Sunday 16th February 2025

Happy Sunday to you!

I’ve been speaking about the concept of ‘Wintering’ this week and came across this wonderful quote by the author Donna Ashworth. I wanted to share it with you:

This resonates a lot with me as I have been trying to get my therapeutic writing groups and staff wellbeing groups organised, along with a couple of other initiatives and a re-organisation of my websites. I have wondered why everything feels like it is taking too long, and also feeling a lack where my energy should be, in order to do it all. But after thinking about the concept of seasonality, maybe it is just this. Maybe now is not the time for the energy of ‘doing’. Maybe it is the slow before the spring, the preparation phase, the getting ready and the stock-taking before the shop opens. 

This makes me see how it is so easy to forget that we are nature-beings just as a tree and a group of daffodil bulbs are.

Flowers can’t bloom before conditions are right. Maybe our bodies and minds are the same. Or perhaps the mind needs to be reigned back into the body at these times! My mind has been racing ahead, but my body is still in hibernation mode. 

Realising this makes me see how I have been falling into that trap of thinking that I have not been doing enough, that there is something wrong. The same trap we can fall into with our emotions. Where we feel upset at being upset over something, worried about having certain thoughts, upset because we feel low, or worried that we can’t do something. This extra layer of thinking about our thinking, and feeling about our feelings is what can make us feel worse. 

We can’t help but do this, because we are always having thoughts about thoughts about thoughts. It is the way that our thoughts work. We don’t have thoughts in a serial flowchart, like this:

We have thoughts in an associative network, more like this:

Have a look at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy research, for relational frame theory for a more detailed explanation of this. It is fascinating and eye-opening, and shows how tricky thoughts can get!

What we can do though is pause, reflect and notice what we have been doing. This is mindfulness. We cannot be mindful all the time, but we can stop to be mindful when we remind ourselves to do it. 

At this moment, compassion and understanding are key to help you to go easy on yourself. Pause, Notice, Reflect and set an intention for the next steps, but with acceptance that you will likely stray from that path, and that is okay. 

Make your next mindful pause a moment to reflect on where you took a detour to. Acknowledge and accept this with compassion and understanding if you can. I am going to do the same today.

It is hard to be both a nature being and a being who can examine their nature. 

It is wonderful, but also quite hard to react and reflect and forgive ourselves for acting when we often can't help but be like this.

Let’s ease up on ourselves a bit and not expect too much whilst we are also wintering. 

I am going to take this message into my weekly process later. Why not give it a try in your weekly process too.

I am also going to go and explore the books by Donna Ashworth, this one has caught my eye so I think this is first on my list.

Using Expressive Writing for self-awareness and emotional connection

If you are looking to increase your connection with yourself and your feelings, I have written an in-depth course on how to use expressive writing for emotional awareness and regulation. The course also blends CBT tools and techniques for understanding and working with our patterns, as well as a module on using music for our emotion processing.

It is available from my course platform HERE.

Or you can also access it on the Udemy course platform HERE. I have priced the course to be less than the cost of one therapy session. If you have any difficulties accessing the course or have any questions about the course, do feel free to email me by replying to this email.

Weekly Process Writing Prompts:

Write about what you notice when you think back over the past week. Have you been expecting a lot of yourself this week? How would it feel to let yourself go at a slower pace right now.

Sending you love and hope that you can let yourself winter right now. Spring is on the horizon, but we are just preparing for it right now and do not need to do any more than we are doing. Let yourself rest.

Until next Sunday,

Donna

From the Blog: