Health issues can cause a lot of suffering, both physical and emotional. In some cases, patients move from doctor to doctor, different medicine modalities and other alternative resources, without much improvement in their symptoms. This might end up in a long journey of search, hope and disappointments.

Family Constellations work can help us to start open new perspectives on the roots of the issues. It’s a therapeutic way of looking at the deeper causes of illnesses and possible ways of healing. In order to do this, the symptoms are seen as an ‘entry gate’ for the exploration - a starting place for what is really going on with that person - and not the enemy that we need to get rid of.

At the end of January, I noticed I was feeling very worried and anxious. The world has been a strange and unsettling place in the last year. Yes, I do have a very heavy job and it can get personally draining at times.

As I preach to my clients, self-care is crucial in life and I apply that to myself everyday. However, I realised the excess of information and the general collective anxiety was taking its toll on me.

So I decided to delete all my social media apps from my phone. It was meant to be just for that weekend. But I felt such a positive difference, that I decided to continue my ‘experiment’. Six weeks later, I’m still off the apps and I’m truly loving it.

Most people are finding difficult to switch off from work and separate their personal and professional lives. On one hand we are saving time from commuting, moving around between meetings and travelling. On the other hand, that time seems to be transferred and fully dedicated to work duties, without much change or respite.

Suddenly, life is becoming an endless list of obligations and demands, without the release that comes from social activities and other distractions, from meeting different people and being in different environments.

How is all this affecting our mental health and our emotions? How can I then separate my personal and professional life? How can I switch off from work?

Are people constantly disappointing you and letting you down? Do you feel you don’t matter to them, or they don’t get you, or they simply don’t care?

What about we start moving the focus away from the others and turn it towards ourselves?

What about starting questioning: Why am I feeling so disappointed right now? What did I want from this person? What is my part in all this?

Everybody is talking about it. Everywhere. There’s a lot of anxiety around us at the moment. ‘How am I going to cope with Christmas this year?’, ‘It’ll be so bad’, ‘I’m dreading the Holidays’, ‘It’ll be so strange this year’, ‘I always do ‘this’ or ‘that’ over Christmas’ and the comments go on and on.

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. The rules and guidelines are constantly changing and it’s difficult to make plans or have a clear view of what’s to come and what we are going to do, and how we are going to feel.

But there are things we can do and change in ourselves, there are ways to think and focus that can be very helpful in these last weeks of the year. And hopefully, for other times too, ‘not only for Christmas’:

While we had to readjust and find new ways of living during lockdown, we will need to rethink our lives and habits when this is all over.

While many people used the lockdown as an opportunity to rethink their lifestyle, become healthier and slow down their pace. Many others reached a much higher level of anxiety and insecurities, or threw themselves into unhealthy habits such as much more alcohol and excess eating, less motivation for physical activities and less interest in social interactions.

This has been a very difficult time for most people. Uncertainty and the unknown shake our most basic life structure, we lose routine and we end up feeling confused and lost. Right now, nobody seems immune to the ‘collective anxiety’ that has been taking over our society in the last few weeks.

If we let ourselves get sucked into all the stress, if we don’t focus on what can be done right now, if we don’t create a healthy mindset, we are in danger of freaking out and losing touch with the things that are really important in our lives.

Many people fear ‘they’ll go crazy’ by being stuck at home. So these are the things I would suggest:

So many people ask me what they need to do to ‘get rid of’ their suffering. How to stop feeling the pain, stop feeling sad or even how to stop thinking about the issues that are causing their suffering. As if there were techniques to learn or a magic button that would make it all disappear in an instant.

And the answer is simple: we don’t ‘get rid’ of our suffering, we can’t just make it disappear. It takes time. It takes healing. And, surprisingly, it takes our care and attention for that to happen.

Sometimes you might be feeling stuck, not knowing what to do and unable to understand why you behave in certain ways. Or you have been carrying unresolved issues that are beyond your control. Constantly repeating old patterns. Or you have physical and emotional symptoms that don’t seem to be your own, as if they have been ‘passed on to you’. Common statements are ‘I wasn’t being myself’ or ‘I don’t know what took over me’.

There are so many people who seem so confident and sure of themselves, making decisions and getting on with their daily challenges, that you wouldn’t even suspect that they are feeling extremely anxious and vulnerable on the inside. For every task, there are countless doubts, insecurities and fears. And that can be exhausting and lonely, dealing with those emotions, without anyone knowing about it.