Therapy 1

I was thinking maybe I would transcribe some of my therapy sessions for y’all, given that they’re – what’s that? You didn’t know I was a practising therapist? Well, I am. Not a licensed, qualified one, of course – but I do give sessions, and people seem to find it useful. They come, sit for an hour, tell me what’s on their mind, what’s in their heart, and I listen, ask questions, offer little tidbits, gleaned from my own experience, from reading, from hopefully useful ideas. Mostly it’s about giving people a chance to get things off their chest, to feel heard, to get their thoughts outside their heads. I really believe expression is key: simply putting a voice to our inner-workings can have near magical effects.

Naturally, because I’m not qualified, I can’t take payment – but I’m certainly not averse to the food they leave me, to the tenners dropped ‘accidentally’ by the door.

I feel like it’s a good thing to do. I know how powerful expressing and being listened to have been in my own life and transformations, so I do my best to offer that back. Kind of a shame I don’t really get to do much of it myself anymore. Though that’s not really through choice.

Anyway, I’m thinking of about a month ago and this woman who’s been coming to see me on and off the past fifteen years or so. She’s a pretty bright spark – has her ups and downs – but mostly a positive, persevering sort. She’s a pretty classic example of someone for whom this style of ‘treatment’ works: I don’t generally have to say anything; she just wants to get her head cleared; she figures it all out herself.

She sat down in the chair opposite and looked around the room. She’s a good looking woman, three or four years younger than me, shiny-eyed and quick to smile. But I sensed a certain heaviness about her this day that I wasn’t used to seeing. A weariness of spirit. It took her a little longer than usual to begin.

“I’ve come to a conclusion,” she said, finally. “I’ve come to the conclusion that…I think I’m…mentally ill.”

She stopped then and looked at me. I looked back, slowly, subtly nodding. I scanned my brain to see if it felt like there was something I was supposed to say, but there wasn’t. I just looked at her and felt my breath.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she said. “Something deeply wrong. Something wrong with my brain, something wrong with my BEING. It’s who I am. There’s no getting away from it. I really, truly don’t see this being fixed.”

“You know when they were cracking DNA?” she said. “They worked on fruit flies, and found that by altering little pieces of the code, they could alter the flies’ behaviour. Fiddle with one gene and the flies might become asexual, or only be able to steer in one direction, or be repelled by light. That’s how I feel: I feel like there’s something in my genes that causes me to behave in weird ways, and even though I know they’re weird, and I know what I’m ‘supposed’ to do, there’s nothing I can do about it, and it’s starting to become hell – because at least the flies don’t know there’s anything weird about what they’re doing, they’re just doing it, little automatons. And I guess that’s what I am too – a weird little automaton powered and controlled by and enslaved to my genes – to whatever it is that makes me who I am – except I have this awareness of it, and a desire to be something different, and so there’s this push-pull, this tension between the two. I can barely stand it. It’s getting ridiculous.”

“I’ll be 37 next year,” she said. “I think if I haven’t got this sorted by then, I might just die. I’ve had a good life, done pretty much everything I ever wanted to – grown and experienced and become a better person than I was but…it feels like the fun’s gone out of it. That I’ve taken this thing as far as it can go. That everything else that’s left to do – all my ideas and dreams and desires – are just sort of beyond me – the same way writing a postcard or making a good cup of tea is beyond a fruit fly. They’re not difficult things to do – but only if you’ve got the capability. I think I’ve reached my limit. It’s getting hard to see a reason to go on.”

She paused for a second here and let out a big sigh. I thought about saying something – I guess you’re supposed to say something when people express thoughts like these – but she started up again before I could, and laughed.

“So I was talking to this friend of mine the other day,” she said, “and I was talking about this article I’d been reading about a young guy who had killed himself. I said to her, ‘you know how they always say, we never had any idea, they always seemed happy enough, it was totally out of the blue – would you say that about me if they one day found me dead?’ and she laughed and said, ‘no, you’re always talking about dying, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.’ I got a certain satisfaction in this. I’ve never wanted to be one of those clichés after death: all ‘they were such a good person, they’d do anything for anyone, they lit up every room’. I really hope it’s true, that this friend would tell the reality about me. That they’d laugh and say they’d been expecting it for years, that they were surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.

“Not that I could ever do that,” she continued, “my spiritual beliefs get in the way of that – though I could,” she mused, “maybe engineer it by hanging out in dangerous places, I suppose – but you get the point: there’s a big part of me that’s kind of done with existence. Or done living with the way my head currently is. It’s too frustrating. Too much to deal with. To be handicapped and incapable of doing the things I want to do, and to not be able to think of or tolerate anything else – and yet to have to wake up every day in a world where ‘not doing’ is impossible, strapped to this brain that won’t allow me to let go of all the stupid thoughts and ideas it relentlessly compels me to pursue.”

She sighed and slumped a little in the chair. There was no need for me to ask her what these things she wanted to do were – she painted, and wanted to paint more – to knuckle down and commit to it in a proper way – and probably the majority of our sessions were taken up with discussing this, to the extent where neither of us were sure whether she did really want to paint, or was just deeply attached to talking about it and enjoying the drama of the incapable and unable artist, weighed down by ideas, and haunted by the reality of such little actual output.

“I had this awful thought the other day,” she said, “that I was literally doomed to living out another three or four long decades in this continually frustrated and incapable state, finally dying without accomplishing even a fraction of what I wanted, was supposed to, maybe could have done if one little thing had been just that little bit different. Some gene, some opportunity, some meeting.

