Mental Health: How Parenting Styles Affect Us

Photo by Nicole De Khors at Burst

I was raised in the 70s and 80s when it’s generally agreed that parenting styles were very different. Top priorities back then were ensuring that your child was fed, clothed, educated and disciplined for any transgressions. This was all well and good, our physical and academic needs were well met, but emotional nurturing was left very much to the personalities of the parents and the vibe that this generated within the family – a well-being lottery if you like. Schools offered a similar deal, feeding you through the system, spitting you out at the end with a clutch of O and A levels, with little support for friendship/personal issues. This type of parenting and schooling meant that if you had problems, you pretty much had to deal with them on your own. We had to find our own way through the minefield of relationships, worries, body issues, alcohol (and other substances) and sex. Some might say this was ‘character building’, but for many, we became victims, bullies or a combination of the two. Some of us suffered mental illness, developed low self-respect and were ill-equipped to deal with alcohol and sexual relationships, making us behave inappropriately or dangerously and vulnerable to abuse. The vast majority of us did indeed pull through – we figured out who we were, how to move forward and become successful, kind and reasonably well-adjusted people. But with a bit of support, advice and guidance, this could have been so much easier for us, and we would have far less ‘baggage’ to deal with in our ongoing lives.

This type of upbringing is now known as ‘under-parenting’, where parents fail to acknowledge and address their child’s emotional needs. Fifty years ago, it was the norm – these days, you'd have a social worker knocking at your door.

As a parent of four children with a sixteen-year age gap between the oldest and youngest, I have witnessed the change in approach when it comes to supporting and nurturing children as they grow. We now keep a watchful eye on their mental well-being. We understand the importance of listening to our children, not just their worries but the things that have made them happy too. We know we must respect their thoughts and believe that what they say is important to them. We teach them to be loving and kind towards their siblings and not allow teasing to go too far or become one-sided. We offer guidance with friendship issues. We make an effort to ‘catch them being good’ and give them lots of praise. When they are naughty, we give them a chance to explain their actions before giving well-considered sanctions. We help them with the stresses of school life and guide them to establish a healthy work–life balance. As they grow, we talk openly about body image, sex and alcohol and advise them on staying safe as they enter the adult world. It is interesting to note that, according to a recent study, young people are drinking much less and, in fact, almost 30% of 16-24-year-olds do not drink at all.

It isn’t just parents who have changed the way they care for children’s emotional development. Most schools now acknowledge the importance of mental well-being and offer services to support young people and their parents. My children’s school runs seminars and workshops for parents and students, covering an extensive range of issues and have a large pastoral team who deal with problems that students are experiencing. They take mental welfare very seriously and believe that you can only achieve your full potential academically if you are feeling happy, confident and safe.

It could be argued that there was nothing wrong with the way children used to be brought up. Why shouldn’t they find their own way – it didn’t do us any harm, it made us who we are. I would say, yes it does make you who you are but perhaps not the best version of who you could have been, and that it can do untold harm. The habits you pick up as a teenager/young adult and the way you view and conduct yourself at that time do tend to stick. Untreated mental health problems and attitudes towards self-image, relationships and addictive substances that develop during childhood become deep-rooted and often last a lifetime, with the sufferer in a permanent state of ‘management’.

This 21^st-century wave of awareness and proactive involvement in children’s emotional development can only be seen as a positive step in turning out well-adjusted, happy individuals. But as the pendulum swings away from under-parenting, it poses the risk of sliding into over-parenting, which can be equally damaging. Over-parenting takes the form of excessive praise/attention/interference, minimal/biased discipline or telling the child they are gifted in some way. 

Constantly praising children has been shown to have a negative effect. Many realise they are being praised for little reason which diminishes its significance and can actually damage self-esteem – a kind of ‘is this really the best you think I can be?’ thing. This is one reason for many schools no longer giving out stickers, and also because it normalises praise – children start to see it as an entitlement rather than something special. Parents who believe their child can do no wrong also do them a dis-service in failing to help them develop healthy relationships and these children often go through school experiencing endless friendship issues. Telling a child that they are talented when they simply just like doing something can be dangerous, as when they eventually discover they aren’t that great, just normal, it can come as a massive blow. They may feel they have been deceived and this can lead to trust and anger issues to go alongside a loss of confidence and sense of failure (you only have to watch The X-Factor to see this played out). Over-praising can also cause a child to believe they are perfect and superior, which can result in relationship problems, depression and a constant pressure to perform. The ‘helicopter parent’ who constantly interferes with their child’s life and friendships and is always on the phone to school over trivial matters runs the risk of transferring their continual fretting to the child, who can end up with anxiety issues of their own.

And, of course, it’s entirely possible to simultaneously under- and over-parent – make your child believe they are God’s gift whilst failing to notice and address their emotional needs. This can have a particularly toxic effect and lead to very unpleasant personality disorders.

What a very difficult line for us to tread, and I, for one, know I don’t get it right a lot of the time. It's about judging when and how to step in or back off – a fine balance of giving the right amount of support and advice to equip them to independently deal with what life throws at them. 

But even if we do underdo it or overdo it occasionally, we can take comfort in the knowledge that by including emotional nurturing on our list of parental responsibilities, we’ve taken a huge step forward in providing a positive future for our children.

