Happy Easter

Happy Easter, I hope everyone is having a restful weekend, even if it is just for some of it. So far I have a had a lovely weekend. Our weekend started on Thursday evening, myself and Lisa went to Hull City Hall to see Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast on tour. He interviewed Bob Mortimer (yeah I know, absolutely fantastic) and Tommy Cannon. Bob was his usual hilarious self, sharing jokes from his joke book in the style of Peter Beardsley, telling stories about appearing on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and explaining the drawbacks of having electronic gates that rely on having an app. Absolutely sublime! Tommy was not as abstract as Bob, but fascinating and somewhat emotional all the same. He talked about how he met Bobby Ball and spent most of the hour regaling us with stories of his best friend and comedy other half. It was a wonderful evening.

On Friday we went out for breakfast at the pub where Jack works, the breakfast was reasonable and the company was exceptional. It is always a pleasure spending time with Jack and of course Lisa. For the rest of the day me and Lisa just slobbed out on the sofa watching Homicide New York on Netflix, and trying to remember what day of the week it was (Friday, Saturday or Sunday, it felt like a Sunday but then it could be Saturday as we were at work yesterday, then remembered it was Good Friday). At teatime we wrestled with 2 traditions, do we have fish and chips as it is Good Friday, or do we stick with our Friday after pay day Chinese Takeaway. We went with the Chinese takeaway. It was a no brainer really, the queues for the chippy are always mental on Good Friday and we just couldn’t face the stress of waiting ages in a queue, getting more and more stressed and hungry with other people experiencing the same negative emotional response. Lets be honest most of us get hangry waiting in line for fish and chips and I just didn’t need that amount of negativity in my life. We ordered our usual once a month takeaway from our usual Chinese Takeaway (Hing Wins on Springbank West). We get the same thing every time. We have prawn toast to share, Lisa has Chicken Satay and fried rice and I have Singapore Chow Mein. We like what we like, sometimes if I fancy a change I will have King Prawn Curry and fired rice. But this Good Friday I wasn’t feeling that adventurous. Poor Jack was at work, he is always at work when we have our pay day treat. I felt bad that he missed out, then my food arrived and I didn’t care anymore.

After our takeaway which was delicious as always (Lisa left some of hers for Jack to have when he got in, I didn’t leave any of mine, I love him, but not enough to share my noodles with him), we watched Barbie on Sky Movies. I enjoyed it, quite funny in parts, in some ways quite simplistic, but I did like the use of Brene Brown’s web of shame to describe the female experience, and the box of shame from a male perspective. Very thought provoking, the songs were fun and I had a couple of moments where I laughed out loud. If you have not seen it (I don’t imagine there are many that haven’t) then it is worth a look.

Saturday saw us going into town to see some live music in the shape of the Trinity festival ( an acoustic music festival in various pubs across the City centre). We wanted to see one particular act (Louie and Zac from The Froot). They played 2 sets in Humber Dock Bar. As usual they were fantastic.

Today and tomorrow are a chill out days. Lamb is in the oven, football on the telly and I am contemplating getting a beer out of the fridge.

Have a lovely Easter, be gentle to yourself and those around you, take the time you can to rest and recover.

Reflecting on working during the pandemic: Story 2; Clinical Team Leader, Public Health

What has been challenging for you, during the pandemic?

So, way back, when we first went into lockdown there was a little bit of friction within the team, as in team leaders and service managers with slightly different views as to how much  the staff should be working from home, and when they can work from home, accepting that we are a face to face service of school nurses, health visitors, etc. However, there were many things that could be done from home. We did resolve that quite quickly. But it was clear that there were very different views between us, and as time has gone on, what has become more apparent is that those views seem to be linked with how well those people work from home themselves, or how sociable they are. How much they need people around them day to day to do to do the job. So those that really miss it are the ones that are arguing for staff, to be back in the office, etc. As per the government directive, we stopped face to face visits for a few weeks. And that was really hard supporting that and the staff through that because it felt very wrong to them at that time. We didn’t have access to PPE, but staff were saying they would rather take the risk. We got us set up on Microsoft Teams and that’s what we used as an alternative  for putting eyes on people, but absolutely not  the same as face to face contact.

I’m a very tactile person. I know the staff that are comfortable with accepting the hug and I will readily give hugs. It’s It’s my default setting when, there’s nothing I can say, or do to change a situation immediately. Now that time has gone, I have found that harder and harder. And this last week has been particularly difficult. I think people are just reaching the limits of what they have endured through this. So for a lot of the staff, home working has been great. We’ve got staff, trying to work while home-schooling their children and we’re accommodating them. That balance of being at home and going out to work, and all that but trying to do a job alongside home-schooling your children, maintaining confidentiality, not letting your children hear what you’re talking about. As well as all of those pressures are really difficult. The same as the whole country. Some people’s partners have been furloughed. Some have lost their jobs.

That sense of powerlessness. I can’t make the situation better for them. And I fight every day with the fact that my default position is to try and be a fixer. And I think I’m guessing I think I’m getting better, but I certainly aren’t there yet. And there’ll be something going through my mind, like… “what about if you did that or what suggest this…” and I have to stop myself all the time.  I started saying “I’m an open book” to my team. I say to them if I appear to be stuttering and incoherent it’s either my menopausal brain or it’s because I’m trying to stop myself from saying something. Because I might be trying to fix, and I can’t fix and nor is it my right for me to fix. I think that was probably one of your sessions that really, really brought that to the front of my mind. I think that as a service, it has been particularly difficult a lot of staff have, really struggled and I have been trying to be there for them. I can’t change the workload and it is crazy. We are X number of hours down within the team, and we just have to just pick up that work and cover the work?

I don’t expect you to be able to do that as much as I want to. I care about my job, I care about the families, my work with the school nurses, I care about the people I’m working with. I try to create psychological safety within the team. I’m very self-critical and the rating myself but that’s me, and that’s my issue. When I make a mistake, I say to them none of us are perfect, we’re all fallible. And I want you to feel able to say to me, when you think something, either or when you know something’s gone wrong, when you’ve done something wrong, or when you think it might have and, and we’ll learn from it, and we’ll fix it. But we have, as in any team, there’s a range of staff, some who are real perfectionists. And, and I can see the conversation and it just feels so much harder having a team meeting, over Microsoft teams. Sometimes somebody says something, and I think, Oh, here we go, that there’s going to be there really defensive response coming soon, because of the perception of perfection, and there’s a perception of incompetence, and neither, are true, and whilst that, that’s obviously not an issue that is at all related to COVID, that is just something about team dynamics. It is just, it just feels so much more challenging to work with.

