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.

Looking for the Self by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

April 2026

I’d just entered the water at South Beach, South Fremantle and saw a man with a metal detector scouring the seabed. I asked him what sort of things he finds and he said, rings and coins. He paused, and then said that  he has  yet to find himself. I said something along the lines of, “Just keep on looking.” Naturally this conversation got me thinking, once again, about life and coming to know oneself. After all, it’s all a bit of a mystery.

Do we ever find ourselves? What are we referring to when we ask the question? Is there a thing called ‘self’ or, maybe, it in the searching that we are a self? 

C. G. Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology,  called the process of discovering the self, individuation. But is that a thing? Let’s examine more closely what he was referring to. For Jung, individuation was the process of becoming a self-actualized person, distinct from the collective psychology of society (family and the broader community), distinct from what he called ‘the collective unconscious’. It was the process of becoming conscious. 

It is interesting that Jung’s concept actually doesn’t refer to the thing called ‘self’ in the way it is often depicted: that is, a thing to be found, as one might find a golden treasure, but a process of growing clarity around the assumptions of community psychology. But this I’m referring to assumptions about gender, race, size, age, social status, money, etc that all communities around the world have about people.

The substance of myths, of which Jungians are very attached to, can lead us up the garden path to misconceptions about the individuation process. And to get caught up in an idea, rather than understand it all as an ongoing process of discovery.  The search for the Holy Grail is a classic example. The Grail is a sacred vessel of legend. It is traditionally thought of as the cup or chalice used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. The image comes from 12th century French literature and is an Arthurian motif symbolizing a, usually unattainable, object of quest, divine grace, or immense power. In other words, it is a symbol of something never to be found, only sought.

The Grail cannot be found because it isn’t a thing; it’s an idea, an image powerful enough to attract us to search for it. All the metal detectors in the world won’t, however, find either the Grail as metal object nor an object called ‘the self’. 

So, what is the purpose of looking? Why bother? Such a question inevitably ties to the purpose of psychotherapy. Yes, for sure, people seek therapy because something in their lives isn’t working, and they are not happy. We can certainly treat symptoms of discontent, but is this enough? The whole school of cognitive behaviour therapy is all about symptom control, and that’s perfectly alright if that’s all a client is interested in. Psychiatry, likewise,   manages symptom control with medication. Most clients, however, in my experience are searching for something much more profound, and I get it. Like the man with the metal detector scouring the sea bed, we want more than a few coins. We search for more. 

Identifying, selecting, deciding, rejecting, sorting, feeling happy about this versus that, and finding comfort and peace within ourselves is part of this process. It’s also sorting through family and cultural expectations about what constitutes a good life versus how I feel about it and why do I search for more? There is something very essential, something very fundamental about the drive for our own authenticity. Hindu philosophy has the phrase neti neti (not this, not that) which is a foundational method of self-inquiry used to uncover one’s true self. The method systematically negates all transient illusions of body, mind, thoughts, and emotions to find an unchanging self. What it boils down to is witnessing awareness: we are not this, nor that, but we are that which witnesses. In other words, here, is consciousness which is process, not a thing.

The Clouds Don’t Need to Cry by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

It’s now practically the end of summer and moving into autumn and the days are still light and full and hot for us in the southern hemisphere, but on the other side of the world the days are short and dark and often miserable with people saying, they’re so glad January is done. As many of you know, I recently went to Norway, right up into the Arctic Circle and there was darkness practically all the time.  Hours and hours and hours of night. It was quite dramatic for the likes of me who was born in January in the middle of summer here in Western Australia. I grew up on the beach, in sea water, practically, in long hot days, and night was something you simply slept through: daylight until 7pm and night until dawn at around 5am.  Back here in the West I’m up with the sun and out the door for my daily swim in the  Indian Ocean.

In Kirkenes, in Norway, right up near the Russian border, in December night was effectively all day. Where was the time for waking, when for sleeping? How do people cope with it all? Don’t they get horribly depressed? What is the incidence of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): that condition associated with lethargy, low mood, irritability and craving carbohydrates  (the symptoms of SAD) up there in the Arctic Circle? These thoughts led to a lot of reading, as thoughts  generally do, and I discovered something very interesting: those northerners generally don’t experience SAD. So something more is happening.

Antidepressants are often prescribed  along with psychotherapies for those suffering SAD, a condition more often experienced by those living in kinder climes than Kirkenes. Why do we suffer and they don’t?  Maybe it is because we don’t know how to manage our perceived difficulties. They get no more than a mere sliver of light hovering above the horizon but they are active, engaged, friendly, warm.  We, on the other hand, are often moody and irritable. How do they do it? Studies have indicated that their moods stay pretty well stable throughout the year.