Parenting: School-Day Mornings

Photo by Matthew Henry at Burst

When children grow up and go off to university or move out, it often leaves parents with a depression known as 'empty nest syndrome'. The eerily quiet house, the lack of mess to constantly tidy, the absence of managing someone else's life and a sense of not being needed anymore contribute to the loss of identity of being a mum or dad. (This doesn't actually happen; you soon realise that, as your child transitions into adulthood, hands-on, daily dealings with them are replaced with being the provider of remote support – a virtual assistant, on 24-hour duty for at least a couple of years before they really find their feet in the world.) We may wish they were still children, living under our roof, but there's one thing that a parent will not miss – as they stand in an empty bedroom, wondering whether it's fit for Airbnb – a thing that they'd probably had enough of after only a few weeks of it, a thing that has significantly contributed to the alarming appearance of worry lines, a thing that they absolutely, definitely will not miss... the school-day morning routine.

Oh, my goodness, if you could harness the stress levels in parents getting their children ready for school in the morning and convert it into energy, you could compensate for the surge in demand on the national grid that occurs at the same time. 

From the early hours of the morning until the magic school registration time, five days a week during term time for at least fourteen years it's a ground-hog day of the same – and sometimes new – spanners flying into the works. No matter how carefully you prepare the night before (uniforms laid out – tick, packed lunches – tick, books in bag – tick, return slips filled with exact payment – tick, PE kit washed and by the front door – tick, water bottles refilled and in bag – tick), you will never, ever have a nice, calm start to the day.

Younger children get up ridiculously early and have to be entertained, whilst you are desperately trying to get ready for work and not turn up with only one eye mascaraed and your skirt tucked into your pants; older children get up ridiculously late and very grumpy and have to be chivvied and cajoled every step of the way. If I had a pound for every time I had to repeat an instruction (have you cleaned your teeth, please can you put your shoes on, stop playing on the Xbox, put your phone down and get ready, what do you mean you've left your coat at school...), I could take early retirement. That hour requires the skills of a personal assistant, United Nations envoy and a child psychologist rolled into one.

You battle on as the time for leaving the house gets ever nearer, and you're still trying to shepherd your children into some semblance of readiness. At last, and miraculously on time, you open the front door and usher your children out. You think you've made it when one of them (at least) pipes up and presents you with THE DOORSTEP CHALLENGE.

The doorstep challenge is a complete curveball. It can be anything:

Oh, Mum, we're meant to wear something spotty/pink/Roman today.

I need to go back into the house and find my hat/fidget spinner/script for the school play.

We have to wear sun cream today or we won't be allowed out to play (sun cream in loft).

It's school photos today (2nd day of wearing their uniform, hair not looking good).

I've got to bring my saxophone into school (saxophone not in case, music nowhere to be found).

An author/footballer/circus skills coach is visiting today – I need £5.63 in exact change to buy a book/football/diabolo.

Can you test me on my spellings – wait while I search my bag for the list.

It's Skipping Day today – I need my skipping rope (locked in garden shed).

I've left my homework in my room – I just need to finish it quickly – it has to be in today!!!

Now, you could, quite justifiably, turn around and tell your child that it's too late for that. Give them the lecture about being more organised and that the deadline for all these things is the night before, not now. You could tell them that this will teach them a lesson, and maybe they won't do it next time.

But you know you're just wasting your time. You love them, and the last thing you want to do is let them go to school worried or angry about the day ahead. You want them to have a good day and to like school, and you know that putting your foot down will achieve neither of these things. 

So, you stand in the doorway, shouting at them to hurry up or race around the house, searching for something that will do for dressing up as Matilda for World Book Day until finally, much later than you should be, you can all head off for school. You arrive at work, utterly frazzled, feeling like you've already done a day's work and knowing that there will be a repeat performance tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow).

But when your children do finally fly the nest and leave you feeling redundant and bereft of their company, you can look back with pride, through those rose-tinted glasses, that you've successfully (almost) survived going on 3,000 mornings.

And then see if you can do anything about those wrinkles.

Mental Health: How To Deal With The Narcissist In Your Life

Photo by Thought Catalog at Burst

I know someone with whom I rarely disagree... but not because our views always concur. In fact, I find a great deal of what she says abhorrent, but if I express this, even in the mildest terms, she will most likely fly into a rage or label me with some awful personality trait that explains why I don't agree. Matters to disagree on come thick and fast, as she is a prolific ranter, airing her extreme views and intolerances, along with pompous declarations of 'how things should be', which are often utterly incompatible with accepted social norms and expectations.

This person firmly believes she is above most people – an important person and entitled to special treatment. If she doesn't get this, she becomes angry and resentful, and the ranting starts over. She is always right; alternative views are scorned without a second's consideration.

A fine example in this person's canon of rants is the public breastfeeding one. According to her, it is beyond disgusting, the mother is showing off, it's on the same level of indecency as urinating in a public place or having oral sex in a restaurant, and it absolutely should be banned. Yes – she actually said that, to me, then a mother of two young children who I had breastfed, sometimes in difficult and embarrassing situations and sometimes in great pain (and she knew that). I sat there, inwardly fuming at this vile, hurtful and anti-people remark, but not daring to call her out for it, as I knew that her opinion was unshakable and she would have become enraged if I had.

So, for most of the time I spend with her, I murmur noises of agreement – which only serve to strengthen her convictions that she is always right – whilst inside, my blood is boiling. 

