There’s a reason that so many people are finding lockdown difficult and challenging.  Many reasons, you might think, but I’d suggest one very major, significant and fundamental reason.  In fact, it’s the same reason that many people struggle with their physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing in more normal times.

Before lockdown, the main issues that I was seeing clients for were anxiety and stress, particularly stress-related conditions of insomnia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  What these clients had in common was feeling low and unwell, weighed down by worries, lacking energy and with all kinds of negative thoughts racing round their heads.  The first thing that I invariably cover with my clients to help them feel better, calmer and more positive is this very major, significant and fundamental reason that their wellbeing is suffering.  This reason is affecting more people during lockdown and is having such a massive impact on health and wellbeing.

I will cover this reason in several parts, because it will take more than one blog post to cover it all.

There is an approach to psychology called Human Givens, developed by psychologist Joe Griffin and psychotherapist Ivan Tyrrell.  In their years of research and helping clients with mental health issues and addiction, they developed a model of therapy designed to help people meet a range of fundamental physical, psychological and emotional needs that were essential to health and wellbeing.  They found that, when clients were better able to meet these needs that were lacking in their life, depression lifted, anxiety and stress were reduced and addictions could be overcome.

Why are so many people struggling during lockdown?

People struggle when they are not adequately meeting their ‘human givens’ needs and that’s the case now, during lockdown, even more than before.

I use the Human Givens approach with most of my clients, usually very early on in sessions.  I go through the different ‘human givens’ needs with them as the fundamentals of self-care and ask them to do an audit of how well those needs are currently being met in their life.  If they have any low scores on the audit, we discuss how they can better meet those particular needs.  Sometimes some simple, straightforward and practical changes can make a big difference to their overall sense of wellbeing.

When you find out what the ‘human givens’ are, I’m sure none of them will be a surprise.  What is surprising, is perhaps how much we take them for granted or even ignore them.  When you see what the ‘human givens’ are, you might have a clearer understanding of why so many people are finding lockdown really tough and why, in modern times, levels of stress, anxiety and depression are so high.  Lockdown and modern lifestyles make it more difficult for us to meet these fundamental human needs.

I will cover the ‘human givens’ in several parts, starting with the physical needs.  Look out for further blog posts for the rest.

Physical ‘human givens’

It won’t be any huge revelation when I tell you that the main physical ‘human givens’ are food, water, sleep and exercise.  It’s obvious that if your needs for those aren’t met, your physical and mental health will suffer.

Just a few thoughts on how best to meet those needs and on meeting them during lockdown:

Food – The importance of a healthy, balanced diet, with the right vitamins and minerals, can’t be underestimated.  Unfortunately, the current predominance of processed foods and snacks high in sugar and salt in Western diets doesn’t help provide the nutrition we need.  I’m not an expert in nutrition, but I do encourage my clients to consider how they could eat more healthily.

Watching what you eat during lockdown is even more important.  The temptation to snack may well be greater and it isn’t as easy to work off those extra calories if you’re stuck at home all the time.  It’s not just the dangers of putting on weight and the health problems that that can cause, though.  There’s increasing research evidence to show that what you eat affects not only your physical health, but your mental health too.  Recent studies point to the effect that gut bacteria can have on mood, even to the extent of being linked to depression and anxiety.  A healthy, well balanced diet will make sure your gut bacteria contribute to good physical and mental health, rather than mess it up.

So it’s even more important during lockdown to eat as healthily as possible – plenty of fruit and vegetables, of course, and reducing your sugar intake.  Keep your blood sugar level stable by avoiding sugary foods and drinks and white, refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta and rice.  That will help to prevent energy dips and tiredness.  Caffeine and alcohol cause stress on the body, so they’re ones to avoid as well.  If you’re stressed or anxious, the last thing you want to do is rev up your nervous system even more with caffeine in any form.

