Category Archives: My Experiences On The Couch

My Experiences On The Couch

January 5, 2012 · 11:46 pm

One hour, One night.

By Will

As I walk the dim corridors of the Oxfordshire hospital at 4am, I wonder on a spiritual level what has brought me back here once again, exactly what is it that I now need to learn? I live in London, so why am I back here at ‘the scene of the crime’, the same hospital where my Dad lay a few years ago after his cancer operation, before he eventually passed away. I knew the hospital well but never thought I would be back, especially as a patient. I remember saying goodbye to the institution as I made my way out that musky winter day a few years back. I slowly pace the endless asylum type corridors stopping to gaze at the donated paintings from former patients on the walls. I have little energy after 2 weeks of not sleeping and hardly eating, and from somewhere I hear a desperate shriek from a lost soul in a bed nearby calling out in agony. My heart was pierced by their anguish, I wish I could help them, and I thought… I am not so badly off….. I thought of God, I thought about why people suffer, and then I thought…. don’t think, separate yourself from this movie and create no-one to carry the burden, as if there is no-one to carry pain, pain cannot exist.

I run over last night’s operation in my head. The long run down the corridors to the operating theatre, wheeled by the tired porter, on my portable bed, my life carrier for the night, which seemed to transport someone else’s life. I chuckled to myself in the lift, thinking about my lift phobia, as we went down to operating levels. Coming into ‘theatre land’ and meeting ‘The Angels’ as I saw them, the  smiling anaesthetic family who somehow managed to make me laugh while they put a tube down my nose and into my throat. I am sure one of them was introduced as ‘Brother G’. I liked that, and trusted the black man in the beanie hat. I saw other angels in blue procedure cloaks surrounded by heavenly crisp white walls, and before they put me under I told them so; ‘you guys are like angels, you’re wonderful’, it had to be said, I wonder if anyone had said that to them before while sober? The last thing I remember was Barbara, the surgeon, waving to me and smiling through a small window in the operating room.

Where can I smoke? it’s been a day since my last cigarette. I come to a door that required a credit card swipe to regain access, so I may not be able get back in, but I had to get out. I walk through and start my decent down four flights of glass stairs to the car park below. The cold wind blows me sideways as I try to light my smoke with a magazine stuck between the doors keeping them slightly ajar. Why the hell am I smoking this while there are kids upstairs with cancer? What the fuck is wrong with me? How could that child in the canteen today be so happy with no hair and tubes everywhere? I deeply inhale, feeling the smoke rush over the swollen wounds in my mouth, and exhale the smoke upwards towards the cheap neon lamps, watching it drift away like a cloud. Suddenly chemicals hit other chemicals and I feel light headed and my knees almost buckle. I need to get back inside, I am weak and delirious. Should I crawl back up the stairs, who cares if anyone see’s me? Then I spot a lift and make my way towards it trying not to faint. I think about settling down in the lift for the night, that is, if I can’t get back into my room. Finally I reach the door to the ward with the credit card swipe system and hold onto the handles and my head sinks down exhausted. I notice a ‘call’ button on the side of the door. I ring and I wait, I ring and I wait, desperately trying not to keel over. Part of me wanted to collapse so that I would be at someone else’s mercy. After what seemed like hours I jump, as a monotone voice leaps through a crackling speaker, “yes, can I help you?” “I need to get back to my room” I say….. erm room ten….. I’m locked out… Sorry… can you please let me in?” All I hear is the clicking sound of the door opener and I stumble through and take pigeon type steps back to my room.

I lie down on the bed my heart beating loudly in my chest and I suddenly notice someone come into the room after me. It’s another angel, the beautiful young nurse appears and calls me by my name “are you ok Will?” is all she says and all I can muster is a murmur as my eyes fall back into my head.

A moment can seem like a lifetime and a lifetime can seem like a moment.

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December 10, 2011 · 10:40 am

True Connections

By Will

As long as I can remember I have always been searching for true connection with others, and I knew in my heart that something vital was missing. Discovering that most of my relationships were of a dependant nature was quite unsettling. Attachment to others in this way is perpetual, as you never truly have your needs met, and can end up continually eating crumbs. Both parties have their agendas, and both may end up feeling half full much of the time, carried with the need to go back regularly to refill their plates. It is very much like overeating in as much as there is never a particular type of food that satisfies, as the food itself will never fill the empty space inside, and so acts as a substitute.

