dreams

Procrastination? A Therapy break. And Musing On The Cost Of Failed Therapies. Part 2

rubberbandsandchewinggum6 Comments

Right – so – part 2 – ummm so this actually ended up being 4500 words on its own and I don’t have the mental wherewithal to break it further… so…yeah…maybe grab a coffee or something?! Here’s the stuff about what’s been going on recently with therapy as we headed into a bastard therapy break…which ends today…PRAISE THE LORD! Phew. Man am I ready to see Elle…anyway, let’s fill in the gaps!

*I went into a freeze hole with with the US election so this is a bit delayed posting.

A little while ago I was writing about how I was struggling with the therapy container with Elle not feeling big enough – or me basically ‘being too much’ and having ‘too much to process’ and not enough time and space in which to do it (same old same old! I was actually thinking of getting myself a t-shirt made with ‘same shit different day’ on). I can’t lie, I have been in an absolutely horrible place with it all. And it’s not Elle – it’s ALL of it. EVERYTHING has flooded all at once and there is just TOO FUCKING MUCH TO COPE WITH.

The last month heading into this therapy break (me being away not Elle – pray that she isn’t going to spring a break on me anytime soon, please!) I really did start to unravel and it was bloody awful. I mean I literally was sliding downhill on my arse, at speed, and it was fucking painful despite sessions with Elle having been really good. Like really good and holding…. and just lovely, actually.

I mean it’s really brilliant that we aren’t lurching from one shitty rupture and misattunement to another and that sessions feel safe and calm and useful – but it’s really hard when therapy is really going well that things outside the room feel so fucking hard. Complex trauma – as I have said soooo many times – really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Elle and I seem to have connected in a really deep way (or at least it feels that way to me) and it feels very safe and just nice when we are together…but the problem with that is that it’s really brought the young parts up to the surface and when they’re here it’s a LOT. There is so much need (and grief) and as I keep saying, the week between our sessions is tough going.

I think part of it, is that it’s almost like everything with this young stuff has been on hold for the last year-and-a-half since everything went south with Anita and it is only now that the trust is really there and the solid foundation has been built with Elle that my system is prepared to let it all be seen again. Until relatively recently much of this stuff has been in hiding or protected (and understandably so!).

So, whilst it’s starting to feel a bit like an emotional rollercoaster inside again, I do understand why. I’m finally letting the lid off a pressure cooker that’s been madly boiling away for too long a time and it’s not surprising the contents are a bit hard to handle. Elle seems to have a good solid set of oven gloves so I don’t appear to be burning her in the process which is really good, and I do, at least, feel like my sessions are useful and not fucking traumatising or triggering which is great!

Sitting together on the new and bigger sofa all the time has been a game changer in how I allow myself to be – or who I let be- in the room with Elle…it’s so much better than her being in a chair across from me. I know all I needed to do was say, because any time I have asked for her to come closer to me she has, but it’s been a real slow and steady process after everything that has happened before with Anita and Em, and I haven’t always felt able to ask express what I need. There’s always been that very real fear of not wanting to be ‘too much’ or come over as ‘too needy’. Elle assures me that I am fine however I am, but of course it’s not only her voice I have rattling round in my mind, is it?

It’s very hard having a need for someone who ‘appears safe’, now, because I thought Anita was safe and it turns out she absolutely wasn’t – or she was, and then she wasn’t. It really is like doing tiny baby steps with Elle – thankfully she is a very patient person and she meets me where I am at and doesn’t push me too hard, but is right there ready alongside me when I want to go to the hard places…I think it’s really clear to her that this is delicate work and I am very fragile after all that has happened. We aren’t in any great rush and I am determined that this time I do not end up worse off than I went in.

I mean basically this is like exposure therapy, isn’t it? I’ve been bitten by three separate dogs in the last four years and here I am, in a room, with another dog. Fortunately, this latest one is a golden retriever trained as an assistance dog and will just sit beside me calmly for as long as I want them to. Well, that’s the impression I’ve been given. I can’t see Elle suddenly becoming vicious or running off…

I wonder what breeds Em, Anita, and Hannah would be? Em?…are there any dogs that just genuinely hate people and savage them for even wanting to pet them? Anita?… something that looks soft and cuddly but in actual fact is nippy and has a tendency to bolt- but when you find them they’ve snuggled up to new people and pretend they don’t know who you are? – some kind of terrier perhaps? And Hannah?…ummm… maybe a dog that isn’t very used to humans yet and is flighty and doesn’t trust?!

Anyway…back to the story-

My system settles so much quicker at the start of sessions than it did because of the physical proximity I now have with Elle and I am not bothered by the fucking table between us because it isn’t between us! I still do the internal safety checking at the start but it’s nothing like as bad as it was. I don’t think that will ever go away with a history like mine. I am always going to need to scan for danger before letting my guard down because the reality is people change, people drop bombs on your heart, and I would be foolish to not be cautious.

A key difference being beside rather than across from Elle is that I am less likely to let False Adult front the show. In fact, that hasn’t happened at all since we’ve changed things up. When Elle was in her seat I could sometimes find it hard to figure out where we were at and so talk endlessly about stuff (that was relevant but didn’t leave space for the vulnerable parts to connect) and this would sometimes mean that I would head into dissociation (very well disguised and still carry on like nothing is wrong) because I’d feel like I wouldn’t get what I needed until we said goodbye and could feel the session slipping away.

Goodbye hugs are not really enough and would often leave me feeling bereft that I didn’t get more of what I needed in the session (even though we would have talked about useful stuff for at least some parts of my system) and now had to wait until the next week to try again. This really is one of the crappy things about one session a week. It seems to put a lot of pressure on the session being ‘enough’ whereas two sessions means that if things don’t feel quite connected enough that there isn’t an age until the next contact which means there’s less time to catastrophise and for Brian to go wild.

I like that now, instead, I will come in, sit on the sofa and already be close to Elle… The other day I was having a bit of a freeze and shut down (anticipatory dread for the upcoming break that was still a couple of weeks away). Elle had got the playdoh out that I had brought with me and left with her at the end of the previous session. She had it all set up when I got in the room which should have delighted me but instead I was just sat still, I didn’t even reach for the play doh but did discuss colours and textures and was generally chatting so hiding the extent of the hell I was feeling inside – like it wasn’t obvious I was having a hard time.

Why was I upset? Because it was a day where I just wanted to come in and cuddle into her and sob. I had been totally overwhelmed and in a panic, and I didn’t want to play at all – or not right then, anyway. I think Elle sensed something was up even though I was doing a good job of hiding because as she was making a frog she moved her leg over a bit and rested it against mine so we were touching so that I could feel that she was there.

This was enough for me to come out of wherever I had gone and made me realise (again) that I am safe and Elle doesn’t mind me being close and that we are connected. I really need that almost continual reminder that I am not unpalatable and disgusting at the start of each session because that’s the message so many parts of me now carry. They feel that I am easy to discard and it must be because there is something wrong with me…like I have always felt that from the beginning but it has been heavily reinforced by Em, Anita, and Hannah and it’s hard.

So, being next to one another, I can edge my way closer to Elle as and when I want to. I can reach out and hold her hand, or shuffle over for a hug, or I can just lean up against her and be in physical contact whilst we talk. It REALLY helps…and makes me realise how bloody awful it was all that time with Em when she refused to come anywhere near me… it was sooooo terrible for me and my nervous system. It’s bizarre to think that in all the years we worked together we never touched once, not even a handshake. For someone that struggles with feeling unlovable and untouchable it did a whole load of damage – especially as there was no emotional holding either. Crikey.

Elle and I talk in a way that I haven’t been able to with any of my other therapists. She is smart and insightful and funny and kind and makes it very easy to just be me with my jump around brain that is always changing direction. Sometimes I talk a lot and other times I say little, or nothing at all – and not because I am being withholding, just because it’s nice being with her and feeling my system rest a bit.

So therapy with Elle feels really comforting and connected but also like I am wading through all kinds of stuff in a very safe way. It’s different to with time with Anita – although it probably sounds exactly the same. I feel like Elle has a much better sense ‘the work’ and me, like, she’s not just phoning it in and having an easy time if I choose to ask for stories or cuddles or whatever. I get a sense that she is thoughtfully in the space with me. I think Anita really used to be at the beginning, but I think towards the end when she was on her slow spiral into burnout and breakdown, she was just grateful if I turned up and didn’t want anything from her but a hug because she could zone out and I wasn’t being challenging or difficult.