Water – Water is an even greater need than food.  We can survive without food much longer than we can survive without water.  Fortunately, this is perhaps one of the easiest needs to meet during lockdown. Nearly two-thirds of the body is water, so constant hydration is vital at any time.  Among other things, it helps to keep skin and hair healthy and to control body temperature and blood pressure.  Signs of dehydration include lack of energy, irritability and confusion, so just like food, water has an effect on both our physical and mental health.

Recommended daily water intake is usually given as 2 litres for men and 1.6 litres for women, or 6 to 8 glasses.  Of course, you may need to drink more, if it’s hot or you’re exercising a lot and losing water from your body by sweating.  Your recommended daily water intake can include tea and coffee, although as already mentioned, it’s best to avoid caffeinated varieties if you’re stressed or anxious, and caffeine in large quantities is dehydrating.  Another culprit for dehydration is alcohol.  The body draws on its water reserves to flush alcohol out of the system – a further reason for reducing your alcohol consumption.

Sleep – We all know that a good night’s sleep is essential for physical and mental wellbeing.  In sleep the body repairs itself, the mind processes experiences of the day and recent findings suggest that toxins that build up in the brain while we’re awake are removed.  8 hours of sleep a night was always put forward as the average amount of sleep we should all be aiming for.  More recently it’s been recognised that everyone is different, some people need more sleep than others, and that actually 7 hours of sleep a night is a good average.

Get my top tips for dealing with sleep problems and how to get a good night’s sleep

During lockdown, I’ve seen a lot of comments about people sleeping badly for different reasons.  Stress and anxiety are clearly having an impact, as well as the disruption to normal daily routines.  I have a handout which I give to clients about some of the practical things they can do to help have a good night’s sleep.  If you’d like me to send this to you, please e-mail me at anne@transforming-health.co.uk.  One tip is to make sure that you go to bed and get up at the same times every day.  This keeps your body and mind in a good sleep habit.

If a racing mind is stopping you falling asleep or keeping you awake in the middle of the night, being able to relax both your body and your mind is key to getting you to sleep.  Switch off screens at least 30 minutes or even an hour before you want to get to sleep, because the blue light from phones, laptops and other electronic devices interferes with the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.  Use relaxation techniques, such as visualisations, progressive muscle relaxation and breathing, or mindfulness and meditation to help calm the body and the mind and get them in the right state to drift off to sleep easily.  Counting sheep is actually quite a good thing to do, as it can be a way of focusing the mind away from anxious thoughts and worries.

Insomnia is one of the issues I specialise in.  Please do contact me if you’re having problems sleeping and would like help to get a refreshing night’s sleep.

Exercise – The Government obviously recognised the importance of exercise for physical and mental health when setting out the lawful reasons for leaving home during lockdown.  Whilst it’s perfectly possible to exercise indoors in a small space,  being outdoors in the fresh air adds an extra dimension to wellbeing.  The Japanese have recognised for decades the positive effect that walking in woods or shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, has on lowering blood pressure and decreasing stress hormones.  There’s something about trees that’s calming, so even if you can’t get out for a walk in woods, walking in a park or down a tree-lined street can help lift the spirits.

Whether you exercise outdoors or indoors, it’s so important to maintain a regular exercise routine to keep the body functioning well.  Exercise releases endorphins, the ‘feel good’ hormones, so it’s one of the best things you can do to combat low mood, as well as deal with stress and anxiety.

NHS guidelines are that adults aged 19 to 64 should be active daily, break up periods of sitting with light activity, and do at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity every week and strength exercises that work all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week.  However, if you’re not used to exercising regularly, start gently, build up your activity gradually and check with your GP before doing any strenuous exercise.  Also, be aware that exercising too vigorously for extended periods of time causes stress on the body.  Most of all, find exercise that you enjoy doing, whether that’s working out with Joe Wicks, cycling round your local roads or dancing round your sitting room.  That way, you’re more likely keep up a regular exercise habit.

