Excerpt from my book, Your Pocket Therapist

Introduction - How therapy changed my life.

My Book Your Pocket Therapist is out this week (which you can buy here) To celebrate and honour my Substack community I wanted to share an excerpt from the book with you - the introduction, which shares more personally how therapy completely changed my life and the revelations I had about that motivated me to write this book.

Introduction

I am sitting on a sofa in a warmly lit room, looking across to a wise face with inquisitive eyes. Everything is about to change. I fidget in the chair, as nervous as I would be before a first date – just not the kind of date you sneakily text your friends about when they’ve gone to the bathroom. No one knows I’m here actually. There’s a sort of shame in telling people, as if they might think I’m crazy or broken for being here. 

I’m not here because I’ve had a mental breakdown. Actually, I’m pretty sure my mental health is fine. If I’m honest, I’m not sure why I’m here. All I know is that I’m suffering and I don’t know what else to try. I can’t stop eating. No matter what diet I try, what new type of exercise I take up or food group I attempt to cut out, I’m stuffing my face until my belly hurts every single day. I eat in a frenzy until I feel sick, comatose on the sofa, barely present. I feel sluggish and ugly and miserable. Honestly, I don’t think therapy is going to help at all. I’m just desperate.