Month: July 2025

I Was ‘The Good Girl’ In The Therapy Room And I Hurt All The Time

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

I’ve been in therapy for a long time.
Like, a really long time.
It’s been ten years solid this time around, albeit with four different therapists (not that I am counting!). I’m not sure how to explain how long that is in soul years, but it feels like a thousand.

I am no stranger to the therapy room. Even before this latest solid run of ‘trying to get my mind fixed’ (or should I say my nervous system recalibrated and the mother wound healed?) there have been some hopeful episodes in the ‘room’ over the last twenty-five or so years. But mostly, as is generally the case when you’re a student in college or university, these were relatively short-term therapies.

I went, then, because I was suffering with anxiety or depression or stress, or my eating disorder, or imposter syndrome or whatever (the list goes on and on). I knew deep down that something was very wrong and those sessions acted like sticking plasters for a wound that was far deeper than I ever could have imagined at the time. Little did I know that I needed far more attention than four or six sessions could ever hope to provide.

I remember feeling like I was fully losing the plot as it was coming up to Christmas when doing my MA. I was twenty-two and I realised that I needed to see someone having not been to a therapist since my A Levels. The university I was studying at had a counselling service and, fortunately, as most people had already left for the holidays there was some availability to see someone.

It was in that room that the dam broke. It was a tiny room in the back of an old Victorian red brick building not far from my seminar building. I started to let out ‘all the things’ and although I only had four sessions with that counsellor it was such a relief to finally have someone say to me that I wasn’t overreacting and that actually they thought I could really use some long-term therapy because ‘trauma’…and no, it wasn’t just the stress of deadlines and they didn’t try and ply me with strategies to get through the immediate stress rather just gave me a space to be heard and collapse a bit after trying to hold it together for such a long time.

I might have walked out of those short-term sessions feeling a bit bereft – like, it would have been so great to be able to spend a few months with that particular therapist as a bit of a scaffold around my crumbling self, but that wasn’t how the service worked…and where was the long-term therapy that a student with no money could afford? I certainly couldn’t access the kind of therapy I need/ed back then and so put everything back in the box on the top of the shelf and continued on with life until I couldn’t do it anymore.

One thing I will say, is that these episodes of short-term therapy never did me any harm. They may not have been long enough, but I didn’t leave those sessions in a worse state than when I started. But then perhaps these therapies were never quite long enough to activate my attachment system. I don’t know. But then, that doesn’t work, because I saw a therapist N, for two years after my dad died and it helped, I was attached to her- and we’re still in contact now seventeen years later – certainly no harm done there.

Harm in therapy didn’t become a reality for me until Em – the highly experienced Clinical Psychologist, the person I was led to believe I stood a really good chance of healing with, and so the person I trusted with my whole story and self. Gosh. What a mess it was.

I met Em thirteen and a half years ago, now. I feel so sad, looking back over my life, that I have been trying so hard for so long to feel ‘better’ and yet here I am still working on undoing damage not just from my childhood, my life, but actually my therapies. It’s tragic.

Em and I initially did sixteen months in the NHS — it was the kind of therapy where the clock ticks louder than your voice and the radiator only half-works and my god, those awful shiny yellow gloss-painter woodchipped walls were really something!… but finally getting a space to delve into my psyche with someone who (on paper at least) really had the skill to help was much-needed.

But like every therapy before – the time I had wasn’t long enough. NHS work, even when it’s extended (which mine was) is still time limited. There is only so many sessions you can have and then that’s it – there’s a huge waiting list (three years for me back then) and you can’t clog up the system forever even if you really need the therapy. And surely you should be grateful to get a long stint of therapy in the first place. It’s kind of laughable, because it took me a year to even get close to the work or for my system to activate. In reality a little over a year of once-a-week therapy is nothing for Complex Trauma and quite honestly, the NHS just isn’t at all equipped to help with these kinds of issues.

And my god, opening my version of Pandora’s Box and then being left with no therapy at all really really messed me up. The nightmares. The panic attacks. The eating disorder and self-harming behaviours were triggered again. My child parts (and my structurally dissociated system – not that I knew that that was what it was then) had a complete meltdown. The feelings of abandonment and rejection felt huge. And I didn’t cope at all. But I was completely and utterly alone and without any kind of support…because I’d used it up.

