The Reward is the Journey

At school, I was hopeless at physics.  I have a younger sister whose aptitude for the mathematical sciences shone bright and quickly eclipsed my own.  We've both grown up.  School grades and exam marks matter very little to either of us now.  Today she uses her talents for the benefits of her patients.  And I endeavour to use my own for those I work with. Physics notwithstanding, I was ever an enthusiastic learner.  And in this respect, I am well suited to my profession.  As a therapist, it is both a pleasure and a duty to continue to learn.  Einstein is said to have been the first to say that the more we learn, the less we know.  This is certainly my experience.  And, in the therapy room at least, not knowing is important.   What know what we are but not what we may be.    ~ Ophelia, in Hamlet My clients are my teachers, as well as their own.  Whilst I have skills, and training at my disposal, I am anyth...

Anxiety is on the up.  It makes appearances ever more regularly amongst my clients/patients.*  It comes in different guises:  sometimes attaching itself to certain triggers, at other times preferring to float more freely. Anxiety is troublesome.  It demands attention yet does not like to be examined.  Anxiety does not always make sense.  There is often little value in seeking to ascertain its aetiology as, regularly, there will not be an obvious cause-and-effect in action. First things first.  Anxiety needs to be put in its place.  Therapy can be extremely helpful in right-sizing panic when anxiety has become unmanageable.   As a therapist supporting those for whom anxiety has got out of control, it is useful for me to understand what seems to be triggering anxious symptoms and how the individual experiences these.  No two anxiety presentations are identical, but there are patterns and traits I have become all...

Our relationships with the work we do are a subject to enter the therapy room with great regularity.  For many of us, how we are doing in our work has a significant bearing on how we are doing overall.  Hardly surprising, given the emphasis placed on work as a facet of our identities and the inescapable fact that, due to the fact we have bills that need paying, most of us tend to spend the majority of our waking hours at our places of work.   I am fascinated by the impact that how we employ our time has on us, and remain committed to exploring ways in which we can reduce stress, promote resilience and enhance creativity.  This deep-seated interest is something I hold as something more than an academic curiosity:  I am constantly thinking about wellbeing as a holistic working concept, and hope to share my observations and learnings as widely as possible, as often as I can.   I do this in my therapy practice, and in my mindfulness consultancy teach...