I am quickly becoming a big fan of Moya Sarner. I have just finished her book “When I grow Up-conversations with adults in search of adulthood”. I love the book, and Sarner’s writing, which is personal, kind and generous as well as being interesting and incredibly relevant. Reading the book felt like a conversation over a cup of tea.
Sarner is a psychoanalyst in training, and as part of this training is also going through psychoanalysis herself. She makes incredibly herself vulnerable in sharing some of this (sometimes very difficult and intense) experience of trying to understand herself better, and by sharing it in her book is trying to help the reader also understand themselves better.
In this recent article from the Guardian, she writes that in world that currently can feel quite overwhelming, difficult and disturbing to live in, the key to staying sane is to focus on what you can change about yourself, when the bigger, more global things feel out of control.
I loved this bit, where she is talking about her experience that some clients come to counselling because..” because they want change – but they don’t necessarily want to change”
Knowing something doesn’t feel right, and wanting things to be different is often the motivation for people to reach out for counselling. But it the working out what needs to change, and doing the things , making the different and difficult decisions that is the hard bit.
Anyway, sharing the article here, because I find her words comforting and human.
Nat Creighton Counselling 