Ask Angela: Glasgow’s psychotherapist give advice on picking yourself up after being made redundant

National World - LocalTV

Glasgow psychotherapist Angela Trainer gives advice on responding to negative situations and looking at things in a new light, giving examples of tactics she used when going through cancer treatment.

Transcript

00:00 I've recently been made redundant, I'm 60. I didn't expect to feel so flat and isolated.

00:04 In my book, The Beauty of Broken, I speak about the need for reframing when we go through any

00:11 crisis or change points in our lives around any negative language that can have lots of

00:17 baggage attached to it. So the word redundancy is not a good word, it's not the best word we

00:23 could be using about what happens when after many, many, many years of working, for one reason

00:29 or another, things change for us. I reframed language around having cancer, the chancer.

00:37 I got another chance. I got a chance to do things differently. I got a chance that lots of people

00:43 didn't get because they didn't waken up that morning. I did. I had treatment, I had stuff to

00:48 go through. I might not have been going to live very long, I'm very lucky that I have, but I

00:53 didn't know that. I got another chance. I talked about going to the health hospital, not the

01:00 hospital because there were so many scary words and notions around going to a hospital. And this

01:06 reframing of language and the way we view our situation is crucial at these times. So I'd really

01:12 like you to think about you're going through a redirection rather than a redundancy, that your

01:20 life is going to change and it's going to shift, but actually there's new life coming through rather

01:26 than the same old, same old every day until you drop. So this redirection is a transformation.

01:33 It has the potential for a transformation of your life. You are not broken. There is nothing

01:41 wrong with you. But there is a big change in your routine and that can be a shock. And sometimes

01:47 when things change, we go into a bit of dissociation. We don't know what to do. Initially

01:54 for a lot of people that retire or are made redundant without a lot of preparation, they play

02:01 catch up with all the sleep they've missed over the 20, 30, 40 years that they've responded to an

02:07 alarm call every morning and fitted in their breaks to two week holidays when they were allowed to

02:13 take them. So this open-ended time is a new experience where initially, often, they want to

02:20 catch up on sleep and rest and watching afternoon box sets. The challenge is when that goes on too

02:27 long, we get out of routine and actually human beings respond quite well to routine. So the first

02:34 thing I'd ask you to do is to look at whether or not you have some kind of gentle routine. It might

02:40 not be five days and two days, but that you have some kind of system of order in your life, that

02:49 you have some kind of sleep hygiene routine too, that you're not sitting up really, really late

02:55 and then waking up halfway through the day when it's too late to do anything, feeling groggy.

03:01 That's not helpful. Was all of your identity caught up in your job title? Was all of your value

03:09 and your worth caught up in your job? You've got an opportunity here to rub that out and do

03:16 something else with your life. You're not your job, you're not your career. Who are you? So

03:22 retirement and later life input working is an inside job. This gives us an opportunity to find

03:32 out more about who we are rather than having to be what they need us to be out there. And this is a

03:40 great chance for that. The Chinese have a symbol that means two things and their opposites. The

03:47 word for crisis is also the word for opportunity. So we've got that opportunity here, learning a

03:55 new way to live and having the chance to do that. So watch, you don't lose the value of routine,

04:01 don't dissociate, don't lose contact with yourself or the outside world. Watch the wonky sleep cycles

04:11 that can create more lethargy and having a bit of preparation, having some goals, sitting down

04:17 and writing down some of the goals that you have for the time you have left. Mary Oliver, the poet,

04:23 wrote a great poem. What is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life? You know, we're all

04:30 living on borrowed time. So what is it you really, really, really want to do with the time you have

04:35 left while you've got the energy to do that? If you're missing people, get in touch with them.

04:42 Just because you no longer work there doesn't mean you can't be included in meetups and nights out

04:49 and staying in contact with your colleagues. So make contact, get in touch, reconnect. You've now

04:57 got time to maybe reconnect with some of the people you've lost along the way in your life

05:02 because of work. So make a list. Who did you lose touch with along the way? Can you get in touch

05:08 with them? Can you find out what they're up to today? And then there's new people, there's the

05:14 people you haven't met yet. Where do they hang out? Where are the people who have your interests?

05:19 When we try to be a somebody and we have an ego and an identity caught up in the externals,

05:27 we get this chance, usually at some point in our life, to get to know our inner self.

05:34 And in the TED Talk that I did on YouTube called 'The Curse of Perfect', it's just Angela Traynor

05:42 TED Talk on YouTube, I speak a lot about the need for perfection, the curse of perfect,

05:49 needing our lives to be a certain way, making demands of our identity and who we should be.

05:56 And that might be a useful watch for you to relate to yourself. But we can learn new, fascinating,

06:05 interesting things and skills. We can have the time to do all the things we never had time to do.

06:11 Do you do anything creatively? Do you write? Do you draw? Do you paint? Do you sculpt? Do you walk?

06:17 Do you exercise? There are so many things for people in later life that have reduced rates.

06:24 We can go and watch the movies in the afternoon. We don't have to travel back in the dark after work.

06:30 And how can you contribute to the world? There must be so many places and organisations that

06:38 would love just that much of your input and your skills. Every university has an adult learning

06:46 department. Every college has more courses than you would ever believe. Find out research. This

06:54 is an opportunity.

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