I am more than just Am by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns, PhD

Ego cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. Maybe this is the case, maybe not. Let’s explore it all a bit. Let’s have some fun with it: "I feel, therefore I am," (Accipio ergo sum) "I wonder, therefore I am," (Admiror ergo sum.) "I dance, therefore I am," (Chorea ergo sum.) "I play, therefore I am," (Adludo ergo sum.) "I move, therefore I am," (Agilis ergo sum.) “I sing” (Ego cano, ergo sum), "I create, therefore I am," (Aedifico ergo sum.) or "I love, therefore I am," (Amo ergo sum.) Or even just, sum (am)? Is “am” (being)  all that there is?  

All this intrigues me. What is it that we are? Are we what we do, or are we just being? I am a thinker, a feeler, a wonderer, a player, mover, creator, lover, and so much else. I am not just being a being. I am relating, interacting, communicating. The nature of being Das Dasein (being, existence) is so much more than a mere noun; it is process, it is verb. Are we ever just nouns? Can we simply be nouns? Surely, only to an observer – never to the one who lives, engages, interacts.

Rene Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650) , the author of the words Ego cogito, ergo sum did his thinking confined in a disused baker’s oven. Why? Because his body was wracked with pain and he felt he needed to contain it all in a tight, confined space. 

This is a very interesting bit of information, because one is reminded of what the animal behaviour expert, Temple Grandin (born 1947) did to feel safe in her autistic body. She designed a bed that held her, contained her, settled her before she was able to meet the world. Temple Grandin went on to design restrictive containers for animals before slaughter, to settle their anxiety. The containment thing also gave rise to the use of  weighted  blankets, slings,  and other similar  holding devices  for people with autism, ADHD, insomnia, osteoarthritis, and chronic pain through deep pressure stimulation which  calms the nervous system. Seems Descartes knew this well 400 years ago.

Descartes identified with that which he used to discern himself, not with his own body. He ignored the body, focusing just on the mind. Grandin brought awareness back to the body, observing some fundamental needs of the body, noticing that in calming the body, the mind was calmed as well. There is an essential difference in this shift: a realization that we are more than body and more than mind. Confinement does not give rise to an idea of  separation of body and mind nor does it define a person. Cats like boxes, but the box is not the cat. The “am” of a person is so much more than this thing that holds them still and so much more than the mind that feels free to express itself while in confinement. The noun of “am” is incomplete unless it is part of an interactive process.

Descartes containment tightened his experience of being an “am” to a thought, but if he was a dancer he would know himself in fluid movement. Dancers and musicians come alive not in thought, but exploration of the shape of sound and movement. Painters know it in colour, texture and canvas. Lovers know it in connection with others, in intimacy, touch and voice.

We are not one thing; we are alive. We engage, we create, we play, we dance, we sing. Our experiences of the world identify the world for us. The world is not known outside our experiences. As Schopenhauer put it, though we live in the “same environment, everyone lives in a different world. The world in which everyone lives depends first on their perception of it, therefore, it follows the diversity of minds." And more, a diversity of bodily presences.

There is no singular am-ness, but everything in relation, everything in connection, everything in communication, indeed in communion.

Imposter Syndrome. by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

October 2026

Imposter Syndrome is surprisingly common. When I was doing my PhD at university many years ago, I became aware of the numbers of people I respected who believed they were frauds and who thought that, any moment, they would be found out. I certainly felt I was a fraud. The fact that so many of us thought liked this intrigued me sufficiently that I started asking everyone I worked with how they felt about their university positions. Practically everybody,  most of the academics, felt fraudulent. Now, these people held lectureships, professionships, with the highest qualifications there can be. A PhD is the highest post-graduate degree you can get. Yet hardly anyone actually felt they deserved to be there. Very interesting stuff.

Imposter Syndrome is defined as the subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments compared to a perception of  other people’s accomplishments even when there is no objective evidence to the contrary. Imposter Syndrome is associated with perfectionism and the desire to seem secure in positions of perceived power. It is not a psychiatric disorder, though it can be associated with high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, somatic symptoms and depression. Certainly, it can interfere with personal relationships and, ironically, get in the way of achieving their full potential in their areas of interest. It can also lead to early burnout.

