Living through the last few months has highlighted how we live and work as well as throwing up a lot of financial challenges. One thing that has hit a lot of us more than usual is a feeling of loneliness, even more acute than it might have been before Covid-19. Some people choose to be alone and can live very happily without a lot of contact with other people.                                                                                                                                            But loneliness can hit most of us sometimes, whether you’re young and feeling cut-off from your friends, in your middle years and lonely in your relationship, or an older person who’s lost their partner.                                                                                                          Even if you have lots of friends or come from a big family, it’s still possible to feel real loneliness.                                                                                                                                              It can have many different causes and affects all of us in different ways. Certain lifestyles and the stresses of life today can make people socially isolated and more vulnerable to loneliness. It can also have a big impact on your mental health, contributing to anxiety, stress and depression.                                                                                                                     Not feeling part of the world in which you live is part of a vicious circle where you then stop trying to maintain friendships and then feel excluded.                                                         Certain situations might also make you feel lonelier – if you have a relationship break-up or someone close to you dies, you can feel lonely within yourself for a long time. When you’re part of an ethnic group with few community networks or you’re a single parent finding it hard to go out, you can feel lonelier than ever before.                                     People try different ways to avoid this inner loneliness including spending a lot of time socialising and thereby not having time to ponder on it too much, or they develop a dependency on drugs or alcohol to escape these feelings.                                                        So, how can you combat these feeling of loneliness? For some people it’s about making more social contact with other people, either friends or family. If you’re feeling ‘low’ this can take a lot of effort but if you don’t do so then you’re likely to end up more lonely and isolated than ever.

Take small steps at first:

• go for a short walk in the fresh air and try to say ‘hello’ if you see anyone from your road or who looks familiar to you.
• text someone in your family, just to see how they are.
• Now that restrictions are lifting (at the time of writing) if you’re in a group of people, try to make a few comments, even though it seems easier to keep quiet and let everyone else talk.
• try having a short talk with the cashier when you pay for goods in the shop. Even a little social contact helps a bit!
• if you have children, maybe you could make conversation with one or two other parents once school re-starts.

Another way of making connections with people is through shared interests, values or experiences. If something interests you, whether that’s walking, watching films or going camping, there will be other people who feel the same. There is usually information about local clubs or groups in the library or you can look online and these groups will hopefully re-start again soon.                                                                                                           If, despite doing your best, you don’t manage to achieve the social contact you’d like, it may be worth learning how to feel more comfortable in your own company. This can be rewarding if you focus on the pleasure it gives you. Having time to reflect and think can be positive.                                                                                                                                          Trying yoga or pilates can help to achieve a peace that frenetic socialising can’t.  Getting a dog or cat is another way to alleviate loneliness, especially as they’re usually pleased to see you when you arrive home! Writing a blog helps to look at how you’re feeling and seeing your thoughts on paper can help you to look at how you might be able to improve things.                                                                                                                                                       You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on Linked In, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.

In my last post, I wrote about feeling cut off from your family but what if you decide that this is actually the right thing for you? It’s a big decision for a lot of people because there are usually past loyalties and history.

In fact, cutting ties with your family is often harder than you might think, not least because we’re conditioned to believe that to end these relationships is somehow wrong. Even when you would never usually choose to have these people in your life, it can feel as if you’re a ‘bad person’ if you decide to stop seeing them. It doesn’t mean that you wish them harm but it’s not good for you as a person to keep in touch.

Here are some reasons that might make you decide to do this:

• The only contact you have with them is negative and brings you down or makes you feel as if you’re not good enough or haven’t done enough.
• You’re often ostracised by one or more people in the family, to the point where you find you’re losing sleep over it. There’s often a ringleader in this who influences other family members and in the end you start doubting yourself and wondering if you, in fact, are the problem.
• When it’s all about the other person and they don’t make any effort to understand you. In fact, they often set you up to fail – and you always will because that’s the game they play.
• When they indulge in the ‘silent treatment’ as a punishment if you challenge some of their views. That happens when they don’t get their own way and you’re going to know all about it by being frozen out.
• When the relationship is mostly about them borrowing or needing money from you.
• If the relationship is based on some sort of abuse: this can be verbal, emotional or physical. If you’re living in constant anxiety and never know how things are going to be, it might be time to let go.
• If the other person/people ‘gaslight’ you – make comments to other people which are not entirely true but show you in a bad light in some way. Other family members start to believe it because they don’t realise that they too are being manipulated.

