Month: May 2025

I woke up 5.30am this Sunday. Ready for the London Marathon. Heart pumping. Surely, it’s the best marathon in the world? I’m sure you know somebody who took part? Maybe you watched the marathon from the London streets, or maybe you watched the highlights from the comfort of your sofa?

It was going to be the biggest ever in terms of finishers. Maybe there would be some records broken? What time was I aiming for? Thanks for asking, but the best thing was I wasn’t going to have to run it! No having to forcing sickly sweet blackcurrant gels down my throat. No bright pink £200 bouncy trainers. No need to smear myself from head to toe with Vaseline. No need to focus on my breath or pace. No need to suffer, suffer, suffer.  No need to die, die, die. No need to push, push, push through the pain cave. I have run it three times before and was delighted to be on the sidelines this time.

Despite the early morning cold fog as I cycled to the start line, I knew it was going to be a sizzling day. I knew how much it would hurt those brave runners as they soldiered on through the sweltering afternoon city heat, slowly cooking, burning, melting. I had it easy. I was simply volunteering on one of the baggage trucks. All the fun of a marathon vibe, with none of the running. I was going to be a tiny cog in the logistical monster of this feel-good global event. I was going to help make sure that each of the 56,000 runners finished up with their valuables. Well, at least I was going to try and help a few of them. This was a nice distraction from my day job as a psychotherapist…but also strangely similar.

Psychotherapy and emotional baggage

As a psychotherapist, you could say, I help people with their “baggage”. I see lost cases, damaged cases, shiny cases, half-open cases, and tightly locked cases. Sometimes there are cases everyone leaps for off the baggage belt at the airport, and sometimes there are cases that nobody picks up. They just go around and around.

I examine the content of these cases, looking for interesting material. In the marathon, runners must use regulation see through plastic bags. But we can’t just peer into someone’s insides. We must get through a tough protective outer casing. Security locks, polythene wrapping, padlocks.

We can’t break into cases. We must get the patient to remember the codes. How can we help the patient feel comfortable enough to unlock some of this material in our company? Sometimes it can take five minutes; sometimes five years.

I look for clues in the content, and how it is arranged. Patients sometimes literally leave things behind in the consulting room. More often, they might wish to store some of their emotional baggage in my psychological storage facilities. I don’t have a truck, but I need to make sure I keep a space in my mind to provide adequate storage facilities.

The baggage truck

I arrived at Blackheath early, as instructed. The first thing I learned was this was a serious business. Our leader Emily, a seasoned volunteer, was clear: “Check the bag number matches the bib number on the runner’s vest. Make sure they tie bags up properly. Once you get a bag, don’t let the runner have it back! You won’t have time to go searching for their bags amongst the huge piles. You will be inundated. At 9.15am it will be chaos. The trucks will be leaving. Just take the bags. Once the trucks leave that’s it.”

Some of our group stepped into the trucks and donned a harness to keep them secure as the moved about with the luggage. When we are handling other people’s luggage, we can trip, and fall. I stood closer to the runners and took bags to pass up or throw to my fellow volunteers on the truck.

The early runner and spooky happenings

There were a few super organised runners who wanted to leave their bag with us at 7am. They were dressed in charity clothes, which they would later discard, to keep warm for the start. One man was dressed in a white synthetic outfit. He looked like he had travelled in from another galaxy. He explained he had bought a disposable painter’s overall. It was light weight, warm.

These early types were conscientious, they were planners. They had clearly considered every detail.  Controlled every controllable. Read every book, digested every forum, and thought through the race before running it. This reminded me of my running friend Claire Steward. I caught up with her over a coffee post-marathon. Her attention to detail is staggering and her results and numbers are often spooky. Einstein talked of quantum entanglement as being the answer to the universe’s riddles. Claire is a living example of marathon entanglement. She is 71. She ran her first marathon aged 51 and this was her 51^st marathon. She completed it in 4.44.44. She has mild COPD and was advised to have a double knee replacement five years ago. Her marathon data is a snapshot of her precise psyche!

