Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 30

My own counsellor had the irritating habit of ending every utterance with the word Sue (it IS my name of course, but I don’t need to hear it so often as I am still capable of identifying myself). I met her every Friday on the top floor of a disused vicarage, the panelled staircase lined with paintings of deceased parsons. In my mind she was Morticia Addams, and it took me weeks to get out of her dusty grip. Recently, I had another bit of counselling through the NHS with a cheery gay guy who made me think about stuff, and reminded me of my strengths rather than the dire situation I was in. Proof that counselling can be good, but don’t make the mistake I made of thinking you’ve got to stick with the first one you’re given. ~ Sue Ab

I have a very poor track record of getting on with counsellors. Prior to JS’s death I had been to counselling three times: I’d encountered an enormously fat psychotherapist who wheezed so loudly I couldn’t concentrate on my problems for wondering if he would make it through our session, a beardy-weirdy who turned out to be a pervert and a woman who picked her zits and flicked the dried scabs onto the floor. After JS died, I failed to bond with the strange woman in black from Cruse, the trauma psychotherapist Doktor R, and the woo-woo chakra-balancing woman who looked like Thunderbirds’ Lady Penelope. Six counsellors, and I don’t have a good word to say about any of them, although I have much more affection for Doktor R now than I did then.

Perhaps it’s not them. Perhaps it’s me and my, ‘You can’t tell me anything I don’t know attitude,’ that has clouded my ability to pick a decent one.

Four months after JS died, I was bemoaning my counselling misfortune to a friend who had been both divorced and widowed. H, a feisty Northerner who whilst of the same ‘Get on with it’ school of life as me, acknowledged that what had happened was so huge I needed some professional support. My friends were wonderful, but I was aware that some of them were suffering from sympathy burnout, and I didn’t blame them. I’m finding it hard to be around me too. H felt that what I really needed was coaching, not counselling, and mentioned that an old industry colleague of ours – Claire D – had recently set up a life coaching business. Perhaps I should get in touch with her? I barely knew Claire, but what I knew I liked: she had formed and run a successful character licensing agency, sold it, started up a restaurant in Hammersmith and was now coaching. She had always come across as bright, straightforward, kind and no-nonsense, and, what’s more, I knew that JS liked and admired her. I was convinced that Claire was the key to my getting my life back on track.

I Googled her and found her website. The words she used were exactly what I needed: her coaching was about setting goals and forming strategies to thrive, not just survive. The problem was Claire wasn’t a life coach, she was a business coach. I was devastated. H suggested that I still contact Claire, but I couldn’t imagine turning up to meet this admired business powerhouse clutching a wad of snotty tissues sobbing, ‘JS is dead. Help me!’ But H was right: perhaps it was decades spent in business or just my personality, but what I needed wasn’t endless navel-gazing and introspection, but goals to strive for and strategies to put in place. I didn’t just want to survive. I intended to thrive. So I put those exact words into the Google search engine along with ‘coaching’, ‘grief’ and ‘bereavement’. The one word I deliberately missed out was ‘counselling’. And up popped the website of a woman called Shelley. I had no idea where in the world Shelley was, but, immediately, I emailed her. Her email bounced back, but I was on a mission. I tracked her down on Facebook and sent her a message. She sent me her phone number and suggested I call her. I rang her and her first words, delivered in a clipped but warm South African accent, were, ‘Darling, it’s all going to be OK. I promise you.’

Shelley explained that she had been widowed (which I liked, because I felt she was one of ‘us’) and remarried (which I didn’t, because I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else but JS ever again), and that we should meet up for a chat. I am a firm believer that people come into your life just as you need them, and as it turned out, Shelley lived only a few miles from me, just past St Marylebone Crematorium in East Finchley, where my husband’s ashes were still sitting on a shelf.

I know that Doktor R’s code of conduct prevented her from becoming too involved with her clients, and I understand that (though I remember her looking pained and, just as I was about to leave, saying, ‘Please eat some breakfast every day,’ which I found oddly touching), but when Shelley opened the door of her house and immediately gave me a hug, it was exactly what I needed. We sat in her office – a snug sanctuary – where I wept and wailed and drank tea and ate biscuits as her dogs snored next to me. When I left her house several hours later, I felt the first glimmer of hope for the future.

The approach that Shelley takes is, ‘Yes, what has happened is terrible, but it has happened so what are you going to do about it?’ This is bereavement coaching, not counselling. It’s a practical, no-nonsense approach that resonates with me. During each session she allows me to weep and wail, but then we put in place a plan for the week. In the early days it was something as simple as aiming to eat breakfast every day (are they all obsessed with breakfast?) or making an appointment to massage my tension-packed shoulders and sticking to it. She’s had me watching films on DVD (The Bucket List!) and then discussing them, or making a goal to deal with paperwork I find frightening. These small steps and practical measures have gradually made me feel as if I am regaining some control in a life which otherwise feels chaotic. The weight of grief is so intense, it’s been a relief for someone to say to me at the end of our session, ‘Right, this is what you are going to do this week . . .’ This ‘homework’ gives the week a purpose, if only to be able to go back for the next session and say, ‘I ate breakfast six days out of seven!’ Just call me ‘teacher’s pet’.

I don’t always agree with Shelley’s methods: I’m not a believer in healing crystals for instance, though I keep the one on my desk I bought on her recommendation, and there have been times when I felt I was veering off in to a woo-woo world that doesn’t sit comfortably with me. And yet, even with my scepticism of affirmations and meditation and feng shui and burning sage to cleanse a space, Shelley’s practical plan to grieving is helping me to put my battered little soul back onto life’s tracks to continue its journey.

I’m the first to admit that this approach is not for everyone. I’ve been very scathing about the counsellors that I have met, but the key, I think, is to keep searching until you find someone you feel fits your grief, and grief, like counsellors, is not a ‘one size fits all’ emotion. Some people don’t need or don’t want counselling, or get it on a more informal basis through family and friends, and if that works for them, good. Some people want to spend an hour a week rehashing the past and sobbing, and if they come away feeling better, then great! Traditional counselling didn’t work for me, because the reason I was falling apart wasn’t because my mother threatened to give my prized patent-leather shoes to poor children unless I behaved (Doktor R’s ‘Tell me about your childhood’ approach), just as it wasn’t the reason I was bolting from the queue in M&S with panic long before JS died (Beardy-Weirdy and Flaky Face). The reason I am in despair is because I have watched my husband drown.

But just as there are different counsellors for different people, perhaps we need different counsellors for different stages of our grief. I was so shocked and traumatised in those early weeks, perhaps I needed to just cry and shred tissues as I did with Doktor R. I became so angry about the hand that life had dealt me, I’d have sneered with contempt at anyone who sat at my kitchen table and trotted out stock sympathy phrases whilst cocking their head, not just the strange woman in black from Cruse. I hope there will soon come a time when I won’t need Shelley to give me my tasks for the week, at which point I’m sure she will be delighted that I feel strong enough to set out on my own.

The Chakra woman? She was just bonkers.