What is the place of discontent and unhappiness in human experience and how best can we be with it? There is something about everything that makes it not quite satisfactory. Even things we really love are spoilt by not being quite enough or by 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. Even after years and years of therapy many of us feel that there is no ‘happy ever after’. Present with Suffering shows that by becoming present, accepting and kind, we may enfold what hurts us in a more spacious and meaningful way with chapters addressing loss, bereavement, emptiness and impermanence. Table of Contents: Chapter 1. Introduction, by Nigel Wellings and Elizabeth Wilde McCormick Chapter 2. Suffering in loss and bereavement, by Elizabeth Wilde McCormick - Attachment and impermanence - Living in a human body - The heart - Mind the gap Chapter 3. Emptiness, by Nigel Wellings - A meditation on the pain of emptiness - A meditation on the delight of emptiness - Working with emptiness About the Authors: 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 been in practice as a psychotherapist for over thirty years. She is also a teacher, trainer and writer. She is a founder member of The Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy at Guy's Hospital, London, and the author of a number of best-selling self-help books. |