How are you crossing thresholds?
Welcome to our August Newsletter.
August is a blended month in the UK, and this year, autumn is very early, a few weekly early, in fact. So, I am thinking a lot about crossing thresholds (major life milestones) and other transitions. Transitions are incredibly important for good digital wellbeing. To maintain good health, we need to be able to step online and come back offline smoothly while also managing our headspace accordingly. No number of laws asking us to stop checking emails at a certain time will help if we still think about work over dinner.
So, the first step in managing transitions is to acknowledge them. The entire summer, for me, is rich in thresholds and transitions, so I need to go softly and count all of them before I even decide how to cross them. Personally, I really like the Gestalt model of experience, especially the final stage of each experience (when we have felt through the transition and responded appropriately) – the void! That moment of emotional stillness is when one experience is over, and the other one has not yet begun.
Some Gestalt professionals tell me that if we pause in that stage of experience and reflect on the entire cycle, we may be able to reflect and learn from it – this is called fertile void. I love the term and thus often pause for a moment of reflection: “Well, this was intense, but how was it for me, really? What have I experienced and learned from my response? How would I react if the same experience were to occur in my life again?”
Sometimes, a threshold or transitional experience is unique – for example, my current midlife stage, which prepares me for elderhood and will not happen again with such intensity because it is bound to my biological development. Then, we most certainly need to pause and take stock of what is shifting in us, even at the core of our identity. Like water, we are all beautifully fluid, not static. Embracing and working with that fluidity can be ever so enriching!
This month I encourage you to notice moment of void in your daily or larger life experiences and transitions and experimenting in reflecting on those. Make your voids fertile to invest in your future self and the future of your village.
At Voxel Hub, we are taking time to rest and reconnect with our friends in the UK and globally, so we may be posting less. However, all this is in preparation for the next part of my academic journey – in September, I will be starting the MSc in Existential Psychotherapy at the NSPC in London to deepen my work with liberation psychology and to bring digital wellbeing into the more psycho-social context. Our services continue as normal, and we will be back with more posts in September.
Have a good, restful rest of the summer!
My favourite topic this month
This month, I am exploring existential therapies in preparation for my course:
- Existential Therapy: Distinctive Features by Emmy van Deurzen, Claire Arnold-Baker
- Rising from Existential Crisis: Life beyond calamity by Emmy van Deurzen
- What Is Existentialism? Simone de Beauvoir by Simone de Beauvoir
- Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom
- Man’s Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E Frankl
- Existential Therapies by Mick Cooper
If you have any recommendations on the topic, please let me know! Thank you!
Resources & Offerings
Here is a gentle reminder of how to ask for help if you need counselling. Check out our free guide to counselling and free guide to counselling preferences.
You can sign up for the Psychology of the Witcher Kickstarter campaign updates here.
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