She constantly seeks to exert her superiority over people and I suspect ramps it up for people who threaten her sense of importance. She does this in several ways:

She bigs herself up: she seeks out and associates with hi-status people (in her eyes) and uses the fact that this person is her 'friend' and therefore holds her in high regard, to elevate her own importance and validate her world view. This places her on a higher platform, from which she can lecture and patronise everyone else. She believes, for example, that her GP knows her better than all the other patients and has something of a soft spot for her. She also believes that most people waste their doctor's time with trivial complaints; she only visits when there is really something wrong – which is probably why the doctor likes her so much. 

She puts others down to achieve superiority: gaslighting, blaming, nasty remarks or labelling with a negative personality trait. Her favourite tactic is to claim that someone's sanity is in question. I guess, in her mind, since she is always right, people must be mad if they don't agree with her.

She also ensures that everyone sees and acknowledges that she is at least one cut above most normal (stupid) people. She has accomplished a number of impressive things but elicits constant worship by being excessively modest and under-celebrating her achievements. This has the double effect of making people feel inferior and (perhaps to redress this) that they need to show or remind her how amazing she is. The more they do this, the more self-deprecating she becomes to keep the praise coming in. This inverse bragging is boosted further by her outward contempt for anyone who dares to revel in their own achievements, with a thinly veiled 'they haven't done half as much as me, and look at them boasting!'

She puts herself at the centre: everything orbits around her, and, like a child, behaves as if all things, whether good or bad, happen because of her or for her. Her emails are dense with self-referencing - I, I, I. She reacts to the most unconnected things as if she was the intended recipient, because she's so special. And if she thinks someone has forgotten that she’s special and important, she’ll lose the plot, like responding with fury if invited to a party that clashes with something she already had planned: how can that person be so inconsiderate?

And no matter how nice I am, how much interest I show, how sympathetic to her problems I am, how much support I offer, I never get anything back. This is because she thinks she is entitled to the way I treat her and I'm not. I don't think she has ever asked me, in a truly authentic, non self-serving way, how I am or wished me luck or asked for an update on a problem I might have had last time we spoke. She expects praise and gets angry with people who don't give her enough but never authentically offers any herself. If I offer her a drink, the response is simply, 'Yes,' or 'No,' – no please or thank you. I find the mum in me constantly wanting to jump out and correct her, as my children would never get away with that level of rudeness. But I wouldn't dare.

I'm not known for reining in my views or holding back from challenging someone else's, so why do I do it with her?

For years, I puzzled over how to deal with this person. Why am I so submissive with her? Why do I allow her to say and do these things? Why do I let her make me feel so bad?

And then, one day, after a particularly unpleasant time with her, I Googled 'how to deal with a difficult person', and the trusty internet provided the answer: narcissism

As I read through the description, all the puzzle pieces slotted into place. Initially, it seemed some of the 'red flags' didn't apply to her, but as I thought about it, I realised they all did. For example, I never realised how much she lies - she is always so convincing and forthright and compels you to believe her, with her army of people or 'evidence' to back her up - but, oh, my goodness, she does! She achieves this by gaslighting (twisting facts/blame-shifting) and exaggerating to the point that her accounts are simply not true. Electronic communications have revealed some absolute howlers which confirm that my long-held gut feelings have always been accurate: she bullshits.

Following my discovery, I then eagerly looked to find what I'd really been searching for – how do I deal with this person, how do I come away from being with her without that knotted-up, frustrated, I've-gone-and-let-her-do-it-again feeling?

And the answer – you don't. In a nutshell, that's pretty much it. As I trawled through the tips for dealing with a narcissist, the most recurring advice was to try not to argue with someone with it because you will never win. Great. There was even advice, in light of the damaging effects of being with a narcissist, to consider ending the relationship or at least keeping them at a distance (known as 'grey rock'). Not easy if it's a close family member, spouse or work colleague. There was a great deal about working on your own self-esteem and making sure you knew in your own mind who you were and what your strengths were so that Mr/Ms Narcissist could not put a different version of 'you' in its place. Again, doable, but the effects of narcissism are so toxic, you would need a cast-iron sense of self to remain unaffected.

Unlike most personality disorders, narcissism is rarely diagnosed and even if it is, it's very hard to treat. This is because the very traits of narcissism prevent sufferers from accepting a diagnosis or subsequent treatment – they're not the ones in the wrong, everyone else is!

And so, I am left feeling both empowered and disempowered: I now have this knowledge – I know what to call this thing and have the information to try and understand it and, to an extent, why it makes me feel the way I do. But in some ways, I feel more at a loss as there seems to be little I can actually do to turn things around and make this a happier relationship.

So, what can I do? I have come up with some tactics based on responding rather than reacting, making my boundaries clear, all the while maintaining my dignity and preserving my true sense of self.

For starters, I am going to try to convey to her, in as many ways as I can, that I do not single her out for special treatment. I want her to understand that I ask everyone how they are, that I will compliment anyone on their looks or achievements, that I sympathise with everyone's problems and offer help equally to all my friends and family and that I don't give extra thanks and praise to her for birthday/Christmas presents, in essence, I don't give her special treatment. This may irritate the hell out of her, and it will do nothing for her belief that she is exempt from having to do such things herself, but at least it will assert the notion that I treat everyone the same, and I do not consider her life circumstances to warrant her special status.

