If we want help with depression we need to understand the link between depression and sense of self. From the moment we are born, the development of a sense of self does not occur in isolation. Indeed its secrets lie in the complexities of the right hemisphere of our brain. Furthermore this evolution occurs through the infant’s interaction her mother (in particular, her mother’s mature right brain)

Difficult childhood experiences affect our brain

Injurious experiences from childhood affect the development of our brain. The corresponding emotions such as separation, distress, fear and rage are stored in our implicit memory and in our body. These have an important impact of our sense of self that is at the heart of conditions such as depression or anxiety. Depression itself is related to our limited sense of self and is usually triggered by interpersonal or relationship difficulties. It is only our most intimate relationships that have resonance with the original attachment relationship.

Trouble in relationship

Troublesome relational events, such as loss of or rejection by a parent, emotional neglect, parental depression or other absence (Schiffer, 1988), get “affectively burnt in” to our developing brain. These experiences have a negative effect on ‘affect regulation‘ in the infant. Importantly, this interferes with the development of the child’s brain (especially the right hemisphere). And it is this that interferes with the infant’s (and adult’s) development of self. Unfortunately this also means that the individual has predisposition to to negative feeling experiences and emotions and a tendency towards depression.

Depression shrivels our sense of self

Damasio (1999) writes that depression, in its acute and severe stages, exhibits alterations in extended consciousness, causing the sense of self to shrivel. Yet in difficult, earlier memories there is ‘something to be known’ which presents an opportunity for the client to re-experience and derive important new meanings about his own identity:

“Sets of memories which describe identity and person can be reactivated as a neural pattern and made explicit as images whenever needed. Each reactivated memory operates as a ‘something to be known’ and generates its own pulse of core consciousness.” (Damasio, 1999).

Resolving memory

Therapy can help with depression in amazingly powerful ways. The right type of psychotherapy in a responsive therapist-client relationship can literally rewire the client’s right brain. In this respect therapy is not a talking cure but a limbic-system ‘communicating cure’ composed not just of two minds but of two bodies. The therapist can work with a client to help them understand patterning from their past history. By implication this will help them to resolve memories – particularly those associated with negative emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt and shame. Clients can then safely re-present old traumatic or negative memories from much younger ages and take new insights and meanings that will reinforce a more resilient sense of self.

Mindfulness can help

Schwartz (2002) suggests that the mind can affect the brain in that neuronal connections in the brain can be remodelled by consciously strengthening certain pathways (in particular in the neo-cortex and precuneus) and inhibiting the pathological ones (those between the frontal cortex and basal ganglia).

This means that every one of us can utilise the inherent plasticity in our adult brain by drawing on the brain’s higher order functions to change its own neuronal structure. By using mindfulness-based practices to develop what is often called the ‘witness mind’, the mind can learn to experience negative thoughts ‘simply as events in the mind’ (Schwartz, 2002). This seems to serve a similar purpose to Korzybski’s ‘silence’ and ‘orders of abstraction’, thereby allowing the emergence of new meanings and a more complete map of the self.

Stopping the automatic patterns

Stopping the automatic patterns of pathways of ‘depressogenic thinking’ allows people to find new ways to think about their feelings. The mindfulness model encourages people to ‘stay with’ the bodily sensations (felt sense) and allows the emergence of new understandings and meanings thereby changing their emotional responses to internal affective events and thoughts. This breaks the strong physical (somatic) connection between unhappy thoughts and memories which causes the ‘depressive interlock’, so that new understandings may be encoded from the somatic cues that triggered the depression (Schwartz, 2002).

Perhaps even more powerfully, “the empathetic therapist’s capacity to regulate the patient’s arousal state within the affectively charged non conscious transference and counter-transference relationship is central to clinical effectiveness.” (Schore & Schore, 2008).

