Signs of Semiotic Ghosts

C. and I are in Amsterdam, for just under four days of culture, good food and the kind of time together we haven’t really had in the last three years. I feel an odd urge to do as much as possible and enjoy myself every single minute, which is another form of pressure in itself, quite outside my control, desperately trying to compensate for the relative absence of pressure. Neither of us are sparklingly entertaining or companionable for 24 hours a day and it triggers a need for reassurance in both of us, to a certain degree. I refer to it as “pinging” – the frequent desire of asking whether the other is ok and a strict dialectic when it comes to any decisions at all are symptoms. It’s quite interesting to watch, though I hope it might peter out into genuine winding down before too long, as I’m now officially halfway through my three weeks of unpaid leave, begged for precisely this purpose at interview.
The negotiations regarding the job are part of why I’m not relaxed. In my perception, they are not yet finished, because I have not signed a contract yet. When I recently found out that the other new starter in a very similar role in the trust had negotiated for a full research day per week, and I recalled my struggle to secure three hours per week for regular “continuous professional development” time, I felt as if some animal were more equal than other animals. This is not helped by the fact that the manager who offered me the job really did not make me feel at all welcome or appreciated, though my oversensitivity to this is part of my personal pathology. I pointed out the disparity and the manager just said that this time was not part of the job normally and had been negotiated by the candidate for that job– still he has granted the time, and is paying for it. I encouraged the colleague concerned to fight for her research day when it was threatened after our interviews and she did, and won. In any case, I wrote a lengthy email trying to cautiously negotiate some more, or at least get an explanation, or a statement along the lines of “tough luck, live with it!”
I l o a t h e having to be assertive for my own benefit. It makes me feel greedy, and unreasonable, and afraid of the impression I am going to make. Even thinking about doing it made me feel quite physically ill. It was really interesting, the kind of valuable development opportunity I probably need, but didn’t really want. I am used to standing up for causes and ideas with others, for others, but this me-thing really does not sit with me. I think this is a quality quite common to psychologists and job starters respectively, and I couldn’t help thinking that manager was counting on this. I’m also fairly convince that he thinks I am confident and pushy and assertive and inconsiderate and unreasonable. I’m not expecting to win this one, but I had to try it in order to soothe my fledgling self respect.
This isn’t really succeeding as a travel blog entry, is it?

We spent a chunk of the day in the Rijksmuseum with the Dutch masters from the “golden period”. I used to love that period as a little girl, because it tended to involve huge, detailed oil paintings with lots of things happening on them. Rembrandt did a very good line on those story-paintings, and it was good to see them, though much of the museum was out of action for large scale building works. I saw one lovely Vermeer, too, just an ordinary street view, with several people in it, quite unlike his usual portraits, though I love many of those, too. We walked everywhere, and my feet hurt by the evening – Amsterdam is quite compact, but things still add up. In the evening, we went for an Indonesian Rijstafel, many little, tasty dishes and rice. We’d bee looking for a Malaysian, but found this in its place, the second time this has happened this week, so the changeover of restaurants must be quite sizeable at the moment.
The hotel is posh, a well restored Art Noveau building with vastly high ceilings, pool, steam bath and sauna – I feel in the lap of luxury, even the mini bar is free. I haven’t sampled Amsterdam’s other intoxications yet, but might, if there is anything accessible to non-smokers.

A couple of weeks or so ago I was travelling to Clacton to work. The train was slightly delayed and I exchanged a greeting with a man sitting opposite me at the platform, weighed down with three bags and wheeling a small racing bike. He mentioned he was going to Wivenhoe, but then tried to get on the intercity to Norwich. I stopped him in time and we got talking. He said he’d just come off the boat from Holland and was taking the bike to a friend in Wiv.

We managed to get on the right train eventually, and spent ten delightful minutes talking about philosophy, religion and psychotherapy.

His name is Jaab, he looks between 35 and 45, brunette, slim build, is gay and newly in love with a sexual therapist who works in London. He has read The Little Pilgrim myth of orthodox Christianity. He said he hoped to run into me on the same train sometimes. That’s the sum total of what I know about the man.

Now – does anyone know him, or know somebody who might? I’d try to buy him a drink, as we started about three separate, interesting conversations.

I love riding the trains, partly because I occasionally meet interesting people. This does not make up for the general crap-ness of the line I ride most often, which is run badly by National Express, but it's a definite plus.

