After spending months of conducting research interviews, reading,’presenting at audiences, discussing about my topic etc, there is a ‘next’ stage now awaiting in the PhD process that has to do with ongoing data analysis, reading, organising writing etc…and what i experience is a deep feeling of ‘enmeshment’, both emotionally and practically speaking. On the one hand i see that this is a ‘normal’ ( i.e. expected) place to be at this stage due to the size of the whole Thesis thing but i also know there is so much more that is going on for me, which has to do with the ‘nature’ of the topic itself and the dynamics it brings up as well as my personal involvement with the ‘meanings’ and dimensions inherent in it. I can observe that in comparison to months ago, i have developed some ‘resilience’ in terms of being able to ’stay’ and bear those feelings that the PhD topic is raising. But, no matter how difficult or challenging those feelings are, i still need to produce text in the end of the day and give birth to a Thesis that is coherent, rigorous and contributes to the pool of knowledge and sound practice in some ways, a Thesis that engages the reader and can stand rigorously and scholarly enough as a PhD piece. … Read more »

It is Good Friday today (at least for the Catholic parts of the world…the Greek/Orthodox fellows will celebrate Jesus victory over death about a month later…) and it has been a quite emotional week, in terms of being encountered by ’synchronistic’ incidents and conversations that reveal the underlying ‘political’ dimension of my PhD topic. As i am talking about cultures and mobility, i see that there is so much we carry from our histories, some of whihc still present, and they operate at an unconscious level at least very powerfully. And as my supervisor puts it in one of his writings: “I do know from my psychodynamics in families that some children do carry unresolved psychological material from their families and end up wrestling with problems that don’t really belong to them” (West, 2006 – The Friend’s Quarterly). This statement seems to expand to national and collective dimensions aslo, especially when certain countries have suffered a lot of violation and trauma that appears to be carried through from generation to generation, often in very subtle ways. And of course, where all this eventually ‘belongs to’ is a whole different story, as in my eyes at least, we are all connected. And even when a specific experience is not directly lived by an individual, when it comes to national collective experience with huge impact, the psychological echoes can be very strong … Read more »

I went to the cinema last night and watched that amazing film, called THE KITE RUNNER by director Marc Forster, It was such a moving story in the context of war-divided Afghanistan who led to immigration of the protagonist etc etc. So much to say about teh plot, the actors, the photography, the music the messaged conveyed, the official site of the film can be viewed here

There is this scene in the film where the protagonist who moved to the US to escape the war returns to his hometomn Kabul, when destroyed by the Taliban etc and says this phrase: “I feel like a tourist in my own country”. This is something that is so vivid to most immigrants, specially those that were forced to migrate due to was and political atrocities. However, this feeling is not far from reality also for many who were not forced to migrate, like myself and many of the participants in my research who actually chose to move abroad… … Read more »

A main theme is my research is the whole issue of ‘up-rootedness’ and belonging or not, as a result of having the experience of living outsied one’s original culture, or even in one’s own culture, in more existential and culture-related terms. This is something i deeply experience also, this sense of not belonging anywhere, this question of what is my place in the world, where home is, where i feel comfortable etc. It is as if many cultures live within me and in each geographical area i am in, with the cultural elements, attitudes etc it brings, some different feelings are triggered, around comfort or discomfort, belonging or non-belonging. My supervisor sent me this thought below today, which is not only reassuring but also explains something that is relevant to the professional choice of becoming a counsellor. He wrote:
“We are counsellors because we don’t belong, we live on the edge and potentially can then empathise with people from other cultures. That is the resource within us that could be taped into for cross cutlural work. The other resoruce is our (child like) curiosity of the Other”

So, i see two skills being crucial in cross-cultural work, amongst many others. Those are: the capacity to exist in liminal spaces, out of comfort zones and therefore empathise with this sense of disrupted ‘at home-ness’ and the other one is having a balanched curiosity.

I am at a stage into the research journey that i shall be really thinking about starting writing (even if it is drafts) and organising it…however, i encounter a huge tendency for procrastination, i am quite slow. It is the time that my creativity and flow shall kick in and instead of that, am rather regressing and avoiding the whole subject. Part of is muct be due to the fact that it is Christmas, am back in my ‘homeland’, staying at my parents’ house etc…so regression is literally happening! Besides that, am aware of how much the topic is personally challenging, although i do have fantasies around the writing of the Thesis chapters, it is a bit scary – i admit – having to produce such a long document that requires a lot of synthesis…it is like bearing a child and giving birth, it is a long process with its ups and downs. I am not a mother in real life but the Phd does feel like going through some kind of ‘motherhood’, i would say. I arranged to meet for a coffee with a dear friend who is a write and can maybe offer some support and understanding about the challenges of writing a script that is to come from so deep within…I also have a lot of reading to do that i am resisting at the moment. I was also thinking how important ot is to me to ‘create a home/office’ in order to write up the Thesis, literally speaking. With my mobile life between 2 countries and other travels in between, i do not have the sufficient ‘nesting’ to host my thoughts and inner process so that my writing can emerge. I need to do some practical changes in order to meet this need, some domestic kind of changes, for sure…i will be back, with some kind of architecture…