writing as therapy

' They're trying to make me go to rehab...' - Paulo Nutini covering Amy Winehouse, Rehab

Neil's been in therapy for a while. He wrote about his therapist shaving her legs, (for him he supposed), had a little bit of transference, as all good therapy patients should and wonders frequently on his blog whether he's adult enough.

I'm 34. Neil is a bit older. I was in therapy before. This is his first time.

I've had some therapists and then I've had some therapists. I had one when I was about 16 (for the anorexia/bulimia) who was so freaking hippie, purple scarves, indian jewellery and the smell of incense. She was short and fat and completely at ease with herself. I was charmed and I obligingly transferred. I'm sure she was polyamorous and I suspect she smoked dope before our sessions, because she was spaced all the time. (I think I might also have smoked dope before meeting with me, knowing what I know now.)

She also treated other family members of mine and you had to wonder at the confidentiality of the discussions we had in therapy. She was pretty helpful though. Her therapy was based on cognitive psychology so there were real solutions to problems discussed in the sessions. Like, 'You feel you can't control x, y, z? Try this.'

So pretty much a good therapy experience overall.

Later, when I met B, left my first marriage and we moved in together it was into a flat in the same building as her practice and that was freaky. Meeting her in the stairwell etc. How to be embarrassed simultaneously in a very small space, especially when she took me aside and asked how the sex was, while winking and gesturing.

Ahem.

A few years later in Cape Town I had a therapist who pissed me off intensely. She was a classical Freudian psychiatrist. She would sit opposite me in her beautiful, light filled, Oranjezicht office with its designer plants; never talk, say 'I see' and then at the end of the sessions tell me that I wasn't progressing while waving the DSMIV criteria at me and telling me that it was all because I intellectualized my feelings instead of acting on them.

Maybe I was intellectualizing but wasn't it her job to help me feel instead of allowing me to intellectualize? 

Years later I still intellectualize. Some things never change.

Here in the Netherlands I had a psychologist who was so sweet, but wanted me to talk about my paaaaaaast all the time. On the premise that talking about the past will fix the present.

Oh my. Oh my. I couldn't discuss my past, especially not in this particular present.

I had a few sessions with her, made her cry, cried in my fourth session, as expected, then ran away as fast as I could and I haven't been back. Talk about fear of facing one's feelings. Chicken. In fact, I usually run away from anything as soon as there is any kind of confrontation or anything that I feel I can't control.

Result = failure in therapy.

Now I go the informal therapy route. I write, and I publish what I write to the internet. That carries it's own set of weird possibilities, actually. How does it affect the people reading it, how many beans can you spill without hurting someone, how do other people feel when they read what you write, how does your writing skew other people's perceptions of who you are?

How fucked up can you be online? Actually I know how fucked up people can be online and that's pretty comforting.

It's a bit like group therapy I suppose - there is always someone worse off in the group. Someone you don't want to be. Then you can say to yourself, 'wow, imagine if it was as bad for me as that person has it' and feel somewhat smug.

Writing as therapy is free and I never really have to do anything I don't want to do, I can re-write my emotions from day to day and if I don't like them I can delete them.

Actually, the deleting thing might not be such a good idea. I admitted at lunch yesterday that I delete my written work wholesale (if you could see the hundreds of stories that no longer exist), and my lunch partner was shocked. He said 'ooooh, you can't do that, a writer keeps everything and rewrites.'

Maybe that's my fatal flaw. I never want to rewrite. I just want to start over.

Perfect therapy, though, the internet.

Don't you think?