It gives me the confidence to carry on being me

I oNCE admitted to a very close friend that I was seeing a therapist. She just snorted in disbelief. ‘A therapist? But you have everything going for you.’ If only she knew!

I wish I didn’t need a therapist. It’s expensive and time-consuming, and quite often painful, but I have come to realise that it is essential to keep my head straight.

The therapist I see doesn’t spend hours talking about my childhood; our work together is much more present tense.

Having been lucky enough to become a full-time writer in my 50s, something I had dreamed of

all my life, I have discovered that writing — unlike my old job of television producing — is not something that can be managed or delegated.

To write well you have to write from the heart and put something of yourself down on the page. The more honest you are, the more vulnerable you become. I have discovered that talking to my therapist is the only way that I can maintain the confidence I need to keep writing.

I would be embarrassed to tell anyone else the fears that swirl around my head at 3am: will I ever have another idea; has all my success to date been a fluke; and will I be found out for being a talentless fraud?

My therapist, who is wise, generous and warm — an ideal mother without all the friction of a real mother-daughter relationship — is endlessly patient with my paranoia and insecurity.

I am reminded that while nothing is certain, my track record suggests I might have another idea and my current success is not totally unfounded, and that the world is not full of people wanting me to fail.

It may seem a bit sad that I need to pay someone to tell me something I should be able to figure out for myself, but I have found that using my emotions to write means that I find myself defenceless when I am done.

There are moments when I hear myself echoing the endless insecurity of my teenage daughter. My therapist catches all that angst and I leave my sessions able to think and function like an adult again.

I suppose I could get the same reassurance from a friend, but I feel that it is unfair to ask anyone to listen to my anxieties, and there is part of me that doesn’t want to expose myself.

And friends, or family members, always want to make you feel better, whereas my therapist is an expert at making me find my own solutions to my problems.

When I was young I used to look forward to the day I would be a grown-up, but now I am middle- aged I realised that adulthood doesn’t magically come with the wrinkles — it has to be worked at.

My therapist is the person who helps me put away my inner child (who is frankly a pain) and learn how to feel like the woman the rest of the world thinks I am — calm, confident and content.