Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

It’s two years this coming week since I walked into Elle’s therapy room completely broken and in pieces, vowing that I would never again allow myself to get close to, or attached to, a therapist. I promised myself that this time, I had one simple focus: I would go in and work through the damage done by Anita (and maybe the others) and get the hell out! Bugger the rest of the trauma – I’d lived with it for my whole life and I’d manage on my own.  

Yeah, that really worked, didn’t it?!

Elle and I have come such a long way since that warm day back in August 2023, where I think I turned up in one of my homemade tie dye t-shirts (don’t judge!) and basically talked at her for well over an hour basically giving a high-speed but potted version of ‘all the things’ and praying that whatever I said wasn’t going to be ‘too much’. I remember emailing Elle after that first session and basically apologising for the splurge and telling her I hoped that I wasn’t too much… which is really sad when I think about it – but shows the damage that’s been done in previous therapies…as well as by my mum growing up.

I couldn’t have imagined back then that we’d be where we are now, and I know that could never have happened if I hadn’t have felt safe (enough) with Elle. My runners are so quick out the blocks these days that they’d give Usain Bolt a run for his money! But because it’s been such slow, steady, safe work and our relationship has been constructed so carefully and with consideration my runners never get too far down the track with Elle – it’s almost like there’s an invisible elastic bungee tied to my ankles and it pings me back to her.

I feel like in the last couple of years we’ve built solid foundations and that even when things feel stormy and rough, we can weather whatever comes our way TOGETHER…which I guess is the idea of it all!

I have absolutely no doubt that Elle is holding my hand no matter what (even on days like today when a lot of my system is in a total all out panic about a call we had this morning –  I was in a FREEZE and barely spoke). I am hanging on tightly to what I know to be true: Elle cares no matter who shows up, or doesn’t show up.

All the steady months (and years!) of work and reassurance is finally starting to bed in. I think I might finally be getting to a place where I am able to see Elle for her – rather than worry about everyone who has come before her and then believing she’ll repeat their patterns on me. Maybe, just maybe, we are rewriting the script a bit. Or some of my system is seeing things a little differently and it’s tipping the balance in a more positive direction. Actually it’s a lot like trying to coil a spring in the opposite direction. We are doing a good job of it – but occasionally it pings back. Like today, the panic is there- but I know it won’t last for weeks on end…maybe the weekend, or just today (please let it be this!), and sometimes it’s just a few hours.

I think part of the reason things are as strong as they are is because I have a voice that I am not afraid to use now (says the girl who was basically mute in our check-in today! – go figure)…or, if I am afraid, I say it anyway! Being a veteran therapy-goer who’s been through the wringer a fair few times, I know what I want and need now, and I ask for it…I suppose I keep showing up with the map, and the emails, and with my armour off and Elle pays attention to what I am saying.

Elle really listens. And the more I am prepared to share with her the stronger our bond and her understanding of me becomes. She actively invites me to tell her what I need – no shame…and even today’s silence and freeze WAS TELLING HER something is up, because I wasn’t masking or pretending. False Adult wasn’t there… instead, a hurting part of me was, and she may not have a voice but she was on the call at least.

Of course, I’ve still got a bloody long way to go. I feel like we’re four miles into a marathon and so sometimes my old friends Shame and Embarrassment show up at the side of the road to ‘cheer me on’ in the only way they know how (throwing things at me and trying to take my legs out from underneath me) and then a little further along the road Fear Of Abandonment and Rejection turn up and tell me that I am “shit at running and should go home now” but I recognise this is old programming and whilst these protective parts might slow me up, they don’t stop me altogether.

I one hundred percent know Elle can handle what I bring to her and I one million percent have faith that she isn’t going to tap out on me when the going gets tough. Elle sits beside/with me with a softness and care that comes out of her in waves. She doesn’t flinch. Like she’s a pro at unconditional positive regard…or shall we just call it love? I feel better when I am with her…and even if I start off rough, by the time we end I’m in a way better than I was.

But Elle thinks outside the box too…and this really appeals to me. She isn’t rigid and boundaries for boundaries’ sake. After so many years of rigid therapy with Em it’s nice to feel like our relationship and how we work together has a bit of an organic quality to it. It’s different to how things were with Anita, too.

