Lockdown and building my child's resilience

A post or comment on social-media caught my eye, it described the current situation as harrowing for children. I am not sure if it was a New Zealand based comment or not, but it reinforced for me that as parents we set the emotional tone for how our kids perceive what is happening. I have noticed a prevailing attitude that expects this to be bad for children, that we need to protect them and that anything that scares, challenges or disappoints them is harrowing and bad for them. Actually children are much more flexible and resilient than we expect, and going through tough stuff builds their resilience much more than keep them protected does. This is an opportunity for them to grow, and find their strength and adaptability - and they will if we support them with love and care. I know that parents are getting A LOT of advice at the moment and if you are anything like me you may even be feeling a little overloaded with it all. So I have outlined this in some quick to read dos and don’ts.

DON’T worry so much. Children are much more resilient, capable and adaptable than you think. This may be a strong memory for them, but lockdown such as we are having in New Zealand won’t for the majority leave them scarred for life.
DO set the emotional tone for the lockdown. My son asked my if I had ever lived through a pandemic before. This reinforced that he doesn’t have enough life experience to judge whether this is unprecedented or normal. He was looking to me to give him guidance on whether he should be scared, worried, harrowed, or curious and resilient. So I told him about other pandemics, that at other times in history New Zealand has faced virulent outbreaks, and that times were tough, sacrifices were made but that people were adaptable and resilient and got through. If you can tell tales of (great) grandparents that lived though the tuberculosis outbreaks, or other hardships this can help normalise difficult times and resilient responses.

DON’T feel that you have to shield them from what is happening in the world, or from how you feel about it. It is through having these experiences, and seeing how you cope that our children gain
the ability to cope with the sad and difficult events that life throws up (and it will because life is not all sunshine and unicorns). Share with them what big feelings you are experiencing, what they feel like and how you are expressing them, this models noticing, naming and accepting emotions that is a basis for resilient responses.
DO share in age appropriate ways and consider the amount of news that your children (and yourself) are exposed to, talk about how we know which information is trustworthy and the sources we choose.

DON’T forget about the need for children to move their bodies regularly, schedule in regular walks, and internet exercise classes, skipping, hooping or whatever else gives them a change to express their physical energy.
DO talk to you children about how we can hold stress and tension in our bodies, and help them to learn to relax and calm their bodies when they need to.

DON’T assume that your kids know how to talk to people on a telephone/zoom call, they may need some structure to get them started. This could be helping them generate ideas of some things to talk about, finding something to show to their friend, or a game or a book to read a chapter from.
DO help your children to find ways to use technology as a tool to connect with their friends (and old fashioned methods too - yesterday we chalked messages on friend’s driveways).

DON’T assume that your children will struggle and find lockdown difficult.
DO assume that they have many strengths and abilities that they can use to get through lockdown. Do take the time to recognise and celebrate their strengths (this is often called strengths spotting). Empower them as much as possible to make decisions and choices as they arise.

DON’T feel like you have to solve all the problems because you are the parent.
DO model problem solving processes and skills to your children and involve them in problem solving. Believe in them and offer hope that together these problems can be solved. Gently aid them to keep problems in perspective, without invalidating their concerns.

DON’T try and protect your children from the uncertainty of the situation. I know some children find uncertainty very unsettling, but giving them false hope or denying that the situation is uncertain won’t be helpful in the long run.
DO affirm that uncertainty is difficult, and explain why we don’t know how long lockdown will last. Draw their attention to the reasons why we are in lockdown and to the things that we can be certain about and have control over, such as the daily routine, and choosing pleasurable daily activities.

DON’T ignore your children’s need for a sense of purpose and meaning or connection to spirituality.
DO use familiar rituals and ceremonies (such as around passover or Easter) to reconnect your child with a sense of belonging, meaning and the familiar. This can help them gain meaning and belonging that add to their resilience.

It doesn’t have to be hard - overall kids needs lots and lots of love (not so much the 100 craft activities). Love your kids and be kind and compassionate to yourself, and your children will be all right.

making friends with fear and worry during a pandemic

Yesterday I forgot to apply hand sanitiser despite being in a meeting only a few hours earlier where I was told to apply it after every client and given a bottle that was in my pocket. I had got too involved in what I was doing and it had not become top of mind any more. Fear has an important role to play in keeping us safe. In this case we could argue that I was not fearful enough, that it is fear that helps me be vigilant and remember to apply the hand sanitiser.

