Category Archives: Bereavement

Finding A New Partner

1 Reply

How hard is it to find a new partner, especially if you’ve just come out of a long-term relationship?

If this is what you want (and maybe you don’t at the moment, having decided that it’s fine to be on your own for a while), then you’ll soon notice that things have changed. A lot!

First of all, you need to decide what sort of person you’re looking for. Create a list and be honest. If you don’t want to get together with someone who has children of their own, admit it to yourself from the start. However, if you’re over thirty-five, this will severely decrease the number of people who will come into your sphere.

That brings me onto the need to be flexible which is in contradiction to the previous point but I want you to think about it. If you can be flexible in this and other ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, you may find that your life opens up no end. If you hate camping, it’s probably better to say so straight away but if caravanning doesn’t produce an anxiety attack, maybe there’s a compromise. The same goes for music and other interests.

You have a choice now whether to register online with a free dating site, pay for a more specialised service or hope that you’ll meet someone through your work or friends. Money will play a big part in this – if you can’t afford a monthly online site, you’ll need to choose one of the other ways. How did people meet one another years ago before computers and the internet? Usually at work or through friends/mutual interests. It worked then and sometimes it still works now.

If you go with the dating online site, you need to become quite savvy – it’s no use being really modest by putting things like “I’m just not used to this and not very good at it” – it’s putting yourself down and sounds really insecure.

However, boasting isn’t very attractive either – “I’m have a high-flying job and a Porsche” sounds pretty arrogant but confidence is fine so you could say “I cook a really good lasagne and am good for a laugh”.

Specific information can be good too – “I like looking at rainbows and one of the best I saw was when I visited Northumberland” gives a clue to the fact that you like travelling around a bit and is more interesting than “I like hanging out with friends”.

Don’t talk about any exes in your profile – it’s a real turn-off. Most people who are looking at your profile will realise that you have a past, as we all do; there’s time to talk about it when you meet face-to-face and preferably not at the first meeting.

Always put a photo on your profile – bite the bullet and make it a recent one as so many people have been disappointed at the first meeting to find the other person uploaded a photo taken twenty years ago!

Remember that playing hard to get doesn’t work any longer – waiting three days to reply may well mean that the other person has found someone else during that time.

If none of the above appeals, you can try the old-fashioned way of finding someone new through a shared interest, preferably where you can see them in the company of other people first. It will show whether they have any social skills, how they interact with people and generally whether they’re fairly likeable. You could find someone in the workplace or connected to your work in some way – there are lots of different scenarios but the old adage of finding love when you least expect it is as true as ever!

Think That You’re Loyal?

Leave a reply

DisloyaltyMost of us like to think that we’re loyal to our family and friends – it almost goes without question. However, what people think of as ‘loyalty’ can differ greatly from one person to the next.

Some families pride themselves on being loyal to one another, no matter what the circumstances. This can sometimes result in an exclusiveness or ‘inner circle’ into which no-one else can intrude partly because they don’t know what the ‘rules’ of that circle are and because family members are so loyal to one another that it makes them tight-lipped about ongoing issues that might otherwise be resolved.

Loyalty is often thought of as an honourable character trait and implies that you have the ability to put others before yourself and to stick with them no matter what happens. There are some ground rules about this though and where friendship is concerned, and I am detailing a few of them below. Further on I will look at how loyalty, or lack of it affects your partner and your relationship. Here are some of the ground rules regarding friends:

  • Taking time to look at your friends’ needs – this is about being generous with your time, making sure that you listen to them when things are hard and helping them out by being an extra pair of hands. It’s also being there to laugh and cry with.
  • Being supportive, no matter what – this means supporting/being loyal to a friend, not because you want something back from them but because you want them to be happy.
  • Not talking behind their backs – if you’re having a problem with a friend, don’t stab them in the back by starting a rumour or by talking to other people about them. Instead, talk to them and learn to share your feelings with them as this will usually keep the friendship strong and healthy.
  • Give them your honest opinion – don’t just say what they want to hear but at the same time, be tactful when you’re doing so. Sometimes it’s hard to give your opinion but if you can back up your opinion with solid reasons, it will be easier for them to hear.
  • Balance your loyalty to one friend with loyalty to another – sometimes you will find yourself in a tight spot because being loyal to one friend might mean being disloyal to another. Don’t pick sides and try to be fair – explain to both friends where you’re coming from and hopefully they’ll recognise that you respect both of them and their opinions. If they hold that against you then maybe they weren’t the friend you thought they were.
  • Finally, balance your loyalties to friends with your own day-to-day needs. Being loyal to a social organisation or volunteer group at the expense of your family and friends may well result in feelings of loss and suffering regarding your relationships. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right.

