The Body Remembers

How are you feeling about facing a new lockdown? It seems as though we might be heading that way even if we're still at the "bespoke" stage.

Personally, I’m concerned. As a counsellor and, I hope, a caring member of society, I am worried about what emotional damage another lockdown would do to us. Will it really save us from this pernicious virus? Is it even right?

We are living in traumatic times. Babette Rothschild’s definitive book: The Body Remembers tells us that experiences of trauma can remain as a body memory long after the reality has faded. My fear is that those in charge have not given much thought how this trauma may affect its citizens of the future. 

I'd like to share a personal story which explains my views.

For almost two years, I have been a devoted carer to a small child. I visited once a week as a family member until she was nine months old and then took over her care for two full days a week while her parents worked. 

The arrangement came to an end in December of last year (to the relief of my body, at least) when she went to nursery full-time but I still collected and delivered and she came to my house so the steady, loving relationship continued.

Until March 23 of this year and lockdown when the relationship was abruptly severed and FaceTime became the “new norm”, a far-from-normal two-dimensional substitute. 

She was puzzled; I was upset but we persevered. She enjoyed pressing the red button at the end and was fairly overanxious to use it. She wasn’t speaking so we were limited to my chatting and waving and her waving hesitantly back until she became distracted elsewhere. It was unsatisfying but better than nothing. This went on for five weeks.

Then came Barnard Castle and the trip by the elusive Dominic Cummings when everything changed. I decided, like many others, if he could interpret the rules in his favour, so could I. The child's father finally agreed that I could come and see her and take her for a walk as long as we were outside the house. That was okay by me. It was Spring and I could do with the exercise. It was agreed I would do that twice a week.

Now for the interesting part. 

I drove over, parked the car outside the house and dropped off two bags of flour (remember the days when everyone was trying to bake and there was no flour around? I found a secret supplier) and went to drive off to park the car round the corner. By chance, I looked up and there was my little girl standing at her bedroom window looking out at me with a slightly puzzled gaze. She put her lovely chubby hand towards the window and hesitantly waved. I waved back with greater enthusiasm and then opened the door to get into the car. She continued to wave and then started to blow kisses. I drove off.

Some minutes later, I saw her in her full three-dimensional glory before she saw me. She was in her pushchair happily babbling to her father without a care in the world. 

Her father stopped walking and she looked around with some surprise. Then she saw me and there was a slow dawning recognition as she gave a joyful gasp. This little person who is usually quite reserved and, at that time, hard to coax a smile from, was so overjoyed at our reunion that she tried to scramble out of the buggy and fling her arms round my neck. It was a wonderful moment for both of us.

Her father left us (socially distanced at all times) and we reverted to our easy one-to-one relationship. When it was time to go, her father met us and walked back with me to my car. As I said goodbye, she began screaming and tried again to get out of the buggy. I was distraught, too, but kept my screaming to myself.

This pattern continued for some weeks and there were difficulties, though not with me. She was desperate for the swings, saying: "Peeese" in the hope that, if she asked nicely enough, I'd open the gate. I explained but she didn't understand of course. When the gate was officially opened, she was hesitant, holding back, uncertain about other children and the greater expanse of play area. 

We settled down and, later, I was “allowed” inside the house because restrictions had been lifted and the social bubble extended. (As I write this, I am astonished that phrases such as social distancing and social bubbles seem so ordinary. However did that happen?). The baby and I resume our relationship and I go over at least once a week to help out. 

If the lockdown is tightened, I will still be all right, as will she. I have “carer” status so there will be no more exclusions for me. But what about everyone else. How will they - you - and your loved ones fare?

FaceTime, Zoom and other computer meet-ups can be useful and are good at times of need. But nothing beats real human contact. Three-dimensional life matters.

By: Lulu Sinclair

Photo 1 by Rod Long on Unsplash

Photo 3 by Ben Garratt on Unsplash

Following the Leader

“Now is not the time for soundbites … I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.”

That quote actually belongs to Tony Blair but it could work well for our present PM, Boris Johnson.

What a time he has had of it. He survived a near-miss with Covid-19 and then, in the same month, became the father of a baby boy who looks to have inherited those strong Johnson genes. Our PM has stamina and he is clearly going to need it.

Back to the quote. 

Boris Johnson and his band of merry men are facing their moment of history. How Boris is perceived and how he manages it will all depend on what happens now. 

Time for the PM to take a lead

Currently, I have my concerns. The Government started off with an extraordinary majority given to them by those who sought Brexit. An unimaginable 80 seats. The future held such promise.

And then along came Covid-19, a new and unknown virus from which thousands of people have died within a very short space of time.

First, the no-blame game. It was not our government’s fault about Covid-19. We have big cities with diverse groups of people, most of whom live in close proximity so, when it happened, it was bound to have a calamitous effect on the population. Even though some said the UK should have been shut down more quickly, there can be no certainty that was the right thing to do. Government ministers, particularly Boris, were very conflicted about what to do and took a while to lockdown - lockup? - Britain. 

To ministers' surprise, the people accepted the decision with ease. Fear can have that effect and all of us were very quickly made to feel very, very frightened.

The problem, as I see it, comes after that. I observed a terror of ministers running around like headless chickens. They seemed to be locked in their own forever “frozen” stage of fear where the alternative fight or flight reflex did not get a look in. “Stay at home! Protect the (it soon became ‘our’) NHS! Save lives!” The mantra was repeated so often it became a cliché and, instead of appreciating the message, I began to feel irritated. 

In my last blog, I wrote that we as a society needed to have a rational head during the present situation.

