Why did I choose this? It may be my undoing.
My friends are speaking.
They speak as they always do, some with exuberant hand gestures that could narrate the story alone, others quieter, their nods deliberate, following the current of conversation like leaves on a slow river. The dialogue starts innocently enough. Someone compliments the food, another praises the wine.
Safe, solid ground.
Then tea takes the stage.
We traverse into conversational territory about origins, blends, and that elusive “proper” way to brew it. Assam or Darjeeling? Loose leaf or bagged?
Do I care? What’s the difference? I am just happy to be here.
And for a brief moment, we orbit this fragrant little world like lay philosophers in the marketplace.
But wine has its gravity, and soon it draws us into deeper waters. Questions float to the surface: sharp, earnest, unanswerable.
The greatest hits are: who can even get a decent job these days? House prices will kill us I’m sure! Does anyone want kids? Kids? Let’s start with where have all the good men gone. Good men? Do people even know what a husband meant to be in 2024 anyway? Why are we even talking about this, have you had sex recently? No, good sex.
The questions pour out, unchecked, pooling on the table as everyone reaches to stir the pot. And I love this, truly, I do. The ebb and flow of connection, the spontaneity of thought spilling out in tangents. Conversations like these are my playground, a place where I can settle into my role as the observer, the listener, and the one who holds space.
But inevitably, it happens. Someone says something I cannot let slide.
It might be a sweeping declaration—a soundbite of unexamined certainty, just thrown into the mix to see what bites. Or maybe it’s an innocuous aside, laced with enough barbed subtext to gag me. And in that moment, my therapist brain—the one I can’t seem to leave at the metaphorical office, kicks in like an overzealous security alarm.
I weigh my options. Do I intervene, steering this glorious chaos toward nuance, toward truth? Do people want suggestions or am I just meant to sit there and watch people put themselves in a spiral? Or do I sip my wine and let it go, let it be a moment for someone else to puzzle out? It’s a delicate dance, this tension of being the one who listens for a living while still trying to live.
Therapists are trained to sit with discomfort; other people’s, mostly. But when you’re at dinner with your friends, no one wants to be therapised, least of all you. When you’re in a group chat and someone wants to vent, you want to help but the ‘help’ might be unhelpful to some.
And yet, you can’t help but notice the patterns, the gaps, the things unsaid that float between sentences like ghosts. Someone’s laughter doesn’t quite reach their eyes.
Another question isn’t a question...it’s a cry for someone to validate the thing they’re too afraid to name.
I am always asking myself, ‘Why did they say that? Why ask that question, that way?’
I tell myself this is my superpower: to notice, to hear the tremor beneath the note. Much harder over text where people are generally duplicitous but still, it’s also my Achilles’ heel. Because sometimes, just sometimes, I want to stop dissecting and diagnosing and just be. To laugh at the absurdity of life without trying to solve it. To let people be gloriously, messily human without holding the weight of their unspoken truths. And so I say nothing with my mouth, but my face screams an opinion one way or another.
So, here I am. Torn between wanting to dive in.
Why do you think all the good men are gone? - and the quiet voice in my head saying, Not your circus, not your monkeys. But of course, I’ve already half-tuned out of the present moment, turning the conversation over in my mind like a Rubik’s cube.
My friend is still speaking, her voice lilting with passion, and I realise I’ve missed half of what she said because I was busy analysing the other half.
This is the discomfort of being a therapist in everyday life. The constant tightrope walk between presence and perception, between the personal and the professional. You learn to sit with it, the way you sit with your clients’ stories, calmly, and attentively, knowing that the tension is part of the work. Except now, the work is your own.
Later that night, as I replay the evening’s highlights (and lowlights), I remind myself of something I often tell my clients: Not everything is yours to fix.
It’s a truth I can say with confidence in a session but struggle to apply in my own life. Because in the end, isn’t that the paradox of care? The instinct to help, tempered by the wisdom to know when to let go?
And maybe that’s the work of living, too. To let the conversation flow like wine at the table. To let questions land where they may.
To trust that everyone - your friends, your clients, even you - will find their answers in time. And to remember, always, that the role of a listener is not to solve the world’s problems, but simply to hear its stories.
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Website: alexholmes.co
