It’s been a rollercoaster Mental Health Week for us, and one which has led me to reflect on the 4Cs – choice, control , consideration and compassion. Armed with these we can try to make life easier for ourselves and just as importantly, make life easier for those with whom we live and work.
Choice
If you voted last week, you exercised your electoral choice. If you opt to hug your family next week Boris says you’ll be making a choice based on science and consideration for those you love.
The pandemic has brought into stark relief what it means to have choice. Choices about things we’d never have even given a second thought to before last year – going out, staying in, hugging loved ones, getting a hair cut, seeing friends and family, going on holiday, and many more.
The opportunity to think more clearly about the choices we make means we have perhaps become more aware of the little choices of life. Things that seemed a drag once, like what to have for dinner, became really important during the pandemic. We also became very aware that for some poverty curtailed choice.
Control
That leads into the second C – control. What to eat and when, was something many of us could choose, something we had control of at a time control and choice was being removed from us by the virus and how politicians were managing it. Choosing to donate to essential foodbanks, or to support others in multiple ways was an option we took to help others regain choice and control in their lives.
I’ve been reflecting on choice and control particularly this week because it seems so apparent to me that having choice and control removed makes us much more aware of how precious they are. During full lockdowns we couldn’t move. We sat on our boat and recognised that within the narrow parameters of food and exercise, we had little choice. We didn’t worry about who to see or where or when because we couldn’t. It was a form of isolation that reduced choice, and at the same time liberating. It made me realise that choice and control can lead to stress. Choices demand decisons and decisions are difficult things. They lead us to wonder if we’re making the right choice or the wrong choice, if there’s a better way, if we’re making a choice too quickly, too hastily.
Choice and control have the potential to inspire, to motivate, to liberate us and to challenge us. Whether it’s trying to decide who to see, where to see them and to hug or not to hug, or whether to return to working in the office (if you have a choice), or whether to travel abroad, the lockdown lifting gives us all challenging choices to make. If we feel that control is being imposed upon us or that we are losing control, even of small things like what time we take a coffee break, go for a walk, decide to eat our meals.
Part of what makes us the individuals we are, are the choices we make and the control we exercise in our own lives. Marcia Baxter Magolda developed a theory about self-authorship, the ways in which we each have the potential to develop and direct our lives. One major aspect of that is about how we each develop our own identity that guides our choices. Drawing on our beliefs, values and loyalties, our past experiences and crucially our mistakes, we determine a way forward which we feel is right for ourselves. In turn that supports how happy or fulfilled we feel which supports our mental health.
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets
The lockdown restrictions led to huge mental health issues for some created by so many factors. The stress of being prevented from seeing friends, of being on furlough, working from home, losing jobs, and that’s just about each of us as an individual, the potential for more stresses and depression to multiply when one takes into account the impact the pandemic was having on our families and friends.
The past year has also removed from so many the ability, and even the right to self-author their own paths through life. Talking to university students, in many cases they felt the pandemic and decisions surrounding it had been taken by others, and had totally negated their capacity to self-author. They had decided to go away to university and then that had been overruled. They had found themselves back at home where decisions on daily life were often taken by parents (also struggling for something they could control); they were studying online in a way decreed by academics or their university IT systems, not as they had intended or envisaged. The only choice for many students and indeed many of us, was what exercise to do and when to do it, or as one student told me – which rules to break and when.
Then came the initial easing and some freedom that comes with choice. We chose to move and that’s fortunately not a challenging choice on a canal – you travel the way you are pointing. It’s not like a road with the opportunity to make u-turns all along the way, On a canal unless you have a short boat you only turn at the winding (turning) points, by which time you’ve usually had plenty of time at 4mph to make up your mind if you’re going the way you want!
We’ve been waiting so long for restrictions to finally lift and yet in that lifting there are going to be new stresses next week for many. Many have become used to a new way of living, one that has reduced social pressures because there’s been no need to go out, to socialise, to spend money we don’t actually now have because of furlough or redundancy, or to invite people round. Workwise, officewear of trackies and a sweatshirt reduced washing, decision making, and perhaps also the need for dieting…
The pressures of lockdown ending can create problems that have the potential to overwhelm. We had a personal reminder this past week of lockdown, of losing control, of being at the mercy of someone or something else, of hopes raised and dashed and recognised how easy it is for any of these situations to trigger negative, low feelings that can be hard to manage.
The culprit for us was the driveshaft coupling. It connects to the engine to make it move the boat (all those who know more complex explanations – apologies!). Four bolts/studs came loose, losing threads in the process. Steve managed to get them to hold sufficiently to let us limp through King’s Lock into a mooring in Middlewich in Cheshire but that was it, the end of their useful lives.
