All posts tagged: wellbeingblog

What a month and a bit away from Instagram taught me.

I remember when I first became aware of Instagram. A friend of mine was showing me all these beautiful little squares on her phone. I have always been a teeny tiny bit behind the curve. I’ve never even purchased a smart phone. My phone is a kindly gifted hand me down from my much more tech savvy mother-in-law. Nevertheless, I was enchanted by the concept of Instagram: A gallery in my pocket. I’m a very visual person and found the artistry and creative input on each of these little squares to be really engaging and charming. Sometimes I still need to remind myself of that love-at-first-sight reaction I had to the platform. Sometimes it’s nice to remember that there is so much creativity and interesting conversations or new perspectives to be found on Instagram. However, this December, I wasn’t feeling like that about Instagram. At all. In fact, I was on the verge of deleting the whole caboodle. Instagram was making me unhappy. And I know I’m not the only person who might be feeling …

Vision Boards and Some Words of Encouragement for 2022

January is well and truly on the way isn’t it? I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I always have the lingering feeling of being ‘behind the curve’ with each New Year. I seem to still have one foot in the year before and am not quite ready to step fully into this one. This year that feels especially true. I’m now home in Sheffield after 17 months of living in New Zealand. January feels as if it is flying past me as I settle back into my home and reconnect with friends and family. Honestly, its been at times a bit of a bumpy transition. I’ve gone from an NZ summer into the UK’s deep dark winter. For the first few days of being back home I felt as if I’d fallen into a black and white movie. All the colours seemed dull and grey and my eyes struggled to adjust to the change. I’ve also had the sensation of landing in a country that has had to deal with the stormy effects …

Why I gave Yoga a second chance…and gave body shaming the boot.

The first time I attempted yoga was about ten years ago. It really really didn’t go well. So much so that I have a clear memory of leaving the yoga class at the end and dipping into the loos for a cry before carefully schooling my face to match all the other zen millennials’ crowing about the benefits of yoga. This is not what this blog post is about by the way. This isn’t about me trying to convince you to roll out your mat and start cat-cowing your way to contentment (obviously very cool if that is your jam). No this blog post is really about shame, and how we can hold shame in our bodies for a long time. This blog post is about taking a tiny bit of our power back when society makes you feel like a holey dishcloth your dad made from one of his old polo shirts. Spoiler alert: you are not a holey dish cloth and you never will be. So strap in (no pun intended) as I …

The best piece of self-care advice I’ve ever been given and something invaluable I’ve learnt in New Zealand.

One stormy day my supervisor and I were ping ponging back and forth with our frustration about how challenging it is to look after ourselves when our cup is empty. I remember the little attic room which we always met in and the sway of a huge oak tree outside the window that was getting battered by the rain outside. My supervisor noticed me looking out of the window and joined me in watching the tree getting lashed with wind, it’s branches getting bent backwards, it’s delicate spring leaves getting tattered before my eyes. Then I said, ‘I feel a bit like that tree right now.’ ‘Hmmmm.’ She replied, she would rarely rescue me from my discomfort and today was no different. ‘I suppose the storm isn’t the best place to plan from, when you’re in it… you’ve just got to be in it.’ I’ve thought about this conversation a lot over the years. It’s a theme that comes up again and again in my work. When you’re in the storm of a mental health …

Turning Brave Upside Down

‘You either walk inside your story and own it, or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.’ Brene Brown ‘In You Must Go’. I’ve got a secret to tell you. For a little while here in New Zealand I have been living outside my story. I’ve been putting a huge amount of pressure on myself to ‘make the most’ of this ‘special time’. I’ve pushed my heart sideways, I’ve said ‘Yes’ to things I really really should have said ‘No’ to. I’ve tried to be ‘brave’ in the face of loss and loneliness and found myself more lost than ever through that. What is it that we define as brave? What does brave look like in our minds eye? For me brave has always looked like a pretty individualistic pursuit. Brave people throw themselves into the unknown with abandon. Brave people take a deep breath and jump into that murky water. Brave people steam ahead leading the charge with their courage and unyielding sense of intuition that they are on the right …

Guided Journal Review: Finding ‘The One’.

