Talking to yourself

A short while ago I went to the funeral of the father of one of my close friends.

 As is often the case in such situations, the service in Dun Laoghaire combined deep sadness with joy and celebration of the wonderful life Graeme Guthrie lived into his eighties. He was a man of great character and a wry sense of humour, and regularly had letters published in the Irish Times. He was also well known for his extraordinarily beautiful garden, complete with a pond.

 In his eulogy, his son spoke of Graeme’s older brother, who he had played with often but who had died while Graeme was still a child. While he loved and was loved by his other siblings, and later the family he had of his own, Graeme had carried the sadness of losing his brother through his life, until he was 70 years old. Then one day by his beautiful garden pond, he imagined sitting his younger self on his knee, and explaining to him the circumstances around his older brother’s death. After that, he felt less sadness about it, as though a cloud had lifted.  

Sometimes imagining a conversation with our younger selves can allow us to process something that we never fully understood as children. I think everyone at the funeral felt glad that Graeme found a way to ease the sadness that he had felt for so long. And it was one more lesson learned from a wise and kind man.

His letters to the Irish Times were very popular, and the paper paid tribute to his “funny, beautiful, inquisitive and charming” observations after his death. One of my favourites of his letters was published in May 2022. Like many of the others, it is a very simple note, but strongly evocative and makes me smile.

“The sun is shining, the swifts and swallows are nesting, the cuckoo is calling and the mayflower is in full glorious bloom. The only problem is the grass needs cutting so I will have to get up off the garden chair and switch on the robot mower. So stressful.”

Passing it on

Like many women of her generation, my mother used to knit. Growing up we were all dressed in knitted jumpers, hats and scarves, and a lot more. If she could make it herself, my mother would, and as children our concern for our style choices wasn’t a factor in the equation.

She continued knitting clothes when I had children of my own, but as they grew up the world changed. With clothes becoming much cheaper and easier to get hold of, it was hard to convince them into their grandmother’s homemade clothes – and of course, they wouldn’t appreciate the treasure of having something made for them by a loved one until much later.

Undeterred, my mother knitted clothes for those who did appreciate them, sending countless tiny jumpers, baby grows and little hats through various schemes to people who couldn’t afford their own clothes – I never knew exactly where they went, but it was a common venture for women of my mother’s age and I like to think they were useful somewhere.

She would sit on her reclining chair, needles click clicking away - knitting while talking, while watching television, listening to the radio, sometimes in reflective silence as the late afternoon sun streamed through the windows. She didn’t seem to need to pay much attention to it, but never dropped a stitch, turning out beautiful garments finished off from her treasure-trove of a button box. It seemed like an awful lot of work, but she said it relaxed her, that she liked doing it.

For my birthday last year, my now grown-up son got me a blanket. Except, rather than just a normal present of a blanket, he got me a bag of thick, deep red wool, and two enormous knitting needles. It was a ridiculous present, and we all laughed about how the blanket would be bigger than me by the time I had finished it. It took me a few months to finally get around to starting it – I hadn’t done any knitting in what felt like decades.

But when I did, I began to settle into a rhythm. Sitting on the sofa watching television in the evenings, the blanket helpfully keeping me warm even as I was still constructing it. It was impossible not to think of my mother and the thousands of hours she spent clicking away, contentedly absorbed in her task.

Last week’s blog was inspired by Michelle Obama’s new hobby of knitting. She describes in her book the feeling of returning to an activity that her relatives had done before her, and the sense of tethering and connection it brought her. For most of us, huge changes in society mean our lives are almost unrecognisable from those of our parents. But there are still some elements of connection to be found, and sometimes they can bring comfort along with them.

Euan's story

Before Euan began learning about PPD, whenever he had pain he would fall into a “deep depressive state”.

“I was fooled into thinking I was defective,” he says.

He found himself being grumpy, not able to go to the gym, which was a really important part of his life, and not able to play with his daughters.

