Blog

16 Feb Worry Monster

I’m paying attention to the invitations that come my way, and am saying “Yes” to some of the ones that in the past would have scared me. Now I am observing a little tingle and taking a risk.

I’m expanding my stretch zone. It’s also known as the ‘magic’ zone. It’s the territory we invite participants to step into during our workshops. With practice, our stretch zone becomes more comfortable and grows. It is a place where our learning can take place at a manageable pace.

Anxiety is often one of the natural responses as part of the grief experience. However, if the events we offer seem too far out of your comfort zone to contemplate, it might be helpful to know that staying in your comfort zone is an option. Even if you choose to join one of our workshops, everything we invite people to do is optional.

In a Grief Tending workshop we definitely don’t want people to leap beyond their stretch into their terror zone. When things are terrifying it’s probably not going to allow your nervous system to engage and process in a helpful way. But if there’s a tinge of nervousness or excitement, maybe now is the moment to take one step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Once someone has booked to come to a workshop, anxiety can build. It is not unusual for all kinds of imagined scenarios to unfold, and feelings to surface. People often report physical symptoms or tensions increasing in the days beforehand. Many people feel worried about the concept of speaking in front of a group. Although we offer many different kinds of exercises and only some of them may include speaking.

If your ‘Worry Monster’ is activated, it can be helpful to find out more about what will be involved, or the style of facilitation. If there is something specific that you need, or are concerned about, it’ a great idea to ask. Often people need to know that they can take care of their own needs in the environment, and a bit more information can help to settle their nerves. If you are contemplating coming to one of our workshops, I recommend watching the video ‘What Happens in a Grief Tending Workshop?’

For Grief Tending workshops and events coming up, please see here.

05 Dec Seasonal Stress?

There are so many reasons to feel stressed at this time of year. In addition to all the things that stretch our everyday capacity, like rising prices, coping with winter weather, and the pressures of working too much or too little, seasonal expectations may add an additional pressure. Our relationship with ‘home’ whatever that means for you, may also be challenging. So often the childhood image of a cosy house may be painfully absent, for many different reasons.

If you are grieving someone, or managing change of any kind, there may be constant reminders of absence or difficulty. People may become acutely aware of feeling lonely, disconnected from others, or facing complex relationship dynamics in navigating this time of year. For some the focus is on personal grief, and for others there is more of a sense of distress about global issues. Often there is an interplay between both, and overwhelm might be a regular experience. Finding ways to play and have fun are important too, especially when times are tough.

In Grief Tending, we come together to practice finding simple resources, have a chance to express some of the challenges we face (whatever they are), and connect with others who may have very different experiences from us. In this way, we may also strengthen our compassion muscle. All of these skills may be much needed over the winter festival season. It can also be an unexpectedly uplifting experience. Remembering and connecting with what we love, and what supports us can be an important first step.

Grief Tending events for the season can be found here.

04 Dec A Dual Process

In London it is suddenly cold. The dark is lengthening, and the colours of autumn can be glorious. For me, the work of grieving involves expanding my capacity to be with both the darkness and the light, both the pain of the world and the beauty in it.

The awareness of grief as something to be acknowledged and spoken about seems to be more accepted in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Normal life goes on despite the suffering that people experience. Global events co-exist in my mind with thoughts about every day needs and desires for good food, sleep and the company of good friends.

I find the ‘Dual Process Model’ theory of grief helpful, to understand the co-existing needs for time to grieve, the continuation of everyday life (which may include other stresses) and developing a new way of being towards integrating loss. Stroebe and Schut’s theory describes an ‘oscillation’ that occurs between ‘loss orientation’, and ‘restoration orientation’, and recognises the necessary attention to life tasks too. We need time to grieve. It is also natural to need time away from an intense grief focus too. They recognise that moving between loss and recovery, can be a helpful way to find more resilience.

The way Grief Tending works is informed by this understanding too. The process involves anchoring in support, and dipping into grief in short bursts before returning to self-care again. It is normal for our grieving and re-orienting towards recovery to happen while everyday life goes on. Creating a threshold can help the expression of grief feel more manageable.

