Good Grief 341

It's funny how things can catch you out and you realise how easily triggered you can be by something so seemingly innocuous and unconnected. As I went to crop this shot I was suddenly shot back to looking at MRI scans with the consultant of one dead husband's lungs. 

It's been a funny old time really - a very long, short week back at work during which I've felt exhausted with rumblings of a bug so I've been dragging myself through the days but on top of that, for goodness sake, make your bloomin' mind up bod, if you're going to menopause, just damn well get on with it, stop revisiting Enoch Powell ... it really is far too exhausting and draining and I've had enough of it. (Not very interestingly my sister who is 10 years older has gone back on to HRT having tried to come off but I really don't want to go down that road if possible ... I think .. but at times like this the jury's out).

In other news over the last week it occurred to be that I was strangely happy in my unhappiness. It was a phrase that occurred to me during the week as I walked back after work behind some youngsters.  I've been pondering on how much we are primed to try to avoid difficult emotion and how anxiety is so quick to lurch and lunge us in to places that try to avoid it all.

This has coincided with thoughts about rationality and emotion in life in general but also at work. I was really heartened talking to someone during the week who was feeling better than she had for 60 years having battled a mix of anxiety, depression and an eating disorder. The key had been understanding the interplay of emotion and some beginnings of acceptance without guilt which had all been by-passed in more rational structured interventions. Poor Beck never intended it to be this way but targets and measures will continue to promulgate this very rationalistic approach.