All the waters of the world by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns, PhD

December 2020

     Most people who know me know that my passion is swimming, snorkelling, and diving. Just being in the water is bliss. These days, it feels to me that all the pools, ponds, lakes, rivers, seas and oceans I have ever swum in are gathered together in the singular swim of the day. It is as though all the waters of the world are present in the now of this swim.

     I have swum in the North Sea (Scotland, England, the Adriatic (off Italy),  the Andaman (off Thailand), the Indian and Southern Oceans (Western Australia), Fonty’s Pool, Manjimup (WA south-west),  in the Pacific, the Atlantic (Iceland) multiple rivers, streams, lakes (including Lake Zurich in Switzerland), the Silfra Fissure in Lake Thingvallavatn in Iceland (water temperature, 3-4 degrees Celsius); hotel and public pools (last year I was in Berlin swimming in their pool on top of a shopping centre, and Caracalla Spa in Baden-Baden), etc.,  etc. I actually dream of swimming across whole countrysides, and it feels fantastic. 

   One thing I love to do when diving, is swim upside down gazing at the underside of the shimmering water’s surface. I’ve had dive masters try to save me, thinking I’m drowning! This, I guess, is the legacy of nearly drowning when I was four years old. That time, I wasn’t yet a strong swimmer and couldn’t follow the group of swimmers who left me behind, so was going under. Far from being afraid, however, I was fascinated by the underside of the surface of the water with the light streaming through. It was magical. I was pretty cross on being saved and told to play on the beach like the other little kids. I guess the reason I didn’t drown was the children’s capacity for stilling the breath, something I consciously practice these days.

     I have a hankering to free dive the kelp forests off Tasmania, and plan on doing this in the next couple of months. I bought the useful extra long free diving fins and added them to my existing rather large fin collection (I’m the Imelda Marcos of swim fins).  My Octopus Teacher, that beautiful documentary made by Craig Foster on the way in which an octopus taught the man about octopus-life, has added fuel to this desire. The dance of waving kelp seduces me.

     So, what has this all to do with psychotherapy? Far from being a remotely connected idea, understanding what being in water requires and understanding what being in the presence of other people in the psychotherapeutic realm necessitates, gives a very clear pointer to how the one reflects the other. 

     Being in the water and working with clients requires in-the-moment attention; it requires focus, listening, awareness of everything around me, and all done while alert and yet relaxed. The nature of both and all the interconnections within is an imperative of the therapeutic communication. 

     It is no accident that water is often seen as the essence of communication, a word that shares its meaning with “communal”, or “togetherness”. Sound travels long distances in water. A microphone dropped beneath a boat captures whale song of those swimming many metres away.

     In astronomy, Sedna, the planetary body beyond Neptune, was named after the Inuit goddess of marine life. She, or it, in this romance, usefully could symbolize the coming of  consciousness from a backdrop of watery unconsciousness. This is our task in psychotherapy, and in life. It’s also what I endeavour to do while swimming, that is, swimming with awareness.

     Water is subtle in her currents, shifts in water temperature, clarity or murkiness, volume (it took awhile to perceive in my body depth perception), the delicate sense of water tension, and the strange way in which the swimmer can sometimes forget that there is a watery substance, but just the natural environment of the marine animal. Swimming the waters of the world is how I’m coming to know how interconnection, individuation and consciousness all roll into the doing of participation in the art, craft and process of psychotherapy. I swim for the enjoyment of coming to know my work, my life.

Smoking and Clinical Hypnotherapy by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 November 2020

     People come to me for clinical hypnotherapy and counselling  in order to give up smoking and other issues (pain management, sleep issues, speech disorders, eating problems, confidence issues, etc.). Today I want only to talk about smoking and the efficacy of hypnotherapy in the treatment of that. What many people do not realize is that hypnosis cannot make you do anything against your will. If you have no actual intention of giving up smoking, the hypnosis won’t be effective. Hypnosis isn’t magic. It is only an altered state of consciousness where you are in a  trance state, much like the state you enter when you are absorbed into something, like reading, or running, or swimming, or watching a movie. The hypnotherapist is talking to your unconscious and giving you information about smoking that you already know: that it tastes horrible, it’s expensive and is terrible for your health, and that you don’t need to do it. If you really don’t want to smoke, giving up is well within your capacity. Hypnosis, in this case, acts as a trigger to change. No one is compelled to smoke; it is up to a point a choice, even though you may feel it is an addiction to nicotine or something to occupy your hands.