Em had agreed that we could see each other in her private practice when our sessions finished but the NHS had stipulated that there needed to be a three-month break between ending there and commencing with her again. At the time I accepted that as how things had to be – but knowing what I know now about my system I can see how very wrong it was to leave that work wide open and leave me essentially hanging. What I should have done then was reach out to Em and let her know what was going on, but of course, I didn’t know that was possible. I was just following the rules…because I have always followed the rules.

After two months on my own without therapy, my graphic nightmares finally stopped in their tracks and I didn’t even dream again for nearly three years– I basically shut off/dissociated my entire system and lived my life in ‘false adult’ I think. And so, I didn’t go back to Em for three years.

You could call it a ‘break’. I call it surviving without witness – but I think there was always a part of me, a child part or five, that I had exiled who was desperate to find my way back to Em. The little parts of me that had been so activated in her therapy room, and all the trauma too, needed a place to go.

And so when I finished my cancer treatment and all the wheels fell off – I went back to her…because… well…to parts of me she was mum, and a kind of safety, and I very badly needed someone because I was very much not ok.

In the intervening three years since I had sat with Em a lot had changed in my world – but underneath or inside I was just the same – all those little parts were frozen inside needing to be seen, held, and attended to. The trauma was there still, unresolved.

I remember the first day I walked back in the room and how hopeful I had been and how excited I had been to see Em again. And yet, it fell flat. I guess there was a part of me that wanted her to welcome me back with open arms or some kind of acknowledgement that it was good to see me again now that we weren’t in the sterile hospital. But she was ever the blank screen, and although my child parts came alive again the moment they saw her, they knew too that the rules were still the same.

And I am nothing if not the girl who follows the rules.

I came to my session/s every week.

I paid on time.

I was never rude.

I never cancelled on her until we were right at the end and broken (but then why would I, my sessions never felt enough and so I would never enact a break willingly).

And I tried so hard to do therapy ‘right’ – and stick within the confines of Em’s very very rigid boundaries (although occasionally failing and texting her – god forbid).

I tried so hard to be grateful for what was on offer. I tried to make it enough. I tried to be insightful and brave and DO THE WORK…and bring everything to the room even when I felt terrified and physically unwell.

I tried not to be too much.  

But man, I felt small and disempowered.

I was the good girl in the therapy room and I hurt all the time.

I could never understand why it felt so painful to be with her…and so painful to be away from her, too.

I guess I  thought I had to earn tenderness and care, and prove myself worthy of it because of course that’s been hard-wired into me from day dot.

I thought being easy to work with would make me lovable – or at least palatable.

It didn’t.

But then why would it?

That strategy had never worked with my mother so why on earth would it work in the therapy room? And yet here I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern with my therapist.

It seemed being the quiet good girl wasn’t ever enough.

So, I changed tack. It took a really long time for me to bring my pain about the relationship with Em into the room unwashed and unedited. Em had said she felt “blindfolded” with me and I thought this meant that my caution and hiding my feelings was stopping us being able to really connect. And man did I want to be connected to her and so I took a leap towards her around about the time I started this blog.

I wrote things down when I couldn’t say them out loud (because shame was so ever-present and dissociation never very far away). I folded pages of typed letters or blog posts inside my pocket like secret spells. Sometimes it would take weeks for me to build the courage to hand them over. Every time I did, I felt like I was giving her the map to the world inside me — it felt like I was screaming over and over, “Please, please just look. Please see what it’s like in here. Please help me not be lost anymore.” And perhaps in also written between the lines was, “Please love me”. But Em would sit and read my words never giving much away as I sat squirming opposite her and then carry on like she already knew the way and didn’t need my map.

And so, I walked alone over terrain that felt like barbed wire and cold rain and shame.

It felt in some ways like I was in the Truman Show – but no one told me what the point of it was, and the lights were much too bright, and whilst I could see Em she was always sitting behind her glass screen taking notes about what I was (or not doing) on her clipboard – she wasn’t in the scene with me. Every now and then she’d tell me where I was going wrong, “Like a tick”. It was as though she was some nasty film director coaching an actor who was absolutely doing their best to act the ‘right’ way but failing miserably time and again.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have ever had to have acted in that room. I should have been able to go and be me – exactly as I was and have that met with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. I should have been able to remove my various masks.

