THERE were times recently, when I felt as if I was being hurled around the universe in Dr Who’s Tardis.

No adventures in the future, but numerous trips, both physical and emotional, into the past. These included two funerals, a college reunion, a BBC5Live anniversary reunion, a grandson in a school concert playing a superb Beatles medley and the first Mother’s Day after my mother’s death last year.

Emotions experienced ranged from hilarity, laughter, poignancy, joy, sadness to tears. To my surprise, most tears trickled down my cheek at the school concert.

Over two weeks, I met some wonderful, inspiring, courageous, ordinary people. People who reminded me of past loves, hurts, adventures, successes, failures, hopes and dashed expectations. And that’s the point. Whatever the experiences, they were all in the past.

The 200 teenage boys at the concert really bought this home. They were full of expectations of a future - just as I was when listening to the Beatles music in the 1960s. Expectations of life that will turn out to be nothing like they may be imagining.

As a psychotherapist, I discovered that the majority of reasons people become unwell with emotional health problems is that they are endeavouring to change things in their life that cannot be changed. Too often people want to change the past and get stuck in therapy, on medication or with addictive behaviours, trying to do the impossible or waiting for the impossible to happen.


Reflection

Imagine a rainbow.

It could be a memory of a real experience, or a figment of the imagination.

We become lost in wonder at the rainbow’s form and the spectrum of rich colours in a changing sky.

We are momentarily entranced and we marvel at the rainbow’s natural beauty and its transient nature.

Our eyes wander to where the end of it disappears... the image fades.

It was a moment of innocent wonder and curiosity.

For a few precious seconds the intrusion of our everyday activities was excluded.

No harm was done. In fact, we may even feel uplifted.

Now, let us imagine another rainbow.

Again, we become entranced by it, but this time we concentrate on where the rainbow ends.

We remember the stories and myths we heard as children.

Is there really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

A pot of gold that would provide a resolution to all our problems?

We want it, and we want it now!

Leaving common sense and reason behind, we chase the end of the rainbow, again and again.

We keep trying, but the end is just out of reach and always unobtainable.

We feel disappointed, frustrated and weary.

Will we ever reach it? No. The pot of gold of resolution is the delusion in the illusion, but we continue to reach for and chase the end of the rainbow.

In fact, the more we try, the more we can become deluded.

We can become emotionally and physically unwell.

Rita Leaman is a psychotherapist and writer who lives in North Yorkshire. As Alison R Russell, she is the author of Are You Chasing Rainbows?  www.chasingrainbows.org.uk