     I’ve known people who had smoked for 50 years and gave it away overnight. One man who told me about  his own experience in this, also said that he cried and cried during that night,  for his smoking had concealed a profound anxiety and depression. And this brings me to a fundamental point. Those who smoke heavily generally do so to deal with emotional and often relational issues that the smoking habit attempts to cover up. At this level, the problem is semi-conscious, that is, it is not something deliberately done, but comes about as a kind of self medication. I’ve be noticing this repeatedly ever since I first trained in this field and then began offering clinical hypnotherapy all those years ago, which is why I now want to emphasize that if you really want hypnotherapy to be successful, you need not only to actually want a given outcome, but to shake off the idea that hypnosis can deal with the problem without your emotional and intentional input and also I suggest that you commit to several sessions of counselling as well as hypnotherapy.

     During counselling you will be heard by someone interested in you.  Connecting to someone (me) about matters that are really important to you are the best ingredients for essential interior change. Hypnosis can beautifully set the landscape up for effective communication. It is relaxing and it feels very good and, with the suggestions presented to you under hypnosis, you have the settings for the beginning of enduring change.  This is not a quick fix, and it has substance.  

      I knew a hypnotherapist who had clients who gave up smoking for a year and then resumed this horrible practice. To my mind that’s not good enough and this is why I continue working for something far more effective.

     Of magic and such, some people expect change without their intention for change, as though with a wave of a wand and sparkles in the air, essential change can happen – whatever your mind set. Such an approach doesn’t work on stage, and it certainly doesn’t work in the clinical setting either.  Hypnosis isn’t magic and change usually cannot be achieved in a small number of sessions. Anyone who claims otherwise is delusional. You really will have to commit to several sessions and, with me, do the actual work to  shift  your relationship with nicotine.  

      Of smoking as an addiction. All the study, conversations and research I’ve done into addiction says the same thing: ‘the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection’ (Johann Hari). When we start connecting through meaningful communication we start to heal. This is why I’m urging potential clients who want to be free of smoking, or anything else, to consider coming to see me and get down to the real work and not just a seek magical removal of symptoms.

 

 

 

Breaking free, with awareness by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

October 2020

     I was doing a hypnosis the other day and thinking, at the same time, about how much of what we do in daily life as if in a trance. Driving (much of the time anyway), eating, drinking, smoking, reading, watching television/movies, walking, singing, writing - even, are mostly done in a semi-conscious state. It is no wonder, then, that the habits we have seem to run on their own steam and apparently drag us along for the ride. We forget that we, as a friend used to put it, are the drivers of our own life.

    The trance state, it should be noted, is a very useful space to be in, as long as we can emerge from it at will. The trance state   can be very creative, and full of possibilities. It is a relaxed,  yet focussed dreamy state for the job at hand. Most of us know how that feels. It is as though we are locked onto doing what we’re doing. Yes, we are aware of outside things: wind in the trees, a gecko chirp, water boiling, smells of dinner or the heavy scent of Jasmine in the afternoon, but it is in the doing of what we have chosen where our mind is at. In other words, it is in that quasi-awareness of outside things that we have the key to breaking free from being a slave to the trance state, if that’s what are interested in doing. There is, in here, a choicefulness in what is paid attention to in the gestalt of awareness (figure-ground, ground-figure), and, isn’t it interesting that we can be aware of both at the same time?

    The art of breaking free of doing something inherently bad for us: things that undermine our health and/or self confidence and/or a block to creativity (writer’s, painter’s, etc), can be learned in hypnosis. Hypnosis plays with the trance state, so that, coupled with expectation for change, the client experiences new internal statements as being part of the trance and also as part of ordinary life. In other words, the person’s preferred way of life is introduced in hypnosis as though it is just part of the ‘now’ of life, even if in fact, it hasn’t been part of ordinary life for a long time. A smoker who wants to give up smoking, experiences – in the hypnosis, and beyond – life without cigarettes and also a sense that smoking is now just a vague memory, without in any actual present interest.

     In hypnosis time is traversed freely backwards and forwards, now, in a year’s time, yesterday, tomorrow, at Christmas time, five years  time,  so  that what is learned in each hypnosis session (and three sessions is the minimum required for some people; more is usual) feels to the client as though that knowledge has always been there, and is felt to be preferable to what went on before. On top of that, there is a sense of a hidden observer, an agent of the self who can observe or witness our behaviour whenever we do those things we, until now, have habitually done. An observer that can step in whenever we drift off into unconscious habit activity and turn things around to doing what nourishes and heals us, instead of performing harmful things.

