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Tag: creativity

Feeling Safe in Therapy: What the Body Knows Before the Mind Does

John Walter | NCPS Accredited Counsellor & Psychotherapist | johnwaltercounsellor.com

Feeling safe in therapy is the cornerstone of successful practice. I knew that long before I could explain it, from fifteen years working with drums, rhythm, voice and connection. Now the neuroscience is catching up.

There’s a moment I’ve never quite been able to explain away.

I’m leading a singing workshop with a group of ten-year-olds. An Ofsted inspector walks in, clipboard ready, pen moving. Standard inspection posture: detached, evaluative, looking for the evidence. At some point I glance across and she’s put the clipboard down. By the end of the session she’s close to tears. She catches my eye on the way out and offers me a single word.

“Wonderful.”

She wasn’t watching a performance. Something in the room had got to her.

For fifteen years I ran facilitated drum circles and rhythm-based group work, trained by Arthur Hull in Hawaii, whose influence runs through schools, hospitals, and organisations worldwide. I’ve seen a lot of rooms. I’ve seen a lot of moments like the one with the inspector. What I didn’t have then was the understanding to say why it works. Now I do. And it’s changed how I think about everything I do in the therapy room.

The girl who picked up the drum

A primary school, somewhere in England. A child sits at the edge of the circle, arms folded, watching. She hasn’t joined in with a group activity since arriving at the school several weeks earlier. The teacher knows. The SENCO knows. Everyone in the room is quietly aware of it, which is part of the problem.

The circle has been running for fifteen minutes. The room has found its pulse. Something shifts in the quality of the sound, less self-conscious, more collective. And then, without announcement, without anyone noticing until it’s already happened, the girl picks up her drum.

Her teacher tells me afterwards she’s never done anything like this before.

What I witnessed wasn’t a child making a decision. It was a body recognising that it was safe.

This is the thing about withdrawal: it’s almost never a choice. The nervous system has assessed the environment and found it unsafe, or not safe enough, and it’s pulled back to protect itself. That stillness, that folded-arms distance, is a biological response. And you can’t talk someone out of a biological response. Reassurance, encouragement, instruction: none of it reaches the part of the nervous system that made the decision to withdraw. That decision wasn’t made consciously, and it won’t be reversed consciously.

What can shift it is a change in what the body is actually experiencing in the room.

A different door

Hull’s approach to facilitation was built around a principle he called GOOW: get out of their way. The facilitator’s job isn’t to produce the outcome but to remove the obstacles to something that wants to happen naturally.

What the research now tells us is why this works. When a group finds a shared pulse, something measurable happens between the people in the room: nervous systems start to synchronise. Not metaphorically. The shared rhythm creates shared ground, and on that ground something like connection becomes possible, not because anyone decided to connect, but because the body found its way there first.

Slow, regular rhythm is one of the most direct signals of safety the nervous system knows. It communicates beneath the level of thought. It doesn’t ask the mind to do anything.

That’s the key. Most of what we offer people, in schools, in therapy rooms, in relationships, makes demands on the thinking mind: follow this, evaluate that, explain yourself, demonstrate that you’ve understood. For someone whose nervous system is running a protection response, those demands aren’t just difficult. They’re genuinely out of reach. The thinking mind is among the first things to go offline when the body feels unsafe.

A drum circle, properly held, asks none of that. You don’t need to know how to drum. You don’t need to perform or evaluate yourself or prove anything. You need only to feel the pulse and let your body move with it. That’s not a lowered standard. It’s a different door entirely.

The training director

A drum circle for 250 people in a corporate setting. In one part of the room I notice a man surrounded by four women. He’s demonstrating to them, showing them what to do, leaning in, gesturing at their hands. They’re watching him, not the group. Their attention is turned inward, towards him, towards their own performance, away from the collective pulse. The energy in that section is flat.

I signal that section to stop while the rest of the group continues. They lower their drums. Suddenly they’re listeners rather than performers. There’s nothing to get wrong, nothing to prove. The only thing available to them is the sound of 245 other people finding a groove. I watch their faces change. The self-consciousness drops. The heads come up.

I count them back in. All five are now with the group.

The man was the company’s head of training. His professional identity was so thoroughly organised around the role of teacher that it kicked in automatically the moment he held an instrument and had people around him. He couldn’t stop teaching long enough to join in. And his teaching, well-intentioned as it was, was the precise obstacle to the connection the exercise was designed to create.

What I did wasn’t correct him. I changed the conditions so that the mode he’d defaulted to became, briefly, impossible. And in that gap, something else could happen.

I think about this a lot in the therapy room. Not with training directors, but with couples who arrive locked in a loop they’ve been running for years: the same argument, the same positions, the same outcome. Both of them, in their own way, are doing what the training director was doing: performing a well-rehearsed role so automatically that the actual person in front of them can’t get in. The loop isn’t stupidity or stubbornness. It’s a survival pattern, usually learned long before this relationship existed, running on automatic because the nervous system hasn’t yet found reason to do anything different.

You can’t argue a couple out of that loop any more than you could have argued the girl into picking up her drum. The work, before anything else, is creating conditions in which the loop has less to grip onto.

What the inspector was picking up

Back to the woman with the clipboard.

What she was responding to wasn’t the children’s musical ability. It was the quality of the room. A group of ten-year-olds who had genuinely settled into something together, genuinely absorbed and at ease, were producing something that her nervous system could feel. Safety is contagious in that way. When people are truly present with each other, it extends beyond the group. It reaches the observer.

Her tears weren’t a sentimental response to a nice lesson. They were her body’s recognition of something real.

