Despite a physically challenging month, I am still sitting at my desk in the evenings and learning positive psychology. Learning about happiness and lack of emotional well-being made me realise that my anxiety levels are much higher now, after few years of living in a small town, in a strange type of social isolation. I looked up the definition of anxiety and actually discovered that my reactions are not that, but rather small instances of fear. It was quite a realisation to me to discover that I have misinterpreted my own feelings! I think I also need to go back a step in my assumption that I know a lot about emotions – when actually there is a lot to learn still. Maybe one day I will start a series of blog posts about specific emotions?

I think it was a really good idea to study positive psychology this summer and autumn. I am finding it fascinating, obvious, uplisting but also extremely practical – a lot of well-being practices and positive interventions have worked for me in the past, I just wasn’t aware of the fact that modern psychology is actually looking at the science behind them. Today I was learning about various applications of positive psychology in the new tech and social media landscape and came across the World Well-Being Project. Back in my first UK job I remember running sentiment analysis of social media conversations from the commercial point of view, so the findings of depression and other areas of mental health through analysis of social media conversations are now a new idea to me. I really appreciate however that this work is funded, published and shared mostly for free. The entire field of cyberpsychology is not new either so as I am revising all the core psychology in my studies I am quietly also getting really excited about the new frontiers of it too.

It was my last week at the care home this week and so I have promised some of the people I met there to come back next week just for a coffee. As much as I like new challenges, I simply struggle with endings. And for the therapy work that’s an area I need to have a solid preparation for. But something someone elderly said to me astonished me: “See you in a week is not something we like to hear out here” (meaning: in a week we might not even be alive anymore). It was so honest, so open. I managed to build some really strong relationships there through our mind games and reminiscence activities but that’s it. This was my last week. The memories and learnings from my work will remain and I am really grateful for those. It’s so humbling to work with people who have a very grounded view of life and death. And it is exactly death that I’m going to study in autumn, so this ending is a great beginning too. Just of a different journey.

I think I might have mentioned that I would read a few books about death in preparation for my autumn bereavement studies. Below are the ones that I would recommend:

1. C.S. Lewis “A Grief Observed” – a classic written about his loss of his wife, a great study of a range of emotions, doubts, bargaining, unresolved questions. A classic many bereavement sources refer to.
2. Max Porter “Grief is the thing with feathers” – a very good read for someone who grew up on E. A. Poe’s “Raven” poem which also presented death as a bird. A great metaphor of death touching a family of a husband with two little boys. Really emotional journey. Really well-written book. Great read.
3. Julia Samuel “Grief Works” – honestly….not so well written (it does not flow well) but very useful for the actual therapy work.
4. Alice Sebold “The Lonely Bones” (also a movie) – a study of a murder of a young girl and her journey towards afterlife but also observations of her family affected by the loss (including the actions of the killer). The really wide range of losses and bereavements. Very moving too. I loved the imagery of the movie.
5. Paul Kalanithi “When breath becomes air”  – so intense there was a point at which I wanted to throw the book out of my window (my brain was in pain!) but could not! Gripping. Intense. So very honest. So revealing. And most of all a unique perspective on death from a neurosurgeon who needs to say goodbye to his beloved ones. Study of death from a very intimate point of view.
6. Hannah Kent “Burial Rites”  – I enjoyed this book because it took me back to the times when counselling was a specialty of priests. It is a story of a girl who is convicted of a crime and needs to prepare for the final death punishment. It features a series of confessions. A brilliant study of vulnerability in the eyes of death but also of trust between the priest and the girl (a key element of an effective therapy)
7. Peter Bridgewater “Mindfulness and the Journey of Bereavement”  – I struggled with the design of the book – due to long-term stress I tend to suffer from migraines so reading funny font on complex backgrounds is a bit painful and somewhat contradicts the idea of clarity which is to come with mindfulness. The content is really useful though, especially for a person who is bereaved as it offers specific suggestions for a wide range of feelings coming together with the death of a close one. It’s a healing read. It is pragmatic but also kind. It also showed me the richness of experience of bereavement and how unique it can be to every single one of us.

I am leaving the iconic trilogy by Kubler – Ross for then too. I think I had enough of various takes on death and bereavement for now. A Positive Psychology series started on Coursera with Martin Seligman and I have decided to take it. I think it’s a good idea for me to counter-balance bereavement studies with another course, but one on our positive feelings. Do let me know if there is anything else I should read about bereavement in autumn.

Additionally few good quotes below, for me, but you might find those interesting too.

C.S. Lewis “A Grief Observed”

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

“I once read the sentence ‘I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.’ That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.”

“Aren’t all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?”

Max Porter “Grief is the thing with feathers” 

“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.”

“[Grief] is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.”

“They offer me a space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me. CROW”

Alice Sebold “The Lonely Bones” (also a movie) 

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.”

“Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.”

Paul Kalanithi “When breath becomes air” 

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

“I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”

“The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.”

Hannah Kent “Burial Rites” 

“It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.”

“Now comes the darkening sky and a cold wind that passes right through you, as though you are not there, it passes through you as though it does not care whether you are alive or dead, for you will be gone and the wind will still be there…”

After few days in Bristol, I feel like I really want to move there now. People are very direct and friendly – lean into each conversation, no matter how mundane. I really miss that type of openness and inclusiveness in our little town. I am also noticing that after just a few days surrounded by street art, music, varied architecture and a great mixture of people I start to plot new creative project. We have decided to move to Bristol within the next 12 months and I quietly hope it will happen sooner than later so that I can continue studies but also live a happier life. It’s not just something I wish for myself and my family but I think it’s important for my self-care as a therapist. Choosing the place where we thrive mentally and socially seems obvious to me now.

It’s those simple situations that show me signs of next steps. I have already decided to apply and, if possible, to participate in the bereavement support course in Oxford this autumn but today, in the allotment, I found a dead bird and started thinking about death a lot. Since I was a little girl I was pretty much at peace with the idea of death but not too happy about the loss it evokes. I was raised in a Catholic family and at the end of my basic education, before joining the university, I have left the church and became an agnostic. I was not happy with the politics of the church. I think the last drop was finding out that the Catholic church leaders decided to rename the place souls go to after death from refrigerum (a cold place, where souls would wait for Jesus to return) to purgatorium (a place where souls would go to to be cleaned of sins). The consequences of such little change on believers are enormous and not very good: they bring guilt, fear, and terror into the picture. Which is not how I imagined death and the beyond. I faced the death of various animals because I grew up in a small village, very close to nature. My cat lost all her kittens just when they were few weeks old due to a cruel infection, but since then I did not see death as cruel, really, just as part of life. A fact. A constant. And I actually found it comforting.  Later on, in high-school, my attitude has changed a bit. I was raging against it due to the very idea of art – the notion that a piece of art will outlive me simply outraged me! I started writing (very bad and not so bad poetry). I had it published at the university and moved on to subcultures and fascination with Gothic, with Beksinski and E. A. Poe. I did think about death a lot and thanks to my friends from Asian countries I started viewing my life and death spectrum in a more balanced way again – zen and other Buddhist theories grew closer and closer to my heart. I had a serious accident and surviving it threw me off guard a bit but zen temple in Budapest help to get it back on the right track again. Giving life to a small baby was natural, it did not feel like a miracle – it was part of the biological cycle of life. A lot about motherhood was obvious and reinforced my pragmatic approach to death too.

Today I would like to think I am at peace with death again, but to be honest, apart from a few animals or news from people who are not very close to me, death still present a bit of a distant concept. I would like to study it more and learn from the specialists. The Cruse bereavement support charity is the second oldest counselling charity in the UK with over 50 years of experience in both supporting clients but also training up their volunteers so I hope I will have the opportunity to learn there but also support their work. I decided to look into books on bereavement this summer to keep my studies going at least this way.

