Ways to bring back the feel good factor

Three years ago Andrea Morrison had it all – a great career as a barrister, three beautiful children that she had battled infertility to conceive, a lovely house and a great husband – but the reality was a stark contrast.

“I was working long hours and, travelling the length and breadth of the country, I was separated most days from my children. We had great child care but I was missing out on their growing up. I had so wanted to be a mother, but was on a treadmill and I just couldn’t get off.”

Andrea’s father, who she was very close to, died just after her first child was born and then, in November 2008, she ended up with pneumonia.

“It was my body telling me I wasn’t wearing superwoman knickers and I had to stop.”

But despite her illness she continued to work.

“It’s easy to see from the outside that I was doing far too much but when you are in it you can’t. You just keep pushing through and don’t questions why. I’d had three children in three years. It had taken us four years to conceive our first child and we were worried it might take as long with the others. We were wrong. We then built an extension to accommodate our growing family and I returned to work quickly after all of them. I wasn’t some career-driven woman particularly, but there just wasn’t any way I could give up work, we just couldn’t afford it and it became something I felt I ought to do or I was letting my family down.

“I had a job that you had to give 110 per cent to. You couldn’t have an off day. I felt very guilty about my children.”

But two years later the decision was taken out of her hands and Andrea was forced to take a long overdue break.

In 2010 she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

“I now know that this was the best thing to have happened to me, as I finally had to stop and think, this gave me the chance to become the person that I wanted to be,” says Andrea, who lives near York with husband Paul.

Initially she took a six-month sabbatical from her legal practice while she tried to make herself well again.

“I was lucky in some ways as I didn’t have it as badly as some people. The thing is with ME (Myalgic Encephalopathy) it is different for everyone. I was still able to get up and take the children to school, well I had to.”

Over the following years Andrea tried many techniques, therapies and practices, while many just didn’t make any material difference some did, and she adapted them further so that they worked for her and she also created some of her own.

She did some tutoring at university, which she loved and then took the brave decision to turn her back on her legal profession.

“I was feeling better, but my children were still young,” says Andrea, who has two daughters aged nearly ten and six, and an eight-year-old son.

“If I went back, nothing had changed.”

And so she decided to follow her heart. “I had always been interested in complementary therapy especially reflexology, but I decided to do a massage course first which I just loved. It made me realise that this was the type of thing I wanted to do.”

A reflexology course followed and Andrea set up the Eden House, a holistic therapy centre she runs from her home.

She is in the process of setting up Holistic Health Zone, a website for holistic therapists and people interested in complimentary therapy.

She has also just written a book, published this week, in a bid to pass on what she has learnt on what she calls her “journey”.

“I know I am not unusual in what I have been through and I really wanted to pass on what I had learnt and how I deal with life to other people. It started by just telling friends and family and then posting a few things on Facebook, but then last year my husband self-published a book and it gave me the idea.”

On Monday, historically known as Blue Monday, Andrea published her book entitled Feel Good Factor in 30 Days.

“By taking lots of small actions in your life, you can make big changes to your levels of happiness,” she says. “The idea was that people could dip in and out and pick what they find useful. It is about taking back control of your life and finding out what works for you. I didn’t want it to be weighty manual, lecturing people about what they should do. I just wanted to pass on what works for me. That’s why I wanted to tell my personal story in the book. To show people where I have been and the journey I have come along .”

It is all a long way from her job as a barrister where she was appointed Treasury Counsel, led by a top QC and described in the Legal 500 as a “formidable junior”.

But would she return to law? “Never say never,” she says. “I have learnt over the years never to rule anything out. People said a girl from a failing school could never be a barrister and I did it. And who would have thought that a barrister would end up being a reflexologist? So who knows?”

But for the time being she is happy being a mum to her three children, running her own business around her life rather than the other way round, and bringing happiness to people.

“I love what I am doing now. I have found what works for me and I just like passing this on to other people and doing something I really enjoy. Who knows what the future will bring.

Feel Good Factor in 30 Days by Andrea Morrison (Eden House Publishing) is available from Amazon and from www.edenhouseholistic.co.uk

First steps on the journey

Andrea Morrison shares some of the first steps to feeling good:

Smile: Today decide to smile. How do you feel? Notice what happens to the people around you when you smile – the chances are they will smile back, so you are not only making yourself feel better – but you are making others around you feel better too.

Be realistic not perfect: Think about what causes your stress – make sure it isn’t your expectations. So today, try and alter your expectations and see what happens, learn to repeat the mantra ‘OK, these things happen’ instead of questioning ‘why does this always happen to ME?’

Focus on now: Try not to think about anything else apart from what you are doing at that moment in time. The object is to enjoy that moment and to remain in that moment, not the past or in the future.