Needing to wake particularly early one morning this week I had a predictably restless nights sleep. Having woken at both midnight and again at three I then embarked upon a vivid dream which began with a previous client of mine writing a phone number on my leg and which culminated in me finding myself in […]

Walking to get coffee this morning it’s as cold as I can remember. As I move past people with scarves wrapped tightly around their faces and others scraping ice from windscreens I eventually reach the yellow glow of the cafe and feel the rush of warm air as I heave open the door. Waiting at […]

Listening to the radio this morning Griff Rhys Jones is talking about a film he has made for the BBC exploring Great Britain. As I listen he expounds a view I have always held hard, that these shores are full of wonder and beauty of which many of us are unaware, never fully appreciate and […]

A Facebook friend asked for my thoughts on an article he had read on the subject of anxiety. First, let me tell you a couple of things I have learned from working with people who suffer from anxiety. First, nobody believes much in their own recovery. Anxiety isn’t seen as a jacket we put on […]

I’ve had better Mondays. After a disappointment came a cancellation, then another one. Sometimes people are just too busy to get better. Rolling around a conversation from my own therapy that morning (it’s part of ethical practice to make sure we therapists sort out our own heads to avoid any possibility of us doing so […]

I made a deal with myself which I started regretting almost immediately. Back in May, as the days started to dwindle away I thought about giving myself some sort of task or objective to complete in June. I have often found that setting myself small challenges helps me to achieve things I would otherwise have […]

Listening to the radio last weekend a programme caught my ear. “Mark Watson’s Inner Child” was a light hearted documentary on the rising tide of “kidult” activities and the companies who peddle them, encouraging adults to get in touch with their inner child. I listened with a slight sense of incredulity accompanied by the notion […]

In the poem “For A Far Out Friend” writer Gary Snyder references “Devas”,  beings of greater power and bliss than can be found in humanity. We seem to find it hard to achieve much bliss at times, in the tumult of everyday existence, and even a moderate level of happiness and contentment can be elusive when […]

I have writers block, whatever that is. I knew it would happen, that one week I would be lost for something to write but that I would simultaneously feel the need to keep going anyway. Gazing out of the window I wonder why that man always parks his black Mercedes outside my house, and I […]

Ghosts. Yesterday, buying a coffee, I had to fight my way through an ever extending array of plastic Halloween decorations, a commercial and tenuous connection to the ancient Celtic belief that this time of year marks a blurring of the lines between the living and the dead. As the leaves turn and the morning chill […]