The late runner and chaos

As I took the bags, I made small talk with the thronging runners. Have you tied your laces? What’s the race plan? Will you sprint the last 100 yards for me? Have you applied sun cream? What time are you aiming to run in? The runners were chatty. “I’ll run it in 2.48!”, “Just want to enjoy it.”

A few runners started to ask me for their bags back.  They had wanted to take out earphones, or put earphones back, or find a piece of kit. I was a soft touch, and managed to work with my fellow volunteer to let them have their bags back. It reminded me of psychotherapy. There are moments when a patient hands something over to the therapist, for consideration, or contemplation. But then the patient may want it back, to examine it themselves in their own mind. They may need it back for a few minutes, or longer. Of course, in psychoanalytic work whilst the therapist may help with interpretations, it is the patient who must come to their own conclusion.

Carrying the big black bag

James, a young man, approached me with a big black rucksack. He was hoping that his parents would have taken this from him, but due to train issues, they hadn’t been able to meet him. Normally, that would mean he would have to leave the rucksack at the recycling facilities. It was like he was being prised from a living, breathing thing. I imagined all the journeys he had shared with his big black well-used rucksack. I caved in. I put myself in his shoes. I told him I could take his empty rucksack for safe keeping and that he could collect if from me in the future. We swapped numbers. He seemed palpably relieved. I put my own smaller rucksack into his enormous one and carried it about with me for the rest of the day. James, please call me or text me to pick it up! As a therapist, we might carry baggage for decades. Sometimes am old patient calls us out of the blue. We find we can always find their case, usually in pristine condition, and hand it back to them.

The sprint, the end

Towards the end of the day, people started to panic.  They hadn’t left enough time and were getting changed in front of the baggage trucks! Gels, phones, socks, hoodies, fancy dress costumes were flying in all directions. We were no longer able to carefully sort and put bags in the exact numerical sections. MOVE IT.  NOW!  THE TRUCK IS GOING!  The tempo and energy levels shot up. Runners sprinted to the truck from all directions. I was now taking on baggage, but with less care and attention.  I was throwing it on to the truck with wild abandon. I was wondering if this was akin to working at an airline desk before a flight is about to leave. I had to give some people bad news that the trucks would be leaving without their baggage.

Chaos. Excitement. The finish line. The end of the session. The baggage handlers are not here forever. Some patients like to finish the session a few minutes early; some like to run over. Some bring super-size baggage, some only carry hand baggage. As therapists we must weigh it all up and handle with care. So next time you’re in the consulting room, have a think about type case you are. Get your code or keys ready, and take a chance, open that case!

“Don’t look down Ajay!” shouted my friend/torturer Michael as we clambered over craggy rocks in 50mph winds.

My heart was beating so fast that I was sure I could see it actually pumping through my many layers of clothing.

I could taste my own adrenaline mixed in the boiled egg we had eaten on our last break.

This was a bit different to siting in comfy therapist chair. I was both smiling and crying simultaneously.

This was my annual get away with friends. I had decided this years’ edition would be a hike, to avoid the jeopardy involved in bikes, skiing, running and so on. I chose people based on the following criteria:

1. Could they walk all day long?

2. Could they avoid ending up in A&E?

3. Would they be good company?

4. Could they wash up/buy a round unprompted?

But to be honest the main criteria was A&E avoidance. In midlife, this was not a simple ask.  Over-inflated or deflated egos, failing bodies, and a quest for adventure make a dangerous and potential painful cocktail. If anyone was going to be the group patient, I decided, surely it was my turn! I was having a few days off and everyone else could take care of me. Hiking was the safest and easiest group activity. Hiking is basically walking with a piece of cheese in your back pocket, and posing with a pair of technical “hiking boots” – that surely is NOT dangerous! Barely a sport. More a convivial way of standing up with a bit of gentle swaying I reasoned to myself.

To make the decision easier, a friend had moved from my part of South London to Keswick in the Lake District, and was keen to guide us and share his backyard with us. He is an experienced climber, hard as nails, and runs 100 mile ultra marathons in his spare time in the cold and dark. So we knew we were in good – if somewhat cold and weathered –hands. However whenever I asked him what we would be doing he would say, shaman-like, “dunno.”  I guess he knew that our city-based ego-centric ways would be useless here in the wild lakes. We were in the hands of the weather gods! He pulled up specialist weather reports only for the initiated that used phrases I had never heard of before like “whiteout” and “zero visibility”… What was I thinking?!

Fortunately, I was well prepared for the job (£7 Lidl bargain black ribbed base layer and an old £5 polyester running top). The wind was howling as I scrambled across Haystacks (not the fluffy rural idyllic golden sort but a severe brooding grey rocky sort) in the Lake District. Storm Bert sounded like a friendly uncle but this was unlike any weather I have experienced in the UK!  There was slush and ice all around. I recalled some of the words I had come across when doom scrolling Mountain rescue reports before coming up…hypothermia….cragfast…fatality…

For a few a hallucinated seconds I imagined I was in the death zone (above 8000 metres) on Everest grinding out steps into a head wind (yes I do get carried away sometimes), when in truth I was five hours from London (thank you Avanti trains) and probably 500 metres above sea level. The air was full of rain and bluster. I was both hot and cold as my last minute Decathlon arctic hiking pants panic buy was slowly cooking me from the inside. My hat and glasses had been blown clean off my bearded face. I scrambled about on all fours, like a clueless goat, trying to recover them, whilst both trying to look heroic, as Michael was taking pictures, and without falling off the edge of the ridge.

Yes reader, I was having the time of my life! I wasn’t at the level of those incomprehensible people who walk on top of the world’s highest buildings, but this sure did beat walking up and down the stairs to my consulting rooms.

This was a different type of drama than the one I often encounter in the hushed and private container of the consulting room. I know that when the Greek gods of relationship – Zeus and Hera – have an argument, thunderbolts roll!! But there is something different from living in the realm of text and language compared with throwing yourself in to an actual storm! Therapists often deal with powerful archetypal materials – raging internal storms, frosty sexual relations, psychological tsunamis – to name just a few. In such cases we need to keep our footing, to avoid being blown away in the ensuing psychic storms. We need bolts drilled into the cliff face to prevent us from falling into the abyss. We think that if we can hold on for long enough there is a chance for the sun to breakthrough, eventually.

Climbers often wear the skin out on their hands and fill the cracks with glue. Therapist’s don’t use their hands, but need to keep a psychic grip on things.  Just like solo climbing is extremely dangerous, and potentially fatal, so perhaps is a solo therapist working alone. A safer arrangement is for a therapist to be tethered to other therapists, in order to manage material that would blow them off their feet.

And so it was in the Lakes. Storm Bert died out. My group of eight friends, assembled over many decades, joked and talked. This trip had been several months in the planning. Several hundred WhatsApp messages had covered train times, routes, kit, marinades, wine and beer preferences.  We wrestled with the following questions:

• Does the house have salt and pepper? (no)
• Are there toilet rolls? (a few)
• Does the house provide towels? (no)
• Is there wifi? (no)
• Is there an electrical car charging point? (no)
• Is the road icy and dangerous to walk on at night? (yes, I fell over and lived out my fantasy of being looked after in the wilds without actually hurting myself)
• How do we split the bill? (In my favour)

I guess the group messages were about the administration of taking care of the group.  Alongside the adventure of hiking in Storm Bert, we balanced more introverted questions of kit and cooking. There is a wonderful thing in groups, that each person is able to contribute something; each person finds their place.

All in all I recommend throwing yourself into a bit of “weather” alone or with friends. And then going home and putting on the fire, or wrapping up warm.  There is something in those sublime extremities, feeling small in the face of Storm Bert and the wild landscapes of the Lake District that will stay with me a whole lifetime.