Navigating Hades.

I had another episode yesterday, (blog post “Dark Again”) triggered by the same thing. I didn’t hit my head so much this time. So I guess I should be thankful for small mercies. Still the same mental pressure and seizing up in my head though. Took myself to a bed and lay down. Ended up moaning, wailing and thrashing. Then curled up with my fists and arms locked to my chest and my knees up to my belly. I got up a few minutes later, teeth chattering and shivering all over. Felt like my heart was racing a bit too,  so I reached for my blood pressure monitor. This was something my GP suggested I buy during Covid, as I had stents fitted back in 2017 (blog post “Angiogram”). 170 over 90 can apparently be life threatening if it continues. So I waited a few minutes and took it again, then again, and again. Slowly it began to come down to a respectable level. I still felt intensely anxious though; as I do now just trying to think and write about it.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a bit of a mouthful of a description for a condition which I believe, is pretty common in some way or form for many more people than we might think. It does go under other names. In the First World War it was referred to as shell shock. In the counselling I do it’s usually referred to as a restimulated distress pattern, which is no less of a mouthful I know.

We go through many traumatic events in a single lifetime. Hopefully and thankfully the vast majority of them will be minor and easy enough for us to process, through evaluating and assimilating any useful data from the experience. In short, we fall over, we scrape our knee, we cry a bit and then move on, perhaps being a little more careful of our footing in future. However, some of those events are a bit more than just a scraped knee. If at some level we perceive them as life threatening and inescapable, we can find it nigh on impossible to process the event without some kind of help.

I find the term “distress pattern” a useful description, and not just because it avoids the awful word, “disorder”, which I consider just stigmatising. On a day to day basis, if we are calm and relaxed, we take in information as a continuous manageable stream of sensory information. Our thinking is free and flexible enough to manage it all, on the go, as it were. We can ignore what’s not useful at that point in time and separate out the information that we need for whatever task we have in hand. This all goes on at a level we may not even be aware of.

Imagine a situation that is anything but calm and relaxed, this would be our traumatic event. In this event we don’t have the time to process the amount of information that is hitting us at that moment. We may not even have the knowledge or previous experience necessary to deal with the situation. In this event all we have left to fall back on are our most basic survival instincts, fight or flight. Even these options may be denied us, particularly if we are a baby, an infant or child.

Although our flexible thinking effectively shuts down during a traumatic event, our brain/mind does not. We continue to record what’s happening. However, everything is happening too fast for us to break things down into the discrete bits of information that may prove useful in future. Literally everything is recorded en-masse, including the feelings we are having at the time. This is what we refer to as a distress recording or post traumatic stress. The problem with this stuff is that because we haven’t had the time to break it down and process it into usable information, if we are ever confronted with an even slightly similar situation in the future, then all that is available to us is that very literal recording that happened the first time around. Complete with all of the awful sensations we were having at the time.

The damage doesn’t stop there though, and I do apologize if this is all getting a bit much. Because our thinking is compromised yet again, we are unable to process the new, but similar, situation that is unfolding around us. So the distress pattern becomes more consolidated and entrenched in our psyche.

This, in a very convoluted nut shell, is what’s going on for me at the moment. I’m currently being triggered/restimulated by what would probably be viewed by an onlooker, as a very innocuous event in anyone else’s life; a simple decision making process, as all it requires is a yes or no. However, what seems to be preventing me from making the simplest of decisions, is a huge tangled web of guilt, resentment, fear, anger and grief.

I feel I’m beginning to get a handle on it. There are so many events in my life where I have felt backed into a corner. Usually by some form of authority figure. The earliest being parents and other adults around me. In school they were supplemented by teachers and bullies. In work it was colleagues and managers.

It’s why I struggle to cope with anything that even looks, smells or tastes of conflict or confrontation. I have a sense also that it is a cornerstone in the reasons why I choose to stay in the background in so many situations. If I don’t make myself obvious, there’s less chance of becoming a target.

I’ve been posting stuff on here for some time now; usually with little to no response. So I kind of figured that no one was paying it a lot of attention…..oh dear, how wrong I was.

I now feel the need to apologise to friends who did check in on my last post, and as a result became rather concerned for me. In my defence, given the space my head was in at the time, I was in no fit state to make a rational decision as to whether or not to publish the piece. So I ended up hitting the publish button.

