A NEW pilot project offering pop-up therapy was trialled, al fresco, in a park in London’s Soho last week. The problem-solving booths (gazebos, actually) are meant to make problem-sharing more spontaneous and accessible. The scheme has the support of the NHS and London’s Mayor and, if successful, may appear in towns and cities across the UK. The Soho emotional swap-shop is being led by clinical psychologist, Dr. Charlie Howard, who hopes the project will de-stigmatise mental health issues and encourage a more open, relaxed culture when it comes to asking for help with our personal and emotional problems.

The scheme is simple: passers-by can just drop in and choose to be either talker or listener (though, in fact, the handwritten signs on the seats are designated "helper" and "helped"). The "client" then shares a problem with the listener, who responds as they see fit, but in a generally willing and helpful way. Trained and experienced psychologists are on-hand to intervene if the problem is acute or presents serious cause for concern.

Many of us are happy to over-share with a stranger on a train, plane or bus, safe in the knowledge that we are never going to have to see them again. This kind of therapy-in-transit has its own therapeutic value: we can offload our darkest, weirdest, saddest thoughts and experiences guilt-free and without the worry that we are burdening the anonymous, objectified listener.

The temporary and disposable nature of talking to a stranger acts as a kind of psychic safety net, allowing us to boldly go where we ordinarily wouldn't dare with intimates or close ties. These "weak tie" encounters don’t usually come back to haunt or taunt us because by its very nature, the stranger network is miles away from our own. There’s little or no fear that the stranger may gossip about us and influence the perception of others within our own social networks. Because we are not invested in strangers, we don’t need their approval, so when we tell them that we have "never bonded with our youngest child” or that we “secretly hate our sister-in-law”, or that we voted Brexit “to stop immigrants getting in”, there is no vapour trail of shame or cross-contamination clouding our internal horizons.

As for the stranger listener, they can hear with a higher level of objectivity. They are not personally invested in the sharer and so can afford a greater degree of objectivity and analysis in their response. Coming from a different world, they may also offer a completely novel perspective on a problem.

This is very different to the over-empathic, or even symbiotic response we experience when a loved one shares something really painful with us. If our child tells us they wish they were dead because they’re being bullied at school, we respond not so much from our head, but from our heart. The pain and despondency our child feels, becomes our pain. We experience it as if it was happening to us. Over-empathising tends to hinder our thinking processes and this is why we don’t always react in ways that are helpful when our nearest and dearest tells us what is really troubling them. Instead, the perspective can shift from the distress they experience, to the distress we experience in feeling powerless to take their pain away. A no-win situation.

Listening really is both art and craft. Some folk are naturally good listeners but most of us need to hone our listening skills, developing them through trial and error, over and over again. It’s not easy to be fully present in the face of someone else’s distress. It requires us to be both participant and observer simultaneously.

Good listening demands agility as it’s a kind of dance, inside and outside the circle of thoughts and feelings expressed by someone in crisis or despair. Our natural reaction is to rescue, to curtail the distress, but being able to stick with someone and bear their pain is much more helpful. In suspending our judgement and remaining open to the why, how and who of another person’s problem, we can offer something truly valuable.

The trick is to be there, to really hear what is being said beneath all the smoke and mirrors. When we talk to a stranger, we don’t feel the need to dress our problems up, to preface the truth with all kinds of rationalisations and justifications. Their very strangeness allows us to tell it how it is.