Transcript

Intro: Welcome to A Bunch of Therapists, the podcast that goes behind the doors of the therapy room. Our guests will be sharing their experiences of counselling and psychotherapy, and all the lessons they’ve learned on the journey through life. This episode is hosted by Dipti Solanki and me, Michaela McCarthy. Our guest this week is Frankie Johnson.

Michaela McCarthy: So welcome Frankie to our podcast, thanks for coming on. So let’s start with you, with you know why you went into therapy, what was your journey?

Frankie Johnson: Okay, so going into therapy for me was, it felt like there was no other option for me really. My life had reached a point where, you know, all my own efforts to try and work it out and to make sense of it just led me back to the same sort of confusions and it was from a place of desperation really.

Michaela McCarthy: So Do you want to say more about that desperation what’s that feel like?

Frankie Johnson: It was a real, for me it was a real rock bottom. I felt that my life had gone, you know, it strayed so far away from the home that I was brought up in. I’d travelled down pathways that I began to feel ashamed about.

Michaela McCarthy: Okay. What were those pathways, if you don’t mind me asking?

Frankie Johnson: I had issues with addiction. You know at first I thought that the drugs were a solution, which they were for a while, and then they became the problem for me.

Michaela McCarthy: But I imagine, you know, when you, you know, when you take drugs, part it, you get a sense of belonging in that scene. And did you find that when you got clean that you met another type of group that you got a sense of belonging with, that they would do something similar?

Frankie Johnson: I think I’m still… I still don’t feel as if I fit in anywhere. I suppose it’s my journey really. It’s not conventional. So I grew up in foster care. I was actually fostered at the age of six months and I was fostered to a white family in Kent and this was during the you know the the 60s and 70s and I lived in the Medway area and I was the only black face around for for for a very long time and issues of race and what’s acceptable to say were very, very different then. So I experienced a lot of racism from both my peers and adults as well. Michaela McCarthy: So when you were young at that age, you wouldn’t have known, I mean, what did you know about, you know your skin color versus your, were you adopted or were you fostered? Frankie Johnson: I was fostered, yeah, it was supposed to have been for a period of three years, during you know, during that time, it wasn’t, it was quite common for West African families to come over as a couple. The man would study, the mother would work and it would be a part of a five-year plan and they would return to, in this in my case, Ghana. My parents marriage broke down in you know during that time, my dad, all I knew was my dad was gone. And my mother struggled, because I was fostered privately, my mother struggled to keep up with the payments. I became aware of that at a very, very young age, but also very, very scared that, I was very happy with my foster parents but I was also very scared that my biological mother would come and take me away.

Michaela McCarthy: Because you grew up with your foster parents? I grew up with them, yeah. And then how long did you stay with them?

Frankie Johnson: Until I left home.

Michaela McCarthy: Oh wow. Yeah. So they were your family?

Frankie Johnson: They were my family and I was raised by them as one of their own children.

Michaela McCarthy: So how did you cope with the racism at school?

Frankie Johnson: It made me… well I felt less then. You know I wanted to… I wanted to be blonde with blue eyes.

Michaela McCarthy: Oh really? Okay.

Frankie Johnson: Which…

Michaela McCarthy: You wanted to fit in?

Frankie Johnson: Oh most definitely, yeah. And I, you know, I was ashamed of my skin. I think the things that gave me respite was I was a fast runner and a good footballer.

Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.

Frankie Johnson: So…

Michaela McCarthy: So sport was your thing.

Frankie Johnson: Yeah, sport was my thing, but it didn’t stop the names. You know, and some of it was quite horrific really.

Dipti Solanki: Well, in the 60s and 70s, I think the racism that was prevalent was quite  brutal. Frankie Johnson: Oh yeah I mean now it would be challenged but back then it was it was accepted and you know and if I retaliated in any way against it, I was the one who I was told I had a chip on my shoulder and sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.

Dipti Solanki: Couldn’t take a joke.

Frankie Johnson: Yeah. It was strange because I had no identity. You know, I had no idea who I was other than I’m not as good as the kids around me and a friend’s brother had discovered that there was a reggae dance in in a town quite near, I was in Strude in Kent, and there was a dancing Graves End, which is five or six miles up the road, you know and so we went along to that and that was my first interactions with a black community.

Michaela McCarthy: Because you’d never been in a black community?