I wish.

I feel so sad when I look at how small I made myself in the room with Em – I don’t mean falling into my child parts small, I mean how little space I took up and how little I asked for from her and yet even that was made to feel like ‘too much’. I feel so sad that I tried to bend and fit to be the client she wanted me to be and it breaks my heart that for all those years my small parts couldn’t get anywhere close to what I needed. There was no we in that therapy- just me…flailing around and hurting.

I took big elephant with me in my bag for years but was never brave enough to take her out even when I had told Em about the many many child parts that were inside me and how they felt and we both knew how much hurt was inside. There was never an invitation from Em to be anything other than my very competent adult self…and that was really hard when my young parts were so very present. Part of me feels angry at my adult self for not doing more to protect my young parts – but I genuinely thought at the time going to therapy was me looking after myself.

I am not the same client I was back then. I have learnt such a lot about myself over the last decade and there is simply no way I would put up with what I did with Em now…or even Anita. And so although this growth and understanding has come at a heavy emotional (and financial cost)…I do at least know myself and have boundaries around how I will let myself be treated now.

But back then, I felt ashamed and embarrassed asking for anything from Em and her NOs to my very few requests cut so deep. Object constancy has always been a massive problem for me and I remember reading an article online by a therapist about how to stay connected to therapists on a break. They’d suggested a simple three dot text message in the week – like it’s bare minimum effort, no words to misunderstand, just a reminder that they are there. But no, she wouldn’t do it.

I remember asking for a simple transitional object – I wanted a short note written on a pebble that I had found on the beach near her house – and that became a torture project for well over six months. But in reality, I didn’t want a rock… I wanted a soft toy like Monty…only I never asked because I knew that was way out of the realms of acceptability for Em…and I was right. We couldn’t even get a few words on a pebble right, a toy for my young parts would have been simply outrageous!

I was made to feel like there was something desperately wrong with me because I wanted her to sit closer to me. I would dissociate so badly when I felt like she was far away but there was never concessions on Em’s part to make a move to adjust how we worked to make things better for me. I wrote in a letter once that I wished I could hug her. Somehow that was really inappropriate and uncomfortable and was addressed only once, “You know I don’t do that”. It felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

And heaven forbid we go anywhere near the ‘L’ word. Love was made to feel like a dirty word and I never once uttered it aloud…I only alluded to it in my maps/letters. And yet it is so much part of the work… talking through human emotions in all their forms is the work. And it shouldn’t matter if they are directed towards the therapist or anyone else. But also, I struggle hard to understand how if you spend years and years of your life with someone picking apart your most vulnerable stuff that love wouldn’t become part of the fabric of the therapy.

Ugh.

I’m not here to talk about her though – although I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit today – I guess I am still reeling from the hurt… and we can totally skip over Anita, and Hannah because – well – I want to talk about now – 2025…

I want to talk about Elle…I want to talk about how I can be who I am, not who I think I need to be with her. I want to say how that the ‘good girl’ part of me has been allowed to rest a bit and that I no longer hurt in the way that I used to – but given this part alone is 2000 words I’ll break this post into two…and believe me, the next part is far more uplifting!…there’s even a picnic to tell you about!!

My Wobbly Brain, Lots Of Vulnerable Emails, And A Phone Check In/Session

rubberbandsandchewinggumLeave a comment

This is loooonnnng – so grab a snack, a drink, and a cuddly blanket and settle in for the ride!!

So last time I was here I was trying to catch up from all that happened with the BIG RUPTURE and get back on track more-or-less to the here-and-now on the blog… I’d just come off a phone check in with Elle that had come about because, once again, I had fallen head first into a doom spiral and had, at least, had the bravery (and sense) to ask to talk rather than to continue on down a path of emails where I was getting myself more and more panicked. But, how did I get to the point where I was requesting a phone call and what was the panic about this time???!

Well, you might remember I said it had been a about a month since Elle and I had repaired the BIG RUPTURE, things felt fine, the sessions since then had been connecting, but because we hadn’t doubled-back to what had happened during the break and the rupture my brain was starting to wonder if things were really ok or not. Part of me was looking for a bit of reassurance – you know, just in case behind the scenes Elle was harbouring something and I didn’t know about it. I think when things go wrong, I need to re-tread the ground several times just to be sure nothing terrible is lingering beneath the surface. I don’t want to find myself down in a hole unexpectedly.

