The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  She called me a “successful adult”. Wow, it feels good to have someone pin that medal on me.

  “Only do what you are comfortable with at each stage,” she counsels, “but remember you can also do this without a friend accompanying you. Be careful not to credit any progress you make to just having someone else present.” She is encouraging me to avoid misappropriation. Also she recognises “absolutist thinking”, whereby I believe in irremovable external factors that govern the need for my anxiety triggers.

  “There are other strategies we can deploy to re-determine problematic emotional responses - other things we can try later. But it may not be necessary. Focus on doing what we suggested in the short-term, and when you have succeeded, make sure that you award yourself the credit for doing it. Not us, not the type of stairs being insufficient angst-causing, but you.”

  Wow. Just wow. A golden illuminating light shaft just lit up the path ahead that I must take. I am so grateful for their insights. This is clearly top counselling - managing my anxieties with a structured programme, while adding a sense of buoyancy to my confidence by simply reassuring me that just because I struggle with anxieties, I don’t necessarily suck at life.

  This is graded exposure. In former, less enlightened times, phobias would be addressed by a practice known by mental health professionals as “flooding” (the phrase “mental health professional” being open to ambiguous dual interpretation). Flooding was a prolonged high voltage exposure to whatever caused the phobia.

  Someone I interviewed for this book reported being unable to travel on public transport because he became irrationally fearful of vomiting. Cue being shown pictures of vomit from his counsellor, then taken to a room with a pile of vomit which he had to sit next to for several minutes. The approach here was presumably that if you hurl enough people who can’t swim into the deep end, eventually a few will learn to swim. Graded exposure has impressive empirically proven results, and is not only far more likely to help shift an invasive phobia, but patients are also less at risk from the phobia being reinforced - an unforeseen side-effect of flooding reported by some clients.

  Nowadays flooding is discredited, and this vastly more beneficial approach to the patient has replaced such callousness. Incremental exposure to the phobia in a controlled environment not only helps reduce a phobia but also lessens risked relapse - a far preferable treatment to the morally wonky flooding technique.

  “Just keep wanting to overcome it, that’s the key,” advises Steve.

  “And keep doing it until you succeed,” Claire adds.

  “Yeah,” Steve adds,” you know what they say about ‘if at first you don’t succeed’?”

  Normally, forever the class clown, I would have added a comment like: “Whoever said ‘if at first you don’t’ succeed’ didn’t work in a bomb disposal unit.” Then there would have been an awkward silent. A pause before I would add: “Yeah, just remembered the advice about me not needing to be funny here.”

  “OK, I think that...” begins Steve, but is rather sharply cut off by Claire.

  “What do you think, Steve?” in, if not a caustic way, then in a surprising tone nonetheless.

  “That it’s time to shut up?” I wonder.

  “That our hour is well and truly up,” he continues, opting to ignore the hardly missable harshness in her tone.

  There’s something else well and truly up too: a broomstick up his...

  “In that case we had better conclude the session. I hope you felt it helpful,” he says.

  Counselling sessions are notorious for this: ending when a threatened breakthrough moment is finally imminent. Like pulling the plug out of Archimedes’ bath before he had a chance to shriek “Eureka!”

  “That was really helpful, especially all those marvellous insights at the end. Please can I see you next week?” I enquire in a mildly begging tone.

  “We have to ask our Supervisor,” he retorts. Apparently all four of us have to agree to the sessions continuing - all four keys are needed to fit the lock. They let slip a professional secret. Counsellors by nature must be discreet. (Er... that’s not the secret bit - I already assumed that. At least I hope they are.) People’s most private insights, motivations and vulnerable struggles for meaning are hardly pub anecdote material. Yet containing all this exposure to emotional turbulence within is by definition unhealthy. Therefore counsellors do tell someone else your inner secrets, but in a strictly controlled, sealed, airtight environment: to another counsellor appointed as a Supervisor. She is unlikely to post the best bits of your marriage breakdown on Twitter. Although, according to the waiver form I’ve just signed, it would be my fault if she did.

