The Reward is the Journey

I find Attachment Theory a helpful lens through which to look.  This is, after all, where we begin and the point from which our stories are developed.   Attachment comes first.  As human beings, it is our primary instinct:  we prioritise it over everything else.  And this is where Bowlby disagreed with Freud... I am, today, less concerned with the intellectual rift between these two mighty influential thinkers and far more interested in thinking with my clients about their attachment styles and how these play out in each and every one of their relationships.    Evolution has not reduced the power of the attachment instinct.  It is hard wired.   An infant has an innate capacity to engage his or her caregivers through a range of behaviours designed to attract and elicit their vital attention.  This is how we boost our chances of survival.   Attachment Theory provides a very comprehensive framework thro...

The swimming lesson I attended this afternoon took me right back to basics, on my back.  In breaking down my 'technique', I was able to feel, immediately, how much more difficult I have been making it for myself.   I swim, firstly, to relax.  This afternoon, I learnt how much tension I take with me into the pool.  I carry it (like most people, I was reassured to be told) in my neck and, as a direct consequence, swimming has become (I now realise) something of a battle, whether I'm swimming on my front, or my back. There is something different about re-learning backstroke:  it highlights the bad habits I have gotten into very clearly.  You cannot help but notice when you're head is submerged, and you're gulping pool water. The mis-alignment is particularly pronounced when you're on your back, meaning that I came away from the 3.5 hour workshop with some key learning points I will be packing to take with me down to the pool tomorrow.   ...

Enjoying lunch overlooking the Lido was delicious confirmation that the summer months are on their way. I'm only ever one swim away from a good mood...  Swimming feeds my soul.  I left not only feeling full of the joys of spring (and my halloumi burger), but inspired to take the plunge and return to outdoor swimming after a break that now feels to have been too long.   Even knowing the beautiful azure water, whilst beautiful will be deceptive, I have come to the resolve that I will make it in before the end of March!  

I enjoyed Ruby's new show.  I particularly enjoyed her 'take' on what it is that we are apt to do to ourselves, and how mindfulness represents something of a practical (and cost effective!) remedy - not to the challenge presented by living life on life's terms, but to the additional suffering we cause ourselves through the less helpful habits of mind we are very good at mindlessly repeating over and over again (just in case this time it might turn out different), engraining them ever more deeply.  Her neurochemistry presentation was accessible and fun.  What mindfulness meditation offers us is an opportunity to temper the fight-flight reflex that gets all too often triggered all too easily in the stressful demanding lives and which (because we suffer with the disease of busy) we are none too effective at turning off.  "We are not equipped for this century, it’s too hard, too fast, and too full of fear; we just don’t have the bandwidth. Our brains can’t t...

There is a sudden surreal realisation that life has gone on  with little notice of how your life has been forever altered. John Pete Time moves, and passes.  Things settle, and change.  I feel as though the change has been taking place somewhere deep within me.  I have a shifted outlook.  My reality has altered.  Profoundly.  And with it, my perspective is somehow different. The capacity to grieve is as much a part of us as the capacity to love. These changes are hard to pinpoint.  They are intangible, yet perceptible each and every moment that I choose to 'tune in'.  I have a different 'take' on the loss.  It is somehow no longer so immediate, or raw, yet always close by. Each person's grief journey is as individual as a fingerprint or a snowflake.   Earl Grollman I carry it with me, but have found a way of holding it close without feeling consumed or restricted by it.  Like the many little t...