I am also going to try really hard to stop making noises of agreement, which validate the outrageous things she says, and attempt to do so without offering an opposing view that could lead to an argument - in other words, not chase her down those rabbit holes. This is not going to be easy as I will be faced with a choice of awkward silence versus stating that I don't agree. Very hard to move on from either.

Then the nasty, hurtful and humiliating put-downs. I might try simply labelling the behaviour: 'Hm, a bit harsh', or try to deflect it: 'That's not what most people say about me', or the lovely one I heard recently: 'you are entitled to your faulty perception of me'.

I will try – and this is hard for a 'normal' person, who naturally wants to celebrate others' achievements – not to give her much praise or, at least, ensure I always counter it with positive comments about other peoples' successes.

I will capitalise on 21st-century technology by communicating as much as I can through texts and emails, You can garner your thoughts so much better when not being beared down upon by an intimidating, unreasonable person and make your point clear without being interrupted (as she always does).

In essence, I am going to set clear boundaries - if she pushes them, I will assert them, not by fighting her fire with my own and getting dragged down with her illogical 'word salad', but with healthy communication that states how I expect to be treated and (if necessary) that she has fallen short of that. And then ensure that she doesn't make me responsible for her ensuing anger - the mushroom clouds are hers to own.

Finally, I will try to bolster my own self-esteem and non-belief in the image of me that she tries to purport.

Narcissism is awful. It poisons relationships and damages people. If you are living with a narcissist, you have my every sympathy, and I urge you, for your sake, to learn more about it, seek advice and take mitigating steps. There's no changing a narcissist, and you may never win the argument, but you might just be able to make their victory less sweet.

Mental Health: ASMR - Nature's Chill Pill

I was in a stationery shop the other day, just browsing the books, when a member of staff started working on a display stand. It was a tall, rotating stand with compartments for putting different pencils and pens in. She had a large cardboard box containing lots of packets and had to open each one and place the contents into the compartments. As I stood, barely watching, the sounds of her activity began to have an effect on me: I could hear her busily remove a packet from the box, open it, get the pencils out of the crinkly bag and… drop-drop-drop them into the compartment. I could hear her arranging them carefully until they looked right and then return to the box and repeat the process. Ahhh, joy! The inside of my head went ‘mushy’, and I became super-relaxed. I wanted the lady to keep doing it forever and had to pretend I was really interested in the languages section, so I could keep the feeling going without appearing strange.

It wasn’t my first experience of this phenomenon. I have been having this trance-like response since I was about ten or eleven. There is a variety of ways it can be triggered – there’s the passive observance of someone engaged in a task, particularly if accompanied with certain sounds, like the pencil-arranging lady, or someone working on their laptop or someone sorting through their paperwork. Then there are interactive experiences, like someone asking me questions and typing or writing down my responses. After the initial irritation of being asked to do a survey for someone, I find myself taken over by this blissful sensation. And the optician… oh my goodness, the soft voice, the altruistic attention, the questions with writing and typing… ah, I could stay there all day. The only way I can describe it is that it’s a bit like when someone fiddles with your hair or strokes your back, except more than that – I kind of ‘feel’ it too, inside my head.

At this point, most of you can be forgiven for thinking that I’m bonkers. But maybe a few of you might be thinking, ‘Oh my God, yes – I get that too!’

In my early twenties, I talked about this experience with my friends, to see if they had it as well. But after being faced with an expression of ‘the girl’s unhinged’ by everyone, I decided to keep my bizarre pleasure a secret.

It wasn’t until a chance conversation with someone, about 25 years later, that I discovered it’s a real phenomenon, that lots of people experience it and that it has a name – ASMR, or Auto Sensory Meridian Response. Rather like that tongue thing where some people can curl up the sides of their tongue, but others just can’t, ASMR seems to be something you’re either born with or not – you can’t learn how to get the response. (It’s even been described as a brain disorder.)

Wikipedia describes ASMR as the ‘experience of "low-grade euphoria"’, triggered by ‘specific auditory or visual stimuli’ and goes on to describe the various triggers. It also explains that ASMR responses can be elicited via simulation: a video of someone role-playing conducting a questionnaire, showing you their shopping or checking you into a hotel is enough. And YouTube is teeming with every kind of trigger imaginable. The people who make these videos call themselves ASMRtists (see what they did there?) and many of them now make their living sorting out their make-up bags, enrolling you onto a course or being a softly spoken medical practitioner conducting a routine check-up. ASMRtists and their ever-hungry followers call themselves a community and have made their home in YouTube. Now, we don’t have to leave it to chance to get a fix of melty-headed tingles, we can have it whenever and for as long as we want.

This has totally revolutionised my insomnia issues, and I think most ASMR followers use the videos to help them to fall asleep. I usually nod off long before the videos end, only to wake up in the morning with my sleep headphones (a must!) still on. I haven’t taken a sleeping pill in the five years since I started watching ASMR videos. The therapeutic value of ASMR is also acknowledged by sufferers of anxiety and depression.

As you browse through the thousands of videos to find the one that will give you the best response, it’s easy to see the parallels with porn. It is true that, like porn addiction, one can become somewhat dependent upon ASMR roleplay videos. And in the early days of studying ASMR, it was even dubbed ‘the brain orgasm’. It is now widely accepted that whilst highly pleasurable, ASMR is not a sexual response – it certainly doesn’t get me in that way. But humans being what they are do have their favourite genres of ASMR (like porn) and, of course, one of those genres is erotic. For me, I go with pencil sorting and whispered questions!