Elle has always told me that if I need to reach out and check that she’s ‘still there’ then that’s absolutely fine to do that anytime. In various ways I do this a lot, but maybe not in quite so explicit a way as asking, “Are we ok?” We maintain a connection between our sessions but this will usually be by my communicating everyday stuff. I very rarely say, “I am feeling disconnected and need to know we are ok”. That sort of thing generally happens in the big splurge emails that come after protracted periods of ‘light’ when all the feelings bubble up and it all spews out in a huge vulnerable mess. Those messages are not a very regular occurrence…but they’re often enough.

A couple of weeks after the rupture/repair I did find myself asking for the tangible reassurance via a text. My Monday morning text reminder for our Tuesday session had come through and even though it was most definitely my lovely Elle, I wasn’t able to feel into it or find her in it. It had been Father’s Day that weekend and I think I was just feeling really vulnerable and sad and disconnected. So, I replied, “Are we ok? I totally get that [ref to message] should mean yes, but I’ve wandered away and got lost.” Elle assured me that we were completely fine and I felt lots better.

It really doesn’t take a lot to settle things down but even now, almost two years in, I still struggle to ask for the support and reassurance I need. I think after so many years of feeling the fear of disconnection (that comes with disorganised attachment) so acutely in my therapy with Em where I was actively chastised if I ever reached out outside of the session and then completely ignored, there’s a part of me that still feels like I am doing something wrong when I ask for something from Elle.

It’s not just Em’s legacy that impacts how I relate to Elle. Anita wasn’t like Em. I was able to message her, but there’s a different kind of fear that comes from this. I think in some ways I find it hard to trust Elle is genuine and means what she says because Anita made promises and then suddenly things changed and I was left high and dry. Anita was warm, and accepting, and encouraged me to ask for what I needed… until the day I was “too dependent” and there was a definite pulling back.

So, with both these therapy experiences always bubbling away in the back of my mind, it’s hardly surprising I struggle to ask for what I need with Elle. It’s no fun feeling like you’re ‘too much’ and I am so mindful of not wanting to overstep the ‘boundary line’ – although I am not entirely sure where that is. I guess I hope I don’t find out the hard way one day although I think it is entirely possible that at some point it will happen.

Having asked for reassurance the day before the session I knew that my internal world wasn’t functioning at its best and I was so glad to get into the room that week. I cried quite a lot – there’s a lot of sadness floating around at the minute with loss and grief and it’s coming out a bit – not full-on sobbing, but just slow tears…which for someone that never really cries in session, that is huge. I still can’t fully let go and let it all out but I feel like I’m edging towards that place. Elle says that she thinks there’s a lot of crying inside, from the young parts, but that I only let it out in small amounts – she’s right of course.

It’s felt like I am holding a lot lately and my need for safety and holding feels enormous and therefore the feelings of shame have built up around that. I don’t want to be as needy as I am…and as much as I try to remind myself that we are only as needy as our unmet needs, I have a hard time feeling compassion for those parts of me, when I know that they are the ones that seem to make therapy explode in my face.

In that session, Elle asked me what had prompted me to check if we were ok. I was cuddled in to her and I didn’t say anything, I don’t think. Sometimes there aren’t words in the moment. I was feeling so so sad and not because of anything between us, but I think sometimes when I feel safe with her, in that space, I stop defending myself against my feelings and they come…and bloody hell…it’s a lot. Sometimes an extra wave of grief comes up as I realise that the time with Elle is only short and before too long I will be on my own back in the world. The young parts of me feel devastated.

Elle asked me where I was feeling the sadness in my body. I didn’t answer again – I just cuddled in and clung on even more tightly to her. She understands now, that my silence isn’t avoidance or shutting her out. Actually, it’s really me minus the armour and often when a very small part is there…pre-verbal probably. Part of me really needs those very small parts to have space and time in the room but another part of me is terrified that it’s all too much.

