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September 13, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

The Passage of Time

Being human means living with the knowledge that we will one day die and that those we love will die too. As mortal beings we are the children of time and none of us are spared its reckoning. Time makes playthings of us all and we are powerless in its passage. A healer it may be but ultimately we do not escape the fatal wound inflicted upon us by time’s passing hours and minutes. There is no cure for time and this is the difficult truth that we must all live with. Religion and philosophy offer sustenance in the form of faith and knowledge. Science and medicine continually develop to improve our life expectancy but time flows relentlessly on…. we may transfigure time we cannot deny or destroy it.

Me, myself and I

Our mind shapes every experience we have, it is our greatest asset and our greatest tormentor. We spend most of our time literally lost in thought and when we are lost in thought we are by implication elsewhere and not in the present moment/reality (psychosis by another measure). It has long been understood in many contemplative traditions that being distracted by thought is the fundamental source of human suffering. It is not so much that our thoughts themselves are problematic but rather the way in which we identify with them. It is hard to truly recognise just how distracted we are and how much of the time, thoughts bond with feelings and feelings reinforce thoughts, both drag us from the present moment and hold us hostage to time…time which ticks on regardless, immune to our suffering.

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

Occasionally a crack opens up in time (or at least that might be a way of putting it) in which we have an experience akin to non time or timelessness. What characterises these moments is an experience of merger, probably best expressed through paradox and poetic imagery, as in Leonard Cohen’s evocative lyric. Love is one of these experiences. Love helps us look death in the face. Beyond pleasure and pain (and it is both) love is intensity. It cannot vanquish death but it makes it an integral part of life. Love cannot protect or preserve us from the risks inherent in living, no love ultimately escapes the ravages of time, age and ill health. Wherever there is rapture there will be rupture and like all the great creations of human kind, love is twofold, both joy and sorrow, an instant and an eternity.

Doorways

In order to become less identified with the tyranny of our thoughts and the drama of our own lives we might well be advised to consider cultivating new disciplines of attention. How might we allow for a crack in our convictions and cognitions such that a light may shine through? A sure fire way of busting through the doors of perception would be to ingest a powerful dose of a psychedelic substance such as psilocybin. For better or worse in such a state we would have a different experience of time and space, and a sense of total immersion in the present moment. (It goes without saying that if such an experience were to be truly useful the set and setting would be of fundamental importance.) Such an experience might shine a powerful light on the mind’s potential, far from that which might be available during the course of normal waking consciousness. However, a Peak experience is exactly that, fleeting in its nature and as such not coincident with everyday waking life (which presumably must go on). Meditation offers another potential way of breaking the spell of identification with thought and the persistent cycle of rumination and reactivity that so many of us are caught in so much of the time. Cultivating awareness via one intentional discipline or another seems, on balance, a useful proposition. A psychotherapeutic dialogue can be of significant value in helping to ground and integrate new insights and awareness into our everyday lives.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Gerry Gilmartin, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin

Intimacy: pillars and obstacles

Love and Family

Understanding sexual fantasy

Fear and hope in the time of Covid

Relationships, networks and connections

Filed Under: Ageing, Gerry Gilmartin, Society Tagged With: bereavement, life changing, passage of time

March 22, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

The Problem with Change

When people come into therapy it is usually with the wish or hope for something to change. If not, they want help with adapting or stabilising following a major change.

It is a paradox that change is such a constant in our lives. As we age our bodies inevitably change and if nothing else this makes living itself a profoundly transitional experience.

Changes in our lives can come in many forms. For example, there are key developmental milestones at various life stages – adolescence and mid-life are perhaps the most discussed of these.

Significant events in life can also impact and bring about profound change in ourselves. These changes always involve beginnings and losses and can lead to crisis. Crisis too can bring about change. Even positive changes – like getting married or starting a new job for example – are often cited as highly stressful, so societally we very much recognise the equation of change and crisis.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have had huge influences in how we might understand changes and crises in life stages and events.

For example, Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst, coined the term ‘midlife crisis’ in his 1965 paper (1). Jaques wrote about how this crisis repeats earlier intense transitions from adolescence and infancy and explored what he saw as a tendency for the individual to lose or discover creativity as a response to this life-stage.

And it is largely due to Winnicott’s seminal work (2) that we understand the level of intense feelings that typifies adolescent transitions, when the young person is caught in a fraught conflict between childhood and adulthood.
In psychotherapy we think about therapeutic change, meaning an internal change for the better. I think most people come into therapy welcoming this idea of inner change and certainly those who are assessed as being suitable for psychotherapy will partly be so on the basis that they recognise the need for some internal change.

Initially in therapy, changes are often experienced as positive. Being heard and supported and gaining insight generally increases confidence and a sense of self. At the same time people can find quite that more negative feelings towards themselves seem less extreme. These changes are important and real. However, deeper changes that take place in therapy, in my experience, are not always so welcomed. This is partly because of the disruptive nature of change and its relationship to crisis.

Undergoing the kinds of powerful changes that therapy can offer can feel destabilising and bewildering. As mentioned earlier, change always involves loss of some kind. What might need to be given up may be experienced – consciously or more often unconsciously – as vital to the person’s sense of self. Even unwanted aspects to one’s psyche and behaviour are still familiar and what is known is experienced as safe, even when it is also recognised as harmful and self-limiting.

While we might recognise the likelihood, even perhaps inevitability of crisis in change, experiencing this in therapy can, for some people, feel understandably counter-intuitive.

Many people who come through therapy find a way of tolerating and working through these unsettling if not disturbing experiences of therapeutic change. But some become too frightened or overwhelmed and may then leave suddenly.

In my experience, those who stay are able, with the support and help of the therapist, to recalibrate and restabilise – much as after major life stages and events. As things settle, they can then experience and enjoy the positive benefits of the internal work and changes they have undertaken. However, inevitably and necessarily, in time the problematic process of change will be repeated.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Claire Barnes, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

 

Further reading by Claire Barnes –

What is it like being in a Psychotherapy Group? Case study – Joe

Silences in Therapy

Sibling Rivalry – Part 1

Sibling Rivalry – Park 2

What is loneliness?

 

References – 

Death and the Mid-Life Crisis. Elliott Jaques, 1965
Contemporary Concepts of Adolescent Development and their Implications for Higher Education, from Playing and Reality. Winnicott, 1971

Filed Under: Attachment, Claire Barnes, Psychotherapy, Relationships Tagged With: Change, life changing, mid-life crisis

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