Again and again I have found that these unfulfilled needs originate during our first special relationships with our parents or guardians. Most of us have to believe that our parents were good parents, as to think otherwise would be terrifying. Parents can be good with their intentions, but if they are not connected with themselves how are children to assimilate connectedness inwardly. A parents love may be intermittent, conditional or possessive which creates a longing in the child for love and recognition. The child will never feel enough.

As a substitute for legitimate connection I choose being noticed externally during my younger years, initially through sports, and then through playing in bands and Djing. Although I may have been playing music in front of thousands of people, and hobnobbing with the so called elite and celebs, I never felt truly connected to others in ways that I desired to be. I would role play and created an externally confident identity. When I entered therapy for the first time in my early twenties I had a glimpse of what true connectedness felt like and it was both scary and exciting at the same time. To share your deepest thoughts, fears and feelings with another in a safe environment was liberating at the same time as being very threatening for the ego self. I began to notice a pattern where during one session I would be intimate and during the next I became aloof and cocky and a general know it all. Hence what followed was a kind of peeling back of the ego defences and an awareness of the darker aspects of my psyche which initially left me even more vulnerable than before.

In the words of Eckhart Tolle “When another recognises you, that recognition draws the dimension of being more fully into this world through both of you.” During my current work with my therapist intimacy has become lighter and almost divine in its form. True connectedness also contains paradox and duality where the painful realities of life can be shared but not judged, like seeing things just as they are. This new awareness feels very much like coming home.

The ego creates separation, and separation creates suffering ~ Eckhart Tolle

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December 6, 2011 · 11:21 pm

The Raging Child

By Will

Most of us are probably aware of the terrible two’s where a child realises over time that he is not the master of the universe and everything in it. That he is governed by another, namely his guardian, and he is not in control of all people and things. It raises a tough question in the child’s psyche; so if I am not everything… I am out of control, and others, have control. Paddy’s often follow with kicking and screaming, until there is some kind of acceptance while he tries to make sense of the world around him. However I don’t feel that there is full acceptance, but more of a storing of the child’s inner wishes, so that someday he may seek revenge and reclaim control of his world once again. The rage that the child feels is red hot and stays with the child throughout adult life and the terrible two’s is one of the many examples of rage inducing disappointments a child may have to endure in his development stage. The more that I delve into my own experiences as a child I deem this to be true.

Rage is hardly attractive, in our culture as we know it, and so the hot coal of rage has to be dampened to fit in with our society and our friends and family. This can be achieved in many ways but on the whole rage is stored inwardly if it is not expressed. I think the same situation arises in adults and toddlers as without the ability to express their needs, instead resort to whatever behaviours they can carry out saying “no” and acting against the world at large and with adults this can mean depression. I remember reading many years ago that depression is anger turned inwards and I would agree with that on the whole. Rage in adult life it may be expressed through delusion and clinging to false hopes and also by letting off steam in ways that are not conducive to our true nature.

Rage has it’s place, however wrong it may feel, and when we acknowledge this we can allow it to breathe and flow like a volcano. It is both natural and damaging and damaging and natural. It is our thought about rage that enrages us, not the existence of a demonic but necessary part of our fuel for life. We seek to rid ourselves of rage and keep it hidden at all costs. The main cost however is a stifling of our energy and time that may be wasted on situations that harm us. Many of us may ask, how can I get rid of this rage, and sadly the answer may not be how we can rid ourselves of it but how can we use it, rather than being used by it.

And die of nothing but a rage to live ~ Alexander Pope

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November 18, 2011 · 12:30 pm

Growth and the Search for Oneself.

By Will

Staying with very difficult and stormy feelings is about as testing as it gets for man. Sometimes a kind voice from another can gently nudge you out of these dense and believable feelings. Staying with the pain and recognising it and investigating it is very hard. We may find that the hurt is old somehow, in as much as it seems familiar, and we may get the sense of our unease having been around before.

When we are surrounded and somewhat engulfed by our sensations we may lean towards keeping them inside as they can be viewed as ‘dangerous’ feelings. The thought of sharing them with others may annihilate the listener or may lead us to believe that we may be outcast or abandoned by the other person. We also have a tendency to believe that we should not be feeling or thinking such thoughts which creates a divide inside of how we should be feeling against what we actually are. Self soothing and acceptance can help and personally I find it helpful to share these feelings with others.

The American psychologist Rollo May said “We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.” Another quote from Rollo May which may give our emotions a sense of purpose is “One does not become fully human painlessly.”