People, in all professions, can experience imposter syndrome: lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, architects, builders, carpenters, ship-wrights, etc etc. A lot of people are living with the belief that – at any moment – they will be found out and their very existence will be called into question.

A lot of people cover these feelings up with a lot of bluster. At university,  quite a  large number of  academics hid behind a lot of bluffing: trying to seem more knowledgeable, in control, than they actually were. They hid behind abstruse explanations of their work designed to conceal their own self-doubt. I remember undergraduate students would come up to me to ask questions  they’d already asked of some of my colleagues. These students would say to me that they appreciated me telling them that I didn’t know the answer to their questions because, on questioning other academics, they’d been told totally obscure things that were impenetrable. I am a  simple peasant in the sense that if I don’t know something, I’ll say so. I won’t try to hide behind big words or high-sounding explanations of things.  I like economy and directness. It’s this, I think, that allows me, these days, to see through the imposter syndrome thingie and see it for what it actually is.

I realized that since practically everybody feels fraudulent maybe there’s something intrinsically wrong with our perception  of adulting. There is nothing that we can know or do that is the final say on things. No  position is fixed, no person in any profession can know it all.  Maybe a belief in this is a hangover from childhood when we looked to adults as if they knew everything; that being grown up means having an all seeing eye. Growing into adulthood never once brought in that capacity, for absolutely everybody. Who could ever say when exactly they grew up, nor precisely what being grownup actually is.

None of us are ever fully made. All  our skills, knowledge and abilities are in process, and are never fixed. We are always learning, always discovering, always working things through. We learn and forget old ways, old ideas, old skills and we build on the knowledges that are useful. It’s a continual process of remembering and forgetting as we build our competencies as we go along. We cannot ever be a finished product. Realizing this, we can surely relax and keep our minds on the business of learning more, not turning inwardly on our self-perception as a being that doesn’t measure up.

We can develop a greater playfulness in our lives, more honesty and openness to our own wisdom as well as the wisdom of others. In this way, we can release feelings of being an imposter and simply be open to discovery and see what happens next.

Ghosts by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 Recently  I attended a weekend workshop on Death and Dying Consciously. It was held in the Beacon Yoga Ashram in Beaconsfield, a  southern suburb of Perth and run by a beloved mentor of mine. That place was full of ghosts for me. My own ghosts, the ghosts of the place and the ghosts of the workshop participants.

The ashram was established by a yoga teacher and friend of my parents named Nancy. My parents ran the Yoga School of Perth and both taught yoga. I helped clean up the building when a  twenty three year old and attended satsungs and other such things. Nancy converted to Hinduism and took the name Swami Lakshmi. She was a devotee of Swami Venkatesananda from Rishikesh, India. Swami  Venkatesananda had first visited Perth in 1956 under the auspices of the Divine Life Society. My mother had gone to a talk and yoga demonstration of his. He helped my parents and another person set up the Yoga School of Perth when I was four years old, and visited us practically every year, so I grew up with him in my life. He was kindly towards me and as a little child I sat on his lap.

My brother and I definitely had an unusual childhood. We were surrounded by those who saw themselves as enlightened, or if not quite that, on the road to enlightenment. We had to learn to sift through all that stuff. And, I suppose, this is why I now work in psychotherapy: a job that requires a lot of sifting, sorting and identifying the real from fantasy. And yet, I, as we all do, still have to do the work of consciousness, of becoming aware.

Remarkably, given the propensity for things to come and go rapidly in this country of ours, the Yoga Ashram is still there  50 years later and looks grand these days. The building previously, I think, was a nursing home  or possibly a children’s home of some kind but in the early 1970a was very run down and unoccupied. Now the gardens are beautiful with roses and flowering plums and the rooms are well kept, with air conditioning. All very comfortable, at least on the outside. It is, though, full of ghosts – all concentrated there. There are numerous pictures of Swami Venkatesananda (who died in 1982), his teacher Swami Sivananda Saraswati, Lakshmi, Krishnamurti, and others – even Jesus (the enlightened and the ordinary Joe Blows of us all). There are corners with religious objects, incense, a statues, altars and hangings everywhere. The place is full of stuff. Just like all of us.

