My first attempt at therapy was laughable. Them, not me.

For some reason there were two intake interviews. They lost their notes from the first one? Dunno. I didn't realize the second intake interview was a second intake interview and instead dove right into the heart of the matter, believing interviewer number two was the therapist I'd been assigned. She wasn't.

It might have been better if she were. 'Cos the guy I did get was addled. That's really the right word. His office was uncomfortably strewn with books and food, he was distracted, and he couldn't remember my name.

I was assigned to him because the intake interviewer pegged me for a "techie". She heard me say I'm a specialist in fixing broken technology companies and deduced that was the same thing as a programmer or a database administrator. It's actually a senior executive but it's moot anyway, 'cos "techie" is neither a personality type nor an illness and you don't assign "technies" to therapists who have some sort of particular aptitude with them. I was shocked when he told me this was how we'd been paired. I thought it was the most incompetent thing I'd heard since work earlier in the day.

He gave me some pamphlets to read about CBT. At my next appointment he gave me them again. He didn't remember what we'd done the first time and apparently had no notes.

It was three years before my next attempt.