Love in the time of Corona

If tea had a collective noun, I’d like to think it would be “a comfort of cuppas”. It’s not just a sense of comfort that has us reaching for the kettle in times of need, but the word does a good job of conveying some of the feeling we get from a well-timed brew. Second only to water, tea is one of the world’s most popular drinks . People all over the globe congregate around the tea caddy at multiple points throughout the day, often in a reflexive response to stress, boredom, sleeplessness, or the need for a break. Tea is served when people are sick, or grieving and exchanged during meetings of friends or colleagues, fuelling creativity, planning, problem-solving and idle chatter. And there are good reasons for all this, as it turns out. Not only comforting, tea has purported physical health benefits and can support our psycho-social wellbeing.   On a basic level, tea is tasty, often caffeinated and reassuringly hot. It can hydrate you, energise you and research suggests that s...

Now that the dust has settled a bit and we have all got more used to cancellations, postponements and adaptations, it’s time to talk about disappointment. An subtle, insidious, often overlooked emotion, disappointment can be much more powerful than it’s more extroverted companions of anger, pain or grief. It can produce intense feelings, therefore playing a huge role in our day to day decision-making as we work to avoid this discomfort. We’ve all had a taste of it’s bitterness and we use the memories of those feelings to try and prevent future, similarly painful experiences, but how often do we really acknowledge disappointment or take the time to process it?   Often, it feels like we are ashamed of it, ready to sweep it away under the carpet and out of our lives. We tend to focus instead on different emotions, like sadness, or try to move boldly on and forget about it altogether. Despite the role this emotion plays in our lives - the actions it provokes, the decisions it help...

A common first world problem is having hundreds, if not thousands of happy life events stuck in photo form on phones or computer hard drives where they are rarely looked at. With lots of us currently having extra time on our hands,   I know I’m not alone in starting to delve back into these memories, reminding myself of forgotten celebrations, printing some out for frames or albums.   Research has suggested that people are more likely to become nostalgic in times of difficulty , and for good reason apparently. While the feelings aroused by looking back at the past can be complex and not all comfortable, indications are that the process and consequences of reminiscence may be beneficial to wellbeing in the long run.   For me, for example, looking at past memories now brings both sadness and pleasure. While I delight in remembering and re-experiencing past joys, there are twinges of disappointment that life is now different, frustration that I may not be able to re...

Mental Health Awareness Week 2020 is being hosted by the Mental Health Foundation from 18th to 24th May with a theme of kindness. But what does awareness really mean and how can we engage with it? One of the main messages of awareness initiatives is that mental health is everyone’s business, whether things are going well for us, or we’re struggling. Being able to talk about wellbeing, openly and without judgement, would mean that mental health becomes less stigmatised and that more people feel empowered to make changes or explore support options. This is even more important during times like this, when we are having to adapt to new ways of living amidst a global health crisis. The theme of kindness is particularly apt for this year too, highlighting communal aspects of wellbeing and our shared potential to build resilience, harness resources and promote recovery from trauma. Kindness, however, is not just what we give to others, but also something we can (and should) reserve for o...

Every Clinical Psychology trainee at Salomons Institute of Applied Psychology knows of Barry Mason. No, not the songwriter, but the family therapist who’s 1993 paper on the value of safe uncertainty has been passed down to many a trainee therapist since. Originally developed to offer family therapists a new way of approaching difficulties that families bring, the paper has implications for much more than just systemic therapy practice.   While doing a reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) recently on how to stay well during the pandemic, it was clear in many of the questions that it’s the uncertainty of the situation that is troubling a lot of people. And this isn’t anything new - humans have long preferred certainty, largely because perceived predictability and familiarity means opportunities to prepare and adapt. So, when the population is facing uncertainty on a scale this big, it’s bound to cause more than a few people to lose their emotional footing.   Humans are hard-wi...

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the end of World War Two while in the amidst of another, different global crisis. Seventy five years ago, in scenes that we cannot imagine under current lockdown rules, more than one million people lined the streets across the UK to celebrate the final surrender. Although people would face more uncertainty, grief and economic decline, the post-war years also brought relative peace, reconstruction and the foundation of the National Health Service - an organisation we have probably never been more grateful for than now, for all its flaws. What people were celebrating most, though, I think, was the resurgence of hope. The end of the devastation and the bombing meant that recuperation and rejuvenation could finally begin. Today, with our light at the end of the tunnel yet to shine, and with many NHS services overwhelmed, I want to offer a little bit of brightness. Launching today, helpers is a free, online mental health support tool built by ...