holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
This is unusual for me, I don’t think I have ever written a letter to you that I haven’t sent or shared with you, and yet today I am writing this ‘hard stuff’ to you and it won’t end up in an email in your inbox or as a text to your phone, instead it’ll sit somewhere out on the internet on my blog. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. I imagine for you it will be a welcome relief that you won’t, once again, be bombarded with some form of contact from me.
Part of me would like to think that by not sending this letter to you it shows some kind of progress on my side. I suppose it could be viewed as ‘holding this for myself’…and if that was the true motivation for keeping all these feelings away from you then that would probably be great, wouldn’t it? The thing is, as we both know, my struggle has always been letting people ‘see me’ and ‘know me’ when I am struggling – it isn’t a good thing at all when I stop reaching out and sharing – it’s a return to default programming.
The reason I am not sending this letter to you today is because I have got myself so worked up that I don’t feel confident that it would land how it is meant and I am scared of the consequences of that. The truth is, I am basically drowning in the being ‘too much’ and simultaneously ‘not enough’ place, right now. My attachment stuff is in meltdown and my traditional go-to when it is like this is to go into hiding. This place of fear and self-imposed isolation is so familiar to me – but sooooooo painful, too, and more than anything I wish I could override the part of me that is freaking out with the ‘therapy heebie-jeebies’ and just text you and check in with the truth: Elle, I am struggling and it feels like I am falling apart. Are we ok?
The one thing I have always been with you is honest, and I have worked really hard at not letting my past experiences cloud what happens between us. Even when I have felt worried and scared that my ‘truth’ … or really, just ‘I’ would be too much for you I have always let you in and given you the opportunity to respond as Elle even when it has felt excruciating to do so. I’ve done this because you aren’t Em, or Anita, or my mum…or anyone else that has hurt me, and I have trusted that the only way to get over the hurts of the past is to allow you into my house of horrors and let you see what’s really there…even if I have wanted to turn all the lights off and lock a few cupboards and direct your attention outside to the beautiful flower garden that I have planted.
But today I have hit a block and for some reason, I can’t tell you what’s happening. And it is my fault. I can see how I have got here, and why I have got here…and I don’t know how to get myself out of it because the shame is getting bigger than my ability to combat it and we all know what happens when shame isn’t witnessed or given empathy – it gets huge and swallows us whole until there is no way we believe that there isn’t something incredibly wrong with us and can no longer believe that we are worthy of love and care.
I am so conscious of not wanting to fuck things up with you, and especially right now when my life seems to be going down the toilet. I’d sooner sit in this discomfort and know that I am not actively doing anything that could break us…or break you. Only I know this is wrong – because by not talking to you I am probably going to fuck things up because my internal narrative gets more and more fucked up and my inability to see what’s really in front of me increases. The moment I start looking for rejection and abandonment I see it everywhere…or my young parts do.
My time with you is so precious to me and I am so painfully aware (because of the past – before you) that things between us could implode if I bring all my need and big feelings right now. It’s funny, typing that, I can hear your voice in my head saying, “Lambkin, don’t be silly, there’s nothing that could make me leave you. You’re human and having a hard time and your need for me doesn’t scare me. You’re not too much and I am here holding your hand until I see you on Tuesday.” Because you’ve told me a version of that a million times before. I text you last weekend with “I miss you” and you replied almost immediately with a really holding message. You show up for me time and again…
And yet, today, I feel a million miles away from you. In fact, it’s worse than that – I feel like you are completely gone even if I have just called you to mind – or a more resilient part of me has. It’s hard. Like I said, part of me wants to reach out to you and seek some kind of reassurance that we are ‘ok’. And it is so simple.. and yet too hard right now. And this is what it is like when my system – the famous mini bus – is hurtling off down the track at brake neck speed without anyone being strapped in. There are so many conflicting or competing needs and voices that I just can’t cope. Adult me sort of knows it’s all ok, but the hurt child parts don’t get it at all.
I wonder if you have noticed how I have become ‘more’ lately. I have tried so hard not to be, extra, especially since my wife lost her job and you are seeing me for free. My internal world is so shaken and all my stuff around lack of safety and rejection and abandonment is so activated that it is total agony outside the room. I have tried to not be a complete fucking basket case when I see you, partly because I just want to have some time with you where I can ‘rest’ and feel contained and partly because you aren’t paid enough for this shit at the best of times, and you certainly shouldn’t have to put up with it unpaid!
There is a part of me that wants to cling on so tightly to you the moment I get in the room and be wrapped in your arms for the entire time I am with you. And, I know that if I reached for you that would happen – because I’ve done it before… plenty. It’s weird, though, at the moment we are close, I mean I am literally leant against you and you hold my hand… but I think what it is, is that I am keeping parts of me away from you. ‘Frustrated-with-life Adult Me’ is turning up and chatting away to you…but the very small parts that have missed you such a lot in the week aren’t there. Or they are, but they are hidden behind the sofa and you can’t see them. They desperately need cuddles, and stories, and head strokes, and reassurance and I get all I need to do is ask – but I can’t at the moment.
It’s hard. I understand why this stuff is so badly triggered. The moment my life gets a bit unsteady then every past trauma is triggered on top. My nervous system can’t differentiate which risks or fears are reality in the here and now, it just piles everything in together.
When there is so much going on in my world right now, and my system is so…mental!…so, activated, it’s super hard not seeing you as much as I am used to. And I get I am seeing you…and I am soooo grateful to you for everything that you are doing for me. I mean it is really staggeringly kind of you and it really feels incredible that you would do this for me when you absolutely don’t have to. But the little parts of me are finding the change in routine difficult. Today is Friday and the ‘falling apart’ feeling has ramped up. And it makes sense. We don’t speak on Friday anymore on our call, and the in person occasional Friday sessions that felt like such a gift are not happening either. And of course that is fine. But the fallout for my system that struggles so much with distance and containment is not doing great.
Last week you text me out the blue on Friday and it really soothed this place and the part that fears being left or forgotten about. Because you reached out, I knew that you were thinking of me and that felt so soothing. I think that contact allowed me to give myself permission to reach back to you from this place of “I miss you” rather than a slightly avoidant ‘lighter’ place.
Lately most of my communications to you have been day-to-day fluff. I think the thing you should probably know, and probably do know, is that whatever the communication is from me it is always about connection seeking. Sometimes it may be raw and vulnerable (like this), and other times completely random and non-descript insta links and humour…but fundamentally the messaging underneath is the same, and that is that I am checking that you are still there, that we are ok…and that I miss you.
And right now, that is it.
I miss you. A lot.
I am struggling to know what is the ‘right amount’ of contact with you now. Because I really don’t want to overdo it…and yet, I know that I am…and I know that the reason for this is because my system is having a meltdown and just reaching for you over and over in different ways … because to some parts it feels like you are gone, and to others there’s a fear of being left, and then…there’s messy me…who is writing this who just desperately wants things to work out.
I feel embarrassed that I find myself here. Like I know what’s happening. I know why it’s happening. I understand it sooooo well – and yet I can’t switch out of it – or turn it off.
I absolutely don’t want to be “too dependent” or worse, “like a tick”. I don’t want to be alone with all these escalating feelings that make me behave in a way that I know is frustrating (to both of us). Like I get it. I just don’t know what the answer is right now. My system is terrified of distance at the moment and so even if you aren’t distancing yourself from me – it’s how it feels – to part of me at least.
I sent you an email yesterday which was a little more feelings and less day-to-day crap and you didn’t reply to me. Usually, you would. And of course, now, I don’t know what to think because my crazy is dialled right up on high. I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. I know I’m freaking out because things are necessarily different and I absolutely don’t think that’s a problem. None of this is about getting things to change – I’m hoping soon my life will get better and we can go back to things as they were. It’s just right now, I need you to know that as much as it may seem like I have my shit together and that everything is fine enough (considering the shitshow I am living in) – it’s not.
Ugh.
Fuck it all.
Man, I wish it was Tuesday…and that you secretly read my blog! lol.
Love From your most demanding, angsty, needy, client. xxx
I’ve been in total survival mode this last month and been barely functional. The levels of stress, or should I say ‘distress’, have been off the chart and I feel like I have been pushed way beyond my limits of coping. January into early February is never easy. It is the anniversary of that bloody awful time ending with Em over the “tick” reference which hurts so much…but it’s also the anniversary of meeting Anita – which now also hurts ridiculous amounts because somehow or other we don’t exist anymore. We never got a proper goodbye and I am left holding such a lot around that end – or lack of one. So, essentially this time of year now just seems to bring into sharp focus feelings of loss…but also abandonment and rejection and shame and … the list goes on. It’s heavy and I feel so deflated and worthless.
So, really, there’s enough going on in my internal world without any complications in my external world. But of course … my life doesn’t really do ‘giving me a break’ and sadly, one of my superpowers (although it certainly doesn’t feel like it) is knowing when the shit is about to hit the fan. I guess years of trauma make you so hypervigilant that you recognise patterns and energy feeling ‘off’ and are alert to stuff no one else would even notice. People tell me I have a sixth sense and honestly, as much as I try not to listen to my ‘inner doom catastrophiser’ when it starts telling me things are bad, it’s never wrong…ever…especially in regard to work and finances.
I said a while back that I felt like things were unstable with my wife’s job and that I felt like all I could do was wait for the shit to hit the fan and then deal with it when it did. Well, the shit did hit the fan. Big time. Four weeks ago she came home in the middle of the day and that was that. Job done. It’s shocking. The industry she is in is so cut-throat but also really fucking toxic- at least in the private sector. And so you can imagine how that landed. The car crash stuff had knocked me for six, the financial hit on the insurance payout has meant we haven’t been able to replace the car, and now the main breadwinner is out of work.
I have been completely beside myself with panic and then when it all gets too much I just dissociate. I have such a brilliant autopilot that’s been so well-honed over the years that somehow or other I have got through the last month and I have really little idea about what has happened.
The gnawing ache in my stomach has been there – I know that. My inner mini bus of child parts is totally out of control and screaming. My anxiety is through the roof. My fear about being ‘too much’ and then being rejected by Elle is huge – but that’s not surprising given the anniversaries on top of all the instability of my everyday life…
I didn’t know what to do with myself the day my wife lost her job. My immediate reaction in my body was insane- I started physically trembling and my teeth started chattering like I was shivering. Total panic and overwhelm. I sent Elle a message telling her what had happened and that whilst I needed to see her (we had scheduled in a Friday session that week in person) and would come on Friday, that I would have to figure things out going forward because… well…money…or lack thereof.
She replied with a really kind message and said we’d figure out a plan on together and she’d bring snacks… because that’s what I usually do. In the summer it was so hot that I started bringing in ice in a flask and something cold for us to drink – and that has been really lovely as it’s certainly not been coffee weather. And then sometimes I would bring in biscuits or a pastry or something.
But lately, because food and intake have been a bit of a thing for the last few months ☹ I have recently taken to bringing lunch for us both to my sessions and we pick our way through it with the drink. Our sessions are 90+ minutes in the middle of the day and so it’s good to eat otherwise one or other of us tends to start getting the stomach growls about half way through and it’s really funny!
Elle doesn’t explicitly know the extent of the eating issue that has reared its head is the reason why I have been bringing actual lunch rather than just a drink or biscuits for the last month or so – but I did mention a while back that my body had been missing cues for eating and drinking…which is so often how this stuff starts off. It’s unconscious…until it isn’t. I have been here before…and I hate that this is so familiar. And I also sent her a link to something on Instagram about a slide back into eating disordered behaviours…so I’m trying really hard not to hide what’s happening – or tell her as much as I feel able – because that critical voice thrives in the dark and silence of shame.
So, being with Elle, in the safety of the room feels like a place where I can really consciously look after myself…or hold myself to account maybe. I don’t want to anorexia to take hold again. I so thought it was long gone…or…very very dormant…and it was…until life got too much…
Anyway, I got myself super worked up waiting to go see Elle…because the very thing I most feared and wrote about a few months back was about to play out:
At the end of the day my relationship with Elle is a paid for relationship. Without money we do not/cannot exist. And that is reality to swallow. Because whilst we, as clients, have money to pay our therapists we can keep up the masquerade that the relationship is ‘real enough’ to do the healing work we need and that we are safe and not going to be left (ahem!!).
Facing this reality at a time when more-than-ever I needed the therapy killed me. Like I seem to be losing so much at the moment – financial security is so important without it there is no physical security because what about the basics like paying the bills and keeping a roof over my head…if we’re not even able to manage the bottom couple of rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs what hope is there?
I (and all my little parts) felt so sad going to see Elle that Friday morning because how would be say goodbye…even it was only temporary? Even though adult me completely gets the situation the young parts were already bracing for abandonment and rejection – because to them Elle is their attachment figure and whilst a pause in the therapy isn’t her abandoning me…that’s how it would feel. They don’t understand it’s a therapeutic relationship.
As it was, I ran into Elle in the street about ten minutes before the session – and you know how you read the things about ‘what happens if you see your therapist in the street’ and there’s the general idea that they’ll ignore you unless you acknowledge them. Yeah, no. I saw Elle, and she saw me, and she smiled and opened her arms up and gave me a big hug, kissed me on the cheek, and told me she’d see me in a minute, that she’d get the heat on, and to go and get my coffee.
So that’s what I did.
I’ve never run into Elle in ‘the wild’ before and I’ve often wondered how I would feel or respond if I saw her in ‘real life’ – and actually it was nice. I think I would have felt really upset if she’d pretended not to see me, or been stiff or awkward with me. Instead, it was just like how we are inside the room…which is actually what I needed. I need to feel like whatever it is that we have is real and not just some weird construct that happens in that space and then ceases to exist beyond that.
When I arrived, Elle had breakfast pastries for us both and she pulled me into a big hug and I leaned into her body and just rested in the warmth and safety in that moment. Part of me felt completely devastated that the person I have allowed to get so close to me and have worked so hard at trusting with ‘all the things’ was going to disappear, though. It felt like grief. Well…it was grief.
However, Elle told me almost immediately that she wanted me to keep coming to my session because I need them – now more than ever – and that I didn’t have to pay her. I was in total shock and told her that I couldn’t do that…because … shame…
I hadn’t realised how big a deal money shame is until recently, but the idea of not being able to pay for something that has a financial cost attached to it is ouch for me. I guess I have put a lot of sense of my own worth and value on my income and the moment that was gone it felt like my value was gone.
I’ve realised that my love language wish list items in terms of what I want to receive (with Elle) are ‘quality time’, ‘words of affirmation’, and ‘physical touch’ which are different to my needs in my marriage which primarily is ‘acts of service’. However, I realise that the way I show Elle I love her is through gift giving because I can’t really do any of the others in therapy. I mean we touch (thank god for that!) but I know that the hugs are really more for me and I am not there to give her words of affirmation etc…because…it’s my session. So apart from telling her here and there how I feel about her, and how grateful I am to her and for her, the way I express my love and respect and value for her is through turning up, paying on time and bringing little gifts – i.e snacks, or things I find here and there that I know she’d like…or at Christmas, a stocking full of meaningful things…which I think was something else entirely when I think about it!
I am sure it’s a C-PTSD thing, but when you’ve been deprived of love and care and all the necessary things to thrive, I think the moment we get even a sense of something good we want to cling onto it…for fear it will slip through our fingers like sand or water. On a level, I get that Elle likes me, loves me even, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t truly believe that I am ‘enough’ just as I am, and that in some way I don’t need to earn her love and care.
As a kid I made myself useful, I was a mini-therapist anticipating the needs of my family and listening to things that were way above my age and pay grade. But I was also quiet, well-behaved, excelled at school…like I moulded myself into exactly what I thought was required of me. It was like a text book ‘do this, this, this, and this and you’ll be ok/loved’ … only bending and shapeshifting to fit what I thought other people wanted never really worked. It was just exhausting and the long-term impact of that has been that it’s taken me a really long time to realise that I can just be myself…and that’s ok and enough. (Well most of the time I can believe that…)
So anyway, losing my ability to pay for our time together felt to me like I would have lost all my value in Elle’s eyes. She is running a business after all. And if I can’t even afford a reduced fee then I would have to go…because … well that’s the deal isn’t it?
Only apparently it isn’t.
I almost couldn’t take in Elle’s kindness or believe it in that moment – and so I didn’t talk about it – and Elle didn’t push it. She knows that I sometimes struggle to find a place to put her kindness and love. It doesn’t bounce off me, exactly, but it doesn’t sink in straight away either. And I can feel overwhelmed by expressions of love and kindness…and seem to shut down or be standoffish or maybe plain ungrateful…but it’s not that…and Elle understands all of that, thank goodness.
I was determined that I was going to make the most of the session with her and told Elle some stuff that I hadn’t shared with her before about my mum. It felt really connecting because it was painful stuff but I hadn’t realised before then that she didn’t know any of it…oh the joys of having had two other long-term therapists and having to recount the story more than once! That’s when she told me, “If there was a Nobel prize for cuntery, they’d give it to your mother!” This felt really validating as so often I convince myself that I am just being oversensitive and maybe things weren’t that bad. Elle assures me that they totally were that bad.
So, we spoke about all sorts that session, and I told her about my financial stresses too – which felt embarrassing but honest as I have never spoken about money before – or the endless stress and juggling act that my life seems to be with bills and servicing debt and life stuff.
Elle brought the session explicitly back round to us and the therapy about fifteen minutes before the end of the session. She told me that she wanted to see me and that she would continue to see me free of charge until things worked out and that when they did, I could go onto her concessionary rate. Which was so kind of her. Like being in the absolute depths in so many ways right now but knowing Elle is still in my corner is literally all that is keeping me afloat.
My change in circumstances has meant a reduction in contact time. We now do one-hour sessions which are really one hour fifteen, instead of ninety minutes which was always more like one hour forty-five, and we’re not doing the thirty-minute call on Fridays – but the fact that I am getting to see Elle at all is incredible to me. Like I honestly don’t know what to do with that. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude…
And I am finding it hard.
What?
Yeah. I am finding it hard, too.
I am finding it hard not to second guess the situation now because of my hang-ups around money and my worth. Part of me feels like I can’t bring some of what I am experiencing to her right now because it’s too much ‘hard work’ and if Elle is seeing me for free then somehow, I need to be as ‘easy’ as possible. I don’t want to burn her out, or be ‘too much’ or for her to start resenting me.
It’s all my textbook stuff coming up.
I’m trying to navigate what is an acceptable level of contact outside the sessions. When we were essentially seeing each other two hours, or more, a week, it felt like I could email her and tell her stuff and that was ok. But now… how can I possibly take up any more of her time when she is already giving me so much? So it’s tricky.
And of course, there’s another bit that is struggling with the change to our sessions. The young parts of me that need a high level of containment don’t have that now. And, please, do not for one minute see that as me moaning or being entitled or any of that. Adult me is fucking blown away with what Elle is doing for me…but this is the child parts and they don’t understand why they can’t speak to Elle on a Friday or see her in person on a Friday for a longer session a couple of times a month.
Any change in routine is hard and this is hard.
I feel like my needy parts are beginning to freak out a bit… a lot. I am having dreams about being abandoned and rejected and all that fun stuff. My system keeps wondering if Elle and I are ok still. Part of me wants to reach out and ask and seek reassurance from her but another part feels foolish and again, doesn’t want to create some kind of resentment and …you know…the dreaded ‘r’ word. I do not need a rupture right now. So the little girl that keeps quiet and behaves is doing her thing.
So, yeah, it’s a lot right now.
But I am so lucky to have Elle still…and maybe after I come out the other side of this financial catastrophe (because things have to get better soon, right?!) I’ll be able to tell her all about it. For now, my friend the Critic is doing her level best to keep me safe, and I guess I have to thank her for that. She understands danger and she steps up in the only way she knows: to take control when things are out of control.
I am so glad I have therapy tomorrow…these weeks are loooooong…and wasn’t January like eleventy-billion days long anyway?!
There’s a fucking cruel irony here, that today I am writing about lies and betrayal in therapy literally straight after posting up my last blog about not being able to fully appreciate safety in therapy even though I am safe, and the one before that writing about harm in therapy caused by other therapists but being so grateful to my therapist for being safe and consistent and all the good things…but I am beginning to think the universe hates me so why am I even surprised at this point?
What on earth am I talking about?
Have I lost mind?
Well, yes. Yes. I have…
Not again? Ha! Yep. Again.
I am so dysregulated at the moment that I barely know what to do or say but I need to get this out somewhere before I explode. I’ve been so … unwell…since Tuesday after my last session with Elle that I’ve been barely functional. I feel like I have had my legs taken out from beneath me. My stomach hurts. I feel jittery. I’ve had a consistent migraine and tension headache for four days now – and it’s only started to ease today. My back has seized up. Sleep is appalling. Nightmares are rife. I wake up in the middle of the night and just sob for hours.
Like it’s a mess.
What the hell has happened?
Has someone died or something?
Nope. But I am grieving.
I don’t think it’s really very easy to explain just how destabilising it is to have someone you love and trust betray your trust by lying to you…and how much grief that stirs up – especially if you have the sort of relational wounds that I do.
Of course, in this case the ‘someone that I love and trust’ is Elle.
I am devastated.
But I am also locked in an internal battle with myself. I don’t know if I am completely overreacting here or whether what I feel is justified?
Perhaps what’s happened isn’t all that big a deal… or maybe I am just incapable, these days, of noticing when I am standing right slap bang in the middle of a red flag factory until I am fully wrapped in them from head to toe. Do I just not see the colour red anymore? Or is it a washed out pink now, and I am trying to romanticise the flags as pretty blush-coloured bunting?
I feel like this is really cryptic. It’s not meant to be. But my brain is all over the place. My system is in chaos and disarray and I just feel really fucking sad that I hardly know what to say here.
Part of me wanted to write yet another email to Elle today rather than blog. But she’s away and my telling her what’s going on since the last message we exchanged isn’t going to help matters any. I don’t want to disturb her time away. The last break we had was fine (still not written about that) but May was a disaster (finding myself on the online therapist forum)…and frankly, I don’t want to go there EVER again.
Right now, I am not sure if I can even make it to session on Tuesday, though. My system is off its tits and because it’s free to go spiral off in any direction it wants to for the next few days I am struggling to hold tight to the sense that Elle is safe at all, or cares.
I guess I should just cut to the chase, here, but it might take a bit as I can only focus in short bursts and want to escape this emotional agony and so keep getting dragged into ASMR rug cleaning videos, or anything else that will distract from the fact that my heart is broken…over what is essentially a white lie.
The thing is, does it even matter what colour a lie is in therapy? Therapy is (supposed to be) built on trust and honesty – they are the cornerstones of the process – alongside unconditional positive regard…and yet here we are.
I can’t actually believe it.
Right, RB, stop fucking about, just spell it out. Deep breaths…here we go. Brace positions.
A few months ago, Elle set up an ongoing Zoom link for our Friday check in sessions rather than having to send me a new link each week – makes sense. When she did that it meant that all our sessions went into an online calendar that was shared with me. I can see months and months ahead that our time is blocked out. No problems there.
A couple of months ago I got a notification that my session on Friday 10th October was cancelled and it had a line through it on my calendar. Fine. I figured Elle had something on that day and it was no big deal. We’d always said Fridays might change here and there so it was no sweat.
When I next saw Elle in person, she didn’t mention the cancellation and I assumed that at some point down the line she would tell me about it as it was still a way off. But I was certain she’d mention it, either just to confirm the skipped week, or perhaps we would reschedule the slot to some other time in the week.
The weeks have been rolling by and nothing has been said by Elle at all. Part of me wondered this last week if maybe the thing had changed again and perhaps the call was happening as there had been no discussion about it – although nothing had changed on the calendar to suggest that. And the Friday round Christmas got crossed out so I knew that Elle was actively doing things her end.
A week ago, on Friday, I was in session face-to-face with Elle. It was during that appalling week where I had lost the plot and basically felt borderline suicidal in my Tuesday session and had had a Thursday check in and then a Friday session too. It was a bad week! She said she was going away that weekend to see a friend and then mentioned seeing another friend this weekend…but no reference was made to the Friday being off or her being away in the week and so it confused me a bit as in that moment Elle must have been thinking about seeing this friend and knew when it was she’d be going. It was also a Friday morning that I was sitting with her in the room so it’s not like she could forget that we meet on Fridays.
She had to be avoiding talking to me about it – but maybe it was because I had had such a rotten week and the idea of telling me about it felt like it might be destabilising? I dunno. Either way, she kept quiet. Still, I just imagined she’d tell me on Tuesday that Friday was off – even if that felt a bit last minute and a bit crap given how hard things have been as it really didn’t give us much of an opportunity to put anything in place… not that I would have needed much. It’s only a check in and really a text message would have done instead.
Anyway, I went to my session on Tuesday and it was ok but something felt a little off. Perhaps I was just waiting to see if Elle was going to tell me about Friday. She didn’t. Nothing was said at all. At that point I wondered what the hell was going on and why she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she knew that our calendars were synced and I already knew?…but then surely, you’d always mention a break in person? Or at least via email or text?
Whenever I leave my session on a Tuesday Elle ALWAYS says, “See you on Friday”… like ALWAYS. Yet as I left on Tuesday she didn’t. So, I knew that Friday was off but she hadn’t told me herself.
Ugh.
Crap.
But I guess I already knew and had been bracing for it.
But why was she avoiding saying anything? I know breaks can be tricky, but our last one was fine and missing a check in isn’t the end of the world…
What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to receive a breezy email later that afternoon from Elle:
Hello lovely girl 💕🥰
I’ve just been invited away for a long weekend this week with a friend I hardly ever see, which means I won’t be able to make our usual call at 9 on Friday.
Sorry to not give you more notice, or write you something that feels holding, and I hope that feels ok and not too jarring? Rest assured I will return on Monday morning, if not refreshed maybe a little perkier and less coldish.
Tightest of squishes,
(and absolutely no Halloween gooeyness)
🎃👻🫂💕🍂
Elle xxxxx
To say my stomach fell through the floor is not an understatement. I was just about to go online and teach and as I read that I felt like I was going to be sick.
Because what was this?
She’d had all the time in the world to tell me about the cancelled check in, plenty of notice. She could have told me right that afternoon when I was sitting in the room with her as it was clearly on her mind given she consciously omitted her usual, “See you on Friday”. And there had been plenty of time to write something holding (not that that was at all necessary). We could have rearranged the call months back – like there were so many ways of navigating this. And if the message had have been the truth, yes it would have been a little jarring but nothing like the whiplash I was experiencing in that moment seeing that my therapist of two years who knows me so intimately, knows how important trust and honesty is to me, knows how badly harmed I have been by therapists and their lies, and how very difficult I have been finding things lately…had chosen to lie to me like this.
And not only that, but this was all coming from a therapist who says how important honesty is, and integrity, and trust…like wtaf was going on?
Please make it make sense.
And in the big scheme of things, I really get that it’s not a huge lie but my system can’t seem to differentiate between a whopper and a barely noticeable one because to the little parts of my system and the traumatised parts – a lie is a lie. And if she’ll lie about this what else has she said that isn’t true?
So, as I was just about to start work I fired off a quick reply:
I guess you don’t know that your Zoom calendar updates my end too for our stuff, and I’ve known that this Friday has been off the cards for weeks now. Please don’t lie to me. I can handle changes – because we always said Fridays would be moveable and not guaranteed. I’m less good at whatever this is. And I get you probably didn’t want to tell me because there never seems a good time when things are crap – but I’d rather know than you avoid telling me because you think I’ll react badly. I wouldn’t have.
That’s all I could say in the moment – but it was at least better than running away and completely retreating from it – which is what I wanted to do.
And then I had to try and teach three lessons on the bounce as my internal scaffolding collapsed and I wanted to run away and curl up in a ball and cry.
I can’t explain how difficult it is to be present online 1:1 with a student when my emotional world is in meltdown. There is literally nowhere to hide.
Not long after I sent that message email flashed up another notification. Elle again:
I’m so sorry honey, you’re right that she didn’t just ask. I’m so sorry I lied and said that. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten to tell you and for you to feel unimportant and like you don’t matter, But the truth is I had forgotten, and then tried to cover it up.
Will you forgive me for being cowardly? I feel as if I really fucked up.
Not long after this my phone rang and it was Elle but as I was teaching and I couldn’t answer and even if I could have I wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate call from her…or one of those accidental dials because she hadn’t text me, “Can I call you?” not that she’s ever called me unplanned before – and she didn’t leave a voicemail or follow it up with a text.
As it was, I was teaching until 8pm with no gaps and by the time I finished and would have been able to return the call I knew that she was off doing ‘the thing’ she does with my friend (groan) and wouldn’t have been available anyway. Not that I would ever call her ad-hoc even if I wanted to because ‘boundaries’ and ‘good client behaviour’ and all that stuff.
You can probably imagine, that by the time I got done with work I was in a right state so I just took myself off to bed. Sometimes there isn’t anything to be gained by messaging in an upset state and I also knew that I wouldn’t get a reply anyway as Elle wasn’t ‘there’ and that would have triggered me even more.
On Wednesday morning Elle emailed me again:
I’m so sorry I let you down lovely girl, and that I didn’t honour our trust.
Please know though that me lying was never about protecting myself from you or your reaction, it was (and is always) about me feeling like making mistakes or being less than perfectly caring means that I’m not enough.
I’m always fighting that programming, and when my resistance is low, like it is right now, I fuck up. I lie to cover the fact that I’ve been careless or clumsy, because in my world that was the worst thing I could ever do.
I know that for you a lie could mean that everything I have said is now being called into question, and that your trust in me has potentially been broken irrevocably. But please know that I will not and will never avoid talking about these things with you, taking responsibility and doing my best to mend your trust. Because this is just as important for me as it is for you.
I really hope you want to see me on Tuesday.
Elle xxxx
I didn’t really know what to say in that moment. I was so upset still. It’s hard to explain what a sucker punch to the gut being lied to by the person I have trusted the most with my most vulnerable self felt like, and I was without words. I could register that that was an apology but somehow it didn’t land. I guess there were so many parts activated that it would take more than an email to mend.
I had hardly slept on Tuesday night and so once I got the kids off to school I took myself off to bed again, lay under my weighted blanket and cried myself to sleep.
That probably sounds really dramatic but there’s been a lot of tears this week and a lot of crying in bed. But I think those of you that have deep relational wounds and are deeply attached to your therapists will understand what it might feel like for this to happen. It just felt so much like the special thing that I thought we had built, that means so much to me, in reality means nothing much at all to her…because I would never choose to lie if it meant risking our relationship – and from her email she as clearly aware what this might mean for my trust in her and our relationship.
And I know it was only a small lie…and she’s clearly tried to reach out to put it right…but is that enough? I dunno. Not for some parts of me. I was so far gone by that point all that really would have reached through this mess would have been to properly talk and ideally see her in person…and that wasn’t on the cards. If there is a rupture I will never ask for contact like that even if it is what parts of me are screaming out for. If Elle doesn’t offer if then I am not going to ask especially if I am already feeling the very things she didn’t want me to feel, ‘unimportant’ and ‘like I don’t matter’.
When I fell asleep I ended up having a terrible dream about being in a train where the sliding doors wouldn’t close. The train started moving and it was windy and unsafe. I knew I needed to raise alarm but I couldn’t get the control panel to work to stop the train. No matter what button I pressed the system wouldn’t let me raise the alarm. I tried to manually shut the sliding doors even though it was really unsafe to do so and once I did it I held it together with a tiny sticker with a handwritten note on – ‘broken- unsafe- do not use’.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what that’s about. I didn’t feel able to reply properly to Elle’s emails or tell her how I was feeling but I sent her the dream and the Chat GPT analysis…because could it be any better of a metaphor?
Elle replied with something that felt sort of holding but also sort of scary…she told me that she wishes I could see into her heart and see what’s really there – which sounds fine – but then said that “I want to never let you down and to always be a safe person who you feel loved and seen by, but honestly I don’t know if that is possible” and all my alarms started going all at once.
Like total panic.
I had to teach again but I could hardly concentrate.
I felt sick.
All I wanted to do was reach out to Elle, to speak to her, to try and stop this going where my brain was going…and then I did the thing…and I didn’t realise that was what was happening at the time but I fell into the “Shit Shit SHIT she might leave, it sounds like she’s backing away, I need to not be too much and make this all ok before she gives up on me.”
How familiar are we with this pattern? Someone hurts us but if we so much as get a hint of their being wobbly we do all we can to make them feel better even if it means shelving our own hurt and pain. We must preserve the relationship at all costs even if that means denying our own need.
Ugh.
I thought I was being super adult at the time and untriggered (!) and actually all I was doing was fawning. My scared little girl part was doing everything she could to prevent herself from getting left and then went quietly away to her bedroom to cry on her own… again…
Like I don’t not believe what I said in that message, I do, but I didn’t give anything like enough space to the reality of what I was feeling, how much I was struggling, or what I NEEDED in that moment.
This is what I sent:
I think you set entirely too high expectations of yourself. As humans we are always going to make mistakes and let people down and forget things. Because that’s what happens… and when we’re tired and hormones are doing weird things on top it’s even harder. The thing is, all of this could have been so easily avoided by just saying, “RB I thought I’d told you this, and I’ve realised that I haven’t, but I’m not going to be here on Friday” and really what’s the worst that would have happened? Like I might have felt a bit sad about it but we would have talked it though and that would have been that. The world wouldn’t have ended. Instead, you thought it better to lie to me than tell me the simple truth. And I get why you did it. And I get that in some ways it’s not a big deal. But this whole thing is about trust and I have to believe that you don’t lie to me about stuff to stand a chance of believing that you are actually someone safe. Because how am I meant to believe anything you say if you’ll lie about something so minor? And I understand the thing about feeling not enough and having a reaction to feeling like you’ve not been perfect and so it probably feels big in the moment because of the old conditioning around that… but I’ve told you before and I’m saying it again now- I don’t need you to be perfect and I don’t expect it either – I just need you to be real and honest with me. However that looks. Because it’s hurt me that you haven’t trusted me with the truth. And of course it’s triggered all my stuff which I know is exactly the thing you were trying to avoid in the first place… so it’s a bit shit. In your message you said you hoped I would want to see you on Tuesday. And whilst part of me wants to run a million miles in the other direction because I’m hurt, of course I want to see you. Because this is the irritating thing about all this – I’d like to think by now it’s not so fragile that stuff can’t be worked through. But it feels sometimes when this stuff gets triggered – your ‘not enough’ stuff – that you retreat and everything feels different. Like you’re there but it’s not quite you. And I guess maybe there’s a little bit of you that’s hiding too. But I don’t say it lightly when I tell you that I love you and it’s not conditional. But I will have to force feed you soggy orange fondant if you lie to me again xxx 😘
Elle didn’t reply to that on Wednesday so you can only imagine how that felt. Like here I was struggling to even function, crying, and feeling sick and yet trying to make it better her end, trying to fudge a repair and she didn’t even acknowledge it. I didn’t send it late either, 4pm, but apparently it was fine to leave it or leave me in it.
I got that horrible feeling that the thing they (therapists) all do was happening – you know? Where there’s a rupture and the therapist pulls back? They start only replying in office hours, and then in a way that isn’t consistent with their usual tone and manner? The next thing you know you’re in for a boundary talk and everything that had been so much a part of the therapy gets taken away…and not because of anything you even did. The moment they feel the container is leaking or the frame is wobbly they double down. I really hoped that this wasn’t going to happen but I was ready. Been there, done that, seen it all before, got several t-shirts.
The next day Elle replied and she explained some stuff that we’ve spoken about before and I think it was an attempt to justify what had happened. And it made sense. Like we’ve all told lies and we often do it because it’s hard to be seen as we are – especially if we feel like we’ve cocked up. Like we try and cover our tracks and hope that no one notices. I won’t put that here because it feels especially personal to Elle and doesn’t add anything but I think I felt just a bit unseen in the whole thing – like I needed something that acknowledged my pain, not why it happened.
I replied:
Well, I think maybe it’s better to tell the truth and deal with the consequences which are probably always going to be way less bad than you imagine (these days at least – or at least where you and me are concerned), than lie and have the fall out of that. I think most people can cope with people being fallible and making mistakes but struggle far more with being deceived even if it’s meant well. Or that’s how it is for me. I’ve been lied to such a lot in these seemingly benign ways and then what’s actually underneath has been so bad and so painful that it makes me really scared. I don’t want to feel like I’m now having to watch really carefully for patterns repeating but it’s my default. Like this all looks horribly familiar to Anita’s burnout trajectory… even if it’s not. It never starts with a huge thing, it’s always small stuff. So, I’m on high alert for the next thing – which is generally a subtle form of retreat.
This week all just feels like a double whammy of ouch. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to what you see as shrinking in for a second because I feel it acutely as a pulling back. It’s like you disappear, or maybe you’re there but only in 2D and in black and white. And it feels really hard because when this stuff happens all I want to do is disappear and I know that doesn’t really help me so instead I try really hard not to, but also try really hard to not come at things from a really triggered place and ground a bit first…and when I do that and can’t find anything but the hollowed out version of you or feel you’re gone altogether it’s really bad because I feel like I am putting my really vulnerable self out there only to be met with distance. That’s how it feels anyway. I guess it’s probably because in that moment so much of my not enough and too much stuff is triggered that I’m fearing the very worst.
It feels a bit like trying to communicate down one of those telephones with two cups and bit of string and I can kind of see you off in the distance but not quite hear what’s coming down the line and you’re too far away to see your face. I just want to hold your hand and know that this didn’t all happen because of something I’ve done wrong or because you’ve had enough and just need a break from caring for me.
😞
Elle replied and assured me that she wasn’t burning out and that what I feared was happening isn’t and that she’d be there on Tuesday.
But then if she isn’t burning out why did she choose to lie to me?
Knowing Elle was away now with her friend I didn’t bother to reply…and the great news about this not being fully resolved is that my system has had plenty of time to catastrophise about everything that has happened because Elle isn’t here, we haven’t spoken, and I am left hanging with this turning it over in my mind in a million different ways and looking at it through all the lenses of all my little parts like I am staring into a kaleidoscope of fear and heartbreak and turning the dial.
Tbh this all feels a bit like I’ve been in a hit and run and she’s gone, “I can see you might have a few broken bones there and it looks like you’re bleeding out from your chest, but just sit tight for a few days and we can get this patched up next Tuesday.”
And that isn’t great.
I guess from my emails it looks like I am largely fine, in my adult and can see this as a rupture that is perfectly navigable and survivable.
Only that’s not the whole story.
What’s written between the lines?
Oh my god, there’s a story.
The thing I keep circling back round to is that this relationship matters way more to me than it does to her. And I get it. That’s how therapy works. Like this is how it has always been. It’s us (clients) that get really attached and bring all our early wounds into the therapy and the therapist who becomes the stand-in parent. I am just one of Elle’s clients and I am her work. I know that. But to me she is such a lot. Like she is so important…and I usually feel ok about that. I usually feel like my feelings are ok, welcomed, not too much, and that they are reciprocated to a degree – but this week has just triggered the biggest amount of shame in me.
Like how do I find myself here again?
Why do I never learn?
Why have I opened my heart up to someone who clearly doesn’t appreciate what that actually means? I’ve always felt that Elle holds my heart and our relationship so carefully (and I really need to write about our 2 year anniversary and the break we had) but it felt like this week she had a choice to make: lean into and trust in the connection even if she did feel like it might cause a bit of upset or choose to disconnect altogether from me and the relationship in favour of a quick get out of jail free moment. And she chose the disconnect.
Clearly, I really struggle with lying (not just being lied to but even telling lies). It does things in my body. I feel physically uncomfortable. My stomach goes tight. My heart races. My mouth goes a bit dry. I feel a bit prickly behind my eyes. And I just don’t feel ok. Don’t get me wrong though. I am a good liar. Or I used to be, once upon a time. I used to lie like my survival depended on it. Especially when I was consumed by anorexia and was self-harming… I used to be able to look people dead in the eye and lie, because I told it like a truth.
I can’t do that now. Or I could. But I absolutely refuse to.
I have never once told a lie to Elle. I don’t deliberately withhold things from her. One of the things I have vowed to myself in my therapy is that even if the truth feels uncomfortable, it’s worth saying. It might feel scary or downright toe-curlingly shame inducing but I feel like if I tell the truth, and people stay then they are my people and there’s really nothing all that bad that I could ever say anyway. I truly believe that honesty and vulnerability are the only paths to true connection (ha, hello Brene Brown!)…and that’s what I want. I don’t want a half-formed ghost version of a connection. I want the real, warts and all one.
If I feel I have to lie or bend myself to preserve a relationship then I don’t really want it anyway because I’ve done that my whole life growing up. I did it so much with Em – I never lied but I held back a lot…until I didn’t… and the more I let Em see me, the more I told her my reality the less she could cope with me and my feelings. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and misery if I’d not taken years to build up to telling her how I felt. In the end she saw me as a tick but I had always been a tick hadn’t I, she just didn’t know! Certainly those feelings I had for her came about nine months after I met her and yet it took eight years for it to blow up and break the therapy because I hid so well. I won’t do that now.
When I saw Anita I went into it without my armour but as she started to lose her capacity I started to put it back on a piece at a time. I armoured up and withheld stuff in order to be ‘easier’ for her. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t always tell her what was going on because I didn’t want to push her away. I basically reverted to type. I made myself smaller. I hid my struggles and my needs to try and give her space to get through what was going on for her. It didn’t work though, did it? It just delayed the agony ultimately.
With Elle it’s been slow and steady work. I feel like it has been such an exercise in trust and bravery, especially given all that’s come before. I have opened up to her in a way I didn’t think I would be able to. And so to have her so easily lie to me feels like a kick in the teeth. I have tried so hard to connect in an authentic way…and I believed that she was doing the same. But now I just feel like ‘work’ and someone whom she can easily discard and disconnect from. And it hurts.
My most unkind protector – the Inner Critic is having an absolute field day spouting their most favourite lines “You absolute loser, you can’t even pay someone to be in a relationship with you and care. Can’t you see what this is? It’s a game that she plays with you for a couple of hours a week to make you think you matter but the reality is, you’re just money to her. You pay the bills. If you mattered to her she’d show you through the most basic behaviour. She wouldn’t like to you. We don’t lie to people that really matter.”
And it’s really really hard to disagree with that voice.
Part of me wants to think maybe it’s the very opposite that is true. Maybe Elle lied because I matter to her. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me or make me feel any of this painful stuff. I don’t think the logic behind what she’s done is great but I can see why it could be the case.
Either way, this week has activated all my really painful stuff and I haven’t had anywhere at all to put it.
Part of me is really angry too – well isn’t Anger just Hurt’s bodyguard? Like, why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t this therapy just be what it said on the tin? What do I keep doing wrong to make it so that therapists treat me like this? Why can’t I just be safe and loved and matter enough to not have someone hurt me in this way?
It’s hard not to see Elle’s actions as coming from a place of just being completely bored of having to think about how to manage my attachment stuff. Like, her initial message said, she hadn’t had time to write something… and so in her mind any time she leaves I demand time and energy just to get a weekend away. So perhaps this is my fault. Maybe if I wasn’t so high need then she wouldn’t have felt the need to lie. She probably just told her other Friday appointments that she wasn’t available and that was that.
So, this all makes me feel rotten. I feel my usual wonderful combo of ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’. Too much need and too much work and not important enough for anyone to truly care or love me.
I don’t know what the answer is here.
It’s only Sunday. I feel broken…and it’s a long way til Tuesday. Of course, I have no sense of the Elle I know being out there at all now because this is what happens when there’s distance and a rupture. My brain is serving ‘danger’ and all the rest of it.
I soooooo want to believe that we will be ok. I want to believe that if I tell her how hurt I am that she will do her best to repair this and take the time to work through it with me – even if it takes a really long time… I need her not to be defensive or reactive…but I have no idea what state she is in and whether she has the energy or capacity to go with me where I need to go. Because let’s be real, this has hit on a very deep wound and it’s going to take some healing. I feel like this is something that will be dredged up over and over again. I will be constantly looking for reassurance and testing.
I hate this.
Part of me is reluctant to post this blog up because I’m worried that if Elle comes across it – now, or later – she’ll see it as a criticism of her, or somehow see it as sharing too much of what’s gone on between us with the outside world. I imagine she’d feel fucked off that I’ve copied some of the messages she’s sent to me here but I honestly don’t know what to do or where to turn for support or reassurance at the moment.
If Elle and I do make it through this I don’t want her to stop messaging me because she thinks our communications will only end up on the blog because that isn’t how it is. I’ve always been so careful here to not really talk any detail about what she says to me – I’ve protected her/us in a way that I never did Em or Anita because I’ve felt so protective of our relationship and what we’ve created together. I value her and the relationship such a lot…and right now I just don’t know what to do.
I don’t know how we’ll come through this because I feel like there’s a massive part of me that will struggle to trust her ever again. How can I be sure of anything now?
Perhaps a white lie is no big deal. Maybe I am just too sensitive. Maybe my trauma makes me too reactive. All I know is that I feel completely at sea and completely alone. I wish Elle understood how in a simple bending of the truth she’s taken a machete to my trust in her and set fire to the deep connection we were weaving together.
I’m sure Elle is having a wonderful time away, though…lucky her.
I think this may be the longest post I have ever written – shoot me now.x
Where do I even start with this? Seriously, why oh why is my life so endlessly fucking challenging? I often wonder if I must’ve been a colossal asshole in a previous life because the unending piles of shit that land over and over seem just really too much. Surely, life isn’t meant to be an ongoing struggle that involves jumping hurdle after hurdle without ever having much time to recover and breathe before the next? But that’s how it feels.
It’s little wonder I am always so strung out – even when things seem to be going relatively well, I feel as though I am waiting for the next barrage of shit to hit…and it always always comes without fail. It might sound dramatic but I really feel like I have had more than my fair share of crap in this lifetime. Like living with an abusive parent, the death of the safe parent, and cancer at 31 was enough thank you very much… ugh.
So, it’s been a little (long) while since my last post where I was having a meltdown about the group email that Elle sent out about her fee increase in April. I honestly wish I could go back to that time and only be dealing with that level of shit in my life – you know, alongside having a chronically sick kid and all the other bits that I navigate on the daily…but I was just about head above water then even though it’s felt like I have been drowning emotionally for the best part of six months.
As it turned out, I never got round to telling Elle about the meltdown I had about being ‘one of many’ and her group email, because as life would have it, my life got turned upside down AGAIN and that seemed really insignificant in the big scheme of things . Ironically, the thing that wasn’t a worry at all in that message, i.e the fee increase has now become a real and present stress alongside the not wanting to share Elle. What’s happened you might wonder? Well, let’s just say, it doesn’t seem pay to speak up when things are wrong – or to care in this world.
My wife recently took on a new role in a new organisation in order to be able to work closer to home now that one of our kids has been diagnosed with a chronic lifelong condition. She’d been in post for a week when she had to escalate some serious findings to the CEO and rather than listen to what she had to say they got irate and told her to leave…basically they didn’t want to know. This was shocking… like honestly, mind-blowing…you just wouldn’t quite believe that companies run like this…especially when people’s lives are in the mix but it is all too common unfortunately.
So, what does that even mean? Well, this is the sixth week she’s been out of work and no money coming in. She has several ongoing interviews at the moment (at her level most jobs have a minimum of three interviews and some kind of presentation to the directorate), but these things take a loooonnnggg time and meanwhile our main earner isn’t earning.
Can you imagine the stress? For someone that has a bit of a scarcity complex it has really triggered me.
Of course, my system is in absolute meltdown about it. I am hardly sleeping, my back seized up the first week, then I came down with a stinking cold/flu which has lasted the best part of a month now and I have had to work through it when had I not been self-employed I’d have been in bed sick.
It’s not surprising I got pummelled with this though and just haven’t been able to bounce back, as alongside all of this we spent most of the first week post ‘no job’ in hospital with our son who is immune suppressed due to his medication regime and had developed an infection.
It’s been exhausting.
I am exhausted.
Burnout is real.
And it is nigh on impossible to hang it all together when so much feels so out of control and dangerous. This post has actually been half-started and languishing in my laptop for ages now, and really I thought about deleting it as it’s not even really about ‘therapy’ – but I want to post so that my next ‘therapy’ post will make some kind of sense…when I get round to writing it… because no surprise, I have hit huge skids with Elle this week (not that she knows it yet) and it has felt like the biggest rupture to my system.
My inner world is in turmoil and I think it must have at least something to do with my external world going tits up…but you can figure that out with me next time. Maybe I am overreacting or maybe Elle has just been unconsciously insensitive and maybe I am justified in feeling really hurt. I don’t know.
Still, back to the shitshow that is my day-to-day!
As we all know, life doesn’t happen for free… gotta love capitalism! lol. I have juggled some bits around for now – taken on some extra debt to cover the immediate expenses, but there is a real worry that this can’t go on for too long before I’ll have to make some hard choices about my therapy with Elle. And whilst it would be me putting things on pause for financial reasons, my system won’t understand that at all especially given the recent ‘rupture’ stuff that’s just been triggered.