Where your partner is concerned, thinking about the following can be helpful where loyalty is concerned:

  • Loyalty is something that usually builds up over time – it’s like trust that needs to be increased on the basis of evidence but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have boundaries for yourself or others.
  • Don’t put yourself in situations where your loyalty could slip – we’ve all been in those situations. Maybe your girl/boyfriend is going out or is away and another friend you’ve been a bit flirty with, suggests meeting for a drink. If you’re honest, you know it spells trouble so be loyal to your partner, even if you’re not entirely sure of them.
  • If you’ve crossed that line and done something to lose the trust of your partner, it’s going to take time to regain their trust. Stay loyal from now on, spend time doing something they love and make an effort to get on with their family and friends, hard though that may be sometimes.
  • If you need a little help being loyal – think about what you’ve got to gain. Your loyalty will usually inspire their own loyalty and the reward is feeling secure, happy and trusting.
  • It really hurts when our loyalty leaves us open to vulnerability – but that’s not a reason to distrust your partner automatically.
  • Behave in a way that you’d like your partner to behave – that is, with integrity and principles.

If you’re struggling to be loyal to someone close to you or you feel that someone has betrayed you and not shown loyalty, counselling could be a way of helping you to come to terms with what’s happened.

Celebrity Culture

Leave a reply

Do we, as a society, think that being famous is the most important thing in the world? Sometimes, it seems like that!

The term ‘celebrity culture’ implies that there’s something childish and almost demeaning about the need to her-worship a famous person that we don’t know. It can almost seem passive and inferior, making us look inadequate and have chosen escapism to avoid other part of our lives.

However, surely fame itself isn’t always a bad thing – without famous people we wouldn’t always be aware of charitable causes that need our donations and help and without actors who are famous we’d miss some great theatre and art.

Maybe there’s an impulse to admire others that we don’t actually know and certainly, when I work on self-esteem with clients, I encourage them to have a role model, someone they admire, who might or might not be famous but has attributes of confidence, vitality and sociability that they might try to emulate in a positive way.

However, on the down side, most of us have read or heard about celebrities who wish that they could just go shopping for groceries without being recognised and it often seems that they experience loss of self and even a mistrust of those people around them.

From the perspective of someone who’s feeling lonely or doesn’t get enough recognition from their families or partner, thousands of strangers online can fill that space and with social media and online forums, that’s easily done. Chasing fame can also seem a way to achieve wealth in a way that wouldn’t usually be possible, particularly if someone comes from a poor background where there’s a poverty of expectation.

There’s also a side to our culture where we love to see famous people fail – we tend to treat celebrities as if they’re part of a soap opera and pore over their successes but more importantly for some, their failures, comebacks and sudden deaths. We’re able to do this now because everything is online and we can get a new episode hourly on an endless basis.

However, when 51 percent of 18 to 25 year olds polled think that they will be famous one day, what does that say about our society? Television targets children and places more value on fame than in previous decades. But surely we need to stop obsessing about it and wasting lives on dreams that can’t be fulfilled?

There’s nothing wrong with having ambition and goals – achieving short-term goals leading to bigger goals and achievements is a great thing to help people with self-esteem and it’s something I work on a lot with clients. Part of that is setting realistic goals, otherwise people can dip down into feeling anxious and depressed because they can’t achieve what they set out to do.

Basing  your life on what celebrities do, or appear to do, wanting to dress like them and be in the public eye isn’t realistic for most of us and doesn’t guarantee happiness by any means.

Compulsive Buyer……

Leave a reply

Although we need food, clothes and transport some people find that their buying habits get out of control. Sometimes this is called being a “shopaholic” or indulging in “retail therapy” and is often quite harmless if the person doing the buying can afford to do so and it doesn’t take over their life.

However, sometimes it can get out of control if the goods feed a psychological urge which relates to identity, values and image. In other words, buying some things can offer a sort of psychological crutch to some of us. If must-have items include excessive buying of labelled products, things that the person might not even wear or use, then there’s usually a problem.

This can start if people wants to feel better about themselves or it can be a weapon to express anger in some way.  It might be an attempt to hold onto someone else’s love by buying their affection.  Equally, it might be a way of trying to fit into a society which seems to be more and more obsessed with appearances. Sometimes it can be a distraction to help avoid other issues in their lives – it’s not always simple…..

Some television programmes have endeavoured to help the issue of compulsive buying more easily understood and one of the things to come out of such programmes is that the frantic purchasing often starts after there’s been a trauma in someone’s life. This could be a severe illness (“life’s too short to start counting every penny”), or they’ve lost someone close to them, either through death or the end of a relationship.  Instead of eating compulsively, they start buying things to fill that empty space they feel inside.

