What Did You Do?

Under a slow-to-shift low mood, you’re almost ready to begin. A spell cling’s on from last nights losing conversation.

You fix your glasses and sharpen your sketching pencil. Flip chart standing ready.

Chairs set up horse-shoe shape. A first sitting of a new mixed bereavement group. You worry about disengagement, apathy and indifference. Worry always.

People usually some get lost in their own disregard. Some fidget, are self-conscious and nervous. Others feign interest, while some appear eager. More are wary of others and sounding silly.

After introductions, expectations and setting guidance, you begin. We begin.

Initial hesitancy is understandable. Hold your silence. But always switched on.

People, in trickles, bear sorrow. Outpourings of anger and disbelief, sometimes non conversational, civil over convivial. You ensure everyone who wants to speak is heard. You respect those who wish still to remain silent.

Make feint pencil notes.

Some fidget. Some cry and tissues are passed around. Inside their essence lie looming consequences.

Experiences of work and familial change. Ideas of and for change. Alterations within incessant cogs, backwards, still and forwards.

Anticipatory grief. Personal ruptures and pain digging in.

Unknown and uncertainty, standing in your humble reality. A variety of self-soothing is passed around without prompt.

Some process as best they can, still lost in a fog of not understanding. Wish it wasn’t as consuming. So what to do? Deliver listening, show attention.

A serious disposition hangs heavy, predictably heavier at times.

Till death does depart us, a final breath splits living and dying. Glum suicidal thoughts. Best not to be here. Listen first. Safe to challenge, if necessary, second.

Pending death and escapes loosens how people show up. Lives, loves and loyalty ties aliveness. Looser is a precious choice, sunny, dark or clouded.

What did you do on this day? You watered a seed in others, and they in themselves.

You thank everyone.

How quick an hour passes. Aware of what stirs, offer to wait behind. See as many as possible next week. Thanks again. Your flip chart looks empty, yet its filled with pencil words. You invite all to look at it before leaving. Point to some professional literature on a table.

Pencil is light. Erasers are cheap.

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Optimism

With optimists, firstly there is a lining and then they go about making it silver.

In events of adversity it’s the making sense of it that creates the optimism and healthy healing or eases coping.

People who suffer traumas normally suffer stress, two things which are normally bad for people, short and long term. I realised this when my wife went through childbirth, that’s where I will leave it though.

Jamie Pennebaker wrote a book about this called ” Opening Up”. He reckoned prior to the book, that talking about things, ie with friends, therapists etc made a difference, a bit if self disclosure. There was a belief that this aids a persons body as well as their mind.

But he discovered something out with normal held beliefs. Yes, what people do after trauma matters. People who chose to talk seemed to fare better than people who didn’t open up and out. In general, they didn’t go through ‘health damaging effects of trauma’.

He completed an experiment. He asked people to write about major upsets or traumas. Now the people who wrote about the events were less sick than those who didn’t write about their upsets a and trauma. He tracked their progress over a year.

Catharsis seemed to be the answer. This describes folk who express their emotions, ‘getting things of their chests’ or ‘ let off steam’. But contrary to popular beliefs ‘ letting off steam’ can make people more frustrated and angrier. Not more calm. Mmm.

So, what Pennebaker did discover was that, it is the sense making that assists in the health benefits and not the letting off steam.

Progressing to make deeper insights in to what happened improved both mental and physical health.

The use of words help to create a meaningful story. You reap the benefits of ‘reappraisal’, ( a healthy coping style)

It appears that pessimists have to put in greater effort for similar results.

Avoiding prolonged rumination, changing thoughts and setting them in a positive direction works well. Building resilience, coping levels and bettering mental and physical health levels.

Find meaning, understanding and grow, I nearly achieve this daily thankfully, on reflection, it works, sometimes better than others. Longer term however, I know I’ll benefit, as will people around me.

Building great social networks and respectful relationships assists also. Great ingredients of trust, flexibility and empathetic sounding boards knit well for me.

Just simply write:
At least 15 minutes a day
No editing or censoring,
No grammar or sentence structures worries,
Write about events,
Display and express feelings,
Why you feel as you do.
Don’t like writing?
Talk into a tape recorder.

Get thoughts and feelings out
Without restrictions
After a few days
Order and sense will emerge from the writing.

Answer the 2 questions.
1- why did this happen?
2- what good might I derive from it?

Marvellous when uphill seems unmanageable.

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