Beautiful, thoughtful article Bronce. Recently I worked with someone who felt she couldn't resist driving to a local store, buying an apple fritter, and eating it in the car - still in the parking lot. It felt like a compulsion. With some digging, it turns out this was linked to happy memory. Mom and Dad in the car on a road trip, his love for apple fritters. Her father passed away just before Thanksgiving. She's been longing for her dad. Her ever helpful unconscious was pointing to recapture those happy memories through the car and the apple fritters.
What a great example Nicola, who wouldn't love some apples and some love and affection from our parents! I remember going to get warm apple cider donuts with my parents from a local orchard when I was a kid. Absolutely loved it.
But the sugar content doesn't love me back. And if the person who came to see just stopped gong to grab apple fritters and replaced it with a healthy salad - okay, I get it but sometimes its what's below the surface of the immediate need that we need/want to address. Not always - but on occasion right.
Thoughtful essay. I love how you helped your client go deeper and see beyond the surface to the triggers and wounds beneath....and then you helped him see how to connect with people around it. "But if longing remains tied to what we can no longer experience, or to what may never come into being, it can keep us intensely alive and emotionally attached to what is absent without helping us discover what form that feeling could take in our present-day life."
I agree with you - following our longings is essential and can be our guidepost. Sometimes it is honestly scary to follow them though. But that is part of aliveness.
Thank you Serena, I appreciate you taking a little time to digest this one. Indeed it can be a bit scary but as we all likely find out in the journey - what is the cost of not following through.
In this regard, we all pay a price. I just like to think healing has its own rewards.
This feels meaningful because it talks about something a lot of people feel but cannot always explain, trying to figure out what makes life feel important and real to them.
The best part is the idea that nobody else can fully tell you what will make you feel happy, alive, or connected to life. Everyone has to slowly discover that for themselves over time.
It also explains well how confusing growing up can feel, because when you are young, you usually do not yet know what will matter most to you later in life.
Thank you for reading and commenting Data Frank. Yes, part of the difficulty of life is not only coming to terms with how we were raised, as best we can over time, but then what would it mean and how to do we go about trying to live a different life to some degree or another if we can and if we will let ourselves. We all have to do this to some degree or another if we hope to live a life more aligned with our sense of aliveness.
Yes that’s part of the real work: holding both the past and the possibility of something different, and slowly learning how to live in a way that feels more aligned and alive.
I'm so glad I finally got to read this. Its been a busy time but I always (eventually) get to what's important! I love the exploration of the comfort seeking, taking us away from the real healing. Longing for something John could only get from being with his own family in a more present way. This inward listening is such a great angle on the truth of outward distraction. Listening to what is within and honouring that is the only real job that makes sense. From that place of inner awareness, we make more decisions that are in our own best interest. Thanks, Bronce. 🙏🏻
Thank you Mark, you nailed it! The goal is to hone our inner ear towards what is in our best interest, our emotional, physical, spiritual wellness, and make decisions in life based on this ability. For if we don't, what are we really doing? Be less kind to our inner nature is one answer right.
Speaking of which, I hope the editing it coming along smoothly! :)
This was such an enjoyable read, thank you for sharing Bronce. I love the way you approach this topic in such an honest way, sharing your experiences with your clients for context. There’s so much hope in your words and fully resonate with this, the “feeling of aliveness” stayed with me… May we always remember to stay close to what brings us back to this state of being.
Thank you Sonia - I appreciate you taking the time to read my piece and comment. So much to read out there and not always enough time. But yes, I like what you said - May we always remember to stay close to what brings us back to this state of being. What an important thing to remember.
What stayed with me was the distinction between longing for something and understanding what the longing is actually pointing toward. The example of John missing a feeling rather than a specific time in his life captured that really well.
Thank you Patrick - and what you highlight is one of the main points I was hoping to flesh out. What are we really after when we find ourselves in a state of longing. On the surface of how we are living it can seem like one thing but actually be tied to something deeper within ourselves than we often realize.
I think that's what I found so interesting about John's story. It's easy to assume we're searching for a person, place, or time, when what we're really responding to may be a quality of experience that we're hoping to find again in a different form.
John was waiting for his frisbee moment. When it didn't happen, he felt disappointed not knowing what he was disappointed about. He kept watching until his hurt turned into numbness. I wonder if John ever got his frisbee moment, even though his mom was gone. Did he find a replacement for that joy?
This was a beautiful essay with a relatable case study braided in. I enjoyed following your thought process here. And I have to admit, I played a little game. After you gave the initial case description, I formulated my own understanding and then read on to see your analysis. And ultimately, it's what you have described (in other writing) as coming back to ourselves.
Dr Gunter, now I admit I love what you did! :) It's brilliant, engaging in your own mental game of thought-frisbee, in the moment, to see where your mind lead you, towards helping ourselves come back to ourselves. Now I'd call that a bit of scientific validity if I were still back in college. Now, I'd just say thank you for playing frisbee with me Amy.
