From Festive Fervour to Fresh Starts – living with intention is a healthy objective for 2024
I am amused when someone asks, ‘Caroline, what are your plans for Christmas?” in September. We spend so long arranging Christmas, and it’s over in the blink of an eye! We look forward to the new year, our annual fresh start…yet months fly past so quickly, and here we are again at Christmas and New Year.
Christmas comes and goes. Take time to chill and relax despite the festive busyness. Amidst the clinking of glasses, vegetable peeling, cream whipping or the chorus of carols, find time to breathe deeply and ground yourself in the present moment. Take off your socks and walk on grass or sand and feel the sea on your feet. You can only be in the moment when the sea’s on your skin!
Christmas does not have to be centred around spending money. Embrace the joy of giving/receiving homemade gifts, knowing that the love infused in them outweighs shop-purchased products. Give something you’ve lovingly made, baked, or created, e.g., a card, cake, painting, or a Spotify playlist.
The list of homemade presents you can lovingly create and gift is endless. Send loving kindness and thoughts of health and vitality to people you haven’t seen in a while – post a card, email, or phone and arrange to reconnect (while you have the chance).
After Christmas, when the decorations and the house are cleared and your guests have departed, sit with the silence, and let gratitude fill the space where laughter and conversations recently lingered.
Make time to pause, rest, and reflect. Post-Christmas days allow the potential for personal insight. If you’re feeling sad or feeling lonely, it signifies the wonderful time you’ve had or post-holiday melancholy.Take comfort in knowing you’ve enjoyed yourself.
Take time to acknowledge 2023. Make space for introspection and prepare for what lies ahead in 2024. Journal about the learning and events of 2023, parts of which you’ll wish to bring into 2024, some of which perhaps you’d rather forget.
January is about taking baby steps in the right direction towards achieving your objectives. Make time for calm and reflection at the end of the year, and rather than resolutions, write your intentions for 2024. How do you hope to feel, or what would you like to achieve? It might be to play the ukulele, learn a language, or understand Quantum Physics. Write the plan for achieving your intentions and your mental, physical, and emotional wellness practices in 2024. Write about how you will feel when you achieve your dreams/goals/intentions.
Choose one habit you wish to cultivate and link it to an existing routine for better adherence. You might decide that relaxation will become part of your 2024 daily routine. Every time you enter the kitchen, inhale as slowly and deeply as you can through your nose. Hold that breath for a few seconds before exhaling slowly through your mouth – your new relaxation habit has officially begun!
This holiday season, may you find a balance between celebration and solitude, action and reflection.
Wishing you a season of serenity and a new year of living with intention.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
Relationship Breakups
Relationship Breakups
We enter romantic relationships giving our trust and our hearts to another with the hope that neither will be broken. The reality is that most of us know what relationship breakups are like and how it feels to have our hearts broken or at least scarred or dented!
People of every age attend counselling and psychotherapy following the end of a relationship. Any relationship ending, regardless of its length, can leave us reeling. If you are experiencing loss following a relationship breakup, here are some pointers that might help:
Firstly, allow yourself to feel however you feel. When grieving the loss of a relationship and the loss of future plans, it helps to identify emotions rather than block them. There’s nothing wrong with crying (although it’s awkward at work or in the supermarket)! Be reassured that the intensity of the emotion lessens over time. Initially, we might go through a vast array of reactions including shock or disbelief, sadness, anger, fear, guilt, jealousy, regret, swearing off any future relationships etc and although we think we are stuck in our sadness for ever, our feelings change.
Sometimes the overwhelming sense of loss follows a period of numbness or vice versa and both reactions are equally human! There is no single, linear response to loss or grief. Our reactions are as individual as we are so there’s no right or wrong way to experience grief or loss so we go through it and we recover bringing our new learning to the next relationship.
Because we may not have been the person to end the relationship, we may feel rejected and get stuck on questions such as ‘What’s wrong with me that he doesn’t want to be with me?’ and if our ex is in a new relationship ‘What does his new partner have that I don’t have?’ This is typical but unhelpful. Try to manage thinking and thoughts so that mentally you don’t enter a wormhole of rejection. We rarely think, ‘what’s wrong with him that he doesn’t want to be with me’ which might be more useful!