Mindset, it seems, is the key, at least to a point. The way we think about things affects how much we are affected by them. Those who view stressful events as challenges with an opportunity to learn, adapt  and discover do better than those who focus on the threatening aspects (possibility of accidents or illness or loss).

You can think of winter as dark and miserable, or an opportunity for warm companionship, outdoor sports, and fun. And yet, and yet… We are also our biology. Light manages our circadian rhythm in a cycle of sleep and wakefulness in a 24 hour environment. It is during darkness that melatonin is produced. Melatonin is the hormone that makes you feel sleepy and those with SAD may produce higher than normal levels. 

Light also shifts our moods.   Morning  sunlight advances the clock (making you sleepier earlier), while evening light delays it. This is why light therapy (blue light, particularly) is useful in the treatment of SAD. Sunlight is loaded with the blue light, so when the cells absorb it, our brains’ alertness centres are activated and we feel more lively and awake. If we suffer insomnia, exposure to morning light helps reset our internal clock enabling us to wake earlier and sleep longer. Bright light at night delays our body clock, making it harder to fall asleep. 

So there needs to be a balance between light and darkness,  environmentally and metaphorically, for the human being to function well. We can be martyrs to biology or, as those in the Arctic Circle do, think about our light-environment as a challenge or cave in to dark feelings where even the clouds cry.

Is it any wonder that it is right up there in the Arctic Circle that dog sledding is a much delighted in sport. My friend and I did it and it was fast and furious fun. Six dogs ran with us in the sled full speed across the frozen landscape with just a sliver of golden light edging its way over the horizon.  This is the essence of cocking the snoot at biology.

Connecting Across Species by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

February 2026

I am sometimes accused of anthropomorphism in the way I talk about  and to other animals but this kind of assumption doesn’t sit well with me. I do talk to all kinds of beasties: birds, horses, dogs, cats, quokkas, octopuses, and the like. I did talk to a carpet snake once, as I patted his/her silky body. Connection and communication does take place. And this is the key and this, I think is why the accusation of anthropomorphising my relationship with other animals misses the mark. I’m not assuming other animals share my emotional  nor cognitive response to the world, nor do I attribute my experience to them. They are different in size, perspective, bodily shape, methods of engagement, experiences, bodily equipment (sense of smell, eyesight, muscle sense, etc etc). A cat is not a human, I know this. But….

Before I go on, I’ll define anthropomorphism and give a brief history into why some still think we cannot share the life world of other animals and have a knee reaction to those of us who think otherwise.

Anthropomorphism is defined as the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a animal, or object. The arrogance of philosophers and scientists has, until recently,  dismissed any idea of mind in other animals, going along with the idea that humans are somehow superior in some way. Descartes in the 17th century, as much as the behavioural psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1950s, saw other animals as stimulus-response mechanisms that could be trained, but lacked an inner life. They saw the attribution of minds to animals as a clumsy anthropomorphism. And yet the observation of other animals, as they go around their business of being in the world, seems to point to a whole lot more. There are many minds, and many ways of acting and responding to the world.  What tremendous arrogance assuming that we humans are pinnacle of evolution, after all we all share an evolutionary and interactional heritage and as such minds didn’t just spring into being with human beings. 

What, though, is this thing called “mind”?  It is generally used to refer to a collection of mental faculties like consciousness, thought, perception, emotion, memory, and will, encompassing both conscious and unconscious processes. These are shared by other animals (though it is only now that we are understanding this more), but do they have a theory of mind? And do we all have a theory of mind? Theory of mind is an ability to understand that others have their own unique thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions, which may differ from our own, allowing us to interpret, explain, and predict their behaviour in social situations and to enter into empathic relationships. Interestingly, people with such conditions such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder sometimes have a deficiency in theory of mind, as do those with severe developmental disorders.

Minds give rise to language and behaviour (direct and indirect), to the ability to manipulate, extract, count, navigate, connect with one another. Those of us who observe and study other animals notice these activities are widespread. Birds, for instance, have complex skills, some more than others: navigational, the learning of complex songs, the creation of fancy nests, the engagement in stealing, pretending to steal it (and thus exhibiting a theory of mind, overserved in corvids [ravens, etc]), the capacity to acknowledge the existence of other agents with motives and knowledge different from their own, make and use tools; recognize and work with abstract concepts; show grief, joy, compassion, and even altruism and form relationships with humans.

