Hate Therapy? Need Help?

Working recently with several personal development coaches on their articles and eBooks, it struck me that the world falls into two camps when it comes to anything perceived as 'Therapy'.

Loosely labelled, they are "Wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole" and "Love it, love you, love me."

My other half would sooner gouge out his eyes with a teaspoon than discuss his feelings with a stranger. I, on the other hand, blog quite happily about excruciating daily experiences and would not quail if someone in the queue at the bank asked me to talk in depth about my haemorrhoids. I live by the John Peel maxim - "If you don't want people to know about it, don't do it." Anything I have done, from giving birth to being held hostage in a library, is worth sharing, writing about and deriving entertainment or erudition from. (I am pretty sure than you should never end a sentence with 'from', but this is a blog, and I can do what I like here. So.)

But once you have attained a certain age, it is difficult to shake the notion that you should know what you are doing in life. So, going to counselling, therapy or any other form of personal coaching, is understandably less attractive, hinting , as it does, that you are struggling in some area.

For those of you reading this and considering marriage guidance or individual therapy, I get why you have trepidation. I get why you'd sooner stumble on getting stuff wrong and dealing with the fall out, rather than analyse your own navel-fluff. I get why you may even feel that you'll eventually work it all out on your own, rather than have to tell someone else, in a room with dead potplants and khaki sofas. But bear this in mind. It's like a Get Out of Jail Free card.

I went to Relate counselling unwillingly. If I couldn't work out my own relationship, when I knew it so well, how on earth could some young college-leaver tell me anything? The point is, she didn't have to. She sat opposite us making notes like a character in a bad Adam Sandler movie, and I despaired that she'd ever get my other half to do anything other than glower. But when I shut up for five minutes, she let the silence hang. She then asked simple, no-nonsense questions, and re-directed us whenever we veered on to emotional loops. She was the equivalent of Switzerland. Calm, bland and serving great coffee.

Hours later, I realised I'd learned more about us in that one session, than in several years of weekend arguments over how badly I pack the car. I heard how he talked to someone he wasn't angry at. I found out why what I did bothered him and he heard my real concerns that had got hidden in my torrent of words. I spotted the mean techniques I'd been employing to undermine him, when I thought they were just ways to empower me. It took the sting out of our circular arguments to hear them in context, and to know that everyone has them, like a nail-biting habit from childhood.

I'm not advocating everyone rush to the Yellow Pages and book in with a therapist now. But don't rule out the benefits until you've tried it. You can carry on being sniffy about self-help books afterwards. But you may have caught a glimpse of how everyone else sees you, and armed with that knowledge be able to navigate a less painful way forward for yourself and those who have to live with you.

And later on, when you're back at the point of no-return (probably yet another argument over the washing-up) you'll scoop this information out of thin air as your Get Out of Jail Free card. And be grateful you did it.

In the deep dark wood...

Are childhood fears really our primeval gut instincts that have hung around since we lived in dark caves? Is our fear of the dark really a fear of that unknown disease lurking within, the unforeseen malevolent attacker, or the unguessable moment of our own death?

What wakes YOU in the night in a cold sweat? A footstep on your stair? A passing car headlight coasting round the room that could be the torch light of an intruder? Are adult fears just extensions of those childhood worries – is that a vampire, a witch, a lecherous neighbour?

I think that late at night that probably translates into - will I amount to anything? Will I be found deficient in social graces and die alone? Will I achieve something significant? Will I ever escape the daily threat of poverty?

Studying our human fears displays the underbelly of society, which most of us prefer remains hidden. Dwelling on such black thoughts is maudlin, morose, unpalatable – even though the sweaty thrills of horror movies, books and films are undeniable.

But without the mocking shape of what torments us most it would be harder to picture the ephemeral qualities of the things we do aspire to – empathy to overcome our fears, gentility in the face of man’s inhumanity, optimism that our best will be good enough if we believe it to be so. The black mask of Vader counterbalanced by the glowing white gown of Leia? (I can’t believe I used a Star Wars analogy – will I ever live it down? I’ll be followed slavishly by small boys for days... probably by grown men too...)

Who wants to be the good guy? Doesn’t he sound lame compared to the swashbuckling, wise-cracking, scarred, damaged, fiendish bad guy? Even from that description I know which one I’m inviting out to the bar tonight.

Go figure...

Sensory Overload

Sensory perceptions are a tad misleading.

I bought a painting today (well, just a mounted print) - its not this accompanying picture, the one I have bought is deeply red, with blue figures, scratched with yellow, anyway, and I can't stop looking at it - gorgeous - makes me want to pick up a brush. Funny how some art makes you reminisce, other pictures are simply decoratively beautiful, some give me the urge to feel and smell paint, smear it, touch it, lick it., some makes me angry or mournful... I don’t know what Art with a capital A is SUPPOSED to make me feel but I love that types of visual stimuli really float my boat. Even this deeply purest green pic stirs an emotional response in me.

Allegedly, a trained salesperson who knows the Dark Arts of Salesmanship can pick up clues from your voice, body language, gestures, expression and certain facial clues to know how to pitch to you. If you lean towards the tactile, or visual, or verbal, or perhaps are that weird combo a ‘kinesthete’ who prefers to engage physically, the sales guy will have to put his whole body and movement into the equation – speaking, touching and moving to engage your attention. Is there a word for people who interpret the world through all five senses simultaneously – some kind of overload freak? That’s me – I have to smell and touch vegetables in the supermarket, smell, feel and read books in bookstores, try on, walk, smell and touch clothes in boutiques.

