The Reward is the Journey

The phrase work-life balance is banded around freely.  Extolled as a virtue towards which we should each aspire I have been wondering, what lies beneath this phrase?   I come into contact with individuals each week who talk about their day jobs as though they were nothing more than slaves to their employers (or their bank managers).  I am never short of gratitude for their reminders - I am truly fortunate to have extracted myself from a profession I never fully arrived in, before stumbling towards and then tripping head-first into a 'line of work' that feels far better aligned to my true vocation.   Our fascination with our work means that it is pretty well the first thing we ask one another on first meeting - we are beginning to define ourselves too readily, by our occupations.  Work is no longer our occupation; it is our preoccupation.   I work therefore I am...  Really?  I claim experience, rather than expertise.  I am an...

My heart has been in need of surgery more than once.  Not due to any hereditary defect or condition compromising the vascular function, but something equally as painful (though, I'm pleased to say, not necessarily as serious in the long term) - put simply, my heart has needed mending. My heart has experienced brokenness.  More than once.   For all the 'I'll never do that again's, I did.  For all the lessons I felt I'd learnt the hard way, I had, and I needed reminding.  But the error was placing it in the wrong hands in the first place.  With time, I have learnt to treat my heart with a greater respect.  We are, possibly as a product of bitter experience, better acquainted. Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.   Buddha A psychotherapy training is like an extended work-out for body, mind and soul.  During which my heart was pushed to the max at regular intervals.  It...

She deserves the best.  And I'm confident that it's out there, waiting for us.  But where, oh where...?  Entrusting the wellbeing of someone you love into a stranger's hands can never be easy.  Mothers experience this, I know, whenever they leave their child in the care of someone else.  But particularly when they do this for the first time.     Children, I have recently found, can experience a parallel and equally daunting process, when researching options for their ailing parents.  Suddenly, the tables are turned, and it is hard to know where to start.  I feel as though I have been on a very steep learning curve of late.  One I did not foresee, seek, or particularly welcome. There is, definitely, a shortage of information.  It is a case of going in blind.  I have read classified sections of seemingly appropriate publications.  I have placed ads.  Countless phone calls and quite a few meetings have ensue...

I had been looking forward to seeing the products of an important experiment since the exhibition was first advertised.  Gendered Intelligence is an organisation whose name speaks its mission beautifully succinctly.  Gender is an area in which we are, it seems, lost at sea.  There is so much still to do, but Anatomy speaks volumes and starts a debate.  My only fear is that, as tends to be the case with anything about gender, it will be attended to and by only those who are already 'on the right page', if indeed a wide enough page could ever be found. About GI's Anatomy The project was, from its inception, challenging and exciting.  GI never imagined it would capture the interest of so many would-be transgender and intersex life models.  The work now on display at the Tavistock Clinic are some of the outcomes of a series of four practical life drawing workshops.  Those who produced the eye opening, thought provoking, assumption challenging artw...

I have been delighted by the recent buzz of interest in the mindfulness program that I will begin teaching this weekend.  I am looking forward to introducing a full group to mindfulness and to Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.  For details of future courses,  please visit my website.    The pre-course meetings I arrange with individuals before they embark upon a mindfulness program are important.  Wherever possible I seek to meet everyone before Session 1.  If we can't meet face to face, then a phone call is scheduled.   These meetings give participants the opportunity to meet me, and put a face to a name - most often people will approach me by email, and we exchange information (me about the course, them about themselves) - meeting in the flesh can be really helpful, making easier to walk into the room to join a group for the first time. One of the things I spend some time considering with anyone who approaches me wanting to learn...

Addiction can, and will, remain a mystery unless those of us who suffer from it make it our life's business to research it.  To be armed with the facts is to have a chance.  Facts and fellowship.   I recently attended a meeting in a room whose walls I had not previously entered.  It mattered not.  I have been to meetings all over the world.  Two years ago, I was sitting in similarly designated rooms in Hong Kong with other English speakers.  United in a single purpose.  Together we recover.   Compassion, I was reminded in a meeting I have been attending on and off for over a decade and that I have, at times, considered a home-group (a secure base to which I could return whatever-the-weather and find experience, strength and hope on tap), is an activity. We cannot simply 'be' compassionate.  We are perhaps more accurately, ever becoming compassionate.  For to feel true compassion is to be involved in the suffering of a...

It has already been a good New Year.  The first week of the year is something I treat with a degree of respect that doesn't often get replicated too closely for the fifty one that follow.  It is, I think, often very telling whom it is that I choose to spend recreation time with. Recreation is, I feel, something to be taken very seriously.  I often ask clients at the beginning of our work together what it is that they most enjoy doing.  I even have a question on the intake form that every new client completes at the commencement of therapy - I ask them to describe what their perfect day would look like, what shape it would take, where they would be, what they would do, and whom they'd most like to spend it with...  How we spend time that we might truly call our own is, I think, very important in determining who we are, and how we feel. This week has been something of a gift.  I have spent time with friends and family.  People who are important ...