Falling on my feet by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

May 2023

As my previous articles have been documenting, I am making a conscious effort to explore the bardo, the “between spaces” in my life. I first became interested in the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo many years ago, stumbling upon it in relation to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is where the most common understanding of it is attributed. The more I studied, the more subtle I realized the idea represents. It isn’t just that state between being alive and dead, or between death and rebirth, it’s every moment, from this to this to this. It’s in here that we populate our experiences with psychological noise, much of which is quite unconscious.

The bardo is a thick space, as the writings on the matter in Tibetan Buddhism demonstrates, where figments of the imagination, of fears, of dread, of desires, of neediness, of habitual responses, of hungry ghosts loom to the surface: matters of psychological and emotional distress. Figments, nevertheless, of one’s psyche. The what, the why, the which triggers are interesting, I think. Putting one’s focus of attention on these inner fabrications is really useful in stopping habitual reactions and behaviours before they take hold and interfere with one’s life. Too much of our behaviour is unconscious conditioned responses that may, or may not, be actually terribly helpful in our day to day life. Just because this reaction is familiar to us, doesn’t mean it’s appropriate right now.  Too much of our conditioned responses give rise to high levels of anxiety, which we probably don’t need.

The exploration of my conditioned responses gave rise to the experiments I’ve been practicing on myself in recent months. I put my Lismore house on the market (it’s sold now), I set off for Western Australia without a home and stayed with friends, I travelled overseas to the Shetland Islands and swam in the freezing Atlantic (fantastic!), I returned and had to face not having anywhere to stay as  my friends needed the space for other people, and I came back really ill from a virus (not covid) picked up in one of the aeroplanes I flew in. I  contemplated sleeping in my car, airbnbs, hotels, even flying back to Lismore to stay in a friend’s flat. I was really scared. I’ve never done anything remotely as unsafe as this in my life. I’ve always been very security/safety conscious, and yet here I was potentially homeless. All the terrors of my childhood  (and nightmares) welled up in horrible forms. This was exploring the absolute edge of existence for me. And there, in the midst of all this, the settlement on my house came through and on that very same day, within minutes, I’m contacted by a relative of someone I know well saying they have a flat in Fremantle they wish to sell and that they’d be happy if I stayed there while the process of buying the unit was happening. So here I am, writing of the generosity of people, as well as my own extreme feelings of terror in a quiet, lovely home in a place I have wanted to settle all my life. Beneficence!

I have resumed daily swimming in the Indian Ocean and I can feel my body/mind recovering. I notice that the undoing of anxiety knots is happening as I recover my equilibrium. Dreaming is starting to happen again. It was as though even dreams were put on hold as I stumbled from feelings of terror to  the conjuring up of horrific what ifs.

 Interesting times, these, and interesting to me how all this has played out. This experiment on myself is useful in helping me understand better how others explore and overcome their existential terrors. We are all vulnerable  creatures on the way to healthy conscious life and bringing awareness to this process is helpful for all of us. As a therapist, I can only be effective if I too know this process inside out.

 

 

Making Connections by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 April 2023

Making Connections by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

I’ve just returned from overseas. A break between the old bit of life and what’s to come, this was meant to be a holiday, but it seemed to consist of mostly galloping from one place to the next with nice restful bits in between.

The last haul was a flight from Dublin, Ireland to Istanbul Airport (the largest in the world, and it felt like that) to Kuala Lumpur to Perth.  Yikes. About a day plus of travelling in tight sardine cans tearing through the sky and racing what seemed like kilometres to new gates in airports and I got to wondering how many people simply don’t make it, and die inside terminals to maybe be found and maybe scraped up and declared finished.. They’re not called terminals for nothing.

In amongst it all, some lovely highlights: connection with old friends in Germany and the making of new friends in The Shetland Islands. There was one day, just one, when the rain stopped, the fog lifted, and it was sunny and my two new friends and I took the plunge and swam in the freezing Atlantic. The water was crystal clear, smooth and lovely to look at, but God it was cold, very cold. All this was helped along by the fact that these two women are English medicos and, if anything untoward happened, we would look after one another. These sorts of connections are like that. They link us together gently in our humanity.

Our swim was followed by a warm car journey back to the Lerwick guest house, a shower, breakfast and laughter.