Ritual is one way to make this threshold, by creating a boundary of time and place, setting an intention, and making space for grief to be expressed without feelings flooding out unbidden at other times. For many people the traditions that previous generations were held by are absent, and they are hungry for grief rituals that can help them to contain and yet express emotions.

Grief Tending is not for everyone. And it is not always the right time to try this approach to allowing grief. It is important to honour our defences, which may have good reason to protect us now, as they did in the past. Sometimes we are still too immersed in an immediate crisis, without breathing space to process emotions. We may need to put our attention into finding support and stability before beginning to do this kind of inner work. But it may be just the way to move gently into our ‘stretch’ or ‘learning zone’ that will help ease the movement between orienting to loss and restoration.

Find Grief Tending workshops and events here.

09 Apr Boarding School Trauma

Like Ash Sarkar who interviews Richard Beard on Novara Media’s podcast ‘Downstream: We Must Ban Private Schools’, I went to a comprehensive school. If this was also your experience, you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘boarding school syndrome’ doesn’t affect you. Maybe like me you have friends or family who did, but it’s not just that. As Ash says,
“boarding school life is suffused through our popular culture,” and it creates a fascinating mystique, and consequences for us all. Of course, not everyone has a bad experience of boarding school life, and I’m not suggesting that if you went to a comprehensive school you had a brilliant time either. In an ideal world, education would be a flexible, caring, child-centred place to explore and develop.

Richard Beard argues (one of a growing cohort who have written on the subject including Joy Schaverien and Alex Renton), that boarding school is where many of our leaders in politics, business, law, journalism and other professions may have learned to disconnect from compassion. The consequences of the normalisation of separating children as young as seven or eight from their loving care-givers, to be imprinted by a competitive system that shames vulnerability, and where abuse, bullying and punishment were (in the past at least) endemic, may have repercussions for everyone in society.

This potentially traumatising system underpins much of our society, and was exported from the UK via colonialism to mete out further harm in other places. Beard adds that the values of this exclusive education also trickle down into the whole private school system in the UK, where “a cycle of entitlement” may be fostered, if people have been repeatedly told that they have received the best education. Beard eloquently describes a system that can condone independence, at the expense of distress, in the name of privilege.

Beard also describes the mechanism that creates this
“dislocation between what you’re being told and what you’re feeling”, which gives rise to repression of empathy. He describes the painful sound of a dormitory’s grief, where,
“a volley of cries goes round the room”, but “the next day we’ve got to get up and we’ve got to pretend that never happened.” The resulting internalised message is, “Don’t show empathy for other peoples’ emotions, and then don’t show empathy for your own. Don’t show empathy for your own sadness.”

Some of the other defences that people may be socialised into in this system include: deflection, politeness, charm and inauthentic self-deprecation. These defences compensate for a complex set of emotions that are being defended against. Richard Beard’s book ‘Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England’ explores these dynamics in public schools in more depth.

In artist Tony Gammidge’s animation ‘Norton Grim and Me’, he reveals himself as school boy in a dormitory where tears are ignored, and the severing of family ties is perpetuated in the name of tradition. He says:
“Norton Grim and Me is about my experiences of going to boarding school, aged 7 years old. It is about the trauma of the separation from my home and family, the tradition and culture that normalises this practice and the impact that this has had on me emotionally and somatically.”

It’s a short, powerful watch that gives an alternative version of boarding school to the jolly games of Quidditch in Harry Potter. Also disturbing is the portrayal of Philip and Charles’ school days as dramatic portrayals of a repressive regime in ‘The Crown’.

Rummaging in family papers, I find evidence from my father’s school days. I shudder when I read his school report age 8 that reads, “Has started Rugby. Will do better when he is a little more robust”. Even as an adult he remained slight.  I scrutinise the faces of boys, the majority of whom look unhappy, and the stern ‘masters’.

