I just sent out a newsletter exploring the dynamic between the longing to change and the power of compassionate self-acceptance.
We all want to change – it’s what brings us into therapy. And self-acceptance is also crucially important.
Read more here: Looking to change yourself? I have something else to offer.
A few weeks ago I spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Belief about Faith and Addiction. You can read my thoughts about the topic, and find the link to the episode on my Substack blog.
Inviting you to be more at ease with who you are. “Interesting, thought provoking and witty.” Untangling the knots that come with being human.
Since January 2023 I’ve been sharing my new writing via Substack. Mostly personal sharing that aims to give us all permission for us to be a little kinder to ourselves. Check it out: Just As You Are
Read my article about therapists love for their clients at the Counselling Directory: is Love a Dirty Word?
When Satya and I started running a Buddhist temple it felt like we had suddenly progressed to the next level of the game. I can almost see the cut scene, and hear the music: the temple rendered in 8-bit glory the 8-bit beeps and whistles. When we got our puppy a month ago it felt like the same thing. I can think of other moments that were like that as well: getting married, moving into my first Buddhist community and training as a monk, my first time directing theatre…
All of these things have ultimately been rewarding. That’s that thing about the next level — the monsters are harder to beat, and the puzzles are harder to solve, but there is more treasure as well.
And at some point — when you are in the middle of playing — you level up: your character gets stronger, or quicker, or more magical, and the game is easier again.
It can be like that in life too.
Before Aiko the puppy arrived I did lots of reading about how to look after dogs. Some of it helpful, some of it less so. I came away with some useful knowledge, and the amount I read also fed into my anxiety about trying to get things absolutely right (an impossible task, of course).
We had a one to one with a puppy trainer, and we’re going to Dog’s Trust training classes, and for a while none of that seemed to make any difference to my anxiety. And then one morning it was just easier.
I levelled up.
I reached a point where I felt like I more or less knew what I was doing and my inner system changed as well, I had become more relaxed about the whole thing. The first one is easy to explain: all of that reading and training and practicing was paying off. My inner system adjusting was just as important but how that change happened might be less obvious.
I think the most important part of the process of inner change was finding spaces where I could be heard, and where I could be supported to hear myself. Spaces where it’s okay to say – “I’m finding this hard”.
As Carl Rogers said: “We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.”
How does this work? Deep acceptance of who we are means that our defensive postures and habits relax, and when they relax — we become more like who we really are.
The difficult times in life — when we progress to the next level — can be great gifts because alongside the difficulty they offer these wonderful opportunities for learning both practical skills, and for letting go of anxieties, compulsions and negative self-belief and we can come out of the situations better than when we went in.
As a gamer might say: sometimes you need to grind to level up.
At 8.15am the new puppy had just gone to sleep. She’d been up since 6:30am, and from 8.00am she was biting and chewing and chasing everything in sight: her toys, my toes, my wife’s shoes, the cat…
Sometimes when she’s tired she gets like that. We put her to bed and she very quickly flopped over and closed her eyes. Sometimes she dreams, moving her feet whilst she’s asleep, and making little noises.
This is our first dog, she’s been at home with us for three weeks, and what a learning curve! She is gorgeous, delightful and she’s just slept through the night for the first time.
As well as learning how to look after a dog, and how a puppy changes from day to day, I’ve also learnt a lot about myself. New situations offer that opportunity. Sometimes that learning has felt like a gentle curiosity, and sometimes that learning has come out of an experience of being almost full of powerful emotions.
In stressful situations our habitual ways of staying safe in the world can come out even more forcefully than usual. For some people it’s micro-managing. For some people it’s finding ways of distracting themselves, or getting distance from the stressor. All of these habits are usually ways of preventing ourselves from feeling some powerful emotion that we (subconsciously) worry might overwhelm us: anxiety, grief, anger, guilt and so on.
Where do these powerful emotions come from that suddenly well up and invite us to jump into our self-protective strategies? They come from the past.
The current stressful situation has some echoes of a time when we couldn’t manage or didn’t know what to do. We were too little or we weren’t resourced enough to cope. And if we haven’t fully processed what happened in the past – if we haven’t felt what we needed to feel, let go of what needed to be let go, and healed those wounds — those feelings come up again and again. Why? They are inviting healing.
That’s why these current stressful situations are such a great opportunity—there is an invitation to heal old wounds. And when those old wounds are healed, we no longer need to dive into micro-managing, or distracting, or whatever, and as well as coping with the present, we can actually begin to enjoy ourselves.
It can really help to have another person alongside for this healing journey. A counsellor can provide a safe space to talk, they can help you feel emotions without being overwhelmed by them, and they can support the letting go and healing that is needed.
In this way stressful situations can be the door to more freedom. If we approach ourselves with curiosity and get the support we need, we can come out of them better than we were before.
We’ve just adopted new puppy. She’s been home for nine days and when she first arrived she spent her time either being completely awake and very lively, or completely conked out. She’s desperately cute, and we’re sleep deprived.
As anyone who has a new puppy knows, when they come home what used to be ordinary life goes out of the window.
This disruption of our ordinary schedules made me think about my attachment to plans and outcomes.
There are times when I want to be quiet and she wants to play. There I times when I want to work and she wants to play. There are times when I’m ready to play, or go out and show her the world and she is flopped over on one side and fast asleep.
We’re slowly getting to know each other’s needs and routines, and I’m learning how completely her needs cut across my plan for the day. How used to following my own agenda I’d become!
In my life I have plenty of aims and objectives: things like some writing in the morning, lunch at lunchtime, a nap in the afternoon, and a few clients each day.
In my work with clients I aim to be completely agenda-less.
When I investigate that intention more deeply I find that it isn’t completely true. My agenda is to keep my clients best interests at heart without really knowing what that looks like.
I have a general sense that healing trauma is a good thing to do. So that’s an agenda. I also know that what healing looks like is different for each person, and that healing needs to happen in the clients’ time — not in my time.
So there is an aim, and there is aimlessness. Aimlessness is often considered a negative thing in today’s world. But the aimlessness that I’m talking about includes paying attention, keeping curious and staying warm towards the client.
It’s easier to do this with clients than in my own life. With clients I have an agreed plan of when and where to meet, and for how long, and for that time my own aims and agendas can be put down. Most of the time, anyway. When my needs do make themselves known in a session I can ask them to wait until later when I can attend to them…
…and that can become useful information in the therapy process. Maybe I’ll write another article about working relationally that dives a little deeper into that another time.
My life isn’t bounded in the way a therapy session is, and sometimes I really want to do things my way. However most of the time it’s probably good for me to bring this kind of aimlessness into my own life as well — can I have the best of intentions for myself and the puppy, and everyone else —and let go of knowing what that looks like?
This letting go of knowing requires a little faith. It requires trust in something beyond my own selfish needs.
Buddhism calls this the unconditioned. Other faiths and philosophies have different names. Julien of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
So what is the goal of goal-less therapy? To enter into trusting that all shall be well, without knowing what that looks like, and to trust that coming into closer more compassionate relationship with ourselves is healing, without knowing where that healing may lead.
And the goal of a goal-less life? The same.
“When I see how the strawberry plants have grown and spread themselves all across the veg. patch, I am reminded that the Chinese character for nature means something like ‘self-managing’. The natural world manages just fine without us. Our minds are often like this too – when we relax, the healing process begins to unfold of its own accord.”
Read more in my Counselling Directory article: The Power of Working Outside
I’ve written an article about IFS that’s been published on the Counselling Directory website. Check it out here: Working with Internal Family Systems
I’ve just published a new article on the counselling directory website: is online therapy for me?