It, isn’t it and that just sounds exhausting being the compassionate leader in this environment.

I think that’s it. I’m very much a sponge, so I soak up the emotions of people around me, I can feel okay, inside. But if I’m working with a team that are really anxious about something, that is how I will end up and up feeling when actually I didn’t start out feeling worried about it. So, we could keep working through this, absorbing the feelings of the staff is exhausting. But I think that’s probably one reason why it’s becoming harder and harder for the staff is that every client, they go and visit, because they aren’t seeing many people. That’s what the health visitors are experiencing and offloading of all the feelings of either new mums or mums with toddlers. Yeah, and, and it is quite exhausting.

On a personal level, I’m a very solitary person, I’m very happy with my own company, working from home and has not been a problem at all. I haven’t struggle with lack of face-to-face contact or beyond that physical element that I mentioned earlier. And the way I looked at it is well, to get two hours more out of me, because I’m not spending that time travelling an hour to get to work and an hour to get home again. And I don’t have to do that. And that’s blissful. Because I don’t particularly like the travel time. I could never frame it in a way as well. I can plan my day, or I can wind down from that day. I was thinking, oh, gosh, I got to get home and start cooking the tea. You know?

I’m missing my daughter like crazy because she lives elsewhere. She’s just married. She’s doing okay, but I miss her.

I think another thing that was challenging for me quite early on was I felt a lot of guilt. We were asked to volunteer for the nightingale hospital at Harrogate. And, and I just didn’t want to. It had been 12 years since I was on a Ward and more much longer than that, since I was anywhere near a ventilator, didn’t want to leave what bit of my family I could have contact with at the time. Although I am an extremely stubborn person internally, I can very easily be guilt tripped. And, and I very much saw my responsibility as being there for the team. But I don’t know whether that was an excuse or not. I just didn’t want to go, and I can’t dress it up any other way. That did come with some level of guilt. So, when I could be involved more recently in our vaccine centre, then that felt like something more useful. I suppose I was looking at it in a practical sense. But people say, oh, gosh, this is making history. And I don’t know why, but I didn’t quite look at it like that. But I can see what see what they mean.

You know, in lots and lots of the properties that we visit, there’s no two-metre social distance, and people don’t have that sort of luxury of space. People are not always honest with you when you ask if anybody has got any symptoms? Then the Health Visitor arrives to do a visit to be told that somebody had gone for a swab. So, they hadn’t answered the questions, honestly, because obviously, somebody did have symptoms.

In the early weeks when the government said no, no face-to-face community visits.  That was when the staff were fearful as they were unable to see their patients face to face. So, they understandably view themselves as responsible, and they can’t, they can’t go in and see them and assess in in the way that they would normally.  They felt a huge sense of responsibility. GPs weren’t seeing anyone face to face, the situation with midwifery services was slightly different. So then the staff were getting requests for midwifery services to go and do more and more visits. And so it almost felt like it probably wasn’t because it’s very often just how things get communicated or twisted, as that comes down the communication path is it felt like midwives not doing one thing became another surfaces responsibility in a completely different trust. And then GPs when seeing patients face to face there weren’t doing six week checks on babies. And so that felt like it became the health visitors responsibility. I don’t really think that that affected me significantly. So I was trying to support them just trying to think back how I would be doing it and and I think it would be acknowledging that their concerns that they felt responsible, but that it was either a national decision to do things that way and and an organisational decision so therefore, they they couldn’t be held responsible but it’s still that responsibility.

What could you possibly see as being helpful?

I guess, the way the organisation moved forward with technology, I think it’s given those more options as a service moving forward. And I think, there’s no sense of rushing, or pulling people back into bases and offices. So I would, I guess, my concern there, I’m gonna go off at a tangent, sorry, my concern that is, is for those staff that do need that. That time in the office to run things past a colleague, all of which is achievable. Everybody has mobile phones. Everybody has a laptop can all call somebody or they have a whatsapp group for checking in and checking out because of learn working. And I think it’s probably been good to demonstrate that for some people who are homeworking can work. And so for me, that hasn’t had a problem with that. I will, I would say that as long as I meet the needs of the service and the staff, so anybody moving forward that wants to see me face to face. I accommodate that, I think, I think the challenges have led to us being more innovative, which is probably been a good a good thing with hindsight.

Working from home has been very helpful for the reasons that I described before. For me, I still feel it’s given me a better work life balance. But I don’t I don’t see that for the staff. Because what I see for them is that actually, rather than in the travel in time, the logging on earlier I was talking about at a team meeting the other day, and I said, I’ve been trying to work out for months why communicating on zoom or teams is so exhausting. And I said, I don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. But I’ve come to realise that unless it’s a meeting I’m leading on, I’m probably very often not always present completely in that meeting, and probably trying to do something else at the same time. So if I was at a meeting in work face to face, I wouldn’t have my laptop out working, because I would think I was being rude. But actually, that’s very often what I’m what I’m doing now. And that is probably what a lot of staff are doing as well, when you look at where their eyes are. And you know, I don’t either. I’ve found that difficult. I’m not sure what else to find helpful.

 I’m meeting my own needs and I hope the nurses as well. But you know, I’ve worked with the same team for three years now. That’s not to say always get everything right, because I don’t. But you just learn to read people and know when something’s right.

Reflecting on working during the pandemic: Story 1, Clinical Nurse Specialist

In March 2021 I started interview people that had worked through the pandemic. I wanted to interview a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds. I wanted to talk to people that where not being focused on by the media. I invited people that worked in the NHS as Nurses, Allied Health Professionals, Senior Managers, and people who did not work in the NHS, including a Funeral Director, CEO of a Charity, a Managers from commercial companies and managers from Government organisations.