  “I can see you next week,” says Claire, charmingly. That means Steve has to see me too.

  “Er... right, well I suppose we could extend to a second session, but not commit ourselves any further beyond that stage at, um, for the moment, and dependent, of course, on Supervisor compliance.”

  “Is next Wednesday OK? Same time?” Claire asks me, hardly acknowledging Steve’s continued presence.

  Steve responds by issuing a statement: “We will have to approach our Supervisor before committing to even the most preliminary of arrangements.”

  “6pm is great for me too. Thanks,” I confirm.

  “Dependent on...” Steve begins, then gives up.

  “Oh, put it in your diary, Steve,” Claire concludes.

  “Thank you,” I say. To both of them. And mean it.

  ***

  In our next session I focus on the words of both counsellors, who have raised their game considerably from the opening few minutes of our first getting-to-know-you session.

  Since these are sessions given by trainee counsellors, they feel entitled to adopt a less formal approach. A few times they make constructive comments about each other’s approach, effortlessly slipping into impressive psychology jargon.

  Jargon helps. Being bombarded with incomprehensive technical jargon seems to reassure my idiot human brain immensely: doctors know this, advertisers know this, IT contractors without a clue why the computer is doing that odd thing know this, but to my shame, it does really work.

  For my part, I provide reluctant feedback too, which they strongly encourage me to do. They are trainees after all, and it is a weirdly formal yet simultaneously informal setting. They delve deeply into my mind’s psychological constructs, and then we have a friendly chat about it afterwards. Trust is essential in just about any relationship format, but with counsellor and client it is utterly essential.

  They apologise for the occasional bickering, and reassure me that when they’re qualified they would not work together. “Never!” Claire over-confirms. Which is a shame as I would love to see these two - undeniably lovely and skilful people as they are - counsel couples with relationship issues. I can envision Steve siding with the husband, and Claire pledging unwavering loyalty to any wife or girlfriend on the consulting room settee. I imagine her imparting in a clinician session: “There’s a technical explanatory reason in psychology why men behave like that: current progressive diagnosis has concluded it’s because they’re all twats.”

  They instigate further useful goal-setting techniques where I have to visit unpleasantly high places and do my set homework. Essentially, they initiate a reporting structure, where we revisit in unpacked detail my conflicting accomplishments and failures encountered with my homework. It’s profoundly effective in numerous ways, but perhaps most crucially in ensuring I actually do my set homework. Knowing someone is taking an interest in my progress helps enormously in implementing my goals.

  And their cognitive approach helps lessen the certainty in my brain’s processors that stimuli prompt an automatic pre-ordained reaction. Instead, a more considered response needs to interject, whereas previously my mind displayed a mechanistic decision to press the bright red p
anic button straight away. CBT has not yet banished unhelpful intrusive thoughts, but I crucially feel the presence of allies is helping me to reduce my anxieties.

  We also revisit abdominal breathing procedures and visualisation techniques that dwell on positive outcomes and imagery. “Rehearsing success rather than persistently rehearsing failure,” I say to the general plaudits of Steve and Claire. “That’s a great way of putting it,” says Steve.

  There is also a swelling sense of wanting to please Steve and Claire, to show them that their work is succeeding. Yet there is an abyss of shame that I feel myself sometimes in danger of falling towards, sucked into a pit of guilt, by the fact I am using their vital resources because I am... well... such a massive idiot. Frightened of heights, fazed by stairs, frozen by anxiety and locked out of much social interaction as a consequence.

  There is an inexpressible guilt that sits in the room, never mentioned in the conversation, like an elephant seated in the room at a dinner party. Once I try mentioning the elephant in the room, imagining him at our dinner party: “I’m sorry, we didn’t know what you’d like so we’ve just done you some iced buns - hope that’s OK.” But only in a comedic context, of course - emotional coward as I undoubtedly am.

