Client Testimonial

"I avoided going to therapy for ages, I mean why would I pay all that money to sit with someone who just sits and nods and at best regurgitates my words back to me?! Anyhow my avoidant self turned up and pressed the buzzer and this guy who appeared most fitting with the shabby chic nature of the neighbourhood came down to greet me. I stated that I just wanted to check how this worked for a few weeks, the non committed open relationship kind of thing....hmm fear of intimacy the therapist wonders. Besides I heard he was doing that person-centred stuff, gentle tickling feathers of core conditions. I wanted to go into like a Turkish massage parlour where I get undress and some dude comes in without any pleasantries and stamps all over me - I would then come out a new man. It turned out that Marcus wasn't the Turkish masseur, but maybe my desire for such a pounding wasn't actually a desire but a measure of what I've known, not what I need. So much for the avoidant in me, months passed with this stranger who week after week knows more about me than anyone else. My lord don't tell me I have formed a secure attachment!! How twisted is that! The people I've known the longest and say are the 'closest' are the real strangers that trigger the dull ache of aloneness within me. Avoidance of coming to therapy wasn't about the money issue, it wasn't about wanting psychoanalytical exterminator, it was the fear of not being enough, not even my problems are worth talking about, it's not like I was from some war-torn country, had major trauma or blazing alcohol problem. I was just a kid who wanted to tell his story. If the ripples go unseen, they will eventually turn into tsunamis. This guy called Marcus got in that boat with me, beside me, we didn't row, the ripples took us. Each one connected to the one before and the one after. There was one point when he praised me for the work I did and how far I had come. If there was ever a point in our time that I shed a tear, it was then. It wasn't so much because finally I loved myself and realised I was capable but it was because it wasn't about me alone, whatever we did we did it together. Without him this would not have been possible. Now I know why I always cry when I watch DIY SOS. Interdependence takes us further than independence. How can we see who we are without others?

Some therapists may look down on me in their prescriptive ways making me think me think I have more problems and end up addicted to the therapist. Other therapists sit there with pens and papers and flow charts to scribble down to squeeze into these boxes and then come out with all these solutions that I can do myself. Then there is Marcus who makes me realise I don't want to come out a new man, I want to live as me, accept me, not fight me, but like me, love me and be loved by others by being me.  

  

I spoke about myself in this testimonial, but without Marcus I would have had nothing to write."

 

 

- Anonymous client