holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rejection. Let’s be honest, here, it’s one of the more shit things that we, as humans, encounter. I would hazard to say that it’s a pretty much a universally experienced phenomenon- although, obviously, feelings of rejection might be felt to varying degrees and at varying frequencies by different people over their lifetimes.
Like I say, the chances are that most of us have probably all been rejected at some point in our lives. I reckon it would be pretty hard to navigate the world of relationships without encountering some form of rejection at one time or other. When we are young, we can come across so many rejecting experiences: maybe we didn’t get invited to a birthday party, or someone didn’t want to be our friend at school, or perhaps someone we had feelings for didn’t reciprocate them (we all remember those early heartaches!).
I mean there are literally tonnes of rejections that we can experience over the course of our lives, and they will hurt, but most will only sting for a little while. For example, someone not ‘liking’ your holiday pics on social media won’t be the end of the world, and not succeeding at a job interview will probably be a bit harder – but essentially, we get over these ‘little’ rejections and move on… but there are other rejections and, crikey…they can feel like physical wounding and are much harder to move through and past.
Clearly, I am not here today to talk about a time when I didn’t get to go a to a party when I was five…I’m here for those other BIGGER rejections (and abandonments). The ones that really really hurt us. You know, the ones that cause us such intense pain that it feels almost physical. You know where I am going with this, right?
As you might have realised by now, I’m one of those really unfortunate, sensitive types, who feels rejection acutely – and sadly, seem to have been rejected enough by significant enough people over my lifetime that I have what now feels like an unhealable wound. Every time I think I’m getting somewhere with it, and the blood flow is temporarily stemmed, the person that I trusted to help me mend and heal, rams a fucking great rusty dagger into the heart of it, twists it, and walks away without so much as a backward glance… and I am left haemorrhaging again, bleeding out in agony.
This is the problem with relationships. Anytime we put ourselves out there we are opening ourselves up to possible rejection. Most of us crave connection. We are human after all; we’re built for connection and relationship; we want to belong. But my goodness it’s risky, isn’t it? Being vulnerable and unguarded is what is required to connect and most of us, who have been hurt and rejected in the past, take a long time to let others in. We fear rejection so acutely, and understandably so, because it is soooooo frigging painful. As I’ve said so many times before, healing takes place in relationship but so does wounding…and sometimes it feels like you’re playing Russian Roulette with you heart entering into what’s meant to be a ‘healing’ relationship.
Ultimately, I think rejection has to be seen as a relational injury. I think sometimes, too, and it’s important to acknowledge this, we can feel rejected and it’s not the intention of the other person to reject us – and that makes it all the more complex. However, intentional or not, the person that experiences feelings of rejection is the one that is hurt and left to try and navigate it. The real kicker comes in when we feel rejected but there is no repair… we’re just left holding a world of pain.
It’s no secret, here, that the main reason I am in therapy is because of the #motherwound. I guess this early, and ongoing, rejection is the one I can never get away from and it’s the one that is tapped into each time something goes wrong with a therapist. I let someone in, expose that hideous wounding, and my most vulnerable parts, trust and attach to someone who promises that they won’t hurt me, that they’re not like the last one…and then… when it comes down to it the same pattern keeps repeating in slightly different ways and it’s left me feeling broken and bruised. It’s soul destroying.
I’ve definitely been feeling my teen part a lot this last couple of weeks who always turns to Counting Crows lyrics in her despair and self-loathing, “So much rejection in every connection I make”…and I hear her. Fortunately, Adult me knows it’s not EVERY connection…but it’s enough!
Feeling rejected is horrible. As I say it feels literally, physically painful. It’s not just emotional, is it? It evokes a massive somatic response in the body. Or at least it does for me. I’ve never given the physicality of it much thought – all I know is that I am too fucking familiar with the pain of it and, when I am sobbing face down on my bed, that the only way out is through! The antidote to rejection is connection and yet that, so often, is impossible. As I say, frequently, (in a therapeutic context at least) the person that has done the rejecting has no interest in repair or reconnection. They wash their hands clean, sever the connection, you’re no longer their ‘work’ and you’re left wondering what the hell happened?
Interestingly, I was reading something the other day about rejection… because obviously it’s quite a dominant feeling for me right now (AGAIN) after what’s happened with Em, Anita, and now Hannah. And it turns out that researchers and neurobiologists have discovered that we actually do experience rejection in the same way as physical pain. Apparently, rejection triggers a response that travels down the same neuro pathways as physical pain…so that’s why it hurts so fucking much! We’re not all nutters who are too sensitive, then!
That’s something at least!
Another thing about rejection that I find so thoroughly soul destroying is what it does to our relationship with ourselves. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t know about you, but every time I get hurt/rejected my default response is not to be gentle with myself and give myself the ‘it’s not me’ self-talk, far from it! Rejection triggers my Inner Critic who goes on a mission to further destroy my self-esteem. When someone I love or care about rejects me, I automatically run the internal narrative (on repeat and high volume) that I am unlovable, unworthy, too much/not enough… and it’s really hard. We berate ourselves endlessly and sink further and further into isolation believing we are not good enough and better off alone.
The shame we feel is suffocating. We feel ashamed for having cared, for letting people in…and mostly for having a need. I’m not sure there’s anything much worse than having a need not met and then feeling like you have been rejected for being too needy.
We all know by now (I think!) that the Inner Critic, whilst seeming like a grade A sadist is actually our number one protector. When that voice starts calling you all the names, “you fucking pathetic moron!” it’s really only trying to protect you from getting hurt again. If you believe the narrative that you are unworthy of love and care, then you are unlikely to go and seek it out again. And if you don’t seek it out again then you’re safe from rejection, aren’t you? I mean it makes perfect sense. Only, feeling isolated, alone, and uncared for is not really a place you want to be stuck in either. It’s like being broken down in Weston-super-Mare… when you really want to be in the Maldives!