Octopuses, as explored by that beautiful documentary My Octopus Teacher, with Craig Foster,  and also Peter Godfrey-Smith in his book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, we are starting to realize have rich minds as well as a capacity for relationships with us and other species.

Anthropomorphism may have been used to undesirable ends in the past but the demonization of it in the present day serves equally undesirable ends, severing our intuitive connection with the natural world and we need now, more than ever, to connect with all the creatures of the earth for our continued health and life.

Border Country by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

January 2026

We rode a dog sled driven by seven working dogs, the seventh a young dog in training, and a man  standing on the sled behind us taking us through the icy landscape of Kirkenes, that borders Russia and Finland in Norway’s far north. It was freezing cold, fast and incredibly beautiful: frozen lake, rolling snow covered hills, bare trees, and a sliver of pink sky. The last two dogs seemed to argue a lot and one kept turning around and looking at us, as if to say, “See, I’m right and he is wrong,” or something.

There is nothing sedate about dog sledding, nothing gentle. It’s heart pumpingly scary as one whizzes around tight corners. A couple of times, I thought I’d be flung off into the snow. My face hurt with the pain of cold, but I absolutely loved it and I loved the countryside.  It reminded me of the landscape of my family and I felt at home in this border land. 

As we crossed the solid lake, I remembered the Ukrainian composer, Prokofiev’s opera Alexander Nevsky, the 13th century Prince of Novgorod, about a battle fought and won on the frozen lake between the Teutonic knights (Germans) and the Russians, a lake that borders Estonia and Russia and the lands of my mother’s family.  My mother was Russian, born in Pskov (on the lake’s edge that borders Estonia and Russia, mentioned in the opera), her mother was Russian, her father, Estonian and originally Baltic German. The land they lived was historically disputed as a site for conflicting ideologies and language (just like the war in Ukraine and Russia at the moment). I note here that Prokofiev is claimed by the Russians as a Russian composer! Kirkenes had this quality, of being between  places. It’s  disputed territory, and interestingly, these days, Russians and Norwegians can freely move across the border, at least within the fairly tight parameter of forty kilometres. What are borders anyway, but a human construct, and we are all humans claiming “mine versus yours” stuff, just like the two sled dogs.

I found the whole thing of being here deeply moving, stirring something profound within me. It was against this backdrop of deep remembering that I met a few of the little puppies who begin training to pull sleds at a young age. One little guy and I totally fell in love. We nuzzled each other and held hand in paw and I wanted to take him home to Australia, but, of course, I couldn’t.

Back home, I have much to think about. Our Norwegian journey was only two and half weeks long and most of it was done travelling on a Hurtigruten ship from Bergen to Kirkenes. In some ways, the trip was far too short, but perhaps not. It was quite restful not having to do much at all. The ship stopped often, mostly merely to collect mail, but sometimes we could disembark and wander new streets, but unfortunately never to do anything but scratch the surface of any place. I guess, it was because dog sledding had a dangerous quality to it and that physically engaged us in that experience that this felt the most real of the entire journey. Everything else became much like drifting through time and space as nothing more than a tourist with a camera.

One place that my friend and I stopped at enroute from Oslo to Bergen, where we boarded the ship, was Flam in the fjords. The landscape was magnificent: mountains, cliffs, rock formations that blew our minds, but the hotel we stayed at was a theme park. Their restaurant was set up like a pseudo-Viking feast house, complete with tall blond Viking man with a suspiciously northern English accent (!) who would sell his grandmother at the drop of a hat, animal hides, carved wooden chairs and tables, a booze bar, etc etc. I felt almost sick with the silliness of it; a  museum piece designed for tourists. If this is what travel has become, I’m not sure I want any part of it.

I suppose what I gained most from my journey was connection with my familial history of border countries/cultures, meeting and loving the dogs, and understanding what matters most to me. The rest can be forgotten.

Hypnosis in the Treatment of Dental Anxiety by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

December 2025

I first came upon the idea of clinical hypnosis when sitting in a dental chair in consultation with my dentist some dozen years ago. As we always did, he and I got talking about shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings and the subject of hypnosis came up. My dentist disappeared into another room and came out with a book on the history of the use of hypnosis in dentistry in Australia and invited me to borrow it.  My interest was sparked.