In the end I interviewed 25 people via zoom. Each interview lasted about an hour and focussed on 4 questions:

  • What has been challenging during the pandemic?
  • What could be possibly be seen as helpful?
  • What would you ask of others to support you in the coming months?
  • What would you offer to others to support them in the coming months?

Initially I was considering writing the interviews up as a research paper, to be honest I attempted a thematic review of all the transcripts, but I found it far too challenging and time consuming. I sat on the data for a few months playing about with different ideas. Then I decided to use the interviews as a basis of a novel. I started this late in 2021. By Spring 2022 I had got the arc of a story and the first Chapter was coming together very nicely. Then my Mum got very ill and died in the August, and since then I have really struggled to get any momentum with it. Yesterday I decided to revisit all of the stories and decided to share some of them with you via this blog. I am hoping that it will re-spark some inspiration in my to start writing the novel again. I have anonymised the stories including removing where they work, this was part of our agreement when I started this project to allow them to be as candid as possible. Reading some of the transcripts and listening to the recordings has reminded me how extraordinary these people are and how incredibly surreal that whole time was. So here is the first story of a remarkable Clinical Nurse Specialist, she was the first person I interviewed and she blew me away.

Interview 001

What has been challenging during the pandemic?

 It all started on a Monday in March 2020 for us. I was told on the Friday before that we could no longer run the service in the Hospital we were currently doing it in, as we could not adequately socially distance. We had been given space in a clinic in a town just outside the city we worked in, in a community hospital, away from medical cover in a completely new environment.

So on the Monday morning, myself and my colleague packed our cars with as much equipment as we could and transported it to our new facility. The rest of the bigger equipment was brought in a removal van later that day. When we arrived we had the hospital to ourselves more or less, we had a completely empty hospital. It was bizarre, a completely surreal situation. We then set about contacting 300 patients to tell them their treatment centre had moved, and they would have to travel to a different town (only 10 miles away). This for people who are used to going to the same place, and are anxious about their condition and now on top of that are worried about catching COVID was difficult to take in. So we spent quite a bit of time reassuring patients.

We all just pulled together and got on with it, it was completely surreal.

We had minimal staff to help, we were all by ourselves, giving potentially dangerous treatments with limited medical back up. But we just got on and did what we needed to do.

The surroundings were beautiful, it was like a scene from the Teletubbies, with grassy hills, flowers and rabbits. It was so calming being away from the hustle and bustle of the inner city hospital. We were seeing 20 patients a day, none of them tested, we just cracked on and did it.

We were there from March to June and then as activity started to get back to normal the community hospital wanted their space back. The only problem was we could not go back to our original space as it was not suitable for patient safety (we could not socially distance).

So our Matron had found us a space at another hospital in the trust. This was a large room in the old administration block that had been used for storage for quite some time.

When we went to look it was floor to ceiling with chairs and furniture, there was mouse droppings on the floor, it was no way fit for purpose.

Within 3 weeks however it was emptied of rubbish, cleaned and decorated it now looked like a clinical space. So we let the 300 patients know that we had moved again, which you can imagine was another challenge. This was a really testing time, it was completely surreal but we created a fantastic space. We saw the challenge, saw beyond the muck and grime, saw what was needed and cracked on and did it. How did I do it? I just saw what it could be and set about sorting it. When I think about what I did to set up a stand-alone unit, a completely different unit to what we had, I giggle to myself. I felt excitement, adrenaline, fear, but I also felt pride. I was proud of what I had done. I was proud that we had managed to keep our patients and colleagues safe.

Me: Why do you do your job?

I love it, I do it for the patients, I want recognition for my patients, I did not want them forgotten. I wanted to put the patients first not the circumstances.

I believed I could do it.

At one point I worried that I might die from COVID, being a smoker, then I pulled myself together, and got myself out of that mindset.

Christmas was horrible, it was lonely, followed by January that was a real lull, it was so mundane with no mixing.

We are due to get a new purpose built unit and I am involved again and that makes me feel better. We can make things 150% better.

I always need a challenge.

When I think back to March and then June last year, I had nothing, I had to get everything. I had to find out everything there was nobody else.

What could be possibly be seen as helpful?

(Her answer to this was not exactly what I expected it turned into more of an extension to the first question, however we did resolve that a lot of what she relayed to me in the first part of the interview as helpful)

The 2nd wave was surreal, it seemed to hit harder. None of my patients are swabbed, and they are high risk patients. I think we are one of 2 departments that don’t swab.

Me: why is this?

It is just not viable they would need to have PCR tests so frequently that they would spend too much time in the hospital. So we screen them very carefully. To my knowledge only one of our patients has become seriously ill, and considering they are all immuno-suppressed that is quite remarkable. We have had no outbreaks amongst staff either.

Me: I wonder if this might have something to do with your mindset as you know none of your patients have been tested.

Maybe.

We have been the only service that has kept going, this is despite having 2.8 nurses to 5000 patients. Quite remarkable. We just crack on and do it.

What would you ask of others to support you in the coming months?

Understanding of how our department works.

Do not make decisions on my behalf.

Believe me when I say we need more staff, and it is not about COVID. We need more staff our patient group don’t get better; it just gets added to.

Trust me I know what I am doing.

I want to expand my service, there is no cure to the condition we treat therefore expansion is necessary, the more we improve outcomes the more patients we get.

This is what I want, this is what I need!

What would you offer to others to support them in the coming months?

Honesty

I will be clear, and open.

There is no right or wrong

I will listen.

Do you still strive for the Insta family lifestyle?

We all know it is unrealistic to expect our family life to be perfect, but we cannot help but compare our lives with our perception of the lives of those around us. Whether that is on social media, or just watching those glamorous parents and school drop off and pick up.

It always seems that everyone else has go their shit together other than you. In reality we know they don’t but we just cannot help ourselves and start competing with those around us, even if they don’t realise they are in competition with you.

The thing is we all do it, we are all in competition with each other. We all know it is fruitless and just makes us miserable. We have all read those self-help books that tell us to stop comparing ourselves with others and compare our present performance (as a parent, sibling, child, or friend) with our performance in the past. In fact I have written blogs about it. It doesn’t help, we still feel inadequate, then feel more inadequate because we are flawed and cannot take control of our lives.