And John, he has his moments. Thankfully, the pandemic has passed but still what do we do when we find ourselvers alone and unsure what to do with ourselves and our time? I encouraged John to explore how he can be alone, still quite, and turn inward to think about what he wants tied to his wellbeing - and I say, John - it's the weekend go have some fun if that's what your heart desires. He says, Bronce my heart desires so many things. I say, Oh how wonderful John, I'm excited to hear what you play with over the weekend when I see you next week.
It’s sounds like you’re still working with client John. Is this what you love the most about psychoanalysis? Building long term therapeutic alliances. Or is it something else? I’ve been curious about how you’ve arrived.
What I love most about psychoanalysis—Mmm good question—I found reading psychoanalysis rather painful at points like trying to learn a new language. It took me many years to understand the jargon + many more years to figure out how do I apply the jargon + many more years to not worry about how to apply it.
I think psychoanalytic theory provides the broadest understanding of why we behave and think the way we do below the surface of “ordinary behavior.” When someone says that’s crazy—to get inside the experience it has a logic most people don’t take the time to understand or care to. For me, psychoanalytic theory helps me better understand human dynamics more and what people don’t want to see. It helps me better understand what I couldn’t understand on the surface of life. Why would a man keep returning to the emotional scence of a “family crime” he didn’t even commit. Religion didn’t teach me the psychological inside of the wound and what the mind does and does not do with it.
That’s not to say psychoanalysis always has the most comprehensive system of treatment. It certainly has one but I’ve needed to augment it with say somatic practices, or Eastern philosophy, cognitive behavioral techniques, positive psychology, and whatever the patient brings to the healing table. Meaning, there’s always more than one way to skin a rabbit.
Bronce, I really liked the idea that longing is not always asking us to go back, but to bring something forward. Sometimes the parts of us we miss still have a place in the life we have now.
Thank you George! That is what the living, inside us, asks of us to be able to do: turn backward with understanding so that we can live out something meangful in relation to our sense of aliveness moving forward.
A thoughtful and moving piece, thank you, Bronce. The phrase that stayed with me was "the feeling of aliveness." So many of us spend years searching for what is missing, without realising we are longing for a deeper connection with ourselves. I love how you frame alignment as learning to live in closer contact with what brings us alive.
The book I am about to start writing focuses on living in alignment, so your words offer a helpful reflection.
Sue - that is wonderful that you are beginning to write a book about living in alignment! I've often listened for how you help others do this very thing through your helpful writings on confidence. A book on such matters seems like a natural next step to me. I look forward to reading it when it comes out. I imagine you've already written a fair bit of related subject matter already. I tip my hat to you :)
This article, Bronce, has so much to offer. It reminded me of how I – quite a while ago when I first read one of your articles – thought that if I didn't already have a perfect therapist (for a decade now) I would consult you. ---
The way you write about our inner life and our struggles as humans to make sense of life in the physical is filled with warmth, emotional understanding, wisdom and psychological insight. The way you also weave in your personal experiences into those of your client's is indeed trust engendering. I have always distrusted therapists who kept themselves aloof from the clients they were supposed to support. This is my personal opinion of course. ---
This article covers so well those most essential questions of longing, aliveness and inward listening. Without inward listening I believe it isn't possible to really come into alignment with one's true Self. Without including the spiritual dimension in the therapeutical process of healing there will likely be no deeper going healing. It has been a "shortcoming" among psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. to "ignore" spirituality. (At least modern science is at long last approaching the idea that consciousness is not a product of our brains, but a basic feature of Existence.) ---
A strength that your work has is the inclusion of the spiritual dimension into the healing process. If we consider that we are a spirit/soul having a physical life experience, then then how can we feel aliveness if we ignore this connection. We can't. ---
Inward listening is what brings us in contact with the Source of our existence, with our soul. Alignment is the result. This alignment is felt as intense aliveness. It is an indescribable feeling of wholeness and Self-Love. ---
Therapy is the tool that helps us remove the blocks that can hinder this alignment. This process is far from linear. It is hard and challenging, but deeply rewarding. And a therapist guide on that journey is gold worth. Love, Maria
Ahh Maria - You have, in my world, paid me one of the utmost highest compliments one can garner. Combined the thought that you would come to see me + shared such wonderful wise thoughts on my writing in tandem. You know you would've made one hell of a therapist yourself and in some uncertain way I get the sense you likely are for a few lucky souls who know you well enough. I sometimes catch the feel of being back in my psychoanalytic training days listening to you, not to Freud but this time to Jung. So thank you, I cannot say enough how much I enjoy your mindful writings.
And the compliment I will pay is that your words take what I've said and extend them forward a bit to what John and myself long for - more understanding, more connection to healing of the spirit and to be able to put this into words to help ourselves and others with this very life giving process. For that, I can't thank you enough. So thank you for extending my life. It matters.