Before our workshop began, someone asked me if I felt a rush of energy from Swami Venkatesananda. I replied, no I didn’t. He was a good man, but he was not holy. Kindly, intellectual  (a Sanskrit scholar and author) and a good speaker, but that’s it. He was, though, a prime mover in getting a lot of people to consider consciousness. A very useful first step.

What are these ghosts of which I speak? These are not the disembodied  post-death entities floating around still attached to the earth that we consider in the West, but ghosts as Tibetan Buddhists see them. They are projections of the people, attachments we all have to what we identify as ourselves, our ego, our beliefs about ourselves, of past suffering and trauma, memories, of feelings of longing and desire. 

It's very interesting to know that in Traditional Chinese Medicine acupuncture, they speak of ghost points. These are thirteen specific acupuncture points designed to treat disturbances of the mind, trauma, psychological blocks, addictions, sleep disturbances, and the like – recognizing that the matters of the mind are found in our bodies. Ghosts materialize literally in ourselves.

The work, then, is not to identify with the ghosts but to recognize that they are there, and there and there. But we are more than ghosts. We are becoming awareness.

Differences and Similarities by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

Biologists determine a species by similarities and differences. That’s the beginning of categorization and understanding how environments also change entities. Thing can look similar but be something entirely different. Take the apple. Sweet, juicy, and succulent, the apple is a tasty fruit. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found. It is cultivated across the world and is a daily staple for many.  Then there is the manchineel: a fruit that looks  edible but actually isn’t. Grown in sub-tropical regions and coined “little apple of death” it is sweet-tasting, but soon your throat swells and you have intense throat burning and stomach distress. 

Lizards and salamanders seem similar, but lizards are reptiles while salamanders are amphibians. As amphibians, salamanders are found close to water, while lizards can be found in a number of climates, including those that are hot and dry.

Antechinus look like mice, but are small, carnivorous marsupials native to Australia. Ravens and crows are similar, but different. Ravens are larger and usually live in pairs or alone, while crows hang around in large groups. They sound different too. Ravens have a deep hoarse croak while crows caw.  And so on.

Nature can be tricky. Something can look like something else but be totally not related to it at all. There are numerous examples of living things that look like other ones, bodies that resemble other bodies, but are different. And then there things that resemble other things just by chance (ie without any environmental context). I’m thinking of pieces of burned toast that look like the Virgin Mary, the shape of a rabbit on the moon, a dragon formed by a confluence of clouds in the sky at dusk, the smile on the electric outlet. This phenomenon is called pareidolia, where the brain imposes images, patterns or sounds on something unrelated to it.

Cultural similarities and differences are interesting as well. I’m intrigued by how Islamic art and Christian Amish art share similar ideas. Both focus on creating geometric abstraction, repetition and the deliberate inclusion of one very curious design flaw. Islamic mosaics are perfect in every way, except one purposeful visual mistake. Amish quilts are monochrome, but with the addition of one brightly coloured square. The message is the same for both traditions: only God is perfect, humans have flaws. Fascinating that two very different religious traditions have come up with the same idea.

Cultural differences may or may not be recognized as such if what we initially see are similarities. Psychotherapy is mostly very Anglo-European oriented and managing our treatment of those outside our culture can be, and often is, very clumsy. I reflect on a client I had a few years ago. She was indigenous to Australia and had mixed upbringing that included both gathering medicinal herbs in healing ceremonies and attending university. I wondered how to work with her. I don’t think I was particularly useful actually, being fundamentally quite confused in how to go about therapy. I suspect a lot of my confusion came about because I wasn’t listening sufficiently closely to what she actually brought to our sessions.

Differences and similarities can befuddle us in many ways. Two clients can arrive on the same day,  share a similar history, be the same gender, similar age, have the same number of siblings, have had an absent mother when they were children, pursued a similar path in life, and yet  their presenting problem may be completely different. Sometimes one’s therapeutic vision is blurred when things look too similar and then one’s attention is compromised. We always need to be vigilant to what is actually present with us and not lapse into reading more into what is there. It’s so easy to bunch people and their problems into simple categories and fail to actually listen to their  uniqueness. An apple may be poisonous or it may be deliciously good.  A fairy godmother may bring hope or distress. A problem may be a problem to one person, but a liberation for another. Not all patterns indicate pathology. The key is to listen for differences even when things looks similar.