I find that my thesis-related anxiety has smoothly transformed into job-related anxiety. Managing anxiety is something I know a lot about, both theoretically and emotionally, but I still indulge in the same pitfalls, dwelling on things I cannot control or change, turning my inadequacies into imponderable barriers, which I then ponder. It's perfectly acceptable to feel uncertain, somewhat overwhelmed, impostor-ey when starting a new job with a lot of responsibility for other's wellbeing, or any job for that matter. I realise this. But of course my catastrophising is more catastrophic than your catastrophising [...]

All I can do is go and do the work. Past evidence suggests that I can do, and have previously enjoyed, doing that work. The only factor that has changed is that I am now qualified, and still painfully aware of all the things I don't know, as well as a lot of the ways in which it will be possible for me to screw up. I still get supervision, from Airmid, who has already worked in the field for six years or so, which should be plenty of contain me and my anxieties. But, having been used to a great old man at the end of his career and a personal tutor who just -got- me, this is a new relationship that still needs work, and might not work. If I don't come up to scratch, it will reflect badly not just on me. I'm no perfectionist. I know I can take things gradually, I don't have to jump from 0 to the required minimum 16 face to face client hours (plus supervision, team meetings, business meetings, training, rounds and indirect working/consultation regarding colleagues' clients and writig sheer endless letters and reports). I have a team of other professionals to work with, learn from and teach in turn. Everybody has started somewhere, I am allowed to start somewhere, too.

I am working slightly reduced hours, 35 a week, in order to have time for my own therapy. I'm just about to return to Thoth, who has returned from his extended sabbatical. This has meant finishing the work with the Jungian I was seeing in the interim, who did not pull his punches and was very good at what he did. Needless to say I was in two minds in terms of my way forward, but as I found both of them helpful, I've opted for trying to pick with with Thoth again, partly because he's Independent School and I'm likely to train with them in he longer run. He's more of a mentor than a daddy, or was when we left off, and I'm curious how things are going to turn out now that part of me definitely wants a daddy. All this is definitely part of the process, and interesting to boot, but not exactly easy, because I'm trying to keep my inner intellectual out of it. She's been nourished plenty in the past three years, and what else I am or might be has been rather neglected, clamoring in other ways. So, anxiety is good, fear is good, Love is Hate and War is Peace. Sensation is returning to some of the limbs I've sat on for too long.

Simple, right?

Yesterday, I passed my viva, with very minor corrections, probably do-able tomorrow afternoon. It was a very pleasant and stimulating hour, after which we drank a bottle of bubbly and went to the pub. I stopped drinking by the time we got to the pub, but still bounced around so much before then to loose the contents of my pockets - my watch and quartz heart C gave me - I hope they turn up in lost property, but if they don;t, I think it's minor damage for a viva day.

Today, I slept in almost without guilt, ambled about a bit, spoke to a number of people on the phone and lay in bed, watching the rain beat on the window as I was curled up on my electric blanket. I had very complimentary email from my internal examiner, whom I respect a lot, which is somewhat counteracting my I-go-away-with-it feelings.

In terms of what's next, two of my friends have to submit their theses on the 30th, so I hope to help them out with proofreading and referencing. I fully intend to do corrections tomorrow, the official handful, and my two page list of things I spotted after submitting. I work Friday, then three days until the end of next week, and then I'm on unpaid leave for three weeks. I'm not getting excited yet, but I hope I will.

I've survived my first week in the new job. The length of my waiting lists (one list for assessments for therapy, one for therapy) is frightening, but I'll see how it goes. Colleagues seem ok, though I'm still laying low due to a huge amount of preexisting tensions and dynamics I need to figure out first.
My viva is next week, Tuesday afternoon, and I'm preparing like mad today, because I'm working tomorrow. I'm trying to be cautiously confident - there's no way of knowing how it'll go, but I'm anticipating the default, which is "minor corrections". I don't know anybody who's passed without those. Once I make those correctionsn and they are approved, I will get paid like a grown up in terms of pay band, though most of that is consumed by the commuting expenses. Hey ho.

So I'm still a bit in Limbo land at the moment, not know whether I'm going to be a student for another year (if the outcome of my viva is "major corrections", I would be), whether I'll finally be able to relax in some of the hours I don;t get paid for, whether C. and I will actually manage to go away somewhere and chill out in November, as we hope to, whether the job is going to work out - all the usual things.

