Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

I am not in a good place right now. Like it’s probably about as bad as it gets. Sometimes I find it really hard not to just give up trying, and instead throw in the towel and admit defeat so far as this ‘healing’ business goes…or life goes, if I am totally honest. Because, truthfully, I am not sure it is even possible to heal the sort of trauma I have. Maybe that sounds defeatist and just someone screaming out from a place of deep depression – and maybe it is that, partly…but…

After all of these years of battling so hard to keep my head above water – doing ‘the work’ in therapy, reading everything there is to try and facilitate the process, sitting in and with the discomfort of it, working on regulation, communication, self-care blah blah blah… I am at a total loss right now to know what else ‘to do’ because once again I feel like I have face-planted in the cesspit of trauma and attachment and it’s killing me. Like it literally feels like I am being annihilated right now. The panic attacks I am experiencing at the moment are insane – and a relatively knew thing for me – and all I can do is hyperventilate and tremble my way through them until they stop. It’s utterly rotten and I feel so completely alone with it.  

The only discernible difference between how my mental health and system is now and how it was fifteen years ago is that I totally understand ‘why’ I feel like I do and am aware of the parts of me that I wasn’t before. I’ve spent years investigating and raking over my past and through my psyche – but knowledge of the ‘why’ things are the way they are doesn’t change the feelings underneath that are so deeply entrenched. I still feel utterly broken, and my sense of being ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ is as potent as ever. Yes, every inch of the relational injury (mother wound) is known about in 4K detail…but that doesn’t mean that I have found a way to stop it being triggered time and again. And because it is a relational injury any time I get in a close enough relationship with a therapist this stuff comes up, doesn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong, I get this is sort of the point of it all, but I am beginning to wonder if this deep level of life-long and consistent wounding can heal or whether being in a therapeutic relationship with someone actually just perpetuates the suffering in the end? Like if, ultimately, I can never repair or make up for what I didn’t get as a kid, I just need to find a way of living with that…and I have lived with it for decades. Surely, building a relationship with someone that has so many limitations and will have to end one day is really just creating more hurt in the long run?

I suppose it all feels especially like suffering right now because the balance of my therapy is all off and out of whack. What’s going on with Elle (or not going on with her) is activating all the stuff about being ‘unseen’, ‘forgotten about’, ‘not being important enough’ and ‘easy to put to one side’, ‘being a burden’…being ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ blah blah fucking blah get out the tiny violins and play a concerto! And it is knocking me for six.

What I have learnt about myself over the last couple of decades is that my mental health is TOTALLY FUCKED…no…well yes, that’s true…but not that!… Seriously, what I think I am having to accept about my brain and how I function is that for my issues therapy is going to be a life-long maintenance plan rather than a complete fix and move on and whoop whoop isn’t it a wonderful life?

After a couple of years of once-a-week sessions with Em it became clear that it wasn’t enough and I was actually getting worse rather than better with that level of contact. It is a really delicate balance in therapy to get the right level of containment for me to be functional. That sounds really complicated, but basically there is a sweet spot in the therapy where there is just enough contact to calm the parts that struggle with abandonment and rejection and *issues* AND be able to do the work and hold it all safely whilst still being able to get on with the day-to-day of life…and when that isn’t possible the wheels fall off and everything goes totally to shit.

The ‘totally to shit’ place is where I am right now. And as much as I try to reason things out with myself and work with the parts of me that are in such distress – it’s not always possible to reach them – or soothe them. The level of shame and embarrassment I feel about how I am right now is hideous. Part of me just wants to curl up in a hole and die because … it is pathetic. Like how, how can I be in so much pain and be so derailed by what is really just a small reduction in contact with Elle? How am I back in the grips of a bloody eating disorder? Why does my brain think that self-harm should be the next ‘logical’ step to cope with all this?

I know it isn’t *just* reduced contact with Elle that is causing me problems. I totally understand that my life being as precarious as is it right now with finances – or lack of them- is a massive worry and triggering all my programming around scarcity and lack of safety. Like that is a real problem and it is very stressful. It’s not an overreaction. I know that I am basically tumbling around in a perfect doom storm right now with all the reasons ‘why’… but fuck me! I am so over the knowledge and understanding … please someone help me with navigating my fucking way out of this shitstorm of hell and shame and fear!

Look, I am not stupid. I know that reduced contact with Elle is a big deal and also not a big deal. Of course, having the level of attachment I have to her, it would cause problems alongside all the other stuff I am struggling with – I can’t get away from the fact that any kind of change for young parts is hard and that the dots that my brain joins around availability and contact often lean towards worst case scenarios. And I get that I should be able to extend some compassion and kindness to myself for doing the best I can in a crappy situation and know that my feelings right now aren’t a reflection on me being “too dependent” or too needy, or “like a tick” or whatever unkind soundbite I can dredge up to beat myself with but…

It’s hard.

I am so scared right now.

I fear that I sound like a spoiled brat, moaning that I am not getting what I want and having a tantrum about it when I am already being given so much by Elle. And I know I reiterate this every time I post here– but I am so unbelievably grateful to her for seeing me at all right now – like soooo grateful. I don’t know where I would be if we had have had to end the therapy. Like it would be way worse than it is now…but that’s not to say I am not struggling.

And actually, being fair to myself, rather than letting the Critic speak for me “you ungrateful child, grow the fuck up and stop fucking whining!” is that my child parts aren’t brats. They aren’t moaning and tantruming. They are terrified and scared and wondering where their safe person has gone. This isn’t a kid making a fuss over not being allowed sweets in the supermarket this is the little girl crying silently, left out alone in the grey wasteland. She’s cold and scared. Why doesn’t Elle know that she’s lost out in the cold? Why doesn’t she come and find her? And…what if Elle never comes back?

The place my emotions in coming from deserves for me to be compassionate… it’s just hard because I’ve got myself back into a place where all I know to do is to shut down, isolate, and beat myself up. I am stupid for needing so much. I am stupid for letting Elle matter to me. I am idiotic for getting myself in a place where someone else can impact how I feel about myself. Don’t I ever learn?

This last few days leading into, and over, the weekend has been especially hard because I have felt Elle’s absence so acutely. I feel that she has backed away from me and I don’t know why? I don’t understand what has changed. But I am sensitive to even small shifts in a person’s energy. And as much as I don’t want to believe that Elle’s silence signals her feeling burnt out by me, I can’t help but worry that that is what’s going on.

I can’t seem to apply the rules I have in the rest of my life to what’s happening here. If a friend failed to reply to an email or text where I asked for a bit of reassurance I would just assume they were busy, or maybe missed the memo. But it’s different with Elle. Her lack of reply feels dangerous to my system. And it probably wouldn’t feel so significant in the regular run of things where we talk and check in twice each week because miscommunications get dealt with and any assumptions I might concoct in my head can be reality-checked really quickly. There simply isn’t time for shit to get out of control when the longest gap you have between seeing someone is three or four days.

Instead, I feel like I am in a sort of horrible limbo now. I’m hanging on for our session on a Tuesday and when it gets here, I don’t want to be *this*. I don’t want to be scared, and needy, and demanding, or shutdown, or stand-offish, or not fully open…or however else it might be perceived.  I really don’t want to get into a rupture over something that can’t change right now. I don’t want Elle to think that how I feel about things is because she is ‘not enough’. Because that isn’t it at all. But I know our dynamic and how our issues can play out with one another. I don’t want to be doing the ‘transference and countertransference dance’ on a Tuesday – I want to soak up every bit of safety and care that I can in the time we have together.

I know, too, that by not bringing this stuff up, it’s probably going to make it worse in the long run and I could end up in a the rupture zone with her. Please god, noooooooo.

I suspect if I said to Elle that I was struggling really badly we might agree a specific text check in on Friday before the weekend. Just like we have the text on Monday morning before the session on Tuesday. If I said, “I just need a bit of tangible reassurance to carry me through the weekend whilst we aren’t seeing each other as much” – she’d probably do it.

I think she’d hate to know how badly I have been struggling lately, and especially this weekend. The problem is, that right now I don’t feel like I can ask for more from her. And I don’t want to tell her how terrible I feel because I just feel so much shame right now. I hate that I am like this.

The thing is, this small amount of more would probably feel better to Elle than the random stuff I am sending here and there that isn’t clear in its intent or need.

Ugh.

Anyway, that’s just another splurge of my wonky Brian (brain).

I just hope so badly that I don’t get myself so deeply into the pit on aloneness that I don’t go on Tuesday. My runners are running already and the ‘leave before I get left thing is real… when all I really want is a cuddle and to be reminded that we are ok, and I will get through this, and that it is just tough right now. Brian is freaking out but that doesn’t mean Elle and I are in the shit…

I wish I could internalise that.