It’s day one of the school holidays. I’m already feeling at a loss for what to do to fill the time. I am feeling a lethargy and a listlessness that has stopped me from making fun plans […]

The intense sense of dread and grief we felt in 2020 has been replaced by a more subtle but chronic feeling. A feeling that has caught many of us off-guard…

There is a little-known term, coined by psychotherapist Andrea Nair, to describe what happens when children get home from school after a day of trying to maintain a certain level of energy, mental motivation, emotional containment and physical restraint… They experience ‘after school restraint collapse’. At home, they are able to release their pent up emotions and express themselves without fear of judgement or consequences.

I think we need an equivalent term for adults…

My son turned 7 last week. When I picked him up from school he described his day… Isaac: ‘Everyone sang happy birthday to me. It was nice but a bit embarrassing.’ Me: ‘So you felt embarrassed but still liked it?’ Isaac: ‘No - I mean I mostly liked it but was a little bit embarrassed too.’

It may seem a minor thing to celebrate, but I'd just spent time with a senior team, teaching them to notice and name their emotions. Their inability to do this has kept them stuck in a perpetual, unconscious cycle of mistrust, reacting to each other without really understanding why. So to be corrected by my son for emphasising the wrong emotion felt reassuring…

I was reminded recently of the power of deep listening and empathy to enable us to process our feelings. I have felt very ‘full’. Full of emotion, thoughts, ideas, hopes, worries, preoccupations, stresses, pressures, doubts, judgements (of self and others). It had been a volatile week in terms of my moods and my children’s. My six year old had started back at school . It was only after dropping him off (and my daughter at nursery) that the exhaustion caught up on me. I realised how much I have been carrying around over the last three months...

A few weeks into lockdown, I started to realise that one of the things I was finding hard was that I had no team to help through the Covid-19 crisis. […] This longing to help people was painful at first as I felt powerless. Stuck at home, self employed, team-less. It was as if my wings had been clipped. And on top of that, my planned team facilitation and mediation projects were put on hold due to Covid-19…

Last Saturday I sat outside for an hour while the wind gusted around me. This was a rare (if chilly) treat. No kids, no book, no radio, no journal, no coffee. I just sat there and observed what was happening around me and within me. […] I love the sunshine. But the changeable, dramatic weather we have had in the last week has better matched the volatile moods I have experienced since lockdown…