The End Of Spin...?

"...I haven't got an autocue, I haven't got a script, I've just got a few notes so it might be a bit messy; but it will be me..."

David Cameron

What an incredible feat that was, to deliver a carefully written and well rehearsed off-the-cuff, straight-out-of-my-pretty-head speech like that.

I now realise what British politics has been missing these long years, the ability to memorise something clearly being a much more desirable quality in a leader than the ability to read out loud.

Personally I would rather vote for Chris Lyons, the Melbourne man who can recite the first 4,400 digits of pi from memory. And I don't even know what his politics are.

The end of spin....? Pah.

On Yummy Mummies...

Something has gotten under my skin today. I shan't tell you what it is. I wondered whether to blog it, and then remembered that I already had, back in the days when I didn't have any readers. First aired in November, now to be found on UK Gold.

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What a monster we have created.

Who decided that we should professionalise motherhood? Don’t get me wrong, I object to the double shift that most women work as much as the next card carrying feminist, and I have always believed that raising our children should go down as our best achievement as we prepare to shuffle off this mortal coil. But when our sisters in the sixties and seventies fought for the private sphere to be made political – and for women’s work in the home to be recognised as, indeed, work - did they realise they were tilling the ground for the emergence of a new form of child abuse in the form of the career-mother? I suspect not.

Everybody knows one. The stay-at-home mother who feeds her pre-school child on a diet of Tumble Tots, Monkey Music and Play Group For The Gifted Child, followed by an hour of Mozart, a soupçon of French for toddlers, and some basic pre-verbal algebra. They relax by making pictures with macaroni or baking organic, wholemeal fairy cakes and the day hasn’t ended successfully until daddy has read a chapter from ‘Homer: the Picture Book’. The poor child ends another day wondering whether it has made the grade.

Do they realise that, as mother subjects them to yet another round of work toddler stylee, she is doing this out of love? I suspect not. Do they somehow recognise that mother is doing this out of a desire to offset her own fears of inadequacy? That their own emotional needs are secondary? Eventually, I suspect, they do.

Just for the record, children (in particular very small children) require relationship above all else. Over-structuring their time leaves little room for the spontaneous development of attachment that will provide the blue print for all of their later relationships. That is not to say that intellectual stimulation and structure are not important. But they really should take second place to the child’s capacity to experience itself in relation to a loving and accepting other. Sitting with your child in front of CBeebies, chatting and taking pleasure in their pleasure, is, ironically, probably far better for their emotional development than any number of outings to Professional Toddler Stimulation plc.

You know who you are. Please just stop it.

PS. I have a friend of a friend who is über Yummy Mummy. Her husband is a surgeon. She refuses to do his washing or ironing (she does her own and the children’s) and hires a cleaner on the grounds that ‘my job is motherhood’. I must admit – child development issues aside - I can’t help but admire her chutzpah.

Will Mrs Johnson Please Make Herself Known...

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I have a proper confession. I suffer from a 'mail opening' disorder. It stems back to the days when money was seriously tight, and opening mail would invariably propel me into a panic as to how I was going to give this person the money they were asking for and that I didn’t have. (I have been a student of some kind for over half my adult life. Enough said.) And so I developed a habit of just, well….piling it very neatly in the corner and ignoring it until its presence became too much to bear.

Now the mail is much less scary but the habit persists and I still have a monthly opening ceremony. (All of my professional mail goes to my office, which I open immediately and sort out straight away. See, I do know how to do it. I am not completely stupid.)

Last Monday I had a ‘mail opening’ day. The euphoria of having beaten the pile into submission is short lived, as each opening session generates a list of things to do. Last Monday generated a list of 13 things that required my URGENT ATTENTION. Nothing life threatening, you realise. Just Things That Need Doing. I spent this Monday URGENTLY ATTENDING to the pile of Things That Need Doing.

Most of them were easy to deal with and very, very satisfying. Oh, the joy of filing a piece of paper that has been dealt with. Its almost too much to bear. A couple of them required me to part with money. I went on-line and checked my bank balance, peeping between my fingers with only one eye open. I cannot deal with the things that Require Me To Part With Money until I have some money. I calculated that this would be March 21 2008. Back on the To Deal With Later pile.