How to survive and thrive in lockdown?  To sum up: make sure you’re meeting the physical ‘human givens’ needs:

• Eat for health and nutrition – carrots not cakes, cucumber not crisps.
• Drink plenty of water and cut down on alcohol and caffeine.
• Use relaxation techniques to help get 7 hours’ sleep a night.
• Work those muscles!  And exercise outdoors near trees.

I’ll cover the rest of the ‘human givens’ needs in later blog posts, talking about the all-important psychological and emotional needs that we neglect at our peril.  I’ll also give you details of how you can access my self-care audit in later posts.  Look out for these, coming soon.

In the mean time, I’m offering special ‘Uplift During Lockdown’ sessions to help with the following:

– unhealthy snacking and overeating

– sleep problems

– motivation to exercise

Contact me to book a free 30-minute phone consultation to get some top tips on what to do and how hypnotherapy can help – phone 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk.

The post How to Survive and Thrive During Lockdown – Part 1 appeared first on Transforming Health.

With lockdown beginning to ease, I’ve changed the title of this series of blog posts slightly to ‘How to Survive and Thrive Beyond Lockdown’.  In my last two blog posts, I’ve been talking about the Human Givens approach to psychology, which is relevant and applicable at any time – in lockdown or beyond.  I’ve started, so I’ll continue!

To recap: the ‘human givens’ are fundamental physical, psychological and emotional needs that are essential to health and wellbeing.

I was using the Human Givens approach with most of my clients before lockdown and I’ll continue using it as lockdown eases.  It’s such a practical approach, which can reveal that the root of problems often lies in some of these fundamental needs not being met.  Once those needs are met, sometimes in easy and straightforward ways, it can make a big difference to the client’s overall sense of wellbeing.

This blog post is about the ‘human givens’ needs related to having a sense of belonging.

In my last blog post, I covered the ‘human givens’ of relationships, which can be met on a one-to-one basis.  This blog post is about the need for relationships within groups.  It’s another key reason why so many people have found lockdown tough, when they have had to be separated from the groups they’ve been part of, whether that’s family, work colleagues, church, drinking buddies down the pub, the bridge club or the bog snorkelers.  It’s why some people haven’t been able to resist having friends round for barbeques or meeting up with their cycling posse in Bushy Park, as has been the case in my area.  Allegedly.

The difficulty in meeting that fundamental need for having a sense of belonging has made lockdown particularly distressing for many.

There are a couple of aspects to the need for a sense of belonging:

Connection to a wider community – As I said in my last blog post, in days gone by, belonging to a social group and having people around us who we could depend on, really was a matter of life or death.  When hairy mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers roamed around, humans were extremely vulnerable to becoming a wild beast’s lunch.  Times and our local fauna may have changed, but that fundamental instinctive need for belonging to a group remains.

Study after study shows how important social connection is.  Loneliness and isolation have been shown to adversely affect the immune system and have a devastating effect on mental wellbeing.  Elderly people, who have two or more people they can rely on for emotional support, have been found to survive longer after heart attacks than those who don’t have the same level of support¹.

It used to be easy to belong to the wider community just where you lived, in your village or neighbourhood. These days, it is less so, especially in towns and cities, where even next door neighbours don’t know each other.  Then, it’s a question of seeking out the wider community in other kinds of groups – groups based on shared interests, activities or concerns, rather than necessarily shared geography.

It’s clearly important to find groups to belong to, but just as people have differing needs for attention, as I mentioned in my last blog post, so our need for connection to the wider community varies.  Some people thrive on big friendship groups, team sports, book groups and art classes.  Others are completely happy by finding their need for community fulfilled by work, knowing their neighbours and meeting up with other dog walkers in their local park – keeping an appropriate 2 metre distance in all of these activities at the moment, of course!

Connecting to the wider community is about giving as well as receiving

Just as the need for attention is about giving as well as receiving attention, the need for connection to a wider community is about contributing to that community, as well as gaining from it.  It’s good to be motivated by pure altruism, but again the evidence from studies shows that it’s good for our immune system too!  One study found that men who did voluntary work for charities were two and a half times less likely to die from disease than men who didn’t do voluntary work².  Another study of 700 elderly people concluded that those who contributed the most to their social networks showed the least signs of ageing³.  All the signs are that by helping others, we help ourselves, whether that’s volunteering for a charity, doing a self-isolating neighbour’s shopping or organising the on-line pub quiz for friends.