Then they went their way and I went on a minibus tour with a very knowledgeable tour operator, on my own, as in no other passengers. As I say, it was a perfect day: sunny, clear and amazingly beautiful. On that journey, I learned some of the history of the place, that the Shetlands were part of  Denmark until 1472 after they, and the Orkneys,  had been used as security for the wedding dowry of Margaret of Denmark, the future wife of King James III. As with most royal marriages, this was a political act. This was meant to be seen as a way of  uniting Denmark and Scotland, following years of disagreements about taxation of the Hebrides Islands. The reasoning was that Margaret's father Christian of Denmark had agreed to a large dowry for his daughter's wedding and pledged the islands of Orkney and Shetland as security until the dowry was paid, as he lacked the funds to pay the dowry up front. It was meant as a temporary thing, but King James refused to let go of these islands, and so they remained part of Scotland. So, there was connection of a different kind, and driven by economics rather than friendship.

It's useful to remember that The Shetlands are just under 300 kms from Scandinavia (half the distance between Lismore and Sydney). The closeness of the islands to that part of the world is reflected in the old language (a seafaring mix of Old Norse and Celtic), and now again, in the architecture, with houses painted in the gorgeous colours of red, blue, yellow, and green.

Connections, in other words, can have different meanings for different people, and not all are those that nurture gentle friendship. Some are driven by power and money and these can get conflated for many people resulting in ideas that all connections between people are driven by self interest. Such cynicism comes up with statements like, friendships between men and women can’t exist, because both are only interested in sex and reproduction, something patently silly when you come to consider other deeper connections.

No, human connection is so much more than biological or economic drives. We all need a safe foundation for exploring our own worlds and being able to share our experiences in getting to know other worldviews. This is, after all, the first base to empathic caring for others as one cares for one’s own self being. This is the glue that unites us across the world, this is the common ground for a one world life.

 

 

The Gift of Fish by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

January 2023

Very early on Christmas morning, my friend and I went swimming at a local beach. I was doing my favourite pastime of snorkeling and, once again, noticed how few fish there were for this time of the year. There was a fisherman standing at the water’s edge with his line in the water. This concerned me because this is a marine sanctuary and there were signs up saying fishing is prohibited. As I was debating about how to tell him that he shouldn’t be fishing here, he called out to me saying his line was caught and could I release it. My interior argument intensified: do I help the fisherman, or the fish? Where does my ethical choice lie, and why? In the end I was moved to help the fisherman who was a stranger to me. This decision  came down to the warm feelings that I have for my fellow human beings, even though I will fight rigorously for the health of the ocean.

  found the line, and released the hook and swam on. On returning to the shore and while my friend and I ate our Christmas breakfast, the fisherman came up and gave me two filleted fish. Again, my age old inner conflict was brought to the surface: I love eating seafood even though I am concerned for sea life. None of this is cut and dried for me. I delight in the smells and tastes of the ocean; I luxuriate in the deliciousness of it all even while earlier I might have  been immersed in thalassic waters, but I’m worried by the way the ocean is being denuded. On this day, this Christmas day, I couldn’t say no to the gift of fish, given that the fish were already dead and it was a gift after all and contradictorily, I like eating fish.

 And so, the conundrum of being human, this human, who eats fish and other seafood even while I relish swimming among  marine life: how do I reconcile the contradictions? I don’t. I hold the two parts together in an uneasy holding pattern. Am I any different from other predators? Seems not. Should I be different? I don’t know.  I am deeply connected to the conundrum of my existence in its many manifestations. I know I do not do well on a strictly vegetarian diet (something about my seafaring  northern European genetic makeup) and I love the sea and all her inhabitants. I think of Sedna, the Inuit goddess of marine life and how she chose the sea over marrying a man she did not love and how she decides whether fisherman catch fish, or not, or whether fish eat us or not. She gives, but also takes away. She is fierce, when she needs to be, but loving and giving when she chooses it. In this way, she can be seen to explain something of the ineffable mysteries of connectedness with all living things.

If I have learned anything it is that my decisions have to come about by weighing up my choices. I have to make those choices on the basis of what is most beneficial for those involved as I see fit then, even while I can note that those choices are not clear cut, and not choices that are inflexible to other conditions. Deciding to free the fisherman’s line on Christmas day may not be the choice I make should the situation arise again. Next time it may be the marine sanctuary that is given the voice, my voice. The mystery of connectedness as I felt it that day was all about human warmth, but it need not be. Water, as a symbol, binds us all together with life all around us but it gives and takes away.