I don’t know where I am going with this, really – just thinking out loud, I suppose. I am really struggling at the moment (I know, broken record). It’s been two months since I last saw Anita and honestly, it just isn’t getting any better. The acute pain of her rejection is just beyond words. And whilst I know what’s happened with H is not intended to feel rejecting and I think she’d be horrified if she knew how her ultimatum has impacted me the last couple of weeks, it does feel rejecting. I feel like I am notching up therapist rejections at a rate of knots. The whole point of therapy was to go and undo a narrative put there by my mum and reinforced by some others over the years…and instead what I am learning is, it’s a ME problem.
Part of me knows this is all just bad luck but I honestly don’t know how much more being open, honest, and vulnerable I can do – because all I seem to do is get hurt…and rejected.
Nothing quite screams depression like zombie-ing it through the day feeling like you’re about to collapse, then the moment the kids are safely in bed taking yourself off to bed and then sobbing your heart out, huge tears, snot, literally wailing, face down on your bed well into the early hours, then texting your ex-therapist that you love her (groan), and then finally when the tears subside, raiding the fridge for a mini pork pie at 2am… and I don’t even really like pork pies, but turns out I’d ‘forgotten’ that eating was a thing yesterday until I’d had my breakdown. It’s been that bad. The young parts have had a collective meltdown and I just don’t know where to start with strapping them all back in the bus because I think it freewheeled off over the cliff edge and exploded.
I’m trying to make light of all this, but actually it’s really not funny. I feel awful. Some of it is hormonal – but that’s only a really small part. PMS is just exacerbating an already intolerable situation. I feel completely and utterly broken now. It’s weird. I hadn’t realised just how much having Hannah (new therapist) on board was creating just about enough of a dam so that things didn’t flood out. I mean it’s been really really hard in the last couple of months. One therapy session is certainly not enough to hold how I feel, and a new therapeutic relationship is harder work, but at least it was something, a bit of a scaffold if you like – and certainly better than nothing at all.
It would have been a break from therapy for this next couple of weeks anyway, which would have been tough enough – I knew I was going to have to dig deep because alongside no H I wouldn’t be able to see K or have a massage with N – basically I was on my own for the first time since Anita and I ended – yikes. However, knowing that I actually have no therapy at all now to hang on for, or return to is… hard. And I simply don’t have the emotional energy to go through the process of searching for someone else, sending the emails, doing all the communications, and then having to start over AGAIN.
You might be wondering what the hell happened. How have I broken a therapy in only eight sessions? I mean, crikey, that’s impressive, isn’t it? Well, it’s complicated…or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. It’s a mess, that’s for sure. I don’t even know how to write this because as much as think I protect mine, and my therapist’s privacy, ultimately the thing that’s thrown a spanner in the works is this blog.
Groan.
There’ve been eight sessions and this is the first I have got to it – when it is over!
When I met H I immediately liked her. A few things struck me about her – she seemed to have a good sense of humour, she seemed to actually be interested in what I was bringing (well, that’s the job right?!), and she seemed to be my intellectual match (actually, I think if I’d come across her in the real world she’s the sort of person who I would be friends with). I know that sounds like a really weird thing to say (the brain stuff!), but actually I really need someone to meet me where I am at to do this work because I have the capacity to run rings round therapists. It’s not deliberate. It’s a defensive/protective thing that means I can hide my vulnerable parts – but this time I really needed someone to get through my walls because, understandably I am in a cold war bunker right now after my most recent experiences in therapy.
I found that I felt reasonably at ease with H even though parts of me hated everything about being in a new room with someone that wasn’t Anita and wanted to run away. I was able to outline quite a bit of what had happened with A and how I felt as well as some other things that have happened in my life. It was coming from the False Adult self’s perspective but that’s fine – she gets stuff done and protects my little parts. Those small ones are so hidden around others right now that it was never going to be a go in and fall apart and collapse in a puddle on the floor situation – even if part of me felt like that’s what was happening inside and could have done with it!
It was always going to take time to build trust, but I thought that it would be a good enough fit for now and eventually the relationship would develop. I knew that I could never cry (even if it’s screaming inside) in that room because the parts that needed to feel safe just didn’t – and that’s not H’s fault – it’s a time thing and a lack of relationship, but it was fine for now, because I have been crying plenty outside of it so it’s not like I am not releasing emotions…and it would come eventually…maybe.
I realised early on that I was intellectualising my experience, and whilst that’s fine, it doesn’t really get beneath the armour and into the agony that I am feeling. And it is agony. It’s annihilation for the youngest parts. However, I also knew that I needed to lay the groundwork and I would never just go to someone new and let my guard down and I knew the process can’t be rushed so I knew it would take time ESPECIALLY because I’ve just been hurt so badly in therapy. Because I was so stuck in my brain and doing the articulate, ‘this is how it is’ stuff I think it created a dynamic where H probably thought I was looking for solutions and to problem solve the situation which sometimes felt like I wasn’t being seen…but then that’s because I wasn’t letting her see me! I think she wanted to dig down but also knew I was resisting.
Sometimes she’d suggest things, and whilst adult me probably would quite like to go on a retreat one day, right now that isn’t what I need. I am not in need of a journey of self-discovery. I know who I am…I know all the parts of me, their fears, triggers, and what makes things better. The issue I have is the person that helped make it all better has gone before the work was done – it’s been like learning to ride a bike and suddenly whipping the stabilisers off when I was nowhere near ready for that – and I was confidently pedalling along and whoosh -it has floored me.
There are grazed knees, bruises, broken bones even, and what’s worse, no one to help. The little ones are crying on the floor…hurt and abandoned again.
What I really need is someone to sit with me in the grief and make space for all those small parts to feel safe enough to talk about how bad it feels to have Anita gone. I don’t need anything more than that. Of course, that’s where the issue of intellect comes in because whilst I know what I need, I am defending against it and any time H would tentatively edge towards the vulnerable stuff I’d literally tell her no. And so, we’d go back to trying to think of ways to make my day-to-day better.
I would always take my shoes off and curl up on the couch at Anita’s but my shoes remained on and firmly rooted to the floor in the new room with the new therapist – I wasn’t wholly relaxed, and whilst part of me would have loved to have been able to go and sink into the space and perhaps take a soft toy with me to help soothe the parts that are never going to be held again, I just wasn’t there yet. I think, now, I actually probably need an invitation to do these things because I am so scared of being too much. I am so terrified of being vulnerable because I just can’t be hurt and rejected AGAIN.
I realised I had a way to short circuit some of this errr resistance, protectiveness, or whatever it is a few sessions in. But how? Well, I mean I have this blog, don’t I? This is me. Vulnerable and unarmoured. I took a leap of faith and emailed H and asked her to read some posts I’d written because I was struggling with feelings of shame and didn’t know how to break through it. I thought maybe seeing stuff would allow H to know what it’s been like for me and to really see the level of attachment work I’ve been doing…I mean it’s basically been reparenting.
I had mentioned that A had read me stories, hugged me, and given me gifts in session and I felt H bristle a bit even though she hid it well. And I’d felt this a couple of times round other things I had mentioned about how Anita and I had worked. I know how it’s not really in the therapy training modules to work how Anita and I have – but actually it’s not uncommon especially with C-PTSD. H is a relatively new therapist and I think that coming across someone like me and this kind of situation with two therapies that have left me reeling is new territory for her. Or at least I’d hope so because frankly, it seems all too bloody common for those of us here, doesn’t it?
Anyway, she agreed to read my posts over a few weeks, and I think it helped her see what things have been like for me even if I couldn’t tell her completely how it felt in sessions. As I say, I suddenly felt a lot of shame for having had the kind of relationship I have had with A because being in the room with H was such a stark reminder of what normal talking therapy is like. Part of me felt like maybe it was wrong how Anita and I were because I felt like H probably felt it was. And yet in my heart and for those little ones I really refuse to let that take root because how we worked, and that relationship did me such a lot of good for such a long time and it was through that closeness, I was able to get down into the trauma and for the first time in my life feel held and safe. It was Anita’s willingness to meet me exactly how I needed that moved such a lot on. And despite everything that’s happened – the love was so there and it was real…
It’s just an absolute killer that that therapy has been cut short when it has because it’s now so traumatic losing A and the work wasn’t done. It hasn’t reached its natural conclusion, the individuating and moving to independence, and an end because the client was ready…I just wasn’t there yet and so it’s now just another abandonment and rejection to deal with.
Anyway, if I felt shame in the room with H and it stopped me talking then I could at least circumnavigate that via the blog posts and keep things moving forward. I felt like allowing H to see the blog was giving her the map and things seemed to be going ok. It was also a massive exercise in trust.
I had been really guarded for the first seven sessions, then last week something shifted a bit. I don’t know if it was just that I felt like I was getting to know H or what, but we had a more real and vulnerable conversation. Somehow, WordPress had refreshed when H was reading a post I’d sent and taken her to the most recent one I had written about how I had gone about selecting a new therapist. It didn’t talk about the new therapy or her, but it mentioned her. She told me she’d read it and asked if she was Hannah. Initially it shocked me that she’d read it because it wasn’t something I had directed her to. I mentally had to track what I had written as we started talking – but actually there was nothing there other than more reference to Anita and the messages I had sent since we’d finished.
H explained that she’d had a bit of a reaction to realising that she might be in a blog and that it had made parts of her feel vulnerable, and probably tapped into some insecurities but that she’d take it to supervision. I said I understood that, and we talked a bit around it all. It felt like a connecting conversation and I left feeling that for the first time probably we had actually met each other on a deeper level. On the way home from the session I did a lot of thinking and I realised that that I really didn’t want H to feel awkward or for this to get in the way of the therapy and so I sent her an email explaining a bit about the blog and the anonymity etc. That evening I started to get a bit of a sick feeling – anticipating a reply. I had hoped that the blog wouldn’t turn out to be a problem but deep down I could feel that it was going to be.
She replied at length the next day. I won’t copy it here because, ultimately, what came out of it is that she is not comfortable being included on a blog and so I don’t want to disrespect that by putting her words/email here. Essentially, boiling it down, she said that whilst she thinks my writing is a great way to process, she won’t work with me if my experiences of therapy are on a public blog even if it is anonymous because she feels it will affect our developing relationship. She would, instead, want me to write privately and only share it with her.
Basically, I think she feels vulnerable and as if her practice is being scrutinised and no amount of me trying to explain that that’s not how it is will change that which is a massive shame.
She tried to make it land as softly as she could and said she hoped it didn’t feel rejecting, or patronising, or attacking … but, it kind of does – the timing is just crap and it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. I know I had a choice, I could have stopped writing the blog and kept seeing her…and I do get it from her side. She doesn’t know me and how does she know I would never expose her… but I just wouldn’t. I never have with Em or Anita despite what they’ve done to me.
The world is changing such a lot in regard to social media and it’s not uncommon now for clients and even therapists to have TikTok accounts or Instagram accounts with videos detailing therapy. Obviously, therapists can’t speak about clients directly, but lots anonymise interactions in books and articles or talk about general experiences online…some are in ‘therapist’ Facebook groups and aren’t even discreet at all asking about issues in their current practice. ‘I have a client who does x… what should I do?’
So whilst I get it – I also don’t. I feel like I trusted her with a massive part of me and it’s backfired.
