Yesterday was our teaching team’s annual “away day”. Impacted by the retirement of one of our senior faculty and the changes in the curriculum this would be necessitated, this year’s theme was coming back to the philosophical underpinnings of our psychodynamic and humanistic courses. I was delighted to have this opportunity to discuss the very …
This week I share the fourth essay of my intended 64 for my coming book…progress, but a long way to go! This one on “the courage to be” follows on from themes such as “knowing” and “the gift of presence”. I won’t be publishing all the essays, but I hope sharing a few over the …
Settling into my new environment, post retreat, entering the mandala…each pointing to something starting afresh, a toward becoming. The demands of spring dissolve into expectations and hopes for the summer ahead. Hence why on Wednesday this week I took myself “out on a date”, a mini writing retreat over in my old town of Eastbourne. …
On the boat back home. My original intention was to use the ferry crossing France ahead of my retreat to draft a post. But such was the choppy sea, that plan soon drained away! However, there was also a lack of intrinsic motivation to write. At first, I watched my mind try to work out …
I wasn’t sure I would get time to write this week, such is the end of term and the tidal wave of assignments that need my attention. And yet it is these assignments that inspire me to make the time. The trainee’s attempts at what is affectionately referred to as the “leaving home essay” this …
This post was to share my most recent “blog to book” intention, having used this model of developing content successfully last time around. And I still do want to (and will) share some of my plans ahead for book 2 on humanistic psychotherapy. I want to share how last week, the day I spent reacquainting …
The enduring theme of the past fortnight has been on of integration; now settled in to the physical space of ‘house’, folding in life around that centre and making ‘home’. Those routines and ritual that hold me and my life together, for example, my work place has stayed the same but the time it takes …
As I sit and start writing this first blog for a while, I connect with the memory of how I started my blogging career “like this” – a savoured moment sat in the corner of a cafe. Twenty years ago, I was writing about cycling and coaching. The coffee companion remains, this Helen still cycles, …
I can’t believe its Friday again. Time goes ever so fast these days anyway; but this week it has been stretching and contracting, and I don’t quite know where (and when) I am. I don’t really know HOW I am either… This time last week, I was receiving the news that my Dad, who was …
In the last post, I shared some of my experience of the training route to becoming a psychotherapist. This week, some more reflections from a less theoretical perspective… One main difference between a formative counselling training and a progression into psychotherapy training is that in the latter, one is now qualified and spending more time …