seventeen
the more you have . . .

At the start of 2002 I should have been happy. A month earlier I had started a radio job which I had coveted for years, and we’d just discovered Lucy was pregnant. We weren’t rich but we had enough money not to worry and we were getting on great. Everything seemed to have fallen into place the way I had hoped it would. If ten years ago someone had told me this was how my life would be I would have been ecstatic. I was a lucky guy. And yet. And yet. I couldn’t seem to relax and enjoy it. I was so used to planning and hoping that when the things that I planned and hoped for did occur, I didn’t seem able to chill out and enjoy them properly.

I had all the outside things in my life that should have prompted me to be happy but for some reason it wasn’t happening on the inside. I kept finding little things to get irritated by, small inconveniences to stress out over and tiny mistakes by others that I could treat as enemy action. I wondered if something was missing, if perhaps I had a dark, buried secret that held me back from enjoying myself because I secretly wanted to be doing something else, but came up empty. No, I wasn’t gay, yes, I really did want to have a child and no, I hadn’t stopped loving Lucy. Maybe, I thought, I just wasn’t all that good at being happy. That was it. And that was okay. I was good at other things. You can’t be good at everything.

Then I had a relapse. One warm Sunday afternoon in March I was lying on our bed reading a book. My mind drifted and I remembered how, just a couple of years ago, moments of peace such as this had seemed unattainable, unimaginable, because I was constantly consumed by fear. I remembered how bad it had been, that constant gnawing anxiety that had dominated everything. There was such a difference between how I felt then and now. Why was that? What if I was living in a fool’s paradise? Could I really be as safe as I had been assuming I was? What if one of the cases I had been involved with when I was a lawyer somehow rose up and bit me? Old cases were always getting brought up. The passing of time should have made me feel safer. But it seemed, at that time, that every day in the papers a story appeared about someone getting into trouble over events that had occurred years earlier. Perhaps in our newly sophisticated, accountable world none of us were ever really safe.

But I hadn’t done anything wrong.

But did that mean it was impossible for something to happen?

How could I be sure it was impossible?

Within minutes I had thought myself back into it all. Within a day I somehow created a complete relapse back into the depths of my anxiety. It was as bad as it had ever been. I was once again completely preoccupied by possibilities, things happening that I couldn’t control, that I might not even know about. Once again I felt I was losing control of my life, and spent every spare moment obsessing over what-ifs. I tried to remember how I got out of it last time, but couldn’t. It was like trying to remember how to fall down stairs: it had just happened.

And it was completely ridiculous. There was no way anything could happen. It really was impossible. I hadn’t been a lawyer for three years. And yet I couldn’t quite believe it and, once again, if I couldn’t quite satisfy myself that trouble was impossible there seemed to be some logical imperative requiring me to obsess about it endlessly, uselessly.

This time, at least, I was willing to seek help more quickly. I went to the doctor and asked for a referral to someone to help me work out how and why I was sabotaging myself. She referred me to a psychiatrist whose rates made me understand why his rooms were so nicely decorated. Luckily I could get most of it back on Medicare.

The first few sessions were spent telling him what had happened. He took copious notes and asked lots of questions. At the end of the fifth session he said, ‘I think I can help you. I think you should keep coming. Perhaps you should come twice a week.’

I agreed. Anxiety was still preoccupying me and the psychiatrist now knew it all. I couldn’t wait. Next session I eagerly took a seat and waited for him to tell me what was wrong with me and how I could fix it. There was a long silence.

‘Have you made a diagnosis?’ I asked.

He smiled. I waited. He said nothing.

‘Because I was wondering whether it might be post-traumatic stress disorder, because I was under a lot of stress when it first happened and now it’s sort of coming back, so I just thought . . .’ I trailed off.

He smiled. Said nothing.

Eventually I said something else.

Waited.

Said something else.

And so on.

It seemed we had entered a new phase in the therapy. One way of describing it is that our two 50-minute sessions each week together in his room were meant to act as a microcosm of my relationship with the world. His job was to provide an environment for me to explore my relationship with myself and everything else, and if that meant that on occasions the time we spent together was tense and uncomfortable, then so much the better because the more tense and uncomfortable I got, the closer we were getting to something of real significance, to uncovering some deep problem that my anxiety complex was a surface manifestation of.

Another way of describing it was that he sat there and said not much, which got me more and more pissed off because I knew how much I was paying him and he didn’t seem to be doing anything.

Occasionally he said something. Usually just when I was so fed up I was about to walk out, and it was often something that seemed so insightful and wise that I wondered how I could have ever doubted him. But doubt him I did. I spent hours trying to cross-examine him about what we were doing and how the process worked. His usual response was to smile enigmatically. Now and again he’d reply, always in a way that made me think I was in a movie that satirised psychotherapy.

‘I just don’t understand how this process is supposed to work.’

‘How do you think it works?’