     Hypnosis is a tool where the hypnotic trance is introduced as a place of change, and not a place of just doing what we always do, outside awareness. Hypnosis is thus paradoxical where the awareness of the hidden observer is introduced, or enhanced, while in that lovely relaxed, focussed, dreamy state, and we become aware of our own capacity for change, we enter the path of choice, as opposed to feeling a slave to unhealthy being. The clinical practice of learning mindfulness also has that purpose. 

     Being hypnotised feels good because feeling relaxed feels good and the beautiful thing about the process is that you never lose control, but can step out of the trance whenever you like. You are comfortable in your relaxed, focussed state, and may thereby avail yourself of the freedom that awareness brings.

Talking to yourself by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

September 2020

     Silently talking to yourself in the third person, hearing voices alien to yourself, talking to yourself in the first person, and thinking in words are all things that many people do, but not all. Why we do/don’t do it is barely understood. There is quite a bit of research on hearing voices in schizophrenia and other psychopathological states, but very little done with people who are quite normal in other ways. A symptom of hearing voices in schizophrenia is an accepted diagnostic symptom, but it is possible to hear voices and not have schizophrenia. Hearing voices is a fact of life for people across many, if not all, cultures and in earlier times was viewed as hearing God’s voice or those of an angelic/or other realm. Most inner speech isn’t about hearing voices, however.

Inner speech, also called an internal monologue, self talk. inner discourse or internal discourse, is a person's inner voice which provides a running verbal monologue of thoughts while they are awake.   It is usually tied to a person's sense of self and is particularly important in planning, problem solving, self-reflection, self-image, critical thinking, emotions, and subvocalization (reading silently). It is thus relevant to a number of mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and bulimia nervosa, as well as certain psychotherapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and narrative therapy, where self talk is altered from negative self talk to positive.

     The ‘why’ of self talk has a number of theories. In the 1920s, Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget  proposed the idea that private (or "egocentric") speech - speaking to yourself out loud - is the forerunner of social speech and that it dies out as children grow up, which it clearly doesn’t.  In the 1930s, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed instead that private speech develops from social speech, and later becomes internalised as an internal monologue, rather than dying out. This interpretation has come to be the more widely accepted, and this supported by empirical research.

     Many of us engage in self talk, but what or who does this self talk sound like to us? In the last few decades researchers have examined this question in more depth. In one study, a  Polish psychologist, Malgorzata Puchalska-Wasyl, asked his subjects to describe the different kinds of inner voices they conversed with and came up with a list of four common internal interlocutors: the faithful friend; the ambivalent parent; the proud rival; and the helpless child. Each voice might pop up in different situations – an ambivalent parent-type might offer caring criticism, but a proud rival-type is more likely to be focussed on success rather than offering support. We might adopt these different roles to help ourselves get through situations like a difficult exam or sports game.

     Traumatic experiences also have a role in the quality of self talk. The inner critic seems to arise from early childhood experiences where the child feels they are not meeting the expectations of her/his parents and so their inner voice tells them to metaphorically ‘pull their socks up and do better.’

     Some people don’t have an internal voice at all.   Russell Hurlburt, an American psychologist currently working in the field, says that the thoughts running through our heads don’t often take the form of words, contrary to popular opinion. He believes that most people think in pictures, abstractions, symbols, algorithms, geometry, emotions, and other sensorial ways, and only 3% of people think in words. Whether this is true or not, it certainly gives one something to consider.  Hurlburt’s views are absolutely counter to the once fashionable idea that all thought is inner speech, but how and where we study the business of thinking naturally limits our conclusions. We can race down the rabbit hole of the question, ‘What is a thought’ because the explanations of this (that it is a representation or a map of something or a form of information) doesn’t help. What is useful, at least as I see it, is how we make sense of things and how we may avoid getting caught up in negative thinking through accusatory self talk. That’s what interests me.

 

 

 

Context Matters by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns., PhD

August 2020

     Context matters, in art, in psychology, in music, in life itself. Nothing exists on its own apart from everything else, no piece of music, no art, no life. The suffering known in a marriage breakup, the death of a loved one,  the torment when families are torn apart through war and civil unrest or misguided government rulings (I’m thinking asylum seekers and other circumstances like the tearing away of children from their Aboriginal families, right now), or when freedom is lost, or domestic violence (those who experience it and those who inflict it), or any of the other multiple ways we are hurt and hurt others, these experiences shape the people we are. We can try to operate without the contexts of our lives, but such an action is not only impossible, but the very endeavour self destructive.