I guess though, the very fact that I hit that button suggests that it was a literal cry for help. I hadn’t been in such a bad place for a long time. I’m still involved with peer to peer counselling, and that very activity can rake up some pretty difficult issues. Part of the task of working through it is a management issue. So I’ve spent some time today researching counsellors registered on the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists website. In the hope of engaging some extra resource and support for where I’m struggling at the moment.

………………..

Update: just come out of a counselling session where I hit a well of grief the like of which I haven’t hit for years. Just the right spot and feeling a little more confident I’m heading in the right direction.

I’m suddenly reminded of two favourite poems that seem very apt for what I’m working through just now. So thought I’d leave them here. The first is by Philip Larkin and the second is by Stevie Smith.

THIS BE THE VERSE

Philip Larkin.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

Stevie Smith.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

Trigger warning.

Just a friendly warning dear reader. This piece is not the lightest of reading. If your low mood is easily triggered, then do not read on.

…………………………..

Not in a good place right now. Just can’t see the point. Simply just don’t want to be here anymore, don’t want to exist. Not sleeping well. Don’t feel people around me see me or get me. No empathy or compassion directed towards me. Feel I’m failing everyone. Can’t take confrontation.

My mental interior is a shit hole of confusion, anxiety and depression. I feel I’ve been fighting over the top of it for years. That if I act right, behave appropriately my feelings and mental nihilism will dissipate and be replaced by something more positive. I just feel a burden. That I’m failing to comply with what’s required of me.

If I try to express myself, (something I find hard anyway) I just feel I’m dismissed or even shouted down. Confrontation seems to induce mental chaos to the degree I feel my head is going to burst. I can even end up hitting my head with my fists in an attempt to stop what’s happening, it just feels so horrific and painful. There is no rational here; neither side is being heard or understood.

I desperately need to communicate the pain I am in. But if I try to do that, I’m met with anger and disdain. As if I was displaying some form of weakness or inadequacy.

I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t really want much from life itself. All I feel I’m being confronted with is how I’m failing in every respect. Am I being bullied? Is what’s happening an attempt at controlling me? I don’t think any of this is out of any evil intent. Just that people around me cope better with the day to day negotiations with each other than I feel able to. So I stay in the background as much as I can. Maybe at some level hoping I won’t be noticed or singled out. Of course, the flip side is that I just feel all the more isolated, which is painful in itself.

I apologise for all this self pitying shit. I just can’t see any way out.

I’m walking along a river bank, having just passed through a group of about thirty school children and their teachers out on a hike. As I walk away from them I hear one of the teachers shout out, “has anyone spotted any wildlife?” The reply came back, “yeah, a fish!” Fair enough I thought, they are standing on a bridge over a river after all.

I continued my walk for a little way and then paused at the water’s edge. I scanned the surface and both banks for anything interesting. A movement caught my eye and there they were, Damselflies, or Banded Demoiselle to be precise. The males of this species are particularly striking, having a dark blue black spot on each wing. Their body is also a dark glossy blue. They were mostly at rest on the reeds that lined each riverbank. At least until a rather drab (comparatively) female went by. Then several males would fly up and begin to chase her up and down the river.

While I’d been watching this little courtship ritual play out, I was broken out of my reverie by chattering and laughter, as I hadn’t noticed that the school party was heading my way. I turned and carried on walking. I’m more of a potterer than a walker though, so they soon began to overtake me. As three schoolgirls drew up alongside me one of them greeted me with a cheery, “hello!” After returning the greeting I asked if they were out on a wildlife walk. “Sort of,” came the reply. Have you seen anything I asked? “A fish,” she said. At this point I half felt that I would regret taking the conversation any further, but decided to anyway and asked if they’d seen the Banded Demoiselle. “No!” came the rather emphatic reply, followed by an equally cheery, “goodbye”.

The school party gradually drew ahead of me as I carried on with my slow stroll along the bank; while continuing to scan the water and each bank as I went. As I did so my mind drifted to everything else I’d seen or experienced along this short stretch of river over the years. Things like:

A frosty February morning while walking my dog Jack, I spotted something swimming ahead of me. Too big to be a water vole I realised it was an Otter, which promptly turned into the bank and disappeared into a tangle of branches and dead vegetation. As I drew closer to the spot I could hear what at first I thought was some type of bird I’d never heard before, but then realised that it was probably a litter of Otter cubs greeting their mother returning from a morning’s fishing.

A summer afternoon, hearing a soft, “Peep” and, turning to locate the sound, seeing a flash of blue disappearing upstream. Which is about as much as anybody sees of a Kingfisher.