And that field had a source. It doesn’t arise from nowhere. It arises from a regulated adult holding the conditions carefully enough that the people in the room can find their way into it. That’s as true in a therapy room as it was in that school hall. Whatever I’m offering, my own nervous system is always part of what’s on offer. If I’m not settled, the room won’t be either.

Feeling safe in therapy: before the work, the ground

The girl who picked up the drum didn’t do it because someone had set joining in as a goal. She did it because something in the room had shifted enough that her body no longer needed to stay defended. Belonging followed safety. It didn’t precede it.

That sequence matters, and it applies well beyond children. An adult who’s spent decades managing relationships from behind a carefully constructed persona needs the same thing first: a room where the nervous system can gradually find it doesn’t need to be quite so vigilant. A couple who’ve been hurting each other with the same argument for years can’t access the tenderness that’s usually still there somewhere until the bodies in the room feel safe enough to put the armour down.

This is what I understood in those drum circles, and what I’ve carried into every room I’ve sat in since. Before narrative, before insight, before any of the work that requires a settled and thinking mind, the question is always the same: what is this room actually like for the nervous system of the person sitting in it?

Everything else follows from that.

If you’re wondering what it might feel like to work with me, you can read more about my approach here or get in touch for a free introductory call.

May 13, 2026
The manosphere didn’t come from nowhere. We helped build it.

A Guardian report this week shows misogynistic abuse of female teachers rising sharply. The response from the Department for Education is more guidance.

Misogyny in schools is getting worse. A union survey of 5,000 teachers found that misogynistic abuse of female staff has climbed from 17.4% in 2023 to 23.4% this year. Nearly a quarter of female teachers, in a profession that is over 70% female, report being targeted. Called “love.” Told to “calm down.” Sexualised. Mocked. One teacher had nude AI images made of her by a student. This week, The Guardian reported on the crisis, and the Department for Education responded with more guidance. That’s not going to be enough

The Department for Education’s response was to say that misogynistic views are not innate, they’re learned, and to point toward updated relationships and health education guidance. They’re not wrong that these views are learned. But they’re looking in the wrong place for where the learning happens.

The school created the problem it’s now trying to solve

I was a boy who didn’t fit in. In the 1960s, that was very clearly defined. Boys did woodwork and science, girls did cooking and needlework. I was more interested in music and art and was, quite literally, not permitted to pursue them. So I stopped trying to comply. I found my sense of belonging elsewhere, in pop culture, in rock music, in the Woodstock generation. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and a culture grounded in the language of peace and connection.

The culture boys are swimming in online today is very different from what it was. But the school experience that drives them toward it isn’t.

OFSTED, the national curriculum, and the relentless pressure of assessment-driven learning all create a culture where personal passion, creative expression, and emotional authenticity are, at best, an afterthought and, at worst, a distraction. Emotional support, where it exists at all in schools, is frequently used as a tool to return pupils to compliance with the system rather than to genuinely meet them where they are.

You can’t squeeze out everything that makes a boy feel like himself, offer him nothing real in its place, and then be surprised when someone else steps in to fill the vacuum.

The manosphere borrowed its language from us

In the 1990s I got involved in the mythopoetic men’s movement. Robert Bly had published Iron John, and something in it resonated. Men and women gathering in fields, sitting around fires, drumming, singing in four-part harmony, finding what Bly called the wild man, the deep self that modern life had buried. It wasn’t macho. It wasn’t about dominance. It was about recovering something authentic that the world kept asking you to suppress. I recognised that hunger immediately.

Later, I drifted into the business coaching and self-development world. Same language, different destination. Boundaries, accountability, inner work, potential, healing: all of it is still there, but now in service of personal success, financial freedom, and breaking through your limitations to get what you want. I never quite bought it. There was always something hollow at the centre of it. But I watched a lot of men buy it completely, and I understood why. It sounded like the real thing. It used all the same words.

What the manosphere did was take that already-drifting language and push it further still. The message became clear. The therapy world, the self-development world, the whole culture of emotional intelligence and healthy relationships, all of it has been lying to you. We’re telling you the truth. The truth being that dominance is natural, that women respect power, that your softness has been manufactured to serve someone else’s agenda.

It’s a con, but an effective one. I can see the path that leads a young man toward it, because I walked a version of that path myself. If no one’s ever offered you something genuine, the counterfeit is harder to spot.

I know what boys actually need, because I’ve seen it work

In the 1980s, I worked in a residential therapeutic community for fifty boys who had nowhere else to go. These were boys whom the system had completely failed. What they responded to wasn’t more structure, more targets, more guidance. It was space.

I remember one twelve-year-old who couldn’t manage relationships with his parents or foster carers, who sat in his seat staring out of the window each day. One day, he started drawing the tree outside the window. It was very accomplished. Then I let him take his sketchpad outside. Then to the farm, to draw the buildings and the animals. He began to engage with education for the first time in his life. By the time he was sixteen, he’d found pottery, done it entirely on his own terms, and got a GCSE in it. It was the only one he got. It was his.

That’s what genuine support for boys and men looks like. Not forcing them into a role. Not offering them a different version of the same compliance. Seeing them for who they actually are, and allowing them to develop, from the inside out, a real sense of themselves and their responsibility to the people around them.

Boys don’t need to be told to earn more, dominate more, or control more. They don’t need a better curriculum on healthy relationships delivered by a teacher who’s been given half a day of training. They need someone to sit with them in their actual experience and take it seriously.

So what now

I married at nineteen with no real model for intimacy or a relationship. I had no idea what it meant to actually be present with another person. It took years, therapy, a different kind of culture, and a great deal of my own work to begin to understand it. I was lucky. I found people and spaces that offered something real.

