Therapists around the world are cranking back to work. After the long and sometimes idle days of summer, it can be a shock to the system to get going again. However, too longer in the paradise of summer has its down side too! Too much inactivity, food, drink and sun can make the body cancerous and inert. The fantasy of being on holiday forever, is just that. A holiday forever rarely if ever delivers what it promises. As Carl Jung said, we need problems. Without problems we atrophy, stagnate, and get bored. The human mind and body need a gradient to work against. Too steep and we get demoralised. Too flat and we fail to get stimulated. But if we find the right gradient we are onto something. The Kenyan marathon runners who run hills know that. They develop muscles, they train their bodies to work against something. Athletes who go to the gym know you need to lift weights. Weights provide stimulation to the muscles and bones spurring growth and repair.
Weights even stimulate bone growth. Sometimes we may wish for weightless days of summer, carefree, downhill, and freewheeling. But that only makes sense if we can return to the gravity of our lives. The weight, sometimes burdensome, is also essential for our psychological and physical development.

As we change gears, and the days become incrementally shorter, and cooler, it may be a good time to reflect where we are going. The blue moon is pulling the tide this way and that. Tropical storms are battering the world. Traffic control systems are breaking down and leading to chaos as people criss cross the world. Whilst psychotherapists are increasingly interested in external weather systems, and climate catastrophe, they are equally attuned to our internal weather systems. What is the climate inside us?

As we pack away the sun tan lotion and get back to reality, what have been avoiding, what do we find in our psychological inbox? Are we feeling replenished and revitalised? Are we able to approach difficulties with new vigour and flair? Or are we faced with the same old dead ends? Can we bring some of our holiday spirit to our work?

There are times to go into hiding, and times to emerge and face the world. As August draws to a close, new possibilities emerge. As i find myself transported from the sunny climate of California, to the grey September clouds of south London, the change is inescapable.