holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
So. Yeah. The title gives you the gist of what’s to come!
A few weeks ago (before the health stuff reared up and took centre stage again -bleurgh!) I got back in touch with Anita to try and arrange our ‘ending’ having initially told her that I needed to hold off on meeting until my work commitments died down – all this came a while after the communication where Anita finally (and somewhat unexpectedly) engaged with me after several months of radio silence and ghosting. Going forward I shall refer to that email as the ‘Shetland Isles Saga’! – because…ha! FFS!
Putting a pause on things after she’d emailed to agree that she would finally see me was definitely a good move. That email alone hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting, and it took a good while to process and filter down through my system. There’s absolutely no way I could have navigated a meeting with Anita when my work was in full flow …and even now that it’s quieter I still don’t know that I am totally ready.
It needs to happen sooner rather than later, I think, because the whole thing is starting to feel like an albatross hanging round my neck and as much as I don’t want to say goodbye to Anita, I have to to be able to move on and properly grieve her. Right now, I am stuck in this god-awful limbo space, and I just can’t keep inhabiting this place for very much longer. It’s emotionally exhausting and it is affecting me physically. The amount of tension I am holding in my body is unreal and even despite having bi-weekly massages, the massage therapist can’t get over what a state I get myself into in such a short time.
Feeling so emotionally discombobulated is also impacting my relationship and interactions with Elle. I feel incredibly needy at the moment, and the attachment stuff is starting to feel quite overwhelming tbh. I guess my system is desperately seeking safety in/with her – and I am really aware that my contact with her out of sessions has ramped up and I really really don’t want to tip the balance into a place where she dreads checking her emails because there’s yet another random effort at connection coming from me.
Of course, it’s not just one part of me in the mix with all this. There’s a part of me that is totally freaking out because people and relationships aren’t safe. There’s a protector part screaming “STOP IT RB! Stop seeking warmth and care in someone who won’t stay! Will you never learn?!” I mean if I am honest the whole mini-bus is in total fucking chaos and it can feel like I am rapid cycling through all of them and all their conflicting emotions so… yeah… I think I need to resolve the Anita stuff so that things settle inside a bit and I am less of a fucking emotional liability with Elle!
Having spent a lot of time ruminating about whether or not a meeting Anita was right for me now (my god the mental gymnastics have been Simone Biles-esque!) I decided after much deliberation that I did want an opportunity to see Anita in person despite how awful things have been. I’m probably insane. So much angst and confusion has built up over the last year that I decided that I wanted to see her one last time, to either confirm that she’s a fucking walking disaster and remind me that I am way better off out of it… and that my anger and hurt is justified, or if not that, to perhaps (hopefully) release some of the very strong feelings around this and be able to simply see Anita as a human who lost their grip on…EVERYTHING… and be able to move on with some kind of partial repair now that (perhaps) the attachment is less active (is it?!)…
I mean it’s not binary anyway. None of this is either/or, good/bad…it’s AND/BOTH/ALL and it’s fucking messy. But the main thing I am completely sure of is that I will (try) not go with any expectations of the meeting giving me anything I need/want because as much as the fantasy would be that Anita would see me and remember that she actually does care and that I am important to her, to open up her arms, pull me into a tight hug and tell me she loves me and that she’s sorry for what’s happened…
Wouldn’t that be something?!
However, I know that that ship has sailed, and that version of Anita doesn’t exist for me anymore- even though she very much did once upon a time. Sigh.
If I do meet her, I need to be realistic and know that it will, in fact, likely be very disappointing, painful, and open up a massive amount of shit – and so afterwards I will need a great deal of support because even though Adult Me knows Anita is long gone, to actually be with her face-to-face and have her not be how I have known her to be would be devastating to the Littles.
I anticipate the meeting feeling like a version of the still face experiment. My young parts will be searching for the smile and the safety and familiarity of Anita who I know and love and instead I am likely to be faced with a distant, withdrawn, ‘professional’ Anita, and this will set all sorts of chaos off inside. She’ll look like Anita, but she will behave like a stranger. I know that. I’ve already witnessed that version of A in the last session I saw her when she admitted to being ‘cold’ and ‘distant’ because she was in ‘self-protect’.
I fully expect this version of Anita to be present when we meet because I think if she truly entered into the meeting with an open heart and the willingness to be vulnerable with me, she might actually be hit with the reality of what she’s done. She will never go there. She will avoid meeting me in that place at all costs and instead function as a spectator to whatever I am able to bring. I imagine it might end up being pretty similar to the ending with Em. I’d like to hope it wouldn’t be…but let’s be real here, Anita is only agreeing to meet so she can avoid scrutiny and other people in her professional world (whom she considers friends) learning about what she did.
Ultimately, though I have reached a point in my head where I am prepared to go in and in one way or other leave with a broken heart. I mean it’s already well-smashed but no matter what happens there will be no walking away from the meeting feeling good. I am not stupid. Even if the meeting goes well, I’m going to be facing a whole lot of grief, aren’t I? Because the woman that was alongside me for 3.5 years twice a week, plus all the outside contact, will be completely gone and that special relationship will be left in past regardless of what happens on the day.
In some ways I actually fear a good meeting more than a cold and distant one because I think that will actually lead to bigger feelings of loss. Like if it feels familiar and reasonably connecting and she says something like, “It’s really good to see you” (because she won’t think and just freestyle it) how bloody awful to get a taste of that again and then know I’ll never have it after that moment. How fucking devastating to know she can turn it on but has chosen not to for me anymore.
Anyway, it’s all been a LOT! So, to the point RB! – I emailed Anita giving her some potential dates I could do to meet and she came back with:
Hi RB,
I am glad the pressure of work is easing for you. I know how busy you are around exam time.
I can make Friday the 21st in the afternoon if that still works with you.
Like you I’m not sure where to meet but wondering about [stately home] or [national trust property] somewhere quiet we can walk and talk.
Let me know your thoughts on this,
Anita x
I can’t really begin to describe the range of thoughts and feelings that came when I read that. Anita and I have never met outside ‘the room’ in all the time we worked together – well apart from that time I ran out the room upset, and she came and found me outside and sat with me in the dark, holding my hand in my car for an hour! But we didn’t begin the session in my car!
The suggestion of a walk and talk feels really weird because it seems to be completely out of step with how Anita has previously worked. I can remember another time where there was a rupture (ha- looks like there were a lot based on these paragraphs) and Anita and I scheduled an extra session to try and repair the next day.
It was on a day where she works in an office in my city rather than where she lives and where I would usually see her. I had said I would come and meet her in that office and she said she thought it was important that we met in ‘our room’ because unfamiliarity of location wouldn’t be containing enough and given I already felt unsettled she felt it was really important to have consistency so that my system didn’t get any more triggered. This seems really sensible and reminds me that there was a time when Anita had her therapist hat on and considered my needs and understood them.
So, it took me a bit by surprise that Anita would suggest us having probably the biggest meeting of the therapy – to end – out in a public place where we cannot sit and be together, where we could come across members of the public and where we/I would be totally exposed. I feel like it’s an absolutely shit idea and completely inappropriate. Is that just me or does any else thing that’s just total horse shit?
I’ve been turning it over in my mind (of course!). What could her motivations for this be? I wonder if it’s partly so that I can’t break down and make things awkard? Anita knows I’m unlikely to fall apart in public. I won’t cry. I won’t get angry. I’ll behave ‘normally’ even if I am dying inside. And that saves her all kinds of difficulty, doesn’t it? She won’t have to witness the pain and hurt that she’s caused.
I feel like meeting out in the open in a relatively busy public space doesn’t provide any kind of container whatsoever and really just feels utterly lacking in thought and care about what this meeting could/should be like. It shows me that Anita is no longer in a place to even think about providing the kind of space or meeting required and basically wants an easy hour where she can hand me my stuff, wander around making small talk and then walk away.
I’m not up for that.
I’m not saying I would go and see Anita and break down in floods of tears, beg for her take me back, and have a complete fucking meltdown and let it ALL out– but the space did ought to be provided for that possibility. There did ought to be space for me to be however it is and for that space to be private, familiar, and containing.
Tbh I am far more likely to turn up and be ‘False Adult’ and then leave and sit in my car hysterically crying for an hour afterwards because I am fairly certain my protectors will be doing everything possible to keep me safe in the moment but when I am on my own in my own bubble it’ll all come out.
So, my initial gut reaction hasn’t changed in the weeks since she emailed this. I really feel like this suggestion is just … not right for this end. It’s not like we’ve done years of intensive work, moved through the attachment stuff and reached a natural conclusion where we are ending on brilliant terms and a ‘wow, look how far we’ve come’ where perhaps a walk and talk and meeting in a different way might feel appropriate. It’s a million miles from that. Given how it’s been I don’t even think a one hour meeting is right. I actually think we should be meeting three or four times to properly put this to bed.
I discussed all this with Elle when it happened, and she was pretty much of the same mind (that it was a weird suggestion and probably would not be helpful). Elle said that whatever I choose to do she would want to see me the same day or the day after because she is really aware of what this will throw up for me… so that at least is something. As much as I don’t think I talk much about all this, when I do it must be pretty clear that it’s a fucking enormous deal.
As it happened I couldn’t meet Anita on the day she’d suggested so I didn’t have to make a plan or talk about where we would meet or explain why I didn’t want to meet publicly as health stuff got in the way so I was able to reply to her and say I couldn’t meet her because I had an urgent blood test on the day she’d suggested and then would have a hospital appointment the week after because my body was malfunctioning and so we’d have to postpone.
All year Anita has taken days/weeks to reply to me, or sometimes just completely ignored me. But suddenly being reminded of my health issues seemed to kick her into somewhere different. The reply to my email was immediate: Oh my goodness, I am so sorry to hear your having such a time of it. It really does come out on us physically, doesn’t it? I really wish our bodies wouldn’t add to the stress we already feel [red heart].
Now I get this was meant to be caring and connecting and kind but honestly, after the last year it just felt… confusing but also a bit… lacking in fucking awareness. Like, actually A, the intense stress and anxiety I have been under that has been impacting my health and well-being has been caused in a large part by what you have done to me. So, it feels a bit fucking rich pretending to care about me now. Leaving me with no safety plan, no care, and fucking off into the sunset for a year is … well, I have already blogged thousands of words on this so we all know the score!
Anyway, I didn’t reply to that because what was there to say, really? Instead, I sent it to Elle and we talked about it in our next session and as always Elle was solid and grounded and present and … exactly what I needed in the moment.
A week later, another email popped into my inbox from Anita:
I hope everything goes well with the blood test today and really really hope you’re ok. Anita x
Honestly, that fucking floored me.
Like what?
Why?
Why start being like this now?
I sent the email to Elle and said that I was really upset. She said she could understand why and said that it feels like Anita is sending ‘really confusing and inconsistent messages’. That’s exactly it isn’t it? Elle signed off with a lovely holding message and I at least felt like I wasn’t going insane and maybe these messages from A weren’t ideal. They’d be fine maybe for a friend to send but not someone who has disappeared out my world for a year and left me for dead. This is some of what I said to Elle:
Yeah, it just feels really unfair of her to decide now that she thinks whatever is going on is worthy of a sort of care. There was absolutely no need to send me this today – especially as I didn’t respond to her message about feeling sorry and all the stuff about body stress. There was no need for a follow-up. It feels like it’s more about her than me…and that she has zero grasp of how this would land after how this year has been.
I know I sound angry. But there was a little part of me that also felt really really sad. Because it proves that Anita can care… and that makes how she’s been this year all the worse.
Anyway, those messages sent me through a total loop. I was already in a fucking state having to deal with the health stuff and I just really didn’t need that on top. To be fair, it probably all felt much worse because I was staring down the barrel of the cancer pathway again – but … even without that… it’s just… a lot.
A week after that message I had my hospital appointment to get checked over. Fortunately, they think everything is ok but when I got home the last few weeks caught up with me in a massive way. I was face down on my bed crying and was totally dysregulated…and -ugh – ffs RB – I replied to Anita…FFS!:
Thank you. I still don’t know the results of my blood tests so fingers crossed they come back normal.
Hospital today was ok. Lots of poking and prodding and then an ultrasound but they can’t see anything obviously amiss in my breast so hopefully it’s all some crap perimenopause symptom….so long as bloods come back fine.
It’s been thoroughly exhausting and overwhelming. I thought I was ok but it’s hit me like a Mack truck. X
UGHHH I know. You don’t have to tell me. Emailing whilst upset and triggered isn’t a good idea.
Anita replied moments later with:
So pleased it’s sounding like it’s going to a positive outcome. It’s understandable that you feel exhausted. It’s going to be really hard on you emotionally and physically until you get the final results. Please keep me updated and I will keep everything crossed for you xx
I burst into tears again.
It’s such an unbelievable feeling of push/pull. That message came through a week and a half ago and I haven’t replied.
My blood results finally came back and there is something not quite right in one aspect that could be linked to the blood cancer I had. This particular level has been creeping up and up every blood test I have had for the last two years and is now sitting on the borderline of the top end of the normal range – so we’ll have to see what happens six months from now. It’s a watch and wait. I hope it’s nothing to worry about but…it’s a marker for lymphoma so…
So, yeah, I’ve ridden the immediate wave of health shit and the Anita stuff and now am back in a place where I guess I can arrange to meet.
I don’t really know how to approach it but I think I am going to have to mention that if at all possible we meet somewhere private and indoors.
I can’t believe how knackering simply getting to the point to have the ending has been. I’m going to be totally flattened when I actually do meet her aren’t I?
