Attachment trauma

Back In The Therapy Room…At Last!

rubberbandsandchewinggum36 Comments

Wow….so apparently today marks the third birthday of Rubber bands and Chewing Gum! I have a three year old toddler blog! -how on earth did that happen? Honestly, I can’t believe it. When I first started blogging I really had no idea how it would turn out, what I would say, or if anyone would even bother to read it – I certainly never thought hundreds of people would follow me or be interested in what I had to say! Back then, all I knew was that I need to find somewhere to put all the chaos that was swirling in my head and so this space became my online therapy journal…it was safe because it was stored ‘out there’ rather than as some random file for someone to come across on my laptop one day – EEK!

I have always liked to write- needed to write- in fact it’s pretty much the only way I have ever processed my stuff. I guess when you grow up and there’s no-one to listen then it makes sense to purge it on the page before it eats you alive. It’s sad really. I find it so easy to get my feelings down in words here, but expressing them aloud can be almost impossible sometimes. Shame and embarrassment have been my constant companions throughout my life and stop me saying what’s really going on…oh and let’s not forget the system inside that’s comprised of a mini-bus full of traumatised parts!

This blog has really been a ‘warts and all’ account of my therapeutic journey. Often people email me and say how much they have related to what I say here and thank me for making them feel less alone in their own experience. I am really glad that this is the case, if seeing what I am going through helps even one person feel less alone with what are really excruciating feelings then I’m happy.

I frequently get told how brave I am to tell it as it is. I don’t know if it’s brave, really, it’s just honest. If I was brave I wouldn’t publish this under a pseudonym because I wouldn’t be terrified of any one in my ‘real life’ stumbling across it and seeing what a mess I really am and judging me for it.

Because whilst on one level, I am completely sure that these are just human feelings and understandable reactions to lots of trauma (and there should be no shame in that) I also know that most people are not in touch with their emotional selves, society is not ready to open its eyes and see how many people are carrying the weight of several ACES on their shoulders – (I’ve got 7/10!) and would sooner judge people that do feel it all and struggle, than try and understand or have to acknowledge the level of damage there is and and the care that people require to heal.

And it’s not just ‘out there’ that is the problem. Part of the reason I started blogging was because I knew I felt ‘too much’ and was ‘too much’ and couldn’t bring my feelings to my therapist. In my gut I knew she couldn’t handle me. And when I did (finally) show her really how I felt, there was the very real experience of being rejected and abandoned for getting close to the core wound – with a therapist – someone who is meant to understand!! No wonder so many of us are in hiding!

However, I know for a fact that I am not the only one to experience the things I do in therapy…there’s certainly a merry bunch of mother wounded souls lurking here on WordPress and I feel so blessed to have landed here when I did and made the connections I have. Honestly, when it all went to shit with Em in January it was this space and you guys that helped me get through. So thank you everyone x

I could rabbit on and on, gushing, but I know actually all anyone wants to hear about was what happened when I finally got to see Anita in person on Tuesday. It feels nice to be able to write something positive here after so much of my journey being a complete shit show.

So here it is:

I left my last post on a bit of a cliff-hanger (sorry!)…partly because the post was already pretty lengthy and also because I didn’t have any time to write more then. I thought I’d get back here sooner than this, but the last few days have been rammed full with stuff that has left me feeling pretty drained.

I’ve seen a couple of friends (socially distanced) and, honestly, after an hour I felt like I had nothing left to give them. It sounds awful but I have literally been wishing they’d go home! This is so unlike me and really demonstrates how lacking in resources I am right now. I usually have so much capacity to listen and absorb other people’s stuff but yesterday my friend, whom I haven’t seen in 5 months, talked at me for a solid 90 minutes before coming up for air and asking what’s been going on my end. I said I was ‘fine’ – I just couldn’t be arsed to talk and was on empty, and so then she went on another deep dive….4.5 hours in total. Sweet mother of god! I honestly do not know how therapists do it and maybe that’s why there’s a therapy hour!! I suppose at least they get paid! haha.

So now it’s Friday, and I’ve seen Anita again today…but that’ll have to come in a later post. The problem is, today’s session (therapy break dread and young parts in hiding) has kind of erased my memory of Tuesday. I hate how that happens. How is it that the panicked parts that fear being abandoned can literally take the good memories underground with them when they go into meltdown?

Anyway, Tuesday, and the walk Anita and I had arranged didn’t happen. Instead I found myself outside her house at 1pm for a session IN THE THERAPY ROOM! I mean I have been banging on about wanting to be back in the room enough over the last few months but now, completely unexpectedly it was about to happen. And I soooooo needed it.

Fortunately, I wrote some lots of notes (5 A4 pages and I can’t read my writing!!) on Tuesday so I am going to try and piece it all back together which might actually help me regulate myself as I have fallen down a (massive) hole this afternoon. I joked in session on Monday that I am a bit like a double-sided puzzle (which apparently do actually exist – WHY?!) – the level of fragmentation isn’t even funny. I don’t know who holds all the memories of Tuesday but it isn’t whoever is here right now!…but I’d like that part back as she is pretty settled and my system right now is freaking out!

I cannot even begin to explain the feeling of being back in the room with A. I mean, I’ll try, but it’s going to be hard as SO MUCH was going on inside. But hey, lets lead in with a super-boosted dose of hypervigilance in action.

It’s funny. You know when you are aware of EVERYTHING in room, like you can go to a restaurant and clock everything that is going on with other tables, suss out the dynamic and relationship between those other customers, know where at least two exits are, and have a map of the floor before you’ve even sat down?? Well, I must’ve come across as a complete lunatic with A on Tuesday. It took a while to settle because I had to reorientate myself to the room. I noticed all the tiny changes. It’s been 5 bloody months since I was last there and yet it was like playing spot the difference… ‘has that cupboard door been painted?’…FFS!

I guess it makes sense to have this skill because at some point I’d have to have been able to do this (ok maybe not in a restaurant, but at home with caregivers) just to stay safe. But it always amazes me when this stuff happens and I am actually conscious of it. It feels a bit embarrassing because I am sure it isn’t normal to comment on a light switch…my poor brain is perpetually working so hard to try and see if there’s risk.

Anyway, after the ‘what’s changed in the room’ exercise I think I spent a few minutes basically like a broken record repeating how happy I was to see Anita and how great it was to be back in the room (not playing it cool at all!)…all the while other parts of me trying to work out if A was still the same, that things were ok, if it was safe…

Last week, before we had arranged the walk and then ended up face to face, I had asked A if I could send her something in the post before she went on her break. She said it was fine but actually, as it turned out, I got to give her what I wanted in person.

I realise that part of me must be fucking insane to contemplate giving a therapist a gift after what happened with Em at Christmas, but there we are…these parts seem to keep bouncing back and hoping for a different outcome! I can’t work out if they are resilient or nuts!

The first time I met Anita, I was moaning about how bad things were with Em, how she just seemed so cold and distant and almost deliberately trying to hurt me (especially off the back of the skype call after Christmas) . A said to me that she felt like my therapy journey was a bit like an egg – I’d got through the hard shell, and Em and I had been working in the white (for a very long time!), but now I needed to do the deep work, where the feelings are, and that work required love, and perhaps Em just couldn’t do that work with me… it really resonated but stung. I knew she was right but also knew that meant that meant the end of things with Em.

After the session, I was in town and I went into my favourite crystal shop and there on the shelf was an egg, made of blue lace agate. The gem stone relates to communication and specifically the throat chakra as well as tying into pisces (my star sign). It felt perfect. I knew even after that first session with A that I wanted to work with her but also knew that it wasn’t going to be a straightforward jumping ship with Em (mind you I never imagined in a million years it would end the way it did!).

I decided to buy the egg, knowing that one day, when the time felt right, I would give it to Anita as a symbol of the work we were doing…as we moved into the yolk and those deeper, painful feelings that as she said, ‘need a different kind of healing’.

Anyway, 5 months of online therapy has been a challenge but also our relationship has grown and I felt like before she went on holiday I wanted to give her the egg. The youngest parts of me fear being forgotten about and if there is such a thing, I think this egg serves as a reverse transitional object…instead of me taking something from the therapy room, part of me is left with A. I guess she can hold me in mind, but because my child parts just can’t hold people in mind at all, they disappear, it makes sense that they think that everyone needs something tangible so that they don’t disappear from memory.

I was a bit nervous giving A the egg but she already knew I was going to give her something and had said it was ok…so…I did. And she seemed to like it and reacted positively which was lovely. She said she wanted to give me a hug and then opened her arms and said ‘a socially distanced hug’. It was a nice gesture but also it activated the young part that actually so desperately wants an actual hug. It’s kind of like when you walk past a sweet shop as a kid. You can see, smell, and almost taste what’s inside but you don’t have any money and so can’t get what you want. Ugh.

The parts of me that have struggled to reach A during lockdown felt so relieved to see her sitting across from me in the flesh. It was so good to see her…but then…oh god…that meant she could also see me! And whilst parts of me really wanted to connect (like honestly how I didn’t cling onto her like a limpet when I walked in I have no idea!) there are other parts who are absolutely terrified of being seen, exposed, because to them it feels almost inevitable that when she sees the level of need, and how much connection those parts of me actually require, she’ll do a runner…like Em.

I managed to tell A that I had been worried that coming back to the room because I feared she might not like me anymore, now that she’s seen more of me, but she assured me that we have got closer since we were last together not further apart. This went a long way to settle some of the panicking parts.

We talked quite a bit about how much I fear rejection and abandonment (ha- no shit) – but that it’s not surprising given what’s happened with the therapy with Em. I said I feel like I always waiting for something bad to happen…like I can’t fully absorb A’s kindness and care because I feel like it can’t possibly last. I guess this is also the legacy of my childhood. Nothing ever stayed ‘nice’ for very long as my mum’s mood changed like the wind and so I was always on guard waiting, but also trying to behave in a way that might prevent her from losing the plot.

I told her Anita that I was still mortified about the reaction I had to finding out she’d been on a walk with another client and I couldn’t believe I’d behaved as I had. Anita said she could completely understand why I had felt the way I did and said how it tied into all the stuff about me feeling inadequate and feeling like for some reason I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be offered that by her. She was so right. The whole thing had felt like a confirmation of how people have to tolerate me but don’t want to spend any more time with me than they have to. I know that’s a very young part’s response but it was massive in the moment.

I talked about the kickback I have experienced over my reaction to it….which has been enormous. The Critic has had a complete field day. I told A that it makes sense, though, because if I am awful to myself then nothing she can possibly say or do to me can be worse…and so in a fucked up kind of a way it’s protective. But man…I wish the Critic would dial it down a few notches!

And then, that awful thing happened. You know, the thing where you are seen and understood and connected and it feels so good and then all of a sudden that young part of you that has been peeking out from behind the sofa, the one who has its face pressed up against the glass window of the sweet shop, who is so love and touch starved and just desperately wants to be closer lands with a thud in the room and everyone else in the system disappears for a minute?

Yeah, that happened.

Then the shame flooded in. And then I dissociated because that level of need feels chronically dangerous and so the walls had to come up. And yet again, I’d protected myself, but actually I’d also totally abandoned the young parts and stopped them getting any of the connection they need because I was so convinced I’d be rejected…even though that’s a clear re-enactment and A has done nothing at all to suggest she would push me away.

FFS.

It was obvious that something had shifted and Anita asked me what the parts of me that are struggling needed in that moment. Ugh. Fuck. Like how on earth do say it? Never in 8 years could I tell Em I wanted a hug especially after the session a few years ago when I was stuck in my two year old self and she said, ‘your young parts might feel like they need to be held but that won’t happen here, it’s my boundary and I won’t cross it. I won’t collude with that young part and you need to hold it for yourself.’ (Oh god … that was rough!) That day I was falling through the abyss and that’s what she chose to say …it wasn’t until January that I even said that I would like her to come closer when I was dissociating…which got a firm ‘NO’ too!

Ouch.

So whilst I knew exactly what I needed in that moment, and for the last gazillion years, the idea of saying it only to replay the old narrative (not because I am untouchable but because of COVID) just felt ugh. Anita asked me if it was too hard to say.

Errr…Yes!

I was beating myself up inside as well as having the young parts having a significant meltdown. It’s agony when this happens.

I managed to say something like, ‘I’ve been here before’…and man, how many times over the years have I been in that god awful lonely space, regressed into a very young child part, desperate to be seen and held, but being trapped because Em would never come anywhere near me? A said, ‘And I’m guessing it wasn’t ok last time?’…

At that moment, remembering all those excruciating times sitting with Em, I massively dissociated, not just a bit. I could feel myself go. I felt like I was being pulled out the room backwards by my hair. It was hideous. I managed to tell A what was going on for me and somehow she brought me back. I don’t know how she does it but having lost hours of my life in the dissociative fog in the therapy room with Em it amazes me how (relatively) quickly I can get back to A. Maybe it’s because there’s lots of parts who believe she is safe and not deliberately out to hurt me.

I was able to tell A what was going on inside. How part of me was raging at myself for being so silly. Like I was in the therapy room, with A, after all these months which is what I had wanted for the longest time, and it felt soooo good, and now that I was there I was getting hung up on something I can’t have. I said, “It’s not like I can’t have a hug because you’re deliberately withholding, it’s because of the situation, but my child parts don’t understand this at all. To them it just feels like more of the same, ‘I don’t work that way’, ‘you might want that but I’m just your therapist‘… Adult me understands what’s happening but the youngest parts just don’t and it really hurts. But then there’s the other part who believes I don’t deserve you to be nice to me and every time I take a step forward I get yanked back into line and it’s disconnecting and painful and it makes relationships really difficult.’

Now for anyone that has been following this blog a while you’ll see how massive that last paragraph is. To actually verbalise the need to be held after what’s happened in recent years is huge. Like massive.

Anita then spoke to me about how she works with physical touch again and how if it feels right she offers hugs and how nurturing they can be. And I know this. I get it. But ugh…when? And again my brain switched into the that space where it tries to make sense of a situation but fails to – like I can get a hair cut and have my hairdresser right by me for 90 minutes, do an hour of body work that involves physical touch throughout, and yet it seems that touch seems so out of bounds in the therapy room where we are actually at our most vulnerable and most regressed states and need it.

My brain was hearing was saying as, ‘we can hug one day’ and that was at least a bit containing. And then she said that she knew how I have been keeping myself safe (I mean how many times have I ranted over the last few months about safety and how I don’t go out except literally to get my hair done?!) and she said she, too, has been very careful and that she wouldn’t offer a hug to everyone and she wanted me to hear that but that she was fine with hugs if I wanted that now.

Anyway, we talked A LOT about all kinds of things, trauma, neglect, still-face experiment…you name it we covered it all! And then it was time to go. We’d run over – A commented how quickly the time had gone. And it really had flown by. I said how great it had been to see A…because it really had. We’d done a lot of work but it felt fab. Anita said that it’d been really nice to see me too and asked if I wanted to resume face to face when she’s back from holiday in September.

Err. YESSSSS!

And as I got up to leave I asked for a hug.

Yes, my friends, I actually said it!

And A’s response? ‘You are most welcome to a hug’.

And then it happened. And honestly I could have cried…it was so nice. I know I hung on for ages and somehow when I let go I found myself holding her hand…I felt a bit dizzy and spacey afterwards. It was as though the impact of being held, properly like that after years and years of needing it but instead being left, refused it, and it compounding the feeling of being unlovable and untouchable released a huge amount of trauma in my system.

Just thinking about it makes me cry. And I feel so grateful to have found A who seems to be willing to work with me in the way I need. Thank god.

Another Rupture…Over A Walk!

rubberbandsandchewinggum48 Comments

It’s certainly been an interesting couple of weeks in my head. And when I say ‘interesting’, I really mean a complete emotional shit show at times! It’s safe to say that all the attachment stuff has gone fully live in the therapeutic relationship with Anita and all the parts are starting to jiggle about for attention!…and (over)reacting left, right, and centre to the smallest of things. Eek!

Give me strength! … and moreover give my poor therapist strength as she’s certainly earning her money at the moment!