A sunny, windless spring day when I was lucky enough to catch a Mayfly emergence. Witnessing the mating dance of, literally thousands, of these ephemeral insects is something that many people never experience. They have no mouthparts and so cannot feed, as they have only one task, to mate and lay the eggs that produce the next generation. All over in one day, their corpses providing food for those creatures higher up the food chain.

Rounding a bend and witnessing, on a few occasions, the great steel grey shape of a Heron lifting off the water. Also, one time, a White Egret. Both birds surprising me that, for their size, they could execute a quite graceful vertical take off.

…………………………….

Back to my current walk, and I realise that I’m catching up with the school party, as they’ve stopped to rehydrate again. A few metres from them I pause my walk and study the water again. This time a dragonfly is coursing the rivers edges, no doubt looking for a meal. However, several of the Banded Demoiselle had decided that it wasn’t welcome. What followed was the equivalent of a World War Two dogfight. With the Dragonfly as the bomber, being strafed by Damselflies. Both species being fairly equal in flying ability, this proved pretty entertaining for several minutes.

I toyed, briefly, with the idea of calling over one of the teachers to check if any of the children might be interested, but when I looked up they were all heading off again.

Money scares the crap out of me. It shouldn’t really, given that it didn’t seem to be a major issue when I was a child. Everyone around me seemed to manage it quite well. Or at least from my childhood perspective it appeared that way. I’ve always had a morbid fear of debt, of somehow ending up destitute. I suspect this is what drives me to put money away. I seem to have a very simplistic view of economics, ie, I obtain money and I put it away until it’s needed. Which is mostly when I need food or clothing or fuel. It’s quite hard for me to reach into that pot that I’ve put away for anything other than basics and necessities. I don’t seem to take onboard that there is replenishment each month. Which means that what is removed will ultimately be replaced over time. It’s almost as if what goes out is gone forever and will never be recovered. I’ve always found it hard to understand any of the complexities of economics. Things like interest, compound interest, percentages, hire purchase, credit, mortgages, stocks and shares, hedge funds all make me want to curl up foetal fashion in a corner and suck my thumb.

I think that the earliest I can remember coming into real contact with money was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I was given a toy cash box, very like the one in the photo. I was also given a few coins to put in it, which I think were the beginnings of a weekly amount of pocket money that I was now deemed to be old enough to receive. The concept of saving my pennies for the things I wanted to buy, ie, sweeties, was explained in very simple terms to me.

I don’t think I was old enough then, or maybe just not sophisticated enough, to have grasped the concept of deferred gratification. So the saving habit didn’t last very long. Every Saturday morning I was given my pocket money and it was straight off to the newsagents to buy my sweeties and comics. This must have been a financially blissful period for me as there were no pressures on me to somehow earn my keep at that time. Mostly, things were just bought for me by my parents and the pocket money was simply a bonus, and a bonus that I had responsibility for and control over.

That word control, coupled with responsibility, is key I think to my fear/anxiety around money. It seemed to be a frequent topic of conversation amongst the adults around me, and I think I learned somehow that one had to be careful with it. Apart from some warnings about borrowing, gambling and debt, my dad didn’t really explain anything to me about money management. And as I grew older I think I picked up that there was a considerable amount of anxiety in the adults around me; particularly in relation to money and if they were anxious, it probably meant that I needed to be anxious too. So I think I ended up very cautious and risk averse around the subject.

As my pocket money increased, I began to spend it on more expensive items. A favourite item was a kit from the Airfix model range. These also fed into my practical and creative nature, as some of them could be quite challenging to build. However, as I hadn’t really got into the saving habit many of the larger, more complex kits remained out of reach. These bigger purchases were always made by the adults around me, usually my mum.

I think I did some occasional pocket money jobs in my teens. One of which was cleaning the local bus shelter. The Labour was shared between me and a friend of mine and usually involved sweeping it out and washing the windows. I never had a paper round or anything regular. School work was considered the main priority.

When I started my apprenticeship I was given a weekly pay packet and while initially I was required to hand over some of it to my mum, the habit very soon went by the wayside. There was no discussion or argument about this, it just seemed to be gradually forgotten about on both sides.

For the life of me I can’t remember what I did with the money. I didn’t have a bank account (although I do remember having a Post Office savings book) until a few years later, so I think I was just spending it week by week. Like many of my contemporaries I got quite fashion conscious so I figure that’s where most of it went.

