BIFFO'S 10 COMMANDMENTS - PART TWO

6. IT’S OKAY TO GIVE UP ON SOMEONE

I’ve been in a situation where I’ve spent a long time trying to help somebody who ultimately didn’t want the help. Or, at least, wasn’t being helped by my trying to help.

It’s tangential to what I was saying about rescuing – and charity and kindness being actually quite selfish acts at their core – but it’s more about not wasting your life. That might sound cruel, but when I’ve certainly had friends who were in bad situations, who bemoaned their lot, talked about wanting to change, but wouldn’t listen to the advice I thought they wanted. 

Walking away from somebody who’s like that is hard – especially if it’s a friend – but sometimes it’s the only course of action. You can’t live for someone else. You get one life, and if you want to spend it helping others… help those who’ll really benefit from the help. Not those who don’t really want to change.

When I did my psychotherapy training, there were people in the group who were clearly far too comfortable in what was for a long time a loving, supportive, almost cloying, environment. Over time I started to see far too much of that, and it wasn’t useful or healthy. 

Without wishing to break confidentiality, I saw examples of individuals testing the support network, ramping up their crises because they knew they could rely on the rescuing instinct of others, who would rally round. In my experience, most of the people who train to be therapists are pretty broken. Some fundamentally so. And therapy training – if you’re engaging with it properly, as I think I was – can be intense. It’ll tear you apart before it puts you back together. 

However, there was one particular incident – that I shan’t go into detail over – that I felt was clearly an effort to exploit the kindness of others, and I wasn’t having it. It was a turning point in the class for me, where I stopped engaging with all the touchy-feely stuff, and started calling it out. I felt we were all dancing around home truths, and we needed to be more honest with one another. I was quite proud that I had the support of my tutors, if not all of my peers. Oh, a few of them  pretty much hated me by the end, but therapy isn’t about enabling somebody’s pain. It’s not telling them what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.

Years before, I also had this one friend who crashed hard after his mum died. It was heartbreaking to see him drinking heavily, making bad choices. I spent two years trying to support him and drag him out of where he’d ended up… I would see him and listen to him talking about how terrible his life was, how he couldn’t go on, and he became more and more dependent on me… It would reach a point where I was putting my own domestic issues to the side to help him. I’d offer advice as to how he could turn his life around, and he would actually get angry with me. That was the tipping point, and it took too long coming.

Perhaps tellingly, it was in the two years where we didn’t speak to one another – after I finally lost it with him – that he started to claw his way back up.

5. AUTISM IS EVERYWHERE

Since one of my kids was diagnosed with autism a few years back – which made sense of so much - I’ve read a fair bit about it, and realised how many of us have autistic traits. In fact, I’ve realised how many of us might actually have full-blown autism, and don’t even know it. 

I wish I didn’t do it, but – be they people I meet, family members, friends, celebrities (hello, George Lucas!) - I’m always diagnosing people in my head. It’s useful to a point, because I kind of then brace myself for how I might handle them, and I’ll make allowances.

Trust me; autistic people can be incredibly frustrating and annoying, but it’s also not their fault. They’re also brilliant and unique, and see the world in a completely different way. Even though it must be terrifying to exist in the world, not really understanding other people. I mean, it’s terrifying enough even when you aren’t autistic. 

But at the same time – as frustrating as it can be - I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt. The internet has just made it all worse, because it’s even harder to read a person’s intent in text alone, and I have to remember that there may be other facts at play if somebody is taking at face value some stupid statement I’ve made. 

I know that some autistic people can take things literally, or have a completely different interpretation of events (or, to put it less charitably, can lie outright, and will absolutely look you dead in the eyes and not back down). That can be scary if you’re on the receiving end of it, as I have been a few times. 

In short: autism is way, way more common than I ever realised.

Tangentially, another of my daughters is now a teacher for kids with severe autism. I’m proud of all my children. 

4. THERAPY ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

I lost a lot of faith in the therapy industry by the end of my training. I’d received my fitness to practice certificate, but I couldn’t go on with it because I didn’t agree with the way the course was being run. In short, I felt that people were being passed to the next stage when they weren’t remotely ready to become counsellors, because without students the course was at risk of having its funding taken away.

When everyone in the class received their fitness to practice, that’s when I quit. I thought it was unethical, knowing that the following year some of those people were going to be sitting opposite vulnerable clients. And the clients wouldn’t know that their “therapist” was still, essentially, in training. Or that their therapist didn’t have the necessarily skills or experience to help them. It felt like the tutors were playing with people’s lives just so they could keep their income.

There were a series of steps along the way before I reached the point where I quit. Some of it I mention above, but I also had to be in therapy as part of my training, and I was disillusioned with the quality of the therapists I saw. Having failed to stick with one who I felt was any good, one of my tutors eventually recommended a friend of hers who was an art therapist, who she felt could keep up with me.

I went to see her for a few months, and it was… okay. Better than the previous ones. But then one day in class my tutor told me that the reason she’d recommended her is that her husband is a notable comedy scriptwriter. One who I knew of. Who you would certainly have heard of too. Who I had probably been in a room with more than once. Who I share many mutual friends with.

This broke a ton of rules that had been laid out on day one of our training; we’re not meant to know anything about our therapists’ lives (of course I went and Googled him afterwards, and learned all sorts I shouldn’t have known…), we’re not meant to have dual relationships with them (and the very real possibility that I could’ve been friends with her husband was an example of dual relationships) – and this was all because of a tutor, somebody who should’ve known better. When I told the therapist I couldn’t see her any more, she told me I “needed” another six weeks of therapy. Which, oddly, would’ve more or less paid for the new expensive washing machine I knew she’d just bought. I declined.

Then there was the realisation that most therapists’ clients are either other therapists or therapists-in-training. The entire industry is kind of self-supporting, and all of that mixed together left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth. 

That said, therapy can be a great thing. If you find a good therapist – and please don’t settle on the first one you come across – then they can really help. Don’t even settle for the firtst type of therapy you try; go for person-centred, but be open to others, such as CBT. But you also shouldn’t just think it’s like waving a magic wand. You need to do the work yourself; read up on how we work. Do your own therapy at home too. Dedicate your time to it. You can’t just go along once a week expecting one person to solve all your issues. Take responsibility.