Photo by Townsend Walton on Unsplash On holiday recently, I found myself watching a young seagull on the shoreline. It was already quite big, but still obviously a baby, and it was crying and crying. I somehow knew it was looking for its mother. Eventually, it found her — the baby was almost as big as the mother — and hurried after her, calling insistently. The mother pecked into a rock pool, and the baby immediately opened its mouth, clearly expecting to be fed. But she didn't feed it. She pecked again, almost as though she were showing it what to do, then walked off. The baby followed. This went on for some time. The youngster calling, the mother moving away, pecking at the ground and the rock pools, but refusing to do for it what it now needed to begin doing for itself. I found it extraordinarily poignant. There was nothing unkind in what the mother was doing. Quite the opposite. She was trying to encourage her baby to become more self-sufficient. At some point, a mother has to stop feeding the chick and allow it to discover that it can survive on its own. But the baby seagull didn't know that. All it knew was that it was calling for its mother and she wasn't responding in the way it wanted her to. That touched something very deep in me. The Need to Attach Our need for attachment begins before we have any words for it. We cry, and someone comes. We are hungry, and someone feeds us. We are frightened, and someone comforts us. Gradually we learn that the world is safe enough because there is somebody there. Or, at least, that is what is meant to happen. Watching the baby gull, I was struck by the pull between wanting to remain attached and needing to become separate. The youngster was physically capable of finding food for itself, but it seemed to be saying, No, you do it. You are my mother. This is how it has always been. I think there is something of that in all of us. However old and competent we become, there remains a part that wants to be looked after from time to time. We want someone to notice what we need, understand us without lengthy explanations, reassure us, perhaps even rescue us. And it can be terribly painful when we reach for someone and they are not there. Losing My Mother As I watched the gull, I realised why the scene was affecting me so much. My mother died suddenly when I was seventeen. Seventeen is a strange age to lose a mother. You think you are almost grown up, but of course you aren't. You are beginning to separate from your parents, pushing against them in some ways and still needing them desperately in others. There should have been years in which I gradually moved away from my mother. Instead, she was there one day and gone the next. There was no slow fledging. No moving backwards and forwards between dependence and independence. No opportunity to discover, bit by bit, that I could manage without her. I simply had to. Of course, what I was watching on the beach was quite different. The mother gull was still there, and she was doing exactly what she needed to do. But something in the scene seemed to recognise something in me. That young bird following its mother, calling after her, wanting something she was no longer going to provide, took me straight back to a much younger part of myself. The Shoreline It also seemed significant that all this was happening on a shoreline. A shoreline is neither quite land nor quite sea. It is always changing. The tide comes in, and the tide goes out. What is covered one moment is exposed the next. It is a liminal place: a threshold. We often find ourselves in liminal places psychologically too. We have left something behind, but we haven't yet arrived at whatever comes next. Adolescence is like this. So is grief. So is the ending of a relationship, retirement, illness, recovery, leaving home or changing direction in life. The old identity no longer quite fits, but the new one isn't fully formed. I think this is one of the reasons transitions can make us feel so unsettled. There is a temptation to go backwards simply because backwards is familiar. The young gull seemed to be caught in exactly that place. It was no longer a helpless chick, but it hadn't quite accepted that yet. The Symbolism of the Seagull Perhaps the seagull itself added something to the meaning of the encounter. Gulls are remarkably adaptable creatures. They move between different environments, make use of what they find and seem equally at home alone or among others. They can suggest freedom, independence, resourcefulness and an ability to survive change. But they are also social birds, which makes the tension between attachment and independence even more interesting. Here was a young gull being asked to become more self-sufficient while still very obviously wanting the comfort and security of its mother. It seemed to embody something we all have to negotiate eventually: how to become separate without losing our capacity to belong. And gulls have another quality that makes them particularly rich symbolically. They are comfortable in three different elements. Land, Sea and Air They walk on land. They sit on the sea. And then, suddenly, they are airborne. I found myself thinking about those three elements. Land is solid ground, the practical world, everyday reality. The sea can represent feeling and the unconscious, all that lies beneath the surface. And air brings to mind thought, imagination, spirit and freedom. A gull can move between all three. Perhaps part of growing up is learning to move between these different places too. Sometimes life requires us to keep our feet firmly on the ground. At other times we have to go down into the emotional depths. And every so often we need enough distance from both to see things from another perspective. The Cost of Freedom Birds are obvious symbols of freedom. We look at them flying and imagine escape, possibility, the ability to rise above things. But freedom has a cost. To fly, the young bird has to leave the security of being fed. It has to discover that its wings work. It has to tolerate the frustration of its mother no longer meeting every need. Growth doesn't always feel like growth while it is happening. Sometimes it feels like rejection. Sometimes it feels like something has been taken away. Sometimes we only understand later that being deprived of what we wanted forced us to discover a capacity we didn't know we had. That doesn't make the pain unreal. Loss and growth are often much closer together than we would like them to be. The Mother We Carry With Us I used to think that growing up meant moving away from our parents. Now I think it is more complicated than that. We leave them, but we also take them with us. We carry something of the people who cared for us inside us. Their expressions, sayings, habits, values and ways of loving remain with us. And this is true even when they die. My mother has been dead for most of my life, but there are moments when the seventeen-year-old girl who lost her feels very close indeed. An old photograph. A song from those days. A smile on a stranger's face which reminds me of her. A phrase or saying. A dream. And, apparently, a baby seagull on a beach. Grief is strange like that. It doesn't move neatly from one stage to another and then finish. It seems to come and go, rather like the tide. Most of the time we get on with our lives. Then something opens the door, and there it is again. Finding Its Own Food Eventually, that young gull will stop following its mother with its mouth open. It will learn to find food in the rock pools. It will fly further. And one day it will look just like all the other adult gulls wheeling above the sea. But on that day, it was still in between. Still wanting its mother. Still expecting to be fed. Still calling after her. And at the same time, being pushed towards a life in which it would have to find its own way. Perhaps that was what moved me so much. There are losses that force us to grow before we are ready. There are people we continue to long for, long after they have gone. And there are times when the part of us that wants to be looked after is met instead by silence, or absence. We may not like it. We may never entirely stop longing for what we lost. But somehow, over time, we find other ways to nourish ourselves. And eventually, if we are lucky, we learn that we can stand on solid ground, enter the depths when we need to, rise again and find our own kind of freedom.

The Secret Language of Dreams and Symbols The Dream A client of mine — I’ll call her Andrea — dreamt that she was sitting on three eggs. They were unusually large and golden, and she instinctively felt they were full of promise. She sat on them patiently until they eventually hatched. From each egg emerged a healthy golden baby. Andrea gathered the babies into her arms and cradled them as though they were precious jewels. It was a beautiful dream, and it came at an important point in her therapy. Andrea had been working with me for about two years. During that time, she had faced some painful material: old wounds, difficult memories, and parts of herself she had previously found hard to acknowledge. In Jungian language, much of this could be described as shadow work — turning towards the things we would rather not know about ourselves, or have learned to hide away. Into the Darkness Therapy can sometimes feel worse before it feels better. Once we begin to look beneath the surface, all sorts of things can appear: grief, anger, envy, shame, fear, despair. At the beginning, clients sometimes wonder whether therapy is making them worse. That’s not the case. More often, something that has been kept out of sight is finally being allowed into consciousness. The alchemists called this dark stage of transformation the nigredo, or the blackening. It is associated with decay, dissolution, and the breaking down of the old form. Psychologically, it coincides with those periods when the person we thought we were no longer feels true. It can be a miserable place to be. But Andrea’s dark phase was not the end of her story; if we stay with the process, it never is. The First Golden Light At the time Andrea had the golden egg dream, something in her had begun to shift. There was more clarity, more kindness towards herself, and less of a sense that she had to remain trapped by what had happened in the past. In alchemical language, she was now in the albedo, the whitening — a time of cleansing and new awareness. And this is followed by citrinitas: the yellowing, the first appearance of golden light. I thought immediately of citrinitas when Andrea told me about the eggs. Sitting on the Eggs Eggs are such powerful symbols. Something is growing inside them, but we cannot see it. Nor can we force it. Crack the shell open too soon, and we destroy the very thing we are waiting for. All we can do is create the conditions for new life to develop. In the dream, though, Andrea wasn’t simply looking at the eggs; she was sitting on them. I loved that image. Like a mother bird, she was warming them, protecting them, and waiting. After spending so much of her life struggling with herself, here she was doing something very different. She wasn’t doing — she was sitting and waiting, tending to what was trying to be born. The Golden Germ In some alchemical imagery, the centre of the egg contains a tiny point of potential — sometimes described as a golden germ or sun-point. That image seems very close to what can happen in therapy. At first, the therapist may be the one who holds hope for something not yet visible. We notice what is fragile, hidden, or only just beginning to stir. Gradually, if things go well, the client begins to do this for herself. She becomes less hostile to her own inner life; she listens, she waits. She learns not to dig up the seed every five minutes to see whether it is growing. Perhaps that was what Andrea was doing in the dream. She was giving her own emerging life the warmth and patience it needed. And, significantly, the eggshells were golden. Whatever was growing inside her already had value, even before she knew what it would become. What Gold Represents When the shells finally broke, the babies were golden too: alive, healthy and new. Gold has always been central to alchemy. It represents something precious and enduring and, psychologically, it is often associated with the Self — Jung’s term for the deeper wholeness that emerges as we become more able to include all of ourselves. That does not mean becoming perfect — far from it. Therapy doesn’t remove everything messy, contradictory or painful. If anything, it helps us become better able to live with those things without being ruled by them. And these golden babies were not fully grown; they were newborns, and like all newborns, they needed holding and nurturing. In her dream, Andrea cradled them like precious jewels, and for me, this was the most moving part of the dream. She recognised the value of what had been born. She didn’t criticise it, hurry it along, or demand anything from it. She held it. Why Three? The number of eggs interested me too. The number three often appears symbolically when something new is being created. Two can leave us caught between opposites: this or that, yes or no, one side against another. Three introduces another possibility. Andrea had spent a long time caught between opposing parts of herself; perhaps something new was now emerging between them. Ready to Hatch What stayed with me most was the feeling of the dream. Something precious had survived the darkness — more than that, it had grown there. The golden eggs had not appeared despite the difficult years; they had been forming quietly within them. And now, at last, they were ready to hatch. A Note on Client Material All client material is used with the client's knowledge and permission. Names and identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect confidentiality, and some details may occasionally be altered where necessary to ensure that the individual cannot be identified.

