Happy Mondays
Leading life and happiness coach
HAVE you ever had one of those heart-stopping moments where you wonder: did I think it or say it? In the age of political correctness, saying a mouthful can be an unconscious minefield that can take you from toast of the party to pitiful pariah.
Tell me it’s not just me who possesses a Tourette’s-type tic that makes me want to shout “too much information” when I see acres of flesh exposed the second the mercury nudges past 15 degrees. Am I the only one who is holding in such big shouty thoughts that would make Victor Meldrew look like a Trappist monk devoted to piety and tolerance?
Then just occasionally when one’s XXXL thoughts can no longer be contained by the size 6 Spandex of your psyche, they leak out. What you are holding in – the resentments and the truth – get to a point of eye-watering tension and erupt.
Constraining what we really think feels like wearing tight shoes with corns and it’s with a “there’s no turning back” groan of relief that it pops out for a moment of sheer satisfaction, closely followed by deep mortification.
The Queen was a victim of Psyche Seepage last week when she, in an unguarded moment, shared her thoughts on the “rude” Chinese officials she had experienced on a state visit. Then in the same week David Cameron’s aside to the Queen that both Nigeria and Afghanistan were “fantastically corrupt” made us cringe.
A Chinese friend was nonplussed. “So what? We are rude,” she shrugged – and even Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari couldn’t deny the corruption claim but used it wisely to get us to take a look at our own financial shenanigans. So there was the subtext. It’s like our brain sometimes slips into the TV show Catchphrase mode as we are urged to “say what you see” and blow the consequences.
It’s hard to say and do the right thing when sexuality is fluid and even the status of being male or female is up for argument. The blooming obvious can no longer be said – even if all evidence to the fact proves the point – and a kind of selective muteness is the only solution unless you want a verbal bloodbath on your hands. We are not all Katie Hopkins but we all occasionally would love an “out” for our outrage.
I remember PTA meetings being conducted like a committee of the United Nations with the sensitivities of more than 20 cultures being laboriously negotiated for hours – not for the liberty of the free world and human rights but for determining the bunting, bar and BBQ of the school summer fete.
I often suffer with a sort of brain strain that causes a kind of conversational hernia. So I have a download doula: a good friend who listens quietly while I vent and offload and I offer the same service to her.
I would also recommend the opposite of a “gratitude” journal: a sort of misery memo where you can write down all the annoyances you can no longer carry with you.
Trust me, it makes for hilarious reading when you look back.