I would sometimes ask Anita what she was thinking when we were having a quiet time, imagining that she’d say something like “I was just thinking about when you said x or y” but often her brain was on things like taking the dogs to vet, or what she had to do later that day or… empty and nothing at all. And this always felt a bit shit. Like I get our minds wander but I think when we are paying someone to be in our experience with us, you’d think they’d be tuned into us and what was going on for us…not mentally making their shopping lists. Again, this was not how Anita was at the start – she couldn’t have been more attuned in that first 18 months or so.

Still, back to me and Elle because fuck me – what else can I really say about Anita? (Loads I am sure, but fuck it for today!). A really lovely thing that has happened in the last couple of months (basically after I shared the post I had written about what a perfect therapy room would be like with Elle) is that she seems to have really taken it on board. One day she came in with new packs of colouring pens and asked if I wanted to draw a version of something I had sent her in an email. She has also brought in story books she thinks I would like, that she liked as a child, and has read them to me so there’s been some lovely sharing of things we’ve liked back and forth. Elle is really good at reading too – and does such good voices – and the little parts of me really love this.

I think after how it all ended with A I didn’t imagine that I would ever be in a position to be safe with someone in this way again. I am now really hopeful that when I eventually get my stuff back from Anita that Elle and I will be able to do some work with the stories and maybe move that all on for the little parts of me. I know there will be a lot of tears if Elle reads me ‘No Matter What’ or any of the books, actually – but I think it’ll be a safe grieving process and something that really needs to happen. I need those little parts to be able to reclaim those lovely messages and have them held with Elle because right now it all just feels really upsetting.

Sooo…the break? Shall we venture into that shithole territory?! Well, it was fast approaching and there was just a lot of stuff coming up especially after Anita’s most recent message about how her life hadn’t been as she’d imagined and how she was now working that came around the time I noticed her website had changed. Talking through that was really helpful but stirred up a whole world of pain.

Then the next week I had left a session that was soooo lovely (the same one with the playdoh) but also really opened up a lot of deep emotional stuff – we’d read a new book ‘Following The Moon’ by James Norbury and both of us cried at the end of it. It is really moving. I had told Elle how much I hated my brain because I had been so anxious about coming to the session and had feared something bad was going to happen (the only bad thing was the upcoming break but my brain was having a meltdown).

I asked Elle if she was real and she had said that she absolutely was and reminded me of the bracelet on my wrist that she had given me. She said that I could message her to check she was real anytime I liked and said she might get another bracelet to remind herself that she was real too – or that I am real – but then corrected herself and said, actually she has no problem remembering me at all. It was all very connecting but I was immediately aware that I was going to experience a fucking huge therapy hangover from the session You know when it’s so raw and vulnerable that it is hard to put yourself back together afterwards because part of you needs that stuff to be exposed but safely in the room and shoving it all back down and carrying on with everyday life feels impossible?

When I got home, I sent an email and asked Elle if she got a cancellation if I could see her. She said she would let me know but if there was going to be a cancellation it would most likely be Friday…because apparently, she’s now working Friday mornings too.

For some reason, that week I didn’t check in with her like I would usually. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was trying to prove to myself that I could do without her and that as a break was coming, I needed to be less needy… I don’t know. So because I had disconnected (despite absolutely needing to remain connected) I was already not in a brilliant place by the end of the week and so when I didn’t hear from Elle until late afternoon on Friday I was pretty awful. Obviously, no space had opened up to see her and honestly, I felt like utter shit. I don’t ask for extra sessions if there isn’t a reason for it and even though it wasn’t Elle’s fault, I felt like I just wasn’t seen and it felt abandoning to the parts that needed her.

Elle messaged me saying she was sorry that no space had opened up and attached picture of the Russian doll set from the room – apparently the little one had been returned (months back she’d realised it was missing but didn’t know where) as an outgoing client had left that day.

This was absolutely a million percent not the right kind of message to have sent me. I am so fucking sensitive to ‘other clients’ but that day in particular it just felt like Elle totally didn’t get it at all. But then why would she – for the first time in months I had not reached out in any way at all. I was probably fine, right?!

Nope.

As I stared at the picture and the lack of anything that felt personal to me and her I just felt at a complete loss and I replied. “I don’t even know what to say to this. I am million miles away from ok. See you Tuesday”

She clearly clicked that shit was hitting the fan… (it totally was) because I am not really a three short sentence type of a communicator – lol – and replied:

I’m so sorry to hear that flower. I hate to think of you feeling so far away from safety and warmth. 

I wish I could hold your hand right know, and tell you how loved and important you are, but please know that I’m thinking it.

Elle x

When Elle sends me messages that use affectionate terms like ‘flower’, or ‘sweetpea’, or my best favourite – ‘lambkin’ it cuts through to the places that really need to be seen and heard and everything that feels very wrong sort of just melts away. I want to tell her this at some point but it just feels a bit cringey!

Of course, the disconnect had felt fucking awful that week alongside my panic about the break and so I bloody did a running bomb and decided to be brave and send her the post I had written about the container and asked her to read it.

Shiiiittttt. Go big or go home RB!!:

🥹😭❤️‍🩹

Can you read this because it’s got much worse even since I wrote it. I feel like a snow globe that’s been shaken so violently that even the scene inside has come unstuck and is tumbling inside the glass. I’m going to bed because I’m sick of myself x big hug 🤗

So, I took myself off to bed and tried to sleep…in the morning when I woke up, I had such a thoughtful and holding reply – I don’t think Elle would mind me posting this here and actually it’s one of those things that would be useful to have here so I can find it quickly in the future when I am wobbling because it was exactly what I needed in that moment – she is soooo good at these kinds of messages when I let her know how I am actually feeling rather than hiding behind random memes:

Oh lambkin. My heart proper hurts after reading all that.

And the first thing I want to say – to maybe give you even a tiny corner of reassurance – is you cannot burn me out. 

I never say things I don’t mean, and burnout is not something you need to worry about with me. I did burnout on a grand scale about 12 years ago, learned some very hard lessons from it, and will ever allow myself to approach burnout ever again. I take very good care of myself, and part of that care is making sure I never work harder or give more to people – friends, family and clients alike – than I know I have to give.

People who burn out do so because they try to give more than they can, usually because they feel they have something to prove to themselves (or the world), and I have nothing left to prove to anyone. I know who I am, inside and out, and I’m enough as I am.

You carry this story that you’re so very much, so messy and overwhelming to deal with, but all I see is this lovely human with many many facets. 

I don’t see confusing jagged ugly parts and separate fun sunny delightful parts, I just see RB, in all her beautiful complexity. And I think she is amazing and brave and smart and vulnerable and sweet, and sometimes she’s terrified and frozen and shutdown and hiding inside herself, and all of that is equally beautiful to me. Because it’s all you.

So you can tell your followers that you let me read that entry, and I said it was wonderful, and that I am super proud of you for putting all your confused thoughts into such eloquent words and then being brave enough to tell me to read it.

And I feel like some of the suggestions they gave you in comments were great, but let’s talk about what else might be great when I see you on Tuesday.

Tightest of all possible hugs and the biggest of all loves to you beautiful girl.

I hope you sleep well.
Elle x

And honestly, that just settled the shit inside right down. It felt like a massive cuddle in an email and every time I read it is has had the same settling effect.

I replied to this when I woke up and we exchanged a few messages over the weekend about other things. I tend to do the big ‘hoorah of vulnerability’ and then head back to adult and hide in normal life not the emotional mess that is my inner world. It’s an interesting dance and it’s hard because I think Elle generally responds to what I put in front of her.

When I am clear about what I am feeling and needing she never fails to respond how I need. The issue comes, then, where I reach out with something fucking random and innocuous like a meme and expect her to know that I am not really ok. I do get this is something I need to work on and clue her into…and I will.

So, what next? Well, that weekend was fucking awesome as I got a sick bug and was absolutely wiped out. Fortunately, by Tuesday (the last session before the break) I was well enough to go see Elle but also just totally on empty. She came to get me and I hugged her immediately in the corridor, she commented on how washed out and knackered I looked, we sat down in the room and I just snuggled into her in a kind of floppy heap. She asked me if I’d like to read a story that I had brought in previously but we hadn’t read yet and I said actually I would like to read a different book instead so that’s what we did.