Artificial Intelligence and the Interpretation of Dreams by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

“AI provides powerful tools for dream exploration by instantly analyzing dream journals, tracking recurring symbols, and offering interpretations across multiple psychological traditions. While AI excels at uncovering thematic patterns, genuine insight ultimately relies on your personal associations and felt sense of meaning.” Thus spake AI.

As my clients know, I often use dreams in our work together. The reason is dreams  are, as Freud said, the royal road to a person’s unconscious. While popular books, and it seems, artificial intelligence, suggest common symbolic ideas I think we have to practice a lot more discretion. We do not all share the same cultural background, particularly here in Australia – which is multicultural and the symbols of those with a Germanic background are not going to be the same as those from Iran.  This means we can’t really flip open a dream interpretation dictionary, or even get anything particularly useful from AI.

The quote from Google’s AI in response to the words I used in the title of this piece at least recognizes that “genuine insight ultimately relies on your personal associations and felt sense of meaning.” It does. Using AI to interpret your dreams isn’t ultimately useful. I don’t write this because I’m worried my job will disappear. On the contrary I never just interpret dreams anyway. I am always interested in what associations my client has, and also what they suggest the dreams are referring to.  The old stereotype of analyst interpreting a person’s dreams is not one I’ve ever followed. Work with my clients is collaborative.

The unconscious is a personal space, not a collective one. This means there are few, if any, common keys. Dreaming of a coil of rope might be a snake, or a coil of rope. Understanding its meaning comes from the conversation we have with the client, not some separate resource.

Naturally, the statement “the unconscious is a personal space” is going to bring to mind Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious. What about that? First of all, the personal unconscious just contains personal memories of experiences, while the collective unconscious refers to the so-called deepest layer of the human psyche, a supposed shared reservoir of universal memories, instincts, and symbolic patterns. There is no doubt that we share biology, but do we actually share psychology? I’m less sure about that, at least in this form. What we do have is a rich cultural human fabric that embraces the world. One that is added to as we travel the globe and expand our immediate association with it at a personal level. In other words, unless we are exposed to the imagery at some personal level, the personal unconscious only then embraces further images. To suggest otherwise, as Jung did, is to venture too far into theory, without evidence.

Doing away with Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious as he described it simultaneously does away with dictionaries of dream interpretation and ultimately using AI to interpret dreams. You really can’t pick out images from your dreamscape and find one on one meanings from external sources.

We should remember that Artificial Intelligence isn’t actually intelligent as we are, it merely gathers together our ideas into mostly intelligible forms. It thus cooks up for our consumption what we have put into it. A tradition of dictionaries of dream interpretation doesn’t automatically make the concept real. In the end, we still have to explore our own inner landscapes for these belong only to ourselves and it there that meaning is made.

Now it may be that an image is so deeply associated for us with a particular meaning that we have taken it on board and it has, indeed, become integrally associated with our psychology that its interpretation actually is what might be written down in some dream interpretation dictionary. If this is the case, then go with it. My point is, however, don’t automatically assume  that an external authority actually is in tune with your individual psychology. More often than not, it isn’t.

Starting Here by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

I’m sitting at my computer writing words on the screen. My feet are encased in red socks, my legs in purple slacks, and I have a red-purple jumper on covered by a black vest. I’ve had a late lunch and feel quite full. I’m sitting writing these words because I have to start somewhere. I’d set myself the task of regular writing and I intend to be regular. Mostly I am, sometimes I’m not. I can procrastinate endlessly, I know that, but I know, too, that – at the heart – I am a disciplined person. I think, in this regard, I’m like my  now deceased father. He was  an architect and  during the war, also a naval officer. Disciplined and accustomed to getting things done. So here I am, writing now from where I am.

The sun is setting behind late May clouds. It’s been a mild day. Rain is forecast for tonight. I will swim down at the beach tomorrow morning. I’m told the water is still quite warm, as it was last week. The seaweed is banking up on the seashore and it’s  looking wintery.

