September 2011

Hurrah, September and Spring at last. I feel like a shrivelled up prune from many months of cold weather beginning when Steve and I first arrived in Paris in mid March. It has been Winter for us ever since – a very long one.

I am feeling particularly blessed presently. This month I have moved my office to Mooloolaba Collaborative Care so Steve’s and my loungeroom and hallway are free of filing cabinets and office furniture for the first time since February when I moved out of Dr June Canavan’s surgery. Our unit has never looked so large and I had definately had enough of colliding with furniture in the middle of the night!

August and September are our son’s, Mark and Christian, birthday months. Having both returned recently from overseas it has been wonderful to have them home together to celebrate these birthdays. Mark is currently performing in Brisbane and the whole family turned out to attend his performance last week. More reason to feel blessed.

Families are so important, for many reasons, but in particular for overall individual well-being within that family unit. I know just how much better I feel when our children are around us. Laughter, fun and silly nonsense abound and when I go to bed at night it is with a sense of peace, love, pride and gratitude. My final blessing is that three of our children, Michael, Jennifer and Simon, and Michael’s partner Amy, live on the Coast permanently.

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Doris and Ben were such a couple as described above. They lived close to their loving family, having regular contact. The grandchildren came to visit often. Both were in their early 70’s and came for counselling when Ben became ‘sick at heart’. This is how Doris described Ben. She said he seemed to have lost his will to live, his physical health was good but he was sad, unmotivated and lethatgic. Normally a good communicator Ben found it difficult to impart to Doris what was going on. When I questioned Ben he could not find the words for how he felt.

Ben had retired 10 years prior and he and Doris had travelled extensively for several years after that. Now though they were happy to be at home playing golf, fishing, visiting friends and family with the occasional short trip away.

Nothing much had changed for the worse recently in their life so why was Ben so down?

Ben had no purpose or goal. Here was an energetic man who had plenty to live for in his early years – raising a family, striving at work, being a good provider and loving family man and finally retirment – his reward for hard work. His love of his children and grandchildren was not condional to anything now because they were not his to raise anymore, each standing on their own feet or in the case of the grandchildren, relying on their own parents.

Although Ben’s life was full and rich he still felt ‘down’. We discussed how Ben might find a new life purpose or goal and Ben came up with the ideas of Lifeline telephone counselling and volunteering. Within weeks Ben had enrolled in a telephone counselling course and was researching volunteering online. Ben suddenly developed an alertness that had not been present when he first came to counselling.

Finally Ben and I discussed ‘belief’. Ben was not interested in a specific religion but knew he could rely on himself in tight moments. Along these lines I introduced Ben to his own form of prayer and meditation – a Spiritual sense of whlolesome wellbeing where he knew he could rely on himself to fulfill his inner happiness and contentment rather than as in the past, when his ‘completeness’ had come from looking out for others and gaining self respect and self worth from that.

Doris and Ben both became telephone counsellors, sharing in the care of others outside the family unit. This was a first for them and they loved it. Ben went on to lean more about meditation, finally enrolling in different courses, opening a whole new world for him.

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Helpguide website

http://helpguide.org/mental/mental_emotional_health.htm