“I thought I would not be able to play with my girls properly again, I thought I would never do weights again properly, I thought my active life was over,” he says.

But then, he listened to a podcast and began learning about PPD, through which he contacted me and we began working together.

Now, he says, with the knowledge he has gained, he knows he “will fix this”.

He has discovered that he is a highly sensitive person - as he puts it, an amazing realisation that this is where his “super powers” come from.

Now when he feels pain he doesn’t dwell on it, catastrophise or end up in a pit of despair, he says.

“I now know that the pain is a signal telling me that there is something I need to address, or something I need to change. I now see the pain as a tool, an annoying tool, but it is helping me figure out what I need to do to fix it,” he says.

In a letter to his former self before he started learning about PPD, he writes: “Your time is coming. Do not fear this any more. You are stronger than you know and you can do anything you want to. It is time to get excited. Excited that the end is in sight. Excited that this is not the way your life is going to be forever.

“You will be able to play with the girls again. You won't be as grumpy and you will get back to training in the gym. Everything will fall into place. Just give it time and trust your thoughts.”

You can learn more about Euan’s story, which he has kindly agreed to be shared, through this video and letter to his former self on the website.   

Going small

I’ve recently been enjoying Michelle Obama’s new book, The Light We Carry. I wasn’t sure about it at first as it is a little sentimental, but there are also a lot of interesting insights and a nice tone of hope – made even better by listening to the audiobook, I find. One aspect early on in the book struck me, as it’s something I’ve spoken and written about before.  

Michelle describes struggling with the pressures of the pandemic while still coming to terms with not being in the White House anymore. Undoubtedly Michelle Obama faced none of the fears about income, job security and access to healthcare that millions of people around the world had to cope with during that time, but it’s interesting to hear that some things, like loneliness, isolation and uncertainty, affected even those at the top.

Like many of us, Michelle turned to a new hobby during this time. Hers was knitting, which she had never done before. She describes the benefit of doing something productive, which used her hands as well as her mind, and which was on a small scale, to distract from all the big problems worrying her at that time.  

“I've come to understand that sometimes the big stuff becomes easier to handle when you deliberately put something small alongside it,” she writes in the book.

“When everything starts to feel big and therefore scary and insurmountable, when I hit a point of feeling or thinking or seeing too much, I've learned to make the choice to go towards the small.

“On days when my brain apprehends nothing but monolithic catastrophe and doom, when I feel paralysed by not-enoughness, and my agitation begins to stir, I picked up the knitting needles, and give my hands a chance to take over. To quietly click us out of that hard place.”

I find this really rings true. I’ve written before about the benefits of taking control of small things, and how that can spread a sense of calm through the rest of your life. It could be tidying a small area of your home, drawing a picture, or baking a batch of bread. I think there’s a reason why these hobbies surged in popularity during the pandemic, and it isn’t just that we all found ourselves stuck inside the house and needing distraction.

Focussing on one small thing, which is easy to complete and shows tangible progress, can be a wonderful way of reigning in overwhelming worries and never-ending to-do lists. I find activities like this also take me away from my phone and computer screens for a while, giving me a few minutes of respite from constant updates.   

Give and take

If the world were split into “givers” and “takers”, many people I know would put themselves into the “givers” category. These people have a tendency to spend their time doing things for other people, often putting the needs of others above their own.

In some cases, this has negatively impacted them, contributing to problems with their own health – either because of the increased stress of continually worrying about other people, or the lack of time left over to take care of themselves. Being a “giver” has come to be seen as almost a negative thing. But it isn’t, and not only because giving to people around you can benefit those you love.

Adam Grant, a psychologist at Pennsylvania University in the US, has written a book and given a TED talk on the subject. As part of his research he identified givers in various areas of work and study, and ranked them against their colleagues or classmates in terms of performance. He found, perhaps not surprisingly to many people, that the givers tended to perform the worst – presumably because they were spending so much of their time and energy helping others.

