Lessons from a Fae Queen: A Playful Guide to a Joyful Life (Working Title)
INTRODUCTION
Hello, there. My name is Lea (pronounced like “Lee”). You can call me Doctor Hughes, if you like — but honestly, no one calls me that except for my brother, and that’s only because he is also Doctor Hughes. We’re cute like that.
This might seem like an usual way to start a book, but if we’re going to spend the next sixty thousand words together, I figured you might like to know who’s at the other end of these pages.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how I’d approach this book. What it would feel like. What the tone would be. The world is filled with endless self-help books: books on habit formation, on creativity, on authenticity. I’ve read many of them. And while they are all unique in their own right, they all have one thing in common: the author deliberately implements strategies that encourage you to trust them.
Some ground themselves in evidence-based research. They reference peer-reviewed studies, drop quotes from indisputable experts, and even include properly formatted citations — all to make sure you know that their recommendations are legitimate.
Some authors call attention to their own expertise. They detail their prolific work in the area of interest. They speak from personal education and hard-earned wisdom. Sometimes it’s a degree, sometimes it’s a snippet from their resume, and sometimes it’s the four months they spent self-reflecting in an ashram in India. In any case, they seek to cultivate your trust through their own personal experience.
Lastly, some look to generate trust through good, old-fashioned charisma. They talk to you like you’re a friend or a mentee. Maybe they swear, or use relatable jargon, or share real, actual vulnerability. Ultimately, they rely not just on what they say, but how they say it.
Despite the neo-capitalist terminology, there’s nothing icky about having a strategy to cultivate trust. Countless research studies have demonstrated that the best predictor of success in therapy is the therapeutic relationship itself: specifically, the client’s belief that they can trust their therapist. Trustful relationships are core mechanisms of change. Trust matters, and it isn’t something that just happens. It must be earned.
Now, we’ve all seen these strategies go awry:
Many people have no interest in reading a bunch of research abstracts when they’re trying to figure out their life. If you do, that’s excellent. I have a friend who’s just like that. But know that you are among an erudite minority. Some of us, myself included, find that tactic unapproachable at best, and elitist at worst.
You know what they say: everybody hates a know-it-all. That person who thinks they’re hot shit because they have a few extra letters after their name? Ugh. I wouldn’t want to listen to me either if all I talked about was my privileged education, or that life-changing hike I took up that mountain in Cambodia. (I swear, I won’t talk about that hike up that mountain in Cambodia. Though it was pretty epic.)
And as for charisma? Well, just about every cult leader in existence has leveraged their charm to manipulate people and further their delusional agenda. Ashlen Hilliard, a cult intervention specialist and the founder of People Leave Cults, identifies it as one of the most common traits among cult leaders. I think it’s safe to say that generating trust doesn’t always come from a good place.
I’ll be honest with you: I want you to trust me. I’m writing this book because I want to help you. I want to know you’re out there, somewhere, thriving: rewriting the narratives that hold you back, unapologetically chasing your joy, and living your best life. I want that for you so badly. And I genuinely believe that what I have to say will help you get there. Maybe you’ll find mind-blowing realizations in these pages. Or maybe, like me, you read books like this simply to reinforce the things you want to believe about yourself and your life. But this isn’t going to work if you don’t trust me.
You might not trust me now, and that’s okay. We’ve only just met. But you’re giving me a chance: you picked up this book, didn’t you? You’ve read a few hundred words so far, and I can work with that. So let’s get a few things out of the way:
In this book, you’ll find the legitimate stuff. I’ll reference research papers, peer-reviewed articles, and experts you may (or may not) have heard of. They’ve spent their lives studying the topics I’ll cover: values, negative cognition, the power of self-advocacy and the use of psilocybin to promote new neural connections. The least I can do is cite them in the single sentence where their work comes up. But know that this book won’t be a collection of research studies. I’m not going to spend my precious wordcount on the details and methodologies. Other books do a better job of that than I ever could. After all, I left academia for a reason.
I wasn’t joking earlier: I am a doctor. I have a PhD in Counseling Psychology. I attended an accredited university, completed an accredited internship program, and have thousands of hours of therapeutic work under my belt. I’ve seen hundreds of clients who presented with everything from Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, to helicopter parents and poor study skills. I cannot claim to be an expert on the human experience — anyone who says they are is full of shit — but I do know my shit. You can quote me on that. Now, before you go searching me up online, I will disclose: I no longer work as a therapist. I jumped ship many years ago to pursue my dream of working in the video game industry. It was an excellent choice, and I don’t regret it. I hope, if anything, that makes you think, Wow, that sounds like the kind of person I’d want to take life advice from.
And no, my experience in this area isn’t purely academic. I’ve been on the other side of the therapy couch. I’ve experienced Trauma (with a big T). I’ve wondered if the pain will ever end, if I’ll ever stop fucking up; and I’ve fought hard for every ounce of personal growth and mental wellbeing I’ve achieved over the years. I don’t mean to suggest growth is linear (it isn’t), but I am definitely much further along than I was a few years ago. I am a joyful person. Not just happy, not just cheerful, but absolutely brimming with joy. I honor my emotions. I allow myself to feel things — and boy, do I feel things. I get sad, I get frustrated, and I even get really stuck sometimes. Brains are pesky things. But I’ve done the work. I promise you, I’m not just some therapist with a notepad who’s only ever read about what it’s like to feel broken. I see you. I want you to live the fullest life you can. I believe in that future for you. I hope you know that. I hope you can believe that. And I hope you can trust me to help you get there.
Lastly, when it comes to charisma…well, I suppose you’ll be the judge of that. But I will tell you this: authenticity is a core value of mine. When I was a therapist, I was a practitioner of Interpersonal-Feminist Therapy (IFT). I liked this approach for a variety of reasons; at the top of that list was the importance of authenticity in the therapeutic relationship. Unlike many other therapeutic techniques, IFT recognizes that, as the therapist, I wasn’t just a mouthpiece, a workbook, or a treatment plan: I was a human being. My clients and their stories made me feel things. And on occasion, we could do really good work if I could name those feelings, out loud, in the room with my clients. Now, authenticity did have its limits: I wasn’t going to tell my client, Stop being a doormat and dump her ass. Even when I really, really wanted to. But sometimes, when they asked about my weekend, I’d tell them about the videogames I played, or the movies I watched. Sometimes, when they asked me what I thought, I’d tell them that their girlfriend was, in fact, being a bitch. With those exact words. And I promised myself, from the moment I saw my first client, that I’d never walk away from a session feeling like I wasn’t me in the room. Even if that me had to be a little more quiet than usual.
This? This is me. This book is so unapologetically me, you have no idea. I will swear. I will share my wounds, if it feels appropriate, and I will gracefully sidestep them if it doesn’t. You’ll probably hear about my cat at some point, because how could I not talk about my cat? Fuck the stigma around parasocial relationships. I hope, by the end of this book, you feel like you know me. Because in some way, you will.
In this book, every chapter covers a lesson I’ve learned along the way. I picked these ones, in particular, because I believe they were the most critical to the joyful life I lead now. I wrote this to be read front-to-back, but I won’t be mad if you skip to a chapter that calls to you. I’ll do my best to make sure each section stands on their own. I simply ask that you finish reading this introduction, including the Note on Privilege below.
In each chapter, I’ll also include some prompts. They’re optional, of course, but you might find them helpful as you think about how to integrate these learnings into your own life. You’ll also find some nontraditional media along the way: photographs, doodles, things like that. For me, my art has been an integral and inextricable part of my healing. It feels only right to share some of it with you.
Lastly, I want to state the obvious: some of this might not be your thing. And that’s okay. Whether it’s the content or the delivery, you are entirely within your right to say, I am not the target audience for this book. If that’s the case, feel free to put it down. I won’t be offended. I am a firm believer in discontinuing things that are not serving you (see Chapter 2.) But, you probably knew this was a self-help book when you picked it up; and I was very deliberate in crafting its title and cover. You ought not be too surprised.
So let’s kick this off, friend. Can I call you ‘friend’?
I’m gonna call you friend.
Alright, friend. Let’s see you shine.
A NOTE ON PRIVILEGE
Full disclosure: I blatantly stole the idea for this section from author Jamie Varon in her book Radically Content. It’s an excellent book. I highly recommend it.
I have no desire to be one of those out-of-touch, overly optimistic boneheads who try to convince you that anything can be overcome if you simply try hard enough. Privilege, and lack of it, seeps into every aspect of our existence. It can take of a variety of forms:
There is privilege in being raised by guardians who made you feel safe.
There is privilege in being born into a body that corresponds to how you see yourself.
There is privilege in having access to resources.
There is privilege in having the physical characteristics deemed as “better” by your culture.
Privilege doesn’t mean your life was easy: it means that there was at least one fewer thing for you to worry about. Our cognitive resources are not endless; every thought, every stressor takes energy. And at some point, we get tired. We hit our limit. We simply don’t have the energy to think about other things. The idea of working on anything beyond what’s directly in front of us seems possible. That doesn’t make us failures, or lazy, or unworthy. It makes us human. We have a tendency to pretend that emotional energy is a boundless resource; because we cannot see it, that must mean it has no limit. Right? Wrong.
Personal growth is exhausting work. You are, quite literally, forging new neural pathways in your brain. Rather than taking the high-traffic freeway of your usual cognition, you’re veering off onto a dirt path and plowing your way forward. You’re redirecting your body’s resources to this new neural pathway and saying, “Let’s build some infrastructure here. Let’s smooth out these roads. Let’s make it easier to take this path in the future.” And the only way to do that is pay attention to the road, slam on the breaks, and take that exit. Then do it again, and again, until that dirt path is the fancy new freeway.
Sound easy?
Alright: try doing that when you’ve got three screaming children in the back seat. Or when you have a partner who’s berating you every chance they get. Or when you have to keep checking the rear view mirror for that cop who might end up pulling you over, or even shooting you, simply because your skin is a few shades too dark for their liking.
In this book, I have done my best to reflect on how these lessons might be born of my own privilege. The goal of this book is to be useful for you, and I’m not helping anyone if my recommendations are inaccessible. I’m sure some of them still will be. But I’ve done my due diligence, and all I ask is that you do the same. As you read, notice where these ideas land for you: where they make sense, and where privilege (or its absence) may complicate things. Really try to tease apart the difference between can’t and won’t — not to judge yourself, but to better understand your limits. That noticing is a powerful first step in making changes that fit your reality.
You can come to your own conclusions about that. I trust you to make the choices that work best for you.
Trust is a two way street, after all.