     I had a rather peculiar online conversation with a man who was irritated by the contents of a news report of the death of an Auschwitz survivor and famous cellist and founder of the English Chamber Orchestra. He couldn’t see the relevance of her concentration camp experiences in relation to her music making. My brain exploded! How could anyone think such a thing? This was beyond my comprehension and me being me, I checked out his online status and found that his social media pages were full of soft porn. It is as though he was blocking out the pain and suffering of the entire world and his place in it. I also tried to suggest to him that all experiences acknowledged deepen one’s art, deepen one’s capacity for empathy and being present for others in our lives, as well as give us the tools for innovative creative acts.

     I told him that my first cello teacher, a Hungarian Jew, had also been a concentration camp survivor and that that experience, that ongoing suffering through memory, made him the most extraordinary musician. He played with his heart excruciatingly beautiful music and with a sense that this could be the last time he plays. I was able to connect with this in my own playing, because he was so very present with me. To this, the online fellow replied that he didn’t care and that what I was saying was nonsense. A red rag to a bull, to be sure, but his comments made me remember once again how little many of us in our society consider important the fact that context matters to the making of selves. Ours has become very superficial, individualistic and self-driven and as a result our creative output is quite shallow. Our attitude to mental health issues are also shallow. Witness, for instance, the emphasis on symptom management control through the one tool of cognitive behavioural therapy, rather than an actual working towards the healing of the whole person. Merely a quick fix to satisfy insurance companies.

     As I write this, I’m remembering also an artist client I once had whose painting were very pretty, but lacked depth. They were pastoral scenes, without the snakes and dingoes, without fires, storms and tempests; without death being acknowledged. Technique-wise they were similar to Sydney Nolan’s palette-work landscapes, but Nolan knew death and pain and his paintings are so much more than merely pretty. His work is majestic, agonizing, incredibly beautiful; hers are not. My heart ached for my client whose own experiences were left out of her paintings and that her potential was not yet realized. Bringing those experiences into her conversation with paint and canvas was the difference between accomplished and great and she was frightened to go there. This is where psychotherapy and clinical hypnotherapy really helps. I am interested in participating in the development of people in whatever path they choose.

     The contexts of our lives matter and it matters that we bring them  into our awareness in a real way. Merely acknowledging it in a sort of clinical case history manner is usually not enough; it needs to be felt; it needs to be known in the sinews of souls to bring a person to wholeness and to make their art, their music, their humanity lusciously alive.

Care goes both ways

July 2020

by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns., PhD

     It’s nice being warm. Too much of my life I’ve had the silly idea that I have to be brave, brave enough to bear the cold, and as I think on this, I realize that with that idea came a tendency not to discard things, just in case I’ll need them later on. How are these two ideas connected, I wonder?

     My mother was Russian-Estonian and half my family are Russian-Estonian, with a tendency to hoard and hold things close to ourselves as though to protect against the cold, all the while bravely putting on a firm resolve to walk hard against the iciness in light clothing. I saw it in my Estonian aunt and my cousins a few years ago on a visit my brother and I did to that part of the world in their winter. They all had that glint in the eye of resolve.

     I watched them put their walking clothes on and it seemed to me that they were not really dressed for snow and ice – and it was freezing out there, but out we’d go, and begin walking, fast. We walked in the snow fields, past the ski jumps; we hurried past the kindly lit, and probably warm, cabins; we just kept on walking. I, in a very familiar way, held in my shivers, and just sought to keep up.

     So here I sit now, snug in new trackie pants and in awe of warm legs. Who would’ve thought! Interestingly, but not so much, in light of my growing awareness, this comes amidst a house clearing where boxes of things and papers have been cast into bins and given away. The family psyche is getting a clean out.

     How many other familiarly held ideas do we have, behaviours, cultural ideas, just the stuff we traditionally do, that take years of shedding? It’s a useful exercise doing what I’m doing now, writing down the little bursts of insight. I had never put together the two ideas described above, till now, sitting, as I am, feeling cozy and warm.

    I’ve written frequently about the importance of connections with one another for good mental health, but now I want to talk about the importance of connecting with oneself. Doing this is ultimately caring for oneself. Christianity only gives lip service to this in the phrase, ‘Love thy neighbour as thy self’, because they also talk a lot about selfless giving. Buddhism, on the other hand, recognizes that the idea of compassion includes oneself in the act of having compassion towards others. Loving is giving and receiving at once in a crux of connection.

      What do I mean ‘connecting with oneself’? Aren’t we ourselves whatever we do? This is true, we are ourselves whatever we do, but much of what we do is out of awareness and we frequently react to certain things, things other people say, or situations, with feral aggression and blind self-hatred.  If we are going to be kind to ourselves, we’ll need to understand ourselves better and be less reactive. Me, being cold in winter, and quietly and interiorly shivering is me not being sufficiently conscious of the indoctrination of my family-borne idea that suffering is good and natural. I am not the suffering of impoverished Russia and downtrodden Estonia, I deserve warmth.

     Connecting fully to oneself is emerging through the fog of disconnection and being able to choose wisely who else to connect with. Again, this is something I am still learning about and in learning, I am better able to pick my causes as well as my connections.

     Many people think that looking after oneself is selfish and uncaring towards others. Nothing could be further from the truth. Self-care is not egocentric, it is simply looking after oneself as we would care for another loved person or animal. Self-care recognizes that any love we have for another is really the same as the love we give ourselves. When St. Francis called his body, Brother Ass, this was not to beat himself up, but to nurture the beast that he knew he was. We need taking care of and when we look after ourselves, we are better able to care for others. Care goes both ways.

Some poems written for publication, Sept 2015

Episteme. An online peer reviewed, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and multicultural journal of Bharat College of Arts & Commerce, Badlapur.  MMR, India.

http://www.episteme.net.in/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&id=100:short-story&Itemid=595

Volume 4, Issue 2 September 2015

Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher, mathematician, and dreamer of dreams, inspires me, for I too am philosopher and dreamer. Like him, I am enlivened by intersections, balances, confluences, and transformations. Jorge Luis Borges has also influenced me, not only for his take on magic realism but the conciseness of his thought and expression. Thus what I contribute here are sometimes not strictly poems, nor prose pieces, rather I am moved to write in the interstices of these. My feeling is in the processes of the kinesthete, of a geometry of shape, form and meaning. I am intrigued by the impulse to silence and words, the microcosm more than macro, the jewel in the grass carried there by some strange imaginary bird.

I am a psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist by profession and inclination. My work is untangling knots in the stories of others and thus bringing greater easefulness of mind. My training has been in literary theory, linguistics, psychology and philosophy and the tools learned there are implicit in all I write.

I offer these small pieces to play with, to allow a drift for dreamers, and an occasional query to stimulate creative outpouring and wondering.

In the space between

Words before Words

I want to write about the dark inchoate space that is night.

I want to describe the beginning before the setting out without a plan, guided only occasionally by a snatch of moon and shiny patches of wet on the leafy ground.

I want to write of this before, before, before, because that’s how it feels right now, to write without a clear sense of what I’m writing about. I have only a feeling; nameless and wordless.

Words before words, before even concepts, before even a sense of direction, before the division of light into dark, before the Genesis of God himself, before before before… I saw the movie a Theory of Everything the other day, the movie about the life and work of Stephen Hawking. In the beginning was not even the word, the thought, nor time, nor a beginning shining in darkness, exploding in the night, just an inchoate nothing.

And yet, a mere dot in which all worlds, all words, spawned and into which all will retreat. There is a hum threading each precious bead of wordlessness to words to nothing once more. A snatch of light, a glistening of moon captured in grass, a stumbling, a bird call… and then the night.

**********

Under the Water

You were brilliant under the water: caring, careful, aware of me learning the art of diving.

Out of the water, you bombarded me with your stories. Chatting, without listening, talking talking talking. You didn’t hear me. Your voice jostled the air that I was trying to breath.

Under the water you showed me the universe: Port Jackson sharks, giant rays the size of rooms, dolphins, head down, feeding on seaweed, wise eyes greeting us. You showed me coloured Chinese lamps and luminous light-twitching fish. You checked my gauge to make sure I had air enough.

Out of the water, you took away my breath with your chatter. I didn’t want to know you anymore; I craved silence and coolness in the head, and so I told you to go.

I see you sometimes around town with your current lady. I see your performances as a balloon-clown, blowing up these rubbery things for the delight of children. She paints their faces and they wear balloon hats.

