For years, psychotherapist Taylor Glenn told her clients happiness lay in doing what felt right, in following your passions.
Smash the shackles, she said. Then she realised an uncomfortable truth: in her own life, she was doing exactly the opposite. Taylor Glenn was handing out advice she wasn't following herself.
Now, at last, she is. After giving up her work as a psychotherapist, the 34-year-old American is touring Europe as a stand-up comedian and next month appears at the Fringe with a show about her experiences. Not only does it explore what happens to someone who spends years listening to other people's problems, it turns therapy into comedy. "Finally," says Glenn, "I'm allowed to be my crazy self too."
Looking back on this decision to change careers, Glenn says she believes all of us are wired to do certain jobs and that ignoring this wiring can make you unhappy. "I think we have personality structures and are conditioned towards certain jobs," she says. "I saw this all the time as a psychotherapist. We're led into what we do."
The problem for Glenn was that she was working as a psychotherapist but felt wired to be a stand-up. "By the end of my time in psychotherapy," she says, "it felt like I was in shackles. I thought: I'm way too controlled."
And so two years ago, Glenn made the decision to change and although she earns much less than she used to and travels much more, she still thinks it was the right decision. Another bonus is that she now feels she can finally take on the taboo subject of what being a therapist is like.
"I learned to yawn through my nose, for example, which is the kind of thing they never taught you at university," she says. "They don't tell you if you have to yawn don't let your patients see that because they'll be devastated so you learn to yawn and look really interested."
Being honest about therapy in this way has been hard for Glenn because she was a conscientious psychotherapist; she took it very seriously. "I would never break my ethical code or anything like that but I have to be honest about what it was like on the other side of that chair. And I think it's refreshing for an audience to see that therapists are just normal people who swear and have weird thoughts and have a sense of humour."
What Glenn certainly isn't saying is that therapists should be sitting in sessions cracking jokes but she is saying they should lighten up a little. "You need reverence because I don't think people want to risk going to a clinician if they think they're not going to be taken seriously but we've taken that way too far to the point where we're not human any more and I think that's working against us. We're being too serious. We're not being human enough. You don't have to be stand-ups but lighten up a little bit."
Taylor Glenn's Reverse Psycomedy is at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2012, Gilded Balloon, The Turret from 1-26 August. For more information, call 0131 622 6552 or visit www.gildedballoon.co.uk/tickets
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article