Monday Reset : 16th June 2025
Navigating endings and beginnings.
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." - C.S. Lewis
The self-esteem hub looks at how our tricky brains effect our perception of ourselves, our sense of self-worth, our evaluation of our abilities, how we fit into the world and how we think others see us. We can experience this as a rollercoaster, functioning really well at times and then plagued with self-doubt and anxiety the next moment. Managing our tricky minds is the art and science of being human. I look forward to taking this journey with you.
Hello everyone,
Life is full of them isn’t it? beginnings and endings.
Some of the endings we encounter can be the most difficult experiences we have. The new beginnings that come from them can bring the most wonderful experiences. We do have to close a chapter to open a new one and that can be difficult.
I am writing this in advance! wow, managed it! Today is Wednesday and this post will be delivered to you on Monday as usual. On Friday, we are driving from our current Scottish home, 700 miles to Devon in England! We are moving from this beautiful house, in Scotland, that we have literally expended sweat, blood and tears and a whole load of money renovating. It is our dream home on the beach that has turned into a bit of nightmare. So it is time for this chapter to close. It has taken a long time to make this decision and the pain, both emotional and financial, of this move is real, on so many levels.
Thanks to stamp duty increases and increased prices on everything, we are swapping years of hard earned house owning equity to a mortgage to pay the government a whole load of money to simply move house. I feel like we are being penalised for wanting to move house or maybe even owning a house. Something we have both done for about 30 years. It is not what we envisioned at nearly 60 years old. To actually increase my mortgage just to move house. I know, I am not alone in the grief (loss) I feel over this.
When we talk about grief, we think of the loss of a loved one, be it human or furry friend. What we don’t always think about is that we experience a lot of grief about a lot of things. An actual grief reaction. When we leave Junior School for High School we lose the position of being top of the school and knowing how things work, being top dog, to being the newbie and not knowing anything. There is a grief reaction in that due to the loss of position in Junior School. When we go to Uni and leave our childhood behind us, we grieve over that. We don’t name it that though, do we? We say, I am anxious, angry, sad, scared, resentful, miss home. That is grief.
It is just part of being human. We can find change difficult. Sameness feels safe, change and the unknown does not always feel safe.
I know I have to start a lot of new things. And I was so stuck in the grief of all the loss that I am about to experience I was paralysed. I have only just worked this out! I just was so sad I couldn’t start all the new things I needed to start. I was pretty mean to myself about it, I have to say. My self-critic was having a field day. My to-do list felt overwhelming. Everything I thought about was overwhelming. The final straw came when I had to increase my corporate hours. That has been awful. More paralysis. The time pressure that has caused has been huge.
The plan for England is to stop the Corporate job, get my private practice back up and running and start our wedding stationery and gift business. I know I need to start the wedding business preparation now to release me from the hated corporate job later in the year, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was angry and resentful about the corporate job taking up all my time (I have to work well beyond my hours to meet their unreasonable demands), furious about the way they manage or don’t manage things, that it prevented me doing anything else, that I had to do so much work on this house in such limited time to get it ready to go to market, loss of my freedom, loss of my house, oh the list goes on. I was so busy grieving over all of this, I got myself really stuck.
On reflection, I should have just given myself grace to take whatever time I needed to adjust a bit to what is going on now and what lies ahead to get us home.
Look at the mess my workbench was in:
Every time I looked at it I thought OMG what a bloody mess, I need to tidy that up. But I didn’t. It kind of represented my mind, my mindset. A mess! Stagnation. Grieving.
Then yesterday (Tuesday last week when you read this). This happened!
I tidied it up and cleaned it! The dust! A mindset shift had happened -
will be glad to hear that my whinging has stopped!I am ready to close a lot of chapters now. I feel ready. It has been a long time coming, I can say!
I know it is ok to feel sad, but when you are in it, it is horrible and confusing. If you need some help to work through your grief or work out what is happening for you, you can find the links below to work with me 1:1. I work on a session by session basis and so there is no big package to sign up for. 1 session or 50, the choice is yours.
I do wish you all a great week.
With all kind wishes
Jane
Accredited Cognitive Psychotherapist
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT), Mindfulness & Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
➡️If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis you can contact me at: mail@janewatkinscbt.co.uk
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Great post. Paralyzed is a word that resonated with me . Glad you have pushed through to start the next new chapter l. ✌️👏
All best wishes for your move and new ventures. We are stronger than we think and new beginnings can be joyous.