I like the concept of "the spirit of alignment." As you wisely define it, it is the unique aliveness that emerges when the mind, body, and spirit work together in harmony, bringing us closer to the sacred dimensions of life.
This integrative and holistic perspective works well for me, and I believe it can benefit many others when adapted to individual needs, values, and goals. I see this sacred dimension as a reflection of the higher self, expressed through a body, mind, and spirit energized by empathy, compassion, and purpose. It involves living meaningfully, in alignment with nature and the broader principles that govern life and human flourishing.
Your heartfelt, insightful, and educational story affirmed many of my own perspectives and experiences, and I am grateful to you, Dr. Rice, for sharing it. I hope this captivating, thought-stimulating, and heart-warming piece reaches many readers who can benefit from your wisdom and reflections.
Thank you Dr Yildiz for taking the time to read my piece and particularly for the thoughtful, wise response you provide here. In your own way, you've done something akin to Maria above. Helped me extend my thinking out just a bit more in relation to where I'm at in my life. And for that I can't thank you and Maria enough. It feels very life giving and prescious to the soul.
I have watched what you do for hints of how I might do a bit of it in my own way. As mentioned in the article, I have to turn inward to help me follow my own path and yet we all still interact with one another for a reason. It's nice to catch a glimpse now and then of part of the reason when I listen to integrate your knowledge in the various ways that you do. Thank you. It matters.
Bronce, I think it can be difficult, for those who don't have the expert understanding into behavior, like in John's case, to objectively stop and try to dive into the why behind something they're doing so they can figure out how to find alternatives that will address their longings.
In reading John's story, it seems obvious what's going on, but when you're in the thick of it, it's not so easy. That's why it pays to have someone else objectively look at your situation so you can get to the bottom of things and achieve what you're hoping for quicker than you might on your own. We both do that as coaches, and for more complex cases, there's your Psychologist hat.
Yet so many people are resistant and choose the wrestling match with themselves. I'm glad John chose to work with you.
Wise eye Melanie Jordan! I've been like John in many ways myself. Of course, I'm not married and don't have children but I've spent long periods of time trying to figure out how not to live so caught up in what I remember tied to my childhood. I've often wondered is this part of the human condition or merely how mine moved forward in relation to my own family dynamics. Likely a both and situation.
But yes, it's why I went back to my own therapy again a few years back as I mention. I needed additional help dealing with my frustrations and I knew a little help from our "friends" in the helping profession would likely help. Thank God it is doing just that! :)
So thank you for doing the work that you are doing while you help others along the path. It matters!
Bronce, This is a generous piece of writing, and I read it carefully. The John case study does exactly what good clinical illustration should: it earns its theoretical weight rather than just decorating it.
A few things struck me particularly.
The distinction you draw early on, between meaning-making and finding what becomes meaningful, is doing more work than it might first appear. Most of the wellbeing literature collapses that distinction entirely, treating meaning as something we construct or impose. You're pointing at something prior to that, something more like recognition, or even reception. That feels right to me, and it's underexplored.
The section on longing is where the essay is at its most precise and also its most useful clinically. The move from longing as evidence of absence to longing as a form of inward listening is not an obvious one, and you earn it rather than assert it. The risk you name, that we can remain emotionally organised around what is absent and mistake intensity of feeling for aliveness, is one I see repeatedly in the people I work with. Older men especially. They feel the ache and conclude they are alive in it, when what they are actually doing is circling the wound.
The phrase "inward ear" works. It's not florid. It points at something specific enough to be useful.
The closing movement toward alignment, where mind, body, and spirit begin working together, carries the essay into territory that feels consonant with the broader Wellbeing Equation arc you mention in the author's note. The phrase "sacred dimensions of life" opens a door I'd be curious to see you walk through more fully in the longer work. There's something there that deserves its own space.
The John story resolves with real warmth. The suggestion that he might play with his children, and speak more openly to his wife about his mother, lands as the natural consequence of everything the essay has built toward.
The central argument, that aliveness requires inward listening rather than borrowed frameworks, is made with real integrity. I'll be thinking about the longing section for a while. Dr Tom Kane
Tom - I can't thank you enough for your own generous time + very thoughtful, generous, comments that will serve me well moving foward with where I am at in my life and what I am continuing to wrestle with as both a clinician and a writer. Again, your eye and what you pick up along the way and how you do it/convey it always make me curious, like how does he do that.
Your eye helps me understand how I can unpack and highlight further what I'm trying to convey in relation to what happens for us humans before meaning making on a more conscious level can happen: our universal search, paying attention to what we find meaningful in the world and we are in the world, - but yes, recognition and reception--and then perhaps unpacking the unexplored part -- what and who are we then responsible to? - You help me see a bit more of what I have been mulling over for a bit now in regard to just what the hell is the intial search before our meaning making kicks in.