I'm not posting on here because my state in the last few weeks really does not lend itself to the sort of reflective mood I need to be in to write. I haven't been reading others' posts, either, due to lack of time, but hope to be catching up woth all your lives soon.

Number 5, Steve White’s “blinded”, was a good thriller with a clinical psychologist hero – that that I am at all biased. I had my suspicions about the outcome from a fair way of, but that itself was satisfying, so I’m not complaining. Imagine a former patient returning to tell of her husband’s exploits in terms of serial killing – it’s got to have some flair!

John Peel’s “Margrave of the Marshes” was the radio DJs autobiography – half of it, because he died suddenly and his family finished the book. I don’t tend to read biographies, maybe because I read so many in casenotes and hear about them in people’s personal narratives. But This one was an exception – I’d loved John’s reflections and humour in his radio 4 show “Home Truths” and I wanted to know more about him. His life was extraordinary, but his autobiography is not in any way self aggrandising – it’s funny, wry, heartbreaking and poetic, in places.

Roald Dahl’s “Going solo” is the continuation of the autobiography he began in “Boy” and continues to pay testament to the sense of wonder he never seems to have lost.

Sue Townsend: The public confessions of a middle-aged woman is a collection of her columns for Sainsbury’s The Magazine, and I was very fond of them. Read one after the other, they can sometimes become a bit samey, but this is great for just dipping in for one or two at a time.

I picked up Enid Blyton’s Good Work Secret Seven for nostalgic reasons, because I remember devouring a lot of her work in the primary school library. I remember that the fascination wore off when I realised that there was always a chapter called “trapped” or “in trouble” with corresponding resolutions, but by then I had read and enjoyed at least a dozen. This one does not hold up particularly well, so it might not be a god example of what I remember.

Car Hiaasen’s “Sick Puppy” is a funny thriller with roadmovie elements. I remember enjoying it, with carjacking, eco-terrorism, littering SUV drivers and some lovely twists.

Sandi Toksvig’s “Melted into Air” is maybe not as witty as she is on air, but it comes close. An unlikely return to the childhood home of the central character reveals past pains, plots and paintings in the summer school that is her excuse for returning. A Fluffy, well-written summer read.

Barbara Vine’s “A Dark Adapted Eye” is a rewarding thriller drawing on intriguing family dynamics. I picked this up on the basis of a recommendation and was not disappointed.

Catherin Ryan Hyde’s “Pay it Forward” is famous in bookcrossing circles, so I bought it out of curiosity. It’s a parable, a simple story with a good idea and a moral, but not preachy about it.

Reginald Hill’s “Good Morning Midnight” was my first Dalziel and Pascoe thriller and has whetted my appetite. It commences with a locked-room suicide of a son, mirroring that of his father ten years earlier. Tense and well-thought throw family dynamics are spun around this, with a stunning cast of characters all round.


Number 15, Jeffery Deaver’s “The Coffin Dancer” is one of his Lincoln Rhyme mysteries, tightly plotted, with two strong central characters in the guises of Lincoln Rhyme, and Amelia Sachs. A dead pilot and a live world class hitman Rhyme has failed against in the past form the basis of this entertaining thriller.

Currently, fear is standing next to me, having sidled up to me none-too-subtly. It’s an old pal anyway, but I’m beginning to smell it on my breath, its clammy hand between my shoulder blades, psychokinetically reaching forward to my breast bone and pulling it inwards. I’m tensing in its half-hearted embrace, inhaling deeply when I can and wondering about how I’ve extended my invitation this time.

I’m about to relinquish a lifetime spent in education, easily two thirds of my life spent in one form of training, schooling or studying. I worked for a living alongside many of these years, but the identifying quality of being student or trainee sheltered me a little. Giving up being a trainee this time also means giving up on a couple of helpful, containing, stimulating relationships, which have played a big part in my staying the course, so to speak.
Said Course has gone wrong in a multitude of ways, characterised by loss and grief and fear and lack of containment, which is why the close ties among my year group and the frequently insightful mind of my personal tutor have been so important. As for my tutor, I’m sure we’ll exchange Christmas cards and meet at an odd training event, but this week marks the end of her responsibility, and our relationship. It’s a credit to her that I feel a little frightened and lost at the thought of giving that up. The friends I made in my cohort will stay that, but new jobs, geography and not seeing each other several times a week for most of three years is going to lessen the attunement.
In a way, this is good – a necessary separation from infantilising effect of our training and into an adolescence where I hope to find out who I am now. That is a real question. I have been so intensely focused on meeting deadlines and fulfilling competencies on an intellectual, emotional and social level that I’m not all that sure what is me at the moment, and whether I might grow to like whatever will come out of the integration (or individuation?) I eventually hope to achieve. I feel dreadfully pretentious writing this, writing like this, but the language of therapies is as hard to shed as unwanted body hair.