Tonight I am finishing the first year of counselling studies. It has been a very enlightening journey which answered my initial question from last September: do I really want to become a therapist? Yes, today I know I do. I also know just how much more I need to learn to complete my training and how exciting this journey is going to be. Everything I have done so far makes sense today. Every positive and negative experience in my life contributes to my current understanding of life and today I am confident that it is enough to get me started in the therapy world. I also have a few ideas as to what I should do next. I will certainly consider bereavement counselling course in Oxford, maybe also few psychology courses at the Oxford University. I will continue with my positive psychology studies too. As for the counselling diploma, I am not sure, but I will probably aim to complete it in Bristol.

This weekend I have completed my Canva notes and ordered my first pack of 100 cards from Moo. I cannot wait to see it. Below are my top four notes of the course.

I cannot wait to learn more but I do intend to take the summer off active studying to recover after a long period of stress and few difficult themes in my life. Things are getting much better but my body and mind do need rest. My plan for this summer is to not to travel, but sit in the garden and soak in as much sunshine as possible, enjoy the allotment and walks with my dog. I plan to rest.

When I was at the university in Budapest, I met a professional dancer from Cuba once, who told me about a concept of closing circles in his family and culture: we live in a world of constant movement and so when we build a relationship we like to start it in motion and move on a circular line towards a resolution; once it’s done we do another circle and so on. When we fall out, argue or abandon each other (we talked about love and life back then) we tend to leave some of those circles unresolved, open. And it hurts us forever. So it’s really good to close all the circles, loops, spirals and other shapes we might be creating with other people. It’s good to have a closure.

I think about it a lot these days in the context of my future work in therapy world. A practicing therapist needs to take care of herself and so all the private relationships preferably should be resolved. In the spirit of that, I am practicing “closing circles” this year. Just recently I have committed a faux pas of talking “business” in a local Waitrose (for the uninitiated, in the UK it’s a posh shop where conversations must only be casual, otherwise one is completely breaking the rules of engagement) and realised quickly that I made a major cultural mistake, but I did not expect to be involved in a very heated argument which resulted in the woman turning around in anger and walking away, later on as a follow up calling me rude and “worrying about me”. I was really upset and shocked because it was her who needed help initially: she asked a nonprofit cause I am working on for money to support her cause and I only wanted to confirm next steps of the process. But I used this emotive situation for practice for my counseling studies. In the past, I would stand my ground, argue the points and simply stop talking to a person as relationships so emotionally complex and twisted are not something I seek in my personal network. But this time I decided to close the circle, accept both points of view and decide that next circle with this person will have to be of a different size and with different boundaries. Why? Because I am now responsible not just for myself, but also for my fellow students who spend all their energy on practicing therapy sessions with me and I need to ensure that my daily life does not affect my studies or work. My mental health needs to remain as unaffected by the fluctuations of daily life as possible, so I also need to be a bit less extreme in my criticism towards others – maybe not less, but different. Even though this particular situation really flooded me with intense feelings, I was able to employ all the self-care mechanisms I had at hand: manage my feelings (calm down, relax), manage my actions (discuss all options with a few good friends, manage email exchange with person involved), and do the follow up self-care activities (go for a walk, visit the allotment, enjoy time with family). I am so lucky that I surround myself with emotionally stable and solid friends who can support me on those very rare occasions when things get out of hand. I was very different when I was younger – I would take it all in and steam it all out and possibly be a bit more creative in the process too. But in the last few years, I have spent more time working on my resilience skills and clear boundaries. On always closing circles.

Two days after Asha’s departure, as if it was a reward gift from gods for everything we’ve done for her, I have received a letter from the Home Office that my residency application was granted and actually backdated. I can apply to be a British citizen soon. I can stop worrying and start planning. I won’t bother you with all the details of why staying is the option for my family because we had various opportunities outside of UK too, all of them good, but staying became the most effective for now – that’s all you need to know. What is important though, I am planning to use this Brexit experience for my future work as it opened up a completely different level of anxieties in me and tested my resilience skills to a completely new level. I really did not want to blog about my negative feelings of the last 18 months. And it had been more than a year, actually, because unlike my friends and family I was not at all shocked with the results of the referendum and I was worried pretty much since it was announced. Today, however, I would like to write up a list of important learnings from this period – for myself and for all the other EU citizens who are suffering at the moment and all the British citizens who wish to support them.