So… I’m stuck in a total procrastination dead zone again. The entire weekend last week passed in a big heap of ‘meh’ and ‘bleurgh’ and I did absolutely nothing except lie on my bed and beat myself up about not being able to do anything – I didn’t even watch crap to pass the time. It was a complete freeze. I hate that sooooo much. This weekend hasn’t been much better to be honest but I did at least take myself off to the beach walk a bit.
To be honest, I’m not surprised that I crashed and burned last weekend. The week leading into it was a massive week for both good and bad reasons – yay for a brilliant P!nk gig, boo for being put back on the two-week pathway for cancer care. I’m obviously trying to stay optimistic and hope that what’s going on with my body is some spanner in the perimenopause toolkit, but for now I am in that limbo zone and trying to not get too worked up whilst waiting to see the specialists next week.
It’s exhausting, though. I already feel like I am stuck in an endless emotional spin cycle so could well do without my body having a moment. It’s honestly been a ride this last year trying to get through the fallout of what’s happened with Anita and I feel like it’s caught up with me in a big way as I have navigated my way through these anniversaries.
There has a been a tremendous amount of heartache and pain…and disbelief…and it keeps unfolding and there seems to be something new each week – seriously I can’t make it up!! But there has also been some good, too so I don’t want to neglect that even thought the shit/upset seems to dominate.
So perhaps we’ll use this as a brief interlude before heading back to the Anita saga! – although so much of what happens or doesn’t happen with Elle is because of what’s happened with Anita… what a legacy!
I guess this last couple of months with Elle has seen me be a bit braver – perhaps – well, actually no… apparently, I tell her a lot of stuff in various ways, I just don’t fucking remember any of it – my dissociative skills are top notch- but there was a bit of HUGE moment fairly recently where I took the armour off and did vulnerability. I could almost hear Brene Brown cheering me on – after all vulnerability is the bridge to connection! (and heartbreak! But let’s not split hairs!)
I don’t think it’s any secret here that I really like Elle. I also don’t think it’s any secret that I have been super wary of letting myself feel too deeply…no…not that…wary of *expressing* how I feel too openly.
Some things have felt fine to tell her: the shit about breaks, the lack of object constancy, feelings of shame, and little by little more about what happened with A…but one thing I have been SOOOO conscious of is being too much, talking about how I experience her, and of course, tiptoeing carefully around the ‘L’ word – well basically keeping it totally off limits. After what’s happened with Anita loving feelings feel incredibly dangerous in therapy and I simply don’t want to fall headlong into an attachment where I lay my heart bare and then the therapist comes along and stamps on it with both feet.
It can sometimes feel like a slow dance back and forth with Elle. Like, I think sometimes she has been waiting for me to take steps towards her before saying whatever she might want to say. I guess, it’s tentative because I am so easily spooked, and she knows that the relationship and trust can’t be rushed. But actually, sometimes I just need clear reminders and expressions of care and then I’ll happily come forward.
So, a while back I was feeling, I dunno, particularly ‘warmly’ towards Elle I decided to buy her a book that had just come out. ‘The Oxherd Boy’ has been all over the internet for a couple of years with its lovely uplifting and heartfelt messages on life and relationships. It has lovely artwork, too. Finally the creator made a book and I thought it would be a nice thing to give Elle. I know she likes ‘Big Panda Tiny Dragon’ and this is in a similar vein.
She seemed to really like it when I gave it to her, and then one day she was replying to an email and asked me if she could put it in the waiting area so other people could see it because she thought it was so lovely.
My initial reaction wasn’t great. Like oh my god, all the feelings of abandonment and rejection and being inadequate flared up and I felt really hurt. I guess there was a part of me that wanted it to be something special between us, or her to not see it as something that’s just part of her work. The young parts were really triggered. Aren’t they always?! Thankfully I didn’t reply with a tantrum, I just simply said it was her book to do as she wanted with…which perhaps was bit petulant but there we are.
I think Elle is someone who is a really generous spirit and likes to share things with people- she’ll loan out books etc – and that’s really nice, but I think that gift, in that moment was my vulnerable self wanting to connect and instead it felt like ‘let’s share with all the clients’ and missed the importance of the gesture on my part… not ideal.
I get this is my stuff but it’s painful when it happens because it really comes from such a young place. However, Adult me does know that when you give someone something it is theirs and Elle really didn’t need to ask me whether I felt ok with her sharing the book – but she did. Although she must think I am way more fucking competent at expressing upset than I am, because I would need a fair wind behind me to say ‘no’ and my reasons why … because uh, hello, I’m a people pleaser!
I think probably when I am talking about my day-to-day life I must appear really forthright and confident – but we all know it’s a whole other kettle of fish when we are talking about our relationship to our therapist WITH our therapist in real time face-to-face. It’s a whole other dynamic! I will get better at it – but like I say, I am carrying a whole heap of shit from Em and Anita in my backpack and so it’s harder going.
I’ve not explained that episode brilliantly well, but let’s just say, every now and then the young parts of my system make me very aware of them – and I realise I still have a lot of work to do!
Elle replied:
I so appreciate it, and you.
A while later when the parts had settled down and gone for a nap, I replied:
I appreciate you, too.
In fact, I was away that weekend and wrote it in the sand – although I never sent the picture to her…although part of me wanted to.
It was a little step forward – but for me it’s more than appreciation. It is absolutely that of course it is – and a huge amount of gratitude. But for a long while now I have had the strong feeling of love for Elle. It’s not romantic and it’s not really parental either (phew)… it’s that really fucking annoying space of friend that can’t fucking be. I mean I get it’s totally a thing, ‘oh I wish my therapist was my friend’ but honestly, had I met her under different circumstances than therapy I think we absolutely would have been friends.
But, alas, no…therapist/client we are and will remain.
So, back to the ‘L’ word. My tentative little heart has been peeking out periodically trying to figure out what is ok and safe to say to Elle – AND DUH! – like yeah you can say whatever you like in therapy can’t you?! – but we all know that when you’ve been kicked so many times that the reply is important too. Sure, we don’t express loving feelings only to have them, hopefully, reciprocated but there is nothing fucking more cringe than opening up your heart to someone and them either pretending like you haven’t said it, or replying with ‘thank you’. I needed to be confident enough that my feelings would be received with compassion rather than disgust…thank you Em…the ‘tick’ still hurts.
However, in the lead up to May I had started to share a bit more with Elle about how shit everything had been feeling and she had responded so … helpfully… repeatedly that I just felt myself emotionally edge closer and closer to her. Then when I shared what I had sent to Anita alongside my big splurge about hugs and shame etc she just really couldn’t have been better. The big long hug being welcomed and my need for it understood galvanised the vulnerable parts a bit and I think made them really see that Elle is safe.
I know I have a really good poker face in sessions and can seem totally unfazed and I dunno – cold maybe?- that I realised that I really did want her to know how I felt. I mean I get she fucking knows because she’s since told me I’m not as opaque as I might think and that she really does see me.
In the wake of the absolute heartbreak and hurt with Anita there has been something good and so I rather bravely sent this at the end of the first big anniversary day, the day where A had told me she was ending work with long-term clients. It had been a sucker punch kind of emotional day but also a reflective one and what I alighted on was I felt a strong connection to Elle whether I wanted to admit it or not and thought, ‘Ah fuck it! Might as well say it rather than dancing round the edges’:
So I’ve almost survived the anniversary of the day life got spectacularly turned upside down… and I’m still just about in one piece even if it’s a bit (lot) wobbly. This whole month feels a bit like trying to juggle jelly, actually…and I hate jelly.
However, as much as I feel like I’ve been trying not to drown this last year and not always being brilliantly successful at it – there is something good to have come from the shit and that’s that I got to meet you which would never have happened had A not lost her mind…or H hadn’t breakdown about the blog…
People often ask me if A were to be back to her normal self and wanted to repair if I’d ever go back. The answer is no.
Sometimes it feels frustrating how protected I’ve become but then I’m not at all surprised. It’s weird feeling like so much goes on in my head and then hiding such a lot 🙈
I suspect you know this already, but I love you. And I guess I don’t need to qualify how, but it’s really a massive gratefulness for you X
(with these images attached beneath)
I hastily hit send and then went into a massive OMG RB WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???!!!
However it wasn’t long at all before this reply came:
Big warm smile reading that message, and a tender-sad ache in my heart for the well-protected heart that sent it.
I love and am grateful for you too, you courageous little pangolin.
And honestly, I just fucking melted. Adult me, little Mes, all of them…like RELIEF. Once again proof that Elle is not disgusted by me, she doesn’t see me as too much etc etc…and as much as she has NEVER given me any reason to think she might feel negatively towards me, far from it, the legacy of previous therapies has left deep wounds and some easily ripped open scars.
I spend a lot of time in my head (!) and I realise that I keep forgetting all the connecting moments we have had and almost feel like I need to print out our emails and put them in a binder to remind me because it’s like I suffer a huge amnesia. My brain is trying so hard to keep my safe that it’s keeping everything out – the good and bad. Not that there’s bad with Elle. I told her recently I feel like the Glitch Girl in ‘Wreck It Ralph’
Anyway, I keep moving forward with Elle, baby steps. Recently, again, I asked for a cuddle mid-session. It was the session that fell the same week of the anniversary of the last time I saw Anita and I was not in a brilliant place. After weeks of wanting to be closer to E I hurled myself over the edge and asked again – every time I feel like there’s a possibility things might have changed and it feels risky- it’s so sad – but every time I ask Elle responds positively… because she is not Em, or A, or even H – she is just Elle.
I can remember absolutely nothing about that session…other than being massively relieved to remove my armour when she came and sat with me on the couch and then about five minutes from the end saying, “I really don’t want you to hurt me” and Elle squeezing me more tightly and telling me that it wasn’t her intention and that she didn’t think she ever had hurt anyone (clients). Which is an impressively crap level of recollection for a 90 minute session – but this is where my head it at right now…flaky as fuck!
I get my experiences of therapy so far have been pretty fucking shite so far as harm and hurt go. I don’t for one minute think that Elle and I won’t hit the skids at some point, but I do have faith that she will be strong enough to work through ruptures with me and do the work required to ensure that we both remain safe in the therapy. I don’t think we will end up in a place where the therapy ends because she loses control of her own feelings and her ability to hold the frame. I fucking hope I am right with that assumption!
After that session, I sent Elle the link to one of my recent blogs too, another step into vulnerability and she replied as Elle does:
You do a really good job of describing your internal experience with this, and – believe it or not – I did get a lot of what you say here yesterday. I imagine you think you’re opaque to me and that all this stuff is well hidden, but I see more than just the corners of it I promise you.
I think I told you the first day we met that – as well as being really good at looking after myself – I am also very very patient. Which is to say I have no real agenda other than to be around for you until you feel safe to share, no matter how long that takes.
I don’t think I can convince you with words that nothing you can reveal to me will be horrifying or scary to me, or reassure you of something that you feel in your bones is a fundamental truth. I can only show up and offer love and curiosity and acceptance to anything you choose to bring me.
The tightest of tight compacting hugs until I see you again on Wednesday. I hope Pink delivers!!
Elle and I have lots of interaction now – just touching base- I send her photos from my walks…but those nothing, unemotional check ins give a sense of continuity and stability which means when my wheels fall of I can reach out with the heart stuff and she does know when it warrants something deeper.
I feel like bit by bit I am letting her see me, and bit by bit the trust is growing and it couldn’t be better times because there is plenty of shit that has been stirred up with Anita this last couple of weeks and I have needed the steady grounded approach Elle brings.
So I’ll post this up now and try and write about the latest upheaval and upset from A later this week. Like I said, though, I’m finding it hard to get out of my procrastination zone with this stuff right now…I want to write- I just feel so much pain going anywhere near the Anita stuff that I am having to push through a lot of internal resistance. I’ll get there in the end!
Hugs to you all and a heart from my weekend on the beach x
Ugh! What a week. I feel like I am in some kind of weird emotional paralysis – but stuck in utter hell so it’s not a good place to be AT ALL- and it’s stopped me from doing anything with this blog post. Despite knowing all I have to do is go dredge up stuff from April into May – so it’s not even all that ‘live’ now – it’s not proving easy. If it were this would have been posted last week and instead it’s still swirling unwritten, and my head is spinning.
I feel like I am thinking with cotton wool where my brain should be at the moment. I do know that this kind of dissociation is one of my most effective protectors but, honestly, it’s actually really preventing me from processing now. I guess I should thank my brain – it obviously wants to save me pain…and it is painful looking at this. However, my body is sending me all the messages that things are not ok even if my brain is trying to conceal things from me. I feel soooooo anxious and shaky and generally just very not ok.
I am on a massive emotional downward spiral in the here and now and am really struggling to hold all the parts together in order to remain in some way functional. I guess in some ways this recent-ish stuff with Anita is where the unravelling started accelerating and so I am reluctant to bring it to the front and centre again given where it has all led me.
The young parts are utterly inconsolable right now and I have this overwhelming need to feel safe and contained because I simply can’t regulate myself which is really disappointing given how much work I have done on myself. I feel like I am so full of tears, but they won’t come out. I feel like a dam that is on the verge of bursting but for some reason I can’t give myself the permission to let it all out – probably because I am terrified that once I start crying, I just won’t stop. I know that isn’t how it works and I know I can’t cry forever but something is holding me back. I guess, part of it is I just don’t want to feel this alone anymore.
It’s weird, there’s a massive disconnect inside. There are parts of me that are screaming out for Anita but the sadness those young parts feel when they know she is so far gone is absolute agony and so instead, they’re left in this wasteland of terror. There are others who absolutely don’t want Anita and want Elle instead – but that isn’t helpful, either, because Elle isn’t here to hold my hand and wrap me in her arms 24/7… and let’s be really clear here, I don’t want to end up face first in attachment hell with Elle because that won’t end well- although I don’t feel like I have much choice in the matter at the moment as my system steamrolls over my coping adult self.
