The gift, blessing and challenge of Existential Psychotherapy

Some one asked me what counselling and psychotherapy was. So I thought I would try and answer. It's a process where we come to terms with the fears and hopes we have that wake us in the night, disturb us in our musings and inspire us . It's about coming to terms with the experience of aging and facing mortality. It's about looking behind the mask we " keep in the jar by the door" it's about talking and acknowledging our failures our inadequacies and our strengths. It's the very opposite of fixing a car, changing a plug and getting a loan or a mortgage. If we must use a metaphor it's organic gardening, it's exploring the things you would not say to a stranger , or down the pub, it's about recognising that the game of life is very hard to play and in losing it we find our own salvation and victory. It's about seeing our prejudices, challenging the construction of ourselves and looking at the darkness we have within. By romancing the hidden we integrate it and understand our blind spots. It's about discovering the child like part of ourselves and also of the creative and poetic part. It's when we realise that the league tables of income, status and power means that in the end we will lose yet in that loss we win by understanding the loss. It's about finding ourselves and discovering more than we ever knew possible.  

 If we judge success by a traffic light system we condemn ourselves to a continual struggle that will end eventually in loss.its about seeing our own ego on the faces and actions if others.its about asking how we came to our identity, our gender, our sexuality and character was formed. It's about realise that all advice is half prejudice and half habit.

 It's about realising that self revolution is continual that infinite possibilities exist and that insight, tolerance and respect is the only soil that humanity thrives in. It's about understanding that we project our fears onto the other, that displacement us easy that denial and justification are the rationalisations and means if coping. It's about understanding that the simple solutions of Trump, Farage and Lepen allow the darkness and shadows to obscure the Sun of Hope rather than the darkness of ignorance, pride and hate

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please

That game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please

The sword of time will pierce our skin
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger, watch it grin

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
Is it to be or not to be
And I replied oh why ask me

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I...

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And you can do the same thing if you please



.The Greeks said know yourself it's the only path and the only way....that's what counselling and psychotherapy are, they are the paths of liberation, the method of understanding and the path to clarity and wonder..it's political, it's personal and we all gain from it....