Final piece of paper. A solicitor’s letter from British Gas demanding that a woman that I have never heard of pay them money for gas that she has apparently used at my address. This woman does not live in my house, unless The Husband has her tucked away in the under stairs cupboard for his fickle amusement. The woman I don’t know of has surely not been using gas in the under stairs cupboard?

I rang British Gas. It took me 20 minutes to get through. Their goddamn ‘hold’ music was so quiet that I couldn’t hear it on speaker phone, and so had to carry on with my chores with the phone tucked under my ear. I happen to know that this is dangerous and can cause a stroke. I briefly drifted into a fantasy where British Gas had to compensate my son with millions of pounds, thus allowing him to grieve in a luxury home in Florida, because his devoted and adoring mother dropped dead whilst waiting for them to answer the f***ing phone.

Eventually I got through. Lots of talking. It took them 25 minutes to tell me that it was a mistake, a fact I was already aware of when I rang them up. I told her that I was already aware of said fact. She proceeded to explain how the mistake had been made. I drifted into oblivion for a while. She assured me it would be rectified, and we would not receive any more threatening letters for people who do not live with us.

This wouldn’t be quite so bloody annoying, were it not for the fact that this is the third time this has happened in the three years we have lived in this house. And each time the threatening letter has been addressed to a different person, at my address. Do British Gas think that I am running a safe house for people who don’t like paying their gas bills? Yes, that must be it. I am running a safe house and they are on to me. It can’t possibly be that privatisation has left them unable to run a piss up in a f***ing brewery, because we all know it is the public sector that is inefficient and poorly managed. Privatisation brings only milk and honey for shareholders and increased efficiency for the rest of us. Yes, that must be it. I must be running a safe house. Now, let’s just check that under stairs cupboard….

Not-So-Good Friday

You may think that Good Friday is the day on which we commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus at Calvary. Or perhaps you are more drawn to the Pagan celebration of Eostre, the fertility goddess whose symbol of a hare is thought to be the origin of the Easter Bunny? On both counts you would be wrong. Good Friday actually marks the official start of the ‘tourist season’ in the small Yorkshire market town in which I work.

It is an ancient and annual event. In the early hours of Good Friday morning, coaches travel far and wide across the vast county that is Yorkshire. If the driver remembers his passport they may even make it as far as Lancashire or Tyneside. These coaches gather a motley collection of people and deposit them at daybreak into the market place of our small town. Their sole purpose is to wander aimlessly for several hours, thus clogging up the narrow streets and ensuring that ‘popping out in your lunch break to buy a sandwich’ becomes a harrowing event of stroke-inducing proportions.

Today saw a particularly fine collection of such folk. I spotted:

• People who have never seen a market before.
• People who have never seen a cobbled street before.
• People who have never seen cheese before.
• People with several dogs, that they have trained specifically to walk on the opposite side of the pavement to themselves thus creating a ‘trip wire’ effect with the leads. (Why is one dog not enough? And why bring your sodding dog out on a day trip that consists entirely of shopping?)
• People with specific mobility problems. (Not normal mobility problems. That is manageable. People with mobility problems may walk slowly, but at least their pace is predictable. People with specific mobility problems are only able to walk for 20 yards before stopping suddenly to look around them, presumably because the view suddenly becomes utterly compelling. They stand stock still, look around, block your way and then start up again. And then they do the same bloody thing another 20 yards down the road.)
• People who can only walk 4 abreast on the pavement, despite its narrowness and the throng of people making this virtually impossible.
• People who eat pies from a paper bag whilst walking. (Please note: this is both bad for your digestion and bad for the people walking behind you, as it propels you into the ‘people with specific mobility problems’ category. Find a fucking bench and sit down to eat.)
• People – mostly men, it has to be said – who have been dragged along by somebody else and hang around outside shops/market stalls blocking the way and looking like piffey on a rock bun.

