dissociation – Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

The Ache Of Estrangement

January 5, 2026January 5, 2026rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

Well, I’m sure you’ll all be very glad that there is absolutely no danger of running into any ‘new year, new me’ bullshit here today. I think, all I can say is that from what I know of myself, I will continue to ‘keep on keeping on’ and trying my fucking best to navigate my way through whatever life throws at me…and I hope and pray that 2026 is significantly less shit than 2025 was. Although being realistic about things, I have no expectations that it will be. I don’t want to sound negative but, honestly, my life seems to be one big fucking long struggle and no matter what I do things seem too hard (I hope that doesn’t magically manifest more of the same! – but I am under no illusion that for whatever reason, my life isn’t ever smooth sailing).

I meant to come here and post something over the Christmas break but after my last post things didn’t really get any better and I found myself pretty frozen a lot of the time, so writing or any kind of processing just wasn’t possible. Thinking about it, I spent quite a bit of the Christmas holiday period dissociated because I was soooooo stressed through December that and I guess that’s the default for when things get too much- my brain just shuts down.

Things got really bad with the anxiety after the car accident (probably the most intense experience of anxiety and panic attacks I have ever had) and I fell quite quickly and deeply (and unexpectedly) into another period of not eating. I thought all that was behind me – and it largely is…

I wouldn’t describe myself as someone with an eating disorder anymore, but I don’t think that the eating disordered part of me is dead, she’s just dormant. I haven’t needed her for a long time. But recently my life has felt really out of control in very big and stressful ways and I am not at all surprised that I unconsciously found my way back to that place again – almost on autopilot.

Like I said, this stuff wasn’t triggered by anything to do with therapy or relationships (although therapy has been impacted as a result of my getting so completely overwhelmed lately – I cancelled Elle this week, first session back after the Christmas break, because it all felt too fucking painful…fortunately she was able to reach through to me and I did go in the end). It’s my actual day-to-day tangible life existence that’s the problem. Lack of security and therefore feeling desperately unsafe and like the world is about to blow up around my ears is what’s sending me through a huge loop. The thing is, this time of year is rough on the emotional front, too, and so as that has also landed bit-by-bit I have found that I have zero resilience and haven’t been able to cope.

I wrote last time about money (or lack of it) and all that stuff that is part of it – stress with insecure jobs, financial pressure, the car crash… it’s all ongoing … but there’s more, too, which is completely flooring me. I haven’t been able to talk to Elle about it yet, and I find that really hard because I feel like I am withholding stuff from her and I never want to do that but I don’t feel like there is much of a choice. So, I feel quite alone with what I am grappling with and that feels completely shit.

I hate that I have zero control or power to be able to get us (my wife and I) through what’s going on and I feel like I am just watching and waiting and panicking about an outcome I cannot control or influence. I just have to wait and see how things land and then pick up the pieces accordingly. And for someone who likes to know where she is at, NEEDS stability and security – it’s totally fucking me up. The idea of getting back to work tomorrow feels so heavy. I literally have no idea how I am going drag ‘teacher’ out of the bag when I am barely coping as RB. And yet somehow, I must find a way. I just don’t know how much more ‘digging deep’ I have in me. I literally can’t believe that I am still standing and yet time and again I have to find another level of coping when I am on empty.

Anyway, back to before Christmas. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop eating which I guess is different from other times I have fallen into a disordered eating pattern. This time, I physically couldn’t eat because of the anxiety. I gagged every time I put something in my mouth and felt sooooo ill. I felt so tense that my body just couldn’t do it to myself and there is a difference between not eating because you ‘can’t’ and not eating because you are deliberately restricting. This was a ‘can’t’ situation.

The days rolled by and before I knew it, I hadn’t actually eaten for five days on the bounce. I know that it very bad. In fact, I don’t think even in my very most severe anorexic periods have I actually just failed to eat anything at all like that. But it really shows me just how overwhelmed I was. I lost quite a lot of weight through December and it was really noticeable to me – clothes were/are hanging off me and I felt weak but the good thing, if there is one, is that because I have been so ‘well’ and in a healthy range for so long now, my initial starting point meant that there was weight to lose and it wasn’t going to harm me…as I said, it has been years now since I was in the grips of anorexia.

So…yeah… it has been rough. But fortunately (weird explanation), over Christmas everything got so close to being too much that Brian shut off altogether and I had a week or so of relief from feeling anything much in any real depth and I got back to eating and breathing and being…but I wasn’t actively enjoying anything but I was at least not hurting myself. Tbh I don’t remember much of Christmas. Well, we all know what dissociation is like, don’t we?! But I’ll take that over the anxiety any day.

When I started to ‘feel’ again it wasn’t great, I got hit with ALL the feelings. Not just the life stress and anxiety that had knocked me for six in the first place but the other stuff too. The usual emotional achy wound stuff reared its head and bloody hell it hurt a lot. Christmas is all about family and connection…and all that I don’t have was thrown into very sharp focus this year. I became acutely aware of how painful this holiday felt compared with others and how desperately alone I felt.

Usually, I might get a bit of separation anxiety from my therapist Elle and the stuff with Em (“like a tick”) ALWAYS rears its head, and the traditional life-long betwixtmas depression hits…but this was different again. Like it had a gazillion extra jingly trauma bells ringing on top because normally this stuff is in the body and centres around attachment to therapist/s and this year it wasn’t that alone…this year I really hurt (it always really hurts!)… but this year I was also hurting for my mum, too. And I suppose that is progress – grieving the original source of the pain? Although it didn’t feel like it in the moment because I still had all the other stuff going on too.

So, this last couple of weeks I wanted to write about the impact of broken connection and estrangement from my mum over the holiday because I’ve really struggled and it had a MASSIVE knock on to how I felt about myself, how I saw my relationship with Elle, and of course it dragged back up all the pain of what happened six years ago over the Christmas period with Em, and then Anita got thrown in the mix…well…it’s four years this week since I met her…. So it’s a bumper season for emotional memories. Ugh. But I haven’t felt able to write because like I say, I’ve been barely functional. Writing this now I can really see how bad it’s been. Survival really. I probably need to find a way to really bring all this to Elle because I haven’t told her about the eating either… and I guess that is a big deal even if it is better than it was.

But to the original idea: estrangement from mum.

Christmas 2025 signalled the fourth year on the bounce where I have had minimal (for the first few years, a card) or no contact from my mum over the holidays. In February last year shortly after my daughter’s birthday, I decided to draw a boundary around my relationship (or lack of one) with my mum and sent her a message explaining how her minimal care and interest in me and my family hurt me and how it was hard for the children to understand why their grandmother no longer wanted to see them or engage. I actually said, “it’s clear that you don’t like them or me much” and so there could be no doubt what I was saying. I told her that she would be better not sending a card at all if she had no desire to see me or the kids under the pretence of maintaining a relationship.

I never heard back and she has had made no contact since.

This is both disappointing and, I guess, validating. It was hard for me to take the bull by the horns and shine a light on the reality and bring what was really happening into sharp focus. But all the while I was letting things go and almost pretending like things weren’t that bad, I realised I was not only hurting myself but allowing my mum to hurt my kids too. And that had to stop.

Of course, it is disappointing that when faced with my side of things my mum was unable to step up, take any form of accountability, or try and make amends…but then why would she? I have no value in her eyes – never have- and what I have believed to be true my whole life – that my mum doesn’t really like me, is true. I am not insane. It it how it is and has always been and my feelings are correct. My feelings of being ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’ haven’t materialised out of nowhere…and here is evidence. If it were me, faced with the same situation I would have been on the phone in an instant, or better yet, have got in the car and gone to see my kid in person…because there is no way on earth I would ever let my kids disappear from my life but then I am not my mother and actively try not to be like her in any way.

So, yeah. Being hit once again with the reality that my mum is exactly who I think she is, I spent some days feeling really low over Christmas. I feel the absence of a mother so acutely (no shit!). Not my mother. I don’t want mine – she’s crap. But I so badly need/ed a good enough mother. One who could have done the job throughout my childhood and would still be here now to support me. I think that’s what I am struggling with a lot right now, the lack of there being anyone to act as a backstop and hold my hand as my world seems to be so fragile. I really need a parent to be there, someone who I can call up and just say, “I am struggling” and even if they can’t fix it they could remind me that I am ok, that I am safe, and that no matter what happens I always have that loving place to return to.

I don’t though.

It’s all on me and my wife.

There is nowhere to tangibly or symbolically put the bags down and rest for a bit. And I don’t mean financially – I mean emotionally. I think that even if you never ‘need’ to use the support system simply knowing it is there makes things feel better. I miss my dad so much because this is exactly what he was. He was a harbour in the storm… he was there no matter what… and now he isn’t. No one is. And I feel it ALL THE TIME. When things go wrong, I am thrust face first into just how exposed I am. How vulnerable I am. And I can’t always cope…or I do… but it’s taking its toll.

I understand that I go to therapy. And I get to an extent this is a place to put things down a bit and Elle is soooo supportive…but she is only my therapist and she is only physically there in my session/s. She is not available in the sort of way I need right now and of course that’s how it is because she isn’t a friend or family member. The rules of the game mean that I can’t text her at 11pm and ask for a call and cry or turn up at her house and collapse. She is not someone whom I can ask to come over and just help me whilst things crumble and make dinner or deal with the kids. I can’t rot in my bed and get her to come and sit with me and stroke my head and look after me. And don’t get me wrong, I am really grateful for what she does offer me – without it I would be in a very much worse state than I am now, but I am so very aware of what I need right now and how it just doesn’t exist in my life. I have some great friends but even they can’t mend this with me.

My dreams have been off the charts again this week. Two nights ago, I dreamt I was being attacked in the hallway in the downstairs of my house. It was nighttime and completely dark. I was screaming over and over again, “Help me! HELP ME! I need an adult. Please help me!” I woke up so distressed and my throat hurt from trying to shout out in my dream … or should we say nightmare? I think it’s really telling though, how I feel like I am under attack in the place that is meant to be safe and I am crying desperately out for assistance from someone to help me. My young parts are so upset right now…but so is my adult. I just wish, so much that I had … an adult to take care of things. And I know this adult is and has to be ‘me’. It’s always had to be me, even when I was a child and should not have had to be a ‘little adult’…but god. It’s a lot.

I’m just so fucking exhausted from struggling all the time. It never ends. I need a break…and yet all that seems to happen is more shit lands on my plate.

I do really get how much I seem to be moaning. I just am so done with struggling.

At least the lead into Christmas in regard to therapy wasn’t too disastrous. In the last face-to-face session Elle brought in cakes for us and we exchanged presents – although to be opened on Christmas. And then we had our zoom call on the Friday before she went on break. I felt sad that we weren’t able to see each other in person twice that week but I didn’t say anything about it because I got the distinct sense that Elle was running on fumes and if she had have wanted to come in that day she would have. Like she will always tell me if she is able to come in and do Friday session in person (like this week – which was a massive relief!) so there was no point in going down the emotional rabbit hole and entertaining any feelings about rejection or abandonment because that’s not what was going on.

When it finally got to Christmas, I was struggling but it was lovely to have something to open from Elle and she really does keep me in mind. She’d bought me a lovely poetry book, ‘Stars At Last’ by Jessica Jocelyn. It’s all about the mother wound and mothering. My god it hit that super stingy, vulnerable place. Elle gets it. She sees it. But ooooofff – wowzers – I really needed a hug after reading it because I feel like I could have written it myself.

She also wrote me a story to read on Christmas day and illustrated it -and that felt really lovely for little parts as it was a reminder that we were connected even if we weren’t together and included characters and symbols we often reference in our therapy. It was lovely…but also hit that little part that so needs to be close.

I won’t lie, I really struggled not having any contact with Elle on Christmas day. Last year she reached out to me in the morning and this year she didn’t – not that there is any expectation of contact…but I think to the part of me who was already feeling so upset about my mum I guess I just wanted to know that I wasn’t suddenly too much…that I wasn’t forgotten about…that I wasn’t about to be discarded…that I hadn’t done anything wrong by giving her a gift (I can thank Em for that worry after rejecting the present I gave her all those years ago)…and all the worries that come up time again. Even though all of this fear was covered in her story for the small parts and I should have understood that there was nothing to worry about.

I think part of the issue that got me panicking a lot is that I gave Elle something that was pretty meaningful to the work we have been doing over the course of the year. I made/sewed her a stocking that had figures from the story I wrote her last year for her at Christmas on and filled it with all sorts of things that were relevant to us… and it felt ‘big’ because even though none of what was in there cost very much, it was very clearly from my little heart…and then on Christmas I panicked that it was all too much and that her silence meant that I was going to walk into the same sort of situation when I came back to the room as I did with Em this time six years ago. I was sure I was going to get a boundary talk and be reminded that I am a client and that I don’t need to give gifts because I already pay Elle and that hurt because I had so wanted the present to be received as it was intended.

