As we’re all acutely aware, to have been a Londoner over the past decade has meant being immersed to the point of asphyxiation in therapy speak. To converse in the modern day lingua franca is to be au fait with the (draining) concepts of ‘coping mechanisms’, ‘co-dependent relationships’, ‘avoidant attachment styles’. We’ve practised ‘self-care’ and shunned ‘toxic’ acquaintances (sometimes a tiny bit toxically). We casually diagnosed, self-diagnosed and received endless diagnoses in an alphabet soup of get-out clauses and emotional escape routes.
But is that all about to change? For years everyone made like New Yorkers and talked about seeing their therapist like they were just going to the gym, butrecently there’s been a flurry of chat about the thrilling advantages of a more British, less examined life. More and more people are parting ways with their therapists. Could this be a good thing?
‘I just got bored with talking about myself all the time and relying on my therapist to make the tiniest decision,’ says one now therapy-allergic friend. ‘I started even worrying my childhood wasn’t bad enough to make me seem interesting and felt under pressure to embellish elements of my trauma. Sometimes I even worried I hadn’t really had any and that my therapist was bored by me. Even worse, I was boring myself.’
“Ignore your problems or any adversity in your life as you would the brown envelopes from HMRC. Stash them away and pretend they’re not there”
Personally, I let Andy Warhol be my therapist with his groundbreaking ‘So what’ theory. ‘Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, “So what”,’ he said.
‘“My mother didn’t love me.” So what...’ he continued. ‘“I’m a success but I’m still alone.” So what. I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.’
Never has a truer word been said. Why be a trauma detectorist over your own life?
Ignore your problems or any adversity in your life as you would the brown envelopes from HMRC. Stash them away and pretend they’re not there. Why care about everything? It’s tiring, dull and turns you into a bore at parties. Why not practise the good old British art of cultivating a stiff upper lip? Nothing makes me admire a person under pressure more than when they don’t complain or even mention whatever it is that’s upsetting them. How glamorous. And have you ever tried to self-medicate with alcohol? Works like a dream.
Your problems are dull. Boring. Dreary. Quotidian. Are you in Ukraine? No. Your social media followers might even still like you if you don’t have all these problems (seriously, stop whining). Stop trying to cure yourself. Be a f***-up, it’s more interesting. Don’t change your crazy behaviour, it’s funny. You’re not a sex addict, you’re a laugh at parties. Be more, not less, like you.