My Book Is Six Months Old! James Hillman suggested that, just as an acorn already contains the pattern of the oak, each of us comes into life carrying the seeds of who we might become. Therapy cannot decide what those seeds should grow into, but it can help create the conditions in which they have a chance to flourish. Six months ago, my first book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth, was published by Routledge. I still find that rather extraordinary. I wrote it because, after more than thirty years as a psychotherapist, I kept coming back to the same question: what actually happens in therapy that helps people change? From the outside, therapy can look deceptively simple. Two people sit in a room and talk. But underneath that conversation, all sorts of things are going on. We begin to notice patterns, defences, old loyalties, beliefs we absorbed years ago and never thought to question, the roles we learnt to play, the parts of ourselves we would rather not look at, and the ways in which the past has a habit of turning up in the present wearing a different hat. Once we begin to see those things, we have choices. That, really, is what The Seeds of Change is about. I wanted to write a book about psychotherapy that did not require the reader to keep a large dictionary nearby. It draws on many of the approaches I use in my own work — Jung, Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, CBT, the transpersonal, dreams, symbols, complexes, the shadow, and much more — but always with one practical question in mind: how does any of this actually help the person sitting in front of us? That question is just as important for therapists as it is for clients. For fellow practitioners, students, and trainees, the book brings together ideas that are often taught in separate boxes and examines how they can sit alongside one another in real therapeutic work. Most of us do not meet a client and think, Excellent, this is clearly a Transactional Analysis problem, and I shall now remain firmly in that lane. Human beings are rather less obliging than that. We draw on different ways of understanding what is happening, depending on the person, the relationship, and what is unfolding in the room. The book contains stories from practice: examples of how people become caught in patterns and how, sometimes slowly and sometimes quite unexpectedly, those patterns begin to loosen. Because therapy is not about turning someone into a completely different person. Nor, thankfully, is it about “fixing” them, as though they were a faulty toaster. It is much more about becoming aware of who we are, what has shaped us, what we continue to carry long after it has ceased to be useful, and what might become possible if we stop living quite so automatically. You do not need to be in therapy to read the book. You may be curious about yourself. Perhaps you have wondered why you keep ending up in the same kind of relationship, why certain people can press your buttons within thirty seconds of meeting you, why you know perfectly well what you should do and then do something entirely different, or why an old wound can suddenly feel as fresh as if it happened yesterday. Or perhaps you are thinking about therapy and would quite like to know what on earth you may be letting yourself in for. And if you are a therapist, supervisor, counsellor, or trainee, I hope the book gives you ideas you can actually use — not only theories to understand, but also different ways of thinking about the person sitting across from you. We all develop ways of surviving. Some of them serve us brilliantly for years. The difficulty arises when the strategy that once protected us becomes the very thing that keeps us stuck. Therapy can help us notice that. Noticing is often where change begins. So, if you are interested in how therapy works, why we become who we are, or how we might help ourselves — and others — loosen the patterns that no longer serve us, do grab a copy of The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. It may even help you understand why you keep doing that thing you swore you would never do again. The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth is published by Routledge and is available from Routledge, Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwell’s, Bookshop.org, and other booksellers, in print and eBook editions.

Credit: Photo by Blake Cheek for Unsplash A client of mine—I’ll call her Sarah— dreamt that she was rescuing her cat from a pack of dogs. When she examined the cat, she saw that its right eye had been injured and was weeping pus. Sarah awoke feeling anxious, then relieved when she realised it had only been a dream. Her first associations were: cat, pus, pussy. I enjoy the puns and wordplay that dreams sometimes offer us. They can seem almost too obvious, even faintly ridiculous, but the unconscious is not above using a pun to get our attention. The Cat According to von Franz Marie-Louise von Franz gave a series of lectures on the symbolism of the cat, later published as The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption. She was not interested in assigning one fixed meaning to the cat. Her concern was with what the animal might represent when the feminine has become enchanted, wounded or unable to appear in fully human form. For von Franz, the cat belongs to the realm of instinct, embodiment, sensuality and the feminine. This does not mean “feminine” in a narrow or conventional sense. The cat represents something independent and self-possessed: a creature that may live alongside us and love us, but can never be entirely owned. Unlike the dog, the cat does not live to obey. It knows its own mind. It withdraws when approached too forcefully, appears when it chooses and retains something wild, even when curled up beside the fire. Tenderness and Claws Nor is the cat merely soft, pretty or vulnerable. It embodies opposites, which is one of the things I love about it. A cat can be tender and ruthless, playful and predatory, languorous one moment and intensely alert the next. It also has claws. This feels important. The instinctual feminine is not only nurturing and accommodating. It can say no. It protects itself. It may know something long before the rational mind has caught up. The Enchanted Princess In the fairy tale explored by von Franz, a princess has been transformed into a cat. She is not naturally a cat; she is under a spell. Something that might have developed into conscious feeling, authority, relationship or creativity has become trapped at the instinctual level. The question, then, is not simply: what does the cat mean? It is: what human possibility has become imprisoned within the cat? One Cat Against the Pack A useful way of approaching a dream is to begin with the idea that every person, animal and object in it represents some aspect of the dreamer. So, when we look at Sarah’s dream, the cat is not only her beloved pet. She also represents a part of Sarah herself. The cat seems to embody something instinctive, feminine and deeply vulnerable. She is attacked by a pack of dogs: one solitary cat against a collective force. The dogs may represent something louder, more aggressive or more socially sanctioned. The cat does not belong to the pack. She remains singular. Perhaps Sarah is rescuing a part of herself that has retained its own instincts but feels threatened by collective demands: duty, noise, aggression or the needs of others. She recognises that the cat belongs to her and that she needs protection. Yet perhaps this instinctual part of Sarah has remained in the form of a wounded creature that must continually be rescued, rather than becoming a conscious authority in her own right: a woman with language, boundaries, clear sight, and teeth and claws of her own. The Injured Eye The injured eye is particularly striking. The cat’s ability to see and orient herself has been damaged. The pus suggests that this is not simply a fresh wound, but an infected area attempting to drain. Sarah’s spontaneous association—“pus, pussy, cat”—also matters. The image may link the wounded animal to the female body, sexuality and the vulnerability of the instinctual feminine. But the dream may not end with rescue. The deeper question may be how the wounded cat—this wounded part of Sarah—can be healed, so that instinct, body, sight, independence and authority are able to coexist within her. About Lynn Somerfield Lynn Somerfield is a psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and author with more than thirty years’ experience. She is a trustee of the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education in London, where she worked for many years as a lecturer, supervisor and group facilitator. In The Secret Language of Symbols, she writes about dreams, symbols, psychotherapy and the curious ways in which the inner and outer worlds sometimes seem to speak to one another. Her book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth, is published by Routledge. Subscribe free of charge to receive new pieces directly in your inbox. Any client material included here is shared with the client’s permission, and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.