After the session, I had time to think about everything, adult was back online rather than the littles being front and centre and I came up with this and sent it as part of a longer email to Elle:

I feel like I am almost drowning in shame at the moment or in a spin cycle with it. You asked me what had happened to text you on Monday to see if we were ok and if something had happened. Aside from more shit dreams, which don’t help, nothing had happened. The reality is I could send you that message every week, and don’t because … I am trying really hard not to be too much (not massively successful in that right now). But actually, by the time it gets to Friday my entire system is falling down a hole – and it’s all the time not just every now and again.

I try and remind myself that this isn’t new – like I know where the panic comes from – being left when I was small for so many years and then my dad dying after being away for three days … like it’s just really hard because my brain sort of knows that things are ok but how I experience it in my body is a different matter. So, I spend a lot of the weekend in a horrible place of feeling like something is wrong or bad is going to happen. And that’s shit…and then we head back into the shame thing because… I really get how clingy I am and well, then that takes me off on another path of doom…so it’s a lot.

The feelings reside in lots of places. There’s the pain/ache in my solar plexus, the big black hole in my chest that feels like its edges are ulcerated and burning, the tight feeling in my throat, the heaviness but also tingling in my legs that makes me feel like I need to run, pins and needles in my hands…. the hot feeling behind my eyes….sometimes all of those all at once…  I think that’s probably why I would dissociate for the longest time. It’s far easier to feel nothing and sit outside your body than actually be in it. 

So there was that… another big splurge of the vulnerable and more pieces of the road map offered up.

Elle and I remained connected as another week rolled around and then I left another lovely holding session with Elle on the next Tuesday. We had talked about a lot of things. Elle had bought a book I had mentioned and brought it to session for us to read together. You’d think that that would more than show that she wasn’t experiencing the heebie-jeebies post rupture… nope.

Almost as soon as I got out the room, I realised I had neglected to bring up the main thing I wanted to talk about that week…it wasn’t conscious avoidance, though. It just totally left my brain. I do think this is a form of dissociation. Like, part of my system is worried that something is wrong and so wants to protect me from poking at it just in case my fears are confirmed. After the session I felt ALL THE FEELS – you know the big loving ones? – ugh – and decided to send this email – let it all out RB! – looks like this last month or so has been big on the big emails, actually! haha:

I really missed you this week and it felt hard 😞 . Before today I wanted to ask you some things and tell you some things but actually by the time this morning got here I just really needed a cuddle and for the panic in my system to settle down and to feel safer and to reconnect with you…when I am with you I feel like I just want to soak it up as much as I can because the ‘leaky non-existent bucket that’s only just a handle now’ situation means that that feeling is quickly gone when I can’t see you. It’s like trying to hold water in my hands or it’s like sand slipping through my fingers… and it’s really difficult. 

And although it was meant in totally different kind of context today, when I was talking about *friend and her wanting a relationship with me and you said about how hard it is when someone hands you their heart and you have to gently give it back to them…reminded me of something I said to *best friend a few months ago about how I feel really pathetic and sad with you. Like I feel like I have taken my heart out the bottle and am handing it to you like it’s a gift and actually it’s so broken and in pieces and damaged that no one in their right mind would want it. And yet, it’s all there is left…and I feel like I’ve exposed this really vulnerable bit of me, there’s no protection whatsoever, and it is so terrifying because given the state of it, I don’t think it will survive being dropped, stamped on, or in a hit and run again. 

And I think the saddest thing is I feel like love is perhaps the biggest gift we can give or receive and yet I feel like my version of it is like an unwanted Christmas gift, that’s quickly discarded or seen to have no value. I imagine it a bit like when a kid makes something at pre-school out of air-drying clay and brings it home and although it most certainly is the most magnificent snail in their eyes, unfortunately they’ve selected brown clay and the coiled-up shape resembles a turd. It’s ok because I always know it’s a snail – but not everyone does… and then of course it doesn’t take long until it’s starts dissolving into dust and parts start breaking off. 

