Searching for the lost Mojo

'All illness comes from within, so don't just scratch the surface.'

I came across this statement the other day and it got me thinking. Of all the patients who have presented with physical symptoms or chronic medical conditions, I can safely say that in every single person there was a significant emotional undercurrent present.

These heightened emotions arise from a wide range of situations, most commonly relationship difficulties, bereavement, stress (financial, and work-related) and detrimental life-style factors.

The ancient Chinese were the first to recognise the correlation between emotional health and physical health, which is why Five Element Acupuncture is concerned with regaining a better emotional and spiritual as well as physical balance.

Many of my patients found they were able to talk about their emotional issues during their first acupuncture appointment, and for some it was the first opportunity they had had for years to 'get things off their chest'. What the sessions offer is the opportunity and time for patients to say whatever is on their mind, in a safe place where they can be heard without fear of being judged or discriminated against. There is no prescriptive advice offered, merely encouragement to discover alternatives and explore options.

The result is usually a mixture of relief, as if a huge weight has been lifted; clarity, with a plan for a way forward; an increase in motivation, self-awareness and self-esteem - and exhaustion, always!

And why exhaustion? Think of all of your holiday stuff being packed into a bag and held out at arms length. It's not how big or how heavy the bag is that matters - it's how long you hold it for. You have to let it go eventually to give yourself a break. Same goes for your emotional baggage.

We all deserve to give ourselves a break sometimes.

Sunbathing in the Rain

I've just read 'Sunbathing in the Rain' by author and poet, Gwyneth Lewis. She describes it as a 'cheerful book about depression'. A bit of an oxymoron it ever I've heard one, but it's exactly what she says it is. It is the author's account of her experience of severe depression - and she writes it very well, with wit, humour and a huge amount of honesty and humility.

One passage near the beginning of the book is particularly poignant and contains some very wise words which have arisen from her close observation of the illness.

She says, 'If you can cope with the eternal nuclear winter of depression and come through it without committing suicide - the disease's most serious side effect - then, in my experience, depression can be a great friend. It says: the way you've been living is unbearable, it's not for you. And it teaches you slowly to live in a way that suits you infinitely better. If you don't listen, of course, it comes back and knocks you out even harder the next time, until you get the point.'

She has realised that her depression 'isn't a random chemical event but has an emotional logic' which kicks in when she's not listening to what she really knows, when she's being wilful and harming herself.

Depression can be caused on the one hand by a significant imbalance in the blood's chemistry, the result of some underlying pathology of  an organ responsible for the body's day to day function; it can also be down to a combination of genetic inheritance, emotional habit and stressful life events.

Stress is the precursor to depression if ignored over a period of time. So if you're constantly feeling stressed out, then this is your body telling you something. It's saying to you that the way you're living is not working for you and something needs to change. Stress is enormously sapping of energy, but change requires energy and a lot of effort in order to initiate and sustain it. 

Depression sets in when your energy supply has been exhausted - you no longer have the resources to sustain the lifestyle you have chosen, but unfortunately you don't have the energy to initiate change either. This is the point when your body will go into recovery mode - and you may become incapable of doing anything other than sleeping. Minor day to day chores can become overwhelming and even the energy required to get dressed can seem more than is needed to climb Mount Everest. 

The solution? Listen to your body. If it's telling you to rest, then do just that. Nourish yourself - physically and emotionally. Don't be afraid or too proud to ask for help. Seeking help is not a sign of weakness - it's a sign of maturity in that you have recognised that there's something you're struggling with - and you're willing to take responsibility and to do something about it.

And tap into your support network - family, friends, GP, therapist. Talk to someone - it's always good to talk, when the time is right and when you feel ready to do so. Sometimes you just need to hear yourself saying out loud all of those things that are going round in your head. Find someone who will listen to you without judging you or giving you advice - the answers to all of our problems come from within, we sometimes need a bit of time, space and guidance to find them.

'If you bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.' 

Do you Love Your Car More than Yourself?

I have come to realise that as a nation, and perhaps even as a species, there is a tendency towards a reactive rather than a proactive approach to health and well being.

Whilst most of us will seek treatment or advice when we're ill or in pain, on the whole we're not very good at looking after ourselves in order to prevent illness and to STAY WELL.

Certainly, most of us take our car in for regular service and MOT - whilst the latter is a legal requirement, the former is because it's such a pain if the car breaks down. Why then, don't we do the same for ourselves? After all, if a car is broken beyond repair it's easy to just buy another one. The same cannot be said about the human body.

Increasingly, we push ourselves to work harder, longer and faster until - guess what? The body says 'Enough!' - the result being the sudden onset of illness or pain, or a recurrent or chronic symptom. We duly trot along to the GP or therapist in search of that 'quick fix' that will help us get better and back onto that gruelling treadmill as soon as possible.