Anyway, I had a bit of a meltdown over WhatsApp on Christmas night with my friend who did her level best to remind me that Elle is not Em, or Anita, or anyone else for that matter and that she really does care and that I am not too much and ALL THE THINGS. It didn’t really work though. I had got to the place where I felt stupid and ashamed for having bothered and all the old hurts came flooding in.

Later in the evening, I sent a very short message to Elle on Christmas night thanking her for my presents but it was about as short and to the point as I ever get. But again, I had got myself into a place where I felt like I didn’t want to bother her, or take up time or space, or be seen as an unwelcome intrusion into her time off. Basically, I just wanted to disappear and hope that I hadn’t fucked things up. I shouldn’t have worried, though. Elle sent me a lovely email on Boxing Day in reply and I was instantly reminded that she is there and things were ok and she did like what I had given her.

On Monday Elle sent me her usual pre-session text and I was so looking forward to seeing her on Tuesday like I was sooooo ready to see her and be with her again. But on Monday night ALL the anxiety came flooding back in about ALL THE THINGS. I didn’t sleep AT ALL. Everything felt wrong. I felt completely overwhelmed by how bad things felt and how much I needed Elle but was terrified of seeing her and being too much.

I think when I am overwhelmed I am worried that I must be overwhelming.

Well – that’s exactly what happened with Em isn’t it? I came back from Christmas in a mess and the next thing I know I am being compared to a tick and we are ending. I never ever want a repeat of that and I guess part of me was trying to protect myself on Tuesday when I sent a text to Elle a couple of hours before the session:

I’m having a really bad time and I need to step away for a bit. I’m sorry x

I felt so upset that immediately after sending the message I burst into tears. I went and stood in the shower in a total freeze for an hour and just sobbed under as the water ran over me. I imagined Elle would just accept what I had to say and be glad I was giving her some extra space because who would want to spend time with me like this? Why would she want to come back when she knew what space from me and all my need felt like? Why would she want to connect with me and my mess and have me cling to her like I was drowning?

Elle didn’t just accept my cancellation, though. She replied she told me that she was right there if I wanted to come in and that she could also come in on Friday and that she really hoped that I could tell her what was going on.

It was enough to show me that I wasn’t unwanted, or too much, or any other the other negative things that were running through my brain and I made it into the session. And I am so glad I did because the moment I saw Elle I was reminded that she isn’t any of the things I worry about – and that she does care – and she does see me, all of me, and that she cares for all of me whatever state I am in. She wrapped me up in a massive hug and didn’t let me go as I cried. I could have stayed there all day tbh. And that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Making that time enough when the need is so big and the safety within that room is only available for small window of the week.

I am sooooo aware of not straying into the place where I become too much for Elle, although I imagine if that feels like it is happening she will manage that somehow, and in a better way than those who have come before her. I get the feeling she wants me to tell her exactly what is going on for me because I realise that I actually often don’t ‘tell’ her in words but I definitely ‘show’ her. I talk to her a lot in my head when I don’t see her and forget she has no idea what I have shared with ‘in my head Elle’. When I see her in person so much of what we do is about co-regulation and simply being together that I don’t verbalise a lot of the stuff. So, whilst I might think I am a lot and too much…maybe it’s not the case.

Being a human with a heart is hard, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ll leave this here because it is long. But the sadness about my mum over Christmas morphed into something else entirely on Saturday when I was out walking the dog…and my anger has a LOT to say! That’ll come next time…be warned.

I hope that everyone is more-or-less in one piece after the shitshow that was 2025… and … that 2026 is…doable! Big hugs xxx

When Safety Feels Unsafe

October 6, 2025October 6, 2025rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

Well, I can’t lie, it’s been a complete and utter disaster zone in my emotional world since I posted a couple of weeks back. What’s happened? Well, my righteous anger about harm in therapy that I channelled into the last blog, where I talked about how I had received an email from a reader about their hideous experience being terminated by a therapist that perhaps could have been Anita (but thankfully wasn’t) as well as harm in therapy more generally, quickly morphed into the biggest fear about being rejected and abandoned and activated all the ‘old’ stuff from Em and Anita but most horribly the absolute terror that something bad would happen with Elle went nuclear. Well of course that would happen, wouldn’t it?

Usually, I am absolutely fine when people share their stories with me about difficult stuff happening in their therapies but, strangely, not in this particular instance. It’s weird, though, because at the same time someone else I have known a while from the blog contacted me about some issues they were experiencing in therapy that also really closely mirrored some things that have happened to me in the past and it’s had no detrimental impact at all. I have received the messages in the way I usually do and responded as I always have…

So, what’s gone wrong then?

I don’t know. I wonder if it’s because what’s happened with this other person has taken place in my city, and so it just makes the therapy world feel all the more unsafe here – I’ve had three therapists who haven’t been up to par, and now there’s another wreaking havoc…not that I ever hope to need to see any therapist but Elle ever again.

Maybe, and more likely, it’s that their experience around termination has so many similar threads to what happened with Em and Anita and so it’s just tapped into the wound more than usual. Like it’s uncanny.

I haven’t been very well lately (physically) either, and I suspect part of it is that my capacity is low. Like I am holding it together very tenuously with my rubber bands and chewing gum right now. It’s not being helped any by the fact that my hormones are really out of whack and so on top of the usual struggles I feel like my emotions are swinging wildly… don’t they say perimenopause is like a second puberty? God help me!

I have been in a really good place with Elle lately and my system has been leaning into the feelings of safety and trust in a way that it hasn’t in a very very long time. Like part of my system had stood down a little bit because maybe I don’t need protectors on duty ALL THE TIME. But then this interaction with this poor therapy client was a reminder, once again, that therapists and therapies that are long-term, deeply connected, supportive, affectionate, and say ‘all the right things’ blow the fuck up in next to no time and it can come almost out of nowhere.

The therapists that we think we know, whom we love deeply, and have trusted with our most vulnerable selves become someone else entirely, unrecognisable, almost overnight and they throw us out the moving vehicle and leave us for dead as they carry on up the road as if nothing happened. And not only that, it seems that it’s perfectly reasonable to disappear without a trace – or at the very fucking least, an onward referral to another therapist!

My total lack of coping and absolute breakdown this last week – looking at what I’ve just said – is due to lots of things all coming together all at the same time. I haven’t been able to think too deeply about it until now because the thinking part of my brain just hasn’t been available to me.

So, yeah, I have been really badly triggered and ended up very very dysregulated this week. Fortunately, I had told Elle about the emails I’d received because I could feel like I hadn’t quite been able to process them in the way that I might usually. I think Elle understood what a big deal it was, because last weekend she sent me a message to please look after myself because … it’s a lot. I assured her that I was totally fine. And in that moment that part of me was. Adult Me was ok. And Adult Me is usually the one that reads the emails and responds and that’s that.

But beneath the coping exterior of my adult self, all the alarm bells were ringing in my system. Essentially, my mini bus was on fire, I’d lost two tires from a blow out, the brakes had stopped working (I keep dreaming that I am driving my car at the moment and my brakes won’t work) and I was heading down a steep and slippery slope at speed in the dark and perhaps most worryingly of all – all the seat belts for the little parts of me had come unclipped. No one was strapped in and a big crash was imminent. This is not a good place to be in.

Part of me knew Elle was there and that we were ok because she kept contact with me a lot last week/weekend because she’s always been there when I have needed her to be – and yet by the time it got to Monday, no matter what I did I just could not ‘find’ or ‘feel’ Elle or believe that things weren’t about to go belly up in the most catastrophic of ways.

I almost cancelled my session on Tuesday last week. My body hurt so much. The anxiety in my stomach was physically painful and I was finding it hard to differentiate between anxiety and hunger. It was like everything in my brain and body was in a total malfunction. I couldn’t eat because I felt sick with anxiety, and then by about three in the afternoon my stomach would hit another level of pain…which I thought was just me getting more and more worked up but in actual fact was that I needed to eat. My system was buzzing with that horrible electrical feeling, too. I couldn’t sleep. I was having nightmares. It was rough.

Part of me wanted to send Elle a text on Tuesday morning to tell her where I was at so that I didn’t end up crashing and burning when I arrived. But a protector part, the one who was already fearing that I/we had teetered into the territory of being too much and that Elle was reaching saturation point decided that it would be a bad move to bombard her any further and the best course of action was to turn up and be ‘fine’ and mask my way through the session.

That part of me is a fucking idiot.

Like for goodness’ sake – don’t do that. Never do that! But it really shows how dysregulated I was. I could not draw on any sense that things were going to be ok – that Elle was ok, that I was ok, that together we were ok. It was just a huge fucking mess.

I can’t remember much about the session now – but I do remember how awful I felt almost the moment I sat down. I was terrified. Of course, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to connect with Elle, be very close to her, and to try and let her in so that I could be reassured that whilst bad stuff might happen out in the world and has happened in my therapies in the the past, in our world right now, there is nothing wrong and I am not about to be unexpectedly dealing with her dropping a termination on me.

The thing is asking for that kind of reassurance when I feel like things aren’t safe feels like a lot, because let’s face it, it is all the ‘crazy’ and it’s ‘hard work’. And I when I feel like this there is a part that doesn’t want to take up any space at all. I don’t want to be seen struggling or behaving weirdly. Tbh, in that moment, if I couldn’t find my way into Elle’s arms I just wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor and hide.

It was agony.

Elle and I always sit together on the sofa. We’re not even sat apart, like we are always physically touching in some way even if it’s just legs touching. I remember that Elle reached for my hand really early on, as she always does, and I pushed it away.

FFS.

Anytime she tried to give me a signal that she was there or it was safe I just retreated further and further into myself because it felt like I was behind glass and I couldn’t allow myself to get what I so badly needed because in that moment I felt so ashamed of having any need of her at all.

Elle asked me if I wanted a hug and I said no – actually I think I just shook my head and continued to stonewall her. Ugh. This is an absolute nightmare kind of a situation for me. Because I know, or part of me does, that if I say no to physical touch then Elle absolutely will honour that. And yet… it’s the very last thing I want. Like that protective part that is working so hard to stop me getting hurt actually is wreaking fucking havoc because my system is screaming for contact and co-regulation. Elle ‘staying away’ (although remember she was sitting right beside me and we were touching) feels like a rejection even though it’s me doing the rejecting. It’s unbelievably painful.

I was completely frozen and then I disappeared altogether. My brain went wild and served me up the most horrible trauma memory soup.

I know I sat in silence for a long time, which I think was probably hard for Elle to know what to do because sometimes I am quiet and there is nothing wrong at all, and then times like these are unbearable, but externally I look the same.

I have no idea how long I was silent for, because I was lost. I kept looping round to Four and she was absolutely distraught. I felt so disconnected that after lots of back and forth in my brain, I told Elle that I wanted to go home.

Ugh.

I didn’t want to go home.

But in that moment the painful feelings of disconnect felt too much to bear. I moved forward on the couch and sat on the edge with my head in my hands. Elle shuffled closer to me and put her arm on my back and told me that she really didn’t want me to leave and that she was there. I didn’t leave. I stayed rooted to the spot for a while but slowly I started to take in Elle’s presence… she’d been there all along…

After a while, Elle asked me to look at her, I think maybe I had let myself reach for her hand by that point, but I just couldn’t look at her. I was so fearful of seeing something disapproving, or angry, or cold…or you know, basically anything negative…that I couldn’t do it. Elle assured me that all I would see if met her gaze would be someone who loved me. But still, I couldn’t do it. There was something, too, about feeling like if I looked at her and she saw what was in my eyes then I’d be really seen and exposed and if she truly got a glimpse of what was going on inside me then that would be too much… and that felt … scary as fuck.

Eye contact in therapy, man!!

I was crying silently. I just felt so lost and sooooo fucking messy and embarrassed about being such a colossal wreck. I think I remember something about Elle saying that she knows trust is really really hard, and something about me being brave…

I can’t remember how I came out of that fucking awful place. Like there’s just a complete blank space where the memory of the session should be but I do know at some point I found my way back to Elle. I don’t think I said anything to her – who knows? But I do know that I ended up snuggled into her for a long time and that felt so much better. Like my system just calmed right down and I was able to tap into the fact that I am safe with Elle. Elle is not Em, or Anita, or Hannah, or anyone else’s dangerous and traumatising therapists – she is Elle…and we are ok.

It felt so frustrating though – because Elle had been there all along and I just couldn’t let myself believe that she was there for me, or that she wanted to be there with that version of me. It’s a no-win situation – I fear being too much because I am too needy and need to feel so connected all the time but I also know that my shut down is really really hard to be around.

