Short blog about the Israel/Palestine situation

It is hard to write an ordinary newsletter with the world as it is. My own words cannot do justice to the suffering of so many people and to the complex feelings evoked. The shocking events of real murderous terror in Israel, the awful repercussions for Palestinians, especially children, who are suffering, the horrendous rise in both antisemitism and islamophobia, are all hard to bear. I have had patients being spat at in the street, an increase in nightmares and other symptoms and people I know on both sides are in fear for their safety.

I dont want to shirk the unthinkable realities. i cannot simply take sides. I am of jewish heritage but not a believer, and I am trying to keep my heart open even when the atrocities invite hate and revenge. I understand why people feel they are fighting for their personal survival and that if their existence feels under threat, they feel the need to fight hard. I also worry that compassion disappears in the process.

Most of us know the costs of racism and ‘othering’. If I have learnt anything about love and compassion in recent years, it is that they struggle to survive when the soil they are planted in is one of fear, terror, hurt and anger. I remember that I wrote The Good Life only when I realised the extraordinary capacities for kindness and compassion in even young children but also knew how the traumatised children i worked with struggled to find such love and compassion, for others or themselves. I have also learnt that as they began to trust and feel what i can only call love, and care, they became psychologically healthier but more importantly, they become kinder. My goodness we are a long way from that in the Middle East.

As ever I think about the science. how oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, central to our biology of trust, love and mutual care, is the very same hormone which increases distrust and dislike of those in other groups. We evolved to ‘other’, to distrust people ‘not like us’, we see this experimentally even in babies. We split into ‘them and us’. We show more empathy and care for ‘our kind’ as again countless experiments show.

Yet, as experimenters such as Ruth Feldman have shown, there is a neurobiology of hatred , but as she showed, and as we know from therapy and conflict resolution, this can be tilted by improving synchrony, care, and mentalizing, by compassion and empathy, by helping to recognise the humanity of the other, which can only happen if we feel ours is also recognised.

I have just returned from speaking at the Compassionate Mind Foundation and we have learnt so much from Paul Gilbert and others about how compassion is hard, we have to open up to real difficulty, pain, often rage, hatred and anger, and be able to somehow bear, or as Bion would say, contain it all. This is a time to be brave and strong but also compassionate and caring. Sometimes it is easier to hate than to love.

Here is a piece forwarded by Esther Perrel, I am not sure if she wrote it or not but thanks to Doron Levene for forwarding to me:

Be careful to separate people from the policies of their governments.

Be careful to separate people from the actions of terrorists who live among them.

Be careful not to collapse history and context into narrow interpretation.

Be careful not to eschew complexity and nuance for the sake of memeification.

Be careful to recognize that grief for one side does not mean hate for the other.

Be careful to understand that support for one side does not mean hate for the other.

Be careful of gaslighting on a mass level: disinformation and denial of loss.

Be careful not to dismiss the excruciating and real pain of others. Do not make it worse.

Be careful not to say things online that you would not say to someone in real life.

Be careful not to add hatred on top of hatred; we are all being crushed underneath its compounding weight.

Be careful not to lose empathy for those with whom you disagree.

Be careful not to dehumanize others. Doing so dehumanizes you.

Do not lose touch with the parts of you needed most:

Your compassion. Your humanity. Your care.

Finally a few words from some colleagues, Neil and Syd Hiskey, from the Compassionate Mind Foundation.

1) To anyone specifically targeted, on the receiving end and/or more directly affected by these atrocities: May you be filled with the compassionate intention to sincerely defend yourselves without harming others.

2) For us all: May we face these threats with peaceful courage and find ways to neutralize these that halt and prevent further suffering for all.
This comes from acting from the highest ethical level of self-defence in combat, the philosophy espoused, embodied and enacted by Morei Ueshiba (founder of Aikdio):
https://aikidonosekai.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/aikido-ethics-self-defense/

If we can operate out from this place where the body-mind is deeply filled with compassion, maybe we can stand in solidarity, be outraged, condemn and decry AND not be limited in where the flow of our compassion gets extended.

Go well with fearless compassionate peaceful courage’

Below are Neil and Syd embodying Fierce Compassion before the conference and below is one of a few of us, in my case, not very fierce nor probably compassionate! (and here is their website with details of events and what they do)

Here is a free to download chapter for subscribers of this newsletter, which is a sample chapter from an integrative child psychotherapy book called One Tree Many Branches.This chapter, called Ecotherapy with Children and Young People in Mind by Alix Hearn

If you are not subscribed then click on the green button below

Request. re Audio version of Respark.

I am experimenting with selling direct via Bookfunnel.

Are there 3 or 4 people who might check this works by buying the book at a discount?

