Terry Burridge Counselling

05/01/2026

The Real Meaning of Christmas?

One of the questions I most often ask my patients is “What does that mean to you?”when they are describing an event or experience. The answer is revealing. It is an important question because It allows us to think about their value system. So, two people can describe a similar experience but respond to it in quite different ways. (Think of the story of three blind men in a room with an elephant. Each man describes the elephant differently because they cannot see the whole creature. So in therapy. Each person describes their experience from their current viewpoint. It is part of the task of the therapist to bring to light other aspects of the patient’s story. To create a more 3D picture.)

This blog was prompted as we celebrated, or not, Christmas. Today is the twelfth day of Christmas, when decorations are traditionally taken down and we can reflect on the event as a whole. Christmas is always a demanding time. An almost impossible event to try and ignore. It divides us into factions. Those who love Christmas and those who loathe it. Each year we hear the cry that we are missing the “real* meaning of Christmas. Which begs the obvious question, “Is there a” Real “meaning to Christmas?

So with the “Real” meaning of Christmas. There can be no “true” meaning. For some it’s a religious festival, celebrating the birth of Jesus. For others it’s a family time. Where we all try and get on with each other for a protracted period of time. (In the UK the divorce rate goes up post New Year with January known as Divorce month). For some it’s a time for Good works, helping with a soup kitchen or similar. For others, the fortunate ones, it can be a time to relax and enjoy some well earned downtime. In any event Christmas is unavoidable. (Ironically, even the act of avoiding Christmas can serve as a reminder of what we are trying to avoid!).

The French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan describes The Real as “the dimension of experience that lies beyond language, symbolization, and imagination”. It seems to me that we might describe a “real” Christmas in similar terms. All too often Christmas is overlaid not with Gold , Frankincense and Myrrh but with impossible dreams of a kind of emotional Never-Never land where reality does not prevail and growing up doesn’t happen. (Not too surprising that the su***de rates also go up in January. )

So, what am I saying about the “real” meaning of Christmas? That as Lacan puts it, the whole event is laden with unconscious values and expectations such that “Reality” finds itself homeless - along with the infant Jesus. As my work with individual patients is to help them build a full and complete picture of themselves and their lives, so this blog is an attempt to allow people to build a “Real” Christmas - whatever that might look like.

And your “Real Christmas” will be entirely different to mine. Your Christmas might be Midnight Mass followed by a celebratory glass of something. Your neighbour might be in their local enjoying a few beers and a darts match. There is no “True” Christmas to find. There is only the Christmas you create each year. And there is the “secret”. You own Christmas, not vice versa.

(Photo by Morgane Le Breton on Unsplash)

19/12/2025

A week ago I came out of hospital following surgery for cancer of the colon. It was successful from a medical perspective. They found and removed the cancer with no secondaries discovered. As one nurse put it “You’re lucky. Nobody wants cancer but bowel cancer is the best kind to have.” ( A league table of cancers. A new thought although I take the point! I was “lucky” in that my symptoms were not severe and the cancer was caught in its early stages.)
I was duly admitted to hospital arriving for a 7:30 a.m. appointment for surgery that day. It was a little worrying to find the doors locked, nobody on duty and diversion signs barely obvious.
(Long live our NHS? Maybe.).

This was disconcerting, having got up at 5:30 to avoid the traffic and get a parking space. When we were finally on the ward, the de-personalisation process began. Away with my day clothes and on with the theatre gown as I left behind my civilian identity and became hospital number 123456 (or its equivalent.) The rest of the day is lost to my memory as I underwent a six hour operation. The next thing I remember is being woken up to have my blood pressure taken. (An important part of hospital life. Every morning at six is B.P. time. It’s almost a sacred ritual.)

My point is not to complain about having my B.P. monitored. Nurses have their tasks to do and making sure I’m still alive is an important one. But it’s the lack of any useful information about one’s stay in hospital. And some of the important information was wrong which delayed my surgery by a week until the error was corrected. It meant missing an important family occasion because I wasn’t well enough to travel.The free flow of information it wasn’t!

