What sparked me? Being depressed, becoming a failure, loosing my relationships; (I remember finding my fiancés engagement ring in the mouth of my vacuum cleaner), pushing people away, loosing jobs, (sacked from my job as a storytelling Wee Willy Winky at Ikea – how low can you get?), loosing dignity, (sacked from the off licence, saked from a cleaning job, begging money), faith and the ability to make choices in my life. A growing feeling that life was bad and could only get worse. The idea that I was a bad person and could only harm or destroy others, that mere contact with others could ruin their lives. Desperation that I would die without every having tasted success or satisfaction, a sense I was doomed to repeat the same pattern of negativity over and over again. That my life was mapped out for me and I was an actor with a small part in the bad movie of my life: a series of cheap soap operas strung together by an overworked producer/director.

 I never thought psychotherapy could help. For me it was an expensive waste of time, an indulgence that the rich and stupid could fritter away money talking about me me me. And yet this was another message from the past – spending any time or money on me was a mistake. I wasn’t worth it. things had to get harder before I bit the bullet and entered into the arena. I started with counseling and (deep intake of breath) it got harder. I dipped my toe into long term therapy. And I’ve been there every since. Going into psychotherapy with no belief whatever that it would or could help me in any way and being surprised some way down the line of the changes in my perception of who I am what I’ve become and what the world is. I realize now that a lot of my beliefs about the world and other people were my own projections, my own fear and hatred writ large. Psychotherapy has helped me be gentler with myself and others. Kinder to my failings and more accepting about my limitations. It has given me the ability to be able to live in my own skin with a life that befits a human being.

 Training to be a psychotherapist, like being a client, has meant a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but like a good hollwood film there is a happy ending. In my darkest moments I wonder why I am spending such a lot of money doing such hard and at times unrewarding work and then it all makes sense. In certain moments of clarity I can’t think of a more noble or difficult or brave undertaking – to try and build relationships with people and understand them, to listen to them as they are and not to try and change them, to be there for someone week after week when no one else ever has been is to undertake and be part of one of the biggest adventures any one can embark on.

Lee Coombes is a psychotherapist in training with Bath Center for Psychotherpy and Counselling BCPC. His website is www.psychotherapyinbath.co.uk