Most boys today aren’t finding those spaces in schools. They’re not finding them anywhere that matters. They’re finding Andrew Tate.

If we want to change what boys are learning about masculinity, we need to look honestly at what we’ve failed to offer them: creative expression, emotional authenticity, genuine belonging, and the experience of being seen as an individual rather than a compliance problem.

More guidance from the Department for Education won’t touch it. Less government pressure on schools to perform arbitrary assessment targets might begin to. Adults, parents, educators and practitioners who are willing to be genuinely present with boys rather than managing them. That’s where the real work is.

The manosphere is filling a vacuum. The question is who created it.

If any of this is close to home, I work with men online across the UK and in person in Bude. There’s more on my page about online counselling for men.

April 6, 2026
Men’s Mental Health Matters. But Whose Version of Men Are We Talking About?

Iron John and the Inner Warrior

I read Iron John when it came out in 1990. I was 36, working as a performing storyteller, and it made immediate sense. Robert Bly’s book sold millions and launched what became known as the mythopoetic men’s movement: a widespread cultural moment in which men gathered in groups, retreated into nature, beat drums, and tried to reclaim what modern industrial life had supposedly stripped from them.

Bly reached into Norse and European mythology and said: something has been lost, and it matters. Around the same time, I was going to men’s groups, sitting in sweat lodges borrowed from Native American tradition, doing vision quests, exploring tantric sex. As a young man who had recently become a father, making compromises and sacrifices I hadn’t anticipated, I found something genuinely useful in all of it.

But something was missing, and it took me a while to name it.

Those groups weren’t only men. Women were there too, and we were all seeking the same thing: the inner warrior, the deep fierce purposeful self. At the time that felt inclusive. Looking back, what I notice is that a particular version of masculinity, Western, traditional, warrior-shaped, was being held up as the template for human wholeness. Not just for men. For everyone. And nobody was questioning the template itself.

A Body That Didn’t Fit

I grew up with five brothers, most of them emphatically on the masculine side of things physically. One was covered in hair at sixteen. I was in my thirties when I grew my first chest hair. It took real effort to grow a moustache. Even in my sixties, the beard comes in patchy. So doing those masculine things in my thirties was genuinely affirmative. I’m not dismissing that. But what I was actually doing, though I couldn’t have said it then, was finding a version of masculinity that could include me, not becoming the template.

Because the template never quite fits. And I don’t think it fits most people, if we’re honest.

Recently I watched a woman describe her experience of being intersex. Her body developed testes but couldn’t assimilate testosterone, and so developed externally as female. A coherent biological variation, one of many that occur naturally across the human population. The medical profession, confronted with something that didn’t fit the category, removed the testes without her consent when she was a teenager. The anomaly had to go. The category had to be preserved.

That’s not medicine responding to a problem. That’s a template being enforced on a body that didn’t conform to it.

What’s Already There

I’m a psychotherapist now, working relationally, in what is an almost entirely female profession. I’m not uncomfortable with that. My feminine qualities sit alongside my masculine ones, and always have. I think that’s true for most people. Western culture has pushed those qualities apart, named them opposites, and planted people at one end of the spectrum yearning for what’s at the other end, without recognising that what they’re looking for is already in them. It’s somewhere between the two. It doesn’t need to be created. It needs to be uncovered.

The Handbooks Arrive

Which brings me to a pattern I’ve been noticing on social media: a steady stream of book promotions, one after another, all circling the same territory. The books have titles like Ideal Man: Reviving Masculinity and The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. They are promoted as landmark, ground-breaking, comprehensive. Some of them do important work: male suicide rates are real, help-seeking barriers are real, the way Western psychotherapy has historically ignored or pathologised male distress is real. These are legitimate concerns and they deserve serious attention.

But the subject of these books, the man whose psychology is being mapped and whose masculinity is being revived, is quietly assumed rather than examined. He is straight, cisgender, and Western.

Gay men, bisexual men, trans men, and men from cultures that have always held gender more fluidly appear occasionally in a subordinate clause about intersectionality, then disappear. The template is back. Just wearing a research methodology.

The WEIRD Problem

This isn’t new. It’s the same move that Western psychology has always made, constructing a baseline from a narrow demographic slice and then universalising it. Researchers have a name for it: the WEIRD problem, shorthand for the tendency to build psychological models almost entirely on Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic populations, and then treat the results as universal human truths.

The male psychology movement hasn’t escaped this. In some ways, it has doubled down on it because its political energy depends on “men” being a coherent, legible category with shared interests and a recoverable identity.

The Binary Was Imposed

The colonial parallel is worth exploring. Many indigenous cultures around the world recognised more than two genders long before European contact. Two-Spirit identities in numerous Native American traditions, Hijra in South Asia, Fa’afafine in Samoa: these are not modern inventions or Western imports. They are ways of holding human variation that existed for centuries.

Colonisation actively suppressed them, through missionary activity, through legal systems that criminalised gender nonconformity, through the imposition of European binary categories onto bodies and communities that had never organised themselves that way. The binary wasn’t discovered. It was enforced.

And now, apparently, it is being revived and sold as a return to health.

It Isn’t Consensus

I’m not trying to make an argument. I’m just noticing the volume of noise, and noticing that it doesn’t match my experience of being human, or the experience of most people I sit with in the therapy room. It’s a loud, well-resourced, self-referential ecosystem that has learned to sound like consensus.

It isn’t.

If any of this is close to home, I work with men online across the UK and in person in Bude. There’s more on my page about online counselling for men.