I don’t know why but I’ve always been nervous about buying face to face. Stores and supermarkets were easy, as I just picked what I wanted and took it to the counter. Individual small shops were a different matter. Here I had to deal face to face and for some reason that could bring up a lot of anxiety for me. It always felt somehow confrontational. I remember walking into a small electrical store to buy a cassette tape recorder I’d seen in the window. I walked up to the counter to be confronted by a man who could have been one of my teachers from school days. He wasn’t very chatty or engaging and just laid the item on the counter for me to inspect. For my part, I didn’t really have a clue what to look for or what questions might be appropriate to ask about the machine. It was all I could do to stop myself running out of the shop at that point. I think my embarrassment kept me rooted to the spot, and I duly handed over my hard earned cash and walked out with the cassette recorder under my arm. Now was I pleased with myself at having made my first big purchase? Not a bit, instead I immediately felt an overwhelming sense of guilt, that I had spent all that money on myself.

Over a lifetime, I seem to have come full circle in my approach to money; from being relaxed, naive and unstressed about parting with it, to being anxious, risk averse and almost neurotically careful about it. To this day I am incredibly bad at spending money, and at the other end of the spectrum I am very good at putting it away; of saving it for a rainy day. Of course, it’s never quite rainy enough. I will procrastinate for months about treating myself to anything and even then, having decided it’s a “want” and not a “need”, I’ll walk away from it.

In my teens and later years I never got into chasing money. It was as if the weekly wage wasn’t the most important goal of the job I was in or even of life itself. I couldn’t see the point of doing something I didn’t enjoy just because it paid well; it just seemed a waste of time to me. Of course the ideal would have been doing something challenging and interesting that I got paid well for. But jobs like that seemed hard to find. In fact, through the 1970s to the 1990s, jobs of any description became harder to come by. Labour markets seemed to get more volatile, particularly for someone with my skill base. I went through more than my share of periods of unemployment. Which is something else that teaches you a lot about money. I discovered a level of adaptability I didn’t know I had. It was a case of make do, mend or simply live without. I guess it was these periods that really taught me the difference between a “need” and a “want”.

In March 2015 my favourite author Sir Terry Pratchet died from complications related to Alzheimers. I first discovered his books in WH Smiths in Liverpool. While browsing for something new to read, I lifted a copy of one of his “Discworld” novels off a shelf, opened it at random and started to read. Then I started to giggle…then…chuckle and finally laugh out loud. Embarrassed at this public display of frivolity I quickly replaced the book and walked away wiping the tears from my eyes. I then went back to the shelf for the book, bought it and never looked back.

Over the next few years I read everything of his I could lay my hands on, and then waited impatiently for him to write the next. A few years ago I wrote a little personal homage to Sir Terry. Just a short humorous piece about his death, or rather how i imagined it, as i don’t think he managed to go the way he wanted to; which was sitting in his garden with a glass of something and listening to a favourite piece of music.

If you’ve never read any of his books,then before I go any further you need to know that death figured as a character in many of them. He was very traditionally portrayed as a skeleton dressed in a black hooded cloak and carrying a scythe and an hourglass style timer. Terry always wrote Death’s lines in block capitals, gave him a white stallion to ride on and, for some obscure reason, made him a lover of cats.

………………………………

Mort D’Pratchett

Sir Terry Pratchett is in Limbo, having just granted himself his wish to opt out of life when he considered his alzheimers was getting too advanced. However, he’s a little puzzled as to why he is, where he is. Eventually he hears a slow clip, clopping and a large white horse looms out of the swirling mist. As it’s rider dismounts, Terry notices that the horse’s body is steaming and that the animal is also breathing very heavily. He also can’t help but notice that the Rider is dressed rather differently than he imagined but, ever the gentleman, he decides not to comment just yet and holds out his hand to greet his nemesis.

“Ah, Death I presume, I must say it’s an honour to meet you at last, I’ve written so much about you.” Death, a little thrown by this greeting as people aren’t usually pleased to see him, nevertheless holds out a skeletal hand for Terry to shake; an action that produces a rather hollow rattling noise. This causes a brief moment of embarrassed silence before a, – quite literally given the circumstances – disembodied voice booms out of the ether.

MR PRATCHETT, OR MAY I CALL YOU TERRY? I CAN ASSURE YOU THE HONOUR IS ALL MINE….there is a slight pause before Death speaks again….EVEN IF YOU HAVE BUGGERED UP MY SCHEDULE!

This time it’s Terry’s turn to be thrown, but he remains polite and says, “I’m very sorry if I’ve caused you any problem but I’m really not sure what you mean.” Death sighs and reaches for his saddle bags, lifting them down he opens them up to reveal that they are full of large hourglasses. All of them have an amount of sand in one end, which is slowly being added to by a steady trickle of sand from the other end; there is very little sand left in this ‘other end’.