Anita has been so great, I mean really, she is just bloody amazing and is doing such great work trying to help me repair the damage done by Em…but she accidentally dropped the ball on Monday and it sent me into freefall for a bit. But I’ll come to that drama in a minute! 

I don’t think it’s any secret that the last few months have been a challenge so far as life and therapy goes. Everything with Em completely destabilised me and then just as I was settling into work with Anita, the pandemic hit. It’s hard to believe that the last session I had face to face with A was the 16th March although in all honesty I feel like I have been aware of every slow second of those five l-o-n-g months!

Despite working online, I have felt a bit like I’ve been in hovering in ‘break territory’ (and we all know how well I do with therapy breaks!) – in so far as I have been holding a lot of stuff that I simply can’t process properly if we are not together in the room. The main issue has been about not getting the regulation and connection for the young parts that happens face to face – the non-verbal stuff that you get from being with another person, absorbing their calm energy, making eye contact, seeing them breathe etc…all the cues that the youngest parts tune into in order to feel safe. And because I haven’t been able to access this stuff my system has just got more and more wound up as time has gone on.

I understand that COVID has been a nightmare for everyone. I mean honestly, whoever imagined that we’d be living through a fucking pandemic in our lifetime?! For those of us in therapy trying to work through complex trauma and histories of childhood neglect and abandonment it’s been huge, I mean super huge having our routine disrupted. Suddenly going from face to face therapy to working online away from our attachment figure has been such a shock to the system and it’s sent my system into a tailspin (and to be fair it was already in freefall after what happened with Em!)

I think because I have been in survival for so long now, my nervous system is just totally on edge but also kind of stuck in flight mode. My body is so overwhelmed from having to ‘hold on’ that when K came for the first time, a few weeks ago, to have a craniosacral session she walked in my gate, saw me, was standing about 5 metres away and the first words out her mouth were, “I can feel your nervous system from here!”.

Months of holding myself tightly in order that I didn’t completely fall apart has left me in a right state. I am so sensitised to the slightest thing now, my hypervigilance is off the chart and I am expecting something bad to happen. So of course when something in the field of rejection comes up I am on it in a flash.

Sigh.

Anita and I have been steadily building up trust in the relationship. I have been sharing quite a bit with her in my sessions but also reaching out outside them with various things and she’s been faultless with her responding – i.e an emoji or a quick reply. It honestly, has helped so much, especially as we’ve been working remotely.

I sent her a link to an article I had read online on the 5th that a friend had posted up and it really resonated so much that I wanted A to see it along with the caption:

Uggggh this resonated so much 😞 I can’t believe how much grief there is – my whole body is hurting x

For those that are interested, here’s the link to the article:

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/08/dear-therapists-stop-with-the-testimonial-injustice/

Anita, replied:

Wow, it’s as it you had written it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I know it’s hard to trust again and I will always try to be there but like everyone I don’t know what life holds in the future, but even if my house falls down we can always work online. I also know you have heard all this before and it’s daring to take the risk again.

I mean, she really is great, right? Like just nails it. And this is why I struggle looking back at what happened with Em. It doesn’t take ‘War and Peace’ to settle the anxious young parts – it’s not hours of time to formulate something holding…and yet she just couldn’t/wouldn’t do it.

I responded with:

Thank you. I just need a hug. I feel like I am going to cry but it doesn’t come. It’s like there’s a tsunami on the way. So exhausted. And I really hope your house doesn’t fall down  😬 x

And then she sent this and oh my god, the little parts inside melted:

It was all going so well!

Then it was Monday morning and I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a couple of brilliant things from Beacon House that I forwarded to her – one was a graphic with a swan that said, ‘Inside even the most composed and competent adult is a little child who is still learning to trust, love, and be loved.’ Like really, that’s totally me…

Anyway, the session was largely fine. I actually can’t remember any of it apart from the last ten minutes! But I know it was ok…

We got talking about work and how I feel like I might have overextended myself in September. She asked me how I was thinking about managing face to face sessions (tutoring) and I explained my plans. All very adult. All very competent. I said how not all students will return straight away as some are happy working online but that some of my students absolutely need face to face. I mentioned again one particular student with whom I resumed my sessions just before the summer holidays and how beneficial it had been to him….and then this is where the shit hit the fan with a minute to go…

Anita said:

I have a couple of clients who have really struggled and so I have done walk and talk therapy.

BOOM.

Cue internal collapse.

I hid how I felt – mask on – and fortunately that was the end of the session but SHITTTTTT everything went up in smoke. I was totally distraught.

Like really?

Honestly?

How could she not see that I have been hanging on by a thread? It’s always the same shit.

I text my friend about it. She talked me down a bit but was able to understand why this news was such a shock to the young parts. She asked me if I felt able to let Anita know what had happened when she said that? Whether I trusted her enough to tell her how upset I was rather than spiral out of control.

It was hard to see a way through the painful feelings of feeling unseen, rejected, abandoned it just felt like ‘here’s another therapist that just doesn’t care and doesn’t get me’ but I also realised that I was responding from a really hurt place that Anita isn’t even responsible for. She’s just tapped into the mother wound and the hurt around what’s happened with Em.

I didn’t feel able to construct a new text to A. I was overwhelmed, sad, and tired. So I just copy and pasted my text to my friend and sent it to A. I was hurting but when I thought about it there was part of me that believed she would respond kindly and not just ignore me in the way Em would have:

I’m trying to side step an internal meltdown before it plunges into total collapse. So I’m sending you this … which is what I sent my friend when we got off the call. I’m drowning in the shame and embarrassment but actually if you don’t know then it doesn’t help:

Argh. Bloody therapy has just triggered a landmine 😩. I was talking about how I was planning to manage face to face working in September in my office and said that some students will likely stay online through choice but there are a few that absolutely need face to face work, and how transformational it was going back to face to face with boy. This was end of session and with a minute to go Anita tells me ‘yes, I agree, some of my clients need face to face work and there are a couple who have really struggled so I’ve done walk and talk therapy’

Like wtf?? 😭

How is it that I come across as a person that doesn’t need face to face even when I’ve said as much as I can about how much I’m struggling? Why, because I’m articulate and controlled and ‘together’ enough do people not hear my words when I say it’s felt bad and like I’m hanging by a thread? I’m never going to scream or meltdown or cry
or beg because that’s not how I am- especially after what happened with Em I’m
terrified of being seen as too demanding or needy.

I’m so upset that she didn’t even have me on the radar as ‘having that need’. I know you understand the stuff I wrote in my blog the other week about how hard it is for someone with disorganised attachment, childhood trauma and neglect, dissociation, parts that struggle with feelings abandonment and rejection to work online because all the usual cues are missing and the coregulation just doesn’t happen – I’ve said it enough times… I know I’m like a broken record.

You can guess exactly how that information feels to young parts- confirmation of the narrative ‘she hates me, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t really see me’ and all I want to do is run away now because I’m so over trying to teach people about me and my needs. I can’t be any more explicit than I am.

And yes I am hormonal 😳. But I just want to cry. It’s the same stuff playing out time and again – ‘she’s a good girl, seems fine’ and people never noticing that the walls are crumbling because the mask is glued to my face.

I just feel like a bomb has been dropped internally on the youngest most vulnerable parts… I get it’s an overreaction but it’s tapped right into that thing about not being seen, not mattering and being left to cope. And I totally get that there’s tonnes of evidence to the contrary but these little ones don’t understand – it’s been like an ongoing re-enactment of how it was when my mum was away … just hanging on til she came back. Only I don’t know when Anita will be back 😕

I wish I was a rager who could express what I am feeling rather than a quiet person that takes everything underground and inside. 😞 Maybe I should just give up. I’m clearly fucking rubbish at therapy.

I don’t have the resources or energy to deal with this right now.

I miss you.

——

That’s the rant.

And within half an hour there was a reply. Not a three day radio silence…or a complete lack of acknowledgement which is what I have come to expect from a therapist:

Thank you for your honesty. I am so so sorry for my complete blunder. I honestly have only done one walk and talk just once with a client that won’t work remotely at all not even over the phone. I have been working with them for years. This is no excuse and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about offering that to you. I think because we have been connecting on line. But I am more then happy to arrange one. I can not apologise enough. With regret, Anita

Then I saw I also had a missed call from her.

Damn.

By the time all this came through on my phone my period had arrived (!!!!) and I felt slightly less insane. I was still hurting a lot but I had got a little bit of my adult online and could see that whilst it feels enormous to the young parts who are so badly hurt it’s not really the end of the world. It just feels impossible when it’s like this. It’s evidence of my system at work – this is the work I need to do with A.

I responded:

It’s fine. I understand. I’m just tired and overwrought. It’s like an overflowing bath and I can’t work out how to turn taps off.

I thought that would be it. We’d talk later in the week and sort it out. I felt much better just that she had acknowledged that I was hurting and didn’t try and blame it on me or tell me I was overreacting, or that she’s just my therapist or any of that other gaslighting shit that used to happen with Em:

It’s not fine and what I have said is the truth but don’t know how to say it without it sounding like a lame excuse. Let’s sort out a time for a walk and talk. 💜

I sent her three GIFs that basically summarised my internal response from different parts and she replied:

Yes I understand all of those reactions and wish I had done things differently. Like in all relationships ours will have bumps because humans don’t always get it right. I believe it’s how we grow and own our mistakes that really count. Where trees fall foxgloves grow.

We’ve messaged back and forth quite a bit this week. Just short check ins, emojis, GIFs etc but it felt really connected and helpful – holding. Later in the week I sent her a link to one of my old blog posts about therapy being a bit like and emotional rollercoaster and she told me that when she read it she just wanted to give me a hug… which again made me feel like she really is there, gets it, and is committed to helping.

So you would think my session yesterday would have been a breeze after all the mini bits of repair and settling since Monday wouldn’t you? Well, sure. that’d make sense. Only no. That’s just not how I work! haha.

By Thursday night I had started to feel really ashamed and embarrassed at my reaction to finding out she’d seen another client face to face. Like proper internal cringeing. I started to panic that Anita would think I was too much like hard work, too needy, too mental…and would just think, ‘fuck this, it’s too much effort’ just like Em.

I really struggled to answer to video call yesterday. It must have rung for nearly a minute. And when I did pick up I felt myself freeze. Child parts were there and my words just weren’t. I told her I felt embarrassed. Anita quickly realised what was going on and worked really hard at trying to reassure me that my reaction made so much sense and that she was so sorry for hurting those vulnerable parts and how scary it is to them because they are trying to trust and then they get let down by her. 

A few weeks ago I drew an analogy between me and her dog, who is a rescue, and it seems to have really resonated with her. She said that she can really see how traumatised I am and how like the dog I am and how much care I need because of what I have experienced at the hands of others. I’ve explained that terribly!! haha.

Anita genuinely really cares. I know she does. I can feel it. She understands how painful this kind of thing is (with the walk) and did everything she could to make amends. I could feel myself slipping further into the young parts, the toddler part and even the baby. She talked to them a lot and I could feel them crying inside. I just really wanted a hug. I could feel tears pricking in my eyes but I shut them down…another part moved in, an older part. She noticed the change.

I was able to tell her that I felt like I was trying to protect myself – like a tortoise in its shell. I said that this kind of protection is also really disconnecting and not what I need and when it happens in the room that distancing feels shit, but actually online it’s really shit because not only am I locked away inside myself, she is also locked away in my phone and it’s so hard to connect and it feels horrid. I don’t think I’ve been as explicit as this before. i.e I have told her I am struggling but not actually how hard I am struggling with the constraints of online therapy. We have talked about how different it is and how hard it is not to have eye contact but I haven’t expressly said “I can’t reach you”.

I think it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for her alongside the events of the weeks and she asked me if I wanted to book in a walk.

…

…

…

What do you think I said?

Go on…I’ll give you a prize for the right answer!

Well, of course, that’s the moment when the petulant, angry teen came up and just said, “No”.

Like WTAF?! I make all that fucking fuss about her having a walk with a client who hasn’t had any therapy at all in 5 months and then I get what I want and I refuse it. You literally cannot make this shit up!

Anita didn’t push it. I think she could tell there was a lot of internal conflict going on. So she told me then that she is actively working with the guy that owns the therapy room that she works out of on Wednesdays in my city to see about how viable it is to go back to face to face work when she gets back from her holiday on the 7th September.

I usually see her at her home but I can understand why she might want to extend her working in the rented room for now. Tbh it’s a ten minute drive to that venue rather than the forty to her home. I am just not massively keen on the idea of a new place, it won’t feel so ‘homely’ (I’ve seen the pictures) or have her stuff in it but to be honest I need to not let those picky parts start splitting hairs. Being able to meet A in person in a room, after what will then be six months, is really what I need to focus on.

She says she won’t know what the plan is for a bit as it depends on lots of things like insurance etc and she also said that she doesn’t think that working in masks or visors is really appropriate to the kind of work we do because facial expressions are so important and particularly for clients with childhood trauma because it’s just like the still face experiment.

I am glad she is aware of this and is thinking carefully about things. I am not going to get my hopes up too much as there are so many factors that need working through, but for her to tell me that she is trying to get back to face to face was helpful and for her to ask me if I would want to come back…well internally I was doing a happy dance but externally I gave absolutely nothing away….

FFS!

The session was coming to the end and she asked me again to think about the walk before she goes on holiday at the end of next week and coming back to the room and let her know what I think.

After the session, I was scrolling on Facebook and a video came up of a challenge where you go and sit with your toddler whilst they’re watching their favourite show and film their reaction. They were lovely. All the kids stop what they are doing and kiss or cuddle their parent – and connect. It made me cry…because I know this was never my reality.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to see A for a walk, but equally was terrified that because I want it but there is only a week until she goes on holiday there would be a strong chance we wouldn’t be able to find a time. I sent this:

Thank you for being there and trying to be reassuring today. It’s so hard. I just saw this video https://www.facebook.com/199098633470668/posts/7821700421210413/?vh=e&d=w and it properly broke my heart because this is what it feels like inside – and even younger still – and yet there never was anyone there. There was never this kind of experience – no ‘I love you’ no holding, no attunement. I look at the connection and love in this video and there’s nowhere in my internal experience to hang it on and I just feel immense loss. Like I know that child is there inside, wanting to love and to be loved and instead is spiralling out of control in the dark, alone. The grief feels completely overwhelming.

I am beyond terrified of being rejected and abandoned for being too much, too needy, annoying. And It’s really huge because it’s happened recently (with Em) not just in my past. I really really do want to see you in person – for a walk, back in the room, whatever … but there’s also a part of me that doesn’t want to need or want that, or for you to know how hard it is. Also, I was wondering, can I send you something in the post before you go on holiday? 

She messaged me back and said that she knows that lots of therapists would say no to me sending something but to her that feels rejecting so I could send her something if I wanted so long as it wasn’t a bag of 💩😂!

I laughed and said that it definitely wasn’t a bag of 💩 and then told her I missed her. She sent me a hug and then asked me if I was able to get childcare anytime this week to have a walk. Anyway after a bit of back and forth we are booked in for a walk on Tuesday afternoon… I’ll let you know how we get on! The good news is that at least a part of me is excited!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreaming of ex-therapist … is a nightmare!

rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

I can’t bear the fact that even now, six months after Em terminated my therapy, I am so massively impacted by our ending. I mean, I am not surprised, what happened is a huge deal…but I am just so sick and tired of the pain and grief of it. I tie myself in knots trying to make sense of what’s happened and yet I can’t seem to.

I can’t let it go.

I can’t let her go.

I miss her so much.

I am angry, too. Angry that she did what she did. But not angry enough that if she gave me the chance to see her for a session that I would turn it down. My young parts are so attached, still, that I would walk through a fiery hell to see her. I feel depressed and embarrassed writing that. Like surely I have more self-respect than that? Surely I would tell her to go fuck herself… but I know I wouldn’t. The child parts of me who are in so much pain would do almost anything to see her…even though it would undoubtedly be horrific.

I suppose the good news is that I will never be afforded the opportunity to talk the ending through, to put it to rest, get any kind of reasonable closure because she’s slammed the door shut on me.

In her mind I no longer exist. I have been erased. But she is branded in mine.