Hard though it can be, sometimes it’s necessary to accept that you’re never going to feel loved and supported in the way that you deserve and you will never really gain their approval. Not everyone has good intentions, even if they are members of your family.

Maybe you’ve been in this position yourself – if so, it would be good to hear your comments about how you managed to cut those ties and how you feel now.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on Linked In, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.

As a counsellor and psychotherapist, I often used to see clients who felt cut off from, or by, family members. Sometimes, they could come to terms with this but more often there was stress, sometimes depression and even shame. This was particularly the case if there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for the rift.

Here are some of the most likely reasons why one person in a family cuts off from another or why an entire family can seem to ostracise just one member. I’m not suggesting that this is a healthy situation but sometimes understanding dynamics can be helpful:

• In most families there are dominant members and these people exert their power and control to keep other members in line – a bit like playground disputes where bullies use the same methods of control with their peers.
• Because of this some family members get exhausted by a relative, feeling that they have put up with some behaviours for far too long. They may feel hopeless about changing the situation and start to interact less and less with that person or people.
• Some families definitely ‘scapegoat’ one member, using them to blame family issues on when things go wrong. This is along the lines of “you always do this/never do enough/don’t pull your weight” and other less dominant family members jump on this bandwagon too, finding it easier to blame one person than take responsibility for looking at the situation with a clear mind.
• Rewriting history – if your family know a lot about your younger self and you don’t want to be reminded of that, it sometimes feels better to shut out family members, avoid them and rewrite your story when you meet new people.
• If you have chosen a partner whom your family don’t like, sometimes it’s easier to avoid your original family and give your loyalty and interest to your partner. Your family will probably resent this, argue with you about it or point out your partner’s flaws and to avoid this you may well end up avoiding your family rather than your partner.
• Misunderstanding can occur between relatives and if they’re not discussed, the relationships can eventually break down. If someone is concerned that discussions will develop into confrontations, they’ll avoid the situation and the people involved.
• Some families have a history of cutting off relatives when they’re annoyed or upset with them. With no model of resolution, you learn that cutting off family members is an option and you don’t have a model of how to resolve issues within the family.
• Money often leads to difficulties within families – a parent who favoured one child where money was concerned or leaves more money in their will to one of their children rather than treat them all equally. In an ideal world, this doesn’t happen but if parents feel that one child did more for them than their other children did, they may also feel that that child deserves more inheritance. There’s no easy answer to this but if you don’t want to see your family disintegrate, you will need to find a way to overcome such perceived injustices.
• If an elderly parent is ill, some families can handle this well and divide the care between them, but if one child lives a long distance away, it isn’t easy and resentments can set in. This is often when families become disenchanted with one another. It may also be that one sibling doesn’t see the need to take responsibility for the parent and naturally this causes friction.

If you feel cut off from your family, or another family member is no longer in contact, you may feel that you don’t care if that changes or not. However, if it bothers you, it’s almost always worth swallowing your pride, getting in touch, meeting and discussing what’s happened and how it might be better in the future. Avoid extreme words like ‘never’ and ‘always’ – they’re not helpful and won’t achieve a peaceful outcome. If you want to be on better terms (and you may not want to!), take it slowly and try to build up your relationship to be at least friendly, even if you can’t manage loving.

Please do comment on my blog if you have found it interesting, useful or otherwise. You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on Linked In, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.

Interesting question, I think …..maybe you disagree!

Is some of it to do with status? In psychology circles there are some debates about whether status is the fundamental motivation for all human beings. Do you think this is true? For all species living in social groups of any kind, it’s likely that thousands (perhaps millions) of years ago, the most able and strongest males lived longer, coupled up with the most desirable females and ate better than weaker, less able men.  But what about now? Is status still important and a key to happiness? It’s not dependent upon how we see men any longer (not for most of us anyway!) so what is it about?

In our modern society, those with perceived status do seem to have more influence and power. However, what I’m asking in this blog is – do you care what others think of you, considering that status seems to make a difference to a lot of people?

To help you decide, here’s a little exercise for you. Try to answer the questions below on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being strongly disagree and 7 being strongly agree:

• I’m not interested in trying to impress people.
• When I achieve something, I tend to keep quiet about it
• It really doesn’t matter how you compare to others
• It doesn’t matter to me where I stand in the social order.
• I don’t spend much time thinking about whether I’m good enough compared to others.
• If other people don’t see me as something special, it’s no big deal.
• I like telling people when something good happens to me
• I don’t need to go telling everyone when something good happens to me.

The maximum score is 56 although I think that it’s pretty unlikely that many of us would attain that score. As you’ve probably worked out, if you have a much lower score, it often indicates a higher concern about status.