Death begins to explain, THESE ARE SOME OF MY LIFE TIMERS. THEY ARE CREATED WHEN SOMEONE IS BORN AND THEY RUN UNTIL THAT PERSON DIES. YOU WILL NOTE THAT THE AMOUNT OF SAND IN THEM VARIES FROM TIMER TO TIMER. THIS IS BECAUSE EACH PERSON HAS AN ALLOTTED LIFE SPAN. I MERELY HAVE TO KEEP AN EYE ON THEM, SO THAT I KNOW WHEN TO RIDE OUT AND MAKE CERTAIN THEY ARE ‘ON SCHEDULE’……..SO TO SPEAK. ALL PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD I’M SURE YOU’LL AGREE…….UNTIL, THAT IS, SOMEONE LIKE YOURSELF COMES ALONG.

A light bulb went on inside Terry’s head, “ah,” he said, “I think I’m beginning to see. I’ve caused you a problem because I took my own life.”

EXACTLY……said Death…..THERE I WAS IN ‘WYJABRINGADOGALONG’ ON THE EAST COAST OF AUSTRALIA, WHEN A BLOODY ALARM WENT OFF. THE POOR BUGGER I’D GONE TO COLLECT NEARLY DIDN’T NEED ME. I HAD TO JUMP ABOARD POOR BINKY…(this was the name Death had given to his horse……it’s a long story)….AND RACE AROUND HALF THE PLANET JUST TO GET TO YOU. I MEAN JUST LOOK AT THE POOR ANIMAL….HE’S GONE FROM NOBLE STEED TO CART HORSE. IT’LL BE EXTRA OATS AND A GOOD RUB DOWN FOR HIM WHEN WE’VE FINISHED THIS SHIFT.

Terry was genuinely apologetic, “Look, I really am sorry, but you must have known I wasn’t prepared to put up with my ‘embuggeration.” Which was the word he used to describe his alzheimers. “Everybody knew that what I wanted was to end my life peacefully at a time and place of my choosing. Admittedly it didn’t go entirely to plan. I mean, I’d got myself comfortable in the garden with my glass of brandy and Thomas Tallis on the hifi. I couldn’t help that my neighbour had chosen that precise moment to play her Kylie Minogue album. I was just about to pop the pills when the strains of ‘I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky’ drifted over the hedge. Well I could hardly knock on her door and ask, ‘I say, would you mind awfully keeping the volume down, as I’m just about to top myself.”

There was an awkward silence as both of them shifted from one foot to the other while staring at the floor. Terry took a deep breath and said, hesitantly, “Er, while we’re here, just out of interest, how much longer did I have left?”

OH, A FEW YEARS I THINK. Said Death.

“And, er, what would have been my quality of life?” Asked Terry.

BUGGERED IF I KNOW, said Death, I ONLY DO THE ONE JOB, AND THAT PREFERABLY ON TIME.

At this point, Terry began to feel a bit sorry for Death. After all, it probably wasn’t Death’s fault that there was a certain amount of job demarcation in the process of passing over. I mean, if everybody started topping themselves willy nilly whenever they felt like it, the multiverse would be in a right pickle. There had to be a certain order about things. So he said, “Look, I really am sorry, but I really didn’t want to carry on, knowing what was likely to happen to me. So I’m quite ready for you now, really I am, but I’ve been wondering, er, would you mind answering one more question before you do your job?

ASK AWAY. Said Death.

“Well I’m curious.” There was a slight pause. “Well, why are you dressed like that?

LIKE WHAT? Said Death, somewhat indignantly.

“Well it looks like some sort of Jedi Master.” Said Terry.

OK, SO I FELT LIKE A CHANGE. Said Death, a tad defensively. IT’S ALRIGHT FOR THE LIVING. YOU CAN JUST POP TO M&S FOR A NEW OUTFIT WHENEVER YOU FEEL LIKE IT, AND ON YOUR WAY HOME DUCK INTO ‘ACCESSORIZE’ FOR SOMETHING TO SET IT OFF. BUT ME, I’VE BEEN STUCK WITH A TATTERED BLACK CLOAK WITH A HOOD AND A BLOODY GREAT SCYTHE FOR MILLENNIA.

“Ok, ok, calm down.” said Terry, “I don’t mean to criticise, but you do look a bit like a cross between Darth Vader and er, Yoda?…..I mean….what’s all that about?”