In 1988 a psychoanalyst, Elizabeth Menzies Leith produced a book on nursing and its defences. In it she suggested that nursing is structured and organised in such a way as to minimise nurses becoming over emotionally attached to their patients and suffering the repeated pain of saying “Goodbye” many times over. She suggested that the whole structure of nursing was a defence against these anxieties. The task oriented nature of Adult nursing. The shift patterns and the whole ethos of a ward or clinical area are designed to keep a “safe” distance between nurse and patient and to avoid any painful attachments.

Certainly this was my experience over a week . No nurse ever introduced themselves as my Named nurse for the shift. Or indeed ever introduced themselves. There was no attempt made to get to know me as a fellow human being. (Despite being corrected by me a half a dozen times a shift, I was consistently called “Terence” instead of my usual “Terry”. Why waste my breath? Simply that I was “Terry” and have been most of my conscious life. If you’re going to nurse me, at least call me by my proper name. It’s not difficult.)

What added insult to injury was that my ward overlooked the university campus where I had worked for a number of years. I taught in the nursing department of the Faculty of Health. Fortunately I taught Mental Health nursing. Otherwise I might have despaired and gone to Tesco stacking shelves!

So, my score card for the staff who nursed me recently. A rather feeble 5/10 “Must try harder. Much room for improvement.”

20/11/2025

There’s a reason Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam is considered one of the most important images in the history of art. God reaching out to Adam — that nearly–touching moment — has come to represent the giving of life, consciousness, and perhaps even something deeper: a meeting between two beings that irreversibly transforms them both.

It’s this idea of meeting that I want to explore, particularly through the lens of the philosopher and theologian Martin Buber, whose writings on “I and …” relationships have shaped the way many of us think about human connection.

Buber described three fundamental kinds of relationships: I–It, I–You, and I–Thou. It’s the last of these that interests me here. He describes an “I–Thou” encounter as a direct, mutual, sacred way of relating — one in which individuals meet each other as whole beings. I often think of it simply as Personhood. Others might call it God, the Divine, the Transcendent, the Wholly Other. Whatever the word, the sense is the same: being connected to something bigger than myself.

And yet describing this kind of connection is notoriously difficult. Words buckle under the strain, as T.S. Eliot reminds us: “Words strain, crack and sometimes break…” So, with due humility, I’ll do my best — and trust you’ll follow what I mean.

What did Buber mean by I–Thou?

You may have heard the phrase “a moment of meeting” in psychotherapy. It refers to those rare instances of deep connection and shift — when therapist and client meet each other not as roles, but as real beings. They don’t happen often, and when they do, they feel like a gift.

A moment of meeting is a little like the creation of a child. No one can claim sole authorship; it’s always a joint effort. In therapy, the therapist creates the conditions for change, but nothing happens without the client’s readiness to receive, respond, and co-create the transformation.

But these moments aren’t limited to the therapy room. Like grace, which I wrote about in a previous blog, they can appear anywhere, often when we least expect them. And this is where Buber becomes especially helpful.

A concise definition of I–Thou might be:
A mutual, direct, authentic encounter where each person meets the other as a whole, unique being — without judgement, agenda, or objectification.

These encounters can happen in prayer, worship, s*x, nature, play, or any moment of genuine intimacy. Sometimes they show up in the most ordinary places: in supermarkets, queues, bus stops, or gyms.

Just the other day in my gym, a woman I’ve been chatting with recently told me she hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and felt lonely. I listened. I nodded. I made a mental note to invite her over for dinner. It was small, unplanned, and unmistakably an I–Thou moment.

I’m due for surgery later this week and expect to be in hospital for about a week. I wonder how many I–Thou encounters I’ll have there. Last time I ended up nearly having a fist fight with a nurse who decided I was “difficult and demanding.” One hopes not to meet him again.