But there is a flipside to ASMR that many people report. It is called misophonia, meaning ‘hatred of sound’ and, like ASMR, has a set of triggers, the most typical ones being breathing and eating noises (which is also a common ASMR trigger). Someone with misophonia will become enraged or disgusted on exposure to these noises and have extremely negative feelings towards the person making them. I suffer from this, and it really is awful. When I hear someone eating, I feel very angry – I actually want to be violent towards them or scream horrible things at them. The noise they are making is unbearable to me and I can’t understand how they can’t hear it too and not want to stop doing it. For some people, it’s such a serious problem that it becomes life-limiting – going out anywhere or being with anyone carries the risk of being set upon by these dreadful feelings. Some people need to wear headphones to block out trigger sounds. I have improved over the years, and certainly knowing it’s a condition has helped me to deal with it. The person does not deserve my negative feelings, it’s an extreme and incorrect response in me. In other words, it’s my problem, not theirs. I also try to see my misophonia as the price I pay for having the wonderful ASMR feelings.

I feel very lucky that I have this weird condition. It gives me pleasure, reduces my anxiety and helps me to sleep. It’s free and safe. I would never want to trade that.

Editing: The Buck Should Not Stop At The Proofreader

Photo by Sarah Pflug at Burst

Have you ever read a book with so many mistakes in it you wondered whether it had ever been near a proofreader before it was published? Maybe you've felt so outraged that you've submitted a low rating and complained about the poor editing in your review? I hope this little article will explain why this happens and why the reader might just want to hold off from shooting the proofreader!

Think about the last time you did a spot-the-difference puzzle. You were probably told how many differences you needed to find – maybe ten. I imagine the first few probably jumped out at you pretty quickly but then you slowed down as you searched and compared the two pictures, and the last one may have taken you a very long time to spot. Now imagine that you had not been told how many differences there were, or you were given a range, say 5–15 differences. How long would it have been before you gave up finding that last one and decided you'd found them all? Or, if you had found all ten, how long would you have kept looking before you were sure there wasn't an eleventh? And now imagine that you have a time limit with this puzzle...

This is what proofreading is like, only on a massive scale – a novel can contain 140,000 words and hundreds of pages. Proofreaders are trained to know what to do with an error when they find it, and their powers of observation and concentration are excellent, but they don't know how many errors they're looking for and will rarely find everything in the time they have.

Now imagine a different scenario: You've got relatives visiting in three hours, so you've decided to give your house a good old clean, vacuuming, dusting, polishing etc, so it will be spotless. You're stood there, Henry-the-Hoover smiling at your side, when you realise you can't do any of that until you've tidied up all the mess and clutter that's lying around. There are coffee cups to clear away and wash up, piles of paperwork that need sorting, jumbled DVDs and cases strewn around the living room – all manner of stuff that you have to tidy up before you can even think about the cleaning. You set to work, picking up, washing up, sorting out until you're finally able to return to the patiently waiting Henry... but the doorbell goes, your relatives are here, and despite all your hard work, your house is still not clean!

For a number of reasons, a manuscript can be very, very messy. It can be riddled with typos, poor punctuation and spelling, homonyms, formatting errors etc, along with issues that are more of a copy-editing nature, like plot anomalies, clumsy sentence structure, anachronisms and such. But like the untidy house, if a proofreader is spending their time tidying up, they will never be able to clean up in the time they have to complete the job. This is probably the most common reason for books being published with lots of errors, because for every mistake the reader spots in any book, you can bet the proofreader has corrected many, possibly hundreds, it's just that messy manuscripts will have a higher frequency of these missed errors.

Traditionally, a book would go through several rounds of editing: copy-editing, typesetting, proofreading (sometimes by more than one proofreader) and proof collating. But these days, publishers must work to a very tight budget to produce the low-cost books for e-readers. This means cutting out a round (or two) of editing, so often, the proofreader is also wearing a copy-editor and formatting hat. So, not only is the book checked fewer times, but the person doing the checking is undertaking the job of two or three skilled professionals. When you're in copy-edit mode, it's harder to spot that missing quote mark, and when you're in proofreader mode, you might miss that a Renaissance man was looking at a painting by Monet. (Similar happened to me – I had found many issues with the timeline of the plot and corrected or queried them all... except for one. Never fear – the readers spotted it and celebrated their discovery in their reviews!)

There is also the issue that, once the proofreader has returned the manuscript, what happens to it after that is out of their hands. All the careful queries and suggestions may be totally ignored and some of the corrections may even be reversed.

Before I entered the editing profession, I too would have an apoplectic fit if I spotted one too many errors in a text. Now, it just saddens me when I see a negative comment in a review about the editing, and I feel sorry for the proofreader. I know how they take their work very seriously, as they are ever aware of the fact they are only as good as their last gig and that their next job depends on this one. A book that ends up on the shelf still full of howling errors is a culmination of many factors, not just the end-of-line proofreader.

So, if you do want to reach for your laptop to write a roasting critique of the quality of the editing, do please consider that there are more reasons for it being that way than just a rubbish proofreader. A 'could have done with another round of editing' avoids pointing the finger at one person and will make your point perfectly clear.

