Are you happy? Probably not.

Some days the hits just seem to keep coming. Last wee while has been a case in point. Now, don’t get me wrong nothing bad has happened exactly, but well, my ‘professional nose is out of joint’.

The final straw came today when I read an innocent, little post where going to therapy was compared to going to the hospital after breaking your leg. I hear this apologist stance all the time. ‘Please, society can you accept me going to a therapist. I suspect I may be broken.’

I’ll take that bet cause — hey, we are all broken (therapy euphonism — have room to improve). Yeah, even your therapist (NB: especially your therapist — you think they got into therapy because they wanted to work you out? Ha).

Therapy though shouldn’t be something you turn up for when the blue light and siren is wailing — it should be part of your everyday, self-care. No apology or explanation needed. Self-love, self-nurturance, whatever you want to call it. Personally, I call it being smart.

I dream of the day when I get a call and the client says ‘Hey Dr. Anne you know what I realise I’ve got some stuff that I need to work through. You know before it gets in the way of my happiness and success.’ Glory be! The gates of heaven open and the angels trumpet the dawn of Revelation.

Nope.

What I get is ‘Hey Dr. Anne I’m not sleeping, not eating. I’m signed off work. My partner is pissed at me. I have no friends. Life has no meaning. Can you sort me out like by next week?’ Che’yeah, right. Here’s my special magic t-shirt that will make it all better (retail: 50 quid not including P&P).

But therapy is for the crazy yeah? You know those who are so desperate and bonkers, that there is only the Psychologist left to see. It’s where we send all those who have failed to achieve meaningful change via the ‘bandwagon crapola’ (anyone still eating Goji berries???). You know the type of thing I mean. Like the recent all-the-uber-cool-folk are doing it, the Viva Meh-yr starvation retreat-ment.

Apparently, they take you to some luxury resort, where they promise for only a couple of grand you’ll lose weight. No sh*t Sherlock that generally happens when you only eat 650 calories a day — oh but bonus, a quick skim of their website shows that they throw in a couple of massages for your tummy and some mumbo-jumbo ‘science’ about your muscles and food. And also, fab, you can buy their the popular ‘Bitter Sprays’ for only 25 quid a pop from the store — brilliant — it’s bitter and it’s a spray. Coolly-doodily. Where’s my Visa?

Uh huh.

Tell you what, here’s my special counteroffer…. I offer early bird rates…

Come to my house. I’ll feed you the odd sandwich, give you a squirt of the Jiffy lemon that’s been sitting in my fridge maturing (cough), and let my cat pad on you groin* whilst I jibber on about your ‘bad energy’ being sucked up by my Nepalese salt rock lamp (which has had the bulb removed cause it was too much of a hassle to keep changing it) and here’s the hook, I’ll only charge you a couple of hundred quid for it. Come on, it’s a bargain.

I digress.

Point is therapy is not about slick titled baloney like, Kundalini Jedi Training, but considered relational help - with yourself, with others.?

(Ok, I admit it, this is what tipped me over the edge… I saw an advert for KJT today, and no, I have no idea what it is. Maybe you go to the park, wave around sticks saying ‘schwoom schwoom’ and learn how to move rocks with your now ‘opened chakra’ (Ladies, you know where the kundalini is right?) Probably costs a couple of month’s wages after you’ve bought their 26 quid intro feeder course. But yeah, hands up, what rightly p*ssed me off about this, was not the utter nonsense of their title, but that it was being marketed to victims of generational trauma. WTF??? Not good. Not good at all.

Truth is, no ‘next best thing’ (or ‘old, old thing’) is going to work for everyone (quite possibly no-one). If their marketing tells you what they are peddling works for ‘anything you could ever, possibly have’, do not believe them — Woo! Woo! Snake oil alert! Snake oil alert! If they are saying it's super secret - it usually means that can't explain Jack cause it's rubbish. They are playing on your suggestibility, desperation, and quite frankly consumer laziness.

Instead of going down that lovely ‘fairy-tale river of the magic bean which led you to the golden goose of happy ever after land’ why not try engaging your critical reasoning? What’s their evidence? What’s their T&Cs? What’s their registration with a recognised governing body? What’s their complaints procedure? Look, if someone is saying they are going to be starving me, I’d be hunting like a ferret with its arse on fire through their website to find this basic info. And hey, hunney! Ain’t no-one messing with my kundalini if I’ve got trauma issues.

It’s not that these types of checks and balances are infallible — of course they aren’t. Many a legit organisation has screwed up majorly (organised religion anyone) — but at least they have them. Instead, your ‘pop-up’ spiritus shop is often just linguistic-sales manipulation designed to fleece you, leaving you with absolutely no come back when you realise instead of the yellow brick road leading you to the promised Emerald City, you’ve actually been taken to a soddin 3 storey carpark in Cumbernauld (Google it…). Not being ‘mainstream’, does not translate to ‘so hey, yeah man, this is sooooo trustworthy, because they don’t do corporate.’?

Therapy has fads for sure — some of them were doozies. But generally, the longer the tooth of the therapist the less faddy they are. We start to realise how to listen, how to be agile, and how to deal with what emerges in front of us. New recruits tend to be evangelical in their approach…old farts like me, tend to have pretty much accepted that the best we can do is promise to do the best we can, but that sorry, no, we do not have a miracle cure.

Therapy then is for those who are serious about change. Those who want the best for themselves by having the time, space, and access to expertise to help guide them to their own solutions. Those folks who know hyped-up, gimmicks just don’t bloody work (unless of course your measure is how good they are at emptying your bank account — in which case they win hands down).

You want to throw away your money? Loads of charities out there — at least you’ll know you have a slim possibility of your cash doing some actual good.

You want to follow a fad/guru/theory? Bash on! Go eat the superfood from ancient China told of in the sacred scrolls of some monk from somewhere sometime someplace, sketchy on the historical details but, it’s mystic and I’ve seen a YouTube video about it so it’s got to be true. What? No. No, I haven’t seen the scroll myself but well, you know, your doubt is a sign you aren’t ready to accept the truth (eyebrow raise)…. Seriously, don’t bother walking the hot coals, just use it to burn your cash.

Oh, and finally, if you want to run the greatest (and most common) self-con of all time — declaring that you are on a journey of self-exploration and change but really you just want to spend your cash on staying the same — well, at least have the balls (or kundalini) to admit that to yourself — because that would be a wonderful beginning to meaningful self-disclosure and might, just might, go some way to justifying the money you’re spending on pseudo-psychobabble crap.

*Legal waiver: Management takes no responsibility for any claw-related injuries inflicted during ‘cat-bowel massage’)