Craniosacral Therapy

System Crash: Defences Breached

rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

Well, blimey, it’s been hard this week. I knew things were approaching the ‘danger zone’ but I genuinely didn’t think the wheels were going to fall off in such a spectacular way mid-week! It felt like I hit a patch of black ice on Tuesday and then started desperately careering around the road on Wednesday only to crash out on Thursday.

I managed to get through all my teaching commitments this week but I could feel how thinly stretched I was. Half term cannot come quickly enough. The child parts inside were all activated and I just wanted to cry most of the week. It felt desperate. Everything felt too much. Never have I relied more heavily on my rubber bands and chewing gum to hold it together!

By the time it got to my craniosacral session with K on Thursday morning I was hanging on by a thread. It was so good to see her, to be safe in the space with her for that window of time, and to get some much needed care and attention for my nervous system…and myself! She sees right through me – which is both terrifying and a huge relief. It means that there is no point in acting like things are ok or pretending that I am hanging it together because she feels what’s going on in my body whatever I say!

I’ve noticed the harder I am struggling to juggle things, the more I put on a coping front with people. I paste on the smile and say ‘it’s fine’ when actually everything is falling apart inside. The performance aspect of myself, the part that allows to me to teach and exist in the outside world gets jammed on and I feel almost like I am in some kind of out of body experience. I guess it’s a form of dissociation. And it works…to an extent.

However, whilst this ‘coping, high functioning self’ ensures I can function out in the world, it comes at an enormous physical and emotional cost to the rest of me, or should I just say ‘me’? That seemingly extroverted, happy, self that takes care of everyone else’s needs runs on overdrive, draining every last drop of energy, leaving absolutely nothing in reserve for everyone else inside and then, inevitably, the shit hits the fan!

When I am on the edge, running on adrenaline, ‘in role’ I actually do some of my best work. I know my lessons are really good. But it’s insane. When I need to dial it down to my conserve energy I ramp up. Panic. Panic. PANIC! I can’t let anyone see how desperate things are, so here, have the all singing all dancing version of me. I’m fine…it’s fine…fine…FINE!!! (It’s not fine…not fine at all)

ARGH!!

And so when that manic, crazed, state is on and I find it quite hard to land back in myself because the distance between appearance and the reality is immense. When I stop and really stare into the truth of the situation I know I am on empty. Burnt out. And the young ones are beside themselves. And it’s too scary to go there…because if I stop, and acknowledge the reality, the vulnerability, the fact that I need someone to help me and I am left open and exposed…what happens if I can’t get what I need? What happens if I can’t pick myself back up and get going again? I’ll have a proper breakdown… and I CANNOT GO TO THAT PLACE AGAIN.

I told K how crazy it’s all been and she invited me to take time to land and then asked what was going on inside/underneath. I felt so exposed. But also so pleased to be able to remove the mask for a bit. I told her that my four year old self was terrified and I feel like I am falling apart. There’s been a lot of adult life stress going on recently with my family that taps back into old wounds and triggers the child parts so it’s been feeling tough. Adult me can just about cope but the child parts are not doing so well.

I have this image that frequently comes up when Four is around. She’s standing in the middle of a country lane in just her nightie. It’s grey, wet, dark, and cold. She has no idea where she is. She is totally lost. She’s scared. She’s hungry. And yet she doesn’t make a sound. There is no point in screaming for help because she’s learnt that no one ever comes. Was there ever more fitting an image of an exiled part than her?

It’s really painful when this little one gets live and it’s no wonder that I spend so much of my time trying to outrun this stuff. I mean, all these little parts are always there in varying states of distress and need, but most of the time I can hold it together enough to not be floored by them. I can function alongside the internal hell. But not this week.

I don’t know what happened or why, but I felt really held by K in the session. I mean physically. And yet there was absolutely nothing different to any other session. It’s a body-based therapy and so I am physically held every week. But for some reason it felt different on Thursday. All I can think is that my usual defences just weren’t there in the same way? I had nothing to armour myself with and so just felt it all. I couldn’t quite hold myself and so sunk into being held. I don’t know.

I know it sounds bonkers that even with one of my safest, most trusted people my system still has a degree of armouring. I guess it’s all about survival and protection. No matter how badly I want to trust that things are properly safe, my system just can’t fully let go. I’m so terrified of being rejected or abandoned that the closer I get to someone the scarier it feels – well, at least to some of the parts. I guess there’s so much more to lose when you really care about someone and need them. I know K isn’t going anywhere. I am safe with her. But this stuff is unconscious…it’s the internal autopilot doing its thing and it’s going to take a while to reprogramme.

Still, it felt like my system was more ‘trusting’ than it has been in a while or just so tired that it couldn’t function which meant that the young stuff was right on the surface! I had been complaining about a pain in my hand and wrist and K asked if she could hold my hand. I said yes. It was bizarre. When she took my hand it was like little Four landed with a thud inside me. I was no longer watching her from a distance, that poor tiny child, isolated, bare foot on a lane. Instead she was in me… and oh my fucking god it was so painful. I just wanted to burst into tears, get up off the couch, and cuddle into K.

K noticed that I was barely breathing and asked about the little girl. Did she feel like it was dangerous to take up space? Was it safer to her to not be seen and stay out of the way? Yep. K asked if I could try and take a few deep breaths. I couldn’t and just shook my head. She asked if I could allow myself to feel this stuff in the moment, allow Four to be there just for a minute…and I froze. It was so overwhelming. Being so consciously aware of the pain that is there, that I have been holding for so long is just so hard….even in the presence of a trusted other.

At the end I sat up on the couch, drew my knees up into my chest, buried my face in the blanket and hid behind my knees. I just didn’t have it in me to be ‘fine’ because I was not fine. That little part was right there. K came over and hugged me and rubbed my back until I managed to get to get enough adult back online.

K said I had gone really deep in the session. Of course, she was right. As I left she asked if she could hold me, and we hugged. It’s so hard leaving though…because it’s in those moments where my system starts to relax but then the reality hits… it’s time to go….back out there…and somehow I need to put the mask on when I really don’t want to.

It’s really a double-edged sword. Because this is the work that absolutely needs to be done (exposing and working with the young parts)…and yet I can only access this stuff, be open and vulnerable when I am on empty, when my defences and protectors can’t function enough to hide everyone. So it’s a pain. I can’t function as I am long-term but equally I need to be able to access the parts to be able to heal and move forward.

I spend so many hours in therapy hiding/protecting these parts and feel frustrated with myself because I know what I need. I know what needs to be done. BUT the reality of being so vulnerable, so exposed, is hard. It feels dangerous. It’s no wonder my system has built up such strong defences! It fears total annihilation of the self.

Only what I think I am learning, slowly, is that some people can be trusted with my most vulnerable self. And whilst I have been hurt…a lot…and recently too (with Em) I can be how it is and that be ok. Some people don’t need my performance and love me just the way I am. It’s going to take a while to get my head around that. But I think what happened with K on Thursday enabled me to take a massive risk with Anita yesterday…so that’s good right?! – spoiler alert…it was sooooooo good 🙂

I’ve been here before but this time I have the A (and K) Team on my side!

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

My battery warning light is flashing red now. Power saving mode has been engaged for months but despite this, I’m still reaching that near dangerous level of energy depletion. The weekend is almost gone (noooooo!) and it has felt like the hours have rapidly slipped through my fingers. Like trying to cup water in my hands, each minute has just trickled away and now tomorrow everything starts up again and I simply haven’t had enough time to relax and recharge. I feel like I could cry as I stare down the tunnel into what I have to get through in the coming week.

For the first time in a very long time, I have taken some proper time out this weekend – literally spent the entire time in pyjamas sitting by the fire (apart from a rainy tip run this morning!) but it’s not enough. I still need more time to recover…not just from the last couple of weeks, but from 2020 as a whole (and there’s still 3 months to go!! FFS!). Actually, I feel like my body is crying out for me to hibernate until April – and honestly if I didn’t have a mortgage and bills to pay then that’s exactly what I would do! Imagine having six months off but still being paid. I can’t even begin to imagine what that would be like.

My friends who have been furloughed since March and who don’t have kids are bursting with life despite the pandemic. They have been living in a protected bubble and are ‘so chilled’ and ‘fit’ and ‘happy’ having finally had time to meditate, do the couch to 5k, read endlessly, cook, and basically practise self-care on an epic level…and yet I feel like I have been slogging away since lockdown began (and even before that – with the therapy termination with Em) trying to juggle my regular life of work, transitioning to online teaching (and therapy), my wife being made redundant and the stress that entailed, all alongside home-schooling my kids. And whilst the children are thankfully back in school and my wife is back in work there has been no break, no holiday, and I we/have simply run out of steam now.

I so need a spa day!

I get being furloughed won’t have been stress-free for everyone, far from it, and the above statement about some of my friends (and my flippant spa day comment) probably highlights how privileged, middle-class, secure, and sane they are/I am, so I apologise if that felt blinkered. I understand that as furlough ends it’s going to be hard for a lot of people. I guess, really what I am trying to say is that sometimes it’s hard not to compare oneself to others and wish for a moment that you had what they had.

I suppose, really, I am jealous. Jealous of the carefree photos, the texts about ‘relaxing coffee’ and screen shots of the latest book. Jealous of the holidays. Jealous of the fact that it is only now that work is coming back onto their radar. My jealousy is really a symptom of the burnout I feel – both physical and emotional. I don’t begrudge my friends these things – far from it. I just wish sometimes my life felt a little easier.

I need some time off without the worry of what happens if I don’t work. I was really sick a couple of weeks ago. So dizzy that I couldn’t even stand up without falling over, and repeatedly vomited from the motion sickness associated with the dizziness. I had to cancel all my students that day – 5 hour’s worth of work. It’s one of my biggest working days. Being self-employed that’s money that is gone for good – can’t claw it back. I don’t get sick pay. Simply taking one day off work massively impacts the finances for the month and it’s so stressful.

Time has literally flown this weekend which feels so bloody unfair, too. When I am in the middle of the week (woeful Wednesday) it feels as though time is almost standing still, like I am suspended in some kind of awful, endless nightmare. I have to coach myself through the day, work on an hour by hour basis so that I don’t hit complete overwhelm.

It doesn’t help that the young parts of me are always massively activated in the middle of the week – it feels such a long way from the safety of the therapy room and adult me just hasn’t got capacity to look after those small ones when it’s taking every ounce of strength to survive my adult life! I feel so blessed to have both Anita and K on my team now, though.

In the past when I have felt in this kind of area (stress, anxiety, and overwhelm) I have also had to navigate the added stress of having a therapist who was unresponsive, unavailable, and if we are honest about it, totally uncaring. I felt perpetually triggered and dysregulated both in and outside of the sessions. It was agony. Torture, actually. And I don’t have that now.

What I have now is so much better. Therapists who see me and all my various parts. Care about me. Support me. And love me. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. The other week at the end of an amazing craniosacral session with K she quickly scribbled some notes about some pain in my shoulder she pulled out a card from her folder and said, ‘You gave me this in 2010, do you remember?’ – I couldn’t believe she’d kept it.

I was a bit embarrassed knowing that I was so defended back then, but I’m guessing I must have said something unfiltered (as is usually the way when I write!) and actually back then she was one of the few people I let in and allowed to see the pain. To be honest she can feel it anyway so there’s no point in hiding! I think I said something about being intense even back then, and she laughed and said she is honoured to work with me and thinks I am courageous. As I walked off down the street she shouted, ‘I love you RB!’ from her front door. I turned around and smiled, feeling so warm inside and said, ‘I love you, too, K’. It was so easy. So natural.

And to think I got myself in knots for so long with Em, never once being able to tell her how I felt. I suppose maybe it’s easier to express feelings when they are in some way reciprocated. It feels much more dangerous and exposing having feelings for someone who is clearly struggling to tolerate you and sees you as a parasite. Ugh. Never mind. That was simply the most spectacular re-enactment wasn’t it?!

Anyway, what I think I am trying to get to in a round about way is that I feel so supported having K and A in my life. When things feel tough, or activated, or just plain bloody attachmenty, I know it’s not a big deal to either of them if I reach out and text them something and that they want to help me. More often than not it’s some kind of GIF. My best friend teases me about this. ‘RB is feeling something: send the therapist a GIF!’ And it’s so true. But these communications are mostly coming from the young parts and it’s their way of checking in – ‘Are you still there?’ So when they reply with a GIF back it really settles those parts. They both seem to understand that they’re dealing with my most vulnerable, needy parts and aren’t disgusted or put off them. In fact they both understand what I need and it’s really helped build the trust and safety.