Therapy as a profound encounter to rebuild sense of self

The therapist can use implicit non conscious, non-verbal communications in the therapist-client relationship to regulate the client’s limbic response and positively influence dysregulated affective states in a new ‘secure’ attachment. The therapist who has a ‘trained, practiced and disciplined sensitivity’ effectively has a right hemisphere that allows her to know the client “from the inside out” (Schore & schore, 2008) and will thus be able to use her own bodily-based reactions to the client’s communications to facilitate a ‘profound encounter’ (Corsini, 2000). Developed over time, this can allow for expression and re-expression of experiences that resonate with the original mother attachment experiences in the first two years of life to co-create a new secure attachment (Schore, 2008).

In such a deeply connected and sensitive relationship where the therapist is somatically attuned to the client’s right brain, the relationship serves to change the neuronal structure of the client’s right hemisphere so that psychotherapy becomes neurobiology in a right brain to right brain communicating cure (Lewis et al, 2001).

Implicit in this is the process of body-based communications (as in body-based psychotherapy), as Schore says:

“The body is clearly an instrument of physical processes …. This sensitive instrument also has the ability to tune in to the psyche: to listen to its subtle voice, hear its silent music and search into its darkness for meaning.” (Schore, 2008)

Hyperventilation

These symptoms are also the result of hyperventilation (over breathing) and other breathing disorders. When we hyperventilate, we are breathing mainly through the chest.

How to test yourself

It is quite simple to test yourself for hyperventilation. Here is a simple questionnaire that you can use. A score of over 23 out of 64 suggests a positive diagnosis of hyperventilation syndrome.

Alternatively you can try this:

sit in a comfortable position on the chair or on the floor
place your right hand on the centre of your chest, the heart area, in between the nipples
place your left hand on your belly, just below your navel
begin to breathe in your own way, your normal breath

Do you feel the movement more beneath your left or right hand? If the right hand is moving more you are chest breathing.

Shallow breath

Chest breathing results in a shallow breath. As the breath is shallow too much carbon dioxide is exhaled and body becomes more alkaline. This (alkylosis) triggers the neuro-hormonal, physiological responase which increases breathing rate and also the anxiety itself.

Whilst an initial activating event (a conflict with your boss, perhaps) may have caused the breathing response (and the initial anxiety) but the breathing patterns then propagates the anxiety. Thus we have entered a vicious circle of anxiety.

Change our anxiety by changing our breathing

How we breathe, and how we feel are intimately connected in a two-way loop. Which means that we can change the way we feel by changing our breathing.

However, it is also important to know that chest breathing can cause tension and pain because it uses the wrong muscles of respiration. This might include the sternocleidomastoid and upper trapezius in the neck, pectoralis and latisimus dorsi in the trunk. These muscles soon get tired and weak, because they are not designed for primary breathing, and this can lead to aches and pains in the neck, shoulders and upper back.

The importance of the diaphragm

The diaphragm is the main breathing muscle and produces 80% of the inhalation. The diaphragm is attached to the ribcage and the lumbar spine. When we breathe using the diaphragm, the belly moves; it moves out on the inhale and releases back as we breathe out.

Diaphragmatic breathing has many benefits over chest breathing:

it massages the internal organs and reduces the symptoms of IBS and other digestive problems (common with anxiety)
it activates the vagus nerve and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and reduces the release of the stress hormone cortisol, so that we feel less anxious and more relaxed
as the diaphragm is connected to the heart, it acts as a second heart and means that less stress is put on the heart when we use the proper breathing muscle to breathe

Learn how to practice diaphragmatic breathing with this short podcast.

I estimate that one in every 10 people who come to me are suffering from panic attacks. They think they are going mad and berate themselves for feeling out of control. Yet panic attacks are not what you think. They are a stimulus-response circuit that your body has learnt. I have suffered from them myself. It limits lives, even ruins lives if left to run without help for long enough, becoming a panic disorder.

The symptoms include: feeling of faintness (or actually fainting), lightheadedness, chest pains, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, numbness, sweating, tingling feeling on the fingers, nausea, hot flashes, trembling or shaking, abdominal pains. A feeling that you are about to have a heart attack or die. People can feel like they are about to vomit, or have diarrhoea. Symptoms vary from person to person, but they are very frightening.

Who gets panic attacks?

Panic attacks can happen to anyone. Many of us may have had one or two in our lives, and overcome them. When panic attacks become a problem, it is usually in people with less self acceptance/ self like, they tend to dissapprove or dislike themselves. Maybe an underlying, limiting belief about self such as “I’m worthless” keeps them unconsciously wishing to punish themselves or self sabotage any attempts at changing it.

What are panic attacks?

They are not phobias, as phobias are a fear of something specific and identifiable outside of yourself, removal of which stops the symptoms of fear. But if you fear fainting in a public space or making a public spectacle of yourself in certain situations then your fear is a fear of panicking and is internally generated, caused by your own thoughts: “What if I faint? I’ll make such a fool of myself. What will others think of me?”

Panic attacks become inconsistent, their occurrence depending on a number of different circumstances, unpredictable and we don’t know why it happens or how you learned it. They always start with some event in childhood where we lost control of our bodies, usually due to illness, and fainted, were sick or had diarrhoea. This leaves us with a very negative emotional experience linked to a time and place. It is this memory of time and place linked with emotion, that becomes an unconscious pattern outside of our conscious control. And explains why they can be so scary.

What can be done?

Many people believe that, because they have had panic attacks for a while and have not been able to do anything about it, they are stuck with them and can’t change. But, whilst the change may not be immediate, and the person needs to put some effort in to change, panic attacks can be treated and life can return to normal. In Embodied Living therapy here are some of the processes that I look at to help people:

education about the process of panic attacking
assess hyperventilation/breathing and retrain breathing
teach relaxation skills
teach thinking skills and identify the trigger thought and learn to change/stop it
identify the ‘dandelion root’ of limiting belief or event from early life and re-solution that
develop witness mind to teach person to dissasociate and keep out of the panic
install resources to help with managing emotional state and control the sympathetic nervous system: anchoring, resourceful self, cognitive distraction, SWISH, timeline intervention and memory resolution,
tasking and practicing controlled exposure with resources
building identity – ideal self – to build a more resourceful, resilient self this can have a huge impact on eradicating the panic attacks and helping people achieve their fully potential

In yoga we use breathing as a fundamental tool in both posture work and more overtly through the practice of pranyama (breathing practices). There is a way to breathe – known as coherent breathing – where we can synchronise heart rate and even blood flow, with respiration. This process happens when we are breathing slowly and deeply. Specifically, this needs to happen at a rate of 5 breaths/minute (yes that is a 12-second long breath!!). The average person breathes at 15-20 breaths/min (some are at 30 or more!!). This rate of 5 breaths/min brings about emotional and physiological coherence. However, it can only happen if we breathe using our diaphragm.

Unproductive breathing is the human condition

When we don’t breathe coherently we become incoherent (in thought, behavior etc). For many of us incoherent, unproductive breathing is a lifetime habit, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) becomes dominant. We’re in the realm of fearing, fleeing or fighting. And the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) becomes redundant. The PNS is the side of our nervous system that induces the ‘relaxation response’. Without a doubt we all have inherent access to this deep internal calm state. However, through unproductive breathing habits our system becomes dysfunctional and is no longer able to counteract the stressed nervous system. This leads to a pretty negative and unpleasant way of being in the world.

Our terrible experience

With sympathetic nervous system dominance, caused by unproductive breathing, we experience:

poor circulation (cold hands, feet, tingling, numbness)
muscle tightness (particularly trapezius in neck and shoulders)
headaches
anxiety
pain (can lead to chronic pain)
increased rate of ageing

And a myriad of other symptoms!