‘I don’t know how it works. That’s why I’m asking.’

‘I see.’

‘So are you going to tell me how it works?’

‘Why do you need to know how “it”, as you call it, works?’

‘Because it costs $170 an hour.’

‘Is that the real reason?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes . . . I don’t know. Yes. I think so.’

Long pause.

‘See, if you were a chiropractor or a dentist or a mechanic, you’d tell me what you were going to do and why you were going to do it. You’d explain it to me if I asked. So why won’t you tell me?’

‘Because it’s not relevant.’

‘Of course it’s relevant. It’s why I’m here. To fix myself up. If there’s no methodology I might as well talk to the cat for two hours a week.’

Enigmatic smile. ‘Ah, the comedian is here today.’

‘Well, I just find it really frustrating not knowing anything. If you want me to talk about things, ask me questions and I’ll answer them.’

‘Why do you need questions to talk?’

‘Because that’s how people communicate. Questions and answers. It’s been going on for centuries.’

Enigmatic smile. ‘The comedian.’

‘If you tell me how it works, how can that be a minus? Surely it’s only going to help.’

‘If I were to explain to you how this process works it would take hours, and it would not help the process. I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I were to waste our time that way.’

‘Just give me the condensed version. In one minute.’

Enigmatic smile.

I tried to talk about things, to work out where the anxiety came from. I raked over anything vaguely disturbing in my past. There wasn’t much, really, I’d had a pretty easy trot. Sometimes I’d pick some incident that had been mildly unpleasant and try and talk it up into a character-shaping trauma in the vague hope that we could then identify it as a cause, but it was always a bit half-hearted.

‘You know once the car ran out of petrol, and I had to be at a meeting and I was late, and I remember feeling really guilty and anxious, and thinking how stupid I was not to have filled the car up the previous day, and ever since then I’ve always looked at the fuel gauge a lot and I wonder if that incident may mean that now . . .’

Okay, not quite that trivial, but not much more traumatic either.

There was no small talk, not even ‘How are you?’ I would knock, he would open the door, and silently gesture me into the chair. He would arrange himself, pick up his notebook and pen, then stare openly at me with an expression of caring concern, and wait. I found it quite intimidating to start talking unprompted about my life to someone who was so clearly focused on my every word. It made me feel whatever I said should be significant, which is probably why I often couldn’t think of anything to say.

When I did get going, the more he didn’t respond or interrupt or question, the more I got the shits with him and his smug clean carpet and his smug nice hair. One day I thought, Bugger you, mate, and sat there without saying a word for the whole 50 minutes. We had a staring contest at first. I lost. He was a good starer. Then I looked around, at the walls and my shoes, and counted down the minutes. I felt like a sulking child. Whenever I glanced back at him he would be looking at me in exactly that same caring, concerned way. But eventually, near the end of the session, I broke him. He talked.

‘I’m assuming that this display, the silent treatment, is meant to show me something. Perhaps you are trying to indicate how strong and independent you are, trying to prove to me how little you need the therapy . . .’ he raised one eyebrow fractionally, ‘. . . and yet you are still here.’

I tried to keep my cool and say something enigmatic, but only ended up with,‘Um, yes,well that could be it, I suppose, yes.’

He smiled.

‘Maybe I was trying to show you that,’ I gabbled on, ‘because I have been thinking that with all the things I have been saying that maybe I’m not actually . . .’

He put his hand up, stopping me. ‘Let’s talk about it next time, shall we. Our time is up.’

Prick.

I found out nothing about him. Which was the way it was supposed to be. The therapy was all about me. My fears, my hopes,my money.

It was like having a very interested, egoless friend, who was a bit reticent when it came to starting conversations.

The best moment was the day he was late. I never usually had to wait and our appointments would last exactly 50 minutes. He would then have ten minutes to compose himself before his next patient. But one day I knocked and there was no answer. A minute later my mobile rang.

‘I’m terribly sorry, I have been caught in traffic and I will be approximately ten minutes late.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Would you like to reschedule? Or we can have a shorter session today. I will not bill you, of course, for more time than we have.’

‘We can just start when you get here.’

‘I am terribly sorry. I have been to a meeting and the traffic has been unusually heavy.’

‘I see. And how does that make you feel?’

I didn’t really say that. But I wish I had. It was the only time I felt as if I had some power over him. The rest of the time I felt like an immature schoolboy, unwilling to knuckle down and do the hard work needed to achieve something useful.

I went for almost a year before I worked up the guts to quit, and I still don’t know whether I lacked the necessary commitment to have made it worthwhile, or if it was all a waste of time.

‘The good thing is,’ I said in our last session, ‘that I can walk away thinking that the process—whatever it is—wasn’t one that worked for me, that the fact that it didn’t work for me was all psychotherapy’s fault, and you can walk away—or at least, continue to sit there—and think that I took the soft option and ducked out, and that the fact it didn’t work was all my fault. So we’re both protected. I’m protected from thinking I’ve failed, and you’re protected from thinking that your job might not be a very useful one.’