Good Friday is the day when these people return in packs. And I have to take a huge deep breath, because I know that this will last until at least late September. Thank god that today was dry, because when they all get their brollies out I turn apoplectic. So if you live in Rochdale and someone offers you a coach trip to a ‘quaint Yorkshire market town’, please think of me and just say no.

P.S. You may ignore me. I am a curmudgeonly old so-and-so sometimes. Most of the citizens of my small town will welcome you with open arms. Honest.

Women Who Rant Too Much...

I have come across a couple of comments on blogs recently that have irked me. Blogs that I really like, by the way, and so I won’t link to them as I don’t want to hold the bloggers responsible for the views of some idiot readers. The comments are about therapy. Firstly, the comment that only white, young, wealthy, middle-class and self-indulgent people go to therapy; secondly, that therapists are exploiting people’s misery. I have felt most irked, before remembering that I have my own blog and therefore have a right of reply, of sorts. How exciting. Normally these things bug me for a few minutes before I remember to breathe out the anger and feel compassion for my fellow man/woman/mindless numpty. (I have just had to add ‘numpty’ to my Word dictionary, as I use it in almost every post and don’t want to be constantly reminded that there might be a better word.)

Time to hit back.

It seriously hacks me off when people suggest that therapy is self-indulgent toss for those who have more money than sense. Here is a breakdown of my client group for the past 6 months:

• Clinical depression, including suicidal ideation or suicide attempts: 17%
• Potential relationship breakdown (long-term relationships involving children): 15%
• Self-defined ‘breakdown’, (depression or anxiety) resulting in long-term absence from work and loss of income: 12%
• Self-harm (cutting - requiring hospital treatment in one case): 9%
• Significant attachment issues, resulting in an absence of any meaningful relationships (sometimes called pathogenic autism) : 9%
• Bi-polar illness: 9%
• Borderline personality traits or disorder: 6%
• Potential paedophile behaviour: 6%
• Carer stress: 6%
• Anger management: 6%
• Body dysmorphia: 5%

Childhood sexual, physical or significant emotional abuse was a factor in all of the above cases. Only one client presented with issues that the uncharitable among you would call ‘self-indulgent’. I gave her two sessions, assured her she was entirely normal and told her she didn’t need therapy in order to accept that fact. 80% of this sample had approached their GP before coming to therapy, and had been offered medication and, occasionally, 6 sessions of counselling. (6 sessions of counselling is the equivalent of putting a sticking-plaster on a gaping wound for these people.) Those with bi-polar illness were seen by a psychiatrist and prescribed medication but no therapy. Only one of the above sample, aside from those with bi-polar illness, had been offered an appointment with a psychiatrist and 3 sessions with a nurse-therapist: he was offered this because he admitted to driving around with a shot-gun in the back of his car and had made a suicide plan. The psychiatrist prescribed him Prozac and the nurse-therapist said that she wished she could give him longer term therapy, but her case-load made it impossible. I know that the NHS employs psychotherapists, but I have absolutely no idea of the eligibility criteria. Everyone I see would benefit from it, and none have been offered it. I don’t think any of these people could be described as ‘self-indulgent’, and I know that therapy has made a significant difference to their quality of life (and in the case of those with suicidal ideation has prevented them from further suicide attempts.)

Self-indulgent toss? You, anonymous commenter, have absolutely no idea of the depth of pain that some people manage in their day to day lives.

Do I, and other therapists, exploit people’s misery? If you agree that bakers exploit people’s need for bread and builders exploit people’s need for houses then perhaps we do. I think the real charge is that we make huge sums of money out of people’s unhappiness. That we are cynically exploiting people’s unhappiness to line our pockets with easy money. Let me disabuse you of this idea. Nobody goes into this profession to make money. There are much easier ways of making a much better living, and so we do it for very personal reasons. Perhaps I will blog about why we do it another time. But we don’t do it to make our fortune. Had I stayed in social work I would be earning half as much again as I earn now. I have friends in teaching who earn almost twice my average earnings. If I worked in the NHS I would be earning far more than I earn privately. God, I feel like I am moaning now about how little I earn, so trust me I am not. I earn a comfortable living. I agree that it is prohibitively expensive for many, many people. But in the serious absence of NHS therapy for those who want it, private therapists provide a much needed service. Surprisingly, there are many people on low incomes who choose to come to therapy because they feel its benefit. (And most of us offer a number of 'subsidised' places for those on low incomes.)