What I’m trying to say is that despite feeling completely knackered I don’t feel like I am on the verge of a breakdown when I know in the past I would have been teetering on the edge because the parts are more held. I am more held! Therapy now feels therapeutic, helpful, and holding which in turn is modelling how to hold myself.

In fact, the other day my wife even asked me if I was even going to therapy anymore. I asked what she meant. She explained that I have been so much more settled in myself, and even though I am clearly under a lot of stress and pressure I haven’t fallen apart or been hard to live with. She said that it used to be really difficult when I was seeing Em because for the two days leading into therapy I would be so wound up and snappy that it was like treading on eggshells with me. And I saw Em twice a week!

That wasn’t easy to hear but I know she was right. I thought I was doing a better job of hiding it than I was, but clearly that level of intense pain and dysregulation was just too much to contain and still function. It was exhausting – for all of us. Anytime my wife questioned whether therapy was actually helping me I’d get defensive and shut her out. I didn’t want to believe that Em and I weren’t making progress. I didn’t want to acknowledge that the level pain I was in about the relationship was unusual in therapy. I thought it was just the nature of the transference.

I would say that ‘things have to get worst before they get better’ not knowing that actually it’s supposed to feel safe with the therapist. I know that sounds dim. But what I mean is I have a huge mother wound so I kind of thought it all feeling so painful with Em was the work…and it was…but you can heal the mother wound in another way. Withholding isn’t healing. Shaming isn’t healing. Pathologising isn’t healing. Empathy and care is healing. Acceptance is healing. Love is healing.

Anyway, I had to concede that my wife was right. What Em and I were doing wasn’t helping me. In fact it had really hurt me. And I told her that, yes, I was still in therapy and that my new therapist is great and I feel much more contained. She said it really shows and is so happy that I am finally getting what I need because she sees how hard I am trying to heal. My wife was the one who encouraged me to go back to K last year. And it was K who gave me the strength to question what was happening with Em. The contrast between seeing them in a week was so stark. Without K I would never have considered seeking out Anita.

Earlier this week I sent both K and A a variation of this message after making some tough choices about my estranged family with their support:

I hope you know that you’ve been instrumental in helping me move into this, still wobbly, but much more solid place in the last year. I know for certain had I not been seeing you I’d still be stuck with Em and letting people be horrid and believing that’s all I was entitled to. Thank you for showing me that I deserve better and have value because it’s helping me make better choices for myself. x

They both replied with hug GIFs!

I literally don’t know how got through to Friday but I was so relieved to see A. It was a crappy day. Stormy, cold, wet and the drive had been horrid. I arrived at therapy, promptly took my blanket out my bag, wrapped myself up in it and told Anita that I can’t do ‘it’ any more I really feel like there needs to be eight days in the week. ‘In order that you can actually get a day off?’ she questioned. I nodded.

I think I start nearly all therapy sessions with, ‘I’m exhausted’…and it’s true. Only I am really really exhausted now. Hence taking a fleece blanket to my session and basically curling up on the sofa for an hour. It was an ok session. Very adult. And in the past, with Em, I would have felt like that was somehow ‘crap’ because my child parts were always hiding behind the sofa on alert waiting like heat seeking missiles desperately trying to lock onto some semblance of warmth and care. I would always leave feeling disappointed when there was none and believed that because I had kept my child parts hidden that the session had fallen short because Em didn’t get to see them. I mean let’s be fair if they did creep out I would dissociate instantly and then things were bloody horrific.

Anyway, what I have realised with A is that it doesn’t matter who is there, who fronts, because actually I feel safely held and contained both inside and outside of the sessions with her. So even if the child parts don’t make an appearance it doesn’t matter because they feel safely held in mind by her. I’m not explaining this very well. I guess it’s something like therapy doesn’t feel so ‘high stakes’ anymore. It just is. I don’t get the therapy shits any more. I don’t feel like I am going to gag brushing my teeth the morning of a session. I don’t feel my heart racing as I walk up to A’s front door. I just feel content and happy that I am going to be in a room with a safe person who can handle whatever I tell her.

I feel like my blog has reached a level of beige these days – but oh my god I am so glad to not have the drama. Don’t get me wrong. My child parts are totally in the mix, there have been (and undoubtedly will be more) ruptures but now I have the confidence that my therapist/s can handle me, are invested, and because of that my youngest parts don’t feel ashamed for existing now.

Thank god!

Reunited (at last!): Relief and Release

rubberbandsandchewinggum36 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My nervous system has been in meltdown!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OH THE SHAME!!!

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

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

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

Some Kind Of Love

rubberbandsandchewinggum12 Comments

So, things have changed a lot since I last posted at the beginning of March haven’t they?! Back then the response to Coronavirus in the UK was largely about washing our hands, panic buying bog roll, stockpiling pasta (that wasn’t me btw!) and wondering if and when the government might actually make a move to lockdown the country or maybe do some proper testing… There was still a semblance of some kind of normal: the kids were at school, therapy was taking place face-to-face, and you could still get a drive thru McDonalds should the desire take you (I’m not a fast food junkie by any means, but I could demolish a Big Mac meal right now!).

‘Normal’ all feels so long ago now. We’ve had to adjust to a new kind of normal. Some days I seem to succeed at this new way of living and some days it just feels impossibly hard. My mental health has been up and down like a yoyo and whilst I have had stuff to say, and lots and lots of feelings, I have lacked motivation to do any writing. When I do finally have a minute, the blog just keeps getting put the bottom of the pile because I don’t even know really what to say or sometimes literally cannot do anything but stare at my phone scrolling through Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or some other shit that does zero for my wellbeing. I feel like all I do is moan here and frankly, when people are dying in their thousands me droning on like a broken record about how sad I am about being dumped by my therapist feels… I dunno…a bit self-indulgent?

And even if it’s not self-indulgent, by the time it reaches the end of the day (on a day where I am not some kind of emotional jelly) I have just about had enough of staring at a laptop. I spend the majority of the day on it, either teaching for my job or home-schooling my two kids.

Fortunately, I have been able to take my tutoring work online and have been working via Skype and Zoom to do my sessions. I only work 12 hours a week at the moment as the GCSE work has fallen away now there aren’t any exams this year, but even that little bit of time is really exhausting when I then have to cram in my own children’s learning on top. I get to about 8pm and just go into a semi-comatose state!

Doing everything via a screens at the moment is emotionally and physically demanding in a way I that hadn’t anticipated. Maintaining a connection and keeping upbeat and interesting is much more of a challenge than when you’re face-to-face. We’re all getting used to it and the students have adjusted really well now, but I do feel like a performing monkey at the minute – or a circus clown trying to keep all the plates spinning! It’s a relief though, that as a self-employed person I have been able to keep working, especially as my wife got made redundant at the end of March – don’t ask… I can’t even…

But to therapy – as that’s why I am really here – or why you are here!

Ummmm…

I’m finding therapy a bit meh tbh- I think a lot of us are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to at least be able to see Anita online and not have to do without therapy altogether but it is not like being in the room and I find that it is much, much harder to feel any sense of connection especially through a tiny phone screen.

I’ve tried a few different ways of doing things to see if I can find something that works/feels helpful: two half hour sessions in a week acting more like check ins, one longer session a week, leaving a couple of weeks between sessions… nothing has felt great tbh because what my system really needs to settle, feel safe, and build trust is proximity. I need to physically see the micro communications of my therapist. I need to feel the energy in the room. I also need that co-regulation that seems to happen when you can see the other person breathing with you.

I also feel like I am missing being able to tune into ‘the voice’ when Anita is using it for effect – you know what I mean- that thing that you get together in the room but that fails to really translate on screen. When it’s through a video call on a phone you need to kind of keep a reasonable volume or it gets lost…in the room there is no external noise, no interference, no screen freeze, and even a tiny whisper can be heard or soothing ummm can be heard.

I have been trying to make the sessions feel as containing as possible by taking myself across the road to sit in a field in order to get a bit of peace and quiet and to ensure that I am not overheard by anyone in the house but I dunno, it just all feels a bit shit, really. I don’t like distance! And the fucking sheep really haven’t helped! Noisy things!

I dunno it’s hard to explain but whatever it is that I feel I need, I can’t get it on the internet no matter how hard either of us try. That’s not either of our faults. It just is what it is. And until face-to-face sessions can resume we’re just going to have to make the best of it. But who knows how long that will be. I feel frustrated because I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO and yet I can’t really do it. ARRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Not being able to see Anita in the room and having to stop craniosacral therapy with K until lockdown is lifted has really left my support system in tatters. I was ok for the first few weeks of lockdown but having not been more than 100 metres from my front door for the last 6 weeks is beginning to take its toll – I miss the therapeutic spaces and the therapists! I just hope this doesn’t go on for too much longer because I really am quickly descending into the hell pit when things start to unravel now. I haven’t felt this precarious for a really long time.

I have really noticed what a huge difference it is for me not doing the body work with K too. I think losing those sessions has been the hardest thing for me, because even though K and I are in almost daily contact (and that’s really nice and holding) it’s not the same as being on the couch having the magic done to my nervous system! And when my body is wound up tight like a spring everything feels that much harder on an emotional level.

I’ve been really struggling at intervals with the Em thing. I guess because my usual routine has been decimated everything feels all the more unsettled and I just really miss her. I miss doing therapy with someone that really knows me, all of me. I miss that security and familiarity. I’m still laying foundations with Anita and so working online feels that bit harder I think. If I had to Skype Em, I wouldn’t like it so much but we’ve worked like that on and off for years so it’s just easier and I just want to see her face. I know. I know. Get a grip!

It’s not all been desperate pining (but a lot of it has, I can’t lie).  The young parts have been falling apart on a pretty regular basis. They feel so let down, rejected, and abandoned by her (which is fair enough because that is what has happened!). I have spent a lot of time this week just sobbing my heart about the ending and the loss of the relationship. I’ve wanted to reach out to her to check in, to ask if we could maybe talk, but know there’s no point because a pandemic isn’t going to change anything is it? She simply doesn’t care…and that really hurts.

But of course there’s also the anger and disbelief that I even find myself in this situation. I am left dumbfounded by the way it ended: no safety plan, no onward referral, just a door slamming shut, ‘don’t contact me again’. I mean wtaf? It’s so painful. As I’ve said enough times already this has just stuck a dagger right into that already very sore wound and twisted it. No reparative experience here – just a traumatisation.

I need to bring this back to therapy tomorrow with Anita. I haven’t really gone anywhere near it since face-to-face stopped. It’s been around during the week (of course it has) but when it’s come to the session time I have somehow talked about other things. Part of it, I think, is like I said at the top, I feel a bit stupid this even being a ‘thing’ given what’s actually going on in the world right now. Part of me feels embarrassed that I can’t just get over it. Another part feels massively ashamed that I have been so emotionally attached to, and loved someone who, clearly, when it came to it had no feelings towards me at all. But it is a big deal to me and I think it will be for a very long time and so I need to bite the bullet and talk about it more.

I’ve been trying to find ways to not get bogged down in all the excruciatingly painful feelings during the week because it’s only me that suffers. I’ve been trying to find ways to think positively about the relationship, and Em in general, because there are good points and I have done a lot of work on myself in therapy with her. And even though it’s all spectacularly fallen apart I still really care about her. The love I feel hasn’t gone away and I want to be able to honour that. I also want to give myself some recognition. It was good, at least, that I tried to let someone in, that I allowed myself to feel things, that I was vulnerable. It’s just such a shame that the person I trusted with ‘me’ couldn’t/wouldn’t help me when I laid myself bare.

I’ve struggled to look back at the therapy recently because I keep getting soundbites and flashbacks of negative stuff that’s happened, ‘that part is adhesive like a tick’ (I feel that may never leave me),  the arctic cold last session, the throwing my gift back in my face at Christmas, ‘kind regards’….the list goes on and on…and what I have wanted is to find a warm, safe place that I can go back to in order to try and settle the parts that feel that the whole thing was sham and that I was a bloody idiot for the last eight years.

Anyway, one of the things Em tried with me a while ago was a kind of EMDR activity that was meant to settle whatever was going on inside and create a safe internal space. She asked me to choose a song I liked and to bring it to session and we would work with that alongside eye movements. I think, basically, together we were going to try and create a safe relaxed experience in the room and so when I listened to the music outside session it should function as some kind of regulating tool.

Dido had recently released an album and a song on it had really resonated with me. It’s called, ‘Some Kind Of Love’. I have always been music mad and I felt like this could be my song, my experience. It’s wistful, reflective, rhythmic and the lyrics really hit home for what I was feeling about my journey – that I have been through the wringer but there’s still hope and even when things get super shit there is always something left that is enough to keep going- there is some kind of love. That’s kind of what I was feeling about Em, therapy offered some kind of love – sure it’s not the big love that was lost in childhood, or that there never was enough of, but there was something… HOW FUCKING WRONG WAS I?!!