Learn how to breath coherently

We can learn how to breathe coherently. This involves the following:

Diaphragmatic action – the diaphragm is a strong sheet of muscle that sits in the torso separating the abdominal organs from the thoracic cage. It is the most important breathing muscle. It can move in a range of 10 cm. Yet in many people its range may be 1 cm or less. When the diaphragm is used to at least 60% of its capacity in breathing it brings mind and body into balance.
Effect on the Heart – the diaphragm is connected to the heart and its action massages the heart. As much as 65% of heart cells are neural cells, identical to those found in the brain, your heart has thoughts and a ‘mind’! In addition, the heart is a powerful EMF energy generator (the electromagnetic energy that a coherent heart kicks out can be measured up to 15 feet outside of the body!!), and can affect the energy of brainwaves (a process called entrainment) and also of other people.
Engage the parasympathetic nervous system – the diaphragm is connected to the vagus nerve, part of the PNS, and its action serves to increase the functionality of the PNS
Entrainment – through coherent breathing we can entrain the heart into coherence (high HRV), and the brainwaves into alpha or even theta.

Powerful changes

These four points mean that when we learn how to breathe coherently, we notice changes in both body and mind. Nevertheless, it is important to realise that for some, to begin with we may simply feel MORE pain, more tiredness or exhaustion. This won’t last, it will pass quickly. Indeed this only happens because we are actually really exhausted and/or in pain. But this experience has been ‘hidden’ by the over active SNS. Stress hormones such as cortisol are at permanently elevated levels and serve to mask this. Without a doubt, in the long run this state of elevation will reduce our immune response.

Constant and consistent effort

But if we practice consistently and regularly these problems will diminish and we will start to feel the many benefits of coherent breathing:

reduced pain
more energy
improved sleep
reduced blood pressure
reduced symptoms of depression and/or anxiety
increased performance
improved emotional control
increased resilience and less stress
better decision making

Coherent breathing is the key to increasing our immunity. building our confidence, and achieving happiness and bliss.

You can find even more resources for accessing your most resourceful self on my Embodied Living podcast site.

Are you suffering during this COVID-19 crisis? Do you feel low and would like a more mindful approach to help you cope? Are you feeling more anxious and want to learn practical coping techniques?

Anyone with pre-existing anxiety, trauma or OCD is likely to be triggered by everything that is currently happening. In fact the trauma of COVID-19 – loss of control, feeling of helplessness and overwhelm – is triggering for all of us. I’m a registered clinical psychotherapist based in Stafford. I’ve have set up a group offering many FREE resources and support during this time. This includes a FREE online course ‘Emotional Wellbeing’ to help with anxiety and depression.

You can access this online course anywhere and at any time. All you need to do is join the group. This is totally not-for-profit, I am not profiting from this in any way. I’m offering this to be of service. This Module was granted approval through mental health professionals in the Satyananda Yoga UK network. Satyananda Yoga is accredited to the British Wheel of Yoga (BWY). It was also approved and grant funded through Staffordshire County Council. I designed and ran the course a few years ago and luckily I had all the assets which I could easily put online.

JOIN NOW

Panic attacks are disabling and can have a significant effect on limiting people’s lives. In a recent post on panic disorder, I looked at the underlying sympathetic nervous system response and how yoga and mindfulness practices can help. From a psychotherapeutic perspective, I find that when people have some education about the process of panic attacking and some awareness of the process, they can start to let go of some of the fear. The very nature of panic attacks is similar to phobias, but the fear is of fear itself: the fear of having a panic attack becomes the phobic response. So by educating people as to the nature of the process, fear starts to loosen.

The Process of Panic Attacks

Panic attacks are the body’s learnt or conditioned response to a stimulus and is classical conditioning. However, when the body does something really well, it leaves it all to the unconscious mind, which by its very nature we can’t change without a little help. The original stimulus is often an event, perhaps an illness, where we lose control and experience some particular strong, negative emotions for the first time (fear, terror, panic, etc). We often can’t even remember the original ‘event’ but nevertheless, the body remembers it! These powerful emotions get ‘remembered’ by the body, the memory of that event in terms of the ‘felt sense’ of it, get stored in the body as a response.

Then, at a later date, some other (non related) event (stimulus) then gets associated with the response of panic (that response which has been remembered by the body). Thereby a ‘limiting decision’ is made by the unconscious mind (body-mind) to make the connection between the new stimulus and the panic response. The negative emotions of the panic attack build up and work together in a vicious cycle of anger, fear and blame. As well as the fear of having a panic attack (because we cannot control it), there can be anger that we feel at our self for doing it, sadness that we can’t control ourselves or will lose face or friends, guilt that we can’t solve the problem ourselves.

