Introducing: F*ck It therapy.

Warning: Best not continue reading this post if you have a problem with the “F” word. No, not “Facebook” or “flamboyant”. The rude one.

By MAMAMIA TEAM

Are you worried about your weight?

Fuck it.

Are you stressed out about your job?

Fuck it.

Are you panicking about what school the kids should go to next year?

FUCK IT. FUCK IT ALL.

And no, we’re not being blasé. Saying “fuck it” is the entire premise behind Fuck It therapy – the new form of therapy that’s infiltrating the “wellbeing” shelves of bookstores everywhere.

Forget traditional ideas about therapy. Forget sitting on a couch across from a therapist sobbing your heart out while they silently hand you tissues and maintain a completely neutral expression at all times. Forget constantly hearing, “and how did that make you feel?” and “tell me more about that?”

Because it’s Fuck It therapy. Where you take whatever is worrying you and you say, “fuck it”. And forget about it.

And you do that all while sitting on a beach in Italy.

But let us back up a little. Fuck It therapy is the invention of John and Gaia Parkin, a husband-and-wife pair that woke up one day in London, said “fuck it”, quit their jobs, left their home, and moved to Italy to start a retreat for their kind of therapy.

They’ve since set up that retreat for stressed-out, frazzled citysiders such as the people they used to be. Their main estate and spa is located in the little town of Urbino. Think: 4000 acres set in the Italian countryside, organic food and wine made on-estate, a spa and infinity pool, a sauna.

If that’s not to your liking, you can pick one of their alternative retreats. There’s one located on a volcano, also in Italy. There are only 400 residents on this volcano. No street lights. No cars. Just you, a black-sanded beach, a beautiful hotel and all the Italian food you can poke a stick fork at.

As John explains on the Fuck It website: “It’s a fantastic place to learn how to say F**k It: the local southern Italians are very F**k It; the beach life forces you to say F**k It; and the live volcano says F**k It by exploding every 20 minutes… oh, and you can’t help but say F**k It and stuff yourself on the delicious food.”

Because what’s better than a volcano that doesn’t even care? (Don’t worry – apparently there is no lava that actually comes out of the volcano…)

But back to the actual therapy. According to an interview he did with the Huffington Post, John says that Fuck It therapy “points at the fact that most of us worry about things that don’t matter so much”:

Most of our pain is around resistance to what’s happening, the situation we’re in. We’re resisting something that’s there. What Fuck It does is it pricks the bubble of that attachment to something. It might be: ‘Oh Christ – I really need to lose stone (after a weekend about drinking)’. You then say: ‘Oh fuck it, it doesn’t matter.’

So essentially, it’s all about getting away from your life and being able to examine it from the outside. When everything is simplified, when everyday life is reduced to some simple therapy sessions and going to the beach – perspective is so much easier to get. What you’ve spent weeks worrying about, suddenly doesn’t seem worth a second thought.

Since he got up and left his life as an advertising creative in London, John has written several Fuck It books, which have sold over 250,000 copies and been translated into 22 different languages. So it’s evidently held some resonance with people who are looking to simplify their life and stop worrying about the things that don’t really matter.

But as simple as it sounds, we do worry that it seems a bit… overly simple. Like escaping to Italy and saying “fuck it” to all your troubles doesn’t really begin to unpack the issues that might lie beneath whatever you’re worrying about.

But hey… fuck it. What would we know?

Would you try Fuck It therapy? Have you taken part in any more traditional therapies?