I was so exhausted and done in that we didn’t really get on to talking about the blog or the struggle between sessions or any of the big stuff but what we did do was a tonne of containment and holding. We read some stories and Elle brought up my dreams (something I had mentioned in the blog) and how I have been struggling with the ones I have where she is horrid to me or pushes me away or gets angry. She said she’d seen something about dream completion, which is something where if you keep getting stuck in loops of horrible dreams that you can try and rewrite the ending so it feels better and maybe we could do that together?

I was cuddled into her and the reminder of the sort of dreams I have set me off and I just started crying. I think I was also really aware that I would be leaving the room and her in about twenty minutes and just didn’t want to be out in the world for two weeks. So, Elle just talked to me in a really soft, soothing voice, and told me what she would say to me if we were continuing the dreams and honestly, I just cried and cried. It was so lovely and so reparative (even though she’s not actually done anything to hurt me!) and made me realise just how many of these conversations I have needed with my mother over the years…but will never have.

As well as this, we made a plan for how to get through the break and how we would check in every couple of days…and we have. The break hasn’t felt great because…it’s a break…but it’s not felt horrendous either. We’ve had a lot of ‘light touch’ contact – I’ve sent her photos, linked her to Monty’s page and shown her what he’s been up to, and had general ‘hi’ type messages – but then on Friday when I got home, I crashed. Totally out of energy. I’ve got a stinking cold. And the wheels came off…but I think I actually have done pretty well given how much crap has been swirling lately to get nearly through the break in one piece!

I sent Elle a message saying ‘it feels very very Friday today and Brian is wreaking havoc’ with a picture from a page I follow and asked for a vibe check. She sent back another totally perfect reply and it’s carried me through the weekend…

Crikey, this is soooo long so I’ll leave it here for now…there is a lot to get through and process…if I can ever get my brain to fucking work.

One more sleep! I really hope I don’t go in and be a distant weirdo tomorrow…which is very possible! x

(I do totally get these two were having an affair btw – and it’s NOT meant this way for me with Elle!)

Endless Trapdoors.

rubberbandsandchewinggum18 Comments

I wish I could say that things were on the up and that I am feeling much better than I did in my last post but, if anything, things are feeling worse. Worse? How can it be worse than that?! I have no idea, but it is how it is. Believe me when I say I am sick of this shit now. Like I am so fucking over it – and yet I have no idea how to get out of it. I mean I am doing the ‘things’: self-care galore (who knew that was a thing for me?!), therapy, (trying to) sleep, doing only the bare essentials in order to keep things running and yet it is still TOO MUCH. Like it’s all TOO HARD now. I just can’t seem to catch my breath at all and am running on fumes.

I told Elle, this week, that my current ‘life’ is easy in comparison to how things were last (academic) year. She assured me that it didn’t sound easy. But then I guess the difference back then was that I wasn’t in this emotional state. My day-to-day life was insanely busy and challenging but I could pull it out the bag because I felt ok in myself – or as close to ok as I have ever felt. The reason things feel so impossible, and exhausting now, is because the floor has fallen out from beneath me. I mistakenly thought I was standing on solid ground with Anita, yet I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It feels like she’d collected all the parts of me together, the ones that had just endured an earthquake when we met #tickgate, wrapped her arms around them (literally), made them believe they were safe enough to rest, that it was possible to rely on someone and trust them, and then suddenly she pushed me headlong into the basement of a haunted house and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, set fire to the building, and walked away. It’s so jarring it’s not even funny.

I have to give myself some credit – I seem to have a tremendous skill for scrabbling round in the dark looking for the light and a way up and out, and instead alighting on unexpected/concealed trapdoors, falling through them, and landing face first in yet another pitch-black room with no ladder or way out. I honestly thought I had hit ‘bottom’ in June when everything ended with Anita. Like I surely must’ve been in the core of the fucking earth at that point…or hell… but, apparently not!

When I said goodbye to Anita, I knew immediately that I needed to get out of that dark place before I either burnt alive or starved to death which is why I quickly sought out Hannah. I did this despite every fibre of my body telling me it was probably better to perish in the basement rather than try and escape…and perhaps I was right, the basement level one would have been the better option because look how that worked out – another fucking trapdoor! Eek.

I keep unlocking new depths of shit and I honestly feel like some poor character in a glitching video game. I keep respawning, although I feel like I am missing the key bits of kit I need each time – like my armour – or at least a bloody torch! I know I need to find a way out and I’m trying so fucking hard and yet, over and over I find myself further down in the deep dark depths. I do wonder how long this can go on for? There’s only so long you can run on empty before everything grinds to a halt. Characters only have so many hearts to lose before it’s GAME OVER.  

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I am not a gamer so that feels like a really random analogy to have made. Anyway, what I am really trying to say is there has to be another way right? Like maybe rather than trying to climb the walls hoping to find the hole to get back up and out a million times perhaps there needs to be a different strategy. And I think I know what the strategy is but it’s fucking scary option which is why I keep trying to do this all by myself. Like there is a bit of safety in the narrative, ‘Noone can help me but me’…only I am not doing an especially wonderful job of helping me right now.

Elle asked me what the major sources of stress in my life are this week. Ummm. So…what did I answer, do you think? Like what is the one thing that is really making EVERYTHING else feel totally impossible right now?…You’d be seriously out of pocket if you’d placed your bet on ‘the ending with Anita and the fallout of all that it’s dredged up from the trauma vault #motherwound’

Nope. I didn’t say that because, you know, that would be far too fucking straightforward wouldn’t it?

In a stroke of avoidant genius I said, ‘myself’.

Which is true isn’t it? I am the major source of stress in my life. Because all the things that are stressing me out are, in part, down to me. It’s my wonky brain that holds onto shit like my life depends on it. I allow these things to stress me out. I put myself in situations that cause me stress. And even this ‘stuck in the bowels of hell drowning in the depths of depression’ situation isn’t being helped by me, really… like I know I am falling down the fucking holes over and over and when someone is seemingly offering me their hand to try and find a way through it, I don’t take it. I don’t trust it.

Awesome work RB.

Good job.

Slow fucking clap.

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To be fair, though, I’m not surprised there are parts of me working really hard to keep me safe from ‘help’ after what ‘help’ has looked like over the years. I sometimes wonder if Elle knows that I am taking us both as far away from the path that we need to be on as is humanly possible in our sessions because there are so many paths that appear to be ‘the path’. Everywhere we go there’s uneven ground, deep bog (oh my god I love the word bog!) brambles, and probably a troll hiding under a bridge ready to jump out, so it looks about right for the therapy room.

I guess you could argue that eventually all the paths will lead to the same place in the end, but these random detours, whilst not completely irrelevant, aren’t doing a lot for my ability to cope with the week or my feelings of isolation and disconnection. Being in hiding means I can control what is going on to an extent – like I am not going to suddenly burst into tears and embarrass myself because I have everything sewn up so tight…or should I say, the parts that need to be in that room are gagged and bound behind the couch.

I read over my last post before starting this one and I was struck by this bit:

I feel absolutely broken by this…and it feels like there is nowhere to put it down to breathe. And the longer I don’t get ‘help’ with it the more shame and embarrassment I attach to what’s happened. Like the longer the topic is avoided the more I feel like it’s something that makes me seem weird or too much. Basically, the Inner Critic is starting to get vocal, and I really don’t need that.

Ouch.

Fucking true, though.

That critical voice has got louder and louder these last few weeks and as much as I know it’s trying to keep me safe – my dysfunctional protector in rusty armour – I could seriously do without it. I know I am on dodgy ground…bog… ha!… when the Critic is running free.

And then my absolute favourite thing started happening. The dreams. Fucking loads of them again. Now we really are in the shit…bog. Honestly, it’s exhausting being so tired, trying to sleep, and then finally getting to sleep and being pummelled repeatedly every night. The icing on the cake was last Friday night, though. It began with a fairly run of the mill anxiety dream involving Elle…this is the first time she’s come into my sleep but it’s not like ‘therapy’ dreams haven’t been a thing over the years and tbh this one was nothing like some of the horrors I have had! Excuse the condensed style, I shoved it all on the notes page on my phone as I woke up so I wouldn’t forget:

Running with no shoes in woods in pants and a vest- it’s raining – I’m cold but have to keep going-I run past a group of people well-dressed in expensive wet weather gear and good boots -as I run past I hear Elle’s voice coming from the group, “Oh my god, that’s one of my clients- what a fucking state!”

