Back Room Chat

I have been thinking lately that it is time I shared a lot more of what I know with more people. Why?.… because I think that for some people, maybe many, it will help them to live happier and more meaningful lives. Otherwise, to write my views and opinions, what is the use, really? There are opinions everywhere. There always were but today it is different. People are constantly writing their opinions and shooting them out to who knows who or where! We who receive them scan them quickly and move onto something else feeling displeased or maybe pleased, very momentarily. For me, and hopefully for you, my view has been formed into a deep unshakable truth about the condition of the human mind, how it gets to develop and what can be done about it for those who want to change. A deep understanding is needed and I am offering some of my own knowledge which has developed over many years. Therefore I am sharing my work, my own development with you through the medium of this website.

Since I have been extremely fortunate in this life to have found work and a life that is immensely fulfilling it has given me the opportunity to find out a lot about what people want in their lives. From the beginning it was not difficult because I already knew when I began my somatic psychotherapy training that most people just wanted to be happy. I did too. I also wanted to be more useful in my life. That was a major reason I was drawn to become a psychotherapist. I was required to do a certain amount of personal therapy as part of my training. That made a lot of sense to me and I was already ‘in therapy’ anyhow. I ended up being in therapy, working on myself for a number of years.

So humans need happiness and to feel useful.

Happiness is one thing but sometimes people just want to feel OK. That is what a young man told me when he came to me recently suffering from disillusionment and depression. When I asked him what he wanted he said, "I just want to feel OK." That summed it up for me. OK was good enough and I think it is good enough when you are a suffering 20 year old. However others may want to find out how to deal with a particular person at work or they may want to learn how to be free of an addiction. They want to develop particular skills for many different situations. They are troubled, unhappy and often cannot see any point to their lives. Anyhow, they mainly want to feel happier than they currently feel when they come to see me.

Maybe people can gain some insight to sort out their problems just from reading my views. It wont necessarily make it very easy because working on one’s self and one’s difficulties is always hard … but never too hard. Humans are incredibly strong and resourceful and can become more so if they can seek out and take some help along life’s way.

So, from my work with people and constant ‘work’ on myself, I could now say I am quite accomplished in knowing a lot about human existence, the human mind … and since that has been the very nature of my work for over 25 years I feel I qualify as a kind of philanthropist in the field of life and the living of it. As is commonly known in this area of work, one does not go into it for the money, so rather than donating money to some good cause I can donate the knowledge and wisdom I have gained to help people to lead happier lives by coming to understand themselves. This, I believe, is an essential and great ‘good cause’ in this time of amazing change and growth for the whole world population. I hope I can be quite successful!

I do not really think there is a thing called happiness to be found, not outside of ourselves, anyhow. We can find happy situations, happy experiences and many things that will make us feel happy temporarily. The truth is, what one individual experiences as making them happy may not apply to another person standing right next to them. In fact the same situation could make the other person feel quite miserable. Simply by knowing that, we can understand that relying on any particular experience or situation to make ourselves happy just does not work. These happy experiences we find are often short lived and then we are not happy again. Nor can we rely on people or money or any material possessions for happiness because one day these may disappear from our lives. So what I have found in therapy is when a person is sorting out problems and difficulties which are all too often, very complex, very debilitating, and quite difficult to deal with, they can also be taking advantage of their learning and find a more lasting way to make themselves happier. Actually, through gaining understanding about themselves this comes quite naturally. That means they will be coming to the understanding by working with their own minds, understanding their mind or their self.

To this end I always tell people we will be working with their minds. That is what we do. Mind is there and mind has to change, become more flexible. The inner self has to change in order to sort out problems and to be happy. This, I might add, has no ‘airy fairy’ spiritual kind of overtones, just simple, straight down the line working with how it really is … how one’s mind really is and training oneself out of all kinds of beliefs, habits, thinking and behaviours that support unsteadiness rather than a steady comfortability of mind... a flexible mind.

When a woman has become depressed and dysfunctional because their boyfriend has left them … we will not focus on getting the boyfriend back even though that can be a part of the work. No, we will focus on her getting over the sadness, the anger or rage, whatever is there in the mind and learn how to live and be OK with or without the boyfriend.

Indeed, I have helped many a girl get her boyfriend back, through helping her work on her mind. In working through her anxiety, grief, disappointment and anger she gains a deeper understanding about the reality of why she wants that boyfriend so much in the first place. Through the inflexibility of her mind her need is so great, too great for the boy! She changes. He comes back, though nothing is permanent and he then finds he has to change too!

So I will keep updating you with all sorts of ideas and information that can help you gain a greater understanding about yourself and give you some confidence that there are ways to help yourself out of predicaments, even grave ones, so that you more easily see a way through to feeling happy and useful. Understanding your own mind and mentality, how it developed, understanding the choices you have made because of that, creates a real opportunity for change if you want it.