Yes, I knew about hypnosis from my studies in psychology decades previously, and yes I knew about hypnosis as entertainment, but that was it. It really hadn’t entered my consciousness very deeply until now. So I got to thinking, incorporating hypnosis into my psychotherapeutic work would be very useful. I set about looking for decent courses in clinical hypnotherapy and found one down in Sydney. This course was spread over several months and required me to fly down to Sydney every month, find a place to stay and immerse myself in the theory and practice of this art. It also required me to write essays, record my sessions with clients, and the like. We had a mountain of stuff to read, to critique, and to incorporate into our practice. It was a good course, and I came out with a Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy, which with my Master of Counselling degree has proved very useful.

I see people with all sorts of issues for hypnotherapy, as with non-hypnotherapy clients, but the most frequent issues are sleep disturbances, smoking, fear of heights, fear of falling, of flying, self confidence issues, etc. One client needed hypnosis because she had to undergo bone scraping under local anaesthetic because she’d had too many full anaesthetics for the same procedure and the surgeon was concerned that her recovery rate was too compromised by full anaesthesia. The bone scraping was to stimulate healing. She’d been in horse riding accident and had nearly torn her foot off. The injury had become infected. A truly horrible condition. And so I was called in to hypnotise her, which I did and her recovery was hugely improved. 

It is very interesting to me that it is only now, nearly 13 years later that I have my very first client receiving hypnosis for dental anxiety, particularly since I began with this as one of the reasons I chose to learn hypnosis in the first place.

Dental anxiety refers to fear of dental procedures and a reluctance to seek dental care, even when the person has major dental issues.  According to the literature, the  prevalence of dental anxiety is anything up to about  58% of people, but gauging real numbers is difficult.  If someone is avoidant, are they going to own up to it? Avoidance of dental care can lead to significant health issues, including heart disease. The oral cavity can become septic and then the person is in grave danger, beyond just losing their teeth to chew efficiently. So avoiding dental care through anxiety worsens dental problems and that creates even more anxiety and more dental issues. 

And then there’s the problem of pain. In the context of dental fear and anxiety, one can never ignore the topic of pain. Although pain has a clear physiological process which is the pain pathway, it also has a strong cognitive component. This means that a person who already has dental anxiety may have an exaggerated pain perception and experience, sometimes to the point of fainting. This is where hypnosis is very useful. The dentist can numb the physical pain, but the hypnotherapist can switch off the psychological fear.

So, if you have dental anxiety consider hypnotherapy for helping you overcome it and give you the means for attending important dental appointments. Hypnotherapy is very useful for many things, and this is there among them. Your overall health matters. 

Please contact me via dr_mccardell@yahoo.com to make an appointment. 

Incorporation and Utilization in Hypnotherapy by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 The other day I did a hypnotherapy session with a client coming for dental anxiety. During the session, a neighbour started drilling a wall (there’s always some building going on around me here), so I incorporated that sound into the hypnosis. Afterall, here was the perfect arising and I, anyway, work on the principle that we can be aware of a multitude of things and if we have previously only concentrated on our problems, bringing awareness to the multiplicities shifts our consciousness to whatever happens around us and not be fixated anymore on just the perceived issue.

 

Incorporating the sound of drilling is a neat example of incorporation in therapeutic practice. I could’ve totally ignored the sound and made no reference to it, but it was very loud and present – and quite funny, really, given what we were working on. Something that the client referred to at the end of the session. The sound, and my reference to it as one of many sounds, served usefully as a reinforcing tool, given that I was emphasizing that one’s attention can be on anything, and nothing at all.

 

The art of incorporation is central to Ericksonian hypnotherapy, as is its counterpart, utilization. What might otherwise be seen as interruptions are actually very useful opportunities. 

 

The principle of incorporation is using the sounds, sensations, perceptions that arise during a session. Sounds of drilling, perceiving the texture of the rug draped over the client’s legs, the softness of the cushion behind their back, how it feels to put one’s feet on the floor, etc, can all be used to deepen a person’s trance. 

 

The principle of utilization is similar, but refers to anything the client does: movements, words, facial expressions, breathing patterns (even breath itself), cognitive and emotional processes. All can be woven into the hypnotic language employed. 

 

I always employ awareness of breath into the hypnoses I do, because it is already a gift. While we live, we breath and we can use our awareness of our own breath whenever anxiety, or whatever, arises. Some hypnotherapists suggest deep breathing, but I find such a suggestion can actually cause a lot of problems. Getting someone to take deep breaths can made a person ultra self conscious, and create thoughts long the lines of, “Am I doing it right” as well as possibly inducing hyperventilation.  Awareness of an ordinary breath, on the other hand: breathing out and letting go and feeling more and more relaxed, pause, and breathing in the new is always available to our awareness, and without stress. And, of course, the beauty of it is that breathing is occurring whether we are awake or asleep and we can be aware of it, or not, and whether we are is a matter of choice. Just like anything else in our consciousness, problems included.