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW. Said Death. I WANTED A NEW IMAGE. SOMETHING A BIT MORE 21ST CENTURY. I HAPPEN TO THINK THE DARTH VADER LOOK IS QUITE BUSINESS LIKE WHILE ALSO LOOKING RATHER SEXY.

“And the head of Yoda?” Said Terry, raising an eyebrow.

WELL, WHO WANTS A BLEACHED MAGGOT INFESTED SKULL TO BE THE LAST THING THEY SEE? Said Death

“Ah, I see your point.” said Terry. “But what about your scythe, surely you need something to do the deed?” There was a click, a hum and a swish as Sir Terry Pratchett disappeared in a puff of smoke. A swish, a hum and a click as Death clipped his light sabre back onto his belt.

OH YESSSS. Said Death, with a satisfied smile. BEATS THE HELL OUT OF A SCYTHE.

I saw my Doctor yesterday. A routine appointment to get the results of  blood tests I had a few weeks ago. It turned out quite positive, in that my prostate, aside from being a little enlarged, was showing no indicators of cancer, and my LDL cholesterol had dropped to 1.6. All in all pretty good news then, and I felt the anxiety I’d had on my way there just lift off my shoulders.

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety lately, as I’ve been feeling quite a lot of it it seems. So I speculate about where it might come from and why it’s there at all. It’s curious, but I even feel anxious as I’m writing about anxiety, or any writing at all for that matter.

As a client, in my counseling sessions, I’m sufficiently long in the tooth to know that any negative feelings I may have, more than likely are rooted in my past somewhere. Mostly they just sit in the background until something in the present triggers them, and if I’m not mindful of the difference between past and present then all hell can let loose. Those are the moments when some time after the event has passed, or even five minutes later, I drop my face into my hands and exclaim, what the hell did I do/say that for? The answer being, because I allowed the past to take over the present.

As a counselor however, I’ve learned to be more mindful of the current situation in the life of the person in front of me. I’m not overfond of the self help memes that crop up on social media. Many are just simple truths repackaged as great wisdom. Some at best may be mildly comforting, (and that’s OK), while at worst some just come over as glib or even patronizing.

I’ve learned that unless someone has specifically requested that I remind them of what they were working on, that I simply need to pay attention to where they are right now. Sometimes the current reality of someone’s life can have so much going on in it, that they are unlikely to be able to spend the time exploring anything deeper. Even if that’s where the greatest gains in personal growth might be made.

So a young single mum of two, juggling childcare while trying to hold down two minimally paid jobs and attempting to stay clear of an ex who is stalking her, is not going to appreciate me encouraging her to explore her early relationship with her mum and dad. She would have every right to tell me to fuck off.

Some have; I once had someone let fly at me for attempting to counsel them, which I had assumed was what I was supposed to be doing. I had probably used one of those glib pithy phrases. I realised that I had allowed my anxiety about what was going on for them to hijack my thinking. In a sense, effectively there were two clients in that room, which was never going to be workable.

Getting back to my anxiety about writing. I realised that it goes back a long way. Right back to my school days. In my secondary school years, a teacher called Mr, Brick took us for English language classes. He didn’t know it but he didn’t do a lot for my confidence. He was incredibly critical of my handwriting, amongst other things, so as a result it just got worse. So bad that other teachers began to pile on the negative comments. For many years after leaving school, apart from filling in forms or signing my name, I simply avoided writing anything. I also didn’t get the hang of punctuation and grammar. The whole world of commas, full stops, colons, semi colons, verbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectives, was all so much gibberish to me; still is if I’m honest.

What freed me of at least some of the stress of writing was the word processor. Ok, it’s a cheat of sorts, as I still do very little handwriting. So the problem hasn’t gone away, I’ve just found a way around it. I also still struggle with all the other aforementioned issues around writing.

There is an enduring myth that I probably picked up from a self help book many years ago. It’s one of those pithy little phrases I referred to earlier. It goes something like, “Face a fear and the death of that fear is certain.” They lie dear reader, they lie. Since I started journaling and blogging some years ago, I must have written several hundred thousand words. However, whenever I sit down to write, the same painful feelings surface. Also, whatever reassurances I get from others, “you write really well!” “It’s really good!” “It draws me in!” seems to make no difference at all to the way i feel about it. 