Em was Mrs Boundaries (wasn’t she?!) with years and years of experience in the NHS and privately, and Anita has twenty under her belt and neither one of them ever once told me that my blog was a problem or that they wouldn’t work with me because of it. In fact, both of them encouraged me to write it – even if Em once really struggled to read one of the posts after we’d had a massive rupture and were trying to process what had happened together. My blog has never been a huge part of my therapies, my therapists don’t read all my posts, but there have been times when I have written and shared it with my therapists, and it’s been so helpful. But mostly – it is my space to process and my support network.
We all know how useful this space can be for us – and so ultimately, I had to make a horrible decision. And as much as I don’t write as much as I used to, or in the way that I used to (there is no session-by-session accounts anymore and it’s more general or after the event), and the blog sees much less engagement than when I would write regularly, I decided that I couldn’t drop the blog in order to keep the therapy and I wrote an email to outline why:
Hi Hannah,
I’ve tried to formulate my thoughts on this, but there’s a lot of conflict inside and so it’s been really hard to try and listen to all that and give it space. Firstly, though, I just want to say that I am really grateful to you for having seen me when things have so spectacularly disintegrated with Anita. I had hoped that we would, over time, build a good enough relationship to do some of this work, and felt that Thursday had been a shift into something more real and less guarded, but I did also get the sense that this was what you were going to come back at me with after I emailed you so had been preparing for this.
On reflection, letting you see the blog was clearly a mistake – if I hadn’t have shown you, you’d never have known about it, and I guess we would have continued on. As it’s not identifying, had you have ever come across it by chance you’d never have known it was mine. As you said, lots of clients journal, some might bring that to sessions, but actually lots blog, too, now – especially younger people (not that I am young now!). The thing is, I’m not a liar and don’t deliberately conceal things in therapy because I actually think it’s useful for you, or whoever I work with, to know about it and see it here and there when it’s relevant.
I let you into this place in my world because actually it’s my most vulnerable stuff. I could really easily have hidden from you for months and months in the room and never have got beneath what’s really going on. I’m good at running rings round people and looking like I am talking about something important when it’s really just a screen for what’s underneath. The blog might feel exposing to you, but it completely exposes me – hence the fact that it’s anonymous but I wanted you to see it because ultimately that’s me…or the part of me that’s hurting and needs the therapy.
You might wonder why on earth I would bother writing and posting this stuff if it is so vulnerable and exposing? What purpose does it serve? I do it partly because it’s a creative process that allows me to process my feelings. It’s a kind of journal. It’s safely out on the platform and not sitting in my computer possibly being read by someone at home – that happened years ago when I would keep a journal on my laptop and it caused no end of friction. The blog is about me and my experiences and feelings – it’s not a spotlight on the therapist, although I can understand how it might feel that way from your side.
Another reason I write publicly is because it was finding someone else’s therapy blog when I was seeing Em that completely changed things for me. I was in such a bad place. I was constantly dissociated, swimming in shame, and feeling like there was something very wrong with me. I was chronically anorexic and basically just a fucking mess but I was in therapy once a week so surely what I was experiencing was normal…nope. It was finding this person’s blog, that made me feel like there was someone else in the world like me, that I wasn’t somehow defective for feeling how I felt, and it went a long way to dispelling the shame and embarrassment I felt in the therapy…and in my general existence. It was this blog that first introduced me to the idea of structural dissociation and parts.
It also allowed me to see that therapy doesn’t all look the same way and doesn’t have to be a horrible experience of feeling inadequate and defective. It also highlighted to me that big feelings happen in therapy, it’s not always plain sailing, that ruptures happen and can be navigated effectively and you shouldn’t fear being ‘too much’ all the time, or at least if you feel that, that it can be worked with rather than being reinforced. I was always so concerned about not being viewed negatively that I ‘behaved’ – basically spent my time hiding in the room until this point when I realised that actually you ‘should’ be able to bring all of yourself to therapy, not just the bits that seem palatable. The thing is the bits I felt were unpalatable weren’t the angry parts or the teen – it was the youngest, most needy ones. It’s horrific feeling so many feelings but also feeling so embarrassed and ashamed that you dissociate all the time. I mean it doesn’t help when the therapist confirms that narrative of being too much… but there we are.
Clients have no idea what to expect when they enter therapy – TV doesn’t really depict it and books…well, like I say, they’re written from therapists’ and academics’ perspectives. Perhaps the closest we get to something is work by Carolyn Spring but even she doesn’t really delve into the depths of the relationship. Clients just don’t get a voice. The reality of therapy and how it can be is a big void, the unknown. You just go in and give it a go, not knowing what is possible or what to expect but honestly, face planting into attachment injuries is no fucking fun and is actually terrifying.
There’s a lot of good therapists out there, I am sure (maybe!), but there’s also a LOT of bad, and it’s all hidden behind closed doors. The power is so unbalanced from the get-go in therapy and clients, are out on a limb, we’re pretty isolated because most of us don’t talk about our therapy with people in our day-to-day lives. I totally get that lots of clients are ‘easier’ than me, or the people I come across, but Complex Trauma is really a minefield in therapy, and we need all the help we can get both inside and outside the room…but that’s not easy.
My wife knows nothing of my therapies, or what’s happened in them. She doesn’t even know your name. I haven’t said a word about any of it to anyone. I don’t talk to my friends in my everyday world about it because – well – can you even imagine? I felt you bristle when I told you about Anita and how it had been with her, and you’re a therapist, so imagine having a coffee with a friend and trying to explain to them that you feel suicidal because someone who you’ve seen for years, who has read you stories and held you for hours without words just so you can hear their heartbeat, and worked extensively with your young parts, and essentially been a mother figure to you, has dumped you!
If I said that my young selves were totally broken and feel like self-harming – they just wouldn’t get it. If I said that I miss her and cry most days – most people would think I was a fucking lunatic because how could anyone understand? Most of my friends are lucky enough to have had good enough childhoods so they don’t understand the mother wound at all. I mean I guess you don’t either [for x reason]. And yet it is breaking me inside. I have this great coping exterior, but I am so tired of trying to hold it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum. All I want to do when it’s like this is be back in that familiar space, with Anita who knows me inside out, and put the weight of the world down and fall asleep. My nervous system is … fucked.
Only she’s gone and no one knows or gets it…except these merry band of bloggers.
It was so helpful to me to alight on a community of people who experience similar things to me because there are a lot of us out there with significant trauma and attachment injuries and we speak a language that most people just don’t understand. In fact, lots of therapists don’t understand it either. When I talk about what feels like a black hole in my chest that has edges that are ulcerated and there’s just a sense of falling through an endless abyss because there has never been any containment or holding for parts of me… they get it. Therapists don’t. If you haven’t felt it, you just cannot begin to truly know how fucking debilitating it is. It’s beyond words. It’s trauma so deeply locked in the body from a pre-verbal time and it’s impossible to understand…but these people do.
I know that my blog has really helped other people and whilst I don’t feel like I have to write because of this, I do it for me first and foremost, it feels like it would be a shame to stop that when it has done such a lot of good not just for me but for others, too. I’ve been blogging for seven years now. It’s been massive in my processing and growth but at times it’s also literally been a lifeline. The handful of people that I know via the blog that have become friends have got me through some really tough times. When everything went south with Em it was that group of people that assured me that I was not a tick, that I wasn’t all the things that she made me believe and the Inner Critic was screaming at me. People that had followed my journey had seen how things had developed and were there to help me when I was completely alone in my ‘day-to-day’ life. Same goes with what’s happened with Anita. It’s a peer support network. And there’s no guarantee it would work out with you and then I’d be left totally stranded…again.
Clients are usually really discreet in their day-to-day lives about their therapy. Noone in my [county] world knows who Em is or Anita is or what they’ve done to me. I could have spoken to people in this area, used their names, slammed them, made public comments on their social media… but I haven’t. I haven’t done that on the blog, either. As I said, I never would because I’m just not that type of person. None of what I write is about wanting criticise practice…it’s about what’s happening to me. How what has happened has impacted me – good and bad. But it is sooooooo private. And I know that seems absolutely bonkers to say when it’s online, but it is.
Therapists get supervision and peer supervision…and personal therapy, and clients get absolutely nothing – and yet it is us who often suffer harm at the hands of therapists. As I say, it is rife. You wouldn’t believe it, or perhaps you might be beginning to. I don’t follow many blogs but five of my online friends have been terminated since October alone and are left to pick up the pieces. If it wasn’t for this network online, it would be really crap. I can honestly say that it’s been a couple of these people checking in with me on a daily basis that has got me through this recent shit show because it is pretty bleak inside.
Like last night, I dreamt about my daughter when she was a tiny baby, not old enough to support her own head. She was locked inside a car. I couldn’t get in to get her out. Someone had put her in a car seat but not strapped her in properly and she was slumped forward screaming and stuck. It doesn’t take a genius to see what that’s about…but I am literally stuck in this kind of loop. And I need help to reach into that stuff. But I see you an hour a week – and there one hundred and sixty seven others I need to get through.
You say you’d like me to continue to write in some kind of capacity and maybe process that together. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wanted to share stuff with you and that’s why I let you into that part of my world. My writing a blog doesn’t mean that part of the process gets skipped, it’s not like because I blog, I then withhold important stuff in sessions, and I can understand how that might be seen as a problem. As I said the other day, so much of a client’s experience never makes it into the room anyway and this is for lots of reasons – so sharing writing helps. I get you would prefer me to write like this, to you, and not online… I just don’t know how I feel about it.
Part of me thinks it’s not a huge deal because I don’t write like I used to anyway. I don’t write session by session accounts. But I think the biggest kick back I am getting is the fact I feel like my blog and whether I have it should be my choice.
I get that you’ve issued this ultimatum and I get that it’s where you are at. I understand how from your side you feel like me writing would potentially jeopardise the relationship because you would feel exposed. From my side, I know that if I stopped writing because you’ve told me I have to or that’s the end of things, and I agree to stop writing to try and keep the relationship, then I think there’d be parts of me that would really resent that. Here, yet again, is someone with power dangling the relationship over me and making it conditional. And that’s fine. I really do get it. And to be honest it’s such early days that I can just chuck this on the pile with Anita and process it all at once… but on my own.
I feel like I am done with therapy now. I can’t do this to myself again…which ironically kind of means the end of the blog doesn’t it? So why am I having such a strong reaction to your request? Don’t blog and keep the new therapist. Or have a dead blog and no therapist. Great.
I was trying to think of a work around – what would happen if I made the blog private accessed with a password, and it was there only for a handful of people that I actually have contact with… but then that doesn’t work because they can still see it and I don’t think given what you’re saying that would be any better. Then I thought I could try and write like I sometimes do about particular issues, like eye contact in therapy, or shame, or the mother wound…but then that all is through a lens of my experience so that doesn’t really work. I thought about not writing at all for a while – because I really have been AWOL on the blog for the last year – and seeing where things got with us but then I wouldn’t want to develop a relationship and then have the same ultimatum when I actually care more.
So, I don’t think I have a solution that works for either of us and so that just leaves it that I’ll have to say goodbye. It’s not that I value the blog more than I do spending time with you working together but it is/has been a really important part of my journey and I just don’t think I can cut off that support network in the hope that things, this time, work out…because things just don’t seem to work out where I am concerned with therapy.
