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• I think I can be hard work as a person. People see me as independent, wanting things on my own terms, sometimes intimidating, I don’t suffer fools. I am strong and capable and want to be in control. I’m not sure whether I am naturally like this, or whether life has made me this way. I believe that asking for support is a sign of weakness. Experience has taught me that asking for help will result in frustration and humiliation, when the support is unforthcoming. People have given me what they think I should have, what they are prepared to give me, not what I have asked for. I am fearful that if I show that I need help then it will be used against me in the future. I have found that showing vulnerability results in giving power to that person which they can then use for their own ends and hurt me. 

  All of this baggage I have taken with me to the therapy room. And dropped it at the feet of my therapist. I am going against what experience has taught me and I am here asking for help. This is a big step. But am I receptive to that help? I have to get over another hurdle: will I let her help me? Can I step out of the shadows and join in with all of my heart? I think it has taken me an awfully long time to trust my therapist, so she has a daunting task.
  
  Firstly, I went through a period where it all seemed a bit of an embarrassing joke. I couldn’t take myself and the situation seriously, or give the relationship and my therapist the respect they deserve. During this time she patiently listened to me, her face rarely expressing anything and her tone of voice gentle and unexcitable. No judgment is hinted at by the way she responds. There isn’t much eye contact. She has to put up with me staring to the right of her, usually focusing on a book with a damaged spine. (Why do I look at that one, I wonder?) Her body language is open. I think she is looking at me. Although sometimes when she asks me questions she stares into the distance, too.
  
  I then felt a period of irritation and exasperation. I asked her on a number of occasions whether she thought we were getting anywhere. She did allow her mask to slip and asked me with a look of incredulity: ‘Well do you think that we are getting anywhere?’ I always did this outside of the session. I wanted to make a judgment looking in from the outside. The frustration was that I wanted her to shift the whole thing up a gear. I have very high expectations of her. I want her to surprise and enlighten me. She continues to respond in a thoughtful monotone. ‘How do I feel?’ ‘What were you thinking?’ No surprises.
  
  Then I had a word with myself. If you don’t get into this 100 per cent and make a commitment you are not going to get the maximum out of it. Trust. Take part. Be genuinely intimate. I feel a taking off of layers and defence mechanisms. I am not sure if my therapist is aware of the stages I have had to go through. If she is, neither of us has mentioned it. She seems to me like a constant in the background while I have peeled myself down to the edible flesh. I don’t feel her making a big impression or intruding on the process. Again, something that I felt was frustrating. I wanted her to turn the light on. I wanted to hear longed for answers. Instead she has calmly allowed me to get to a point where I can be myself. And with some gentle prompting, to go deeper, to work out for myself what is going on.
  
  I have to acknowledge that the journey that I have gone on with my therapist is typical of the stages I go through in relationships. By making herself available to me I’ve been able to see what I do. By giving me the support I need with my son, she has shown me I can trust others enough to ask them for support too. And that it is not a weakness and I will not be let down. She has helped me see that the relationships that I might turn to automatically for support – my mother and the father of my children – are dead ends. She has shown me that there are other support networks that I can tap into instead for mutual support. If I can trust her, there are others out there I can trust too.
  
  There’s still a small version of myself sitting on my shoulder thinking, how ridiculous is this? I won’t allow that to enter the spotlight and be taken apart. Humour and self deprecation have served me well on the emotional roller coaster that is my life and I’m quite happy for that bit of me to escape the ‘How does that make you feel?’

• Some details have been changed.