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Chaplain’s Corner

I read a really interesting short article this week that I’d like to share with you. It’s about the potential impact that the additional stress caused by Covid-19 could be having on ourselves or the people around us.

You can find the whole article online here if you’d like to read it in full for yourself.

It’s written by two therapists, both of whom have experienced trauma and its side effects for themselves and have gone on to develop ways of supporting people to heal rather than simply to cope with the symptoms. Symptoms include a wide range of potential physical, emotional and behavioural effects such as heightened anger, restlessness, negative thoughts, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, excessive drinking to numb the feelings and the list goes on and on. It highlights that we all too often ignore the signs because we slip into these coping strategies without recognising that we are doing so. That struck a particular chord for me because I’d been focusing on developing self-awareness of the way that we think about or talk to ourselves internally last week and the way we talk to ourselves internally can be very affected by the way we are experiencing life at the time.

Learning to recognise how our body experiences stress can help us to focus on healing from it; and breath work and practices like yoga that work on our parasympathetic nervous system can have a really beneficial effect on our physical and mental state.

If you would like a little help to explore this concept more in person you can catch up with me around the duck pond and surrounding areas on most dry Thursday lunchtimes between 12md and 2pm and on the rainy Thursdays, (or if you don’t manage to catch up with me outside), you are very welcome to call me directly on my mobile: 07526 378529 either to chat or to arrange a time to meet. If you prefer you can contact us via email on info@mitechaplaincy.com where you can also request a call-back.

Debbie

We also have a range of resources on our web-site including some that are more specific to the Covid-19 outbreak and some that help in dealing with stress: https://mite.org.uk

If you prefer you can easily keep in touch with us on social media:
Facebook: @mitechaplaincy
Twitter: @mitesthwarr