Thoughts Make the Problem Worse

When the limiting decision made by the unconscious mind to make the connection between the new stimulus and the conditioned response, the beliefs and thoughts that the person has about the situation make the negative feeling experience much worse – ‘it’s not normal’, ‘it’s not right’, ‘i’m abnormal’, ‘I’m rubbish’ , ‘If anyone finds out I’ll lose everyone’, ‘I’m going to throw up/lose control in front of everyone’, ‘I’m going to die!’

How to Treat Panic Attacks

The process of treating panic attacks, involves giving the unconscious mind more choice and flexibility to help it ‘undo’ the stimulus-response that has been ‘learnt’. In my work using neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, I follow a process that broadly can be summarised as:

Identify the triggering thought and emotions and/or limiting belief
Identify the first panic attack – the time when the stimulus-response and limiting decision was made
Use search anchor (with safety anchor and kept dissociated) or similar to find first event – where the root fear was experienced
Clear out the negative emotions that act as a ‘glue’ binding the response in place – anger, sadness, fear, guilt
Then clear out the limiting belief or treat as a phobia

Contact me at Embodied Living for help on resolving your panic attacks.

“Everybody’s better off for a bit of psychotherapy”, says Henry Marsh, leading British neurosurgeon, who is 68 this year.

Recent statistics drawn from the UK population shows that older people experience more mental health problems such as anxiety or depression. Yet many people over 60 never seek psychotherapeutic help and it is estimated that 85% of older people with depression receive no help at all from the NHS.

Ageing Population

Over the last 40 years or so, the number and proportion of older people in the UK population (aged 65 and older) has grown by 47%, now making up nearly 20% of the total population. Given that we have an ageing population, why don’t more older people make it to the psychotherapist’s proverbial couch?

One reason is clear. People of a certain generation were brought up to ‘just get on with it’. After all their parents survived the war and other traumas. This means that they can have a kind of in built prejudice to seeking help: they might see it as ‘navel gazing’ or ‘thinking too much’ about things. Or in the very least they see counselling or therapy as self-indulgent.

Limiting Beliefs

However these beliefs, sadly, can often result in a serious impairment of their life. They may be too anxious sometimes to leave the house, they may experience fatigue and loss of interest in the things they used to enjoy that comes with depression. They might be experiencing anger and irritability.

But nevertheless they remain trapped by a belief that to seek help is somehow weak. This is the ego defences at work: if we have been through trauma and hardship and, because of familial or cultural expectations, we ‘just got on with it’, that becomes our ongoing strategy. However, when it comes to the unconscious processes of the psyche, we often cannot fix it our self. We need an experienced other, to help see into the windows that we haven’t yet been able to see into for ourselves and help us to facilitate our own change from this new perspective. We are simply too close to our own unconscious processes to see through them, without someone to help us (otherwise we would have done so a long time ago).

We were made to be able to be happy in an imperfect world. It is not a sign of weakness to seek (the right) psychotherapeutic help, it is a sign of strength that we are overcoming our own ego defences.

The stats from this article were sourced at The Mental Health Foundation

For help with mental health problems contact us.

In light of the Covid-19 lockdown announced by the Prime Minister last night I am currently only offering online sessions.

I have been working therapeutically online with people for many years. I will set up an online meeting that can include both audio and video and send you a link and a password. It is all secure, totally confidential and encrypted and you can even have a recording if you want. All you need to access this service is a device (mobile, tablet, laptop/computer) that is connected to the internet. I will set up the meeting and send you the link and a password.

Online sessions are the same rate as face to face, as they are still one hour long. But during the COVID-19 crisis I am able to offer a free initial (first) session for new clients and discounted rates for existing clients who may be suffering financial difficulties because of the crisis.

