Caravan Drop-In and Counselling Service

As many of those who find their way to St James’s church soon discover, tucked away behind the fountain and steps in the garden is a small green shepherds hut, only the most recent incarnation of the Caravan (thecaravan.org.uk), that in one form or another has been here for more than 40 years providing emotional support and free counselling for those who are in crisis.

I remember one client who was walking by in a state of desolation, saw our sandwich board at the gate, and in an impulse, walked in and knocked on the door of the Caravan.  She had recently lost her beloved cat, and felt alone, suicidal and alienated.  ‘No one understands my grief’.  She didn’t understand her grief.  It had possessed her, and she was beside herself.

Listening therapy tries to do something different than other essential services.  Social workers have a goal to resolve problems in peoples external lives; medical / psychiatric professionals diagnose, name and treat.  Listening therapy is where people bring their dangerous thoughts that have nowhere else safe to go.  We try to not judge or push away with fixes or diagnoses, and to walk alongside our clients, wherever they are.  In short, to ‘be with’.

Being alone in the darkest place is completely different from having someone there with you.  It transforms the experience.  Considering all the ways we consciously and unconsciously separate ourselves from others, even the idea that ‘I’m ok, and you’re not ok’ is a barrier to truly being with someone.

I remember one client who had lived in a Caravan when she was a child, and discovering The Caravan service, dropped in and shared her story of childhood abuse in her family.  When she had reported this at 18 years old, she had had to leave the place she had grown up in, and sitting in the Caravan, bawled in grief at the loss of home on so many levels.

A woman of the windrush generation dropped in regularly to talk about her history of racism in Britain, and her moments of belonging and love.  Her nobility of spirit brought me to tears, her anger was hard to bear.

I remember a man who had arrived as a refugee and wandered London with just a rucksack to his name.  He turned up for his slot every week.  Transient everywhere except this place that was his, with someone who knew him.  He slowly shared his stories of man’s inhumanity to man.

The volunteer therapists in the Caravan are students from CCPE (The Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education – ccpe.org.uk) and are usually in the second or third year of a five to seven year training program to become UKCP registered psychotherapists.

CCPE is a centre for transpersonal psychotherapy, which essentially means psychotherapy with a spiritual perspective. The spiritual perspective offers space for the sacred elements of peoples lives, whatever that looks like.  Life crises and early betrayals all seek to be transformed, and this yearning to be known, to surrender our burden is as valid to an atheist as it is to anyone.  We are all united, inside the church or outside by a universal desire to be seen, understood and find meaning.

I remember a man with severe mental health difficulties, who was alone.  So lonely and feeling so worthless that when someone else knocked on the door, he tried to give them his time in the Caravan, and the therapist was able to gently put her hand on his arm and say this time was for him.

I remember a man, who feared doing something terrible.  Gradually letting go of his obsessive fear, as we explored his feeling of being ‘bad’, and he began to be able to bear the experience of being ‘good’.  He did so much for others, permanently making amends for something he had never done.

I remember one woman, who had experienced a terrible assault, and felt unable to hug her children.  Surrendering her feeling of defilement and rediscovering her preciousness.

There is the potential for growth as we develop the qualities needed.   We especially need to find meaning in our difficult experiences, and holding a space for the sacred is to honour those who show such courage and bring their stories to the Caravan.

I remember a woman, who was always dressed smartly, turn up on Christmas eve, tell me she was a rough sleeper, and filled me in on which hostels had gangs operate, which ones were safe, and which ones weren’t safe, signposting her difficult experiences obliquely as points on a map of London.  She had missed entry to somewhere for Christmas, and we looked together for somewhere else for her to go while we drank tea and sat in the warmth for 50 minutes.

A man who shared that he had dropped in to the Caravan 5 years ago for a single session with someone when he was faltering with his recovery from addiction, who had managed to get through that time and remain sober, and he left one of his medals in gratitude.

So many stories, so much meaning settles on the Caravan, this place where people bring their burdens, and it is like a grace that enriches us all.

(All names and stories are anonymized stories from Caravan clients)