March 18, 2026
Why You End Up With No Ice Cream: On Decision Paralysis and Learning to Just Choose

How do you make decisions? Do you make them quickly, just choosing instinctively, without much fuss? Or do you take ages, weighing every option, asking everyone you know, going round and round until the moment has passed? Maybe you avoid decisions altogether and find ways to hand the responsibility to someone else.

There’s a story by Terry Jones, yes, the Monty Python one, in his book of Fairy Tales, called “Katie Make Sure.” Katie is offered the chance to visit Goblin City. She can take the short way, which is quick, or the long way, which is pretty. She can’t make up her mind. She goes back and forth, weighing the options, considering the merits of each. And while she’s standing there deliberating, she loses her chance. Goblin City closes. She doesn’t go at all.

The cost of not deciding, it turns out, isn’t the wrong choice. It’s missing the thing altogether. Katie didn’t choose the short way or the long way. But she did make a choice, by default. If you can’t choose between strawberry and vanilla, you end up choosing no ice cream.

On writer’s block

I’ve been thinking about this because of something that happened to me recently with my own writing. I write articles, usually about therapy and the things I notice in my work. For a while, I was writing one a week, and I enjoyed it. The articles were personal, sometimes messy, but they felt like mine. Then AI came along, and I started using it to help. At first, it was useful, generating headline options, suggesting structures, speeding things up without changing the voice much. But gradually it started to get out of hand.

The problem wasn’t that AI was writing badly. The problem was that it kept offering me choices. I’d get to the closing paragraph of an article and ask for some help, and it would give me seven or eight different approaches. Which one did I choose? I didn’t know. So I’d leave it and come back to it. And then I’d ask again, and get more options. Eventually, I realised I hadn’t finished an article in two months. I had three or four sitting there, almost done, waiting for the final flourish. I had given my power away, not to a person but to a process, and the process had no interest in helping me land anywhere. It just kept generating possibilities.

If you search online for help with decision-making, you’ll find plenty of advice, most of it perfectly sensible: determine the stakes, know your objective, minimise your emotions. It’s the kind of guidance that works well enough for business decisions with clear criteria and measurable outcomes. It doesn’t do much for the person sitting by the signpost, paralysed, wondering which path is quickest, which is prettiest, which is most likely to lead somewhere good.

Unsticking the stuckness

In therapy, I sometimes work with people who are genuinely stuck in this way. For some of them, the roots go deep, into childhood, into families where decisions were made for them, where their developing sense of agency was never encouraged or trusted. They arrive hoping for tips, a system, something they can apply. And I understand the impulse. But a six-step framework rarely touches the thing that’s actually in the way.

What I find more useful, and what seems to help, is a distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding implies a process: reasons, justifications, criteria, a case to be made. When you decide, you owe yourself and others an explanation. Choosing is different. You simply choose. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need to defend it or explain it. Vanilla or strawberry, it doesn’t really matter, just choose. Red pill or blue pill, you can’t know what lies ahead, but you still have to pick one and step forward.

It sounds simple, and it is, but it’s also surprisingly hard. The time and energy that can go into the most straightforward choices are extraordinary, and for some people, genuinely debilitating. The shift from “I need to make the right decision” to “I’m just going to choose” can feel almost too small to matter. But sometimes it’s like taking the red pill: the earth moves, and you find yourself standing in a different dimension of space and time, wondering why you waited so long.

Space and freedom

The point isn’t to arrive at the perfect destination by the optimal route. The point is to keep walking. You can adjust as you go, make another choice, find your way back to the path. What you can’t do, if you want to get anywhere, is stay sitting by the signpost, reading it over and over, hoping it will eventually tell you something it hasn’t already said.

Katie never got to Goblin City. She never went anywhere at all. Maybe that felt safer. But is that the option you choose for your life?

February 25, 2026
AI Therapy in 2025: Helpful, Misleading, or Both?
Many people now turn to AI chatbots or social media for mental health advice before speaking to a professional. This article explores how these tools can both help and mislead, and how therapy can offer a grounded space to make sense of what you discover online.

A client once told me their chatbot had confirmed that all their symptoms pointed to a genetic mental illness.

They had lived for years in fear of a parent and were now beginning trauma recovery. It is true that long-term trauma can sometimes affect physical and mental health, but this person was already in therapy and beginning to find hope.

Bringing those fears into therapy became a turning point. Together, we looked beneath the surface and found an old belief that they might be permanently damaged. Through connection and understanding, that belief began to lose its grip.

Healing from trauma takes time. It is not about finding quick explanations but about helping the body and mind feel safe again. Progress grows from patience, persistence and secure relationships, whether through family, friends or therapy.

How we arrived here

By 2025, most people begin their search for mental health information online. It has been building for decades:
- 2000s: Search engines and symptom checkers such as WebMD start to shape how people understand illness.
- 2013: Crisis Text Line launches and text-based support becomes normal.
- 2020: TikTok turns into a global space for mental health conversations.
- 2023: The platform adds direct links to professional resources.
- 2024: AI chatbots start offering “therapy” at any hour.
- 2025: Research shows that many viral mental-health videos still spread false or simplified information.
With so much advice online, confusion is understandable.

Bringing AI into therapy

In my practice, I encourage people to talk about any source that has influenced how they think about their well-being. That might be a book, a video, a podcast, social media content or an AI app.

These tools are not new in spirit. Self-help books have offered neat solutions for decades, sometimes helpful and sometimes misleading. AI is simply the latest version of the same search for guidance.

If a client mentions a resource, I may look it up or ask for a short summary so that we can make sense of it together. The aim is not to judge but to understand how it fits into their personal story. Whatever a person brings into the room, we explore it within the safety of a real relationship.