I have a job to look forward to, and it sounds like a good one, but only experience will be able to show me whether I can do it or not. When you are responsible, in some ways, for the sanity of a lot of vulnerable people, that’s a scary thought, but I suspect it’s scary in whatever context somebody starts a new job. The evidence of the past three years suggests I can do it, or learn how to do it, that I might even be good at it, but all this is not really connected to how I –feel- about it.

I’m also thinking about further training in the long run, as I feel strongly that training as a psychotherapist on top of being a clinical psychologist is going to add significant understanding and skills that will ultimately benefit my patients, though I am curious about and interested in them in their own right. I want to train with the AIP (http://www.aip.org.uk/index.html), but I desperately need a break first. It’s taken some time and a fair amount of discussion to realise this, to acknowledge that it is frightening not to study, in some formal way, when learning is one of the few things that make me feel safer.

I know nobody will stop me picking up a book or signing up for a workshop, but I wonder what will happen when it’s not part of my life as a matter of course. Part of me is afraid that, once I stop, I may not be able to start again. Part of me has observed me in the past few days, in between my final teaching block, running chores like mad and playing Battle Tetris (with added bombs, no less!) for hours. I know frantic activity is one of the indicators for trying not to crash down too hard. I don’t relish the idea of getting depressed, though it would be fairly normal for me at this time. I am counter steering carefully, getting exercise, sleep, regular meals and gradually trying to reconnect with my friends. I’m hoping to stay in touch with somebody who knows me to check in occasionally, because having a mentor has usually helped me to stay connected, and I’m continuing to have therapy, because it’s a lovely and interesting and excruciating way to spend time.

I want to keep writing, and start taking pictures again, and go back to the gym, but I think I need time to watch clouds go by and make pebbles go spe-LUNK in a body of water and smell crushed lemon balm leaves and find out what’s normal again, so I don’t go too psychologisty on my friends.

http://malnurturedsnay.net/2009/07/29/those-crazy-librariansv-cart-wars/

This brightened my day today.

Mind you, books brighten my day any day, or darken it, depending on what I'm looking for. I love the smell of libraries, and that of bookshops - both distinct, yet uniquely bookish scents. I enjoy the feel of a reference text in my hand as I look something up, and the pale glow of somewhat steam-punk interim media of microfilm and microfiche. I've maintained a continued attachment to information in this form, not just because some of my references still provide more extensive information than what can be gleaned from the interwebs.

I'm in a sea of learned articles at the moment, flagged and annotated. The process will soon be obsolete, as better software for doing just those things is being developed and monitors become more suited to lengthy reading on screen.

In the meantime, I better get on with it.

http://taintedtalents.twoday.net/

Just a reminder for my German-reading readers to give this blog a look in. It's my sister's, and her drawings speak for themselves even if you don't read German.

I'm in hiding, in a room I've blacked out as well as possible to be reminiscent of the night-time when most of my best thinking and writing seems to happen. The thesis is due in a few weeks and much remains to be done, but I am, dare I say it, getting there.

I've been thinking about why studying makes me feel safe, what it is about finding out about things that so tickles me and keeps me together. Partly, it's for keeping my forever ravenous mind well supplied with information and led away from any wells it might wish to fall down into, because being bored is like being hungry. I'm better about not having a book to read at any and all times these days, have always liked time to myself and to think, but not when it was inflicted on me when I wasn't ready for it, on transport, in waiting rooms, during uncalled-for empty time. Partly it's my unquenchable need to be an occasionally incontinently articulate smartarse, as all those useless factoids need to come from somewhere. I wonder whether part of this hasn’t also always been about making myself feel a bit more adequate in my super-artistic, super-language-geeky family, as I am neither. No, I’m not looking for people to contradict me, I know my English is more than adequate, but unlike every other surviving member of my family, I’m not fluent in at least a third language and have neither artistic nor musical talent – in some way, maybe I had to become the egghead for lack of a better idea. I think it might be rather pitiful to admit that part of me is doing all this learning out of sheer stubbornness, to stick up two fingers at all the teachers who made me feel stupid or supposedly judged me unfairly, but there’s something in that, too. I’m still afraid of being stupid, of being boring, of not being deserving of the attention part of me so desires – trickling a steady stream of information over this head of stuff keeps things nicely moist.