I mean, it’s not that big a deal. I can see that it’s all about being exposed and about how others who seem to have their shit together (dressed for the weather) perceive me. The painful bit was hearing Elle’s mockery when I had run past. Like I hadn’t seen her at all, but when she thought I couldn’t hear her she was mean, and not only that, clearly didn’t think that maybe there was something wrong and instead chose to be horrid based on her perception of what she saw – I wasn’t wanting to be running with no shoes and in next to nothing! This dream reminds me a bit of a dream I had years ago with Em in and her wearing a raincoat in the therapy room as if it would protect her from my storm.

There’s a part of me wondering ‘why do I care what she thinks anyway?’ I thought I had got to a point in my life where I really couldn’t care less about other people’s opinion of me – or perhaps not quite that, but I certainly give much less of a shit about this kind of thing than I used to (and that’s been hard won, I can tell you).

So why is this different? I guess in the wider world people might form an opinion but not really know ‘me’, so I just let them get on with that…but therapy – well it’s a bit different, isn’t it? We expose all of ourselves: the most vulnerable bits, the most shame-filled bits, the weird bits, and the whole point of it is about being seen, known, and accepted by someone else so that we can see, know, and accept ourselves. So, when the vulnerable parts are ‘rejected’ by that person we have trusted with the most delicate and fragile bits of ourselves stuff – it feels massive. Being wholly known and then to be thrown into the basement on repeat is fucking shit…and so I understand why this feels such a massive issue right now. I am sick of the fucking basement.

I am utterly crap a navigating my way through the dark.

Anyway, I didn’t think much on this dream because when I went back to sleep another one happened and OH MY FUCKING GOD!:

I give birth to a massively premature baby in the toilets of an airport terminal. It’s absolutely tiny – size of my hand. 

The airport is huge, white, light, reasonably quiet but also completely useless as there’s no facilities or shops- I guess it’s like a vacuum. The plane I have to get is cancelled but I can’t not go to wherever it was (even though I wanted to stay behind) so am offered a reroute on another flight. I am concerned if I fly out on the reroute I won’t be able to get home on my original flight…I don’t feel like I have a choice, though. 

Whilst I’m trying to sort this my dad shows up (?) and has taken my baby but I don’t know where. I start panicking and trying to find it like a crazed lunatic. 

My plane is about to leave and I discover there are only two seats booked-what would I do with the baby who doesn’t have a passport? 

I finally find my dad and ask where the baby is and he says he’s put in daycare because it can’t come with us. I am furious. I need to feed it or it’ll die. I can’t go away for a week on holiday! 

He’s taken it to somewhere next to a run down shopping centre. I open the door and have to go down loads of winding corridors, dark, narrow, crap carpet- like not been touched since the 80s. I eventually arrive at what looks like a busy doctors waiting room- not day care. It’s really gloomy and no staff. It’s packed with people everywhere looking totally depressed. 

I’m really aware of being massively under pressure and feeling panicked and overwhelmed. I scream “Where’s my baby?!” at the empty reception desk and someone pops out from under the desk and says it’s in a room behind her unattended. 

I find it and it’s dirty and hungry. I ask if my dad left it a change bag, nappies, clothes etc – nope. I am so angry that he’d think this was an ok place to leave a newborn and do absolutely nothing to make sure it was safe or provided for. I realise I have no money, am bleeding heavily from giving birth, and am totally panicked now and feel like I’m going to cry. 

The woman at the desk says she’ll look after the baby whilst I go find supplies in the playroom. Like everywhere else it’s grim, dirty, broken toys, torn books, totally neglected, and strangely, there’s noone in there (probably because is so crap).  I find a box meant for nappy changes under a chair and it’s empty. Get back to the reception and ask where my baby is and the woman says she has wrapped it up safely and put it in a box. 

I get to it and can’t find it because it’s been completely smothered, face covered etc. I desperately peel away the layers round its face and it’s dead. Try to do CPR but there’s no chance. “You’ve killed my baby” I cry. 

I mean wow – right? That’s a big one. There’s such a lot I can pick out from that. But to go really simple with it -it’s all about my inner child and what’s happened with Anita and what’s happening with the therapy now.

I felt absolutely distraught when I woke up from this one and it’s stayed with me. The baby was so tiny and vulnerable – it wasn’t ready to be born, or in a safe environment for that to happen, then no one in the dream cares for it properly (story of my fucking life!) – even the person I trusted most in the world (my dad)- and in trying to sort things out and being so consumed with figuring out what to do and how to fly, Adult me let go of caring for it and then it’s too late. It’s dead. Mind you I am not in a particularly great state – bleeding out. I think we both could have done with a hospital and some professional help. But this is kind of what’s happening… really? Yeah… bear with me!

I think the cancelled plane symbolises what’s happened with Anita. The journey I thought I was going on just isn’t going to happen now and the reroute isn’t going to be easy or how I thought it would be either, even if I end up at the same destination eventually.

There’s certainly a part of me that is reluctant to get on Elle’s plane because I know that means I’ll never get back to Anita…but Anita’s plane is gone, it’s cancelled, and I cannot stay in that airport that’s completely barren and unhelpful because I have to go somewhere because I have some serious problems, and I have a really vulnerable self to keep alive… but then that part doesn’t seem to have a place on the plane so that’s a nightmare.

I think the biggest worry I must have, then, is that getting on Elle’s plane means I need to leave the most vulnerable part of me behind. It must feel on some level somewhere in my brain that the child parts of me can’t go on this flight or into this therapy and instead that part of me will end up stuck back where it originally came from in the 80s and die there in a place that is completely unsuitable for a child and where there is nothing but neglect. I don’t like the sound of that much.

But there just doesn’t seem to be any place for that baby, or by extension any of those really vulnerable child parts I’ve been working with in the therapy with Anita. And I am really conscious of this – I can feel how fucking distraught that young part of me is, and how much need there is. Like I am really aware of how much care that little one needs and yet no matter how I try I can’t seem to find the resources I need to keep it safe or alive.

And then there’s the part about feeling like I can’t go away for a week in the state I am in. Well, it’s not me going away, actually, it’s Elle. She’s got a break coming up and I thought that was ok…but obviously on a level it’s not. We all know how much I love therapy breaks!

So I guess this is why I am so fucking exhausted. I am perpetually searching for safety and help in what feels like a life-or-death situation… at least that’s the reality for my internal world. And all the while I am trying to keep up the act of being a capable and coping adult in my day-to-day life. That’s getting increasingly difficult to do and I can see my spinning plates are starting to fall off the poles and are smashing on the floor. I can’t do anything about it – there’s too many fucking plates. How on earth have I got so many fucking plates anyway?! Maybe I just need to lean into it and reframe it as a Greek wedding and celebrate the shattering of all that I thought I had to hold up. You know what I am like though, I’ll cut my feet on the shards as I try and walk away.

Anyway, back to the point…

I know that the therapy with Elle will never be anything like what I had with Anita – I wouldn’t want it to be, and I can’t replicate how it was. However, I really do need to grieve what I have lost because what I have lost is massive. It’s not just a person, it’s the sense of feeling safe and held and like my nervous system wasn’t completely fucked. It’s the also coming to terms with the fact that the person I trusted above all others has discarded me. That dead baby in the box feels really relatable.

I hate it. I hate how this feels. I hate that I seem to be unable to make any of this any better for myself and probably most of all I hate that despite what she’s done and how badly this has all been left, I just really wish that I could see Anita, sink into one of her long cuddles, listen to some stories and hear her steady heartbeat, and fall asleep for an hour.

My whole system is so dysregulated that I can’t find any sense of peace, or relaxation, or safety anywhere now, because it was with Anita that I found all that. The saddest thing is I was starting to be able to internalise that felt sense of safety and take it out into the wider world…but then the basement happened and here I am and I can’t tap into it at all because every time I bring that space with A to mind my stomach goes tight, I feel sick, and tears prick in my eyes. I can’t even begin to explain how massive a loss this has been but I feel it in my soul.

Fuck. Will someone please just hold my hand?