Please read here for my out-of-lockdown policy on Covid19 working

During this time i have also set up a free online course to help anyone suffering from anxiety or depression. Anyone with pre-existing anxiety, trauma or OCD is likely to be triggered by all of this. The Facebook group offers many FREE resources and support during this time. This includes a FREE 8 week course ‘Emotional Wellbeing’ to help with anxiety and depression. This course includes yoga practices and therapeutic ideas. All you need to do is join the group. I am not profiting from this in any way I’m doing it to be of service. Module 1 is ready now.

Join the Embodied Living – Coping with Covid Facebook Group here

We are living in unprecedented times as COVID-19 spreads faster than our UK government expected. Many of us are scared and anxious as we see our lives and the lives of loved ones drastically altered by this unseen enemy. This is why psychotherapy during COVID-19 is important. Even before the pandemic, levels of anxiety and depression were high so it is important to seek help in managing and maintaining your mental health at this time.

At the start of the pandemic, I introduced a covid-19 crisis policy and I keep it regularly updated.

Online psychotherapy as we move back into lockdown or Tier 4 upwards

I have many years’ experience of working online or by phone and this can be as effective as in person. I am working online during Tier 4 restrictions in Staffordshire as of 4th January 2021 – with the exception of Tier 4’s ‘reasonable excuse’. Therefore anyone who is extremely vulnerable I will still see in person in my covid-secure therapy room.

With online psychotherapy options during COVID-19 all you need is a computer or device linked to the internet and you simply open a link in your browser to begin the session. With Skype you need an account (it is free though) and with Zoom you just need a web browser. Your computer or device will need a video cam/camera and microphone. If we are doing sessions by phone, WhatsApp is the best option as it is encrypted. Please ensure that you have the following for online working:

A decent internet connection
A private space in your home/working area where you will not be disturbed
Your device at face/chest level (ie propped up on a table with you sat down, or other variations)
Also consider the routine that you have around the preparation for your online sessions

Moving back to in person psychotherapy when we move back into Tier 3 or lower

I will offer sessions in person again once the restrictions ease to at least Tier 3 levels. I will encourage everyone to work online (or by telephone) where feasible, but will consider in person working on a case by case basis. I work in an office unit and am following (in fact, exceeding) all the current government guidelines for office working. I am only working in person with non-symptomatic clients, who have not been exposed to anyone showing symptoms and are not in a high-risk group. Obviously, I will only do this if I am currently not showing symptoms. In my personal life I have modified my own behaviours to minimise risk to myself and others, and I am following government guidelines for the local tier of risk. I am following government guidelines for in person psychotherapy during COVID-19. This policy outlines my current COVID19 working procedures, which may change if we move into different tiers. Also, if local risk factors increase significantly, sessions may need to move online.

My policy for in person psychotherapy during COVID-19

I have sought best practice advice from my professional indemnity insurers, Howdens, and my professional registration body, the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), on working safely from my office space during the crisis. I have also conducted a risk assessment for in person psychotherapy during COVID-19.

As a result, for in person working, I am taking the following measures.

I have arranged my ground-floor therapy room so that:

There is a 3 metre distance between us when we are sitting
There is a protective clear 2m x 2m barrier screen between us
The client sits by a slightly open window for ventilation (so ensure you bring a jumper or scarf, for although I have the heating on, there may be a draft). There is a heater next to you if you need to adjust the temperature.
My room has handwash and PPE (Type IIR fluid resistant surgical masks) face masks and nitrile powder/latex free gloves) available
The centre in which I work has handwashing stations and clear social distance signage and policies visible
You are able to use the cloakroom/toilets (2 of them) as long as you maintain 2m social distance guidelines and only one person in the toilets at a time
I allow at least 30mins between clients to ensure I have time to clean down and disinfect the room and access points

NHS Track and Trace
- I will keep a record of your name and contact details for the NHS Test and Trace service for 21 days and provide this data to NHS Test and Trace if requested (after this time this record will be destroyed)
- Alternatively, you can ‘check in’ by scanning my NHS QR Code

Sue Tupling and clients agree to the following general procedures:

The client will ensure they are aware of the known risk factors of age or pre-existing health conditions, prior to agreeing to in person work
Wash hands as per recommendations before we begin
On entering the main door through reception, you will use the handwash station to disinfect your hands (immediately in front of you as you enter). If this is empty, you will use the one available in my room
Wear PPE face covering on entering and leaving my therapy room and gloves if desired. You may remove them during the session, once we are seated and at a good distance
When wearing a face covering, avoid touching your face or covering, as you could contaminate them with your hands
Continue to wash your hands regularly
I will wipe down surfaces including door handles before/after each client with antibacterial spray
Keep at least a 2m distance at all times
Cough or sneeze into sleeve or tissue
If showing symptoms cancel session with 24 hours’ notice if possible
Use online working as a non-contact option: phone, Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/2128175815) or Skype (sue.tupling)
Clean our mobile devices before starting a session
Clients will bring their own water/drink and tissues
Avoid contact or touching (shaking hands, hug)

Stay safe and make sure you invest in your mental health at this difficult time.

More information

Here is a link to the government’s guidelines on working safely from office spaces during COVID-19.

Read more on my blog about how psychotherapy during COVID-19.

I had to have my cat put to sleep recently. His illness was sudden, aggressive and short, mercifully. He was a loving companion for 15 years and these last couple of weeks I have felt the normal range of emotions we experience with grief: depressed, lacking in energy, guilt, anger, moments of disbelief expecting him to walk through the door, anxiety. I have also felt strangely displaced, not interested in the things I usually enjoy in life, and a sense of meaninglessness in my life.

We can forget that the death of a pet can be just as painful as losing a family member or friend. Yet when we start to experience the pain of the loss, well-meaning people around us can say ‘well it’s only a cat’. This might lead us to not take it so seriously, and not set aside time to process the loss. For some, perhaps where the pet is an only companion, or the loss was traumatic, the pain is greater.

Yet when we lose someone close to us, animal or human, we need to allow ourselves time and space to grieve. Otherwise, we risk bottling it up (again) and carrying it into the future, where the task becomes harder still. There is no right way to grieve, it is a highly personal process, and we all do it in our own way: for example, some of us cry a lot, others don’t. Nevertheless, whether I am working with myself or others, I find J. William Worden’s model of the ‘four tasks of mourning’ useful rather than focussing on what we expect to be going through, it suggests what we need to do to manage the loss in our life.

Worden suggests that there are four tasks we must accomplish for the mourning process to be completed satisfactorily to allow us to find a new normality. This model is flexible in that it is not linear, the tasks do not have to be completed in order, and we may find ourselves jumping to one and later revisiting another.

Firstly, we need to accept the reality of the loss. It is natural for there to be a sense that it hasn’t happened, but this first task is to recognise rationally and emotionally, that the companion is dead and will not return. Rituals help with this; burying the pet’s body or ashes in your garden, for instance.

The second task is to process the pain of grief. Many of us cope by keeping busy, and modern life makes that easy. Yet we need to allow time and space to let the pain move through us, and being around supportive people who validate our feelings will help us to work it through.

Thirdly, we have to adjust to a world without our loved one. This might require external, internal and even spiritual adjustments. We might have to dispose of our pet’s paraphernalia, and also find ways to use the time that used to be spent with the animal. If we have other pets, it is important to give them extra attention and maintain their routines, as they will have their own grief. Internally, we must adjust our own sense of self without that relationship in our life. Spiritually, even the death of a pet can challenge our sense of meaning and leave us feeling a little directionless.

Finally, we need to find a lasting connection with the deceased pet whilst moving forward with our new life. Essentially, we need to find a way to stay connected with Harvey or Smudge, but without preventing us from getting on with life; so that we can enjoy life again, whilst also enjoying memories, thoughts and feelings about our loved one.

Of course, these tasks also apply to people we love and by accomplishing the tasks we can reach a place of acceptance and move on with life again. But if you find a death is challenging you beyond your ability to cope, getting support from family, friends, clergy or a professional will help.

Find out you can get help overcoming grief by contacting us.