1. Poor, Poor Pitiful Me.

Sometimes I just want someone to put their arms around me so I can cry uncontrollably and wipe my nose on their sleeve. I don’t want to be told to pull myself together, pick my socks up, get a life, move on, build a bridge and get over it or take a spoonful of cement and harden up. I just want someone to validate and recognize my long-term pain and acknowledge it.

2. A Horse With No Name.

As a child of the Seventies this was my third most hated song ever, after Car Wash and Chuck E’s in Love. Now I am almost into my dotage, I am hearing this song in a different light. My take on it is that it is about solitude and/or depression, the desert being a sucking life-force, the horse being solitude or depression and the rider being the solitary or the depressed. Maybe it wasn’t what the song-writer had in mind but to me it’s all about finding myself again.

3. Behind Closed Doors.

In therapy behind closed doors no-one can hear you scream (or laugh). And that’s the way it should be. Family, friends and work colleagues don’t have the same tolerance level for my problems as my therapist does. I’ve finally, FINALLY stopped thinking that the check-out-chick and the garage attendant are my new best friends as well as spending my entire lunch-hour treating my indifferent work colleagues as a Psychological Health Support Management Team.

4. Remember (Sha la la)

This is what you have to do behind closed doors. Remembering the past in particular which is painful, regressive but kind of feels good in a masochistic way at the same time.

5. Bend Me, Shape Me.

The idea of talking to another person who is qualified to contort and twist your grey matter is so that they can bend and shape your mind into one that isn’t malfunctioning and sending off sparks at the wrong time, with the wrong person and in the wrong place. My head is a completely different shape from fourteen years ago. There’s only one person (ok maybe two, all right three if you include my mother) fighting for space. Between my therapist and I we have evicted the cast of thousands that used to squat for free.

6. Looking Through the Eyes of Love.

Otherwise known as the transference song. We look at our therapists through the eyes of love – puppy love. When you’re in love with someone they have no faults. I’ve hit the highs of transference and come down the other side and am starting to see my therapist as a wise old crone, but do I love her anymore? I used to think I was in love, but the honeymoon ended a while ago and mature loving/kindness has set in. After a decade and a half I finally feel our relationship is more egalitarian.

7. When Will I See You Again?

This is kind of self-explanatory. I’ve been known to count the days down till Therapy Day arrives and then get as anxious as an ant around a hungry ant-eater and just want to not turn up. Once I sat in her waiting room, in my usual seat well hidden from the reception desk and my therapist’s door until the receptionist leaned out and spied me and asked me how I was and I replied in an over-jovial voice, that I was wonderful and that my weekend was excellent and wasn’t the weather fabulous? I want to see my therapist again, but not the receptionist.

8. The Morning After.

When I see my therapist it takes me till at least the morning after to process all the information, integrate it into my life, have a good cry and then get back to doing whatever it is I was doing before I went to therapy. This can take three days. The night before the morning after is spent thinking about what I’m going to say; all these perfect conversations in my head, her insightful answers and my aha understanding of how to deal with an old problem in a completely new way. It never seems to go quite by plan though. However, psychotherapy is incremental and I always come away with a nugget of gold at the end though.

9. Look for the Hero Inside Yourself.

Your therapist is a means to an end, not an end in his/her self. This means checking inside your body to find out who you are and what you are capable of. I wrote and had mainstream published two books, a radio series and a freelance writing career. She facilitated my head-space and nurtured my potential, but I did the hard yards. I am my own hero.

10. I Can See Clearly Now.

That is what therapy is all about – seeing your life, your family, your friends, the rest of the world and most importantly yourself through new eyes. Rather like when I got glasses for my short-sightedness. I had gotten so used to seeing a grey, fuzzy, underwater world that I came to think of it as perfectly normal. Now I can see as clearly as possible. I don’t have to be perfect. My faults and foibles can actually endear me to other people and vice versa. When my therapist spilled hot candle wax over herself and the couch, missed her mouth with a cup of tea and drowned her laptop with a glass of water, I didn’t think she was a stupid idiot, I just thought she was normal like the rest of us. It’s not what happens; it’s how we handle what happens. Previously if I did something like that I would be flaying myself with a cat-o-nine tails for weeks to come. I can see so clearly now that I can forgive myself for not always getting it right.

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Dr. Deborah Serani (September 30, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 30 Sep 2009