And so, because I have no chance to repair this, or at least better understand it, I am left with it swirling in my head. Sometimes I can talk about it with Anita. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I feel so ashamed by how I feel that I avoid talking about it. And recently, when I had a really triggering dream the night before my session involving Em, I got online and despite wanting to talk to Anita about it I dissociated almost instantly because the pain is so massive. K says she can feel a lot of grief in my body.

It’s at times like these where online therapy really falls flat on its face. In the room I would have been able to tune into A, her breathing, make eye contact, and in the usual run of things (pre-COVID) have her sit close to me to help me come back into my window of tolerance and regulate. But no matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to feel safely held when I am in one room and she is in another 35 miles away. And it’s not her fault. It’s not mine, either. It’s just the nature of the beast. There are some parts of me and some wounds that really need contact…real contact.

Anyway, I was quiet, subdued, anxious when I got on the call with A but aside from telling her I felt like I was drowning in shame, there wasn’t much I could do. I couldn’t go there. Anita was good, she told me that she wished she could take my hand and pull me out of the shame and tried hard to make me feel safe but in my head I just had the dream on loop and I just couldn’t do it. I talked about stuff about my mum and delved into the mother wound stuff (which is the work), she was kind and reassuring and repeatedly told me that I had been let down by my caregivers and none of what has happened is my fault but, still, I couldn’t get close to the dream.

At the end of the session it was clear that I was not in a brilliant place, despite having pulled myself back from the brink, and A said that she wished she could stay with me longer. I wished that too. Ugh for the therapy hour!

The one huge bonus about therapy with A compared to Em (and to be fair there are many!) is the fact that I am allowed to contact her between sessions. She understands my need for connection and how I build trust and so I always feel safe knowing she’s there and I can reach out without repercussions or a telling off and a dreaded ‘boundary talk’. With Em it just felt like a perpetual rejection, ‘Don’t contact me. If you do I won’t read what you send…’ Thankfully it’s not like that with A.

After the session I decided to send Anita my dream in an email so she could at least see why I was so bothered and having difficulty and then maybe we could talk in our session on Wednesday. We had scheduled in mid-week sessions to see if that helps with ‘woeful Wednesday’ so it wasn’t all that long to wait.

This is the email:

Drowning In The Pit Of Shame – The Dream That’s Sent Things Into Freefall

It was snowing, dark, and I was driving in the car with my childhood best friend. She needed to get to her parents’ home for Christmas and I was getting a lift with her back to the same place but it was pointless really because I had nowhere to go but I would sooner have spent time with her on the journey than be outside in the snow alone.

Every time we tried to leave the city we hit with massive snowdrifts, feet deep blocking the road, and there was no way out. I could see that if we could just get about five metres of snow cleared we could get onto the A road out the city and would be on the road that was gritted…but we couldn’t. It was too deep.

We ended up turning back and painstakingingly following another treacherous, windy, back road – a single track lane – and the car was sliding all over the road. My friend is not a very competent driver and I spent a lot of the time coaching her through how to drive in snow conditions. In the end I took over and drove the car because she was so stressed and didn’t know where she was going.

It was pitch black and no one was around. We talked a lot about the shit show we experienced as teenagers and the horrors we were subjected to by our mums. It was cathartic but also tragic. It was hard to tell in the dream whether I was an adult or 17…

We finally reached the village that we needed to be in and when we got there, there was a power cut. Just fabulous! Everything was cold and dark. It felt like the place was deserted.

Then suddenly my friend was gone and I was alone. The snow was falling heavily and I wasn’t dressed appropriately for the conditions.

There was nowhere for me to go so I started walking aimlessly.

I found a caravan in a field, broke into it, tried to get warm but couldn’t. It was freezing, cold and damp. I was hungry but there was nothing to eat. I was tired but I couldn’t sleep. I was alone with my thoughts and as usual they strayed back to what has happened between Em and I. The loss. The devastation. The abandonment and rejection. The young parts of me were beside themselves with grief. The same questions on loop: ‘What is so wrong with me that made her cut me dead like that? I was so hidden and yet still that was too much. Why do I still care about this so much? Why am I so affected by it? Why can’t I let it go? Why didn’t she care?’

I have been so upset by the fact that she has specifically advertised herself as working with ‘attachment disorders’, ‘trauma’, ‘dissociation’ ‘eating disorders’, ‘self-harm’ ‘PTSD, ‘abuse’ etc etc etc but rather than feeling angry about it, it’s led me to think that the problem must lie with me. There’s something fundamentally wrong with me. Something unlikeable. Something disgusting. Something that makes me untouchable. Because if it’s not me then how can she say she can competently work with these issues – the issues that I have? She told me she wasn’t competent enough and didn’t have the training to deal with me and yet here she is suggesting the complete opposite on her page.

I feel betrayed but also completely worthless.

In the cold of the caravan I decided to set up a fake email account pretending to be a potential client and contact Em basically outlining all the issues I have, asking questions about her how she practises and seeing what she would come back with as potential therapist. In theory the response should have been ‘I am sorry, but I don’t have the competency to work with this level of complex trauma’ but of course, this is not what happened in the dream (and no doubt it wouldn’t happen in real life either). Instead she suggested an initial face to face meeting the next day.

I was nervous going to the appointment but the young parts of me were so happy to get to see her. The room was in a new building back in the city and I arrived wearing a disguise. She was friendly enough but detached – she had started peddling the Cambridge Weight Plan and I mentioned that it felt a bit off having weight loss merchandise in a room where you would be talking to people with eating disorders. She brushed the concern aside and said that lots of people need help losing weight and she clearly wouldn’t be pushing it on anorexic clients.

Then I asked her questions about how she sees the therapeutic relationship. How she works with trauma. What she does with between session contact. EVERY ANSWER was the complete opposite of my experience of her. At that point I removed my disguise and burst into convulsive tears. ‘Why couldn’t you do that for me?’ When she saw it was me, she was furious, telling me that she had made it clear she never wanted to see me again and how dare I trick her into seeing me?

I was beside myself sobbing on the floor. Rather than be angry and self-righteous about the situation I just fell further into despair. ‘I knew it was me. I knew you couldn’t stand me. And still I miss you. I really love you.’ It was painful.

She ignored me for several minutes and I pleaded with her to talk with me and try and understand what’s happened and where it’s all gone wrong. Eventually she invited me to sit on the sofa with her and I lay down on the sofa with my head on her lap and she held my hand. I cried and cried – it was absolute agony– it was like being two years old. Not an adult at all.

I basically begged her to see me again and she begrudgingly agreed – ‘I can see you sometimes on these days but only for this long etc…oh and my fee has trebled…take it or leave it’. It was horrific.

It was clear as day that absolutely nothing had changed, but the young parts who need so much holding were willing to accept anything just to be with her.

________

So that’s what has sent me over the edge… it’s grief but also so much shame. I feel embarrassed even thinking about talking to you about how I feel. It makes me feel sick. I don’t want you to think I am some kind of obsessive freak who can’t accept that a therapeutic relationship has ended. I don’t think you understand how big a deal this is, though…because most of us don’t really say how big our feelings are and how attached we get… because it’s horrendous to experience. It has absolutely rammed a poker into the mother wound and it feels unsurvivable. I don’t want to scare you away either – because I know it’s intense. I would be running for the hills.

Anyway, I understand the different layers in the dream and I am not at all surprised that my brain served up this big shit pile to me in my sleep! But ugh.

Anita quickly responded to my email in the afternoon:

RB,

I hope you believe me when I say I’m not going to run to the hills and I do get it.

I know it’s going to be difficult for your vulnerable parts to trust and understandably so, as I said you have been so badly let down.

I was only talking in peer supervision to a colleague today about the deep attachment that happens in therapy and how powerful it can be to meet in that psychological depth of trauma but also how dangerous it can be if not handled with the love and care individuals deserve. 

That’s why I believe therapist like Em are so so dangerous. 

I really hope this helps.

Thinking of you,

A

Yes! It helped – a lot. Like honestly, it always staggers me how nice and warm her emails are after the crap that Em sent!…Kind Regards…code for ‘FUCK YOU AND FUCK OFF’.

I have to laugh or I cry…!

On the Wednesday session we talked a lot about it, not just the dream, but all the feelings I have around Em. There was one point close to the beginning where A asked me what it is about Em that makes it feel so hard to let go when she’s clearly treated me so appallingly. I felt a lump in my throat and my solar plexus go tight. Part of me wanted to run away, dissociate.

I never once in eight years managed to tell Em this in words, aloud in our sessions…I looked down into the camera and simply said, ‘I love her’.

‘You love her’, A reflected back. And I simply nodded. Yes…that’s how it is. Simple, really. I love her.

To acknowledge that properly was really freeing. I know I say it here a lot and to my close friends…but telling A felt important. I looked to see if there was any shock or disgust or anything negative, but of course there wasn’t. I was just met with an enormous amount of care and compassion as we talked about the young parts and how desperately sad it feels for them. Anita reiterated how normal it is to have these feelings in therapy. How the relationship is real and that it’s natural for love to develop in such a close and intimate relationship – on both sides.

I admitted that I wonder if I am just so love-starved that I will attach to anyone and inflate the situation in my head. The thing is, I knew that Em never really cared about me. She did her job, just about, but even at the end she couldn’t manage to exercise even professional care by ensuring a referral on and a safe handover to another professional. She left me high and dry. I so badly wanted for her to be warmer. I sat all those years ‘behaving myself’- hardly asking for anything, hoping that eventually I’d earn the care and love I so badly need. Only that’s a re-enactment of my childhood. It didn’t work with my mum who was biologically mine, so why on earth would I think it would work with Em?

This session was a few weeks ago so I don’t remember lots of the detail now, but I do remember the feelings. To be seen and accepted when I express these deeply painful- but also what so often feel like shameful- feelings was amazing…and connecting.

It is such a pity that expressing love in the therapeutic relationship has been such a taboo. Like we are somehow broken, or weird, or pathetic for having loving feelings. Every time Em said, ‘I’m just your therapist’ when I told her how I felt really missed the point. Clients are not stupid. We know the limitations of the relationship. I, for one, never wanted Em to be my friend or my mother, I just wanted a close, genuine relationship with her as my therapist, as someone who could help me with my mother wound. I’m not deluded. She was my therapist –  I was never going to turn up on her doorstep outside session or be anything other than her client. But clearly I scared the life out of her.

What I have learnt in the last six months with Anita is that I can bring all of myself – all my parts to therapy. I can lose my shit, overreact, be needy and she is steady and there. Always. It’s bizarre. I’m not used to it. I don’t feel like I need to earn her care…she just cares. I really feel it….when I am not losing my shit over finding out that she’s seen another client for a walk!! But I’ll come to that next post!

Cliff-hanger much?!

 

 

 

 

 

Reunited (at last!): Relief and Release

rubberbandsandchewinggum36 Comments

I am really aware that have been like a broken record for the last few months here, moaning on about how hard I have found lockdown without any face-to-face therapy and having to conduct my therapeutic relationships online. It’s sad really, that the difference between things in my life feeling manageable – or not – essentially boils down to having contact with a couple of therapists for a few hours each week in person. I guess though, that is the transformative power of therapy, it doesn’t take a lot of time, in the big scheme of things, to help to start shifting the balance in the right direction and helping the various traumatised parts feel a little more stable.

There’s really no good time for a global pandemic to hit (!) but I could cry about how poorly timed this one has been for me and my sense of emotional wellbeing. I mean, the hell that was December to February with Em was really something else, it floored my youngest parts. In fact, I still can’t really express how awful that ending with Em was and how massively impacted I have been by it. But at least I had both Anita and K in my corner helping to drag me through the worst of it. My sessions in February and March were absolute life savers, like strategically placed islands in the stream allowing me to catch my breath before being once more subject to the swirling currents of my feelings ‘outside the room’.

And then lockdown hit and all of a sudden everything stopped. Well, I mean face-to-face therapies. Anita and I started working online and K and I have been in pretty much daily contact throughout on WhatsApp…but it’s not the same [screech in whiny voice!]. At the beginning of lockdown, I could just about satisfy myself with the idea that some contact/therapy was better than none given the fact that it felt as if we were heading into the apocalypse. But, actually, as time has gone on, I’ve struggled more and more with feeling physically isolated, alone, and abandoned. Adult me gets that I have not been ‘left’ and am not ‘untouchable’…but the nature of lockdown has wreaked havoc with the young parts.

As I say, lockdown itself has been fine. I have largely enjoyed being at home, working from home, having a slightly slower pace of life, in a lot of ways not much changed but I have really missed going to see A and K. Especially K. I have really missed the holding that comes from doing the body work in craniosacral therapy. K seems to see me even when I am in hiding. Or maybe that should be ‘feel’ me? So, the longer lockdown has gone on the harder it has been for me to hold the really vulnerable, traumatised parts of myself because usually I get help with that.

Don’t get me wrong, I have given it a really good go (trying to self-care/meet the need of the young parts) but my god it’s been exhausting and pretty useless because when my adult self is AWOL and I am stuck in distressed ‘baby’ there’s nothing to be done. That baby has no idea how to soothe itself. All it knows is that everything is wrong and it is scary spiralling through the black abyss.

So, it’s felt like the level of need/distress has been steadily ramping up week on week until recently I felt as though those young parts were dying to be held. It felt like a whole-body ache…or as my friend described it the other day, like a ‘hunger. It sounds dramatic. I know it does. But she’s right, it’s like the biggest hunger or rather like being slowly starved to death.

Anyway, somehow or other I have got through it but I have felt increasingly like my rope is unravelling and I’m hanging on by the final frayed thread.

My nervous system has been in meltdown!

Honestly, I wish just for a day I could be without this stuff. To not carry this unbelievable weight would just be so freeing!

The last few weeks have felt especially tough. The screaming distress of the child parts has felt almost impossible to manage. Thinking about it, I am not surprised that it has been the last two weeks where the Inner Critic has moved in from the wings and got a bit more vocal. It’s a last resort. Someone needs to get things in order! Only, I am so aware now that following through on the demands of the Critic doesn’t do me any good in the long run. It thinks it’s protective – and sure it helps numb that young agony for a bit – but the thing I have learnt is that I can’t outrun it (that feeling that I am going to be annihilated if I feel and face pain of the youngest parts of me) forever, because when I inevitably crash and burn after a period of self-attack – it’s always there waiting, it never goes away. Ugh.

Sooooooooo you can imagine my absolute delight when a couple of weeks ago K said she was going to be slowly getting back to working face-to-face. Like I did a full on internal happy dance…until I realised that I have two children and a wife that works full time hours and it’s the summer holidays! In the usual run of things, term time, pre-Covid I’d see K on a Thursday at hers…but getting out anywhere alone in working hours is just not on the cards at the moment. Honestly, the realisation that I am not free until September was like a sucker punch. I could have cried.

I explained that I would absolutely love to see K but that I couldn’t because of the children. But you know. The story doesn’t end there. Because K is amazing – that’s no secret – she offered to come to mine to do a session. OMG! My kids have been really good at entertaining themselves when I have had my online tutoring sessions and therapy with so I knew they’d be ok gluing themselves to the TV for a little while.

Because we’ve kept in touch throughout lockdown K knew how it’s been for me, how big of a struggle it’s felt, and has been bombarded with various hug gifs and heart emojis over the last few months. Like it’s basically been four months of ‘I miss you’ and ‘I need a hug’. Bless her she really puts up with a lot from me! To know that I would see her soon, and get a proper hug, not a virtual one was amazing.

So finally, it got to Thursday and yay yay yay! I can’t even put into words how lovely it was to see K in person after so long…it’s only been four months but to the younger parts it’s felt like a lifetime! And to be able to have a hug the minute I saw her was just the best. I mean if there was a scale of hug 0-10 she gives 10s.

We sat outside on my deck, had a cup of tea and a chat and it was just so nice to feel normal-ish again and catch up a bit…and to be able to talk about the stuff that I can’t say to everyday people: like the struggle I’ve been having with online therapy, the disconnect, and other stuff that is sandwiched with shame.

