Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 20 years. He is Executive Director and co-founder of Alternatives at St James’ Church in London and runs groups internationally. Malcolm Stern: Courage to Change

Having worked with groups and individuals for the past twenty years, Malcolm has observed how much courage it takes to make change. In his workshops on relationships, he’s seen how people expect their lives and relationships to change, without being willing to make change themselves. Most people come to him following a life shock that becomes a catalyst for change. It’s at that point that people have to dig deep to find the motivation and courage to instil new practices in their lives, new routines that over time, create new neural pathways.

It’s in the ongoing groups that Malcolm facilitates that he sees real change. His London One Year Group is the centrepiece of Malcolm’s work and has been successfully operating since 1990. Here, the sixteen members can see that they are not alone, that everyone struggles with something in their lives. They commit to attending the group one weekend a month for a whole year. Many members are based in and around London, but some come from around the country and a few from across Europe. Malcolm has been facilitating the London One Year Group every year for the past twenty-seven years. He never gets bored of it, because each year, a completely different group is created with completely different individuals. There is no outline for the year: Malcolm simply works with whatever comes up. The group becomes like a community, a sangha, a family, at a time when the breakdown of the family unit leaves people isolated within society. Everyone needs to feel loved and to have the opportunity to love: that is human nature. Within the safety of this group, each member can reflect honestly on their lives and learn to ‘slay their dragons with compassion’, by giving and receiving vital feedback.

Malcolm Stern had to face this challenge in his own life when his 33 year old daughter Melissa took her own life. She’d battled with mental health issues previously, but had seemed ‘OK’ for the last ten years. Her death came as a complete shock to Malcolm and the family and as he learned about her death during the 4 day end of group retreat, this One Year group helped to provide part of the support and compassion he so desperately needed, along with superb help from family and friends.

A memorial Malcolm created with others at Skyros

Malcolm believes wholeheartedly that he is doing the work he was born to do. As a young man, he travelled the world, getting involved in a wide range of life-changing and world-changing projects – such as working on the Greenpeace ship ‘Rainbow Warrior’ for a time. In the UK, he worked as an estate agent before deciding to study psychotherapy. Sitting in a therapy group as a student, he knew from that moment that he’d discovered what he was born to do.

I looked around the group and at the facilitator and knew that I could do better than this. We each have a daemon within us who nags us and pushes us until we discover what we were born to do. And when you discover it, then service becomes a joy. I work hard but my work is a joy. Malcolm Stern

Back in 1982, Malcom Stern co-founded Alternatives.

Alternatives is the UK’s longest running weekly mind body spirit events company and is internationally known as UK’s landmark speaking platform for spiritual teachers, alternative thinkers, conscious business leaders and visionary thought provokers for the past 30+ years. Alternatives

For that whole time, Alternatives has been based in the heart of London at St James’ Church, Piccadilly. Long before spirituality became the hot trend that it is today, Malcolm and the team were ‘raising awareness and offering practical, inspiring and alternative solutions for every day living.’ Malcolm describes spirituality as ‘the effort to swim upstream against the current’. Spirituality takes nothing for granted. Spirituality takes everything that we have been brought up to believe or are told by the media and society on a daily basis and turns it on its head. Having been brought up in the Jewish tradition and inviting inspirational speakers from all faith traditions and none to address an audience within an Anglican church, Malcolm believes that spirituality can be found in the integrity, compassion and authenticity within all religions. However, the issues arise when these three are laid aside and ego, dogma and agenda become the highest priorities.

It’s all about walking the talk. Malcolm describes himself as a pilgrim walking through life alongside his fellow pilgrims. Imagine if everyone in the world saw themselves and others in this way – what a different place this world would be then!

This world we’re living in thrives on overstimulation and fear. We’re witnessing the breakdown of family and connection. We need to forge new ways of working. We need to find a way to take a step back and learn to trust life with its inevitable ebb and flow. We simply need to find the strength and courage to do what’s in our path. Malcolm Stern

Malcolm’s book on relationships Falling in Love, Staying In Love was published in 2004. In it, he describes how relationships involve connection on all four levels – physical, emotional, spiritual and mental. He allows that within a relationship, people change and the relationship changes and sometimes it is right to take the decision to move off in different directions (he’s experienced that himself with the breakdown of his own marriage). However, for those who want to build a strong, lasting relationship, it’s about confronting what we have and what we want to become within the relationship and then building in a set of practices that lead us towards what we wish for.

Conflict is an inevitable part of any relationship and Malcom has worked with individuals, groups and within big international companies to address conflict.

With conflict, people either tend to dive right in without a thought or do all that they can to avoid it. There has to be another way, a better way. We have to explore what it is to speak our truth in a way which respects the dignity of both parties. Trust and truth are central to any community, whether it be in the family or the workplace. Malcolm Stern

Having worked and studied in the field of spirituality and psychotherapy for over thirty years, you might imagine that Malcolm Stern would know all that there is to know by now. However, Malcolm humbly admits that nothing could be further from the truth. In having to face the major tragedy of losing his daughter three years ago, he has had to face change. In the first days after her death, he called the Samaritans for help. In the months after her death, he joined a six week support group organised by the Samaritans for those affected by suicide, which helped him reflect on and feel the grief. In that first year after her death, he turned to his Jewish faith and learnt how to pray. He prayed for eleven months and in the final month, he fell silent and allowed God to speak into the silence. In the past three years, he’s learnt how to embrace real things and embrace life. He’s continued to enjoy walking, tennis, bridge (he’s a fiend at bridge apparently!) and trips to the theatre and reading good fiction. He’s realised how little he’s known previously about the complexities of mental health and is now working with Compassionate Mental Health to help those struggling with the realities of mental health issues to ‘find new ways to build trust and connection with other people’.

Melissa getting married 15 months before her death.

My journey since Melissa’s death has been one of intense sadness, but it has also involved seeds of growth and understanding. I really believe that if Melissa hadn’t had such a traumatic early experience of mental health services, she wouldn’t have been scared of seeking help when she became unwell again.
Melissa was afraid to put herself back into medical hands. I now want to work with others to make sure our mental health services, are safe, healing places that people want to use when they are in crisis. Malcolm Stern

Malcolm Stern is as human as the rest of us. He is not immune from the struggles and tragedies faced by every human being. And yet as a pilgrim walking alongside fellow pilgrims, he is doing all that he can to embrace necessary change and conflict to make his life and the world around him the best that it can possibly be.

May this be an inspiration to us all as pilgrims on this journey that is life.