Hello from us to you 🖐.
As we (as total amateurs) embark on our first ever family "blog post", we hope you find what we share useful and insightful.
To make it plain from the outset in case any of our readers think we are assuming “delusions of grandeur”, we are nothing more than an average British family living an average British life and in the process dealing with serious "life issues" and challenges every other family faces from time to time.
We are in this respect neither unique nor special.
We have, however, always been very interested in tools available for stress and anxiety management and wish to impart what we have learned first hand by successfully navigating enormously stressful experiences in our own rights, not from an elevated position of purported professional qualification or privilege as many high profile figures may appear to do, but on an equal, light hearted, non condescending and most importantly accessible footing with no agenda.
Our Blog Posts merely constitute our opinions from experience gleaned.
If our readers (should we be lucky enough to have any) would be assisted by expert input on particular matters from time to time, then this will be facilitated on an expert guest basis, nothing more.
We are not, like some sites are, here merely to provide tips, but rather intend to share the actual techniques we have and do apply to real time situations as they arise from time to time.
We hope this fresh openness, coupled with outcomes that can be followed to their conclusions whatever they may be, provide a more friendly springboard, context, tool and comparison for stress and anxiety management than the mere list of symptoms to look out for and DIY coping strategies currently available online.
These, we believe, do not give the sweeping impact stress or anxiety can have on people the credence it merits or make stress any less a lonely business, but instead reiterate society’s long held but entirely outdated view that people “should just get on with it” because stress is “not physical”.
Put simply, we have had evidence of stress conveyed to us repeatedly when going about our daily business since the end of lockdowns that is backed up by statistics, much of it clearly suppressed, unaddressed and unsupported.
So we decided it was high time we tried to do our little bit to help, even if it meant opening ourselves up as examples.
A blog seemed like the most natural way to do this for the widest possible audience, given stress transcends borders, cultures and religion alike as it is a truly and undeniably global phenomenon affecting people of all ages and orientations.
As to what further specifically prompted us to invest our own family time and funds into setting up this forum now, that is also easy to answer.
There has of late been an extremely healthy and flattering level of interest in us, our activities, our opinions and how we appear to flourish so well and with humility and humour regardless of age and having been beset by a number of life's most challenging circumstances in rapid succession, both as individuals and a family.
But independent sources told us that they felt we were "private".
We initially judged this to be a tad unfair.
After all, the right to Privacy is as fundamental a human right as Freedom of Expression!
And if by being too private people meant we didn’t burden them with the problems we as any other family face, then that is correct, because owing to the extensive armoury of stress and anxiety coping mechanisms we are fortunate enough to have amassed over the years, we have had the ability to deal with issues ourselves.
But this nevertheless caused us to explore whether we were adequately sharing the underlying lessons we have learned from the experiences we have endured, survived and ultimately prospered from.
There's an old saying to the effect that "when you think you should do one thing, you should do the other", and so (in direct contrast to the wider global impression that we Brits are a shy and reserved bunch!) instead of sitting wondering where we might be going wrong, we thought “to heck with it” and the opposite is exactly what we have elected to do! 🙂.
By proactively sharing our news, experiences, outcomes and feelings here in real time with an accompanying heavy injection of the family humour that keeps us fresh and flourishing, we aim to "undemonise" and "demystify" stress and anxiety at the same time as adding value to others.
We hope that this new and unique forum proves to be genuinely useful in helping to normalise and unravel the stress phenomenon for those otherwise potentially feeling isolated and alone as a result of it.
As such, our Blog is available to all no matter what the participant’s personal life location currently is.
We equally hope our posts are embraced within the genial spirit they are intended and look forward to engendering meaningful, constructive dialogue, positive change and feedback in the coming months on issues ranging from grief, marriage planning, relationships, managing finances in austerity, the challenges of remote working, hygeine, living with cancer & terminal illness, gaming addictions, sustaining a positive vibrational frequency, diet, fitness, excelling with a new-born, decision making and determining priorities, to name but a few to come.
So stay tuned for a follow up StressBustingExpert™ post very shortly together with exciting easy to access interactive initiatives.
We look forward to embarking on life’s challenging but exciting journey with you.
Because as a collective group our influencing voice as everyday people in an uncertain climate is far louder.
And by pooling experience and coping mechanisms, we are unquestionably stronger 💪.
!HAPPY STRESSBUSTING™!
Much love&excitement,
LouLoU & MikeyM™ xxxx