Jostling head

I’ve always been a split personality. But I don’t think I’m the only one. In fact, I think we all have different versions of ourselves which come front stage from time to time, or lurk behind the scenes pulling strings, or act as go-between linking your extrovert and introvert selves.

I also happen to think we need all the different parts of ourselves in order to function properly. Whatever. Because so many different things matter to me right now, I’m finding there’s a lot going on in the theatre of my life with lots of ‘characters’ all jostling for space at the podium.

This is possibly not the best way to introduce the fact that, as well as writing novels and memoirs, ghosting for others, editing dissertations for overseas students, facilitating workshops and so on, I have recently returned to my old counselling business. This is an incredibly exciting development for me. Last week I reread the text which made me fall in love with person-centred counselling all those years ago (nearly 20), Person-Centred Counselling in Action, by my old professor, Dave Mearns, and his colleague, Brian Thorne.

It has a boring title and a dull cover, but is an inspiring read and, like the student quoted on page 19, it has always read to me like a recipe for how to offer love (perhaps with a small ‘l’) to another person. ‘It’s about being free to treat other people in a loving way,’ she says. It’s a practical guide, and difficult to do, but I know from past experience that person-centred counselling really does work.

I had also decided to return to my earlier name of Sue Reid in order to keep Sue Reid the counsellor distinct and untainted by the madness that is Sue Reid Sexton, but those social media gremlins that rule the world now are having none of it. Therefore, I come clean: they are one and the same.

Except they’re not. It turns out they’re similar but quite distinct parts of me. For each to function fully they have needs which have to be met. They occupy different but similar spaces in my head. I am each one completely when I am actively functioning as either one or the other, such as tapping the laptop keys or engaging with a counselling client. Clients can rest assured that they have my full attention when I’m with them. With writing I’m in more danger or wandering off piste. It’s when I’m not doing either of those things that the confusion, and even discomfort, starts.

If I’m writing a novel, sometimes characters, situations and sentences float through my mind when I’m doing other things. If something interesting crops up, I jot it down in a notebook and continue with the washing up, still mulling. It’s a bit like sleeping on a problem. The work is going on even when I’m not consciously focussing on it. Likewise, the stories people tell in counselling often linger too. My mind wanders back to them in the days between sessions. Another counsellor once described it as people inadvertently ‘taking up residence in your house of counselling’. You can see how between these two very important activities, counselling and writing, there are a lot of ‘people’ milling about, many needing the attention of a counsellor, others of a writer. The distinction between the two is absolute, but I have only one brain.

While this is slightly overwhelming, it’s also interesting and stimulating. I’m hoping the various parts of my psyche, writer, counsellor, mother, facilitator, driver, editor and beachcomber, for instance, will sit down together and offer each other food for thought.

For more information on counselling click here.

Strange Truth

Yesterday was the last day of the Auld Reekie’s International Book Festival and also the first day that I made it over there. Illness and other distractions kept me in Weegieland. But my trip was so worth it.

I went with a friend, bumped into my very own brother and then another friend, and together we hid the last remaining copies of Mavis’s Shoe from any prospective buyer. Not on purpose of course and not once we’d realised what our little huddle was doing. Then, after a brief short story in the Spiegeltent, I abandoned the crew and went to hear Ingrid Betancourt.

Has anyone else had the experience of feeling as if everything that is being said is suddenly massively important? It’s a feeling that makes the colours in the room more vibrant and, of course, you could have heard a pin drop. In that little hour I had that experience. Ingrid Betancourt was abducted by guerrillas while campaigning for the presidency of her native Colombia and spent six and a half years imprisoned in the jungle. I didn’t actually learn the nuts and bolts of what happened to her in captivity, only that it was unimaginably brutal, that her captives were increasingly savage towards her and that, despite this, still she hoped to find absolute forgiveness in herself for them. She is small and slight, speaks slowly and with deliberation, though I suspect sometimes this was true because the questions she was asked required her to dwell on memories that continue to cause considerable pain.

Before taking my writing seriously I worked as a counsellor and specialised for some time in trauma. The kind of counselling I offered often took my counsellee to the very centre of their existence. Does this make any sense to you? It’s the kind of place where the big questions of life roam, where people make decisions that change their lives completely, though their outward circumstances may seem the same, and where people decide the most central question of them all: whether to live or die. Hearing Betancourt talk took me into that strange and most important space where life and death decisions are taken. Most of the audience questions were about what had happened since her release, how she had dealt with it, what happened to her family relationships, how she felt about her captors and their organisation now, and so on. These are important questions because, unless you've lived through something like that, it’s hard imagine how you’d sustain yourself during your ordeal or how life might feel on your release. It’s that central question of so many stories, if not all, ‘What would I do?’ Perhaps we want to be reassured that we’d have the same resilience and compassion as Betancourt, that’d we’d survive with our integrity intact, that we’d survive. That we wouldn’t end up either mad or bad. But the truth is that there is no such reassurance. We just have to hope we never have to face those questions and if we do, that we behave in ways we can live with afterwards.

But for me, being reminded of those existential questions made me feel all the more alive. Something vital was being spoken about and that in itself is refreshing, so I bought the book and took it home. Late last night I read the first few pages and had to wonder whether I was as brave as I’d thought. It was the story of one of Betancourt’s many escape attempts and I had to leave her at the point of re-capture as she is surrounded by several brutal men charged with teaching her a lesson. This is not something to read last thing at night so I stopped. But perhaps the other reason I am drawn to this woman’s story is because I want to see the bottom of the barrel of human behaviour. I’m wondering if there’s a safety in knowing just how bad it can get and that people do rise from the ashes as Betancourt appears to have done.

Reading this also raises questions about fiction, truth being stranger and in this case more powerful. Mavis’s Shoe is about a horrendous real-life bombing episode in which thousands of people were killed, although the real figure is not known. Since writing that novel I continued my research into other war zones and then turned my attention to what happens next. All of this research involved reading personal accounts, many of which were gripping, fascinating stories in themselves. So why fictionalise? Why not just tell the stories? But that’s for another post.