Frankie Johnson: No.

Dipti Solanki: How did that feel?

Frankie Johnson: I gravitated towards it because they were the stars of the show, whereas I was not. And I made friends with the person whose personality stood out the most but then there was another obstacle for me, they were from the Caribbean I was from Africa and then it wasn’t cool to come from from Africa, and it wasn’t cool to be this dark either, so I felt ‘Wow!’ you know.

Michaela McCarthy: Because you didn’t know.

Frankie Johnson: No. And so that started my journey of reinventing myself.

Michaela McCarthy: So what would you do?

Frankie Johnson: I became I became Jamaican, to fit in, a Jafaican I call it.

Michaela McCarthy: Okay

Dipti Solanki: That’s inventing a whole different history.

Frankie Johnson: A whole different history and you know. What happened was I um, the old people from the Caribbean they love to tell stories and none of the kids wanted to listen but I did and through listening I developed a road map of Jamaica in my head and I also learned all the you know the patois, including all the old-time patois.

Michaela McCarthy: So you really studied the culture?

Frankie Johnson: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah and I, you know, changed where I was born. I never denied my foster parents, but instead I was fostered at the age of two, when, you know, after coming from Kingston.

Michaela McCarthy: Okay.

Frankie Johnson: And I remember having this picture of me in some long grass, which was taken in the next door neighbour’s garden, but I said it was me in Jamaica. Okay. But I was living a lie and eventually that lie would get found out and I got into a bit of trouble, you know, nothing nothing major but what was required was a social inquiry report and that revealed all my background and a lot of people were sort of found it quite entertaining that I’d lied about my background, yeah, and you know I disappeared for a while and during that sort of disappearance I met an old Cockney guy who spoke nothing but rhyming slang and I was absolutely fascinated by it and he really took me under his wing and I thought yeah this is this is who I am I can’t be a Jafaican anymore but I can be a Mockney and so I learned all the rhyming slang possible, changed where I was born again, this time I was born in Stepney because I knew you had to be born within the sound of the bow bells in order to be a proper cockney. But again, never denied my foster parents. They’re always a part of it. But the noise was still there. Will I get found out? Will I be exposed?

Dipti Solanki: Fear.

Frankie Johnson: And on that scene I was introduced to different drugs, amphetamines, so and you know my appetite for them was always again more than everybody else’s. You know, mainly to shut down the noise, people pleasing, trying to become comfortable in my own skin, but it didn’t work.

Michaela McCarthy: So, when did you stop the drugs?

Frankie Johnson: Oh, well I’ve been clean and sober, drugs and alcohol for the last 12 years now.

Dipti Solanki: Amazing.

Frankie Johnson: Yeah.

Michaela McCarthy: And then how did you then, with the stopping drugs and alcohol, getting clean and sober, you know, going into therapy and…

Dipti Solanki: How much of a part was therapy, part of that journey?

Frankie Johnson: I’ve had lots of attempts to stop on my own, all unsuccessful. And so, you know, I felt… I went to rehab. And that was where I was introduced to therapy. You know, I tried all sorts of things in my attempts to stop, which included going to university, and where I got a degree in sociology and social psychology, which helped me make sense of my journey on an intellectual level, but not emotionally. So it didn’t work, so you know going going to rehab was like okay look I can’t do this on my own.

Michaela McCarthy: So did that work for you rehab? And then you went to meetings

Frankie Johnson: Um, yes. But it wasn’t so much the meetings, it was the therapy.

Michaela McCarthy: Yeah yeah

Frankie Johnson: The therapy itself, where I was able to gain a real emotional understanding of my journey. What was my anger about? What was attachment? How I formed relationships, or didn’t form relationships.

Michaela McCarthy: And also who you were.

Frankie Johnson: Oh, most definitely.

Michaela McCarthy: You know, who am I? And then when did you decide to train to become a therapist?

Frankie Johnson: Well, it felt like, because after gaining my degree, I worked as an alternative curriculum activities provider.

Michaela McCarthy: What does that mean?

Frankie Johnson: It meant I wrote a bunch of self-development programs for young people who were just like me basically and the programs were… they were successful because what I’d managed to do was get them accredited. So schools really bought into the programs, because I was not only engaging with the young people in a way that they understood and related to, I was also, if I’m honest, probably ticking the box for Ofsted, as well. But, I was doing all the stuff with them that I should have been doing myself.

Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, but that’s the key, isn’t it? I wonder if that was part of your healing as well, working with the kids going on that journey, that you didn’t have but you were able to provide for them?

Frankie Johnson: It worked for them but for me what was happening for me as the program’s got, you know, recognition um I got uh, you know adulation, and praise but it was like giving it to a child still and…

Dipti Solanki: Did sabotage come in then?

Frankie Johnson: Oh, completely yeah but I didn’t understand that it was that you know I was getting all the attention that I really.. and gravitated to where it was coming from and and you know and tried to… I remember trying to think okay you are a professional now, be what the professionals do, you know they’re there… I started drinking a lot of red wine because I thought that was what you do when…

Dipti Solanki: Again, it was trying to figure out what is my identity?

Frankie Johnson: Trying to fit in. Again, you know, trying, trying to fit in. Trying to rid myself of the shame that was still so deeply ingrained in me. But, so, it didn’t work and you know eventually I ended up I relapsed and by that time the you know my drug of choice had become cocaine and that, that in that you know that substance in particular took me to that place where I thought well ‘Look, this is where you have got to… you can’t do this by yourself’.

Michaela McCarthy: So what happened then

Frankie Johnson: I went into, I went into treatment. I was lucky enough to get a place in a long stay treatment centre, and during that time I really started to sort of understand you know my journey, and but not just my journey but a therapy works.

Michaela McCarthy: So when you came out did you then think ‘I know what I’ll train to be a therapist’?

Frankie Johnson: Well, I actually trained whilst I was there

Michaela McCarthy: Okay, yeah, yeah. So, what area were you in?

Frankie Johnson: I was in East London, in a long stay treatment centre that’s there. And I mean long stay as well you know you can stay there for four years it’s a very very I won’t name the place but it’s a very unique model, a one-off, and I was lucky enough to get a place there.

Michaela McCarthy: And so where did you train?

Frankie Johnson: I trained at City & Islington. Well, that’s where I started my journey. But then I decided I wanted to, you know, have a bit of spiritual awareness. So I went to a place called Spurgeons. So I trained there. And then after that, I went to… I did the Level 5, whilst doing a placement in a drug service. Which was, I now realise, I was actually hiding.

Dipti Solanki: In what way?

Frankie Johnson: You know, even as a therapist I thought ‘Well, just keep your head down’. You know, stay where it’s safe. Don’t put, you know, don’t be shamed. Don’t be shamed. Don’t be anywhere where you can be exposed or shamed.

Dipti Solanki: That fear was showing up again.

Frankie Johnson: That fear was showing up again. So after I’d qualified, I actually came to TAC as a qualified therapist with the aim of getting enough hours to do my accreditation. But then, the then counseling manager sort of encouraged me to go into private practice. And I was like ‘Where? Here?’ And you know that is one of the things that I love about this place. I can honestly say it’s an environment where my background hasn’t actually mattered.

Dipti Solanki: How freeing for you.

Frankie Johnson: It’s a bit, yeah.

Michaela McCarthy: We’ve been talking about The Awareness Centre, where we wanted to create a community where everyone from different walks of life can come because everyone’s different.

Frankie Johnson: It’s been, you know, it’s been the backbone in in helping me gain a really healthy um, not self-esteem, you know because I differentiate between self-esteem and self-worth, but self-worth. Where I genuinely haven’t feared, because usually I think, oh, if only they knew. If only they knew, then it’s all over. But it hasn’t felt like that here. And there are not many places that I’ve experienced, where I can honestly say that I felt like that.

Dipti Solanki: So you came to The Awareness Centre as a fully qualified professional. You know, you’ve done the whole incredible journey of training to be a therapist and you’re here, but yet there was still that sense of fear about being found out, about being exposed about being shamed, can you just unpack that a little bit more and and help us and the listeners the viewers understand what that was about?

Frankie Johnson: It was about mixed messages that I’d internalised from, you know, I had no sort of, I was dependent on external stimuli to tell me what was right and what was wrong, and what was good about myself and what was bad about myself. And I found there was a, for me, I found there was a real contradiction in, well, we’re a society of second chances, but no, we’re not. If you’ve done certain things, we’ll shame you. Dipti Solanki: Right. So you weren’t trusting what was being told. Yeah. Frankie Johnson: Not at all. Not at all. And so, you know, when does that sort of, you know, like now, for example, we’re still saying we are a society of second chances, but we’ve got cancel culture that exists, which for me is still a contradiction.

Dipti Solanki: It doesn’t take much to be cancelled.

Frankie Johnson: No. And so the easiest thing for me to do was keep my head down. And, you know, coming to The Awareness Centre, it wasn’t keeping my head down. It was taking a big risk.

Michaela McCarthy: So what do you feel like now when you walk around The Awareness Centre? Do you feel like you need to keep your head down or…?

Frankie Johnson: No, everybody knows me!

Dipti Solanki: I love that.

Frankie Johnson: I think, I’m wondering if there is a therapist that is probably is more well known throughout both sites than me. I doubt it!

Michaela McCarthy: Okay. Well that’s special isn’t it?

Frankie Johnson: Yeah.

Dipti Solanki: So Frankie knowing what that sense of belonging feels like here and knowing what that absence of fear feels like being here that you’ve just spoken about, how does that translate into therapy room for you, when you’re working with your clients?

Frankie Johnson: That’s a good question. It, well that is actually a really big question for me because it, there’s so many sort of facets to that for you, you know, for me.

Dipti Solanki: I imagine it helps you to understand people on a completely different level

Frankie Johnson: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. I think my journey has enabled me to develop a really sound knowledge and understanding of, you know, what it’s like to experience trauma a very early age what it’s like to experience trauma at a very early age. What it’s like to feel different in your own skin from a very early age. And the behavioral issues, issues around how those early relationships are at the heart of how we form relationships in the here and now. And so I’m able to join those dots for people in a way that they feel is really, really genuine. And I think also my journey, you know, it’s placed a particular importance on cross-cultural competence.

Dipti Solanki: Yes.

Frankie Johnson: And that is something that, you know, because we… therapy can be, you know, from a theoretical perspective, it can be quite Euro, you know, Western Eurocentric and we’ve got to move away from that.

Michaela McCarthy: Absolutely.

Dipti Solanki: I strongly, strongly feel that in my practice too. I think it’s so important. And I think there’s going to be so many people listening and watching today that they definitely won’t have had the same journey as yours because it’s so unique. We all have a unique journey. But they’re going to recognise parts of themselves in what you share and especially that part about the not belonging. Even if they haven’t had such a varied journey, what would you say to those people who haven’t ever gone into therapy but they have this deep sense of, ‘I don’t know where I belong, like who am I, on a deeper level?’ What would you say to those people?

Frankie Johnson: So therapy is the place to, to, you know, not only for you to make sense of that, but also to heal from that.

Dipti Solanki: Right, right. And you talked about understanding your journey on a cognitive level, but it’s that emotional level, isn’t it? Because when you’re, you know, I think Michaela you speak a lot to this, is that we understand our journeys on an intellectual level but that emotional journey we can’t easily access because we are in trauma and you’re in survival mode, it’s not safe to feel your emotions so how does therapy help with that?

Frankie Johnson: I think that… I think it’s the therapist itself, themselves, that help with with that. I remember hearing, you know, now you can only take a client as far as you’ve been yourself.

Michaela McCarthy: Absolutely, I agree with that.

Frankie Johnson: And you know, and I do feel that I’ve experienced enough of a trauma, from different perspectives, to be able to take somebody through that safely without creating more trauma.

Michaela McCarthy: Exactly. But you know you’re talking about longer term therapy as well. You can’t do that in short term therapy. That’s… you open up a can of worms there and people I don’t think realise when they come into therapy, you know, they have lots of issues and it takes time to unravel everything.

Frankie Johnson: Yeah, I’m a real believer in that you know this is not to… I kind of see… my analogy for the sort of short-term therapy is, and I’m you know I’m not criticising anybody that adheres to these particular models, but um you know what I’ll always… my belief is you can have therapy that puts out fires, allows you to sort of keep putting out fires on a daily basis, but um but I think the real work is when you look at, ‘Okay, so why do the fires keep starting?’

Michaela McCarthy: Look at the cause.

Dipti Solanki: Yeah. I think they both have their place, don’t they?

Frankie Johnson: Yes, yes, of course. But they have to work, I think they have to work together. For example, in my own work, whilst we’re looking for the cause and helping a client to understand that I am giving them strategies for how to put out fires,  but eventually it’s that the aim is ‘Look, you don’t want to keep putting out fires, yeah? We want to understand unravel the wiring that’s creating the fire.