Compulsive buyers come from all sorts of social backgrounds and for some it can be a way of saying “look, I’m successful. I have all these lovely things and I feel a better person for it”. Added to this, there’s now so much to buy and a huge amount of advertising which reach nearly everyone, whatever their circumstances. If someone is materialistic and believes that possessions are the key to happiness, they will also define themselves and others by what they wear and obtain (car, house, holidays).

A person with non-materialistic values will find happiness in other ways, not connected to obtaining goods and things.

On a short-term basis, buying things does improve self-image and perception but this soon wears off and then the cycle has to begin again to get that ‘feel good’ factor.

However, going on the occasional shopping spree doesn’t mean that you’re a compulsive shopper who definitely has problems but if you find things are getting out of hand and that you shop whenever you’re feeling low and stressed, it may be time to think about it a bit harder.

Compulsive shoppers usually fall into one of the following categories:

  • Those people who shop when they’re feeling emotionally distressed.
  • Those who want to cultivate the image of being a big spender
  • Bargain-seekers who buy things, even if they don’t need them, because they’re in a sale or on special offer.
  • People who are always searching for the perfect item.
  • Those collectors who don’t feel they’re complete until they have one item in every colour in a set.
  • What is known as ‘bulimic shoppers’ who are caught in a cycle of buying and then returning goods each time.

So how can you stop these binges before they get out of control and you end up in serious debt:

  • Make a list and only buy what’s on the list (sounds easy but it’s often hard to do!).
  • Use cash more, credit and debit cards less – it’s too easy to feel you’re hardly spending anything if you use cards.
  • Avoid special offers, discount warehouses and anything that seems ‘too good to resist’. If you do visit discount centres only take a certain amount of cash with you.
  • Don’t watch TV shopping channels and don’t order goods online.
  • If you feel the urge to shop, go out for a walk, exercise or use some other distraction to avoid it.
  • Although you want to treat your family and friends, set a limit to the amount you’ll spend and stick to it, however difficult that might be.
  • Try to destroy all your credit cards except one that you can use for emergencies only.

If you feel that your shopping is getting out of control, consider counselling to look at this and develop strategies to control it.

Pets -They Mean The World To Us

1 Reply

 

Living in England, it’s clear that pets are very important to us – many households now have a family pet, often a dog or cat but sometimes a hamster, guinea pig, rabbit or gerbil.  Although we don’t know exactly when this started, we do know that thousands of years ago our ancestors probably kept some wolves around, probably because they were useful for hunting.

Eventually, they became domesticated and now, keeping a pet has become part of many cultures. That may seem strange when you think that it’s quite a costly business – meals and healthcare can mount up. However, now that they are very much part of peoples’ families, most people don’t begrudge this.

What does your pet mean to you?  Although dogs can be time-consuming (training, walks twice a day, finding holiday accommodation for them…..) we get a lot back from them. Unconditional love and companionship are a big part of this and we can get this from cats and other pets too, although they don’t always need quite so much attention as dogs.

So what is it that’s so appealing about pets? Well here are some of the reasons:

  • A lot of pets are really smart – this is often demonstrated by their ‘sixth sense’ when they know something’s amiss. Some pets, usually dogs, can be trained to sense when their owner is going to have an epileptic fit and warn them of this. Many dogs are trained to assist visually impaired and hearing impaired people and this is invaluable in our society.
  • Sometimes they seem to show more empathy than human members of our families! They often sense our sadness and will snuggle up closer to give us warmth and solace.
  • They really seem to love us and show great loyalty; this may be because we feed and care for them, but maybe there’s no need to analyse the reasons – they love us and that’s enough!
  • Because we’re mostly a social species and often seeking relationships with others, this includes our pets. Keeping a pet, especially a dog, is a good way of meeting other people through walking your dog through the same places, often at the same times, each day. The people you meet will already have something common with you – they too love dogs! It’s a good start to friendship. With cats, there are online sites which help you to connect with pet owners, showing videos and sharing photographs – it’s a big online community out there.
  • Animals show some of the same feelings as we do including grieving – they form deep bonds and connections and seem to be sad and ‘lost’ if their owner dies.
  • Like a lot of humans, they like and need stability and security – it keeps them happy and it keeps a lot of us happy too.

Losing a pet is a huge thing and, like any other family member, death is hard to come to terms with. You will go through all the feelings of loss in the same way you would with other family members or friends.  Don’t deny yourself this – it’s important to recognise that your pet has been a huge part of your life and can’t just be replaced.