Here is a simple approach that will help you manage your response to this and give you the ability to make decisions that are best for you and your family and not worry about how it appears to those around you. This approach will help you feel comfortable not always have to create those insta moments. Not to say capturing those fabulous insta moments is wrong, and should be avoided, but it is ok for them to be the moment you want to capture as a family to remind you of that wonderful experience you had as a family. And also accept that you will have moments that you would rather forget. Although to be honest I have pictures of my boys that were taken well they were behaving like little shits, that with the passing of time I treasure more than those picture perfect moments.

  • Accept that your life is not perfect (I know you already do, but stick with me). You are going to compare yourself with others, and there is very little you can do about it. You can however understand why you are doing it. Be curious and seek to understand why you are thinking what you are thinking and feeling what you are feeling without judgement, but with kindness and curiosity. You think and feel what you feel for a reason. You thoughts and feelings do not define you however they are just thoughts and feelings.
  • Once you recognise and understand your thoughts on feelings it is important not to allow them to dictate what happens next. It is very easy to become fixed on these thoughts and feelings. It is very easy to see a picture story on instagram posted by a friend during their day out at the beach, where the kids are playing perfectly, mum and dad look gorgeous and blissfully in love, and feel that you need to recreate that yourselves, but your kids keep arguing, your husband is always on his phone answering work emails and you feel fat and ugly in you new swimming costume. You feel like a complete failure and resentful of the life your friend has. None of this is real, it is all driven by thoughts and emotions that tell you how your day out should be. It is important to be able to recognise when you are about to be hooked by a thought or emotion that can be unhelpful. You can do this with practice, by practicing mindful exercises of being in the moment, and noticing when you mind wanders, once you start to think about something other than what is happening in the moment, stop thinking and start to concentrate on the moment. Do this for 5 minutes everyday, and you will soon be able to use this technique when you are being consumed by an unhelpful thought. You will then be able to recognise that you are getting hooked on the thought of being inadequate and not having the experience you hoped for. You can then let that thought go and be in the moment, recognising what is really happening in the moment. You now in a better place to take control.
  • Be very clear what you value, and what is truly important for you and your family. Take some time to think about what your current core values are, talk as a family about what you value as a family. There are loads of values exercises you can do, in fact I have quite a few blogs on them. Most importantly though is to talk about what you value on a regular basis so you are clear what is important to you. Now lets go back to that less than ideal day out. Instead of getting hooked on the unhelpful thoughts and just becoming resentful and angry, you are able to see what is exactly happening and appraise this against what you value. If what is really happening (your kinds bickering and your husband answering emails) is in line with what you value, then no action needs to be taken. If not then what would meet you values and what action can you take that is in line with those values.
  • The last step is to take action that is inline with what you value and gets the results that meet your values. You are then able to remind your family that what is currently happening is not creating the best day out, and you can do something that everyone wants to do, that meets your family values. These actions and outcomes might not always be perfect but they are in response to what is really happening not just in response to your thoughts and emotions.

If you want to know more about this approach or discuss how I can support you to create a work/life balance to meets you and your family’s needs then please message me.

Chester…A Love Story.

Last Saturday I went to Chester for the first time since my Mum’s funeral. In the build up to this trip I was apprehensive and anxious about how I would react when I was there. The emotions I have been experiencing about my home town over the past year have been so entwined with the loss of Mum that it was almost impossible to differentiate. Every time I see a picture of Chester I think of Mum.

For over 30 years (all of my adult life) visiting Chester has meant visiting Mum, staying in my childhood house, sleeping in my bedroom, eating in our kitchen and sitting with Mum in our front room. This visit would be the second time I had visited with Mum gone. The first time was the day we all said goodbye to her, and I travelled and was with Lisa and the boys throughout. This time was over a year later and solo.

As mentioned the week before my trip was full of anxiety and apprehension. My work week was being and challenging and I found it incredibly difficult to concentrate and stay focused on my work. I was worried that the nearer I got to Chester on the train, the more emotional I would become. I really did not relish being an emotional wreck on a busy train. I was going to Chester to meet up with some old school friends for a meal and a few drinks. I desperately did not want to dominate the evening struggling with my emotions. I was also due to meet Louise (my Sister) as soon as I arrived in Chester. I had visions of myself breaking down in the street and creating a scene. Chester had become such a symbol of my grief that it was on the verge pushing my memory of Mum to the side. I didn’t know how to manage this, so I decided (eventually) to put in practice what I have learned over the years and written about in blogs over the past 4 years. I just allowed these worries and emotions to be. I made no attempt to address them or rationalise them. All I could do is visit Chester spend time with people that are important to me, experience the emotions that I experience and understand what is driving those emotions. I decided to hold it all quite lightly. If I am completely honest I didn’t start doing this until Friday night. By the time I got on the train at Hull Station I was quite relaxed. Quite frankly it was a good job I was feeling zen like as the journey was horrendous with delays and overcrowded trains (apparently this is now normal on our rail network, but that is a story for another blog, probably by another blogger).

I arrived in Chester 30 minutes late, still feeling quite relaxed. I had kept Louise informed of the delays, so we arrived on City Road (the road from Chester Station) and where the venue was where we were due to meet) at the same time. I spotted her paying for her parking and I could feel my emotions starting to bubble. I gave her a hug just about managing to keep myself composed. We arrived at the Corner House Bar and it was packed. A party of about 16 young men dressed as Jockey’s had just arrived, clearly on a stag do. We contemplated going somewhere else, but decided to stay. Louise found a table and I stood at the bar waiting to be served. After some time waiting to be served behind a bunch of pissed up Jockeys I fought my way to our table. And that was it, my composure was lost, for the next 2 hours we were emotional wrecks. In hindsight it was the perfect place to have an emotional conversation as it was so busy, that everyone was absorbed in themselves to notice a middle aged brother and sister crying in the corner. It was lovely to spend some time with Louise and catch up on each others lives and families. We don’t talk as much as we should, but with busy lives and raw grief it is hard and sometimes too painful to pick up the phone.