If you’re not comfortable with that, it’s a good idea to reflect on why it’s important and what your self-esteem is like. If you’re happy with yourself, you won’t care so much about what other people think about you. Here are a few tips to start feeling better about yourself, caring less what others think of you and worrying less about status and keeping up with other people including friends and maybe family members:

• Be patient, kind and understanding with yourself.  Take time to feel pleased when you achieve something good.  Don’t blame yourself out of all proportion if something doesn’t go as you’d planned.
• Set achievable goals and work to accomplish them. This is important as, if we set goals that are too high at this stage, we will almost certainly feel disappointment if we don’t achieve them.  It is easier to work up to goals than to work down from them and gives us more of a sense of accomplishment.
• Do not accept put-downs.  Be assertive and let people know that you don’t like negative criticism.
• Accept compliments.  Just say ‘thank you’ and smile.
• Act the person you want to be.  Play the new role long enough and you will become that person
• Visualise change.  Imagine the person you want to become six months down the road.  Imagination is stronger than the will.
• Look after yourself – look at your diet and try cutting down on sugary processed snacks, walk as much as possible and generally review your lifestyle and how it affects you.
• Think of yourself as a loveable and capable person.  You came into this world that way and that potential never changes.
• Try to mix with positive people who don’t drag you down in any way but help reinforce good feelings about yourself and the world.

Keep practising and you’ll find that you feel better about yourself, even if you don’t live in a big house, drive a fast car (if you have a car) and earn loads of money.

Please do comment on my blog if you have found it interesting, useful or otherwise. You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on Linked In, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.

Rarely has the subject of debt been more relevant. With so many people having been furloughed, debts are mounting for a lot of them – in fact, maybe you’re one of them. There’s also the added worry that a lot of people have about whether they’ll have a job when the lockdown restrictions are finally lifted.

Finding that you can’t cope financially can be absolutely devastating, especially if you’ve never found yourself in this position before. You may have prided yourself on managing to save money, ‘paying your way’ and probably providing ‘treats’ for your family and friends.

When you realise that things have to change it may be too late – you’re in too deep and things look bleak.

It’s hard to admit that we haven’t been able to manage things as well as we’d hoped but these are unusual times so cut yourself some slack. With the way things are, a greatly reduced income and the current financial climate, it’s easier than ever to get into debt and if you’ve been made redundant, this in itself can be devastating. The emotional impact of redundancy is often huge anyway, let alone the financial consequences, even if you’ve received some compensation.

A budget needs to be drawn up and this needs to be realistic – rent/mortgage, food and bills need to be paid before anything else. If you can take a mortgage holiday, great, although you may find that your monthly payments increase a bit once you’re able to start paying again. Maybe your landlord will reduce your rent during this difficult time, but that’s not certain.

If you have children you may have to explain that you can no longer pay for some of the things they used to have but try to be positive in the way you tell them – they will take their lead from you and if you can make it seem as if you’re all going to cope and be fine, it’s a good life-lesson. Where you are concerned, once you hopefully get back to work, it may mean that you can no longer go out for meals with friends or socialise in the same ways. They’ll already realise that things are tight right now and you can only go for a coffee for a while – they may be in the same situation anyway. They may want to help you but this can make it worse – try to put down some boundaries, say that you’re going to be fine and that a bit of budgeting won’t hurt you.

Regarding the practicalities of debts mounting up, the worst thing you can do is to ignore the problem and hope it will go away on its own – it will not.  Here are some steps to deal with your debt right now:

• Make a list of how much you owe and whom you owe it to.  Mortgage and rent payments are most important, to avoid eviction so tackle them first.

• Speak to your lenders – they may agree to you stopping payments for a couple of months if your problem is a temporary one or they could arrange an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement iva.co.uk to pay off the debt at an affordable rate for you.

• Find out how else you can make money.  Is there a skill you have that could help you with a second job from home in the evenings?
• Can other family members lend you money instead of a bank or finance company? If you are able to borrow from within your family it’s vital to make sure that you agree on a regular method of realistic repayments with an end date for both parties. If you don’t do this resentment can build up and spoil the relationship.
• Sell possessions to pay off debt.  Online auction sites are a great way to make cash which can then be used to pay off your bills.
• Even during these difficult times, the Citizens Advice Bureau is still operating by phone, e.mail and online chats so it may be worth contacting them if you’re struggling.

Please do comment on my blog if you have found it interesting, useful or otherwise. You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on Linked In, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.