Even though things were fine by the end of the session – I felt so desperately sad when I left. Like, I beat myself up that I had wasted my chance for things to feel ok. When things feel hard in my everyday world – which they really do at the minute – therapy is the one place in the week that feels safe to me. It feels like a refuge. It’s the space where the armour can be removed and I can just be… and yet I just couldn’t do it last week. Instead I left feeling like my opportunity to catch my breath, be safe in the life raft if you will, wasn’t maximised and so leaving the space felt like I was back out at sea drowning without having resourced myself to be able to stay afloat.

I mean it wasn’t completely desperate because I didn’t leave the room dysregulated and upset … I never have with Elle which is really something when I think about how pretty much every session with Em left me feeling distraught and unseen, and how many times I have literally run out the room with Anita.

Elle asked me to text her and let her know I was ok later in the day and I refused!! Ffs. There was still that loud voice going on about not being too much and taking up too much time and space. When I got home, I was checking my phone, and she’d text me and asked me to let her know I was safe and said that she felt sad that I felt so alone.

This felt connecting and reminded me that it is actually ok to take up space, and to ask for support when things feel difficult. And because Elle had shown me that I wasn’t too much in her eyes, I felt brave enough to ask if we might be able to have an check in before our check in on Friday. We fixed something up for Thursday and knowing that was in the diary was sustaining enough to get through.

So,clearly, Tuesday wasn’t great at all…but I think it probably put things in quite sharp focus for both me and for Elle. It shone a spotlight on the deep wounds and although it wasn’t at all comfortable it probably was important that it happened. I guess, also, on a level, it must say something about trust I now have in Elle, because I let her see that completely broken version of me that I keep so hidden from the rest of the world. That part of me sometimes reaches out in email but doesn’t make it into the room in that way very often.

After our extra zoom check on Thursday, I sent an email to Elle (of course!)… she’d said she wanted to know what was going on with me on Tuesday and that when the words eventually came and I felt able to tell her I could send them if I wanted, or talk it through – whatever workes.

Thursday’s Zoom was … I dunno…ok…but not enough. It’s Zoom. And it’s fine… but it’s not the same as being in the room. And whilst I would rather have Zoom than no contact at all, I do need to find a way to get more of what I need from those contact points. I find it so hard to connect when I have needy child parts activated because they tend to go into hiding and then feel unseen and unattended to which is really difficult to manage.

So whilst it was nice to see Elle, it was also kind of traumatic because I couldn’t physically reach through the screen and touch her and that’s what the little parts of me really need. Whenever I see Elle on screen there’s always some really young stuff that wants to come out but it feels sooooo embarrassing. Like I want to say, “I wish I could hold your hand” or “I wish there was a way of having a cuddle today” or “I miss you” or “I love you such a lot” or “do you want to see my teddy?”… I don’t think I could ever say all that on a zoom call. It’s much easier in an email…and sometimes if I take a running jump at it I can say some of that in person but mostly Elle will tell me she loves me as we end the call, and sometimes I will say it back but more often than not I just disconnect the call like I am too cool for school and then cry.

Elle asked if I wanted to still see her on Friday seeing as we were talking on Thursday. I said I didn’t know. Ugh. Once again, that part of me that doesn’t want to be seen as too demanding and needy was fronting but later on in the call Elle said that she would be in the office on Friday if I did decide I wanted to see her. Of course I wanted to see her but I didn’t say anything at the time.

Anyway, after the call on Thursday some words came but I was so filled with anxiety and embarrassment at the time that I couldn’t even proof-read the email, I just sent it. Here’s what I sent:

The words aren’t wording because Brian is fried…and I don’t want to read this over as I feel sick.

Can I come in tomorrow? – and bring drinks.

For the record I will always want to see you in person when I can. I don’t know why I feel like I disappear on zoom, because I don’t feel like that when I am at work at all… and you’d think having teenagers staring at me all day I would feel super self-conscious and want to shrink away and I just don’t. I guess maybe it’s something about knowing that I am good at what I do and I am really good at building relationships with my students…but teacher me is brave and knows stuff and knows what other people need…I think part of me hides when I see you and then I just feel really like I can’t really find you and that feels horrible – sometimes, at least.

Everything feels really disastrous right now and I feel like I am tumbling down in a big hole. I have to hope that at least some of this has to be down to my body giving up on me recently because if that can’t be 50% of the reason then I might as well give up because I am so sick of this cycle and spiral.

I think some of it has to have been triggered by those emails the other week but actually that stuff is always there to an extent anyway shoved into the back of a cupboard with the door wedged closed and me leaning my full body weight against the door so it doesn’t ping open unexpectedly. Only it has.

It’s a bit like that scene in Friends where Chandler discovers Monica’s cupboard and it’s completely full of shit and she’s horrified because everyone thought she was a neat freak and had everything under control and she doesn’t. I mean I’m not pretending the cupboard isn’t full of shit, or that it doesn’t exist… I just can do without everything piling out all at once when I have to actually function.

Tuesday was really awful…well, you know, you were there. It felt like I was cycling through so many memories or feelings where I have felt alone, or abandoned, or disregarded and it’s awful because it’s not like getting wedged in one awful thing from one time, it’s like a video montage. And the scary thing was, after a period of time my brain just couldn’t cope with it anymore and took me off to the cliffs. I find that really scary because there have been loads of times when things have felt really shit (I used to imagine driving my car into a wall when I’d just passed my driving test just to make it all stop) but generally speaking I have enough of a sense that things won’t feel terrible forever and that I should just go and hide in my bed and be safe that way even if it feels unbearable – I don’t have any thoughts about actually ending it all. And I really don’t want one of my favourite places in the world to escape to now feel like it’s almost dangerous.

I know I have been feeling burnt out and exhausted and all the day-to-day life stuff for a while and I think my capacity for holding the cupboard door closed has reached an all-time low – like maybe the thing has just come off its hinges this week.

And I don’t want to shut down or push you away but at the same time that whole thing about being too much/not enough is massive. I feel like I am just being really negative and boring and it’s just really crap because no one wants to be around that. And not connecting with you makes it feel a million times worse but the fear of being seen and then being sent away is real…and that’s what’s happened. I want to trust that it wouldn’t…but it’s hard to believe it. And then I just feel really pathetic and needy.

Then to top it all off there’s the crippling feeling of shame and embarrassment because by now I feel like I should do so much better than I do and not get side-swiped. But it’s like all the alarms go off all at once and I can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess maybe try and tell you…which is fine if there are words and I am half way present but impossible if I am stuck somewhere else entirely. I feel like I need a human version of a retractable dog lead so that when I disappear and feel lost I know that I’m not really. It’s a bit like the story with the invisible string… only that now makes me feel sick.

I love you x

Elle replied with a really holding message and asked me if I would like to do an hour long session instead of the thirty minutes – yep!

So, Friday felt way better. I wasn’t a complete fruit loop. I felt connected to Elle. In the week, I’d bought her a novelty gift based on something that has happened recently and she too had bought me something funny. It felt really nice to feel like all the anxiety and stuff from outside the room was left outside the room and we could just connect as we do. I could lean into the feeling of safety without then being triggered into, “this won’t last, you can’t trust it”. I so needed that.

I am really aware of that pattern lately, though. I can feel so safe and so connected and so calm and then all of a sudden, I feel like the wind changes inside me for no reason at all, and I feel massively anxious and triggered even though ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS HAPPENED OR CHANGED. It’s almost like my system wakes up and goes, “What the fuck is happening here? What is this feeling? This isn’t familiar – it must be dangerous!”

I think it’s going to take a while for my nervous system to see that safety can be trusted and that being exposed/vulnerable doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is imminently about to happen and that I need to get my shit together and brace for impact.

I think this experience is pretty common for those of us that have experienced trauma, especially attachment trauma whenever we start to experience a felt sense of safety after a lifetime of being unsafe. Until now our entire being has been constructed around adapting to others and the risk they pose to our safety- emotional or physical or both. So of course, sometimes the unknown- feeling safe, held, contained – feels really dangerous because all we’ve ever known is fear, or anxiety, or shame, or disconnect. We have no internal shelf to house safety…so it doesn’t belong.

And because of this, oddly sometimes feeling unsafe feels safer than actual safety because at least it’s familiar. We know it. We have entire rooms dedicated to the different ways we can experience and know lack of safety. It’s like an exquisitely curated library. We have strategies we are able employ to work with being unsafe and we know which shelf each one is on. We know to make ourselves small. We know to shut down. We are excellent at dissociation. We know how to people please and fawn. We know how to overextend ourselves. We know how to pretend we are fine…and on and on…And whilst this all feels pretty horrible, we know that we are protected – to an extent.

I’ll admit it, I feel a bit like I am fumbling around in the dark when I feel still, and safe, and content with Elle. Like what am I meant to do with that? Just enjoy it and be in the moment?! I guess, what I would like to do is build another room in my library dedicated to being safe rather than being unsafe and begin to fill it with all the different ways I know that I am safe – or safe with Elle at least.

I might start that catalogue this week, actually…and if I am brave maybe share it with her!

Anyway, this is enormous and I actually haven’t really delved quite into where I wanted to go – but this has been languishing in my laptop most of the weekend and if I don’t get it posted it will just wither in the depths for another few weeks.

xxx

I Was ‘The Good Girl’ In The Therapy Room And I Hurt All The Time

July 20, 2025July 20, 2025rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

I’ve been in therapy for a long time.
Like, a really long time.
It’s been ten years solid this time around, albeit with four different therapists (not that I am counting!). I’m not sure how to explain how long that is in soul years, but it feels like a thousand.

I am no stranger to the therapy room. Even before this latest solid run of ‘trying to get my mind fixed’ (or should I say my nervous system recalibrated and the mother wound healed?) there have been some hopeful episodes in the ‘room’ over the last twenty-five or so years. But mostly, as is generally the case when you’re a student in college or university, these were relatively short-term therapies.

I went, then, because I was suffering with anxiety or depression or stress, or my eating disorder, or imposter syndrome or whatever (the list goes on and on). I knew deep down that something was very wrong and those sessions acted like sticking plasters for a wound that was far deeper than I ever could have imagined at the time. Little did I know that I needed far more attention than four or six sessions could ever hope to provide.

I remember feeling like I was fully losing the plot as it was coming up to Christmas when doing my MA. I was twenty-two and I realised that I needed to see someone having not been to a therapist since my A Levels. The university I was studying at had a counselling service and, fortunately, as most people had already left for the holidays there was some availability to see someone.

It was in that room that the dam broke. It was a tiny room in the back of an old Victorian red brick building not far from my seminar building. I started to let out ‘all the things’ and although I only had four sessions with that counsellor it was such a relief to finally have someone say to me that I wasn’t overreacting and that actually they thought I could really use some long-term therapy because ‘trauma’…and no, it wasn’t just the stress of deadlines and they didn’t try and ply me with strategies to get through the immediate stress rather just gave me a space to be heard and collapse a bit after trying to hold it together for such a long time.

I might have walked out of those short-term sessions feeling a bit bereft – like, it would have been so great to be able to spend a few months with that particular therapist as a bit of a scaffold around my crumbling self, but that wasn’t how the service worked…and where was the long-term therapy that a student with no money could afford? I certainly couldn’t access the kind of therapy I need/ed back then and so put everything back in the box on the top of the shelf and continued on with life until I couldn’t do it anymore.

One thing I will say, is that these episodes of short-term therapy never did me any harm. They may not have been long enough, but I didn’t leave those sessions in a worse state than when I started. But then perhaps these therapies were never quite long enough to activate my attachment system. I don’t know. But then, that doesn’t work, because I saw a therapist N, for two years after my dad died and it helped, I was attached to her- and we’re still in contact now seventeen years later – certainly no harm done there.

Harm in therapy didn’t become a reality for me until Em – the highly experienced Clinical Psychologist, the person I was led to believe I stood a really good chance of healing with, and so the person I trusted with my whole story and self. Gosh. What a mess it was.

I met Em thirteen and a half years ago, now. I feel so sad, looking back over my life, that I have been trying so hard for so long to feel ‘better’ and yet here I am still working on undoing damage not just from my childhood, my life, but actually my therapies. It’s tragic.

Em and I initially did sixteen months in the NHS — it was the kind of therapy where the clock ticks louder than your voice and the radiator only half-works and my god, those awful shiny yellow gloss-painter woodchipped walls were really something!… but finally getting a space to delve into my psyche with someone who (on paper at least) really had the skill to help was much-needed.

But like every therapy before – the time I had wasn’t long enough. NHS work, even when it’s extended (which mine was) is still time limited. There is only so many sessions you can have and then that’s it – there’s a huge waiting list (three years for me back then) and you can’t clog up the system forever even if you really need the therapy. And surely you should be grateful to get a long stint of therapy in the first place. It’s kind of laughable, because it took me a year to even get close to the work or for my system to activate. In reality a little over a year of once-a-week therapy is nothing for Complex Trauma and quite honestly, the NHS just isn’t at all equipped to help with these kinds of issues.

