"Honey, we need to talk about death and dying"

"Honey, we need to talk about death and dying" has never said anyone. Well, at least no-one under 70.

We actually avoid the subject entirely, not just as individuals, but also as society.
Have you noticed the euphemisms we use? "He passed". "She left us".

Now I hear you asking - what's wrong with that? Who wants to think about something as morbid as death and dying?

There are a couple of compelling reasons to stop pretending we're immortal.

The first reason is the most obvious. We all will die. Hopefully, not today, or this year, or even this decade. But ultimately, we are sure that we will all die.

By pretending that our lives last forever, that there will always be time tomorrow, we put off things until it's too late.

The day to love others is today.
The day to embrace them is today.
The day to tell them how much they matter to us is today.

And also the day to change the world is today.

Then there is another, more practical reason to talk about death and accept it as part of life: it is that even whilst we deny it, a part of our subconscious mind still knows of course that we will die one day. And that part, deep inside our psyche, will agitate in the background, trying to raise our awareness, so we don't live obliviously.

That part will seep into our consciousness as a feeling of unease, or anxiety, sometimes even feeling like guilt, or panic attacks. Everything will be sort of OK, yet those symptoms will make it hard for us to enjoy our life.

This is what Existential Therapy is about. At the time, it seemed like the most depressing modality I learned about - "we're all alone and then we die". But actually, in a weird way, it is the most hopeful.

Because it teaches us that it is up to us how we live, that there are no outside boundaries, no judge other than ourself. It is taking personal responsibility to its logical conclusion.

It's about living because we are going to die. It means loving because we are alone.

Attachment theory and how it impacts on our relationships

Attachment theory is a whole field of research on how the way you were loved as an infant and little child impacts on the relationships you form later in life (and on a lot of other things).

I'd like to summarise it this way (it's a bit more complex than this, but this is the bit that counts):

If you were securely attached in your primary relationship (typically baby to mother), i.e. if you could depend on your (emotional and other) needs being met in a consistent manner, you are likely to grow up feeling safe, trusting that your relationships will last, that your partners will stick around, that you are loved.

If your attachment was not a secure one, if your parent was "running hot and cold" (sometimes all over you, sometimes neglecting you), if you were not loved in a consistent manner, or if you were "abandoned" (that can run from completely losing your parents' attention after a new baby is born, to gross neglect), you are more likely to grow up feeling insecure in your relationships, not trusting that they are safe.

The problem is that few of us will have experienced a perfectly secure attachment. So most of us will display one of the following "symptoms": clinging to our partner as if our life depended on them on one end of the spectrum, to sabotaging our relationships so we won't be abandoned by doing the abandoning ourselves, all the way to never actually becoming invested in relationships (building a wall) in order to stay "safe" at the other end of the spectrum.

Those dynamics are illustrated and explained perfectly by Alain de Botton in "The Course of Love" - a novel with subtext I can thoroughly recommend.

So what can we do, flawed beings that most of us are?

Well, awareness is a great thing.  Once we become aware of our patterns, once we realise that we are reacting to something from our past triggered by our present, we can choose to act differently.

At the beginning it's very hard. It's about starting to see how our reaction is not justified by what is happening here and now, but rather an echo of our childhood. It's about becoming aware that just because we have experienced abandonment in the past does not mean that our relationships today, which involve different people, will follow the same path.

It is about making ourself vulnerable, by saying our hurt, owning it, rather than blindly kicking around us in pain and blaming our partner.

It is about accepting that even though we were imperfectly looked after at some stage, it does not mean we were not loveable enough; but rather accepting that our parents were humans too, prone to tiredness, stress, and anger.

In a weird/funny/poignant way, this is what therapy is also about. It is about creating a secure attachment with the therapist, being able to trust that he or she will be there, regularly, consistently, listening, metaphorically holding you whilst you sit with the pain of finding out where all those feelings stem from, and helping you accept the past in order to write your own future.

For me as a therapist it is the most sacred aspect of my work. It is not about being a trusted advisor, a sounding board, "the expert" (beware of any therapist telling you they're the expert of your life); it is about offering a true relationship, that you can completely count on, for as long as you need it.

How to go from binge-drinking to "controlled drinking"

The festive season is upon us, and just as the ordinary Friday or Saturday nights see many of us drinking more than we know is healthy, Christmas and its lot of office parties and uncomfortable family gatherings tends to bring out the binge-drinker even in the tamest of us.

What is binge-drinking? It is drinking alcohol in order to get drunk, with a hang-over the next day in the best case scenario, a few hours missing due to black-out or waking up next to a stranger in the worst...

Binge-drinking is not to be confused with alcoholism. There is usually no compulsion to drink every day, but rather an inability to stop where the sober version of you knows is your limit.

So how can you move, from systematically getting trashed back to enjoying yourself?
Here are a few tips:

• Set yourself a limit when you go to a party or a function, and count your drinks
• Start with water or a soft drink if you're thirsty - only move to alcohol when your thirst is quenched
• Make every second drink a glass of water. Not only does that halve your alcohol intake, but you avoid the nasty dehydration headache the next day
• Switch to low-alcohol beer or wine and avoid spirits 

To allow your liver to regenerate (yes, it is the only organ that can heal itself, but only if you give it a break), have an alcohol-free day, ideally two in a row, each week.

Aim for 2-3 low-alcohol days per week - what that means depends on your drinking capacity. For me it might mean one standard drink, for others three. This is a particularly good exercise to reconnect to pleasurable drinking as opposed to drinking to get drunk.

The good news is that by lowering your overall intake your tolerance to alcohol will actually decrease over time - you'll need less for the same effect, and your body will thank you (and your wallet too).

And the piece de resistance, as always, is mindfulness: 

• bring back the focus on the pleasure of drinking, the smell, the taste, the colour, as well as the company you're in, rather than absent-mindedly "throwing them back": "festive drinking" as opposed to bingeing.

It's about finding ways to enjoy the "silly season" without needing to get drunk to do so.

Should you find that despite trying to control your intake you still struggle with binge-drinking on a regular basis, there may be some deeper stuff going on - maybe some anxiety you're trying to cover up, or a learnt behaviour on how alcohol is used in your family to deal (or avoid dealing) with emotions, or a fear of social situations.

Please reach out if you would like some help with that.