Being judged or in any way assessed for my hoarded knowledge is different depending on the subject, and on who is doing the judging and what the judgement entails. I remember I positively enjoyed writing English lit essays, and doing linguists exercises and translations. I never felt that way about psychology pieces, I don't think, at last not often. I remember enjoying my undergrad thesis, but that’s it. I've enjoyed writing clinical case reports, but the rest, especially this thesis, are largely painful. I think I might never stop feeling that I’m faking mot of the intellectual bits, because I really am no intellectual. I don’t read learned articles for fun, or almost all nonfiction for fun, for that matter. I pick up my news bitesize from BBC news online instead of attempting a quality paper. I have the attention span of a goldfish. It’s one of those things I’ve found to make sure that I don’t start feeling I’m too good at something […]

Now onwards with that second doctorate. This really is getting silly.

I was on leave a couple of weeks ago to do some more thesis writing. by Wednesday, I was so going up the wall with it that I begged my long suffering supervisor to let me go back to work a day early and use the leave another time, son no, I didn't get anywhere neat as much done as I would have liked.

I've be chipping away at it ever since, sometimes productively, sometimes less so. Tonight is shaping up to be one of the latter, probably because too much else is whirring around in my head. As it is, I will try to write about it and then have a cool shower and an early night. Writing is still relatively painful, but there -is- an end in sight, ore so than the last time I wrote. I have one chapter still to write; two of the remaining three are mostly done and one is half done. The latter is a journal article which has to incorporate the results section as well as literature, methodology and discussion from the rest of the thesis. This will get written last, because it needs to draw on all the other bits. My internal examiner has been determined; he's a man I greatly respect who will not give me an easy ride, but is likely to be fair. I'm waiting on tenterhooks for the approval of my external examiner, who supervised my undergraduate thesis in '96 and has since started publishing in quality of life, which is what my thesis is devoted to. If that worked out, it would be great, because I used to adore him and it would be lovely to see him again.

These days, I get rather a lot of headaches, mostly tension-related, because my posture is not the best and doing anything for my upper body fitness has fallen to the wayside with the second half of this doctorate, because while I'd love to go back to the gym, that would count as procrastinatory activity at the moment, as I get sufficient exercise cycling to not be able to justify anything else. On Wednesdays, which are my heaviest days in terms of patient appointments, I'm normally in need of an ice pack and a lie-down by the time I get back from work. In any case, I've just requested a referral for a block of private physiotherapy, because this is stopping me working or, at least, concentrating for a chunk of most working days and all days are working days. I don't sleep too well either at the moment (see whirring head) and need to be careful to leave at least an hour of unwinding-time before bed, otherwise I dream about SPSS outputs, and not in a nice way. The last time this happened, my then supervisor recommended computer games and alcohol, but those are less feasible at the moment as I'm already getting to much monitor-time. Oh well :) I still love my placement, but get very busy days and our (roomy) office is open plan, so there's no rest for the wicked. In some ways, this is great, because I don't miss anything, and in others, trying to concentrate on writing reports is a bitch.

In other news, I'm looking for jobs, and an absolutely amazing one has just come up in the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, in London. I'm all excited about it, but I don;t want to be. I don't feel it would be wise to commit myself to a 4-and-a-bit hours commute per day at a phase of my life when I badly need time to regroup and find out who I am again after three years of attempting to be a bundle of competencies and barrel of hoops to jump through. They welcome part-timers, but that would still mean the full cost of a season ticket (£5100) with less salary to pay for it, as a season ticket is still cheaper than paying for 4 day a week travel. I notice I'm beginning to talk myself out of that job, but I'll speak to one of the contacts first, because she is a clinician I seriously admire. Another job in adult mental health is coming up in a neighbouring trust in Essex, with a team of people I know well and many of whom I like a lot. It's not been advertised yet, but has been signed off. Watch this space...