Using AI with care

Technology will keep changing, but healing will always depend on human connection.

AI can be a useful reflection tool, a way to clarify thoughts or rehearse conversations, yet it cannot replace the experience of being understood by another person.

The goal is not to reject AI altogether but to learn to use it thoughtfully. When clients and therapists speak openly about what is helpful and what is not, the digital world becomes a little safer and a little kinder for everyone.
October 13, 2025
The Art of Kintsugi: Healing Through Acceptance
How the Japanese Practice of Golden Repair Guides Us Toward Wholeness and Transformation

First Published on Medium 18/12/2024 John Walter 📣Therapy and creativity

Image created by the author using Midjourney

Kintsugi is an art form that celebrates breakage and repair as part of an object’s history rather than as something to disguise.

As a therapist specializing in trauma, I often work with individuals who have reached a crisis point after trying to hide or suppress their traumatic experiences.

Healing begins when we explore the emotions surrounding these events and understand that embracing our authentic selves involves acknowledging the learning and growth that come from processing these feelings.

Like with Kintsugi, we acknowledge our history as an integral part of ourselves.

I had the experience of losing my daughter to suicide six years ago. It catapulted me into almost constant therapy for recovery, but it also became a wake-up call and launched me into training as a counsellor. An act of extreme trauma also became a point of transformation in my personal journey.

What is Kintsugi?

screenshot from wikipedia re Kintsugi

Behind Kintsugi is Wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence and authenticity. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. Something broken becomes celebrated as an art form.

We can learn to see our “cracks” and “scars” not as defects to be ashamed of or hidden but as unique parts of ourselves which have contributed to our growth.

The process of healing ourselves can be compared to repairing broken pottery with precious metals. By celebrating the scars that come from healing trauma, we honour our history as an integral part of who we are. This perspective allows us to embrace our imperfections, recognize our resilience, and find beauty in our journey toward wholeness.

Image by the author

What are your broken pieces?

Do you hide them away or accept them as part of your rich history? Have you a trauma, a loss or a significant life transition point that could do with being re-examined and polished up?

There is a perceived stigma in society around imperfections and vulnerability. Social media promotes a particular idea of perfection, flawless appearances, unerring decisions and emotional invincibility. This becomes a pressure that leads us to hide parts of our true selves, fearing judgement and rejection.

We use terms like “dark secrets” or “skeletons in the cupboard” to describe parts of ourselves that must be kept secret from others.

Being abandoned

My first wife left me in true abandonment style back in the 70s at the ripe old age of 24. No note, no attempt at contact, just an empty flat when I returned home one night and the bizarre experience of being contacted by a local solicitor a year later to sign divorce papers.

My confidence was knocked for six. I had no idea anything was wrong. We ate food together, slept and had sex together. What was missing? Obviously, something was missing for my wife, but she chose to leave without explanation rather than articulate it.

I quickly drowned my sorrows with excessive drinking and fairly wild sexual adventures. I was ashamed of not being what a husband should be, yet I had absolutely no idea of what that was. I tried to put a brave face on as if I was having the time of my life, but the truth was I was broken and struggling from day to day.

Images created by the author.

Kintsugi and the therapeutic process

Kintsugi:
1. Find the broken pieces
2. Prepare them for repair
3. Apply the gold lacquer and glue them back in place
4. Allow time for drying and setting
5. Polish the finished article
Therapy:
1. Recognise the hidden and broken parts of ourselves
2. Seek help through therapy, support groups or self-reflection
3. Accepting our history, developing self-compassion, and choosing a new pathway.
4. Allowing time and space for healing to take place
5. Get used to living as your new authentic self
The things to watch out for

Unlike Kintsugi, the therapeutic process is not singularly linear. With a ceramic pot, you would gather everything together at the start and work through each stage with all the parts.

In therapy, it is more likely to be a process where each broken part becomes visible and is processed individually to some degree. Spurred on by your success with one issue, you reach back, and another becomes visible.

Is it ever complete?

There is usually a constant supply of difficult circumstances in life. With each episode, we develop resilience and self-awareness. The more we work towards living authentically, the more we notice places where we unconsciously hold ourselves back.

Looking at My School Days in a New Light

One piece of my life that remained unexplored for many years was my journey through grammar school. Society viewed it as a failure, and so did I. Now, as I pick up those memories and polish them off, I see them quite differently, much like a Kintsugi repair that transforms brokenness into beauty.

I entered Year 7 at age 11, was at the top of my class and was captain of the rugby team. However, I was also hyperactive and quite confrontational, always wanting explanations for everything. At the time, these behaviours were seen as symptoms of anxiety, and I was treated with strong sedatives that effectively switched my brain off. Even when the medication ended, I remained disengaged. It seemed that was what they wanted: a compliant student who didn’t question the system.

I went through the motions, attending classes but not truly participating, and left school at 18 with a tattered collection of qualifications. For years, I saw this as a personal failure. But now, reexamining this “broken” piece of my past, I realize that I inadvertently gave myself space to explore my interests and passions by not fully engaging with the socially prescribed education system.

Those seven years, once viewed as a time of struggle and failure, were when I developed my artistic vision and sensibilities. My musical passions were forming, and I was reading widely — unfettered by the need to adhere to curriculum guidelines. While some school friends who were fully engaged with the system found themselves locked into debilitating career paths and yearning for retirement, I have happily bounced around in teaching, musical facilitation, and psychotherapy.

Now, past retirement age, I ask myself why I would ever retire. I love my passions: work, music, and writing. Like a piece of pottery repaired with Kintsugi, the cracks and imperfections of my past have been filled with the gold of experience and self-discovery. Because of these so-called flaws, I have become more whole and authentic, and I will continue pursuing what I love for as long as I can.

