When we started the weekly sessions, I was awkward and unsure of how to talk to her. I’d scoured the Counselling Directory to find her, the only Black woman in my local area with availability, and now I wanted to impress her – to be the sort of interesting and receptive client she’d be glad she’d taken on. I found our early sessions stressful, although it would take me a while to figure out why.

I understood that my therapist was someone who would get to know me intimately while holding me at a professional distance, never offering up details of her own life, her own likes, her own emotions. But I’d still bound into our sessions smiling and deferent no matter how I was feeling, asking how she was and what she thought we should start with. All I ever got back was “What do you want to talk about?” A question that made me irrationally furious, though I was careful to hide it. A person who gives nothing away, who shrugs off their outside self and becomes a knowledgeable mirror, as good therapists do, is very hard to get a handle on. Which means they are very hard to please.

You see, for most of my life, pleasing was my safe space. Saying and doing things to make the people around me happy – and, crucially, happy with me – has been my MO since I was a child. Being a good girl (“helpful, hardworking, no trouble at all” reads my Year 6 report) was my attempt to avoid conflict and maintain the emotional stability of the adults around me. Particularly my father, who is about as volatile as a person can be, to the point that I’d put my ear to his bedroom door on Saturday mornings to see if I could get a read on how the weekend would go.

“As a people-pleaser, I thought I was a good person. My therapist called bullsh*t”