British Invasion Love GIF by The Zombies - Find & Share on GIPHY

This song… man… I came across KT Tunstall almost twenty years ago, now, and Through The Dark couldn’t be more relevant. Tbh I should have just posted this and the lyrics. It says it all.

Dreaming Of My Therapist… Again

rubberbandsandchewinggum18 Comments

The last few weeks in therapy have been absolutely incredible/transformational (sorry if I sound like a broken record here!) and I absolutely plan to write about what’s going on in a few password protected posts soon – but before that happens I need some time to really process it all properly with A.

This, as you’ll see, is not a protected post. I’ve just woken up from the most winding, random, emotionally-charged therapy dream and whilst it’s fresh I think I’ll write about it here before I forget it – although I don’t think I’ll forget that all too familiar feeling of sadness and shame it’s left me with. I definitely need to take it to session tomorrow because I am still jangling inside even though I know it’s just my brain having a good sort out!

I seem to have a thing about dreaming about my therapist/s don’t I? I think over the years I have written about handful of them here. In fact, I am struggling to think of a title that isn’t the same as all the others! Why am I writing about dreams again? Well, I’ve noticed that the blog posts that seem to get the most traction here are the ones about ‘dreaming of my therapist’, ‘touch in therapy’ , ‘eye contact’ and ‘ruptures’ which just goes to show that these things concern a lot of us in therapy. It’s not really surprising that we process relational stuff in our dreams and that this crops up in the form of our therapists with whom we are processing our attachment issues.

I used to feel huge amounts of shame when I’d have these BIG dreams and keep quiet about them for weeks and months on end letting the feelings steadily eat away at me – but this was because Em never really knew how to handle what I was saying. I remember the time I finally told her that I dreamt she’d violently thrown my three-year-old son out the back of an ambulance that was parked on her drive so that he injured himself as he landed on the concrete. She’d stepped over him and gone back into her house and shut the door on us both. I was left holding him unconscious in my arms …fuck me why did I not listen to what my mind was trying to show me then – talk about a clear message about my inner child!!

She was so distant, so unmoved, so analytical ‘what does this episode remind you of?’ Being curious about dream content is fine and useful, but sometimes when my mind is serving me up trauma 101 I just really need to hear, ‘that sounds really upsetting and I am sorry that I hurt you in the dream.  Can we look at the feelings that have come up for you around this? I wonder what your dream is trying to tell us?’

It’s really not easy unpicking upsetting dreams ABOUT your therapist WITH your therapist – especially when you’re still reeling from feeling rejected or abandoned and so it’s really important that a sense of safety is established first. Anita is really good at this – thank god. But it’s so alien after years of feeling so much shame if Em even made it into a dream and often not saying anything because it would just pour salt in the wound.

It’s been a little while since Anita has made it into my dreams – in fact I think it’s got to be back in June or something, when we were in the thick of lockdown and online therapy sessions. I was feeling unsettled and was caught up in a panic, worrying about the various ways that she would abandon me and tell me she couldn’t work with me anymore. God the abandonment narrative never gets old does it?!

I’ve found that taking these hard dreams to A has been really helpful. We work through them and the underlying fear (being left/abandoned or being too much) and it really seems to help solidify the relationship and help build trust, because of course my brain is replaying long-standing fears and imagining the worst that could happen in the relationship in these dreams. Anita doesn’t have a problem with giving reassurance (remember how Em wouldn’t AT ALL?) and even though it takes a lot (A LOT!) of repetition what she is saying IS starting to go in a little bit. At least part of me is starting to believe that she’s not planning on running off into the sunset screaming ‘fucking leave me alone you freak!’.

They say that it takes the brain thousands of repetitions of an action in order to make a new neural pathway so it’s going to take a lot of ‘I care about you, I am not going anywhere, and I love you’ for it to really stick and start create its own track in my brain. Oh help!… imagine that also needing to happen for all the different parts of me – because it’s not always the same part present that hears the affirmations!

ARRRGHHHH!

For the longest time it has felt like I get told these lovely things and they almost bounce off me, or slip through my fingers and are suddenly gone. K said to me the other day that there’s a part that really struggles to take in love and care, like that part literally has no idea what to do with it, and she’s so right. I so desperately want to find a place inside myself to put this care and love because now that I am finally experiencing what has been lacking my whole frigging life I don’t want it to disappear. And yet I have nowhere to store it…which is hilarious because there feels like an endless black hole in my heart area that needs filling! Ugh.   

Anyway, back to dreams – recently, I had a dream about Em (yeah, that relationship and its ending is still giving me the occasional nightmare even 9 months down the line) that affected me so badly that I really couldn’t hold myself together at all. I forewarned A in a text before my session about what had happened and what I needed in the session from her – basically to stay close to me so I didn’t dissociate.  

No surprises that A was phenomenal that day – just completely saw what I needed – and that’s where the passworded posts will begin. To have that horrible sense of feeling rejected and abandoned when it’s completely live and unfiltered, witnessed by A felt hard, but allowing that pain and young stuff, to be truly seen by A was what triggered to move into this new therapeutic space we are now in. The level of emotional intimacy has ramped up and the most vulnerable parts are finally getting seen, held, and contained which is both great and fucking terrifying.

After several really wonderful holding sessions this month where the young parts have been seen and worked with, the untrusting, angry, self-loathing critical part who is pickled in shame turned up to therapy on Monday and it was utterly horrendous. I completely shut down. My body language was so closed, knees pulled up into my body, head down, completely rigid. I couldn’t look at A at all. The longer I was in the room the harder it got. A was so kind, consistent, and present and it just made things worse (for a bit!).

Every time she asked a question or said something kind, I wanted to scream at her to leave me alone. I did tell her to ‘shut up’ at one point! Eek. I couldn’t bear to be seen and if I could have curled up in a ball and hidden from her view I would have. Anita believes in letting the protective defensive parts have their say, and to be in the space, but also talks to them and understands the situation enough that she is able to disarm them a bit. In the end my defences shattered and that protector backed down and the vulnerable that feels so much shame came out but again was met with exactly what it needs.

Anyway, all that’s for the other posts but I’m not surprised that I had the dream I had this morning having had the voice that says, ‘You’re too needy. This isn’t real. This isn’t safe. She’ll realise she’s made a mistake and leave soon’ being so present on Monday.

The dream:

I was due to see Anita for a therapy session at the end of the day. She lived at the top of a very long, steep hill, and for some reason I had parked at the bottom of the hill. I walked up the tree lined street. It was heading towards sunset and the view back down the road was lovely. I thought I was going to be late and so started running up the remainder of the hill – I was exhausted by the time I reached the house!

The house was built into a hill (I used to live somewhere like this when I was a teen) – it was an upside-down house with the living room and kitchen upstairs and there were steps spiralling round the outside of the property to get to the front door at the top. There was a large veranda off the back and when I arrived there was a village gathering going on – like a ‘bring and share’ sort of thing with heaps of people milling around chatting. There was a long table laid out and I was invited to sit down but A wasn’t there. I was totally confused. I didn’t feel like I should be there but people insisted that I stay and it was fine that A had said I would be there. I felt awkward and embarrassed.

People kept talking to me and I got on fine, cue my chameleon skills, but inside I was wondering what the fuck was going on. I looked around and noticed that Anita was sitting at the far end of the table on the corner about two seats down from me. When I saw her, I got the absolute jealous rage! There was a friend of mine (not someone I actually know in real life) who was about 17 sitting perched on her lap and laughing her head off. She seemed really confident and happy and just one of those people that seem to have it all. A and this girl clearly had a deep relationship and I felt so unbelievably angry.

I had no idea that they knew each other and was furious that this person, my friend, seemed to be so connected to A, that it was so easy for them both to laugh and joke and be close. I got up quietly from the table, glanced again at A – we made eye contact and I could feel the tears coming. I quickly left the house and ran off down the hill. I felt so sad but also massively abandoned, too. I didn’t want to have some crap second rate pretend relationship with Anita when clearly my friend didn’t.

There was no reason I should know about my friend knowing A but I didn’t feel like I could trust Anita anymore because she’d let me walk into that situation. Surely, she must know that would hurt me. I ran out of energy and the rage dissipated. I sat down on someone’s front lawn at the bottom of the hill under a tree and just sobbed like my heart was breaking. I felt so sad that yet again things were going to shit with someone I care about – someone I love -there was no way I could continue to see A if this other girl was involved.