To be back on the couch was brilliant. Almost immediately I could feel my system responding to K. I can’t really explain the sensation of craniosacral therapy on the body because lots of different things happen over the course of a session – but initially, to me, it felt like everything that had been blocked in my system started to flow again. When things start to feel more in tune it feels almost like a tide is running through my system – like a natural rhythm is restored. I know that sounds properly heebie-jeebie but it’s true!

Another thing that happens is a deep sense of coming back into the body, this often takes a good while to happen – especially if I have been hurtling around out in space. It feels a bit like being in an elevator and slowly coming down, down, down, until you land, grounded. I have been so ‘out of my body’ lately that to feel embodied again is amazing but also fucking heavy! Like oh my god I had no idea how exhausted I was! And the hangover from it on Friday was so big that I couldn’t really do anything!

And all that is amazing… but what I didn’t anticipate (you’d think I would know myself by now) was that parts of me were still defended and protected. There’s still this massive hangover from Em and all the stuff with my mum that prevents me from saying exactly what’s going on – but it’s not surprising when what comes up is so overwhelming and the need is so huge. Although, as I said, K seems to understand without me saying anything.

At the beginning on the session she had said that the session was for all the parts of me, however vulnerable, and especially the baby who had been essentially stuck in an incubator (which is a big trauma – 3 days in an incubator when I was born and no contact with my mum) for the last four months…so I guess she must have understood what was going on – to a degree.

Anyway, it was all going well, my body was doing its thing – coming back into itself- when K gently put her hand on my chest – and boom – fuck me it was like all the stuff I have been tightly holding onto for…well…a long time…not just lockdown came up and out. Jesus. There was no gentle tuning into it, or slow bubbling up – it was like a defibrillator shock into feelings that I generally can’t connect to, especially in the presence of someone else. Actually, the only person I get close to expressing these feelings with is K.

I don’t know how it happens, or why, or what gets unblocked but it’s sooooo powerful. All of a sudden though, I felt about two years old, vulnerable, exposed, and just wanted to roll onto my side and cuddle into K and be rocked. It was so young. Ugh. It’s fucking mortifying. Like seriously, the shame around this stuff is just too much to bear sometimes. It’s not lost on me that I am a 37-year-old woman with two children of my own … but sometimes I have a hard job remembering that when this stuff comes up because those young parts take over and it takes an almighty effort from the critic to override that stuff…which is where the shame and self-loathing come in!

Anyway, I have enough of a filter to not do that (thank god!) but it’s so hard then navigating these intense feelings. I’ve been in this place enough times with Em – feeling young and then being faced with the distance and being immersed in the shame and it being so overwhelming that I end up creeping off into dissociation. The positive with a body-based therapy is that there is at least some touch – some contact – and so whilst in the past I might be flooded with that overwhelming need to be held and Em would be half a world away in her chair at least K is actually right there, still.

The young parts settled a little bit as the session went on but, as K reached my head there was part of me that really just wanted to hold her hand. FFS! It feels really embarrassing. But I think it is a bit like what I was saying earlier – it feels like I have been starved of this for the longest time and now I realise just how bloody hungry I am. And you know that thing that happens in sessions when you are mentally aware of the time ticking away? Like sand slipping through your fingers? Well, I know that it’s really common for my younger parts to get panicked – like the anticipation of it all being over and being back on my own makes those parts want to cling on. It’s as though their life depends on it.

OH THE SHAME!!!

The session was so nice (aside from my inner gymnastics). I think the other thing I realised as time was ticking by is that I need to stop fighting whatever it is that’s going on inside because all the while I am trying to keep everyone in check I am missing out on the level of connection I actually need. The shame keeps me isolated. I am certain K could handle me saying, ‘I feel really young right now and I just want to hug you’ like it’s fine…isn’t it?…it’s just feelings. But ugh… I wish I wasn’t so terrified of being rejected or abandoned or left. I wish that what has happened with Em hadn’t have made me even more cautious and guarded. It feels like such an almighty ask of myself to risk those parts coming forward again. I literally cannot bear the same thing happening again and being hurt.

What I have to remember, though is that both K and A are NOT Em…they have the power to hurt me like she did but it doesn’t mean they will.

At the end I said goodbye to K we had another hug and I told her, ‘I’ve really missed you’…it’s so much easier to say that when you can’t be seen and are being held…although there was a part of me that didn’t want to let that out at all! To a ‘normal’ person that would be a pretty simple thing to say wouldn’t it? Like isn’t it normal to say things like, ‘I am so happy to see you’ or ‘I’ve missed you’ or ‘I love you’…but anything like that just feels like I’m some kind of creep. Like it would make the other person feel uncomfortable. That it’s too much. Expressing any kind of emotion – good or bad – is really hard for me and increasingly so since Em’s ‘tick’ comment. I never want to be thought of that way…although clearly, internally, it has stuck.

I need face-to-face therapy! …

rubberbandsandchewinggum38 Comments

“It’s like you’ve spent your whole life being told and believing that something is orange and here I am trying to convince you that it’s actually purple…what happened to you was not your fault RB. You were failed time and again by your caregivers. I know after what’s happened with Em that it’s going to even harder for you to trust me when I say this but your young parts have done absolutely nothing wrong. You are not too much. I am not going anywhere.”

That was the end of one of my sessions with A this last week…of which there were three! Eek.

I have lost track a bit of what’s happened since my last post, my chronology is out but that’s what lockdown has done to me – it’s just days and days and days and more endless days of the same stuff punctuated by staring at my therapist via a screen and wishing we were in person in the room!

To be fair, it’s not that bad. My day-to-day adult life is ticking along just fine. I have finished the bulk of my teaching for the summer (just going to do two sessions a week on a Monday) and we’ve had a pretty good few weeks in the nice weather as a family just chilling in the garden.

As usual, though, it’s not the ‘here and now’ that’s the problem and often what happens when my life slows down a bit is that it creates space for the old stuff, the trauma, to take centre stage. I think part of the reason stuff is coming up it is that I feel a lot closer to Anita since the session where we spoke about how massively impacted I had been by her not acknowledging some of my messages. Since then she has replied to everything I have sent – emojis are great for my young parts and a simple ‘lovely 😊’ is really enough to start to trust in the connection which has meant I have been braver in coming forward about some of the bigger things because I feel like she is there and safe.

I am so glad at A was able to listen to what I was feeling in that session, could take it all on board, and has committed to helping me in a way that works. It was so easy in the end. It’s such a contrast to how things were with Em. I feel so sad when I think about how there was never any collaboration or trying meet each other half way on things in that therapy. Everything I asked for was met with a ‘no’. And when I look back, I should have given up when even three dots midweek in a text was too much for her.

Anyway, back to me and A. I have had lots of dreams about her lately, pushing me away in various ways and have really struggled with sleep. The other day I was dithering at the beginning of the session, because you know, a bad dream makes it all feel unsafe!! A asked me how I had been sleeping. I told her ‘really badly’. And she asked me if I’d had any more dreams. It reminded me that last time I spoke about her rejecting me in a dream she had made it clear that in real life there is no way she’d respond to me or abandon me in the way she did in the dream and it was enough for me to tell her about the next one…and again she could quickly put my mind at rest which allowed us to dig into what was coming up for me in my dreams. Usual stuff…all traceable back to the motherwound!

The sessions have been good – so far as Skype goes (which is not the same as face-to-face). The only problem, of course, is that when you are nose deep ferreting through the shit together in session, it can feel like you are drowning when you are back out on your own!…hence the midweek 30 minute check in sessions over the last couple of weeks.

I woke up feeling particularly rubbish a couple of weeks ago on Wednesday – ‘Woeful Wednesday’. Bad dreams. Feeling very unsettled the moment I woke up. Trapped in that young place where there are no words and you need holding and containment but there is none. I outdid myself and sent a super cringey message with a gif:

Woeful Wednesday again. I just wish I knew why it is such a consistently terrible day x

She responded really warmly and asked me if I wanted a half hour session later that day. I absolutely did and it made a huge difference to the parts that were wobbling. Anita suggested that whilst we aren’t working face-to-face (how much longer?????)  that we could experiment with having a half hour session on a Wednesday and see how that helps. It makes sense so I agreed and that’s what we’ve been doing.

I resent the fact, though, that a lot of why I feel so destabilised is lack of face-to-face contact and so I am paying a fortune every week to try and maintain some sense of connection and that I just don’t need that when there’s face-to-face. It feels like I am haemorrhaging cash to get a 5/10 connection.

I am really grateful that she is trying to accommodate me and ease things as much as possible. The session itself on Wednesday might not allow for a lot of work to get done but it seems to make the Friday session quicker to drop into and it lets the young parts see that she is still there. The object constancy stuff is being worked on by doing this – and given the struggles I am having about feeling abandoned and rejected due to the limitations of Skype, more consistent contact has been good. It’s still not as good as face-to-face though.

I’ve felt increasingly like I am reaching the end of my rope so far as online therapy goes. I mean we have been doing some good work. Or, at least, she is really getting to see the map now.

I’ve told her a lot of stuff, the trust has really built and on Monday this week I dived into the really concealed stuff around my eating disorder and how difficult exercise can be because of the tendency to use it as a method of self-harm. I’ve been really open about how hurt I feel by not being ‘loved enough’ – it stung a lot when she referred to me having ‘an empty love bucket’! and we have explored a lot of early stuff…but I just know I need to be face-to-face. I can’t really connect with the feelings because I don’t feel safe to do it when I am on my own…through a screen.

Anita said this too, she is really clear that what’s happening for me is coming from a pre-verbal place and that the feelings that are needing to be felt and processed need to be held and expressed in safety so they can’t come out like this because my protective parts don’t want to be left – they need proximity and to coregulate with a safe person. She sees it. She hears me when I say how disconnected I feel. How I miss eye contact and just ‘feeling’ the energy in the room and yet still we have not had a conversation about when we might be able to resume working together in person.

I looked at the COVID stats online yesterday for the South West – and there have been no deaths recorded in nearly 4 weeks here. There have been 32 new cases for the whole of Devon and Cornwall over the last seven days. The population of this area is roughly 1.7 million people. To me 32:1,700000 or 1:53,125 doesn’t seem like the biggest terror factor. I get that there is a risk. I get why we need to wear masks in shops etc. I have no desire to go to the high street or the local Wetherspoons…but what I don’t understand is how it is ‘safe’ enough to go to places with huge groups of strangers mixing together under the influence of alcohol and yet I can’t go sit in a therapy room 1:1 with my therapist, with the window open, and sitting 2 metres apart – (guidance is 1m+).

I wish that people understood that for some of us with these particular injuries – CPTSD – that a protracted period of feeling isolated and distanced from our ‘attachment figure’ is really fucking hard and detrimental to our metal and physical wellbeing. Like the first month of it was ugh but some therapy was better than nothing…and yet as time has gone on, it’s got harder and harder to hold what’s inside. It’s exhausting trying to keep it all together and to be honest my rubber bands and chewing gum are feeling the strain.

I think, too, as society has opened up it’s got more difficult for my young parts to understand why I still can’t see Anita. Like why can I go and get my hair cut which requires close physical proximity…or like I say, how can I go rub shoulders with strangers in a bar (if I wanted to) and yet not get support with my mental health for trauma? Like my roots can wait but my child parts that are falling apart and need contact…they really can’t hang on indefinitely.

I feel frustrated.

Like why she hasn’t even mentioned what her plans for the future might be?….like are we talking the Autumn, Winter, 2021?? The unknown is really hard. And whilst the idea of months and months more of this feels impossible I would sooner know what I am actually dealing with.

Anyway… that’s that! I didn’t expect to descend into this rant!! Whoops! Maybe I could get myself a HAZMAT suit?

 

Navigating Our First Rupture…

rubberbandsandchewinggum29 Comments

I made it through last weekend a little haphazardly and as it got to Monday, and almost time for my session, I felt anxious. I had every intention of telling Anita that her not replying to some of my recent (vulnerable) texts had unsettled me in a big way. I mean surely the evidence was there that she is safe enough to express that with? She may not have replied to me but we had talked in sessions about what I had said, more or less, and when I had reached out in the middle of the week and asked for a check-in she’d accommodated that. If I don’t tell her what’s going on how is she meant to know…and how can we sort it out?

I took a deep breath and waited for Anita’s call to come in, 10:00…10:01…10:02…10:03… wtf? I started to feel pissed off, angry, forgotten about…abandoned…rejected…and then I closed down. I know this is not all about Anita, that everything she does is also filtered through the lens of how Em behaved, but I nose-dived really quickly, ‘She’s the same as Em. She doesn’t really care. You’re a fucking moron for hoping that this time things would be different because the problem is you…not them…’

So with the Critic ranting in my head and my body feeling I almost just left it, ‘Sod her. I don’t even care anyway…’

Only of course I do care.

Having stared at my home screen for the last four minutes I opened up my Whatsapp and saw that I had a missed called from A at 10:01. My phone hadn’t rung or notified me of the call.

Really?

For fuck’s sake! I returned the call and A picked up. I told her my phone had glitched and she said she was glad to see me and was worried something might have happened. You’d think that might have been enough for me to settle down, connect, and talk but of course it isn’t that easy. In the intervening four minutes between expecting the call and realising I had missed the call I had run the attachment gauntlet and my body was in flight mode.

I wish I had have been brave enough to say, ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me and I feel panicked’ but of course because I was hanging on to all the worry about the last two weeks and her not acknowledging those few texts it felt impossible. I was already armoured up and so I did the thing… I talked BUT NOT ABOUT WHAT WAS REALLY BOTHERING ME. I spoke about work, my daughter’s return to school, and you guessed it… COVID!

Give me fucking strength!!

I’m not saying that what I spoke about isn’t a concern or wasn’t helpful it’s just on my list of ‘what’s bothering me’ those things probably come about 15 places down. Like even if I couldn’t tell her about the fear surrounding being rejected or her seeming to have backed away, maybe I could have talked about the fact I was upset about the anniversary of my dad dying which was happening the next day having touched on it in our Friday session, or told her about the fact that I had looked at Em’s website over the weekend – you know how I like to self-harm – and had seen that she’s updated her page to specifically list the issues she deals with. There are tonnes but imagine my horror when she lists: attachment disorders, dissociation, eating disorders, and trauma…

I wanted to puke.

I knew the, ‘I have reached the limit of my competency’ and I do not have ‘the relevant skills or training’…was utter fucking bullshit when she said it. It’s like the therapist’s get out of jail free card. How can you argue with that? It’d be like a student asking me to teach them German – it just wouldn’t be possible. They’d have to seek support elsewhere. But to see that she is advertising her services in these areas tells me that she has learned absolutely nothing from what has happened between us. That she takes zero responsibility for her part in it.

To think that she genuinely thinks she has the skills to treat people with these issues is absolutely beyond words. I am upset. I am hurt. But I am absolutely terrified that she’ll do the same to someone else. Perhaps someone else who doesn’t have quite as much resilience as I have. And it might sound dramatic but it’s not beyond the range of possibility that someone might really hurt themselves facing the situation I did.

If it weren’t for my kids and the fact that I quickly found Anita just as things began to unravel (tick gate!) I think there would have been a strong possibility that I may have hurt myself…or worse. Because annihilating a person’s young parts when they have been exposed and vulnerable is just about the worst thing that can happen for people with attachment problems.

Everything went wrong when we were kids, we learnt to protect ourselves, often using maladaptive coping mechanisms that hurt us further, and in many cases the damage that was done to us as kids led to us developing problematic relational patterns…this all causes us problems in later life and that’s how we end up in therapy depressed, empty, anxious, hurting…

We are encouraged to try again at letting people in, trusting some with the most vulnerable parts of ourselves… and it took years for me to let Em see what I was struggling with, how badly hurt I was, and when she saw the full extent of the need and pain, she abandoned me…only this time it feels worse because unlike my mother, she’s also rejected my adult self, too, so I feel utterly heartbroken.

But no. I didn’t bring ANY OF THAT to the session…because people refusing to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces is clearly of greater concern for me! Jeez!

Anyway, the session ended it was fine, but not fine you know? I doubt Anita even knew I was keeping her at arm’s length. I felt so pissed off with myself afterwards, though. I convinced myself that she was fed up with me, disinterested in me, that I was wasting my time. And yet, there was still a part that wanted to connect.