If you are working towards a greater understanding and acceptance within yourself with the help of therapy, old stories and ways of viewing the world and ourselves are slowly eroded away leaving a sense of emptiness. When this happens not only do we feel a sense off loss, we may also be left wondering about our purpose in life and who we really are. We may realise that our old patterns of behaviour may have not served us well in the past and it makes sense that we need to grieve and say goodbye to them. It takes courage to say to the world, this is me take it or leave it. It is much easier to conform to ourselves and society and this is what most people tend to do. We may be in limbo with anxiety, who’s purpose is to keep us away from discovering our true selves, but when we can manage to live with anxious feelings by our side, our next step is to face what is underneath, which is yet another difficult and painful task, but a task that is necessary for our personal growth and freedom within.

“Steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term “hero” is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man.” ~ Rollo May

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October 18, 2011 · 6:37 pm

Coming Home

By Will

My therapist, who I now like to call my ‘spiritual guide’, has an uncanny way of tuning in and summarising or pinpointing exactly where I am at, especially when I am trying to explain or describe a particularly new sensation that may be beyond words. He sensed today that I was ‘at home’ on the couch which is exactly how I felt. I was glued to the couch today, akin to the grounding one feels when meditating or in deep relaxation, my eyes were fixed on the white cotton clouds that I could see through the window for the entire time. Today’s session had no agenda, nothing specific was discussed or worked through, we simply took a leisurely stroll with our conversation among the many gaps of silence which were like long deep relaxing breaths. It produced a beautiful image in me of a Mother and baby relaxing together, where the baby is happily kicking it’s legs and doing it’s own thing, and the Mother is simply being and not interrupting the babies flow. I think I may have been influenced by Winnicott in this case.

This longing to ‘come home’ is what so many of us strive towards. However many of us feel ‘away from home’ much of the time. We are all searching for something that is already within us that has been lost somewhere along our paths. This does not mean that we all have the potential of continuously being at home, in some kind of enlightened state or ‘Ānanda’ as some Buddhists may call it. However enlightened one is, I believe that we all have certain tendencies developed in our past that tend to rear up over certain issues, which is why acceptance of who we truly are is essential. I often try to be a more spiritual and enlightened person but what is that exactly? It’s just and idea. All I am capable of is being aware when something uncomfortable arises and noticing it for what it is and staying with it rather than trying to fight it off. As soon as I engage my old stories and patterns of attachment to a particular way of feeling I land myself in trouble. ‘I should not feel like this’ or ‘why is this happening again’ only reinforce these old patterns, as well reinforcing my neurological pathways. An example of this is the morning my Father died. I remember, just after I received the news, I walked to the window and watched some kid’s playing happily outside and thought, how can they play joyfully when this is happening!

Developing your own style of daily practice is essential for healing. Tara Brach said on mindfulness, that for some suffering with trauma, practising mindfulness and breathing may cause a sense of suffocating. There are ways of practicing that may suit you better. For myself, yoga has been a wonderful practice but right now I am practising Chi-walking around nature, mixed with prayer and meditation, just because it feels right to me. I seemed to stumble upon this almost by accident and this is where I seek refuge at times when I feel exacerbated. This daily practice is slowly developing into something very lucid for me and helps me to be more centred and free when faced with uncomfortable emotions. It is one thing meditating and practicing and another thing to stay focused when faced with daily experiences that put you on the spot. As Jack Cornfield said ‘If you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog’. The idea of being a perfect spiritual human being can only lead to feelings of failure. It is though the unconscious knows this and almost sets you up to fail. There are plenty of other things outside daily orthodox practice that can help us like music, art or film which may give us a new sense of purpose and hope. We are individuals and we can engage in being compassionate to our own unique way of living, even if this is not how we planned it.

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October 9, 2011 · 8:47 am

My Best Friend the Breath

By Will

Around four years ago I started practising yoga and was blessed to have a teacher who really concentrated and stuck with the breath. Whatever position we found our bodies in during practice she kept bringing us back to our breathing. Outside of the classroom I began to notice my breath more often and found that I would hold my breath if I was anxious, or sometimes I would not breathe out fully, almost like not wanting to let go. When we find ourselves in trauma, perhaps due to an accident of some kind, we are told by the medics to breathe. Breathing helps us to connect with ourselves again and aids us in bringing us back to the moment.

I came across an elderly woman recently who needed to use a public toilet, she was really struggling to walk unaided. I took her arm and slowly we began to make our way to the bathroom. She was anxious and distressed, and with each small and slow step that she took, her body began to shake. The shaking was clearly upsetting her and she said “It’s this shaking, why does my body do this”? I could see that she found it hard to accept that her body was not doing what she wanted it to and this was creating more anxiety and so on. I asked her if we could stop for a moment and I asked her to concentrate on her breathing and to forget the shaking for a moment. Together we got our breath’s in sync, in a simple in for 3 and out for 3 fashion, and we spent a minute or so practising this. In her own time she began to walk again with me and we kept our breathing practice going while we made our way to the bathroom. This exercise had a dulling effect on her shaking. The shaking became secondary and her breathing became primary and although the shakes were still present she seemed much more in control of her situation.

