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| Photo by Willie B. Thomas, Getty Images |
By Philippa Perry, The Guardian
Sometimes, one of my
psychotherapy clients will be late. “The tube got stuck; I do
apologise.” If it happens once, I don’t treat it as significant. But
some clients are perpetually late – perhaps just five or 10 minutes, but
always – and out of breath when they get to the door. Then I am curious
about what is behind their pattern of lateness, what it means and what
purpose it serves.
There are probably as many reasons for
unpunctuality as there are habitually late people. Sometimes it seems
unfathomable, but not always. One client remembered that his mother
always spent so long in the bathroom that she made him late for school.
She told him that it didn’t matter, and early people are uptight anyway.
In his unconscious, being on time for things had got mixed up with
being disloyal to his mother and therefore bad. Once he had found this
narrative, he lost his compulsion for lateness.
Punctual people may believe that late people are passive-aggressive
and that their time is more valuable than those who wait for them. But
reasons for lateness are generally more complex. The reason may be the
opposite of arrogance. It could be that they don’t value themselves
enough. If this is the case, might they be unable to see how others
could possibly mind their non-appearance?
This explanation may work for social situations,
but why miss planes, boats and trains? Perhaps it is an unconscious
testing of the theory: “If I were a worthy person, the train would wait
for me.” Since it doesn’t, the feeling of not mattering is reinforced.
One client I had kept thwarting her own attempts
to succeed in her career, and bad time-keeping was part of this. When
we unpicked what success would mean to her, she uncovered an old family
belief that people with money were evil, bad people. Faced with a choice
of not progressing or being evil, it was no wonder she kept up with the
self-sabotage programme.
Late people often have a sunny outlook. They are
unreasonably optimistic about how many things they can cram in and how
long it takes to get from the office to the restaurant, say, especially
if it is nearby. My book editor and I often have lunch in a cafe next
door to her office and she is always seven minutes late, because she
leaves at 1pm. I think she believes she possesses a teleporter, yet, by
the time she has chatted to a colleague in the lobby and waited for the
lift, she is seven minutes late. I am considering getting there seven
minutes late myself, except, as an early person with my own set of
neuroses, that would make me ill with anxiety.
Lateness can also be caused when we have a
reluctance to change gear – to end one activity and start another. We don’t like getting up,
we put off going to bed. Stopping something we are absorbed in to do
something else can be annoying. It takes willpower to carry out. But if
we don’t change gear in time when someone is waiting for us, we are in
danger of being judged as selfish.
Some late people choose to accept that they are
terrible timekeepers and that they can’t do anything about it. Yet
punctual people think they know that late people could decide to be on
time and follow through.
It is only when the latecomers make the decision
to be punctual that they change. It must be a conscious decision; if
they merely make a woolly attempt to “try” to be on time, they won’t be.
Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist. Her most recent book is “How to Stay Sane” published by Pan MacMillan.
See more at The Guardian