It’s been a hard year. My husband has had several operations, culminating in heart failure and two weeks in the cardiac care ward. He is recovering well now, and perhaps that is what finally did it. The adrenaline wore off and, for the first time in months, I felt able to breathe again. Unfortunately, without the adrenaline to keep me upright, I crashed. This weekend, after a relatively minor setback to our plans — it is often the pebbles underfoot that hurt more than the rocks — I told him how low I had been feeling. I had kept it from him because he had been so ill, and the last thing I wanted was to add to his worries. Some part of me knew it would pass. I am naturally an optimist. Nevertheless, I felt flattened and rather defeated. I found myself rummaging through the archives of my life, looking back at various choices and disappointments and wondering, “What happened?” My husband was upset to hear me speak like that, and I was upset to have upset him. I knew the feeling was temporary, but there is a part of me that sometimes longs to stop trying quite so hard and simply give in to defeat. Something in the Night At around three o’clock the following morning, I woke to go to the bathroom. I really should keep a record of what happens in the middle of the night, because there is often something. As I climbed back into bed, I glanced out of the bedroom window. There, on the garden path, was a dead duck. I went downstairs to investigate. The top of its bill was curved upwards, as though it had struck something at speed. Perhaps it had flown into the house or hit the ground and broken its neck. I couldn’t be sure. What I did know was that I felt an immediate sense of recognition and pity. The duck seemed to embody a part of me I knew very well: something exhausted, spent and no longer able to keep itself afloat. Ducks appear so calm as they glide across the water, while beneath the surface their feet paddle furiously. That was what I recognised: the part of me that had kept going, kept working, kept fighting, making telephone calls, writing complaints and trying to hold everything together. And now, as dawn broke, it lay still on the path. I recognised this as synchronicity. Synchronicity is Jung’s term for a meaningful coincidence: two or more events that are not obviously connected, yet seem linked by the meaning they hold for the person experiencing them. It might be a dream, a thought, a fear or a question that is suddenly echoed by something in the outer world. Jung did not suggest that such moments proved the existence of fate. Rather, he saw them as occasions when the inner and outer worlds briefly align, leaving us with the unmistakable feeling that something significant has occurred. What Ducks Symbolise A dead duck is not difficult to read as a symbol. Something has ended or lost its life: a hope, a plan, a relationship or perhaps an old part of ourselves. Ducks belong to water, land and air. They can swim, walk and fly, moving between different worlds with apparent ease. The dead duck, by contrast, could no longer move anywhere. It seemed, to me, to speak of exhaustion and the loss of the ability to adapt, recover and carry on. There was vulnerability in it, too. It looked small and helpless, lying there. Whatever had happened had happened quickly. One moment it had presumably been flying; the next, it was on the path. And, of course, there is the phrase itself. Something described as a “dead duck” is hopeless, finished, beyond saving. That fitted rather too neatly with the defeatism I had admitted to only a few hours earlier. But perhaps the duck did not signify the death of hope. Perhaps it marked the end of a particular way of surviving. The part of me that had paddled furiously beneath the surface had done its job. It had carried me through fear, anger, hospitals, operations and uncertainty. Perhaps something in the psyche was saying: you cannot go on like this. That way of staying afloat is over now.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash The Chapel of Bones The Sedlec Ossuary, near Prague, is a small chapel decorated with the bones of thousands of people whose graves were cleared over the centuries. In 1870, a woodcarver called František Rint arranged the bones into chandeliers, garlands and even a coat of arms. Macabre, certainly, but not intended simply to horrify. The chapel is a memento mori. The phrase is Latin for “remember that you must die”—or, more simply, “remember death”. It is a reminder of our mortality and of the need to live consciously while we still can. I visited the ossuary some years ago and found it deeply moving. I left feeling sobered, reflective and rather more in touch with my own mortality than when I went in. It is also, in its way, an alchemical image: death, dissolution and the remains rearranged into a new form. Although I’m not sure I’d want to end up as part of a chandelier. Given a choice, I’d opt for something a little more dignified. An Early Dream Perhaps my interest in bones began much earlier. The earliest dream I can remember was about life, death and what remains. I was about eight years old when I had it, although the dream itself seemed to belong to another time. I was in a very hot country—possibly ancient Greece. The setting was an old ruin. It was rather like a hospital ward, except that instead of beds there were slabs of stone. There were separate rooms, but the walls had worn down so much that it was easy to see from one into another. In the dream, I was not a child but a young woman lying on a stone slab. Around me were other slabs, some with people lying on them. Attendants moved quietly among us, offering sips of water from stone drinking vessels. Somehow, I knew that I was dying. I also knew what would happen next. Once I was dead, my body would be carried into the room next door and laid on another stone slab. What struck me is that I was not frightened. The movement from life to death seemed orderly and inevitable—almost ordinary. It did not feel like the end of everything, but more like the next stage of a process. Beneath it all was an awareness of the bones. Beneath the flesh, beneath the shroud and beneath whatever identity I had carried in life, something more enduring would remain. Bones in Alchemy In alchemy, bones are closely associated with death and with the stripping away of everything that is no longer needed. They belong particularly to mortificatio and nigredo: the dark stages of the work, when an old form has broken down and cannot simply be patched up and carried on as before. Alchemy is not terribly sentimental about this. Sometimes something has to die before anything genuinely new can emerge. Bones can represent our deepest structure—the framework beneath appearances, roles, ambitions and the various disguises the ego likes to wear. When life strips us back to the bone, we may discover what is actually holding us up. They may also represent the part of us that survives loss, illness, humiliation, disappointment or change. The ego may feel thoroughly dismantled, but something essential remains. Bones also belong to the imagery of calcination (or in alchemy - calcinatio). Burned down to white ash, bones become associated with fire, purification and reduction to the bare essentials. There is not much room for padding at this stage of the alchemical process. Psychologically, bones may represent what is left when an old identity has died away. They remind us of mortality, certainly, but also of endurance. Something has been lost, but something else has survived. When Bones Appear in Dreams In dreams, the condition of the bones matters. Broken bones may suggest that a supporting structure has failed. Buried bones may point to something hidden, forgotten or inherited. White or polished bones may suggest purification, while bones being reassembled may carry the promise of restoration, resurrection or the rebuilding of the self. So bones are not simply symbols of death. They may also ask: what remains when everything superficial has fallen away—and what might be built from it?

Photo by Bruce Christianson on Unsplash We fall in many ways—physically, emotionally, socially and symbolically. We fall in love, fall over, fall unconscious, fall into the abyss. We hope someone will catch us when we fall. We fall out of love, into despair, into depression. We fall back into old habits, fall under someone’s spell, fall into a trap. We fall from grace, out of favour, behind, into debt, from power and between the cracks. Tears fall, petals fall, shadows fall. I could go on, but you might fall asleep. We do not generally seek out the experience of falling, apart from that falling-in-love business. Falling suggests a loss of balance, control or position. Yet sometimes it is also a necessary readjustment—a counterpoint to inflation. Like Icarus, we may be flying too high, too close to the sun, when a natural correction takes place and brings us crashing back to earth. The fall may be humiliating or painful, but it can also return us to reality, to the body and to the ground beneath our feet. The central symbolic question may be this: are we falling because something has failed, or because it is time to surrender our old position and descend into something deeper? Dreams of falling are common. When I was researching and writing my Master’s dissertation, I had recurring dreams of falling—off mountainsides, out of aeroplanes, from diving boards into empty swimming pools, from pavements as high as tower blocks, off bicycles. You name it: I was forever teetering on the edge of something. The curious thing was that I never hit the ground. That changed when I finally handed in the dissertation. For a while, my dreams became dreams of crashing to earth and feeling the pain of the impact. Symbolically, this was rubedo: the final alchemical stage, in which something that has been worked on inwardly is brought into form and made real. The dissertation was no longer an idea, a possibility or a work in progress. It had landed. And so, in my dreams, had I. Perhaps this is why falling dreams can be so unsettling. They confront us with the loss of our familiar position and the possibility that we are no longer in control. But they may also be asking us to come down to earth, to inhabit the body, to accept our limitations, or to allow something long held in the imagination to become real. The important question is not simply, “What am I afraid of falling from?” but also, “Where might this fall be taking me?”