The universe has been delivering a total avalanche of shit since my wife became unemployed… not only were me and my son ill… but the car got a puncture and needed a new tyre, the dishwasher blew up, the boiler broke and flooded the bedroom – because – why??? Then my car engine light came on last week and was an £800 fix…umm….HELP!! There’ve been a few more of these unexpected financial sucker punches but I can’t remember what they are…dissociation is such fun! But it’s meant the safety net I put in place to tide us over whilst my wife gets a new position is spring huge tears left and right.
Not seeing Elle would feel like an abandonment to my young parts who already struggle such a lot because of what’s happened in previous therapies. How many times have I heard that “I’m with you for the entire journey. No matter what.” Or “It’s not about money to me” or “I will keep showing up for you.” And then something happens and oh look, it’s Me, Myself and I figuring things out alone – it certainly doesn’t help that we are rapidly approaching May and two years since Anita went on holiday and then came back and ended the therapy…or you know, didn’t actually end or say goodbye…
FFS.
As much as I’d love to pretend that Elle and I have a relationship that is important and matters no matter what – the reality is, my time with her is a paid for slot and … well… if things don’t shift for the better in the next few weeks then… Elle and I don’t exist. And that is super painful and is sending me into freefall. It’s hard to imagine the person that has been so present and available and just plain loving and kind mightn’t be there for me for much longer – and I do wonder if I have latched on to this ‘rupture’ this week to make it easier for me to detach from her if I have to.
I’d like to think I was better at navigating ruptures now – but I think my ability to be able to bring hard things to the room depends largely on how solid and safe I feel – not only with Elle but in life…and frankly – safe isn’t a feeling I am tapping into right now. Ugh.
I won’t keep you hanging for months on end with the next bit…I just haven’t been well enough to write until now.
I’ve been struggling a lot with therapy, lately… Actually, no, that’s not quite right -therapy is fine, good, really good (when I am there!)… but what isn’t so good is the *time between sessions* and the shitstorm that can (and does) blow up in the gaps between seeing Elle.
My system seems to be perpetually activated these days, and I find it thoroughly exhausting and stressful navigating the nightmares (usually with Elle in), the intense panic, and the heightened fear of being left or abandoned that escalates in intensity as the week goes on.
There’s always the huge separation anxiety that builds and builds during the week before triggering the protectors at the weekend which sends me through a whole other set of loops. I don’t know what’s worse, the small parts sad, lost, and crying or the angry protectors wanting to burn everything to the ground.
Like today, Monday, I feel like I just want to quit therapy altogether because this emotional cycle feels so painful and too hard. I feel thoroughly disconnected from Elle and the idea of even going tomorrow feels impossible because my mind has convinced me that I am set for rejection and that there is no solid base or relationship and so I am wasting my time.
The sensible thing would be to reach out and tell her that this is happening but what’s the point? (Is that the teen? Probably).
I will go because I know that I need to, but pushing through the wall of protectors to even get there means that there will there will be consequences. I will struggle to sleep tonight, mind you my sleep is appalling anyway so I guess that’s nothing new. When it feels bad like this, there is always a total and absolute physical terror in my body. Sometimes it’s just on the day of the session, but today it’s really live, too, and I feel horrible.
To get to my session I have about a ten minute walk across town from where I park my car, and the whole time my heart races, I feel physically sick, and my mouth is dry even though parts of me are desperate to see Elle…it’s honestly fucking horrific. When I am waiting for Elle to come and get me, I feel completely terrified and like I will burst into tears and often my body trembles. It’s so hard. My entire system is in chaos at that point – and yet you’d never know. Externally I appear completely fine – but that comes from years of hiding how I am really feeling in order to survive in the world.
Let’s be clear, this hellscape isn’t because of anything that Elle is or isn’t doing – like there’s no suggestion that she’s suddenly going to end, or leave, or suddenly be horrible and attacking and do something to hurt me (I need to make a big sign with this on!) – it is simply because my system has been triggered off its tits after what happened with Anita and Em. Because of what’s happened with them I can’t get a sense of feeling safe or ok in myself at all – let alone safe with Elle when I am not with her – and of course I am not with her for quite a few days at a time. I know it’s only a week between sessions, but my system just doesn’t cope at all – it’s too long.
Part of the problem is that I struggle a lot with ‘forgetting’ Elle between sessions even though we have a reasonable amount of contact during the week. When I finally see her after a week it can feel like I don’t really know who she is, or whether she’s safe, or… basically it’s the object constancy stuff isn’t it?! Not only that, even if I can hold onto Elle as someone who is safe there is the constant worry that she might change…I think probably we need to do some work with the scared parts so they understand she isn’t Anita or Em…teens particularly just see her as ‘therapist’ and therapists cannot be trusted.
Because of all this, it can take me quite a while to settle into the session because I feel like I am doing my fifty-point check to assess where we are at. Thankfully, generally speaking, when I am actually with Elle it feels fine – especially now that she sits on the sofa beside me rather than in the chair across the room. This, at least, removes the need for any additional mental gymnastics about whether or not she feels disgusted by me and wants to keep her distance which of course are all part of the internal narrative that gets super loud during the week.
I am really glad that we do a ninety-minute session because it can take a good half an hour to relax into the space when I have got myself so worked up (I have no idea how I used to cope with 50 minute sessions with Em- oh of course, I didn’t cope at all!!!) .
It obviously takes a while to trust that the person in the room with me is the same one that I saw last week (and for the previous fourteen months) and that nothing has changed – because therapists do change and drop unexpected bombs (mentioning no names!). I guess to the protector parts it’s important not to remove my armour prematurely in case I get an unexpected grenade launched at me – you know the type that rolls and lands just under my ribcage and stops just where my heart lies – Boom! It’s happened before and I really hope it doesn’t happen again.
If False Adult doesn’t take my session, then it’s all good. At least in the session it feels safe and connected. But no matter who turns up to the session, I feel like when I leave, I almost instantly fall into a panic, not because anything is especially wrong in that immediate moment, but more because I know what’s coming. I only see Elle once a week despite us having a really decent length session (and I really know that I am so lucky to have that), by the time it gets to Friday it’s really not great inside. The wheels on my mini-bus have pretty much fallen off and all the littles have unclipped their seat belts and someone has to take charge – and that’s the dream team of protectors. It’s awful.
Basically, by Friday, my ability to hang it together feels massively reduced and the days until I next see Elle seem to stretch out endlessly. I feel like I am always stretching that bit too far between our sessions and so never really feel properly settled/safe. It feels a bit like a fuck tonne of water is building up behind the emotional dam but the release valve is never activated early enough and so there’s always going to be a flood – despite the high-tech flood management system I have in place.
I am really conscious of not being ‘too needy’ or ‘too much’ or ‘too dependent’ and I really don’t want to run the risk of burning Elle out or, probably more apt for this metaphor, drowning her! So, what do you do when the container isn’t big enough to hold everything from week to week?…or rather, what do I do when I seem to be too much for the container I’ve got?
I have no fucking idea.
It feels like an impossible bind. I don’t want to stop the therapy because actually what all this is telling me is that I need more therapy at the moment, not less…but making what there is ‘enough’ is a challenge especially when I am already exploiting every self-care strategy I have available to me. I don’t just sit and mope about in the week (well, perhaps I did a bit this weekend!) and still this stuff is activated in the biggest way.
I guess part of it is that it feels like there is never quite enough time to get through all the things that I need to talk about or that need space and attention. For example, it might be that we do some really great work on big important stuff. Last week we spoke at length about Anita (which stirred a lot up on its own), but because of this, the young parts that need a degree of reassurance and a different kind of interaction weren’t attended to (even though I was leaning against Elle the entire time and she held my hand…ugh…make my Brian function better please!) and that has unleashed carnage inside this week!
Whereas the week before last, I was in a right fucking mess and so we read a lovely story and had a really calm, nurturing session. It was absolutely what I needed, but then there was all sorts of adult stuff that didn’t get space that really could have done with some time, too. Neglecting adult is far less problematic than neglecting the little parts – and it’s not even neglecting, it’s simply time – but it all needs space and time and there just isn’t enough…even with ninety minutes (talk faster and get to the point sooner, eh?!).
So this is why there is always too much building up behind the dam wall… then throw in the hideous attachment shit on top and frankly, I’m fucked.
This would be a really useful conversation to have with Elle, wouldn’t it? But the problem is, I can’t see a solution to my problem. Elle only works face-to-face two days a week and is always busy. So, what I think would help (i.e another session) and what is actually possible just doesn’t align at the moment and so I have to keep trying to make this work as it is.
The feelings of shame are huge right now. I am so sick of being like this. I hate that I seem to need so much more fucking input and care than everyone else. Like, part of me gets there’s been a lot of trauma and then all the more recent shit on top with therapy going wrong really hasn’t helped…but still. Like why can’t I just be relatively fucking normal and behave like a fucking adult and be bloody fine on a session a week. Why do I seem to spend my life in the fucking hole? Like this week I feel like I have got my legs dangling over the edge of another trapdoor and rather than edging away from it, the protectors want me to jump in the next dark pit.
Ugh…
I used to see Em and Anita on Mondays and Fridays and that spacing felt really good. Like there was enough time between the sessions to process whatever was going on, but there wasn’t too much time until the next session for things to get too much or go too wrong.
I feel a bit like a toddler that’s learning to walk. I can do quite a few steps on my own but by Friday I need a hand to hold for a minute to stop me falling on my arse before I can carry on again. But there is no hand on Friday and so I find that I fall down and it is pretty painful over the weekends.
Every now and then when things are hard, I have asked about seeing Elle for an extra session on the Wednesday but she is always booked up. To be honest, Wednesday probably wouldn’t really help with this problem long-term, as it’s the longer time between sessions that is the issue and this would still leave a big gap the other side.
Elle has offered to so a Zoom session on a Friday before – but I have a feeling (given my online therapy track record) that this might actually make things worse. When I am struggling with distance and connection seeing Elle through a screen rather than in person would likely only intensify the feeling of being far apart and left and lost and all the other shit. Perhaps I need to suggest it here and there, though, because I don’t think I can do many more weeks like this one and perhaps I am only basing my expectations of what online sessions were like with Em and Anita.
This weekend has been terrible. I’ve felt so tired and overwhelmed but I couldn’t seem to rest or sleep because it’s felt like all the little parts of me are crying. There is no soothing that. And I have really tried. I get that this week has probably felt harder because Elle and I properly ventured into the Anita territory in the session and of course that would send seismic waves through my system because there is such a lot of pain there that needs to be looked at. The saga is ongoing with A and it’s just so upsetting.
It feels really difficult. Like I know when I avoid the ‘big’ stuff I am much better equipped to manage the week between sessions. The thing is, I am in therapy to work through this ‘big’ stuff and it feels really helpful to look at it with Elle. I can’t avoid it for much longer because it has a way of catching up with me, anyway. I don’t really know what to do though, because the moment we go there the whole fucking place is underwater as a result. I’m equipped to deal with high tide but this is a fucking tsunami heading my way.
I have no idea what to do. Maybe I should write more? Try and process more that way? Although that doesn’t solve any of the internal panic about Elle, does it? The more we look at Anita and Em the more wobbly I am going to feel about Elle.
I just don’t know. what to do.
What I do know is that this level of activation and upset is crazy-making and exhausting and scary because when this stuff isn’t contained enough I know that I am much harder work, more demanding, more likely to end up in rupture territory because everything is out of control inside…and you don’t have to go too far down the path to see where this can lead. I don’t want to be difficult or create a dynamic where Elle dreads seeing me… I just wish I had a different brain and the ability to make one session and a week between enough!
Right, that’s enough of that… I don’t think there’s much more I can say tbh. Does anyone have any ideas to help with symbolically increasing the capacity of my container??…Any ideas that don’t actually involve me having to bring this to Elle and see me die in a big pit of shame and embarrassment would be lovely! 😉
I get that at some point I am going to have to bring this up because I know the longer I don’t the worse it’s going to get… ffs! HELP!!
It’s been a complicated, stressful, and emotionally messy week. ‘No change there, then’, I hear you say! To be honest, I thought I was close reaching my breaking point these last few weeks. It’s certainly felt like I was at rock bottom – but as it turns out, there was a hidden trapdoor I didn’t know anything about just waiting to spring open and give that extra little bit of depth and doom to plummet down into. I really need to stop saying, ‘how much worse can it get?’ because invariably the universe seems to think I am issuing it some kind of challenge.
My wife came home sick late last week with a fever and by early Monday morning we got the confirmation that it’s COVID – we knew anyway, the rapid deterioration and the developing symptoms were there and clear to see. This is unbelievably stressful on many levels- she’s actually very unwell with it, struggling to breathe and I can see that’s she’s scared – and nurses don’t tend to get scared with health stuff because they’ve seen so much shit in their careers that they shrug most stuff of as ‘you’re not dying so you’re fine!’ To see my wife in tears via FaceTime (because she’s isolating) is heart breaking. She is the solid rock in this household and suddenly she’s more like a jelly than a chunky bit of granite.
I’m trying not to let myself run away with what could happen but it’s hard not to – you all know what I am like. I know it won’t help anyone if I start catastrophising and so I keep on keeping on because I have to hold it together and remain calm for the kids, but there are things that are a disaster already just a week in. Like me, if my wife doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid. She doesn’t get sick pay in her job and SSP doesn’t come anywhere close to covering what’s not coming in from her salary. So, once again, we are on a really financially precarious footing. We’re still not recovered from her losing her job last year and every day she’s not in work is another bill that becomes a challenge. Like many people in their 30’s and 40’s we have no savings and a lot of unsecured debt.
I text and cancelled my Monday session with Anita on Friday because that’s the only area where I can cut anything from our budget– everything else is already on a knife edge, every pound accounted for. It felt rubbish because, now more than ever, I really need my sessions. I am not in therapy twice a week because it’s ‘something to do’ I am there because without it I don’t function. Therapy is a huge part of my maintenance plan but also my fucking healing!
I really hate that mental healthcare is so exclusive and based on your ability to pay for it. I hate that my system is so traumatised that without that routine of my Monday and Friday sessions I swiftly fall into a place where I don’t cope. I did once-a-week sessions for years with Em and it was horrific for those young parts that just don’t have any sense of object constancy. I spent the whole time anxious and spiralling in the abyss between the appointments. Twice a week is much better but even that’s not perfect.
I know I am not the only one that feels like this. I feel angry that I am saddled with the bill for trauma that was done to me and it’s the reality for so many of us we’re left footing this enormous bill. When you exhaust your ‘quota’ of NHS therapy you’re left to manage by yourself. Discharged. ‘Goodbye and good luck!’ A lifetime of trauma doesn’t just get resolved in 12 months of once-a-week sessions with a psychologist (and that’s if you are even lucky enough to be given that and not just 6 sessions of CBT). When I start reeling off my history and the coping mechanisms I have built over the years it’s clear as day that this isn’t short-term work.
So what do you do when you hit the end of your NHS entitlement? Essentially, you’re faced with a choice – accept that this is the best it’s going to be for you or take on the equivalent of another mortgage to try and help yourself some more…and cut everything unnecessary out of life to facilitate it.
It’s insane.
If you had a broken leg that wasn’t healed the hospital wouldn’t say, ‘well, you’ve had one cast, and that’s your lot – hobble on’, they’d look again at how to try and mend you. When I had cancer they didn’t say, ‘We thought based on your initial scans that you would need 8 rounds of chemo. However, looking at your most recent scan we can see the treatment is working and the tumour is shrinking but the cancer’s still there. We now think you need another 4 rounds of chemo and radiotherapy, but tough, we don’t have the budget…’ I mean, can you even imagine? – Of course they booked me in for more chemo and the radiotherapy and because of this I am still here. And yet when it comes to mental health it’s tough shit and that withdrawal of support feels so abandoning and rejecting which again taps into a lot of the trauma for childhood – not being worthy of care and support, being too much etc.
It’s hideous, really.
It stresses me out to think about how much debt we have accrued over the years just so I can go to therapy. Sometimes it feels counterintuitive because the financial lack of safety negates the benefit of therapy. I hate feeling unsafe and financial insecurity really impacts my well-being. I panic about money a lot. I take on more and more work to try and cover the shortfall but in turn I feel exhausted and burnt out. It’s a vicious cycle but I literally don’t know what else to do.
My wife can never understand how we never have any money when we both work so hard, don’t drink, don’t eat out, don’t socialise, don’t buy presents for each other even at Christmas and birthdays. We make sure the kids have what they need but it stresses me out when their feet grow or they need new clothes (which seems to be all the time!). Our holidays (which we didn’t have any at all for 6 years) go on credit cards piling on the mountain of existing debt. It’s hard to explain to her that all this is down to the fact that she is married to a basket case whose system is so fucked that therapy is like life support.
I feel bad about it, but what’s the alternative?
Anita text me on Sunday evening to see how I was and said we could do our session if I wanted and arrange payment later. When I cancelled my session with her I told her that we just couldn’t afford it. I declined her off because it’s not like there’s a magic money tree in the garden that I can shake in a few week’s time and miraculously find another £50 hanging off a branch. It was kind of her to offer but really it just moves the problem.
We got confirmation in the early hours of Monday morning that my wife did have COVID and by Monday lunchtime she had deteriorated so much that I text A in a panic and asked if we could check in during the week. Maybe there’s a treasure chest lurking under the patio?! Suddenly, everything just felt really unsafe and out of control because the COVID diagnosis directly impacted another medical procedure and ugh…it’s just too precarious…but of course it also sent my brain on ‘we just cannot afford this’.
Anita and I fixed up a time to talk on Wednesday and I just ploughed on in survival mode – feeling increasingly ‘not ok’ and also panicky and disconnected from A. The last session we had face-to-face had been a nightmare for my system and the fallout from it has been huge. I feel like I am just fizzing with nervous energy. My nervous system is wound up like a tight spring and I feel like I am going to either explode or collapse soon.
I have been trying hard to look after myself through all this – eating properly etc (which is a fucking miracle given my ‘go to’ under stress is to starve myself) but even with self-care I was totally done in and exhausted by Tuesday evening and took myself to bed early – like 8pm. I couldn’t sleep, though. My brain was whirring and I just felt like talking to Anita online was going to make everything worse. I have been hanging it together with rubber bands and chewing gum but this is only possible because the child parts have been locked away. There was a very real possibility that an online session could trigger them, there’s no space here right now, no privacy I could end up falling down another trapdoor.
I felt incredibly unsettled – so much so – that I text Anita at 10pm to cancel our session:
A, I’m really sorry but I don’t think I can do tomorrow. I’m sorry it’s short notice to cancel. Things here are really hard and I just haven’t stopped running since Friday. I’m completely exhausted, stressed out, and drowning. Tomorrow is my crazy busy day and we’ll be up home-schooling from 7am. I can’t see how I can fit it is and talk to you – there’s no private space to speak to you either. I can’t escape to my room.
Also, I know that I am on my edge and as much as I want to talk to you, I think given how bad things feel it might actually make things worse because distance doesn’t help and I feel really far away from you already. It’s that thing where my brain doesn’t even think you exist or believes you are dead. I’ve sort of thrown all the non-coping parts in the cupboard because I can’t do my life right now. I need to be armoured.
I don’t know if you got the email I sent you last week but it’s very much in the needing to survive it by going it alone. I know that that’s not ideal but, actually, I can’t give space to the parts that are terrified and spiralling because I can do nothing for them – but what I can do is not trigger myself further by putting a screen between us. I cannot afford to fall apart. I hope you understand. X
She replied a little later with:
I am so so sorry to read your message and do totally understand. Please do let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Think of you with lots of love xx
I didn’t reply as it was 11pm and there was nothing to say anyway.
I could not sleep despite being absolutely exhausted. I tossed and turned and felt absolutely awful. My brain wasn’t consciously thinking of anything but my body just would not relax. I got cramp in my feet. I felt hot and cold. The anxiety was horrendous. That feeling of falling through the black abyss, the young stuff about being unsafe and uncontained was massively activated but it wasn’t really in regard to Anita even though I felt somewhat disconnected from her. It was 4:45am the last time that I looked at the clock and then I finally fell asleep for an hour and promptly had a plane crash dream (and have had it every night since).
I woke up feeling terrified and my heart was racing. And then my brain clicked. 20th January. A year since the horrible session when Em compared me to a tick, and the session that led to our termination on the 3rd February. This time last year was absolutely fucking horrific. It’s been on my radar that January was the anniversary of it all going to shit but somehow the date of ‘tick gate’ crept up on me. Of course, I am worried and stressed about the here and now but there’s also a big undercurrent of anxiety about this stuff with Em and that, I think is why I feel like everything is life and death. It’s that early annihilation stuff being tapped into.
I responded to Anita’s text when I woke up. Honestly – I’m like the tide changing all the time. I briefly outlined what I had realised when I woke up and asked if we could speak at the time we had arranged. We spoke yesterday for half and hour. It was very adult and I didn’t mention any of the stuff about Em or the attachment stuff or feeling disconnected because opening it up didn’t feel like a brilliant idea given I had a solid run of 10 hours ahead of me juggling my kids and teaching my lessons. However, it was connecting enough and I am so glad I have her in my corner.
I don’t know when I will get to see Anita face-to-face again. I have to isolate until Sunday and so far, I feel fine…so fingers crossed I don’t get sick, too. But ugh. It’s all too much stress not knowing how things are going to work out and money…fucking money man…
I know this is just a rant but actually I realised that money is such a huge thing and I know for a fact that I am not the only one struggling with the price of trauma – and therefore the price of therapy. I think what’s hard, too, is that we value our therapists so much that it’s not a case of thinking the therapy is ‘too expensive’ or ‘not worth it’ – it’s just simply unaffordable sometimes and that’s far from ideal when you REALLY NEED IT! It’s not easy to talk about this, either. I feel incredible amounts of shame around being unable to afford therapy – and this leads to all the stuff about not being worthy of it, deserving of it, good enough…it’s a vicious cycle but then £100-150 a week for years and years and years is just not realistic for lots of us is it? But like I said before, what other options are there?
I hate to be so doom and gloom but I just feel rubbish right now.
So after two days of barely holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum (I had no idea this blog name would end up being so apt!) today, at 11am, I found myself lying face down in my bed holding a pillow over my head convulsively crying about… yeah…you guessed it…feeling like my therapist doesn’t care about me after a pretty rubbish Skype session on Monday and a complete failure to acknowledge a message I have sent her since.
Believe me, there is a part of me that is seriously rolling my eyes and sighing in exasperation right now as if to say ‘for goodness sake, not this AGAIN’ as I type this. Like really, this cannot be happening again can it? But it really is. And you’ve probably noticed by now – I tell it how it is…even if ‘how it is’ is fucking ridiculous and embarrassing. I tell it how it is in the here and now, as I experience it, even if in two weeks (or possibly even two days) I feel differently and can see things through an alternative, more rational lens.
I’m very aware that right now my left brain is offline and my right brain (where all the emotions are) is lit up like Piccadilly Circus. It’s probably not a great time to write a blog post but it’s either put it on the page here or start firing off upset/angry/needy messages to my therapist and that’s not a very good idea is it?
And so here I am again, trying to find a way through the difficult feelings in order that I don’t completely fall apart over the next two weeks. Does anyone have any glue to hold all my pieces together?… I am worried that the bands and gum aren’t up to the job this time around and am in danger of smashing into a million pieces.
I wrote recently about shame having just then started reading Patricia A. DeYoung’s book ‘Understanding And Treating Chronic Shame’. I’m no stranger to shame and having now read the whole thing, I have to say, the book is fantastic. I highly recommend it. There’s heaps of really useful and interesting stuff in it and I plan to take it to my therapist and go ‘Here! Look at this. This is what’s happening!!’ (that is, of course, if one of the other parts doesn’t go to town with the text messages!)
Young suggests that shame is essentially caused by being ‘a self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other’. I mentioned in that post that I was concerned that I had somehow got caught up in a dynamic where my therapist was taking on the role of ‘dysregulating other’.
And. Yep. Skype session proved that point on Monday! More on that in a bit.
Basically, when a child is in distress it looks for connection and containment from the other to help regulate the distress. If all goes well the interaction soothes the child and the distress ebbs away. However, if the interaction between the child and other in some way misses the mark, is not attuned, a child is left feeling uncontained and out of control. It tries to place meaning on what is going on. Basically, the child ends up blaming itself for the failure of the other to contain and connect.
It makes sense that when we need something really badly from an important person and they fail to meet that need often enough that we start to feel like there’s something wrong with us. Instead of blaming them we find fault in ourselves. It must be something we are doing wrong. Our need is too much. Feelings are bad. And so the shame cycle begins. We see need as ‘bad’ and try and hide it.
So, we amble through life pretty successfully – well, you know, smoke and mirrors and all that! To most people I seem like a highly self-sufficient, high achiever, who ‘doesn’t need anyone or anything’ and if you’d asked me before therapy ‘I can do everything on my own and by myself. In fact other people are a pain and I prefer to be alone’. But now I see that actually I am not made of Teflon so far as emotions go and scarily: I have needs.