After saying goodbye to Louise I booked in at the Hotel (conveniently situated on City Road). I had a shower and got changed and went to the pub where we were meeting. I got there really early, as I could not think of anything else to do. I messaged the group to say I was there, and bought myself a pint and waited. I wasn’t waiting long before my old friend Mike arrived. I hadn’t seen him for 30 years! It was wonderful to see him, it was as if we had never been apart. I found it so easy to talk to him, and we naturally fell into conversation about our lives now. Then Adam and Rich arrived, we had another drink and went to the restaurant. I needn’t have worried about getting emotional, the only leakage from my eyes was from laughing so much. The food was OK, the company was outstanding, it was a fantastic night.

The next day I decided to have a walk around the City Centre to acquaint myself with my hometown. I was walked along the canal in to the City Centre it felt incredibly familiar, but at the same time there was no emotional attachment. It didn’t feel like home, it was just a place I know well. I felt quite sad a flat as I walked along the streets in the rain. Chester isn’t my home, it hasn’t been my home for 34 years. In fact it was only my home for 8 years. I know this sounds really twee and hackneyed but home really is where you feel loved and safe, somewhere, where you belong. For 51 years of my life that was wherever my Mum was. More recently that has grown to my own family of Lisa, Ben and Jack. The physical Chester has no place in my heart, the notion of Chester as being where Mum and Dad are from and where our wider family live holds a bigger place in my heart. I was going to write that Chester will always hold fond memories for me, but that is not true. I could not leave Chester quick enough when I was 18, at that time it was full of difficult memories. My fond memories of Chester come from when I visited it as a young child and visiting it as a parent with my young children. Chester is a place I am happy to admire from a distance. I love to look at pictures of Chester, as they make me smile and remind me of my beautiful Mum.

My visit to Chester was full of emotion, some of it painful, but most of it joyful. It has also allowed me to disentangle my emotions about the place and the emotions I have about Mum. Chester is the place where my Mum lived, the love I feel when I see a picture of Chester is not for the place but for the one time inhabitant. Being in Chester does not make me feel any closer to her, in fact it made me feel the opposite. I prefer to keep the memory of Chester as she knew it. Chester the place and the Chester in my mind are very different, the place has no more attachment to Mum, and never will. The Chester in my mind will always be part of Mum. It took this visit to see the difference, now I can visit Chester in the future without worrying about how I will react.

As a Helping Professional how do you guard against losing yourself

Last night I read an advert for an online event by Kristen Neff on Facebook. It was titled Self Compassion for Helping Professionals: Caring for Others Without Losing Yourself. This got me thinking about a conversation I had with a colleague earlier in the day. She is going through a lot of challenges at the moment, both at work and in our home life. At the end of the conversation she said that when life gets challenging she finds comfort in helping others. She is so correct that is exactly what I do, I go into super sensitive rescue mode. When life is challenging it is comforting to immerse yourself in other people’s difficulties, and support them. It answers our narrative of ourselves as being caring compassionate human beings, whilst distracting us from our own troubles.

In truth you are not helping anyone. Our support we give to others is often very directive and short term. When I am in this state of mind I will often go into problem solving mode, seeking to find a solution for the person in front of me. I want to fix them, because if I fix them it will make me feel better. It will give me a sense of control, in a world where I feel increasingly out of control. At best it will work in the short term. The person feels supported, responds well to my problem solving approach and they are very grateful to me, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. However I have to go back to facing my world, for which I do not have an answer. At worst the person I am helping does not feel heard and becomes frustrated with the advice I am giving them and leaves feeling unsupported, which clearly in turn makes me feel worse.

When I fall into this mode it is so easy to lose myself in this desire to help others in the belief that it will make me feel better and restore me without me having to understand what is happening in my own world. I am pretty certain that this happens to all of us, and not just those of us that work in obvious helping professions, but anyone that provide a service to others. I suppose that can include all of us in one way of another, as we all attend to the needs of other people to a greater or lesser extent.

How do we all then guard against losing ourself?

From my experience it is an incremental process of forming habits of self-care and being prepared to be as compassionate to myself as I am to others. That I would say is incredibly difficult to do, and therefore requires you to form a habit of self-compassion through practice. I started with noticing when I was being self-critical, to be honest I was shocked and continue to be shocked at our unreasonable I am towards myself. Once I was able to be conscious of my thoughts and recognise my inner critic, I could then practice asking myself if I would hold others to the same standard I am holding myself to, in particular my loved ones. If I wouldn’t then could I hold myself to the same standard and offer the same level of compassion to myself as I would to them. This takes time and continual practice. I still slip into extreme self-criticism especially when life is extremely challenging.

Next I took time to get to know what is important to me. I have talked about this a lot and I cannot emphasise the importance of this enough. I use my values as a guide for all the actions I take, this level of awareness has been a gamechanger. Being clear what I value helps me everyday to understand the emotions I am feeling, and therefore help me identify the needs that are not being met that are driving these emotions. If you are not clear what your values are there are a number of exercises available including in a number of blogs I have previously written. I also provide a 1:1 values sessions either as a one off or part of a coaching programme.

Once you are equipped with the ability to be more self-compassionate and be able to be curious about why you think and feel what you think and feel, based on the values you hold, you can then start to make changes in your own life that ensure you remain connected with yourself and therefore be able to connect effectively with others. People then get the real you helping and supporting them in a consistent compassionate way without the baggage of your personal pain.

I offer a programme of coaching called Connected Living which takes you step by step through this process to ensure the habits you start to stick for you. If you want to know more please contact via the platform you accessed this from, or email me via matt@mattycoach71.com

Slowing Our Thinking

To slow our thinking we have to utilise and use our neocortex, and not let ourselves be hijacked by our amygdala’s. But there is a problem…

The neocortex is never going to act faster than the reptilian and mammalian brains. They are designed to react to keep us safe. The problem is they are rather blunt and indiscriminate. Professor Steve Peters bundled them together into the Chimp to describe how they both work to protect us from physical threats and threats to our position in the group. That is a convenient way to describe them, as they are very good at detecting potential threats but no good with the social niceties and context. That is what the neocortex is for.

