About me
This section is designed to give you an idea of who I am and where I'm coming from in doing this work which I hope will help you decide that you'd love to meet me and hear for yourself what I have to share. There are two essential strands to my work, the Goodwill Patterns and the exploration of creativity.
The Goodwill Patterns are the tools I use to achieve and maintain happiness and they have proved their worth in the last couple of years which have had more than their fair share of challenges. In writing this book about the Goodwill Patterns, I'm developing the central ideas contained in the text I've made available here (it's also in booklet form - if anyone would like to buy it, please contact me). I write in intense bursts and it seems like every chapter is accompanied by a new miracle! The Goodwill sessions I'm offering are based on this material.
I've worked most of my adult life as a counsellor and the book I'm writing is the distillation of my learning in over twenty years as counsellor, trainer, group-facilitator, supervisor and lecturer in counselling. When I left Northern Ireland five years ago, I left behind my identity as 'counsellor' and in the last five years have learnt a great deal about why I chose this career and its benefits and drawbacks for my growth as a 'self-actualising individual' (the goal of the person-centred therapy I trained in).
I believed, and perhaps I was right, that as a counsellor, I used the reservoir of my own experiences of grief and pain, to help others. I had my first child adopted; a decision I took believing that it offered him the best possible chance of growing up loved and celebrated as every child deserves to be. I could not change how the pain of that loss threaded through every day of my life, but it meant that whatever distress a client expressed, I was with them on their journey into the depths of themselves. I loved my work, witnessed and participated in many amazing journeys towards integration, wholeness and happiness.
But I had become 'the wounded healer, who through compassion and empathy can heal others yet who cannot heal his own hurt' and this was reflected in developing a goitre, representing, I reckon, the fact that a counsellor listens and reflects back but does not say their 'piece'. We are not there to advice. I now think I hid somewhere in the silence of the counsellor, learnt not to speak my truth. There are many factors that fed into my decision to stop working as a counsellor but I more than anything else, I wanted to melt the walls. The famous core conditions of Rogerian counselling, authenticity, empathy and 'unconditional positive regard' (why do we shy away from the word love?) are a way of being in the world, not skills to be exercised only by a counsellor in the safety of a counselling room.
The shifts I've been through in the last few years have lead me from the position of the counsellor who stays silent to that of the bard who speaks out. No-one could feel the honour of being chaired as the 'chief bard of Ynys Withrin' more deeply than I do. It empowers my work, makes me feel more confident that the world is ready to hear what I have to say. I believe that now, at long last, I have stepped into my power.
My work is still about helping people become more truly themselves. But now rather than framing this as remedial work for the wounded, I see it as working with others in circles of equals so we can align with inner truth and then, as self-actualising people, do the work for which we are on the planet at this time of crisis. Both the Goodwill Patterns sessions and the creativity development I offer, work towards this end.
We face such huge changes in the years ahead, I pray that we all become the effective agents of change the world needs at this time and whatever part I can play in that process, I ask the angels to grant me the opportunity to play it. May you who read this, be called to participate in the circles that serve your highest good. Blessings on your path.
