Author, Psychologist
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I’ve just completed another day’s work in COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, via telehealth sessions with patients. It’s our sixth lockdown in Melbourne Australia, just for the record, and it looks like we’re in it for another long haul on this one. I’m a psychologist sitting with the pain and struggle of my clients, who are …
As Australians tentatively prod the early weeks of 2021 to see if the year’s open to reinstating past freedoms, the shadowy shocks of 2020 grumble threateningly just below the surface of our days. Is COVID-19 going to surge forward with renewed energy after a quick kip? Can we capture new mutations in their infancy, weed …
Last night, satisfied but really tired, I got to rest after a few days intense work. Helping people find acceptance and self-compassion, is a big part of my job as a therapist. Many people are stuck in pain about the past, or anxiety about the future. Compassion and insight open the door to freedom. I …
It lost me at Father. I could not feel the spirituality of my forbears. As a kid I tried to believe God was listening and watching over us. I couldn’t feel him. Christianity was the ideology and tradition of my ancestors. Believing in it made you a ‘good person’ according to my Grandma, but my brain wouldn’t …
Ultimately, love is the cure for dissatisfaction. I don’t mean love of another person, but love of your own life. But how do we get there from feeling lost and unhappy with the way things are? Understanding Chronic Dissatisfaction (CD), and accepting that it’s a common experience, is the first part of transforming it into …
Do you need to be dissatisfied in life to be driven to succeed? Is satisfaction a lame, insipid word to you that means giving up, and just settling for mediocre when we should be going for bigger, faster, better, stronger, harder? In fact, does satisfaction even exist, or do we always want for more? And, are these key reasons …
Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough. Alain de Botton. Continuing from my previous post, here’s the second installment in my series …
I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else. Oscar Wilde Chronic Dissatisfaction (let’s just call it CD) stalked me for years. Do you know CD? The symptoms include restlessness, needing more of something indefinable and always shifting, feeling like you’re not there yet (but wondering where the hell there is.) …
Let me fall if I must. The one I become will catch me. Baal Shev Tom From my twenties, I recall this image. I was standing on the edge of a crevasse, not just a cliff, a dark, vast jagged wound in the ground, an abyss where I couldn’t see the bottom. Around it was …
I was looking forward to working on a piece I’d left unfinished in favour of other things for too long. However, when my butt hit the seat I found myself struggling to flow despite desire. I sat staring. I’d found a window of time, so why couldn’t I seize the moment? Two noisy, wrestling …