Let me begin to bring this short series of blogs on stress to a close, with an attempt to describe a rationale or underlying strategy for what it is, that together, we have been attempting in these blogs to achieve. Presumably, we have all, as children, experienced the pleasures and spills of a seesaw. Sometimes when – say – one is deploying make-shift equipment; for example, a segment of tree trunk or a barrel and a long plank; it becomes possible to accommodate and keep in balance, widely varying weights at either end. An example would be where two children on one end and only one (same-sized child) on the other, are brought into balance by changing the position of the segment of tree trunk or barrel (fulcrum) from centre, to off-centre of the plank. In simple terms, we attempt to redistribute the weight at either end by adjusting the position of the fulcrum.

Thus, translated into terms of human endeavour; additional pressures in life; i.e. illness in one’s self or affecting a family member/close friend’; redundancy or some other form of significant change in a negative direction, may also be elevated, (more often than not, without the remotest thought about it in such terms), at least to some extent. By using that same simple principal of leverage illustrated in the above, we find it possible to bring about significant change of a favourable nature. This approach to the self-management of such need is by no means new or difficult to apprehend or apply. Indeed, it is ‘as old as the hills’.

Time and again it has proved itself to be a tried and tested way of facing up to the reality of a need to increase the capacity and ability to cope and – perhaps above all – to change the perception of it, all in a more favourable and thus more manageable direction. “Easy to say” you murmur as you read; “but far from easy to achieve”. Well, possibly not quite so much, as, at this precise moment, you may be imagining and – as I hope this series of blogs – has already begun and will continue, to reveal.

Moreover, there truly is a great deal of support and help out there (although it may well require some degree of initiative and endeavour on your part to locate it). Furthermore, any such enterprise shown and effort taken, is likely to help form part of those invaluable “waves of recovery”, about which I have written copiously in earlier blogs; and for one very good reason In this – as in other spheres of interest and activity – we have an opportunity for growth, even if, understandably, it is one we feel we could well have done without.

In my next blog, I hope to ‘say’ a final word or so about the above, with reference to real life experience at the ’coal face’ during my own clinic days, working with patients and their family members.