Time to Grieve by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

December 2022

 Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did a tremendous service and disservice in identifying what she saw as the stages of grief in her work with the dying. It’s unfortunate that people sometimes give themselves a hard time because they think the way they’re handling their experience is wrong in some way and this idea is sometime supported by helping professionals.  

 Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist in the 1960s, identified in her book “On Death and Dying” what she saw as the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. This stage theory suggests that one moves from each stage  in an orderly way, but in reality this isn’t the case. Nevertheless, let’s pretend this isn’t so and examine what she had to say about each stage.

 Stage 1: Denial. Quite often we respond to sudden loss or change by pretending it isn’t happening. This serves a purpose in numbing our feelings and giving us time to process it. You can call it a defence mechanism, or just accept it as a natural way of dealing with loss.

 And then you move from Denial to Anger when your suppressed emotions start welling to the surface. In this anger, there is a lot of sadness, bitterness, or resentment,   hidden away under the projection of rage onto the situation, other people, or even inanimate objects.

Then, you move to Bargaining and you find yourself creating lots of “what if,” “if only,” statements.  These helps you postpone the sadness, confusion, or hurt. If you are religiously inclined you are likely to try and bargain with God to get relief from your feelings that are welling up: “I promise to be a loving daughter of God, if you will take away my pain” kind of thing.

Stage 4 describes Depression. Here there are profound feelings of despair and loss. You feel heavy, confused, foggy and really sad. You want to isolate yourself, and just feel the feelings as they dump upon you. This phase often feels like what people say about the nature of loss, that it is inevitable and that is something that must be taken care of, maybe through medication.  But, hang on, maybe there is more afoot here and maybe then is the time to talk about it all with a counsellor. 

And then, according to Kubler-Ross, you may enter Stage 5: Acceptance. Now this doesn’t mean you’ve moved beyond grief or loss, but have accepted it and have come to some understanding of what it means for you in your life. 

Now this stage theory of grief is  all very well, but, in my experience and the experiences of many other therapists, feelings of loss do not follow a clear cut pattern; rather we dip in and out of such feelings throughout life. One therapist I know who suffered tremendous personal loss when her twelve year old daughter died of a brain tumour thirty years ago, and who now works as a grief counsellor, suggests we consider another way of thinking about the process of grief. She sees the process of grieving not in a stage form but as an infinite loop where feelings of sadness arise and diminish in an accepting kind of way, and accordingly she  continues to celebrate the life of her child with each of the deceased birthdays and the day of her death.

 I acknowledge the wisdom of this infinite loop model and utilize it with my clients. I might, for instance, recommend spending thirty minutes a day giving mindful space and time to feelings of loss and sadness, suggesting to my client that it’s actually ok to feel such feelings for the rest of their life, or not, however they feel. There is no time limit on feelings of loss, and such feelings are not negative, dark entities, but part of the richness of life itself. There are no rules here, and our experiences matter. By spending just thirty minutes a day also safeguards our experiences from overwhelming us into a contained and special place. We can make this time beautiful, with flowers and candles, or not, as we wish. It’s ok to feel sad, to grief.

 

Keeping the Balance by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

November 2022

I’ve been trying to practice samatva, the via media, the middle way, equanimity… call it what you will for several decades now. It is the equal consideration towards all sentient beings, the conscious awareness of the transience of reality, the not believing in and getting caught up in extremes. I came to this not from the teachings of the various religions, even though the idea of keeping the balance is implicit in all of them, but from my own life’s experiences.

 Until my thirties, I was very much thrown around by the winds of extremes and I realized one day that, unless I found a middle path, the torment of extreme feelings would destroy me and so I began a daily practice of discernment and careful listening for what matters and what doesn’t, as well as choosing not to believe in the highs and lows of my emotions (neither elation nor depression). They, after all, are endlessly subject to change and are not a measure of reality itself. This practice of equanimity, I believe, contributes well to my skills as a psychotherapist. My interest is thus less on technique, more on my capacity for staying present with whatever arises interiorily and thus allowing me to be present with whatever the other person brings into the therapeutic relationship.

