Author: George Halfin

Adults Have Tantrums Too – Learnings From A Low Mood

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Low Mood WordsIt’s now over 10 weeks after the birth of my second son and even though I’m in an amazingly good space compared to when I had my first baby, I can’t deny that exhaustion is setting in. – Recently this resulted in me dropping my phone down the toilet. I think that is proof enough!

A few weeks ago we were due to go to dinner at my parents which me and my elder 3 year old son were really looking forward to. But then my husband got home and said he was too tired to drive. After much emotional tooing and froing we made an attempt to go, but the traffic was bad and my husband decided to turn back.

I was very upset and thought that my 3 year old would be so disappointed he would throw a massive tantrum that would last until bed time. How wrong I was! – In fact it wasn’t him that had a complete meltdown it was me! I felt very emotional and upset and my thinking started running wild! Continue reading →

When The Unconscious Becomes Conscious – When What Is Staring You In The Face Becomes Visible To You.

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Blinkers

For the last few months our 3 year old son has been constantly saying to us ‘ What are you doing mum?’ ‘What are you doing dad?’ several times over even when we’ve explained what we are doing from the mundane ie putting washing in the machine to the overly obvious ‘getting you dressed’. Since at times it occurs to us that this question is asked incessantly we find it fun to ask him jokingly back ‘What are you doing ‘S’?’ or to when we want to test if he understands ‘What do you think I am doing ‘S’?’.

We like his curiosity – I was a curious child myself – driving everyone I knew to distraction with my constant asking ‘Why?’ as a young child. When people despaired of me I would say ‘But mummy says it’s good to ask questions – why?’ so they had no escape.

Yet we wondered where he got this phrase from…Then yesterday as I was looking after him and I feeding the baby in the other room I noticed I kept asking him ‘What are you dong ‘S’?’ and it was so subconscious to me that I hadn’t realised that it is me who asks him this question all day long as a way of trying to him out of mischief/or to put more generously – as a way of keeping his curiosity from getting him into dangerous/ undesirable situations!

How funny that I hadn’t noticed that these words came from me all day long and yet they have literally been staring me in the face for months, and it made me think how many other things do we think, say or do regularly out of habit that we don’t even notice and what effects does this have on ourselves and those around us?

What We Can All Learn From Toddler Tantrums

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Toddler Tantrum Picture

My son is going through what some people call his ‘3nager’ stage. This translates to at times him refusing to do what he is told for no reason that we can gather other than that he doesn’t want to do it. When I say refusing I mean ‘shouting, sulking, crying, and being generally petulant.’ Occasionally this can make for fun and games when I’m trying to get him to nursery on time and have to take the baby too. When he is in this kind of low mood he simply refuses to do comply with what is asked. When you need to get him dressed he is very good at making himself into a dead weight so it’s almost impossible to make him and if you do you are in for quite a few kicks. What I’m learning is as, as quickly as these thoughts of ‘I don’t want to’ come they also pass, once his thoughts change to something else. So for 10 minutes he can be refusing to get dressed and you leave him in his room to sulk and suddenly he changes his mind.  – Or he refuses to have his breakfast and while sulking he spots you eating yours and asks to try some and before you know it he has changed his mind and starts eating his. Continue reading →

Can Being In A Bad Mood Lead To Inner-Peace?

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Due to the pregnancy I’ve had quite a bit of insomnia which has helped me get this blog up before the baby comes so could be seen as a good thing. However the other weekend me and my husband were watching ‘The Voice’ to wind down and I decided to ask him to help me get my ipod working, even though I knew deep down this probably wasn’t the best timing.  – I was right it pushed us both over the edge. This resulted in him getting in a huff with me, fair enough and me getting emotional – also fair enough. Because we now understand each others moods and realised it was better to do our own thing rather than aggravate each other further he went upstairs to read and I went downstairs – to watch TV/sulk.

When I was sulking in front of the TV it occurred to me that I could sulk just about what happened and leave it at that,  or I could indulge my emotional mood and see where my thoughts went. Because I was in the mood for a good cry I thought I’m going to go with this  and indulge myself and boy did I go for it! Continue reading →

Decisions – Are They As Important As We Think They Are and Do They Deserve As Much Effort As We Put Into Them?

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I am now a few weeks away from hopefully giving birth to our second child and have been given the choice whether to have a cesarean again or not, because last time despite my best efforts that’s the route we had to go down.

In the past I have made decisions by seeking lots of people’s opinions and analysing and re-analysing these opinions along with thoughts of my own, by myself and with other people, which is frankly exhausting for me and everyone else I involve!

This time I have consciously chosen to decide differently. – To wait for decision to come to me rather than to agonise over it.

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Does Thinking Affect Our Sociability?

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I recently joined a big crowd of our friends who were having lunch, and it struck me how much our thinking can influence our experience of any situation, moment to moment.

At times I was enjoying full conversations with friends, at times I felt overwhelmed by the number of people there and felt I couldn’t really properly talk to anyone. At other times I felt distracted by thinking of feeling self-conscious about things I had said or not said. At times I felt very connected with people at others I felt distant and not connected.

I wandered if everyone was having a similar experience but not realising it or acknowledging it?

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Is Being Reactive Bad For Your Health?

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Crackberry picture with effectsWe live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by requests on our time via our mobile phones, computers and other media. All this connectivity is incredible and helpful but it also makes increasing demands on our time and can lead us to feeling overwhelmed or under pressure to keep up.

In the past I’ve always believed that if people called you to ask you to do something or invite you to something you should get back to them straight away and always try to do the right thing by them… Now I’m not convinced…

Doing things because we feel we have to rather than we want to or if it’s true to who we are, is that healthy for us?

Is there a difference between being responsive and being reactive? I’m beginning to see that there is.

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Where Does Fear Come From?

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As someone who has entertained fearful thoughts from early on in life and believed them so much they have affected my life deeply in many ways; including keeping me single into my early 30s to staying in jobs until well past their sell by date when they were no longer healthy for me to be there. –  This is something I am curious about.

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