The Ego’s Vehicle Cars often appear in dreams when something is being shown to us about the way we are travelling through life. No dream symbol has one fixed meaning, but cars often seem to represent the ego: our known identity, the part of us that gets us through the everyday world and tries, more or less successfully, to keep us on the road. The car carries us, rather as the ego carries the soul through the journey of life. It also protects what is inside, although some vehicles offer more protection than others. A solid, well-maintained car may suggest that we feel reasonably equipped for the journey. A battered car, faulty brakes or an unreliable engine may suggest otherwise. The Car as the Body Cars can also represent the body. We speak of running on empty, overheating, breaking down and needing a service. A car that will not start, keeps stalling or is almost out of fuel may reflect exhaustion, illness or a sense that we have pushed ourselves too far. The details matter. What sort of car is it? Is it old or new, expensive or modest, reliable or falling apart? Does it belong to the dreamer, or has it been borrowed? Is there enough petrol? Are the headlights working? Is it the right car for the journey? Status, Persona and Identity Cars can also say something about status and persona: the face we show the world. A flashy car may speak of success, ambition or the need to appear successful. An old banger, a borrowed car or a car that does not feel quite right may raise questions about the identity we are moving around in. Whose car is it? Does it actually feel like ours? Or are we trying to live a life that belongs to someone else? Who Is Driving? One of the most useful questions is: Who is driving? Sometimes the dreamer is confidently at the wheel. Sometimes someone else is driving while the dreamer sits beside them, or in the back. The driver may represent another person’s influence, but it may also represent a part of the dreamer: a fear, an ambition, an old habit, a complex or a condition that has taken over. The Road Ahead The road matters too. Are we on a motorway, a narrow country lane, a dangerous mountain road or going round in circles? Do we know where we are going? Have we taken a wrong turning? Are we travelling too fast? Or are we stuck in traffic, unable to move at all? A car with no brakes may suggest that something has gathered momentum and become difficult to stop. A car that will not accelerate may reflect frustration, lack of energy or a feeling of being held back. Freedom and Independence Cars can also represent freedom and independence. Learning to drive is often an important step into adulthood. It means being able to leave, choose a direction and get somewhere under your own steam. A dream in which the car is damaged, stolen or inaccessible may therefore touch on a loss of freedom or agency. Who Is Travelling With Us? Passengers can be important as well. Who are we carrying? Are they welcome? Are they distracting us, criticising our driving or demanding that we take them somewhere? They may represent actual relationships, but they can also represent responsibilities, younger parts of ourselves or aspects of our life that have come along for the ride. Dreams of Losing the Car Another very common dream is that of having lost the car. The dreamer may be wandering around a huge car park, unable to remember where they left it. Or searching unfamiliar streets, becoming increasingly anxious. Sometimes they return repeatedly to the place where the car ought to be, only to find that it has gone. These dreams may arise when we have lost touch with our familiar identity. We no longer quite know who we are or how to move forward as we once did. A role, relationship, career or way of living that used to carry us may no longer be available. This can happen during illness, bereavement, retirement, divorce, redundancy or any major transition. We know we arrived in the car, so to speak, but we cannot find it now. At other times, it may simply reflect exhaustion or overload. We have been so busy attending to other people and getting through what needs to be done that we have lost track of ourselves. There is an important difference, though, between a lost car and a destroyed one. If the car is lost, it may still be found. Perhaps the identity we once relied upon has not vanished altogether. Perhaps it is simply no longer where we left it. Stolen, Damaged and Unparked Cars A stolen car may feel rather different. It may suggest that our sense of freedom, identity or direction has been taken from us. A damaged car may reflect an injury to confidence or to the way we are managing in the world. Being unable to find anywhere to park may suggest difficulty finding a place to stop, settle or belong. My Dream of the Blue BMW Many years ago, when I was seriously ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I had a dream that I was travelling up a motorway in my blue BMW. It was unmistakably my car and therefore, in the language of the dream, my life and my known identity. But I was not driving it. I was sitting in the back seat. At the wheel was someone who was disabled, although the nature of the disability was unclear. The car was weaving across the motorway, apparently out of control. Yet we did not crash. At the time, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome had left me seriously disabled and would continue to do so for several years. Looking back, the dream seems painfully clear. My illness was driving my life. I was being carried along by something I neither understood nor knew how to control. The Motorway The motorway is significant too. It is not a quiet lane where one can easily stop, turn round or pull over. A motorway has speed and momentum. Everyone else appears to be travelling purposefully towards somewhere, while you are trapped in a vehicle that is not responding as it should. I was in the back seat, with no access to the steering wheel, brakes or accelerator. That image says something about the helplessness of serious illness. The life I had known was still moving, but I was no longer in charge of its direction. The Disabled Driver The disabled driver might be understood as the illness itself. But the driver was also part of me. The dream did not place the disability outside the car or at the side of the road. It was inside, at the controls. That does not mean that I had caused the illness, or that it was “all in the mind”. It means that the dream used the fact of my disability to show me how completely my relationship with life had changed. The BMW may also have represented the identity I had known before becoming ill: successful, capable, independent and used to moving at speed. The car was still recognisably mine, but I was no longer in command of it. We Did Not Crash There is another detail I find moving: we did not crash. The journey was frightening and chaotic. The car was weaving across the road, and my conscious ego was no longer in control. Yet something held. I could not drive myself out of the illness, but neither was I destroyed by it. The car remained on the road. The journey continued. The Colour Blue The colour may also matter. Blue can suggest sadness, depth and the inner life. It may have carried something of the sorrow of my condition, but also of the inward journey that had begun, although I did not yet know it. Before my illness, I had lived a fast and outwardly successful life. I was used to making things happen. I knew how to push, organise, persuade and perform. Then the body intervened. The identity that had carried me so effectively could no longer function in the old way. The dream did not explain any of this. It simply showed me the pattern: my familiar vehicle still intact, but driven by disability while I sat helplessly in the back. Questions to Ask of a Car Dream A car dream might therefore invite us to ask: Who or what is driving my life at present? Am I in the driving seat, the passenger seat, or the back seat? Is the car going where I want it to go? Am I following my own route or someone else’s? Am I moving too fast, or unable to get moving at all? Do the brakes work? Is there enough fuel? What condition is the vehicle in? Who else is travelling with me? Have I lost the car altogether and, with it, some familiar sense of myself? And what, or who, is being carried inside? The Journey Continues We need an ego. We need an identity, a vehicle and some protection as we travel through life. But the ego is not the whole self. It is the car, not the journey, and not everything contained within it. Sometimes we are driving. Sometimes something else has taken the wheel. Sometimes the car tells us we are exhausted or in need of repair. And sometimes we cannot find the car at all. The dream may then be asking not simply how we can get the old vehicle back, but what has changed, what has been lost and what kind of journey lies ahead now.

Photo by Laura Seaman on Unsplash The Toad at the Threshold Some years ago, when I was about to embark on a new pilot workshop, I dreamed of meeting a toad in a desert. At the time, I would not have said I was especially worried. I was excited about the project and busy getting on with it. Looking back, though, I think the dream knew something I did not. Beneath my conscious enthusiasm, there was anxiety about stepping into unfamiliar territory, putting myself forward and not knowing quite what I might encounter. It was only a snatch of a dream, but I remember the toad, the oddness of the setting and the moment when I opened my mouth to speak—and swallowed it. I woke feeling sick. The image stayed with me, partly because it was so peculiar. Toads belong in damp earth, ditches, ponds and shadowy gardens. They do not belong in deserts. Yet there it was, in a landscape where there seemed to be no place for it to live. And instead of speaking, I took it into my body. Dreams often present us with images that resist immediate or tidy explanation. Perhaps that is part of their power. A toad in a desert is not an obvious symbol, and swallowing one is even less so. I was about to begin something that would require me to speak, act and put myself forward. Yet in the dream, at the very moment I opened my mouth, I could not speak. My mouth became the place where I swallowed something earthy, repellent and difficult to digest. Perhaps the worry I had not consciously acknowledged had found its own image. One thing I was conscious of was that I had not run a workshop for some time due to lockdown, so I had aged and also gained weight (vanity, vanity...). The Unlovely Creature In fairy tales, the toad is rarely invited to the feast. It does not have the beauty of the swan, the freedom of the bird or the nobility of the horse. It sits low to the ground, squat and watchful, close to mud, water and shadow. Its rough skin and ungainly appearance have long been linked to what is ugly, secretive, or faintly sinister. In stories, it may appear beside a witch, near a dark pool or in some neglected corner where respectable people would rather not look. Fairy tales, however, tend to know better than to dismiss the unlovely. Again and again, they ask us to approach the creature we would prefer to avoid. The despised animal may be enchanted. The toad can become a prince. The beggar may be a king. The ugly old woman may carry wisdom. Something that appears lowly, repellent or insignificant may be hiding something of real value. The toad belongs to this company. A Creature Out of Place Like all amphibians, the toad lives between water and land. Water is often associated with feeling, memory, dreams and the unconscious. Earth belongs to the body, to ordinary life, and to material reality. The toad moves between the two, carrying something of the watery depths into the solid world. It is a creature of thresholds. But the toad in my dream had been displaced from both water and damp earth. It appeared in a desert: a place of dryness, exposure and little shelter. The desert may represent emptiness, deprivation or isolation, but it can also be a place of testing and revelation. In myths and sacred stories, people enter the desert when familiar distractions have fallen away. There is nowhere to hide and very little to sustain the old way of being. The new workshop topic was taking me into similarly unfamiliar territory. Consciously, I felt ready for it. The desert may have represented the less confident part of me: the part that felt exposed, unsupported and unsure whether I had what I needed to survive there. And in the middle of that arid landscape was a creature associated with moisture, instinct and the hidden life of the earth. Something living had appeared where it did not seem able to survive. Swallowing the Toad To swallow something is to take it inside. We speak of swallowing our pride, swallowing an insult or swallowing words we cannot bring ourselves to say. We swallow what is difficult, disagreeable or indigestible. In the dream, I opened my mouth to speak, but the toad entered instead. Perhaps this reflected an anxiety about finding my voice. New projects often require us to make something inward visible. We have to speak with authority before we feel particularly authoritative, claim space before we are certain we deserve it, and risk being seen without knowing how others will respond. The toad may have carried something I had not yet admitted to myself: fear, doubt, ambition, awkwardness or some less polished part of me that did not fit the confident face I was presenting to the world. The dream did not allow me to leave it outside. I had to take it in. That does not necessarily mean that swallowing the toad was a positive act. The nausea mattered. My body registered revulsion. Something about the image was too much, too close or too difficult to digest. Dreams may show us what we are doing rather than what we ought to do. Perhaps I was swallowing fears that needed to be spoken. Perhaps I was taking in other people’s expectations or doubts. Perhaps I believed I had to absorb something distasteful in order to proceed. Or perhaps the toad represented an instinctive wisdom I did not yet know how to welcome in any other way. A dream does not offer a single answer, and I am glad of that. It forces reflection, a sitting-with, until its meaning appears. What We Would Rather Reject The toad may symbolise a part of ourselves we have judged unacceptable. It may be something bodily, needy, envious, angry or ashamed. It may be a feeling we think we ought to have outgrown, or a desire that does not fit with the person we prefer to believe ourselves to be. We may try to push such parts down into the mud, but rejected parts do not simply disappear. Sometimes they return in dreams, where they are harder to ignore. In therapy, the part that first appears most troublesome is often guarding something more vulnerable. Irritability may protect hurt. Withdrawal may protect fear. Grandiosity may conceal shame. What looks unpleasant on the surface may have developed for a reason. The fairy tale does not ask us to admire the toad. It asks us not to assume that its appearance tells us everything. What have I called ugly before finding out what it carries? And what happens when the rejected thing can no longer be kept at a safe distance? Medicine and Poison The toad has also long been associated with poison. Some toads produce substances that protect them from predators, which no doubt contributed to their darker reputation in folklore. Symbolically, however, poison and medicine are often close relations. What harms in one dose may heal in another. What we fear may also contain information we need. Psychologically, the poison might be bitterness, envy, resentment or rage. Left unexamined, such feelings can seep into our lives and relationships. We may project them onto other people, convinced that the ugliness belongs entirely to them. Once recognised, however, those same feelings may tell us something important. Bitterness may point to something that has never been forgiven. Envy may show us a life we have not dared to claim. Rage may tell us that a boundary has been crossed. Fear may warn us that the ground beneath us is not yet secure. The feeling is not the whole message, but it should not be dismissed either. The toad does not offer sweetness. It offers a more difficult medicine: the possibility that what we most dislike may still have something to teach us. Close to the Ground The toad’s world is earthy. It does not soar above life. It stays close to soil, roots, insects and fallen leaves. It belongs to the physical, the primitive, and the real. This earthiness can be corrective when we have become too identified with ideals, spiritual aspirations or our own cleverness. The toad brings us back to the body and to the awkward facts of existence. We hunger. We age. Our looks fade. We become jealous. We need other people. We make mistakes. We are not always generous, wise or composed. The toad is unlikely to be impressed by our persona. Perhaps this was part of the dream’s impact. I was preparing to begin a project that would involve thought, language and presentation. I was concentrating on what I would say and how I would appear. Yet the dream gave me something bodily and wordless. Before I could speak, I encountered the rough, instinctive creature beneath the polished idea. And I could not simply talk my way around it. The Treasure in the Unlovely Fairy tales often hide treasure in unlikely places. The precious object may be inside a beast, beneath the earth, at the bottom of a well or in the keeping of a creature nobody respects. The treasure cannot be found by remaining in the bright and orderly parts of the kingdom. The hero or heroine has to enter the forest, approach what frightens or disgusts them, and learn to see differently. The toad may guard the treasure of instinct: knowing when to remain still, when to retreat and when to leap. It may represent the ability to survive difficult conditions and to wait through long periods of darkness. A toad does not require the world to be beautiful before it carries on living. Perhaps the toad in the desert represented a part of me that could survive the uncertainty of beginning. It was not graceful or reassuring, but it was alive. Something instinctive had made its way into a barren landscape. Before the Transformation We are often in too much of a hurry to get to the transformation. We want the beast to become a prince, the ashes to reveal the treasure and the dark forest to give way to a clear road home. But the toad may ask us to pause before the magical change. What if the point is not simply to turn the toad into something more attractive? What if the toad itself has value? This is one of the dangers of interpreting symbols too quickly. We may try to tidy them up, make them positive or rush towards some supposedly higher meaning. In doing so, we risk overlooking the image that has actually appeared. Sometimes the psyche does not give us a swan on a lake. Sometimes it gives us a toad in a desert. And sometimes, just as we open our mouths to speak, we swallow it. The task may be to remain with the roughness of the image and the sickness it provoked. To wonder what has been taken in, what remains undigested and what words may have been displaced. Looking back, I think the dream revealed an anxiety that had not yet reached my conscious mind. Outwardly, I was ready to begin. Somewhere beneath that confidence, however, I knew I was entering unfamiliar ground. The dream gave that feeling a landscape, a creature and a physical sensation I could not easily ignore. It did not tell me whether the project would succeed. It brought me face to face with the part of beginning that was awkward, instinctive and hard to swallow. The toad appeared at the threshold. And before I could go any further, I had to integrate it.