Another aspect to the need for a sense of belonging:

Status – Linked to our need for belonging, is the need to feel important and valued, the need for status.  Now, we can’t all be VIPs or bigwigs in our local community and the need for status isn’t all about power or place in the perceived pecking order.  In ‘human givens’ terms, it’s about feeling appreciated and valued for what you do or what you know.

It’s interesting that in these COVID-19 times, people who were often thought of as having low status in society, usually because society equates low status with low pay, are finally getting the recognition they deserve.  The spotlight of appreciation has fallen on the likes of hospital cleaners and porters, care home staff, refuse collectors, supermarket shelf stackers, and delivery drivers, who have kept things running.

Status can come from different sources.  It could come from your position in your family, as a parent or grandparent.  It could come from your work or from your role in a voluntary or community group.  It’s intertwined with the connection to the wider community and in how people treat you.  I used to be an assessor for the Investors in People standard, which was a gauge of how well employers managed and developed their staff.  In the best organisations, the most junior tea boy could feel he had status, if people thanked him for his work and he was included in staff consultations.  In some cultures, elderly people have much higher status than in others, due to the respect given to their wisdom and life experience.

Status is about self-perception

Sometimes part of the problem that I’ve seen clients have is that they don’t recognise their own status.  They fail to realise their value, how important they are to other people and the contribution that they make.  I can think of one unassuming, lovely lady in my church, who week after week (before COVID-19) turns up without fail to make the coffees at the ‘Stay and Play’ toddler group.  She always has a smile and an encouraging word for the parents and carers as she serves the coffee.  She always stays on afterwards to make sure the washing up is done and everything is tidied away.  When you express appreciation for what she does and comment on how important all her behind-the-scenes work is for the smooth running of the group, she will say ‘Oh that’s nothing, anybody could do that.’  She may not realise how much some of the single parents, struggling with a boisterous toddler or two, look forward to coming to the group, what a luxury it is for them to have someone else make them a cup of coffee, and how just a friendly smile and kind word made them feel better.  Sometimes meeting our need for status is about taking a more positive view of our own worth.

Community connection beyond lockdown

In lockdown, remaining connected to the wider community has been hard, in spite of being able to go on-line for work meetings, virtual dinner parties, pub quizzes and the like.  Seeing people on a screen just isn’t the same as being in the same room as them, though.  As lockdown eases, we will probably have a new appreciation of being able to reconnect to our community.  Social distancing and the restriction on how many people can meet up at any one time will still affect how well we can meet our need for that sense of belonging.

Find your tribe(s)

To survive and thrive beyond lockdown it will be even more important to have groups to belong to and to continue the mutual community support that has emerged during lockdown.  If you realise that community connection is lacking in your life, why not look for what groups you could join in your local area?  There’s bound to be a group nearby that shares one of your interests, a group for exercise, or a charity crying out for volunteers.  Meet Up www.meetup.com is a great source of information about any kind of group you could imagine and many that you wouldn’t imagine.  Your local council will have a volunteer service, which can match you up with a local charity.

Appreciate your worth

As you connect with the wider community and seek to contribute to it, you may well find that a sense of status automatically follows.  You might need to adjust your thinking too.  Take a moment to reflect as objectively as you can on the status that you have – your role in your family, in your work or your community and groups you belong to; the importance that you have in the eyes of your family, friends, neighbours and colleagues; the contribution that you make with your skills and strengths.  Resist the temptation to say ‘Oh that’s nothing.  Anybody could do that.’

