Here are my reflections on life and living. I won't tell you what you should do or think. I will tell you what I'm learning or have learned along the way.

When problems don't go away

I come across problems all the time as a counsellor: it’s why people see me. Equally - though I often prefer to ignore this fact - I have...

4 min read

What fills our cups? Lessons from sharing an empty cup of tea.

How do we find meaning? Here is what I learned from sharing an empty cup of tea with my son.

2 min read

A dad's pause

“Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward...

4 min read

Hope

The third reflection following a process group centred around making sense of the war between Russia and the Ukraine. In these, I am...

2 min read

Peace in pieces

This is the second reflection I wrote down following a process group whose conversation centred on the war between Russia and the...

2 min read

The tyrant within

Process groups are hard. If you’ve never attended one (and they are a counsellor-y thing to attend!), they are, in effect, a group of...

2 min read

Ukraine

Merely the word evokes so much feeling: terror and pride; grief, horror and floundering confusion; compassion, camaraderie as well as a...

3 min read

Searching for meaning?

It seems to me that the more we search for the meaning of our lives, the more it proves both necessary and yet elusive. The pain of this...

5 min read

Finding Our Meaning Again

Life is full of meaning and emptiness. Acknowledging this paradox of the human experience and our experiences of it is necessary for...

6 min read

Empty and full: living with the human condition

‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’ (Ecclesiastes, 1:1) Another rendering is...

3 min read

Depth perception

We’re used to seeing in 2D. Social media, TV, newspapers (if anyone still reads them) crush humans onto a 2-D medium. And often not...

4 min read

Learning to be trustworthy III: learning to still hope

Can I trust you? This strikes at the heart of encounters. ‘Can I trust what you say? That you won’t let me down? That you care? Do I need...

5 min read

Learning to be trustworthy II: learning to be reliable and competent

Trustworthiness is perhaps the most crucial characteristics for being a therapist¹. Trust is perhaps the most crucial characteristic for...

4 min read

Learning to be trustworthy I: Learning to be honest

I don’t trust you. You can’t be trusted. Such accusations hit us hard. They strike right at our sense of who we are. We often react with...

3 min read

Doing Me

This week I was sharing with a colleague a struggle I was having at work. They’re not a therapist, but their response was as good as it...

3 min read

Wondering about dreams: finding clarity in the murkiness

Dreams can feel rather mystical. What do they mean? Are they trying to tell us something? What’s it saying about me? If we come from a...

6 min read

Just One Thing: A New Year's Demand

It’s the New Year! And I wish I had some resolutions I could believe in. Believe that I could, with some renewed determination that...

5 min read

How to deal with Christmas stress

Brené Brown has an insightful definition of stress The Atlas of the Heart: We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as...

6 min read

Ordinary Tea. Ordinary lives.

I would quite like a teapot at the moment. Not a big one; ideally, just big enough for two average-sized mugs. I have an image in mind,...

4 min read

The tyranny of happiness: why positive psychology needs to see its shadow

We had a staff training day a while back. It was about happiness. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? I was excited about a day purely focussed on...

5 min read