Lastly, my therapist, Thoth, has had to go on a three month sabbatical for personal reasons as of last week. I knew this was coming and we've discussed somebody else I can see in the meantime, but that kind of thing is tricky at the best of times. In any case, I'm seeing his colleague on Thursday to see whether we think we might get on. In some ways, I'm excited, in others, terrified. Therapy is important at the moment, when I'm at the cusp of changing from perpetual trainee to knowledgeable professional and striving-monkey to somebody who can hopefully just work for a living. That said, I'e already decided that I want to train as a psychotherapist, though not under whose auspices. Doing infant observation training is the first step, and I don't necessarily need to do it in the theoretical orientation of the training body I'll join eventually, so that'll be on the cards first. Training is likely to flow along with whatever job I take on, within reason, and will not involve having to write another doctorate. Still, it's another 5-7 years, and a fair few friends are calling me mad.

Anyway, this concludes the where-I-am-at-the-moment update.

AT 5 MINUTES AND 6 SECONDS AFTER 4 A.M., ON THE 7TH OF AUGUST, THIS YEAR, THE TIME AND DATE WILL BE: 04:05:06 07-08-09
THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN UNTIL THE YEAR 3009.

There. Aren't you glad I just provided that titbit of information? (Thanks to Mimir, who provided it in turn).

A couple of months ago an eminent psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and clinical psychologist came to teach us as part of our Integrative Therapies module. We had met him in the first year, when he’d confronted us with some of Freud’s earliest case studies and thoughts which fed into the development of psychoanalysis. It was an interesting class about what then were some quite alien concepts in the development of internal conflicts and trauma. A few months ago, he came back to talk to us for a day about an integrative critique of the NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) guidelines specifically for mental health and then about psychoanalytic energy psychotherapy PEP (http://www.philmollon.co.uk/Whattoexpectinasession.html), an approach he has developed involving psychoanalytic thinking in combination with energy psychology approaches. The thinking evolves around the concept that difficulties and distress in the psyche are also encoded in the energy fields of the body, encompassed in Eastern medical approaches through the concepts of meridians and chakras. I’d come across the latter in a handful of shiatsu workshops and through acupuncture, but have not come across the idea of combining them with classical psychotherapy, despite the fact that I’ve long come round to the idea that mental distress can be reflected in the body, whether we are at all aware of triggers or not. I was very intrigued, but too shy to join in as a volunteer for any of the demonstrations.

Then my lovely, caring, interfering friends gave me a session of PEP for my birthday.
I spent last Sunday with Mimir (itself quite a therapeutic activity!) and yesterday evening, she gave me a lift to the delightfully named Letchworth Garden City. I was nervous, excited and skeptical – I very much wanted and want to be rescued, but was quite unsure whether one session with a man who didn’t know me would be anything other than making him feel that we were being disrespectful and making me feel embarrassed and awkward.

Instead, I had an extremely interesting time for nearly an hour and half, and want to write about it before too much of it escapes me. My memory is quite disjointed, maybe because I was too busy concentrating on more immediate things, but writing things down often helps me.

P was expecting me in his private practice (a lovely room with a skylight over the couch, just what I want one day ...) and checked with me regarding what I was expecting and whether there was a particular issue I wanted to work on. I had decided to focus on the procrastination about writing, particularly writing my thesis, that is the bane of my existence at the moment. I explained about this, about how stuck I was, how prevarication had reached proportions beyond what is usual even for trainees at this stage. I said that I had a history of setting myself up to fail and then not failing, but that I might have really put myself beyond redemption this time.
The first thing that struck P was that, on some level, I appeared to be equating my PhD with my clinical doctorate (he has both, but did not mention this), when the two aren’t comparable, or meant to be comparable (the latter is much shorter, and part of three years of coursework, the former is one piece of work prepared and written over three or more years, in which you’re not expected to do much else). He’s right, in that I don’t feel at all as if I know what I’m doing whereas, at the conclusion of my PhD, I was moderately confident of knowing my stuff. This course, and this research, have been a lot more about learning to accept that I don’t know things.

He began gently asking me about a few things using muscle testing, where the client holds out and arm and the therapist lightly pushes down on it to find out whether a muscle is testing "strong" for yes and "weak" for no. This element of practice comes from kinesiology.
I remember thinking kinesiology a lot of hokey when I first came across it having meet a kinesiologist on a residential artsy workshop week that I used to attend, partly because the lady concerned didn’t really convince me either with her muscle testing or her person.
PEP feels very different though, and the potential massive shortcut engendered by being able to check out traumas and hypotheses about where somebody might be stuck in terms of their psychological and somatic system within a few minutes could greatly enhance the progress of therapy, when it works. Initial evidence seems to suggest that it does and the evidence base is being built on. It's not unequivocal, but it is there, though I don't know how much of it is connected to individual practitioner factors.