Solid observation on my inward listening piece tied to longing and how it can play out in relation to older men especially. - Circling the wound - yes, that helps explain and extend my thoughts within the piece. So you, like Maria and Mehmet Yildiz, have helped me extend my mind--certainly an enlivening experience. So thank you as well for this!
But this piece Tom - "The phrase "sacred dimensions of life" opens a door I'd be curious to see you walk through more fully in the longer work. There's something there that deserves its own space." Hmm, yes, you again have a trained eye to detail below the surface that many don't see. And I'd be curious Tom - how did you develop this ability?
Bronce, thank you for this. The question you end with is the one I find most interesting to try to answer honestly.
The short version is that my educational journey was unusual in ways that turned out to matter. Domestic circumstances meant I left secondary school at fifteen and went straight into work. By the time I got to university in my twenties, I had already spent years watching how the world actually operated, rather than how it was supposed to. That gap between the two became something I paid close attention to, not by design at first, but out of necessity. When you are young and navigating adult environments without the credentials or the protection that formal education provides, you learn to read situations carefully. You notice patterns because missing them has consequences.
When I eventually got to university, I think I brought that habit with me into the academic work. The literature made a different kind of sense because I had already seen some of it playing out in real people and real rooms. I have always thought of it as getting the best of both worlds, the formal training in molecular biology and behavioural science, and the prior education that no curriculum designs for you. The introversion helped too. People who are naturally quiet in social situations tend to spend more time observing than performing, and that has its own slow yield.
What you describe as seeing below the surface, I think of as simply taking seriously the distance between what something appears to be and what it is. Your work on longing does exactly that. You are not describing the surface experience of absence. You are pointing at the structure underneath it, what it is doing, what it is organising around. That is the move that makes clinical writing worth reading.
Your question has extended my own thinking here more than I expected it to. I will be returning to the "sacred dimensions" door. I suspect what is behind it is precisely this, the question of what we are responsible to once recognition has happened. That feels like the natural next territory for the longer work.
"And if we learn, over time, to listen with this inward ear, we may begin to sense that our aliveness is not only something we feel deep within ourselves, but something that asks us to give it expression in the wider currents of life itself." To me, today's article provided organization around what I've done and still do when I feel "off." Like you, it usually centers on being outdoors, time that's spiritual or meditative, or some combination of those. My touch point often comes from a suggestion my therapist made decades ago — a studio picture of me when I was about three years old, hair in a ponytail, big brown eyes looking soulfully at the camera. That picture has been on my desk for a very long time and reminds me of who I am. I'm so grateful for your writing and this article in particular.
Cindy - I very much appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this article, particularly what you find helpful about it but also what your own therapist has helped you do in relation to what you have in that picture of yourself. I hope your therapist doesn't mind me borrowing this. Quite moving in that portrayal on many different levels.
It's also nice to know when my writing has been helpful in some fashion. Sort of like a bit of "scientific validity" if you will.
The article has been coalescing, for decades, in the back of my mind. Most operative when I go hiking and find myself in the midst of a sensation of awe. I am excited but also I'm saddened for reasons I don't always understand. Life has a strange way of coming together at points. Thank you for being a part of that movement.
I'm so glad you felt the value in my 'muse.' And even though my therapist and I parted amicably and then sadly lost track of each other through several moves, I feel certain he'd appreciate your ability to use his suggestion to me in any way you can. Like you, he's extremely well educated and, as a scholar, very generous.
Thank you for reading it John and letting me know. I'd love to hear a bit of how it was helpful, within reason of course, should you have the time and inclination. Sometimes we don't always know until someone unpacks it a little. Plus, you are a wordsmith and so that in itself makes me smile.
I will but leave it with me. Using John and his story was hugely helpful in understanding your thesis. I think it helped me understand or remind me that everything we need to be whole is within reaching distance. John needed to be present in his own garden with his own child, not in the garden of his past. I want to digest it and read it again. But I will get back to you.
Yes, there are times, often enough, when given my focus in life I'm better able to convey what I'm thinking in relation to those I work with. At times, to do it otherwise, my writing becomes overly muddled.
It's all yours for awhile. I'm glad to hand it over and let someone else mull over it a bit. Again, thank you.
Trying to slow down and take it easy a bit. I have been inundated with too much stress + online technology/screens. Not good for my sense of enjoyment in life. I suppoe you might say trying to practice what I preach.
Beautiful, thoughtful article Bronce. Recently I worked with someone who felt she couldn't resist driving to a local store, buying an apple fritter, and eating it in the car - still in the parking lot. It felt like a compulsion. With some digging, it turns out this was linked to happy memory. Mom and Dad in the car on a road trip, his love for apple fritters. Her father passed away just before Thanksgiving. She's been longing for her dad. Her ever helpful unconscious was pointing to recapture those happy memories through the car and the apple fritters.