The trouble is, although we may feel better in the short term and we're able to pick up from where we left off, if we keep going at the same pace as before it's pretty certain that a recurrence will be on the cards sooner rather than later.

So how can we prevent this happening again?

The answer is to implement change. When illness, pain and symptoms occur, it is your body telling you that something in your lifestyle isn't working well for you. It is a warning sign - and you need to listen.

One change could be to ease up on yourself - don't work so hard, long or fast. Easier said than done though, in today's climate of financial and peer pressures.

If this is not an option for you, then TAKE TIME TO LOOK AFTER YOURSELF. Ring-fence an hour a month minimum for 'Me Time' - and hour a week would be better - to replenish and nourish yourself. Do an hour of yoga; have a treatment or a massage; go for a quiet walk; have an uninterrupted soak in the bath; SWITCH OFF YOUR PHONE!!

And don't give your car more TLC than you give to yourself.

Cruelty or Kindness?

I've had this problem ever since I qualified as an Acupuncturist and started my practice. As it turns out, this problem is a recent manifestation of a pattern of behaviour that I've adopted for most of my life, and now that I'm aware of it, I have made it very much a work in progress.

The problem I've had is that of charging patients a fee for the late cancellation or failure to attend an appointment.

I've always prided myself in being flexible and have been eager to accommodate last minute rearrangement of plans. I've shown limitless patience and understanding towards people in general, particularly of late to patients who either change their appointments at the last minute or just plain fail to turn up ("I got my phone reminder five minutes ago but I'm in Braintree" - that type of last minute!). 

I've always smiled, shrugged and said "Oh never mind, just one of those things, happens to us all", in the hope that patients will re-book (which they mostly have done) and I've absorbed the inconvenience, the disruption to my work pattern and the cost of putting the heating on for two hours prior to the appointment.

When this degree of acceptance has been challenged in the past (by my clinical supervisor, my peers and my husband) I have justified my actions by saying things like "Such is life", "Can't be helped" etc, but mostly it was because I thought I was being kind.  In my mind, to make a charge for late cancellations or missed appointments would be a punishment for something that was unavoidable, and so would be cruel. There was also the resonance of knowing that actually I too was once that person who would change arrangements at the drop of a hat because someone or something else took priority.

And that's the crux of it.

I would allow other people and their arrangements to take priority over my own plans. But who was to say that their stuff was any more important than my own?It was purely my perception and I had chosen to put myself in second place - because I felt that other people were more important than me. And this is a mindset I'd adopted for most of my life.

That is, until I decided to change this mindset - and in so doing, also changed the habit of a life time.

I now put myself at the top of my list of priorities, especially when it comes to arranged appointments. And because I have greater respect for myself, I am able to consider my own arrangements important enough to take priority. This level of commitment also reflects the fact that I have, and show, an equal respect for the person with whom I have made the arrangement, and so I will keep to my word and will not let them down.

The minute I allow something else to take priority and fail to keep to a commitment, it immediately intimates to the other person that they are no longer as important to me at that moment as they were previously. It is one thing to have a lack of respect for yourself, but to disrespect others is lamentable. 

In conclusion, my perceived 'acts of kindness' were a total misconception. I was in fact denying myself respect - from others and well as from myself; I was enabling and actively encouraging disrespectful behaviour; and in relation to patients, I was denying them the opportunity to commit to looking after themselves and to gain their own self-respect. 

And how can we possibly expect others to respect us if we fail to respect ourselves?

I now regard my insistence on payment for late cancellation and failure to attend appointments as a true act of kindness. It would be a misconception to see it as a cruel, financial punishment.

What is Normal?

Wednesday 23rd April 2014 marked the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. It also happened to be World Book Night 2014.

World Book Night happens on April 23rd each year and is an initiative started by The Reading Agency, a charity with a mission to encourage people to read books for pleasure. http://www.worldbooknight.org/

Volunteers across the UK and Ireland sign up to receive a consignment of books which they give out to non-readers or to people who don't regularly read - FOR FREE.  Why? Because everything changes when we read.

For the third year running I volunteered to be a Book Giver. I stood in the greengrocer shop on Nacton Road and gave away 18 copies of 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' - or at least, that's what I tried to do.

Giving away free books is actually more difficult than you might think. People are naturally very wary of being approached in the street. I was in a shop, which I thought would be less threatening both for myself and the recipient but folk seemed to be really reluctant to accept a gift from a stranger - they wanted to know if there was a catch.

I tried to explain the concept of World Book Night (which incidentally, only one out of the eighteen had actually heard of it) but still people were fearful of there being religious, political or monetary overtones. Several people just wouldn't entertain the idea in any shape or form; one or two declined the book, saying they didn't have time to read, but most accepted the book, albeit reluctantly, before making a hasty exit from the shop (I did wait until after they'd made their purchases before speaking).

