We are blessed with a small but fabulous choice of pubs and eateries near where I live. It’s a tourist haven for six months of the year, attracting people from all around the world. It’s a seriously gorgeous place.
It also draws people home from all around the world, to reunite with loved ones, have the craic, maybe an oul “dalliance” or two… maybe a bump of coke…
I recently read a non-fiction book about a colleague that was deeply chilling – though not, truth be told, terribly surprising. Of course, not every therapist is abusive, coercive, or amoral like the individual described in that book. And, on paper, this colleague looks perfectly fine. (Plus, oddly, I owe my return to writing to them.)
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I’ve been doing other things lately – staying away from writing, and from posting on social media as much as I used to. A couple of people have expressed curiosity about that – and here’s what I tell them:
Continue readingThere are a few reasons. I’ve been pondering each of them this morning, coffee in hand, wondering how best to fill the unexpected gap created by two cancellations – courtesy of this year’s remarkably efficient flu virus.
“I’m sorry” – powerful words aren’t they?
The best thing about saying “I’m sorry” is that it does all of these things:
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If you’re from Ireland, you may have heard of Knockadoon Summer Camps. They’re an Irish language summer camp, very popular, and just around the corner from me – well, practically, perhaps not quite literally…
Anyway, a friend of mine had her 2 kids there for the 2nd or 3rd consecutive year and I decided to pop over and meet them all, see how they were getting on. Maybe try and get some scandal re potential romances etc – y’know, the usual old-person-embarrassment rituals (they’re so tolerant of me these two!)
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I just saw on Sexual Violence Centre Cork‘s page that the term “gaslighting” is the word chosen by Merriam-Webster as the word of the year 2022 with searches on its website for the word spiking by 1,740% in 2022.
What a thing to witness! What a cultural shift! In awareness at least – the behaviour certainly hasn’t disappeared. If anything, its ‘territory’ has expanded. But it’s always good to have the language for a phenomenon. It literally makes it easier to talk about it.
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Every June my subconscious does this fabulous fun thing – the annual Leaving Cert dream. If I’m really lucky it’ll be really specific – like Irish paper 1 – or an accountancy paper full of Question 1s – either way it morphs pretty smartly into a nightmare.
Thanks, Brain.
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Mixed messaging much??
“Be Kind” is something we hear a lot growing up – especially, but not exclusively of course, women.
And kindness is so, so important. So basic, so simple. If everyone were kind, the events we are currently witnessing would simply be alien to us. There would be no Putins. I can (and do) dream…
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Well…
This may or may not surprise you but this has come up quite a lot in therapy in recent days. This does seem odd at the face of it, doesn’t it? I mean, surely there are more pressing things to explore in sessions…but as with everything that arises in a session, there is meaning attached.
We’ve attached that meaning. Part of that meaning is attachment.
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