Anita came walking down the road and sat down beside me. She tried to comfort me but I just couldn’t hear what she was saying. I couldn’t feel it. I was so shutdown. I needed to protect myself from more hurt. She handed me some old pieces of paper and pictures and explained to me that she was still with me and that nothing had changed and to read these things she’d given me and I’d see that our relationship was important to her, that the relationship she had with the girl was different but not more important. I felt slightly better but I still hurt. I knew it wasn’t rational but I felt like I had lost everything.

A neighbour called to Anita from across the street and she went to over to see them. The 17-year-old friend came towards me and sat down. I said, ‘I didn’t know you knew Anita?’ and the girl told me she’d know A for years and that they were really close. She said that A was good at making clients feel special but it’s just a game, that’s her job, it’s not real, none of it is real. She pointed at the pieces of paper that A had given me and said ‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen all those before’. I couldn’t contain my sadness and got up, leaving the papers behind me and ran off again. I had to get away.

Anita saw me go and shouted after me, but I didn’t look back and just kept running. I ended up in a school, in a changing room cubicle and sat with my feet up on the bench so that I couldn’t be seen by anyone walking by outside. I opened my eyes and there was a little girl in there with me, maybe four years old, in a grey pinafore dress. She was clearly lost and looked really sad. I asked her name and she couldn’t speak. I asked her if she was lost and she nodded. I sat her next to me and told her that it would be ok although I didn’t really believe it either for her or me.

At that moment I heard Anita and the 17-year-old enter the changing room. I put my finger to my lips and gestured for the little girl to be quiet. I could hear Anita talking about me, ‘She’s intelligent but she’s an emotional wreck and really so needy, I’ve never come across anyone like her. How do you know her and why on earth would you spend time with her?’ And the girl said that we went to college together and agreed that I was a bit strange but nice enough.

I felt really betrayed hearing Anita talking about me to this other person in this way and just sat there stunned. The little girl’s shoe poked out from under the door and Anita and the 17-year-old knocked and I had to open it. I looked up at Anita and burst into tears and the little girl ran into the arms of the 17-year-old – they were sisters.

I don’t remember how it ended but man…. I have woken up really exhausted. I feel like I have done an emotional workout before the day has even begun and whilst adult me knows that none of it is real there’s that horrible hangover that just niggles in the background ‘what if?’.

So, there we are. Hopefully I won’t go into shutdown tomorrow and can actually just see that this is ‘the fear’ doing its thing.

Honestly, my poor little brain needs a rest! Remind me why I do this to myself!! x

Dreaming About Therapy (again).

rubberbandsandchewinggum18 Comments

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This is certainly not the first (and no doubt won’t be the last) time I have written/will write about dreaming about my therapist/therapy on this blog (see here and here for other posts).

My brain is funny (not haha more… strange) where dreams are concerned; sometimes I go long spells without dreaming at all: well, I know we actually all dream most of the time, what I mean is that there are extended periods of time when I don’t remember my dreams when I wake up. This directly contrasts with the other times when it’s like being in the most vivid drama/horror night after night and it feels like every minute I am asleep I am caught up in heavy duty emotional stuff that I cannot forget when I wake no matter how I try. It all seems so real that I wake up and am not always sure for a minute or two if what’s happened was real or not.

I guess sometimes my brain is more open to processing stuff than others? Or maybe sometimes I’m just so distressed my brain goes on the rampage. I dunno.

When I completed the first 16 months of therapy with my T back in 2013 I had terrible nightmares every single night for six weeks afterwards- and not just one or two, but multiple nightmares every night. They were worse, even, than when my dad died (and they were frigging horrific: dead bodies hanging off light fittings and bodies in bin bags). Why am I not surprised? – losing her felt like a bereavement.

I wasn’t ready for the therapy to end but there was no choice. I was in a bad place and even though my T had managed to get a four month extension to the therapy (was meant to be 12 months time-limited therapy on the NHS) it still wasn’t enough…hence the fact we are now another separate 27 months down the line totalling 43 months of therapy so far! It’s hardly surprising, back then, that without my therapist my brain went into some kind of meltdown throwing up horrors night after night.

Then one night, after all those weeks of stressful sleep and trying to manage the horrible ache of attachment pain (although I didn’t really know what it was at the time) during the days, I dreamt I was swimming, in the dark, in a freezing cold reservoir near where I live. I’d had enough. I was tired. I felt defeated. I decided to put my face down in the water, stop swimming, and drown myself. I couldn’t go on any longer. I wasn’t upset. I just didn’t have any energy to keep swimming or fighting. I felt calm/numb as I stopped swimming and waited to drown (It’s a bit like how I feel when I have self harmed: numb and resigned to the situation rather than bubbling with emotion and angst). Just as I felt myself losing consciousness I was grabbed by someone and pulled up and out of the water and into a boat. The person wrapped a heavy blanket around me and held me close to them, rocking me gently, as I shivered. The person kissed the top of my head and gently said, ‘you don’t need to do this to yourself anymore, you are safe now’, that person was my therapist.

What a dream to end the nightmares!

I didn’t have a single memorable dream for the next three years after that one. I literally went from dream overload to total night time blackout…until I started therapy with her privately in 2016! I still missed my therapist terribly in the intervening period between finishing sessions in 2013 and going back to her in 2016 but at least the nightmares/dreams were gone and that made things a bit more bearable…you know, in amongst having a baby and getting diagnosed with cancer when he was 7 months old! The nightmares had stopped but life became a bit of a frigging nightmare.

When things feel bad, that dream from 2013 sometimes comes to mind (like today!) and I find it really comforting. Yeah, sure, it’s not exactly a ‘having a hot chocolate on the sofa and getting a cuddle’ type dream (like my brain would ever serve me up something like that anyway!!) but I can really physically feel that care and safety when I imagine that scene in the boat – even though it was only a dream and I was basically trying to kill myself beforehand. I think when she asks me to try and imagine a felt sense of safety, in sessions, I perhaps should try and hook into this because I feel so very safe when she is holding me in that part of the dream.

It sounds dumb but this dream has only just come back into my mind and it has never occurred to me to use this as a stimulus before. Ha. Hurrah for blogging and dredging shit up out the recesses of my mind.

Anyway. Dreams! It’s been a while since I have been ‘plagued’ by them and that really is the correct word for it right now. I have one or two memorable dreams about my T every couple of weeks but the dreams that were so rampant and regular last Christmas break have largely settled down.

Sadly, the dreams I have that involve my T, these days, are usually about her rejecting me or physically pushing me away when I try and get close to her which I find really upsetting. I could certainly use another being pulled out the water and held tightly moment!

Since moving from one therapy session per week to two a couple of weeks ago I guess it was to be expected that my brain would fire up again and try and process stuff that’s been activated in the sessions in my sleep.

To be honest I can’t remember a lot of the detail about the sessions this week. Monday was ok-ish, I think, with a big fat bit of dissociation thrown in when she let me about the next set of therapy breaks!!!!!! (We haven’t even talked about – recovered from-  the summer break yet FFS!). After really struggling to talk after the ‘here’s my breaks’ and her handing over of the yellow post-it note (honestly hate fucking yellow post-its now!) with about ten minutes to go I got a really strong memory that I have of being about five years old. It was like I stuck in that moment. I was there. I didn’t speak for quite some time although I know my T was trying to talk to me.

I eventually told her ‘I feel like I am stuck in a field’ and went on to describe a memory of having been sledging with my dad and my mum standing and watching us before having to take my mum to the train so she could go to university for the week. My dad had said we could go back to do more sledging once we’d dropped my mum off as we were having a great time but we couldn’t miss the train. The place we had been sledging was in a valley and in the valley the train tracks ran about two hundred metres away.

I, clear as day, remember standing in the snow with my dad and seeing the train disappear up the track. My mum was on the train. I didn’t cry. I didn’t do anything. I carried on sledging knowing she was now gone for the next five nights. I think most of the goodbyes/being left resulted in me feeling a kind of numbness…but now, as these memories creep back into my consciousness I feel absolutely distraught but also agonisingly empty. Why did she always go? How could she leave every week for six years? Why would you do that?