Don’t let anxiety get in the way of you meeting your needs for connection and status

A lot of my clients find it difficult to engage with the wider community.  The thought of joining a group of strangers, or meeting up with people they don’t know very well, fills them with dread, before they start sessions with me.  Happily, they learn to overcome that anxiety, grow in confidence and feel at ease in group settings.

It’s the same for people who have a low opinion of their own status and worth.  With some very easy techniques, they can learn to have a whole new perspective on their own true value.

Please don’t let your anxiety and negative thinking get in the way of you meeting your needs for belonging and status.  Book a free 30-minute phone consultation to get some strategies on how to better meet those needs and find out how hypnotherapy can help – phone 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk.

1. Goleman D. (1996) ‘Emotional Intelligence’
2. House J., Robbins C. and Metzner H. (1982) ‘The association of social relationships and activities with mortality’ American Journal of Epidemiology
3. Depner C. and Ingersoll-Dayton B (1988) ‘Supportive relationships in later life’ Psychology and Ageing

The post How to Survive and Thrive Beyond Lockdown – Part 3 appeared first on Transforming Health.

Mindfulness is great for dealing with stress, which is so often a major underlying factor in IBS.  It can actually help with IBS symptoms in another way too: mindful eating.

What is mindful eating?                               

Like any mindful activity, mindful eating is about focusing all your attention on it and being fully present in the moment:

• Don’t do anything else while eating.  Ignore your phone, switch off the TV or radio and just focus on your food and eating.  If you’re eating with other people, you could let them know that you’re going to be eating mindfully and explain that’s why you might not be so engaged in the conversation at times.
• Use all your senses, not just taste.  Notice the colours and shapes of the food and how it smells.  Pay attention to the sounds of the food.  Maybe some food is crunchy; maybe some food is sizzling as you serve it.
• Savour your food.  Notice the different tastes and textures as you eat.
• Chew 20 times, so you eat slowly.
• Don’t rush off after you’ve finished eating.  Stay sitting and let your food digest.  Have that conversation with the people you’re eating with.

Why does mindful eating help IBS symptoms?

If you’re constantly eating on-the-go, grabbing a quick sandwich before rushing on to the next thing, or eating while you’re working, scrolling on your phone or watching TV, your nervous system will be in action mode.  For your digestion to work well, you need to be in ‘rest & digest’ mode, rather than action or ‘fight or flight’ mode.  When you’re stressed in body or mind, the ‘fight or flight’ response is activated and interferes with any function in the body, which isn’t necessary for immediate survival.  Digestion is one of those functions.

When your digestive enzymes aren’t working properly to break down your food, your gut bacteria will have a field day and produce fermentation and gas, leading to the discomfort of bloating and trapped wind, among other things.

Mindful eating is a really good way to reduce stress levels and it also helps digestive enzymes in other ways.  Digestion starts in the brain and when you’re paying attention to your food and eating, it prepares the brain to know that the stomach is going to get food.  This stimulates the enzymes in saliva, the first stage in the digestive process.

Digestion works best when the stomach has small bits of food to deal with.  Saliva starts to break down the food and then chewing well will make sure that the food arrives in the stomach in a mushy form, which is easy for the stomach to digest.  If the stomach has to deal with larger bits of food, without the help of the salivary enzymes from eating too quickly and not chewing well, it can result in bloating and indigestion.

With IBS, it’s not just about what you eat, but how you eat

With IBS, the focus is very often on what foods are causing problems.  It’s important to consider the impact of how you eat and the role of stress as well.

In my years of working with clients with IBS, it’s been so rewarding to see how they have been able to alleviate their symptoms when they manage their stress better.  This has included mindful eating.  Many clients have been able to eat a wider range of food, without it causing the bloating, flatulence, cramps and other problems that they used to have.  Spending more time in ‘rest & digest’ mode, rather than ‘fight or flight’ mode really does help.

If you’d like to find out more about how hypnotherapy can help IBS, please book a free 30-minute phone or Zoom consultation with me.  Email anne@transforming-health.co.uk, or call 0208 546 2122.

Featured image by Pablo Merchan Montes on Unsplash

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