SPECIAL TALK!
Professor Mark Williams
Wednesday, 20th September @ 6.30pm
We are unbelievably lucky at We Thrive to be hearing from Mark Williams who is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre at the University of Oxford. He co-developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and is the author of several books including the huge best seller Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World.’
Mark will talk to us about how mindfulness and related techniques can help to heal and support us and ultimately how to find ways to help both ourselves and our children navigate a more peaceful, loving path.
“Get out of our heads and learn to experience the world directly, experientially, without the relentless commentary of our thoughts. We might just open ourselves up to the limitlesss possibilities for happiness that life has to offer us.”
How do we know what to do?
In our weekly meetings this past month, we have shared feelings, situations, responses and asked questions – most of the questions boil down to the ultimate question of How do I/we as parents know what to do? And the ultimate answer is mostly that we don’t. We are learning to live with ‘I don’t know’. I don’t know produces for most of us a state of fear. We spend an awful lot of life either assuming or pretending that we know or desperately trying to avoid situations of uncertainty, however the truth is that we don’t really know what will happen one minute to the next, what it is all about, and in our particular circumstances what to do when our children are suffering. In our loving attempts to do the ‘right thing’ we can get lost in desperate searching and seeking and subsequent feelings of desperation, helplessness, frustration or confusion. All this seeking and searching can cause more distraction and dis-ease. Perhaps the one thing we can do is to acknowledge this fear and to see if we can instead let go of the frantic search and become more still which may then allow us to simply connect a little bit more to our child and to each other without the pressure of having to have answers. Sometimes I find when I have done this, the answer comes along all by itself.
‘It’s what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That’s all and that’s the hardest thing.’
– Morgan Freeman –
This is an article from a great website called www.aspergersexperts.com
which provides lots of information about supporting children on the Autistic Spectrum. It is from a parent talking of their anxiety around their child on the Autistic Spectrum:
My Anxiety As A Parent Prevented Me From Seeing This
https://www.aspergerexperts.com/topics/parenting/articles/my-anxiety-as-a-parent
….’So when you’re looking at a kid and you’re saying, “Well, he’s just refusing. He’s being manipulative, or he’s being whatever.” remember: it’s for a reason. They don’t feel safe. They don’t feel grounded. They don’t feel secure.’
September Monthly Theme
This month’s theme as a topic to consider during our meetings is
How do we deal with not knowing what to do
– All I know is that I know nothing –
Socrates