Category: Blog 2

The writer of so many good songs it is challenging to choose one Ed Sheeran number to focus on.

But, as Mothers’ Day approaches this beautifully crafted tribute to his mother appears appropriate.

 

Here is a link to the official YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIB8EWqCPrQ

 

Ed describes performing various domestic routines. But, like the photos in the album, they speak of a life that was loved. As the scene unfolds we learn that this life belonged to his mum whose illness has succumbed to death and whose love for him is evidenced by his breaking heart.

Ed celebrates his mother’s support of him by singing “Hallelujah” and, against the etiquette of his father, shedding a tear.

Ed continues tidying respectfully, coveting his mum’s view of life that, “A life with love is a life that’s been lived”.

While we are mistaken to think that all angels are good, Ed recognises that his mum’s home is with God. Proclaiming her observation of the person he has become he eulogises her shaping of him.

Attachment theorists suggest that we only need one attachment figure, typically our primary caregiver, who provides secure enough attachment for us to develop from dependence into secure independent, or maybe that should be interdependent, adult human beings.

Knowing we are unconditionally loved offers a strong foundation in life, bringing a sense of identity and purpose and meaning to this journey we call life. From this secure base we have the confidence to explore our environment and the people who inhabit it in safety, enabling us to regulate our emotions and negotiate transition from one phase of life to another successfully, giving scope to developing the full potential of who we are intended to be, as a gift to the rest of humanity.

Where an infant’s experience of their primary carer is either as unattuned, unreliable or even abusive they are likely to develop an insecure attachment style. If left undetected or untreated this will probably become the prevalent way they connect in adulthood.

Where a child experiences inconsistent attention from their carer, perhaps because the carer is preoccupied with meeting their own needs, the child tends to develop an ambivalent attachment style, alternatively clinging anxiously to (even, sometimes, to the extent of a role reversal attempt at seeking to care for the carer) and repelling the perceived intrusiveness of the carer in an attempt to pre-empt anticipated rejection. Unchecked this will likely manifest as self-criticism, manipulation and possessiveness in adulthood, often characterised by a pattern of angry outbursts followed by pleas for forgiveness.

Where a child experiences neglect and abandonment from not having their needs met, they may seek to minimise their needs in an attempt to avoid experiencing the disappointment of not having them met by their carer. But unacknowledged needs often come at a price as they cannot be voiced and so remain unmet by another, leading to the foment of resentment.

Where an infant is betrayed through abuse it is likely to lead to confusion and lack of trust and a disorganised chaotic relational style.

Fortunately, all is not lost. If you think you may be among the 35% or so of the UK population who have an insecure attachment style, working with a registered, accredited therapist can help remedy delayed development through finding secure attachment at any age.

 

Let us join with Ed in singing “Hallelujah” for his mum who provided him with such secure attachment to enable him to write and perform so many life affirming songs that bring so much blessing to so many people.

David Sinclair is a registered accredited psychotherapist, counsellor and supervisor.

He is the Pastoral Care Director of the Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC), a faith- based soul care agency.

David is also the Service Manager of Wessex Psychotherapy and Counselling CIO (WPC), a registered charity dedicated to relieving psychological and emotional distress.

 

 

Morrisey, former lead singer of the Smiths is not renowned for his calming lyrics. It is hardly surprising then that his first new release in three years pursues a disquieting tone.

Here is a link to the official YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rmAi9XmlIo

The staccato ‘intro’ stands in stark contrast to the rest that bed invites. The driving rhythm that ensues militates against daytime repose. Perhaps this is intentional. With the notable exception of night workers most people take to their bed for sleep at night. Those staying the day in bed are typically ill, out of, or eschewing work, homemakers or possibly retired.

Morrissey pre-empts any workshy judgement being made of him, stating “I’m not my type”. The reason, it appears, that he is “very happy” he “spent the day in bed” is that he seeks to avoid what he asserts is the enslavement of being a worker.

Often associated with time off work is watching daytime TV, an eclectic mix of soaps and shopping channels. But rather than endorsing avoiding these, Morrisey advocates his listeners “Stop watching the news”. As he offers this advice the rhythm modulates, becoming free flowing, and the melody resolves, running counter to the conspiracy theory he implies. “News contrives to frighten you”, with the purposes, he alleges, of minimising personal significance, isolating and controlling individuals. “To make you feel small and alone…that your mind isn’t your own”. This cocktail of ideas is likely to provoke anxiety even in the most stable among us.

