Therapy is big business and it perpetuates itself. Therapists pay a lot for training (often to private training providers, in the UK at least), pay for supervision (to privately employed supervisors), pay for ongoing training (to private providers), pay for their own therapy (with private therapists). Add in an inflated sense of self-importance and and assumed professionalism and, boom!, you've got a whole lot of cost they need to pass onto clients. And here come vulnerable and wounded clients who are desperate for healing and will pay because something gentle and caring is so integral to our lives as humans that we will source it where we can. Obviously, therapists need a wage and some of them are talented, but the fact that easing heartache is a business matter does not sit well with me.

I should say that my therapist charges me a nominal amount and often doesn't charge me at all. I am grateful, but then this gratitude causes issues of its own. I feel like charity, I see her as Lady of the Manor issuing alms to the poor. Fees are rarely a neutral matter in therapy.