And my god, opening my version of Pandora’s Box and then being left with no therapy at all really really messed me up. The nightmares. The panic attacks. The eating disorder and self-harming behaviours were triggered again. My child parts (and my structurally dissociated system – not that I knew that that was what it was then) had a complete meltdown. The feelings of abandonment and rejection felt huge. And I didn’t cope at all. But I was completely and utterly alone and without any kind of support…because I’d used it up.

Em had agreed that we could see each other in her private practice when our sessions finished but the NHS had stipulated that there needed to be a three-month break between ending there and commencing with her again. At the time I accepted that as how things had to be – but knowing what I know now about my system I can see how very wrong it was to leave that work wide open and leave me essentially hanging. What I should have done then was reach out to Em and let her know what was going on, but of course, I didn’t know that was possible. I was just following the rules…because I have always followed the rules.

After two months on my own without therapy, my graphic nightmares finally stopped in their tracks and I didn’t even dream again for nearly three years– I basically shut off/dissociated my entire system and lived my life in ‘false adult’ I think. And so, I didn’t go back to Em for three years.

You could call it a ‘break’. I call it surviving without witness – but I think there was always a part of me, a child part or five, that I had exiled who was desperate to find my way back to Em. The little parts of me that had been so activated in her therapy room, and all the trauma too, needed a place to go.

And so when I finished my cancer treatment and all the wheels fell off – I went back to her…because… well…to parts of me she was mum, and a kind of safety, and I very badly needed someone because I was very much not ok.

In the intervening three years since I had sat with Em a lot had changed in my world – but underneath or inside I was just the same – all those little parts were frozen inside needing to be seen, held, and attended to. The trauma was there still, unresolved.

I remember the first day I walked back in the room and how hopeful I had been and how excited I had been to see Em again. And yet, it fell flat. I guess there was a part of me that wanted her to welcome me back with open arms or some kind of acknowledgement that it was good to see me again now that we weren’t in the sterile hospital. But she was ever the blank screen, and although my child parts came alive again the moment they saw her, they knew too that the rules were still the same.

And I am nothing if not the girl who follows the rules.

I came to my session/s every week.

I paid on time.

I was never rude.

I never cancelled on her until we were right at the end and broken (but then why would I, my sessions never felt enough and so I would never enact a break willingly).

And I tried so hard to do therapy ‘right’ – and stick within the confines of Em’s very very rigid boundaries (although occasionally failing and texting her – god forbid).

I tried so hard to be grateful for what was on offer. I tried to make it enough. I tried to be insightful and brave and DO THE WORK…and bring everything to the room even when I felt terrified and physically unwell.

I tried not to be too much.

But man, I felt small and disempowered.

I was the good girl in the therapy room and I hurt all the time.

I could never understand why it felt so painful to be with her…and so painful to be away from her, too.

I guess I thought I had to earn tenderness and care, and prove myself worthy of it because of course that’s been hard-wired into me from day dot.

I thought being easy to work with would make me lovable – or at least palatable.

It didn’t.

But then why would it?

That strategy had never worked with my mother so why on earth would it work in the therapy room? And yet here I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern with my therapist.

It seemed being the quiet good girl wasn’t ever enough.

So, I changed tack. It took a really long time for me to bring my pain about the relationship with Em into the room unwashed and unedited. Em had said she felt “blindfolded” with me and I thought this meant that my caution and hiding my feelings was stopping us being able to really connect. And man did I want to be connected to her and so I took a leap towards her around about the time I started this blog.

I wrote things down when I couldn’t say them out loud (because shame was so ever-present and dissociation never very far away). I folded pages of typed letters or blog posts inside my pocket like secret spells. Sometimes it would take weeks for me to build the courage to hand them over. Every time I did, I felt like I was giving her the map to the world inside me — it felt like I was screaming over and over, “Please, please just look. Please see what it’s like in here. Please help me not be lost anymore.” And perhaps in also written between the lines was, “Please love me”. But Em would sit and read my words never giving much away as I sat squirming opposite her and then carry on like she already knew the way and didn’t need my map.

And so, I walked alone over terrain that felt like barbed wire and cold rain and shame.

It felt in some ways like I was in the Truman Show – but no one told me what the point of it was, and the lights were much too bright, and whilst I could see Em she was always sitting behind her glass screen taking notes about what I was (or not doing) on her clipboard – she wasn’t in the scene with me. Every now and then she’d tell me where I was going wrong, “Like a tick”. It was as though she was some nasty film director coaching an actor who was absolutely doing their best to act the ‘right’ way but failing miserably time and again.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have ever had to have acted in that room. I should have been able to go and be me – exactly as I was and have that met with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. I should have been able to remove my various masks.

I wish.

I feel so sad when I look at how small I made myself in the room with Em – I don’t mean falling into my child parts small, I mean how little space I took up and how little I asked for from her and yet even that was made to feel like ‘too much’. I feel so sad that I tried to bend and fit to be the client she wanted me to be and it breaks my heart that for all those years my small parts couldn’t get anywhere close to what I needed. There was no we in that therapy- just me…flailing around and hurting.

I took big elephant with me in my bag for years but was never brave enough to take her out even when I had told Em about the many many child parts that were inside me and how they felt and we both knew how much hurt was inside. There was never an invitation from Em to be anything other than my very competent adult self…and that was really hard when my young parts were so very present. Part of me feels angry at my adult self for not doing more to protect my young parts – but I genuinely thought at the time going to therapy was me looking after myself.

I am not the same client I was back then. I have learnt such a lot about myself over the last decade and there is simply no way I would put up with what I did with Em now…or even Anita. And so although this growth and understanding has come at a heavy emotional (and financial cost)…I do at least know myself and have boundaries around how I will let myself be treated now.

But back then, I felt ashamed and embarrassed asking for anything from Em and her NOs to my very few requests cut so deep. Object constancy has always been a massive problem for me and I remember reading an article online by a therapist about how to stay connected to therapists on a break. They’d suggested a simple three dot text message in the week – like it’s bare minimum effort, no words to misunderstand, just a reminder that they are there. But no, she wouldn’t do it.

I remember asking for a simple transitional object – I wanted a short note written on a pebble that I had found on the beach near her house – and that became a torture project for well over six months. But in reality, I didn’t want a rock… I wanted a soft toy like Monty…only I never asked because I knew that was way out of the realms of acceptability for Em…and I was right. We couldn’t even get a few words on a pebble right, a toy for my young parts would have been simply outrageous!

I was made to feel like there was something desperately wrong with me because I wanted her to sit closer to me. I would dissociate so badly when I felt like she was far away but there was never concessions on Em’s part to make a move to adjust how we worked to make things better for me. I wrote in a letter once that I wished I could hug her. Somehow that was really inappropriate and uncomfortable and was addressed only once, “You know I don’t do that”. It felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

And heaven forbid we go anywhere near the ‘L’ word. Love was made to feel like a dirty word and I never once uttered it aloud…I only alluded to it in my maps/letters. And yet it is so much part of the work… talking through human emotions in all their forms is the work. And it shouldn’t matter if they are directed towards the therapist or anyone else. But also, I struggle hard to understand how if you spend years and years of your life with someone picking apart your most vulnerable stuff that love wouldn’t become part of the fabric of the therapy.

Ugh.

I’m not here to talk about her though – although I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit today – I guess I am still reeling from the hurt… and we can totally skip over Anita, and Hannah because – well – I want to talk about now – 2025…

I want to talk about Elle…I want to talk about how I can be who I am, not who I think I need to be with her. I want to say how that the ‘good girl’ part of me has been allowed to rest a bit and that I no longer hurt in the way that I used to – but given this part alone is 2000 words I’ll break this post into two…and believe me, the next part is far more uplifting!…there’s even a picnic to tell you about!!

Procrastination? A Therapy break. And Musing On The Cost Of Failed Therapies. Part 1

November 4, 2024rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

Oh my god…this was meant to be a single post but once I got going I was up at 5000 words and had to split it into two posts – so it’s a bit slow going with this first bit… sorry!

Do you know what? I just don’t know how to label what it’s like in my head at the moment other than ‘bleurgh’. I feel so completely lacking in energy and oomph that I don’t know whether it’s an ongoing depressive episode, burnout, illness (I’ve just got a nasty cold and been in bed for three days but this is merely the cherry on top of things!), generally just being shit at life, or what?

I have been thinking about writing here for a while but it’s taken me nearly all weekend with the laptop sat open beside me for me to now, at 5pm on Sunday, start typing anything. I’ve been doom scrolling social media, watching the day sort of disappear from my bed, and having absolutely zero will or motivation to do anything outside of attending to my kids. I haven’t even showered today…or got dressed! This is so far removed from how I usually am…but I have got NOTHING TO GIVE.

To be fair to myself I have had an utterly bonkers week away from home and have crashed and burned as a result of too much peopling and visits and location changes and juggling the needs of everyone else AND being unable to sleep … sounds dreamy doesn’t it?! Of course, all of this overstimulating away from home ‘vacation’ (?!) stuff has also meant that I had a dreaded THERAPY BREAK. But I’ll talk about how I haven’t (!) managed that a bit later.

Lately, I find myself more and more in the worst kind of procrastination – not just with the blog, but with pretty much everything…even really simple tasks feel absolutely impossible – even things that will make my life EASIER feel beyond me. A prime example of this is work admin. I need to make a spreadsheet for payments – and I just can’t – it’s honestly a ten-minute job but I feel like I am running at a concrete wall – I just can’t get through it. So instead, I am juggling twenty students in my head rather than having it easily on a screen. FFS RB!

Another ridiculous thing just like this, was the new laptop I bought last December but only took out the box and set up in September. Nine months! Wtaf? And the only reason I got to it in September was because I absolutely had to before the new term began as it the old one was crashing left and right…AND Elle had pretty much coached me through it the session before I did it.

I can’t tell you how many times Elle and I spoke about what I needed to do in order to get it sorted though– like lots of times over that nine months – she even suggested taking my old laptop and new one to someone who would transfer everything over and set it up for me- but I simply couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it. It’s not that I didn’t want a laptop that was reliable, didn’t overheat, or have keys that would work consistently. It just all felt totally overwhelming even thinking about it and so I went into a ridiculous freeze and watched the monthly direct debit leave my account paying for something I wasn’t even using.

AND IT IS A REALLY GREAT LAPTOP…and I love it for work now, even if I find it hard to use for anything other than work.

I wonder a bit if I have some now conscious (but until literally thirty seconds ago unconscious) associations with my laptop. I work completely online these days and whilst I like my teaching job, I find it exhausting and draining. I give a lot to my students and working 1:1 day-in day-out on Zoom is hard. I wonder if there is a little part of me that wanted to push the laptop to the point of extinction so I had a legitimate reason to not work for a day or two? Like I just wanted something to happen to ease my pressures a bit.

Probably.

I wonder, too, whether I am now finding it hard to get on the laptop and blog because it symbolises work, I spent twenty hours a week on Zoom and then goodness knows how long around my actual contact time farting around planning lessons and making resources etc… but also there has been so much pain written and explored here it’s not only about work?

As much as writing and the connections I have made here have been absolute lifelines, it’s hard seeing so much hurt in post after post and to know that most of you guys who regularly comment have survived longer than my therapists! There are a handful of you who have been here from the very beginning and sometimes I wonder what keeps you following along when all I seem to do is lurch from one crisis to another. Like I am not exactly a great advert for therapy… more of a stark warning of the pitfalls of therapy and all that can go wrong!

I recently screenshot the last few years of blog titles and sent them to Elle…and you know what, it’s tough. It’s hard seeing and knowing how much struggle there has been. It’s hard seeing how much I invested into therapies and seeing where I am now. I tallied up how much I spent on therapy just with Em and Anita the other day and it was a staggering £37,000 …

Deep breaths into a paper bag RB!!

I would have ZERO credit card debt, or car loans, AND would have some savings in the bank had I not gone to therapy with them. In fact, had I found someone who could have done the work with me and stayed the course, I might not even be in therapy at all now!

That’s really hard to take in and metabolise. I suspect there are a few of you, too, who would wince at how much you have spent on your therapy, how much you have sacrificed or gone without in order to attend sessions, only to end up dumped and hurt and damaged.

It’s hideous.

I am a big believer in attending to our mental health, but you know what? I am not sure the ‘investment’ was worth it. I went into therapy with Em and Anita with past Trauma and came out additionally retraumatised TWICE over.

This is never right, is it?

Like in what other situation would you go and spend significant amounts of money only to come out worse? If you bought a faulty product you’d get a refund; or if the product you bought exploded and damaged you then you’d get compensation…not with therapy. We just have to suck it up, pretend like it never happened, and try and make the best of a bad situation. Harm in therapy is really a big deal, it’s widespread…and nothing ever seems to happen unless it’s something to do with inappropriate sexual conduct because that’s easier to prove…I guess.