I’m a big fan of writing it down. Always have been, always will be. There are so many reasons why I love writing as a form of expression; yet I think the main reason is a sense of control. If a thought or an experince can be distilled into a few words on a piece of paper for me it stops being this mythical, nebulous multitude of thoughts that I can’t catch into something that can be seen, read over, returned to and for a time maybe even forgotten. I love writing. However, I’m an exceptionally patchy journal keeper. I have countless notebooks that have entries from 2016 right up to 2021. I can go months without the desire to write in my journal (even though I know it makes me feel lighter and clearer). Recently I’ve realised that this has something to do with the empty page. Sometimes I relish an empty page, but the majority of the time when I’m really trying to work through something knotty in my heart and soul an …

What does Success look like?

Yesterday I had one of those days. I sat down to write this blog and had a carefully curated to-do-list of ‘grown up and responsible person’ things to accompany it. This list had time slots for optimising my productivity, bullet points and carefully written out notes to remind me of my ‘intention’ for the day. Then my laptop (which is over ten years old) and has seen me through two degrees and a Masters decided to have a monumental freak out. It seemingly had a mind of its own. Tabs opened at random, the screen blackened out and flickered back to life like it was trying its best to be faithful and trustworthy – but the strain just made it all the more unreliable. Most bizarrely (and frustratingly) the numbers on my keypad decided that it would only show their symbolic counterparts. I spent over two hours down YouTube rabbit holes trying to fix my ailing robot who I am actually very sentimental about. I did it, but it involved a lot of screaming at …

Naming our Narrative

When I first stumbled upon these words they stopped me short. I was taken aback by just how true they are. We have a need to name: our children, our homes, our favourite food…our emotions and internal world. This quote from Ronald Rolheiser sparked a pondering in me; how often do I name my experiences for myself, independent of other people’s labels or expectations? How often do I stick with a feeling or an emotion long enough that I can gather a sense of its character, its texture, its colour – let alone giving it a name. Yet in our culture names really do matter. Names stick. Everyone knows how an unkind nickname from childhood can linger long past the time anyone has thought to use it. We use names as a way of identifying each other; so when someone calls your name, your head turns without you thinking about it. So what happens when we don’t name what’s going on for us internally…what happens if we allow other people to christen it without our …

Taking Breaks, learning to Rest and Leaning into Loss.

Without meaning to I’ve seemed to have taken almost two whole months off writing on this blog. When I realised this my first instinct was to be critical with myself. A voice floated into my mind saying: ‘Another thing you’ve let slip‘. How unhelpful is that? I know I’m not the only one who has thoughts like this pop up from time to time. Then a kinder voice came to mind. One who until a few years ago was buried down pretty deep. She said: ‘You’re allowed to take a break, you’re allowed to adjust to a new season of life. Where did you get the idea that adapting happened over night?’ This question really intrigued me. We live in a world where so much is instantaneous. We can have hundreds of thousands of items delivered to our doorstep next day. At a click of our thumbs (like some tech-savvy fairy godmother) we can consume countless stories, films, art and opinions. This fast pace of life has seeped into my unconscious brain somewhere along the …

Tides of Change and Bright Stars

Once, when I was first training as a counsellor we were asked to think about some of the most significant changes that had happened to us. Then we were asked to think of one change we would characterise as ‘good’ and one we would judge to have had an ‘adverse or bad’ impact on our lives. I’d normally like to consider myself a pretty optimistic person; yet I found the ‘adverse’ changes far easier to pick out then the one’s I had been an active participant in. My counselling tutor then went onto conduct a session on our brains negativity bias and how as humans we are hardwired to linger on those tough changes and less likely to celebrate or recognise the good ones. That particular afternoon has stuck with me. Change will happen. Sometimes it will be of our own making (like our choice to relocate to NZ for a year) sometimes it will be forced upon us. We lose our job, we lose a loved one, unexpected ill health. Sometimes change hides under …