Go on then, what’s therapy really like?
……As nobody has ever once said to me
Perhaps I should explain first that I do know of which I speak, having seen a shrink for 5 years a couple of decades ago. I thought it might be diverting for those who’ve never sat in a room with a stranger, a clock, some slightly ethnic-looking ornaments and a malevolent box of tissues, to know what the mechanics of the process are.
But first I’m afraid those expecting lurid tales from my background involving drugs, drink and abuse (self- or otherwise) are doomed to disappointment. I’m afraid my visits happened, more prosaically, as a result of a feeling of gradually escalating gloom and hopelessness arising from…. nothing. I couldn’t explain why I felt so shit, so I thought well, perhaps somebody else could. With Susie’s agreement (She had to live with me being a miserable bugger, so not surprising she was on board) and safe in the knowledge that she was certainly not the cause, I started looking for somebody….
I found Debra, who described herself as a Jungian Analytical Psychotherapist, online. In a directory of Psychotherapists, believe it or not. She had 30 years’ experience so I thought - well that should mean she’s seen plenty of people like me - shouldn’t take her too long to sort me out.
It took rather longer than I anticipated.
I’ll explain the mechanics of the process, because it never varied one iota in the five years, twice a week, that I went. I’m sure that was the idea.
Debra ran her practice from her home, a fairly large modern house in a suburb of Northampton. She shared it with her husband and I think, one or two sons who may have been at University. (astonishingly I visited her house on about 450 occasions and never once saw anybody else, just occasional sounds of a quietly closed door or an occasional muffled voice talking to someone in their drive). She never volunteered any information about herself. She wasn’t unfriendly at all, just extremely adept at setting boundaries.
She was, like her house, a very very neat woman of about 55. Maybe a couple of times over the five years she mentioned something domestic, say an apology for the (rare) noise of distant drilling, but nothing else. It was effectively a part of the terms and conditions of our sessions: I spilled my guts about all my deepest, darkest fears, phobias and memories.
And she didn’t.
Anyway, I would park my car in the drive, always at exactly the right time. The closest things got to a rule was that I showed up on time, neither early nor late. I would ring the bell and Debra would answer about 10 seconds later and we would start an unvarying gavotte, whose steps were that she would take one step backwards while quietly saying hello. I would smile and nod and go straight up the stairs and into the front room, which had a long black sofa two easy chairs a cupboard and a few ornaments, which, like the whole room, were intensely, absurdly, neutral.
The sofa was an option for lying, but I tried it once but found it inhibiting and clichéd. It was the easy chair with the window behind it for me. On the windowsill In Debra’s eye line but not mine, was a travel clock. A coffee table to my left with the terrifying tissue box. I’d sit down then Debra would sit down, a closed notebook on her lap. She’d smile at me and…..
Silence.
Then more silence.
The silence would last until I said something. The thing about these types of sessions is that they are not led by the therapist, to the point where Debra would literally wait and wait, minutes sometimes, for me to say something. In the early days I was profoundly uncomfortable with this, to the point of finding it irritating, but gradually caught on that it forced me to look backwards to the previous session and overlay my thoughts from the intervening days, then I would start in on what I had been feeling and thinking in that time. The sessions would last 45 minutes and in the early days the sessions would be split 95:5 in terms of who did the talking. Maybe Debra might ask one open question, but that would be it.
Things started like this and went on in the same vein for maybe a year. As an aside it does take a considerable effort of will not to write off the whole exercise as a colossal waste of time and money during this phase. With the benefit of perspective of course, I can see that I began to talk myself into a bit more self-awareness and I think Debra began to get some information on what was going on inside my head. But she never came to a ‘diagnosis’ as such and I never asked her for one.
After about a year of this apparently futile, expensive waste of time I began to notice something. During the sessions I began to wonder if some of the stories I had told myself about my past might not be quite so cut and dried.
To explain, we all have an internal narrative of our life that explains how we ended up here and got quite as screwed up as we are…. (well, that last bit may be just me). It’s deep-rooted and could follow on from the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. It’s a source of comfort and makes us feel like we have made sense of the world and ourselves. My narrative began to get a little less linear and a little more open to debate.
In the second and third years of the sessions I began to glean that Debra’s odd open question were carrying a bit more freight than just enabling me to talk some more. We started discussing my dreams, not in an interpretive way, but more as a tool. I’d say what nonsense had come into my head and then with Debra’s subtle prompting I’d look for explanations as to why I’d had the dream. The point was the dream itself meant nothing, but it was what I thought they were about afterwards that was interesting to me. Gradually the narrative began to change. My idiotic self-criticisms and opinions began to become, if not improved at least explicable. Some of the bad guys and girls in my tale seemed to be less appalling. My grudges and anger seemed to be somewhat overstated. My internal story still had good guys and girls and bad guys and girls. But some of them had changed identity.
I had some time off, but I restarted the sessions after my Mother’s death had sent me quietly bonkers for a bit. At this point Debra began to add an occasional observation and sometimes she would throw in an astonishingly perceptive insight. After 4 years she kind of knew me pretty well.
In the sessions, invariably, just as we would be getting into some deep shit, Debra would announce that the time was up. I would, also invariably, find the strict timekeeping intensely irritating, but would slowly stand up and lead the way out of the room. We would walk, usually silently down the thickly carpeted stairs then Debra would open the door and say, “I’ll see you next time”. I’d answer “Yes” and I’d get, sometimes dazedly, into my car and reverse out of the drive.
Eventually, after 5 years I said I wanted to stop the sessions. I still found them an oasis of calm and reflection, but I felt as if the urgency had gone out of things a bit. Debra agreed.
So…the obvious question: Was it worth it?
Yes.
I started unhappy and ended feeling significantly better, with a some clear insights into why I am like I am. That knowledge means these days I can sometimes understand myself a little more and it hopefully means I’m not quite such an arse to be with for those I love.
Oh, and that bloody box of tissues. I’m not sure why I disliked the whole “I’ve got things ready for you to have a good cry” thing, but I really did. I cried, of course I did, on many, many occasions but I never once reached for a tissue!
The obvious question though is - why the hell didn’t I tell Debra how I felt about that?