Replacements were ordered asap by the helpful Paul Donnelly at Middlewich Wharf but the Bank Holiday weekend meant they didn’t arrive until day 6 of our enforced pause. When they arrived it was rapidly apparent that the threads into which they were connecting were also damaged, and that these had already been drilled out and repaired with helicoils in the past. Nothing for it but get rescued.
Day 6 we called River and Canal Rescue – we’re insured with them. It took until day 13 of our enforced stoppage for them to have the parts and get to us. The moment the engineer Andy arrived with the new part was wonderful – high, positive, excitement but then it wouldn’t fit…instant low. By cutting out part of the engine bay the new coupling fitted and within minutes we had it fired, tried and with almost undue haste we thanked our rescuer and were pulling off our mooring as his feet left the boat for the towpath!
It almost seemed worse to be grounded again (by a failed drive coupling which links the engine tot he act of propulsion), having had a taste of freedom. We were constantly reminded of what we were missing as other boats happily cruised last us and all we could do was wait…impatiently in my case…for the replacement components to arrive. Huge glee when they finally arrived – followed immediately by a crushing low when they wouldn’t work.
It’s made me appreciate the difficulties for students, for colleagues at work who have suffered the difficulty of lockdowns; developed through personal choice and control their own ways of working, and then with the lifting of lockdown have the potential to lose that again through heavy-handed management. Making the return to the new normal one that allows everyone the opportunity to exercise their personal control and make their own choices, and to manage that with compassion and consideration, seems vital.
We’ve all got used to a slower pace of life in lockdown – and the speeding up is going to seem exhausting for many. Making sure we have slow times in our days is going to be vital – fairly easy for us at a maximum 4mph!
Consideration and compassion
It made me consider all those things we do often unconsciously that reduces choice, or control for others, and how by doing that, we lack compassion. Do we manage our lives and work to give those (children, partners, colleagues, students, clients) involved in the decisions we are making, a meaningful element of control and choice? Academics – are your assessment practices offering elements of control and choice for students? Do we exercise compassion if they find any elements overwhelming or challenging? When people are struggling with work, study, or life being compassionate and considerate isn’t telling them to “Get on with it”, or “Pull yourself together”. What seems an obvious solution to one can be impossible or alarming to another. Unless we are aware and remember that we lose our compassion.
Sharing is one way of caring for each other, sharing a new found love of nature, of walking, of cooking or crafting, or whatever it has been that got you through. In my case it’s been discovering more about the history and architecture that’s on my doorstep – wherever I take that doorstep on England’s canals. In the salt town of Nantwich and the City of Manchester we discovered some fascinating sights.
Sharing may help others make it through the challenging changing times to come. Even if they don’t feel it’s for them, you’ve given them the chance to share in your choices, your self-authorship of a crucial time in your life, and that insight might be something they draw on to find their own inspiration for the next battle they face.
As individuals we need to look after ourselves for our own mental health, when it seems we have no choice or control over what life is throwing at us. We recognised the need to consciously see the multiple positives during our fortnight in Middlewich – shops, access to services, friendly and helpful owners at Middlewich Wharf (possibly the only wharf in England with a horsebox bar), visits from friends, good pubs serving food and drink outside and we found with the constant “will today bring news or a solution”, it was important to keep reminding ourselves of these pluses.
We consciously recognised the need to gain some control over our situation, it’s tempting to sink further feeling totally out of control. We walked. We took ourselves and the dog for long, new walks immersing ourselves in the countryside around us whatever the weather, consciously noting the changes going on in the trees, the hedges, the continuation of life through the hatching of ducklings, goslings and cygnets and appearance of buds, blossom and new leaves.
I’m hugely grateful right now – to those who have helped us on our way, supported us with consideration compassion and engineering expertise to get us on our way to the cheery waves from those on the towpaths and houses we have passed, to those who have shared a smile as they pass the boat and those who have shared the work at locks. Most of these lovely people will be unaware of how much they lifted my flagging spirits, but all these little interactions as we endured our enforced pause and then made up for lost time with long days cruising to get us into Lancashire for a much-awaited family reunion this weekend were little positive nudges. We are here. We will get to see everyone, and hopefully the only choices this weekend will be to hug or not (I am happy to but will leave that choice to each individual concerned), and how many slices of cake are too many? Ah cake – perhaps that’s a 5th C in the armoury to support my mental health!
Pickingupducks 