So here I am navigating the fallout of the last year and feeling completely unequipped for the job. I think I have spent a lot of the year in avoidance and now I can’t outrun the feelings anymore … so yay for that! Yikes.
Anyway, last post I mentioned that immediately following my email to Anita asking her to help figure out a way for me to get my stuff back if she wouldn’t end that I wrote an email to Elle too…because…I am beyond help…but actually because I was really suffering. It was not long after the session where I had braved asking for a hug in session and I’d spent the majority of the session snuggled into Elle’s body – which felt amazing but also triggered all sorts of panic. And then of course she was about to go on a break…cue nightmares. So here’s more of RB in her meltdown era:
Dear Elle,
This is a real mess. It’s taken ages to get down because my brain refuses to think in a joined up way… or, rather, there’s been a fuck tonne of internal resistance and I’ve been fighting against various parts that want to shut this down over the last month. I keep zoning out every time I think about saying something, so leave it… or it completely disappears from my head when I see you. 🤦♀️ Things get worse and I repeat the cycle over and over until today and I’ve woken up screaming from a nightmare and I think that’s probably a message that I’m not really doing very well.
The last month or so I’ve been having dreams/nightmares where in various ways you’ve left or abandoned me in some way. In the ones where you leave sometimes you tell me what’s going to happen in advance and other times I only find out after you’ve gone – but either way there’s no explanation for what’s happened – I’m just left to pick up the pieces. It’s not a break it’s an end.
Sometimes the dreams are strange, and we’ll be in a situation that feels really off. I’ll tell you how what’s happening is hurting me and you don’t care at all, and I’ll leave – only making it as far as the next room and crumbling in a heap. I’m finding it both exhausting and unsettling.
I think part of it is that my brain has a wonderful way of catastrophising around dates/anniversaries and likes a good couple of months run in to build as much panic as it can. It’s almost a year since Anita’s holiday that turned out to be the end of our therapeutic relationship. The “it’ll be fine and I’ll be back and nothing is going to change” couldn’t have been further from the truth and I feel like I’ve spent nearly a year in survival now… I mean on top of the usual life survival 😅. So I’m not really surprised that everything has become so panicked inside lately. I feel like the light on a lighthouse constantly scanning the horizon for danger and finding it everywhere.
Only it’s really gone wild the last few days since telling me you’ll be away. I feel stupid because most of me knows you’re just having rest and a break … which is good and necessary- like it really is. But there’s these other very scared parts that think you might not come back at all. I get it’s unlikely but actually there is a pattern of people disappearing after or during a holiday and it’s not like it’s only historical from being small- although there’s that in there, too. And I really get how fucking ridiculous this sounds – but it feels like I’ve gone up through a hole in the clouds at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree and hit the land where everything is topsy turvy and keeps flipping so there is nothing solid.
So, I feel fucking weird about that … and actually not just about the break. I think in general I’m really struggling to figure out what’s going on. I really get how bonkers it sounds when I say that I lose all sense of you or our relationship between sessions- or at least lots of parts of me do. Like every single time I see you it feels like I’m trying to work out who you are, if you are safe, what might have changed, how you feel, if we are ok. Inside it’s chaos and it’s like trying to convince a bunch of really protective gatekeepers that you’re not going to deliberately hurt the parts they are trying to protect.
It’s hard because all the while I’m trying to appease those parts and also take care of the very sad, needy ones I am having a completely different kind of conversation with you. I am really aware of boring the shit out of myself when I’m talking to you. It’s really hard because I feel like I can’t win. If I’m boring myself then I feel like you must be slowly dying inside and clock watching too. But, clearly, there’s some part of my system that believes that it is safer to be like this than actually exposing the parts of me that are distraught and broken. And I really get why this is happening – like I’d have to be an absolute masochist to put myself in a position where I could be hurt again in therapy.
The other week I was so anxious and dissociated when I arrived that I don’t think I was even able to speak to you for quite a bit of time. I don’t know what happened to allow myself to ask for a hug that day because the protector parts of me had been screaming not to and wanted to go home. This is because I’m absolutely terrified of being pushed away now.
The thing is, there is also the bit of me that is like a heat-seeking missile that actually more than anything wants to be close and connect rather than be in lockdown. I find it really hard feeling far away and disconnected because it triggers my system really badly – it’s all the stuff about being too much *list goes on*…so it felt really nice to not have twenty layers of armour on and for the first time in a really long time I felt like my entire system settled…for a few days at least.
Only it didn’t last because when I saw you again it felt like I had no idea what was going on and the same pattern of trying to figure out if things are safe, ok, unchanged happened – only with the complicating factor of having exposed that really needy part and having zero clue what the outcome of that was from your side …
So – yeah- I feel like I’m unravelling at the minute… or pretty much continuously since May tbh 😩. And whilst I’m shining the light on the crazy, I sent this to A – I doubt she’ll respond. But as much as it will be really painful to have my stuff, I think after all this time it’s only right that I should have it back. It’s been colossal shitshow and not at all what we agreed would happen at all:
[THE LETTER TO ANITA CAME HERE]
So this was a really fucking put myself on edge kind of a communication week – I’d let ALL THAT out the bag with Elle and also sent the big thing to Anita all with one session remaining before Elle went on a break. Talk about door-handle type revelations there! I do wonder whether there was a part of me that decided to burn the house down right before the break so that if it all landed badly I would have some hiding time and could come back and pretend like nothing had happened.
Anyway, first to reply was Elle:
That’s such a beautiful honest clear request to Anita. I badly hope you get the response you want, and that you get a chance to reclaim your things and maybe also a little fraction of what they symbolise for you.
I think it’s really important for you to recognise the importance of “I don’t know what happened to allow myself to ask for a hug that day”. I think you did and do know on some level that, despite all the wounds that you have been dealt, that it was safe to ask for that hug. Personally, it felt such a meaningful thing for you to ask and to hold on (and squish tighter!) in the way that you did, but at the same time I had no sense or expectation that that session was the one that would unlock our relationship and allow you to feel you could finally completely trust me. A step forward is still a step forward, don’t negate it by whatever comes next.
I so appreciate you sharing, and I don’t want you to feel that – by not bringing any of this up on Tuesday – you’re somehow backing away from all of this. You’re not, you’re just taking your time, being vulnerable in the way that feels safest to you and yet still being so courageous. I want you to know how much I appreciate that.
I’ll see you in a few days. Until then, keep breathing and allowing yourself to be loved.
——–
I feel a bit weird posting that reply here – I feel incredibly protective of the relationship I am trying to build with Elle and have been really reluctant to be specific about anything she has said/emailed here because, well, I don’t want her to feel self-conscious that stuff she might say might end up here on the blog and then as a result stop saying these lovely things which have felt soooo important for the building of trust in our relationship.
I know I have a long way to go and it’s a sloooooowwww process, but I think it’s important to show this email because it really highlights the difference between Elle and Anita now and how I am most certainly with the right therapist for where I am now. That message felt so holding and containing and Elle has done such a lot of that for me over this year. I might not be especially expressive or open in the sessions but she has always responded well to my vulnerability splurges in email…of course I often forget all this in the room.
Anyway, the good news is that the emails that Elle and I exchanged over that weekend did a lot to help me feel like maybe the Anita stuff that I have been so scared of taking to her was actually fully accepted and that Elle was on my side. Because Anita also replied and I was left floundering…but Elle was there to help me pick up the pieces a bit before we had our session on the Tuesday and unpicked the whole sorry fucking mess.
Anyway, here’s Anita’s reply after months of radio silence and avoidance. Seems like asking to see her supervisor or colleague was enough to make her do ‘the right thing’:
Hi RB,
Thank you for your email.
A lot has happened over the past 12 months lots of changes and emotional turmoil.
With hindsight we should have done a proper ending at the time, especially with everything being so unstable around me.
But unfortunately, none of us can predict the future and I also understood your feelings at the time and inability to keep coming knowing it was working towards a final end.
I am so pleased you are now seeing someone else to help process everything.
I am wondering if you would like to meet up so I can let you have your things back and for us to say goodbye to our therapy relationship.
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances I have also had to change my supervisor to someone online in the Shetlands.
So it’s not possible to use my supervisor.
I am also currently moving my case load to online therapy only.
I could possibly ask a colleague but thought I’d ask if you would like us to meet first rather than use a third party.
Please let me know your thoughts.
With very best wishes, love and care,
Anita x
Ummmm so yeah…
My initial response was one of disbelief…for so many reasons.
In some ways it felt like more of the same – look how hard it had been for her this year. The bit about my ‘inability to keep coming knowing it was working to a final end’ feels like the biggest exercise in revisionist history. It’s almost like Anita has forgotten how she was, how she couldn’t breathe, how any time I brought my feelings to the room she shut them down, said she couldn’t handle the stress and would go on again about how hard her life was. We agreed we’d come back after three months to see how she was or end if no better – that wasn’t ideal but it was the best she could manage in that moment and I had to leave because it was HURTING ME… like fuck me, she seems not to care at all about how much what has happened has hurt me.
So, I was a bit angry about that part of the email…and then I had to laugh…
The supervisor bit…
I mean…The Shetlands?
Let’s put it this way, Anita had been working with her old supervisor for YEARS (although how effective her supervisor/supervision has been is up for debate!) in our locality and then for unexpected reasons that has to end and all of a sudden Anita is picking a supervisor who couldn’t be any further away from us in the UK – like it’s literally 800 miles distance. Whilst I’m not suggesting that this new supervisor is a problem, perhaps they are very good, and sure remote sessions these days are absolutely a thing …but, I dunno, it just feels a bit avoidant.
I mean there are soooo many supervisors in our area, Elle for one! (although can you even imagine that scenario?!). I dunno, it just feels like a weird choice to make. Anita can hide online and pretend she’s the ethical therapist she promotes herself as. This one need not know what she has done to her long-term clients. I also get that sometimes you might seek out a supervisor with a particular specialism but given Anita is winding her work down to the bare bones of what therapy is I can’t see that being the case.
Anyway, in some ways it just felt like Anita was going, ‘there’s no way you can see my supervisor because they are in Timbuktu’ – I think, too, the realisation that I might go and see a colleague of hers would put the fear into her and that is the only reason she’s offered to meet.
The sign off ‘love and care’ made me want to cry. Like what love and care? There’s been no fucking love or care this last year.
Anyway, I went to see Elle after all this and thrashed out a few options. I didn’t reply to Anita until after I had seen Elle. Given it’s a very busy time of year for me I replied and told her that I would like to meet but not for a while because I would need to put some serious scaffolding around me to make it ok and that work is so demanding I can’t afford to not function.
That period of busy is now at an end and honestly I feel sick about arranging this meeting. I am in such a terrible place emotionally that I really don’t know what good can come of seeing her. Perhaps it’s just me, and maybe I am now looking to see the worst in Anita, but I don’t feel confident from her email that I would get the end I need. Like it really needs to be a heart-to-heart exercise. I cannot go and have the sort of experience I had with Em. I need Anita to at least meet me in the pain.
Part of me feels like I might just be leading these little ones like lambs to the slaughter. I know how bloody flaky I must sound – to have been practically begging for Anita to engage with me and meet all year, and no she has finally conceded I am running scared. I think in my head I had thought she would opt for the supervisor/colleague handover of stuff and had got my head in a place for that…but now to be faced with seeing her… gosh, I dunno.
What do I do? The longer I put it off the more I feel like I am prolonging the agony for all these young parts. But, equally, knowing I am barely holding it together as it is makes me worry what the fallout of that meeting would be.
So, yeah, it’s a mess.
I feel so desperately sad and alone. I guess, I am now coming face to face with the reality that part of me, deep down, had hoped would never come. How can the woman that held me so tightly, told me she loved me every single session, washed my elephant so that it would smell like her, and read me stories now be a total stranger. It is completely crazy making and I am not at all surprised that my child parts are fucking destroyed.
I’ll come back again and add to this because I am sooooo far behind with the blog, but for now I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this (although not if it’s to say that I am a delusional weirdo obviously!).
May was a really tough month, unsurprisingly, and this blog post was started right at the beginning of it – and then sat languishing as an open tab alongside tabs for a million past exam papers – whilst I did my best to get through the busiest working month of my teaching calendar and trying not to emotionally fall apart.
Mid-May signalled a year since that god awful session where Anita came back from her break and then dropped the bomb about her thinking she’d have to give up her long-term clients…but then at the end of that session doubling back and saying that we’d “find a way through and still try to connect”.
Then of course, there was the agony of flip-flopping back and forth over the next couple of weeks until I just couldn’t take it anymore and then ultimately, I walked away on the 2nd June with the agreement that Anita and I would come back together in September and either figure things out if she felt better, or end properly if the picture was not improving. I hoped she’d get better, I hoped she’d feel like I was worth her time…but nope. Her silence has been so loud that it’s been impossible to ignore and this ‘end but not’ has done so much damage…on top of so much damage that was already there.
And so here I am – a year and a day on…and we have not yet had that meeting to end, to honour what once was such an important and meaningful relationship, or to simply say goodbye and give me the opportunity to get my things back. The thought of holding my baby elephant in one hand and my storybooks in the other actually fills me with the most profound sadness, but I know it’s something I’ll have to go through in order to move on and past this. Again, given the kind of work we were doing, it’s just terribly poor that A hasn’t been able to return those things to me in order for those young parts to get a kind of closure.
It’s been a completely horrible year but this last week or so has been really terrible. Anniversaries are hard and I knew I’d find it difficult – a year without A – I could never have imagined that eighteen months ago and yet here we are, or rather, here I am.
I wasn’t expecting the wheels to totally come off yesterday given that I had survived most of May with the minibus reasonably intact and everyone more or less safely strapped in – but the wheels came off, and the windows and doors blew off, and the engine exploded, and the steering wheel came loose in my hand, and the gear stick snapped, and the brakes failed, and the air bag activated…. and you get the picture. It was a total shitshow.
I woke up and just felt completely and utterly broken, externally frozen and internally in complete meltdown. I thought a walk might help so I took myself off out to the river having failed to motivate myself to get up and out of bed on Saturday where I, instead, spent several hours like a zombie staring into nothingness when I was literally in my most favourite place in the world and a stone’s throw from the sea and sand – big gold star for brilliant dissociation skills there RB.
Usually, I find walking in nature soothing and settling or at least distracting, but all I felt yesterday at the river was total shit and anger and upset and then I started spiralling and my brain started serving me so many episodes of rejection and abandonment – and of course threw in the Em stuff for good measure. Thoughts of self-harm crept in (just because I really need that right now!) which was especially worrying given how long it’s been since I have hurt myself deliberately. There’s been a lot of dissociation related accidents with the oven and burns lately, but none of them have been on purpose. Anyway, the more I walked the worse it all got, and then my brain started really panicking and began unpicking my relationship with Elle and then I started totally unravelling… AND OH MY FUCKING GOD MAKE IT STOP ALREADY!!!!!!
It was really painful. Not only was I feeling the full force of the grief around Anita, the … what would be call it for Em?… shit?…then all of a sudden I have really really vocal parts telling me that I am a fucking fool to think I can trust Elle, that she is only going to hurt me in the end, and that actually she doesn’t really care anyway so I am idiotically marching myself into another replay of the same old shit where I get my heart broken and she walks away without so much as a backward glance…because…(here’s the fun with parts) that’s all I deserve because why would anyone care when it’s been proven time and again that I am ‘too much’.
Ouch.
Nice one Brian (brain).
These days I have a pretty good handle on my system (!). I am usually able to separate myself from the parts and to hear and listen to them and generally I’m not completely taken over and unable to function when they’re activated. Ha! Well, they had other ideas yesterday, didn’t they?!- and, honestly, I mustn’t underestimate the power of the Teen and Critic when they are doing their utmost to protect the littles because they are fucking formidable. But wow- am I tired today. And honestly, I feel so unmoored it’s awful. It’s hard not to plunge headfirst into a shame cycle because the level of need I feel right now is huge. I feel like I need a massive amount of reassurance and physical proximity…and that’s a problem because…isn’t that what eventually burns people out?
Ugh.
My whole system is totally off its tits and I can’t seem to regulate or ground. I keep trembling. It’s really bad. Part of me just wants to run away and hide and there’s the other parts that just want to feel safe and settled.
Anyway, let’s rewind a bit and go back and go back to where I began this a few weeks ago…
Back to the end that wasn’t…I feel like I am treading this same old ground over and over, feeling my way through the dark and seemingly getting nowhere – although that’s probably unfair, I am still here and so that’s something…
The lack of planning around the ‘end that wasn’t’ was impressive and, honestly, the more I think about it the more annoyed I am about it all. Therapists can’t/shouldn’t just make it up as they go along and hope for the best when it comes to closing down a therapy – especially a long-term one like mine and Anita’s was. If therapists decide to end long-term work they should be seeking proper supervision first, formulating a plan with their supervisor, and finding ways to minimise the harm to their clients so they create as good endings as possible for those clients…
Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?
To be fair to Anita, she was in a complete state of panic and survival and just didn’t have it in her to be working, let alone working as a therapist at that point last year. I am so sad about how it all went down and I do get it…sort of…but I am less understanding about that fact she continued to keep working, and I PAID for that fucking shitshow of a month, and that she is STILL working but hasn’t kept her end of the bargain with me. Like wtaf?!
It was clear A couldn’t hold the end and needed space as she edged closer and closer to collapse…but three months rolled by, and no end, more months passed, no end, every time I asked to meet to end she was “not in a good enough place” and just avoided going anywhere near this/me.
I’m a fairly patient person but I have my limits.
I feel that after 3.5 years of paying to see a therapist twice a week that I should at least have got some kind of ending that is about me and my experience not just a therapist saying how ‘hard’ everything was for them and being unable to hear anything that was in any way painful for me. Like it would never have been great – it wasn’t what I wanted – but at least holding space for how fucking terrible it was would have been something.
We had agreed to tie up what has been massive work…but also what has been massive heartbreak and betrayal of trust. There ought to have been a space to process that and there just hasn’t been. I’ve been left holding such a lot – and thank goodness for Elle, but this isn’t work for Elle and I, really, it should be between me and A. I shouldn’t have had to find a way through this on my own – and I don’t, Elle is there, but I still find it really difficult talking about this stuff because there’s enough of me that believes this is fundamentally a ‘me’ problem and there’s a cautious bit of me that doesn’t want to have her confirm this because I do or say enough to send her running for the hills. I shouldn’t have had to grieve this loss in this way, especially given the kinds of losses and bereavements I have experienced that Anita is so very aware of.
In March when all the health stuff was kicking off and it was my birthday I hit a really bad place. Tbh it feels like I am perpetually skidding on black ice and then I periodically face plant into the worst bits, pick myself up and continue slipping and sliding along until I fall again. But in the March crash I sent Anita a message it had been months since the last one and I made reference to some of the stuff above:
There has been no proper end, no goodbye, you’ve still got my books and baby elephant…and I can’t even begin to explain how hard that feels for the littlest parts of me.
There was no reply to that.
And radio silence is just so wonderful isn’t it?
Several weeks later in April I reached a point where I had enough of being fobbed off or completely ignored and decided to try a different tactic. I haven’t been hounding Anita or contacting her very regularly at all, but every few months I’ll ask if we can meet to end and for me to get my stuff back because…that’s what should happen!
However, I realised that if Anita wasn’t going to be prepared to meet with me then I need to find a way of closing this off and moving on because it’s so painful to me.
On 4th April I sent this email to her:
Dear Anita,
It’s nearly a year since you went away on holiday and never properly returned. Those couple of weeks when you came back and said we had to end were really awful. Part of me was glad you could share with me how hard everything had got for you but it was really hard for me – because I care such a lot about you, could see you were in no place to hold the kind of end I needed, and so I walked away in the hope that giving you time and space would help you get well quicker and eventually open up space to be able to properly end- if that’s what needed to happen.
Of course, there was a huge part of me that hoped you’d come out the other side and actually want to see me, that actually the love you said you felt for me was real and not just words, and our relationship meant something. Clearly, I’m delusional to have thought that there was any foundation to our relationship.
After a few months it was clear to me you weren’t coming back and things weren’t better for you – but I didn’t expect for us not to be able to come back together even just for an hour, to meet, to properly say goodbye and end. Endings in therapy are such a significant part of the work. In life we are often faced with shit endings, but therapy can offer us a chance to get a good one. To grieve, to celebrate, to get closure. Only we haven’t done that. And the confusion and hurt I feel around this is just enormous… and this is especially so after what happened with Em. I never thought you’d be like her.
The very things I’ve been trying to undo for so many years with you about ‘not being worthy’ and being ‘easy to abandon’ have been hardwired now because the evidence is there. I opened myself up fully, my most vulnerable parts were completely exposed, and actually deemed both ‘too much’ (work) and ‘not enough’ (to care about).
This year has been like living in limbo. It’s been torturous. I’ve been left holding so much and have got absolutely nowhere to put any of it. To keep reaching out and to either get no response at all or be told that you’re ‘not in a good enough place’ to meet to properly end feels really crap. Like I’m not worthy of your time. That an hour of your life is too much to ask for despite the fucking emotional mess this has left me in. You said this was delicate work – and it really is.
It feels like you’ve washed your hands clean of the situation and haven’t cared at all about the fall out of what’s happened with you for me. Probably now you’ll see this as me being mental and too dependent and too attached – a ‘me’ problem. And this is a huge problem for me, but I honestly feel like the kind of work we were doing, for the length and frequency of time that we were doing it, deserves a proper end.
I assume you are still working in some capacity, and I get that it might look different now – but like I said – it’s an hour of our lives and it could be anywhere.
You still have my books and my small elephant … there’s some serious irony there. You said you’d look after it if I looked after the big one. But actually, it feels like my child parts are being held hostage by someone who doesn’t care for them at all.
I, too, am not in a good place (you can probably tell). I can’t move on from this whilst you’ve got those things. It breaks my heart not being able to be close to you. I miss your hugs, your heartbeat, and our stories. I miss being with you. I miss your energy. I miss feeling safe.
I’ve been seeing someone for several months and I can’t go anywhere near this stuff because it’s too painful. As much as I don’t want this, I do need to find a way to move on and seeing as you won’t meet with me can we arrange a way of getting my things back?
It would be too upsetting to receive them in the mail because they’re not just things – they symbolise such an important part of our work and our relationship. I know I’m going to need to be with someone when that happens so I wondered whether you might give me the contact details for your supervisor so we could arrange some kind of handover of my things and a space for me to just be with that maybe? Or I don’t know, one of your colleagues? I just know I’ll need a bit of a space to process what this all has meant and what’s been lost because otherwise it’ll be like picking up my dad’s ashes and stuff from the undertaker’s garden wall. It’s the same well of grief. I can’t really believe it’s come to this – trying to navigate saying goodbye to someone who is very much alive but won’t participate.
I feel so broken by what has happened. I probably sound angry or nuts. But actually, I’m just very hurt and want to move past this heartbreak.
Despite how this must sound, I really hope that you are doing ok because I care about you and I love you … that has never changed and that’s why this hurts such a lot x
So that was a lot – wasn’t it?
In true RB fashion, I simultaneously managed to have a fucking breakdown with Elle – it was one of those lovely moments where several shits seemed to hit the fan all at once. Things had felt reasonably settled and I had managed to take a bit of armour off in sessions which had felt nice if not a bit risky. But then, of course, she announced she was going on a break and – brace positions – it didn’t land brilliantly well inside given the landscape was already pretty fucking crap.
Breaks are never very good but I think I find them even more difficult these days because …well, bad things happen after breaks don’t they?! – but also my ability to maintain any sense of connection with Elle when I am not with her is patchy at best and breaks just exacerbate that. I find that in the usual run of things, by Friday my brain just has this void where the evidence that things are ok and the Elle is safe should be. My system starts to do the thing where everything feels wrong and dangerous which is especially bad timing as this is exactly when the young, vulnerable parts feel really scared and desperately want evidence that things are ok. It’s just fucking awful!
Honestly, I find this such a nightmare. To be so functional in my adult life and then to have this fucking disaster mess going on draining the battery is just the pits…and frankly embarrassing after so long.
However, in some act of bravery, or madness, or both following that email to Anita I sent a long and exposing email to Elle… because hey, why not?! Like in for a penny in for a pound… yikes.
But this is long so I’ll carry this on in part 2 – and guess what – Anita replied to my email…so there’s that to look forward to! Not even I could make up the content of it. The positive was, I had to laugh because…I’ve done too much crying! This isn’t an intentional cliff-hanger – more of a oh jeez we’re at nearly 4000 words again.
It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.
The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.
It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.
The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!
Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.
I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.
So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.
I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.
Like that’s the idea.
That was our plan.
A kind of gentle reparenting.
Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.
My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.
Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…
Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.
Yikes.
The feelings are big.
I cry a lot.
It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.
One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.
It feels like an act of grief and act of love.
There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.
So, therapy with Elle has been ticking along for several months now. We get on well – I think- and have had some really lovely sessions when I have been brave enough to bring stuff to her. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I get spooked before I even get in the room and so frequently end up talking a lot about mind-numbing shit in my day-to-day life whilst I try and figure out if she’s safe or, rather, if I am safe with her. I think I am…but my system is going to take some convincing after recent therapies.
I feel like there’s a part of me that is constantly seeking out the really ‘deep’ connection with Elle (you know the stuff that’s the therapy equivalent of a class A drug – seriously addictive stuff) and so feel kind of bleurgh when we actually just have a really ‘fine’ time. It’s hard to explain. I guess part of me experiences such a lot of emotional intensity outside the room, and does such a lot of thinking, that it doesn’t know what to do with every day maintenance kind of sessions.
There’s nothing at all wrong with these sessions, they’re a world away from dissociation and painful hell that I used to experience with Em, but I guess, it just feels ‘not enough’ – particularly to the parts of me that long to be seen and held. Another part of me knows, though, that we are still really getting to know each other – it’s going to take time. Steady, consistent, ‘in my window of tolerance’ sessions are probably exactly what I need even if it feels like I have a dam on the verge of bursting behind my cool exterior.
Part of the problem is that I am really fucking good at only showing the parts of me that I think are palatable (and together)! But then, recently, I had a moment where I thought, ‘that’s really boring’ – and actually I suspect Elle would rather be let more fully into my inner world, to see its complexity, rather than be bored shitless listening to me moan about stuff that is actually boring the shit out of me when I say it, too.
Ooohhh…it’s funny – I’ve always feared being left/abandoned for being ‘too much’ but then I became really aware of maybe being left/abandoned for being ‘not enough’ (again!) – like I’ve become ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. I don’t think that would happen (Elle ending because I’m boring her!) but I know what it’s like feeling like you’re watching paint dry with someone and I know I much rather be with someone down in the depths rather than paddling, barely getting my feet wet. I would like to think she’d feel the same.
However, what I will say, is that I am really aware that I can’t force this stuff with Elle – not because of her but because of me – all of the mes (I am so desperate to put an apostrophe on there for how it looks!). I am going to have to go at the pace that my system will allow – even if that means sometimes feeling frustrated or like parts of me are in hiding.
It makes total sense that it’s slow-going because I feel like I am just about holding myself together since the Anita catastrophe and need to be especially careful not to trigger any landmines and blow myself up. I am very aware of how precariously balanced my ‘coping’ is especially with the really active suicidal thoughts over Christmas. After what’s happened with the Em, Anita, and Hannah it’s easy to feel like the situations I have ended up in are a ‘me’ problem and I am super conscious of not wanting to be ‘too much’ for Elle. I need Elle right now so let’s not fuck that up RB.
For a long while I have been trying to figure out what Elle thinks and feels – as I say, trying to gauge what is safe to bring. She tells me what she’s feeling about me sometimes – usually if I ask. I am pretty sure she thinks that having told me that I am ‘delightful’ among other nice compliments and giving several reassurances, alongside being consistently ‘there’ and warm that I must KNOW, by now, that she likes me and that it is safe with her.
Ha! You’d think! But, sadly, not! This is me and my system…I’m the one who literally spends the beginning of every session like it’s our first. ‘Who is this woman (today)? Is it ok?‘ I just can’t hold onto Elle in my mind at all from week to week. Big whoop for my object permanence skills – not! It’s fucking tragic. But, actually, recently I realised that so much of how I view Elle in the room is filtering through the lens of where I am at. If I feel anxious and insecure I’ll be looking super hard for her seeming far away or disconnected… and I’ll convince myself that’s what’s happening – when actually she’s not either of those things.
I can’t always realise this in the moment but oftentimes after a session if I listen back, I hear things in a different way, and this is really helpful. Basically, things are never as disastrous as I might feel. In fact, it’s all pretty good. I just don’t feel it in the moment – and this is actually because so many parts aren’t allowed out. It’s those parts that are having a horrible time because they aren’t getting seen and so for them these sessions are completely disconnected and painful. I am starting to figure a way round this…again.
Still, one of the very good things about Elle (and there are plenty) is that she can read… and gets exactly what I am saying when I share something with her in writing. I realise, now, how much of a hindrance that was with Anita. I communicate best in writing – ha! – and so having a therapist that was so severely dyslexic that she couldn’t really read my stuff meant I either didn’t say what I wanted or had to record a voice note – ugh. It is actually really freeing to be able to have a bit of a meltdown and write and then share it with Elle knowing that even if I can’t bring stuff into the room right now it can at least be expressed and then make it in later – I can forewarn Elle about the state of things and give her a really clear heads up.
Elle and I have a reasonable amount of outside contact, and this goes some way to alleviating the anxiety I feel between sessions. I only see her once a week and it’s quite an adjustment going from two sessions that bookend the week with Anita to this. We do a ninety-minute session and, honestly, this is sooooo much better than an hour for me because … well… *waves hands desperately* this is how I am. But I still find Fridays pretty rough, and I think actually I might see if Elle and I can figure out some way of officially checking in then to make the panic a bit less.
I’ve sent a few ‘big’ emails over the time we’ve worked together outlining some of the huge stuff so haven’t kept her completely in the dark. I have found whenever I have given Elle the map she’s responded in a helpful and holding way – she writes really thoughtful replies and says what feels like the right thing in the room – as I say, it’s really just a case of my system being VERY reluctant to completely let go and trust given everything that’s happened in my previous therapies. It’s not surprising. It’s just kind of disappointing to be in this place after so many years of counselling – and actually so much of the damage being caused by therapists rather than my actual life events.
I’ve been seeing Elle since August – after it all went to shit with Hannah, after it all went to shit with Anita, after it all went to shit with Em! I feel like I have the therapist version of a Russian doll stack! Ha. It’s not funny, though.
I really like Elle, like really like her. I feel like she is actually really steady and safe. I feel like she is present and authentic. We seem to have a lot of similar interests which is nice – obviously it’s not essential, but after Em and her total closed book thing until the day she waxed lyrical about Brexit and outed herself as a tory it’s nice to know that Elle and I have these common interests and reference points.
Anyway, there are two sessions that felt like turning points in our therapy and as much I would like to write in detail about the last several months, I don’t have time – but these, I want to share over the next few posts.
Years ago, when my dad died I saw a therapist who was keen on activities – sand tray, drawing etc and actually sometimes I found doing things that didn’t revolve around me just sitting rigid and intellectualising my way through a session really helpful (because you know that’s what I do a lot of the time, right?). In all the years I worked with Em, she never once tried anything like that with me. She was firmly rooted in her seat and I sat in mine – like a good girl. Anything abstract or conceptual fell on deaf ears…oh my god the fucking pebble!!
With Anita it was different – we were more in touch, connected. We weren’t on opposite sides of the room once I mentioned how much I hated it. The physical touch stuff was really helpful. Reading stories was fab for the young parts. But we rarely did any of that abstract exploratory work – well never, actually. I’d kind of forgotten that there was this side of therapy tbh.
Anyway, in November there was a day where I was just feeling totally off. I still went to my session but I think it was maybe the first time I let my guard down a bit and didn’t perform the RB that Elle had gotten used to. Rather than fill the silence I just didn’t talk. I guess I let her see that maybe I wasn’t completely ok. I dunno.
Anyway, after about ten minutes Elle asked me if I would like to see her button tin. It pulled me from wherever I was, and so I said, ‘sure’.
Now, between Elle’s seat and mine is a low table with an edge – I actually hate that fucking table as it feels like a massive barrier between us but that day it was useful. Elle tipped out hundreds of buttons onto the table and spread them out in a circle around the outside. She told me the collection had come about over years and years and she could remember whose clothes the various buttons had come off as far back as her grandmother. The range of shapes and sizes and textures of buttons was impressive.
I moved from the sofa and sat on the floor and Elle did the same. I’m guessing a lot of you have done an activity like this before, Elle asked me to find a button that represented me. I finally found one after lots of rooting around. It was black and broken in half and so sharp that I said you could use it as a weapon. I then asked Elle which button might represent her? I think she was momentarily shocked, but she poked around in the pile and found a lovely silver embossed kind of bead/button. I commented on how our button selves change periodically, and she smiled. She said this one was definitely her today, but yes we do change.
Anyway, I think the general premise of this activity is to find different buttons that may represent parts of you, or maybe important people in your life/relationships and to talk them through. I didn’t do this. Instead, I found a range of beautiful buttons that all fell along a blue/turquoise/silver colour palette and placed them in a pile nearish to Elle’s button. My black, broken button stayed way over on my side of the table.
We talked about all sorts of stuff but mainly about the actual buttons. I would periodically hand really lovely ones to her, and she would take them to look at them. This was really the closest we had ever got to touching one another in the three months we’d been working together, and this activity felt really intimate and connected – I felt way less self-conscious in that session than I had done previously. Perhaps I showed a little more of the vulnerable self.
Anyway, it all felt so nice but then I clocked that our time was ending and, honestly, I just didn’t want to go and I think I dissociated a bit. Elle noticed. She said that in all the years she’s been a therapist that no one had ever invited her into their button circle, I think I probably blushed a bit – I couldn’t imagine not wanting my therapist to be alongside me in that, I needed to know who she was in order to show who I was. She thanked me for engaging with the task for so long and just as we were about to stop, I slid my black, broken button all the way across the table and put it next to hers.
I know that sounds like a nothing thing, but honestly that was an act of total courage and vulnerability on my part. A signal that I don’t want to be distant, and contained… I want to move closer. She said that I was a gift of a client and told me some stuff about how she experiences our time together and how she feels towards me. It felt like a completely different space to what we had inhabited up until this point. That session felt like it was about us, and our relationship, and our work together and it was so … exactly what I had needed.
We talked a bit more and as I stood up to leave, Mrs Brave came out of nowhere and asked if I could have a hug…
Elle said that of course I could have a hug, and honestly it was just lovely. She gives very good hugs, and she didn’t let go for ages, well actually I let go first, then pulled her back again and she giggled, in fact, she said something about a hug needing to be at least forty seconds to even work and so I didn’t feel like a needy, too much person…it just felt nice. And huge. And a turning point.
As I say, we’ve had some great moments on top of good moments and have been steadily creating something that feels solid. We laugh together a lot…which is nice…because I think I sometimes have a bit of a random sense of humour.
Anyway, it all went quite massively to shit almost immediately after the ‘buttons’ session – because of course it did. I guess the next session being back to ‘normal’ felt off but also, and fuck me, the six degrees of separation thing is just the absolute fucking pits, isn’t it? In that week between buttons and the next session a friend of mine had posted something up online of a performance they had done. Elle had told me she was doing something similar in that last session and low and behold, I could hear Elle laughing on the video my friend had posted. In fact, as I found out, it was Elle that had filmed my friend. I can’t even believe it. Like, why????
My instant reaction to the video was huge jealousy and sadness. Like how fucking unfair that my friend gets to spend time with Elle doing fun things… and I don’t. And, I totally get it, the intimacy in the therapy room is different and like gold at times, and she’s not my friend, but ugh… just ugh! So that set me off! I felt thoroughly shutdown in the next session – but I don’t think it was massively obvious until the end because False Adult is so good at taking the reins and creating a smoke screen!
I left that session and felt like utter shit, though. Like proper crumbling into pieces. I decided to message Elle and ask if she had any availability for another session – huge act of bravery – and her response just triggered the absolute shit out of me. Basically, she said that being like that in session was fine and something about how it’s learning to self-regulate and not to worry, and didn’t offer to see me– looking back at it it’s not terrible but for the part that had been so vulnerable in reaching out to get what felt like a body slam and rejection was just hideous. Ohhh yikes. Red rag to angry teen there. I replied with something to clarify and how bad disconnection feels and I got this back:
OK, so rather than trying to end the feeling of disconnect or the struggle, maybe think about if that has words or a specific fear attached to it. Is there an idea or story about what will happen if you stay disconnected?
I’m still going to be there – same place, same time, next week – and you can tell me anything you figured out then.
I just felt thoroughly let down. And, you know, it’s not even bad is it? But it just felt like she totally didn’t get it and that she just didn’t care…but then of course my short to the point messages don’t really show the extent of what’s underneath and so Elle is only working with what she sees – and up until that point I’ve been quite a closed book. She wouldn’t know what my system would do.
My whole system went wild…and out came the splurge self…and a fucking massive email!
BRACE POSITIONS!
I don’t think you’ll believe the response that triggered in me and I don’t even really know what to say. You don’t need to read this until Tuesday – it’s long – and probably makes no sense as it was written at 2am…couldn’t sleep. x
Sometimes I just need a person. Sometimes it gets so dysregulated inside that I can’t ground and instead dissociate. Yesterday, when I was with you, I was ramming my fingernail into my palm, and I couldn’t feel it at all. Sometimes I am present enough to ground – and have one foot in the shit and one foot in the here and now but sometimes it feels impossible, and I just disappear. And I get that it is ok – on a level- but actually being trapped in that is hideous. I feel disconnected from myself and you, and it just spirals really badly. The longer I am stuck in that space the more I feel like I am being left/abandoned even if that’s not what is happening.
I think you think that just sitting in it proves that it’s fine to be however it is in the moment and that you are there still regardless. However, sitting in that feels a bit like the still face exercise – internally it’s an absolute shit show and so it feels horrid because I need to know you’re actually with me and I can’t feel it at all. Checking in or soothing or telling me you are with me still – or whatever it is that you think is so bad and unhelpful would help me regulate – co-regulation when it’s like that is what I need. Although you probably think it’s what I want and not what I need. But self-regulation in that moment feels like you’re asking a toddler to do algebra when it’s only capable of counting to ten…with a few numbers missing along the way.
I think last week you wanted me to either map out some stuff about significant relationships in my life or let you see what my internal dynamics and relationship to different parts of myself is with the buttons – and I did a brilliant job of avoiding that because right now that isn’t what feels important – although I guess the inner system would be. You said that no one had ever asked you to be in their button circle and right now that’s what I am trying to figure out. I’m trying to understand what is going on between us. Like there’s a part of me that really wants to connect with you but the moment that comes up I feel myself start to disappear because it feels dangerous on a level but then feeling disconnected is equally as triggering. I can’t win but I absolutely do want to let you in and feel closer to you but that also feels exposing and risky because that opens up space for you to hurt me…and frankly I just don’t think I’d survive that right now.
Remaining disconnected and in the struggle like you’ve suggested, is fucking exhausting and triggers my nervous system. It literally makes me feel sick. I seem to spend a lot of the time trembling at the moment, and I know that this only happens when things are really bad. Not trying to end that feels like … self-harm, really. Not only that, it leaves space for the critical part of me to take root. My inner critic is a sadistic fucker. I know that ultimately it is the biggest protector I have and thinks it’s doing me a massive favour by relentlessly telling me that I am stupid, too much, unlovable, and that I must be a complete moron to even try to do therapy again. Like can’t I see the evidence that people leave because of me? I can’t believe I’m going to quote Taylor Swift (don’t judge!), but it feels like, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me” and that’s sort of stuck after recent events.
It’s like I have a minibus full of traumatised parts of various ages all kicking off in various ways and screaming. In those moments I don’t have an observer self and just get hijacked. This is what it’s been like. And it’s not even like there is a steady slip into that where I can do something to stop it happening or catch myself early. It’s like one minute I am here and the next I’m not and I can’t get out of that on my own – not really.