Using the lessons

In the end, Kintsugi teaches us that our brokenness doesn’t diminish us, it defines us. Each crack is a testament to our struggles, how we have survived, the lessons we’ve learned, and the strength we’ve gained.

These moments, though painful, give our lives depth and texture, just like the gold-filled veins in a repaired pot. Looking at my own life, I see that every failure, every loss, and every misstep has shaped me into who I am today.

It’s not about erasing the past or pretending the cracks aren’t there; it’s about honouring them as part of our story. So, as we gather our broken pieces, let’s remember: the beauty isn’t in perfection but in the courage to keep piecing ourselves back together, over and over again.

www.johnwaltercounsellor.com

Get in touch if you want help piecing yourself back together.

Image created by the author

An in-depth study of the connections in this article is found in Tomas Navaro’s Book (link below)

Navigating Emotional Healing in Therapy

Navigating Bereavement: A Counsellor’s Personal Journey Through Loss and Healing
December 18, 2024
Mind, Body, Soul, and Emotions: Finding Harmony in the Pieces of Yourself
A Personal Journey to Balance parts of myself

Published in ILLUMINATION on Medium John Walter 📣Therapy and creativity

An image created by the author in tribute to Mark Hartshorn — the four parts of self.

In creating the title image, I considered each tile to represent a different aspect of myself: my mind, my body, my soul, and my emotions. Some days, the pieces fit together perfectly. On other days, they feel jagged, disjointed, and hard to reconcile.

Over the years, I’ve realised that we comprise these four elements, each playing a vital yet distinct role. The challenge is figuring out how to give them all space to breathe, interact, and support each other without letting one dominate the others.

We live in a world that heavily emphasises thinking. From our early education to our professional lives, we’re taught that logical thought, intellect, and rationality are the ultimate tools for navigating life. However, I don’t believe that this was always the case.

In contrast, there are cultures deeply rooted in spirituality, where the seeker, someone who connects with something beyond themselves, takes centre stage. These traditions value intuition and transcendence as pathways to understanding.

Similarly, some communities prioritise action, the doers who trust their bodies to lead the way. They value experience and physical engagement as the primary means of comprehending the world around them.

Emotions are universal, yet how we experience or express them varies widely. For some, feelings are the lens through which life is understood, and connections are made.

This isn’t about choosing one modality over another. Rather, it’s about recognising that each of these aspects

the feeler, the thinker, the action-taker, and the seeker

plays a crucial role in the fabric of who we are. Embracing all these dimensions allows us to navigate life more fully and authentically.

It’s Not a Battle

Have you ever read those personal growth articles that make it seem like your emotions are the enemy? The ones that tell you to “master” or “control” your emotions as if they were wild animals needing taming? It reminds me of the stoicism of Victorian Britain, where showing weakness was seen as a failure. But emotions are not a battle to be won. They’re not something to conquer. They are part of who we are, woven into the very essence of our being, linking us to generations past.

Image Created by the author

The Feeler

I used to think acknowledging my emotions meant giving them power over me, but I’ve learned that tuning into my feelings allows me to live more fully. Emotions are messengers, little whispers from my ancestors, reminding me of the long, shared human experience. By listening, I gain the benefit of choice. Ignoring them, on the other hand, only keeps me disconnected from an essential part of myself.

Grief, sadness, joy — they all come from the same place. If you can sit with your pain, you open the door to experiencing joy in a deeper, more meaningful way. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. Acknowledging the trauma in your life enables you to embrace life more completely in the present.

All images created by the author.

The Thinker

Rational thought has become a cornerstone of modern life. It’s what distinguishes humans from other species, right? But here’s the thing: while thinking can help us plan, strategise, and reflect, it can also lead to overanalysis, anxiety, and burnout. We’ve put too much weight on the mind, letting it dominate our decisions at the expense of the other parts of ourselves.

Mindfulness has taught me to observe my thoughts without letting them consume me. I’ve found that the most profound insights often come when I stop overthinking and simply experience life.

Image created by the author

The Action-Taker

The action-taker in me loves to get things done. It’s the part that thrives on energy, momentum, and progress. But there’s a trap here, too, one I fell into more times than I care to admit. In our productivity-driven culture, it’s easy to equate being busy with success. I used to think that I was falling behind if I wasn’t constantly moving forward.

What I’ve come to realise, though, is that even the strongest action-takers need rest. Athletes know this. Without proper recovery, their bodies can’t function at peak performance. In the same way, our drive and motivation need space to recharge. Action doesn’t always mean doing. Sometimes, the most significant progress happens when we allow ourselves to pause.

Image created by the author

The Seeker

And then there’s the seeker — the part of me that looks for meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than myself. In a world focused on tangible successes and external validation, it’s easy to neglect the seeker. But I’ve found that I start to feel lost if I neglect nurturing this part of myself.

The seeker in me doesn’t always need answers. Often, it’s the questions themselves that matter. Why am I here? How can I contribute to something bigger than myself? Seeking isn’t about finding a destination; it’s about embracing the journey and understanding that searching for meaning is a lifelong process.

Image created by the author

Harmonising the Four

Balancing these four aspects

feeler, thinker, action-taker, seeker

is an ongoing process. It’s not about giving one more importance than the others; it’s about learning to let them all have a voice in my life.

When I feel overwhelmed by emotion, I remember the value of connection and expression. When I get lost in my thoughts, I remind myself that thinking is a tool, not a ruler. If I push myself too hard, I step back and give the action-taker a break. And when life feels empty or aimless, I listen to the seeker and allow myself time to explore, reflect, and reconnect.