I think I understand the criticism of ‘therapy culture’; I blogged about it recently. I dislike the hurry to remedy any negative emotion and the implication that we should treat emotional dis-ease as an illness. Personally I blame the self-help industry (all those dreadful books and motivational seminars) which truly is a child of late modern capitalism. Create a hitherto unrecognised need, and then persuade people to part with vast amounts of cash to meet the newly acquired need. I loathe the self-help industry with a vengeance, and so do most serious psychotherapists, actually. The discourse of self-help implies:

• Emotional distress is unacceptable and should be treated as an illness requiring treatment.
• We all have an absolute right to be free from emotional pain, discomfort, disappointment or disillusionment….
• …and we therefore have an absolute right to have the world meet our need for self-gratification. I have a right to have my needs met.
  

Yuch! We have many rights, but this isn’t one of them.

Ian Craib’s The Importance of Disappointment is a fantastic critique of this cultural trend.

I do think that we need to differentiate between this and the very desperate circumstances and personal despair that drive some people into psychotherapy. So please think again before making casually offensive remarks about those who seek professional help and those of us who provide it.

PS. Some people come to therapy because they simply want to explore who they are, what they want from themselves and others, and how come they feel/think/act the way they do. I don't include them in the 'self-indulgent' bracket. I think it is just fine to explore one's internal world to find a place of self-acceptance. Just to say.

On Therapy Culture...

I was listening to a clever woman from Marie Stopes on the Today programme yesterday talking about waiting times for abortions. I was making sandwiches for lunch-boxes, toast for breakfast and applying mascara with that second pair of hands that parents develop in the morning, but I was still enjoying listening to the discussion. I was in agreement with pretty much everything she said: first-trimester…blah-de-blah, government guidelines breached blah-de-blah, poorest people hit…as always… etc etc. And then she said “the government is leaving women in distress. They should at least be offered counselling.” Or something similar. And suddenly I felt quite irritated with her. Isn't the government’s job to provide us with a health care system that is fit for purpose? Is it really the government’s job to help us to manage our emotional response to the world?

There was a subtle implication that we have a god-given right to be without distress, an entitlement to have the world meet our emotional needs and a right to ‘counselling’ to ensure that we should never ever have to feel distress. Because emotional distress is intolerable and unbearable, right? It left me pondering the role of the state in our emotional lives. Is the state actually responsible for alleviating distress that we may feel, for example, at finding ourselves with an unwanted pregnancy? Or is the state responsible for ensuring the material conditions which will allow us the security of managing our own happiness? (By providing first class health care free at the point of delivery, for example?)

What irritates me is that ‘therapy culture’ gets the blame for individuals demanding that the world meets their emotional needs, without paying attention to their personal responsibility. I fear that in using the words ‘personal responsibilty’ I may be mistaken for a Daily Mail reader (which would cause me so much distress that I would have to have even more therapy.) But psychotherapy is absolutely about enabling people to manage their own internal world by taking responsibility for it. Psychotherapy doesn’t – or shouldn’t - collude with the notion that emotional dissonance is intolerable, and should be routinely remedied by professional intervention in the way that we would treat a disease. It is a very normal part of being alive and should be seen as such. Psychotherapy is about enabling people to develop the robustness that will allow them to process their internal world and not collapse under the weight of it. Dorothy Rowe says that when she sees a client who asks ‘why me?’, she responds with ‘why not you? These things have to happen to somebody.’ I like that.

I fear this is descending into an incoherent rant. To clarify: I absolutely believe that there are some people who genuinely want and need psychotherapy, and who benefit enormously from it. I believe there is a need for people who can’t afford counselling or therapy to have access to it via the public purse. But I don’t think it’s helpful to shout ‘give ‘em counselling’ every time someone has an unpleasant experience.

Phew. Glad I got that one off my chest.