(lyrics and link to youtube video below – give it a listen!):

She found the records lying underneath the bed
All the songs she used to sing
All the songs she used to play
All those words, those melodies
And the promise of some kind of love
And the promise of some kind of love

When we lose what we love
Don’t think anything will ever taste the same
When we lose what we love
Don’t think anything will ever feel as good again
Now I know how much the anger
However much the pain
Destroy only enough that enough still remains of
Some kind of love, some kind of love
Some kind of love
Some kind of love, some kind of love
Some kind of love

The songs hadn’t changed, every note just the same
But when she played them once again
All those words, those melodies
Like better days past and gone, leaving her behind
With the promise of some kind of love
With the promise of some kind of love

When we lose what we love
Don’t think anything will ever taste the same
When we lose what we love
Don’t think anything will ever feel as good again
Now I know how much the anger
However much the pain
Destroy only enough that enough still remains of
Some kind of love, some kind of love
Some kind of love
Some kind of love, some kind of love
Some kind of love
Some kind of love

She put the records back in their place
And straightened her dress, and wiped her face
She closed and locked the door
And left them lying on the floor
And she sang
Mmmm, some kind of love
Some kind of love, mmmm
Mmmm, some kind of love
Some kind of love, mmmm
Mmmm, some kind of love
Some kind of love

 

Anyway, the song came on a playlist on my phone this week. Guess what doesn’t tap into a safe internal space? Guess what happened within a couple of bars of the song coming on? Yes. I fell completely to pieces and sobbed my heart out, remembering the room and feeling nothing but grief and loss that there is nothing left and perhaps there never was anything in the first place that was real.

I’ll try and blog a bit more soon – there is still so much to say…

Take care all, and thanks to those of you who have been checking in on me via email and wondering where I had disappeared off to. I’ve been hanging it together with rubber bands and chewing gum xx

‘And You’ve Washed Your Hands Clean Of This’

rubberbandsandchewinggum24 Comments

 

No. I’m not referencing the Coronavirus with the title of this post, it’s actually a lyric from Alanis Morissette (who I’m going to see in concert in September – yay for my sixteen year old self!) but, either way, I guess handwashing is relevant right now and maybe a some bad humour is needed seeing as the world has gone absolutely fucking mad, stockpiling… bog roll! I mean wtf? It’s not Norovirus! We’re not all going to get struck down with the shits if we contract Coronavirus (as far as I am aware) and when I cough, I don’t tend to soil myself at the same time!

I just don’t get it. Like, seriously, what is wrong with people? People have even been stealing hand-sanitiser from hospital wards – you have to be fucking mental to do that… and you know, on a scale, I would say after the last month or two I am quite high up on ‘crazy’…but I am not about to go raid a hospital so I can sanitise my hands when soap and water is completely adequate and there is a pressing need to hygiene around sick people on ward. Fucking morons.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this but, frankly, I find it so depressing to see how quickly the self-serving ableist bullshit has prevailed, ‘don’t worry, it’s only the elderly or those with compromised immune systems that’ll die’…ah good to know, thanks for that – like we don’t matter or something. Like why do people even voice that? Ugh. Man. Makes me sick but tbh I am not surprised after Brexit and voting in Boris it’s just more of the same isn’t it?

And breathe…let’s bring this back to therapy before I have some kind of global pandemic fuelled panic attack!

Em’s hand hygiene routine seems to have been wholly successful so far as aiding her in moving on. She has washed her hands clean of the shit show that was our therapeutic relationship – but then she never really got her hands dirty to begin with so perhaps it was easier for her. I, on the other hand, am faring less well. I am basically channelling my inner Lady Macbeth here, shouting, ‘Out, damn’d spot!’ as I furiously try and cleanse myself of this horror, but it’s just not working. It’s all in my mind and no matter how much I wash there’s still the stain of what’s happened tormenting me even if it appears that I am free of the problem.

I suppose it’s also helped that Em’s capacity to self-isolate and quarantine herself for the bulk of our relationship has meant she’s largely avoided coming into any significant (emotional) contact with the virus whereas I have laid myself bare and been completely unprotected from harm. I am, after all, one of those poor people with a knackered immune system who is most at risk of complications. I think that’s probably where this analogy should stop! Because I fear I am actually beginning to sound like a traumatised Shakespearean character.

I know it’s really quite early days and it’s going to take a while to move on and recover from what’s happened in my therapy with Em but, honestly, I feel like the trauma has left a stain on more than just my hands. I feel odd even calling it ‘therapy’ now because it’s been far from therapeutic. The more I unpick what’s happened with Anita, the more I am realising just how bad things were. I think I had so badly wanted to believe that Em could help me and cared that I glossed over the evidence to the contrary and believed her narrative that it was me that was the problem and I should just work harder and accept how things were. If she didn’t work in the way I wanted then that was my problem and I had to suck it up.

I’m not really sure what I want to say here – I mean really what more is there to say? I don’t want to be ‘that client’ who demonstrates just how crazy they are by what they write after termination and has everyone giving each other knowing looks and mouthing ‘she’s bonkers, it’s no wonder her therapist couldn’t handle her’. But there is so much whirling in my head and this is one of the places I can think about it out loud. My therapy sessions with Anita are really helpful but I am literally like a broken record- repeating the same stuff over and over.

I am so confused and disorientated by what’s happened with Em. I find myself wondering how on earth it all just disintegrated in no time at all. I feel like I am left her scratching my head and wondering if I really was just a massive handful and couldn’t see it. But genuinely, I don’t think I was. I am honest in what I write here but crikey not much of it made it into the room, a lot of the time, because the shame and embarrassment was so strong and the rejection always felt so huge. But, then, Anita said this is what happens in abusive relationships – the abuser moves on and the victim is left shell-shocked trying to process what happened.

It feels a bit OTT putting it like that, but that run in from Christmas break was pretty horrific and I can’t dress it up, really.

I wish I was able to be pragmatic about this, accept what’s happened and just move on – be less Lady Macbeth and more Elsa – and just ‘let it go’😉.

And I suppose if it was just my adult self that had been in the relationship and affected by the end it then I probably would be able to, but we all know that this ending has body-slammed all the parts of me. I’ve tried to shelter and protect the child parts from the worst of it but when you’ve been living in an emotional shanty town and a category 5 hurricane passes through it’s inevitable that some serious damage is going to take place.

I know my last post here was pretty doom and gloom. That final email from Em really, really hurt me….I mean the time since mid-December has really, really hurt me but I guess that email was the final nail in the coffin. I feel like I have been left for dead. It’s like I’ve been in a hit and run and she’s driven off without even so much as a casual glance in the rear-view mirror. For all she knows I could be in a right mess, injured or dead – and yet she couldn’t care less. It reminds me, a bit, of a fab poem by Simon Armitage called ‘Hitcher’ that I used to teach on the old GCSE syllabus before English got massacred by the Tories and made the kids need to have almost photographic memories rather than insight… God, I’m in a good mood! Apologies!

I am blown away that throughout this ending Em has not once asked me about what plans I might put in place to keep myself safe, offered a referral on, or put any kind of support in place knowing we’ve gone from two sessions a week to none in the way that we have. This wasn’t a well-planned termination of long-term work. There was no gradual winding down or celebration of the work done. It was abrupt and unwanted. So, the lack of safeguarding feels neglectful. There is just a complete lack of professional care. I’m beyond wanting her to have warm fuzzy feelings about me, but surely she has a basic duty of care to safeguard her clients just like I have as a teacher with my students? I mean if nothing else, shouldn’t she have covered her own arse here?!

I guess I am angry because there would have been a time where going this would have ended up in a right fucking mess: self harm, active anorexia, hard to ignore suicidal thoughts…and she knows this. In fact, this week has been really awful because everything really just caught up with me. I was having my craniosacral session with K on Thursday and I felt suddenly like I was plummeting through the darkness, it was a younger part, and in that moment all I wanted to do was take a blade to my arm and cut from wrist to elbow. Fortunately, I was in a safe place, with a safe therapist, and I could move away from it because amazingly, she felt it instantly in my body and asked me about the part that wants to give up and not be here anymore and we processed it. BUT this stuff is right here, just under the surface.

It’s going to take a while to recover from this because this abandonment taps into a lifetime of other abandonments and losses…so thank god I have both K and Anita to help me.

I had really good sessions with both of them this week and whilst I was really in the mire so far as the hard stuff coming up went, I was so supported in the work. K and I ended up having a ninety minute session and she’s told me to check in over the weekend…which I have done. It’s a different kind of therapeutic relationship than regular talk therapy, although we do talk a lot (she is a trained counsellor too) she just works as a craniosacral therapist these days.

The work is really holding and containing and K is awesome at coregulation which is so needed for my system that is so frequently set into flight mode. She sees all the parts and contains them all. She accepts all of me. It’s absolutely mind-blowing having this kind of trusting, warm, caring relationship after so long out in the cold with Em.

Em said I was scared of intimacy – and yet that is not the case at all. If there is trust I can do it. My system just knew something was wrong with Em even though my young parts were so desperately attached – traumatically bonded- to her. K thanks me for trusting her and letting her in. She appreciates what big deal that is for someone that has been so hurt, not just now, but throughout my life to be vulnerable. Being seen is scary but being accepted despite this, is something new and healing. The way she talks reminds of the book by Charlie Mackesy, ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’ – if you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s a wonderful book of stunning illustrations with really uplifting messages on each page:

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99352bf5-ec23-4be4-baec-b5c4c8cd160a

Just to clarify, I haven’t just fallen head over heels in love with K after a couple a few months of work together. Although I guess it must sound that way! It’s not like that at all. We did two years of weekly work in the years before I gave birth to my daughter – when I had my breakdown following my dad’s death. We have remained in loose contact via email and text ever since and caught up every now and then but now we’re back in the thick of it and it’s really nice to be back.

I was able to securely attach to her back then and so picking up the work again now with the new insights I have about myself has been great. She meets me where I am at and is so encouraging. She believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself. I feel like I have an ally and despite knowing I can’t be fixed by someone else I have a solid support to help me on my way. We laugh, too, which is great! I think our inner teens could be quite good friends, actually – or a bad influence on each other! I trust that she knows herself well enough, and has done enough of her own work to be able to handle me.

To be honest, given the choice now of Em or K – I’d choose K hands down…because I feel how good she is for me and how much of a healing presence she is. I miss Em – but I don’t miss all the real time anxiety, the between session depression, feeling shit in the room as well as out of it, feeling inadequate, too much, and like I wasn’t doing therapy right. And I certainly don’t miss the high levels of dissociation twice a week!
Crikey – that sounds really bad doesn’t it?!

And then there’s Anita. It’s like the difference between night and day seeing her and Em. I get that we are still early days and I haven’t really attached to her or had any of those transference feelings towards her yet which will likely shake things up a bit when they happen but I do really like her. I have been able to really explore what’s going on for me. She isn’t frightened by my feelings, my distress, or how I have reacted to losing Em. I have been able to cry with her. She has normalised my feelings. She understands. And best of all – she keeps reassuring me that I am not too much for her. A little reassurance goes a long way doesn’t it?!

Because she is so present with me in the room (no still face exercise here), tells me her experience in the room with me (so I don’t have to guess something negative), and keeps checking in with me, it feels really connecting and safe which means I am able to be much more open than I have been in the past with Em. I can tell her about the feelings about self-harm, not wanting to eat, feeling utterly devastated about Em and I don’t feel any shame bubbling up inside me, wanting to gag me. It feels really freeing.

I have been sitting on these feelings for so long with Em and yet rarely finding a way to tell her – hence the notebooks, and occasional (unread) emails, or things I had written and printed out to talk about in session. I always felt so nervous and scared of the reaction – because I so often felt like I was being pathologized for being how I was.

I told her, this week, about the image I have of the pair of us working together in the mud on a building site, laying the foundations so we can build a solid new structure together and compared that to how Em has always been more of a site foreman telling me to work harder at building while she stands in the door of the site office drinking tea. Anita smiled at this and agreed we were in this together. I do think we might be able to forge a good enough relationship with time.

Anyway, this is long and I need to go to the tip! It’s been a busy weekend of trying to clear the garden in preparation for spring (which I am sure wants to come!) so there’s a trailer of stuff to go to the recycling centre…and then I need to write a letter to my estranged grandmother who has written to tell me my grandad died a few days ago…but that’s a story for another time!

Enjoy your Sundays everyone…and please, please, don’t go panic buy toilet roll, it won’t help you!

And remember…

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

rubberbandsandchewinggum38 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s nice isn’t it?! Yay.

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

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

Crikey.

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

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

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

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

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

I felt so distant from her.

It was painful.

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

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

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

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

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

I started crying.