Thank you for your time. I don’t see any point in coming in on the 10th because that won’t change anything. I don’t need help finding someone else. I thought I had done a good job this time around, but I’m just not interested in doing this again. I’m sorry that this has happened but to be honest I think you’ve probably dodged a bullet anyway. I know you haven’t meant for any of this to feel rejecting or attacking or patronising…I do get where you are coming from. This has to be a new record even for me, though, I usually manage three years before it goes to shit!
Take care,
RB
So, there we are. I haven’t heard back from her – I don’t really expect to as she’s on a break until the 10th. I imagine when she does eventually read it, I’ll get something back like:
Hi RB,
Thank you for your email. I understand your decision and I am sorry that we can’t agree on this aspect of the therapy together. I wish you well for the future.
Best wishes,
H
And that’s fine. That’s what they do isn’t it? It’s about the best I can expect from someone who’s seen me for eight weeks and doesn’t really care about me or know me. So, I’m ready for that. But there’s a part of me that feels massively disappointed about all this. I hate that I have had to choose between two sources of support because they are both important in different ways. It’s just awful timing, and whilst this is not anything like what Em or Anita have done, it is yet another example of me not fitting with a therapist, and my need being shelved as ultimately, we don’t have much power in our own therapies and the therapist holds all the cards.
To say that this has been a difficult week would be the most epic understatement. I have been emotionally flat-lining and barely holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum. Externally, I have been running on a kind of righteous anger about what’s happened with Anita, and it’s given me the energy to function, to a degree.
My last blog post probably seemed reasonably together and optimistic…I guess that’s the False Adult self again trying to keep me functional because underneath that, there is absolute and total devastation. Maybe that’s not quite right – I guess, there was a bit of optimism because at least things seemed to be moving in the right direction with the new therapy and I was settling into that so it was like having a bit of a life belt even if I was trying to swim in a stormy ocean. Only I’ve managed to fuck that up already sooooo maybe that’s why I have crashed and burned – or drowned – overnight and things feel so shit. I don’t know if I’ll bother to write about that – and there’s a huge irony there.
The reality of what I have lost with Anita has come into even sharper focus – I mean how much sharper does it have to get?! And as much as I am angry with her, mostly I am just terribly sad. Anger is a mask for such a lot of feelings isn’t it?
I am exhausted from holding myself together when everything is falling apart inside. I feel like I am looping on an endless marathon – there is no finish line and I just have to keep going putting one foot in front of the other in the hope at some point there’ll be somewhere to rest. Only, my legs are done and there are no rest points. I feel like I am on the verge of stumbling, tripping, and landing face first in the shit if I’m honest.
I just need… well…I need Anita (before she lost it). I need someone who really knows me. I need that comfortable relationship and space where I can go and catch my breath. I need to not have to work so hard to just be seen. I need more holding and containment – or in fact – ANY holding and containment. I feel like such a lot has been ripped away from me and I just, honestly, don’t know what to do now. I won’t give up – but I really feel like it right now.
I have tried so fucking hard to do the right things since A and I ended in order to support myself. I’ve gone big on self-care: been for massages to try and ease this horrid tension I’m holding in my body; tried to get lots of sleep (ha – insomnia has other ideas and is kicking my ass, though!); been to see K to try and calm my nervous system down but she says she can feel how desperate it is for my young parts and I’m desperately holding on; I’m eating well; I’ve written to try and process; and I had gone to therapy and tried to build a new relationship… As I say, though, I’ve already fucked that up, so as of now am back to my own devices and I am just so done. You know? I am so sick of battling through.
I realise this is moaning. It feels quite teenage tbh… but ugh…I just can’t right now. Sometimes you just need someone else when it’s like this and sadly it’s just me, myself, and I…plus the mini bus of little ones. The small parts of over-tired and overwrought. I’m surprised there’s any screaming left in them…but there is.
Anyway, enough of this doom. Really, I just wanted to share a poem I found the other day. It’s a break up poem, but it resonates so much. I know it’s not just me that’s navigating the termination of long-term depth therapy and I think you’ll get it.
Big hugs x
I Should Hate You
I should hate you. For running, and taking your reasons with you. The questions left behind like little thorns of the mind. I’m trying like hell to pull them out hoping to spot the warning signs missed.
Why couldn’t you help me understand? Why didn’t I deserve the reprieve? How were you unfazed by my bleeding?
I should hate you. For discarding my heart and history as if it were throwaway cheap. The way you disposed of my spirit left me shredded. Cut to ribbons that I’m sewing back together. I’ll never be the same after you. You didn’t leave me better off than you found me. You stole what we shared.
It’s unnatural to move on from someone who resides inside me. I can’t shake loose or free. The painful truth is I don’t want to forget you. I won’t act as if we never existed. After all this time together, all this life together, you detached with such ease that I must have dreamt it all.
What I wasn’t prepared for – choking down answers I’ll never receive.
Your indifference is brutal. Something reserved for savages. All decency is disposed of once someone decides to run. Fiendish for distance between you and them. No long goodbyes. Nothing resembling a semblance of closure. Their own embarrassment brings about avoidance.
I should hate you. See, needing to do what’s best for your life, at the expense of mine, doesn’t make you right. Quite the opposite. And what’s most troubling is how often I still think of you. I still imagine hypothetical scenarios of you coming back around. Showing up on my doorstep. And how I’d react to your negligence. What would you say? What could you possibly say that would fix the damage done where I’d even take you back?
After two or three sessions of trying to figure out what to do with Anita after she dropped the bomb on me that she was stopping the therapy (forever? for a bit?… who knows?) it was painfully apparent that we were getting nowhere in the ‘ending that isn’t an ending… or is it?’ and it was increasingly painful going to see her and for her to not be able to hold the work, the space, me… but also to not have any kind of a plan on how to handle whatever ‘this’ was. I would just end up crying and she would keep saying she was “sorry”. It was all utter shit. Traumatising, really.