I sit here writing these words because this is exactly what I knew I would do. I wanted to say, as many have said before me, that all endeavours start with right now. Miro, the Catalan artist (1893 - 1983), began his surrealist pieces with a single dot and from that dot elaborated all else. Things evolve from right now. The single seed becomes the mighty tree. In the beginning was the word… All that is began thus.

Plans and imaginings begin here. They start as a small bub, nothing more. 

I often hear from my clients that they want to start something new, but because the idea isn’t fully clothed in their mind, they can’t even begin. This is folly. No enterprise begins fully formed. They can’t because everything is open to change. Things are altered in reaction to other events, and shaped accordingly. Things are emergent entities and relational. The acorn receives its ability to grow in relation to moisture, temperature, nutrients – not just the germ of its own self.

Beginning comes with risk. Who know what will become of anything. Beginning enters existence and perhaps comes to nothing. In the end, does it really matter? Beginning can blossom into something extraordinary, or not. It is exciting just allowing something to happen. We learn from whatever happens.

The philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) saw “now” is not merely anchoring yourself in the present but projecting your future possibilities onto the concrete reality of your past. In other words, “now” is not a point in time, but “flow. Starting now is thus a culmination of what was before along with what is to come in relation to whatever you encounter all the way in the doing of a thing. 

Where you are now is human existence (Dasein). You are an integration of past, present and future possibilities and the doing of anything is just this. Everything begins just here. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

I am reminded of Ted Hughes’ (1930- 1998) wonderful poem, “The Thought Fox”. It’s about the essential mysteriousness of beginning any piece, and just letting it happen. Here is the entire poem (included, because it’s incredibly beautiful): 

“I imagine this midnight moment's forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock's loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.”

Putting Feelings into Words by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

When a client comes to work with me one of the first things I ask of them is to write down feelings, thoughts and dreams. The reason is not just to create a text for reflection and discussion, but to develop the process of learning to witness their unconscious processes. It’s a practice I’ve been engage in for practically all of my adult life and I can attest to actual changes in my approach to living.

What happens with such witnessing is that the waves of emotion no longer have a big grip on daily life. I began the process decades ago because I realized that if I allowed those massive deluges of emotions to dominate my life, I probably wouldn’t survive. I understood that it really was critical for me to find a way to live moderately, with awareness. And so, I started writing. This writing has evolved into many variations on the original theme, from self observation to others. It now incorporates my professional and academic insights. The insights have become outsights (if I may call this article one of these).

Writing, as therapeutic tool, is much used by psychodynamic practitioners like myself in various ways. The psychodynamic approach suggests that human behaviour is generated by unconscious processes and that the therapeutic purpose is to bring such unconscious things into conscious awareness for fundamental change in everyday life. 

The process of writing does not include interpretation, though these may be suggested in the psychotherapeutic session itself by both client and therapist. It merely records whatever the clients wants to bring up. The text may be accompanied by drawings, if the client wishes.

Till recently, I  just intuited tangible shifts in awareness in myself and my clients but now I’ve discovered that neurological brain research has found that this has a measurable aspect as well. Brain imaging studies show the writing down one’s feelings changes how the brain works. The emotional circuits of the brain (the amygdala) show reduced activity.  The amygdala lies deep within the temporal lobes, and is an essential part  of the limbic system. It is primarily responsible for processing emotions, particularly fear, anxiety, and aggression and attaches emotional value to memories. It also triggers fight-or-flight responses. What happens when you write your feelings down, instead of being overwhelmed by such feelings – as these brain studies have shown – there is reduced amygdala activity along with an increased engagement of the prefrontal cortex. 

The prefrontal cortext supports planning, reasoning, and self-regulation. Simply put, writing things down reduces the welling up of emotions to being able to manage life more effectively. Your thoughts are structured and externalized into written form and thus they lose much of their grip, thus cutting down feelings of stress. You can step back and observe your interactions and behaviours and thus proceed in emotional safety without being swept up in realms you can’t manage.

There is an added benefit to the process of writing: you end up with a record of your therapeutic journey which, in itself, can be used to develop other possibilities for your own life. Maybe the writings can become a memoir, a novel, a series of poems, theoretical discoveries, whatever.  I’ve had clients utilize their writings in the form of all these things, which delights me. And of course, the very activity of the writing process itself is therapy, and a very valuable  and wonderfully self clarifying one.