Over the years I’ve identified eight different parts of the system that sit outside my adult self (and even there, I suspect/know there are quite a few aspects to that self). At the moment, though, I keep dropping into this really desperately sad three-year-old part. It’s always the same, the scene never changes. She is standing in a grey wasteland with her back to me – it’s eerie and scary and cold and just really awful. Sometimes if I am able to remain in my observer self, I can see her but I can’t seem to bridge the gap between because it’s like I am stuck behind glass. There’s no hope of soothing that part because I can’t reach through to her. Other times, though, I feel like I am locked in that little body stranded and alone on the wasteland and I can’t get out of it – which is what happened yesterday.
I really need to feel/remain connected in the moment when I am with you because I struggle so much outside the sessions. My brain is super quick to lean into the narrative that you are pissed off with me, I’m too much, and that something bad is going to happen even when there isn’t evidence for it. Disorganised attachment is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m gutted because I really thought that this wasn’t a thing anymore because for such a long time I felt secure – or a secure as I have ever felt with A…and then it just collapsed, and I feel like I am back at square one trying again to find a way to not let this pattern dictate how I experience people/relationships but I guess it’s not surprising I feel like this now.
You asked if there is there a story and a fear around staying disconnected? Umm how many would you like to hear?… because there’s plenty, but perhaps the most relevant right now would be the ones related to therapeutic relationships going tits up. Ultimately, fear of the effect of disconnection is closely tied to feelings of rejection and abandonment because they’re all stops along the on the same track.
I think this feels so bad right now because I am not out the other side of what’s happened with Anita. It’s still live and so I am already nose deep in the shit of the reality of this story I tell myself. The impact the ‘disconnection’ but not ‘end’ I have experienced with Anita has completely derailed me. I feel like I am literally in survival all the time. The house is still on fire. [this is referencing a previous email] And there’s a part of me that feels like what’s happened there must be my fault because why else would she behave like this? And then I wonder if you’re perhaps consciously keeping your distance because you essentially think you’ve got a fucking disaster zone in front of you…and I get it. Part of me is trying to go with the narrative that this is about the container but mostly it just feels rejecting.
It’s six months this week since I saw A…and a month since she chose to ignore my message and ghost me. I can’t even… and I have no idea what to do about it now. Like I literally have no idea what to do about it. I really hoped there’d be some kind of resolution by now but I have to find a way of moving through it without her input.
Christmas break is imminent, too, and this time of year is never easy but it doesn’t feel safe because of what happened with Em. I guess maybe it’s exacerbated because I happen to be going abroad like I did the year it all disintegrated with her. And whilst that shouldn’t mean anything – I think my brain is terrified of the pattern repeating. I left feeling disconnected and dysregulated in December 2019 but told myself that I was being stupid and that of course it would be ok because why wouldn’t it after so many years?…and then boom – ending in January. So, the idea of remaining in this disconnected state now feels… horrific, actually.
And I get that both those relationships were long term and I barely know you so it seems crazy that any of this feels this massive or intense – but the smallest thing now is like lighting a touch paper into all that gone before because I am so sensitised to feeling like I’ll be left, abandoned or rejected…and all that stuff sits neatly on top of the core wound which is the stuff with my mum. Like I really knew that this wasn’t going to be easy but I didn’t think it would be this hard either.
And as much as I am really trying to fight against all that when I have so many different internal narratives at once it’s hard to hang onto any sense of being ok or safe because I actually don’t really know how you feel because you don’t tell me. Like I felt like last week was quite a big shift into something different and then yesterday it felt like we were a million miles apart and it felt like being held at arm’s length because that’s what I read into silence. And I think this is probably me and my wonky brain but … fuck, it’s so tiring.
There’s a part of me that just thinks, “Fuck it – just give up!” but I don’t want to because … I am hoping that this can actually work – but regulating my system feels like an impossible task.
November has always been a crap month emotionally. It always takes me by surprise and it’s only really afterwards that the dots join up and I figure out why I feel like I am flatlining. I think it’s been particularly hard this year, partly because everything seems to have so spectacularly disintegrated in the here and now as well – although not for the same reason… and so my brain has decided to serve me up a double dose of feeling isolated, unsafe, *more of the crap*. It’s all too familiar. Relationships feel dangerous.
The other week I was really conscious of feeling really just not ok – I mean it’s all on a continuum at the moment but I realised the timing of it tied into what happened when came out in November when I was seventeen having had a friendship end (you know the one where you have feelings for them so it’s way bigger than that). I had finally let this person know about some really vulnerable stuff around my eating disorder – which was huge after hiding it for two years. She decided it was too much, threatened to tell my parents, and then disappeared which was horrific, and I don’t think I ever really got over that acute feeling of being rejected for being *almost* completely myself and trusting her with something so vulnerable.
It’s not like she was a teen either, she was twenty-five. And then this reminded me of something that happened with Em when I told her about the extent of the problems I was having with eating and exercise – and she told me that we’d have to end if I didn’t go to the GP.
To add insult to injury, when I came out, I lost my friendship group all bar two people overnight. I used to walk into rooms at college and it would go silent, people would stare and then do that coughing a word/phrase thing “fucking dyke” or generally something else offensive and so it was really awful because I had been popular across lots of different groups – chameleon skills – although clearly not actually liked for who I was – even if my sexuality is only one part of my identity.
Not long after my best friend also ghosted me but not before writing me an ‘honest’ letter first. We’d been out clubbing on my eighteenth birthday, and I’d kissed a girl which was AMAZING. My friend wrote me a letter the next day and said she couldn’t be my friend anymore because now that she’d seen what it actually meant for me to be gay rather than just a concept, it made her feel physically sick and she would never see me in the same way. So that was pretty shit.
It’s all historical but I think that right now it almost like I’m experiencing multiple layers of disconnect simultaneously through different parts of my internal system – so my seventeen-year-old self is having a shit time but so are most of the young parts, in a different way, because of what’s happened with Anita.
And I really get the need to learn to self-regulate but historically self-regulating has looked liked shutting down, keeping everyone out, leaning into self-harm and an eating disorder and I know that none of that has never done me any good but is highly effective.
It feels like all the years I have been trying to recoil the spring in a different way and approach things differently has been totally wiped out and the spring wants to flip back to its original form because on a level it is safe and known – only it’s not really safe and I do know that. So, I’ve been swimming, and sleeping and breathing and all the self-care things but it hasn’t helped, really.
Reaching out instead of going inward yesterday was difficult because my instinct is to hide or run away instead. It felt vulnerable and exposing but sometimes when it feels like that, I know that actually I can’t do it all on my own and I need a person. It’s about co-regulation. And I think you think that doesn’t help, or reassurance is just fostering dependence or something. But to be told essentially to tough it out and think about what’s going on feels pretty crap when the landscape feels like it’s blowing up.
I already know what’s going on and why – and all the stories and fear behind being disconnected. And that’s why I reached out because sitting in this for any length of time feels utterly unbearable and it’s not like it serves me up any new understanding of what’s going on – because I get it already. But the knowledge of what’s playing out doesn’t seem to make it any easier to endure. I told you I had the Dead Sea Scrolls decoded – and I don’t doubt there are other bits I haven’t fully got the meaning of yet, but largely I understand the story.
Reaching out feels fucking dangerous because I already have the narrative of being left, abandoned, rejected because what I want/need is too much for the other and so getting that response feels like it confirms that. I know you wouldn’t ever want it to come over this way but to part of me, at least, it feels punitive and punishing. It feels like you’re asking me to do an exercise in stress tolerance…
I think I am so used to feeling a lack of care that part of me is always expecting it. And I really get that this, to you isn’t about a lack of care – it’s probably something about encouraging me to try and hold stuff for myself because I am strong enough to do that…or something like that. But this refusal feels like a rejection and also like you don’t really see me…or perhaps you do and that’s why and you want to keep your distance. And my brain has a wonderful capacity to switch into worst case scenarios – but then it’s not really surprising as worst case has happened quite a bit.
Disconnect, on a level, feels like annihilation – and I get for adult me it’s not. Like I will continue to limp through my life until I collapse. But how my system experiences it is so different and it’s so dysregulating. I was really struggling last week even before the absolute colossal shit show that was my weekend and there was a tonne of stuff that I wanted to talk to you about.
So, you might be there next week – and I get that is meant to be reassuring but it doesn’t feel it. Whether I will be there or not largely depends on how vocal and persuasive these protective parts get and, alongside that, how much shame and embarrassment rises up from having reached out and then it landing like this because I already want to crawl into a hole and die.
I get what you’re trying to do here, I think, and I also know what my protective parts are trying to do. Sometimes I can get these gate keepers to stand down and listen to me and other times I am locked in a fucking prison of my own making.
I don’t suppose any of this makes any sense because my brain is in a complete mess and I don’t really have the words – I just know how it feels…which is pretty fucking shit.
So, yeah, this was a nice ‘welcome to my world, Elle’ wasn’t it?
The next session was really great. Giving Elle insight into the behind-the-scenes version of me allowed her to really respond. She apologised for what had happened and said she had no idea that was what was going on. She said she wouldn’t want me to feel like that at all. And then later in the session was when she told me that she thinks I am ‘delightful’ which is really fucking nice. So, yeah, there’s been lots of good. And I feel kind of shit that this blog has fallen so far by the wayside as actually there’s such a lot I would have liked to have said.
Other than the very first session I had with Elle I have never brought up what’s happened with Anita. Although it’s come up in a few emails (of course). But largely there’s been a massive block from talking about it face-to-face. I think it’s to protect myself from feeling the pain of what’s happened which is enormous, and on another level to avoid judgement from Elle. She has never given me any indication that she would judge me negatively, but this is the legacy of what’s happened with Anita…and the other Russian dolls.
I think there’s been a part of me, too, that didn’t want to scare Elle off by being ‘too needy’ and telling her the finer details of what went on in the therapy with Anita just in case she panicked and ran! I think I wanted to establish the relationship between us first, and I guess sort of prove that I am not a total fruitcake before wading in and showing her the really vulnerable stuff.
I’ve sent Elle some blog posts about the ‘Anita Saga’ so it’s not like she doesn’t know about the cuddles and stories and elephant etc –I just feel like I keep what she does know in a particular compartment of my mind so that I can go see her and pretend like I am not some nutter with major attachment issues and a broken heart. It’s funny, though, because I compartmentalise all the vulnerable stuff that I have shared I really forget that Elle actually knows. And having just found that email to her…
Oh my god, she KNOWS it all!!!
She must be wondering what the hell is going on in sessions? Where is the person that sends emails about high anxiety and panic and attachment stuff and our relationship? Because she rarely shows up in the room!
Well, that all changed recently.
What with all that health shit, things have felt really precarious, and it’s triggered no end of anxiety – like a 13/10 rather than the usual 8/10 everyday level. Part of that has manifested in me having terrible nightmares with Elle or Anita in. That old chestnut! It’s been really upsetting, and whilst I know it’s just my brain feeling anxious it’s hard when you go to therapy to put that fear to one side especially when the therapy is relatively new…is 8 months new?!! I would so easily have been able to tell Anita that she had hurt me in a dream and yet I am still in the place where I feel a bit weird even telling Elle I’ve dreamt about her…because CRINGE.
I’m sorry that this is jumping around -there is so much to say!
Anyway, a few weeks ago I emailed Elle the night before the session telling her, what I thought was quite big stuff about how I was feeling – and she didn’t reply. Now, usually, if I send that kind of message, she responds with something really helpful and holding – because she gets me better now! With hindsight, I know that the way I phrased the start of the message didn’t make it clear that it was a ‘now’ problem and it really did seem like ‘for tomorrow’ in session and could wait. Of course, my system didn’t deal with the lack of reply very well and I felt really upset going to my session, in fact, I almost didn’t go.
I felt so bad when I arrived that I dissociated and couldn’t even talk for about ten minutes. This is not something that really happens with Elle, like maybe I’ll check out a bit here and there but it’s not common…so this was BIG. I felt like I was in freeze. However, despite my protectors doing their best to shut down, there was a little part that just would not let itself be hidden… this is new!!
Rather than being stuck, frozen in my isolated misery, I looked up, looked at Elle, made eye contact (whoa!) and asked Elle if I might have a hug. Now, this isn’t completely new, as I said we do tend to have a hug as I leave and that is lovely – but we all know that a goodbye hug is not the same as a hug hug when you don’t have to peel yourself away and leave immediately – and I already probably hang on for way longer than is normal then!
Elle got up from her chair and asked me whether I would like a stand up or sit-down hug. I shuffled over on the sofa and she sat beside me and folded me into the most lovely snuggle. My system relaxed for the first time in ages (like since Anita and I were ok which is nearly a year ago now) and I just didn’t move for 75 minutes (!). We talked about childhood memories, and she sang me a song that her mother used to sing her. It was just so fucking perfect and needed at that particular time. It felt like maybe my caginess has not been necessary, actually. Maybe Elle has been there the whole time and just waiting for me to come to her.
It was so nice to fully rest and be. No protectors, no rigidity, no fear. I just felt so completely safe and like I could finally breathe. Elle’s heartbeat was regular and steady, she smells lovely (although I already knew this), and the physical touch instantly regulated my completely dysregulated system. The sad thing is, I know exactly what I have been missing for all these months but until I was there in that moment, I didn’t realise just how heavy it has been carrying this weight for so long.
That little part that wanted the hug that day has been patiently watching and waiting since November, hoping that this would/could happen. There’s a lot of longing in that child part. But actually, adult me just really needed to be close too.
Anyway, it felt so nice that week between the sessions…I felt more settled than I have felt in a really long time – that is, until a couple of days before the next session when the panic kicked in:
What if it’s a one off?
What if she thinks I am weird?
What if I get the boundary talk?
It didn’t take long for me to start to unravel once I started turning that over in my head. So, of course, when I arrived at the session I was looking and hoping for some kind of sign or reassurance that the previous session hadn’t been weird for Elle, and that it was ok. Because, you know, SHAME is a fucking bastard. But it didn’t come. I think this is because Elle must think, ‘If I wasn’t ok with a hug I wouldn’t do it’ and so therefore it must be ok, right? But the thing is, I literally didn’t let go for 75 minutes – that is a massive cuddle by anyone’s standards…
I can’t remember what I spoke about that session but suffice to say I was back onto ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. Or just a different me.
I left feeling quite unmoored even though we had ended with a hug.
I realise now, that I really need to bring this stuff up when possible, because when I finally did pluck up the courage to ask, it was clear that Elle was in no way weirded out by me. Like totally not at all.
This is super long – fuckkkkkk – sorry!! -so I’ll end her and then pick up the rest very soon!
I hope that everyone is hanging in there. Take good care of your gentle souls x
According to WordPress this post on Eye Contact In Therapy is six years old today. It’s still one of the most visited posts on my blog, so I think my hunch back then was right: lots of people struggle to make eye contact in their therapy sessions.
This post feels especially poignant at the moment. I wrote it when I was still working with Em…in the time before I started burning through therapists like sand trickling down in an hour glass! The problem with eye contact hasn’t bothered me for years (whilst working with Anita), but I seem be back in the hell zone now with Elle which feels absolutely fucking marvellous – not.
Part of me feels sad about it because it reminds me of what I have lost with A, how easy it felt and safe, but then, actually, I think part of the reason I am struggling so much to let Elle in and to look at her is because of what’s happened with A… because it clearly wasn’t safe at all was it?!
Omfg. Just OMFG! What a bloody few weeks it’s been. Honestly…just once more for festive cheer: OH MY FUCKING GOD! Does the run into Christmas ever get any easier do you think? I’ve been struggling with the ‘season to be jolly’ since I was 14 – or, at least, that’s the first time I really remember feeling like I couldn’t cope and fell face first into the doom vortex on the 26th December before finally getting spat out and back into some semblance of reasonable coping early in the new year.
These days the festive doom and gloom seems to hit hard in mid-November and continue on right through to January…because I like to take my time over these things and really get the full experience of shit for as long as possible (!). To be honest, the moment the Christmas chocs hit the shelves in … October (?)… I start my steady decent into *waves arms around* this fucking mess. It’s gloriously tragic.
Unsurprisingly, this year is/has been terrible – but then it was always going to be, wasn’t it? I probably sound hyper and manic but I am really just trying not to collapse. I’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster lately and it’s been pretty bad at times like I said last time I came here for a moan.
Tbh It’s hard to know where to begin today. I know I’ve been AWOL here again – for a few reasons that seem completely bonkers but then make sense when remembering my system is a fragmented mess of parts:
1) I have had so much to say but just couldn’t find the words or the time (there’s been a tonne of dissociation which hasn’t helped matters)
2) I have been in survival and have spent a lot of time hiding in my bed just to be able to function on a minimal level and every time I have thought about writing I have shrunk away from it
3) Child parts have been pretty activated at times and they just need cats (and Anita…)
4) I’ve been away on holiday this last week (hooray for sunshine, boo for still having to parent!) and have tried to recharge and find some reserves so been reading a lot of books in order to try and escape my brain and all the attachment shit that’s been thrown up lately
5) My laptop decided to get in a big hot huff and then give up the ghost – bloody marvellous!
I mean that list isn’t exhaustive by any means, but you get the picture.
Also, I haven’t really been able to formulate what I want to say about therapy with Elle. That has obviously been ongoing and last time I was here I mentioned that I had been triggered – honestly, it’s been a fucking hellscape navigating this new relationship after what’s happened with Anita and what’s galling is it’s not Elle’s fault or even mine, and yet here we are dodging fucking landmines that keep activating every other fucking minute.
Therapy has always been sensitive work where I am concerned #trauma but I feel like we are now having to work like the bloody bomb squad. It’s gently gently…and even still sometimes we manage to cut the wrong colour wire and BOOM!
I don’t know how to approach writing about the last six weeks or so because I feel like Elle and I have had some ups and downs but the result is that I think we are getting a better sense of each other which is really good. I really like Elle – and I think she is going to be really good for me. But now we are on a three-week break and ARGH fuck me – all the stuff is coming up. Doesn’t take long to feel like it’s all going to shit, and abandonment is imminent, does it?
Perhaps I’ll come back to all that separately because I feel like there are moments that I want to give proper time and thought to…maybe in between Christmas and New Year when I will- without doubt- be struggling (worse than I am now!).
Last time I was here I was talking about the email I had sent Anita reminding her of the agreement to end and holding her to account having ghosted me for a month – and her fucking ridiculous reply, “I am unsure what it is that you are looking for from me” … jesus.
Anyway, I have really struggled these last few weeks. It was inevitable. Christmas over the last few years has been tough (in the way it is always tough) but I have been held through it by Anita’s love and care. She has made the breaks as short as possible, checked in with me (even sending me messages – iniated by her – on Christmas day itself), bought me some really pertinent/heartfelt gifts, washed my elephant … you know, all the stuff that has meant that the young parts have felt loved and cared for even in her absence.
This year that is gone.
And my god it’s painful.
This last few months has been so hard but until now there haven’t been any ‘occasions’ where there has been something to ‘miss’ or be very different outside the sessions being over but Christmas is the first of those massive ouch moments and being faced with just how ‘gone’ Anita is. I’ve been battling with wondering what to do about getting my books/stuff back from A but resolved that was best tackled in the new year because frankly, getting my stories back is going to HARD and the child parts of me don’t need to feel any more rejected than they already do.
I hadn’t replied to Anita’s email either – I’ve been turning it over in my mind a lot (because that’s what I do) and I just hadn’t known how to reply. There’s been a massive part of me that wanted to send her a card this Christmas – which is a massive distance from the gifts we’ve exchanged over the years – but in the end I decided against it. Part of me wanted to reach out and ‘care’ but there was another part that just feels like I am wasting my fucking time and emotional energy on someone who absolutely doesn’t give a shit.
I’ve had a lot of time to think this week being away from life – and as much as I wish I could leave my troubles back in the UK I haven’t been able to. I have been thinking about Anita, I’ve been thinking about the new relationship with Elle. I have been thinking about what I need and how to move things forward.
Anyway, long story short, after weeks of upset and nightmares and generally just not doing great I sent Anita a text last night:
Tbh I didn’t expect her to reply…but when I woke up this morning I see that she’d replied late – 11pm (clearly her work phone boundaries are as appalling as ever) but what came was honestly just a fucking kicker:
I mean I shouldn’t be surprised – she’s been beyond fucking crap this whole time – but seriously?! All the months of how hard it is for her alongside her total failure to show any kind of care about my experience has been rough… would it have killed her to say, ‘Happy Christmas RB’ –
Anyway, I’m sure none of you are shocked by this. I wasn’t. I don’t really know what I feel tbh. Disappointed? Resigned? Numb? I am sure if I felt deep into myself there’d be a lot of feelings, but I am not going to go anywhere near that right now because frankly what’s swirling in that vortex of doom is painful and if I can not get swept up into it then all the better.
I know for so many of us, this time of year is fucking challenging. I mean it’s a bloody melting pot for emotional chaos isn’t? Even without therapy breaks thrown in for seasoning! There’s all sorts of crap about families and expectations and grief and *all the things*…it’s no wonder we struggle because it is fucking hard. So FUCKING HARD!!!
I hate that every year I wish the festive period away. I so desperately need the time off work, but I find this time anything but relaxing. I have a lovely family – my wife and kids are fab…and I try very hard to be present and enjoy making memories with them. We have started new family traditions. We have begun to do Christmas on our own terms…and all that is really great. But there is also that shadow that lingers and the stuff with Anita has totally exacerbated the core issue…this year I have yet another mother figure who has abandoned and rejected me and I REALLY DID NOT NEED THAT.
My own mum is totally absent and ghosting me, too. I don’t know why. Most of the year I can cope with the absence of a caring mother – but that ‘lack’ is all thrown into sharp focus at this time of year. So many of my friends are spending the holidays with their parents. Their parents are massively involved with the grandchildren… and I know I shouldn’t compare but it’s hard not to. When your working narrative is that you aren’t good enough, loved, wanted, etc…you’re perpetually scanning for evidence to either confirm or deny it. Sadly, all I seem to get is confirmation.
I know my journey now is to be my own parent and to stop looking outside of myself for someone to fill the hole inside me. I need to look after myself and all my parts – because I know what they need and how they need to be loved. It’s hard, though, because those parts still really need the ‘other’ sometimes – not all the time, by any means…but Christmas has always been a holiday for kids…and my littles are…out in the cold…again. I honestly wish Anita and I had never undertaken the work we did. Reparenting is such delicate and long-term work, and you cannot just fuck it up and run away. I’ve seen it happen so many times now and seen the devastation it’s left behind.
Complex trauma and attachment injuries are not easy to heal – but therapy didn’t ought to make it all much worse. I totally get that ‘in the therapy’ it can be bumpy and that is all part of the work…what I mean is these fucking awful terminations that we seem to go through. It’s mind-blowing. It’s devastating. We deserve so much better.
I doubt I’ll get back here until after Christmas now – so I’ll send you all big hugs and see you on the other side.
So… I wish I could say things are getting better this end, but they really aren’t. I haven’t felt this awful in years and honestly, at this point, it’s just my dogged determination not to give up that’s keeping me functional – albeit, barely. Talk about living life in survival…it’s fucking beyond exhausting and I have really just had enough, now.
There’s such a lot of shit going on in one way or another and I haven’t really known where to begin which is why I have been AWOL (mind you, looks like everyone on WP has gone awol this month). I want to write. When I feel isolated and alone like I do now, this blog always helps – but, which therapy do I even talk about?: the one that’s ‘ended but hasn’t really’ with Anita or the new one that seems to be ‘like flying through turbulence and is triggering the shit out of me’?
I was laid up in bed most of last week because my neck seized, and I couldn’t move! The tension was triggered on Tuesday during and after my session with Elle and it’s only today that I have even the slightest bit of movement before hitting the pain. But that’s another story…for another post because I’ve just received an email…
Last time I was here I was telling you all about the messages Anita and I had exchanged at 5 months post ‘end but not end’ (5 FUCKING MONTHS!) and how her lack lustre, ‘I know but I just can’t work at that level of work anymore’ reply just set a fire under my ass and I sent her a long message in reply knowing that really it would signal no going back.
What I hadn’t bargained on was her ghosting me.
When I wrote my last post it was about two weeks after the message I’d sent and there had been total radio silence… well, the radio silence persisted and then it was 6 FUCKING MONTHS on Saturday – and Anita had ignored that message altogether for a month. I can’t even really believe the woman/therapist I worked with for all these years has become this. It makes me wonder who she even is? Was any of it real, or was this version of her there all along and the whole thing has just been some elaborate act? It certainly feels that way.
To say that this whole thing has been driving me insane (making me ill) would be an understatement. I don’t know why I expected better from her – but I really did. I have a tendency to want to see the best in people and remain hopeful even when there’s a shit tonne of evidence to the contrary telling me people are fucking shit.
I didn’t imagine for a minute that when she face planted so badly in May that she wouldn’t at some point reflect, take herself out of the immediate situation, and think about what she had done to her long-term clients – me – and want to make a decent end…because why wouldn’t you? Like if you know you have hurt someone really badly, wouldn’t you want to try and repair as much as possible?
If you genuinely cared about someone then surely, as a therapist, that’s the very least you’d do….ESPECIALLY if you were still working and have a client load. I can’t believe an hour out of her life on a working day is beyond her. I can’t believe she wouldn’t be willing to want to try and make an end that mitigated against how fucking appalling this has been. I can’t believe that she hasn’t taken this to supervision and her supervisor hasn’t given her some advice on how best to handle the clear up…
But there we are. Can’t apply our own standards to others – even if those others have been paid by us for years!
It’s maddening.
As First Aid Kit so accurately wrote,
“I always thought that you’d be here, but shit gets fucked up, and people just disappear”
Anyway, on Saturday I decided to switch to email. You want to ignore my messages then let’s try another prong of attack!
This is what I sent titled ENDING:
I’m guessing that given you’re now completely ghosting me, that the agreement that we’d come back and end properly if things were no better isn’t going to happen either.
I’m at a complete loss to understand how it’s got to this point – as walking out the room six months ago it did not for one minute occur to me that it would be like this now, “It’s not what either of us want”… really?
3.5 years of work and relationship deserves a better close than this and how it’s not, and I’m not, worthy of a proper end even if it would be hard and painful feels shit.
This time three years ago you gave me the beating heart necklace… I can’t understand what’s happened to now be in a place where you won’t even talk to me but it’s really hard to be approaching Christmas and you just not be there.
RB
The weekend has been pretty rough – I’m navigating all kinds of angst and feelings of disconnect with Elle — that of course are intensified because of all this bullshit with Anita so I feel like everything is very very fragile.
Anyway, I’ve been soldiering on and then just now I received this email…
Honestly, guys, tell me what you think because at this point I am just at a loss:
Hi RB,
It’s not I’m ghosting you although can totally understand it feels like that.
I just I have so little capacity at the moment.
I know my friends and family are also struggling with me not being as available as I once was but that’s just how it is for me.
I am also unsure what it is you are looking for from me, I think we both agree we can’t go back to a therapeutic relationship so not sure what it is you are looking for as I am really not able to offer very much in my current situation.
With sincere apologies,
Anita x
I was frankly speechless when I received it. I didn’t even really have many feelings, initially. Part of me locked down somewhere inside is probably crying – but the most dominant parts are really just fucking flabbergasted. This is the best she can muster – after all this time?
