I don’t know much about the ombudsman but just wanted to respond to the silence. This is something many of us experience. It increases our anxiety and we our brains start filling in the gaps thinking of all the reasons there is silence, usual negative ones! Our brains try and fix things even when it can’t be fixed. The research shows that the way to combat these horrible thoughts is through sharing our frustrations with others (as you do) and minimising the impact of these negative thoughts. That get easier with practise.
Allocate some fixing time where you think about any solutions and actions to take.
Think about SOS (search for it in the programme): what’s going on for self, others and situation: often they are understaffed, poorly trained because if high turnover, poorly motivated and underfunded. Sometimes thinking about that can help.
Once you’ve done that, you’ve done all you can and mindfulness and meditation come in to reduce the impact of the worrying, stepping back and noticing your thoughts rather than focussing on them. We’ve updated chapter 1 and there’s quite a few more exercises on there to help ground and focus and bring us out of these spiralling thoughts. Take a look… Warm wishes Mel
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