Who knew?!
Unfortunately, I seem hard-wired to feel bad about having feelings or needs and so in therapy it’s become a complete disaster zone because I have some very strong feelings towards my therapist and needs that I wish she could (although frustratingly know she can’t/won’t) meet.
I’ve noticed for a while now that I can go from ‘fairly normal’ to ‘away with the dissociative fairies’ in a matter of seconds in my therapy sessions. My therapist keeps asking for us to think about the process and notice what happens to make me dissociate and hide. For a long time I haven’t been really conscious of it, all I know is someone young comes online and then I am gone.
It’s like a switch gets flipped.
Because it’s been happening more and more lately I have been consciously trying to pay attention to the feelings that crop up and then what happens when I retreat inside myself. It probably won’t come as any surprise to you when I say it has its roots in shame. It happens so quickly and I am trying to work out how to stop it happening or how to get back from that dissociated, lonely space when it does.
Monday’s session was a complete shit pile but it kind of gave me some answers.
I am not stupid, I know that sessions after breaks are often hard. It takes time to reconnect (I’ve been here before. I know what I’m like!). We’d not seen each other for three weeks. It wasn’t face to face it was Skype. And following the virtual stepping stone in the river crossing (therapy break) there is now another two weeks until a face to face. It was always going to be a challenge to connect with my therapist. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to but I have so many defences… ugh.
I know that I was certainly trying to keep buoyant and surface level because I knew I would be on my own again for two more weeks the moment the call was over and I couldn’t face the possibility of falling headfirst in the pit of attachment pain for the next few weeks if I let her see the vulnerable stuff and it not go well. Ironically, yet again I failed to notice that if I don’t let her in I feel shit too!!!
Part of me didn’t want her to know how much I have missed her and wanted to shut her out a bit. But of course it didn’t last because as the session went on, surface level chatting, I could feel things stirring. I could feel that time was ticking away and I desperately wanted to connect, or at least part of me did.
I asked my therapist what the time was and it was 11am. I thought ‘oh that’s ok time to talk‘ and then the moment the thought went through my mind I realised I didn’t know how to get what I needed from her. It didn’t feel like she was receptive or attuned to me. I desperately wanted her to come closer to me, to hold my hand, hug me, and tell me that it’s all ok…but that will never happen.
The need feels huge.
The young parts screamed inside, burst into tears, realising that she was there but couldn’t see them and that we were going to be left until September…
…and then I was gone…
The shame of having those needy feelings and the pain that shame generates is utterly unbearable and that’s when I dissociate. I can’t cope with the overwhelming sense of longing and need for connection and feeling like I can’t get it, that I am not worthy of it, that she doesn’t want to connect. I feel like there is something wrong with me.
Like I say this whole process happens in a matter of seconds.
The rest of the session was hard. I think I just sat there making the odd ‘uh huh’ ‘yeah’ ‘no’ as she continued to talk to me about what I had initially started talking about (filler!). I felt like we were on completely different pages and was kind of glad when I hung up the call – not because I wanted to be in the throes of a further two week break- because it was so fucking excruciating feeling the minutes tick away and feeling like I didn’t know the person sitting opposite me. She probably felt the same way.
I felt awful the moment the screen went black and took myself straight into the kitchen to cut myself. That’s how bad it felt in that moment. Sheer desperation. I didn’t self-harm, though. I took a minute and thought about why I wanted to hurt myself. It was the need, the shame, the feeling unseen…and also very clearly having a sense of ‘what’s going on’ when it goes to shit in a session.
So instead of cutting I made this:
and then sent it to my therapist as a text along with a note to ‘File under ‘unread’. The teen part was feeling sarcastic. Like, ‘fuck it, I’m sending you stuff to try and help me and you won’t read it just like everything else, so shove it why don’t you?!’
Clearly, she hasn’t replied…and I feel rubbish about it. Not just because she hasn’t replied but because I feel so utterly overwhelmed by where I am in therapy and the therapeutic relationship and the break.
It just all feels kind of futile right now.
I don’t feel like I am moving forward. I just feel like I am stuck in trauma.
The teen parts are definitely wounded and feel like texting my therapist to tell her ‘we’re done, because what’s the fucking point in all this if almost every time we interact I am left feeling inadequate and like what I want/need from you is too much. I feel physically sick when I think about how much I care for you and contrast that with how easy it is for you to leave me/ignore me when I am struggling’.
[Ok. So that’s the work isn’t? it]
I have no idea how the next couple of weeks is going to go. I know I will cycle through heaps of emotional states. I expect I will go to my session on the 3rd because the young parts are so desperate and attached that they’d have me swim through shark-infested waters to see her. But, ugh, I don’t know. I don’t know how much longer I can keep putting myself through this.
I’m feeling a bit bleurgh at the moment (a technical term I’ll have you know!). It’s not a full-on depressive episode yet (I don’t think) but it’s feeling like a huge struggle just to remain in a relative coping place…but then when is mental health ever a walk in the park, really? It pretty much always feels like I am struggling in one way or other.
For now, at least, I feel like I have done with sliding down the hill towards rock bottom, which was what happened at the start of the therapy break, and have finally got a fingertip hold on something semi-solid that has allowed me to stop and take stock. I daren’t move though, rock bottom is still a long way off, thank god, but I feel like adjusting my position may result in me losing my precarious grip and careering at speed downwards again. I can’t risk that so I am staying here stuck in a kind of uncomfortable limbo.
Put it this way, I am not where I would like to be at this point in the holidays!
I don’t feel especially solid.
I’m certainly not grounded.
I can feel anxiety creeping around the edges.
I’ve woken up feeling queasy for the last four days.
The attachment pain is really there just before bed and any time I let my mind drift towards therapy.
It’s all a bit shit really.
Moan. Moan. Moan!
I daren’t look too far ahead because 3rd September feels like a very long time in the future and it makes me even more aware that I’m not even half way through the break yet – it’s still three weeks until I see my therapist in person – nooooooooooo! Having said that, I am meant to have a Skype on the 20th so I shouldn’t complain. I am just massively aware that it could go belly up next week.
I am experiencing the usual conflicting feelings:
I love you/I hate you
Please come back/Fuck off I never want to see you again
and what I really don’t want to happen is to have a Skype session that semi opens up stuff, doesn’t really do the job, isn’t especially connecting, and then be left for a further two weeks for phase two of the therapy break.
I think I just about have a handle on things right now but I’m not stupid, I’ve been here enough times to know that there is a real possibility of me trying to sabotage my therapy before September is here. The teen part of me that wants to give up is never far from the surface and on breaks, especially long ones, she gets quite vocal. She’s still angry about the last session before the break. Seriously, ‘imagine something you like doing’….FFS!
Feeling stuck in this limbo state/place is pants. My last session seems a long time ago (eve though it was actually only two weeks ago) and all the good things I feel about my therapy/therapist seem to have evaporated now…. and yet the crap parts haven’t, they remain there! It’s not ideal. I’m beginning to put my therapist in the bracket of people that reject and abandon me rather than who do their best to help me. (I do know how crazy it is – but it is how it is!).
You can probably tell from this post that my mind is all over the shop. In addition to this, I seem to have no energy at all. My motivation has gone on holiday (along with my therapist – grr!), and all I really want to do is lie in bed and sleep for hours on end or, failing that, sprawl out on the sofa and eat biscuits and chocolate. Essentially once the kids get to bed at 6pm that is exactly what I have been doing- filling my face with sugary things in some mindless stupor state in front of the TV and then crawling into bed and sleeping for as long as I can reasonably get away with (which, to be fair, with two young kids never extends much beyond 6:45am).
Put it this way, I’m not scoring big on the mindfulness and self-care scales right now! Although I am not over-exercising or under-eating (clearly!) so I suppose generally vegetating and resting shouldn’t be seen as a criminal activity. The critical voice in my head is starting to give me a hard time, though:
Lazy.
Fat.
Sloth-like creature.
I am just not particularly good at stopping and doing nothing. I always feel like I ought to be doing something, keeping busy, achieving things. I’m not working again for a couple more weeks as it’s the school holidays. I need to keep reminding myself that it’s A HOLIDAY – not just other people’s (my T, the kids I teach, my own children) mine too and that means a break from the usual drudgery of school runs, work, having to be in a specific place at a particular time etc.
As much as I moan about it when I am in it, I think routine does me good to an extent. I’m not great at this long drawn out time off. I do wonder, though, how much of this is because in the back of my mind (ok quite close to the front!) is the fact that I am on a therapy break and frankly I am not someone who does especially well without regular therapy. Ha! I mean I am not exactly willing the clock forward to September to re-enter the world of ‘Please put your shoes on! I’ve asked you four times already. We are going to be late.’
Having said that, I think with young kids, time off is rarely ‘time off’. Since my son’s birthday last Monday we’ve been busyish: swimming lessons, cinema, ice cream parlour, farm park, a couple of playdates, baking, making pizzas from scratch, a visit to a soft play centre as well as a fair bit of playing in the garden, oh, and we/the dog delivered a litter of puppies yesterday. It’s not exactly been a dull existence!
I don’t know what’s wrong with me really. I just feel a bit stuck. Whilst, clearly, elements of my life are carrying on as normal and I would say I’m doing a good enough job at parenting at the minute- the kids are happy- underneath the exterior of ‘with it and together mum’ the other stuff is bubbling away. I guess that’s the problem. Usually I have somewhere to let ‘the other stuff’ out and right now I don’t. I’m very much aware of operating of multiple levels. I find it tiring at the best of times and perhaps without my release valve I’m finding it all a bit more exhausting?
Who knows?
Maybe I am just getting depressed. Or maybe I am about to get sick. Or perhaps it’s just that my period is on its way… whatever it is I want to feel a bit more energised and less like I am going through the motions. I want to feel present in my life rather than as though I am spectating from the sidelines. The only saving grace is that no one would know I feel this way. It is not evident that I am struggling. I would hate for my kids to feel like ‘mummy is checked out’….and I guess they don’t know because it’s only parts of me that are. I guess maybe it’s part of the beauty of being fragmented – the bits that can’t cope aren’t really seen and the ‘carrying on with everyday life self’ is a damn good autopilot.
Errr what else? I’m scraping the barrel a bit with this post – no therapy to talk about!! haha.
I’ve been without internet for the last few days due to a cock up with changing provider. Seamless transition it was not! And so the one positive was that I haven’t been in this ‘bleurgh’ state and additionally whiling away the hours mindlessly on my phone flicking between WhatsApp, Facebook, WordPress, Instagram. Even NetFlix hasn’t been a possibility!
A social media blackout is not necessarily a bad thing every now and again. I do it at Christmas and always feel quite good having gone screen-free for a bit. You might be thinking, why not use your phone for the internet…well, I live in a signal/data blackspot and so have to go in the garden and stand in a specific place to get anything at all and it’s so intermittent that it’s not even worth it. It’s so circa 1995!
Everything went live again yesterday evening and actually it felt like a bit of an attack to the system. I have been off radar with a few friends this last week due to feeling so crappy and so I’ve been trying to be a bit present again. I just find it really hard.
I really have nothing at all to say today!… but having already gone more than a week between posts I wanted to write something. This, post, shall hereby be filed under ‘bleurgh’ and sink to the depths of unread trash!
Actually. I posted this on my Twitter feed the other day…and it says it all x
With just ten minutes of Monday’s therapy session remaining I finally said it. In words. In the room. To her face. Not written down. Not kind of implied and hoping she might read my mind. I actually said the sentence that has been persistently in my head for the last month (well, it’s always there) aloud. It may not have been very loud, it may have come from a young part, but it was loud enough for her to hear:
‘I don’t want you to go away’.
OMG what just happened?! Did I actually directly tell my therapist how I was feeling about the summer therapy break and show vulnerability and need even when several parts were screaming at me to keep my mouth shut? Looks like it, doesn’t it?
We all know by now that these feelings are always there in one way or another. Every time I have to leave my therapy I feel like my therapist is ‘gone’ and it’s a huge struggle for the youngest parts to just make it through the week…but therapy breaks, well, crikey, they are the absolute pits and no matter what I do, or how I try and prepare for them I always end up on my arse, in a heap, sooner or later.
Ok, so I did kind of have to throw myself over the metaphorical ledge to get the words out and take a forty minute running jump at it: sliding through dissociation, silence, and shaking just to reach the drop off, but I did it- and you know what? It was ok. She didn’t freak out (of course she didn’t) and it opened up a really useful conversation about breaks and the difficulties I have with maintaining connection with her.