Part of me doesn’t even want to say this because ugh huge shame 😳 but also there’s a bit that feels really sad when I feel like this and I don’t say. Like it feels a bit like there’s all these parts of me in the room watching and wondering why I don’t let you know they’re there or how it’s been. Although I think you probably do see them because I think these days rather than being locked in a cupboard or hiding behind the couch they’re really just hidden under a flimsy piece of fabric. Or maybe more like when kids cover their eyes and think you can’t see them…🙈

So, I wanted to ask how things are after last month 😬 and I wanted to talk to you about what’ll happen if we end up in that place again. And also, I think we need a code word for when things are bad or a symbol. And then just for added fun content I was going to mention that Brian is having a bit of a meltdown about living in my body right now and whilst I’m on top of it I thought I was over this shit – or maybe it just goes dormant. 🫠 There was something else but I can’t remember now… which bodes really well for teaching – I feel like a hologram.

Elle sent a really lovely expansive reply – here’s some of it:

Hello my sweet girl 🙂

I think you’re right about all of that stuff being totally present in the room, even though it’s not explicitly stated. I absolutely do feel the responsibility of holding your beautifully broken and fragile heart, and I think take that responsibility as seriously and with as much sensitivity as that warrants. I don’t imagine me telling you that holds much weight at all, given that you’ve been told almost the exact same thing many times before, but I always hope that is something you can feel in the room.

She went on to tell me that she promises that she’ll never ‘blindside’ me because when she takes any kind of action it comes from ‘months of consideration’. There was reference to what we spoke of at the time of the rupture. And then she talked about how we got to where we did. Then came:

I think seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been given freely is never helpful in terms of deepening connection, and instead of building closeness I think it has the potential – for you – to create an even more profound sense of isolation, rather than the closeness that is so badly wanted. If there are things I can provide for you between sessions to help you feel connected to me when you feel distant – I was thinking recordings of me reading our stories for example? – then let’s come up with some that feel like they might work. You also mention notes to open, and I think that’s a beautiful idea. Maybe I could write some affirmation cards that feel like they are uniquely special to us? I really like that idea.

The entire email was actually just really considered and thoughtful and lovely … could my brain take it in?

HA! Could it fuck?!

It fixated on two small areas of the message and went into full scale panic.

Firstly, I was wondering what kind of ‘action’ was coming? What could that mean? Was she turning something over in her mind and waiting to see whether or not to act based on what I was doing?

And then I locked on and fixated on the part about “seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been freely given” and it sent me into outer space in terms of panic and shame. I felt like this was a thinly-veiled comment about what had happened with our recent rupture and that she was in some way mad that I had been overstepping boundaries because there are some things I have found out about Elle that she hasn’t expressly shared with me – but then, it was information that was freely available online or that she had reference in an oblique way and I had found as a result.

Great.

So, I decided to reply to her with details of what I was worrying about – it couldn’t wait a week.

Elle replied and tried to address my concerns and she is really considered and careful in how she responds to me.

At the end she wrote:

I can feel myself getting tense as I was writing that, and am now worrying that I’m not communicating all this to you in a way that will land as I want it to, so I’m going to stop now.

I found out when we were in the thick of the big rupture that she has a thing about being misunderstood and says she can sometimes overcompensate to try and be clear and then feel like she’s making it worse. So, the message that she was going to stop didn’t feel like she was refusing to engage with me, rather that she was trying to reassure me but wasn’t sure if it was working and recognised that she didn’t want to make it worse.

I was still pretty activated and overnight had horrible nightmares but had a word with myself and realised that none of what I was experiencing was desperate… but that tying myself up in knots trying to explain what I was feeling in an email wasn’t actually meeting the need underneath. What I needed was to ‘hear’ that Elle and I were not running off in different directions, that she wasn’t annoyed with me or harbouring something from before, and that I hadn’t done something wrong… child parts much??!!

There was absolutely no way I was going to make it to Tuesday in the state I was in and so I text Elle first thing on Thursday morning asking if she might have time for a phone check in sometime before the weekend.

She got back to me immediately and said we could talk that morning… and we fixed up a time. Phew.

I felt nervous picking up the call, but as soon as I heard Elle’s voice, I could hear that there was nothing wrong between us. I could feel that that she was there. She asked me how I was feeling in my body and I replied that I felt like I was locked in a vice and tensing in a brace position. She said she really got that, and the actually she felt the same.

The talk we had was really really helpful. The instant connection and the honesty and being able to ‘feel’ Elle and the safety settled my nervous system so quickly. I felt my body starting to relax, the tension in my solar plexus went and I was able settle into the call.