1. Nothing is certain so we need to stand up for tolerance. During the last 18 months, I have noticed something really strange about people: those who are racist suddenly feel it justified and permitted to express their hate speech, whereas those who are tolerant do tolerate that and rather fear speaking up for foreigners. We all know this but on an individual level, it can be very extreme. A mother of my son’s friends (a woman who spend endless hours in my house) had the guts and lightheartedness to text me on the morning of the referendum results that my husband probably won’t find work after Brexit in the UK, knowing just how hurtful this could potentially be. (Actually, it was very revealing, and I suspected this sentiment so I am glad it came out to the open finally and I can one day show it to my son as a learning). On the other hand, another family friend did not text me that day, but a few days later mentioned on the way home that she wanted to say sorry, even though it was not her fault, just to cheer me up. What I took out of this experience is a strong commitment to tell racists to f**** off and reconsider their tone and on the other hand, a strong determination to support, actively reach out and hold those members of our community who are actually vulnerable.
2. It’s good to know when to speak up and how. People live in a wide range of biases and arguing with the blindfolded does not always help. Also, sometimes we tend to have an urge to prove our point but in times of political crisis walking away might just be the best option. We, the more educated and informed of us, know very well that Brexit is going to hit us hard (it already has, economically) so is it really worth re-negotiating our relationships with every single person? I don’t think we have enough of mental capacity to do so in times when renegotiating (ie. re-establishing, reinforcing after a political event which aims to divide people) our friendships with the closed ones are a priority.
3. We need to work on our resilience contingency in the good times. I am ever so happy about all the work I did in the last few years to build up my resilience. I did so to ensure that I can run my own business more effectively and provide emotional support to my family, but as it turns out I myself have benefited from it too. I know that we have a tendency to understand the need to resilience once our mental abilities are tested, but it is so much easier to focus on it in the good times when self-development is something we actually have time for. I will take this learning with me to my future studies and always try to prepare for the worst in advance – it’s astonishing how much simple mental habits and a bit of positive thinking can help when life seems almost helpless or at least challenging.
4. We need strong networks, even if very small ones. This one is obvious, of course, but in the modern times, we tend to forget it. I read a study somewhere that almost 30% of people in the UK don’t have a single trusted friend and I just cannot imagine how hard their lives must be! Close friends are there for us when we need them and when we have those happy time to share too. Why? Because in those happy times they learn us and on a bad day are already a step ahead of us and know better what’s good for us. They hold us through hard times. Sometimes they save us too. It’s also worth remembering that some worst times last longer: depression, long-term illness, caring for an elderly person or grief – all those long periods of challenging reality can be so much easier if we have an escape in a friend who can just meet for a coffee or sit next to us. We are social creatures in the end.
5. Noone should be left alone in their isolation. As a follow up to the previous learning I would also like to point out that we are here not just to secure ourselves a friend or two but also to look around and figure out who is missing and why? In my small town, I have met so many lonely people that my heart hurts! A man who passes our house every day sat alone in the pub and only during the literary festival I found out just how well educated and interesting his opinions are. I wish I had a beer with him in that pub on so many occasions. But I did not and now I worry because I myself did feel isolated for a long time and even if not early on, sooner or later, I was lifted out of that abandonment by a new friend. We should not have to be alone in the modern world and we should not have to face Brexits to flock to each other for support.
