What is Counselling?

Today I spent the morning writing  my entry for the Counselling Directory.

I was trying to say what I consider the process of counselling to consist of without using too much jargon or convoluted syntax. This was difficult and I found myself frozen in a condition of indecision for minutes at a time. I like to use words to pin things down but that is not always possible.

Firstly some words have been ruined by bureaucratic abuse, for example, the word 'empowerment'. Because it has been used by so many agencies in a glib and meaningless way it has become a pale and insubstantial term that signals dreary disempowering interventions by tired and uninspired employees of local government departments who themselves have been disempowered by bullying bosses, micromanagement and government initiatives.

Yet it should be a good word. It is important that we are empowered to make decisions and take control of our lives. David Smail in his book, The Nature of Unhappiness, points out that mental distress can be understood in terms of lack of personal power in the areas of action, thought and feeling.  Not having control in each or any of these areas almost inevitably leads to anxiety, frustration and depression.

Secondly, words, much as I love them, are limited. They don't comprehensively cover all the kinds of things that happen when two people communicate in the context of a counselling session. There are lots of non verbal communications occurring which are subtle and have the unique quality of the moment and which impart  a distinct flavour to the session. This is why transcripts of what is said during counselling seem rather banal. You can't determine what was occurring just by reading the words, just as you can't judge the performance of a play by reading its script.

But whatever is happening, the counsellor is helping the client regain his or her power over action, thought, feeling and I would like to add, meaning. One of the worst forms of disempowerment is the loss of the personal meaning we give to the events and the patterns of our lives. That is devastating. The counsellor helps* the client uncover meanings. Art, literature, music, science all deal with meanings as do family relationships, work, sport and love. We say 'It means a lot to me', when we want to indicate an event or situation that is of essential importance to us. When you find meaning...what happens? I'm trying not to sound as though I'm preaching a sermon, but that's difficult. When you find meaning you find life. That's the expression that came to mind but I hesitated to put it down for fear of sounding like Echart Tolle when I wanted to sound like R.D. Laing.

*'Helps'  a word now discredited because it has an undeserved reputaion of indicating a patronising situation. It needs to be reinstated as it is a very helpful word.

Explanations & Riots Part 1

The Riots have troubled me. They've got into my dreams. They've dominated my conscious thinking. They've given me Apocalyptic shivers. They've made me fear that there is something fundamentally wrong with our society.

I have been equally troubled by the explanations people have found for them. They have frequently shown a viciousness and misanthropy that has matched that shown by the rioters themselves. Calls for violent measures seem, to me at least, to spring from the same core of frustration, discontent and unhappiness that is behind the rioters' behaviour.

Sorry to get a bit psychodynamic here but it's unavoidable: there appears to be a projection occuring; that is, we are seeing in the perpetrators of the crimes we are witnessing something of the rotteneness in our own hearts. Hence we call them 'evil'. We want to see them not as confused, morally muddled people like ourselves acting badly, but as entities who are totally evil. Once we establish that we can explores the joys of vengeance. Enter Arnie, Clint, or whoever to 'take them out' while we drool with delight. That'll teach 'em! Such a sentiment is probably the same as that of many of the rioters: We'll f.....g show you! or words to that effect probably went through their minds.


In Christian terms what I'm saying is 'He who is without sin cast the first stone'. I'm not a Christian but I greatly admire this saying by the great Rabbi, Yeshua, who is exhorting us to look into our own hearts before we mete out punishment. This approach, of course, has been comprehensively ignored throughout the history of Christendom.

I'm not [and I'm sick of labouring this kind of point] advocating 'being soft on crime'. What I'm saying is that before we proffer explanations, and explanations lead on to remedies including punishments, we need to look long and hard at ourselves.

I'm horrified by the rioting but I  can't say I'm surprised at it. Trouble has been simmering away in the background for years.

Before I go any further I apologise for adding my opinion to the 100 million opinions on this topic that have already been expressed in print, on blogs, in pubs, amongst friends and so on. 

I would also like to remind anyone who reads this that explanations are not justifications. Just because I try to understand why people riot does not mean that  I condone their actions. In fact I'd definitely fight back if my community was threatened.

What I am curious about is the mindset of the rioters. What is going on in their heads? How do they justify their actions? They no doubt do; they might not be educated but they are not stupid. How do they see the world they find themselves in?

These are uncomfortable questions for us all because we love to demonise others. It is one of the great dirty pleasures of being human. I do it myself. Three or four pints of beer and  I 'm saying all chavs/NOW reporters/social workers/traffic wardens/public school boys/fruit and veg traders/ local council officials/Daily Mail readers/Co-op Bank staff/psychiatrists/Jeremy Clarksons or whoever else has happened to upset me during the day should be shot, tortured, castrated, sent to live in Coalville, and worse. Ranting is such fun! No doubt a scientist will tell us 'research shows it activates the pleasure centres of the brain'. But scientists are just a bunch of f...g geeks aren't they?

Demonising is a process that is opposed to empathising. Empathising is what I'm talking about. What would be interesting would be to hear what rioters say about themselves and their actions. Of course this would not be popular, but it might help us to diagnose the sickness that afflicts our society.

Another note: empathy is not sympathy.

In the course of adult life I've talked to quite a lot of bad and mad people and have found it illuminating to discover their paranoid views of the universe, that is the real or imaginary entities that are their demons. These include Galactic conspirators, the Mekon, Muslims, anyone from Africa, Social Services, the Illuminati, the Marcone, Communists, Capitalists, Zionists, the Insect People, Irishmen...It's hard to distinguish the insane from the political and the religious.

