On the curious expectation that understanding life should make you exceptionally good at living it.
Being a therapist has never stopped me from making a questionable decision. It has, on occasion, simply meant I understood the psychology behind it rather well.
People have curious ideas about how therapists live. I suspect some imagine us rising at dawn to meditate, drinking herbal tea, reading Jung before bed and approaching life’s complications with enviable composure. We are presumably too self-aware to be impulsive, too emotionally intelligent to lose our patience and far too knowledgeable about human behaviour to make the same mistakes as everyone else.
Admittedly, I do love herbal tea, books and meditation. But I have a profound dislike of early mornings, and my personal history contains more than enough evidence that psychological insight is no guarantee of good judgement.
I have always been fascinated by people. It’s one of the reasons I became a therapist. I love the complexity of human relationships, the ways our experiences shape us and the extraordinary things children communicate when they are given the freedom to express themselves. My work matters enormously to me. But it is only one part of my life, and I sometimes wonder whether people find that more surprising than they should.
Outside the therapy room, I am a woman who can disappear into a book for hours, who loves going on holiday and who is happiest near the sea. There is something about arriving somewhere warm, leaving my usual routines behind and having very little to decide beyond where to spend the afternoon. I love the sound of waves, the smell of salt in the air and the particular pleasure of having nowhere I urgently need to be.
I am equally fond of the opposite. When winter settles over London and the evenings turn dark, getting into bed early with a good book feels like an entirely respectable way to spend the night. I have never understood why staying out late is considered more exciting than being thoroughly comfortable at home. Although with the right people, I can happily stay out all night.
I love evenings with friends that descend into complete silliness, the sort of laughter that makes conversation almost impossible and stories that become funnier every time they’re retold. I particularly enjoy being around people who don’t expect me to be wise or insightful. Friends who know that sometimes I have absolutely nothing useful to say, and that this has never prevented me from joining a conversation.
Horse riding has also become one of the great pleasures of my life, although I suspect anyone who has listened to me talk about it recently would already know that. I love arriving at the stables, the smell of hay and leather, the personalities of the horses and the peculiar satisfaction of getting something right that seemed impossible a few weeks earlier.
I also love how little horses care about what I do for a living. A professional qualification is of no use when you’re trying to persuade a horse to cooperate. Neither is a thoughtful explanation of your intentions. You have to be present, pay attention and occasionally accept that the horse has an entirely different opinion about how the afternoon should proceed.
It’s a wonderfully uncomplicated arrangement, and I have no desire to turn horse riding into a metaphor for my work.
Nor do I need to explain what the sea teaches me about emotional regulation, how reading contributes to my personal development or why an evening laughing with friends is important for my wellbeing. I don’t need to describe a holiday as an opportunity to practise mindfulness or an early night as an act of self-care.
I love these things because I love them. That ought to be enough.
One of the stranger aspects of being a therapist is the way the profession can follow you into places where you have no intention of practising it. Tell someone what you do and there is sometimes a flicker of concern. Are you analysing them? Have you noticed something? Are you quietly forming a theory about their childhood?
Of course, being a therapist changes the way you understand people. It would be rather odd if years spent studying human behaviour had no influence on how I see the world. But curiosity is not the same as constantly analysing everyone around me. I don’t spend dinner parties conducting imaginary assessments, and I have no particular desire to turn every conversation into an exploration of someone’s attachment history. Sometimes I just want to hear a funny story.
There is also an assumption that therapists should be exceptionally accomplished at managing their own lives. I find this one particularly entertaining, largely because I know how untrue it can be.
I have made decisions I wouldn’t make again. I’ve trusted people who disappointed me, been overly optimistic about situations that probably deserved a little more scepticism and occasionally ignored advice I would have considered perfectly sensible had somebody else been asking for it. I can be impatient, stubborn about something entirely unimportant and remarkably good at filling my diary when I know perfectly well that I need a quiet weekend.
Some of those decisions might have interesting psychological explanations. Others are simply the result of being impulsive, distracted or convinced that something was an excellent idea until it turned out not to be. I don’t think every mistake requires a retrospective examination of my childhood. Some are just mistakes.
And while I can laugh about the difference between what I know professionally and what I occasionally do personally, I take the distinction between those two worlds seriously.
My work with children carries a particular responsibility. I know how much it matters to offer a space in which a child can feel safe, understood and free to express things that may be difficult to put into words. I care deeply about the children I work with, and I know that the trust placed in me deserves thoughtfulness, consistency and care.
But the qualities required of me in the therapy room are not a script for every other moment of my life. Being attentive to a child’s emotional world doesn’t mean I must be endlessly patient in every personal interaction. Being able to sit with difficult feelings professionally doesn’t mean I always know what to do with my own. And being capable of understanding someone else’s behaviour doesn’t mean I am obliged to understand, excuse or accommodate it in my personal relationships.
Perhaps that is what I find most peculiar about the expectations placed on therapists. We spend our working lives recognising how complicated people are, how easily emotions can overwhelm good intentions and how rarely human behaviour follows a neat, rational pattern. Yet somehow, knowing all of this is supposed to make us exceptions to it.
I don’t want to be an exception.
I love being a therapist, and I wouldn’t want to lose that part of myself. But I also want to spend cold Sundays in bed with a novel, go on holidays, laugh until I can’t speak and talk about horses enough to annoy everyone around me. I want to make plans, change my mind, get excited about things and occasionally make decisions that turn out to be terrible ideas.
I love being a therapist. But I also just want to be me.
And if I occasionally make a questionable decision along the way, I’d quite like to be allowed to make it without having to analyse it afterwards.
ON MINDS, MEANING AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN.