Credit: ConstantinosZ iStock The Worm in the Apple When I was training as a psychotherapist, a worm appeared in a visualisation I was doing with a client. She had arrived saying she had nothing in particular to talk about, so I thought I’d try a visualisation and see whether it stirred something in the psyche. The Apple Appears I asked her to imagine a rose and, in its centre, to allow something to appear. She saw an apple. Brilliant, I thought. An apple: knowledge, temptation, abundance, nourishment, the Garden of Eden, the duality of human choice. I was doing really good work here. Then, out of the apple, appeared a worm. Oh. What on earth was I going to do with that? “Just allow whatever happens to happen,” I said sagely, as though I knew exactly what I was doing. The worm began to eat the apple. In fact, it devoured the whole thing. Oh no, I thought. There goes all that potential therapeutic gold. “What happens next?” I asked. The worm then excreted vast quantities of the apple it had consumed. I paused. “And what does that mean to you?” I asked, falling back on one of the therapist’s most useful questions. “Well,” she said, “I suppose the worm’s faeces nourish the soil it lives in.” And there it was. It was certainly not the symbolism I had expected, but perhaps it was something far more useful. We began exploring how the image might serve as a metaphor for her life. The apple had not simply been destroyed. It had been digested. What had existed in one form had been broken down and returned to the earth as nourishment. Something apparently valuable had been lost, but it had not been wasted. The Lowly Worm The worm is not a particularly glamorous symbol. We are generally more attracted to eagles, lions, butterflies, white horses and other creatures that seem to speak of freedom, courage, beauty or transformation. The worm stays closer to the ground. Indeed, it lives within the ground, moving through what is buried, discarded and decaying. It belongs to the dark, hidden world beneath our feet, where fallen matter is broken down and put to use again. Our first response to a worm may be disgust. Worms remind us of death, decomposition and the body’s eventual return to the earth. They challenge the fantasy that we are somehow separate from nature. The worm is a small messenger of mortality, but it is also an agent of transformation. It does not simply inhabit decay; it plays a part in turning what has died into nourishment for future life. What appears ruined, finished or useless becomes fertile. Digested, Not Destroyed Psychologically, this may be an image of what happens when an old identity, belief, hope or way of living has reached the end of its usefulness. Something begins to break down. The ego may experience this as failure, waste or loss, while the deeper psyche may recognise a process of composting. The question then becomes: what in me needs to be digested rather than preserved? We often try to keep things in their original form long after their natural life has ended. We hold on to an image of ourselves, an old ambition, a grievance, a relationship, a certainty, or the conviction that life should have unfolded differently. We may want restoration. The worm offers transformation. It does not return the apple untouched. It consumes it, breaks it down and produces something less attractive but more fertile. This is not generally the sort of transformation the ego has in mind. We prefer change to look graceful and purposeful. We want the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. We are less enthusiastic about the digestive process that turns yesterday’s apple into tomorrow’s soil. Yet much psychological change is rather more like this. Grief may break down an identity that was built around a particular relationship. Disappointment may dismantle an illusion. Failure may digest a grandiose idea of who we believed we ought to be. Therapy itself may gradually break down a story we have repeated for years, not because it is entirely false, but because it can no longer contain the whole truth of our experience. This can feel undignified. It may seem as though something valuable is being destroyed. The apple in the visualisation carried all sorts of rich symbolic possibilities, and I had become rather attached to them. At first, the worm appeared to ruin everything. But that was my attachment to the apple as a symbol, not the client’s unfolding process. The psyche is rarely concerned with preserving the therapist’s clever interpretation. It has its own direction. What Is Gnawing Away? The worm may also represent the small, uncomfortable thing that undermines certainty: the doubt that creeps into a perfect idea, the unease beneath a polished surface, or the suspicion that something is not quite as wholesome as it first appears. We speak of something “worming its way” into the mind, or of a thought “gnawing away” at us. The worm may point towards something persistent that has not yet been fully acknowledged. What is eating away at this apparently perfect apple? What truth has entered the picture? What can no longer remain untouched? The Hidden Work In alchemy, transformation begins not with radiance but with breakdown. The old substance must darken, separate and decay before something new can emerge. This stage is known as the nigredo: the blackening, when familiar structures dissolve, and certainty begins to fall apart. The worm belongs naturally to this hidden work. It is not the completed transformation, but one of the agents that makes transformation possible. The worm also brings us down to earth. It can puncture inflation and return us to humility. That was certainly true for me in the visualisation. One moment, I was congratulating myself on the apple's richness. The next, I was watching a worm eat the whole thing and wondering how on earth I was going to rescue the exercise. What Happens Next? There are moments in therapy when the work refuses to follow the therapist’s preferred symbolic route. The image changes. The client goes somewhere unexpected. The interpretation we were quietly preparing becomes irrelevant. At such moments, the best we can do is stay out of the way and ask: “What happens next?” That question allowed the image to complete itself. Had I rushed to rescue the apple, remove the worm or explain what it meant, we might have lost the wisdom of the visualisation. The worm’s excrement became the important image, not because it was beautiful, but because it was useful. It nourished the soil. Perhaps this is one of the deeper meanings of the worm: the psyche’s ability to make use of everything. Nothing is wasted. Pain can be metabolised. Loss can deepen us. Disillusionment can make us more truthful. What has been broken down may eventually nourish a new way of living. The worm does not promise that we can remain untouched. It offers something earthier and more honest. Life feeds on life. Endings participate in beginnings. What disappears in one form may return in another. And sometimes, when all the promising symbolic apples have been eaten, we discover that the real therapeutic gold was in the compost.

The Rose, the Thorn and the Awakening Photo by Gruescu Ovidiu on Unsplash The rose is one of those symbols we think we understand. We associate it with love, romance and beauty. But, like most powerful symbols, it contains an opposite. Its colour, scent and softness draw us towards it, while its thorns remind us that beauty is not always harmless. The Latin phrase sub rosa means “under the rose” and has long been associated with secrecy and confidentiality. A rose placed above a table was understood to mean that whatever was said beneath it should remain private. There is an obvious connection with psychotherapy. What is spoken in the consulting room is also held sub rosa: within a private space where thoughts, feelings and experiences can emerge before they are ready to be taken into the outside world. The phrase also provides a useful way of thinking about alchemical transformation. The alchemists worked with substances inside a sealed vessel. The material was heated, dissolved, darkened, separated and brought together again. Psychologically, this can be understood as the inner process through which an old way of being breaks down and something new gradually begins to form. Much of this happens beneath the surface. Outwardly, life may continue as usual. We work, shop, cook supper and answer emails while, inwardly, an old identity may be loosening and another trying to come into life. Transformation often takes place sub rosa: privately, quietly and without much outward evidence. The rose is also connected with rubedo, the reddening, traditionally understood as the final stage of the alchemical process. After the darkness of nigredo and the cleansing or clarification of albedo, rubedo represents a return to life, feeling and embodiment. Something that has previously been understood only inwardly must now be lived. It has to acquire blood, warmth and substance. I once had a dream in which I found a red rose. I reached out to take it and pricked my finger on one of its thorns. At the time, I had been rather seduced by an offer. It was flattering and attractive and seemed to promise something I wanted. To be seduced is not necessarily to be foolish. We are seduced through our hopes, ambitions, longings and vulnerabilities. Something catches the imagination and, for a while, we see the flower but not the thorn. The rose in my dream perfectly conveyed the attraction. It was red, alive and desirable. But when I reached for it, it drew blood. The prick of the thorn woke me up, not only from the dream but psychologically. It punctured the fantasy surrounding the offer and brought me back into my body. It made me wonder what accepting the offer might actually involve. What would it ask of me? What might it cost? What had I overlooked while enjoying the feeling of being chosen? The dream did not tell me that the rose was false or that the offer held no value. It showed me that the beauty and the danger belonged together. The thorn broke the spell. This is where the dream connects with rubedo. Red is the colour of passion and desire, but also of blood. The rose was no longer simply an attractive idea. The moment it pierced my skin, the situation became real. Psychologically, rubedo is not a state of permanent happiness or completion. It is the point at which insight must become embodied. Fantasy meets reality. What has been discovered inwardly has to be lived in the world. The dream transformed seduction into discernment. The psyche rarely presents its wisdom as a straightforward explanation. More often, it gives us an image: a red rose, a thorn and a drop of blood. The image arrives first. Its meaning may take longer to understand. The work is not to explain it away too quickly, but to stay with it. What is the rose in my life? What am I hoping it will give me? Where are the thorns? What becomes visible when the spell is broken? The rose is a symbol of love, but not of love stripped of difficulty. It suggests a love that can include boundaries, risk and truth. It invites us to open, but not to abandon our judgement. Perhaps transformation sub rosa asks us to see the rose whole: the blossom, the scent, the stem, the blood and the thorn. Only then can attraction become wisdom.

Photo by Warren on Unsplash Being cast out by a community is a particular kind of wound. It doesn’t only hurt socially. It can feel as if something much deeper has been disturbed — as if the circle that once held you has closed its gates, leaving you standing outside, trying to understand what has happened. In Jungian terms, this is the territory of the exile or the outcast. Although that can sound bleak, it is worth remembering that, in myth and fairy tale, the one who is sent away is rarely at the end of their story. More often, they are at the beginning of an initiation. When you have been banished, scapegoated, misunderstood, or pushed to the village's edge, it may be because you are carrying something the group cannot yet bear: a truth, a difference, a sensitivity, a disturbance, or a new possibility. This does not make the pain acceptable. It does not romanticise rejection or excuse cruelty. But it does suggest that more may be at play than simple exclusion. Sometimes the community casts out the very thing that sustains life. The work, then, is not necessarily to force your way back in or to spend a lifetime begging to be understood. The deeper work may be to ask: What part of me was exiled with me? What did I come to believe about myself when the group turned away? What truth, gift, or tenderness needs to be gathered back now? From a transpersonal perspective, belonging is not only about belonging to a group, family, school, church, profession, or tribe. There is another belonging too — belonging to the soul, to the Self, to the earth, and to the mystery of being alive. When human circles fail us, we may need to remember the older circle: the trees, the breath, the body, the ancestors, the night sky, and the quiet presence within. There is a belonging that no committee can withdraw. It cannot be voted away. It does not depend on approval. The wound says, I have been rejected. The soul may eventually answer, But I have not been abandoned by myself. A simple inner exercise Imagine yourself standing outside the gates of the community that cast you out. Not to plead. Not to argue. Not to make a case for your innocence or your worth. Simply to witness. Then notice who, or what, is still standing there. Is it the ashamed child? The angry one?The loyal one?The bewildered one? The part still waiting to be called back in? Now imagine walking towards that part of yourself and saying: You do not have to stand here any longer. You do not have to keep proving your worth to people who cannot see you. You belong with me now. Come home. You might imagine wrapping that part of yourself in a cloak — a cloak of dignity, warmth, and protection — and leading it away from the gates. Not back into the old community, but towards an inner place of refuge: a fire, a garden, a chapel, a forest clearing, a shoreline. Somewhere the soul can breathe again. Being cast out can leave you feeling ashamed, contaminated, or somehow wrongly named. But banishment is not the same as truth. The group may have rejected you. That does not mean your soul rejects you. The group may have falsely named you. That does not mean your true name has been lost. But another threshold may be opening — quieter, deeper, more honest — where belonging is no longer bought at the price of self-betrayal, but grows from becoming more fully who you are.

Some symbols arrive quietly, like a feather found on a path. The peacock is not one of them. The peacock enters like an opera singer in full costume, having apparently missed the memo about humility. It does not sidle into the symbolic imagination. It fans itself open. It shimmers. It says, in no uncertain terms: look at me. And that, of course, is where the trouble begins. Because many of us are deeply uneasy about being seen. We are taught, often very early, not to show off, not to take up too much space, not to be “too much”. We learn to tuck our brightness away. We trim our colours to fit the room. We become experts in being acceptable, useful, and manageable. Then along comes the peacock, dragging behind it a fan of blue, green and gold, asking: What if your beauty was not a problem? At one level, the peacock is a symbol of display. It is associated with vanity, pride and self-importance. To “peacock” is to show oneself off, usually with a touch too much confidence and perhaps a jacket no one asked for. We all know that version. The inflated self. The person who cannot quite leave a room without making sure everyone has noticed their departure. But symbols are rarely so simple. The peacock also carries a deeper message about visibility. Its magnificent tail is not merely a decoration. It is a revelation. It shows what has been hidden. It fans out the inner world into colour and pattern. In dreams, myths and inner life, the peacock may appear when something in us is ready to be seen. Not the polished persona, not the performance, but the deeper radiance of the self. The part of us that has survived shame, comparison, criticism and the long, grey education in self-doubt. There is also something extraordinary about the “eyes” in the peacock’s feathers. They seem to look back at us. In symbolic language, eyes often suggest awareness, perception and consciousness. The peacock may therefore speak not only of being seen by others, but of seeing ourselves more fully. This is not always comfortable. To truly see ourselves is not simply to admire the attractive parts. It is to recognise the whole pattern. The beauty and the awkwardness. The longing to shine and the fear of being judged. The genuine gift and the temptation to use that gift for applause. The peacock asks us to notice where healthy self-expression ends, and performance begins. In this sense, it is a surprisingly useful therapeutic symbol. Many people arrive in therapy with their colours faded. They may not describe it that way, of course. They might say they feel flat, anxious, invisible, stuck, or strangely disconnected from themselves. But somewhere, often hidden beneath years of adaptation, there is a lost brightness—a way of moving, speaking, creating or loving that has been subdued for too long. The peacock reminds us that healing is not only about reducing distress. It is also about recovering vitality. There is an old spiritual association between the peacock and transformation. In some traditions, it is linked with immortality and renewal, partly because of the way its feathers are shed and regrown. Symbolically, this gives us another layer. The peacock does not merely dazzle. It renews its splendour. It knows how to lose and regrow. That feels important. Because the beauty we recover in later life is often not innocent. It is not the untouched brightness of childhood. It is something more weathered, more truthful. It has passed through grief, disappointment, embarrassment, ageing, loss and the occasional deeply unflattering photograph. It is not perfect. It is alive. And perhaps that is the real teaching of the peacock. Not vanity, but permission. Permission to unfold a little more.Permission to stop apologising for the colour in us.Permission to be visible without becoming inflated.Permission to recognise that modesty, when overdone, can become another hiding place. Of course, there is a balance. The peacock can warn us against empty display. It can ask where we are performing rather than expressing, seducing rather than relating, dazzling rather than connecting. But it can also challenge the opposing wound: the belief that we must remain small to be loved. So, if a peacock appears in a dream, an image, a sudden fascination, or even on a cushion you find yourself oddly drawn to in a shop, it may be worth asking: Where am I hiding my colours? Where am I afraid to be seen? What part of me longs to unfold? And where might I be confusing visibility with vanity? The peacock is a flamboyant teacher, admittedly. Not everyone’s preferred guide. Some of us might prefer a wise old owl or a discreet little robin. But symbols do not always arrive in the outfit we would choose for them. Sometimes the psyche sends a peacock. And when it does, it may invite us to stand a little more openly in our own lives. Not to strut, necessarily. Though on a good day, why not? But to remember that the soul, when allowed its full expression, is rarely beige. As I explore in The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth, healing often begins when something hidden finds a form: a word, an image, a gesture, a dream, a symbol. The peacock, with all its impossible colour and beauty, reminds us that what has been folded away may not be lost. It may simply be waiting for the right moment to open.

Photo by Curology on Unsplash The toilet may not be the most glamorous symbol in the gallery. It does not have the majesty of a tree, the mystery of a snake, or the poetic shimmer of a river. It is unlikely to appear on a greeting card alongside the words “follow your dreams”. And yet, symbolically, the toilet has a great deal to say. In dreams and the inner life, toilets often appear when something needs to be released. Something old, unwanted, toxic, embarrassing, private, or simply no longer useful. The toilet belongs to the part of life we prefer not to put on display, which is precisely why it can be such a powerful image. It may speak of the need to let go. Old shame. Old grief. Old resentment. Old stories. Other people’s expectations. Emotional material we have been carrying for far too long, possibly with the same determination we use when refusing to throw away a drawer full of cables that fit nothing we own. Toilets are also about privacy. We need a safe place to deal with what is most basic, bodily and human. So when toilets appear in dreams, especially if they are exposed, dirty, blocked, missing a door, or impossible to find, they may point to feelings of vulnerability, lack of boundaries, shame, or not having enough private space to process what is going on inside. In therapy, the toilet might invite us to wonder: What am I ready to release? What am I still holding onto? Where do I need more privacy, dignity or space? And what has become blocked because I have not been able to let something move through me? A blocked toilet is rarely subtle. Symbolically, it may suggest that something is backing up. Feelings, needs, anger, grief, fear, perhaps even words that have not been spoken. As with all symbols, the meaning is never fixed. For one person, a toilet may feel comic. For another, shameful. For another necessary cleansing, exposing, or oddly liberating. This theme of releasing what no longer serves us is also part of the deeper work explored in my book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. So perhaps the question is not, what does the toilet mean? But: What am I ready to stop carrying? What needs to be flushed from my life? And where might I need a little more privacy, compassion and decent plumbing? @routledgebooks#TheSecretLanguageOfSymbols#TheSeedsOfChange#HowTherapistsCultivatePersonalGrowth#TranspersonalPsychotherapy#InnerLife#SymbolsAndMeaning

Photo by Sarah Penney on Unsplash The mirror is a tricky little object. At first glance, it seems to tell the truth. There we are, apparently: hair doing whatever it has decided to do, face slightly more tired than we had hoped, expression suggesting we may need either a holiday or a decent cup of tea. But symbolically, the mirror is rarely just about appearance. It is one of the great images of self-recognition. In fairy tales, myths, dreams and the inner life, the mirror may reveal what has been hidden. It may show us the face we present to the world, but also hint at the face beneath the face. The self we know. The self we avoid. The self we are becoming. A mirror can be reassuring, but it can also be unsettling. Most of us say we want self-knowledge until self-knowledge actually turns up, takes its coat off, and starts pointing things out. In therapy, the mirror may invite us to wonder: What am I ready to see? What am I avoiding? What image of myself have I mistaken for the whole truth? And what might be reflected back to me through my relationships, dreams, symptoms or longings? The mirror can also speak of projection. Sometimes what we see “out there” belongs partly “in here”. The irritating person, the admired person, the feared person, the envied person, may all be carrying something of our own unlived or disowned life. Annoying, but useful. A good mirror does not flatter us, nor does it shame us. It helps us look with honesty and compassion if we cooperate. That is often where healing begins. This movement towards deeper self-recognition is also at the heart of my book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. As with all symbols, the mirror does not have one fixed meaning. For one person, it may suggest vanity. For another, truth. For another, reflection, illusion, intimacy, ageing, identity or the longing to be truly seen. So perhaps the question is not, what does the mirror mean? But: What is being reflected back to me? What do I find hard to look at? And what part of me is waiting to be seen with kinder eyes? @routledgebooks#TheSecretLanguageOfSymbols#TheSeedsOfChange#HowTherapistsCultivatePersonalGrowth#TranspersonalPsychotherapy#InnerLife#SymbolsAndMeaning

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash The snake is not always the most popular guest at the symbolic table. For many of us, it arrives with a certain reputation: danger, temptation, poison, something lurking in the grass that we would rather not meet while wearing sandals. And yet, symbolically, the snake is one of the great images of transformation. It sheds its skin. It knows when an old covering has become too tight, too dry, too small for the life moving underneath. There is something deeply powerful in that. The snake does not attend a weekend workshop on personal growth, buy a new notebook, and make a list of intentions. It simply sheds what it can no longer live inside. In dreams, myths and the inner life, the snake may speak of instinct, sexuality, healing, fear, wisdom, danger or renewal. It belongs close to the earth, to the body, to what is felt before it is explained. It may appear when something old is being outgrown, or when a more instinctive part of the self is asking to be acknowledged. Of course, not every snake should be stroked. Some symbols come with both a warning and a message. The snake may ask us to notice toxicity, deception, or other aspects of life that need careful handling. In therapy, I might wonder: What old skin am I ready to shed? What instinct have I ignored? What frightens me, and what might it be trying to show me? Where is healing trying to happen, even if it arrives in a form I did not expect? The snake reminds us that change is not always pretty. Sometimes growth looks like discomfort, exposure, and the awkward business of becoming someone we have not yet fully met. This theme of growth through difficulty is also at the heart of my book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. As with all symbols, the snake does not have one fixed meaning. For one person, it may feel threatening. For another, sacred. For another, powerfully alive. So perhaps the question is not, what does the snake mean? But: What is stirring close to the ground of my being? What am I afraid to feel? And what must I shed in order to feel renewed? @routledgebooks#TheSecretLanguageOfSymbols#TheSeedsOfChange#HowTherapistsCultivatePersonalGrowth#TranspersonalPsychotherapy#InnerLife#SymbolsAndMeaning

Photo by Daniel Arroyo on Unsplash A river rarely moves in a straight line. It begins somewhere hidden, as a spring, a source, a small stirring beneath the earth. Then it gathers itself. It widens, deepens, bends, rushes, slows, floods, dries, and somehow keeps finding its way. Rather like us, really. Symbolically, the river can speak of feeling, change, grief, longing, surrender, and the deeper current of the unconscious. We may like to think we are in charge of our lives, sitting neatly at the steering wheel with a sensible packed lunch and a five-year plan. Then life happens, and we discover there is another current moving underneath us. Older. Deeper. Less interested in our diary. A river can soothe and nourish. It can cleanse, carry, restore and bring life to dry places. But it can also feel frightening. Too much feeling can be like water rising. We may fear being swept away by sadness, anger, love, loss, or the sheer force of change. In therapy, the image of a river might invite us to wonder: Where am I flowing freely? Where have I become dammed or blocked? What am I trying to hold back? And where might life be asking me to loosen my grip on the bank, even if only by one finger? The river also reminds us that change is not always dramatic. Water wears away stone by returning, again and again. In the same way, healing often happens slowly, through repeated acts of attention, honesty and compassion. That patient movement through difficulty toward growth is also at the heart of my book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. As with all symbols, the river will mean something different to each of us. For one person, it may feel peaceful. For another, dangerous. For another, full of memory. So perhaps the question is not, what does the river mean? But: What is moving in me? What needs to flow? And what might happen if I trusted the current a little more? @routledgebooks#TheSecretLanguageOfSymbols#TheSeedsOfChange#HowTherapistsCultivatePersonalGrowth#TranspersonalPsychotherapy#InnerLife#SymbolsAndMeaning

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash The tree is one of the great symbols of the inner life. Rooted in the earth, reaching towards the sky, it holds together two worlds: the grounded and the spiritual, the visible and the hidden, the life above the surface and the life beneath. Its roots may speak of ancestry, belonging, memory and the places from which we come. Its trunk suggests strength, steadiness and the capacity to remain standing through many seasons. Its branches reach outward, seeking light, connection and growth. But a tree is not always a symbol of ease. It may also carry the story of what has been cut back, weathered, bent or scarred. Some trees grow around wounds. Some lean towards the light. Some survive in places where little else can take root. In therapy, the image of a tree may invite us to wonder about our own rootedness. What nourishes us? What supports us? Where have we grown strong? Where have we had to adapt? This theme of growth through difficulty also sits at the heart of my book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth. As with all symbols, the meaning is never fixed. The deeper question is not simply, What does the tree mean? But rather: What kind of tree am I? Where are my roots? What am I reaching towards? And what in me is quietly beginning to grow? #TheSecretLanguageOfSymbols#TheSeedsOfChange#HowTherapistsCultivatePersonalGrowth#TranspersonalPsychotherapy#InnerLife#SymbolsAndMeaning

There are some symbols that seem to speak to us before we have had time to think about them. The door is one of them. A door is such an ordinary thing. We pass through doors every day without much thought. We open them, close them, lock them, knock on them, wait behind them, stand outside them. And yet, in dreams, myths, stories and the inner life, a door is rarely just a door. It is a threshold. It marks the place between one world and another. Inside and outside. Known and unknown. Safety and risk. The life we have been living, and the life that may be waiting. A door may appear when something in us is on the edge of change. We may not yet know what is changing. We may simply feel restless, uncertain, called, or afraid. There may be a sense that something has ended, but the new thing has not yet taken shape. In that in-between place, the image of a door can carry great power. It may ask: are you ready to enter? But it may also ask: are you ready to leave? Not every door is open. Some doors are locked. Some are hidden. Some are forbidden. Some are only slightly ajar, allowing a strip of light to fall across the floor. A closed door may frustrate us, but it may also protect us. It may represent a boundary that needs to be respected, a part of the self that is not yet ready to be known, or a mystery that cannot be forced. In therapy, I am always interested in the feeling around the symbol. Is the door inviting or threatening? Is it old or new? Heavy or fragile? Is it familiar, like the front door of a childhood home, or strange and unknown? Are you inside looking out, or outside wanting to come in? Do you have the key? Are you knocking? Is someone, or something, on the other side? These details matter because symbols are never fixed. A door does not mean the same thing for everyone. For one person, it may suggest freedom. For another, exclusion. For another, danger. For another, hope. A locked door in a dream might speak of something withheld, perhaps an emotion, memory or possibility that remains out of reach. But it might also say: not yet. The psyche has its own timing. It often protects us until we have enough strength, support or understanding to open what has been closed. An open door can feel full of promise. It may suggest welcome, invitation, or permission. But even an open door can be frightening. There is still the question of whether we dare to cross the threshold. Many of us know what it is to stand at the edge of change. To remain where we are may feel too small, but to move forward may feel frightening. A part of us longs for the new room. Another part wants to stay with what is familiar, even if the familiar no longer nourishes us. This is often how change happens. Not in one grand gesture, but at the threshold. We hover. We hesitate. We imagine. We retreat. We approach again. The door may also symbolise choice. Once we go through, something may be different. We may not be able to unknow what we discover. We may not be able to return to exactly the same version of ourselves. This is why doors appear so often in fairy tales and myths. The hero or heroine opens the forbidden door, enters the hidden chamber, passes through the gate, crosses into the forest, the underworld, the castle, the unknown. A door invites movement, but it also asks for consciousness. What am I entering? What am I leaving behind? What part of me is ready? What part of me is afraid? There is also something deeply intimate about a door. It suggests privacy. What happens behind closed doors belongs to the inner world. Our homes have doors. Our bedrooms have doors. Therapy rooms have doors. The door protects the sacredness of the space within. So perhaps a door can also ask: what needs a boundary? What needs to be kept safe? What needs to be opened, and what needs to remain private? In the inner life, the door may stand at the entrance to a forgotten room of the psyche. A place where old grief, buried anger, unlived creativity or childhood longing has been waiting. Sometimes we spend years walking past such doors, sensing something behind them but not quite daring to turn the handle. And then, one day, something changes. A dream comes. A symptom speaks. A relationship breaks open. A book, a conversation, a piece of music, a moment of silence, touches something in us. The door appears again. This time, perhaps, we pause. We listen. We place our hand on the handle. The deeper question is not simply, “What does a door mean?” The more useful question is, “What does this door mean to me, now?” Where in my life am I standing at a threshold? What door have I been afraid to open? What door may need to close? What am I waiting for permission to enter? And if I crossed the threshold, what part of me might finally begin to live?

