How kind are you to yourself?

Apparently, I’m a first class bitch.

I learned this fascinating fact last Friday while sitting on the fourth floor of what can only be described as a treatment centre, where mixed-up people still like to read what’s hot and en trend even when having a meltdown.

It’s the only place I know for troubled souls which has the latest glossy magazines on the waiting room table – not Country Life or How To Raise Cats or Look At My Antiques And Weep – but the type of big reads even those with rock solid self-esteem would find demeaning.

But I guess there’s some cleansing to be done in the escapist tactics of fantasy.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to London for some hard love and tough talk, only you don’t get a cup or tea, a biscuit and a cwtch off your mother after one of these sessions.

It’s part of the documentary I’m making for BBC One, so as well as spilling my generously proportioned guts there’s also a film crew there recording me doing it.

Normally, I don’t mind. I find it quite a hoot to be honest, a bunch of people following me round and hanging on my every word and emotion for dear life in case there’s a “moment“ worth capturing, like me dragging my Significant (thin) Other through the sea (check), licking some diet success story’s arm so I can see what triumph tastes like (check) or retching while I taste new food for the first time (check, with fish, salami, cheese and olives on top).

But last week, in session number three, it all became too much for me and I had a bit of a meltdown.

I knew something was jabbing at me, unsettling my emotional balance, when I couldn’t be bothered to put on any make-up. And not just for a stroll in the park or to do the weekly shop – for telly. FOR TELLY!

This eventually led to a full-on emotional collapse, complete with rolling cameras, and ended with me back in Cardiff eating salad in Bella Pasta. Talk about cruel irony.

You’d think carbohydrates would accompany self-perception or finding out something new about yourself, what Oprah calls the fabled “aha!” moment.

But no, salad is apparently the way to go because salad is a way to be kind to yourself. Stuffing your face with pizza or – get this – NOT doing so, is all the same thing to someone like me, according to my new therapeutic best friend.

And by “someone like me” she means a person who needs to pay a deeper level of attention to their emotions if they are to lose weight and maintain it.

It’s apparently nothing to do with diets or willpower, the ultimate revelation if ever there was one.

My “counsellor”, Julia, is a formidable presence. She works with groups of women to help them understand their eating and why they use food to manage their emotional lives.

She then helps them develop different strategies for managing their feelings so that they can let go of their use of food.

And now she’s turning her attention on me, one on one.

Her thing, if she has a “thing”, is about lighting candles to self-perception, not fumbling about in the darkness which is what I seem to have spent my life doing.

It’s trying to disengage our fly-by-night and flimsy illusions of beauty and smarts, telling the self-deprecating humour to take a break and just go back to basics.

And in order to get there, you have to ask yourself some very difficult questions.

Three sessions in, with three more to go, there’s been more tears shed in front of her (and potentially about nine million others when it goes out in January) than any other person I can think of.

I’ve felt childlike, odd, fractious, confused, elated, delighted, small, calm, peaceful and angry.

What I don’t feel yet, however, is closer to finding my way forward.

Although with her help I’ve been able to trace my way back through the graze of my bad habits.

Oddly enough, these don’t always revolve around carbohydrates. It’s how we think of ourselves, and how we each deal with that perception, which is at the heart of the matter. And I’m just step one into literally eating my own heart out.