When we react it is always based on emotion, and that emotion comes from our memories, which are initially interpreted by our Chimp (a combination of the reptilian and mammalian brain) from our memories. Therefore a potential threat is detected by the chimp who refers to the memory bank, there is often something in the memory bank that fits the bill or is similar enough, and then the chimp will detect an emotion attached to that memory, and make a decision to act or not. No reasoning is applied by the chimp. It will either act or not based on the emotion that memory creates. We cannot get around this, this will always happen.

If we want to practice responding rather than reacting, then what we do after we react is crucial.

What is important is that we challenge the memories we hold and the emotions we have attached to them. We often leave our emotions and memories unchecked, as we do not believe we can alter them. This is of course not true. We alter our memories all of the time to fit our narrative, our view of the world. We know we can shift our view of the world, and therefore our narrative about what is going on, so it is inevitable that we will view some of our emotions differently. If we view our emotions differently, how we react or respond to new events will be different.

When I was working as a Charge Nurse (Ward Manager) and for some of the time working as a Nurse Educator, I would dread going into work, I would feel anxious about the day ahead, I lived in fear everyday of being criticised and talked about. That feeling of anxiety for a long time would stay with me all day. It still comes and goes now, especially in the morning just before I go to work.

What I needed to do was to make sense of the emotions I was feeling, and as Steve Peters suggests, replace those Gremlins I had about work with Autopilots. Now I started doing this after I had left my role as a Charge Nurse and was working as a Nurse Educator, so I was now removed from the events that caused me the most pain, but I was still feeling the after effects. I was still seeing the people and working in the same environment, and was therefore still worried that I would experience them again.

What I started to do was to write down what was happening to me when I started to feel anxious. I would write it all down in what Brene Brown called my “first shitty draft”. I would get it all out then look at it after I had written it all down. I could then start making sense of what I had written.

To start making sense of what I have written I ask myself the following questions:

  • What assumptions am I making about the situation? Start by looking for facts in what you have written. Underline them all, then go back through them, and just ask yourself is that really a fact or are you just assuming it is a fact? Our assumptions come from our memory banks. As I said previously both our reptilian and mammalian minds use our memory banks to help them assess the threat level of what is being presented to us. They will look for anything that is remotely similar then our minds will if unchecked make an assumption based on previous evidence. The issue is with our memory bank is firstly what I mentioned before, our memory makes stuff up, and secondly it chooses similar situations like Spotify chooses what you should listen to next. Sometimes it is spot on and other times it is very wide of the mark. So always check your assumptions as often your emotional response is based on faulty out of date information.
  • The next question I will ask myself is how accountable am I for the situation I am in. In other words what part did I play in this mess? We will often if unchecked look for people or situations to blame for what has gone wrong. It is after all easier than facing up to the part we have played. Populist Governments and right wing racist movements have been making an artform of blaming groups of people and races for the ills of society. We see it every day in the press and on social media, like stories of immigrant’s taking jobs, and scrounging off the state in the UK and USA to name only 2. The UK has Brexit and the USA has the wall. Being bombarded with that kind of rhetoric makes it much easier to look for external influences when things happen in our lives, rather than looking closer to home.
  • The next question to ask is what part did other people play in what is happening? Was the part they played helpful or unhelpful. Were they active or passive participants? What do I not know about the part they played? Remember those assumptions. Our minds are masters in projecting and attributing behaviours to people that are possibly less than accurate. What facts do you have about the part they played? Again ask yourself are those facts really facts or are you just making assumptions?
  • The last question I ask myself is, is this situation within my control (can I change it)? If I can what do I need to do to change my emotions about this situation? Some times that will just be a mind-set shift, and sometimes I need to take action. If action is needed, it is vital to turn those thoughts into action. This leads to some supplementary questions.
    • What specifically am I going to do?
    • When will I do it?
    • How will I know I have achieved what I wanted to do?

Now all of this might feel a bit stilted at first but that is the reason for starting off writing those “first shitty drafts” at first to practice these responses. You can then start training your mind to pause when a response is required, and not jump in with an emotional reaction. This will take time and there will be many times that you will jump to an emotional reaction when a more reasoned response would be more appropriate. Don’t beat yourself up over that, it is after all how your mind has been operating for most of your life. What is important is that you recognise when you have reacted when a response may have been more appropriate and use the process above. The act of practicing converts those gremlins to autopilots, by putting the notion of an alternative view in the memory bank, allowing your reptilian mind to concentrate on real threats to your life and limb, and managing the reactions instigated by your mammalian mind to be more limited and less widespread.

What we don’t want to do is to kill off those gut feelings we have. Those feelings that let us know when either something is wrong or something is right. It is what we do with this visceral sensation that is so vital, do we go with the instant reaction stemming from our reptilian and mammalian minds or do we quieten them down to allow our neocortex to give a more reasoned and considered response. Now some of us will find it easier to have a more considered response than others, which is something we will consider later in this book when we look at behavioural preferences. 

The Story of My Persona

Are you an introvert or extrovert?

Are you most comfortable as an extrovert or as an introvert, or does it depend on what you are doing and who you are with?

Are you chatty or more the quiet type?

Do you prefer to watch from the side-lines or are you more comfortable in the thick of it getting stuck in?

Do you look within yourself for inspiration or do you prefer to surround yourself with friends or colleagues to find your creativity?

Do you relish those intimate one to one moments with friends or do you love those occasions with all your friends and family present?

Do you like to blend in to the background or do you love to stand out in the crowd?

Do you think to speak or do you speak to think?

Do you like to reflect before you act or are you more prone to rushing in to action?

Now if you are anything like me you will relate to some of the introvert traits and some of the extrovert traits. For some of the statements you might not have an opinion either way. We are after all complex and interesting human beings, none of us can be put in a box.

You may have noticed however that you answered more one way than the other.

