I remember working in the same department as a consultant clinical psychologist who specialised in cognitive therapy for psychosis. I always thought he had a particularly cool job and an introduction that must have gone down a storm at parties (“I’m K. I work in psychosis”).

Fairly frequently, I have to dabble with psychosis, but the more day-to-day psychological-type work I’m caught up in involves sensitively responding to emotive situations, but also accepting how subjectively life is experienced.

Even a generous amount of left-field life events isn’t preparation enough for some of the situations that occur. In the past year I’ve seen the dawning realisation on someone’s face that they’re about to be sectioned (and am probably going to see that same expression on the same person’s face in a few weeks); the thousand-yard stare of another being tormented by critical auditory hallucinations; or just having to adjust to how simple daily activities can be a major challenge to someone with major mental health needs. The following video is a pretty good simulation of how someone’s reality can be distorted by psychotic experiences:

Unlike in general conversation, the question “How are you feeling?” is nearly always of particular relevance where I work. It becomes second nature to delve into areas of someone’s life that would normally be considered off limits. I often forget this when chatting with people outside of the job and have to remind myself that the “special permission” (as one psychologist described it to me) to go into those areas no longer applies.

As workers within the project we’re encouraged to keep access to our own personal lives strictly compartmentalised (“professional boundaries”) when working with service users. This can often seem very one-sided when you’re expecting an individual to disclose extremely sensitive personal information while being off limits yourself.

At the weekend I had to sit through an emotional interlocution of my own with R and face up to last week’s events. We’d had about 25 minutes of having to work together as if nothing had happened last Thursday, but after we’d found a quiet spot in one of the upstairs kitchens I decided to break cover.

I think it’s fair to say, much like on the night in question, she didn’t exactly let me down gently. Her recall of a sequence of events that were misty in my own mind was unsparing, and I accepted as true her account of actions that I couldn’t quite remember myself. After a while, I didn’t so much wave a white flag as climb out of my trench and walk slowly towards the crossfire. I figured that if I’m expecting my key clients to be open about difficult circumstances in their lives I had to take the same journey:

Me: Wasn’t it obvious I was attracted to you?

Her: On reflection there were a couple of occasions which now seem obvious. (Slightly chastising) But what made you think I was attracted to you?

At this point I had a particularly bittersweet Wilco track floating through my head, and pretty much sighed out the title as my response:

Me: Wishful thinking...

Maybe I should have included it with the MP3s I gave her...