What a great example Nicola, who wouldn't love some apples and some love and affection from our parents! I remember going to get warm apple cider donuts with my parents from a local orchard when I was a kid. Absolutely loved it.
But the sugar content doesn't love me back. And if the person who came to see just stopped gong to grab apple fritters and replaced it with a healthy salad - okay, I get it but sometimes its what's below the surface of the immediate need that we need/want to address. Not always - but on occasion right.
Thank you for sharing this!
That's a beautiful memory, Bronce. Feels like I can even taste it!
Well, after that taste wears off, let me know how that nap goes afterwards! :)
😂😂😂
Thoughtful essay. I love how you helped your client go deeper and see beyond the surface to the triggers and wounds beneath....and then you helped him see how to connect with people around it. "But if longing remains tied to what we can no longer experience, or to what may never come into being, it can keep us intensely alive and emotionally attached to what is absent without helping us discover what form that feeling could take in our present-day life."
I agree with you - following our longings is essential and can be our guidepost. Sometimes it is honestly scary to follow them though. But that is part of aliveness.
Thank you Serena, I appreciate you taking a little time to digest this one. Indeed it can be a bit scary but as we all likely find out in the journey - what is the cost of not following through.
In this regard, we all pay a price. I just like to think healing has its own rewards.
This feels meaningful because it talks about something a lot of people feel but cannot always explain, trying to figure out what makes life feel important and real to them.
The best part is the idea that nobody else can fully tell you what will make you feel happy, alive, or connected to life. Everyone has to slowly discover that for themselves over time.
It also explains well how confusing growing up can feel, because when you are young, you usually do not yet know what will matter most to you later in life.
Thank you for reading and commenting Data Frank. Yes, part of the difficulty of life is not only coming to terms with how we were raised, as best we can over time, but then what would it mean and how to do we go about trying to live a different life to some degree or another if we can and if we will let ourselves. We all have to do this to some degree or another if we hope to live a life more aligned with our sense of aliveness.
Yes that’s part of the real work: holding both the past and the possibility of something different, and slowly learning how to live in a way that feels more aligned and alive.
I'm so glad I finally got to read this. Its been a busy time but I always (eventually) get to what's important! I love the exploration of the comfort seeking, taking us away from the real healing. Longing for something John could only get from being with his own family in a more present way. This inward listening is such a great angle on the truth of outward distraction. Listening to what is within and honouring that is the only real job that makes sense. From that place of inner awareness, we make more decisions that are in our own best interest. Thanks, Bronce. 🙏🏻
Thank you Mark, you nailed it! The goal is to hone our inner ear towards what is in our best interest, our emotional, physical, spiritual wellness, and make decisions in life based on this ability. For if we don't, what are we really doing? Be less kind to our inner nature is one answer right.
Speaking of which, I hope the editing it coming along smoothly! :)
Thanks, Yes. I’m getting there!
That’s good! I’m glad you are finding the time :)
It’s important.
This was such an enjoyable read, thank you for sharing Bronce. I love the way you approach this topic in such an honest way, sharing your experiences with your clients for context. There’s so much hope in your words and fully resonate with this, the “feeling of aliveness” stayed with me… May we always remember to stay close to what brings us back to this state of being.
Thank you Sonia - I appreciate you taking the time to read my piece and comment. So much to read out there and not always enough time. But yes, I like what you said - May we always remember to stay close to what brings us back to this state of being. What an important thing to remember.
💛🙏
What stayed with me was the distinction between longing for something and understanding what the longing is actually pointing toward. The example of John missing a feeling rather than a specific time in his life captured that really well.
Thank you Patrick - and what you highlight is one of the main points I was hoping to flesh out. What are we really after when we find ourselves in a state of longing. On the surface of how we are living it can seem like one thing but actually be tied to something deeper within ourselves than we often realize.
I think that's what I found so interesting about John's story. It's easy to assume we're searching for a person, place, or time, when what we're really responding to may be a quality of experience that we're hoping to find again in a different form.
John was waiting for his frisbee moment. When it didn't happen, he felt disappointed not knowing what he was disappointed about. He kept watching until his hurt turned into numbness. I wonder if John ever got his frisbee moment, even though his mom was gone. Did he find a replacement for that joy?
This was a beautiful essay with a relatable case study braided in. I enjoyed following your thought process here. And I have to admit, I played a little game. After you gave the initial case description, I formulated my own understanding and then read on to see your analysis. And ultimately, it's what you have described (in other writing) as coming back to ourselves.
Dr Gunter, now I admit I love what you did! :) It's brilliant, engaging in your own mental game of thought-frisbee, in the moment, to see where your mind lead you, towards helping ourselves come back to ourselves. Now I'd call that a bit of scientific validity if I were still back in college. Now, I'd just say thank you for playing frisbee with me Amy.