Here I hope is the product grahammusic.gumroad.com/l/oaszhv
It should be £5.99

This should give you a discount code of 70% (i.e. hopefully less than £2?)
U2GU3NF

You need to download the Bookfunnel app which in fact is really good and works on iphone, android or kindle fire, as it gets played through that. You can get it here, and its free https://bookfunnel.com/help/app/

In case anyone actually does this please let me know how you get on. I think 8 people can have that discount code. I would love to have feedback on the process and also of course, the audiobook. It should be exactly the same product as on Audible or Spotify.

this picture below just struck me, we are all nature (trees can protect themselves but lack human destructiveness)

A heartfelt statement from Patrick Kielty in hope of peace, using his Irish experience as the source of such hope for the Middle East

Books and writing

Upcoming talks or events

I am doing less events but a few to keep an eye out for .. in the next month there is the below (and do though send in information about other events as I am less in the loop at the moment but like to advertise other organisation’s events) | October 28, 2023

Talk on Respark.

Details here
Annual lecture for Severnside Institute, Bristol, in person (yay)
November 2, 2023

Adolescent brains and contemporary challenges

Event Link
King’s Counselling and Mental Health Support Conference
Conference in working with Intersectionality in Student Mental Health, again in person and with some great speakers
November 4, 2023

Shut down, Numb and Undrawn States, with Anne Alvarez

Details here
Organiser: Tavistock Relationships Location: online
Former Confer organiser Alice Waterfall has resurfaced at TR and this is the first of what looks like an exciting series of events. this one is online

Some of my other future events can be found here

Other events that look of interest include:

A Conference celebrating the importance of David Malan’s work, perhaps forgotten at the Tavistock but he has had an extraordinary influence internationally, especially through the reach of ISTDP details here

The Weekend University: An amazing array of mind-body clinicians here, although many usual suspects eg Porges, McGillchrist, Laura parnell etc details

Tavistock Trauma lectures: next one Psychoanalytic Spaces, Implicated Places details

MINDinMIND Amanda Jones Legacy Interview details

Beyond the Brain: An amazing looking online conference about one of my current favourite subjects, consciousness, including Iain McGilchrist and Rupert Sheldrake, details here

just saying …

Yes sheep returned to Hampstead Heath in London, the aim to enhance the environment for rare woodpeckers as they prune the anthills that the woodpeckers feed on

A few blogs to enjoy

Naomi Klein is not Naomi Wolff: Interesting article in the Atlantic about Wolff and the overlap between radical politics and conspiracy theories read here

As the hippies knew, its all about the vibrations!: One on consciousness I enjoyed in Scientific American read here

Triggered? : Great piece by Johnathon Shedler on the over-use of therapy speak read here

Trauma backlash: Good piece by Elliot Jurist read here

‘RESPARK’ is available in audible format on bookfunnel here or on audible here and on Spotify and many other platforms

The physical book and ebook is available from amazon or better, independent bookshops eg psychological therapy books and the reincarnated Karnac books here, yay!

Please please do leave a review anywhere you buy it, it helps a lot
Affect and Emotion (the new edition) is available here on amazon … or psychological therapy books …. only about 6 quid too!

Click on links below to view or buy these:
Nurturing Natures,
Affect and Emotion
Nurturing Children,
The Good Life,
From Trauma to Harming others

For other journal papers and chapters papers and chapters see here

A few recently read books recommended

The Drowned Children

BY LOUISE GLÜCK
You see, they have no judgment.
So it is natural that they should drown,
first the ice taking them in
and then, all winter, their wool scarves
floating behind them as they sink
until at last they are quiet.
And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms.
But death must come to them differently,
so close to the beginning.
As though they had always been
blind and weightless. Therefore
the rest is dreamed, the lamp,
the good white cloth that covered the table,
their bodies.
And yet they hear the names they used
like lures slipping over the pond:
What are you waiting for
come home, come home, lost
in the waters, blue and permanent.

A few podcasts

Rebecca Solnit on hope, the climate and much more: Solnit is one of my favourite writers about subjects dear to me like solitude and i loved her ‘Field Guide to getting Lost’. I was glad she popped up on a podcast for Upaya, a Zen centre I follow and whose dharma talks I often listen to, often in the early hours. this one is about climate threats, but also hope, taking action, the importance of uncertainty and is infused with poetry and philosophy and sensitivity listen here

Spring Washam: Slightly different; here a Buddhist teacher talks about her experience about partnering with ancestors, in particular the black 19th century activist Harriet Tubman, as described in her book listen here
and a few on my new rabbit hole I am stuck down: consciousness:
an intro one with Aril Seth and others listen here

I love this guy, Philip Gof who is more of a, yes, panpsychist, interviewed by Liz Friedman listen here

A few research bites etc posted on X (twitter)

And finally …
I wasnt sure about putting a joke in this month, but anyway,

How come Pavlov had such great hair? Because he conditioned it !
(Blame that one on Aaron Ballick!)

That’s it! Thanks for reading everyone and I hope you walk in peace and love