However, I do not actually possess synesthesia. Apparently, 1 in 23 of the population possesses this extra sensory gift, in which letters and numbers also appear specifically coloured, or days or months display personalities. Synesthetes may find that visual flickers seem to have a sound. Basically, two or more senses are inextricably linked. Wikipedia says ‘Synesthesia can occur between nearly any two senses or perceptual modes.’ And goes on to detail those that have been studied, which is surprisingly few. One of rarest variations is lexical-gustatory, in which a person hears certain words which invoke certain tastes in their mouth. Commonly synesthetes have no idea that everyone does not experience the world this way.

I met a girl once who could ‘see’ musical notes, in a range of colours. She even wrote a poem about it. I think her name was Lavinia Greenlaw, but I could be mistaken. I shall Google her and get back to you.

Meanwhile, any synesthetic moments you have could be recorded here for posterity. Cheers.

Go Wagga Wagga!

Ahem. I have an incy-wincy poem in print and not wishing to blow my own trumpet (course!)I just thought I'd include a mention for it here on my little-seen, barely-read blog.

The publication 'fourW' is Australia's longest-running anthology publishing poetry and prose and I'm chuffed to bits to be included alongside such luminaries as Alicia Sometimes, Ivy Alvarez, Daniel King, Laurinda Motion, i.j.oog, Phillip Muldoon, Joan Cahill and others.

If you're not in Oz or anywhere close to locate a copy, check them out on the net or follow Derek Motions wonderful witty blog at http://typingspace.wordpress.com about all things literary from Wagga Wagga.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about said poem, I reproduce it here. Mind yourself on the rude bits.

Sigh. Fame.

Must work on Fortune next.

After

There are moments
pinned to you
as latent engrams
when a life coagulates in one drop:
sweat water saline blood ink semen

don’t sweat it:
one trickles down my freckled breasts
drops on the tiles I’ve mopped badly
so that the grime line is visible under the steel refrigerator doors
where I retrieve the bowl of Nectarines Aux Armagnac for the portly businessman
with the lechy colleague who asked me if I was aware of my own destiny
sniggering at the waitressy reply I give
since it would belittle me to talk philosophy
with a man who spat in his hors d’oeuvres so his partner would not try them

her hand wore
my raven ring:
the room intense with cold
when she took the whole pack of morphine pills
downed with the tiniest sip of liquid to avoid the retch reflex
the 400mg calculated by
current weight of seven stone (but does that include the lumps?)
three days before
my first birthday without a mother

I touched her shoulder
and wondered if we would hug today:
since her husband declared he no longer loved her or their two year old son
but preferred Natalia who had long straight hair and looked like
the photos of our mother in her sixties mini-skirt and kohl
who made jewellery for women to wear whilst fucking with their husbands
She was slumped into rolls of fat breasts and belly
and my hand didn’t span her upper arm
which used to look like Kate Moss’s
protruding from her pulling dress with spaghetti straps from Jakarta
when the only tears she shed were for
boys who looked like girls
or her mutilated grey Siamese

dropping the pizza
off the edge of the perfect white plate:
to stare at the amniotic fluid pooling under my table on the laminate flooring
you laid by hand on your cracked knee for three days with Brad
while you looked for the watch timer you forgot you were wearing
and I stared at the black interior of a holdall containing the doll sized nappies
I doubted I could fasten around the waist of a doll let alone a red faced squalling thing
with heart and lungs and pearlescent fingernails
that you would hold in your arms two hours later
while I investigated the hospital shower stall
and watched paint red blood
cascade down my inner thighs
to swill with water down the Art Deco floor grill

a sable brush
with a thick handle shaped like a carved chair leg:
made sweeping calligraphy flow across the stretched cotton frame
of the T-shirt that Caisa hung in her flat in Göteborg the one she was wearing in the photo
when we saw Ulrika
outside the museum on Götaplatsen
and I stood in the window next to some Europeans and thought will I always feel English
unable to see the future where my children speak Valenciano
and I read the digital European news emailed to me because
I need to find out if they’ve printed the article about our battle
to save the Carrascal Mountain from urban developers
or if my poem’s in print
on that forum

a tree stump
near the London to Cambridge railway line:
in the shade cast behind the corona glare of a station lamppost
his penis constricted by the black mesh of my fishnets I refused
to remove, his penetrating finger adorned me with the scarlet blush
of my first orgasm
caused as much by the sight of his purple prick dripping
as by the hoot of the oncoming train
and the backdraft whoosh
and the stars coming back into view

after.

Forest Edge?

Hey! Here's my Christmas plea, Santa.

Can you please very quickly re-make Mirrors Edge but set it in a forest environment with rope bridges swaying between trees, and dangling creepers along tip-tilting fallen trees, and strange bird calls, and forest noises and rainfall through the canopy, and impenetrable bush areas, and lush exotic blooms and foliage, and possibly a few poison-dart firing adversaries and illegal loggers and chemically-polluting cocaine-traffickers to dodge, and some new plant and animal species to discover, and maybe, just maybe a cure for cancer in the form of parasitic wasp nests?

Pretty please?

Cos I'd love that and it MIGHT turn me into a gamer, and my other half would be awestruck with bliss. So that would kind of be my ideal Christmas prezzie, really.
Cheers.

Oh, hope the elves aren't giving you any gyp.

See ya soon, usual time and place. Whisky toddy and mince pie awaiting.

XX P