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A moment that changed me: group therapy stopped me falling for ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/22/momen...

A moment that changed me: group therapy


stopped me falling for versions of my dad
Eleanor Moran
Why was I attracted to charming, older and unavailable men? The Hoffman process
showed me I had placed my unreliable, dangerous father on a pedestal
Thursday 22 September 2016 14.54BST

he hotel function room was packed tight with tables, drunken voices raised to cut
through the hubbub. It was a TV awards do, guests all dressed up and the booze
owing like a river bursting its banks. As I manoeuvred through the crowd, my
eyes met his. The older writer Id been seeing and obsessing about for the past
few months.
Id convinced myself that the reason he was so unreliable, so hard to track down, was
because he lived at the other end of the country. Now I had a freeze frame of the real
reason he was so reluctant to commit: his hand intertwined with a womans, the
girlfriend hed sworn hed broken up with months before. The fact hed told me he was
still looking to move out of the house they shared together, and was staying in the spare
room, should have been a clue, but I hadnt wanted to heed it. Now denial was no
longer an option. I turned on my heel and ed into the night.
That was the moment I knew something fundamental had to change. That the men I was
attracted to charming, older and inevitably unavailable were living ghosts of the rst
man whod tted that description. The father Id never lived with, but had spent my
childhood idolising, and pining for during his frequent absences from my life. Hed died
a few short years earlier, and my complicated grief about it was casting a long shadow
over my whole life.
My father had so much promise as a young man he was witty, academically gifted and
handsome, and I can absolutely understand why my mum had fallen for him when they
met at university. But he struggled to deliver on that early potential. They had me young,
and I think the responsibility was too great. He left when I was still a baby, and
proceeded to drift through life, never nding a meaningful career or remarrying. He
drank too much, and was always broke.
As a result, his life was precarious there were times when he was even homeless but I
would still long for the school holidays when I could visit him. These times were intense.
Hed conde in me about his adult problems, read to me from novels and let me stay up
until midnight watching lms with him. I loved feeling like a grown up, too young to
realise how confused and damaging our relationship was.

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22/09/2016, 18:16

A moment that changed me: group therapy stopped me falling for ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/22/momen...

I was 28 that night I ed the party, and something in me knew that if I didnt change the
way I was living, Id spend the rest of my adult life in a prison of my own making. It was
the Homan process that handed me the keys to get out a week-long intensive group
retreat where you identify the childhood patterns that are still running your life.
Homan has been widely praised by celebrities Sienna Miller is its most recent vocal
fan but its more than a fad. Its tough and profound, and oers a real chance to make
your life better. Having heard about it from an older friend, I maxed out all my credit
cards, lied to work about a last-minute holiday, and set o for a big house deep in the
Sussex countryside.
Before the process begins, you write reams of notes about your early life and your
current issues. My teacher, motherly and tough all at once, identied my core issue the
moment I met her. Youre a daddys girl, she said. Theres always at least one on every
process. Soon I was sitting in a circle, peering suspiciously at the rest of my group and
wondering what had brought each of them here. With no phone or email, they were
going to be all I had for the rest of the week. As they started to speak, my inner critic
reared up in judgment of the corpulent banker whose marriage was on the rocks, the
stern German woman who seemed to have had a sense-of-humour bypass. Why hadnt I
splurged my hard-earned cash on a holiday when I still had the chance?
What I came to learn was that working in a group can be incredibly healing. Id had
plenty of therapy before, but now I was peeling back my defences with 20 people who
were feeling equally vulnerable. When I showed them who I really was, they didnt run
away screaming. Perhaps I didnt need to be perfect to be lovable after all? I had a busy,
high-prole career, and the grief that dogged me often felt like something to hide or be
ashamed of. It was such a relief to know I wasnt the only one feeling like I lived a double
life.
Over the course of that week I came to understand why Id put my father on such a
pedestal as a little girl, even though hed been at best unreliable, and at worst downright
dangerous. I couldnt aord to question his behaviour, because I was too frightened that
if I made demands on him, hed disappear from my life again. Instead Id rationalise it,
and take the blame on myself. He would leave me alone at night, petried, and I would
wish I was grown up enough not to bother him with my petty terror. When he burned
the house down when I was 10, forcing us to shin down a drainpipe to escape, I
experienced a strange kind of triumph about the fact that Id been the one to wake us up
and save his life. Our roles had always been reversed, with my narcissistic father the
child and me a miniature adult: unable to cope, but valiantly trying.
All of this had taught me that relationships with men involved winning their love; that
their aection should be something to ght for. So it was the men who oered the
biggest challenge who stole my heart. The reverse was true too I could be harsh and
callous with the kind of boring men who called when they said they would and made
it clear they wanted to be with me.
The Homan process is shrouded in some secrecy, as its very experiential. You revisit
the pain of early life in a way thats safe but also visceral. Id read enough self-help books
to ll a library, but when youre on the process, theres no hiding behind your intellectual
understanding of whats made you the way you are. You rage and cry, and regress to
some very early experiences.

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22/09/2016, 18:16

A moment that changed me: group therapy stopped me falling for ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/22/momen...

Over the course of that week I was able to really feel the anger that it was too dangerous
for me to express as a child, for fear of triggering another of my fathers long, agonising
disappearances. As an adult I still tried to be no bother with the older, unavailable men
who invariably stole my heart. I knew instinctively they had little to give me, and tiptoed
around them, a meek, bland version of myself. It meant part of me was still that child,
frozen in time; Homan gave me the chance to grow up.
Now I could parent that child, move through the anger, and nd compassion for my
damaged, broken dad from an adult place. He too was a product of his upbringing, and I
could end a cycle that had probably stretched back through generations.
In one visualisation exercise, imagining how my own life would turn out if I carried on
acting from those early hurts, I felt a proper change. I knew in that moment that I was
absolutely committed to living a dierent life from the short, painful one he had
experienced.
Homan is a long time ago now, but I still feel grateful for the shift it gave me. I dont
believe our early life ever leaves us, but I certainly think we can relate to it in a very
dierent way once we have awareness of its patterns. I can even see positive sides to the
start I had in life. I treasure stability and kindness now. I also know that most of us have
secret hurts that were trying to conceal, which hopefully makes me more empathetic.
And all that therapy gave me a heroine for my novels a psychotherapist with a screwy
past who ends up advising the police on their most emotionally complex cases.
Denitely a bigger win than a week in Tenerife.
Too Close For Comfort, by Eleanor Moran, is published on 22 September by Simon &
Schuster

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