It was smart-arse, I know, but not cruel, because I’m sure it didn’t dent his confidence in his process—whatever it was— one bit. What I wanted to say, but lacked the courage to, was that the reason I had felt unable to go past a particular point, and really open up and make myself vulnerable, was that I never felt safe enough. He was so intent, it seemed, on not offering easy solutions or soft options, and of identifying self-pity whenever it was about, that he forgot about compassion. His analysis, on the rare occasions he shared it, was always logically impregnable, but never emotionally inspiring. Maybe I’m a wet blanket, but if he wasn’t going to give a bit, then neither was I. If you’re going to try and deconstruct yourself, if you’re going to try and pull yourself apart without really knowing what you’ll find or how it will all fit back together again, then every now and again you need at least a verbal hug, for someone to tell you that, yes it is hard, and you’re not doing that badly.

Despite my dissatisfaction, the psychotherapy may well have worked. (What may also have worked was talking to two lawyer friends, who listened and then calmly and logically told me how impossible it was that I had anything to worry about. ) Six months after I started psychotherapy my relapse began to slowly ebb away, and by the start of 2003 I was therapy and anxiety free, and once again the idea that I could ever have been dosing up on any of them seemed ridiculous.

And I slowly came to a sort of realisation of where the anxiety came from. It came from a need to be in control, to feel secure. Once I had got the things I wanted—job, money, partner, baby—I became preoccupied with the fear of losing them. I felt compelled to look everywhere for threats and if I could find none that were real, I made them up, so that I could then show how diligent and prepared I was being by planning how to meet them.

The more you have, the more you can lose. If you are very happy today, the contrast you will experience when the things that bring you that happiness are gone will be far more marked than if you aren’t happy today. Therefore, stay miserable and if things go bad in the future you’ll know how to cope. That seemed to be what I was doing.

I always got anxiety surges when I was happy. Sometimes when I was playing with Bibi one would arrive like a messenger, and the message it brought was that this could all be gone tomorrow. So with my anxiety problem came a fear of enjoying myself, because to enjoy myself was to give myself more to lose.

Deep down, I believed I deserved a good, safe, comfortable, middle-class Aussie life of at least 75 years, and that not getting it would be hellishly unfair. And yet to believe I deserved a particular type of life was ridiculous. Billions of people have died before they reach the age of five. Billions more have lived their whole life without a fraction of the comfort or opportunity I have had. But if any misfortune, either imagined or not, befell me, what would I do? Would I think about how lucky I was to have had 38 years of healthy living, full of opportunity? No. I would whinge and moan and obsess about what I had lost. I wouldn’t spend one minute giving thanks for what I have had.

I had been like King Midas—although far less wealthy— crouched in a dungeon trying to encircle all my gold in my arms for fear of losing it. Whatever the treasure—gold, money, love, life, a baby—if you give in to the temptation to let the fear of losing it outweigh the joy it brings you, then you are a fool. And I had been a fool.

Which is easy to say but harder to do anything about. Habits of a lifetime are not easily changed. That’s why I thank Ivan and the builders. By the end of 2003, our month of Sundays had wrought a benefit on me far greater than any psychotherapist, drug or hypnotist had, or perhaps ever could. What had started as a desperate attempt to flee noise had become a series of precious mornings. They had involved me in the moment, they had shown me newness again, they had been full of experiences that demanded my attention now, in the present, and so had made me leave the past and the future alone. They had brought me into what was happening, into life, into my life, and ultimately that is all there is. The past is gone, the future is fantasy, and I had lost too may moments dwelling in both.

Bibi had been a continual teacher. If she was happy she was happy, if she was sad she was sad, but she was never thinking about why she had been happy yesterday or whether she would be sad tomorrow. She was right there, present all the time, turning the parent as teacher and child as student relationship on its head, and teaching me by example how to live.

But the real test wasn’t whether I could be fully involved in the present and able to find happiness at the aquarium or at La Perouse beach, it was whether I would be able to do it all day every day. The real test isn’t whether you can find happiness on a sunny day at the beach, it’s whether you can somehow find it on a shitty day on the bus.

Some will think it’s unrealistically optimistic to think you can enjoy each day. What about when the boss shouts at you, or you get sacked, or you’re sick, or your mum dies or your relationship ends, or you get hit in the eye by a stick because your dad forgot you were sitting in the backpack behind him. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is unrealistically optimistic. But it’s not a bad thing to aim for.

How do you describe a day? Every morning we try. We say it’s sunny, or it’s windy, or it’s 21 degrees. We say it’s a good day or a bad day or it’s the 25th of June. Each is right, none tells the full story.

So what sort of day is today? In the end, maybe it’s whatever sort of day we think it is.