It’s fair to say that therapy has been a bit weird lately. It’s my fault. I do want to kick myself sometimes. I’ve been struggling to really connect with my therapist/hiding from her for a variety of reasons. Some of it is definitely a hangover from last Easter break and how she reacted when I finally properly let her in and told her about the eating disorder stuff. I have struggled to trust her with the big things since then because I am worried that if I so much as allude to issues with my body or food she’s going to overreact and write to my GP or threaten to ‘work towards an ending’ again (shudder).
My rational adult knows that I can trust her and that we now have an agreement (that we worked out together) in place around what we do if I end up struggling with eating and she is concerned that things are bad but even so, the teen parts are still hurting after how things were handled and most of what I need to say to my therapist comes from these younger parts. As I have said many times my adult knows what she’s doing and has it together…it’s the others that let the side down! They’re the ones that need the therapy and if they don’t feel like they can trust Em then we’re all screwed.
In addition to stuff around the ED I have been struggling to reach out or let her in because I’ve felt pushed away – and that bombshell about needing ‘to work towards an ending’ if I didn’t go to my GP has just got stuck on loop. Fucking soundbite from hell. I feel wobbly at the best of times and parts of me are certain that she wants to get rid of me… Disorganised Attachment 101. I do know this is really very much about my skewed perception of things rather than it being the reality but I don’t require a lot of evidence of her supposed lack of care in order to shutdown and hide. It is a nightmare.
For example when I asked for a regular check in around the time when the ED was off the chart bad and she essentially said she had no time I couldn’t help but feel like the whole therapeutic relationship was just a huge pile of shite and that she did not care at all. It takes a lot for me to express any kind of need and so to do it and then get a no was just hideous. Add to that the hell that was the beginning of July (cancer follow up at the hospital neatly coinciding with the anniversary of my dad’s death) wanting to reach out to my therapist and knowing I couldn’t, or could but she wouldn’t reply sent me into a complicated rage and devastation cycle:
Why the fuck do I bother? She clearly doesn’t give a shit about me.
I wish she was there and could give me some reassurance. I miss her.
I’m done with this. I hate her.
What is wrong with me? Why doesn’t she care?
I hate myself.
It’s so hard constantly trying to juggle and manage utterly conflicting but intense emotions. I get that this is where the work is. On a good day I can completely see how my therapist is just a therapist and is doing her best to help me but other days it is so much more complicated than that. It drives me insane.
When the five week summer break started flashing persistently on the radar it added in another level of internal struggle. I absolutely want and need to be able to connect with Em before the break but the moment any kind of vulnerability or need starts to creep in the room I have dissociated. I am gone and it takes ages to try and get back to her. It’s been horrendous feeling like she is behind glass and I’m stuck in a long dark tunnel. This week was even worse than usual. There wasn’t even the ten minutes of adult small talk at the beginning before a plunge into young parts’ chaos and dissociation. Nope. I sat down, looked at her, and went numb.
AAAAAHHHHH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!!
It’s so annoying. I spend all week wanting so badly to be in that room in order to try and work on this stuff and yet my mind plays tricks on me. I can’t even really remember what we talked about in the session, now. I know that she was trying really hard to draw me out and connect. I really wanted to talk and yet there was a part inside freaking out ‘if I tell you how I feel you’re going to leave’ which is hilarious, really, because of course there is a therapy break coming up next week anyway, and she is leaving, so what’s the difference? I guess a therapy break isn’t forever, though, and yet to some of the young parts there is a real and genuine fear that I will get terminated for being too needy if I tell her how I really feel.
It’s that old chestnut: I am too much.
No matter how many times she tells me I am not too much and that she wants to hear everything I am feeling I still can’t trust in it fully. I really want to, though. I am trying. And I do get there eventually.
So often what happens is that as we creep towards the eleventh hour in therapy I am able to talk a bit. I guess I build up enough trust, or perhaps enough desperation to let some stuff out the bag. I sense the clock ticking down and I get a ‘now or never’ sort of motivation but also an ‘oh she is still a safe person’. This is a pattern I have noticed in my sessions – the last ten or fifteen minutes is where the work is really done. But this is also true as we head into a break. I conceal how I feel for at least a month leading into a holiday (‘what’s the point in telling her anything, it won’t change anything’) and then suddenly the break is almost here and I let it all out. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps it’s about feeling like I can’t contain it on my own during a break, or maybe it’s about safety. If I let all the really vulnerable stuff out just as a break starts then I have time to recover from it, let the dust settle a bit, we can pretend like it never happened if it is totally mortifying… I dunno.
So anyway, when I said ‘I don’t want you to go away’ I felt like I’d had some kind of out of body experience. Who the fuck said that? It was a young part for sure but I have never allowed that stuff out in this way before. Sure some of you might be thinking, ‘seriously, you’re getting wound up about this??’ but it was huge. Em handled it really really well. She asked me what I was scared of and I said ‘that you won’t come back’ and we talked a lot about how massively traumatising this all felt especially in relation to my dad having gone away and died on holiday.
I always feel silly getting stressed about her going on her summer holiday. It certainly is the hardest therapy break in the year and not just because of its length. It just falls so soon after the annual sucker punch of my dad’s anniversary. I have experienced someone I love not coming back from a holiday, and I have had it front of mind for the whole of July, and then off she goes on holiday for a month in August. The timing sucks.
I wish I didn’t get so scared and anxious that she would respond negatively to something that is fairly normal and understandable. Like surely it would be more weird if I was completely unaffected by her going away for 5 weeks especially given the timing. But I do fear her rejecting me. It is a huge stumbling block for me. I wish that I could retain all these positive therapeutic experiences where she responds to me as I need her to. If I could hold onto her and her kindness and care I know it would enable to be more open and vulnerable but unfortunately I just cannot hang onto these connecting moments and file them away in my memory banks to give me some courage the next time I have stuff to let out (which is basically every session).
I know it’s a process…but god…it’s long isn’t it?!
Anyway, that’s kind of where I am at now. I have one more session on Monday and so that revelation in the last ten minutes of the session might have been the start of the emotional flood gates opening. I kind of hope so. I don’t really want to sit on all this attachment stuff over the holiday and feel alone, unseen, and unheard. I want to tell my therapist how it feels so that she can help me put things in place so that everything doesn’t disintegrate the moment I walk out the door.
She said we are going to work on building on the felt sense of connection between us in session next week…..god only knows what that’s going to entail but I’m telling you now if she gets me to imagine fucking angels or a sodding box to hold positive feelings in I will throw my pebble through her window!!
So I was planning to come home from my holiday (yeah, I haven’t just dropped off the face of the earth this last couple of weeks – I’ve just been on a different part of the face of the earth!) and write about how lovely it has been to go abroad for the first time in four years, to have a proper relaxing break with my kids and wife, and to say how amazing it’s been to recharge my batteries… and I will get to that at some point in the coming week along with writing up the session where I gave my therapist the letter I had written her. But something happened last night when I was at the airport and about to fly home that sent me into a bit of a tailspin.
I was ten minutes from boarding my flight when I received a notification on my phone about my rubberbandsandchewinggum Instagram account that SOMEONE I KNOW IN REAL LIFE (a mum from preschool/school) had become a follower. My heart skipped a beat and then I panicked and then I literally started sweating…and I am not a sweaty person! Basically my brain was screaming ‘FUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!’
How on earth did this happen? Like really? All my privacy settings are set not to sync with any of my contacts on my personal email or phone. I don’t even list my mobile number on the accounts I set up with Instagram or WordPress. I use only my blog Gmail email to set up anything like this – not my actual name or anything. In theory there is absolutely no way that account should have been found other than by complete chance.
So I don’t know what’s happened. I went over all my settings with a fine-toothed comb a couple of months back when I wondered (got paranoid about) whether I was identifiable on one of those ‘you might like this’ suggestion type things but I asked a friend to try and locate me with my details ‘ie my phone, email, facebook etc’ and she couldn’t find me.
I guess it could be complete chance. This woman has an interest in similar things to me, from what I can tell on Facebook and having spoken in real life. She doesn’t deny she suffers from anxiety and depression and always ‘likes’ anything I post on Facebook that relates to MH awareness etc. I just feel like it’s a bit of an unlikely massive coincidence, you know? Like of all the pages in the world about mental health she discovers mine with no identifying info. GPS??? Does Instagram try and suggest pages you might like with people in the vicinity? I have no idea. I am not a techy person – I just write!
It all feels a bit, I dunno, Big Brother… I guess I am naïve and trust that these big social media things are private when you set yourself to be private but who knows. It’s too complicated!
Anyway,
My Instagram has this info:
Mental health blogger. Mum of two. LGBT. Procrastinator. Holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum.
Which is basically the same as my Twitter account.
I guess that wouldn’t have been too defining had I not posted some Bitmoji on the Instagram page….but also used Bitmoji on my personal facebook as my profile pic….ugh. What a dummy! It looks like me! Obviously!
Until yesterday my Instagram had a link to my blog. I have since removed it- although given the name is the bloody same only with a dot com at the end it’s not exactly a stretch to find my blog is it? I temporarily made this blog private last night (thanks to those of you that emailed to find out why and to get permission to read it). In my panic I didn’t know what else to do knowing I was about to board a flight.
Just before I turned my phone off I bit the bullet and messaged the person who had followed me (but for some reason was her account was no longer showing as a follower despite the notification coming through) and said:
Am I imagining it or did you follow a mental healthy Instagram (my Instagram) earlier and then disappear? My phone’s having a wig out and then I had a panic that someone I know would access my blog through that account. Thought it better to be honest and ask than freak out – as am actually bonkers mental health wise x
She responded kindly and basically said she had been following things at random on her business account that had come up in her suggested pages and thought it looked cool and followed without even looking at it. And then said ‘I’m pretty bonkers too, so no judgement’. She then said she understood the panic and knows how important it is to have places like that (the blog) to go to that are your own. I received that reply when I got off my flight having been sweating it some more for the four hours back from the Canaries.
So. Where am I at today with all this?
Well clearly, as you are reading this the blog is no longer set to private. What I have decided is this: whilst I am not going to suddenly promote my blog on my personal Facebook page (can you even imagine?!! -hell no!) or let anyone else that I know know about this blog (literally my two best friends know about this page and even they don’t read it and respect my privacy and need for space to let this stuff out) I am not going to take the page down.
Why?
Well, even though this is blog talks about personal stuff….VERY personal stuff and is a window into my emotional world and my private thoughts. It is a side of me that only a very few ‘real life’ people ever get a glimpse of. I kind of feel like if I take down this blog or make it private because one person in the world that I actually know might find out that actually I am more vulnerable than I appear, that I struggle with my mental health, and that life is not always what I present to the outside world then….well…that’s a bit daft isn’t it? What’s really wrong with someone knowing the authentic version of me?
(breathing deeply into a brown paper bag here!)
Obviously, I am working on trusting this person, who I don’t know very well but seems nice enough, to keep my blog and anything written on it to herself. I mean why would it interest her to talk about me to anyone else in the playground? I am not that interesting.
There are, of course, parts of me that flood with shame and embarrassment and want to crawl in a hole and die at the thought of being exposed in this way. But I need to work on my feelings around shame and embarrassment. Man how much of my therapy is devoted to this pairing?!
I am not a bad person. I have feelings. Some of them are tricky. I have some shit coping mechanisms. But I am not a weirdo for having them (the feelings or the coping strategies). Lots of us with traumatic and neglectful childhoods feel like this and have unhealthy behaviours that we use to try and help us cope.
Yes. I am in therapy. So what? Frankly, it’d be more worrying if I wasn’t in therapy, given how I am, wouldn’t it?!
And lastly, the main reason I am not binning my blog is you guys. If so many of you have accepted me despite, and maybe because of, all my emotional wounds when you haven’t ever met me than surely someone who has did ought to extend some of the kindness, compassion, and care that you do (if they end up reading).
I don’t often talk directly to the followers of this blog other than in comments but I really have to say that this blog, and the people that choose to interact with me on it and through it, have been a huge support. I think we have a brilliant community. I cannot thank you enough for the kind, considered, thoughtful comments you post up. I have made some lovely friends through this page, too, and what started out as a random anonymous space for me to spill my emotional guts has become something so much more than that.
So, yeah, this is me, warts and all x
And now to get back to writing about therapy…soon be Monday…eek!!
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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