So, here I am in therapy with Elle, working at a painstakingly slow pace just trying to recover from past ‘therapy’…we don’t really even go anywhere near the trauma I went to therapy for in the first place! I mean we do, because let’s be real – lots of it is relational trauma and the mother wound – but there’s a lot of stuff from my past I need to talk about but we are constantly trying to bail out my boat from the massive amount of water that’s flooded in due to the shit tonne of bullet holes that the hull has been peppered with over the last four years…well longer – I started seeing Em again in 2016 and it wasn’t great from the beginning, was it?!

I probably sound bitter. I’m not. I am just sad. I am sad for all of me. I am sad for the little parts that trusted and loved and got so badly hurt. I am sad for the protectors who stood down despite feeling it was a bad idea because Adult Me insisted that it was safe and believed Anita’s promises of love, and care, and staying for the ‘entirety of the journey’. I am sad for my family who have not had the things they could have had: holidays, treats…no debt!! It’s gutting on so many levels.

And here I am. Still trying. But out of energy, now. As I say, the effect of living with the battery light flashing red for such a long time now is that I feel like this is just how it is to live. I have no idea how to get enough charge to start functioning more effectively because it feels like existing just takes way more than ever gets put back in. I do get that I am sick right now, too, so have hit a really low ebb – but honestly, I cannot remember the last time I felt really well, energised, and happy. That sucks.

It’s really hard to explain just how eroding the experiences/endings with Em and Anita have been – although I have given it a damned good go here on the blog! It’s actually hard feeling into it because the pain is so all-encompassing. But what I can see very clearly, even if there aren’t words, is how all this crap has impacted my day-to-day functionality…or should I say lack of functionality.

I am not a lazy person at all but I am really struggling to move through my weeks and do what I am supposed to. I am not even sure procrastination really fits what is going on for me a lot of the time. I am honestly in a complete freeze or dissociated…or in survival really. That’s really more reflective of the current state of things. I absolutely am pushing myself up hill and just can’t seem to make much forward progress.

So yeah…it’s not great.

Happy gloom-day RB! I bet you are all really glad I decided to start tapping away today like a suicidal Eeyore!…1800 words in and I actually wanted to talk a bit about the therapy break and the rocky road into it… cut to the chase eh?! —

I’ll break this here, and I promise that the next part is actually somewhat more interesting and about my therapy and break with Elle and not just me whining on about how fucking tired I am – I’ll try and pop it up tomorrow – although if I shut this laptop down it could take me a week to be able to turn it back on and get back to this – GROAN!! x

Body/Health Stress

April 8, 2024April 8, 2024rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. It’s not that I don’t want to write – I do – but I have been stuck in what feels like anxiety concrete for the last month or so. I’ve spent a LOT of time in freeze and it’s been all I have got to take care of my day-to-day responsibilities and not collapse. To say it’s been hard would be the biggest understatement, but I feel a little more optimistic today and have a day off, so here I am trying to catch up bit by bit.

I don’t really know how/where to begin. I imagine the next few posts might jump around a bit because there’s all sorts of stuff that’s happened and I think it’s all a bit much for a single post…but you know what I am like, this could end up at 5000 words and have it all! We’ll see.

After my lovely letter from love I felt quite settled for a little while. It was so nice to be able to tap into that voice and know that no matter what- it’s with me, even despite my panics and anxiety and self-doubt…*all the things*… I will do another one soon, but I am not sure I am quite ready to ask it the question I have inside. I know it will respond kindly, but I also know deep down what it has to say – and I am not sure I am ready to really hear it. That’s not meant to be cryptic – it’s just as I head into a year anniversary of Anita’s bombshell end but ‘not an end’ I’m trying to do some work to help me move on seeing as she refuses to participate or hold up on her end of the bargain.

March was hard for lots of reasons. Health being one of them. I recently got called for a ‘routine’ MRI and mammogram. After my cancer treatment in 2015 I was told that due to the amount of radiation I’d had to my chest/neck for the tumour there, I’d be at a higher risk of other cancers: lung, thyroid, and breast – and would be put on the regular high risk breast screening programme once I hit forty in addition to my regular cancer follow up care. So, when the letter came a few weeks before my forty first birthday I took myself off to the appointments and braved my way through the triggering MRI scan which brought back so many memories of CT and PET scans…

It shocked me how instantly and fully I was thrown back into those traumatising body memories whilst in the scanner. Well, not shocked – this is classic PTSD after all – but I try so hard to put the health anxiety out of mind to be able to function that I thought I was more over cancer than I am.

Here I was in 2024 and instantly back in chemo and treatment regime – the dread, panic, and fear was unreal. Since the MRI scan I have had ‘chemo mouth’ which is a really awful metal taste you get when having chemotherapy- it’s nauseating. I know it’s completely psychosomatic because I haven’t had anything other than contrast imaging dye put in my veins – but there we are, the legacy of trauma and a wonky brain.

The mammogram process was fine. I’ve never had one of those before and so it was just a bit of an inconvenience rather than triggering a scary memory. The worst of it was that I couldn’t find the venue on an industrial estate and was almost late driving round and round in the rain!

The nurse that did the mammogram was nice enough and after so much treatment over the years I am not really bothered about having my body exposed like that. It’s just my body. Having said that, I’ve just been called for my smear and honestly, when time stands still in most areas of my life, the three years between smear tests feels like a blink of an eye!! I’m certainly getting a good deal out of the NHS right now!

Anyway, health wise I’ve felt ok enough…I mean I’m perpetually exhausted and bleurgh but I have taken that to be part and parcel of adult life in my forties with kids and peri-menopause … plus mental health cack…but bodily… I’ve been same same for a long time. So, imagine my surprise when I got called back to the breast clinic two days after my mammogram.

I tried not to stress too much. I imagined it would probably be because the mammogram wasn’t a good enough image and they’d need another. I was warned it was quite common for women to get recalled after their first mammogram for this reason and it’s nothing to worry about. However, the letter I received said to leave 2-4 hours for the appointment… I emailed Elle and let her know what was happening and she responded with a soothing message. I’ll write about therapy with her soon because there’s a lot to say there.

My wife was out the country for a couple of weeks, so I went alone to the appointment – because – it’s only a retake image, right?

Wrong.

I arrived at the venue (at least I knew where I was going this time!) and was quickly ushered into a small consultation room with a morose-looking breast care nurse who thrust a leaflet about breast cancer into my hand and began with, “I am so sorry you’re here. I can see from your records that you have already been through such a lot. I suppose you’re used to it by now.”

She must have clocked the confusion on my face.

What was she telling me?

“Your MRI results are back and I’m sorry to say that your right breast has lit up with activity.”

…

“We’re going to get another mammogram done and then you’ll go and see the consultant who will ultrasound you and possibly take a biopsy…”

I was floating ten feet above my body at this point.

I had not for one minute considered this would be anything to do with the MRI. You know, those highly detailed scans.

Yikes.

I now seriously regretted turning down the offers from friends to come to the appointment with me. This was not a day to be alone, afterall.

So off I went, stripped off my top and stood numb having image after image taken of that right breast. There was lot more squishing and sandwiching and then once that was over, I was told to wait in a small room and the consultant would be with me soon.

Ninety minutes in a room with no windows, a flickering neon strip light overhead, and importantly no phone or wifi signal…perfect.

I can honestly say, those ninety minutes floored me. One of my best friends died from breast cancer recently and another is currently on palliative care as it’s metastasised into her lungs… it’s a very real and present threat to younger women but we often believe it’s something for your fifties and beyond. It just isn’t.

I’ve been in this place before. You never forget getting delivered this sort of information and the face of the person telling you it. Everything stops. All the things you worry about day-to-day: bills, work, getting through the day in one piece whilst juggling a million things, none of it matters. All of a sudden, it’s ALL about the kids. The kids being left with no parent. Treatment. Survival.

When I was sitting waiting for the consultant I could hear a voice inside saying, “I just cannot do this again” because the strength it takes to go through treatment is…a lot. When I got diagnosed with Lymphoma I threw everything at it. Yet that day pondering the news, all I could hear was the very weary voice saying, “I haven’t got it in me to do this again”.

It’s hard to explain what this time was like in this room. In that moment all I wanted was to be able to reach out to Anita and feel safe for a second. Whilst I have been made very aware what my future will likely hold with regard to health, I just wasn’t ready for this. And even though I have undergone a fuck tonne of treatment in the past – the idea of being back under oncology services is not something you ever get used to.

Eventually, I got called into the consultant and she was very cheery. Odd, I thought. She quickly proceeded to tell me that all the mammogram images were clear and that MRI is notorious for flagging up in breast tissue because the nature of the tissue is so granular. She said she was going to thoroughly ultrasound my breast to get a really good look but that she didn’t think there was anything to worry about. So, after ten minutes of being scanned she said she was confident there was nothing to see and that she’d see me in a year.

I mean THANK FUCK! But what on earth was that meeting with the breast care nurse all about?

I went to my car and just collapsed in a heap of relief.

I didn’t text Anita. There’s no point. She’s not my therapist. (More on that shitshow next post!)

But I did email Elle and told her what had happened. She responded almost immediately with a lovely message and that was that. I took myself off for a revolting McDonalds drive thru and resumed my mum duties and normal life… I am back to worrying about money, and everyday stuff…and relationships and therapy again!

The hangover from all this health stuff has been quite massive. And then there was Mother’s Day and my birthday within a week of all this and honestly, I just didn’t do very well with any of it – it’s a lot of firsts without Anita and I felt it so acutely. My anxiety has been off the chart and I have been circling the drain in one way or another. I’ll leave that here – and get back to therapy again next post because that, at least, is interesting.

The good news is, I think, after 8 months I might now have reached a place where Elle and I can do the work which is really nice…it’s literally happened in the last couple of weeks and seems to have gone from me being largely in hiding to the doors being blown off and the vulnerable and intense stuff getting taken to her…this is good, but also fucking terrifying and has largely come about because she’s on a break next week…so you know, trigger the door handle type revelations!

Letter To My Therapist…Do I Send It?!

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022rubberbandsandchewinggum52 Comments

Hi everyone – it’s been ages since I have blogged. And even this, today, isn’t really a blog, it’s a letter that I have written that I am debating recording in a voice note for A. We are on a break (ffs!). Things have been horrible for ages now. This ongoing rupture is bloody agony and is driving me crazy. My life is also falling apart… not because of therapy but the instability in the therapy is certainly not helping matters.

I don’t know what to do, really. I appreciate I sound like a brat in what comes below (which is why I have put it here first whilst I decide what to do). I get that this feels quite out of context as it’s been such a long time since I have posted and so the background isn’t there and there’s a lot of ‘big feelings’ coming out.

Anyway, I’m hoping to write something and catch up soon as I have a few days off now. I am sorry I haven’t been commenting much on your blogs. I just haven’t been here…although looking at my reader today, I think a lot of us are AWOL. I’d like to think it’s because things are going well for everyone but I suspect it may be that people are worn out and on their edge. Big hugs x

———————————–

A, everything is a right mess and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve written something in order to try and process things a bit but I don’t know if it makes any sense because I feel so upset. I’m going to read it anyway because I need you to hear it.

The first time I contacted you to see about starting therapy with you I grilled you on whether you thought you were able to work with complex trauma and if you had done enough of your own work to work with someone like me. I remember sending the email and thinking I was probably asking a bit much, probably overstepping what was acceptable to ask a new therapist, but it was all heading south with Em and there was no way I was going to go blind into another therapeutic relationship and I really needed to be sure that any new therapist really understood what they would be dealing with.

You assured me that you had experience of working with CPTSD and that having received my message you had thought carefully about whether you had the capacity to take on a complex client because you understood the need and how delicate the work is …but yes, you thought you could and you commended me on trying to take care of myself in asking those questions and so we arranged to meet.

Our first session felt so different to anything I had experienced in therapy before. It felt like you were really ‘there’ with me and for the first time in ages I felt seen and heard. But not only that, I felt ACCEPTED and UNDERSTOOD. There was no sense of being judged, you just felt warm, and open, and perhaps someone who might be safe enough to work through a lifetime of trauma with. The relief I felt was palpable, but I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy transition leaving Em…little did I know at that point just how bad it would get and the lasting damage that would be done.

Em’s tick analogy has lodged inside me like a jagged piece of shrapnel. It is so painful. I feel sick and tearful every time I think about it – which is daily, and to be honest it’s not even conscious thought, instead it’s like a shadow that follows me around, or worse, a deep sense of shame that I carry inside me. I’ve told you about that thick tar that I feel like I am coated in and runs through my veins – well it’s that. Even though all this happened a couple of years ago, it’s not gone away, and I am not sure that it ever will.