It was recently coming up to the anniversary of my dad’s death which is always a rotten time for me. Elle had suggested a few weeks before that we could have two sessions that week and that maybe we could do something nice to put a different association on the day, make something beautiful out of something heavy. This sounded really lovely to me – and it felt so nice that Elle was looking ahead and thinking about what kind of support I might need rather than just letting a hard time pass by in the usual run of things.

When she mentioned booking the additional session I’d literally just told her about a dream I had had with her in (not a nice one), and she said that she too had dreamt about me that same week but that hers was really lovely dream – because we’d had a picnic together in the room with tiny cucumber sandwiches that I had brought in…and then she said, “I think that would be a really lovely thing to do – let’s have a picnic on the day you come in for the extra session”.

So that’s what we did.

On that hard Monday (I’d cried a lot in the morning – floodgates had opened), we both came in loaded with food, drink, and treats. Elle had brought a proper picnic hamper with her and a picnic blanket and we laid it out on the floor of the therapy room and ate and chatted and laughed. I’d made a YouTube playlist the weekend before, and we played it in the background. And honestly it was just so lovely.

We had a serious feast…much better than the one in the picture!

Elle brought in little ham sandwiches and some cucumber sandwiches (because of the dream she’d had!). We had ginger beer (just like the Famous Five), chocolate, fruit, crisps, dips, homegrown tomatoes from Elle’s garden, Belgian buns (although we were too full to eat those and saved them for the session the next day). Elle even brought me in a can of cherry coke because she knows it’s my absolute favourite. But perhaps most special was that she brought me in sausages and cheese on cocktail sticks. I had said that it was a happy memory from when I was small, and so she brought it to life.

Do you know what that feels like? To be held in the details? To be seen and held with so much care that someone brings your fleeting moments of childhood joy into the present? In that moment time folds in half and you get to be little and loved as well as seen and cared for in the here and now.

It’s everything.

And after years of an eating disorder to actually sit in the therapy room and not be at all self-conscious about eating… HUGE!

I could cry writing this because I can just deeply feel and see the love and I feel like my heart could burst – and so often I lose sight of it when my system goes into freefall (like this morning) when I feel like I am simultaneously too much and not enough and on the verge of overwhelming Elle.

There would be some therapists (Em for one) who would have an absolute meltdown at the idea of what Elle and I did on that lovely Monday afternoon sitting on a picnic rug spitting our cherry pips into a flask and genuinely just having a really nice time together…but in negatively judging, they would neglect to see that Elle and I connecting in a real way, opened up a safe enough space for me to finally be able to open and read some letters from my dad that I haven’t been able to look at in the seventeen years since he died.

With Elle by my side, I felt safe enough to dip into that pain and that is enormous. This particular anniversary is so full of grief and yet I was able to access my grief in a far more helpful way than ever before. I wasn’t drowning in it – because Elle had a life vest for me. She held my hand and stopped me from sinking and as a result I feel like something has metabolised this year. Like I have moved something on that has been stuck for nearly twenty years.

So, tell me how that is a problem, or bad practice? It’s not. It’s meeting a client where they are at and creating the kind of space that is needed for the healing to be done.

There are so many therapists who get bent out of shape even at the idea of a client bringing in their own drink for their session, and aren’t sure whether to have a box of tissues to hand, or you know have strong opinions on moving a chair…so let’s not even go there with between session contact and physical touch!

Yet I can say some of the most connecting moments with Elle have been when we’ve been sitting next to each other and had drinks, or biscuits, or played roulette with jellybeans creating some really weird combos, or recently when we totally overloaded on sugar from some seriously dense cakes from a local shop and neither of us were able to eat for the rest of the day. Or the other day when we tried out the new M&S strawberries and cream sandwich (not a fan!). Like all these little moments work on so many layers of my system.

There’s something really human in those moments. It’s connecting when I bring a coffee from the shop round the corner and it’s fucking terrible. We each taste it and agree it’s a flop. Or recently we were wincing at a crazy bitter lemonade. It’s been north of 30 degrees Celsius here lately and the UK just doesn’t even attempt to do air con – so bringing in cold drinks to share has been a hydration thing…but it’s also therapeutic for me!

Relational wounds need healing in safe relationships and Elle has created an environment with me that allows me to be and do exactly what I want or need in the moment. Sometimes that’s really deep soul and heart work, and sometimes it’s being silly and childish. Sometimes it’s food and drinks. Sometimes it’s playdoh. Sometimes it’s stories. Sometimes it’s saying nothing at all and having a long hug and nearly (or actually) falling asleep. Other times it’s me chewing her ear off for the whole ninety minutes – but whatever it is and however I come to the room, I am very much welcome.