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

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

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

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

…on my own again.

 

Finding My ‘NO’

rubberbandsandchewinggum8 Comments

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Well. it’s safe to say that I have totally overloaded myself again this academic year and have been, frankly, exhausted and drowning in shit I hate! I don’t think I actually hate my job (do I?!) I just think I have taken on a little bit more than I can chew and so am suffering with an uncomfortable reflux right now…although it’s not just work that’s the problem.

I am both physically and emotionally exhausted from trying to embody Dory from ‘Finding Nemo’. I may be a piscean but I’m so over being an upbeat (and rather confused) fish! My mantra has always been, ‘just keep swimming!’ but the reality is, right now, I just want to get out the water, dry off, and lie on a sun lounger for the next decade or so! (I get that that mightn’t work out so well for Dory!- but luckily I am a human and not a fish!)

It’s been so instilled in me from a young age that I should just keep going ‘no matter what’ that I have felt that the only viable option has been to keep swimming against the tide, at all costs, even if I am not getting anywhere, even if I am near to drowning (because I am overwhelmed and exhausted), even though I know, deep down, that it isn’t good for me and is completely at odds with what I really want and need…

AND, NOW, I AM DONE WITH THAT!

I CAN SEE HOW DANGEROUS AND DAMAGING THAT IS TO ME!

Hoo-bloody-ray!

Finally eh?!

I guess until now I have always worried what would happen if I don’t ‘do what I think I am supposed to?’ What happens if I ‘don’t follow the script?’ And I don’t have an answer for that BUT what I do know is that continuing as I am isn’t an option because whilst it’s ‘known’, my current modus operandi it isn’t working for me AT ALL.

And so a change is gonna come – and it’s coming now.

These last three weeks I have been AWOL here on the blog. I have wanted to write but I simply have not had a minute to do it. Actually, really, for the last six months or so I haven’t had much time to write or reflect here in the way I’d like and that’s sad for me because I do find writing really helpful. I enjoy it. The thing is, I don’t have a clone of myself and there are only so many hours in the day; blogging or anything that isn’t completely essential has been wiped from my weeks.

This neglecting of myself and not ‘finding time’ (because there is none!!) for ‘self care’, of course, has huge consequences in the end but this time the consequence is something entirely unexpected and new. Instead of the negative sinking further and further into a kind of acceptance that this is ‘just how my life is’ and feeling hopeless and helpless to do anything about it, I’ve found my ‘NO’. The ‘no’ is positive and this ‘NO’ is extremely LOUD!

I don’t know how, or why the time is now, but this is what’s happened:

Because I have been back in filo pastry mode (spread so thinly you can almost see through me!) I have edged closer and closer to burnout and that drop off where everything looks really horrible – like potentially having a breakdown terrible. Everything has felt overwhelming and too much. The attachment stuff with Em has been really activated and I have felt really precarious in myself.

I have kept going, because that’s what I do, but knowing that it couldn’t last forever. Something was going to give way, eventually. I was just kind of hoping I’d get to half-term and then be able to regroup again. I am always hanging on for the holidays and that’s really no way to live.

Lately, I have been waking up in the night feeling sick with anxiety – even before I have any conscious thoughts and not because of bad dreams just because my body has been overwrought and tense. I’ve felt as though I’ve had an electric current coursing through my veins all the time. I have been perpetually wound up and because of this I have felt so so tired. I’ve basically been mega stressed out…but sort of ignoring it…because it’s kind of just ‘the norm’, it’s ‘what it’s like at this time of year when work starts up again and the nights draw in’, and because, ‘I’ll get used to it in a few weeks’.

That’s pretty standard for me. I have gone through this in cycles for almost as long as I can remember so I don’t know what’s happened in the last couple of weeks, but basically the biproduct of me overdoing it, having no time for myself, and descending into a pit of misery is that somewhere deep inside the little voice that usually gets ignored, the one that is desperately pleading for things to be different, the one who is desperate for me to listen to her because whilst she is little and vulnerable and carries so much shame (that isn’t hers to carry by the way!) she is the one who knows exactly what I need… well, she has evolved her little voice into an almighty fierce roar that is so powerful that you can hear it miles off! I can’t ignore her anymore.

So what’s she saying now she’s truly found her voice? Well, she’s yelling, ‘FUCK THIS SHIT! I AM DONE!!! NO MORE!! I am not living like this anymore. I AM THIRTY SIX YEARS OLD – IT’S TIME TO LIVE AUTHENTICALLY! I need to be who I truly am, and if people don’t like it then they can fuck right off because I am tired, so fucking sick and tired of draining myself dry living in this cycle and feeling like I’m at odds with myself, hiding myself, making myself smaller than I am because I feel that how it should be. I am important and my needs matter too! I deserve to be loved. I am worthy of care. And I will not put myself at the bottom of the pile any more! I cannot and will not keep abandoning the youngest parts of myself because that’s what I have learnt to do. I believe in myself.’

And wow, there’s a lot of oomph in there!

I have known for a long while now that a lot of the work I need to do to move things on with therapy is body based. I have talked and talked and talked in my sessions and that has certainly helped me get to this place- especially as Em has really got me to notice my body, what’s going on with it, the changes that can happen in session – especially around the dissociation stuff.

I can track my body really well now. I know my patterns. I know what gets triggered emotionally and where it manifests in my body. I am not closed off from my feelings in the way that I used to be. But now I am more in touch with it all I have a problem. It’s that thing, you know once you see something horrendous you can’t unsee it? Well, that’s what it’s like inside. Now I see and feel all that’s ‘wrong’ in my body I can’t unfeel it.  I know my nervous system is wound up like a spring and yet I haven’t been able to discharge that energy.

No amount of visualisation or breathing or whatever has helped. No amount of thinking about the pain that the young parts of me carry, or knowing more about that feeling of abandonment and deep grief really helps. And it is so hard to trust Em when my body is screaming that she’s not safe, and doesn’t really care. Adult me knows she is safe and cares but underneath there is so much fear and they just can’t seem to reach a place of safety when those feelings get activated.

There is a part of me that knows that some of the healing that needs to take place requires physical touch and connection with another person because the ‘injury’ is so early. There are no words to help this. And because that can’t happen with Em, because that’s her boundary, it feels like it just perpetually retraumatises those young, vulnerable parts because they are essentially sitting six feet away from someone who chooses to keep their physical distance and they can’t understand why.

