My analyst told me we should start seeing other people. It was a strange experience. I first clomped self-consciously up the stairs in his Victorian (could be Edwardian) house in a grim area of North London when I was 25. I had realised very slowly that my state of constant terror, insomnia and blind panic was actually something I needed to address. I lived on my own and, as my state of mind didn’t much affect anyone else, it was just something I gritted my teeth against until my teeth refused to grit any more.
Since then my ex (analyst) has changed the carpets twice, painted the walls and woodwork, fitted a new bell, changed a painting from a Japanese mountain scene to a bright, childish abstract thing, moved a few volumes of Freud around the shelves and got fifteen years older. He may well have done other things too, but these are the things I know about. Actually, that’s a lie. I know he has published a lot of work, some of which is on the reading list for a course I’m doing. I’m nervous about reading it. Perhaps it will begin: ‘I had one particularly irritating and boring patient, a young woman who….’ etc. Or, since I am talking about these things, perhaps I am hoping I will star in his essays and papers and will be devastated to find that I do not feature at all.
15 years in therapy! There has to be an easier way ...
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