Inner Life Therapy and Coaching
“I can’t decide,” said the young man pacing up and down. “It’s a jumble and I don’t even know if I trust myself. What should I do?”
The old man sat quietly looking down at the ground. After a pause he looked at the young man and replied, “That’s because you don’t know where to decide from.”
“What do you mean? How do I make a decision from somewhere? I just need to make up my mind.”
“So you decide with your mind? You think a decision!” [Read more…] about Cultivating Knowing: a conversation
It was winter 1979 in Edinburgh, and as usual the wind off the North Sea cut to the bone. A group of eight of us huddled in a circle around an electric bar heater in Winifred’s front room. Although we met weekly, we knew little of each other’s outer lives. Our only task was to explore the workings of our inner worlds through sharing dreams.
Dr. Winfred Rushforth sat in an overstuffed armchair, a gently commanding presence, her snowy hair forming a halo around a strong square wrinkled face framed by oversize glasses. At 96 she had been practicing as a psychoanalyst for over 50 years and her owl-like gaze could penetrate any dream to its most obscure depths. [Read more…] about Appreciating Dreams
This is the first of a two-part article on how to work with dreams. Tongue-in-cheek, I explore different aspects of dreamwork using the metaphor of fish and fishing. In this section, I deal with how we catch, hold on to and recognize different kinds of dreams. A second article will address how to prepare, cook and digest these strange creatures of the unconscious.
Dreams are slippery fish—hard to catch and difficult to hold. They don’t give up their nourishment without a bit of a struggle and some resolute cooking. [Read more…] about Fishing for Dreams: Part 1
This is the second of a two-part article on dreamwork using the metaphor of fishing. We have caught our dream-fish and held it tight so it does not slip through the fingers of our mind. Now comes the really interesting part: How to prepare and cook our dream so that it provides nourishment for our hearts, minds and souls.
Lay out the fish
Our dream-fish lies fresh in our minds-eye. We examine it carefully to see what we need to do next. This is when we write down the dream. [Read more…] about Fishing for Dreams: Part 2
Introduction
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—we find it with another.” 1 This quote from Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and author, points toward a neglected aspect of relationship in the second half of life: that it can become the container for profound inner growth.
[Read more…] about Spirituality and Relationship in Later Life
This is an extraordinary and difficult time. With so much uncertainty and social turmoil, it is easy to give in to fear and hopelessness. We must keep physically safe to avoid being infected and infecting others. We must also take care of our emotional and mental wellbeing. Below are suggestions to help you maintain your inner psychological balance. [Read more…] about Self-Care during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Therapy is one of the few places where you can be completely honest with yourself and explore all your thoughts, feelings and actions. However, therapy is not simple or easy. Like any worthwhile undertaking, it can be demanding as well as immensely fulfilling.
To get the most out of your time in therapy, you should ask yourself: How can I best use this time? What will help me make the changes I want? What might get in the way of making progress? [Read more…] about Getting the Most out of Therapy
Introduction
Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being.
C. G. Jung, The Red Book
This is a story of my life between the ages of 14 and 18, an intense period that happened during the 1960’s in Wales and Ireland. It is an odd story, filled with twists and turns—but it is real, or at least as real as my memory and my Self allows. [1] I wrote most of the narrative years ago, but something was missing, incomplete. [Read more…] about Surface and Depths: Introduction
Summer 1966, age 14
The world reassembled as my eyes opened. I was looking up at a plain white ceiling, smooth with no cracks. It was not my bedroom ceiling. My gangly 14-year-old body was lying on a bed covered by a sheet and thin blanket, dressed in baggy blue-striped pajamas—definitely not my pajamas. The room had a faint disinfectant smell and it was empty except for the bed and a bedside table. Like the room, my head was empty—blank. [Read more…] about 1: Surface & Depth – An Encounter with Death
Summer 1966, age 14
We sat in the back of the rattling ambulance on our way back to Cardiff from the hospital—a journey of ten miles. The nurse had hustled us off, dressed in borrowed pajamas, dressing gowns and cheap slippers.
Across from me, Toody clung close to Dad, quiet and subdued. He looked smaller than usual in his drooping pajamas as though shrunk in the wash. Not quite 13, he was still a child: round baby face, big sad green eyes and shrill voice. We shared a bedroom but since the move to Cardiff 18 months ago, we’d grown apart—or maybe I’d stopped caring. His chirpy manner got on my nerves, so I tuned him out, like other things that bothered me. A lot of things bothered me. [Read more…] about 2: The Unconscious Family