In all parts of my life I have a tendency towards introversion. I prefer to email someone rather than speak to them on the phone, especially when I do not know them very well. If I am in a shop and I cannot find what I have gone in for I would rather walk out of the shop empty handed rather than ask a shop assistant. When I have a difficult problem I need to solve, I will prefer to do this alone and work through my problem carefully, I will then share my plan once I am happy with it. On the flip side I love teaching groups of people and I love talking in large groups, I often relish being the centre of attention on some occasions and hate the thought of it on others. When I worked on the wards I had no problem talking to complete strangers and striking up a rapport with them. When I am teaching and talking to large groups of people I am Matt Smith the Educator or Matt Smith the Coaching Lead. When I am blending into the background I am being Matt Smith, just plain old Matt Smith, the father, husband, son, blogger and coach. Saying that my extroverted traits do you show up in my latter persona as well as my professional persona, and the same is true for my introversion. Jung described humans as having different personas for different occasions. So crudely speaking I have my Professional persona as an Organisational Development Practitioner and Coaching Lead and a persona as a Father, a persona as a Husband, Son, Coach, Blogger and Friend. Most of these persona’s no doubt are very similar, as yours will be, otherwise it would could get very confusing trying to work out what version of a person we are speaking to, let alone how exhausting it would be to keep up all these multiple characters all of the time.

As well describing your attitude (introversion and extroversion) Carl Jung, suggests there are 2 aspects of our decision making. He proposed that we either make decisions based on our thinking or our feelings. As with our attitude they are not mutually exclusive, therefore we can and do use both traits, but not at the same time. We do however prefer to make decisions either one way or another. Again to help you understand your preferred behaviour I have put together a series of questions below:

Do you consider yourself to be formal in your interactions with people or are you much more informal when greeting people?

Do you remember facts and figures more easily than names and faces or do facts and figures leave you cold?

Do you like to analyse a problem before you plan to correct it, or do you get stuck in and use a kind of trial and error approach?

When faced with an issue do you look at it with a subjective or objective eye?

Once you have decided on a direction of travel do you stick to that route or do you see where the road takes you?

Do you relish competition and strive to come out top, or are you more interested in taking part and helping others to succeed?

Is it important to you to have a tidy desk, is it important that everything has its place and is in it, or do you not really care whether you desk is tidy or not, or where things are kept?

Do you choose your work or task above spending time with friends or family, or do you insist on finishing work on time to ensure you spend quality time with your friends and family?

Again if you are anything like me you will be able to relate to some traits for both thinking and feeling decision making. I must admit my preferred route to making decisions is based on what I feel rather than thinking things through. When faced with important decisions however, I will rely more on thinking than feelings. When I am writing or reviewing guidelines I will spend time collecting data and make sure I have all the information I need before I start writing, sometimes to the point where it takes me such a long time to get things done. However in every other aspect of my life I make decisions based on how they make me feel and how they may make others feel. I will often base my decision making on my values, if they are congruent with my values, for me it is the right decision. You may think that you base decisions on either analysis of data or on what you feel, but they may have their basis in the opposite. To examine where your decision making is routed it is worth exploring your values. What you value will unearth your preference.

Below is a picture, I would like to invite you to write down what is there for you in this picture.

The words you have written may well help you understand whether you prefer to perceive the world using sensation or intuition. If you use sensation you may well have written;

Girl

Horse

Grass

Red Dress

Trees

Hat

If you use intuition you may well have written;

Friendship

Summer

Adventure

Kindness

Happiness

Warm

Again as with all the other preferences you may well have written a mixture of the 2, however it may have come easier to come up with words for either sensation or intuition. So we can perceive the world using both preferences but find it more comfortable using one or the other. I will normally want to go straight for intuitive descriptions of the world around me and have to concentrate on seeing what is really there.

If you prefer to use intuition you are more likely to be future focussed and feel comfortable projecting and predicting what is coming next. You feel at ease when planning for the future. You are happy using your imagination and when you are with others that like to use intuition you can get carried away. Using intuition is very useful when planning for the future and creating a compelling vision.

If you prefer to use sensation you are more grounded in the here and now and feel much more comfortable describing the current state. You are comfortable highlighting what is right and wrong with the current environment. Sensation is vital to ensure that any future plans are routed in the reality of what is really happening.

It is important to remember again that you can use both intuition and sensation and that you don’t hide behind your preference when things do not work out as planned. I keep repeating this, but it is so important, we are complex and are full of contradictions. We can be introverted and extroverted, a thinker and a feeling, a sensor and intuitive. We may prefer to behave differently in different situations. It is vital to recognise this and embrace our own complexity and that of others.

A week of talking about listening, and listening

If only we spent more time listening, and I mean really listening then maybe the world would be a much better place. We all think we a good at listening, but most of us are very poor at it. We spend our time listening to respond. We start with good intentions to listen to what someone has to say about a subject or to listen to a question. As soon as they start speaking we start making judgements on what they are saying, we then stop listening and start formulating our response. In fact most of the time we have made a judgement about the person and what they are about to say even before they have opened their mouth. Really listening is difficult and takes practice. I find myself regularly falling into this trap of listening to respond or judge. My intentions are often honourable, as I want to help someone, so when they start telling me their story I get this strong urge to look for a solution for them. I completely disregard their experience and story and will often stop listening altogether while I explore my memory banks looking for a solution for them. For a coach this is a terrible admission. I know! When I am coaching or having a professional conversation with someone I consciously prepare myself before I start being very mindful of this urge I have. As mentioned earlier being able to listen well or as Nancy Kline would put it; listen with fascination, requires learning how to prepare for and conduct a conversation as well as practice.

So this week I have been working with senior health professionals to enhance their listening skills. Now most health professionals worth their salt are very effective communicators, however there is always room to learn more and improve. In my experience they are excellent listeners when it comes to working with their patients. This is often more intuitive than intentional and most would struggle to describe what they really do to make their listening so effective. What I have also noticed is that this listening skill is rarely transferrable to their colleagues and direct reports.

On Monday I was working with a group of Senior Nurses, in fact Monday was day 2 of a 3 day leadership development programme I had developed for them. Day 2 was how to conduct coaching style conversations when working with teams. Having a coaching style conversation is all about listening effectively to help a member of staff gather together all the information they possess about a particular issues they are facing then helping them assess this information and support them with create a plan to address this issue, whilst resisting the urge to take over and solve their issue with the incomplete or irrelevant information you have. It was a wonderful day with lots of laughter and meaty conversations. We always end the day in groups of 3 listening to each other in turn and experiencing how it feels to be listened to with fascination. I love working with Nurses, it is always good fun, but I was exhausted afterwards. They do like to talk so they take a bit of corralling to make sure we get through the content we need to.