But it’s not just what happens in the room that makes a difference – it’s what happens throughout the week. I can email Elle or text her if I want. I can ask for a check in. I can ask for transitional objects – and Monty has had a really fun year over on Insta since he came to live with me.

https://www.instagram.com/montys_awesome_adventures?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

And all of that is ok. I am learning that Elle is open to hearing whatever I think might help me – and will always give what I say proper consideration…unlike Em who was a hard “No” on almost everything I suggested…and we all know how the pebble transitional object bombed… six months of hoping and believing she was going to finally give me something close to what I needed…ha. So disappointing.

Turns out that so far, I am pretty good at not stepping over lines and invisible boundaries. Of course, I don’t ring her or turn up out the blue – or whatever it is that therapists seem to panic about happening with clients with complex trauma…because as much I have a lot of trauma, and as much as my inner children are in a state, I do also have an adult self who operates in the world fairly successfully and I know what is and isn’t ok. Of course, I would like to be able to spend more time with Elle. I would love to not be ‘on the clock’ and just spend a day with her where I wasn’t aware of having to squeeze everything into ninety minutes but the only way that would ever happen is if we decided for that to happen.

It makes me laugh, really. I remember when I was working with Em how I would trawl the internet searching and trying to find evidence of what was acceptable or possible in therapy because I felt like my therapy was just … not meeting me where I needed – and more often than not I felt that what I came across was a highly defended, almost paranoid approach to therapy by therapists.

Clients were so often pathologised and infantilised – it was as though if you gave a client an inch, they’d take a mile and the next thing you know you’d be needing a restraining order. It’s total bullshit. To be honest, the longer I have been online blogging and communicating with people in therapy, the real danger seems to be the therapists and not the clients!! #harmintherapy

I know counselling and therapy is all about processing and thinking – but sometimes I feel like therapists get caught in a trap of overthinking a situation and lose sight of the fact that therapy is really just about two people having a relational experience together. Of course, there are boundaries and rules to how it works but it doesn’t need to cold and sterile. If I wanted a sterile experience, I would type my woes into ChatGPT and let it be my therapist for free…or you know, have a relationship with my mother.

Fortunately, there are some therapists who are human and discuss how they work online – and of course clients who write and give a window into their therapy. I guess, what I would say is there isn’t a one size fits all approach and each therapy needs to be co-created between the therapist and client. It should be a collaborative experience, not a place where the client is powerless and ‘done to’. There will always be a power imbalance, but it doesn’t need to be a central tenet of the work. For those of us who had no power or control as children that sort of therapy doesn’t help at all.

I stayed with Em for all those years because how she made me feel was familiar… it wasn’t healing. I gained a lot of insight, for sure…but that came from all the suffering. Ugh.

The thing I love so much about therapy with Elle is that there is space for all the parts of me. The littles who cling and ache and need. The teenage part who hides behind eye rolls and survival. The adult who tries to keep it all tidy but is tired. They all get to show up. They all get to belong. They are all loved.

I am loved – just as I am.

I don’t have to shrink myself into something that I think makes me ‘manageable’ or ‘palatable’ anymore – both literally and metaphorically. I don’t have to apologise for being messy or needy or too much. I can just ‘be’. Although, of course I do sometimes reach out and apologise for being all of the above – but not because I think Elle wants me to. In fact she would say there is never any need to apologise for how I am.

I love Elle and that terrifies me sometimes. When I feel vulnerable and small, sometimes the fear of losing her is too much to bear. Sometimes I carry it around in my chest like a second heartbeat that almost drowns out my own. But I don’t doubt her care for me. I see her gentle, thoughtful love EVERYWHERE. It’s in her remembering, in her words, in the way she sits with me instead of away from me. It’s in the sausages on sticks. It’s stories. It’s in the way she meets me wherever I am and says yes, this too can come in. It’s in the way she holds me – physically and emotionally.

It’s our two-year anniversary this week and do you know what was really lovely? Last session she asked me, “So, are we celebrating our two-year anniversary next week?” and I replied that we were. She said, “Good, because I’ve made something!” So I’m intrigued about that, but also touched – because yet again Elle is showing me in the most certain of terms that what we are doing together matters.

x

And I’ll leave this on one of my favourite Andrea Gibson quotes: