In the second edition of our “Ask a Counsellor” series we spoke to David Gill. David is a qualified psychotherapist who has worked with us at Waterloo Community Counselling for a few years. He also runs his own private practice: https://www.gillypsychotherapy.com/
This might be a wise place to remind you that the opinions expressed in these blogs are not necessarily representative of WCC and they are not given on behalf of the organisation.
Without further ado here is David Gill’s wonderfully erudite and entertaining responses. Please enjoy!
LD: Why and when did you decide to become a counsellor?
DG: After I left Afghanistan and closed the door on my life as a social documentary filmmaker and photographer, I realised that I was still looking to find a way to continue to engage with humanity. To listen and to learn from people. I was looking for a fresh challenge. Three years ago, I had a germ of an idea about wanting to be a therapist. If you’d asked me to give you an answer as to why I wanted to do this, it would probably be much different to the answer I’d give you right now and probably different in another three years. I suppose like everything it depends on who is asking and what I think they want to hear.
Having spent three years in the academic system, I still hold the opinion, despite the over-medicalisation of therapy, that this vocation has room for creative individuals and free thinkers. This optimism is based on delving into the lives of its originators such as Rogers, Freud, Klein, Adler and Ellis and it’s more weird and wonderful leftfield luminaries such as Jung and RD Laing. One thing that struck me about all of these people and what kept me going was that every single one of them at some point was regarded as frauds, charlatans, quacks, counter-culture renegades or just plain bonkers. To a man (and the odd woman) they were all rule-breakers, all of them questioned and challenged the status quo in their desire to unlock the secrets of the human psyche.
LD: What did you do before you became a counsellor?
DG: My last quantum leap was a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, living and working in Afghanistan for seven years.
LD: Why and when did you decide to join the team at WCC?
DG: I joined WCC back in February 2019. I found the whole atmosphere warm and extremely welcoming, and without sounding too affected – it has ‘soul’. It’s also very diverse in both practitioners, and it’s client base which is what I am looking for in my private practice. They were also the first people to say ‘yes.’
LD: Is there a certain model of counselling you use in your work? Can you explain in less than 10 words what it means?
DG: Integrative Approach – ‘Promiscuous and flirtatious around the psychodynamic, relational and humanistic theory.’ = 10 words – I did it!
LD: How have you adapted to doing your counselling work during the lockdown?
DG: Novelist Tom Holt summed it up for me, ‘Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever.’ I accepted the inevitability of going online with a certain grim foreboding. Within weeks I realised that I was spending a third of the session looking at myself. I Googled it and found out it was normal. Then I discovered how to mute my face. Concealment was a revelation. Now there’s a paradox!
LD: Do you feel as though the lockdown has increased peoples’ need for counselling and therapy?
DG: The media has been reporting a lot of research highlighting the negative impact on people’s mental health and finding it difficult to cope with the emotional challenges of isolation. Personally, I thought lockdown was enlightening at first, aside from the grim death toll I found exhilaration in its novelty. No traffic, low pollution, endless sunny days. ‘All in it together’ and all that malarkey.
The current lockdown is very different, and I can sense a collective anxiety building amongst all my clients. It is impacting everyone in a myriad of ways, but now I feel as though we are all yearning for things to return to normal. Although as James Hillman said in, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – and the World’s Getting Worse, ‘In a world like ours, where what’s considered normal is a sickly compromise between how much boredom you can stomach and how much denial you can defend, new thoughts and explorations are often couched in terms of psychosis’. So maybe it is an opportunity for people to look at new meanings and new beginnings instead of looking back. It could be the jolt some of us require.
LD: What would you say to someone who is thinking about receiving therapy or counselling?
DG: Be careful, as Carl Jung said, ‘Be aware of unearned wisdom.’ Searching for the truth is not the same as what’s desirable. My god that sounds enough to scare the pants off anyone. Honestly, it’s great. How about Socrates? ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ No, that also sounds quite intimidating. Ok… just do it you’ll never look back. Oh no! That’s the whole point. What about; Be as truthful as possible with your therapist and ask questions. Get stuck in and do the work. It will reward you.
LD: What do you find most rewarding about being a counsellor?
DG: The trust that clients place in me and the utter privilege I feel from receiving that trust. James Andreoni claimed the ‘glow of giving makes acts of generosity ultimately selfish.’ In sum; Helping people is a win-win.
LD: What do you find most challenging about being a counsellor?
DG: The trust that clients place in me and the utter terror I feel from receiving that trust. Which is good right? Terror broadens the mind. When you’re scared, the stress response induces an adrenaline rush and floods your brain and body with oxygen, increasing your stamina.
LD: What advice do you have for people who are thinking about becoming a counsellor or therapist?
DG: Take the red pill. It represents an uncertain future. Living the “truth of reality” is harsher and more difficult than you could imagine. But as Morpheus says in The Matrix, “if you take the blue pill…the story ends.” If you haven’t seen the Matrix, then that won’t make any sense. But maybe this is a trick question because as counsellors we are not meant to give advice. So perhaps I should adopt the Oscar Wilde approach on this one, ‘I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.’
LD: What’s your favourite technique to keep happy and healthy at home during the lockdown?
DG: Cooking hearty soups and getting stuck into a Cold War Steve jigsaw puzzle. Twitter @Coldwar_Steve
LD: How do you start your day?
DG: Tragically, like most people, these days, going to the loo and staring at my iPhone.
LD: Which 3 people would be on your guest-list for your dream dinner party?
DG: RD Laing, Dorothy Parker and Keith Moon. Although I might be too terrified to attend.
LD: What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?
DG: I’m a Joke, and So Are You – Reflections on Humour and Humanity by Robin Ince & Stewart Lee.
LD: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
DG: Not sure it is solid advice but more of a statement from Maya Angelou, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ She sounds a bit harsh and judgey, but I get the point. But I think the best advice I have read is that therapists should read more stories, more great literature, more Greek myths. Case studies, diagnosis, theories are great, but a lot of the time we are dealing in fiction. Freud said, ‘It’s how you remember, not what actually happened.’ That’s what clients do. They tell us stories that they have told themselves, and we should be always aware of that.
LD: What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve done in life?
DG: Besides embarking on a career in therapy, I suppose it must be going to live in a so-called ‘war-zone’ and eating meat-based Kandahar street food in the blazing summer.
LD: When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
DG: In the Navy, but my mates told me that it was a bit ‘gay’. Please don’t blame me. It was Yorkshire in the 1970s in and literally, everything you didn’t like or understand was pejoratively called ‘gay’.
LD: What thing are you most excited to do once the lockdown has finished, and it’s safe to travel again?
DG: Travelling on the Central Line in rush hour and licking shop windows outside Harrods.
LD: What are you irrationally scared of?
DG: I am scared of faking it and making it. Freud called it ‘success neurosis’, but the great poet Phillip Larkin, said, ‘Life has a practice of living you, if you don’t live it.’ So I try not to be scared of living.
LD: What 3 things would you bring to a desert island?
DG: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I have never managed to read it (the paperback is over 1100 pages) but apparently, it echoes a timeless conundrum: the propensity for humans to distract themselves, often mindlessly, from boredom and the trauma of life. If that doesn’t work the complete audio works of Alan Watts and Screamadelica by Primal Scream and maybe something to play them on if that’s not too greedy.
LD: What does 2021 hold for you?
DG: Hopefully spending less time staring into a screen and shouting, ‘Can you hear me?’ However, I must end on another quotation since this interview is drowning in them. ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.’ Woody Allen.
David Gill
info@gillypsychotherapy.com
www.gillypsychotherapy.com