I have been banging on a bit about therapeutic approaches in psychology and lately reading up again on CBT and ACT. There are plenty of good resources available, though in the case of the latter, there is a bit of jargon that needs to be waded through. But let me give you the tiniest nutshell summary of ACT, though I'm sure that I will annoy practitioners.

We are not our thoughts. We can observe our thoughts through mindfulness exercises (nothing new, Buddhists have been doing this for two and a half millennia), the realisation of which leads us to understand that we don't have to be ruled by our thoughts or our feelings. We can detach from them, diffuse them or put them at arms length. We can make also space for them, practicing non-avoidance by allowing them to remain fellow travellers for the time-being. This means developing an attitude of acceptance.

As we do so, they usually become less worrisome, particularly as we turn our attention to what is important or valuable in our lives. We make a commitment to the pursuit of these values. Sure, the thoughts and feelings will return daily but there are ways in ACT of turning the tables, of making them more benign or insignificant.

Consider the following chain of thinking, for example.

"I can't cope."

"I am having the thought that I can't cope"

"I notice that I am having the thought that I can't cope."

At each remove, the sting is taken out of the original thought, allowing one to become an observer rather than a victim. Try it sometime.

Nearing the end of the middle of Spring, the jasmine is finally fading from the front verandah, having given us a beautiful display over the past few weeks. The aroma of jasmine in the night is overpowering - it hits you like a freshly opened bottle of cologne - and lingers long if the evening is warm.

Thinking of fading flowers in the garden today, this wonderful haiku sprang to mind, by Moritake (1452- 1540).

Those falling blossoms

all return to the branch when

I watch butterflies 

I think that there are fewer butterflies about than when I was young. I'm told its because of pesticides. They will never return to the branch, alas.

Even though I only spent 12 months in a formal counselling practice, I have used the skills acquired many times over in different situations. Any helping profession or job usually requires at least a modicum of empathy and listening capacity - counsellors just have more options and experience.

I write this as a follow up to a recent post about the advantages of one therapeutic approach over another, specifically Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. They are a little like cousins, because they can be used together in a more integrated way (I know that purists will baulk at this claim).

Some people love filling in charts and lists to get at the nub of their thinking problems (cognitive distortions) and find more helpful ways of thinking. That makes a lot of sense of me, for I catastrophize and personalize and do quite a lot of mind reading, amongst my many cognitive sins. It is very helpful to go over all the faulty thinking patterns, locate yourself amongst them, and go to work on an ABC chart or two. This is CBT.

On the other hand, ACT asks us to forget the challenge of changing problematic thinking (and the feelings and acting out that go with it) but rather make space for all those troublesome emotions and thoughts. Let them be. Not pay too much attention. The technical term is - not to "fuse" with them. Stepping back and coming to a realisation that you are NOT your thoughts. The core of the practice is mindfulness - awareness of the present moment, of what is happening now. There are many exercises and practises that are set up to help you achieve this kind of outcome.

There is no reason not to use both or any of the other systems that exist, so long as you are not just shopping around hoping for a quick fix.

After my last couple of posts - which might be construed in some circles as a little dark - I present something to laugh at. If you are of a certain age you will have watched a particular sci-fi drama many times over. I have the complete set of DVDs, even though I probably watched very episode of the three seasons that it ran for at least ten times through. This show had regular repeats until the mid-seventies and perhaps beyond.

If you are fan, too, of Edvard Munch (yes, very dark indeed), you will enjoy the following clever pictorial intertextuality.

Every so often I notice that my thoughts have become far too inward for far too long a time and I reach for those books I studied during my counselling diploma. I usually settle for a combination of CBT and ACT, which, while they employ different methods (broadly speaking, one to rectify, the other to 'let be') are more like cousins. I take wisdom from both and hopefully use it to ease my overburdened mind.

I have always had mild health anxiety (formerly known as hypochondria) which has been compensated for in a host of ways, but occasionally I allow myself to be drawn into thinking too deeply. That way is madness. 

So today I'm back into reading up on cognitive distortions and ways to diffuse unwanted thoughts and feelings, which is a kind of marriage of the two systems I mentioned above. Whatever works, keep using it. 

For anyone wondering, there are plenty of resources for self-study and application on both CBT and ACT, and all the others too. I was trained to work in an integrated way across the spectrum of therapies, which makes sense. There are gems everywhere if you care to look.

spring awakening

the rites of Spring remain,
fast budding trees
and birds, berserk
in clarifying rain,

that makes the roof
sound and sound again-
at night I mean-
the ancient patter
found in sleep-waking,
gathering in a faze,
and then, 
a seeming second later,
a smudge of green
in the upstart dawn-
sheer fecund joy-
my unsteady gaze
poring for feature.
spring, the bringer,
shepherd of what's been
and what will be, 
reminding some, like me, 
a trio of seasons 
done,
that only an unending winter
is to come.

