How I got off to a bad start in life

From being kicked out of school to a career in philosophy and psychotherapy

I was going through some old documents recently and uncovered a couple of interesting letters from my teens. I thought I’d write down my memories, before I forget, and so one day my kids will be able to read about my life — if they’re interested! Anyway, this is (part of) my story.

When I reached the age of twelve, my parents had to choose between two high schools. Most of my friends went to Belmont Academy but I was sent to Kyle Academy. That’s where most of the middle class kids went, and so my mother and father believed it would be a better school. (The average grades were actually better at Belmont.) I lived in a council estate, on the edge of the catchment area. On the first day I arrived there, I suddenly realized that I was going to be viewed as an outsider because I came from a more working-class part of town. I didn’t have many friends at Kyle. I behaved badly and got into a lot of trouble, mainly because I wasn’t happy, and felt like most of the other kids looked down on me. My father passed away when I was about thirteen and from that point onward, I got into a lot more scraps and arguments with other kids. I was pushed around when I was among the youngest, but as I became older I started to fight back more. That got me into trouble with the teachers.

After my sixteenth birthday, which fell in late December, I returned to school and was marched to the front desk by the deputy headmaster, who told me that unless I left school immediately, now that I was old enough, I’d be expelled. Apparently, they waited for my birthday because if I’d been under sixteen there would have been a lot more paperwork to complete, as they would have been forced to transfer me to another school. So I was basically kicked out of school, with no qualifications. (Actually, I had three O Levels, but they weren’t of much use in finding a job.)

The local employment office told me that they couldn’t put me forward for any jobs because they had a file that said I wasn’t suited to work with members of the public. That seemed completely out of proportion to the trouble that I’d been in — and took me completely by surprise. I still remember how stunned I felt when they told me they couldn’t even send me for job interviews. The person who told me shrugged apologetically, as they read aloud what it said on their computer. Between my lack of qualifications and the black mark on my record, there didn’t seem to be much they could do for me. Eventually they decided that the only option was to place me on a training program, meant for young offenders and kids with learning difficulties.

I looked a bit rough around the edges as a teen (top right).

After completing this program, about three months later, still only sixteen, I was told that I had to attend a meeting before a panel of social workers and some staff from the college. I also remember being taken by surprise by this. My mother didn’t attend because she hadn’t been notified. The document below, dated 20th April 1989, summarizes the outcome. I felt pretty humiliated, as I sat in silence and listened to some adults that I’d never met before tell me why I was considered a complete waste of space. They read out the following report to me:

• "Unreliable. Gives very little of himself. Rarely applies himself to any task. Showed aptitude in computing on the one occasion he attended."

• "Lack of interpersonal skills colours his general performance. Very withdrawn/introverted. Converses in monosyllables. Has potential but this is totally submerged by his personality and poor attitude."

• "General performance within this area [work experience] lacks motivation despite indicating an interest in computing. He lacks initiative and will stand aside, withdrawn, rather than take a participating role."

• "Needs continuous guidance and support in the area of personal relationships and interpersonal skills."

In retrospect, I do find this an odd way to treat a child. It wasn’t much of a pep talk! It felt, to be honest, more like ritual humiliation. I hung my head, ashamed and perplexed, stared at my shoes, and mumbled that I didn’t have anything much to add except that what I would rather have been learning how to program computers.

I decided that my only option was to stay on at college. They didn’t want me there but nobody would provide me with a reference to get a job. So it was agreed that I would study programming — the only thing for which they felt I showed any aptitude. I spent about three years at college and eventually completed a Higher National Diploma (HND) in computing.

However, I’d always enjoyed philosophy and writing stories. So I enrolled on an additional class in English literature. I quit after getting my first feedback because the lecturer sat me down and told me, quite bluntly, that my essay was pretentious garbage and that I should forget about becoming a writer. He probably had a point but, looking back, I also think I had some trace of potential, which he could have encouraged. I think that because of this experience I tended to favour relatively plain language in my subsequent writing.

I then met with the college careers counsellor — I still remember her name to this day, although we only spoke once or twice. I told her that my passion was philosophy and that more than anything I wanted to become a psychotherapist — I was reading lots of books on these subjects. She told me to forget about it because the training was too expensive — only rich people can afford to do that, she said. She told me I reminded her of a man she knew, rolled her eyes, and informed me that in her opinion I wasn’t at all suited to being a counsellor or therapist. (I was more interested, at the time, in helping people solve problems than just talking to them about their feelings.) I should get a trade quickly, she said, while I was still young enough to be accepted, by joining an apprenticeship to become a bricklayer or a mechanic. That did not appeal to me.

By this time, I actually believed that I was, well, stupid. Because I’d been told repeatedly by teachers and lecturers that I was. Something bothered me, though. As a young child, I’d taken an IQ test and my parents refused to tell me the result. I overheard my mother tell my father it would give me a big head. I also had a knack for computer programming, and I seemed to be able solve logical problems very quickly. My classmates were always asking me to help them out when they were stuck. One of my friends told me he’d seen an advert in a newspaper for tests administered by MENSA, the high IQ society. We both completed the home test by mail and were surprised at our results. So we agreed to go to the centre in Glasgow together to do the formal supervised test. I scored 156 on the Cattell scale, which placed me in the top percentile, and qualified me for MENSA membership. The results are dated 23rd March 1992, when I was nineteen years old.

I don’t think that I would have found the confidence to go to university and study philosophy if I hadn’t received this little bit of validation. All my life, I’d been told that I was stupid and a “write off” academically. At high school, I was placed in “remedial education” because I was so far behind other students. About four or five of us would sit in a small room, and draw with crayons. The teachers had kept telling me that I was lazy and stupid, and for a long time I believed them, but it turned out that they were wrong. (I think I became withdrawn after the death of my father, and, in part, they misinterpreted this as laziness.)

Luckily for me, two positive things emerged from my time at Ayr College. I made some good friends. I also met a media studies and communications skills lecturer called Mary Smith, who was, at that point, the only person who appeared to see any potential in me. She just encouraged me to read whatever I was interested in, and advised me to go to university and study philosophy. I remarked “But doing philosophy won’t really lead to a career…” Mary looked me dead in the eye and said “Exactly!” I wasn’t sure what she meant but the way she said it had such a big impact that I made up my mind there and then to do a philosophy degree.

At Aberdeen University, I flourished. I was genuinely shocked when I started to receive top marks for my essays. I took courses specifically on Plato and Aristotle, which helped prepare me to study the Stoics later. I graduated joint top of my year with a 1st Class MA Hons in Philosophy and was awarded the John Laird Memorial prize in Moral Philosophy. I planned to go on and do my PhD in philosophy but, to my surprise, my applications were declined. Looking back, I think I could have used some guidance on wording my proposal. So instead, because there was an opportunity there to get some of my fees paid, I went to the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies at the University of Sheffield, where I obtained my MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, with distinction. It was really an interdisciplinary program in philosophy and psychotherapy. My masters dissertation was on the existential psychoanalysis of Jean-Paul Sartre.

At this time, around 1999, I started to become disillusioned with psychoanalysis and existentialism. I looked for a totally different approach to combining philosophy and psychotherapy and began to study the relationship between Stoicism and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Blending philosophy and psychology was unusual but followed naturally from my experience of interdisciplinary research at the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies. It became my “passion” for the rest of my life. It was only after graduating from Aberdeen that I realized ancient philosophy was often a much better fit for psychotherapy than modern philosophy — ancient philosophers, especially the Stoics, often saw what they as therapeutic and adopted a more down-to-earth approach than, say, the existentialists or post-modernists.

I had already trained as a counsellor, and started training as a psychotherapist. I would eventually become a UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) accredited psychotherapist, and obtain accreditation from the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), which meant I was qualified to practice throughout most of Europe. I obtained many different qualifications in different forms of psychotherapy, and worked in different environments — including in several South London schools, with the probation service and young offenders, and with a drugs project. I became quite good friends with a well-known American hypnotist, called Gil Boyne, who lived in Islington at the time. Eventually, at Gil’s urging, I opened a private practice in Harley Street, where I would continue to work for many years. I later obtained a diploma in CBT and REBT, and also went on to obtain an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in CBT from Kings College, University of London.

I was convinced that with two first class MAs in philosophy, I would, at some point, be guaranteed to get onto a PhD program to write my dissertation on Stoicism and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). I had been reading the works of the French scholar Pierre Hadot, an expert on “spiritual exercises” in ancient philosophy, and “philosophy as a way of life”. I made copious notes for the doctoral thesis that I was planning to write. Even with a first-class masters, though, I still found myself unable to get on a PhD program. This time it was because none of the philosophy departments I approached had anyone who felt they could supervise a dissertation on Stoicism. And even if they did, they told me they had no interest in CBT and wouldn’t be able to arrange supervision of an interdisciplinary thesis of this kind. I tried for a couple of years but eventually gave up. My last attempt was an interview for a well-known interdisciplinary PhD program in philosophy and psychotherapy — the interviewer told me they had zero interest in my proposal, as they were more focused on subjects like postmodernism and psychoanalysis. They weren’t willing to consider supervising a thesis on Stoicism and CBT.

Around that time, the UKCP announced that they were inviting book proposals from their members. I sent them a proposal for a book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor — a self-help book that was based on the notes I’d compiled for my PhD thesis. They declined. However, an acquiring editor working with them reached out to me and suggested that despite being rejected by the UKCP panel, I should submit my proposal directly to the publisher Karnac, who specializes in books on psychotherapy. I did so, and it was declined again.

Having encountered quite a lot of obstacles in life, by this time I wasn’t someone who would give up easily. So I contacted Karnac and asked them what sorts of books they actually wanted people to write. They told me they were really looking for a book on philosophy and CBT. That surprised me because it sounded similar to the rejected proposal. So I changed the title to The Philosophy of CBT — as close as possible to what they said they wanted! — made a few minor tweaks and sent it back to them. They sent me my first book contract in response. That book was published in 2010, is now in its second revised edition, has been translated into several languages — and it has subsequently been cited by over four hundred other books and articles.

Since then, for about the last fifteen years now, I’ve been writing books on philosophy and psychotherapy — mainly about Stoicism and CBT. Years after publishing my first book, I proposed the rejected title How to Think Like a Roman Emperor to another publisher, St. Martin’s. They accepted. That book that has been translated into about 20 languages and became a breakout evergreen title, which has now sold over 300,000 units. In total, I’ve now written about nine books. I’ve had an interesting career, as a writer, psychotherapist, and now life coach. Looking back, I don’t regret any of the setbacks or obstacles that I encountered along the way because, ironically, I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

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(Another reason for writing this down, incidentally, is that I’ve read 2-3 AI generated things recently about my life — one that someone sent to me — that contained a few inaccuracies. So I wanted to put down some facts online that may, over time, help to keep the record straight.)