  Leaving, I turn around to re-enter the room as I forgot my gloves. I catch Steve absentmindedly touching her hair. Just a quick pat, but she responds by arching her neck closer towards him, with the desired effect of prompting him into stroking her hair further, like a cat getting a backrub off a settee leg. It’s a heartfelt sight of charming spontaneity, unthinking affection and a gesture that pleasingly offsets their earlier coded bickering.

  ***

  Not all the valuable analysis of my condition arrived in a counselling room. A young blonde Australian model provided me with one of the most perspicacious and genuinely useful counselling tips in a trendy Notting Hill eatery.

  Set up on a blind date for a London-based Australian magazine’s feature article with a 23-year-old blonde glamour model from Melbourne, I am experiencing understandable anxiety. Given I’m in my late forties. And English. And the magazine is clearing going for comic contrast.

  My date is a minor celeb amongst London’s antipodean community, and like me can’t turn down even slightly paid projects that offer any sort of exposure, though exposure transpires to be a main part of her day job too. My date arrives and is predictably physically perfect. Early on she confides that she has removed a safety barrier deployed for all her dates, blind or otherwise, where she takes “the exit call”.

  The exit call, she explains, is where a friend makes a pre-arranged phone call culminating in her departing immediately while breathlessly announcing a death in the family. “Why after twenty minutes and not earlier?” I enquire with genuine curiosity. “Ensures I get a drink and the rejectee has to pay for it.” Nice. The courtesy has been applied to me of no exit call. “Why?” I wonder out loud. “’Cos you’re an author,” she replies, “And I thought how bad and untrustworthy can an author be?” “Have you ever read Mein Kampf?” I enquire.

  Surprisingly, we bond. Obviously I am irredeemably, irretrievably in love with the unattainable 23-year-old blonde before the menus arrive, but unlike most dates, all attraction must be muzzled, hidden and remain unacknowledged forever. Put in a cement-lined box, taken out in a hired boat to the middle of Lake Windermere and then dropped overboard.

  We ought to be on our best behaviour, as the magazine has tasked us with writing a review of our date. And, rather awkwardly, awarding each other a mark out of ten based on our date experience. Yet she gorges on her lamb cutlets, succeeding in shocking me out of my bourgeois politeness stick-to-the-rules mentality by picking up her bones. She then gnaws them like a primitive. Even allowing for the fact she’s Australian, and hence probably unaccustomed to knives and forks, this succeeds in delivering a surprise.

  It is peculiarly, and somehow inexplicably, unfeminine too (as conditioned by a patriarchal society, right sisters?). She the unreformed meat-eater, while I pick sophisticatedly at my limp salad as I’m trying to shed weight. “So,” she says, grease on her lips - I don’t know her well enough to point it out, yet alone wipe it off - “you happy with that salad?” She knows I’m not. And it’s also a transparent sexual metaphor: me the past-it reluctant salad nibbler, her gorging on all the prime juicy flesh available of her choosing. And she can have any flesh she wants, on or off the menu.

  “You’ve got something on your face,” I finally raise the courage to point out. “Any advice for going on a blind date?” she asks me between meat-tearing pulls of her teeth. “Yeah, don’t apply to the Guardian to go on one of their blind dates where they set you up with a fittie and write about it,” I advise. “Why not?” she asks. “’Cos it turns out they do check first if you’re married,” I say jokingly. “Right. Of course they do. Yeah, you should expect that with the moral Guardian,” she replies. “Er ...I was ...er... joking,” I stutter. “Right,” she confirms in an unconvinced tone.

  “So, are you going to write funny bits about me? Will there be jokes about me being Australian?” she checks. “No, of course not,” I lie. “Ridiculing my unsophisticated Australian accent and table manners?” she suggests. “Of course not, no. No,” I reply in my best mock how-dare-you wounded tone. That’s four pages of material instantly lost.

