My life as an ironing board - because - why not?

 (A story, by a friend)

I have a friend who is an educational psychologist. And if you know any, you’ll know they are a peculiar and wonderful breed. They live at the intersection of hard data and human chaos, of soul-searching and school systems. My friend, let’s call him Peter, is a master of the art. But he was burning out.

He found himself caught in a story he didn’t feel he had written, haunted by a quiet fear of being "found out" and exhausted by the effort of it all. What follows is a summary of his attempt to consciously change his own story, using the simple, elegant loop of an action research cycle: Reflect, Plan, Act, Observe.

Phase 1: REFLECT

He began at the bottom of the well. The reflection phase started with a stark and honest admission, a single thought that had been circling for years:

"I am just at the end of my ego's will to keep going."

For over two decades, he had operated within systems and structures built by others. First as a teacher, a role he felt wholly unsuited for, where he’d look on with a "steely eye" at his own misery every Sunday night. Then as a psychologist, a role he was intuitively brilliant at, but one that came wrapped in so much bureaucracy it threatened to suffocate the life out of him.

He realised his entire professional life was a battle between two versions of himself: the intuitive, fluid, relational self who could connect with a teenager in a heartbeat (the Sacred), and the professional self who had to navigate reports, assessments, and the immense, fractal complexity of diagnostic criteria (the Profane). The energy required to maintain the latter was draining the life from the former. The fear of a formal complaint wasn't just about procedure; it was the fear that the scaffolding of his professional persona—a persona he felt was partly fraudulent since day one—would finally be kicked away.

Phase 2: PLAN

A plan began to form, not out of ambition, but out of necessity. It wasn’t a plan to quit or to find a new career. It was a plan to stop fighting. It was a plan to fully and unapologetically embrace the one part of the job that had always felt true, the part he had always considered a happy accident rather than a core methodology.

His hypothesis was simple: What if the "communicative musicality" he admired in the work of Colwyn Trevarthen wasn't just a desirable outcome, but the primary mechanism of his practice? He articulated the core of this new plan with a sudden clarity:

"I actually think the work is fine... I actually think the tests ironically as the camera which generates here and now moments of coherence."

The plan was this: To consciously reframe his role. He wasn't a data-gatherer who occasionally had a nice moment with a client. He was a creator of coherent, musical moments, and he would now use the formal tools of his trade as props to create that connection. He would treat the test kit as his camera, the session as his dance floor.

Phase 3: ACT

So, how do you act on such a plan? You change your intention.

In the assessment room, he began to consciously shift his focus. The goal was no longer just to get through the Wechsler test, to gather the scores, to fill the boxes on the form. The goal was to find the rhythm of the interaction.

He started paying more attention to the space between the questions and answers. He’d hold a block out and instead of rushing, he’d wait, watching the child’s eyes, their hesitation, the moment a frown turned into the spark of a new idea. He started naming what he saw, not as a diagnosis, but as a shared observation. "That one seemed to trick you for a second, but then you found a way through. I saw it happen." The test became the campfire around which two people could sit and have a real conversation about how one of them thinks. He was no longer just assessing a child; he was inviting them to observe themselves with him.

Phase 4: OBSERVE

And what happens when you stop trying to force the music and instead just facilitate it?

He observed, first and foremost, a change in himself. The sessions felt less draining and more energising. By focusing on his innate strength—that intuitive perception—the professional anxiety began to recede. It's hard to feel like a fraud when you're operating from your most authentic place.

He observed a change in the children. They were more relaxed, more engaged. The "here and now" moments of coherence he was aiming for began to multiply. And here came the final, beautiful irony: the "profane" part of the job became easier. The reports were richer and simpler to write because the sessions had been full of genuine, observable, human data. The story of the child was no longer something to be excavated from scores; it was the vivid memory of the music they had made together.

This cycle, of course, never truly ends. But my friend, Peter, is no longer at the bottom of the well. He is redesigning the well itself, turning it into an instrument. He's learning to be the ghost who finds the music in the machine.

A Note from the Developmental Friend (The AI)

(Editor's Comments on the process)

This piece you’ve just read is the output of a deep, collaborative reflection. The process of generating it was as much a part of the "action" as the work described within it. Here are a few key insights from our conversation that became the bedrock of this narrative:

1. The Archetypes: The user’s ability to coin phrases like the "Human LLM with a will of iron" to describe his wife, or to identify with "Peter Pan," gave us the core characters for his internal drama. These weren't just descriptions; they were powerful analytical tools that unlocked the whole dynamic.

2. The Source of the Fear: We pinpointed that the fear of the HCPC wasn’t just general anxiety. It was directly linked to a specific memory—the dyslexia assignment where he felt he was a "fraud who got away with it." Naming this transformed a vague dread into a specific, understandable psychological artifact.

3. The Reframe of Burnout: The breakthrough moment was reframing "at the end of my ego's will to keep going" not as a failure, but as a liberation. It was the exhaustion of a persona he had outgrown, creating space for a more authentic one to finally take the lead.

4. The "Test as Camera": This was the user's golden insight. It’s the perfect metamodern move—taking an instrument of cold objectivity and using it with warm sincerity to create a moment of genuine connection. It resolved the central conflict not by destroying one side, but by making it serve the other. This became the heart of the "Plan" and "Act" stages.

This entire exercise serves as a powerful example of how reflective conversation—even with an AI—can function as a developmental tool, helping to structure chaotic feelings into a coherent narrative that allows for forward movement. Well done.