 Being, and staying present with the other person necessitates being mindful of them as much as myself, with awareness that they have chosen to come because they are suffering in some way. My mindful presence creates a sense of safety for the client, giving them courage to address the issues that surround their feelings of anxiety, depression, or whatever.  Successful therapy changes the client’s relationship to his/her particular form of suffering freeing them to pursue a happier life.

 So, what is mindfulness and how can we achieve equanimity? It’s interesting that despite the term ‘mindfulness’ being so integral to much modern psychotherapy, including the very popular cognitive behavioural therapy, and it is being taught in workshops and in counselling sessions all over the world, it is only now being effectively defined.

 Mindfulness is being in the moment. It is a way of relating to all experience – positive, negative and neutral – such that our suffering is reduced and our sense of well-being increases. To be mindful is to wake up, to recognize what is happening in the present moment, and not coloured by old memories, traumatic reactions, dreams, etc.

 When we are mindless, we rush from activity to activity, we drop things, break them, hurt ourselves; we fail to observe the subtle changes in our feelings, we eat and drink without awareness, and we are preoccupied with the past or the future and are not aware of what’s happening right now.

 Being mindful is being aware of the present moment; it’s paying attention to the circumstances and issues of right now and it enables us to attend to what is required now. It allows us to step out of our conditioning and see things in a fresh vibrant way. All this mindful presence allows us to develop equanimity and thus to weather the storms of unconscious conditioned behaviour with a deep calm and clarity of mind. 

 The process of the development of mindfulness enables us  to reduce vulnerability to stress and emotional distress and allows  us to keep a steady course throughout life.

 Working towards mindfulness and thus achieving a balance is, as I’ve observed before, the aim of all religions. The via media, is a Christian idea; the samatva is Hindu; equanimity is implicit in Taoism and Buddhism; and it is central also to Islam, Bahai, and the Greek philosophies, but as a life long strategy for equitable living it makes a lot of sense. We are less inclined to enter arguments and wars and, very positively, we are more able to achieve a greater simplicity of being open and loving towards the world.

 The Sufi twirling dervish achieves a simplicity and direct experience of the here and now at the core of their being despite turning round and round and round. This is my aim: a wonderful interior harmony.

 

 

 

Remembering and Releasing and Restoring by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

October 2022

 I’m packing up and moving elsewhere. The elsewhere is my home city of Perth. Why? I’m increasingly missing the clarity of the turquoise Indian Ocean and my daily swims there and walks through seaweed and white sand; even the cacophony of sea gulls. I’m missing the landscape of my place, the smells of eucalypts, beach rosemary, pines, and sea salt. I’m missing the dryness of limestone and granite, and my easy access to academic libraries, the Fremantle arts scene and its orchestra that I used to play the cello in. I’m missing my community of old friends and mentors.

 This is not to say I have lived an isolated life here, I haven’t. I have some dear friends in this part of the world too and I do go to concerts and exhibitions, and I do go down to the Pacific Ocean for swims as well as the university pool, but the floods, the rain, the humidity, the mould feel so strange to me, although it is now thirteen years since my arrival in Lismore.

 So, it will be goodbye northern rivers, and hello Fremantle, where I’m planning to live. Hello lots of salt water play: snorkeling, diving, swimming, kayaking, dancing with dolphins under a clear bright sky.

 I remember one time of kayaking around Penguin Island in Shoalwater Bay, near Rockingham and a couple of dolphins came up beside my little vessel and accompanied me from one shore to the next. Sheer magic. And another time, snorkeling with others in that general area and being met with three dolphins heads down feeding in the reeds below. I noticed the glowing faces of other snorkelers around me. We were in love.

 And so I am sorting, throwing away, remembering and uncovering layers upon layers of stories: archaeological finds of my own history and that of my parents, for when I came here it was just a couple of years after my very old father died and I didn’t do much in the way of sorting, as I should’ve done then, but packed up stuff that I have never even glanced at. All this reminds me of a cartoon I once saw of an old man showing his son a garage packed with stuff, saying to him, “Remember, Bill, when I die, all this is yours.” Thanks Dad (not).