On Tuesday I had a good day with work, back to face to face, but by the evening the grief around my dad loomed large. I had told Anita that I was really sad that this year I would not be able to go to the beach and ‘connect with my dad’ like I usually do, to mark the anniversary. I mean I know technically we are allowed to travel wherever we like but I don’t think that a trip out of county is essential right now.

On Tuesday evening I sent Anita some pictures I took from my trip last year with the caption ‘If Only…’

img_8103img_8079img_8101

And sure enough she did not reply.

And that is when my system went into full scale meltdown. Usually, before the message when I let her in, she would at least send an emoji and now nothing.

I had bad dreams all week. One where I was watching Anita with someone (aspects of me) at an outdoor café. As I watched I could tell that something wasn’t right. It looked fine on the surface but I just knew it wasn’t as it appeared. As she got up to leave, she handed me a rolled-up piece of paper that looked like a receipt and on it written in pencil were the words, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t work with you’.

Then I woke up on Thursday morning having had a dream about being on a paddle board with both my kids in a harbour (where I used to live). The paddle board had a puncture and was rapidly deflating. Neither of my kids (in the dream) were competent swimmers and I knew I couldn’t save both of them. I noticed Anita was on the harbour wall. I called for help and she turned and walked away.

I know they’re both dreams. Not reality. That these are my fears coming out. But it’s horrid because I ignored my dreams about Em and look what happened. What happens if my dreams are trying to tell me something again?

I felt so triggered and upset that I sent Anita a message to cancel the session on Friday. This is so unlike me. I never cancel sessions…ok so I cancelled that one with Em just before Christmas but never before! So I sent this:

Can we have a break tomorrow and talk on Monday instead? I feel really unsettled, disconnected, and that things aren’t ok/safe/something has changed between us. Bad dreams aren’t helping. Maybe it’ll feel less bad after the weekend. July is always hard.

I wasn’t sure what she would come back with but I wasn’t really expecting this:

Of course, that’s no problem.

I mean sure, I asked to not do the session but I explained why and for me to be saying I am feeling shit and unsafe in the relationship I basically did not need her to agree that it was fine to ignore that for another few days. The child parts felt so abandoned. I needed Anita to see past my defences and reach through to the little ones and she didn’t. I left it a few hours and felt really unseen and disappointed.

I am good at catastrophising and was really seriously thinking that this was it…it wasn’t going to work out – she just doesn’t get it. To be fair I also need make it clear that I was massively hormonal and I am never at my most rational when in the throes on PMS!

A few hours later I replied:

It doesn’t feel like no problem ☹

And then this came in:

No, I can hear that but not sure how to try and reassure you in a text. My guess is the closer we get the more your defences will try to sabotage the relationship to try and keep you safe. It’s a system that works as in it keeps you guarded but it also isolates you. I can hear July is a triggering month so maybe letting your defences step in for a few days is what you need and gives your defences the respect they deserve for trying to keep you safe. So try not to be too hard on yourself and try to give yourself the empathy you deserve.

Ugh. Yes. But. No.

Absolutely, the closer we get the more spooked parts will feel because the fear of loss and rejection becomes more acute but there’s more to it than that … and telling me not to be too hard on myself when I am depriving myself of connection feels like we’re letting the protector win when actually sometimes she needs to be shown that we’re ok and that it’s safe. But that message was enough for me to see that actually A is not trying to ignore me or disconnect…I don’t think… and so I asked if we could still have our session, feeling like a bloody dickhead!:

I hate feeling like this. And yes, you’re right. But I don’t want to feel triggered and then run scared from people because it is isolating. It’s that thing about leaving before I get left. I was hypervigilant before January but now it’s off the chart ☹ . I’m sorry. Is it too late to change my mind about tomorrow?

And of course, this is Anita we are talking about and she came back:

You really don’t need to say sorry and tomorrow at 10am is absolutely fine 😊

And so that was that. Fun times.

When it came to the session on Friday, I felt a bit nervous. I knew I had to tell her what was really going on if I was going to really sort it out. So we started and I said I was a bit embarrassed that I had made such a fuss and actually still ended up in the session…what a 24 hours! She was really warm and understanding. I asked her outright, ‘has something changed?’ and she was adamant from her side that no, nothing had changed, or yes, something had changed, but positively, she said she felt like we are getting closer.

I smiled.

Good. It’s not just me moving towards her then and her feeling repulsed and backing away.

She said that I had mentioned some bad dreams and asked me if I would tell her about them. So, I started with the one about the café and she said that sounded really hard and that she wanted to reassure me that she really has no intention of leaving and that I am not too much for her. She said she understood that might be hard to take on board, or believe, because Em will have said the same thing and then left (the warmth that she exuded as she said it is like nothing Em ever expressed in all the time I worked with her). It was easy to believe what she was saying because it felt real and genuine.

I told her about the second dream and she was really moved and replied that she could see how hard that was for me. Two dreams on the bounce where she’d abandoned me. She could understand my concern, what if I allowed myself to get into the water and it got emotionally overwhelming could I be sure that she wouldn’t let me drown, would she reach out and save me? And the answer to that was an emphatic ‘yes!’. We are in this together and she has absolutely no intention of letting me or my child parts drown.

I can’t tell you how much my body relaxed when she said that. I have never experienced any real reassurance in the relationship with Em. I’ve always been left second guessing, hoping for the best but fearing the worst…and then frequently hearing the worst. Anita isn’t like that. It’s so unbelievably refreshing. Healing.

She said that my protector is really strong and good at her job. I agreed but said, ‘the thing is Anita, I need you to be stronger than she is. I need to you to be able to meet her and diffuse her or at least side step her to get to the young ones because that will make her stand down.’ She repeated the idea she had said in the text about giving the protector space and respect. I said, ‘no’. ‘No?’ she wondered. ‘No. Because if we let her have free reign then the little ones lose out again, they remain isolated and unseen, and they’re the only reason she’s there in the first place’.

Anita asked me to explain further. I said, ‘my system works in a particular way. It’s always the same. If the young parts reach out and are vulnerable but aren’t met they are left in a whole world of pain, it’s awful. So in order for me to function, first the teen steps in with her bubbling rage which is externalised, and then if she can’t get a handle on it all,  the critic steps up and starts attacking me. The teen part is like a really angry big sister. When the young ones are abandoned, she loses her shit. There is absolutely nothing she won’t do to protect them from another unsafe adult hurting them. She’ll cut all ties before things get worse. She struggles to trust anyway but if the young ones are hurting it’s like all hell breaks loose.’

Anita really seemed to get it and said, ‘so what you need then, is for me to see the young parts and help them and the teen will step down a bit?’.

Bingo.

I think at this point she thought that the teen was having a meltdown because of the dreams. It felt like we were moving in the right direction but I still didn’t quite feel like I could tell her that I had been so upset about the texts. It felt stupid. Being face to face – or screen to screen – or whatever I could see that Anita was not trying to abandon me at all. I guess, though, there was a little bit of me that was thinking, ‘she only cares in the paid for time, outside that I don’t matter’… you know all the great stuff!

So instead I decided to tell her something else that I felt shame about but not quite as much shame as I did about overreacting to the texts… I decided to tell her that I had looked online at Em’s website earlier in the week. I waited for it…a raised eyebrow… look of disgust…an uncomfortable shuffle in her chair. Of course, none of those things happened. Just a look of care and understanding as though it were the most natural thing in the world that I’d be searching my ex-therapists website after terminating five months ago!

I expressed how upset I felt knowing that she had learnt nothing, took no responsibility, and basically that left me in no doubt that she absolutely thinks I was the problem. Anita empathised. I said I was angry. She asked me what I wanted to do with my anger and I said that I didn’t know right now, but that I was certain that I didn’t want to turn it in on myself…it’s not always possible but if I do that then she’s really won. Anita agreed and said she was glad that even though it was painful that I wasn’t abusing myself as well.

Anyway, we spoke about that and then I built up a bit more confidence…and asked again, ‘Are you absolutely sure that we are ok and that nothing has changed?’ She replied again ‘I’m sure’. I sat there quiet. ‘In the last few weeks you’ve taken steps closer to me’ she looked thoughtful for a second ‘and I really feel like we are getting closer… Do you think I have stepped back?’ I nodded. She told me that if I had felt that she is sorry but that absolutely had not been her intention. A little voice murmured, ‘but you’ve ignored me’. Anita looked shocked. ‘In session?’ she wondered. ‘No’ I whispered. I felt so small at that point and it was really clear to me that it was the young part that was talking to her. She was quiet for a moment. ‘Is this about texts?’ I nodded again. She thought for a few seconds and then started talking in a really open and vulnerable way,

‘I’m sorry if my text replies have felt not good enough or what you’ve needed. I think I told you before that I have really bad dyslexia. I almost couldn’t complete my training because of the written component of the course. I needed a lot of support from my supervisor and had to use voice technology to write my essays because I struggle so much with writing and typing. I could never offer email therapy for this reason. So, when I text I have to think really, really hard and the harder I try the less authentic it might feel because I lose myself in trying to get it right when I know I am likely to get it wrong. I’m sorry.’

Honestly, it was so heartfelt that I melted a bit inside. Like I really felt for her and was so pleased that she was able to be vulnerable with me. To have authentic communication modelled is really something. I hadn’t really thought about it from her side despite having been told in our first session together that she prefers to check in via calls rather than texts because she struggles with dyslexia and finds calls more connecting. I really heard it now, and realised that it probably feels especially pressured knowing I am an English teacher and will notice any errors in what she sends.

I suppose I tend to communicate in writing because it’s what I find easier but it’s also that I have not been allowed calls or any outside contact with Em and writing is all I had – even though I really shouldn’t text or email! In all the years we worked together we only had one phone check in…and it was a game changer for me…and yet the next time I walked into the room she raised the drawbridge and told me she’d stepped outside her role as a therapist by doing it. It was devastating.

I said to Anita that I really understood that, but actually I really didn’t have a problem with her texts, that her replies up until two weeks ago have been phenomenal, so holding, so attuned, and exactly what I had needed. I said that she had felt so connected, even when she might just reply with a smiley face emoji. I told her that two weeks ago, when I told her that my young parts missed her she stopped responding and since then every time I have reached out with something vulnerable she’s made no reply at all and it’s made me worry that something is wrong, that I am too much, and that she is backing away.

If I had said any of this to Em she would have thrown it back at me, telling me how I am just being sensitive and that the feelings are coming from the past and that it’s not how it is and that we need to keep communication inside the room and that this is her boundary. She could never step towards me in a rupture and instead left me hanging having to work through it on my own.

What did Anita do?

She leant in towards the camera and gently said, ‘I am so so sorry for letting your young parts down, I really didn’t mean to. I am so glad you’ve been able to tell me this because now I can make sure I don’t do it again. I have been really busy at home the last couple of weeks and I am sorry if it’s come across as me not caring. It’s not that, at all. I have been aware of how you’ve moved towards me and I didn’t want to get it wrong with you or give you an inadequate response’.

I explained that I really don’t need long or complicated responses to my texts and that I really understand the feelings around being exposed and not feeling good enough due to the dyslexia. I said I am not judging and that she’s always felt really authentic to me. My young parts just need to know that she’s still there when I reach out. I told her again about how I really struggle with object constancy and so that it really is the young parts seeking reassurance and an emoji can be enough…but getting no reply at all sends me into panic.

I told her that I genuinely thought she was trying to find a way to tell me she wasn’t able to work with me which is what’s been coming up in my dreams and why I had backed away on Thursday. She said she understood that there felt like there was safety in leaving before I got left. I said having just talked in the way we have it seems like a massive reaction to three texts being left hanging especially when in the same block of time I’d reached out and she had made time for a check in. I said it’s just really hard coming from a place where texts, emails, and calls hadn’t been allowed. I said how I had been ignored for years and years and it felt like a narrative repeating.

She reiterated that she is not Em but acknowledged how badly Em had hurt me in various ways and understands how sensitive this is. I said how I had worried that she’d been to supervision or peer support and she’d been told that she shouldn’t work with me in this way, and that if she took away the outside contact I’d really struggle because it’s been so important to me. I think she was genuinely surprised by my mental gymnastics and assured me that it was all ok and that she knows what I need now. She reiterated that the way we can keep moving forward together is by talking and communicating this stuff even when it’s tough.

I haven’t really done that exchange any justice at all but what I can say is that it is probably the single most healing moment I have experienced in talk therapy in all the years I’ve been doing it. Being listened to, seen, understood, and accepted (even if I was being dramatic and over the top)  is so healing. And it is such a contrast to being ignored, blamed, or shamed for how I feel. To effectively repair a rupture rather than be left holding the pain and upset is amazing. To know I can express how I feel and that be met well is so much healthier than feeling like there is no choice but to move through a rupture and let it go as it’s better than risking losing everything. I mean the last time I tried to sort a rupture I got terminated…but I couldn’t allow my therapist to think it was ok to call me a tick, could I?!

Anyway, after the session I sent A a short text thanking her for being real, and open, and hearing me. And she replied by thanking me for my honesty and signed off with a hug emoji.

And, that, my friends is how it is done! This tick is doing therapy! x

Outside Session Contact…

rubberbandsandchewinggum28 Comments

Anita didn’t acknowledge or respond to the message I sent her onSunday. Part of me knew it was because she would want to talk about it properly, in real time, on Monday. This latest communication had a different quality to it than the texts I have sent before. I had made it clear that my child parts are attaching to her and it was the first time I have really spoken about how the young parts feel in our therapeutic relationship. It felt much more exposing than anything that’s gone before, even discussing the feelings about Em, due to the fact I was now being honest about my feelings for her. I mean sure, I was only telling her my seven-year-old self missed her but that’s big deal, because those young child parts of me are bruised and battered after what happened with Em.

The fact that Anita didn’t respond to my message when generally, if I have contacted her, she has replied and usually with something holding and understanding really shook me up. Oh jeez. I wasn’t expecting the level of internal reaction I felt but it was really something! It surprised me just how intense the feelings were. I mean I’m more than familiar with how it feels when parts of me go into a blind panic but I just hadn’t thought it would happen with A just yet. It was noisy inside on Sunday evening, that’s for sure!
I couldn’t get away from the repetitive questions:

What if now that I have shown her a little of how I feel about her, she’s shitting her pants and feeling like she’s made a mistake in agreeing to work with me?

What if now that the attachment stuff is kicking in she’s started to feel negatively towards me and is starting to understand why Em acted in the way that she did?

What if she regrets communicating with me outside session before now and is about to raise the draw bridge and leave me stranded?

What if I am a tick?

It’s such an impossible bind when my brain starts down this path because the rational side of me can’t seem to do anything about the panicked feelings that start up and then quickly escalate into something completely unmanageable. By the evening, I was really stressed out. I felt physically sick. Part of me wanted to cancel the session and leave therapy with Anita before I got left again. Another part was genuinely terrified that she had had enough of me, and if I dialled into the session on Monday I’d get one of those god awful boundary talks that used to happen on the rare occasion that I would reach out to Em. Ugh.

I decided not to do anything drastic. I certainly was not going to fire off any messages – either seeking reassurance or raging because I felt abandoned. Instead, took myself to bed early, read a bit, did a meditation, but despite all that still struggled to sleep. When I did manage to sleep, I had nightmares about being surrounded by snakes (I hate snakes) and woke up feeling scared and stressed about that and then the reality of having to discuss stuff with A kicked in. I just wanted to run and hide.

Fortunately, I recognise my patterns now. I know that some of what I feel is absolutely rooted in a level of reality after what’s just happened with Em. Like I know that I can be too much for a therapist, I know that I can be abandoned, and that does tap into a level of real time fear. Of course, it also feeds into a lifetime of various kinds of being too much and being abandoned. And yet, there is a little part of me that still holds out hope. That part of me does trust Anita and really wants to have the opportunity to build a strong alliance with her. I can’t do that if I don’t talk to her and I have to acknowledge that the lens I am viewing her through is distorted and has nothing to do with how she’s behaved or any vibe she’s given off.

If I don’t ask for a reply, on a Sunday, we have a session the next day then really it’s fair enough… I can see that. BUT for some parts it’s not ok and so I need to bring this to session on Monday because if we don’t ‘talk’ then it’ll escalate into something unnecessary.