That young part was having a meltdown about always being left and told T that ‘it’s just too much’ at the end of Monday’s session. She was really kind and validating and said it must have been unbearable being so young and repeatedly being left and that she understood how hard any separation is and even endings (of sessions) can be impossibly difficult. I nodded. The session was up…as it always is just at the time stuff comes up! I didn’t make the link at the time – I was too caught up in the feelings – but on reflection this whole thing/memory was triggered by being told about the next therapy breaks.

Have I mentioned I am not a fan of therapy breaks?!

The week between sessions (thank god it’s only 4 days now) was pretty ropey in that I was feeling both really angry at everyone (grrrr!) but also really emotionally vulnerable and needy. The attachment pain was stuck firmly in my stomach and I felt like I wanted to reach out to my therapist (of course!). I didn’t. And, actually, I’ll say this about the two sessions a week – I feel way more able to hold onto things in the time between sessions than when I had to go a whole week. Don’t get me wrong, Wednesdays are still really really tough (my friend calls them ‘woeful Wednesdays’!) and I have to be really firm with myself in order not to send my T a message.

This week all I wanted to do was text her ‘I love you’. That has been the overriding feeling I have had this week. That young five year old part that came out in session on Monday really just wants her mummy.

Even if mummy doesn’t exist…

Anyway, I had heaps and heaps of dreams during this last week in which I did, in fact, tell my T that I love her only to be met each time with her disgust and rejection. It’s god awful dreaming this stuff because it feels so real. It’s these kinds of dreams that make it feel near impossible to tell my therapist what I am feeling when powerful loving feelings come up. The idea of her being repulsed by my feelings towards her and shaming me, and then rejecting me makes me want to cry.

I literally cannot bear the idea of that becoming a reality and so can never tell her face-to-face exactly what I am burning to say. It was hard enough telling her “I don’t want you to go away”   or ‘I really missed you; five weeks is a really long time’ in session so to say out loud ‘I really care about you and you are important to me – I love you’ feels almost impossible.  I’d like to think I would get there one day – and of course she’s read it in words enough times – but verbally expressing it? …after Friday’s Skype session I do wonder if I’ll ever be able to say it!

I had decided that given how upsetting the dreams had been since Monday I would use the Skype call on Friday to address some of what I was feeling and maybe also talk about how the summer break had been as well as the impact of her telling me the next break dates last session. I dragged my duvet downstairs (I was both freezing cold and in need of some sense of feeling held) and dialled in. I don’t know who the fuck was on the call but it wasn’t me – or at least it was, but the not the one that needs therapy.

It was ridiculous. I just moaned about nothing stuff in my day-to-day life. I could’ve rung a friend to have this conversation. It’s so frustrating when this happens. I don’t know if after the young part being so present on Monday that a kind of protector part stepped up on Friday to stop the vulnerability…whatever the case, I am getting sick of this happening. I don’t want to waste my time with my T and that’s exactly what it is when I do this. I can’t even stop myself from doing it – I just get off the call or finish the session and think ‘What the actual fuck happened there?’

I think the worst thing about these kinds of sessions is how everything starts swirling about afterwards. The young parts feel desperate and then the dreams ramp up another notch. I’ve had some crackers this weekend: sinking boats, forced surgeries in order to see my therapist, physical abuse, but the best of last night was coming face to face with a sodding great orange cobra in the therapy room and not being able to move. Joy! Mind you give me a cobra and shitting my pants over being told to go away and that I’m an embarrassment any day!

I am hoping for a peaceful night tonight – but hey, who knows! As I have said before:

‘To sleep, perchance to dream’…but please, God, not about my therapist!

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Why do I always dream about my therapist when we are on a therapy break?

rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments

Just like clockwork, three days into the Christmas therapy break, my therapy/therapist dreams kicked in.  I wrote at length a while ago about dreams and how much dreams of my therapist can knock me for six.

I feel compelled to write on this topic again now because my sleep is filled with her again… I need to get this stuff out my system because it is still another 12 days until my next therapy session and part of me needs to process/let out what’s going on before I amass a catalogue of dreams and end up sitting down first session back and saying….‘So, err, I dreamt about you every night for two weeks…’ 

I wonder, is that more or less weird than sitting down after last year’s three week Christmas break and the first words out my mouth being, ‘Do you think I have BPD?’ I’m sure she’d sit there completely un-phased if I went in and told her she was repeatedly in my dreams during the break but there is a bit of me that always feels like it’s a bit creepy telling my therapist I have dreamt about her … and it’s even more cringeworthy if it’s happening night after night.

So often what comes up in dreams about my therapist are the anxieties I am feeling in the therapeutic relationship and so it is unsurprising that these dreams tend to increase in frequency during breaks when I can’t see her, or at times when I feel unsettled in the relationship, or there has been some kind of rupture.

These recent dreams seem, again, to be tapping into the underlying (ok surface level!) worries I am feeling about being on Christmas break and issues in the therapeutic relationship, mainly: feeling like I am unimportant to her and that the connection is broken; feeling angry about her not caring about me and that she’s abandoned/rejected me; and despite all this, still desperately craving closeness and proximity to her, wanting to repair the damage.

It’s all about conflicting feelings and emotions. What a surprise!

For the past three nights I have had incredibly detailed dreams about, and involving, my therapist.  There is a little part of me that is glad to ‘see her’ in my dreams because I find it so hard to hang onto any sense of her actually being out there in the real world during a break. I so easily lose my sense of her being safe and ‘there’ because on breaks she is not there. It’s long been one of my frustrations, being unable to reach out to her between sessions and check-in and try and maintain the sense of the relationship being sound.

Unfortunately, I start to emotionally wobble quite soon into any kind of disruption in therapy, and the dreams I have about my therapist aren’t usually massively warm and fuzzy. They don’t really involve lots of nurturing, love, and holding (which is what I would love my mind to serve me up in my sleep). It’s usually feelings of abandonment, rejection, and loss that come to the fore and leave me with a killer dream hangover for days (and sometimes weeks) afterwards. Sigh!

Mind you, having said all that, perhaps I should mention that I did have my first erotic dream about my therapist a couple of weeks ago (which after six years I think has been some time coming!) and that sent me through a completely different set of emotions – obviously. I won’t lie, it was a great/positive sexual experience (it wasn’t scary or threatening or pressured) but the moment I woke up I was flooded with shame and embarrassment, as well as confusion about it.

Although I am gay, and my therapist is a woman, I have never really thought of her ‘in that way’! She is attractive, definitely, and I have always had a thing for older women (oh but of course!), but for me, there’s been a shit tonne of maternal transference and so I have never consciously/unconsciously thought of her in a sexual way….until the other week!

My fantasies involving my therapist have always revolved strongly around being held/cuddled by her and her behaving in a very mothering way towards me. Basically I have wanted her to treat me in the way a mother would (should) treat a young child. (Isn’t it odd that I should feel less embarrassed writing that than saying I had a dream where I slept with her! ha!)

Thinking about it now, I realise the sex dream was really again about trying to get close to her (as so often happens in my dreams), only in a different way. The sexual element, I think, was about a part of me (maybe the adult) finally trusting her, being vulnerable, and allowing her to see part of me that I keep hidden which is kind of what’s been going on in therapy…I mean opening up to her and being vulnerable- not having sex! So although it was a bit ‘argh!’ at the time, in many ways I guess I should see that dream as a positive. I haven’t managed to tell her about that yet, and to be honest I am not sure that I ever will.

Still, back to the current batch of dreams… I know it’s not just me that is currently negotiating the therapy/therapist dreamscape during the Christmas break. Sleeptime for many a therapy client is firing out all kinds of anxiety-ridden dreams. Oh the joy and wonder of breaks eh? I’d be really interested to know just how many people are having therapy dreams right now and how many of those are positive, how many feel full of anxiety and if/how this reflects where people are at in their therapeutic journey.

Anyway, yesterday night’s dream stayed with me all day. I was a fucking pain in the arse all day as a result. Even this morning, I know that I am like a bear with a sore head. I have already been snappy and short. I can’t help it and I can’t blame it on being tired. I just feel so frustrated and sad and all kinds of emotions. The attachment pain stuff has kicked in massively and I feel really awful. It’s ridiculous, really. I should be enjoying the holidays but it is just so difficult when there are various parts of myself missing my therapist and feeling unanchored.