And John, he has his moments. Thankfully, the pandemic has passed but still what do we do when we find ourselvers alone and unsure what to do with ourselves and our time? I encouraged John to explore how he can be alone, still quite, and turn inward to think about what he wants tied to his wellbeing - and I say, John - it's the weekend go have some fun if that's what your heart desires. He says, Bronce my heart desires so many things. I say, Oh how wonderful John, I'm excited to hear what you play with over the weekend when I see you next week.
It’s sounds like you’re still working with client John. Is this what you love the most about psychoanalysis? Building long term therapeutic alliances. Or is it something else? I’ve been curious about how you’ve arrived.
What I love most about psychoanalysis—Mmm good question—I found reading psychoanalysis rather painful at points like trying to learn a new language. It took me many years to understand the jargon + many more years to figure out how do I apply the jargon + many more years to not worry about how to apply it.
I think psychoanalytic theory provides the broadest understanding of why we behave and think the way we do below the surface of “ordinary behavior.” When someone says that’s crazy—to get inside the experience it has a logic most people don’t take the time to understand or care to. For me, psychoanalytic theory helps me better understand human dynamics more and what people don’t want to see. It helps me better understand what I couldn’t understand on the surface of life. Why would a man keep returning to the emotional scence of a “family crime” he didn’t even commit. Religion didn’t teach me the psychological inside of the wound and what the mind does and does not do with it.
That’s not to say psychoanalysis always has the most comprehensive system of treatment. It certainly has one but I’ve needed to augment it with say somatic practices, or Eastern philosophy, cognitive behavioral techniques, positive psychology, and whatever the patient brings to the healing table. Meaning, there’s always more than one way to skin a rabbit.
Bronce, I really liked the idea that longing is not always asking us to go back, but to bring something forward. Sometimes the parts of us we miss still have a place in the life we have now.
Thank you George! That is what the living, inside us, asks of us to be able to do: turn backward with understanding so that we can live out something meangful in relation to our sense of aliveness moving forward.
A thoughtful and moving piece, thank you, Bronce. The phrase that stayed with me was "the feeling of aliveness." So many of us spend years searching for what is missing, without realising we are longing for a deeper connection with ourselves. I love how you frame alignment as learning to live in closer contact with what brings us alive.
The book I am about to start writing focuses on living in alignment, so your words offer a helpful reflection.
Sue - that is wonderful that you are beginning to write a book about living in alignment! I've often listened for how you help others do this very thing through your helpful writings on confidence. A book on such matters seems like a natural next step to me. I look forward to reading it when it comes out. I imagine you've already written a fair bit of related subject matter already. I tip my hat to you :)
Thank you Bronce. It is what this year’s articles have been leading up to, so I am happy you made the connection 💕
Solid way to go about a book right! :)
Haha. I have no idea what I am doing! I just know I am writing a book 💕
This article, Bronce, has so much to offer. It reminded me of how I – quite a while ago when I first read one of your articles – thought that if I didn't already have a perfect therapist (for a decade now) I would consult you. ---
The way you write about our inner life and our struggles as humans to make sense of life in the physical is filled with warmth, emotional understanding, wisdom and psychological insight. The way you also weave in your personal experiences into those of your client's is indeed trust engendering. I have always distrusted therapists who kept themselves aloof from the clients they were supposed to support. This is my personal opinion of course. ---
This article covers so well those most essential questions of longing, aliveness and inward listening. Without inward listening I believe it isn't possible to really come into alignment with one's true Self. Without including the spiritual dimension in the therapeutical process of healing there will likely be no deeper going healing. It has been a "shortcoming" among psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. to "ignore" spirituality. (At least modern science is at long last approaching the idea that consciousness is not a product of our brains, but a basic feature of Existence.) ---
A strength that your work has is the inclusion of the spiritual dimension into the healing process. If we consider that we are a spirit/soul having a physical life experience, then then how can we feel aliveness if we ignore this connection. We can't. ---
Inward listening is what brings us in contact with the Source of our existence, with our soul. Alignment is the result. This alignment is felt as intense aliveness. It is an indescribable feeling of wholeness and Self-Love. ---
Therapy is the tool that helps us remove the blocks that can hinder this alignment. This process is far from linear. It is hard and challenging, but deeply rewarding. And a therapist guide on that journey is gold worth. Love, Maria
Ahh Maria - You have, in my world, paid me one of the utmost highest compliments one can garner. Combined the thought that you would come to see me + shared such wonderful wise thoughts on my writing in tandem. You know you would've made one hell of a therapist yourself and in some uncertain way I get the sense you likely are for a few lucky souls who know you well enough. I sometimes catch the feel of being back in my psychoanalytic training days listening to you, not to Freud but this time to Jung. So thank you, I cannot say enough how much I enjoy your mindful writings.