So, my session time came and I was nervous, like really nervous. Dry mouth. Nervous bladder. Heart racing… fun times! When I am in these emotionally heightened states, I would really prefer to be working face to face. The reassurance that eye contact and using the body to coregulate affords is so important and it just doesn’t quite translate on screen. But who knows when we’ll be back in the room?…and frankly the idea of returning to therapy in person where I will be considered a biohazard and the room needs to be sanitised after I leave it, does nothing to help my sense of feeling ‘toxic’ and being ‘untouchable’ so I’m in no rush to go back if that’s how it’s going to be. I just miss being with another human and feeling all the benefits of therapy.

Anyway, Anita started calling and I left it a good thirty seconds before I accepted the call. I braced myself for the worst whilst simultaneously hoping for the best. I immediately told A I felt shit, and anxious, and tired and not ok…and she said she could see that I was not ok. She asked me what was going on for me and I kind of shrugged my shoulders. She said that she received my message but thought that we should talk about it together in person and wondered if given how I felt, whether I felt able to. I shrugged again and agreed that we could try.

To be honest I can’t remember a great deal of the detail of it all and now that I don’t record my sessions because we use WhatsApp video and I can’t engage the recorder on my iPhone at the same time I can’t go back and listen. I might ask if we can start using skype so that I can use my laptop and my then my phone can record. But I have enough of it in my head to say that it was ok and we did some good work.

Anita quickly reassured me that things we going to be ok between us. She said it’s important that we keep talking and being honest with each other so that if stuff crops up then we can work through it before it becomes a big issue. She said appreciates how hard it is for me after what’s happened with Em and that she understands that those young parts who have been so badly hurt just need to be loved and cared for, but that it’s hard for those parts, and all the others inside to trust people – and trust in a therapist isn’t going to come easy. I agreed that it feels really hard now because I am really aware that she properly matters to me and I am scared of loving again after what happened with Em. It feels dangerous and stupid to even entertain getting close to her. I said I felt really conflicted.

She said she gets the feeling that I have a huge conference room inside and it’s total chaos in there – but not surprising given what’s happened. Some parts (the teens) are shouting over each other and raging (she did a brilliant impression of what she thought it might be like which made me giggle because it was spot on), some parts are refusing to engage, the youngest ones are scared, crying, and traumatised and there’s adult me trying to get their attention but no one even notices I am there…she said it must be exhausting. She said that having this structural dissociation is tough because it’s so hard to give everyone space when they all seem to need and want different things but that we just need to be aware of it and see if we can reach a place where I let the parts express what they need to. She said we can’t rush it and that we have time.

I know she’s right but at the same time I am so pissed off that I am having to tread this ground again with another therapist. I’ve been here, done this, and it didn’t work out. I’ve lost years of my life doing this and wasted so much money on therapy – it’s frustrating.

Anita said that it’s natural for there to be so much internal upset again because right now it feels like the parts have just about managed to escape a burning building (the end of the relationship with Em) and they’re burnt and hurt and then I’m taking myself to therapy with her, starting to attach, and basically that’s like saying, ‘go back in to the burning building and potentially risk the same thing.’ It makes sense that a lot of me is wary.

I talked about how hard it feels having these kinds of vulnerable conversations because my brain just wants to disappear because I am so programmed to expect the worst-case scenario: rejection and abandonment. I have such a huge somatic response the moment we get close to the vulnerable areas. I had stars and pins and needles and all sorts going on but I managed to stay present enough throughout (although it hasn’t all stuck in my mind) and I was tell her what was going on for me.

I explained that I simply didn’t think I could withstand being hurt again by a therapist. I told her that I know that saying that puts an awful lot of pressure on the relationship but I really feel like this is it, if it doesn’t work out then I am done with therapy. I said I feel sad that she is having to contend with the legacy of what’s happened with Em in our relationship but I guess that’s therapy all over – we go and view our therapists through the lens of our relational injuries.

Anyway, there was a lot to the session that I won’t recount here but I ended the call feeling reasonably settled and good despite it being hard. She asked how I was feeling and I said, ‘a bit ugh but ok, just tired’. She said it had been a big session and to look after myself, to go get myself a cup of tea and a biscuit and take a minute before I started teaching half an hour later.
Yes mum!

It feels like such a bizarre experience being seen and not being run from.

But then the session was over and of course there is always some kind of therapy hangover when this attachment stuff starts whirling about. Sometimes it feels like a no-win situation. When I feel like I don’t say what I need to and I talk shit for an hour (which is what I did on just Friday gone) I feel disconnected and disappointed which is hard to manage…but when I feel really connected and understood that brings its own set of problems.

Being seen, held, and safely contained in that hour is addictive. It feels so good, my nervous system that is wound up like a spring unwinds a bit and there’s a feeling of relative safety. But when the call ends that’s all gone. She’s gone. And then we are back in lack of Object Constancy 101 hell.

And fuck it’s really hard to manage…

Later on Monday when I had finished teaching I sent A a message…

Thank you for being so patient and listening today. It feels confused in my head and body – so much conflict between wanting to be close but being terrified of being really hurt. It’s so exhausting. Parts of the session feel like they have fallen into a black hole/vacuum and I’ve no idea what happened! I’m really glad I found you and I’m trying really hard to hear that I don’t frighten you…I frighten me.

And she didn’t respond…

Oh god…

And that set the cat among the pigeons in the biggest way.

I have always struggled in the middle of the week in between sessions even when I was working with Em. I has it’s roots in various losses – my mum being absent when I was a kid, but more recently my dad dying three days into a holiday. My friend and I talk about ‘Woeful Wednesdays’ and that’s exactly what it’s like. Even if I am doing ok on a Tuesday I can wake up on a Wednesday and it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet- to varying degrees. It’s shit.

Anyway, I didn’t even get to Wednesday before the shit started hitting the fan! I hardly slept on Monday and by Tuesday I was a mess. FFS.

MAKE IT STOP!

So on Tuesday, I decided to ask Anita if she had space for a check in.

She didn’t see the message til later in the day but replied and told me that of course we could have a check in and she’d check her diary when she was home and get back to me. She offered me a time on Wednesday and one on Thursday. I took the one on the Wednesday and felt instant relief. Only my wife came home from work and said she’d be working from home on Wednesday morning doing interviews on Zoom. I panicked. I don’t like doing therapy when she’s in the house. Sound travels and I don’t feel like I can talk freely. She wouldn’t listen in. She was busy. But there’s something about it, I dunno, maybe it’s shame that makes me feel like I can’t do it.

I text Anita and explained the situation but also that I couldn’t do the Thursday time as I teach back to back lessons on Thursday mornings and we’d talk Friday. She replied and said that it was a shame and that she’d look forward to speaking to me then.

I was like a bear with a sore head all night.

Again, I barely slept.

And I woke up at 5am and decided I needed that check in. So I asked if the time was still available and it was. I felt a bit anxious telling my wife that I had a check in arranged with Anita – I didn’t want her to ask why or what was wrong. I always feel a bit like I need to justify my need for therapy and so almost like I need to ask permission. I don’t. My wife isn’t like that. But it’s something in me. I worry I feel like I might not be allowed. It’s weird.

Anyway, fuck the worry. I decided to change tack. No more of this, ‘would it be ok for you to… whilst I …?’ Instead I said, ‘I have a ten minute check in with Anita at 11:15 and I’ll be going across the road in the car to do it. The kids will be fine, they’re watching tv, and I’ll be teaching from 11:30-1 so I’ll see you when I finish’. She was like ‘Ok. See you later. What do you want for lunch? I can have it ready.’

So much less stressful an interaction. No drama. I need to realise that I am entitled to space in my life and to do things that meet various needs. I don’t need to ask permission. But it’s going to take time to change my inner narrative!

The check in was fine. I talked about how everything seems to be disintegrating inside but that I hadn’t consciously realised that it was the anniversary of the time I last saw my dad that week and that the anniversary of him dying was coming next week. I said things feel unsettled. She made a link to the fact that as a baby I was taken abroad by my mum when I was 9 months old and that I didn’t see him until I was 2.5 years old (when he visited) and then I didn’t come home to the UK until I was nearly 4.

She said I would have felt this loss acutely when I was little, that babies really know who their caregivers are and given my dad was more of a mother to me than my mum it would have felt very upsetting. I had never really thought about that early disruption had been important. I have always been aware of how affected I was when my mum left to go study when I was little but not the earlier loss. And then I had to go and teach.

When I finished the lesson I had a bit of a realisation about the object constancy stuff. And I wondered if the reason I struggle so hard to ‘hold people in mind’ is because at the time when this would have been learnt everything went to shit, that particular developmental stage got disrupted or went wrong. I dunno.

And you know it…

I fucking text her AGAIN. I have zero impulse control. I know it’s connection seeking but ugh!

Thank you for earlier. It really helped to touch base. It’s not like I don’t know what’s happening. I just don’t know how to fix it. Lack of object constancy is just crap and so unsettling. Not only do I struggle to ‘hold in mind’ and fear that something bad has happened but there’s also the other side which is something about my being forgotten about … so it’s like you don’t exist but I don’t either. Speak Friday.x

And, of course, she didn’t reply…and so my nuts brain felt like that was it. A week of her not replying to texts that talk about ‘us’ and it has put the teens and protective parts on high alert. Don’t get me wrong, adult can see she was great in Monday’s session, gave me the check in I asked for, was connected in that…but someone there’s a niggling doubt with the others that are wondering what’s wrong. What’s changed? Is it really safe?

I know outside session contact can be a minefield and I know that this last week I have really contacted her a lot. I have been in a place where because so much has come alive I have needed to test her. See if she’s safe. If she’s even still there. And I (adult) think she is…it’s just going to take a bit of time to get the message to those noisy buggers in the conference room. Maybe I’ll make them a PowerPoint as they seem completely unaware of my presence!

The Aftermath…

rubberbandsandchewinggum24 Comments

When I received that final text from Em on Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, the initial reaction was one of panic, like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet but then I went numb almost immediately afterwards. In the moment, I knew that I couldn’t let myself feel the full weight of what was in the message, not when my family were outside waiting for me to come back to join them and be ‘Fun Mummy’.

Somehow, I managed to keep my mask on for the duration of the afternoon but it was difficult, and I could feel the young parts inside screaming, ‘She’s really gone GONE. Why doesn’t she care? What’s wrong with me?’ Everything was disintegrating on the inside so how I held it together on the outside I have no idea – years of practise, I guess.

However, by the evening I was really struggling. When I am tired, I find that my younger parts are much closer to the surface anyway, so given what had pinged on my phone earlier in the day I decided that the only viable option was to take myself off to bed early, wrap myself up in my weighted blanket, and grab my teddy (yes, totally trying to soothe the inner child parts).

Once I had attended to the young parts that were falling through the abyss, I somehow had the presence of mind to try and get some support put in place because I knew I was on a downward spiral.

Had I not taken myself up to bed and put myself in a ‘safe place’ I would almost certainly have opted to self-harm in the bathroom… and I promised myself that I would NEVER go back down that route no matter what happens. No matter how bad things feel (and they felt desperate) I refuse to physically hurt myself anymore. The eating side of things is still up for debate because I find it harder to not restrict food when things feel bad but I seem to be doing ok not with cutting and burning myself which is… a…MIRACLE!!

My daughter asked about a scar on my wrist, the other day, when I was reading her a story – I’ve got quite a lockdown tan going on and so it is more noticeable than usual. The scar came from a ‘not entirely accidental’ episode with a boiling hot baking tray a couple years ago when I was in a terrible place with the attachment stuff. I told her it had been an accident and that I had got burned when I was getting something out the oven and that you have to be really careful with hot things. I felt shit lying – not that I was going to tell an eight-year-old the reality- but I don’t want to do this to myself anymore and I know there are better options for me now.

I am clearer than ever in my mind that self-harm is not going to be my go-to coping strategy and I will not let what has happened with Em make me harm myself. It doesn’t solve anything – not really. The Inner Critic might think that it’s the only sensible option, after all, I am a worthless loser who has brought this whole situation on myself. A paid for therapist can’t even tolerate me and is so repulsed by my parasitic behaviour that she’s shut the door on any further communication, so why bother believing that I am deserving of love and care?

But…

There is another voice in there, she’s quiet but she’s definitely there and it’s a little girl, it’s Eleven I think, saying, ‘Please stop hurting us’. And because I seem to have a slightly more strengthened Adult Self now, I feel a bit more compassionate towards myself and all those little ones inside who I was repelled by.

I couldn’t get far enough away from their need for the longest time, the shame and embarrassment were big but there was also some disgust in there. I couldn’t bear to go near the pain, to have to really acknowledge it as my own felt like it would break me.

Then it changed a bit, and I wanted Em to look after those young part and love them, to help me carry the burden of it, but she was insistent that I had to do it myself. But I couldn’t, not at that point.

In recent months, both A and K have demonstrated time and again, care and compassion for those parts, they’ve modelled a kind of mothering that I’ve never experienced, and it’s like my brain has gone, ‘ Wait! What? Hang on. These parts aren’t scary, disgusting and too much after all? And actually, two people that I respect and value a lot, care for me not despite them, but because of them?? – whoa – revelation? Maybe I can take a better look at these parts and look maybe take a step towards them too?’ And it’s a bit tentative but it’s something.

Because a real sense of love and compassion has been extended towards those needy younger parts recently, I have instantly felt a settling in my system. I’m starting to see that I should not punish myself for these difficult feelings but try and channel whatever it is that A and K do for myself. I guess I am trying really hard to internalise their care. It’s not easy, though, it’s like accidentally sticking your car in reverse when you’re hurtling along in top gear at 80mph but I think with time I’ll get there.

I don’t need to attack myself for reacting so strongly to something that really isn’t my fault. My young parts were too much for Em but that doesn’t mean that I am too much for everyone and that’s a game changer. Not getting clouded by the negative experience in that relationship (even if it does replicate the original mother wound) and seeing it as ‘everyone’ when it was just ‘her’ is important. It’s a move a bit from the child’s experience of feeling responsible for everything that happens because it is too unbearable to think that parents might actually just be a bit fucking shit. Therefore, if we blame ourselves for the situation it somehow makes it more palatable because we can mould and change ourselves because we can’t change the other. It’s a survival strategy it’s just not fit for purpose now.

So, whilst I am not completely out of the woods – not by a long way – I can keep going and take life minute by minute and hour by hour until the pain recedes a little bit. I can commit to doing that even when things feel impossible. And my god, something that’s starting to trickle down into my consciousness is that self-care is not selfish! About Friggin’ time!! Maybe, just maybe, I am worth a bit of TLC and maybe it’s not being self-indulgent to listen to my inner voice and try and meet some of my needs! Feeding my body and nurturing myself is reasonable…honestly, I know it’s like ‘well duh’ but I really have struggled to self-care because I haven’t felt worthy of care and I haven’t had it modelled to me…and yet now, with K and A who are modelling it, I’m like ‘ahhh that’s how you do it!’

Anyway, that was a long ramble but basically what self-care looked like in that moment on Sunday evening was reaching out to Anita and asking for a longer session!…

I have therapy with Anita on Monday and Friday and so, fortunately, I knew my session was coming up the next morning. I just needed to sleep and survive the next few hours of internal chaos and pain. If I’d been beating around the bush a bit for the previous few weeks then I knew that there was no choice but to upfront and direct about exactly what had happened with Em and how it was making me feel. I was going to have to shelve the shame and embarrassment and let her see the mess I had created for myself.

Sessions with Anita are an hour long and I can’t explain how much better that has felt to me than the 50 minutes I used to have with Em. Part of it, of course, will be that I don’t lose half a session being dysregulated and dissociating but, equally, I feel like I have a good block of time with Anita which automatically sets me off on a much better footing. A 50-minute session always felt like there was a rush against the clock. It always took ages to settle down and get into the work and I could mentally feel the time ticking away which would panic the young parts who so desperately needed to be seen but took so long to come out.