6. We need to be radical about our environment. We need to actively seek places and community that make us thrive. In the last 18 months, many of my liberal friends decided to move out of my rather conservative town, some actually regretting waiting so long to do so. We have started planning our move too. The groups we live in, and its underlying culture, ultimately are not just our support networks, but if unsupportive, can also become additional factors for depression. I am not just talking about the targeted hate or ignorant comments but the actual lack of support, lack of interest, lack of care and kindness on a daily basis. So many of us don’t even realise the power of neighborhood and its impact on mental health. My street and surrounding house are really friendly, but at the core of its heart, this town is the coldest and most unwelcoming place I have ever lived in, and I have lived in a few at least. Even some people working at the Town Council agreed with me that it takes on average ten years to be allowed in (never really accepted) and possibly start making friends. It took me seven to find a good friend and I was involved in all the possible groups and causes, I really tried to join in and contribute. I thoroughly regret staying here for so long, and I am really sorry that such terrible political changes had to make me realise this. How do you know? It’s in the neighbor’s smile or condescending “hello”. It’s in the number of social invitations or the lack of thereof. And finally it’s in the care: the pro-active thinking of the members of the community about those who arrive, join in or maybe don’t seem to be visible, maybe feel alienated – and actually doing something about it.
7. We need to realise the power of words, gestures, and silences. Every word is a message. Placement of a racist paper in the shop window. Condescending morning greeting. A flag in a coffee shop. A swastika in a window. Those simple signs of hatred that I have experienced in my town are nothing comparing to what some of us experience nowadays due to Brexit. I do not think we appreciate just how strong the written word and the unspoken hate can be – it’s in our tone, on our face and in our silence too. We really need to get a grip and learn to use the communication tools we have for positive impact instead. I take it as a learning and I hope others will too.
8. Long-term, slow suffering is just as damaging as one-off trauma. I read recently that the impact of a lonely day of depression equals about 10-15 smoked cigarettes, really. I hope this is not right, but I am not surprised. I remember a series of moments when my heart was sinking. Hateful message from another mum. Daily Mail on a table of a client who asked me for endless free work. May’s Christmas wishes to all the families in the UK that made me cringe – obviously mine was not the one she would consider worthy. It all had a genuine negative impact on my physical and mental health. It’s terrifying to realise just how much self-care I had to practice to counter-balance this terrible period of my life – even though I actually had a lot of alternative options for the future of my family. I cannot even imagine how an EU citizen with no prospects might feel right now.
9. Self-care is crucial in challenging times and there is no scope for self-criticism. When shit hits the fan I hug myself and say it out loud: It’s all going to be OK, I am OK. And it helps. And there is more. I walk the dog, I cuddle her. I take the gardening tools and venture out into the allotment for another project. I watch the baby birds play in the garden and practice gratefulness. I turn my face towards the sun. I shop for new fruits and prepare a new salad for boys. I watch a good movie or read a good book. I register for a new course. I take a long hot bath listening to punk, rock, jazz, any good music. I dance. Even though I know that the reality is not perfect, I am taking a very good care of the little girl inside of me. I do not scold her. I do not judge her for her mistakes. Not now. Now is the time for her to rest a bit. Before the next piece of bad news. Before the next ignorant neighbor opens her mouth. Before the skies open up again. I soak in the sun which fills me up with a lot of good energy because I need it now.
10. We need to accept grief into our lives. And when all the clouds are gone and things start to become a bit better, we need to give ourselves time to simply feel sorry for ourselves. Our parents grew up in a world which told them to suck it up and toughen up but I do not think this is a good long-term practice. If our minds and bodies were exposed to a long-term tension or suffering, it’s perfectly fine to grief and takes time to recover. I have no idea how long it will take me to recover from the experiences of early years of Brexit, but I know it did hit me hard. I usually collapse a little bit after a trauma. Sometimes I catch a cold or simply need to catch up on sleep. I eat a lot and don’t worry about my kilograms. I know I can lose them later. I eat chocolate and enjoy life but carefully, slowly building up my trust and positive outlook. It does not happen from one day to another, it’s a process and some of it is negative. And it’s OK. When times are bad sometimes we simply have no capacity to hurt more. Grieving is the process that helps us process all those leftovers, I think.

This is my little Brexit decalog. It has shaped me into a more empathetic person and I understand people suffering from trauma and crisis so much better now. I hope to work with refugees and other victims of life challenges one day but for now, I am making a note of those important points, not to forget them.

If you have been through similar times and have good learnings, please share. I would love to learn more about this.