Image created by the author

Practical Tips for Daily Balance
- Start your day with intention: Ask yourself, How do I feel? Where is my energy today? Set a simple goal for which part of yourself needs attention.
- Create space for reflection: Whether it’s five minutes of journaling, meditation, or simply sitting in silence, give yourself time to listen to what each part of you is saying.
- Practice conscious action: When you take action, ask yourself, Is this aligned with my purpose? Or is it a reaction to external pressure?
- Balance thinking with feeling: After a long day of mental activity, spend time reconnecting with your emotions. Whether through art, music, or conversation, let yourself feel.
You create harmony by bringing all these parts together.

mind, body, soul, and emotions

None of them need to be suppressed or overpowered. They all deserve to be seen and heard. And in that balance, true growth happens.

Image created by the author

All images here were created by me using both traditional and AI tools to bring these ideas to life visually. It’s a way to express the balance I’m constantly striving for between

creativity, logic, action, and reflection.

Which part of yourself needs the most attention today?
October 10, 2024
Reaching for Color: Embracing My Creative Self in a Monochrome World

How Therapy Helped Me Uncover the Vibrancy of My True Identity Beneath the Weight of Conformity

Published in Very Personal Growth 18/08/2024

Reaching out Reaching in — A digital drawing by John Walter 2024

This is a digital painting I have recently created, which partly came from conversations with my therapist about the struggles and successes of my teenage to 20-year-old self.

It represents a significant shift in how I view those years and how I choose to live the rest of my life.

I was and still am a vibrant, colourful, creative being. In my youth, I embraced this in myself, but as shown in my drawing, I seemed to be reaching out into a bland and monochrome world.

There is a sense in the image that my other arm is being held back by some invisible force.

The balcony overlooks a vibrant world of playfulness and energy — a world I felt too afraid to enter. By not depicting anything beyond the balcony, I symbolized my reluctance to even acknowledge that world’s existence.

I know I don’t belong in the bland, monochrome world of conformity and compliance, but I also fear I will be rejected by the creative world because I am not familiar with its rules.

Therapy and creativity go hand in hand.

I discovered how closely linked my creativity and emotional healing are through therapy. This connection became clear in the creation of ‘Jack,’ an embodiment of my inner child, captured in the following image.

Jack is screaming at the thrill of being hit by a cold Atlantic wave. Jack has been a creative manifestation of my inner child for the last six years.

Jack and the Wave — A digital drawing by John Walter 2022

He emerged when a student counsellor was working with me and tentatively suggested we do some inner child work. Guided by her supervisor, we worked carefully over several weeks. We talked during the sessions, developing a number of characters representing parts of myself, and I drew images at home and tried to bring the characters to life.

To take the rational mind out of the process, I was asked to draw only with my non-dominant hand and not try to refine or process the images, just keep them raw. The focus was on the emergence of the inner child from the subconscious rather than any artistic aims.

Images arose of Jack, who lived on the beach and was free and wild, exploring rockpools and the limits and possibilities of his physical body.

The older teenager emerged on a balcony built into the cliff. He was trapped with no way out. He lived alone in a single room lined with books. He read about marvellous worlds and explored the creative world of the mind but would not stray beyond the confines of his balcony.

I began to see these two characters as parts of my authentic self. Both had difficulty connecting with societal expectations. They were strong-willed and protective of the freedoms they embraced but not so aware of the limitations they placed upon themselves by exercising those freedoms.

Societal expectations and Authenticity

As I reached secondary school age, societal expectations began to show up. I was expected to wear a uniform, sit still, and learn all the things I needed to know to get a job and be productive in this world.

My teenage self managed this by masking every day. For my teachers, I did my best to behave; I took on the things that interested me and daydreamed through the rest.

For my peers and family, I allowed my creative self to thrive. Drawing, reading, writing, and playing music were daily activities. They tolerated my obsessions with rock music, songwriting, obscure poetry, existentialist writing, intricate pop art, and art nouveau drawing.

This is how my authentic self managed to survive. Although my parents found it difficult to understand why I didn’t want to follow the path of stability and a steady career, they supported me in pursuing a creative life.

It is only very recently that I have been able to separate those two things. I had long believed I was an outsider in my family and school. Now I realise that school as an institution always leans towards compliance and conformity, and only some of us manage to escape its stranglehold and live creatively.

Rediscovering my creative voice.

I am 70 years old, and reclaiming my creative voice has been a long journey. It has not been linear. At times, I have been living a life I love, and then I can sink into periods of depression where all my creative juices seem to disappear.

There has been constant fluctuation between creative expression and productive employment. Sometimes linking, at others pulling against each other.

Image created by the author for this article.

After some major life traumas, I seemed to have settled into a period where creativity and productivity could coexist. Recognising the two parts of myself, as imagined above, has played a major part in this sense of stability without compromise.

Honouring my creative spirit.

Creativity is my self-care and therapy and part of expressing my authentic self. My adult functioning economically and socially in the world is also part of my authentic self.

I have learned that balancing the two has brought me the fulfilment I have sought and a deeper understanding of my whole self.

My Invitation

Do you feel your creative child and responsible adult are in balance? Is your path harmonious or filled with tension?

I invite you to creatively explore these aspects of yourself. Where might your journey lead?

See where it takes you. Maybe explore places you have been afraid of entering, Moving in ways that give you freedom even though that freedom may be accompanied by fear.

I would love to hear your responses to my journey and how they might resonate with you.

