Distance

I often seem to end up writing my blogs on thursdays. There is a good reason for this: little one #1 is at school, little one #2 is at toddler group with her granny and, right now, little one #3 is asleep, the worst of his chicken pox thankfully over. So I am sitting here alone at half past ten, still in my dressing gown, drinking my coffee and listening to Ayub Ogada whilst the snow drifts quietly past the window. It is very peaceful and ah, these moments are gold dust.

I've been all over the place this past week, what with Andy still away and an uncomfortable, itchy baby up in the night and his sisters' waking quite a bit too (cold feet / duvet fallen off / nightmares / runny noses). I keep missing deadlines for things Maya is meant to be giving in or doing at school and feeling a shudder of guilt about it. But I must remember - the little lady is only four years old, at the very start of her educational journey, and if she misses the odd drawing competition, it is OK.

Now, on another note, I have a confession to make: I own enough self-help books to sink a battleship. (I suppose part of the thinking in the past has been that, if this book does what it says on the tin, I'll only be spending £6.99 to help with my insomnia, rather than the huge amounts paid for various therapies). They claim they will make the reader more confident, more positive, or that within its pages lies the secret for chasing away childhood ghosts. Rather hilariously, none of them have worked. At least, not for me. So perhaps it's pure folly to be diving into another one, but I am. It's called 'The Happiness Trap' and is by a man called Russ Harris. I'm not going to go into it now, because I could be sitting here tippity-tap-typing away my gold dust moment....But he has some interesting things to say about these stories that go around in our heads that we call 'thoughts'.

Now I know I've talked about thoughts in the past and the hold they can have over us. Harris asks the reader to prefix negative thoughts that pop into your head with the words 'I'm having the thought that....' I've been really trying to make a go of this over the past few days, to see what happens. The idea, obviously, is to distance oneself from the thought so that ultimately, recurring negative thoughts can release their hold on you. It's been an interesting exercise and I can see that the same thoughts do come up again and again and again. For example, instead of simply allowing the thoughts 'I am a wreck' to plough through my head, it now reads as 'I'm having the thought that I'm a wreck.' If I keep doing this, I might just start allowing myself to believe this isn't necessarily the truth. And even if it is the truth, it's not a thought that helps me in any way.

The great thing is that after just a couple of days of doing this properly, I can already note a change. Yesterday, as I was walking to pick Maya up from school, I mused how awful I was feeling yet again. I then prefixed my thought with the necessary words and instantly felt better. It was bizarre. I even started chuckling, just because I knew that I had heard this story so, so many times before and it was all a bit silly (yes, I am that mad looking woman who walks through the park laughing to herself).

I'll keep you updated on how I get on with Mr Harris and his Happiness Trap and the madwoman's response to it ;)