However, the givers were also the group which performed the best – it turned out that all the takers, and the people who didn’t fit either definition, sat somewhere in the middle. Grant determined that givers can sink time in the short term, but cause huge benefits to a team or company in the long term.

His findings are surprising, and combat the view that giving is a negative attribute. Instead, Grant argues, it’s important to manage that giving tendency appropriately – by preventing burnout, asking for help, and surrounding yourself with the right people.

His advice rings true when I think about the givers I know. It is not the giving nature that is the problem – the world would be a better place if everyone acted like this. But givers need to protect themselves, by setting boundaries, or limiting the amount of time and resources spent on others for example.

It is also vital for givers to be surrounded by the right people. Grant argues that if even one person on a team is a taker, while the rest are givers, it disrupts the team dynamic. In the examples that come to mind of givers blaming themselves for the difficult situations they end up in, there is always another person – a taker – without whose actions there would be no problem at all. So it looks like giving is to be encouraged, so long as it is to the right people.

Easy does it

Welcome to the first blog of 2023! Very best wishes to you for the year ahead.

Over the festive period, I was racking my brains to think of a fun challenge we could do as a family for the first few months of the new year. The idea would be a set goal for each day, and we would share updates to a group chat on how we were all doing. It was inspired by virtual family challenges we used to do during Covid lockdowns, and which I have written previous blogs about. It’s a nice way to have a bit of fun, connect with family members you might not be able to see in person, and maybe do something good for you in the process.

We decided to run the challenge from mid-January for 100 days. But the problem was, when discussing it with family members we just couldn’t agree on a goal to set. Walking 10,000 steps a day? Spending one hour outside in the fresh air? Running 5km? Reading 20 pages of a mind-expanding book?

In the end, the problem was obvious. The targets were too difficult. We had forgotten that age-old advice of not setting goals which aren’t achievable. It was deemed by a family council that if we set these kinds of blanket goals for everyone, we would all just end up miserable because we weren’t able to do them – or worse, sacrificing other areas of our lives in order to hit them out of a negative sense of competition. After all, this was supposed to be fun.

So we changed tack, and now everyone is going to set their own goal, which they know is achievable, and the emphasis will be on connection and sharing our progress with each other. Rather than pressure to complete whatever task it is every single day, we’re going to celebrate the days that we do get there.

Let it snow

It’s been a challenging year. Another challenging year, I should say. It feels as though each year after

the Covid pandemic struck we’ve been hoping for a wonderful reprieve, when everything suddenly

becomes much easier. It seems that isn’t going to happen just yet.

Last week I was travelling from Dublin Airport for work. We got stuck because of the cold weather,

and were held at a gate underground for hours, in the freezing cold, until well past midnight. It

wasn’t ideal. There was a lot of grumbling going on, as we were all very cold. But then my sister-in-

law sent through a picture of a cheery snowman my nephew had made. The cold weather clearly

wasn’t causing so much upset to everyone.

It all sounds a bit cheesy, but it made me stop and think for a bit and try to look at the situation

differently. I began to think how much worse things could be – at least I wasn’t in Ukraine facing the

prospect of cold and blackouts all winter. I was certain to reach a warm bed at some point. It’s just a

few weeks until New Year, which can bring a fresh start. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to a

few days off, and hope you all get the chance for a rest or a change of routine. And I’ll be thinking

about all the wonderful things which have come out of the past year, and that 2023 has the

potential to bring.

We won!

As many of you may know, I recently worked on a study about Pregnancy-related Pelvic Girdle Pain (PPGP) with two colleagues, Alex Frankham, a physiotherapist based in Jersey, and Dr Sinéad Dufour, at McMaster University in Canada. We looked into perceptions of the causes and treatment of PPGP among physiotherapists based in the UK, using an online survey. It was a larger form or a previous study we did in Ireland, and produced similar results, with a few differences.