Catch up with Jack on Webtoons

https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/jack-the-beach-and-freedom/list?title_no=888096

Navigating Emotional Healing in Therapy

August 18, 2024
Deciding in a Heartbeat: Embracing Intuition Over Indecision

A Personal Journey Through Music and Therapy: The Moments That Define Us

John Walter 📣Therapy and creativity Published in Very Personal Growth 10/05/2024

All images created by the author using traditional and AI tools.

I once made a seemingly irrational decision that puzzled everyone, myself included. It wasn’t thought through or premeditated, and there were no logical justifications, but it changed the course of my whole life.

The moment comes back to me on many occasions, particularly on my self-awareness journey through therapy. It was a peak experience, and I chose to step away. Why would I do that?

I have worked with several clients who cannot decide what they want to work on in therapy. I suddenly realised that what they needed to work on was obvious. They were unable to make decisions. They knew something was not right but had no idea what it was. Their body was screaming out to them to make a change, but they could not access what was causing them pain.

So, I will tell my story and see if it helps me to help them choose—to decide something for no reason, to choose because not making a choice consumes vast amounts of energy and keeps us in a place of stagnation.

Choosing to step away from my career as a musician.

I walked into the Green Room after the best gig of my life. I was playing a duo gig with someone who became an International star. An audience of over 1,000 people were still clapping us. I had been playing an exquisite Grand Piano, and Andy soared alongside me on tenor and soprano saxophones.

We danced through our set of spontaneous improvisations held together by pieces I had composed. I wallowed in the care, integrity and undivided attention Andy was giving me through the music. I recently attended one of his concerts with his European Trio, and I went straight back to that place, reliving those extraordinary feelings by observing him interact with his current musical collaborators.

My wife greeted me with glowing smiles, and we hugged around our one-year-old daughter, who was strapped to her front and sleeping peacefully. She poured a cup of chamomile tea from the silver Thermos, knowing I would need something to bring me down from the giddy heights I had been scaling.

We shared with her our mystical experience of feeling as though the audience was guiding us as if a greater creative force had swept through and was playing the music through us. She handed me a doorstep sandwich of some kind as if she were the only person on the planet who knew exactly what I needed at that point.

It was then that I made the decision. On the surface, I decided to stay with my wife and daughter and drink herb tea rather than ride this adrenalin wave and run around the City bars chasing further excitement. I can see it was much deeper than that from a distance of nearly forty years.

The Build-up

I left home at the age of 18 and went to London to become a Rock Star. It didn’t work out. I became obsessed with improvisation and jazz music, which was already declining as a popular art form. I found top London jazz musicians willing to give me piano lessons. I wallowed in the jazz scene, frequented clubs and pubs, and spent many nights at Ronnie Scott’s.

I worked in a 10-piece function band to earn some money from music. My relationships were a mess, and I was drinking too much. My soon-to-be wife rescued me from all this and drew me to Bristol.

I went back to University to train as a teacher, and I loved being part of the Bristol Jazz scene playing wine bars and hotels, teaching courses in jazz improvisation and helping set up a jazz club.

Eventually, I began teaching and started a family. Soon after that concert, I accepted a job in a residential therapeutic community for boys with serious behavioural difficulties. By accepting that job, with long hours, including evening and weekend work, I had made it impossible to continue any Jazz career.

The legacy

I eventually found my vocation in therapeutic work, although it took me on a roundabout route until I qualified as a psychotherapeutic Counsellor thirty-five years later.

Jazz composing and piano playing are still regular hobbies. Teaching music became my main career thread in many manifestations, and I have mostly been living the life I love.

At first, I felt resentment that I had given up on my jazz performing career, but I found creative ways to make a living from music that fit better with family life. Now, I have nothing but glowy, warm feelings about the way I have woven music into a stable career.

Embracing the Maverick: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Acceptance

The power of intuitive choices

That night forty years ago, my heart was giddy with emotion and potential, yet I could listen to my inner voice. I embraced my intuition and ignored my excited, rational mind, which was screaming at me to go with Andy to meet promoters and soak up the praise and acknowledgement that was sure to come my way.

At the height of what could have been a bustling International music career, I chose the warmth and stability of family life. This decision, made in a heartbeat over herb tea and a comforting sandwich, was a pivotal moment defining my future.

It wasn’t just about choosing to stay physically present with my family that night; it was about choosing a life where I could continue to be emotionally present for my loved ones.

How Music and passion has driven my personal growth

Music never left my life. It transformed from my profession into a way of being in whatever I chose to do. In therapeutic work and teaching, I have deeply intertwined those principles I loved in music — Spontaneity, improvisation, sensitivity and unscripted connections with others.

Personal growth often requires us to forgo immediate rewards for deeper, more fulfilling sustenance.

Embracing the Intuitive Leap

It is not always easy to listen to your intuition and connect to that inner voice that whispers quietly behind the incredible racket of the rational thinking mind, but that moment of quiet reflection can shape your destiny as it did mine.

From that moment, I crafted a life rich with fulfilment and purpose, balancing passion with responsibility. If you stand at a crossroads, unsure of which path to take, weigh up the logical chattering of your mind and the whisperings of your heart. Sometimes, the best decisions we make are those we cannot explain. We cannot put our finger on the logical reason why, but we know we have been guided by our intuition.

An article from the Association for Psychological Science states:

Great leaders make smart decisions, even in difficult circumstances. From Albert Einstein to Oprah Winfrey, many top leaders ascribe their success to having followed their intuition. New research shows how going with our gut instincts can help guide us to faster, more accurate decisions

Life is unpredictable, and I hope my journey inspires you to ride those unpredictable waves spontaneously. Know that following the pathway that is yours exclusively, following unexplainable currents, and sometimes drifting in the unknown can lead to profound personal growth and unexpected happiness.

May 13, 2024