I don’t know if you know how much this enduring sense of shame and of being ‘too much’ is present in the room when we are together and in our relationship in general? Whenever I want to be close to you, to hug you, or to see you, or now simply reach out and text you my brain serves me up those words “It’s like you want to be inside me, your young parts want a constant drip feed of what they need, a permanent breast, they are adhesive, like a tick…” and I am floored. I can’t really explain how bad it is, but it makes that vulnerable part want to curl up and die.

The steady work we have done together on building trust and safety had silenced that voice a lot, the one that tells me I am draining you dry and am an unwanted parasite – the one that says I need to be careful, or you’ll leave. But it’s got louder and louder again in recent months since you’ve stepped back. The part that feels ‘unlovable’ and ‘too much’ is always looking for confirmation of that and so not being able to do longer sessions and you not replying to my texts is taken as evidence that I’m finally too much for you too, and it’s so painful. As much as I try and work round it it’s playing out in our sessions over and over again.

I know you say your need to retreat isn’t about me and you have tried to reassure me that this is your stuff and Adult Me can hear that and gets it. But the young parts, the bits that actually need to be in therapy, don’t get it and I need you to understand what’s been happening for me since February because things aren’t ok. Well, clearly, they’re not. I’ve run out of the therapy room so many times now because it feels unbearable being so disconnected, and other times I have struggled to make it into the room. I know things aren’t going to change but we still need to look at this because whilst you probably think it’s settled down now, it hasn’t, I’ve just taken it inside and it’s eroding my sense of safety in the relationship.

I feel so far away from you now. My protectors are on high alert because when they look for evidence that you’ve gone, it’s all they can find. The week before your break I texted you and told you I missed you. You didn’t acknowledge it. Then I asked if we could find a way to connect so that I didn’t feel so alone, and you said “absolutely” – but then the Friday session happened, and it felt like you hadn’t understood how desperate it actually felt. On Thursday before our session I sent you a picture of a crying child. Nothing. You used to send me messages saying things like, “looking forward to seeing you” before our sessions but you don’t now and so when I have already spiralled off it feels really precarious coming. Like do you want to see me or am I just another thing on the list that you have to get through?

The week leading into Friday’s session was awful. I was falling apart. Massively. For the first time in years, I seriously considered self-harming. My brain was wandering into not being here anymore. Things felt so bad, and I just felt like there was no way through it. I felt so alone and scared. You couldn’t have known from the messages I sent you how bad it was because I didn’t say it explicitly, but there would have been a time when I would have text you and told you that, or at least asked to check in or if we could do a longer session. But I don’t ask now because I know you don’t have capacity and so instead, I try and hold it on my own.

I didn’t self-harm but it was there like a shadow all week. What I did slip into like a comfy pair of slippers was not eating. I didn’t even know it had happened until Friday when I realised I hadn’t actually eaten a meal all week and had just been dashing about and had a few biscuits here and there. Fortunately, I caught myself quickly and have been on top of it. The last thing I want to do is go back down that road- especially on autopilot. Things are really bad at the moment – it doesn’t really get much scarier than thinking you could lose everything, but it’s been compounded by feeling like I am on my own now. I felt like I had dragged myself through the week and just needed to be able to put it all down for a bit and be safe with you but that didn’t happen. I worry that telling you that makes me sound manipulative but it’s not, I’m not trying to make you do or feel anything, it’s just a reflection of how bad it’s been feeling and I think you need to know because I always seem to be ‘coping’ when actually I am so far from it.

I miss feeling connected to you and I know I have to learn to find another way, but it feels like a big shock to my system. I miss the goodnight messages you would send. I miss the photos of places you’d been that helped bridge the gap when you were away. I miss you checking in with me when things were difficult. And I know it’s not like that’s completely stopped but I miss feeling like you were ‘there’ and I hate that you being ‘gone’ makes me feel like it’s happened because I am not important enough or worthy enough of your care and attention. Things are really bad at the moment, terrible in fact, and it feels like you just don’t care at all.

I know all this is hurting much more than it should because of how things used to be when I was little. But it’s very hard for the young parts who grew up without a mum in the week. You had begun to feel ‘real’ and I had started to get a sense that there was something maybe a bit solid and safe in the relationship even when I can’t physically see you. I was heading towards the sense of there being an ‘invisible string’ and I felt myself relaxing and beginning to breathe in the relationship. But now – to go back to what they’ve always known – well it’s like being body slammed. I know that seems extreme, but it is how I am experiencing it.

The young four-year-old part of me that had started to cry and reach out has gone back to silence and hiding because no one cares, and no one comes. She’s used to coping alone…surviving…and so it’s returning back to what is known. The baby is still screaming to be picked up and soothed but again it’s a scream that is going unheard and cry that will eventually stop. You told me once that a baby doesn’t try and annoy its mother by crying when it’s hungry and that needs don’t work on a timetable – but now we are trying to work on a timetable and it’s so hard because so much of the upset I experience is triggered from being left. It’s the sense of abandonment is what sets everything off inside. I try and get through the week and not be ‘too much’ and not contact you ‘too much’, but the internal chaos and upset is intense.

I try and coach myself and all the young parts through the week. I tell the parts to “hold on” and say that, “it’ll be ok” when I see you and that “nothing has changed”- but more often than not, when I arrive now, the despondent older child parts (especially the teenager) won’t let you anywhere near. They feel rejected and abandoned in the week so why would they let you close in person? That’s what happened on Friday. I was in complete agony, trapped and terrified. I don’t think you really got how bad it was, I could hardly speak and it was an effort to tell you anything at all. When I say things like “my body is in pain”, it’s physically excruciating and a symptom of how much emotional distress I am in.

Earlier that week I had I told you I needed cuddles in a text. I feel really stupid asking for anything like this, stories, whatever, but what you tend to get in messages is the youngest parts’ needs being expressed. They’re the ones that get imprisoned in the room and can’t reach out easily. So even if I arrive and seem stand-offish or shutdown or whatever it is that keeps you far away as you said, “keeping you at arm’s length” (which incidentally is how I feel about you – I feel like I am being pushed away and that’s why I am so protected) I need you to reach through that and get to those young parts. I know you asked if I wanted stories but I was already so far gone that I couldn’t get back to you.

I need you to know that when I say “no” to a hug it’s only the protector saying “no”. There has never been a time in the entire time I have been seeing you when I have not wanted you to come closer to me or hug me or hold my hand or give me some physical signal that things are still ok. I don’t know how we get round this, but I think I said before, maybe you could ask, “Is that what all the parts of you want, or is it a protector trying to stop the little ones from getting what they need because it thinks you’ll get hurt?” That sort of thing really cuts through that protective part that feels like it’s unsafe and you don’t want to be with me. When you acknowledge the young parts it gives the protector permission to step back.

I know how nuts that sounds – and I think you asked me twice on Friday if I wanted a hug. So I do get you were trying. You’d think I would be able to respond to that, wouldn’t you? And I REALLY wanted to. I wanted to shuffle over to you and snuggle in and just feel safe. You’d think I would understand that you asking me more than once if I want a hug means you aren’t trying to get away from me or push me away, but I get frozen in fear. I don’t want to be too much and the longer we are far apart and silent the worse that feeling gets.

I can see the time ticking away and I feel desperately sad. Those little ones have been hanging on all week to see you and then this happens. It’s so painful, and so reflective of what it was like when I was a child. I needed my mum to look like she was pleased to see me when she came back after a week away, to give me some kind of physical cue that everything was ok, that I was still wanted…and this is what is playing out with us and going so badly wrong at the minute.

I am so filled with shame for needing you so much that I can’t even look at you now. I don’t know what your facial expression is like so can’t read what’s there, but it feels too scary to look at you or make eye contact. When I am frightened, we hardly talk so I can’t even judge your tone of voice and I read your silence as frustration, anger, or lack of care. I really, really just need for you to reach out and let me know it’s safe. I need for us to find a way to connect quickly at the beginning of sessions so it doesn’t spiral into something terrible where I feel like there is no option but to leave.

I’d told you I felt like I was drowning in that last session. You told me that people who are drowning usually put their arms out for help. That might be the case – but when I feel like you are not even ‘there’ I don’t register that I can reach out. That’s how bad it feels. The level of dissociation was off the chart. I genuinely felt like I was in freezing water, in a choppy, grey sea, and was totally alone. I might have looked like I am with you, but I was nowhere close. Adult me is a really strong swimmer but when it’s like that, and I tell you I am drowning I’m little and I am scared and I can’t swim.

You said once that you wouldn’t let me drown. You said there would always be space for me with you. You told me that I didn’t need to stay out in the cold. And I trusted that. You told me I was brave for trying again and you understood that coming to therapy was almost like asking me to run back into a burning building when I have already have third degree burns. It felt like you got it, but now I tell you it feels like you are watching me drown and you tell me it’s because I’m not accepting help. It feels like you don’t really care. If I was able to reach out and ask for help I would.

It feels like such a long time since you laughed and told me that you had a cupboard full of chocolate. With Em I had been told the cupboards were bare and that statement felt like you really saw me, understood the trauma I had experienced and knew what I needed. You said I needed a different experience of relationship – I was looking to do the deep relational work and you said you could do that with me. I don’t know if that’s how you feel now, or whether I’m too much for you. I get that all this is probably a reflection of the depth of the relationship we have. It’s messy and sticky and covered in feathers not neat and clean…and maybe this is where the healing will come but right now I am face down in the pain.

You have never shamed me for my big feelings, you say that I am not too much, and sometimes you say you love me… but not as frequently as you used to. After years and years of feeling chronically unsafe things had begun to settle but now… it feels like I’ve lost you or I am losing you. Or as I said last week, like I am lost. And it’s scary. I don’t even know if I am making sense it’s such a mess inside.

When it’s really bad, I sometimes wonder if I was sitting in floods of tears instead of frozen and silent whether you would still stay away from me? My silence and freeze is how I express overwhelm – that is my crying. Sometimes I cry with you but it’s not even a tenth of what’s stuck inside, it’s still ‘controlled’. I wish I could just fall apart and let it out but it wasn’t safe to cry as a child, and I learnt early on that no one comes anyway. But that’s the reframe that needs to happen – if I am silent and still, I am not keeping you at arm’s length, I’m massively distressed and need you to come close. I know this is a difficult area but we need to figure something out because I can’t keep getting to the place where it feels so intolerable that I can’t bear to stay and run out because it feels like I am being abandoned and that is how it feels.

When I said I was going home last week you didn’t say anything – I guess you’d had enough too – but the message it sent to the young parts, again, is that you just don’t care. Rather than try and fix things you let me leave and then stayed to chat with whoever it was that was sitting on your front step. That really didn’t help. I guess it’s my fault for leaving before the session was over, but that whole episode just made me feel exposed but also highlighted that other people are more important to you even if I am falling apart.

With a break coming up it was always going to be tricky, but it really couldn’t have been a worse way to leave with a long break looming. Usually, I would have given you my elephant to wash just before a break but I didn’t this time. This wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it’s because I didn’t feel like I could, it didn’t feel safe for the young parts to express that need…and that’s where I am at. It feels like those young parts have been completely forgotten about and abandoned. There’s been no preparation for the break and now I just have to tough it out and frankly it’s not been going all that well.

It’s Thursday now and this is the longest period of time we’ve ever had no contact and I suspect that you won’t contact me before Tuesday’s session. It feels like a punishment. I get you need a break. I get that you are tired. I get that you have a lot on. And I get that I am hard work…but it gets to be even harder work when the young parts aren’t attended to, and it feels just like total confirmation that you have had enough. You’ve totally backed away. And I get why you are doing it – a bit – but the impact it’s having on me is enormous. I get you have to look after you, of course you do, and I have to look after me but so much of my looking after me comes through the relationship I have with you right now. I get I need to ‘individuate’ and take care of the little parts inside and I am getting better at that but we are still in the thick of this work and …I don’t even know what to say.

The fact that you and your supervisor have had discussions about referring me on makes me so unsafe because I feel like if I don’t do what I am meant to do or I get too upset about how different things are you get to decide to get rid of me. In so many ways I feel like the rock I was standing on has turned to quicksand. And none of this is meant as a criticism. I don’t want you to hear it in that way at all. I know this is the work. All these triggers and feelings need working through. This is life. But I need you to know that this is really painful and I am bracing myself for you to tell me that you can’t work with me anymore after this holiday… which on top of all the stuff that is going on in my day-to-day life feels horrendous.

There’s a part of me that feels like I should just tell you I am not coming anymore and protect myself from more pain because I can’t see how it’ll be anything close to Ok on Tuesday as things stand. There is so much hurt right now. And I don’t know if you are meaning to hurt me or whether is accidental but either way I am struggling. If things can be mended, then I really need us to find a way to connect in our sessions and to have a plan for when things hit the skids because I am finding it hard enough to adjust to feeling like you’re gone in the week without also feeling like you’re not in the room with me. I need to feel like you have your end of the rope, or invisible string, and lately it feels like you’ve taken scissors to it and I am left completely alone.