Likewise with the rioting tribes: they will have a shared view of the world , they will have their demons. Knowing what these are will be help solve the problems we face collectively. We can guess what some of these are: the police, immigrants, the middle classes and so on. The rioters are part of the great stinking, sticky mass of discontent, anger, frustration, depression, envy, greed, that sits in the middle of our society, that we all contribute to. It needs to be dealt with before - and this is my great fear- it is exploited by political extremists. Check out history and be frightened.

Apologies if I sound like a vicar or an opinion column in the Independent.

Words of Wisdom

There's bucket loads of words of wisdom sloshing about. Just think of all the good advice given by traditional English proverbs with their silver clouds, sow's ears, long roads, cups, lips, cooks, pigs, cows, foxes, kings.. there's enough there to keep you going for the rest of your life. Then there's the religious texts: the Book of Proverbs, the Sayings of the Prophet, the Analects of Confucius, the Koans of Zen and so on. More recently there have been the modern mystics like Eckhart Tolle and Paul Coelho, Californian gurus, Shamans, neurologists, agony aunts, TV pundits, Jeremy Clarkson [sorry], management consultants, psychologists, NLP practitioners, complimentary therapists all deluging us with words of wisdom.

And there's me in my kitchen after  glass or two of wine pontificating. Fortunately what I say in such circumstances is not recorded by eager pupils of my wisdom. [ A nice little volume lost there: 'Harry Ashcroft's Table Talk'.] I'm no exception, of course, we all have this desire to pass on what we think of as wisdom. It's some kind innate urge: the oracular urge that adds yet more words to The Ocean of Wisdom.

What are we to do with all this stuff? How do we use it in real life?

If  I am in my hospital bed after an accident do I mutter to myself  through broken teeth, Every cloud has a silver lining? Do I put my trust in the Lord? Do I reflect on the 'lesson' that my suffering has granted? Do I say to myself Ah! The Buddha's First Nobel Truth! Suffering. Dukkha.  What do I do? How do I use this vast body of wisdom that's out there?

It seems to me that wisdom is cheap but life is hard.

And wisdom is much abused. It is used as a weapon by devious politicians, religious bigots, bogus gurus, oppressive parents, bullying bosses, sadistic teachers and such like.

Yet, undoubtably,  there is much that is good and true amongst all this material. How do we distinguish the sound from the spurious?

Incidentally I would like to point out that I am not asking these questions rhetorically. I am asking them in an open ended way hoping for some illumination. Hopefully not more words of wisdom but some real answers.

One issue is that words of wisdom are offered as self evident truths and are backed by authority, usually in the form of powerful partriarchs, or 'tradition'. This makes their examination problematic. Questioning them can thus stir up anxieties and make us feel vulnerable as we might enter unknown territory and, at most places and times, stir up accusations of heresy, political incorrectness, antisocial attitudes with all the consequences that  a real struggle to find some real wisdom might bring.

And are the words I've written themselves 'words of wisdom' just adding more confusion to the difficult business of being human?

There's the question of how things are said here. Are they said in a way that is pompous and pious or human and generous?

If I'm lying on my hospital bed and the Priest, or other important religious person, sits at my bedside and talks to me about  the need for patience how does that make me feel?  Patience is certainly something I'm going to be in need of but how is he [it's almost certainly a 'he'], the religious figure going to make me feel when he exhorts me to be patient?

So lots of questions. Any answers would be welcome. I'll be parking some of my own speculations on this blog over the next few weeks.

What this Blog is about.

This blog is for my reflections on life, happiness, counselling and therapy. It is also about events in my life that have deeply affected me and my reflections on them.

It is a space where I intend to work with words to try to articulate what I think on these matters.

Words are magical. With words we make sense of ourselves and the world.

Finding the right words enables us to work with our lives, to grasp where we stand and where we are going. In these blog entries I hope that in my struggle to find the right words I might help other people to do the same.

This blog will be boring [What does 'boring' mean?] for most people. But I'm not after great numbers of followers, just the odd individual who might want to find out what I really think about some serious* matters that have continually bothered or intrigued me since childhood. I also want to record some experiences that have deeply affected me such as those that I had when I lived in Hull and Manchester. I met some remarkable people in those places.

I was tempted to call this blog 'Meetings with Remarkable Persons' after George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's fascinating book 'Meetings with Remarkable Men', the mystic from Armenia,  but thought better of it. It might be too ironic. I do too much irony, for  reasons of amusement and self protection, and want to keep that tendency under control in this blog. I will however, for mental health reasons, allow my self a little indulgence now and then: my irony rations, if you will pardon the pun.

I am afflicted or blessed -it feels to be one or the other according to what is happening in my life at any particular time- from an early age by a compulsion to dwell on existential matters: life, death, identity, meaning and such like. This has not always won me popularity [What is 'popularity'?] with friends. Likewise with my compulsion to examine the meaning of certain words in common use on the basis that they conceal more than they reveal.

I actually find this examination exciting which shows what kind of person I am. But, I've found from experience that this feeling is not shared by all. In fact many people experience outrage or anxiety instead. This puzzled me when I was younger: surely exploring our world with words is what everyone wants to do? I still want to get on with the exploration. The world is still a mysterious place for me.

* 'Serious'  a word that has come to suggest pretension in our culture which, like me, is deeply imbued with irony for reasons of amusement and self protection.