I watch quite a lot of videos that roughly cover the topic of the cosmos. Some are highly speculative and come closer to futurism. All are grounded in some way in physics as we know it, so they are not science fiction per se. Their creators are often intelligent, well-educated and clearly excited by their subject.

Often as not there are questions raised about how human advancement will go and whether we will overcome the obstacles that becoming a space-faring race will entail. I enjoy that kind of thing but somewhere in the back of my mind is the thought that the argument is moot - we won't be around to trouble the planets, stars and interstellar domains.

That might sound a little pessimistic but the current lie of the land suggests I am on the right track. As a species we seem unable to get past the idea of war as a means of solving conflict. There has been some moral growth but no guarantee that things might not go backwards if conditions changed sufficiently.

Even if we get through the next 500 years or so and manage to establish communities on Mars or the Moon, even if we are mining asteroids and capturing greater and greater quantities of power from the Sun, even if the question of war is finally solved, this is only a temporary stay. The Moon will leave us, but not before the atmosphere is burnt away by an increasingly hotter Sun. It will be an ignominy of departures.

That is a long way in the future I know. Best to focus, I suppose, on one day at a time.

Tomorrow  I celebrate my time on Earth over the course of 63 circuits of our Sun. It is no small feat in human terms, historically at least, but I get some reassurance at the total mileage of 59,220,000,000 kms. The annual distance is 940 million kms, which looks pretty impressive on any old odometer.

This pales when one starts to look deeper and these localised figures become less impressive. The Sun itself (and our Solar System) takes about 225-250 million years to do a circuit of the centre of the Milky Way, so the last time we were roughly in this spot, dinosaurs were only just beginning to emerge as a class of reptiles. Using the same time scales, said dinosaurs were about to be wiped out at about the three-quarter mark.

I could of course, just settle for a plain old year of 365.25 days and forget the cosmic scales. But somehow the latter is strangely reassuring. Whatever happens today, good or bad, will be forgotten many times over when we swing around next time.

 About 18 months ago I was on a train to the city. Two men in the seat in front me, who seemed oblivious of my presence, were having a merry time looking at photos on their phones. All well and good, you might say. But I became aware that the shots they were viewing seemed a little dodgy - young girls in bikinis with heels, or lingerie. Stuff like that. It wasn't illegal, as far as I knew, but it struck me as odd.

When I got home I googled one of the names of the models I had heard them repeat (I won't be revealing that) and found, after a relatively short time, that there were half a dozen legitimate sites set up for the very purpose of photographing very young models in what I deemed an inappropriate way. It struck me that these might act as some kind of gateway to harder, illegal material, whether intentionally of not.

Being the ghastly do-gooder that I am, I reported a string of sites to the esafety commissioner (in Australia) on the presumption that they had the power to investigate and possibly take action. I checked in from time to time to see whether sites had been taken down and often found myself reporting a bunch of new sites that had popped up.

Today I can happily report that all the sites I reported are down(with the exception of an orphan page or two) and that searches for model names have born no fruit. I may have had nothing to do with it, but I feel a little better for having acted as I did. Let kids be kids. Soon enough they will be adults with all the cares that come with growing up.

I have written before about Whisperings Solo Piano Radio, a service I have used for over 15 years. Whenever I feel the need for meditative or reflective music, or just something calming, Whisperings is where I head. It was also a great teaching device. I guess that you are wondering how that might be so.

When I was teaching English in Japan, I encountered what most language educators spoke about as a common problem. Japanese students get a lot of grammar, reading, writing and listening training at school, but precious little conversation. I won't go into the reasons for this, but this is a system that likes testing, and speaking doesn't fit easily into a neat marking scheme.

I had a similar problem but mine was borne out of a reluctance on the part of my students to speak when asked to (or to go beyond a few perfunctory words) or to answer questions in the general run of the lesson. My best attempts at humour and positive reinforcement only went so far, but then I discovered Whisperings, quite by accident. I was searching the internet radio in iTunes on the school's old iMac when its started playing all by itself. I decided to leave it on in the background quietly during the lesson. I figured that if there wasn't such a silence to fill, then maybe students would relax and talk.

And they did! There was a perceptible shift in the quantity and quality of conversation. I don't have any control groups to establish the bona fides of this apparent breakthrough, but I know that what took place was real. I'm guessing that any music that is not a distraction would do the trick - orchestral, free of lyrics, quiet - and I'm just a sure that others have tried the same thing with equal success. In any event, I continued the practice up until my departure in 2007 and today, I walked home in the rain, listening to the same station, and thinking about that time.