As much as I didn’t want to see another therapist (and still don’t), I knew that whatever ‘this’ is/was with Anita there was definitely, and minimally, a protracted break coming, and I would need some support to process what is essentially a massive abandonment and rejection from my attachment figure…again. No matter how you look at it, Anita has handled ‘this’ all appallingly and I have been left reeling and just utterly bereft. It’s hard to put into words just how awful this has been, but it feels like every part of me has been body slammed and then left for dead. Ugh.
Whilst Anita and I were still seeing each other, I started hunting online for someone who might be able to catch me as I fell headfirst out the nest. I’m sure many of you have scrolled through therapist’s profiles on the internet on therapy platforms and kept scrolling and scrolling looking for a face that looks at least half-way like someone you might want to sit in a room with. It’s funny – credentials are important, but I literally scrolled pasts loads of people without clicking into their profile because I didn’t like their photo! And of course, I didn’t really want to see any of them…because the only person I want is A, or Anita before she lost the fucking plot!
When looking for someone, there were a few things I definitely avoided this time. I didn’t want anyone in the ‘mum’ age category, and I also wanted the therapy to be in a space that wasn’t in the therapist’s home. I didn’t want to go anywhere close to replicating the experience I have had with Anita (as good as loads of it has been I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth). I know attachment wounds are kind of unavoidable and transference happens, but I didn’t want to accelerate that stuff if I didn’t need to. I’m there to process what happened with Anita not to replicate the relationship. That’s done. It’s burnt me really badly and, frankly, my young parts will never be coming out again in a therapeutic setting as they did with Anita. I’m not interested in cuddles or stories or any of the stuff that was so helpful with A, because to have it suddenly ripped away is just horrific and worse than not having had it at all.
I feel like she took me in, symbolically adopted the child parts, encouraged the attachment, started to reparent them, and then when her life got hard, decided it wasn’t for her and has sent me away – but not even to a ‘foster’ family, just turfed me out onto the street and closed the door. Her and Em have more similarities than I realised.
Anyway, back to therapist shopping…I decided that if I am paying for a time and space (which is what it is, right?!) then I don’t want dogs barking, the postman banging on the door trying to deliver stuff, daughter walking around outside the room or bumping into her on the doorstep, navigating my way past mum on the driveway…NONE OF IT. All of these things were annoyances with A but worth it in the big scheme of how it felt with her in the room (before it went to shit)…but now that’s gone I just want a simple place to be that hasn’t got any baggage attached to it. AND this time I wanted a therapist who would just do therapy and hold the frame and boundaries and all the other stuff that has got so lax with Anita. Basically, I wanted therapy 101 – back to basics. Dare I say it, I almost wanted an Em…only Em with a little more relational capacity!
So, I found a therapist who looked nice enough. She seemed to be around my age and had a profile that seemed ok. Given that I am not looking to do long-term, deep work, I just wanted ‘good enough’ and someone who might have space to meet before I was completely cast adrift. I emailed Hannah asking about her availability and outlining what had happened with A and why I wanted to see her. She responded warmly and we fixed up a meeting a couple of weeks ahead. Phew. At least there was something in place.
Things, obviously, got no better with Anita. I was breaking my heart and she just couldn’t give me anything. It was headed to the end of May, and she offered to keep working with me until the end of June. As much as parts of me would have loved to have seen her for nine more hours – I just couldn’t do it to myself – or more specifically all the child parts that were absolutely devastated. On the 2nd June I resolved before I went to see Anita that it would be my last session. I simply couldn’t keep hurting myself and when it came down to it, I couldn’t justify the money to keep doing it for another month. To be honest, I really don’t feel like I should have paid for any of the sessions in May either – it wasn’t therapy and it wasn’t about my need.
About five minutes from the end Anita apologised again and acknowledged that she probably seemed distant and cold which wasn’t what I needed but that she was in self-protect and survival. I knew definitely, then, that I had to leave. Through tears (of course) I said to her that I didn’t want to drag this out anymore because she wasn’t up to it, I didn’t want to make things worse for her, but that this was really hurting me. So, I asked her if I could just leave things as they were and maybe get back in touch properly in September and see how things were after the summer, not to continue, but to see if she was in any better a place to do a proper ending that fully honours the work we have done and the relationship. She agreed and said she just didn’t know how she was going to be and as much as she would like to give me something to hang onto she thinks she’s probably going to have to give up her job altogether and retire. And then I got up, gave her one last hug, and walked away.
The pain has been unbelievable.
The grief. I mean… there just aren’t words.
Almost immediately after the session I sent her a text. I know. I know. One of the books we read together a lot was ‘No Matter What’ by Debbie Gliori – it’s gorgeous… but… well, it all seems like empty words now…
This is what we’ve exchanged since we finished. I don’t even really know what to think.
I have so much to say and so much left hanging that part of me thinks, “Well fuck it, surely she can cope with a couple of texts here and there on her work phone when we’ve gone from two hours a week and between session contact to this. It’s not like she’s not ‘working’ she ‘s just not working with poor fuckers like me who really need her.” But I’ve stopped texting now, I think I needed to reach out when it was all so fresh – and I’ll maybe get back in touch in September – but more likely I’ll just ask to arrange to get my books back.
There are so many feelings of hurt and anger coming up and the more time goes on the worse it’s actually getting and I think what might come next if I gave it space would be really fucking mean – and I don’t really want to do that – even though the teen has some choice words ready to fire!
Right now, I don’t see there’s much to be gained by maybe eventually meeting again. The hurt is too big and there’s no going back. Ill or not, I deserved better than this. So I need to try and process this with Hannah and let Anita go. I don’t want to reopen a wound – and if I saw Anita and she was still in self-protect it would send me over the edge – I don’t need cold, still face…
It’s not easy writing that – but she’s let me go – and all the trust and care and love that I thought were real…well… what was it? Really? … ‘therapy’…
Anyway, I’ll leave that there for today and come back and introduce you to Hannah next time.
