The Right Question

So, I have been going to an acupuncturist / osteopath since mid-2000.  At least I think it will be since around then.  I remember that it was a few months after I first moved to London.  At first I went because I wanted an alternative approach to my eczema.  My relationship with my acupuncturist, R, has been one of the constants in my life ever since.  There have been times when I haven't seen him for months and months - perhaps even the better part of a year.  He was the first person to suggest seriously that I could perhaps benefit from some counselling.  He was kind of alarmed at how miserable my weight problem made me and at the negative and hateful language I used when talking about my body.


He gave me the number of a counsellor contact of his who worked out of the same practice.  And two years later I asked for the number again and got in touch with the counsellor, A, who I ended up seeing on a weekly basis from Feb 2008 to April 2009.


I went to my first session with two questions: why am I overweight, and why am I single?  Over a good number of weeks A managed to get me to re-address even these questions and morph them into a statement, a mission statement for what I was doing with my counselling journey: I want to be happy.  Rather than "I want to be thin" or "I want to be in a relationship".


The theory being, asking the right question leads you to making the right decision.