As the year draws to a close, I offer you my first blog. What’s on my mind today? Love - and dogs. On Boxing Day my neighbour, his little Staffordshire terrier in its harness, ready for a walk, waved goodbye to a couple of Christmas guests in their car. As he strode off the dog turned around and stared, aghast, at the visitors’ car about to leave. His daddy gently tugged on the lead to encourage him to keep walking and the dog pushed his paws into the road in a Disney stop. “No!” (I voice-overed) “I thought we were all going together! I don’t want to go with just you daddy!”. No stiff upper lip. No promises of not leaving it so long in future. No “Phew, thank God that’s over for another year…”. Just genuine doggy remorse that his expectations were not met. Thirty seconds later, he was feeling better as he sniffed the local lamppost for new and interesting smells. The resilience! Today I’ve been watching dogs in the park. Not one without its tail wagging. Each and every one seemingly thrilled to meet new friends, old friends, two-legged and four-legged, it seems to matter not. Everything is a source of amazement, but not for long. Then they’re onto the next amazing thing with barely a backward glance. How much easier life would be if we could be more dog. Relishing the moment, throwing ourselves into relationships with complete abandon. Grieving endings briefly and then moving on to the next lamppost. I know we can’t. I know the human brain is more complex and it needs to reconfigure itself after a loss. I get it. But as I prepare to say goodbye to 2022, I’ll be looking for my own metaphorical new lampposts. Grateful to have had 2022 when so many didn’t make it through. Intent upon relishing 2023 with every ounce of my being. Wishing everyone who reads this a Happy New Year and leaving you with the words of Meher Baba (February 25, 1894 to January 31, 1969) Love is essentially self-communicative: Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches. Lynn

I wrote this in the Spring of 2012 and I can still feel the impact of the experience now. I thought I’d share it as I continue researching death, dying and grieving for my Matter of Life and Death workshops. The nest was eye-catching. Balanced on the rudder of a moored canal boat, twigs were woven together with rubbish - strips of blue, green and red plastic. A waterbird recycling project. Mummy and Daddy Coot - taking turns to sit on their five eggs - quickly became a canal-side sensation, with the birds growing accustomed to amateur photographers and commentators discussing the nest, its construction and the commitment of mother and father Coot to their eggs. Onlookers eagerly awaited the sight of the baby coots. In London, where etiquette discourages eye contact, the coots drew us together for a while. We gathered on the towpath to photograph the birds, their colourful nest and their eggs, to allow ourselves to be captured for a while by nature in the midst of a busy city. The prosaic became poetic, as we waited excitedly for an anticipated new life - beauty emerging from a pile of rubbish. How those little Coots and their five little chicks brightened the last few weeks of a dull, rain-sodden Spring. But today the nest is gone. I cover my mouth in horror. My breath becomes shallow and rapid. The adult coots are stamping on freshly-gathered twigs with their oversized webbed feet, determinedly re-building their vandalised nest. Of their five little babies, there is no sign, and as I frantically cast around hoping for a sighting, I hear someone say “Shame they nested through weeks of rain and then their chicks get eaten.” As if punched in the stomach, I exhale sharply, then feel a horrible soreness where my heart is. I wipe my tear-filled eyes with my hand and flee the scene as if distance will help. And as I trudge heavily back to work I feel the familiar sensation of shock as I wonder how I didn’t see this coming. How I never see it coming. "I learned that every mortal will taste death. But only some will taste life" (Rumi)

In the wake of the publicity around Prince Harry’s book ‘Spare’, and the allegation that Prince William accused his brother of being ‘brainwashed by therapy’, I’m tempted to say ‘if only!’ . On the other hand, I have some sympathy with Prince William’s alleged viewpoint. Let’s unpack this subject. Firstly, why do I say ‘if only’ ? I’m being facetious by saying if it were so easy brainwash our clients perhaps we’d save them a lot of time and money. It isn’t easy sitting for weeks, months or years at a time whilst a client purports to desire a change in behaviour whilst doing the opposite. But having attended therapy for years, I know my own changes were not easy. And I’m so grateful that my therapist never exhibited frustration at my resistance. Just as you wouldn’t push a little child into the deep end of a swimming pool without arm bands and lots of encouragement, nor would any therapist worth their salt try to crash through a client’s defences - developed for good reasons, usually in childhood - and attempt to force a change before they were ready. When change happens, it often happens incrementally. This is due to the nature of the brain and the ego (who we believe ourselves to be) and the ego’s astonishing will to survive intact. Making change is difficult. Period. Good psychotherapists put aside their own agenda and take the view that they don’t know what’s best for the client. The client knows what’s best for themselves. At some level they know. And although it might sometimes appear that wrong choices are being made, therapists must hold a position of humility and curiosity. We may wonder with the client what might happen downstream if they were to make this or that decision, and so on. But we need to remember that the client has a soul and that soul has its journey and what may look like a mistake to us might be the perfect healing journey that client needs to undertake in order to develop a particular quality or set of qualities to help them become more whole. To individuate. Gestalt therapy refers to the process of individuation (or becoming whole) as ‘selfing’. Selfing is a dynamic process. So, when we respond in the same old way to challenging situations (choosing to avoid confrontation, for example, or choosing full-scale confrontation as opposed to calm dialogue), we are in a very real sense avoiding our wholeness. When we take a leap of faith and choose a different way of responding to challenges, we are ‘selfing’ - taking a step towards becoming whole. So, back to Prince William’s alleged viewpoint - can therapists brainwash clients? Can they influence their clients? Of course! People can be influenced by many things - nature, nurture, our experiences, our friendship groups, what we choose to read and so on. So when we are in crisis and reach out and find a therapist in whom we place our trust - yes, of course there is the potential for undue influence. Psychotherapy training is about not influencing our clients. It’s about providing the right environment, holding space and allowing clients to find their own, best way forward. Ideally, we therapists are like Sherpa guides - we know the terrain, we have plenty of experience of the territory in all kinds of weather, we can to some extent suggest the best paths to take. But we don’t direct or decide. The route, the speed, the stops en-route, changes of direction - all these are the client’s decisions. We assist the explorer as best we can. In the therapy process, we do this by asking open questions (questions not requiring a yes/no answer) and allowing the client to explore their inner and outer worlds without interference from outside influences. However, some people are very receptive, searching for somebody authoritative to make decisions on their behalf. This can be alluring for some therapists and there’s a need to avoid being unconsciously recruited by clients wishing for this.

Each year, like many psychotherapists, I find myself carving out time not just to deepen my understanding or nourish my practice - but to prove that I’ve done so. Logging CPD hours, gathering certificates, listing webinars, copying receipts for books I have purchased, providing reasons for buying the books, and summarising the books. The process is supposed to ensure ongoing professional development. But more and more, it feels like I’m spending less time genuinely educating myself and more time just documenting that I’ve tried. Recently, I found myself summarising several books I’d read for reaccreditation - books I chose out of genuine professional interest and deep personal curiosity. Yet instead of reflecting on how they’d changed my perspective, challenged my assumptions, or informed my practice, I was caught up in turning rich insights into neat, countable units. Not for my clients. Not for myself. But for an external system that seems to prioritise evidence of learning over the learning itself. As therapists, we understand that the most meaningful growth doesn’t always fit into neat categories. It develops gradually through reflection, embodiment, and dialogue. Sometimes it occurs when we revisit a familiar text with fresh eyes, or when a passing comment in supervision sparks something profound. However, under the current reaccreditation model, these subtle, transformative experiences often don’t “count.” What does count? A ticked box. A dated signature. A record of attendance. All useful in their place, but not reflective of the depth and nuance of therapeutic learning. I wonder how many of us spend hours trying to articulate in a few lines what we’ve “learned” from a book - not for the sake of integration, but to have something to upload. And how often the time spent proving we’ve read something might have been better used to pause, reflect, discuss with peers, or even rest - because rest, too, is part of how we learn. This is not a call to abandon accountability or standards. It’s a call to reimagine professional development as a living, breathing process rather than an administrative hurdle. Could we trust therapists more to shape their learning paths? Could reaccreditation invite dialogue instead of documentation? I don’t want to become a better form-filler. I want to become a better therapist. And I suspect I’m not alone. I will be formulating an alternative re-accreditation proposal to put forward to the UKCP, and meanwhile, I would be happy to hear my colleagues' feedback on this article.