Therapist

I was a therapist long before therapy became a thing. I know all your secrets. When people come to me they think there’s something I can do for them. But that’s just what they want to think. They think it because it’s convenient. The answers they’re looking for might not be as palatable as the ones they’d prefer to hear. No one wants to be told I can’t help them. No one wants to have to come all this way to be in this small room with me for another hour to go away disappointed. They want to believe what they want to believe and they want me to believe it too. They will take any old lie over the truth. The truth can be hard to bear.

I came into therapy because I knew what the truth was. I’d had a long hard struggle with myself over the years. I don’t look old but people couldn’t begin to suspect how old I am. How many years of wisdom I bring. How I see things from the outside. How I don’t get entangled. So I was, and am, the perfect therapist. This isn’t arrogance or delusion, this is just something I know within myself to be true. Once you know something is true then it lingers and you can relish it.

When I first started practising it was hard. I had to be persistent but I didn’t want to scare them off. I had to sweeten the pill to some extent. My client was resistant. He thought he knew but he didn’t. He got so angry defending himself to the hilt. He was utterly convinced such and such thing was the case. He couldn’t believe he wasn’t right. He had to see things his way. If he’d stopped thinking what he thought, everything would have fallen away. That was his downfall. Of course he thought he had stopped thinking it, and so many times. But he had only thought he had thought. He had not stopped thinking it at all. Perhaps it had been a stepping stone but there aren’t really stepping stones, only big leaps. The mind can be so powerful; it can play tricks. It can make you think all sorts of things. I could see my client was lying. I could look straight at him from my armchair. I could see that he didn’t know that he was. I had to be gentle but also I had to be firm.

People think there is an answer and they think I will have it. They think that if they just say all the things that they have been thinking about someone that this will resolve it. They think just by bringing it out into the air the magic will strike. But they want to hold on. They want to carry on thinking those things. They want to feel that they can carry on thinking all the things they think about all the people they think them about and that just a rehashing of those thoughts will make their lives better. They want to be justified. Above all they want to stay as they are because the alternative is a vacuum. They think that they can just come and offload here. They want to hide blame in the cracks and call it catharsis. They want conflict avoidance. They’d rather I pretended not to hear. They will do anything to get me onside.

As I sit in my simple armchair I see the person struggling and writhing. I see them desperate not to know. Because if they were to know, to understand that there is no answer, to get that there is no way of making their life better, that the resolution is for them to see that they are responsible for thinking all the things that they are thinking, they would run out of the room and never come back. Believe me that has happened numerous times. If you can’t hold the person down physically and stop them from leaving then there’s no point. But you cannot restrain people. I can only do so much. But if the person were to realise that their life is not going to get better one tiny bit, they wouldn’t come back. And yet they do come back, at least most of the time.

But how they struggle. They struggle so much. Don’t get me wrong, the struggle is real, it’s not exaggerated. They struggle with wives and their partners, with their mothers, with kids. They struggle with people at work, with friends. They are upset about what someone did or said. They are upset because someone didn’t love them enough, didn’t call them back. They are upset that they haven’t been recognised, that people took no notice when they spoke. They don’t have enough parties or friends, don’t go to enough dinners. Why they never go travelling. Or they don’t understand why they can’t get a new job, or at least the job they wanted. Why they’re still doing the thing that they never wanted to do and after all these years. Why they haven’t moved on. Why they’re stuck when they’ve tried almost everything. But most of the time it comes down to the simple things a person has said, the use of one innocent word, or the way it’s delivered, or just one little look, or some other facial expression or gesticulation, the offence can be so tiny but it lodges up inside them and hurts them, makes them angry, or even worse, they feel they can no longer cope. The things they tell me they would never tell anyone. They are so resentful.

And of all the people I see no one is unique. It goes round in one big circle. There I am sitting on my simple chair as the next person files in with the same declarations, the same gripes, the same complaints about the uncles and fathers, the same imprecations and most of the session idles by as the person recounts how they were hurt, mistreated, misunderstood, how people just don’t get it and need to be different. They go on and on and I don’t get a word in edgeways. If I don’t interrupt it is endless.

But every so often there’s a silence. A pause. It seems like a moment of sadness of grief has set in. I will look directly at them, not that I’m trying to look stoic or profound or loving or anything like that; I am not trying to channel the quintessentially wholly-sympathetic/empathising/understanding therapist, my hands pressed together in a steeple, I am not consciously holding the space. I will just feel this affinity for them in that moment and perhaps for a moment they’ll look back at me.  

After hundreds of sessions of fruitless endeavour something has sunk in. 

After years of me telling them that there’s no way out, they look at me like a child, like a puppy, they seem to understand that I had no answers the whole time, that they don’t know what to do now, that they have nowhere to go, that they are completely stumped. 

And what sinks in is: that there's nothing more to be resentful about, that they will have to admit that they did like that person they know didn’t like them all along, that it is in fact rather painful to admit this, that there’s no getting round it, that there’s no neat trick or subversion, no technique, that there’s nothing they know now that they didn’t really know before, that they will have to be rejects and rejected, to be normal and flawed, not all that good at foreign languages, not musical, not especially handsome, tall or desirable, that they will always be the offspring of neurotic parents and grandparents before them, insignificant and one of many, -- some bright sparks will even be relieved at such a liberation -- they will have to watch all their interior promises ground down to dust, all the things other people said that they held onto, they will see that they are the same person that came in as the one that’ll go out, the same person they were when they were twenty, the same person they were before the realisation, that they will continue to think things, to doubt, be disappointed, hurt, rejected, that they will get angry, that the people that disliked them still dislike them, but that the ones that like them are a real blessing, that there’s no need for fudging and pleasing just so they’ll be fed the same insipid lies in return, that they can handle being disliked, disrespected, ignored, unappreciated and that they will even thrive in the face of these feelings, that they will be free from the tyranny of expectation, and the ultimate realisation that whatever life throws at them is a simple product of reality. 

And then the look of disbelief as if to say: well what now, what will I be if I don’t judge any longer, what if I stop judging myself, how will I do anything, how will I get up in the morning, how will I go to work, won’t I just crumble and melt, who will look after me, won’t I turn into mush?

And what about the people who never came?

I’m not offended. They will come at some point. They will also want to know. They’re always ok until something breaks down. Until some minor disaster, until the divorce. Then I get the call. I want them to be ok, but I want them to be even better than that. Then they come funnelling in quietly, demurely. They lie on my couch and I sit in my armchair with no idea of what’s to come. I have seen it all before. They will start to complain and cast aspersions and I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. If I agree, it just carries on for ever, and if I don’t, they just shout me down. Where is then my refuge, at least for one moment?