3 Things My First Therapist Taught Me
My initial encounter with therapy happened in my early twenties.
At college, I’d seen a psychiatrist and counsellor. Neither shed any light on my disordered eating so I don’t really count them.
After graduating I moved to London to be an actor. Truth be told, I'd lost my confidence. I clung to my acting fantasy for years hiding behind various hospitality jobs, pretending to want auditions but feeling relieved when they didn’t materialise. Behind the scenes my eating disorders were moving centre stage and by the time I realised, it was far too late to build an acting career. Or any kind of career, for that matter.
Out of over eighty guests on our podcast only one has ever said, eating disorders break your spirit.
I couldn’t agree more. But timing is everything. Finding out at what point you break differs for everyone. In my case long after the event. Towards the end of the 1980’s I landed a waitress job in an American restaurant through my friend’s boyfriend. Culturally the 1980’s were brash and loud. Margaret Thatcher juxtaposed with the early dance/rave scene.
The restaurant reflected this with a loud ‘happening” music playlist, red lighting and city types queuing, round the block, for that coveted weekend night table. Bar staff rang a large bell every time they sold a bottle of Dom Perignon and whooped with joy because their commission went up. Three weeks of training (more intense than my degree) and us newbies - the ones that made it - were loose on the floor.
Apart from constantly disappearing to the bathroom mid shift as my laxatives kicked in or to empty my stomach of the garlic roll I’d snatched on a break, because I hadn’t eaten that day, I had a ball. I'd like to apologise to any diners from back then, who may be reading and who had to wait longer than the allocated time for their orders - while you were waiting for dinner, I was getting rid of mine.
The restaurant enforced strict rules and procedures, one of which was running quasi-military fashion around the huge kitchen. Management called it Team Building. I called it Ridiculous having just spent three years on a Marxist based analysis course, I had no intention of lowering my political standards!
While everyone else chanted around the burners I sneaked off to the flat roof out back to smoke (whatever was to hand) with the Head Trainer. The restaurant staff, an eclectic bunch, were funny, talented and like me biding their time until something else came along. Meanwhile the money was great.
One night I got talking to another waitress, as we decanted the first of our Long Island Iced Teas (LIT’S to those in the business, see I’ve still got it) into coffee mugs (an instantly sackable offence) while pretending to stock the busser station. Weird how those cocktails kept turning up throughout the night onto our happy little section.
Anyway she told me she’d been having therapy. Art therapy, no less. I was intrigued. Art therapy? I said. What for? To make her feel calmer and less anxious, she said. Ooh, I thought. I could do with some of that.
Not for my eating disorders, no Siree, they were mine for the foreseeable but for my on/off relationship with someone who planned to emigrate across the world. Without me. My thinking went something like maybe a therapist can help me not hurt when he leaves.
Which is how I ended up in a beautiful front room with large french windows, somewhere in North London, with my very own bona fide psychotherapist. This therapist had given up a successful professional career as a classical musician and retrained to see people like me. Not only had she made it in a highly competitive industry similar to the one I wanted to be in but she’d also left it on her own terms. She was glamorous and together with the kind of blue eyed stare that screamed intelligent - sorry if this is a cliche but it’s true.
I was in awe. What I didn't understand was that being in therapy meant I had to open up. I just assumed she’d fix me because she was a therapist. I stayed for about a year, maybe two and left on her suggestion that I revisit, “finding out about yourself” when I was older, maybe, in your early 30’s she said, when you’re more emotionally mature. I had no idea what she meant by emotionally mature.
However she taught me three invaluable lessons:
One: I was never going to reach nirvana; defined, by me at the time, as the state where nothing touched me or knocked me off balance.
Life isn’t like that, she said.
Two: I was always late. When she challenged my lateness I blamed the tube. She said you’re choosing to be late. Again, I reiterated the tiresome nature of tube travel in our great city. But she said, leave earlier. Choose to leave early so you always have enough time. Oh I said. I hadn’t thought of it like that. No one had pointed out with such simplicity that I had choices. Later during my darkest and most destructive moments however compelled or “addicted” I felt, I always knew I had a choice. Do this or don’t do this?
Wasn’t the issue. The issue was my lack of care.
Number three was when I told her my Dad used to bring his face close to mine and stare. She said, what did you want to do? I said, I wanted to punch him. My arm shot out as I balled my fist. Then she said, what did you do instead? Involuntarily my arm recoiled and my fingers splayed as I mimed sticking them down my throat.
That was the first time I had an inkling that my eating disorders might not be about food.
And I was never late, for a session, again.
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