Music often evokes memories, or at least, the feelings behind memories. The memory itself may be an actual recollection, or a collage of recollections muddled together. It's perfect accuracy is not important for the emotion is quite authentic enough.

I have learnt to mistrust my memories, in some cases because I have unaccounted for blind spots in my past, and in other cases because my diaries tell me something other than what I seem to remember. If you are going to write an autobiography, keep diaries. Otherwise large parts of your work might be unintendedly fictional.

It is with this in mind that I venture into today's entry. This morning, while listening to an old Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell, I was flooded with an apparent recollection from Thailand from the late 1990's. I was travelling with a colleague from work and we were on a bus on the way from Pai to Chiang Mai. I had my Sony Walkman plugged in and was listening to the aforementioned album, which I had picked up in cassette form at a market in Chiang Mai. We were winding our way along a road that snaked, sometimes precariously, through rain forest. 

Was the memory correct? Well, it seems that it was not far off the mark, because I was able to check with the notes my travel friend had made on the trip (and had somehow left with me), notes which seemed more interested with what I was doing than what she thought of Thailand. It only goes to show that keeping a diary can pay off, even if it's not your own! (It helps too if you have kept an annotated travel guide from the trip. Thank you Lonely Planet).

As for Pai, back then it was sleepy little village in beautiful surrounds. We stayed in a common or garden guesthouse and hired motor bikes to see the countryside. If I look at a map today, Pai has kicked on a lot, for there are now resorts and all manner of cafes and restaurants.

Some people think that's progress and like to say so. But I'm not so sure.

Considering again the poet and writer May Sarton, to whom I made reference yesterday, it is quite remarkable how precocious she was at such a young age. I discovered some poems that she had published in the December 1930 edition of  Poetry A Magazine of Verse and found myself more than mildly astonished at her dexterity. If I had written the following poem at age 18, then I would not be typing this dross now. How to be so articulate and wise and yet so young!

    First Love

This is the first soft snow

That tiptoes up to your door

As you sit by the fire and sew,

That sifts through a crack in the floor

And covers your hair with hoar.

This is the stiffening wound

Burning the heart of a deer

Chased by a moon-white hound.

This is the hunt and the queer

Sick beating of feet that fear.

This is the crisp despair

Lying close to the marrow -

Fallen out of the air

Like frost on a narrow

Bone of a shot sparrow.

This is the love that will seize

Savagely on your mind

And do whatever he please;

This is the despair, and a snow-blind

Hound you will never bind.

I often read posts from Brainpickings, a site that promotes informed writing about people and subjects. Today I was reading an excellent piece on writer and poet May Sarton, who, like many great writers, suffered from depression. The article was focussed on her book, Journal of a Solitude.

Notwithstanding the fact that her affliction seemed to make her a better writer (which echoes in some ways Camus's assertion that "there is no love of life without despair of life") she was quoted as having written, that we live in "an age where more and more human beings are caught up in lives where fewer and fewer inward decisions can be made, where fewer and fewer real choices exist." 

It struck me that this comment, written over forty years ago, has been proven correct over and over again since that time. If anything, the situation is more grim, with so-called connectedness through social media and technology leaving little time for interior dialogue or reflection.

Ann thinks that I think too much. I guess I do, but I cannot do otherwise.

In the Park

Waiting for the jab -
Squat buses wail and squeal
The park light shifts
And sun peels through
The Moreton Bays.
I watch the bins,
Birds with crooked beaks,
The dip and dip and dip,
The way shadows sway.
Lunchers gather briefly
Silently unmasked,
Then, watchful of the air
Step soundlessly away,
For everyone who parts
An image of the grim,
Unbidden by the eye,
Still lingers there.

Yesterday I took JJ to the city to get her first moderna jab. The vast distance travelled became a necessity because my wife wanted her done as soon as possible and most of the local appointments had long wait times. 

It was my first trip to the CBD in months, not since the last shift at 2RPH, and it was eerily quiet. Few shops were open and fewer people in evidence - one might shoot a gun in the once busy thoroughfares without any risk of injury.

An emptied-out city offers different perspectives though. Unpeopled streets and arcades drive ones attention elsewhere - the shape of a window, the jut of a stair, the chairs and tables in unmoving mute conversation.

The closure of food courts and lunch spots also reduced my choices for hirugohan. Once I had finally found something, there was the challenge of locating a legal place to sit. After much stumbling about I did find somewhere in the open, and with my mask gingerly pushed to one side, took this picture. Ordinarily, this stretch of George Street on a Friday would be thronging.