And the compliment I will pay is that your words take what I've said and extend them forward a bit to what John and myself long for - more understanding, more connection to healing of the spirit and to be able to put this into words to help ourselves and others with this very life giving process. For that, I can't thank you enough. So thank you for extending my life. It matters.
I like the concept of "the spirit of alignment." As you wisely define it, it is the unique aliveness that emerges when the mind, body, and spirit work together in harmony, bringing us closer to the sacred dimensions of life.
This integrative and holistic perspective works well for me, and I believe it can benefit many others when adapted to individual needs, values, and goals. I see this sacred dimension as a reflection of the higher self, expressed through a body, mind, and spirit energized by empathy, compassion, and purpose. It involves living meaningfully, in alignment with nature and the broader principles that govern life and human flourishing.
Your heartfelt, insightful, and educational story affirmed many of my own perspectives and experiences, and I am grateful to you, Dr. Rice, for sharing it. I hope this captivating, thought-stimulating, and heart-warming piece reaches many readers who can benefit from your wisdom and reflections.
Thank you Dr Yildiz for taking the time to read my piece and particularly for the thoughtful, wise response you provide here. In your own way, you've done something akin to Maria above. Helped me extend my thinking out just a bit more in relation to where I'm at in my life. And for that I can't thank you and Maria enough. It feels very life giving and prescious to the soul.
I have watched what you do for hints of how I might do a bit of it in my own way. As mentioned in the article, I have to turn inward to help me follow my own path and yet we all still interact with one another for a reason. It's nice to catch a glimpse now and then of part of the reason when I listen to integrate your knowledge in the various ways that you do. Thank you. It matters.
Bronce, I think it can be difficult, for those who don't have the expert understanding into behavior, like in John's case, to objectively stop and try to dive into the why behind something they're doing so they can figure out how to find alternatives that will address their longings.
In reading John's story, it seems obvious what's going on, but when you're in the thick of it, it's not so easy. That's why it pays to have someone else objectively look at your situation so you can get to the bottom of things and achieve what you're hoping for quicker than you might on your own. We both do that as coaches, and for more complex cases, there's your Psychologist hat.
Yet so many people are resistant and choose the wrestling match with themselves. I'm glad John chose to work with you.
Wise eye Melanie Jordan! I've been like John in many ways myself. Of course, I'm not married and don't have children but I've spent long periods of time trying to figure out how not to live so caught up in what I remember tied to my childhood. I've often wondered is this part of the human condition or merely how mine moved forward in relation to my own family dynamics. Likely a both and situation.
But yes, it's why I went back to my own therapy again a few years back as I mention. I needed additional help dealing with my frustrations and I knew a little help from our "friends" in the helping profession would likely help. Thank God it is doing just that! :)
So thank you for doing the work that you are doing while you help others along the path. It matters!
Bronce, This is a generous piece of writing, and I read it carefully. The John case study does exactly what good clinical illustration should: it earns its theoretical weight rather than just decorating it.
A few things struck me particularly.
The distinction you draw early on, between meaning-making and finding what becomes meaningful, is doing more work than it might first appear. Most of the wellbeing literature collapses that distinction entirely, treating meaning as something we construct or impose. You're pointing at something prior to that, something more like recognition, or even reception. That feels right to me, and it's underexplored.
The section on longing is where the essay is at its most precise and also its most useful clinically. The move from longing as evidence of absence to longing as a form of inward listening is not an obvious one, and you earn it rather than assert it. The risk you name, that we can remain emotionally organised around what is absent and mistake intensity of feeling for aliveness, is one I see repeatedly in the people I work with. Older men especially. They feel the ache and conclude they are alive in it, when what they are actually doing is circling the wound.
The phrase "inward ear" works. It's not florid. It points at something specific enough to be useful.
The closing movement toward alignment, where mind, body, and spirit begin working together, carries the essay into territory that feels consonant with the broader Wellbeing Equation arc you mention in the author's note. The phrase "sacred dimensions of life" opens a door I'd be curious to see you walk through more fully in the longer work. There's something there that deserves its own space.
The John story resolves with real warmth. The suggestion that he might play with his children, and speak more openly to his wife about his mother, lands as the natural consequence of everything the essay has built toward.
The central argument, that aliveness requires inward listening rather than borrowed frameworks, is made with real integrity. I'll be thinking about the longing section for a while. Dr Tom Kane
Tom - I can't thank you enough for your own generous time + very thoughtful, generous, comments that will serve me well moving foward with where I am at in my life and what I am continuing to wrestle with as both a clinician and a writer. Again, your eye and what you pick up along the way and how you do it/convey it always make me curious, like how does he do that.
Your eye helps me understand how I can unpack and highlight further what I'm trying to convey in relation to what happens for us humans before meaning making on a more conscious level can happen: our universal search, paying attention to what we find meaningful in the world and we are in the world, - but yes, recognition and reception--and then perhaps unpacking the unexplored part -- what and who are we then responsible to? - You help me see a bit more of what I have been mulling over for a bit now in regard to just what the hell is the intial search before our meaning making kicks in.