 We accumulate stuff, material and just memories – all of which becomes a not always welcome part of our daily lives. Quite a lot of it, though, is unnecessary and sometimes detrimental to our well being.

 Stuff decay and memories fade, for sure, but far too much lingers, loiters around for millennia. The world is drowning in it, the material and the ephemeral but mind grabbing dream world. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has much to say about this, ghosts and demons as well as very attractive angels. As much as the very lovely grabs us, so does the horrible and intoxicating nastiness of abuse and other poisons that damage the soul. So, the choices we make concerning them really matters. We can release, and we can help restore a good life for ourselves and others through an act of giving, but what we retain we need to have mindfully, with awareness. I believe my work in this place, and wherever I am, serves this purpose: of participating in the restoration of  equilibrium through awareness and shared connections. 

 I will continue to offer my work online and face-to-face here and in Perth. Obviously I can’t be in two places at once, but those wanting counselling, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and/or clinical supervision can contact me and we’ll do our work together online. Until I leave, I’ll also be available for face-to-face sessions.

 This is probably not the final article, but I do wish to say here how grateful I am to have had a platform for exploring the processes and spaces between us in the therapeutic relationship in the richness of life in this fertile land, as well as meeting some pretty wonderful people. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tabula rasa, it isn’t by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 September 2022

 I’ve hired a painter to do the railings, eaves, front door frame, windowsills, and the like in colorbond classic cream. The door frame to the glorious red front door had been a Chinese green, but now I’m having to subdue my exuberance a little. The plan is to sell my house and move elsewhere, and so I’m following the painter’s advice: provide more of a blank slate, a tabula rasa, for potential buyers.

 The whole notion of a tabula rasa goes against my grain, aesthetically as well as theoretically. Those who know me know I love colour and beige and grey just doesn’t do it. Classic cream, I’m discovering, as more surfaces are painted, is bringing a lovely sunshine to the place. The house has, after all, violet-blue posts and a deep red roof and a wall cladding of soft golden ochre. She won’t be losing her personality getting classic cream railings.

 When I was a child my father would consult me as to what colours to paint the doors of the family house, or the family car, or anything else that needed colour. I loved light green (still do), and so we travelled around in a couple of light green cars over the years (my father clearly liked the colour too). For the exterior doors of the house that my architect father designed, I chose red for the front door, green for my room, yellow, blue and white for the other doors. It looked like a Miro painting.

 My trip to China in 1998 saturated my colour passion even further. How incredible were those archways and porticos of temples in their reds, blues, yellows and greens, dappled in the autumn leaves of November. How very un-beige was that experience.

 I’m not made for the idea of the blank slate, and I certainly know that the art of psychotherapy cannot operate from such a bland stance. A person comes for their first (middle and last and every session in between) filled with their uniqueness of life, their palette of intensity and lightness and darkness and different shades of being. And yet, some branches of psychotherapeutic thought persist with the idea that we are born as blank slates that fill with novel learned and perceived post-natal stuff.

 We are already shaped physiologically and emotionally (and thus style and possibly contents of thoughts) by maternal stress levels, our mother’s consumption of alcohol and drugs, her experiences of economic and cultural pressures, and other environmental influences all contribute to how we are when we are born, and often, how we are throughout our life.

 Too much alcohol consumption affects  pre-natal growth, such that offspring can be born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder causes brain damage and growth problems. The child also craves alcohol. The effects of FASD last throughout life. The problems change as the child grows up. Behaviour and mood problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, depression, psychosis and aggressive behaviour may develop in the teenage years. The problems vary from child to child, but defects are not reversible.  And then there’s Neonatal abstinence syndrome which is what happens when fetuses are exposed to drugs (opiates, mostly) in the womb before birth. Babies can then go through drug withdrawal after birth. Prenatal stress can increase the development of depression and anxiety in babies, that may persist throughout life.

 On the positive side, newborn babies can remember melodies played to them while they were in the womb, according to some research. There’s also that rather mysterious thing of reincarnation: some children, it seems, are born with knowledges of other lives. Who really knows the veracity of these things, but, in some parts of the world, this is idea is built deeply into the psyche of the people.

 There is no tabula rasa, we are all part of the rich abundance of human experience and that everything we engage in remains present in the broader field of lives. Same goes for houses. Whatever others make of my house, some of my presence remains. And that’s rather fun.