Only one person accepted the book enthusiastically - she asked what the story was about, listened intently to me talking about WBN and even asked how she could get involved herself for next year. And yet she was the least likely person that I expected to have such a response. She was dressed in black punk gear, had black and red hair, numerous piercings and tattoos. She said she worked in a youth center and thought people there might be interested. So I gave her two books.

This experience left me feeling bemused, mostly because people were prejudging me and seemed unable deal with a 'normal' person trying to give away something completely harmless, as an act of kindness. At least, I regard myself as normal, and I think I look fairly normal in an average kind of way - but then, what is normal? Certainly, giving away books on a Wednesday evening in the local greengrocer shop is not normal, but has it also come to pass that acts of kindness are also now considered not to be normal?

Perhaps if I had looked less normal and more like the punk girl, then my random act of giving would have been more acceptable - odd behaviour from an odd-looking person.

I Love My Job!

I love my job!

How many people can say this, with hand on heart, and really mean it?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a job as 'A regular activity performed in exchange for payment, especially as one's trade, occupation, or profession'.

That definition seems far too shallow to me. Certainly, acupuncture treatments are indeed a regular activity, particularly in the initial stages until the patient regains a better physical and emotional balance; and of course this involves an exchange of payment. But there's far more to acupuncture than this.

When a patient comes for treatment, I have the privilege of being allowed into their life and I am invited to embark upon a journey with them - a journey of discovery, about themselves and their interactions with their nearest and dearest, and an exploration of options and the initiation of change.

Every encounter with a patient fills me with humility as I am left wondering 'Why me? Why have I been chosen to walk hand in hand with my patient,  into their unknown territory? Why are they seeking support and reassurance from me during this period of transition? Surely there are other practitioners out there who have more experience, greater knowledge and profound wisdom who would be their preferred choice?'

I have come to realise that when a patient's path crosses my own it is because we both have valuable life lessons to learn. We have been fortunate enough to have been put together at this particular time and place, and have been given the opportunity to learn these lessons from each other. 

There have been instances in my practice when a patient's predicament resonates very strongly with me and with a similar situation that I have been through in the past. In such instances, perhaps it is the benefit of hindsight and experience which are useful in helping to explore options. But I am also often challenged to reflect upon my own past events in order to reassess as to whether I could have done things differently, or more importantly, better - not always an easy or comfortable exercise, but nevertheless always best tackled face on rather than burying my head in the sand.

I have also treated patients presenting with extremely challenging conditions, some of which I may not have encountered before. I welcome these patients with open arms, an open mind and an open heart, for it is here that I am given the chance to learn the greatest lessons of all - to be open, honest and receptive to all things, to listen to my patient and to assess their needs, and to quieten my own self doubt so that I may do my best by my patient, with every good intention. If my best does not seem good enough, then I will have had the privilege of encountering a new experience and an invaluable opportunity from which to learn. 

What more could anyone ask for? This gives 'learning on the job' a whole new perspective.

Mums Need Looking After Too!

Calling all Mums out there! 

Mother's Day is the weekend after next and our little darlings are racking their brains to think of a suitable gift. Will it be chocolates, flowers, smellies or the latest Micky Bubble CD?

Whatever the gift, we'll be touched and really, really appreciative - won't we? Because it's the thought that counts. 

Hands up if you're that person who, when asked what they'd like for Mother's Day, says "I don't want anything, just a hug and a kiss will do me".

Hugs and kisses are wonderful gifts - so simple to give but so often overlooked. A tender touch and a warm embrace speak volumes - what's not to want?

But what do Mums really NEED?

Without a doubt, ALL Mums definitely NEED some time out for some quality ME TIME.

Mums spend so much time looking after children, partners and sometimes pets too, caring for their every need and giving their absolute all. It's all give, give, give but if we're not careful, before we know it we're all given out and there's nothing left. Our pot of giving is empty and needs replenishing. To carry on giving from an empty pot will leave us feeling empty, resentful, out of sorts and at risk of burn out.

For many Mums it is their very nature to put others before themselves, assuming the position at the bottom of the pile. These Mums do a brilliant job at caring for everyone else but are just rubbish at caring for themselves. They need to be reminded that it is OK to be on top of the pile once in a while - it's not being self-indulgent or selfish - it's called self-preservation.

One hour a month of quality 'ME TIME' would be the bare minimum. One hour a week would be amazing. Mother's Day would be a good day to start.

And remember - if we do not care for ourselves, we cannot care for others; if we cannot look after ourselves, we cannot look after others; if we do not respect ourselves, we cannot respect others.