I invented an underwater sign for “Wow!” The lexicon had “good,” “crayfish,” “shark,” “air low,” and concepts such as these. No, “Wow!” for the exuberance, the joy, the amazingness of the underwater world. Without you, I would’ve known these things only as a snorkeler. With you, I became a fully fledged diver.

I miss our dives, but I don’t miss you.

**********

Easter Eggs

This Easter I painted eggs that I’d dyed as I’ve done every Easter since childhood. My mother and I prepared these eggs in the beginning. Some we boiled in food colouring and painted and some we wrapped in onion skins tied up in a piece of stocking and string. There was always industry here, in the making of beautiful eggs, and it had a special sense of holiness, if I may put it that way. I cannot imagine not making eggs.

I get my friends involved as much as possible. Perhaps it is just wanting to share delight in the process of creation, perhaps I have a mission. A mission, you ask? I do feel a certain fervour for the camaraderie that this task sets in place and somehow want a tradition of shared creating to continue with me, and beyond me, into generations and generations after my time on earth. It was my mother’s gift to me, and this I give to you; this sort of thing.

We sit together, with paints and paint brushes, and a little container of gold colour for buffing onto an egg, a roll of kitchen paper, and two glass jars of water, one for the reds and one for the blues, and we talk, reminisce, joke, laugh, drink coffee, eat cake, and paint. One day of the year we paint together, sharing a tradition of the ages of Russian Orthodox Christendom (for my mother was Russian), but beyond that, beyond that, to a mystery beyond that, to an inchoate knowing, hardly formed flocculant sense of birth and rebirth, just beginning and mysteriously just ending. How can I say what I mean? I do not have the words for it. So I just paint.

In the Cracks Between the Ordinary and Imaginary

My mother used to tell me to write about stuff I knew. She’d found me writing about the imaginary. She said the ordinary was already rich enough.

But, but, what about Swift’s Houyhnhnms, what of busy rabbits with watches waiting for tea?

She showed me the brilliance of leaves, the luminance of grains of sand, the smell of earth…

What though of the elementals in lava flows? What of the Dreamtime serpent lifting the asphalt under our feet? What of talking horses?

Her world at night was scattered with stars, hurtling meteors, and worm holes. Mine had goddesses, wild boar, and boats coursing the Milky Way. Her days shone with sunlight glancing off dew on the mulberry tree, mine moved to the cracks between worlds.

I can hear them both, see them both, for my imaginary horse has whinnied-away the veils between this and that.

**********

Wolf

I was twenty three when I studied at the Jung Institute of Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland for the second time. I stayed with nuns around the corner and up the road a bit.

Each lecture day I walked past winter gardens, smelled coffee, apples, and hot chocolate and each Sunday rode the train to some sweet sounding village.

And I drank in the silence from the mountain springs
And I watched puppets in the medieval towns with babies in bonnets And I ate strawberries soaked in kirsch with clotted cream

And I’d walk miles upon miles. I’d walk in the hills, past garden allotments, into the wilderness.

I’d walk alone.

One time I saw a wolf padding around the fields. She was very beautiful, fierce and elegant.

This was my Switzerland. It changed everything for me, and I’ve never been the same. I tried to return to my life in Perth in Australia. I tried to fit in. I tried the life of wife, I tried employee, but the call of the wolf is the call I listen to.

I tread a path that is solitary, and it suits me. I enjoy the pack, it is true, but then at the end of the day, I pad back to my lair, lick my fur, eat my food, contemplate the hours that have past and go to sleep.

The Tao of Acknowledgements

I have in hand a book of poems written by my old friend and teacher, Peter. From his hand, my sense of the poem was nurtured, like breath upon a little fire burning in a solitary place.

I am a voice in a line of voices, flowing like the Tao down generations after generation, connecting us from then to now, to now, to now.

Poetry is the language of connection, the language of connective patterning, of words evocative of much,
and yet bringing a gentle silence into the space between.

Poetry is the language of the heart, the language wrought by the mind, and settled like smoke in the hollows of the soul.
It rests,
I rest,

glad to have been a part.

About Face, Masks and Mysteriousness by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns., PhD

May 2020

     Wearing a mask can be a lot of fun. Combined with a fancy dress and the donning of a mask, you can set the scene for a night of frivolity, mayhem and a lot of laughter, and this is mostly because you can play being someone else and while only being partly recognizable doing so.

     The wearing of fancy dress and masks in the Carnival of Venice, a yearly celebration that ends with Lent, forty days before Easter, is meant to protect Venetians from anguish and hardship. What a stark irony that this year the whole country of Italy was brought down by the covid-19 epidemic during the carnival. Now everyone there are having to wear masks all the time, as are many across the world.

     What will be the effect on the quality of human interaction when we cannot take off our masks? This question was posed to me by a friend the other day. My response is that the increased mysteriousness of the quality of interactions will likely breed suspicion and paranoia in some people. This is because human interaction depends mostly on how we read the faces of the people we are talking to.

     Jonathan Cole, a neurophysiologist and author, has observed this in his book About Face. A lot of the trust we have in one another comes about through our interest in the facial expressions of others. When someone doesn’t, or can’t, show much expression our tendency is to treat that person as inherently untrustworthy and thus to be ignored or avoided. Interestingly, the one who is being ‘read’ this way, comes to feel blunted emotions of their own, because we come to know ourselves through our interaction with others. The result of this blunting of interaction is an isolating process  that can lead to loneliness and depression.

     Some people cannot engage in the lovely dance that is human interaction through facial mobility because of nerve disease or damage, as can occur in those with Parkinson’s Disease, Moebius Syndrome, Stroke, and the by-product of oral and other facial surgery, for instance. Wearing a mask is pretty similar. A facial paralysis is mask-like, after all.

     When we cannot ‘read’ the expressions of others, we very readily assume that the other person doesn’t have much personhood and thus much integrity. The blandness of the mask, whether worn or stuck there by disease or neurological damage, or even just as a matter of personality trait, becomes a ‘blank canvas’ that others can ‘read’ whatever they are inclined to do. I’m remembering right now the trial of Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby was taken by a dingo. Her lack of facial expression was ‘read’ by practically everyone as guilt. Where were the tears, the anguish, the wailing and gnashing of teeth in this cool, collected woman? She literally was deemed guilty by omission.

     When someone is wearing a surgical mask it is as though they are somehow not a person at all, present and absent at the same time. Normally faces are lively and our expressions dance around in response to what we are talking about. In a face that is hidden behind a mask or stuck in a mask-like fashion, there is none of this vibrancy and it’s hard to know what they are thinking or feeling, or if they have any feeling at all. When coupled with words like, “Good to see you,” or “I like how you’re wearing your hair,” or whatever, spoken by a masked one, the words are often treated as though they are sarcastically said, because instead of  a friendly smile, there is nothing. In the face of sarcasm, we usually retreat. In the face of no facial mobility, a paranoid response can emerge. What is this person hiding, what are they concealing from us, do they know stuff we don’t, and so on. These are words that spring from the imagination when little actual information is shared. Sharing, without masks, is playful, caring, and – the containment of this virus aside – this is why I hope we can soon take off our masks and be gloriously responsive again with one another.

Connecting in Strange Times

April 2020

by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

     Just before the virus covid-19 broke as the pandemic it is at the moment, I went to my favourite place on earth, Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth, Western Australia. I discovered at my father’s wake thirteen years ago that I was conceived there, in the Bathurst Lighthouse cottage, so you see, Rottnest is in my DNA. It was also a place my brother and I often holidayed with our parents and friends. We used to swim, cycle and wander through the pines and Morton Bay figs, and marvel at the sights of quokas, salt lakes and nesting birds. One of my earliest memories was of nearly drowning at a heavenly place called ‘the Basin’ and being saved and being quite cross about that. I was four and hadn’t learned to swim properly, but that near death experience was strangely beautiful.

     This current visit was a gift from a very old Perth friend of mine, Charles, and we fitted it in perfectly in the scheme of things. Yes, the airports from here in the Northern Rivers to Perth were practically empty of tourists, but everything went smoothly and I did not get sick.

     I stayed for a couple of nights both sides of the Monday to Friday Rottnest holiday stay with dear friends from university days and soaked up the gentle companionship they offered. Then, on Monday, I met Charles at the Fremantle wharf from where the ferry departed and we were transported the 23.9 kilometres across the water to that sunny, beautiful island.

     Each day was perfect: low 20s, sundrenched, calm and clear sea, white sand and bird song. It was extraordinary really. I don’t think I’ve ever known so many days of perfection. Yet, I felt it in my bones that this was a sacred time, before something awful.