I know some of what I am feeling will be the Christmas hangover coming out. Christmas day was ‘fine’ on the surface, as I knew it would be, but inside I felt a little bit like I was dying. The little ones are always poised and waiting to see if Mummy will see them or acknowledge them. She never does. She never did. If she couldn’t do it when I was in my child’s body then I guess I am expecting too much for her to see beyond the body of a 34 year old woman.

The day wiped me out and I slept until 10:30 yesterday (which is unheard of – but then my wife got up with the kids and I think given the chance I could easily sleep like that everyday!). Christmas when it was just me, my wife, and my kids was lovely but when my mum arrived I could feel something shift inside me. It’s a subtle shift but I am very aware of it now. I become ever so slightly anxious and ever so slightly hopeful….which I know is what happens when I sit down in therapy. I hope that my therapist will ‘see me’ but also anxious that she won’t.

It was civil enough with mum but just not ‘warm’. We chatted for a long while, but not about anything in particular – other people mainly. It was small talk. The ‘real’ things seem to be off limits. Since she said ,‘therapy was for losers’ a couple of months ago (despite knowing I am in therapy and have been on an off for the last decade), I am not really feeling like my mental health is a topic to broach anyway! I mean I guess it’s not a Christmas day topic (why?!) but I don’t know when the, ‘Mum I am really struggling to cope with what it was like when I was younger and it’s really impacting on me even now’ will ever come up.

Anyway, as so often happens all my sadness and feelings of loss and abandonment which clearly originate in my childhood have been fully transferred onto my therapist and our relationship in 2017. I am not grieving my mother’s lack of connection and relationship with me. I don’t want her now. Of course I don’t. I want the person who has given me the closest thing to unconditional love that I have experienced. It is intoxicating to all the younger parts of me and the adult too….but of course that is just a fantasy that needs to be crushed and grieved for too….eventually. Not now, though! Give me time!

This dream is a long one, so feel free to skip:

I was walking alone along the coast path not far from my therapist’s house. A little further along the bay I could see the snowflake card that I had given for Christmas resting on a wall/gatepost. It was as though it had been displayed as an ornament but it was now falling apart and broken in places. It had been left outside, and because it had been raining it had started to disintegrate. Perhaps she hadn’t realised that the card was only made of paper and therefore fragile….or perhaps she didn’t care?

As I walked further up the path I became increasingly angry. I felt sad and disappointed that something I had put thought and effort into, and had bought to symbolise our relationship seemingly meant nothing to her. It was fine to leave it out in the rain.

When I reached where the card was it turned out to be the entrance to a pub but it was also where she lived (?). Part of me wanted to walk on by and ignore her but another part was drawn to see if I could find her. To get to her place I had to walk through the bar which was incredibly busy because it was Boxing Day and up some narrow steps to the door. The door wasn’t locked so I let myself in – there was no one there.

I wandered around the house knowing that I shouldn’t be there but at the same time desperately craving any kind of connection with my therapist in order to try and prove to myself that she did care, didn’t mean to hurt me, and wouldn’t deliberately disregard something that I had given her that demonstrated the feelings I have for her.

The house was really tidy and one of the windows had a window seat and lovely view out over the sea. It wasn’t raining at that point but I could see the snowflake card looking really sorry for itself on the wall below. I decided to lay down and wrapped myself in a blanket that was on the seat and try and take in the space, and by extension, my therapist, but I must’ve fallen asleep.

I woke up to find my therapist kneeling down beside me and gently saying my name. I woke up with a start. I was mortified! She didn’t seem angry that I was there, but feeling exposed  and off guard I immediately launched into an attack on her. I pretty much screamed at her that ‘she didn’t care about me’, that ‘I couldn’t believe that she would so easily disregard something I had given her, something that had taken me time and thought, but moreover something that really showed my feelings toward her’. I said ‘you told me that this card was about love. You know it is. Why would you treat my love like it doesn’t matter?’ I started crying.

She said, she was sorry and that she had put the card outside because it was beautiful so others could see it at Christmas but it had started raining when she was away. She was sorry that it had been damaged and was disappointed too. I petulantly (teen part) said ‘it didn’t matter’. I told her ‘I would never have left it outside’ and it just shows how I much I would value something from her if I had something and proves the lack of balance in the relationship.

I told her I still have every scrap of paper that’s she’s written holiday dates on for me. I said, ‘see how pathetic it is? – how pathetic I am? I hang onto the tiniest part of what you give me to try and sustain the connection. I have to try and make that enough and yet you couldn’t care less about things that clearly mean something, that are given with love’.

She said she understood how I was upset and wondered if there was anything we could do to fix the snowflake. I said ‘look at it, it’s falling apart, I don’t think it could be repaired and even if we could it’s not the fact the snowflake is broken that’s really the issue, it’s that you left it out in the first place, it doesn’t mean anything to you and it is not important to you’.

She told me that it was important to her and that’s why she had put it on display. She said she could see I was upset and asked what could make it better. I wanted to ask for hug. I so badly wanted to feel close to her. I knew that even though that was exactly what I needed I couldn’t ask for it because it was one of her ‘boundaries’. 

Having this thought come into my mind made everything feel even more awful because I felt abandoned and rejected and now couldn’t ask for connection because it was one of her ‘distancing rules’ (boundaries) that I have no say in and it made the anger rise up in me again.

I said ‘I don’t know why I am even here. I just keep hurting myself in one way or another with you. I love you so so much but to you I am completely insignificant. All that happens when I am with you is that I get reminded how unimportant I am to you, and that really hurts. I can’t keep putting myself through this. It physically hurts that you won’t let me close to you and I just can’t bear it anymore.’

Then she said perhaps we could take the card to a dry cleaners and see if it could be mended. I said that was a ridiculous idea, it wasn’t clothing and it couldn’t be mended. I said to stop going on about the card – that she was missing the point. I went outside and brought it in off the wall and put in on her table. All the words I had written had blurred into a watercolour of ink.

I said I needed to go. I didn’t want to go, though. I felt really hurt but I didn’t want to leave because I knew there was a long time until I would see her again and in that time I knew my upset and anger would increase and I may never return to therapy.

She suggested that we could go for a walk along by the sea together and talk things through. I said that I would love that (caving in)  and so we made our way downstairs through the pub which was now empty, and out for a walk.

We walked for a while but I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I still felt angry and upset and I was also aware that I was shutting down because I knew that I would have to leave her again soon. She looked at me and said ‘this has really upset you hasn’t it? You think I don’t care about you and that you don’t matter?’ I couldn’t look at her but nodded. She took hold of my hand and said ‘I am sorry. I really think there’s a lot to work through in this area’.

Then I woke up.

So yeah. Ugh! There we are another detailed version of the same old things. Whilst I know it is just a dream it taps so heavily into all the areas that bother me in the relationship. I have to remind myself when it feels this bad that what’s going on for me is not my therapist’s fault. The dream isn’t real. The issues are real but they aren’t of her making. I have deep-rooted attachment trauma and it’s playing out in this relationship now.

My adult knows (kind of!) that my therapist hasn’t just left me and stopped caring… but there are other parts who are not convinced that this hasn’t happened because this is their experience of what caregivers are like: they leave and they don’t care about me or my needs. I am not on the radar. I am not ‘kept in mind’.

I know my therapist is just a therapist (argh!) but there are parts of me that refuse to see her as anything other than the desperately longed for mother figure they need/ed. I know that the time for those young needs to be met has passed but the youngest parts of me don’t understand this at all because they are frozen back in time where it was possible. They are active in 2017 but they live back in the 80’s and early 90’s and to them there is still hope of things being ok, hope that whacking great mother wound can be filled with ‘her’ love.

Just writing this makes my stomach ache. It’s awful really. I have said this stuff so many times now. And, yet, whilst rationally I TOTALLY get it, I just cannot get accept it emotionally yet. I know that I shouldn’t ‘hope’ for the impossible but I would be lying if I said I didn’t.

I know this is why I am in therapy and why there is still a long way to run with my therapy…but right now, on Christmas break oh my god, it’s so hard! There was a period of time where I didn’t dream at all between 2013-16 (break in therapy) and I could go to bed to get away from things. Now I go to bed in the hope of escaping the emotional torment I feel and it chases me into my dreamworld and plays out there.

As I said a couple of months ago: ‘To sleep, perchance to dream’…but please, God, not about my therapist!

Sleep tight, everyone!

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