P quickly noticed me having felt unable to communicate certain things, lonely in writing my first thesis and not feeling safe or deserved to finish this one, because submitting it means submitting it to be judged. This led into how it does not feel safe to qualify as a clinical psychologist because I won’t have any more answers than I do now when I qualify, yet people tend to expect a lot more answers from somebody who is qualified rather than a trainee. We spoke about how (and this was new to me, but makes a lot of sense on reflection) I fear that my connection to my mother will change once I qualify. In some ways, this has been happening for a long time, but the more I understand about the psychodynamic background of our relationship, the more I have become aware of the way that itself is changing our relationship. I’ve always been a bit of an insufferable know all, but now I am nearly a therapist insufferable know all [...]. Strangely enough, this kind of separation is not at all evident in my relationship with my sister and I’m still thinking about why and how that is.

P knew next to nothing about my family, just tested out some intuitions he had had. He asked me whether I wanted to be well, whether it felt safe to be well, whether I felt I deserved to be well and happy. Again, interesting outcomes, and though I tried, I could not predict what my muscle reaction would be. It did not feel at all random, either, which is the thing that’s intriguing me now.

He also noticed something that’s quite salient to me and that I hadn’t mentioned, even though it is somewhat related to procrastination. That something is about blocks to my creativity, about feeling stuck without a remotely adequate means of expression, things I could not allow myself to acknowledge, never mind feel. Blogging and photography have taken care of that somehow, but I was stuck for years. Linking those blocks to sacral, solar plexus and throat chakras and making me lightly tap my fingertips together in front of each of those felt incredibly good, somehow, even though I find it hard to describe and qualify.

I’m not at all fluffy about most new age-y things, chakras included, but this was doing something, and the placebo effect may have been limited by the fact that I didn’t and don’t, quite believe in any of this. Interestingly, P writes in one of his books that he’s grown to feel that any belief stands in the way of open-minded discovery, and I’m with him on that.

He began to look into early bad experiences I’d had with learning, arriving with a specific focus about my school experiences as a seven year old, when I hated school, was in a huge class and often bored, as well as not achieving anything extraordinary. It appears that I separated out part of myself then, so she could remain removed from all that hassle. She might now be back. I explained about having been a failure for most of my school career and I think sensed his surprise, or am flattering myself. PEP involves sounding out sticking points such as this one, with the therapist interpreting or at least describing the meaning intuited from free associations. The sticking points are then addressed through tapping in customised sequences on areas of the body, checked out through ongoing muscle testing, and put in their place by stating the issues along the lines of "despite of feeling X, Y and Z, I completely accept myself". This is reminiscent of various NLP etc related chanting and I really needed somebody with P.'s gentle manner and a certain twinkle in his eye to let myself go with that, but I did and felt a lot less coy about it than I was anticipating.

After this, P asked me whether I was ill. I explained about my gut and he gently began to check out what was going on there, both in a traditional psychoanalytic way and through querying my energy system. (It feels odd to be writing this, because it sounds wacky to me, but I’m writing it partly because of this. I like things which make me question my own biases, one of which crops up in terms of some alternative medicine approaches – I think there’s good and just plainly odd ones out there). This again played into whether I wanted to be free of this illness subconsciously and about what felt unsafe about letting it go.

I think it helps enormously that P is a perceptive, unassuming man with a quiet sense of humour who is pursuing this field of work despite attracting a lot of the “What on earth has happened to P?” kind of thinking from many of his colleagues. He has nothing to gain from mumbo jumbo, maybe very much the opposite, and he’s not living on mumbo jumbo, working full time for the NHS in addition to his private practice. I have to admit that he’s got under my skin, but in a good way.

It’s too early to say whether this has had a significant, lasting impact on my procrastination. I’m a bit hesitant to walk too far on that particular broken leg yet, but I definitely –feel- different. I am, for instance, able to acknowledge just how hard it is to be ahead of my friends with my thesis, how it feels I don’t deserve to be ahead, how it’s not safe to be ahead and while that really upset me today, it’s also quite liberating.

It appears that my friends made me happy for my birthday….