So what is the bit of this puzzle that is missing for me? I think fear of criticism is part of it. Or worse, fear of attack in some form. Laying my work out and open to public scrutiny seems to mean a high degree of vulnerability for me. So I’m recognising that this fear/anxiety I have probably goes back much earlier in my life. Certainly pre school and maybe back to my cot. I’m speculating that I was left alone a lot, even when I was crying. There did seem to be a general attitude around back then, that if you picked babies up too much it just spoiled them. So there were probably quite a few of us who were left to just cry ourselves to sleep.

I heard some bad news just before going to bed a few nights ago and although I managed to get off to sleep ok, I woke at around 3 am with the issue churning around in my head. Just recently I’ve discovered that you tube has quite a range of videos that are meant to help with insomnia. They seem to be mostly recordings of waves or babbling streams or rain on various types of roof materials. They don’t usually send me back to sleep, but I find the white noise a bit of a distraction to what’s in my head, at least for a short time.

On this occasion I found myself drifting off again and starting to dream what turned out to be quite a vivid and pleasant dream. This in itself was lovely because mostly my dreams are quite disturbing. Those that I remember anyway.

I was visiting a woman friend; someone I’ve known for years. She’s always very warm and welcoming but this time there was the added bonus that she was completely au-naturale, starkers, as the newborn! I was greeted with the usual, apart from the nakedness of course, warm embrace. Throughout the entire encounter I remained fully clothed, and there was no sense of eroticism at all. The main feelings in the dream seemed to be of warmth and comfort, and the sense of delight in running my hands gently over soft warm skin. The whole thing felt rather beautiful and normal.

I guess that my subconscious self had somehow managed to conjure up something powerful enough to replace the anxiety and insecurity I’d been feeling. It seemed to work on this occasion anyway. I just wish I could do it more often, and while I’m awake would be nice too.

In a quiet moment a few days ago, I noticed a feeling. Just something vague in the background. I think some people refer to it as existential angst. So I brought it forward to the front of my mind, in order to examine it more closely. I realised that what it actually was, was fear. As simple as that really,

There’s a lot of it about just now; right the way through our society. It seems to be making a lot of people act rather irrationally. Including me when I’m not aware of it. So I’ve made a decision to bring it forward to my conscious mind whenever I can.

It’s strange really; holding it up to be examined. Because it seems to be in the nature of fear, that it doesn’t want to be scrutinised. Which shouldn’t be surprising really. Who in their right mind wants to confront fear.

I learned a long time ago that feelings are triggered by a combination of present and past events. The trick is separating out the two. The current situation may be a very real threat, triggering our fight or flight response. The problem is, that a lot of the time, what also gets triggered is a considerable amount of feeling from past fearful events. It’s often referred to as post traumatic stress. For some people this can cause a full on panic attack; even in a situation that to some onlookers seems insignificant.

People tend to associate PTSD with some major distressing event in someone’s life. Just something one off and dramatic, like a car crash or a natural disaster. And that often is the case. However, I think that it’s a bit more complicated, longer term and more deep rooted in all of us. You have to add together all the apparently minor incidents in life, right from one’s birth experience. Ok, we may not remember the event, but our mind records the feelings all too easily and well. So that each time we are confronted with another event in our lives that we experience as threatening to our existence in some way, another bit of fear is glued onto the pile.

I’ve counselled people through fear and, like grief, it seems to have it’s own physical manifestations. As they tell their story what seems to manifest first is shaking, sometimes quite vigorously. Although mostly it seems to happen in short bursts. Their hands can also feel cold and clammy to the touch. On repeated telling of the story the trembling seems to die down and then shifts to laughter. Which seems odd until you think what happens when someone is given a sudden mild fright. They usually begin to laugh a few seconds after.

Repeated telling of the story seems to be quite important. Which can be hard, since one understandably would rather be doing anything else but confront our fears. This repeated telling of the story of the event, often brings up other thoughts and feelings. It’s equally important to allow these to be expressed too. So shaking may turn into crying or raging or even laughter. These feelings may seem inappropriate to the counsellor, but they may have some relevance to the client, and that’s all that matters.

My wife likes a cup of coffee in the morning. Just the one at breakfast time. For years she used a one cup cafetiere and this served her very well. It’s just a small glass flask mounted in a metal holder. The lid has a filter mechanism on the end of a plunger, that separates the coffee grounds from the brewed liquid by pushing them down to the bottom of the flask. A simple device that served its purpose. However, she had always coveted one of those coffee making machines on the supermarket shelves. In particular the type that grinds the beans for you and produces a perfect, fresh cup of coffee. The problem was that she never felt she could justify spending what was a large amount of money just to make one cup every morning, her dear husband not being a coffee drinker.