Have Religious Festivals Capitalised On Our Natural Biorhythms?

Picture by Scott Murdoch at Burst

Call me a miserable old bag but this is not my favourite time of year. 

Yes, I appreciate the beauty of a misty autumnal morning or the warm balmy Indian summers that we enjoy in the UK, but for me, these don't make up for the shroud of darkness that creeps over us as the season takes hold. In fact, it's the shortening days that get to me more than the weather (which can be appalling at any time of year). As sunset times get earlier, so we have to cram all our outdoor activities, like walking the dog, into fewer and fewer hours. Our children trudge home from after-school clubs in the dark. The bike lights and reflective gear come out. The washing lines come down and the tumble dryer wakes up from its summer hibernation and trundles away, adding to the sounds of the rediscovered central heating.

By the end of October, when the clocks go back, the darkness is really upon us, and although we still have a way to go until the winter solstice in December, for me, this is the most depressing time, for which an extra hour in bed is no compensation. In fact, by the time we do reach the shortest day, I'm starting to feel a bit more hopeful, and even those dreadful dark mornings of January hold a tinge of optimism as I know the tide has turned and the light is coming back. 

It seems as if I'm suffering from some kind of displaced seasonal affective disorder until you look at the pagan wheel of the year. The end of October marks the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice and is observed by the festival of Samhain. The pagan legend goes that at this time, the Green Man dies and the Goddess, his mother, goes into deep mourning for her lost son. It signifies the start of the dark half of the year and is a sombre occasion.

But the mood changes at the winter solstice, where pagans celebrate 'Yule', the rebirth of the sun, with lights and decorations of mistletoe, holly, ivy and evergreens. It is a joyous time where people get together to eat and drink and exchange gifts to celebrate. Sounds familiar? It is no coincidence that Christians have taken over this occasion for the celebration of the birth of their son and used pretty much all the pagan traditions to do so. I mean, why else would the birth of the son of God be marked by a fir tree covered in lights and shiny things?

And going back to Samhain, the time of mourning the dead, pagans believe that this is a time when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and they hold seances to communicate with the deceased. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly the same time that Christians celebrate All Saints' Eve (Halloween) and All Saints Day: a time where the bond between those in heaven and on earth is honoured. But it is more as a result of the pagan origins that children dress up as ghosts and go trick-or-treating.

This is not the only annual pagan event that Christianity has used for its own end. Easter is the other big one. The word 'Easter' comes from 'Ostara' or 'Eostre', the festival that occurs at the spring equinox in March. It is, in fact, where the word 'Estrogen', the female sex hormone, comes from. Christians celebrate the rising of Christ from the grave, but in fact, it is a time of celebrating the rising fertility of the earth and its creatures. That's what all the eggs and bunnies are about!

There are other pagan festivals that Christians have taken over for their less significant events. Imbalc, in February, marks the first signs of life by honouring the Goddess Brigid, which Christians have made St Bridget. And, of course, we have St Valentine at that time too. Then there is Mabon, a time of celebrating the harvest and making preparations for the winter, that has become the Christian harvest festival. Beltane, on Mayday, which honours life, also appears in the Christian calendar. In fact, of the eight pagan wheel-of-the-year events, Christianity has annexed six!

I'm guessing the reason for this is that at the time Christians were imposing their faith on Europe, most people held pagan beliefs, and it was easier to get them to accept the new faith if it was latched onto existing customs. A bit like hiding peas inside ketchup to get your child to eat them. One can only imagine the political wheeling and dealing that went on amongst the hierarchy of both camps and the obliviousness of the poor people whose lives were affected.

This takeover, I think, has been made all the more effective by tapping into our natural annual rhythms that the pagans illustrate so poetically with their legends. We may not all feel as cheesed off as I do in the autumn, but many of us have a rising sense of wellbeing in the springtime. I think we are all, to some extent emotionally tuned in to the seasonal changes. What better occasions to garner people's spiritual allegiance than when they're naturally inclined to be feeling that way anyway? Clever. Even the times of day that religions like to worship – morning and evening – are the same as those that pre or non-religious people used as a time for reflection, as the rising and setting of the sun were considered to be moments of great significance.

So, as I watch the daylight hours get shorter and race around to get things done before it gets dark and find something for my bored children to do in the long evenings, I look forward to Yuletide, when the sun stands still and then slowly starts its journey back to us, and hope that one day, these beautiful and meaningful events, which already exist within us, will be widely embraced, regardless of faith.

Atheism: No-Afterlife Anxiety

photo by Bruno Passos at Burst

The other day, I took my youngest two children to visit my grandparents' graves. All four of them are interred within metres of each other, bringing into focus what a leveller being dead is. My mother's parents were pretty well-off and lived on the posh side of town, whereas my father's parents were austere, church-going folk who had no time (or money) for unnecessary luxuries. Yet there they all are, lying deep in the ground in close proximity, with just a few words above them to remind the living who they were.

The three of us stood and stared at the headstones; I, as usual, became quite choked up and chatted awkwardly to my grandparents (all of us knowing how silly that was) and cleared away a few cobwebs and overgrown plants. I told my children a bit about them, stared a bit more and then we left. As we were walking away, my daughter started talking about the afterlife and whether I thought there could possibly be one. Really, she knew what my answer would be; she knows that I believe that when you die, that's it, there's nothing else. But, as a near-teenager, she's starting to find that thought unbearable. Most children, at about that age, become aware of their mortality and many struggle to deal with it.