  “What yers working on at the moment?” she asks in her Oz accent, not yet remotely sandpapered down by six months exposed to less abrasive UK vowel sounds. Thereby I tell her about my treatment for height anxiety and fear of stairs.

  “Streuth, you’re kidding, right?”

  “Yes, yes, yeah, yes... no,” I reply.

  “I’ve never heard of that!” she remarks.

  She crams two cutlet bones into her mouth at once, and sucks noisily. She may be an unfairly attractive impeccable blonde but even she can’t get away with this behaviour looking anything but distinctly unappealing.

  Then she asks another question: “Is it possible to be scared of...”

  Table manners? Polite hesitancy in conversation?

  “...stairs?”

  “Yip. It’s an extreme manifestation of height anxiety termed bathmophobia,” I confirm.

  “Right,” she acknowledges, finally stunned into temporary silence. She looks around for somewhere to wipe her greasy hands. I hand her a serviette moments before she uses the table cloth.

  I ask: “What would a typical Aussie think of a guy who’s frightened of stairs and heights?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be getting much,” she acknowledges. Such bluntness is an asset in Australia. That’s why I don’t live there.

  As she picks up another bone, I wonder whether to offer her a lesson on how to use a knife and fork. She’s probably only just been picked up from the wild in Oz, and is beginning to adjust to captive living.

  “Are you gay?” she enquiries between noisy cutlet sucks. “What? Er, no, I mean... no and there’s not anything wrong with being gay. I’ve never been asked that before - well, apart from by my wife, obviously.”

  “I know there’s nothing wrong with being gay. We have lots of gays in Australia. I have loads of gay friends. Just wondered if you were gay, that’s all,” she clarifies.

  “Are you from the 1970s?” I ask.

  “What, you don’t like my outfit?” she says, going up an octave in the process.

  “No...”

  “Oh, thanks. Your shirt’s not brilliant either,” she swipes back.

  “No. The ‘no’ was a ‘no’ that referred to me not liking... oh, your outfit’s great,” I bleat like a bleeping vehicle making a reversing noise.

  “You Brits are so sensitive. I was joking.”

  “Phew, thought my score had dipped to 1/10 there.”

  We laugh. This is fun. We appear to be of the same species (homo sapiens) but have absolutely no
thing in common. And it is so unusual to spend time with people who match this category. We tend to socialise with people who fit our sense-making templates for the world, allow only those who replicate and mirror ourselves. Reflect our own values, views, tastes, opinions - corroborate our confirmation bias. We pick friends and cultural experiences that tend to flatter our existing prejudices.

  Although impossible to be sure, given the compromised clarity in her voice caused by shoving two cutlet bones into it while talking, I think she just called me a “whinging Pom.” I decide against clarifying this as its outcome will probably shave some serious digits off both our awarded scores.

  Must ask about herself if I want to be a good date.

  “What work are you doing now?” I ask.

  “Showing my body for money, pretty much,” she replies.

  I laugh expecting this to be another joke, which receives a look that ensures I apply the laugh brake instantly. “Really?” I say. “Well, pretty much. Adverts and stuff. Model work. Are you going to put that in the article?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to,” I reply honestly. “Wow, a man with sensitivity. Are you sure you’re not gay?” she says.

  “You can put it in. I’m not ashamed of what I do. You hire out your brain, typists hire out their fingers, actors hire out their emotions, I hire out my looks whilst I’ve still got them.” It’s a good line - one she’s probably developed over time, but a good line nevertheless.

  The message I’m meant to receive here is: “blonde model does not necessarily equate to thick”. I liked to think I knew that already, but I’d never met a blonde model before. Not offline, anyway.

  “Journalism pays badly,” I announce. “Only getting £100 for this assignment, and I’ve had to cover my train fare to London before filing the copy.” Then I notice a change of mood.

  “Oh... er... yeah. Me too. I know the magazine said we’re only allowed to spend £50 on a meal for two with drinks in central London. The tight arses.”