 

I also often refer to the thoughts and memories that are likely, and most probably, arising as I’m doing a hypnosis and I’m likely to say, “Isn’t it interesting that you can have this thought, or that thought, or that… and they keep coming and going like clouds in the sky, taking shape and form, and evaporating.” This technique I employ is quick in inducing a trance state. As the reader may notice, I use utilization and incorporation all the time when doing a hypnosis, and it use it in a rather confusional way. The point of this is that awareness is shifting all the time in ordinary life and when we pay attention to such processes our fixations on problems shifts. It’s hard to hang on to a single iterative thought when we become aware of the multiplicities of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that arise.

 

Milton Erickson, the father of the branch of hypnotherapy that I practice, saw the techniques of incorporation and utilization as central to the creative process of hypnosis, and they are. The old idea of swinging a pendulum in front of a person’s eyes and making them focus on just that and ignoring all which is going on around them is unhelpful, in my view. I’m far more interested in bringing awareness to complexity than trying to control the person. It is in the awareness of complexity that we are able to choose what we attend to, which seems to me to be the whole point of therapy. We are free agents when we become aware of such things.

 

Please email me on dr_mccardell@yahoo.com if you are interested in receiving clinical hypnotherapy. It’s all done online, which works well.

 

 

 

 

Delayed Emotion after Trauma By Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 September 2025

One of my first clients years ago when I was starting out as a therapist was a Vietnam veteran. He had just retired as an aircraft mechanic when he came to see me in a state of deep anguish. He had been a helicopter pilot during that war responsible for picking up broken bodies in Vietnam jungles. He said that at the time he just did his job, just got on with it. Didn’t feel much. After he returned home from the war, he settled into his job with a couple of airlines: went to work, came home,  showered, cooked dinner, watched a bit of television, and went to bed. Same thing day after day for decades. No hanging out with friends, no intimate relationships. And then he took early retirement and suddenly found himself standing on a bridge about to throw himself in. Instead he went to his doctor and, after that, came to see me. Suddenly he was feeling all those emotions that he cut himself off from for all of his working life.

 I get this. In the past month or so I’ve been suddenly feeling the deep sadness from nearly dying this time last year when I was hospitalized with blood poisoning that damaged my kidneys. Suddenly sad, coupled with recurring iterative memories of being in three hospitals with tubes in me for blood transfusions, temporary dialysis and other indignities.

 I feel for those in the Northern Rivers, and particularly Lismore, who lost their houses, livelihoods and animals after the 2022 floods. I was lucky, living as I did in Lismore Heights above the devastation. The floods and aftermath are one reason I returned to my hometown of Perth, Western Australia where flooding doesn’t happen. The trauma felt, I know, was not immediately felt by all and many, I’m sensing, are feeling it now. I must admit that I’m feeling the feelings now delayed as well.

 Why are feelings sometimes delayed for so long? You’d think that in the face of immediate catastrophe that feelings would be running high. They are for some, but not for others. Our immediate reactions in the aftermath of trauma are complicated and shaped by our life experiences, culture, coping skills, and community support. Coping styles are individual and variations in how a person copes (including those who just get on with life, without feeling much) is not a sign of psychopathology. There is no “normal” response to trauma. The realization of this is relatively new to those who study trauma. When I was studying for my Master of Counselling degree this wasn’t really talked about and the advice given to us was to encourage the person to talk about their experiences at the time of the traumatic event. A person like my Vietnam vet client, or me, for that matter, would not be helped by this approach – until they were ready to feel their emotions; emotions  have to be felt in their own good time.

 Coping styles vary from action oriented to reflective, from emotionally expressive to reticent. There are those who just get on with life, and there are those who are left exhausted, confused, sad, anxious, agitated, numb, dissociated, confused, in emotional and physical pain, and feeling nothing much at all. Of course, these feelings can become crippling and lead to long term distress: nightmares, sleep disorders, iterative thoughts, flashbacks, anxiety and depression, suicidal thoughts, as well as avoidance of emotions that are associated with the trauma.

 Delayed emotional responses are not inevitable. Why this is so, is poorly understood. It could be that the event is not felt life threatening, or perhaps it is familiar to some lucky people. The thing is, though, that we cannot assume that if a person who has been in a horrible event is not showing much emotion is ok. Care and support is necessary whatever the person exhibits, or doesn’t.

 

Creative arts, therapy, mindfulness exercise, watching the breath,  and sometimes medication helps. What doesn’t, is self medicating with drugs and alcohol. The thing is, be gentle and practice self care.

 

 

Hypnosis as Everyday Trance by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

July 2025

 

 Quite a lot of people are frightened of hypnosis. They immediately think mind control and stage performances where people are made to do bizarre things, but clinical hypnotherapy is no more threatening than reading a book, walking on the beach, watching a movie, listening to music. It’s just an extension of a common, everyday trance state.

 

You know the sort of thing I mean here: you’re in the zone, you’re not really aware of what’s going on around you even though you can still hear extraneous noises (a dog barking, the wind in the trees), you are aware of passing thoughts, but – like clouds in the sky, they arise and depart; your focus is on reading the book, listening to the song, the rhythm of the walk. You are in connection with the process of where you’re at.

 

As a hypnotherapist I’m uninterested in attempting to persuade you to do anything at all. That strategy would, anyway, lead to a massive resistance on your part!  Instead, I invite you to explore your own experience and inner resources to resolve the thing that is bothering you.  Hypnosis isn’t a violence against you, but a gentle exploration. It is felt as deep, supportive, safe relaxation.

 

Hypnotherapy can have immediate results, or you can notice change happening over time. You may feel different or you may just notice that trepidation, or intrusive thoughts, or feeling compelled to do something habitual has evaporated.

 

I worked with a woman with a fear of flying. She had a planned a trip to Bali but was really worried about getting on a plane. I discovered through the first session (usually about three one hour sessions are what is minimally required) that she used to do really exciting things like scuba diving and motorbike riding. Given that I also have done these things I know the excitement. I know, also, that the body perceives excitement and fear in about the same way (a rush of adrenalin) and thus feeling afraid to fly can be experienced not as fear, but as excitement. By this suggestion alone, when my client flew she was happy and delighted by the whole experience.

 

Intrusive sounds, can likewise evaporate under hypnosis and be translated into the spaces where they used to be a massive bother.  Several years ago, I had a client having to use a dialysis machine at night that made a particular intrusive noise while he was trying to sleep.  Instead of trying to persuade him not the hear the sound (have you ever been successful not thinking about the elephant in the room), I encouraged him through hypnosis to listen to the sound in the same way as he heard the wind in the trees outside his bedroom window, or voices in the street, or anything else going on in the night. In this way, no sound dominated and he was able to sleep.

 

A woman came to me with a fear of falling and was planning a hiking trip through the Grand Canyon. I discovered in her first session with me that her birthday is in January, like me, and I commented that we were both goats. And thus the hypnotherapy sessions were about the magnificence of mountain goats and how they/we are able to climb mountains with great agility and ease. There is caution, carefulness, and confidence in distributing weight and movement. And so my client had a wonderful hike.

 

The process of hypnosis is an interesting one. Brain wave research shows that in a hypnotic trance state a person brains exhibits deep alpha and theta brain waves. Alpha is associated with imagination and theta, with meditation. When the therapist’s brain waves are measured while doing a hypnosis, both alpha and theta are also present, but with the addition of beta waves. Beta is connected to conscious thought. So, in other words, the therapist experiences what the client is experiencing, with the addition of conscious thought in the presentation and shaping of the hypnotherapy session.  You can see why, receiving hypnotherapy feels so good and why I enjoy doing it.

 

I offer hypnotherapy online, which works very well. Contact: dr_mccardell@yahoo.com for more information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online Therapy by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

June 2025

As most of your already know, I moved to Western Australia a couple of years ago and yet I continue writing for The Nimbin Good Times, as I’ve done since March 2009. Why, you may  ask?  The reason is that as I’m mostly working online these days, it doesn’t matter where I live. I’m also still very much connected to the people of the Northern Rivers and consider your part of the world my second home. I lived there, after all, in Lismore, 14 years.

 I returned to my home town of Perth for a few reasons, including the realization that I was missing my beloved Indian Ocean too much and I was getting home sick.

 As the covid pandemic taught us therapists, counselling and doing hypnotherapy online works. In the case of the latter, after all, the hypno is done with the client lying down with their eyes shut and my voice drifting across the ether wherever you or I am. Computer technology is so sophisticated these days that we are generally very comfortable talking to the person at the other end as if we were all in the same room.

There are many therapists working exclusively online nowadays. I do see people in person here in Fremantle, where I’m living, as well as online. This is obviously only an option if you’re here in the West. For everybody else, it’s online therapy that I’m  offering. I have clients, these days, spread across the whole of Australia, which is really quite nice. I advertise in Psychology Today, which, like most things these days, is predominantly an online journal.

