Losing our minds, coming to our senses.

The 'nation's therapist' reflects on emotional labour, self-awareness, and unfinished selves.

- By SALLY SAUNDERS

On a bright, cold morning, Philippa Perry appears on my computer screen with the easy humour of someone who has done this dance — a journalist, a camera, impertinent questions — a thousand times before. Yet, if you call her 'the nation's therapist,' she all but winces.

'Well, that might be what other people think,' she says, waving the label away as though brushing crumbs from a table. 'I just see myself as an ordinary psychotherapist. I really do.'

It's quite the understatement. Perry has spent decades translating the complexities of human behaviour into the warm, witty, accessible voice in her columns, bestselling books, viral videos, and now a fast-growing Substack community. Her reach is enormous; her tone, unmistakable. But in her own mind, she's still the person who flies to Mexico every year to sit in circle with other therapists, 'critiquing each other's therapy' and deciding she is, on balance, 'pretty average'.

It's the sort of disarming humility that has made her adored — and trusted — by millions.

But this conversation, like all good ones with therapists, quickly becomes about us: about women, about the emotional load crushing so many of us, and about the moment at which we finally say, as Perry titled one of her most-read Substack posts: 'Have you had enough of everyone else's shit yet?'

The new confessional

'I'm getting an avalanche of letters from overloaded women,' she tells me. 'Women who are stuck between teenagers and elderly parents, whose own lives are squeezed out while they try to look after different generations. They're holding down full-time jobs, running households, and trying — often unsuccessfully — to get their men to step up.' She pauses. 'It's difficult. Quite a lot of the time.'