious about other people’s behaviour and supports us to shift from “what is wrong with you” to “why is this behaviour happening”. So how do we take this idea and make it applicable in our everyday relationship moments?  Essentially, we do this by asking one simple question “What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened.”   Imagine the scenario – you have just arrived home after a long day at work, you come in the front door and your daughter asks if you have remembered to pick up her book from the library.  You have completely forgotten and apologise to your daughter.  Your daughter starts shouting at you “you are rubbish, you never think about me, I hate you” So how do we respond.  For most of us this will activate ...

For young people who are struggling with depression life can feel unbearable.   They often struggle with debilitating low mood, they cannot find the motivation to do the simplest task, they feel isolated and often find it hard to hold on to hope for their future.   Living with a young person with depression can also feel unbearable.   We now know just how contagious our emotions are and anyone reading this who has a child with depression will know just how difficult it is to remain upbeat.   We want the best for all our children and most parents work hard to provide the extra support a child with depression needs.   In many ways this is positive, treating our children fairly means that we need to consider each of our children as individuals, who require a specific type of support based on the uniqueness of who they are. However, with so much focus on the child who is struggling we also need to be mindful of how we show up for their brothers and sisters. Dr...

There is no such thing as a perfect parent, we all get it wrong over and over again. And while we are often left feeling shame and guilt when we lose our tempers or react in ways we are not proud of …. the silver lining may be the lessons our children can learn when we are normal human beings who get it wrong some of the time. Imagine this scenario, it is Monday morning and your youngest child has just told you that they have a project due in this afternoon, you can’t find your work computer and nobody can find the dog in the garden.  This is a pretty typical scenario in many houses on a busy Monday morning.  Your resource cup, which was feeling quite full after a few days off work, is beginning to feel very empty and when your oldest child starts complaining about having to walk to school you completely flip your lid.  You temporarily get highjacked by your own big feelings. Once our big feelings (anger, frustration, disappointment…) are in the driving seat, we no longer...