I’m Giving Up Dissociation For Lent!

March 6, 2019March 6, 2019rubberbandsandchewinggum5 Comments

‘I’m giving up dissociation for Lent!’ …Ah if only leaving my unconscious ‘go to’ coping strategy behind were as easy as giving up chocolate for the next forty days… actually, giving up chocolate would be a huge stretch, too, so I don’t know why I am even saying that!

I’m not religious (at all) and so the title of this post was sarcastic rather than a real thing – and please don’t be offended by the tone of the post if you are religious- it’s not meant as a dig I am just thinking out loud and scratching my head about where I am at right now.

I always kind of wonder about why other heathen non-believers like myself seem to jump on this particular time period and say they’re foregoing something until Easter. Like what’s so special about Lent? I wonder if the idea of withholding from ourselves is so engrained that we think, ‘ah, yes, I can punish myself for a protracted period of time’. Let’s face it, most of us don’t need an event in the Christian calendar to revel in self-denial and penance. We are perpetually listing our failings and, for the anorexic eating disordered among us, fasting is second nature.

Maybe Lent is too easy then?

Maybe it’s the convenient timing too?

These days we are so fixated on body image – I’m sure it’s about now that the glossy magazines start bleating on about how to achieve ‘the ultimate bikini body’ (FYI you basically have to put a bikini on your existing body but that’s not what they pedal is it?!) – that maybe we see Lent as a time to shed those winter pounds we gained. It’s become diet season so why not have a running jump at losing the muffin top? I dunno.

Look, I totally get that seeing the next six weeks as a sort of weightloss challenge is a bastardisation of the original purpose – but this is what I am wondering about – like why when you don’t do organised religion does Lent seem to be a ‘thing’? For those people that are religious I understand it – makes sense – and I’m betting most people of faith aren’t simply shunning bars of Galaxy until Easter.

Anyway, moving on…a bit…I have been thinking about self-care, strangely, in relation to Lent. I give self-care a wave every now and then but, frankly, am pretty poor at looking after myself. I seem to come somewhere right down the bottom of the pile for care: kids, wife, other people, my animals, the dying orange at the back of the fridge, and then somewhere a little further along the line is me.

It’s strange.

I get that self-care is a REALLY GOOD THING and NECESSARY if you don’t want to be a complete knackered wreck/basketcase and yet I really struggle to prioritise my needs and myself. There’s a part of me that sees looking after myself as selfish… rationally I know that is totally fucked up but it is how I feel.

There is certainly a part of me that thinks I don’t deserve to be happy, to be looked after, to rest, or be a normal weight….and we all know who that is: the Inner Critic. I know that part of me has been doing her best over the last 25+ years to protect me and keep me functioning but these days, her ideas of how to keep me safe and working don’t really work. Trying to be perfect, stretching myself beyond my limits, and starving myself don’t really lead to things being ok or safe. I know that.

I have been really aware of my body again these last couple of weeks. You know how it is, that niggling thing where you look in the mirror and notice all the flaws – that extra couple of pounds you put on over Christmas seems to have welded itself to your hips and won’t budge…(even though you’ve done nothing to help budge it other than will it away!). And I think this is why Lent is winding me up a bit as I see people choosing now to start dieting again because actually my brain is scheming and saying, ‘Go on, jump on board with it too, here’s your opportunity, you can legitimately hide behind Lent to cover your eating disorder for the next couple of months – give up sugar…or EVERYTHING and you can lose that weight that’s been driving you mad for the last three months’.

See, this is not good which is why I am just blathering on here. I am aware of how careful I need to be when my mind starts considering any kind of restriction because it never leads anywhere good. I know I need to have a conversation with my therapist about these feelings but I feel kind of moronic talking about not eating when I am actually eating and am as close to a normal BMI as I have ever been.

It’s sad that there’s some critical voice that is saying, ‘you can’t talk about not eating when you are this weight and eating food! Like seriously, look at you, you’re fat!’ Of course I do know that this is exactly the time I need to be mentioning these feelings in therapy – BEFORE things start to spiral downwards and the ED mindset kicks in and the secrecy and denial becomes the fronting part. I don’t want to end up in the place I ended up last year and when Em issued an Ultimatum.

I also need to work out why I am feeling like I need to take control in this particular way again. It isn’t because of Lent! 😉 I know it has something to do with the level of dissociation I have been experiencing lately. I had a crazy bad dissociative session last Friday and I know it’s because I have been edging closer to the Mother Wound again. When the young parts are a bit more present or want to come to therapy it generally doesn’t go well – not because Em says or does anything wrong, but because other parts step up to protect me from being vulnerable (or stupid!). That huge need for connection and care so easily triggers feelings of shame as well as fear of being abandoned for being too much that it just sends me into orbit. I get sucked out the room. It’s horrid.

Fortunately, Em and I were able to do some good work on Monday where I was able to stay in the window of tolerance and start to unpick some of what has been going on. Em herself said something about the fact that there is a massive painful wound that sometimes gets exposed and is so incredibly raw that it is too much to bear so I cover it over with a plaster – only it doesn’t heal when it’s covered. So the deal is we are going to try and very very gently let a little bit of air get to the wound and let it start to heal in tiny increments…and try and understand the shame too. (This is not new news by the way, it’s just we are repeating it again!)

I don’t really know what I am trying to say with this post, but basically, I think if I am going to try and give up anything for Lent then it has to be being horrible to myself and defeating myself. Rather than giving up something I enjoy (although to be fair I think the Critic is a bit of a sadist and enjoys being mean!) I am going to try and use the next few months to be kinder to myself. I am going to try really hard to trust in my therapeutic relationship with Em and accept and believe that after seven years she is still there, steady, and constant and caring…I do not need to be frightened of her. She is safe.

What am I giving up for Lent? A lifetime of bad habits that hurt me. Perhaps some of you can do the same.

EEEK! I’m beginning to wish I’d stuck with chocolate! x

Wobbly

February 14, 2019rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

Wobbly. That’s how I feel right now. After a period of relative stability and calm things seem to have shifted into that uncomfortable space where everything feels ‘not quite right’ again and I am in danger of completely losing my balance. It’s not desperately bad (yet!)…it’s just ‘not ok’…you know? I don’t really know what’s happened; all I know is that I was fine and now I am not! Ha. Great!

Life is just my usual kind of busy: nothing is really any different to normal. There’s lots of work (more teaching taken on last week but nothing I can’t manage), running kids about, therapy, general life stuff- and yet for some reason I have gone from coping, no, better than that – living – to not really coping very well at all. I feel almost paralysed by whatever is going on inside me.

I desperately want to crawl into my bed and sleep and just hide from the world for a bit. I have very little motivation to do anything. I actually feel tearful at the thought of having to go to work later this evening. It feels like putting on the ‘professional me’ will be too much…and yet, of course, I will go and do my sessions tonight, it will be fine (as it always is), I might even enjoy it whilst I’m doing it…just part of me isn’t convinced.

In addition to this, I’ve noticed that I have shut my social circle down to essentially one poor bugger who gets it warts and all. Other than this interaction I am struggling to engage in social contact. I have a bunch of emails and messages I want/need to respond to but I simply don’t have the energy to think about appropriate messages that don’t basically end up with me looking like a self-absorbed twat.

I need to spend some time really unpicking what’s happened for me to end up here again because right now I don’t have a very clear picture. This, in part is down to the fact that I have been dissociating a lot lately (WHY?) and having periods of amnesia when I bring emotional stuff to mind. It’s like trying to catch something on the breeze, I can see it and then it’s completely gone. I feel as though I have just been thrown out a vehicle in the middle of nowhere and have absolutely no idea how I got here, or indeed, where I am now. It’s a bit disconcerting (terrifying!).

Therapy on Monday was complete agony. I don’t know what happened. I just didn’t feel right on the way there and the moment I sat down my body started freaking out – I guess I felt fear/panic initially and then I was frozen, my vision blurred and then there were stars, and I felt as though I was being sucked out the room. I tried to hang on in there and not succumb to being pulled into the vacuum but it was so so hard.

Staying with my body when it is oscillating between pain and numbness and tingling etc is hard going. Sometimes the feeling of letting go and escaping the bodily sensations is really quite appealing (I used to do this a lot in therapy)…however ‘leaving the room’ comes with its own problems and I really do want/need to stay present with Em if I am able to, otherwise there is no hope of connection which is really what I need when things get like this.

The thing is, whatever has been triggered in me also triggers all my defences and so no matter how I want/need to connect, I just can’t – parts of me won’t allow it. I’m not stupid, I know that the core problem lies somewhere in the feelings around being needy and vulnerable and wanting intimacy but it all feeling too dangerous to be open…that old chestnut again!

The problem with the kind of sessions I had on Monday is there’s a lot of discomfort and silence and me saying, ‘I don’t know’ when she asks me questions because my brain is empty – like a void- all the stuff I want to say before I get there just vanishes. It’s not that I am being deliberately avoidant or withholding, it’s actually that everything is gone and I am just left with the body sensations. Nightmare.

Em is always really good when this happens and tries to help me ground and reassures me that things are ok, that it’s been like this before, and that we will work through it. The problem is, when it gets like it did on Monday, the shame floods in. It is so embarrassing be such a mess in the presence of someone else. My adult self is pretty high-functioning and a bit of (a lot of) a control freak, so to find myself mute and struggling is really hard for me. For my adult to have been overridden by whatever this stuff is (attachment stuff!) is really hard especially after several weeks of my adult doing therapy and getting a lot from it.

I hate that my brain makes it so that I can’t talk. I hate that when I get close to that core wound (#motherwound) that my mind does everything in its power to run away and shutdown. I hate that whilst parts of me trust Em implicitly that there are other parts that don’t/can’t and so I end up in this horrendous place over and over again. I know, because this is happening again, that I am steadily creeping towards talking about the big stuff (again). I know this pattern – I take my adult to therapy and do some useful work and the young parts get left at home. That’s fine for a while and the suddenly something happens and it’s as though the whole system activates and EVERYONE HAS STUFF TO SAY!

The problem is, I/they don’t know how to say it and are scared stiff….so generally I write something, email it, or take it to session and a discussion starts. Every time I fear the worst (abandonment, being told I am too much etc) and every time that doesn’t happen and yet for some reason I am hardwired to be fearful of being open about my feelings. Every time I let stuff out that is raw and vulnerable it feels like I am doing it for the first time. I can’t seem to bring to mind that I have said, on multiple occasions, that I sometimes struggle between sessions, that I miss Em when she’s not around, that I love her AS WELL AS the other stuff like when things are bad my Inner Critic is vile and I sometimes resort to negative coping strategies such as not eating or self-harming…

I need to bring that stuff up in session tomorrow because things felt so utterly awful after Monday that for the first time in two years I did self-harm….it wasn’t really anything, I don’t keep sharp stuff in the house these days, but the fact that I was using scissors on my skin… well, that isn’t good is it? I feel ashamed about it. I feel embarrassed about it.

Ugh.

Anyway, I really really hope that tomorrow turns out ok and I can get myself up and out of this pit of meh! There’s more to say but I have to go to work… oh adult responsibilities!

Not Alone

January 13, 2019January 13, 2019rubberbandsandchewinggum6 Comments

Well, firstly, before I get down to the real business of this post I just want to ask this: how on earth is it only January 13th? Has someone been buggering about with the time/space continuum AGAIN?? Like, seriously, this the longest freaking month ever. I’ve only been back at work a week and already it feels like there should be a holiday on the horizon because I ache all over and feel utterly exhausted (unfortunately there are still five to go!); but then there’s that other important date that can’t come quickly enough too…payday!!!

Seriously, January is such a bloody depressing month – the twinkly lights and tinsel are both gone; it’s cold, wet, dark, and grey; and notably there’s no bloody money (to be fair there never is any money!)!! Actually, for once, this utter broke and probably eating beans on toast til the end of the month isn’t because I dipped into December’s pay for Christmas gifts (that didn’t happen this year) it’s because thus far January has chosen to shit on me so far as unexpected bills have gone: there’s flights for my wife to go to her grandmother’s funeral as well as an appropriate outfit to wear; a new bedroom carpet for my daughter after a vomit fest; and errrr some car repairs that uncovered more problems that weren’t worth fixing and so now….A NEW CAR! Not quite what I needed.

Anyway, I am sure no one is interested in my financial woes and January depression so I’ll get to it…

Not Alone.

