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    6Jun, 2023
    Post Pandemic, Are We Looking At An Anxiety Crisis Down the Line?

    The sad fact is that the pandemic played to fears that we all have, of death, disease, lack of control and infirmity. It also played to those who have lived with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). By pushing through the need for hand washing, distancing and the threat and fears of an airborne disease, these messages pressed the fears and insecurities of those with anxiety conditions. In other words, for some two years, the fears were potentially re-enforced in those enduring medium and long term anxiety, whether that be through social phobias, panic attacks, ruminations and health fears.

    What the impact will be, has yet to be measured, though it is telling that one of the highest search terms in the Counselling Directory is ‘anxiety’. Furthermore, what will the implications be for those young people who could not go to school and who had to endure stringent measures on safety and social distancing? Once again, we will only know in the coming decade. Or, how will they fare when they have life changing situations, such as going to university, growing into adulthood, and overcoming grief and traumatic situations in the future? Will these life events trigger fears and thoughts that developed through the pandemic? These are just some of the questions that come to mind around the long term impacts of Covid-19 on anxiety and mental health.

    Which is why it is essential to put into place some equilibrium on the work and life balance that young people have. Social media pressures, economic woes, the inability to pay for housing and other such living stressors are pushing young people into working longer hours and into more unstable financial working environments. What should be happening is the opposite – that young people should not be pushed to burn the candle at both ends, thereby raising long term stress impacts on their emotional, mental and physical well-being. In other words, the longer they stay in these positions of social stress, the greater the potential of them suffering a long term mental health issue.

    It is therefore essential that we all have the chance to ask those around us, how they are, how they feel and to give them a chance to authentically trust us and let us know what is on their minds. The relationship with anxiety can be reframed for many people, so that it does not become a heavy weight around their body. However, the start to healing comes from talking. That is why I am so passionate that we connect to each other.

    20Apr, 2023
    The Complexity of Anxiety with OCD and intrusive thoughts

    As someone from a family that was made homeless and stateless by Idi Amin in 1972, I have come to realise through painful experience, the multiple impacts of trauma on mental health, as well as on physical health.

    A lifelong journey of attempting to find some form of spiritual, mental and physical equilibrium finally led me, like many, to light bulb moments in therapy.

    This journey and my work with clients who endure chronic anxiety with or without OCD and intrusive thoughts, (sometimes with compulsions), demonstrates that there are a multitude of factors that lead people to be affected by these conditions. In the 1990’s when I studied Neuroscience, much was made in the science world around how science and genetics alone could unlock cures and thankfully, this argument has changed over time to take into the account the significant impact of life events which trigger these conditions. Thankfully, we are now starting to fully understand the impacts of severe traumatic shocks through life events that cause life changing mental and emotional health impacts.

    Furthermore, we are as therapists, are now taking a more holistic approach to well-being and I know that one thing that I repeatedly hear from many people who suffer from both anxiety and OCD, is that they feel that their immune system has been compromised in some way and that they are more susceptible to catch things such as viral infections. In fact, some clients tell me that there is a direct link between catching a cold, flu or another viral infection and a significant uptick in their obsessions, ruminations and/or compulsions. Thirty years ago when I did my degree, any such talk in the field of Neuroscience would have seen me laughed out of the lecture room, as thought I had totally lost any grasp of reality.

    Yet, we also know today that early Adverse Childhood Events (ACE’s) can lead to trauma that can lead to future clinical diagnoses of anxiety with OCD. This trauma becomes pervasive into the body functions of individuals, where it can be felt and determined through an immune system more prone to catching infections, gastro-intestinal issues and a hyper-active limbic system that creates the seat for anxiety and OCD to take root. Today, we also know that the brain is highly ‘plastic’ and that it has the possibility to heal itself through adaptive reconnections of neural pathways. Healing is therefore very possible, even in conditions deemed to be ‘serious’. We must never lose sight of that.

    Our work as therapists is based on facilitating a sense of personal exploration by clients, and in holding them in a place where they can feel that they have options and new ways of looking at their conditions. This is in turn, it is hoped, can give client’s hope and over time, encourage them to take actions that can develop new neuronal connections over time.

    As someone who has come into this field later in life, (and as a second career), I know that neither my ‘Neuroscience’ side or my ‘therapist’ side can fully explain mental health difficulties. By combining the two, connecting with clients and letting them navigate their wellbeing through the work, can I even try to address the outcomes that they are looking for.

    Fiyaz Mughal OBE FCMI MBACP has worked for over 25 years in communities and is a qualified therapist. He specialises in conditions such as generalised anxiety, social phobias, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorders), panic disorder and also works with clients to explore impacts  of geographical dislocation, faith, identity and intersectionality.

    20Apr, 2023
    The ‘Trauma’ Legacy of Amin, Very Few Ugandan Asians Talk About

    Trauma’ – a word that you hear much about today. But what is ‘trauma’. I refer back to the statement that the informed trauma specialist, Dr Mate Gabor, said. “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you”. How true this statement is.

    What happened to me in 1972, has lived with me to this day and age. I am now 51 and never realised how important early childhood impacts were, until the lightbulb moment when I trained to be a therapist. The fact that feelings, deep seated emotions, fears and wants are all set so early in the development of a child and which cause us to react in ways much later in our adulthood.

    What many people don’t tell you is what early childhood trauma does to you later in your life. For some like me, it made me drawn to situations of high stress, anxiety and elevated stress. Why wouldn’t it? I was already attuned to it from an early age. However, what I did not know was that my parents who fled Uganda in 1972 because of the persecution of the Ugandan Asians,  were to then put me in another traumatised state. They had no choice about being expelled by the brutal dictator Idi Amin and my parents did all they could to help me survive in 1972. Of that I am eternally grateful. Arriving in the cold of winter, I can only imagine the sights and sounds of what my family met in the colourless walls of RAF Stradishall and in the fears and hopes that were contained in that camp. All I can say is that I still have problems with the ‘grey’ cloudy environment of the United Kingdom to this day. Going from the colour of Uganda to the grey clouds of winter, no doubt left a lasting impact on my formative neuronal networks in that fateful year. I just don’t do grey!

    Yet, it was a later decision that further consolidated the trauma, partly driven by a value system nailed into the Asian psyche, which said that the world revolved around a ‘good education’ and that emotions came secondary to this. After leaving RAF Stradishall camp in 1973, my parents took a job in Kenya and wanted to go back to the beauty and sunshine of East Africa. After a coup in 1983 against the President of Kenya at the time, Daniel Arap Moi, they decided that they had had enough of the political instability of Africa and moved the family back to the U.K. In making the choice to move my brother and me from Kenya in 1983, the change was never explained, nor contained and neither did my parents work through the changing set of emotions, that I felt. Like many parents of the time, they felt that if you were warm, fed and watered, you were going to be fine. How emotionally simple the world looked like just forty years ago.

    In fact, within months or arriving, my father was to leave for Saudi Arabia for 20 years. My mother coped alone – though the word ‘coped’ does not describe the pain, loneliness and aggravation she suffered as a lone Asian female, struggling to bring up her children in a country that was still not welcoming for people of colour. So, she sent my brother and I to a boarding school in Kent. It might as well have been like sending us to Mars; the cultural, racial and religious differences were so stark to what we had been brought up with, that it was a matter of time before the stresses of change became internalised. Internalised into a giant boot that kicked me down, because I was not good enough, not able to be happy and ‘just not like the others’. The trauma of 1972 became the traumas of 1983, 1984, 1985…….

    Part of the trauma that I have felt was never feeling at home in the U.K. I felt like an outsider, never really accepted and someone on the borders of society. This was not helped by the racism that I endured from the twenties through to my mid-forties. That racism led to years of harassment from far right activists and Islamist activists, with one person even being jailed for over 5 years of persistent online harassment against me. Yet, in the distress, pain and agony of all of this, those who targeted me failed to realise that the trauma that affected me early in my life made me think the clearest when I was under stress; that I had adapted to a clarity of thought and mind when under duress and that I had Amin to partly thank for that. However, where there is a benefit, there is a drawback and when the clarity of thought faded, the resonance of being an outsider kicked in and with that – emotional pain.

    What I have come to learn though, is that the brain is plastic enough to change. To adapt with a speed that is beyond our wildest of imaginations, though this change needs a deep personal realisation that change is possible, painful, but ultimately doable. In doing so, the body, psychology and even our moods adapt to a new reset.

    My journey of understanding starts with Amin and who knows where it will end. I say that Amin made me the best risk manager any organisation can have, yet he also made me the one person who goes against the grain, the ‘doubting Thomas’ of a group of people. With that comes a life of struggles, but it also comes with a clarity of mind that cuts through.

    20Apr, 2023
    After the Pandemic Many Want a Change in their Lives

    Much has changed in the last three years since the pandemic. People seem to want a better life balance, a form of rebalance and redress that was possibly coming for some time.

    Taking time for walks, exercise, yoga and meeting with friends and family have become more central to people’s lives. Cutting down on stress has become more relevant to personal discussions as has the desire to get out into nature.

    For far too long, many people have thought that the adrenaline and anxiety that fuels their life is just part of normal life. The morning cups of coffee, the school run with the traffic, the late working hours and the quick ‘take-away’ have all become activities that increase stress hormones and adrenaline in the body, resetting levels of activity that are unsustainable in the long term.

    Which is why a ‘reset’ in our stress levels is needed. One way is through self-reflection and counselling, and there are many other ways to try and ensure that we all maintain a level of disconnectedness from the online world which has become so pervasive.

    So, if you get a chance, take some time out, feel and see the beauty of nature, be mindful of the animals and birds that may be around you and just feel a sense of being alive and connected to nature. This is one of the best ways of overcoming stress and anxiety.