Wednesday was day 3 of Clinical Supervision training. We offer this training to Nurses and AHPs to develop the skills required to be an effective Clinical Supervisor. These skills involve effective listening. Day 3 is a consolidation of the skills where we talk about the pitfalls we can fall into when conducting clinical supervision. The majority of the pitfalls we discussed involved the difficulty with truly listening, and not being distracted by our own thoughts as we start to listen to judge and respond. We talked about preparation and the importance of getting our head in the right place. We discussed using mindful techniques to practice letting go of our thoughts and keeping ourselves in the moment. We finished the day with a group clinical supervision session where everyone brought an agenda item they would like to discuss, and the group would decide which agenda item to start with. I would then ask some opening questions to start the process and then invite other members of the group to ask questions and get curious to help the member with the issue unearth all the information about the issue and then help them use this information to explore potential solutions. This was a great practice to get them noticing how strong the urge is to listen to judge and respond rather than to understand.

On Friday I was the one listening with fascination when I was coaching. Before the coaching session I warmed up by spending a few moments being mindful, practicing letting go of any thoughts that came into my head whilst focussing on an object in this case my mobile phone. I held my phone in my hand focussing on it’s weight and how it feels in my hands. Inevitably I was distracted by a thought, and each time I noticed my attention being taken away from the phone, I would reset my focus back to the phone and let go of the thought. This helps me during the session to concentrate my focus on my coachee and listen to the information they are giving me and therefore ask questions that provide more information to help them see what actions maybe helpful for them.

As I mentioned earlier I don’t always get it right and there are times when I do not listen with fascination, this is often when I have been listening all day to people that require my attention professionally. Therefore it can be times when people need me to listen to them personally where I can fall short. It is vital to make space for both. This requires us to take care of ourselves to make sure we have enough energy to listen to all the important people in our lives. In my blog Find comfort at both home and work by creating and managing your personal boundaries I explore how we can make sure we give both home and work the attention they deserve.

If you want to know more about how you can listen to understand rather than to respond please get in touch via social media or email matt@mattycoach71.com

Reflecting on the day I left home 34 years ago

Yesterday I wrote a short blog offering myself as a coach for parents and young adults that are maybe struggling to navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood. I hadn’t planned to write that particular blog when I got up yesterday, I planned to write some more about career coaching and the milestones in our lives when we assess our careers. But instead I started to consider the difficulties young people and their parents face when teenagers move in to adulthood. When I reflected on this decision it was obvious why. On the 1st October 1989 I left home to start my Nurse training. Since Friday this has been praying on my mind. It has seriously affected my state of mind and had clearly influenced the decisions I was making. With that in mind I thought I would share with you my memories of those few days and try and make sense why this year of all years this event has had such an impact on me.

Clearly this took place 34 years ago so my memory of the exact events will be very patchy. However what is clear is the memory of how I felt and how Mum felt (having had many conversations about that day over the years).

I didn’t have to much to pack, my clothes, radio cassette player, my music collection, a few books and a food hamper put together by Mum. My cousin Rachel drove us to Hull. Mum was in the front seat next to Rachel and I was on the backseat with my belongings, and a list of directions to get to Hull. I had written the directions from a road atlas. I remember being more tense about getting the directions right than leaving home as we drove along the M56 towards Manchester. As it turned out I could have done with being more alert to my surroundings, as we missed the turning on to the M6 North and ended up in Manchester. After being lost in Manchester for about an hour we eventually got on to the M62 straight to Hull. I remember nothing of the rest of the journey until we were on Clive Sullivan Way (A63), which is the main dual carriageway into Hull. I remember seeing the Humber Bridge and my nerves starting to take hold. Then we turned on to Rawlings Way and Hull Royal Infirmary came into view, where I would be living, working and learning. My stomach started doing somersaults. Once we arrived I was given my keys and room number (Room 914). I was on the 9th floor. Opening the door of my room was a big shock for me and Mum. The room seemed tiny and so basic. I had a sink a wardrobe a table a chair and a bed. the kitchen was down the corridor as was the shared bathroom. Everything seemed so dated and soulless. I really wanted to go home, but I knew that was not an option so I kept my thoughts to myself. Before Mum and Rachel left we walked into Hull City Centre and had Sunday lunch in Burger King.

When I was saying goodbye to Mum I tried my hardest not to cry, I could see Mum was trying her hardest not to upset me and cry. I will never forget that hug we gave each other in the carpark outside the staff residence at HRI. Neither of us wanted to let go. Mum told me years later that she cried for the whole journey home. She said it felt like having having her arm cut off. When they had gone I bumped in to a few other people on my course, I think it was Cathy, Anna and Jo. We had a quick chat and agreed to meet later to go exploring. I then went straight to my room and sobbed into my bed. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be an adult.

I really struggled for the next 3 months. Every night I would cry myself to sleep. I realised I was woefully under equipped for leaving home. I had no idea how to cook, I couldn’t use a washing machine and had no idea how to iron. Thankfully despite being shy I was good at making friends and if it wasn’t for my neighbour Anita (who is sadly no longer with us), Omar, Vicky, Sam and Sonia, I think I may have not managed to get through those first few months.

As I reflect on that first year of training I started to grow into being an adult, I met my best friend Julian (we talk still every week) and made some wonderful friends and memories.

Yesterday I felt really out of sorts and was short tempered and quite tearful. Reflecting on transitions and milestones in life has made me realise that I am going through another transition in my life. Our children have grown up, Jack has moved back home. and it has been a year since Mum died. I am moving into the next chapter in my life. From a work and life perspective I have less time in front of me than I do behind me.

I have no doubt been in transition since Mum died, just like the transition I started 34 years ago today. This transition period is unsettling and uncertain, but exciting at the same time. The difference is that I don’t have a full life in front of me. If I am lucky I have another 15 years of work (that would make me 67). The choices I make workwise hold more importance as I have less time fill. It makes me realise that making value based decisions is vital to ensure the actions you take meet your needs.

If you have waved goodbye to child recently, you will recognise that hug that you never want to end. This transition is painful, the fruits of this pain are worth it. They are even sweeter if we give our children the space to make decisions that are based on what they value.

If this blog has sparked a thought and you want to explore it further please get in touch.