Is it not clear what I have been holding out for and asking for over the last few months- to honour the fucking agreement that we would meet in person and try and do a decent end? Like the therapeutic relationship is long gone. My trust is decimated, and I feel so fucking angry and let down by Anita but an end… come on now. Is she that dim?
Never has she checked that I am ok in all this (clearly, I’m not). Even when I left in June, you’d think she’d at least have made some kind of plan with me to ensure that I was ‘emotionally’ looked after, even if it was with a colleague or her supervisor. The level of neglect and basic lack of care is staggering to me. I mean a twice a week client with outside contact who has complex trauma and a history of self harm – of course it’s fine to just drop them and never look back right?!
This email, again, like those sessions in May, is about her: her lack of capacity, her struggle, how hard it is for her… and you know what, I get it, but it’s not fucking good enough. This ‘crisis’ has been coming for years. I can’t understand why, as a therapist, she wasn’t able to see her issues (certainly after her first meltdown in September 2021) and take herself into personal therapy to help get a handle on it before it shattered her world. And to be clear – the issue she’s ‘dealing’ with is not uncommon; her elderly mother needs increased care. Lots of people and families navigate that without completely falling apart and wrecking their careers. I’m sure it’s brought up all kinds of issues from childhood and stuff about meeting other people’s needs – but go do the fucking work before you act it on on your paying clients!!!
Anyway, that’s that. I don’t even know how to reply. It’s not worth my emotion is it? She simply can’t/won’t see what she’s done and cannot give me the closure I so badly need. I need to talk to Elle tomorrow and see what plan I can make for my books (which Anita still has btw!). Anita’s city office if literally across the street from Elle so I am wondering whether I can ask Anita to drop them in the door at Elle’s. At least then I don’t receive them in the post and get body-slammed.
Of course, that all relies on tomorrow with Elle going ok. We are in rupture territory – I’ll come back and write about that next. Needless to say I am not having a very good time.
It just feels like I am screaming into the fucking void: Can’t somebody help me PLEASE!!
I last saw Anita on June 2nd… five and a half months ago. It was an agonising ‘session’ (if you can even call it that). I realised that day, that no matter how much I wanted to stay and see her for another month, I simply couldn’t keep going when she wasn’t fit to be working or handle an ending effectively – she was in survival and winging it. It was simply too damaging to keep subjecting myself to that. Those couple of weeks after she returned from ‘the holiday that tanked’ and said we had to end were horrific. She was so ill, so stressed, and by the final week so much in self-protect that it was absolutely hideous to go and feel like the person I know and love so well had broken and checked out completely.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – leaving it/her like that. My young parts were devastated…still are. Surely Anita in that state would be better than no Anita at all? Well, to them, yes, but my Adult self knew better (maybe). The level of distress it caused me, going to see, crying my heart out, falling apart, and then feeling like the person that was with me wasn’t even fully there or able to engage with my feelings about the situation because she was in survival was traumatising.
I’m sorry if this isn’t making much sense. It’s taking me ages to write this because thinking about it makes my stomach and chest go tight and I feel sick…it’s been so bad. The physical pain that gets triggered off the back of the emotion of it is so intense that I keep dissociating. I feel like I need to try and get this down but getting it on the page is hard because I lose focus mid-sentence and then when I read the sentences back my brain takes me away elsewhere.
Not ideal…but…
That is the reality…
Dissociation, I mean. It’s been particularly bad the last couple of days – I keep dropping things, misjudging space (walking into things), and then of course losing time…I feel like I am suspended between two worlds and can’t land fully in either.
That is the impact this (what the hell is this?) ‘end but not end’ has had. My brain is desperately trying to protect me from the hurt and pain. I guess it’s doing a good job. It just makes life really tricky. I feel like I am in a daze on a level but then in agony on another. I feel like I have third degree burns over my body and everything that touches me hurts. This is making therapy with Elle hard too. This week I have just wanted to run a million miles away from her because everything just hurts.
I wish I was more robust, less sensitive, *all the things* but I am not. I am someone who *feels* and loves *big*… and there is deep wounding and trauma … hence needing the therapy in the first place…and yet here I am dealing with another abandonment and rejection (with Anita) and my system is experiencing this as survival issue. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And the laugh is, I paid for all this! Being dumped by a friend or a lover is one thing – but mostly they aren’t professional at doing relationships, there’s no training on how to be friend…but therapists are trained professionals in relating. What’s happened with Anita is so weird because she hasn’t done her ‘job’ here – she hasn’t kept her professional hat on at all.
Anyway…get back to it RB.
All the way back in June, we left it that we’d be in touch properly after three months (September) and see how things were for Anita. If she was no better, then we’d come back and do a proper ending. We said we’d spend some time to find a way of keeping connected even if the therapy was done. None of that felt great but it felt like it would at least honour all the work we’ve done and the relationship we had. Looking back, now, I realise there was no thought or provision for me in there. Of course I tried to put things in place to hold myself but Anita never once checked that I would be ‘ok’, or what I would do in this period knowing how badly I would struggle. It’s shit really. Like don’t therapists have a duty of care?
The laugh is, Anita was furious when I told her how Em had ended the therapy. She said the way she terminated was unethical, that Em was dangerous, and should have ensured there was an onward referral… The irony is not fucking lost on me now. And you know what? What Anita has done is ten million times worse than Em. Em was always cold and detached. What I wanted from her and what she was prepared to give were poles apart. Her tick comment and the total shitshow of an ending was really just the icing on the cake.
The therapy with Anita has been soooooo different from the very start. We met on such a deep level. The love and care were tangible. I am not crazy or too attached or delusional…the relationship is/was how I have presented it here. I haven’t made it up. I have every session recorded! So, the contrast from how it was to how it is now is utterly mind-blowing. I feel like I’ve got a whiplash injury. It’s been brutal.
At three months I sent Anita a short text message saying that I missed her and it was a quarter of year… She responded and told me that her inner child was having a really bad time and that she had changed her work into couples’ work because it was more head than heart (really?!). I didn’t push for a meeting, then, because she had told me things were no better for her and so reading between the lines, she’d still be unable to end properly. I knew it was definitely going to be an ending now, no going back to how it was, but I hoped at least at some point she’d be able/want to meet to do that…because it’s the right thing to do and it’s what we agreed!!
As the months have passed, I have tried really hard to give A space. I didn’t want to push her over the edge or further away with my ‘need’ because it’s everyone else’s needs being too much for her that sees her in this place (well, it’s more complex than that!) … but this of course, has meant that I have been left holding an awful lot. There’s been no end. No closure. No celebration of the work we did. It’s just been another situation where I have been dropped from a massive height and left trying to gather all my pieces together and soldier on. Every time the second of the month rolls around, I feel utterly bereft. I struggle to function in any meaningful way and just want to crawl into my emotional hell hole and die.
Don’t get me wrong, things are never good these days – it’s a daily struggle. Inside it’s awful and it’s getting worse as time goes on, not better. There is no sense of distance creating healing – rather, I’ve been hurtling downhill on the struggle bus and there’s no brakes. To say it’s scary is an understatement. I’m in a perpetual state of flight and it’s wreaking havoc with everything. I feel like I am living my life in some kind of bizarre alternate reality, or a movie…you know, like the Truman show or something. Nothing feels real and I am waiting for the ‘scene’ to end and regain some sense of being me again. Or perhaps not that…I don’t want to be stuck in this all too familiar version of me: the one that feels unsafe, lost, alone…unlovable…I want to go back to the one who felt held, safe, and functional the one who was starting to heal.
By not asking anything of Anita, or holding her to the agreement we made, I have been stuck in a kind of awful limbo since September. I really hoped things would improve for A but the reality is she won’t have changed all that much in her life and some of it is not possible to change. She’s still working, though, (ain’t that the kicker!) and although she swears it’s the long-term depth work that’s beyond her capacity, knowing her as I do, she’ll be hanging by a thread even doing what she’s doing.
I guess I just hoped that somehow, she’d want to find some way of not severing our connection altogether. I hoped that everything that she had said over the years was true: that she wouldn’t leave, that she loved me, that no matter what she was there for the journey, that she couldn’t let me go, that I was safe with her… you know the drill. And whilst I know no one can promise ‘forever’, I honestly never believed she could walk away and not look back. When I walked out her house in June we were not leaving on bad terms, it wasn’t a rupture. It was a “neither of us want this”, “I love you”, and “let’s find a way to figure this out” (her words not mine).
But something has happened in the last few months to change that – I don’t know what – but I know now that I am not going to get an ending. In fact…I don’t think I’ll hear from A ever again.
I can’t believe I am even typing that.
So, it’s got to November now and the struggle bus has careered off over the cliff edge and gone up in flames with all the passengers on board. I don’t really know what to do if I am honest.
On the 2nd November I text Anita a simple, “5 months. I miss you”. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess maybe I had hoped that she’d dig deep into her therapist tank and think, “I really need to sort this out with RB. It’s not fair to keep this dragging on and we need to meet so we can end properly”.
But, like most of the interactions we’ve had since June – she replied with something so lack lustre that it just lit the fire under my teen,
“I know but I really can’t work at that level any more xxx”
I’ve been hanging on for 5 fucking months and that’s the best she can do??? Like come on, that’s not fair. She is still working AS A THERAPIST and yet she can’t find an hour to meet me face to face to talk with me and get a sense of closure AFTER EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH…and knowing my history so intimately?
It was just too fucking much.
So…then it came…the words that I have been swallowing. I typed a message on WhatsApp knowing that this was it. But I have been so fucking contained, quiet, giving her space and time….and what about me? Where have I been left in this?
Shafted.
I knew that sending this message would probably stress Anita out. We all know she’s not good at reading, but you know what? What other choice have I been left with? She hasn’t offered to meet. She’s just been waiting it out… I guess hoping I would just disappear, and she wouldn’t have to deal with a difficult emotional situation. She wouldn’t have to face what she’s done. Anita is inherently avoidant in her personal life so it’s hardly surprising that she’s behaving like an ostrich when she knows she’s hurt me. But again…she’s a therapist. Suck it up and do the right thing. Do the right fucking ‘ethical’ thing.
This is what I sent:
I’m not asking you to. It has never been about going back to how things were. I know that would/could never happen and not only because you have no capacity/bandwidth but also because the hurt this has caused me means it would never work again how it did because my trust in you is gone and I’m just in a state of survival now. You don’t want to repair that. Or can’t. And so, it’s really hard.
I don’t know how to explain this or get it to come over in the way it’s meant – because this isn’t a conversation to have on WhatsApp it should be in person.
I know it’s really fucking awful for you, and I really really see that. You know I do. I’ve always seen it, often before you have. And this is why it’s so fucking hard for me now- you let me into so much of what was happening for you – and I’ve watched you get more and more stressed and have been unable to do anything to make any of it any better – it’s been hard watching the person I love so much break bit by bit. I have so wished there was something I could do to make things better for you. But then you slammed the door.
It’s so confusing. I feel like suddenly I became the problem and too much and it’s really hard because I didn’t change and yet it feels like massive displacement – like this isn’t all about me. I get your capacity changed but did the love just die too?
Our relationship moved so far outside of what therapy is but equally we’ve spent so long together that the reality is we are also just two human beings in a relationship and it felt deep and important – to me at least. Like I know it was messy and complex sometimes and I really know I can’t go back there like that (with you or anyone else)- but I do really still love you and care about you and miss you.
And this is why I’m struggling – I can’t believe that how you have been with me all this time is just fake or just ‘work’ because it hasn’t felt like that to me. Like when you take away the work what’s left underneath? Because when I take away ‘therapist you’ and the intensity of seeing you all the time I’ve got Anita – someone who I just really love, who I miss, and who I’d like to see every now and then.
And so, this has completely broken me in ways you would never understand. It’s not just a bit difficult or upsetting it’s totally flattened my inner world. You made me believe that I meant something to you and that I was safe. Stupidly, I thought our relationship would evolve into something else eventually. And yet here I am five months down the line and I’m alone with it. I cannot understand how you can completely cut me out of your life after everything. Like it totally screws my brain up thinking that the idea of seeing me in any way at all feels overwhelming and too much.
I didn’t expect us to return to how things were, but I hoped that we’d find some way through this – somehow. Like find another way of connecting.
I’m just left in a state of complete and utter confusion. There is no closure only me driving myself mad with questions that I have no answers to. I find it very hard to understand how you can just stop caring. Like I can’t get my head round what ‘love’ even is if you can just act as though the relationship was nothing.
And it’s not about therapy now. I feel in lots of ways that it got really blurred anyway but that’s not a bad thing – but it’s a reality. I am seeing someone else now and honestly, it’s just breaking my heart. It’s different. I’m not trying to replicate what I had with you because I’m not interested in that, and I also know I can’t go back to that either. So please know I’m not asking you for that.
When I message you it’s because I miss you. Not because I’m asking you to go back to twice a week and loads of contact. It’s not that. But I’m really really struggling to get my head round this. It’s like I’m grieving you but you’re still alive.
I know this won’t make much sense because I don’t make sense to me either.
A. I love you. That’s really it. I just really love you.
So, I sent that on the 3rd of November and have received precisely NO response.
No acknowledgement whatsoever. Two weeks and nothing at all. Not even a “I need to speak with my supervisor and will get back to you”… zilch.
I never, for one minute in all the years that Anita held me to her chest for hours at a time so I could listen to her heart beat, read me stories, told me she loved me and kissed me on the top of my head, washed my elephant, bought me so many gifts – and even a fucking beating heart necklace to remind me of her heartbeat when I wasn’t with her… would ghost me.
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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