 I follow the lives and politics of what’s happening around the northern rivers region of New South Wales  as I do back here. You matter to me. If you wish to contact me, the best way is by emailing dr_mccardell@yahoo.com

 It’s interesting how readily we humans have taken to online communication. It doesn’t generally feel very odd at all. Online therapy, also called teletherapy, has been found to be just as effective as in person therapy. It’s better than doing sessions on the telephone as we are very visual creatures. We connect better with each other when we can see the other person.

Online therapy, and I use WhatsApp, Messenger, and doxy.com usually, allows for great flexibility as clients don’t have to drive to a designated place. We can do it from the comfort of our own homes. This opens the way to good therapy for clients living outside towns and those who are disabled in some way. Time constraints are also more easily managed for online sessions.

 There are downsides to online therapy and these include dodgy internet connections, difficulty making sure the sessions are private (you need, ideally, to have your living space to yourself for your sessions), incomplete visual clues (we therapists learn a lot about our clients through careful observation), and some psychological issues are not well cared for by this mode of communication. Severe psychiatric crises are best treated by somebody in person.

One thing that is as true for online therapy as in person therapy is the need for quiet contemplation before and after each session. Such time allows the person to reflect and prepare for what is to come and to make notes as felt necessary. You might follow up a session with a hot bath and lovely essential oils or sit down to a delicious meal or just head off to the garden. Prospects that don’t include car travel. Not bad, really. The important thing is that you don’t throw yourself into the rigors of work and stress straightaway but give yourself a bit of space around your therapeutic sessions.

 Online therapy is a matter of personal choice. If you prefer in person sessions, then find a therapist for that; if online suits you best, and you’re interested in my work, contact me, please.

Clinical Hypnotherapy by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD, Dip. Clinical Hypnotherapy.

 

May 2025

 In 2013 I got into a conversation with my dentist about the use of hypnosis in dentistry. He loaned me a book on the subject written by a dentist working in  Australia who started using hypnosis with anxious patients and for ameliorating oral pain.  Until then, I’d had only a passing interest in the field, although I knew about the old experiments in psychology (Clark L. Hull, etc) and also the mystique surrounding it (Mesmer, and all that). The dentist author, though, was hinting at more than suggestibility and magic; he was exploring the revelry of the trance state where anything can be attended to. This was the revelation for me and ignited a more profound interest.

 I researched training bodies around Australia teaching hypnosis and decided upon the Australian Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy in order to learn how to do hypnosis properly, and to gain qualifications in it. And so for four days out of every month for four months I travelled down to Sydney to attend classes held in one of the  University of Sydney’s colleges: in theory and practice and essays, building up my expertise. I had to do 400 hours of practice in order to get my diploma. It was a thorough education that added beautifully to my existing training as a counsellor/psychotherapist; an education that continues.

 My main interest in the hypnotic state is, as I hint above, that it opens our minds to other possible paths hitherto not considered. Anything can be attended to in equal measure to the otherwise iterative one track mindedness of a problem story. Recurring thoughts are the things that bog us down and get in the way of more creative solutions.  For example, a client I’ve been working with recently had two main things going on: recurring negative thoughts and feeling her life and career was going nowhere. I worked with her issues in two ways: shifting her awareness from the negative thoughts to the process of breathing in new cool air and breathing out and letting go of old stuff. The second arm was getting her to explore ways she can reactivate her intellectual and activist life through writing scholarly papers in the field of her expertise. Iterative thought processes are inward looking and depressing, while awareness of breath and focus on creating new work are outward looking, and break the mindset that behaves more like a mouse wheel than anything healthy.

 Hypnosis throws up other ways of being in forms that excite and interest and appeal to the bigger picture of what a person sees in themselves.

 Another patient has been bogged down with the problems of giving up smoking. He now wears nicotine patches which help with the chemical addiction. The physical pleasure of rolling the paper and stuffing the tobacco inside also has an addictive component. What to do? My suggestion was to practice making origami birds and little beasties out of paper, thus transferring the cigarette paper making skills to something fun and intricate and little animals that can be given to his grandchild – this bringing delight to her. From the insular process of rolling a fag to making a gift is compelling.

