Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

How many times have I talked about therapy breaks on this blog?! Loads, right? But hey, here we go again! 😉

Last Monday I missed my therapy session because my therapist was away. It wasn’t brilliant but it was ok; I focused on self-care and wrote a blog post when I would usually have had my session and had a slow day before I had to go to work. It was fine. In fact, as I said at the time, not having to drive an hour either side of the session was quite a relief and freed up quite a bit of space for me to just potter and do not much (lie in bed with my cats and drink tea!).

So…that was ok wasn’t it?

I made it through the minor disruption, worked hard all week (sigh), and was more than ready for my session when it got to Thursday. Internally I was pretty much repeating ‘one more sleep to go’ to appease the younger parts.

Only guess what happened this week on Thursday evening?

SNOW.

LOTS OF SNOW.

LOTS OF SNOW THAT SETTLED.

LOTS OF SNOW THAT MADE IT UNSAFE TO VENTURE OUT ON THE ROADS.

FUUUUCCCCCKKKKK IT!!!

I live on the edge of a National Park, on high ground, in the S.W of the UK. Basically, despite only being a few miles from a city I live high enough up for snow (and even simply ice) to be problematic. We live in a small village and it doesn’t form part of the network of roads that get gritted so essentially if a couple of inches of snow settles no one is going anywhere until it’s melted.

On Thursday night I could already see that I would not be going to my therapy session as I had had to abandon a tutoring session in the city and cancel another in order to drive back home when my wife text to say if I didn’t leave to come home I may not actually get home because there was so much snow falling.

By the time I got home it looked like something out a Christmas movie; the school had already emailed to say it would be closed on Friday; and my kids were unbelievably excited to be having a snow day. There was an Amber weather warning for the whole country. We don’t get much snow in the S.W and aside from last year’s ‘Beast From The East’ the last time we got snow was on the day I moved into my house in 2010.

As much as I would have liked to have been able to feel pleased about the prospect of snowman building and sledging you can probably imagine what my reaction to knowing I would not be seeing my therapist in person yesterday was…

Child parts had a meltdown!

I felt instantly grumpy and so so sad. I wasn’t able to be pragmatic about it at all. I just felt bloody miserable and hard done by! I feel sorry for my wife and kids as I was such a misery guts.

I know that this reaction was partly due to the fact that I hadn’t had my session on Monday either….so by the time I next see Em it will have been 10 days since I have seen her. That feels like quite a long time especially when it’s been a while since I have really talked. I had a weird session the other week where I got choked by shame and embarrassment about a dream I’d had where she ignored me – I couldn’t connect (or even look at her) or tell her about it. Ugh. Then after that therapy bomb I had a couple of very adult sessions. So there’s stuff we need to come back to but I feel like it has to be in person not via a screen.

Yesterday, I text Em to tell her I was snowed in and asked to Skype. In theory, this shouldn’t have bugged me quite so much as it did- these Friday sessions started out as Skype calls because it’s a 9:30am session and unless my wife is available to take the kids to school I can’t do the school run and still make it to session on time. Lately, however, my wife has been off work and so I have been able to go to my sessions in person. I much prefer this. Skype is ok but it is a very different experience.

So, I dialled in yesterday and to be fair it was a really nice session. Really relaxed. We laughed and it felt easy. My cat kept getting in the camera and interrupting the therapy but it was nice to sit on my couch with a cup of tea and a fur baby and talk. It was nice to see Em too. I think I spend so much of my sessions not looking at her and instead scanning the bookshelves or looking at the door that I don’t really see her much… so in a weird way Skype is good because I can look as much as I like and I don’t feel like a weirdo.

(Oh man I have issues don’t I?!)

It’s a bit of a weird thing then: I prefer to be in the room with Em and yet I hate not being able to look at her without feeling awkward; yet I hate Skype despite the fact I can see her….I guess it’s because I am always locked firmly in my adult via Skype calls and the parts that want to reach out just can’t.

Anyway eventually the conversation came round to the missed session on Monday and how I felt about it.

Adult: ‘Fine’

[meanwhile child parts locked inside adult fortress are screaming ‘NOT FINE!!!’]

Deflecting the question again I said something about looking forward to half-term and a break from my teaching work. Em said that she wasn’t going to be away this half-term (praise be!) but that she would be off the week before Easter as well as Easter itself (groan) and would be taking a little longer in August than this last summer (which was shorter than the one before). Ugh.

Instantly my brain started whirring and thinking about the summer and the young parts definitely came to the surface.

There was a bit of silence.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to dig into how hard breaks have felt. I didn’t want to acknowledge the attachment stuff.

So I glossed over it and started rambling on about something else. Good tactic!

There’s no reason that summer break shouldn’t be ok or even ‘as good as’ Christmas break.  The thing is, there are quite a few breaks coming up and lots of bank holidays which means no Monday sessions. Basically, there’s lots and lots of small disruptions and few lengthier ones. I am going away in May half-term for a holiday and so will miss two sessions. Weirdly it feels worse that I might be away and she could still be there working – opening my space up for someone else. It feels less bad if we are both away simultaneously, like last May she was on holiday but so was I….so it was ok. Ugh. At some point I will look at the calendar and see just how many sessions will be missed – I know the time between April and September always feels yuck, though.

Anyway, I now have six and a half months warning about the summer break and this actually makes me laugh a bit. Clearly, Em doesn’t think I’m going anywhere anytime soon….there’s still a lot of work to do and it’s unlikely to be completed by the summer or else why give me this forewarning?!

This got me to wondering just exactly when I will be done with therapy? I know I am making progress and little by little I am working through and processing years and years (a lifetime) of trauma… right now I can’t imagine a time where I wouldn’t be participating in some kind of therapy- that’s not because of the attachment stuff, but actually just because I can’t imagine how my life will ever feel ok enough to not need to touch base with a therapist on a monthly basis.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime I guess I’ll just try and remain calm and not freak out about the summer therapy break! Only 197ish days to go!! x