Isobel Brooks was the perfect therapeutic counterpoint to Sally Mungall.

It is common for different types of psychologists and therapists to develop an eclectic toolbox of skills that draw from different modalities and Isobel’s approach was almost diametrically opposed to Sally’s.

My therapy with Sally Mungall had been destabilising, dissolving of boundaries and dismissive of rules. Isobel, on the other hand, was cautious and erred toward restraint. I believe Isobel was relatively new to psychotherapy. She wasn’t given to self-disclosure so I never knew much about her background, other than what I could glean from the internet but I eventually guessed that she was working at Basingstoke Counselling Services in order to accumulate clinical hours, maybe to fulfil the practical module as a part of a university course. Perhaps Isobel was being careful until she had found her feet, like the person who has just passed their driving test, anxiously trying to avoid mistakes. Perhaps it was her developing therapeutic style. I have worked with six therapists over the last ten years and they have all brought their own individual personalities into the setting.

Indeed, the therapeutic setting, the physical space of therapy sessions as well as the psychological environment created by each therapist, has been almost as varied.

My first therapist operated from a back room in her home. One wall was devoted to her books, mostly paperback fiction, from what I remember. I would walk in to every new session and cast an eye over the spines to see if I recognised any of the titles or authors and was once delighted to learn that she had read Julian May’s The Many Coloured Land. It was an ideal setting, comfortable, private and quiet, except on one notable occasion.

I was mid-flight through one particular harrowing psychotherapy session when an intrusion freeze dried my insides. My therapist had a visitor, probably her partner. I heard the front door opened and closed, triggering a fight/flight response and an unwelcome memory from childhood, felt like an immense rock dropped into an otherwise unruffled pond. And though I heard nothing else I didn’t fully recover for the rest of the session.

The second therapist I worked with was Sally Mungall, always in the CAMHS environment and always in the same space that felt like a secondary school classroom, layered with adolescent angst and smut, grubby and worn. It was a ridiculously inappropriate setting for a parent to be psychologically cross examined, at least it felt ridiculous to me.

Isobel was my third therapist and the setting was a Georgian house called Goldings at the northern edge of the War Memorial Park in Basingstoke. Goldings is currently part of the Basingstoke Civic Offices campus but originally belonged to parkland laid out between 1788 and 1797 as private grounds to Goldings by Frances Russell. After 100 years in the same family Goldings was auctioned in 1916 and purchased by Thomas Burberry. The house is now turned into office space but retains much of of it’s quaint, creaky charm. Each therapy session with Isobel was in the same tiny room on the first floor with a window that overlooked the London Road, just big enough to accommodate two armchairs facing each other. I sat by the window while Isobel sat with easy access to the door.

I worked with Isobel for twenty-one months, the longest therapeutic relationship that I have ever been involved in. Isobel never missed a single session. There were times when she was tired and other times when she was under the weather but she was always there to collect me from the postage stamp sized reception area at 8am every Thursday morning. Only the occasional public holiday ever interrupted the schedule.

I eventually felt held by Isobel though it took the better part of a year before I could feel comfortable with her. Trust was now a major issue for me. It still is. I will never completely trust another therapist, not after what happened with Sally Mungall. I continually tested Isobel for about a year, trying to work out if she was a good enough therapist or if she was just another ‘wannabe’, another one of those aspiring types who placed personal ambition above the needs of their patients, another one of those trying to cover up incompetence with bigotry, bluster and braggadocio.

I eventually satisfied myself that Isobel was a good enough therapist. She frustrated me sometimes, which, as it turns out isn’t an altogether bad thing in therapy. And there was one specific issue that could have evolved into a permanent therapeutic ‘rupture’ but we recycled that disconnect, folding it into the work like an ingredient is folded into a cake mix to retain as much air as possible. I’ll write about that in a much later blog post.

I was especially hypervigilant during my first fourteen weeks of therapy with Isobel, right up until the till the game-changing event that played out on the 25th September, 2022. I had been begging for psychiatric intervention and now here I was, suspicious and somewhat cynical. Isobel was passive and allowed me to talk. I had much to talk about, mostly about Sally Mungall and the unfolding psychodrama of CAMHS. She followed her training, adhering to the therapeutic principle of unconditional positive regard, accepting me without judgement and maintaining a space of complete acceptance.

 “A caring which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification … It involves an acceptance of and a caring for the client as a separate person, with permission for him to have his own feelings and experiences and to find his own meanings for them.” (Rogers, 1967)

That same non-judgemental, unconditional positive regard was not afforded to Sally Mungall, nor her clinical cohorts at CAMHS or the wider Trust. Isobel listened to my harrowing account of my therapeutic relationship with Sally Mungall and the way that I had been subsequently treated by leadership acting on behalf of the Trust with growing incredulity and was visibly aghast as I related my experience in detail. Isobel eventually declared, ‘That’s abuse!’ ‘You were abused!’

Isobel’s declaration permeated right to my marrow. It was an inciting incident, the moment that shifted my perspective and offered insight, the moment that the free falling ball of conscious awareness stopped falling, met the cold hard marble surface of psychophysical reality…and bounced.