Ariadnes Thread counselling

 Following the light is a series of pictures taken when I was drawn out because of the light. Mainly looking at contrasts in the evening or morning light in the seaside town where I live in Devon. One evening I was working in my office and noticed some of the cloud structures. I had tried to photo some of the sunsets before, some have unbelievable colour but never caught just what I wanted. I am an amiture photographer so these are very much as taken Light and dark are so important in our lives - binary contrasts but it is in  the in between places that potential is to be found - the what if's and could be's. The edge of darkness and light is the liminal place threshold where the worlds meet. Across vast expanse of sea the celts cast their skin covered coracle into the water and waited to see where the wind would take them - blown by the wind of the Spirit. There was little fear of what might cause them harm because to find such a place offered the holy task of "praying it...

The big pothole I was walking back from the station and coming over the crossing noticing the hole in the road. I happen to think that with the chronic underfunding of well just about everything, but particularly in this instance the Devon County Highways department, about the hole I could see. A very obliging driver stopped watching me take a photo of it and then giving me the thumbs up as I crossed. It’s a bit difficult to see just how big it is.  My thinking turned to – you know those times when you hit a pothole. Travelling along and then an almighty thump as you realise that you did not see this hole in front of you and wonder what sort of damage it done/doing to wheels and tires. I am sure that I hear somewhere that the council have a fund that is more than the budget allocated for repairs, for compensation for the damage done and claimed for.   It made me think in the rather tangential way I do that this might be a familiar kind of feeling for me. Life just seems to be ...

  All too much - just go fishing When it all gets toooooo much One of the constant things I get asked about is anxiety, or “it’s doing my head in”.   For many people today life is just too stressed and out of this is born our anxieties. It may be simple to suggest that much of this is something that as humanity we have done to ourselves, it does not make the anxiety any the less real though. Putting religious sentimentalities aside for a second, we are not so long out of the hunter gatherer stage of development. Within this we had an important part of our social structure in both the closeness of relatives but also in the tribe that we lived in. No one was expected to care for babies, children, the sick or the elderly on their own. These were community issues and others helped and brought knowledge and other support to a communal wisdom. The sense of the individual was less prominent. I think that also it might have been easier (although maybe not better) that people knew thei...

Nostalgia and impermanence I was walking past my old school today (I only went there for a year having moved with the family after my dad got a job with Devon County). 50 years ago, the part that is being demolished was a 5 th form block, that specific bit was a lounge coffee bar. It was here that I set the KitKat red wrapper four finger ripping record. Having collected 100 of the outer wrappers using just my fingers ripping them apart. It was heralded as a world record! The rest of the building was also significant for me. By the coffee area (I don’t remember coffee being served much there) were the private study booths. Downstairs was a workshop that facilitated apprentice level wood and metal workshops. Here I created my nearly 2-meter interlocking forms (triangles) sculpture for my CSE art. I spent three hours in the private study booths building up enough courage to go to the local youth club later that evening and began a friendship that was to totally change my life, with someo...

The social dimensions to therapy   I read a very profound quote by way of Andrew Ramseys book English Grounds originally from Aldous Huxley book Heaven and Hell. “….the perception of the infinite in the finite particular, is a revelation of the divine immanence” I guess that what I was taking from this was something not religious, as in the divine imminence, but that from the very small blossoms into the very large. This small personal event, attitude, or response ripples out through ourselves into the society and culture that we are all forming. Individual events may seem to be unconnected, but they are all a part of our ongoing meta-story. Our individual relationships, including the relationship we have with ourselves, are entangled with the world we live in. It’s a lot to think about because we often are very familiar with the specific self, although Johari window (https://www.selfawareness.org.uk/2022/09/25/understanding-the-johari-window-model) might beg to differ; there is so...

What’s in a word? The word psyche relates to the human soul or the innermost self perhaps the true being. I like the thought of soul but then I guess that I might. In Greek mythology Psyche was the goddess of the soul who was said to have been a beautiful almost as much as Aphrodite, she was to inspire the love of Eros the god of desire. The word therapist relates to a person who specialises in therapeutic treatment of impairment, injury, or disorder. So, when a fellow counsellor at CAMHS described himself as a psychotherapist, and I asked him what this meant he told me that he was a healer of the soul. This person was not overtly religious and may have taken a wider view of what “soul” meant but, a healer of the psyche, nevertheless. I have to say that this has been an ongoing debate in the counselling world, within the definition of Counsellor and Psychotherapist. BACP is the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and seems at times to not make a distinction. I underst...