Let me tell you about my "counsellor", Julia Chi Taylor, and about what a difference the work we've done has made to my life. This is her. Dancing on the table at her 60th birthday party. It's not a great quality picture. But it does sum her up. She neither works nor lives in a conventional way.
Julia doesn't call herself a counsellor but a teacher of life skills. Other of her clients call her their mentor, their guru, their life coach. She doesn't sit there silent allowing you to come to your own conclusions about what drives your feelings and behaviour (I dread to think where that would have led - if anywhere). She tells stories from her own experience, gives advice, sends you videos on WhatsApp if you're having a. bit of a crisis. And inevitably, by five minutes into a session, you're laughing.
When I talk to other people who see her (and that's weird - I've met quite a lot of them socially), I find she doesn't approach her work with them in the way she approaches her work with me. I went to her 60th birthday party. She's coming to mine. We've been running together. I've met her husband, her oldest friend, her sister, her niece. It's just not what counsellors do.
Two years ago she ran across Spain - barefoot. When I first met her she was a nomad - able fit everything she owned into a cabin baggage sized rucksack. She has now relocated to London where she has a flat in Chelsea and a room where she sees clients in Piccadilly. She still doesn't wear "proper" shoes. She's happily married (at last - it's her fifth time) but doesn't live in the same house as her husband. She lives as she wants to live. Is able to truly be herself. Never compromising. Never worrying what people will think.
We see counsellors for all kinds of reasons. Often when we’re in crisis. That's how it started for me. With mum's imminent death. With mum, there was a concrete, easy-to-explain outcome of my work with Julia. My relationship with mum was transformed in the weeks before she died. And I was able to come through her end without suffering the severe and prolonged grief that many do when they lose a parent.
18 months on, I'm still seeing her. And people have started to ask me why... possibly thinking, as I once would have done, that she’s a bit of an indulgence. That I've become just a bit too fascinated by myself. That it might be better if I stopped contemplating my navel and cracked on with my life. But actually, that's exactly what she is helping me do.
So what the hell have Julia and I been talking about all this time? Very early on in this process, I realised that it wasn't going to be about mum dying at all. It was going to be about me living. About me understanding myself, accepting myself and therefore being free to be myself. Like she is.
Since I started seeing her, there's been less stress, less anger, less beating myself up. And altogether a lot less white noise going on in my head on subjects like...
"Is that piece of work good enough? Will the client be happy with it?" The answer was always no. Even though the evidence - a copywriting business that has earned me a living for nearly 20 years and clients who constantly come back for more - is against it. I'd worry until I'd heard from them. And however much they praised me, all I'd feel was relief that it was good enough.
"What have I done wrong?" That was my inevitable reaction when a friend cancelled a night out, someone didn't respond positively to something I'd said, or ignored it altogether. I would assume was my fault. That I'd done something unforgivable. Now (for the most part anyway!), I assume they are just living their life. Or dealing with stuff of their own.
"If I turn this piece of work down, will they ever ask me again? Will I ever get any work from anyone again?" The result - I ended up working 7 days a week. Doing projects I didn't want to do. Through fear. That has stopped. Over the last year, I've seen a lot more exhibitions, spent a lot more time with friends, dedicated a lot more time to running.
"Is my creative writing good enough for me to go public? Or shall I keep it to myself like I've done for the last 40 years?" I have a massive pile of notebooks and a huge folder on my laptop. Some good. Some not. Until I started this blog, only about 5 people in the whole world had ever seen any of it. Each time, I spent hours in extreme angst about what they thought. With the blog, I don't. The old me would be checking how many people had read it every five minutes. And how many of those had liked it. It's lovely when someone says something nice about it. But once it's up there, I never worry about what people are thinking.
"Have I said said the wrong thing? What will they think? Will they hate me/think I'm stupid for saying that?" This was one of mum's obsessions. She believed it was better to keep it buttoned rather than risk "saying the wrong thing". So she mainly talked about the weather and asked the other person questions. I wasn't as bound by it as she was, but it was there. And now, it isn't.
"Would dad have approved of that? Have I done that well enough to please him?" And since he's not here, to pat me on the back and give me a gold star, I turn other people into dad (bosses, personal trainers, clients) and go completely all out to please them instead. This one is work in progress. Incarnations of dad still pop up all over the place!
And the thing that has perhaps caused me more angst than anything over the years. "Will I be on time? Will the person I'm meeting think I'm unreliable?" I'm not talking an hour here. 10 minutes could send me into flight or fight mode. Switching tube lines trying to find a route that would save a couple of minutes, Getting an Uber. Texting the person a million times to explain myself. Even though it was beyond my control. I still have my moments with this. But nowhere near as many or so extreme as before.
That's what Julia and I have been talking about for the last 18 months. And now I have a much greater understanding of myself. I accept many of the things that I hated about myself before. And I'm freer to be myself.