Two encounters stand out from my years as a counsellor and nurse.

The first happened in a park with a patient. We were watching pigeons doing very pigeon-like things. I began humming Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” My patient joined in, and soon we were strolling through De Crespigny Park singing Lehrer at the tops of our voices. Fortunately, no one heard us, or we might both have been sectioned.�It was absurd, joyful, and unexpectedly sacred.

The second happened on a ward. I had arranged four times to spend an hour with a patient, and four times I’d had to cancel because of ward pressures. On the fifth attempt, I went to cancel again.

“I’m sorry, Tim, but I’ve got to cancel our meeting again,” I said.

“That’s alright…” he began. Then he stopped. “No. It’s not alright. I want to talk with you.”

There it was. Realness. Personhood.

I said, “Give me two minutes.”�I went back to the office, handed the keys to another nurse and said, “I haven’t managed to see Tim all week and he’s cross. See you in an hour.”

For me, that was a profound I–Thou moment. My patient had become real, and so had I.

So wherever you are, in hospital, in the park, in the gym, in a queue, in prayer, or in conversation, may your days be filled with I–Thou encounters.�Or perhaps more accurately: may they find you.

12/11/2025

The photo is of Truro cathedral, which we recently visited. I was struck by the grace of the arches. My engineer wife tells me that the arch design is not simply an aesthetic choice, but a practical one. Straightforward vertical columns don’t work with this kind of structure - for reasons way beyond my poor comprehension. My mind saw these arches as a kind of grace. One definition of Grace is “smoothness of thought or of movement’ or of “courteous and elegant good will”. I like the idea of courteous good will in a cathedral. A building dedicated, we hope, to speaking of God’s grace.

Thinking of Grace took my mind back to an incident in my early years as a psychiatric nurse. It was a busy acute admission ward with regular admissions and discharges - often with people whom we didn’t know. This meant we had to rely on someone else’s assessment to plan our nursing care. One day we admitted a young woman in her early 30’s who was, we were told, both a su***de risk and s*xually disinhibited. To this end she was placed on Close Observations, which meant she was never to be more than arm’s length from her nurse at any time. One shift and it was my hour of Close Obs on Clare. I followed her around the ward like a faithful spaniel. Tedious and intrusive but not too dreadful. Then she went into the female dormitory. “What to do??” I leant against the dormitory wall, hands deep in my pockets. (Protecting my crown jewels?) As she came back Clare gave me a kiss on the cheek, stepped back and smiled at me.
“That’s to teach you not to be afraid of me, Terry”, she said as she left the dormitory.
I think I learned more from that encounter than from many a lecture given during my training. I experienced it as a moment of Grace in which I was given a free gift.

What was that gift? It was several things. Firstly, it taught me not always to listen to the judgement of others but to make up my own mind. I have found this to be particularly true when working with patients with a diagnosis of Personality disorder or Borderline Personality disorder. A group all too often pilloried or feared, and rarely understood. A lesson that has stood me in good stead over nearly forty years in clinical work.

Another lesson that Clare gave me was that good clinical work is a two way process. Our patients give to us as much as we give to them. I can think of several examples where the work has been long and difficult. For both of us. My patient and myself. Yet at the end healing and change have occurred for my patient and valuable lessons learned by me. Not necessarily a kiss on the cheek, but moments of meeting nonetheless.

And finally, I think I learned something about openness. I have worked with nurses who seemed to despise their patients and resent them. (Perhaps forgetting that this work pays their mortgage, at its most basic value.) My own experience as a counsellor as well as a nurse is that as I am experienced as open and available, so my patient responds in kind. I have in mind a patient who, after seeing me for several years, was able to share her thoughts on spirituality. A topic that mattered to her a great deal. But she waited until she could be confident that I would also value her thoughts and hopes.

So, these are my reflections on the Truro arches. I hope you too find your moments of Grace.

21/10/2025

Blog

I find under the boughs of love and hate,In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

To the Rose upon the Rood of time W.B.Yeats

I’ve always been intrigued by this painting. Is it a joyous celebration of Life ? Or an image of pain and suffering? Or both? I’m never sure whether the central figure has her arms raised in triumph or in crucifixion? Similarly with the other two characters. Are they enjoying a dance of joyful celebration or fragmented by pain? The picture lends itself to either interpretation.

The quote from Yeats expresses very well the theme of this blog. The place of both love and hate in our psyche. And how difficult it can be to know that we are capable of feeling both. Often at the same time and about the same thing. As Juliet cries at Romeo’s tomb - “My only love sprung from my only hate. Too early seen, unknown, and known too late.” (Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet) As usual the bard got there first acknowledging that Love and Hate are twins. One cannot meet one without the other.

One of my patients used to read a bedtime story to her young son and kiss him goodnight. One evening he wanted nothing to do with her, refusing his story and turning away from her kiss. “I don’t want you.” he cried. “I want daddy” At that moment they hated each other. He hated her because she wasn’t daddy. And she hated him for this rejection of her. We talked about this incident. She was shocked by the force of his rejection and by her powerful reaction to it. I suggested that his hate was only possible because he also knew that he loved his mummy very much. That she would contain his angry feelings without rejecting him. It was a painful and powerful lesson for both of them, which was not possible if Love and Hate were not both acknowledged and experienced. Happily, she was able to talk to him. It turned out to be less about her and more about his wanting more “daddy time”. He spent much of his time with mummy whilst daddy was out at work. He didn’t need or want any more mummy time. He wanted daddy time.

I’ll explore this process of integrating our love and our hate more fully in part 2 of this blog.

Photo from Tate Gallery

11/10/2025

Still moving on

When I was thinking about this follow-on blog, a memory surfaced, from a long time ago when I was working as a Church Army volunteer. It’s an incident from the active evangelising work we did during the summer season in Weymouth. In an evening a group of us would gather on the beach with guitars and a flip chart. We would sing a few choruses, do some light heart doodles on the flip chart and then somebody would give a brief talk/sermon. Then we’d go up from the beach and witness to those tourists who had stayed behind, leaning on the railings. Our aim was to witness to them and invite them to become a Christian there and then. I don’t know what our success rate was. Mine was zero.

I always considered myself the most spiritual of the group on the grounds that my prayer was always “Dear God, don’t let there be anyone who wants to talk to me.” My prayer was nearly always answered. By the time I got to the railings everybody had gone. Except one time when I got into conversation with a sailor. It quickly became clear that he had no wish to be saved. But we chatted for another ten minutes or so. About many things but mostly his life as a sailor. It was a rich an enjoyable conversation. After he left I felt slightly guilty that I hadn’t tried harder to convert him.

I relate this incident not to explain why I was never going to be a second Billy Graham but to reflect on why I left Christian fundamentalism behind. I enjoyed meeting this chap and talking with him. I was simply meeting with another person. I wasn’t out to save his soul. I simply engaged with another human being who was happy to talk with me.

What does this have to do with my leaving fundamentalism? It’s to do with why I became a psychiatric nurse and, subsequently, a therapist. Both allow me to have interesting and meaningful conversations with people. And conversations which allow me to explore my patient’s inner worlds, not save them from eternal death and hell (a place some of them know too well anyway), but to help them grow and heal and live richer lives. And to be enriched myself by the meeting.

I was listening to a YouTube vireo recently with Don Carveth talking about theology and psychoanalysis. At one point he comments that the word “psyche” which we translate as “Mind” can equally translate as “Soul”. A point I was recently making with one of my patients who asked me what I believed in. My reply was that I saw therapy as”Soul healing”; a view she liked.

So, where does that leave the Evangelical fundamentalist me? Still alive in many ways although I no longer quote biblical texts at people. Nor do I stand on street corners on a Saturday afternoon preaching the Gospel with my loud speaker and my “Jesus Saves” banner. Instead I spend 50 minute several times a week listening to my patients telling their stories. Together we try to join up the dots to create a picture of who they are why. And to allow them to review the emerging picture. To change some bits and keep others. I call it “soul making”. Others will call it theology. Both seem to be talking about Salvation.

Photo by Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash

08/10/2025

Many years ago, aged 13 , I “went forward” at a Billy Graham rally. I invited Jesus to be my personal saviour. That set the pattern for my religious beliefs for the next 30 years or so. I was an evangelical’s evangelical. A charismatic’s charismatic. I preached the Word on street corners; cast out demons; prayed and fasted. I was good at this Christianity! And continued in this vein throughout my college course where I staunchly defended all the evangelical doctrines in the face of the liberal heresies taught by my lecturers. Nothing would pass unless it was Evangelical. Never mind Paul Tillich, I had Jim Packer. For every Bultmann, there was an F F Bruce to defend the Truth.

This continued for many more years culminating in getting married and joining a small Christian community which was attempting to live a life akin to that of the Early church. We had all things in common. A common purse. Shared cars. And regular twice daily prayer times. “Eat your heart out, St.Paul. Hitchin Christian Fellowship is here!” We lasted about five years before splitting up for a variety of reasons. (Mostly, I think, for issues around the upbringing of children. Adults will tolerate quite a range of things for themselves. Child rearing is quite another. )

I carried on with my psychiatric nursing and eventually spent a few years seeing a psychotherapist three times a week. Here I began to explore my Christian beliefs in a way that was different. Until that point I had not explored my faith with anyone who was not a fellow believer. The advantage here is that there is a tacit belief that some doctrines are a given and not open to exploration. Chief amongst these doctrines is the view that Man is a fallen creature who can only be redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross. This is usually an agreed formulation before one starts to question other tenets. The point of seeing a therapist was that there was nothing stopping me exploring any and all my Christian beliefs. I discovered as I did this that my christianity was, in many ways, a defence. A defence against not being entirely sure who - or what - I might be without the cloak of fundamentalism. It was a difficult journey, particularly for my wife who had to explain for a number of Sundays, why I wasn’t attending meetings. (Eventually she stopped making excuses for me and simply said “He’s not coming any more.” The meeting stopped asking after a while.)

But this process wasn’t entirely a negative one. As I continued my exploration, I found myself more and more going back to the “liberal” theology of my college days. So rather than a “Big Bang” version of God, I went back to Paul Tillich’s formulation of God as the Ground of our being. Rather than a Final Day of Judgement I took on the idea that every day is a judgement day where we are judged against Christ’s standards. (Technically known as Realised eschatology.) The list is long and I won’t recite it here! But looking at my faith from a different perspective has opened up many conversations that weren’t possible for me as a fundamentalist. The main difference is, I think, that as an Evangelical believer any conversation had to lead to a challenge. “Are you saved? If not, let me help you towards the Light.”
As a clinician I have all manner of conversations with my patients about their view of “the round world and all that therein is.” Conversations which as a “bible believing Christian” would not have been possible.

Photo by Carley and Matt on Unsplash

28/09/2025

Over recent months I’ve had to use a mobility scooter to get around town or any other venue
It’s a nerve racking experience. Dodging teenagers (and others!) focusing on their mobile. They walk along a busy street chatting away to their screens and look offended if I shout a loud “Excuse me!” (I now understand why Boudica had scythes fitted to her chariot!)
The other problem is that I don’t belong anywhere. If I ride on a main road I slow down the cars and risk getting killed. If I ride on the pavement I have to have X-ray vision to spot the pedestrian stepping out of a doorway. Then when I’ve taken all these safety measures, I have to find a dropped kerb or else my scooter gets stuck on the pavement. (This happened yesterday and it took three strong men to re-launch me.”Thanks chaps!”)

The point here is not to complain about needing to use a mobility scooter. (My life would be poorer without one.) Rather I want to think about “belonging”. I’m struck by the experience of being a displaced person in my own town. I don’t belong on the main roads; nor on the pavements nor in the shops. I’m stateless - through no fault of my own.

My “suffering” is minimal when compared to the thousands of truly displaced people in the world. On current figures, Sudan has the highest number of displaced persons - a huge 14 million people who are stateless through no fault of their own. Doing the sums and 1 in 67 people are currently classified as a displaced person. (Do the sums next time you’re in the supermarket and see how many people might be classified as a displaced person. )

What does it feel like to be a displaced person? Here’s one view:
“You can never go home. I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies. It was never easy being a refugee, regardless of what people might never be able to see. Displaced from your truth, running away from the shell, counting the fears over the scars and the hell.” (Simona Prilogan)
Somehow traversing Aylesbury’s mean streets doesn’t feel quite so bad!

30/03/2025

Rethinking Motherhood: More Than Just an Ideal
As it's Mother’s Day, I started thinking about what "mother" truly means. I expected its origins to be tied to nurturing or caregiving, but surprisingly, the roots are uncertain. Parenthood, after all, is as unique as the individuals who experience it.
Rather than the idealized quotes we often see, I find comfort in Donald Winnicott’s idea of the "good enough mother"—one who nurtures but also allows her child to grow independently. No two experiences of being mothered (or being a mother) are the same, and that’s okay.
This Mother’s Day, maybe the best gift is giving yourself space to reflect on what motherhood means to you. ❤️

With Mother’s Day approaching, it’s worth reflecting on what "mother" truly means. While often linked to nurturing, the word itself has uncertain origins—much like the varied experiences of motherhood.

16/02/2025

Valentine’s Day: A Tough Day for Some 💕
Valentine’s Day isn’t just about overpriced roses and candlelit dinners—it can also be a tough reminder for those still searching for love. If you find yourself repeating unhealthy relationship patterns or feeling like love is always just out of reach, it might be time to look inward.
Counselling offers a space to explore your self-worth, past experiences, and the expectations that shape your relationships. Too often, people—especially women—end up in relationships that mirror their past hurts, mistaking the familiar for the safe. Others keep chasing the “perfect” partner, never allowing themselves to settle into something real and lasting.
The truth? There’s no such thing as perfect love—just good enough love, shared between two good enough people. And that’s where the real magic happens.
So if today feels heavy, be kind to yourself. The best relationship you’ll ever have starts with you. ❤️

Struggling with love on Valentine’s Day? This blog explores how self-worth shapes our relationships and why some people find themselves in toxic patterns. Whether you're searching for love or stuck in a cycle of disappointment, counselling can help you break free and build a “good enough” rela...

12/02/2025

Counselling is more than just talking—it's about truly being there for someone. Whether through deep listening, making connections to past experiences, or holding space in silence, therapy provides a place to feel seen and heard.

In a world full of noise, having the space to just be can be incredibly healing.

Counselling is more than just talking—it’s about truly being there for someone. Whether through deep listening, making connections to past experiences, or simply holding space in silence, therapy offers a place to be heard and understood. In a world filled with noise, the chance to just "be" can...

02/02/2025

Embracing Your Shadow: The Power of Self-Discovery 🌟

We all have a hidden side—the part of us that feels anger, resentment, or even hate. It’s called the shadow, and whether we like it or not, it influences our thoughts and actions. Ever lost your temper in traffic? Felt unfairly treated and wanted revenge, even for a split second? That’s your shadow at work.

Counselling helps us acknowledge and integrate this side of ourselves, allowing us to live more fully and make better choices. Understanding our darkness doesn’t make us bad—it makes us whole. 💡

Read more in my latest blog: http://www.aylesburycounsellor.co.uk/light_and_shadow

Counselling helps us integrate our shadow side—the hidden, unconscious parts of ourselves that hold repressed thoughts, feelings, and impulses. By acknowledging and understanding our darkness, we gain the power to make informed choices, navigate emotions like anger and resentment, and live more fu...