Dipti Solanki: Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah. How would you say that cultural competency has played a part in your healing journey then, in the therapy room?

Frankie Johnson: I think from, you know, just growing up as a black kid in a white family and then experiencing the difference in my own culture has encouraged me to explore difference in other cultures as well. And I think sociology helped with that too, because I’m always interested in gender role, socialisation.

Dipti Solanki: Well, I hear a real anthropologist in you, even throughout the years when you were deeply interested in all these different people that you met and you had a real interest in really getting underneath everything, so that has got to help in the therapy room as well.

Frankie Johnson: Oh, for sure.

Dipti Solanki: That curiosity.

Frankie Johnson: Yeah, you know a lot of my my journey is always in the therapy as well. Theory has given me definitions for things that I’ve come to understand through experience.

Michaela McCarthy: And just out of interest, you know, your client group, are they a mixture of all different people?

Frankie Johnson: That’s a really interesting question, I like that. Yes, they are but there was a point where I was noticing that I was getting a lot of what we would call Millennials and and to the point where I’d think, you know, what on earth is going on? Why am I getting these highly paid young professionals from different backgrounds all coming to see me? And they’re all asking the very same question, who am I? And again, you know, culture was a big issue in that. Well, when I say culture, you know, I’m not just talking about race. I’m also talking about social class.

Dipti Solanki: And there’s a lot of mobility now, isn’t there?

Michaela McCarthy: We can’t just assume that people coming from, you know, let’s make it a traditional middle class family, going to a good school, getting good jobs, that they get a sense of who they are. They know a family that they belong to, but it might not be who they feel they are. You know, some people, you know, they go and train as a doctor, but then – no disrespect to doctors – but they didn’t really want to be a doctor, you know. They’re much more creative, you know, there’s many assets to people, you know, and they haven’t been maybe allowed because it wasn’t the right profession yeah to go into.

Frankie Johnson: That’s a really good point as well because you know I’ve quite often experienced that when um the parent culture has been different from the culture that the that the kids have been raised in, um you know for um, well, with African and Asian cultures, there are there are jobs that are still seen as…

Michaela McCarthy: The right jobs

Frankie Johnson: The right jobs. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, the cultural values are completely different. And that causes conflict within itself, that where your identity gets lost and there’s no place to talk about that.

Dipti Solanki: Or that you may not have even had an opportunity to develop your own identity.

Frankie Johnson: Oh, for sure, yeah.

Michaela McCarthy: So, if you have one message to send out to the viewers and listeners, what would you be saying to people right now?

Frankie Johnson: I think that we still, society still has some sort of outdated thinking around, you’ve got to do it by yourself, pull your socks up, have a cup of tea, you know, man up, yeah? That is really, that’s really unhelpful. If you need help, don’t feel ashamed, reach out.

Michaela McCarthy: That was just the words that I had, Frankie, reach out.

Dipti Solanki: Yeah, we don’t need to do this alone.

Michaela McCarthy: When you started talking about yourself, you know, when you were a young boy and living with a white family and being different, being bullied, being…and experiencing racism. You know, not feeling a sense of who you are, different personalities and everything. What about now, you the Frankie that’s qualified therapist, found a sense of belonging, know even at The Awareness Centre, being one of the therapists here that’s well known. What does that feel like now?

Frankie Johnson: It can still feel really strange and it can still feel a little bit too good to be true.

Michaela McCarthy: So, you’re waiting for someone to pop up? Frankie Johnson: Yeah and that comes back for not necessarily someone but something. You know and but I know where that comes from. You know that comes from that fear that I had as a child, that I’m really happy where I am, but there’s someone who can come and take me away and I’ve got no control over that. That hasn’t quite left me. But in terms of ‘Who am I?’, it used to be a question that terrified me but now it’s a question that excites me.

Michaela McCarthy: Good.

Dipti Solanki: Thank you for sharing everything that you did and I know we had just touched on a tip of the iceberg of your story but we really appreciate you sharing that.

Frankie Johnson: Thank you.

Outro You’ve been listening to a bunch of therapists with me Michaela McCarthy and Dipti Solanki. If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe, rate and review. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials to keep up to date with all of our news. Thank you so much and until next time.