You can find your best friend, healer and spiritual teacher in your breathing. It is widely recognised, in most spiritual practices, that breathing is essential as it is closely associated with our emotions and well being. Strong emotions have a profound affect on our breathing, if we get angry our breath tends to be held or if we are scared the same may happen. When we are feeling love strongly our breathing is also affected and we tend to hold our breath in certain areas like the belly or the diaphragm. The breath seems to be stuck there.

Throughout the day I try to reconnect with my breathing and try to make it my constant friend and companion. It shows me when something in me needs attention. My belly may be tight, and I try to breathe through the tightness, or I may find my shoulders stiff and upright and I breathe and relax that part of the body. Using my mind to notice what is going on inside me seems much more complicated and so I rely on my breath as an indication of just where I am at. Breathing mindfully and being aware of our breathing tends to lesson the full impact to whatever we are holding. We are not as caught up in whatever is happening inside of us, or externally, and this can be settling as this helps us to stay in the present moment. The breath becomes our anchor and helps us when we feel that we are spinning out of control and remains our lifeline when the mind wants to run and project.

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.  Conscious breathing is my anchor ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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October 2, 2011 · 11:56 am

Growing Takes Time

By Will

Most of us that are on a spiritual journey, who are attempting to get some understanding of ourselves and be more in harmony with our true nature, battle with patience. It takes time to create new patterns of behaviour and thought and to accept and understand those old patterns that we have lived with for so long. Although there are people who claim sudden enlightenment, the majority of people will have to partake in long and often-times painstaking journey’s, where they may have to repeat the same mistakes over and over again until they learn and accept the lessons or truths that they need to. We need to take this long term relationship with ourselves slowly and steadily, and realise that in as much as we have taken years to mis-understand ourselves, it may take the same amount of time to get in touch with our true nature and purpose once again. You can liken this process to learning to play a musical instrument. We can’t play it harmoniously straight away, it’s virtually impossible. We have to learn to play the notes first and then perhaps a chord, then a song, and eventually we can play intuitively.

I once apologised to my therapist for having a ‘nervous day’ and he replied ‘it’s just a day’. How we perceive our situations is important if we are going to spend lots of time within them. If we can also create conditions that allow our true selves to flow we may realise that some of our old patterns of behaviour hinder us on our journeys. For example, the right conditions for coping with grief may not be a party for some but for others it maybe exactly what they need. There are no rules and we cannot learn these things from books. Experience is key, and while we are learning, growing pain is inevitable. If we can learn to flow with this pain, learn to flow with the energy of the pain and realise that it is required for us to have a positive and meaningful existence, in the long run, we can be safe in the knowledge that we are sewing the right seeds to form a secure base for ourselves in the future. Pain comes when we feel that we should be feeling other than what we are feeling, so we create a disconnection within ourselves, rather than simply accepting what is.

One thing that helps us to endure the long gravel path is faith. Some pray for strength and patience while others may ask their angels or a higher being of some-kind for help. Many of us seek meaningful and intimate connections with others to soothe us and support us on our journeys. One thing all faith has in common is that it is shared. We are not mean’t to be alone.

Often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key ~ The Eagles

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August 28, 2011 · 1:02 pm

Masters and Students

By Will

In the film Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams plays the Psychologist and Matt Damon, the abused and genius patient, who needs help from his psychologist to find direction in his life. What is interesting in this film is that their relationship goes against the grain of orthodox Psychotherapy. We find the analyst disclosing parts of his own life in order to help the patient. He speaks of his wife’s cancer, his experiences of war, death and love, as well as the smaller things in life, which he feels are important. The therapist realises that this is the only way to get through to his patient and adapts his technique in order to heal. What they also have in common is their childhood physical abuse which is finally shared by both parties and accepted as ‘not their fault’. I always hoped that my therapy was shared in this way but I can also understand that this may be the ego’s way of gathering information from the therapist in order to sabotage the theraputic relationship.