It was usually 11 o clock (half an hour in) or even 11:10 (only ten minutes left of the session) before I might really talk about what was bothering me because it took that long to connect and feel anywhere close to safe enough to let stuff out. Sometimes, though, that sense of running out of time would mean I never even got started and that would then mean utter carnage in the time between sessions. It was crap!

Having a full hour means I start the session feeling calmer because I know I have time and so not only do I get to the work sooner because I am more settled to begin with, but if I do have a long and meandering ramble before I start to really open up there’s often still half an hour or more left of the session which means there’s always time to dig into the work. I don’t think I could go back to a 50-minute session now. I knew I needed more than an hour to deal with the fallout of Em’s message though!!

The nice thing about reaching out to Anita for this kind of thing is that I don’t get that instant rush of shame or fear the moment I hit send on a message. I know she will look at my text and I know that it’s ok to have contacted her and if she can accommodate me, she will.

I didn’t elaborate on why I was asking for more time, just asked if we might do a longer session, and she replied later in the evening and said that I’m the first client of the day and although she has a client after me we could start earlier in the morning if I wanted and asked how when I wanted to start. I decided to ask for an extra half an hour to make it a 90-minute session because I had walked into a fiery hell again and she said that was fine and said that she was sorry to hear that I was in such a horrible place.

I like how responsive she is and how genuine she feels. Like she said early on, she has to be her most authentic self in the therapy with people like me because we see through any bullshit. That’s not to say she is big on self-disclosure or anything, it’s just that she is aware that it’s hard for people like me to trust and so she has to be especially present and connected. I think she said something about relational depth, actually. And I can feel it. I can feel her in the room with me (when we are in the room!) – basically I don’t feel left or abandoned which means I feel safe enough to talk.

I struggled to sleep on Sunday night, turning over EVERYTHING that had happened between Em and I with the termination but was glad, at least, that I had someone safe to talk to the next day. In the morning I woke up and knew that it was going to be hard to get going with what I really needed to say to Anita. How do you start a session with, ‘I’ve exchanged messages with Em and she’s basically broken my heart again and I feel like a fucking idiot’… actually, I suppose that would be one way in!

About half an hour before the session I decided that I would give Anita the heads up so that she was armed with info if for whatever reason I couldn’t talk, or shut down, or dissociated or whatever.
I sent this:

So, this is why today needs to be longer. You know how it all disintegrated inside after finally writing about the hell that happened at Christmas/New Year and linking it to The Velveteen Rabbit on my blog a couple of weeks ago? Well, because I am a moron, that doesn’t ever learn, last Sunday I sent the link to it to Em and asked if she might read it because I felt like I needed her to know about it and hear just how brutal what happened has felt. Part of me felt relief that I had sent it and part of me felt like I’d opened myself up to being hurt because she’d likely ignore it.

By Friday everything that had been stirred up in the week had settled and I felt pretty ok. And then she responded that afternoon telling me she’d read the blog and that she understood how painful the ending had been. It threw me through a loop. I asked if we could talk – not to resume the therapy but just to put this to bed properly because the way it all ended was so awful. And then yesterday this came through which in part is fine but then in part is totally not.

I then forwarded the text from Em and waited for my session.

I was nervous as I waited for the video call but felt at least that Anita knew what was coming. When the screen went live I could see straight away that she was trying really hard to use her expression and body language to feel open and warm. She asked me how I was and I basically said I felt shit and she said she could really see why and that she was sorry. I moaned on about the message and wondered whether I was overreacting. She emphatically told me that I wasn’t and that what has happened has been utterly horrific and I deserved better from someone who is meant to care.

The session was really helpful and connecting. I used the whole 90 minutes and it was brilliant. I really dived into this stuff. No holding back. And it was great. I mean it was fucking painful and hard but great because I really feel like Anita is holding my hand through this, she challenges me when I attack myself and really reframes things for me. We spoke a lot about my mum and drew lots of parallels between my relationship with my mum and what it’s been like with Em. I said it feels like a bit of a cruel irony that I landed up in the consulting room of someone that is more emotionally withholding than my own mother! But that it makes sense that I stayed as long as I did because it was familiar and part of me felt like that’s all I deserved.

The other thing that has really settled me is that Anita doesn’t bat an eyelid when I say how I feel about Em. She is not freaked out by what I say. She doesn’t appear to be thinking, ‘oh fuck I have a complete disaster sitting in front of me’ and she says she can work with this – me. Rather than pathologizing my feelings she normalises them and contextualises them and that somehow makes it all feel more palatable and manageable. When the session finished, she asked me how I was, I said ‘fine, but tired’ and she agreed it had been a big session. She told me to take care and that if I needed her in the week then to reach out.

I had a pretty good week, settled, but then on the Thursday the fog moved in from the horizon again. I had a bad dream about Em… and then I was going through my notebooks from last year (whyyyy???) and came across the picture of me and Em I had drawn where she is tangled in barbed wire. I had said something about it to Anita when we first started working together, saying that I felt like I couldn’t get close to Em. I text A this:

The ‘everything is ok’ and ‘I know it’s not me’ and ‘I’m angry rather than blaming myself’ thing has come crashing down again to be replaced by the ‘I’m untouchable, unlovable, and forgettable’ narrative. I’m so over this feeling of being cut off and isolated because of Coronavirus. I think it’s such a big problem largely because it’s tapping into that feeling of being untouchable and unlovable (feeling contaminated/toxic in some way) – and whilst I get it’s the same for everyone (the social distancing) – I’m not sure everyone has this core wound so maybe the manage it a bit better. They don’t feel like there’s something wrong with them that makes people stay away. It’s not just feeling lonely but actually it feels like abandonment and rejection. I did this drawing last year – perhaps we can look at it together tomorrow?

img_0973

A few minutes later she text me back this – (she’s dyslexic so look past the errors!):

img_1060

What a contrast to the interaction with Em. After years of sterile texts or being totally ignored getting a short but warm message back feels really holding. I really feel like she gets how to communicate with people with C-PTSD and understands that we’re not cut from quite the same cloth as other people and need a slightly different kind of interaction. Reassurance doesn’t feed an insatiable addiction  – it really settles the system and I can go about my day. I feel like I can hold her in mind and like something is slowly starting to shift.

Another thing I really like about Anita, and it’s going to sound daft, is that she often uses emojis in her messages. For some reason, seeing a smiley face, a laughing face or a sad face or whatever it might be really feels connecting. I don’t know if it’s something about her seeming more human and less like a robot, or whether it somehow connects with the young parts who understand pictures better than words, but I really appreciate it. But that emoji on the text was… perfect… I feel like she gets it, sees me, and can interact with me in a way that my parts need right now… and it feels so healing.

I genuinely think I have found a therapist who is a good fit for me, who will be able to help me deal with the deep rooted stuff. As she said in our very first session – ‘if you imagine yourself and being like an egg, you have your shell which you show the outside world, you let Em in and you’ve been working in the white rationalising and understanding your story and trauma, but you know you need to really get into the yolk where all the pain is and it needs healing on a deeper level, on a felt level and it requires care and love and a deeper kind of relationship to do that…

AMEN TO THAT!

 

Calming The Hungry Baby

rubberbandsandchewinggum21 Comments

*I wrote this post earlier in the week when I was approaching that horrible territory where a massive meltdown/crisis was on the cards. I did end up in a really terrible place on Wednesday but I’ll talk about that in another post. I am, therefore, now aware how black and white the thinking seems here, but I’m not surprised given where I landed mid-week. I’ve felt very emotionally precarious for the last month or so. Fortunately, I have more than come out the other side of it now and feel largely fine…settled even…but it really gives an insight into how when I start to slide how rapidly and deeply I fall into feeling like everything is awful. I haven’t experienced such challenges with my mental well-being in a long, long time but I guess it’s not surprising given what’s going on in the world.
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It feels like my internal world has descended into complete chaos and disarray this last week or so after finally writing the mammoth post on ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ that had been swirling in my head for a few months. The result of getting those feelings out on the page in some kind of coherent form, and really thinking about how I feel about losing Em and all that happened, has meant that I have, once again, ended up down an emotional rabbit hole.

It’s that all too familiar feeling of spiralling and falling down through the abyss, young parts screaming inside, and feeling like there’s only one person in the world that might be able to make it better…only they’re not available anymore. Basically, I’m in attachment pain hell in a way that I haven’t felt since Em and I terminated. The level of pains is unreal. I thought I was past this but clearly not.

I know it’s all part of the process and I need to go through it, it’s grief, but it’s absolute hell and being unable to see my current therapists in person has really set the cat amongst the pigeons. And, of course, the only person I really want to see and make amends with is Em. Trying to process all that’s happened with someone else just feels impossible. Despite being in mess at the moment with the young stuff I have quite a few new insights and it feels crap that I can’t take them to Em and discuss them.

And yet, clearly, in light of what’s going on globally, my problems, in the big scheme of things, really are insignificant. I feel a bit of a dick sitting here lamenting how shit it feels inside when actually I am safe, healthy, and protected by my white privilege. Really, what have I got to complain about when there is utter horror going on outside my contained little world? But if therapy has taught me anything, I also understand that what feels big to me is important (at least to me) and I’m not in a competition with the rest of the world to see who is experiencing the worst trauma. I can hold feelings that feel overwhelming in my own life and also know that what others are enduring right is a massive deal.

When I see what’s happening in the USA right now I am in shock – only sadly, I’m kind of not. My body feels shock, but my mind isn’t shocked at all – I’m just saddened that in this day and age that people are still having to fight for their rights to be treated fairly as human beings. I mean wtf is that about? I worry about my friends that are based in the states. I feel useless. My black friends in the UK are really struggling and short of being there for them I don’t know what to do. Read more. Learn more. Listen more. Be more active as an ally. I sincerely hope that things are finally going to change for the better.

Even though I am based in the UK, the moment Trump was elected I had a real sense of foreboding – not just for the USA but for the world. And with every passing year it’s got worse and worse. The stuff he’s got away with seems almost unbelievable for a world leader in charge of (what’s meant to be) a democracy. His broken moral compass and frankly horrendous behaviour seems to have legitimised the conduct of the far right and white supremacists because if the president can get away with inciting hatred and be above the law so can everyone else – in fact it seems like he encourages it.

I wish I was surprised by the images I am seeing on social media showing the unbelievable brutality and suffering at the hands of the police and national guard on unarmed citizens, but I am not. I want to look away, because it is traumatising, but I can’t because I need to see this no matter how uncomfortable it makes me.

So, as I sit here about to launch into what really feels like another self-indulgent look at my inner struggle please know that I am aware of the bigger picture. I just need to write because I feel like I am on an emotional knife edge and I don’t feel like there are many ways to help myself right now, other than splurge and get it out.

It’s been a really very hard month, or so. I haven’t been blogging (or doing anything) much – literally that one post for the whole of May -because I’ve felt so utterly flat and shit but also not really known what to say. I feel like a broken record. Or like I’ve been stuck in some kind of awful Ground Hog Day.

The whole of the lockdown period has been tough on lots of levels and I know I am not the only one who has been struggling. Trying to juggle the demands of my work, teaching my own kids, and having the added pressure of financial instability because my wife was made redundant has been really hard going without the actually worry of what contracting Covid19 might actually mean. Sometimes it feels so hard to just keep going. Like just as I get my head above water something comes along and dunks me under again.

It doesn’t take a lot to knock me off balance at the best of times, and let’s be fair, I was wobbly as hell having just lost Em before coronavirus and the world crumbling before my eyes. I guess I was lucky to, at least, find Anita before everything went completely to shit but I’m finding online therapy a real challenge. We are still building our relationship steadily but it just feels so distant on screen a lot of the time. I can’t help but keep making comparisons of how sessions feel online with A and how they felt with Em (who really knew me) and I feel like every session comes up short but that’s not surprising really, just disappointing.

I haven’t seen K in person since March, either…so it’s not great. My usual support systems are really not the same, or even possible (hands on craniosacral) and so I feel like I’ve had my crutches taken away whilst still being in a cast for a broken leg. I’m lucky that I am in almost daily contact with K via text and she is utterly amazing, but I really want to see her face-to-face. Basically, I need a big dose of co-regulation to settle my nervous system down because it feels like it’s off its tits on something! I think I’ll arrange a walk with her sooner rather than later. She has suggested it, but it’s difficult when I am home with the kids all the time and trying to work, too.

I have always thought that therapy (of some description) would be a lifelong thing for me. It’s not about getting ‘better’ or ‘fixing’ me. I see it more as something that helps me keep functioning, a kind of maintenance, so that I can do my life – as well as something that gives me insight into myself and ways of managing better. I don’t necessarily think I’ll be in talk therapy until the day I die (but it’s ok if that is the case) but part of my self-care will undoubtedly include some kind of input from the outside – and that could be craniosacral therapy, talk therapy, massage, or whatever else I fancy trying, at varying intervals because it does me good.

Up until March I was having a lot of input, doing twice weekly face-to-face psychotherapy and a session of CS therapy…and now I’m managing one, sometimes two teletherapy sessions and it’s not the same. Maybe I am just picky but I don’t find it as holding or containing and whilst it’s better than no therapy at all I feel like I’m sliding. I really rely a lot of physical signals in the room to judge how safe I can feel – body language and eye contact are so important and through a screen that gets lost.

I was ok(ish) with the disruption for a while, but now I am feeling increasingly like I need to see Anita and K face-to-face because I’ve been spiralling down and am running out of ‘coping’. I’ve tied a knot in the end of the rope but my arms are getting tired from hanging on.

I am so sick of circling this same pit of doom. All I seem to do is cycle through being ok enough (and trying to avoid the abyss), being stuck falling through the abyss, or crawling up out of the abyss. It’s exhausting and demoralising. I know I need to work a lot more on the young parts’ trauma stuff because that’s where the sense of annihilation comes from but it’s not easy doing that work over a screen because it is so BIG and needs so much containment. When I feel like my adult is more available, I can handle this stuff but right now I feel like all the young parts are synchronising and about to unleash havoc.

Last week it was bank-holiday in the UK and Anita took her first day off in all the time that we’ve been working (January). I suspect, like many therapists, she’ll have some clients that won’t have migrated online and so will have a slightly freer schedule and so hasn’t taken breaks in the same way but still kind of needs the income – being a therapist is her only job. She was due to have some time off in March but given we were in lockdown she didn’t see much point and continued to work.

Still, on Monday she took the day and that was fine…only it kind of wasn’t! I was fine not to see her and instead of my session I wrote that blog which needed to come out… but then I proceeded to have a terrible day on Tuesday – I’m sure because I’d stirred myself up by writing all about my experience with Em. On Wednesday I woke up feeling sick to my core. It was that familiar anxiety and blind panic that gets experienced by the young parts. I desperately missed Em. But she’s not here now. Ouuuuccchh. And so I had a choice to make – suffer on until Friday or reach out to Anita and see if that might help.

From the off, Anita made it clear that she works VERY differently to Em. She has told me it’s fine to check in via text if I need to and that she will try and respond when she can although it may not be straight away. I rarely text her because I don’t need to. Just knowing that I can seems to create some kind of magic calm inside. So, I text her in the morning and told her that I was really struggling and feeling like I was face down in shame. She replied by offering a session – which I took and I felt the anxiety start to lift almost immediately.

By the time I got on screen – about an hour later – I was in a slightly more adult place so it felt kind of weird trying to explain that only an hour ago I wanted to crawl into a hole and die from the pain of it all. I thanked her for making time for me. She said that she could hear the need and had the time so it was more than fine.

I said it felt really different having reached out and got a response and have the need recognised and met when, with Em, if I reached out she’d ignore me, radio silence, and then give me a boundary talk the moment I sat down in session. I understand the idea about trying to keep the work in the room and the importance of the therapeutic frame but even Em acknowledged towards the end that it was retraumatising my young parts.

Anita said that it felt like Em was only willing to deal with my child parts when it suited her. I nodded. She said that sometimes there’s a need and if it can be met it’s helpful and healing to those of us with C-PTSD because we require a different level of care and absolute authenticity. We struggle so much with object constancy and trust that small gestures of care can really help cement the relationship and start to build the secure base. She said she is also aware of having to be the most authentic version of herself because people like us see through smoke and mirrors and then lose trust or fail to build it. Anita isn’t big on self-disclosure but I know enough about her to be able to trust her.