As we face this pandemic and the financial and psychological implications there is in fact a lot to worry about, a lot to even fear. What we don’t need to be worrying about or fearful about is our own fears and worries. When a global event of this size and scope occurs worries and fears are an appropriate and normal reaction. A greater understanding of our fears and worries can help us to better navigate our emotional response to all that is happening. This is written primarily for people who on the whole have a good level of emotional and psychological well-being. If you have existing trauma or an anxiety disorder that is being exacerbated by the current situation you should seek extra support from your health team.

Fear

Fear is an awareness of danger that is experienced physically in our bodies and also interpreted and amplified by our mind. You can see how useful fear is, and you are probably familiar with the ‘fight or flight’ response, that enables us to escape danger when we need to. The fight or flight response is a state of alert in our bodies, it involves responses such as an increase in heart rate, blood rushing to our muscles and limbs and the release of adrenaline. These responses allow you to respond quickly to the danger that you are facing. You can probably think of times when this has been helpful. Perhaps you misjudged the space that you needed to cross the road and a car was suddenly coming towards you. It is the flight respond that helped you dart out of the way just in time. Or perhaps you sped across the playground and caught your child just as they were about to fall off the climbing frame. We might even say afterwards that we did it without thinking, because our bodily response and the more basic parts of our brain took over.

At this time of viral pandemic we do face a very real danger, and it is that awareness of danger that helps us to take the protective actions we need. It is that sense of threat that helps me be vigilant and remember the hand sanitiser. However, we can develop two unhelpful responses to that state of fear. These unhelpful responses come from the work that our mind does with the fear, the amplification and thoughts that occur around our natural fear response. The first unhelpful response that some people experience is that they may be very uncomfortable with the feeling of being afraid, they then begin to judge the fear response negatively. This may become associated with the feeling that they shouldn’t be afraid, that fear is terrible and this can lead them to try to avoid or suppress the fear, or to become fearful or upset by the fear itself (rather than the threat). Suppression can make the fear worse, and people can become quite distressed by their experience of fear. To combat this extra distress we can make friends with the fear, to see it for the helpful message that it is. Some people find it helpful to just thank their mind for keeping them safe when they feel that fear lurking. The second distressing response that can occur to fear, is when we are unable to quiet the flight or fight response, so we spend all our time at a high state of alert, even when we are not in immediate danger. Physiologically the fight or flight response has a fairly short cycle that will naturally resolve and come back to a state of rest. Some people may have more trouble than others coming back to this neutral stance. This may be particularly difficult in situations like the viral pandemic when the threat is all around us, and the news is so accessible to us. So it is important that we have strategies in place to quite the fight or flight response (more on that soon).

Anxiety

We can distinguish fear which is alertness to a present danger from anxiety which is when our minds project that sense of threat into the future. Anxiety is centred on the thought that something bad is going to happen to me tomorrow or next month or next year. But our body is already going into the fight or flight mode to keep us safe from danger - except the danger is not in the here and now. This constant state of alertness can be quite distressing for both our bodies and our minds, and is often associated with a certain amount of discomfort and avoidance of actually feeling the anxiety.

Worry

Worry is a more cognitive (thought) based response to things that may happen in the future, it may not be associated with the physiological response that accompanies anxiety. Worries are the niggly thoughts that chatter away in the back of your mind - what are you going to do if your child has to stay home from school? What do you need to do? How will you entertain them? Although these worries can be associated with stress, usually they are fairly helpful in assisting us to plan and remember things and generally sort ourselves out. Sometimes however these can create what I call worry loops where the worries go around and around with no resolution or plan. We became suck in a loop going over the same thoughts. A helpful way to break these loops is to identify the emotion or feeling that is behind the worry as often the cognitive focus is a way of avoiding the emotion.

Responding to Fear, Anxiety and Worry.

Understanding the ways fear, anxieties and worries work is an important first step in helping us manage them in the face of the pandemic. We also need to put into action some strategies for responding to these nomal concerns, fears and worries. Here are 4 strategies that you can use to help with your feelings at this time, they are sympathise, soothe, specify, strategise.

Sympathise
Have you ever thought about how you talk to yourself when you are worried, fearful or anxious? Have a go at responding to yourself with extra kindness and compassion. Emphasise how normal your response is, and open up a little with curiosity about your feelings. It can be helpful to talk to yourself as you would a child, “oh dear one, you are afraid today, that is normal considering what we are facing”. It can be helpful to gently identify the feeling behind your unsettledness. Are you fearful, worried, sad, grief stricken, or angry? It can be helpful to find a kind friend to talk to about how you feel and even about how you feel about your feelings. If you are unable to chat to a friend, journalling may also be helpful. Remember that fear and worry are helpful and normal but do remain alert to any changes or distress that you may develop.

Soothe
Another useful strategy is to be able to soothe both your physiological response to fear and your feelings. Although the fear response is helpful, we do need some times when we are back in neutral and our bodies are calm. As well as the fight flight system our bodies are also wired with a soothing system and we may need to prompt that into action. One of the key ways we do that is through affection and bonding with others, this releases oxytocin and other soothing neuro-chemicals that calm our physiological alertness. You may like to identify a safe friend or family member that makes you feel connected and loved and is free with their affection, make sure you have set up ways of connecting with them (given the need for social distance). You can also take actions to calm your body directly. Breathing exercises (vagal breathing), meditation and mindfulness are all helpful ways of calming our bodies and minds.

Specify
I am noticing that people are expressing a vague and amorphous sense of dread. I suspect that some of it is grief around their expectations of safety and how the world works has been turned upside down. It can be helpful to be more curious about this vague sense of fear and anxiousness. What is it actually that you are upset about? Investigate your feelings and try and identify the root of your worries. What is it that you are actually afraid of? There are many things to be afraid of in this scenario but we will all fear different aspects of it. What is it actually that is concerning you? Is it the fear of dying alone, is it fear of leaving your children, is it the financial impact of being laid off, or is it needing to self-isolate with your 4 children? It can help to try and pin down the key one or two or three fears that are most pertinent and pressing for you.

Strategise
Once you have identified the root of your fears, you may be able to take action to mitigate them, and the ability to take action in turn may make the fears seem less pressing. Research shows quite clearly that things are more stressful when they are unpredictable and out of our control. It can be helpful to identify what is in your control, and make strategies to take action on those things that are within your control. If you are worried for you kids what do you need to talk to them about, or provide for them to ensure that that they are developing their own resilience. If you are afraid of financial recession what information do you need to help you plan for that eventuality. Maybe most importantly of all what principles and values guide how you live and how can you act in line with them each day despite your fears and worries. You can take actions to support your well-being and it is worth thinking about whether the information flow that you are exposed to is helpful for your well-being or adding to your fear and worries. Think carefully about how much information you actually need for your well-being and limit yourself to 1 or 2 reliable sources if this enables you to cope better.

You are resilient!
Finally remember that on the whole people are resourceful, adaptable and resilient and the majority cope with disaster well, and some even come through stronger and with a greater sense of who they are and what is important to them. That means that you are resourceful, adaptable and resilient and that whatever you face in the coming days you will surprise yourself in your ability to cope.

a word for the year

Do you make New Year's Resolutions? Or perhaps you prefer to choose a word that is going to be a theme for the year to come.

Choosing a word seems to be growing in popularity (and I enjoy it). But I was curious is it more effective than making a New Years Resolutions or is it just a fad? If it is more effective why would that be so and how can we gain the most from this reflective practice.

The media certainly suggests that people don't keep new years resolutions. I am guessing there is a number of factors at work there, often the resolutions are made without much prior thought or reflection and are spur of the moment thoughts. There are often well used resolutions that return to us year after year - get fit, drink less coffee/alcohol, stop smoking. They are about the things that we think we ‘ought’ to do, not really the things that we want to do. Setting a resolution in the style of New Years, also doesn’t follow most theorizing and research on effective goal setting. There is much more to it than simply saying this year I will get fit.

I couldn’t find any research on the idea of choosing a word and how it may impact goals and motivation for the year ahead. But my guess is that most of the words that are chosen for this purpose represent values. It is an exercise in identifying how we want to live and perhaps it helps us to identify ways of being that are important to us but were lacking in our life last year. The value or theme word helps us know who we want to be, and how we want to act throughout the coming year. Taking the time to identify your values is a helpful exercise and the research clearly shows that values play an important part in motivation. Putting a value in the center of your year provides a why for what you are doing, it provides an internal reason that moves you towards something, rather than restricting you from things you don’t want. Using the example of a New Years resolution of ‘get fit’, if we changed that to a core value, we may say something like ‘care for my body’. It immediately has a less punishing and more nurturing focus, and it more firmly intrinsically located (my body).

Choosing a word centers us on what is important but it doesn’t actually help us to finish those projects and gain some accomplishments in our year. That is where goals (not resolutions) can come in to help us gain that sense of achievement that is so important for our well-being. The theme words once it is set, lead us towards some well-crafted goals. These need to contain both long term goals, broken into shorter term steps, they need to have a positive focus and stem from the intrinsic motivations that are captured by the theme word or value. If we continue with our example of care for my body, we can derive long term goals (loose weight, be able to walk as fast as my son) and short term goals (replace every chocolate with a piece of fruit this week, park one street further away from work so I walk every day). Now when I go to eat that orange instead of the Tim Tam I have a reason - I am caring for my body - and a long term goal - I want to be able to walk as fast as my son, that will keep me motivated for longer.

Putting these two practices together could be what moves you forward this year.

reflective journalling for professional growth

Journalling is popular right now, gratitude journals, bullet journals, pretty journals, moleskin journals. Books and pages inviting you to write down your thoughts and feelings mostly for the purpose of increasing your well-being and clarity. I kept a journal when I was a teenager, it had a pretty cover. I filled it up with random thoughts, wishes, poems I found, dreams and things that I was confused about. It was like a friend that didn’t talk back or ask questions. It is easy to keep a journal like that, but it can quickly tend towards self focus and self indulgence. Just keeping a journal or writing regularly doesn’t always help with our growth or development. Writing our thoughts doesn’t automatically lead us to challenge our own assumptions, in fact it can if we are not careful be a way of justifying what we already know. Yet reflective journalling has a lot of potential to increase our professional growth, particularly in increasing our soft skills like self-awareness and communication that are so sought after in today’s work environments.

To go beyond just writing down all your thoughts and worries about work to actually using reflective journalling to increase your self-awareness and growth takes effort and intentionality. It may feel a bit more difficult than ‘just’ writing.

Reflection is the skill (and it can be learned like any other skill) of standing back and carefully considering and examining what has happened, what we did or new pieces of information and knowledge.

Reflection is a way of integrating what we know with the actions that we take. Reflection can remain at surface level or it can delve into the depths of our thoughts, theories and the background to our actions. Critical reflection is a deeper level of reflection that occurs when we begin to examine our assumptions and habitual ways of thinking. Being able to engage with this deeper level critical reflection is what leads to transformation and the ability to understand and accept different perspectives.

If you haven’t tried reflective journalling before, a good place to start is to identify one area in which you wish to develop greater self awareness or to grow. You will find it easier to begin reflecting if you have one area to focus on. For example you may choose to reflect on how you present your ideas to your colleagues in staff meetings, or how you carry your mood from family life into your work. A journal is a tool to aid your reflection, but being faced with a blank page can be off-putting, so finding a layout that helps you reflect is important. Some people like to decorate their pages, use stickers, hand lettering and other creative elements, others find these distracting. Experiment a little to see what helps you the most.

A technique that prompts my reflective journalling is dividing the page into four columns. These give more focus and structure to the reflection, and help the reflection to get started (the page isn’t blank) they also help to provide some focus to assist a deeper level of engagement.

Column One: Observe

The first column is for all the observations of a situation that you have chosen for reflection. The first step in reflecting is developing your observation skills, being able to notice what is happening. We tend to be tempted to rush over this part and jump into understanding and evaluating very quickly. So try and stay with noticing, with simple observation without judgement for as long as possible. Keep asking yourself - What else is there to notice? What else do I remember about the situation?

Column Two: Make Meaning

The second column is to help you look for meaning and understanding of the situation and your own behaviour or mood. You may like to consider your emotions around the experience, how it connects to any theories that you know and use, and what assumptions there are behind the actions that you and others took. Another helpful approach is to evaluate what was good or bad about what happened. Even though you are searching for meaning try and answer what and how questions. Why questions can lead us to becoming focused on the past, and to becoming defensive or explaining away our behaviour rather than seeking ways to change.

Column Three: Identify New Actions

The third column it to encourage you to apply things that you have learned from your reflections.
This is a chance to consider what you are going to do or change. It is also a chance to begin to make connections between your knowledge, thoughts, feelings, actions and skills. It might be
a matter of identifying some skills that you need to develop or learn.

Column Four: Reflect Again

The last column is left blank until a later date (perhaps monthly). This is a chance to revisit your reflections and to reflect on whether they are prompting your growth or not. You can reflect on your application of the new actions that you identify, consider if you are learning new skills or trying new things as a result of your reflection. It can also be helpful to look for repeated patterns of thinking, struggles or repeated mistakes.

Reflective journalling is a tool that can assist you to make abstract internal processes visible so that you can learn, grow and develop your self-awareness. Like any new skill it can take a while to get used to, don’t give up if it is awkward at first. There is no right way to do it, so give different methods and questions a try. If you don’t feel so comfortable with structured writing, mind maps and pictures also work well. Keep trying until you find a rhythm and method that work well to promote your reflection and growth.

If you are keen for some help to learn how to reflect on your work, book a discovery call with me to discuss your needs further.

Being Kind to Yourself at Christmas

Christmas - Yes it is that time of year. A time when we are bombarded with advertising, with expectations from our family and colleagues, with more and more to attend and do. A time when there seems to be so much to fit in, as we finish work, celebrate achievements, prepare for holidays and hold parties. This year I have also noticed that added to the normal bombardment there has been a push in the opposite direction. Memes and Facebook posts encourage simplicity, inspire alternatives to consumerism and support ethical, natural, fair-trade and values based buying decisions. We have become caught between two warring streams of thought that want our attention and money at this time of year. It is no wonder we feel stressed as we attempt to find our way through all the competing demands that are coming towards us. Often we feel that it is not what we want that even matters. Even if we want an ethical anti-consumerist Christmas our families may not accept it. I remember one year I put an Oxfam chicken into a family secret Santa exchange - well let’s just say that only one person even understood what it was, and I was not popular that year. Negotiating family communication styles and different needs and wants at this time of year can be tricky and adds another layer to our stress, as we often feel that we are getting swept up in other’s decisions, and that our choice is being taken away from us.

If we want to begin to navigate all these competing demands better, and in a way that reduces our stress, the first place to start is by taking a step back and asking:

What is Christmas actually for?

Why is it so important that we rush around with huge lists of what to do, what to buy and what to eat?

So often Christmas has just become something we do, because everyone around is doing it, it has become uncoupled from meaning and it can leave us feeling like it didn’t live up to our hopes or expectations. Christmas can be stressful because we have lost any sense of meaning or purpose from the celebration. Ritual, symbol, traditions, rites of passage, celebrations and festival rhythms are important to include in our lives and our current western urban life lacks opportunities for these. We are left longing for meaning and opportunities to celebrate well, but Christmas often fails to meet these needs. Traditions and festivals are part of how we express the things that are important to us that words don’t quite describe. They serve as outward demonstrations of our inner commitments. They are ways of telling the stories of our values, of re-centering ourselves in those values and expressing what it is that we value to others. They are opportunities to create and remember shared stories with our families and friends, that enhance our bonds and our sense of belonging.

However many of the traditions and expectations of Christmas lack context for us and don’t appear meaningful, so we throw them out. I stopped making a Christmas cake about 20 years ago. I don’t like Christmas cake and having the oven on for hours to cook dried fruit just when the summer berries and first juicy stone fruit are appearing seems silly. Some of these traditions have been thoughtlessly passed down and are now so disconnected from the context of our lives that it makes sense to abandon them. Yet my mum used to faithfully make my Grandma’s fruitcake recipe that had been lovingly handwritten into a recipe collection. By discarding something that is no relevant I am also discarding a chance of connection to my past and my family.

So we scrap the traditions that lack relevance to our context or lack meaning, and that makes sense. However we often don’t replace them with anything or we don’t know how to replace them with something meaningful. We may desire an informal low stress family meal but it doesn’t ‘feel’ important or any more meaningful that any other family meal we may have over the year. We may have scrapped some traditions and yet often haven’t added back any ceremonies, rituals or traditions that hold and express meaning and our values. In the past these types of festival rhythms connected people to the seasons and the land. For example events like the harvest were celebrated as part of a significant rhythm of the year. These were important connections to maintain and celebrate when life was mainly agricultural. For our mainly urban culture these days it is not so much a connection to the land and the seasons that we need (although I am sure some of you may argue that this would be helpful too). What our communities and families are lacking is a deeper connection to others that creates a sense of belonging, a connection to who they are, their story and their values, and to the value and worth of their story. It is these connections that allow us to navigate our way in the world, increase our resilience and foster our well-being. We need to re-create traditions, rituals and celebrations that give us a sense of meaning through celebrating and nurturing our connection to these things. Re-establishing a sense of purpose allows us to reclaim Christmas from the drive to consume and opens us up to expressing connection and meaning in more creative ways. Creating a new tradition of making shared art work, sharing photos and memories or stories from the year all add meaning and connection in a way that buying things may not.

Traditions are important, but to help us avoid stress they need to be contextually relevant, express our values, add meaning and create connections.

Rituals and celebrations don’t have to be solemn and serious we can all do with a little more fun and magic in our lives. Christmas is almost here but if you do have some spare moments for reflection this week, reflect on your Christmas celebrations and what purpose they serve for you. I have prepared a worksheet, with some questions to prompt your thinking around Christmas and creating meaning for yourself.

Taking the time to add purpose, value and connection back into your Christmas will help you to reduce some of the stress and overwhelm of this season. You can then begin to head towards a fun and relaxing festival.

I’d love to hear what new traditions or rituals you come up with so do share your ideas in the comments.