Be supported by others. Talking about the loss is helpful regardless of how private you are. Share thoughts and feelings in confidence with a trustworthy friend or with a therapist. G.P.s have contact details of local counsellors or psychotherapists and www.mymind.org provides a sliding scale of fees throughout Ireland.
Although we might not feel like meeting people, stay in friendly contact. We might find ourselves in a position where our friendship group changed as a result of the relationship loss, so try to say ‘yes’ to social invites because spending time in the company of others is beneficial. It takes our minds off ourselves even for a little while. Be with people who are easy to be with and who value your company. If it seems like committing to social engagements is simply too much of a struggle or output of energy, then perhaps take time out to heal and decline invitations, however, put a time-limit on the social break so it doesn’t extend indefinitely and become social isolation.
Invest in a journal and start writing! Use the journal as a positivity notebook – despite the presence of dark emotional clouds, writing something positive every day or writing a positive word can be helpful. Reminiscing on past achievements or issues that you’ve previously overcome can feel pleasant in the present. If journaling about your feelings is helpful, then go for it! Write what you have learned from your relationship so you can improve future relationships.
Examine what might have been done differently, but not in a self-loathing way, more from a learning perspective – what’s the lesson to be learned from this hurt and heartache?
Communication is difficult and we may feel like we were never heard or listened to by our former partner. Rather than carry negativity, blame and resentment towards the other person, remind yourself that you tried your best and the intention was never that anyone would be hurt.
Concentrate on how you can best look after yourself now and into the future. Make aplan of action (in your new journal) or start a new routine for meeting the basic needs of diet, sleep, exercise, relaxation, social interaction etc. Write a daily or weekly schedule, regardless of how simple, because it can help to provide a sense of purpose and achievement when completed. Include self-care as part of the routine whether it is to walk in a forest or play music you love (or both at the same time!), making time to care for yourself is important for healing and recovery.
Exercise is critical to your recovery – it helps utilise stress hormones that can cause physical symptoms e.g. aches and pains, an upset tummy or digestive issues.
Avoid unhelpful and unhealthy choices following a relationship breakup such as using illicit drugs or relying on alcohol to cope or overeating, self-harm, over-working or excessive gambling. Constantly distracting yourself from the reality of your life and the loss may work for a little while but not indefinitely. Instead, pay attention to what you need to soothe yourself and consciously encourage yourself.
Try not to keep false hope that they’ll come back and all will be well once ‘they see sense’. Life is too short to wait for someone to return following a relationship breakup. Respect their decision and choice to end the relationship. Do you want to be with someone who does not want to be in a relationship with you, or who doubts the future success of your relationship? If the answer to this question is ‘no’, then allow them to leave. Sometimes when hurt, it can be helpful to set a time-limit or deadline after-which it is important to acknowledge that the relationship is over, when acceptance becomes the priority (not revenge or ill-will, but acceptance).
Spending time on our own with our thoughts is growthful. Being independent and being able to identify and meet our own wants and needs will benefit all future relationships.
Although it might feel very daunting initially, there is life, love and happiness after relationship breakups.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
Gratitude in a Pandemic?!
Gratitude In A Pandemic?!
We are living in uncertain times and people are affected by Covid-19 in ways which we may not realise. Being socially isolated from work colleagues and family members; not hugging loved ones (or anyone); uncertainty about how or where to meet a partner; deferred hospital appointments and cancelled treatment plans; family living in other countries; prospective parents unable to attend antenatal visits or be present for the birth – there is a plethora of issues outside of staying socially distant, washing hands and disinfecting our homes and/or work areas.
People are suffering physically, emotionally, and economically. It is important that we try to build our resilience for what lies ahead. Now is the time for us to appreciate that we are doing our best. Finger pointing and blame won’t help. It might seem impossible to feel any level of gratitude having lost a job, working reduced hours, facing a divorce, under financial pressure etc. but we can develop gratitude by learning how to control our thoughts and channel our focus.
Life is complex, tough, and unpredictable BUT learning how to control our thoughts can prevent us from sinking under the weight of worry.
Gratitude is training your mind to spot the things that went well rather than recounting everything that went wrong. Focusing on the present, appreciating yourself and all that you do. We tend to focus on the one thing that went wrong rather than on everything else that went right!