In addition to the foundation provided by a boarding school education which may in itself be problematic, sexual abuse, at least in former decades was rife. I am gratified by Christ’s Hospital’s recent ‘statement of acknowledgement’, which feels like a significant step in the right direction. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is currently investigating not only children in care, but also in boarding schools.

While individual teachers who are subject to allegations may face prosecution, the recognition that school cultures may have played a part in enabling or covering up harm that children in their care experienced is important. Boarding schools are one example of a ‘total institution’, as described by Erving Goffman. This is a “place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.” In such systems, if unscrupulous people are in charge, perhaps with their own developmental trauma, they can wield power unchecked with impunity.

Sophy Banks enquiry into ‘Healthy Human Culture’, looks at the dynamics of change in organisations. This work explores how we uncover the unhealthy dynamics that enables misuse of power, and how to begin the work of restoration and repair. Vitally she asks the question, what would a healthy system look like, with caring community at the centre, and educational values that favour respect, curiosity, creativity over ruthless competition?

In ‘Of Water and the Spirit’, Malidoma Patrice Somé describes his own religious schooling. It is an example of the way some Europeans exported an authoritarian educational regime. He rebelled,
“…for there are times when disobedience heals a very ailing part of the self. It relieves the human spirit’s distress at being forced into narrow boundaries. For the nearly powerless, defying authority is often the only power available.” His experience in this system was part of the process that eventually brought him back to his indigenous roots. This cross-cultural journey is one of the threads that would bring the social technology of Grief Tending to the UK.

Re-connecting with emotions, long repressed is a common theme that people may bring to Grief Tending spaces. Boarding school trauma, and other surrounding issues, may be a theme that someone carries. We offer support circles and grief workshops where we encourage empathy for both ourselves and others. You can find our next events here.

20 Feb Betrayal

I’ve been thinking recently about the theme of betrayal. Do you feel that you were sold the dream of happiness in life, but all you are left with is a burst balloon?

There are the deliberate acts of betrayal – stories of revenge or deception. The fascinating ‘cat-fishing’ story recounted in the Tortoise Media podcast ‘Sweet Bobby’ describes how devastating an intimate betrayal can be. Just think about how you felt if you have ever been scammed and multiply it.

There are ways in which we may feel betrayed by care-givers, elders or leaders; the very people we trusted to take care of us in our families or communities. Imagine the betrayal, for example, of those affected by disasters such as earthquake, flood, storm – who may have been failed by builders, town planners, governments, NGO’s and the wider world.

‘What we expected but did not receive,’ one of Francis Weller’s ‘Gates of Grief’, comes in many shapes and forms. It may show up as an existential sense of betrayal – the hopes and dreams which have not been delivered. This may be where disappointment and longing meets betrayal.

From our early years, stories portray the ‘hero’s journey’ as the route through life, but Paul Weinfield tells another version:

“In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.” Quoted here.

Then there are all the mundane acts of betrayal we have experienced or dished out to others in our everyday relationships. Have you ever cheated or been cheated on? These acts of dishonesty, disloyalty, or insensitivity, and accidents of miscommunication populate our relationship lives with all too familiar drama.

Acts of self-betrayal are also often painfully commonplace. Where have I disregarded my physical or emotional needs? My personal needs are regularly competing with my social needs to be liked and belong. Remaining loyal to my body, I regularly feel as though I am letting people down, betraying the loyalty of a friendship because my social capacity has limits.

Wherever there are relationships based on trust, there is the potential for betrayal. In the past I have assumed shared ethics, only to discover that someone was abusing their position of power, and exploiting my loyalty. The outcome was that I felt betrayed. Afterwards I felt the absence of places to express my feelings, to explore what was true for me.

In the wake of ‘betrayal trauma’, trust doesn’t come easily. I discovered Grief Tending post ‘Me Too’, as a space where a vast range of complex feelings might be welcomed, and as a way for people and communities to begin the process of acknowledgement and repair. Whether personal or collective, the grief of betrayal is a welcome theme at our events.

You can find out more about the Grief Tending events we offer here.