As we talked, I was able to recognise that I am really good at latching onto the tiniest bit of ‘scary’ and lose all sense of the good in our communications – but it all comes from a place of fear. Elle said that she, too, can worry that she’s getting it very wrong with me when I let her know about the bits that don’t land in our communications and then she worries she’s making it worse for me.  

I told her that it might seem like I am taking the whole message as ‘wrong’ but the reality is I am genuinely only looking for clarification and reassurance on the small bits and that at least part of me knows we are ok to be able to keep going over things with a fine-toothed comb otherwise I wouldn’t bring it to her to begin with and that her messages really really do help me. I am aware, though, that my attention to small details might come over as my being critical at times. But really, I’m just overthinking.

I think this is not just a complex trauma thing; I think there is an element of neurodiversity playing out here, too. Both my kids are autistic and the more they grow the more and more of myself I see in them (both as ac child and now) and so understand how my brain works. Talk about little mirrors! It’s complicated. There’s trauma and there’s neurodiversity, or neuro-complexity, and then there’s the space where it all overlaps… no wonder it’s fucking hard for me sometimes!

The good news is that Elle works with a lot of neurodiverse clients, and has close family members who are also autistic so I know I am not too much for her. When we first started working together, I said about my sensitivities to noise, and smell, and all the other various ‘things’ I struggle with and she said she was definitely somewhere on the bell curve, too. We connect on a level that I don’t with other people. Like I don’t really need to explain some of my ‘weird’ because she’s the same and gets it. Thank god.

One of the reasons I like working with Elle is because I think we are both very invested and committed to deep, authentic, clear communication. Like whenever I bring it to her, she more than meets me in it. I just wish my brain could remember this! – but my trauma history keeps jamming sticks in the spokes of my bike wheels time and again.

Speaking on the phone, then, was so good because it allowed us to clear things up so I wasn’t sitting with my panic and getting more jumbled and disconnected over the weekend.

After the call I sent this, and then carried on with my day like a normalish person!:

Mainly, I think I want to say that when I’m focusing on my scary 1% that absolutely doesn’t mean that I don’t see the 99% and that what you say to me doesn’t land. Because it does. Like it really does. And I am also really conscious that my saying I’m freaking out about the 1% can make you feel not enough – and that really really isn’t my intention at all because actually it’s not about you, it’s me panicking about thinking you’re going to disappear… and you are so right about the too much/not enough runners. I feel like I have magic jet pack running shoes when I think I’ve done something wrong, or that I’ve upset you, or mainly that I am going to lose you because I’ve said or done something off. 

And when I get in that place it’s really hard to remember that things are ok – even though part of me knows it – and I can just disappear off like the Roadrunner leaving a dusty haze in my wake.

So, speaking to you really helps because it reminds me that Brian is frightened but his version of what’s happening isn’t necessarily the reality. 

The weekend after the session was much more manageable than how weekends usually are. Cutting the time down between actually talking made a massive difference despite the panic situation I had got myself into. The emails and texts definitely do help but actually it was speaking made all the difference.

I know I have been talking about it for a while, the need for an extra session or a check in, and this really highlighted to me how needed it was, and I resolved to ask for us to see if there was a way of building a check in to our weeks going forward.

The next Tuesday came along and OMFG it was hotter than hell and I thought I was going to melt when I went to my session – like blimey the UK is in a serious heatwave right now and I hate it. I can’t concentrate and it’s absolutely terrible for cuddles!!

We weren’t many minutes into our session when Elle told me that she had enjoyed talking to me on the phone and she wondered whether I might like to figure out a time when we can speak each week. I said that would be lovely and she said we could talk about it the following week when we had two face-to-face sessions booked in. Yes two!

Why?

Well, during the rupture repair session when Elle came back from break, I had commented how ropey May and June felt due to the Anita ending anniversary stuff and how that had undoubtedly made our rupture a billion times worse… but that July was a different kind of hard due to the anniversary of my dad’s death and the month following that had some very complicated shit happen. Elle asked me then when the hardest bit of July was and I told her. She said, that we would book in an extra session on that day (the actual anniversary of my dad dying) and have two sessions that week if I wanted.

So that’s what we did, last week…and I’ll tell you all about it next time. We had a picnic! It was lovely.