 

The theme of escape continues into the second stanza as Morrisey, lying in his paid for sheets, consoles himself that his “dreams” are “perfectly legal”. So persuaded is he by the efficacy of his strategy that he urges all he embraces as friends to “Stop watching the news”. The benefit to be derived from following this advice he suggests is “time [to] do as I wish”. The accompanying music slows, taking on an ethereal quality, emphasising the freedom to imagine.

By his third meditation on the advantages of spending the day in bed, Morrisey pleads with those who will listen to follow his recommendation to “be good to yourself” before the “pillows” of bed become the “pillars” of a tomb because “life ends in death”.

As Morrissey’s treatise melts into the ‘outro’ the repetitive alliteration of “no bus, no boss” and the rhyming of “no rain, no train” echo the rhythmic quality of a commuter journey. But Morrisey’s sardonic observation goes further he seems to see the routine of work as a depersonalising pursuit, one which emasculates and castrates, offering “no highway, freeway motorway” as escape to wilder reverie. Morrisey finally reinforces his view of the work-a-day world as enslaving by what sounds like the lash of a whip.

While I acknowledge news can shock, here is not the place, nor is there the space, to enter into a debate about whether the way in which it is told contrives to frighten, diminish, isolate and control people. Indeed, I find conjecture about conspiracy theory as unsettling as the concept itself. Spending the day in bed to avoid the object of our terror flies in the face of recognised desensitisation treatments of progressively facing our fears.

For me the alarm raised by this song is observing the balance between work and rest. Time and space to reflect on experiences and imagine possibilities offers enrichment. We work more effectively from a place of rest. The routine and creative aspect of work can be beneficial. Granted, some of us have greater opportunities and wider choices than others about what we work as and who we work for. Fundamentally, I find myself unable to agree with Morrisey’s thesis. After all, if we stay the day in bed to avoid being enslaved as a worker who will pay for the bed sheets in which we lie?

A registered therapist or counsellor or a trained pastoral carer can support and accompany you in helping face your fears and anxieties.

David Sinclair is a registered accredited psychotherapist, counsellor and supervisor.

He is the Pastoral Care Director of the Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC), a faith- based soul care agency.

David is also the Service Manager of Wessex Psychotherapy and Counselling CIO (WPC), a registered charity dedicated to relieving psychological and emotional distress.

The invitation to eavesdrop on Maggie Rose’s intimate conversational reflection is a sublime privilege.

 

Here’s a link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWIyAqT4DEY

 

The personification of the bottle enticing her to imbibe its contents so that “We can make it through this lonely night together” offers a timely reminder that as human beings we are designed for relationship. Strange but true; we can experience relational connection with a substance.

 

The trigger for the songsmith’s musing is her desire to “feel better”, “good”, “alright”, indeed “anything but what I feel tonight”.

 

The source of her discomfort is “the way he left”, of which she is reminded by the “pictures running through [her] head”. We are not told how he left, whether he died, or moved on to another relationship. It is apparent that contemplating the leaving tips into distress as she contrasts it with “the way he loved”; as she recognises that what she once enjoyed, she no longer has. To put it another way, she comes to a realisation that she has experienced loss. And the natural human response to loss is grief – deep, if not, overwhelming sadness.

 

Writing, as I am, at the turn of the year, I am conscious that many will be making new year’s resolutions, perhaps targeting a ‘Dry January’. It transpires that this is not the first time our lyricists have experienced the flirtatious call of the vial’s essence. But as vocalist Maggie plaintively intones “that’s a road I don’t wanna go back down”. It appears that merely imagining rekindling attachment to an object of fixation causes her to “hate myself for what I’m thinkin’ now” as she gets in touch with shame arising from dependence on a substance. Perhaps she is recalling the hangovers of the morning after as the body is desperate to rehydrate. Or, maybe, the nausea and blackouts as memories of the night before leak back into consciousness. Or, possibly, the difficulty concentrating and being able to perform at work. But the flask has not yet given up on its seduction “Hey,” it attention grabbingly interrupts her pondering, then whispers, temptingly, “it’s just one night, it’s not like it’s forever.” And the liquor’s coup de grace is it’ll make you “feel better”. And, temporarily, it may well, but her twin aims of wanting to “feel better” and “move on with [her] life and put the pieces back together”, are curiously at odds with one another, because the chaos of intoxication impedes this picture of ordered progress.