“I’m lonesome,” she said. “Maybe that’s all it is. Too much time without a good body to curl up next to. To talk with. To share some giggles and not feel so nuts. But I’ve tried that: it’s hard. It’s never worked. There’s really something wrong with me.”

Again, I thought about saying something – but it seemed she was on a roll now. This stuff had been there a long time, swirling round in the waters of her brain. It was all gushing out like a torrent. There was nothing to do except breathe and be all ears, like the ears of an elephant. Months and months we’d been talking surprisingly superficially, for her. Now I understood why.

“Another thing I’ve been thinking,” she said, “you know how I’ve talked before about just not really liking people, finding them boring, getting annoyed with their overlong tales of nothing, yakking away in my ear, blahing about things that seem sort of pointless? But then I thought, maybe that’s not it: maybe it’s something more than that. Maybe it’s not them that I find frustrating, but rather my inability to connect with them. Maybe I’ve been a little hard on myself. I crave connection – I’ve experienced deep connection with some wonderful people – and maybe it’s not experiencing that that causes the pain. I know how good that can be. I can barely stand not having that. I'd rather be alone than have to live experiencing less.”

She paused. She grew a little quieter, after her enthusiasm for that last thought.

“But other people don’t seem to have a problem with that,” she said, furrowing her brow and seemingly discarding the theory. “No, it’s more than that. I do look at most people and just think, what is the fucking point in you? Why do you even exist?

“But maybe that’s projection. Why do I even exist? What is the point in me? Jeez! Who do I think I am that I have some point and all these other people don’t? You see!” she said. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

She seemed to reach the end of something there. I guess up till that point she’d just been letting out thoughts that she’d been working on for some time, that were more or less complete: and that one about being frustrated at not being able to connect with people had been one that, up until then, had resonated with her – but hearing it, and questioning it, and realising it maybe wasn’t quite as true as she’d hoped seemed to deflate her.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just look around at other people and I can’t figure out how they go on, how they persevere, how they can tolerate one another. I look at myself and I think, I’m a nice person, I don’t get angry, I’m there for others, I’m smart, I’ve got things to say – and yet…I’m lonesome. I’m lonely. I don’t have many friends. I don’t feel part of any group. Some people are real assholes, and they have all that. Some people are dicks, and they have people who love them. Shit, even Hitler had more friends than me; I just don’t get it.”

I looked at her and thought, despite the gloom and obvious darkness of all this, there seemed to be a smile on her face, a light in her eyes. I didn’t doubt for a moment that it was all genuine, and was genuinely sad for her, and yet…there was also this sense that she could laugh it off at any moment; that she was actively enjoying the expression; that these too were ‘mere thoughts’, and though expressing something of her being, it wasn't expressing the whole truth, the deepest part of it.

I didn’t know what that meant. It was just an inkling, an idea, a possibility. I would have to do some reading.

“Perhaps,” she said, after a lull of maybe thirty seconds, “perhaps I’m just depressed: yes, maybe that’s all it is: people get that, don’t they? Isn’t that what it sounds like to you? All this pointlessness and mortality and blah blah blah? Fuck it: I guess it’ll pass at some point – like that awesome cartoon woman and her bit of sweetcorn under the fridge. Oh, for my bit of sweetcorn!” she laughed.

(That was a reference to some blog that became quite popular a few years ago, with silly simple drawings and amusing insightful words; I forget the name of it.)

“God,” she said, “I actually feel better now, thinking that might be it. I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna go out and pop some pills, but putting a name on it…imagining that what I’m feeling is simply what all those other people always say they’re feeling…I mean, I do have a pretty hard time getting out of bed most days, can’t find much to do except click on things, and make it through till sleep. It’s probably like that time I met all those Alcoholics Anonymous people and, listening to their stories, learning about their program, I realised I’d done pretty much all the exact same things on my own, learning as I went along, not knowing it was all just some standard thing that thousands of people are doing all the time. I really ought to get out more, join more groups, stop all this brooding and go find some actual fellow brooders who have the answers all printed out already in pamphlets, rather than having to discover them for myself, stumbling along, and no doubt taking longer.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “I like talking,” she said, “it makes me feel good. I feel better. I feel…a lightness, a sense of something intangible having left me. I don’t understand but…you know what? Right now, in this moment, I feel good.”

She looked at me again, beaming, and then frowned. “It’s not going to last, is it? It’s all going to come back?”

And, at that, I finally realised it was my turn to say something.

“Wait and see,” I said. “Go outside. Go take a walk. Look at things, grab a bite to eat, and see how you feel then. It’s hard to know right now if getting all this off your chest has done anything – but I guess reality will inform you pretty soon. Who knows who you might meet later today? Who knows what opportunities might arise? What you’ll feel next time you sit down to paint?”

We smiled at one another, eyes meeting, resting in connection.

“We’ve still got twenty minutes,” she said, “can I just stay here and hang out? We don’t have to talk.”

“I really would recommend taking that walk,” I said.

She grinned at me coyly.

“I’d actually quite like a hug,” she said, “just something quiet, someone to hold me.”

I thought: I’d quite like that too; she’s pretty fit, this girl.

Which, along with the lack of patient confidentiality, and not having had to train or needing to follow rules and tow the line, is the other great thing about doing this off me own back.

Nothing happened, of course – there might not be any legal requirement, but there’s still ethics, morality, trying to do the right thing by another – nothing beyond a bit of skin on skin; two hearts beating together; a hand cradling a beautiful head; and the lowering of blood pressure and stress hormones that comes from simple, wonderful, intimate human contact in the quiet of a cosy room, in a comfortable chair, two bodies wrapped silently around one another, eyes closed, and smiles on their contented, at ease faces; that sort of thing.