The burden of this dilemma was relieved for her one Xmas, by her daughter buying a machine for her. Needless to say my wife was delighted, and the cafetiere was washed for the last time and pushed to the back of a shelf, where it didn’t take up much space. Which is more than could be said of the coffee machine, whose footprint was about ten times that of the cafetiere. Indeed, it was not much smaller than the average microwave oven. We got it unpacked and set up near a socket in the utility room, as this was the only room that had enough worktop space.

There then followed nearly two hours where my wife and I attempted to decode the instruction book, which appeared to be written in ancient Egyptian pictogrammes. The Rosetta Stone probably would have been very handy. Anyway, we worked out that we had to put the beans in a little compartment on the top. On the side of the machine there was a clear plastic container that had to be filled with water. On the front there was a spout with a drip tray below it that you placed your cup under and on. To one side of this there was a larger spout that swiveled out to the side, which was supposed to dispense a steam jet for heating milk. There was also an instrument panel with buttons and dials and flashing lights that could have come out of an airline cockpit.

We plugged it in and filled everything we needed to and pushed the start button to make the first cup of coffee. Everything went very smoothly but also very noisily, as quiet this thing wasn’t. There was a chorus of grinding, clicking, clunking and gurgling sounds that preceded the production of every cup of coffee. Then, around twenty minutes later, another series of clicking and gurgling sounds as the machine proceeded to flush its pipework through the delivery spout and down into the drip tray. Presumably this action was needed to prevent the pipework from clogging up. However, so much liquid was ejected that my wife decided to leave an empty glass under the spout, in order to avoid the drip tray being overwhelmed.

For a few days everything went well. Until one morning it refused to work, and a flashing light suggested that something might be wrong. Half an hour spent deciphering hieroglyphics in the manual, revealed that the container that held the little pucks of waste grounds ejected after the production of each cup was full, and required emptying before it would make another cup. This necessitated the front being opened up and the drip tray removed before the container could be lifted out. Only to discover that it had collected just three pucks of waste coffee grounds. Now this was puzzling, because there was still plenty of space in the container. We consulted the hieroglyphics again. How did this thing gauge when it needed emptying? Did it know the weight of the little pucks? Was there a light beam that did the counting or some other form of sensor? Try as we might, we couldn’t figure it out. So for the next few weeks, every couple of days or so, the usual mechanical noises were accompanied by a chorus of mutterings and curses as the machine shut down again, and demanded emptying. As it was only making one cup a day, it was decided that it must be faulty and was then duly packed up and sent back for repair or refund. It came back.

Apparently they could find no fault with the machine, but suggested that we might pay more attention to the cleaning routine. A suggestion that really irritated my wife, as she took it personally. So it seemed that there was nothing for it but to persevere with it. And every morning for over two years our breakfast peace was interrupted with a chorus of, grind, click, clunk, gurgle. Followed twenty minutes later with the gurgle, gurgle of the machine flushing its pipes. Also, every few days there was an extra accompanying chorus of muffled hissing, growling and muttered expletives as the machine clicked and clunked but totally refused to gurgle, until the ritual of the emptying of the used grounds container had been performed to its satisfaction. Oh, I’m nearly forgetting, another ritual that had to be performed was the removal of the gubbins, contraption thingy that actually brewed the coffee. It had to be unclipped, pulled out of its housing and then flushed under a running tap before reversing the process to refit it. Honestly I was beginning to think we had the prima Donna of coffee makers. Maria Callas was never so temperamental.

One day fairly recently my wife performed the usual ritual of opening the door, removing the drip tray, emptying the grounds caddy and flushing out the gubbins, contraption thingy and putting everything back again before attempting to make the single cup of precious liquid. Sadly this time she must have done something to seriously piss off the great god Arabica, because, with a resounding click and clunk, the machine refused to function. I checked it over and discovered that it seemed to have jammed up, as the gubbins, contraption thingy was immovable. The machine was out of warranty, so I removed the back and side panels. Only to be confronted by an array of pulleys, cogs, levers and cables that would have been quite at home on the International Space Station. I put the panels back on and pronounced it deceased.

The one cup cafetière was lifted from the back of the cupboard and placed in the sink to be washed prior to being brought back into use. There seemed to be a little smear of kitchen grease on the side of it, and I did a double take, as the smear looked for all the world like a smiley face. With an expression that appeared to be, ever so slightly, smug.

Footnote:

My wife has now given up drinking coffee in the morning.