Solid observation on my inward listening piece tied to longing and how it can play out in relation to older men especially. - Circling the wound - yes, that helps explain and extend my thoughts within the piece. So you, like Maria and Mehmet Yildiz, have helped me extend my mind--certainly an enlivening experience. So thank you as well for this!
But this piece Tom - "The phrase "sacred dimensions of life" opens a door I'd be curious to see you walk through more fully in the longer work. There's something there that deserves its own space." Hmm, yes, you again have a trained eye to detail below the surface that many don't see. And I'd be curious Tom - how did you develop this ability?
with kindness and respect
Bronce, thank you for this. The question you end with is the one I find most interesting to try to answer honestly.
The short version is that my educational journey was unusual in ways that turned out to matter. Domestic circumstances meant I left secondary school at fifteen and went straight into work. By the time I got to university in my twenties, I had already spent years watching how the world actually operated, rather than how it was supposed to. That gap between the two became something I paid close attention to, not by design at first, but out of necessity. When you are young and navigating adult environments without the credentials or the protection that formal education provides, you learn to read situations carefully. You notice patterns because missing them has consequences.
When I eventually got to university, I think I brought that habit with me into the academic work. The literature made a different kind of sense because I had already seen some of it playing out in real people and real rooms. I have always thought of it as getting the best of both worlds, the formal training in molecular biology and behavioural science, and the prior education that no curriculum designs for you. The introversion helped too. People who are naturally quiet in social situations tend to spend more time observing than performing, and that has its own slow yield.
What you describe as seeing below the surface, I think of as simply taking seriously the distance between what something appears to be and what it is. Your work on longing does exactly that. You are not describing the surface experience of absence. You are pointing at the structure underneath it, what it is doing, what it is organising around. That is the move that makes clinical writing worth reading.
Your question has extended my own thinking here more than I expected it to. I will be returning to the "sacred dimensions" door. I suspect what is behind it is precisely this, the question of what we are responsible to once recognition has happened. That feels like the natural next territory for the longer work.
With real appreciation, Tom
"And if we learn, over time, to listen with this inward ear, we may begin to sense that our aliveness is not only something we feel deep within ourselves, but something that asks us to give it expression in the wider currents of life itself." To me, today's article provided organization around what I've done and still do when I feel "off." Like you, it usually centers on being outdoors, time that's spiritual or meditative, or some combination of those. My touch point often comes from a suggestion my therapist made decades ago — a studio picture of me when I was about three years old, hair in a ponytail, big brown eyes looking soulfully at the camera. That picture has been on my desk for a very long time and reminds me of who I am. I'm so grateful for your writing and this article in particular.
Cindy - I very much appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this article, particularly what you find helpful about it but also what your own therapist has helped you do in relation to what you have in that picture of yourself. I hope your therapist doesn't mind me borrowing this. Quite moving in that portrayal on many different levels.
It's also nice to know when my writing has been helpful in some fashion. Sort of like a bit of "scientific validity" if you will.
The article has been coalescing, for decades, in the back of my mind. Most operative when I go hiking and find myself in the midst of a sensation of awe. I am excited but also I'm saddened for reasons I don't always understand. Life has a strange way of coming together at points. Thank you for being a part of that movement.
I'm so glad you felt the value in my 'muse.' And even though my therapist and I parted amicably and then sadly lost track of each other through several moves, I feel certain he'd appreciate your ability to use his suggestion to me in any way you can. Like you, he's extremely well educated and, as a scholar, very generous.
Thank you, I found that helpful
Thank you for reading it John and letting me know. I'd love to hear a bit of how it was helpful, within reason of course, should you have the time and inclination. Sometimes we don't always know until someone unpacks it a little. Plus, you are a wordsmith and so that in itself makes me smile.
I will but leave it with me. Using John and his story was hugely helpful in understanding your thesis. I think it helped me understand or remind me that everything we need to be whole is within reaching distance. John needed to be present in his own garden with his own child, not in the garden of his past. I want to digest it and read it again. But I will get back to you.
Yes, there are times, often enough, when given my focus in life I'm better able to convey what I'm thinking in relation to those I work with. At times, to do it otherwise, my writing becomes overly muddled.
It's all yours for awhile. I'm glad to hand it over and let someone else mull over it a bit. Again, thank you.
Very enjoyable read. Making meaning seems to give our lives purpose
Thank you Dr Chambre, I'm glad to hear it :) Meaning, It certaintly does at that. What are you up to these days? Something meaningful I hope!
I am working on my practice and working on learning on Substack, How about you
Trying to slow down and take it easy a bit. I have been inundated with too much stress + online technology/screens. Not good for my sense of enjoyment in life. I suppoe you might say trying to practice what I preach.