Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 10

I saw a counsellor who had not experienced what I have. We failed to hit it off at the point where she thought it appropriate to mention the ‘and you’re so young’ thing. I decided leaving was better than punching her ruddy lights out. ~ Nancy

Ten years ago, whilst sitting in the stalls at the London Palladium watching Dennis Waterman belt out Get Me to the Church on Time as Alfred P Doolittle in My Fair Lady, I had a heart attack. At least, I thought it was a heart attack; the crushing pain in my chest, the dizziness, the feeling that I was going to pass out at any moment certainly felt like I imaged a heart attack might. Drenched in sweat, I fled the auditorium in terror, stumbling over and stamping on the feet of those next to me. Strangely, my heart attack stopped the moment I was out of the theatre. Instead of calling for an ambulance, I flagged down a black cab and, frightened and bewildered, sobbed all the way home to be met on the doorstep by a less than sympathetic JS. The following morning, on my way to work and still rattled by the events of the night before, I was hit by a tsunami of the same terrifying symptoms the moment I opened the front gate and stepped out into the street. I made it into the car, but 20 minutes later, sitting in the outside lane of three lanes of traffic at a red light on the Holloway Road in north London, I had a strong urge to jump out of the car and run into the road. I didn’t, but only because JS shouted at me and locked the car from the inside. I really thought that I was seriously ill.

I was due to fly to New York a few days later, and, as I didn’t fancy being the reason for the broadcast at 33,000 feet of ‘If there is a medical doctor on board, please could he make himself known to a member of the cabin crew,’ I trotted off to my GP who diagnosed something much less dramatic than a dickey ticker: a panic attack. He sent me away with a prescription for beta-blockers, and a suggestion that if nothing improved, I might consider counselling. I wasn’t keen on counsellors or counselling. Some years earlier, I’d become embroiled in a ‘situation’ and one of the people involved wanted everyone to see a psychotherapist. I sat for three hours being assessed by a fat, wheezy man who at the end of the session told me that despite my emotionally chaotic childhood, rarely had he come across someone more quietly confident, grounded, balanced and secure as me. I remember thinking that he probably wasn’t a very good psychotherapist, but still.

Despite my reservations, one Wednesday evening and several panic attacks later, I find myself opposite a bearded gnome of a man who’s wearing black leather motorbike trousers and a tight grey T-shirt, a garment which accentuates his impressive man boobs. It occurs to me that if I were a woman with body-image issues, specifically lack of ‘va va voom’ in the bap department, it would be disheartening to find my male therapist sported bigger baps than me. The weirdest thing was that whilst I perched on a hard-backed chair, he reclined on a couch in a pose reminiscent of a Roman emperor dangling grapes over his mouth.

Beardy-Weirdy boasts that he’s such a brilliant therapist he has celebrity clients who have stuck with him for years (er . . . ) and angrily accuses me of taking the mick when in answer to his question, ‘What is your coke intake?’ I reply innocently and truthfully, ‘I don’t like either Coke or Pepsi. Fizzy drinks make me burp.’

It doesn’t take long to realise Beardy-Weirdy isn’t for me.

I tell him.

He maintains that without him I will never recover. I will be forever damaged.

I decide he’s a fruit loop and go to leave.

‘Take care,’ I say at the front door.

‘You don’t mean that,’ he spits. ‘You don’t really care about me, do you?’

‘Thinking about it, I don’t,’ I reply sarcastically.

He tells me that I am superficial, a phoney. Insincerity is at the root of my problem.

I tell him to f-off and go home.

I’m not upset or angry; the whole thing is so absurd. Over a glass of wine, my husband and I laugh about my confusing cocaine with carbonated drinks, and conclude there is nothing wrong with me other than not taking enough time off, a consequence of running several businesses. I vaguely wonder if I should report Beardy-Weirdy to someone, but then forget about it.

Years later, I am alerted to an article in the Daily Mail. Beardy-Weirdy has been struck off the UK Council for Psychotherapy for gross malpractice, including (alleged) sexual harassment, swearing and drug taking in therapy sessions. There’s also mention of encouraging clients to dance naked in front of him.

I swear blind that I will never ever seek any sort of counselling ever again.