More than six weeks after lockdown first began, I fear the Government has abandoned all pretence of rationality and is a living breathing example of when blind panic goes bad. Where gut reaction leads, reason gets elbowed aside.

An example of that is being forced to stay indoors to protect the NHS because it couldn’t cope with a pandemic. (Why not? I have to ask, a lot of money is spent on it).  Putting cynicism aside, I am prepared to do as I am told. But I also wonder why, while I am locked up, millions of people have been allowed to travel into this country and less than 500 of them were checked for Covid-19 symptoms on entry. Where is the logic in that?

My problem is, I am adult by age and a rebel by inclination. I am also, as many human beings are, a mass of contradictions. As an adult, if you reason with me and explain, I will be inclined to obey.  Talk to me in the right way and you will have no trouble from me.

Surfing suddenly seems tempting

However, tell me I MUST do something - and maybe get a little shoutie (from the Minister of Health school of governing) - and my rebellious side is right back at you. Before you know it, I'm planning a trip to Cornwall to ride the Newquay surf - something I’ve never thought of doing before. I sense I am not alone.

Better therefore, to treat the population as adults and address them accordingly. You are likely to get adult behaviour back, responsive and responsible and what may be needed to help contain this terrible and contagious virus. 

So why then, do I feel I’m being told what to do by a group of unknowing arrogant prefects who want to get on and are using me as a punchbag to achieve their aims. It does not bring out the best in a person.

Talking of arrogance, if you want people to comply, you need to lead from the front. It is no good telling everyone to do one thing when you and your cohorts are doing another. If you tell me to keep my distance and then go around shaking hands with everyone, I am going to get a confused message. Similarly, if a scientific guru and the architect of lockdown tells me it is a matter of life and death that I stay at home, I am prepared to trust his judgment. But when I discover he has been breaking his own rules, I am inclined to wonder what else I have been told to do that is wrong. And while isolation may be good for my physical wellbeing - although we are not entirely sure of that either - my mental health does not enjoy being separated from my loved ones. 

I hope that one day we will look back at this as if it were a bad dream but we still have a way to go. For now, we need encouraging and thoughtful leadership to give us confidence as we travel along this bumpy road. 

We are told Boris Johnson has wanted this job for a very long time. Now is his moment. I want his decisions to make me feel safe and I want to believe there is more to him than an optimistic soundbite. I’m not yet feeling it.

By Lulu Sinclair

Coronavirus - official information

Coronavirus - current statistics

Photo 1 Hello I'm Nik 🎞 on Unsplash

Photo 2 Ben Shread/Cabinet Office 

Photo 3 Harry Brewer on Unsplash

The Best of Us ... The Worst of Us

“It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.” The opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, sound a strikingly familiar chord today.  

We have made extraordinary advances in science and technology but, at the same time, we have ruthlessly used and abused our environment, and we now find ourselves exposed to a global threat over which we have, as yet, no control.  

This has led an unprecedented level of fear at a universal level, and the way we respond to that fear will be critical in how well we survive the corona virus pandemic.

Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and the survival of the fittest have been interpreted by some as every man for himself.  But in fact, if we look at animals in the wild, and what we now know about the way trees communicate with each other, it is evident that survival is about looking after your community (the herd or the woodland) and that individuals are significantly more at risk if they act independently of each other and do not collaborate with their tribes.  

Those who have emptied the shelves of supermarkets to stockpile for themselves are at risk of setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they not only create the very shortage that they are anxious to avoid, but are also still vulnerable to contracting the virus and may have unwittingly deprived themselves of the very people they will need to look after them.  

There is a fundamental difference between a survival gene and a selfish gene, and unless we can all recognise and respect that we need to collaborate in order to survive, I believe we will exponentially increase our chances of causing our own destruction.  

While we have now been given strict orders from the Government as to how we should behave, specifically focused on what we should not do, I feel there has been little support or advice with regard to the mental health aspect of this epidemic. 

For those people with pre-existing psychological disorders  such as depression, addiction, anxiety etc, being isolated can feel very risky and, in some cases, is actively dangerous. 

The instruction to limit activity and freedom that the Government had to issue was not one that anyone wanted to hear, and it was predictable that there would be a wide range of reactions, ranging from denial to outright panic.  

Covid 19 is creating universal trauma

It threatened us all with being forced to radically change our normality on a daily basis while, at the same time, giving us no certainty of an outcome over which we had no control.  

These are conditions that are very difficult to manage and they needed to be presented in a way that understood that fear would be likely to provoke resistance. Uncertainty and lack of control creates an immediate need for structure and support. 

I believe it would have been helpful for a Government minister to have offered strategies to be put in place to help people manage on a daily basis. For example, it would be useful to explain how to maintain structure in our daily lives; (regular meal times, etc.); how to use the time that we are at home in a constructive way - learning a new skill, exploring new ways of contacting people and perhaps revisiting old friendships. 

Failure to give advice in these areas has left many people without direction or purpose and has provoked anger and rebellion among some and, in others, impotent despair. 

Fortunately, we have also seen very positive examples of people showing compassion and collaboration in supporting and reaching out to each together when, for the first time ever, we experience trauma on a universal basis.

This is a time, I believe, to take stock of our own choices and priorities and to question some of our decisions so that, going forward, we can perhaps, lead our lives in a way that is less driven by short term gain. 

We could also understand and show more awareness of the consequences of our behaviour so that, in the longer term, we can better care for the environment we live in. By doing that, we can learn to take better care of ourselves. 

By Sue Sutcliffe

Coronavirus official information  

Current statistics