I think i shall start recording some moments of recognition that are so valuable and will assist me in keeping up my spirits when things get stressful with the whole PhD work…i also want to do that cause i have made a ‘new decision’ with myself – at a personal level – to stop dismissing the positives but pay attention to them more and draw ebergy and inspiration. So, W, my supervisor, wrote to an email (19.4.97) the following rewarding comments: … Read more »

I just came back to the UK after my brief travel to ‘homeland’ and as i came out this morning, i see my vision and perception of the surroundings changing…it feels as if the move from one cultural environment to another is sharpening up the way we view the world, there is a different kind of ‘sensitivity’ I am experiencing which i cannot easily put into words. Both England and Greece are two countries that I have immersed in, in different ways…as i have mentioned before, none of those feels like ‘home’, I am existing more in a ‘liminal space’, thriving for some sort of integration, which i tacitly know i cannot force… … Read more »

As I am preparing for the ‘cross-cultural workshop’ to be delivered in Athens, I am reading counselling/therapy texts (books, articles etc) in my mother tongue. I observe this not to be that easy since my counselling identity is formulated via the english language, I have been practising in english since the beginning of my training and i have been exposed to related written material in english etc for so long. As i read the text in greek, i find myself trying to translate the counselling terminology in english so that i can make some sense…this is emotionally confusing I shall say, to some extent, in ways that I am not totally aware of or that i can explain. It feels as if I am Greek as a person (although even that is blurred because my person-hood is deeply influenced by the english culture…I could describe myself more as bi-cultural and bi-lingual) and I am English as a counsellor/professional. The question that inevitably emerges here is how to sit comfortably with those two (or even more, am sure) aspects of the self in a Whole, in a self that feels united and integrated…what is the me in me really? I think that this question involves quite a process at an unconscious level. I am just posing this question to the Universe for now and let it rest and maybe reveal its nature as time and self-inquiry unfolds…

I will soon teach a workshop titled “Cross-cultural counselling and the therapeutic relationship: exploring our cultural selves and cultivating cross-cultural empathy”.This will be my first teaching experience in my home country as a counsellor and interestingly enough i hold a lot of anxieties around that: How will the Greeks perceive me? How will I manage to teach in my first language when am so used to operate within my counselling role in english for years now? What sort of reactions will the topic of ‘culture’ provoke to the Greek colleagues? How will i be seen by the organisers, the Greek person-centred training institution?…I just realised that “what used to be my own/native culture is a whole new culture for me” !!! and i have so much anxiety around operating ‘within’ it…It is as if I have become a stranger, a foreigner in my own ‘home-land’…. This realisation, although anxiety-provoking, is quite interesting from a research point of view… … Read more »

After publishing my letter to BACP titled: “Accredited Therapists practising outside the UK” in Therapy Today Journal (Vol.18, No.2, p.23), where I raise the issue of the need for professional support for BACP accredited counsellors practising outside the UK, i had interesting correspondence starting off from other colleagues in the same situation. … Read more »