I know that’s probably a bit of a random title but this week I can say that something else has started to shift a bit in me. As an introvert, to be fair, I like being alone. I don’t do well in crowds or at parties, I feel uptight and uncomfortable and like I would rather be at home in bed reading a book. At work I switch on the self that can do social and confident and capable but it does require effort. I’m not really talking about that ‘feeling alone in a group of people thing’, or being slightly distanced or whatever.

Bear with me, I am so tired I can’t really find words…

For the longest time I felt like I was alone with that gaping hole, #motherwound, sadness, misery, depression, eating disorder, self-harm, not feeling good enough… you know, all that lovely soul-destroying stuff… oh and of course, let’s not forget the crazy attachment issues with my therapist 😉 And I think starting up this blog started to change that a bit. I began writing and sharing the things that I have kept hidden and private, and soon discovered that actually I was far from alone with these feelings and that has been really transformational.

The interactions I have had on here (bar a couple of strange ones!) have been amazing. There is a real sense of community and holding and care from people that I have never met and that in itself has been a massive help on my journey towards healing. I have been lucky enough, too, to have stumbled across a few like-minded people that have become daily fixtures in my life – I think the word I am looking for is ‘friends’ – ha. And then (I’m sorry for this gush peeps) there’s a really significant person who I met here that I actually fondly now call my ‘Straight Wife’ but really I think ‘Soul Sister’ is where it’s at. Without her support over the last 15 months I know I wouldn’t be anywhere like as together as I am right now. It’s pretty unfortunate that we live about 500 miles apart but thank god for WhatApp calling eh?!

My point is, I do not feel alone anymore because I know that there are people who actually accept me as I am, not just a perfected version of me. To be able to be the genuine ‘warts and all’ version of myself, which at times means the needy, anxious, stuck one who can’t muster the energy to get dressed or eat is huge…and to be loved despite that is amazing.

I think my blog has been a bit of a training ground in seeing what happens when I am truly myself and allow the vulnerability out. It’s like another form of therapy. I guess it’s easier to write on a screen and have a bit of distance from it – that way whatever the response I am, in someway, protected. Practising the vulnerability on the phone with my friend has been another step. And then I guess this leads me to my therapy…

Therapy is slightly different. The problems I have around trust are huge and go way back. The maternal transference element and the disorganised attachment patterns I have haven’t made therapy easy (no shit!).

Therapy seems to be some complicated dance that I haven’t quite got the hang of (which after all these years is not really very funny!). It’s like I take one step forward and two steps back when I am meant to be waltzing around the room. I am not a natural dancer! Only what I seem to have worked out this last week or so, is that Em is not expecting me to waltz around the room. She’s perfectly ok with the one step forwards and two steps back. It’s me that has put the pressure on myself to be a certain way. Like honestly – big face-palm!

I have been so well defended lately that I have been unable to really connect with Em. I have felt like she hasn’t been trying hard enough, doesn’t care, is disinterested etc and yet when I listen back to my sessions this is anything but the case. Honestly, she really does try and get to me, and often succeeds by the end of the session. However, the feelings I feel when I am shut off or dissociated are horrible and I can’t see or feel her with me. I know the only way out is through but crikey it’s so hard doing something that basically stirs up a whole load of shit and then I am left with it ‘alone’.

Only, I am not alone am I? This week I have allowed myself to let the guard down a little, to look at Em (I haven’t been able to make eye contact for such a long time) and to just see what it feels like being with her. And do you know what? It’s nice. Rather than bracing myself for a feared attack (that will not actually come from my therapist – but hey I have my mum to thank for that) I have wondered what it would be like to lean into my therapist a bit. Rather than long for a specific type of care and then getting angry because what I am met with is not quite what I want (hugs!) I have just tried to be in the moment and feel what is actually there…and what is actually there is really good.

I feel like a right idiot writing this because nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. My therapist is the same but I am not. I know that is what it’s all about – me changing and growing – but it’s weird that it seems to have happened all of a sudden just like a switch has been flicked.

My last session on Friday was hard, we hit some really huge feelings- I accidentally triggered the motherwound landmine by not looking where I was going with fifteen minutes to go- but rather than run and dissociate from them I stayed with them, and in staying with those feelings guess what I noticed? Em was right there staying with them (and me) too.

When I disappear in session I take myself off into my ‘safe’ place (only it’s not safe, it’s isolating and horrid) I am completely alone and whilst I think it’s protecting me, it isn’t. Sure, it’s what I needed to do as a child when I really was alone and under attack but I am not under attack now. Even when those feelings of fear and being threatened trigger a trauma response in the here and now actually what I need now, and needed so badly back then as a kid, was to be connected safely to someone else. There was no safe person when I was growing up but there is one now and I get to see that person twice a week.

I feel like everyone will be doing the biggest eye roll and going ‘well, duh, that’s what therapy is…’ but it’s taken til now for me to actually feel that Em is safe, is there, is with me, wants to help me, and most importantly not only can I see that she cares, I can feel it.

I am not alone.

And So This Is Christmas (Therapy Break).

December 23, 2018December 23, 2018rubberbandsandchewinggum12 Comments

Right then, folk, looks like it’s time to buckle up and hold on tight for the next few weeks because it’s that time of year again… oh yes, it’s the time we’ve all been excitedly anticipating – Christmas therapy break!

Oh how I love Christmas: the twinkly lights, the presents, the excitement, the movies… the enforced extended time with family, the building stress levels, the missed therapy sessions, the activation of the attachment pain, the bedding in of the belief that ‘my therapist doesn’t care about me’, the mounting anxiety, the feelings of abandonment and rejection, the wading in of the Inner Critic to come add some festive self-hatred into the mix, and the steady descent into breakdown. If things follow this usual pattern then there’ll be a desperate reaching out to therapist which will result in either a) a reply that doesn’t meet the need or b) no reply at all…and voila RUPTURE!!!

Oh it’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Look, I have to make light of this right now (#sarcasm and #humour shield) because I am in that terrified denial/manic stage. Basically I am like Denver the dog – forced smile hoping that if I say, ‘I am ok’ enough then I might start to believe it and might just fool those around me and might even avoid a disaster like last year!

Yesterday was the last session of the year. Without doubt, this has been a really hard year so far as therapy goes. It’s been about staring down the #Motherwound and, in doing so, working through a lot of pain that gets activated in the therapeutic relationship because of this. It’s basically maternal transference 101 in my sessions. It’s so hard.

Those of you that have been following this blog for a while will know that I keep rapidly swinging between two extremes: knowing that Em is there, as my therapist, every single week to try and help me process years of trauma and neglect, that she is safe and trustworthy and that I love and respect her; and then there’s the other side that I’ve been inhabiting lately- the horrible place where I feel she doesn’t care enough, is withholding, is deliberately making me suffer, and is basically retraumatising me. UGH!!!

These feelings are really hard to manage (the doubting the relationship ones). Part of the problem with therapy (but also why I need to be in therapy) lies in the fact that I have so many different parts and they feel and need so many different things – often all at the same time.

I’m more-or-less ok when my Adult Self is online alongside the young parts and I can see what’s going on. I can accept that the feelings I am experiencing come from a young place and are being replayed in the here and now. It’s not comfortable but I’m able to tolerate it. I can feel care and even love towards those younger parts and do try and soothe myself. The real problems happen when my Adult fucks off somewhere and leaves the child parts to run the show. We’ve all seen ‘Home Alone’ right?!

Ages ago I wrote something about structural dissociation and fragmented parts after having read an amazing book by Janina Fisher called, ‘Healing The Fragmented Selves Of Trauma Survivors’. Reading that book was really helpful and gave me a much better insight into what was going on for me. It was a kind of lightbulb moment. Later I read Patricia A. DeYoung’s ‘Understanding Chronic And Treating Chronic Shame: A Relational/Neurobiological Approach’ and that really helped move things on for me too.

Of course, my rational intellectual brain can see all of this therapy break hell for what it is. There’s no problem with being able to see where my issues come from on an intellectual level. It’s the emotional brain that is having such a hard time. It literally has no freaking clue what’s going on and reacts to everything like a child would – and the children vary in age.

Nightmare!

I am aware of a very young baby part, a two year old, a four year old, a seven year old, an eleven year old, a young teen, and an older teen part and so sometimes it gets very noisy inside my head in therapy. I switch about and it is really disconcerting: one minute I can be raging and the next I want to crawl into Em’s lap and fall asleep. Ugh.

I don’t know how Em keeps up with me, to be honest, but she’s really quick to spot when things change in me now, sometimes even before I’ve noticed. I know weird things happen in my body (numbness/heaviness/pain/pins and needles…) and I think I blink a lot/don’t blink at all/close my eyes when things are shifting. I know my breathing goes very shallow and I know that if I am talking my voice goes much quieter. Sometimes I lose time – not for very long – but Em will ask me something and I will have absolutely no idea what she’s just said. I take my hat off to her for seeing what’s going on, working with it and trying to talk to the various parts and bring me back to her.

(Can you see I am trying to hang onto the gratitude and sense of there being consistent ‘good enough’ care today?! – Don’t worry, I’m sure next week it’ll be back to ‘it’s all shit’. LOL)

Anyway, I’m going to try and bring things up to speed quickly before I sign off for the next few days.

It’s been a really hard time these last couple of weeks after the dots thing.

OMG such painful, excruciating conversations about how that all felt punctuated with spells of dissociation.

OUCH.

Everyone turned up on Monday! The Teens were so resistant to talking about the feelings when Em brought the conversation round to what it had been like since she said she couldn’t/wouldn’t do the dots texts. Picture huffy teen, arms folded, snapping ‘what’s the point in talking about this, it won’t change anything?!’ Em stuck with it acknowledging how I might be angry and hurt and did that therapist thing, ‘here we are, in this space to talk about the feelings, give them space, and to let’s try and work out what they mean and where they come from’. There was an actual eye roll on my part and a fuck off big sigh… Em kept pressing gently and then I snapped at her, ‘Why do you keep poking a massive stick in a really sore hole, now?

And there it was.

You’ve hurt me. Massively.

And that opened up a helpful conversation about feeling abandoned and uncared for and about the (god damn) break for and wondering what feeling cared for might feel like. She used the voice…you know the one, the soothing one that makes you feel held and seen and like you aren’t going to die of emotional pain. Sure, I didn’t get what I wanted (texts), but in her not giving me what I wanted we had a healing conversation and I guess that is the work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not happy about it. I still feel anxious that when the shit hits the fan she isn’t going to be there for me…but actually being able to tell her how sad and hurt I felt and for her to hear it, not react negatively or shame me for it was really helpful and I think this also helped open another door for yesterday’s session.

It was a bit of a car crash at the beginning – it was never going to be easy. I’ve been in therapy long enough now to know that sessions are tricky leading into breaks. There were a lot of feelings flying around and as a result a great deal of pained silence. Em kept with me, kept trying to open up conversations and address the break. Part of me was just trying to hold myself together and not disintegrate. I had an image come to me the night before therapy and it hit me again when she asked me how I was feeling.

I know how strange it sounds but I’ll say anyway. I got an image of myself as an octopus in a really rough sea. The octopus was struggling, being battered by the waves. In a calm sea it usually has a reasonable grip on the parts it is trying to hold onto – each part is reasonably well wrapped in a tentacle, still away from the body, but just about held together and safe enough. When the sea is as rough as it is now the grip loosens and all the parts are barely hanging on to the tip of each tentacle. I am scared I can’t hold onto them and they’re going to get washed away and drown. I know it’s weird. But essentially when there’s a storm (the break) adult me feels like I can’t contain all my vulnerable parts….

And so I told Em this. Sure I think this weird stuff all the time, I blog about it, but I don’t always share this kind of thing with her. She thinks that what’s going on right now is another step in the right direction so that’s something. She was able to acknowledge the fear and the panic and tell me that it’s ok. Then the session was up. Oh god. She said some lovely things about the Christmas card I had given her and said that she knows how hard it’s been recently but that we are getting through.

I left feeling sad and ok.

I immediately missed her.

I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to reach out to her already.

I haven’t.

I can’t guarantee I won’t message her but my aim right now is to write in a book every time I want to contact her and write it down with a time and a date and what’s actually been going on in my day. I know it’s going to be fully cringe but I hope that I will be able to take it all into therapy on the fourth and hand it over and we can start to unpick the feelings and the triggers. I think it might be interesting to see what two weeks of need and fear looks like…….. eeek!!

Oh, and when I decided to try and hold myself a bit closer and breathe through the storm, look what came in my cracker last night….

A sign?!!

I won’t get chance to post again before Christmas now so I just want to wish everyone a lovely Christmas, to thank you for following me on my journey, and to say to the cheerleading squad (you know who you are) – your support has been amazing this year. I really hope that between us we can find a way of hanging it together with rubberbands and chewing gum and survive the holidays but I know that the reality might more readily be this:

‘Tis the season ~~to be jolly~~ for a rupture fa la la la la la la la la!

xxx

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