In the Vajrayana Buddhist faith there is something called the Samaya bond. In Pema Chodrons words, “If the student accepts and trusts the teacher completely and the teacher accepts the student, they can enter into the unconditional relationship called Samaya. The teacher will never give up on the student no matter how mixed up he or she might be, and the student will also never leave the teacher, no matter what”. The basic premise of the teaching is to help the student realise that they are bound to reality already and that trying to get somewhere is useless as the student is already there. After time and acceptance of being with things as they are the students world becomes more vivid and transparent so he or she views the same world but with new eyes. “And this is a message that never gets interpreted. Things speak for themselves. It’s not that red cushion means passion, or little mouse darting in and out means discursive mind; it’s just red cushion and little mouse”. The important thing here is that the teacher and student have made a marriage of reality. One cannot leave the other so their enlightenment has to be shared.

In both cases the message is clear; Things are what they are and those things will never change unless our perceptions of those things change also. Our perceptions are mainly based on past emotional experiences and it is enlightening to be able to perceive something in a different way through a new relationship or a new set of reflective eyes. So these perceptions can be changed through love. Also in both cases, the student picks his master like ‘incarnation’ where a child supposedly chooses his or her parents and the master or therapist accepts the students invitation. Also in both cases continuous work has to be done, it needs to be sticked at. You can liken the loving relationship to polishing a mirror. As soon as you have polished it dust will start to settle again.

Often we can’t answer the question; “Is it right?”. We can however ask ;”Is it fruitful? ~ Christopher Clouder and Martin Rawson

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August 23, 2011 · 5:40 pm

I think I’m a Buddhist

By Will

Like many of us, when I had my first taste of monstrous fear and anxiety, I began to read self help books. I took momentary soothing from these books, and at the time they enabled me to calm the storm of these serious life threatening emotions. But despite numerous searchings, and reading tons of these in vain, my fear still haunted and goaded me. In some ways I liken these books to my spiritual ‘O’ Levels as some of the basics were absorbed and have stayed with me ever since. Probably the best example of this would be in M Scott Peck’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ when Mr. Peck states; “Life is hard”. That teaching is still very much with me on my personal journey.

The ‘self help’ industry is a multi million pound industry, and because the basic nature of ‘us’ wanting a quick fix, this is exactly why it is thriving. These books will not tell you to hold onto pain, they will advise you to skip over it or through it. It makes more sense to invite in what you usually avoid. For me these lessons were never born through books but were arrived at through legitimate suffering as I stayed with my fear and pain whenever I could manage to. Of course fear still grabs me by the throat, but starting with the body, I try to relax into it and know it for what is is, an emotion and a reaction to a conditioned thought of;  ‘this may happen to you’! And what, ‘may happen to me’ … ‘The Truth’, thats what will happen. This is the false self or ego’s worst scenario because then it would loose control of ‘itself’.

I had always thought of myself as someone who is kind, flexible and loving but when confronted with this illusion I realised that I am not perfect and if I am not perfect I am continually letting myself down. I constantly invested into an image of myself that I could not live up to. When this was exposed to me, mainly with the help of therapy, I felt as if there was nothing, absolutely nothing, and at times I felt as if I was going to fall off the end of the world. If I didn’t have a story to cling to anymore, then who was I?

Currently I find myself between two schools of thought, one of Psychotherapy and one of Buddhism as they have so much in common. The problem is, as the title of this piece suggests, if ‘I think I’m a Buddhist’ isn’t that too a statement of ‘I’ and one of a fixed thought.. that ‘I’ am somebody. Bomb’s keep continually dropping.

It is possible to live in peace ☮ ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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August 22, 2011 · 10:12 am

Crossroads

By Will

This summer break from therapy feels different and a little like my long childhood summer holidays, kept by myself. Enhanced even more so by abiding in the countryside far away from the city and the rat race. Doing nothing is not easy and is tinged with a sense of guilt. I should be at the office (holding a belief that things fail without me) but the office is fine. I should be doing something constructive, but what and why? Before I left my therapist mentioned that I was in a transitional phase, that I was between places and that I should be careful and mindful of my inner drives. I took this warning seriously, but I wished that he would have said “you will be fine” or “enjoy your break” and it left me wide eyed and cautious.

I feel that I am armed with so much inner knowledge now and yet I feel that I am just the same and that I have not changed. My summer mantra is to be mindful, so whenever I sense the tirade of inner chatter and noise I bring myself back to the now. I keep thinking about moving to the country and a change of career, a new challenge involving people but both the answer and the drive allude me. If only I could meet a like minded soul and get married, that would sort everything out wouldn’t it? I sit here feeling so grateful that I am in good health and my business is going well so why worry. On my death bed I can’t imagine thinking I should have spent more time in the office.

I am not sure what all this means right now and my dreams are not shedding any light either, so I wonder off into the countryside again, camera in hand, waiting for something to happen.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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