    And here we are. We’ve entered a time like the plague, except with wifi, where in-person social distancing is required for the wellbeing of our whole community. Such a term as ‘social distancing’, though must be very worrying for many people, which is why I prefer another such as ‘physical distancing. Hopefully we can continue feeling socially together while maintaining physical distance as much as possible in order to slow the transmission of this disease.  I am worried about the mental health of us all as physical/social isolation is a well known contributor to increased feelings of fear, anxiety and depression born from loneliness. We humans, like most other animals, need social connection; that’s the nature of the beast.  It’s primarily for this reason that I am offering more counselling sessions via Messenger and FaceTime. Clinical Hypnotherapy is also offered online. Both adapt well to the online format.

     My Rottnest holiday feels like a dream, quite apart from everything else, and yet I look down at my feet and see the tan marks of my sandals as well as the tan marks of my bathers, and an abiding feeling of wellness and openness to possibilities. And I can still detect the very special smell of sea and beach rosemary on my rashie. These connect me to my reality, my history, my DNA. My connection with my past is as important as anyone else’s. It’s from my sense of self that I am effective in being present with others. Perhaps this is why we all can contribute: finding the me-ness of me (the you-ness of you) even in these difficult times, so that we can be there not only for ourselves but the selves of others.

    The madness of hoarding food and toilet paper doesn’t define us as human (that defines a profound anxiety for the future); what defines us, and it’s true for many other animals, is a capacity of compassion and deep caring. If anything is to come of this in these difficult times, then I hope it is a greater capacity for sustained empathy for diversity in community. That’s what I’m hoping for.

Refashioning Ourselves After Stressful Experiences

March 2020

by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns, PhD

     What happens to a person after stress and trauma really matters. Most studies have identified the effect of these from a psychophysiological standpoint  (including disruption to sleep, alcohol and drug misuse, depression and anger management problems), but there are those of us who are interested in something completely different.

     At the risk of sounding airy fairy, I note that there is a spiritual dimension to this realignment process. I’ve observed it in myself and in others. The effect of trauma (and, yes, I’ve known this) was to move me from a more pragmatic life to one more interested in the numinous, and with this, a deepening empathic response to others. I note here that I’m understanding ‘spirituality’ as a felt search for meaning that transcends the nuts and bolts of ordinary life and connects us to a timelessness, and thus to ourselves.

     It is as though the stressful experiences stripped the outer covering of conventional being (a state of being which, of course, is very useful in everyday life) to reveal something much more intangible and inexplicable. And thus, I now move tentatively to explore this other dimension of being.

     It is not unknown for people to seek a deepened spiritual life after trauma of whatever kind. Some seek it and find it in the Christianity, or Buddhism, or whatever. Some seek out more esoteric spiritual paths. Some find contentment in the rituals, beliefs, and practices (which is perfectly okay), while others feel for something else. A client of mine, for instance, says that when she enters her local church that it is like entering the layers and layers of spiritual experiences before the church was even thought of; for her, she senses she’s entered a timeless space. I got something of this last year in my visit to  Obernai, in Alsace, France and a walk through oak and pines beside the Pagan Wall that surrounds Mont Sainte-Odile Abbey. This convent was built originally in 690 AD, and remodelled in the 12^th century. This is experienced as such by people all over the world.

     So, is the seeking of a more spiritual life merely a self soothing response to recently experienced stress, or is something else happening?  The more cynical will claim the former, but – again – I’m less likely to go along with that explanation, and this is mainly because one’s angst isn’t diminished, but rather heightened in some ways. I suggest that this search for meaning and a deepening of a felt spiritual connection is part of a realignment of being human. It’s as though we are refashioned. Some writers have suggested that this realignment allows us to face new trauma more easily and to also to better help others get through their stresses.  Donald Meichenbaum, co-founder of the cognitive behaviour therapy school of psychotherapy has noted this, as does the founder of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, through his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. The search for meaning allows us to consider things beyond  immediate painful events, and  to be more empathic with others. This in itself makes us more aware of the humanity of ourselves in relation to others.

     The old ways of being that responded to stress (with sleep disruption, outbursts of anger, misuse of substances, etc) can be shifted to something else through not merely choice, but a responsiveness to a spiritual call of whatever kind. Death, divorce, loss of job, experience of the absolutely horrible can open us up to other levels of experiencing the world. This is quite risky, as it means discarding certain familiar ways of doing things; it means, also, recognizing that anger, depression, etc are not doing us any good.

     Frankl puts it well, ‘Everything can be taken from (us) but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. For herein lies our growth and our freedom.’ There is a space between a possible trigger and our response, and therein lies our freedom.