 

The grieving process cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes. Each individual’s grief is unique to them. So, reaching out to “kill the pain with a stranger’s touch” “when the lonely gets to be too much” driven by the need to “feel better” ends up being counter-productive because the pain needs to be experienced as the loss is processed, in order to “feel better”. And the songwriters seem intuitively to be aware of this “I know there’s gonna come a day when he’s still gone and it’s okay.”

 

The yearning to “feel better” while sparked by the aching void of absence is also fuelled by how the artist feels about themselves. As observed earlier, the composer’s shame springs from addiction to a substance (alcohol) or process (sex addiction) but could also have been exacerbated by the leaver choosing to go rather than being taken, involuntarily, by death, leaving the bereaved feeling somehow ‘not good enough’ and unworthy.

 

A registered therapist or counsellor or a trained pastoral carer can support and accompany you in your grief as you process your loss. They can also work with you to overcome addiction to surrogate relationships with substances or habits by helping you rewire your neural pathways as you come to a realisation that you are unique, precious and worthy in your own right with no need to be trapped by shame.

David Sinclair is a registered accredited psychotherapist, counsellor and supervisor.

He is the Pastoral Care Director of the Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC), a faith- based soul care agency.

David is also the Service Manager of Wessex Psychotherapy and Counselling CIO (WPC), a registered charity dedicated to relieving psychological and emotional distress.

 

In my work as a counsellor and psychotherapist I never cease to be amazed at one and the same time at the resilience and the fragility of the human spirit – that inner core of ourselves as human beings.

In the song ‘Glass’, husband and wife duo Keifer and Shawna Thompson, collectively known as Thompson Square,  explore human fragility through the lens, if you will pardon the pun, of glass. Here is a link to the song www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN8nQ7zYOWY

It is perhaps helpful to reflect for a moment how people come into relationship. It starts with an encounter. Two people become aware of one another. Maybe they find themselves in the same space at the same time. Or, maybe, their eyes connect and they are drawn together. It occurs to me that ‘Glass’ is all about the risk involved in moving from encounter through connection to relationship.

 

“Trying to live and love,

With a heart that can’t be broken,

Is like trying to see the light with eyes that can’t be opened”

 

Just as we won’t see the light unless we open our eyes we won’t experience the benefits of relationship unless our hearts are open. And yes, we may come to realise “This could be a big mistake”. Maybe our hearts will get broken; but “it’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

 

We may discover we are like “oil and water”, which, of course, don’t mix, but if we don’t explore, once connection is established, we’ll never know whether we will blend or not. Alternatively, we may learn that we are “like gasoline and fire”, a metaphor generally used in the context of being no good for one another rather than setting each other aglow. Yet it’s those “different paths”, down which we’ve walked that “brought us here together” to a point of opportunity to “love [each other] gently” rather than “judge” one another.

 

It’s those same “different paths”, down which we’ve walked, on which we’ve “picked up” “baggage”, memories of past encounters and relationships.  However, when events in the present raise unpleasant feelings in us, perhaps because we are reminded of the foibles of a former mate, our minds can play tricks on us, as we attribute the source of our distress to our current partner. This unconscious process is known as projection.

The risk of opening up to another is that while there is potential for us to “shine”, because of the “baggage we picked up on our way” and projection there is also the danger we may “shatter” because “we are fragile, we are human”. Each of us has the capacity to heal past hurts or to, often unintentionally, rewound the other. Therapy helps raise awareness of the unconscious processes that go on in human relationships.

In attempting to protect ourselves from feeling hurt we may restrict “the light we let through us”. The problem with this defensive approach to life is that we also restrict another’s capacity to heal because, rather than showing them who we really are, we display a distorted image of ourselves. The more open our hearts are, the clearer the glass is and the less chance there is of our true “shape” being misconstrued.

Glass, of course, doesn’t have to be colourless.  Sometimes it is translucent or even opaque. And occasionally it may crack without shattering. The path to true intimacy in relationship is through transparency. Being seen and accepted for who we are, warts and all. Again, this involves risk. Shawna is painfully aware as she risks “let[ting] you look inside me, through the stains and through the cracks” knowing “you[‘ll] see … good and bad” because we are all a mixture of both, and pleading “not to judge [and reject] me”.

 

A registered therapist or counsellor can work with you through distressing emotions such as anxiety and shame and being on the receiving end of blame to gain fresh perspective.

David Sinclair is a registered accredited psychotherapist, counsellor and supervisor.

He is the Pastoral Care Director of the Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC), a faith based soul care agency.

David is also the Service Manager of Wessex Psychotherapy and Counselling CIO (WPC), a registered charity dedicated to relieving psychological and emotional distress.