Blog
Living and Dying
'Death and taxes', so Benjamin Franklin wrote, were life's only certainties. Although taxes now seem like an optional extra for some large corporations, death's certainty remains.
Diagnosis and DSM V
One of the pleasures of my job as psychotherapist and counsellor is the opportunity that it affords me to get to know people.
Family Stories
Growing up I had occasion to listen to my grandmother and aunts from my extended family discussing family history. In their heads they carried a family tree which went back at least three generations.
Journey To The Heart
Some weeks have a recurring theme in working with people and helping them find a way forward. This week I found myself describing the process as a journey to the heart.
The Reality of Growing Up
A grey city, a world of black and white, where beige was boring but daring is how I remember Edinburgh. It was a world to be escaped from.
Why we are here?
I heard this week of a young woman who had killed herself, from a colleague who is a friend of their mother. This tragedy of a life lost and family bereaved, impacts as all such tragedies do, way beyond the bounds of those directly involved.
The Couples Course
In the New Year Jenny and I will be running what we have called ‘The Couples Course.’ It is a course for couples, married or unmarried, gay or straight, who are interested in learning the seven principles of what makes a relationship work and therefore last.
Asking the question why?
Asking the question ‘why?’ can be a very powerful way of understanding both oneself and others. It is possible to go from something very simple, such as asking a person their favourite colour, to something very core for them about being in their world, in a few simple steps. The following dialogue, which is based on the PCP technique of laddering illustrates this:
Flooding
The power, damage and chaos that flooding causes is all too evident this week, as parts of England endure torrential rain and people loses their homes to a rising tide of water that carries all before it.
How to Complain To Your Partner
Conflict is a normal part of being a couple, and how we manage it determines not just whether our relationship lasts but the quality of our relationship. At times we all have complaints and can feel grudges against our partners.
The Intentional Family
Rituals can bind a family together, without them families drift apart. When a couple gets together each brings with them at least one rule book as to how the rituals that permeate family life are to be undertaken.
On Being Overwhelmed
Back when I was four and a half, I went to have my tonsils out. I do not really remember anything about this. Apparently, for at this point, this is really my mother’s story, I was distressed when she arrived later than promised to take me home. A not uncommon event, but for her this was the time my difficulties started; I was no longer the “good baby” but “difficult” and “problematical” for being upset.
A Good Life
I have been lucky in my life, in having known a number of people in my early years who, when things were difficult for me in my twenties, provided role models for the life I live now.
Learning to Live With Anxiety
When Stella* came to see me, things were at the stage that she thought she might lose her job. She was ashamed because she was so anxious, she was finding it difficult to get into work in the morning.
The Sheltering of Love
The consequences for Anton Schmid because he ‘could not think and had to help’ save 250 Jews from the Holocaust was that he was shot. He attributed his lack of thought to the ‘softness of his heart’ and claimed in letters to his wife that he ‘merely behaved as a human being’.
Anniversaries
Monday will be the first anniversary of my father’s death and as I approach it I realise what an extraordinary year it has been for me.
Realising Oneself
I have always been pretty good with words, when it came to speaking, but it was not always the case when it came to writing. From my twenties onwards, I would meet writers who, on hearing me speak, would urge me to write. I would find ways to demur and avoid the process.
Alexander Botox for the Soul
The face of decision or, as I some times more colloquially put it, having first warned my pupils of an impending profanity, the ‘what the fuck face', is something that we all share. Charles Darwin observed that it exists across culture, although different cultures will construe its meaning differently. From a functional perspective, it is a psycho-physical attitude, as Alexander would have called it.
‘What’s it like?’
It’s rare in these blogs or in my work to talk directly about Personal Construct Psychology (PCP), which provides the theoretical overview of what I do.
Stillness
A few years ago, I went to hear Paco Peña play during the Festival here in Edinburgh. As well as the flamenco dancers you would expect, he had with him a troupe of African dancers. Both sets of dancers were equally fine, totally different in style and yet had something in common, which I recognise from teaching Alexander Technique.
The Long Shadow of The Good
A candle is burning as I write, its flickering dancing flame creates shadows; light and shadows dance together, inseparable in a contrasting, blending unity. We forget this at our peril when we most need understanding in our personal relationships and in our conflicts.
Would it Help?
Teaching this year, I have found myself telling pupils about the scene from Bridge of Spies, where Mark Rylance’s character when asked if he is worried, answers ‘would it help?’
Magic Time Part 1
My mother loved food and cooking, it was one of her passions and she spent much of her retirement refining her skills, which gave her great pleasure.
Magic Time Part 2 – Emerging from Stillness
The other day, I watched a cat disturbed into a startle, run away, jerkily moving, panicked by the threat of having to move from their toilet, by someone who obviously preferred their garden to be left pristine in its manicured state.
Anxiety and the Mechanics of Action
Looking online, what is most elaborated in articles about anxiety, are how it feels in terms of fear, nervousness, panic etc., the physiological underpinnings of this and the sorts of thoughts that accompany it. One feature of anxiety that can be overlooked is how much it is tied to our anticipations of what is happening or going to happen to us.
Myth and Heroes
Back when I was fourteen in 1977, the Stranglers sang about there being ‘No More Heroes’ any more. As a proposition, it was no truer then than it is now, although it was at a time of heroism being downgraded and falling in some ways out of fashion.
The Way to Language
'There is only endurance, and pain.’ So wrote John Aubrey in 1638 on being caned at school. His coping strategy was ‘to go to another place in my head: the bank of the brook at Easton Pierse, or the tree-lined riverbank at Broad Chalke, where I count the flowers and arrange their names in alphabetical order.'
Getting Into Action
I started this blog back during the summer after a conference in Padua where I volunteered to organise the next European Personal Construct Psychology conference here in Edinburgh in 2018.
How to Have A Peaceful Holiday Season
With the holiday season fast approaching, three small but powerful and effective habits to work with, to help ensure a smoother time with friends and family, if things are getting a bit fraught and fractious.
On the uses of the Alexander Technique or how to think and adapt
I think I must have been twenty six when I went for my first Alexander Technique lesson. The primary reason for going then, as it is for many people, was to find help with a musculo-skeletal problem.
Donald Trump and Fairytales
Donald Trump may not be out of his mind but he may be an idiot and in saying both things, I am actually saying the same thing: that he lacks a sense of community or fellowship, he lacks a connection with his Self.
