In 2018 I completed a Masters programme on Counselling Practice, then spent three years hiring a room in Mount Barker, specialising in ‘Loss & Grief’, ‘Depression’, ‘Bipolar Disorder’, and ‘Family Systems Therapy’ until Covid wiped small businesses out. Quite naturally, I gave discounts to veterans and serving members of the Armed Forces.
I wrote two books on some of my counselling experience. Expect your possible life, is the follow-up to How to be your Possible Self, and it looks at ‘Expectation’ from a Social Psychologist’s perspective and how the expectations you hold strongly influence your life choices and achievements.
One of my clients from my counselling days is one of the characters in the ‘Expect…’ novel, because when she first entered my counselling room she was a broken woman, crushed by a man she loved who dropped her like a hot potato when he got bored. She subsequently found out he had lied about where he lived, where he worked, and had instantly blocked her on his phone the moment he finished sending her a text announcing the relationship was over.
She was suicidal, understandably, and I worked as a team with a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist to get her into what was then called The Adelaide Clinic (now Ramsay Clinic Adelaide), where she would be safe from self-harm.
Six months later, she was strong enough to try finding a job (she had resigned from her executive job because she was unable to get out of bed, or stop crying). She had bravely rebuilt herself and her life, and I always said I was so impressed at her progress she would be in my novels as a character. Expect your possible life will be her first appearance, but not the last, I’m sure.
Co-incidentally, when I went to a gathering of people I’d never met before, I recognised one of the men there from the photos she had shown me many times as she sobbed her heart dry. Of course, it turned out he’d lied to her about his name, but it was definitely the same man.
Life’s curious, isn’t it? Adelaide’s a small town. But the code of ethics (two codes actually, one for psychology and one for counselling) prohibits me from mentioning the man’s name or hers. Or even bringing up that she had come to my counselling practice.
We get together every few months for a counselling session at various cafés; she is going really well now, even has a partner that loves her as much as she loves him. I’m so pleased at how she has turned her life from devastation, heartbreak and suicidal ideation into a life of joy and love.
And I’m guessing that the first dog she’s ever had in her life is helping, too.