I've just had a lovely evening in the pub and I'm more depressed now, partly because it was lovely, or so it seems on first sight. I'm partly victim of my own talent for masking, which takes some doing when you’re out with a bunch of psychologists. I’m by no means adept, yet, but I’m good. In any case I’m as troubled as ever by feeling criticised, and Mimir has had that effect, even though this was not what she was saying and I am over interpreting. I’ve got a tendency towards doing that, as well as a well-developed urge to find things to feed my particular inferiorities no matter how hard I may have to look for them. I think part of the problem is that I had a good day, of the kind that training should be about, talking to a tutor and catching up with my former boss, who made me feel vaguely adult and moderately knowledgeable and competent, something that my course does not led itself to, which was, in consequence, even more appreciated. And it was lovely in the pub, with people from my cohort and the second year and two lovely new acquaintances mingling and talking for the best part of six hours. A lot of us are having similar difficulties, insights and interests, but also sufficient differences to keep things interesting and help each other out. In some ways, this is what things should be like, not every evening or week, but a bit more often, so the striving, splendid isolation can continue to function without becoming pathological. We’ve decided to do this more often, with an open invite after work on Friday, when Brigit and I normally catch up and share thoughts and feelings about the very ill people we’re currently working with.

Speaking of ill people, I know I originally intended to write about my work a bit more on this blog, but I’ve found it very difficult to do so in the kind of depth that I would like without running the risk of infringing even an anonymised client’s confidentiality, so I’m not doing it at all. I continue to work in a forensic inpatient and outpatient setting with a population of men, most of whom experience psychosis, normally with at least one of drug or alcohol problems, personality disorder, significant personal trauma, head injury or difficult social circumstances also in the mix. I love what I do. The work is not about curing people. We can’t. It’s about helping them cope better with their illness, work towards a higher degree of functioning and a better quality of life in domains such as working, learning or socialising. It also means that the people I’ve now worked with for a fairly long time are people who are never going to be well in the sense that the general public understands it, and that’s hard. In many other settings, therapy can make enough of a difference for people to go on to making themselves better for good, or at least for a long time. Not seeing any of that is hard. If it weren’t, I’d think I had finally succumbed to compassion fatigue, and I don't want that, but I’m in need of some other things to contribute to my equilibrium, because it’s tilted a fair bit despite the attentions of my lovely supervisor.

So this is where I am at the moment.

In other news, two of my fellow-trainee friends I know of are experiencing depression to a fairly serious degree and there’s also the anxiety brought on by a thesis-workload that feels overwhelming. I’ve been there before, but it still feels overwhelming, maybe with more reason this time compared to the last time. This is the final lap, but we’re already pretty damn sore, so the usual manifestations of willing effort where no energy is left are beginning to manifest themselves in frequent headaches, gastrointestinal troubles and sleep problems. I want to know what is going on with depressed friends, I want to be there and listen and lift a corner of the whole thing, but I also need to be able to admit that it’s hard.

I’m still having therapy, and relishing it, but more of that another time. You can tell that my procrastination is reaching critical levels when I blog, can’t you?

Blessings and good wishes for those among my friends who celebrated the sumer solstice this morning.
I cooked a feast, my form of honouring the celebration :)

I don't do politics, for a reason. I'm interested in debate, but not in the irrational arguments both I and others seem to fall into when politics are concerned sometimes.
So please feel free to ignore this post - I'm not trying to pick on anyone's convictions, really.

Lots of people here complained lots about Americans electing George W. Bush, including me. (Please don't leap down my throat , dear USsian friends - I know not everybody voted for him.) Now the UK public sent the UK Independent party to the European parliament, who, instead of participating in debate and contributing to meetings and such apparently like waving banners about and disrupting discussions as much as possible. Fat lot of difference that's going to make.

The Germans have shifted to the political right, in fact, most of Europe seems to have invested in the Right and the conservative party equivalents. Why, in a time of economic troubles when corporate deregulation and governments on either side of the divide have screwed things up do people shift to the right? Would the left not be an equally attractive option? I can understand the need for protest radicalisation of one's vote, but this one still puzzles me in some way, because it's gone so much more one way than the other. I clearly don't known or understand enough abut this and am now asking myself whether I want to.

Before you ask, I'm not invested in either "side" of the main political parties. I'm a fringer. I voted green, which, while a moderately affluent, moderately middle class choice (if the discussion I've just heard on Radio 4 is anything to go by), still has some aims I can agree with. Locally, I tend to vote for whoever councilor has impressed me with past performance, or, if the current one seems fairly poor, for somebody else who sounds halfway sensible.