Some eight months after moving to Lewes, we have made it home. When people comment “you must have really settled now?”, it is an emphatic “YES!” And yet…within that settlement, there is a degree of something unsettling. As I deeply embed into the town, it is suggesting another aspect. I am leaning into this twofold …
Walking into work yesterday ahead of teaching on a two day block with the Masters students I felt a deep sense of gratitude. The University campus was just coming alive; looking through the windows of various teaching spaces, people crouched over their laptops or engrossed in books sipping a coffee. Imagining the day to come, …
I can’t quite believe it is two months since I blogged. It’s not the first time there has been a lag between posts; but this time it was very much a conscious decision. What writing time I have had needed to go towards book writing and edging my way through the 60 or so essays …
Writing for the book draft has slowed. What started pre-retreat as a sense of edginess transmuted post-retreat into a conscious decision to step back from the keyboard. The edginess was a tectonic plate-like meeting of my drive to finish and my need to break this summer. Speaking with Rinpoche on retreat brought the “high lung” …
Back from retreat, and spending my days settling back into “reality”. I haven’t found the transition as steep this time around. Maybe a testament to practice pervading more deeply into life and less “this” (normality) versus “that” (the container of retreat)? I certainly feel a little more practiced in the shift between worlds: a developing …
I’ve just returned home from a two-day, walking adventure: hiking over to Alfriston, and making the return to Lewes the next day. It’s a replication of a trip my wife and I did two months ago. As a comparison of the blog header image reveals, we are transitioning into another phase of summer: and I …
This week I have been queuing up ideas around how my approach to therapy might fit with a description of bio-psycho-social-spiritual; building on the ideas of Engel (1977) who first proposed the “biological, psychological, and social, must be taken into account in every health care task”. A philosophy of clinical care (a way of understanding …
I’m a little under halfway with the project of short essays that will form Part 3 of my book on humanistic psychotherapy. The next collection is entitled “with a little help from our friends”, and will consider how the humanistic practitioner might benefit from engaging with ideas from other therapeutic modalities. As a tutor on …
One of the stickiest traps (and frustrations) for the early career therapist is to find themselves in the realm of a client’s aboutism. What starts as the intention to “really hear and witness a client’s story” becomes a week after week reoccurrence, and soon lands us in impasse…going nowhere; if anything, solidifying what is an …
Another enjoyable week devoting much of my time to writing. I am progressing well with the essays that will form part 3 of my book Humanistic psychotherapy: experiencing second order change. This week I want to share an essay focusing on the dialectic of empathy and challenge; one we might summarise through the sentiment of not …