She went onto use an analogy that Em has used in the past. Em had once compared me to a hungry baby that, for whatever reason, wouldn’t feed in sessions and then was left uncontained and starving outside them. But we never worked out what to do with that, either to help soothe that young part outside sessions, or find a way of getting the nourishment in session.

It’s a shame. The problem was evident but the fix wasn’t. It was a complex situation and really it all came down to feeling uncontained and then feeling ashamed when I expressed a need because I was repeatedly told that I had to keep the work in the room. I really tried. But it just felt like in the week I was stranded on one river bank and Em was on the other. I needed some stepping stones, not even a bridge, but there were none and so I kept ending up drowning when I tried to reach the other side.

Anita said that a baby doesn’t scream and cry when it’s hungry in order to be difficult and annoy its mum. It does it because it has a real and genuine need. If a mum decides that she will only feed the baby when it suits her, perhaps with the idea of establishing some kind of routine, then actually what happens is that the baby is still hungry, it just learns that no one comes when it cries, no one feeds it, so in the end it learns to ignore its need. And she felt that’s what had happened in therapy with Em, it had kind of reinforced that sense of my need being seen but purposefully ignored because mum knows better. I had finally learnt to feel and be aware of my needs and once again the pattern was repeated. No one comes. No one cares.

Needless to say, I felt like Anita had seen right into my soul with that insight and completely got it. And we talked about how it’s not about being there 24/7 which is what Em seemed to panic about – because that’s not how it is. We aren’t in need of a permanent breast or being drip fed, but sometimes the need comes and it can be met and soothed really easily. If it’s left all hell can break loose. Over time, because we get our needs met (a check in, a text, three dots even) we learn that the mother/therapist is there and is willing to meet our need occasionally we actually end up being less hungry overall, and with time, grow up a bit, and wean – learning to feed ourselves but we reach a developmental stage where we can internalise the mother/therapist and object constancy becomes less of an issue. Unfortunately, Em seemed to think meeting that need would feed an addiction.

I feel like so much of my injury comes from such a young age -K says it started before I was even born, and that asking me to feed myself when I am in that baby state is just impossible. I haven’t hit that developmental stage yet. I will. But it’ll take time. And I totally get that it seems like absolute nonsense – I am after all a grown up with my own children…but my brain is really wily and has a spectacular knack of turning off my rational, thinking brain, and plummeting back in time to the place of being a terrified kid. I wish, sometimes, that our bodies could morph into the child state we are in, maybe that would make it easier for people to understand how fucking awful it is. You wouldn’t ignore a terrified, lost, crying toddler but because they’re locked inside an adult body we’re just seen as attention seeking nutters.

Anyway, on that positive note, I’ll leave it here for now because my body is having a meltdown and I think I might cry! The somatic response to emotional upset is insane, these days. To think I never used to feel anything, and now it’s like the switch gets rammed on high and the flood gates have opened. I can feel it all! Let’s hope one day I’ll learn to regulate…but right now it feels like my young parts are fighting over a metaphorical pacifier!

Termination Of Long Term Therapy: ‘No More Tricks Up My Sleeve’

rubberbandsandchewinggum38 Comments

Well, what can I say? This last week, or so, since my last post has been an emotional marathon – and frankly, my current emotional fitness levels are really more geared towards a meandering, leisurely stroll interspersed with pitstops for cake than an endurance race in a freezing, barren wasteland with no clue when the finish line might be coming.

What is especially shit is just as I think I might be near the end of ‘the worst of it’ I turn a corner and the sign flashes up that there’s actually another 26 miles to go….I have to do another lap and it seems like it’s an unending fucking marathon…or recurring nightmare. FFS!

It’s really not good right now. I am desperate to crawl into a warm, safe space, and hibernate…shame that life in 2020 doesn’t really allow much of that!

I should probably have a sign that says, ‘approach with care’ or ‘beware- unstable ground’ or ‘caution – disaster zone’ tied around my neck because I am certainly not feeling myself right now. Or rather, the adult fronting self is having a very hard time keeping all the distraught child parts in check, and so my various selves are all simultaneously falling apart. I’m trying my best to hang it together with my trusty ‘rubber bands and chewinggum’ but it’s a gargantuan effort. I am exhausted by it.

When I am on my own it’s felt like the earth has fallen away beneath my feet. The tenuous safety I felt in the relationship with Em has been proven to be a complete sham and I am back to the reality (which I really don’t want to believe) – that nothing and no one is safe, and trusting people with your heart is really an idiotic thing to do. I am freefalling through the abyss. It’s so lonely. (Well that’s what several parts of me feel at the moment…although I know there is evidence to the contrary elsewhere in my life.)

I have cried so much (and we know I don’t do crying!). I’m not talking a few rogue tears escaping out the corners of my eyes, I’m talking about convulsive, gut wrenching, snotty, painful crying that comes like a howl from the heart and soul, soaks pillows through and doesn’t seem to stop without a massive conscious effort. There’s really no point in trying to stop it, though, because it keeps coming in waves….tsunami seems apt.

I am doing grief in a spectacular way. The pain is immense. I know this isn’t just about Em but also so many other losses and abandonments that I have experienced in my life. However, the sudden ending of the relationship with Em in such a cold way has acted as a massive catalyst for me to come face to face with the big wound and I realise, more than ever, that I am still on the bloody endless bear hunt and have absolutely no choice but to keep going, I ‘can’t go over it, can’t go under it, oh no, got to go through it’.

It’s disappointing because I feel like all I have done in recent years is wade through ‘thick oozy mud’, stumble through ‘big dark forests’, battle through ‘swirling whirling snow storms’ and yet at least I had company back then whereas right now I feel a little bit like I am trying to do some kind of lone survival event and it’s not a ‘beautiful day’ and actually I am scared.

I’ve been terrified of the mother wound this whole therapy – panicking about being left, rejected or abandoned has felt pretty awful and all-consuming at times, especially between sessions and on breaks, even when I have had my therapist there more or less every week. So now, to be actually living the reality of that fear coming true – I have been rejected and abandoned – well it’s even worse than I imagined it would be. That pain in my solar plexus, the anxiety headache, and feeling like I don’t know what’s going on is awful. I know these are young feelings but man it’s not easy.

I want to just say, too, that whilst it does feel bloody horrendous and lonely and overwhelming a lot of the time, I am really very lucky to have some amazing supports in my life right now (this merry band of mother wounded souls included!) without whom I would be in a much worse place than I am. I have been on my arse and yet I am fortunate to have the support of a couple of close friends (who live fucking miles and miles away – grr!) that I can trust with these feelings and who are holding my hand through it, the start of a new therapeutic relationship with Anita, as well as an absolutely incredible craniosacral therapist who has basically scraped me off the floor and offered so much love and holding in the last couple of months that I can hardly believe it’s real.

I wrote a while back here about having just gone back to seeing my craniosacral therapist, K, after a long long break (years!) because I was feeling more and more like lots of the healing I have to do needs to be done with my body and through touch which wasn’t possible with Em (who wouldn’t even sit near to me!). And I can definitely say, that’s absolutely the case. I get soooooo much from my sessions with K on a body level. It feels amazing when everything starts flowing and I can feel the shift inside myself when I get a bit of internal space and holding. But what I have also realised is that what I have always been seeking is an authentic connection with another human being and through that, a path to healing – it’s not just about the body, it’s not just about words, it’s about two people being with one another and feeling something, cocreating a relationship that feels real.

K is not afraid to connect with me and she seems to feel what’s going on in my body even when I am not saying anything. She gets me and accepts me in whatever state I am in. I’ve always really liked her loved her and felt safe with her but maybe in my late twenties/early thirties wasn’t quite ready to do the work that I now feel is unavoidable and essential. I’ve done the intellectual work with Em but now I am ready for the soul stuff.

K is so present. So warm and accepting. She has steadily encouraged me to be more vulnerable to allow her in which clearly feels so risky after years of being pushed away.  I can actually make eye contact again now which is lovely. Seeing K again has made me feel like I am valued and loved – but not only that, she makes me feel like I am cared about all the more because of my flaws and vulnerabilities. I don’t need to hide with her. It’s scary but also exactly what I need especially given what’s just happened with Em. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I went back to her when I did.

It’s written EVERYWHERE that the healing of relational trauma takes place in relationship and I have needed this kind of deep, holding relationship for the longest time. I’ve known for a while that Em and I were not going to last (but obviously have clung on to the hope that if I just behaved long enough, didn’t reach out etc she might meet me where I needed her to). In fact having been to see K again for the first time and then gone to therapy and told Em about it, she said, ‘Where does that leave this therapy?’ and I remember replying, ‘I don’t know’. Being with K was such a sharp contrast to the experience I have been having with Em that it really highlighted to me just how badly my young parts were being neglected.

My child parts are so connected to Em and it’s killing me right now, but really it’s a trauma bond – we all know that. There has been no holding. I haven’t really felt her care. I have been ‘like a tick’ to her and it’s basically been a retraumatising experience being in that therapy. I have tried and tried to make what was on offer enough, but it just wasn’t. I probably sound like I am doing black and white thinking here ‘amazing K vs terrible Em’ but it’s not like that. Not everything in my therapy has been bad but it has been really bad for my young parts and this ending has done nothing to help. I mean it’s trauma 101 inside. The narrative I have been trying to escape for all these years that I am too much has been completely confirmed. It’s so painful.

So, anyway, gushing on some more about K. I’ve been talking to her a lot about my therapy since I have gone back – there’s been lots of confusion and frustration, K has patiently held that with me, not telling me what to do, but understanding just how excruciating it’s been to have been so vulnerable and get nothing back….In fact, god, I can even remember popping over to hers for a cup of tea a few years ago and moaning about Em then and she said to me, ‘What is your therapist doing to hold this?’… and even then I couldn’t come up with any answers.

I’ve spoken a lot about feeling like I need to leave but also feeling like it is impossible due to how attached I am. K has been nothing but understanding as I have swung from one state to the other and I am so grateful to have had that space to work through what I feel and also what I need. K has basically made me realise that it’s ok to have needs and ok to want to get some of them met. What a revelation!

As we all know, in the end things came to a head much more rapidly than I had anticipated with Em and suddenly termination was happening – and not in the way I had hoped. The day I got the two line email from Em wishing me well for the future (aka ‘bye then’) I fell apart. It was so painful. I was a mess, crying on the kitchen floor. I text K and told her what had happened and she was so sympathetic but more than that, she did something incredible that I am still blown away by. Sensing my distress and need she offered to move some clients around in order to make space for me to be able to see her the next day.

I can’t even explain what that gesture did for me. I was drowning in abandonment and rejection feeling like I wanted to self harm, and I guess parts of me actually felt like they wanted to die, and here she was making an island for me to come and rest for a bit.

Thinking about it makes me want to cry. She didn’t have to do that and yet she did. It allowed me to maybe believe that I wasn’t actually completely unlovable and forgettable maybe I do matter…

Anyway, since then she has been amazing in so many ways, so kind, supportive and holding, she has repeatedly built me up and tells me how much strength I have and in a way I believe it when she says it. But I don’t want to talk her or it too much here because I feel really protective of the relationship. I feel like I have something really precious but also fragile and so I want to keep it safe inside me a while.

So that’s nice isn’t it?! Yay.

Alongside this I have been seeing Anita – and that’s going well but I will post about that separately later on.

I guess, what most people are wondering is what ended up happening with Em in the end?

Crikey.

Well, I couldn’t make a decision about what to do for a few days. Part of me was so angry and upset that I couldn’t see how it would be possible to go back only to face more of the same. As my friend said, it would be like walking my young parts in to be slaughtered if I went. To a degree she was right. But at the same time I felt like I should try and get some kind of ending and closure because I have had so many endings where I haven’t had a choice in it. If I never went back to say goodbye I’d be essentially left with all these feelings and keep beating myself up about it… because that’s what I do. This is familiar ground to me!

I spoke at length with Anita about it the week before and in the end I decided that it would be best to go to one termination session, try and end well, but then immediately come for a session afterwards with her to try and process it. Basically, a session with Anita after would act like a safety net. Whatever the session with Em was like it was never going to be easy and the pain I have been experiencing has been like a bereavement so I knew I’d need support.

All last weekend I had nightmares and felt sick to my core knowing that I was going to Em to say goodbye. I knew in my gut that it was going to be sterile and flat…that’s partly why we are in this place. But still part of me hoped that it would somehow be connecting, a reflection on the work we’d done and the relationship we have had all these years.

I arrived, and straight away knew it was going to be agony. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even look at me. Just sat in the chair staring off into middle distance. Still face exercise. Fuck. Child parts were scared and devastated. This is not what I wanted at all.

I started with, ‘well this is shit’. I think it was probably a teen part coming out. I literally didn’t know what to say her.

I felt so distant from her.

It was painful.

She felt robotic, using stock phrases, ‘I see you are feeling strong emotions’ , ‘I understand you are disappointed’, ‘this must feel rejecting’…bleurgh. But it felt like a stranger talking to me….when she did talk which wasn’t often.

Early on I said that I couldn’t believe we were in this place but also that this is what I have feared all along that would happen and now it is real. I tried to tell her how much she’d hurt me in the last session by likening me to ‘a tick’. I had hoped she might have tried to repair that but she simply said, ‘it was a metaphor and I stick by what I said about those parts and the unconscious behaviour’. I wanted to leave then. Like wtaf? The last session and she says that? She takes zero responsibility for her part in this. There was a lot of silence from then on. I mean there was no repairing the relationship but man, this was bad.

She said that she was sad that things had got to this point and was disappointed too…but it felt like the kind of disappointment you might feel when it’s raining outside and you’d planned to go out for a walk – nothing more. It wasn’t heartfelt. It felt flat. She said she could see this was painful for me and I said that she had ‘no idea’…as in she had no idea just how terrible this felt for me but no space was opened up to discuss the feelings. She didn’t want to know.

‘I’ve reached the limit of my competency to help you. I have no more tricks up my sleeve’ – I suppose at least she was honest but it also felt crap. Like, to me so much of therapy hinges on the relationship not what’s ‘being done’ and yet it feels to me like she is very much about strategies, ‘try this visualisation’, ‘follow this dot with your eyes’… blah blah blah. And this is always what’s made me feel disconnected. The only strategy she was unwilling to try was putting herself into the relationship. It’s sad really, because I don’t doubt that her ‘tricks’ might have worked if we could have built a solid enough relationship to build from.

She said she was glad I had come to end in person…and it shows how much I have grown to be able to do that and face the feelings. But again, it just felt like she was going through the motions. I noticed her eyes repeatedly glancing at the clock. I guess she was wishing the time away because it wasn’t exactly easy in the room.

I started crying.

I wasn’t beside myself (externally) because even in that moment when my heart was absolutely being torn in two she just didn’t feel safe to let it all out with. Big, fat, silent tears rolled down my face and I felt like I was going to explode trying to hold back the flood and started shaking. She said nothing for ages and then said, ‘I can see how full of emotion you are about this’. Like no shit! This is huge to me –  I HAVE NEVER LET OUT MORE THAN A SINGLE TEAR IN THIS ROOM….but clearly all this was only big to me not her.

She didn’t look at me or make eye contact and I felt so alone in my pain as I cried and she just sat there. It felt so abandoning. She was not prepared to meet me in that moment at all. And I get it, maybe she can’t.  I guess this has been the problem all along. Maybe she was trying to hold the space and that’s the best she could do. But it felt awful. Like I wasn’t expecting warm hugs and smiles because that is not where we are at (nor have we ever been!) but it couldn’t have felt worse really.

The only good thing was that I managed not to dissociate – I could feel myself trying to disappear and kept bringing myself back. I wanted to be present and in the room with her for the last time even if it felt like she had left the relationship already.

The icing on the cake was at the very end. I was still silently crying and sniffing she said, ‘We have to stop. I wish I could have done better for you, but it is what it is, and I honestly hope for the best for you’.  Through my tears I managed to say, ‘thanks’ and I got up and that was it. There were no more words. No ‘take care’, no ‘goodbye’ just the shutting of the door behind me. And that’s when the dam finally gave way and I broke down…

…on my own again.