Since then, the subject has arisen several times. She wants there to be more than nothing for herself and other people when they die, she doesn't want it to end as a void of non-consciousness for eternity – the thought is terrifying. It reminded me of my own 'dawning of realisation'.

I remember, quite clearly, the moment I became an atheist. It was like an epiphany, a negative version of the born-again believer’s story of suddenly ‘seeing the light’. I was about twenty-six, lying in bed, doing battle with my recently acquired insomnia, waiting for sleep, my mind working at a hundred miles an hour. And suddenly, the thought just bubbled to the surface.

You’re going to die.

I really didn’t want to be thinking that.

You will die. And when you’re dead, there will be nothing.

It was horrible. I could feel the panic rising in me – like a heat working up though my body.

You’ll be dead. Everyone else will carry on, but you will have no consciousness at all. You will just NOT BE.

There was a pain in my guts and my heart was racing. I wasn’t breathing right.

I didn't know it, but I was having a panic attack. Despite trying not to disturb my sleeping husband, I couldn't suffer in isolation any longer and woke him, saying, 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die!' The poor guy must have been horrified and totally baffled as to how to deal with a hysterical wife in the middle of the night, freaking out because there was no afterlife. I can't remember any more about that night, but that feeling of terror has never really left me and it still keeps me awake at night sometimes. So, if I haven't found any solace, how can I possibly offer any to my daughter?

This, I think, is the number-one reason why people are religious. It is easier, nicer, to believe that we will continue to exist in some way after we die and that our deceased loved ones are somewhere in the ether, looking down on us. It's comforting. There are no such reassurances for the atheist.

The afterlife, to me, is that on death, everything that comprises a body (whether human or other animal) is given back to the earth, the sky, the rivers and seas, from where they came in the first place. All living things are up-cycled bits and bobs from our planet and the universe, culminated into one body for a few years and then given back at the end. They then go on, eventually, to make other things, and that, in my view, is the extent of reincarnation.

There is an aspect of 'living on' after death, in that every living thing leaves their mark after they die. Your great-aunt's special recipe, your dad teaching you how to map-read, your pet dog, whose funny antics and unconditional loyalty contributed to your happy childhood. No matter how short or long a life is, it will always leave ripples which continue to influence and affect the living after death. And, of course, if you have children, and they have children, there will always be 'a part of you', carried by the wonders of DNA, long into the future.

This is all very circle-of-life – lovely and poetic, but it still doesn't offer any real comfort. It's not what we really want to hear. When you hear eminent atheists speak (Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry), they will wax lyrical about the wonders of life and the universe, of the miracle (scientific, of course) of our existence, and that because of that, and the fact that there is no 'after', we should value life highly and squeeze every last drop of joy from it. But, uplifting as this is, there is nothing of real assurance here that I can offer my daughter.

I encourage her not to change her beliefs just to make her feel better (perhaps I shouldn't do that?) and advise her to try as hard as she can to reject fearful thoughts as soon as they pop into her head and replace them with more positive ones. 

It's not much, but it seems to be the best you can do if you want to stand by your convictions.

5:2 Diet - It's Tough But Easy

photo by Matthew Henry from Burst

When I tell people that I do the 5:2 diet (or 'lifestyle', as 5:2-ers like to call it), the most common reaction is, 'Oh, I could never do that, I would collapse or something!' I find this a real shame because they are passing up what I, along with many other people, have found to be the easiest and most effective way of losing and managing weight. Yes, as the title suggests, fasting days can be tough, but it's the least life-invasive diet of any I have tried and weight loss stops being a wished-for thing – it's practically guaranteed!

A 5:2-er chooses two days a week (not consecutive) where they consume a quarter of their recommended calorie allowance. The other five days, they eat normally. And that's it. There's no special foods or food combining, no constant calorie counting, and for five days in every week, you're not on a diet. Provided you don't go mad on those five days, you will definitely lose weight.

I decided to try 5:2 five years ago. I had been about ten pounds heavier than I wanted to be since the birth of my youngest child. They say those last few pounds are the hardest to lose, and having tried for years (mostly by calorie counting) to shed it, I'd pretty much resigned myself to being that weight for ever. But I'd heard a lot about 5:2 and decided it might be worth a try. One month in, I had lost seven pounds, and after two months, had gone past my target weight. Even a two-week holiday, where I had a break from it, didn't do much harm and it was easy to restart – I'd only missed four fast days after all! For the next few months, I just couldn't stop the weight coming off, and apart from the fasting days, I didn't feel I was making any effort at all. People started to notice a change in my appearance and began to comment that I was looking thin. I just put that down to them not being used to my new look, but when I caught myself in the mirror one day as I was dressing, I could see what they meant. By that time, though, I had lost about a stone and a half and was looking rather bony. I took my foot off the gas for a while and my weight increased a little. I learned from this, and now I'm an ideal weight and tailor my fasting to maintain it.