 

The thing about the hypnotic state is that it is a trance state and thus no different to the trance states we enter when we watch a movie, read a compelling book, enter into a dance, playing music, riding a bicycle, swim, walk. We are entranced by our involvement and we are very aware of what is going on at the same time. Minds are not taken over, but rather we allow our participation in a shared space that we choose. We can choose not to be there at any point along the way: that is up to us. The hypnotic space, in capable hands, is a secure and safe place and nothing is suggested that goes against a person’s wishes. In this safe place, new and creative ideas can be born and begin to flourish. Hypnosis nurtures this.

 Doing hypnosis is beautiful and its good results confirm my ongoing interest in it. Both practitioner and patient benefit.

 

On Viewing William Morris' Tapestry of Adoration, by E. E. McCardell (1984)

 A poem I wrote in 1984 I think is worth revisiting. Here it is:

 

  Hwaet!

A dream came to me

At  deepest midnight

-       The dream of dreams!

I shall declare it.

 

Through wave over wave of wind

Lilies wove soft music

In the warm evening air.

 

By the gently lighted milk-white moon

I saw a lovely lady clothed in blue –

A babe at her breast

And angels bowed before them.

 

My eyes were undimmed, the glass to God

  clear

I saw the hard smeared rood

Heavy with blossoms

And sweet Miriam reach and pluck them

In her blessed hands.

 

And celestial psalmody sang:

“IT IS RIGHT!”

 

Set before me fair full of wine –

Or was it blood?

A fire wrought vessel

And bread –

  Flesh?

And in wave over wave of wind –

Evening shifted to darkest night

  and

I slept, my dream done.

 

Whither is this lady now?

She waits in love

within each our hearts.

 

 

Laying Down a Path in Walking by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

April 2025

Every morning I swim in the ocean, mostly doing backstroke so I can gaze at the sky and watch the clouds and the occasional bird or plane. The other day I bumped into a fellow (obviously I can’t see where I’m going) and his comment made me laugh. He said, you are going forwards yet backwards at the same time. Forwards and backwards simultaneously. It got me thinking.  As a metaphor for my daily life, this is as true for backstroke, as for life. As I go about my day, I reflect on where I’ve been = at the same time. Travelling forward each day, and reflecting on it,  wends a path in the process of making it and it is through the doing of it that I’m making sense of the world around me.

I’ve been mulling about this sort of thing for years. We think we are making decisions before we actually make them; we like to believe we plan our moves, but – as the Buddhists say, “we lay down our path in walking,” in living it. Our decisions are not made beforehand in a sort of clinical architectural office, but in the process of engagement, of everyday enactment.

This is not to say that any systematic organized strategy for going forward can’thelp, but it works because it utilizes earlier knowledge/skills. It is extraordinarily difficult to choose to do something we have no experience in.  I would have practically no clue in how to fix a car, for instance. I don’t have much of a knowledge base in this regard.

I’m reminded of a high school friend who used to spend all her time working out study programmes, rather than actually reading and writing her required school work. She never got around to doing the work because she really didn’t know how to do it, not having a background in the subject at all, and not having the wisdom to start learning either. You can’t start from nothing; you have to build up a knowledge base in order to move forward.

 Encountering the next experience is an evolutionary one: just as choices are made according to what has gone on before, so the remembered experience fleshes out the next one. The accumulation of experiences, recognized as such, makes for a rich life. Just thinking for a moment how horrible it would be to lose one’s memory: for the process of remembering to be replaced by dismembering. The richness of the present moment would be replaced by confusion. The anchor to knowing where you are is lost.

 I watched a short video of a woman with mid-stage Alzheimer’s Disease talking about her lived experiences. She, interestingly, said that she could make sense of the world when the light was on, but couldn’t grapple with any of it in  semi-darkness. If she dropped a newspaper while the light was on, she could pick it up, but in the semi-dark, though she would trip over the paper repeatedly, she didn’t have the wherewithal to stoop down and remove the paper from the floor. Her sight was her anchor to useful enaction in her world.  Jonathan Cole’s book Pride and a Daily Marathon describes how a man who had lost his bodily awareness through acute illness could only move if he could see where his limbs were in relation to the ground. Cole is an English neurophysiologist who remains intrigued by how bodily awareness, movement, memory and a sense of ‘I’ interact. Disconnecting parts of an otherwise ongoing interactive process amounts to dis-membering memory and confusion reigns.

 Yes, we lay down a path in walking, but for the richness of that experience to be felt, we need to remember what has gone before and – at the same time – know our bodies as we move forward. The whole thing together is wonderfully rich and enjoyable.

 Therapy is the art of drawing all these experiences together into an exciting whole so that we can use our pre-existing knowledge to explore new places in our lives. I note that I’m available to do counselling online. My email address is dr_mccardell@yahoo.com