Present with Suffering
Description
There is something about everything that makes it not quite satisfactory. Even things we really love are spoilt by not being quite enough or - the opposite - going on too long. People entering psychotherapy want to feel better - more authoritative, less anxious or depressed, more whole - and although it can help, an enormous amount of difficult and painful emotions continue to arise. After years and years of therapy, many of us feel as mad as ever. There is no 'happy ever after'. This all begs the question; what is the place of suffering in human experience and how best can we be with it? This book picks up this question and answers by saying that discontent and unhappiness are inevitable parts of our human experience but there are ways to avoid adding further unnecessary suffering. By becoming present, accepting, and kind, we may enfold what hurts us in a more spacious and meaningful way. Cultivating our ability to be present with emotions felt in the body, we may get a glimpse of how emotions dissolve in the open space of awareness.
Present with Suffering: Being with What Hurts will have global appeal to psychotherapy professionals as well as general readers who may be grieving, have an interest in Buddhism, or want to become more present and mindful.
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Persons
Nigel Wellings is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author who works within a broadly contemplative perspective. He has been engaged with the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism for the last forty years. He lives in Devon and is a teacher on the Bath and Bristol Mindfulness Courses and the Sharpham Barn Retreats. His previous books include Nothing To Lose: Psychotherapy, Buddhism and Living Life (with Elizabeth Wilde McCormick), Why Can't I Meditate? How To Get Your Mindfulness Practice On Track, and more recently a Buddhist handbook, Dzogchen, Who's Who & What's What in the Great Perfection.
Elizabeth Wilde McCormick has worked as a psychotherapist for over forty years in both private and national health settings. She was, with Nigel Wellings, a director of training at The Centre for Transpersonal Psychology and she is a founder member and currently a trustee of the Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Liz is also a teacher, trainer, and writer with a long-standing interest in the interface between psychotherapy and mindfulness. She is the author of a number of bestselling psychological self-help books, two novels, and two books with Nigel Wellings, Transpersonal Psychotherapy Theory and Practice and Nothing To Lose: Psychotherapy, Buddhism and Living Life.