But my story shows how incredibly effective this lifestyle is. The problem with most diets is that they are untenable – whether that be the latest 'fad' diet or the traditional calorie-restriction diet, you're following it every single day until you reach your target weight. For some people, that could be months and months or even a year or more of doggedly sticking to rules about what you can or can't eat, of feeling hungry most of the time, of wishing you could have that cake. It is practically impossible to stick to; there will be special events, holidays, Christmas and good old-fashioned lapses of willpower that will shove you off the wagon. And once you hit the cheesecake-and-chocolate-and-booze-and-crisps ground, it takes a super-human will to haul yourself back onto that miserable can-only-have-a crumb-of-cheese-every-other-Thursday wagon.

5:2 is not like that. You see the cake, but it's a fasting day. You say, 'Yes! I can have that cake... tomorrow.' Willpower still needed, yes, but at least you only have to wait a few hours. And strangely, when tomorrow comes, you kind of don't fancy the cake anymore. This is because 5:2 eating seems to reset your appetite and the way you think about food. You find yourself thinking, 'Do I really want that?' I think this is partly because you don't want to spoil the good work you have done the day before and partly that your body is not 'needing' it as much. There is a lot of science to back this up, where studies have shown beneficial changes to the pancreas in 5:2 subjects. Many health professionals recommend Type 2 Diabetes sufferers to try this diet (but please note, if you have Type 1 diabetes, 5:2 is not safe).

The other way that 5:2 differs from other diets – and this could be seen as the 'catch' – is that, for most people, there is no end to it. This is why people like to call it a lifestyle. 'No end' may seem very off-putting, but the huge advantage of it is you will never have to lose a significant amount of weight again – no more discovering your summer clothes don't fit you like they did last year or wishing you were a few pounds lighter for your daughter's wedding or desperate, pre-holiday weight-loss plans. In other words, no more yo-yo dieting: months of misery followed by months of putting it all back on again. You can get off that ride for ever. Once down to their target weight, a 5:2-er can maintain it by adjustment. For me, I only fast during school term time and do 6:1 (fast only on one day) unless my weight creeps up, when I go back to two days.  Some people continue to do 5:2 but increase their calorie allowance to 35%/40% on fast days. There are many ways you can tinker with it to make it suit you and lots of literature around to guide you with this. I think of 5:2 as a tool  – if my weight goes above or below my desired range, I use my 5:2 spanner to adjust it!

The 5:2 lifestyle is not, in my view, a fad diet, dreamt up by some (possibly) bogus doctor who's peddling his/her crazy idea to make as much money as possible (and usually cause misery in its failing wake). It was brought to the public domain by renowned scientist, Michael Mosley, who shared his findings on BBC2's Horizon programme in 2012. As far as I know, he hasn't turned his work into a money spinner, although others have made the concept commercial. As Mosely himself points out, fasting is an ancient practice that many civilisations have embraced, not just for religious reasons but because they could see the benefits to their health. 5:2 is merely a simple formula for making the practice accessible to the 21st-century person.

So, if you want to give it a try (please do!), here are some tips to get you started and keep you going:

• Don't be scared of it! I'm not going to deny that you'll find it difficult, especially in the first few weeks, but your body will adjust and get used to it. Feelings of hunger may be uncomfortable but they don't really hurt.
• You can eat tomorrow! This is my mantra. However hungry and weak you're feeling, remind yourself constantly that this is only for one day. You can wake up tomorrow, feel great... and eat!
• Hunger comes in waves. It's ten in the morning on your first fasting day and you're STARVING! You say to yourself that you just aren't cut out for this, you can't do it. Try really hard to hold fire on that doughnut. Go and have a drink (black coffee/tea/water/no-calorie soft drink) and make yourself wait an hour. You will probably find the feelings of intense hunger pass. And you're another hour into your fasting day, well done!
• Plan your food. This is vital for a successful fast day. Do this the day before and make sure you have all your fast-day food ready and to hand. Try to avoid cooking for others (hard when you have children to feed) and get in and out of the kitchen as quickly as you can when you take your meals. Try not to be around food on fasting days and use room-fragrance to get rid of tempting cooking smells.
• Go to bed early. You can significantly reduce the length of a fasting day by going to bed early. You'll also benefit from the extra sleep! You could consider getting up a little later too, although work commitments may prevent this. I usually eat my 'main meal' as late as possible and then go to bed straight after so that I don't go to bed hungry.
• Stay busy. You might think you're too active to consider 5:2 or that you should pick your least hectic days to do it. This is not the case – you will think about your tummy much less if you're busy at work or running around after your children. If you really do have a strenuous lifestyle (not many people do but there are websites where you can calculate your calorie needs based on your activity levels), consider upping your fast-day calorie limit.
• Choose your food wisely. Aim for big bulk and low calorie. Foods with a low glycaemic index are great as they avoid the sugar-spike—slump—craving cycle. I eat loads of very low-calorie jelly, zero-fat yoghurt, zero calorie noodles/rice, tomatoes, salad and a small amount of tuna. 
• Plan eating times carefully. Everyone has their own view about how much to eat at certain times of the day. I prefer to steadily increase my food intake throughout the day: no breakfast (apart from coffee), a tiny lunch, a bigger late-afternoon snack and a 'big' evening meal. This works for me, as by 4:00 p.m., I feel I'm through the toughest part of the day.
• Wake up proud! When you wake up the next day, you will feel so pleased with yourself that you've done it. When you step on those scales, your smile will get bigger. You deserve to be proud – go get some breakfast... but maybe not a fry-up!

Do check with your GP before embarking on any new diet.