I haven’t, yet, worked out how to hold those parts myself and I often feel like a toddler screaming out for a cuddle and being met with intellectual speak. I know that’s partly my fault. I hide behind my intellect to save myself from being vulnerable or exposed and I really need to work on that but whilst my body keeps freaking out I don’t really feel like I can get the next level of work done.

So, anyway, to the point. The anxiety felt so fucking awful a few weeks ago and the attachment stuff had flared up so badly with Em’s second break of the summer that I got in contact with a craniosacral therapist that I had seen before I got pregnant with my daughter about nine years ago to organise a session. I mean, what was there to lose?

Every interaction I have ever had with this particular therapist has felt so full of warmth and care. She’s the sort of person that just exudes calm and care and love -a typical matriarch if you like. She always makes me feel like I matter and as though she genuinely cares about me and she gives amazing hugs. And I really need that right now. I also need a full body reset!

So, on Thursday I went for my session and I can’t even explain how amazing it was. Soooooo different to before. I definitely benefited from this kind of therapy in my twenties but this time around it was transformational in just one session. I think that, in part, has to be because of all the work I have done with Em.

Last time I saw K I inherently knew something was wrong, and I knew I was grieving the loss of my dad, but I had no real understanding of all the childhood stuff or the impact it had had on me. I don’t think I was ready to do the work I needed. I know that now. I feel all that pain and loss from the most vulnerable parts of me and I am more open to it. We all know I have my defences and who they are (!!) but I really want to work on helping get them lowered or feeling safe enough so I can once and for all truly help what’s underneath. That’s actually really terrifying and it means coming home to my body…but I know it’s possible and I believe that somewhere inside my body has the resources to hold all this for itself it just needs some help to learn how.

The session on Thursday was so good. I could feel myself coming back into my body almost immediately. At times it felt like being in an elevator and steadily descending down through the floors in stages, like waves of coming back into myself until I reached the bottom and grounded. At other times it felt as though there were concentric circles expanding and contracting in my head. It was almost like a pebble had been dropped in the water in my head and the ripples were moving outwards and then back inwards over and over again. I could really feel the baby part of me in that session too but she wasn’t screaming and uncontained – she was held. Once the session had finished I felt immediately calmer and more in my body and as though  I suddenly had a protective space/forcefield around me sort of like a bubble.

Usually, I am affected by every little stressful thing because I have no defence against it but with this protective field around me…well lots of the usual stuff can’t penetrate it. It’s like a huge weight has lifted! I simply don’t care about lots of the things that have always bothered me before. It’s almost like overnight I have found an important part of myself again and see my value (where work is concerned at least. There’s still a VERY VERY long way to go with the attachment stuff, the trauma stuff, and the mother wound!!). Still, at least with work I don’t feel the need to people please anymore. I have stopped saying ‘yes’ and I have already exercised my ‘no’.

It was kind of fortuitous timing today, really. Mentally I have been practising my ‘No’ (I know exactly how I want things to look in the new year with my job) but sometimes when I’m face-to-face and someone asks me to do something my ‘No’ becomes a ‘Yes’ and I can hear that little voice inside crying, ‘Why???’

Today has been a bit of trial, day one of a period from hell (I was certainly in my body!), my mood was not good, and I unexpectedly ran into the guy I do some tutoring for in the supermarket.

I couldn’t even muster my usual ‘upbeat’ smiley face or any deflective humour. He said I looked tired and then asked me how things were with one of the jobs I do for his company because apparently one of the challenging groups I teach had been particularly difficult for the Maths guy yesterday. I said that whilst it had been largely ok on Wednesday and the sessions so far, once my current students and commitment on that course finishes in November that I won’t be running my side of the course again and that he’d need to find someone else to do it.

He looked surprised and said, ‘I don’t think there would be anyone else who could do it’. At one time I might have felt an internal pressure to continue, go against my gut which says, ‘no more’ but instead I said, ‘I just can’t do it anymore. I am so over filling other people’s leaky buckets when they aren’t at least trying to stop the leak themselves. This kind of work takes a huge toll on me and I have more than enough work that I enjoy and that is rewarding, where I don’t have to absorb that level of shit. I’ve reached a point in my career where just because I can do something doesn’t mean I am going to. I am going to be far more selective about what I take on from now on’.

I could see the surprise on his face but he could see I wasn’t going to be moved and told me that he would pass the message on to the organisation that has been running the course and accepted that whilst he knows they intend to run another cohort straight after Christmas that they’ll need to do it without me and find another English teacher.

Do you know what? I thought I might feel a bit guilty or whatever – but I don’t at all. I feel relief. Because I have listened to my inner voice and heeded her calls. I have hated Wednesdays the last few weeks doing that particular session with that particular group. It’s only three hours long, and I already have my course plan because I delivered it earlier in the year to another group so it’s not exactly a huge challenge BUT my heart just hasn’t been in it. Emotionally ‘armouring up’ just to get through has been requiring more and more energy. All the young people (18-25 year olds) have a lot going on – mental health issues, care leavers, drugs etc – and I just can’t absorb them anymore.

I don’t know if it’s that I care too much about people but I am massively affected by their stories and I feel so drained after each session then of course there is always the challenging behaviour that can come from some of these people too. And I just can’t do it anymore. Part of me feels sad because so often these groups get overlooked and with the right support things can change but I can’t do it anymore because everything else in my life suffers when I keep putting work above everything else. I am not as good a parent as usual because I am so worn out. When I am worn out my mental health suffers…and we all know where that leads… wobbly child parts and attachment hell.

My therapy session with Em on Friday was mixed. The first part was fine as I recounted the positive impact I felt from having the craniosacral session, Em said it sounded brilliant and asked what I felt that was left for us in the room in therapy. Suddenly I got hit with a wave of full body sadness as the more vulnerable parts came to the front – something had shifted again and I just really struggled to talk because there is a part of me that doesn’t know what is left for my talk therapy.

I wanted to connect and yet that overwhelming fear of being rejected and abandoned was massive again and I just couldn’t go there. I managed, in the end, to say ‘you feel really far away’ but that was about it. Ugh!

I really want for the craniosacral therapy to sit alongside the talk therapy and want for it to be able to give me the grounding and containment that I need to do more of the work. I feel ready to go down into another deeper layer with my healing journey and that why things are going to change in other areas of my life. I need to make adequate space and time for myself so that I have some resource to actually go do what needs to be done!

I know it’s going to be a slow process but I’m in it for the long haul! I think this may be my life’s work!

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