In the past the prevailing view of PPGP among experts has been that it has mechanical causes – things like pelvic instability, back pain or lack of core strength, or a high BMI. But some experts think the causes may be psychological – like fear or emotional stress - or physiological, like an imbalance of the autonomic nervous system.

All this, as you know, closely relates to my work. My colleagues and I wanted to find out what chartered physiotherapists thought of the issue, as this would tell us how they would be most likely to assess and treat patients.

Our results from just over 100 physiotherapists told us that they considered both mechanical and psychological factors to be causes of PPGP. They also selected both mechanical and psychological treatment options, although the latter (including explaining pain, addressing fear, and lifestyle factors) were the most popular options.

We presented our results to the Journal of Pelvic, Obstetric and Genealogical Physiotherapy’s 2022 research competition, and I’m thrilled to say we won! We were invited to present our work at the POGP virtual study day at the beginning of November. It was a great opportunity to discuss our findings, and also a wonderful reward after a lot of hard work!

If you’d like to see the poster, you can find it on the research page of the website or by clicking here.

Standing out

One of my children recently came home to visit. She moved out some time ago, but as seems to be the way with children, never quite managed to remove all of her belongings from her parents’ house. Every now and again we threaten to throw some of these things away, in the hope that our children will come and free up some space in our attic. It never seems to work. But this time, at the end of her visit she appeared in the kitchen with a heated clothes drying rack. It belonged to her, but was so big, awkward and bulky that she’d never managed to take it to her own home.

She looked at me, and said determinedly: “It’s time.” The prospect of rising energy costs in winter had finally forced her to bite the bullet, and bring home the drying rack which had been languishing at our house for I don’t know how long. The problem, it transpired, was not so much the actual carrying of the rack – it’s large, but very light, and because it has built-in handles it’s possible to carry it under one arm.

Instead, the reason my daughter had left it in our house for so long was that she couldn’t face what people would think of her. The journey back to her home involves several forms of public transport, and a connection walking through busy streets. She imagined people staring at her, judging her, and grumbling about how her enormous drying rack was taking up too much space and getting in the way. But now it had become too important, so she had to take a deep breath and bravely venture out with her luggage in one hand, and a heated drying rack in the other.

Of course, nobody noticed. Nobody judged, nobody grumbled. During her entire journey I don’t think anyone even looked at her twice. When she told me – indignant, after getting home, that she had needlessly waited so long to relocate her drying rack, based on unfounded fears – it made me laugh. Not only because of her adventures, but because I recognised something so common to all of us – we all think everyone else is much more interested in us than they really are.

It's so easy to feel embarrassed, to feel like everyone is looking at you, and to avoid doing things because you’re afraid of what other people will think. But more often than not, other people don’t even notice. While it may be a bit humbling to realise you’re not as much the subject of everyone else’s attention that you thought you were, it’s also incredibly freeing.

Building resilience

Years ago I met a woman whose job title was “resilience trainer”. I thought it sounded a little bizarre, and of course her job involved working for a big company and being sent around to regional offices to speak to staff who were being made redundant. At the time it sounded like a somewhat cynical profession, but I was reminded of it some years later, when speaking to another friend who had been made redundant early in her career.

She had been working as a manager in retail, but then used her redundancy pay to begin a master’s course in another field, which led to her next job and a thoroughly enjoyable second career. In our conversation she said she had a theory that everyone should be made redundant at least once in their lives, to teach them how to cope when things go wrong.

I don’t quite agree with the blanket statement, as I remember too many stories of devastating redundancy after the financial crash. It’s one thing when young and single with plenty of opportunities for moving on, and quite another when an entire family might be relying on one income stream.

But I do think my friend had a point – difficult or painful life events can create resilience. While of course it would be much better if they didn’t happen, everyone faces some kind of upheaval at some point or other. Sometimes the only good we can take from it is resilience.