Every morning or evening take a few minutes to think about what mattes most in your life. Write three things for which you are grateful – the simple things are ideal.
I am grateful for access to health care, a warm shower, morning coffee, mobility, literacy, a nice towel, fruit, a loving family…
For October, I am encouraging everyone to write “Three things for which I am grateful” every day. On days when it is a struggle to nail three things, maybe ask yourself what was nice today? What went well? Did I get up? Have the freedom to leave the house? Exercise, stretch, speak with someone, have a nice sandwich, read something helpful? These are things for which we can be grateful. I once had the pleasure of meeting Gabriel Byrne who said he is grateful for his breath.
Phone or visit a neighbour or someone you know who could do with a chat. We are social creatures and need connection to feel mentally steady. By reaching out to help someone else, you both benefit. Be the person who is helping someone else through the month and through the winter of 2020. That’s something to be grateful for – being helpful.
For October, maybe keep a gratitude journal. This task becomes easier over time and as the days pass, I found I’d spot things throughout the day and I’d think “well that’s going in the journal tonight”. Give it a go and even if you miss a day or two, resume as soon as you can. There are universal benefits to exercising gratitude rather like physical exercise – we might not want to do it but we feel good afterwards! If we can exercise gratitude in a pandemic, we build resilience to face whatever the future holds.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
Worry
How To Tackle Worry
September brings change and change can bring worry. Worrying is part of our lives but for many, worry can dominate thoughts and interfere with daily life. I have heard people say, “I’d worry if I didn’t have something to worry about!”
Worrying does not prepare us for every eventuality. Life is unpredictable. Even though we worry about the future, it does not prepare us for the worst-case scenario should it happen. Worrying neither prevents problems nor offers solutions.
Worry robs us of joy and can drive anxieties. We rarely think, “what if it all works out well”. Worrying can become a habit. The good news is that most habits can be broken. If we spent years worrying, it is unlikely we will stop overnight but we can positively improve our worrying by undertaking the following steps:
Limit the time you allow yourself to worry. Set aside a specific 30-minute appointment (with yourself) and designate it as your “worry time”. Perhaps 30 mins per day to start while working towards 30 minutes once per week. The objective is not to ignore, avoid or suppress worries but to learn how to contain the worrying so it does not take over every facet of the day or of life.
Postpone. Rather than trying to stop a worry, acknowledge it but delay dwelling on it for another time.
Journal or keep notes in your phone and record your worries. This may appear time-consuming particularly initially but there may be repeated worries or the same worry in different guises! While noting a worry, remind and reassure yourself that you do not have to sort it out immediately, all worries will be dealt with in the allocated “worry time”.
Worrying and problem-solving are vastly different. While we are worrying, we may feel less anxious. While we are worrying we may feel proactive. Worrying gives us the illusion that we are accomplishing something. Constant or persistent worrying can prevent us from feeling while we stay caught up in our minds, we don’t pay attention to what’s going on in our bodies. When it comes to the ‘worry time’ take out your list of worries and go through them. Ask yourself whether the worry is outside or within your control? If within, start problem-solving. List every possible solution regardless of how simplistic. Focus on the most appropriate solution. Put a plan of action into place. If the worry is outside your control or not solvable, learn to accept uncertainty.
This suggestion is tough. Rather than thinking “what if” scenarios, imagine the worst-case scenario. Picture the thing you fear as vividly as you can. Sit with the uncomfortable feelings it raises for a few minutes. Repeat this say every day until the discomfort lessens. Allowing yourself time to feel discomfort over time lessens the fear as you learn to face what was previously unimaginable. Doing this step with someone you trust such as a therapist is ideal.
When we worry, we have worried thoughts. Pay attention to your worried thoughts. Are they facts or opinion, belief or definite? Do you have evidence to support the thought or to dispel it? What is the likelihood of the worry becoming a reality? How would you cope if it did happen? How would you help a friend with similar worried thoughts? Reassure yourself that we do not have to worry all the time and if we find that we are, what purpose is it serving?
Pay attention to what you feel in your body. What are your emotions. What sensations do you experience? Learn how to relax your body and your mind. Give yourself a break. Self-care is not self-indulgent, it is vital.
We live with uncertainty. We always have. Perhaps now is a good time to treat yourself as you would a dear friend and be self-kind.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
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