After two sessions where Anita and I had essentially got nowhere with processing or dealing with the bombshell of her needing to end the therapy and my, essentially, listening to how hard everything is/was for her, “This is meant to be your therapy not mine” (!), I had to find a way to get her to hear my side, my feelings, my experience because I was absolutely falling apart.
At home, in the car, anywhere I was alone, I was hysterically crying and just couldn’t function. It was so hard trying to hold it together and parent and teach and just generally function, and A just wasn’t able to be there to hold the space or the work…or me… at all – hence the need to end. It was patently clear that A was not up to doing a proper ending and I refused to participate in it- I actually said that to her! I kept telling her we needed to come back to it/us at a later date because I refused to have a half-assed ending but it was a long time coming to that point where we finally left it that later down the line we’d get in touch.
Honestly, it’s really not great having to navigate a broken therapist when you are the one that’s meant to be in therapy! (Although, clearly Anita needs to be in therapy if she isn’t!) I’d spent the two sessions ‘adulting’, trying to hold us both together but it was absolutely killing me. Endings are so important in therapy – in some ways I think they are one of the most important elements of the whole thing given so many of us experience deep-rooted feelings of being rejected or abandoned. A decent ending can perhaps show us a different narrative of how relationships can end – it’s a time where the work and relationship can be celebrated and honoured. And, yet, here I was staring down another unwanted and unsatisfactory termination. Just perfect.
I (well lots of different parts) wrote a really messy, emotional letter to Anita because I needed to give space to my feelings. It’s young, it’s broken, it’s desperate, it’s confused, it’s heartbreak – but this is how it felt and these parts and feelings deserve to be heard because this is where the work is, has been, and if I can’t let it out in therapy then where else can I do it? I knew I would never be able to read what I had written to her in the session because I would fall apart. Instead I recorded it and asked her to play it whilst I was there with her.
Having felt so far apart those previous two sessions I asked her for a hug when I arrived. I spent the entire session in her arms, listening to this, then sobbing my heart out – I mean absolutely sobbing, huge fat tears and convulsive breathing. I wish I could say that the letter had any impact or changed the situation with A but it didn’t. We just sat – broken – together, crying – saying it’s not what either of us want but that she has no choice. Honestly – heartbreaking doesn’t even come close to how it felt.
Anyway, here’s the thing – this is what lurks beneath the capable and coping exterior… I get it doesn’t make lots of sense but it was like trying to get down the thoughts and feelings of the entire mini-bus and everyone was speaking crying at once. I can really picture my new T’s (yeah – I must be mental) face if she saw this.
How this feels…
It’s like being thrown out the nest too soon. It’s like haven’t got the right feathers in place to fly the nest yet. It feels like this is all really wrong.
I think you need time off sick but does it have to be the end? I personally don’t think you’re in a place to be making massive decisions as I think you’re in survival – and flight mode. I think you are panicked – and justifiably so – you have a massive amount on your plate and the last few weeks have really been terrible. It’s no wonder everything is too much. You’re crumbling under stress and so any demands on you are going to break you and feel beyond your scope to cope.
I’m not asking to keep it as it is right now because you’re not up to it. In normal run of things you’d be signed off sick by the doctor and I genuinely think that’s what you need. I know you think things are not going to get better any time soon and that must feel scary and suffocating but I also think that things will improve if you can actually just give yourself a bit of time to breathe. You seem to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and yet the burden is not yours to carry alone.
I saw this coming months ago. I told you you’d burn out and have a break down. Perhaps it was unavoidable, but here we are.
I can’t let you go, though, Anita. Not fully. Our work isn’t done, and our relationship isn’t done either. The relationship we’ve created is important. I can’t just move onto another therapist. I do need therapy – you’re right about that – but I need it with you, not someone else. I love you and I’m attached to you. My healing is happening in relationship with you and because of you. It’s you that I have learned to trust. My young parts love you. It’s with you that I feel safe. I don’t want to have to grieve you if I don’t have to. And I certainly don’t want to do this again with anyone else. The only person I want to read me stories and cuddle is you. And I can’t give that up. I can’t lose another ‘parent’. Not yet. I’m not ready yet.
If we end now the message I get is that I am not good enough or worthy enough to stay. That I don’t matter. That what I thought we had isn’t real and everything that’s been said and felt is a lie. I’m not prepared to trash 3.5 years of therapy that has been so transformational and put in on the pile of the same narrative Em and my mum have given me.
The thing is, you are nothing like them but this ending makes it feel like that. When it comes down to it, I am expendable. I am put back out in the cold. It’s the rescue dog being left at the side of a road because the owner can’t cope with it. The pain round this is different than with Em. It’s actually worse because you have actually loved me. I’ve felt it. You’ve shown it. And the thought of losing that is too devastating. You haven’t been withholding, you’ve always been right there holding my heart in your hands so carefully, and delicately because you’ve known how fragile it is. And yet despite this, somehow it’s not enough.
When you said we’d carry on until I found someone else it felt like you were really diminishing our relationship. I don’t want someone else. It’s not like going and finding a new dentist. Instead, it’s like saying get a new mum – and I just can’t. Because you are it. I can’t replace you. You said I need someone who can really hold me. And we both know that’s not possible. There is absolutely no one that would be with me how you are. If I were to see someone else, I’d always be comparing back to you and everything would feel less than. So I can’t do it.
You need to get you well. You need to function. I need you. But I can do without you for a while if I know you’re still there. I really don’t want to have to test the invisible string or the hugs sent in raindrops like in the books but I will…if it means you can get better and deal with the horrors you face right now. I don’t want to put additional pressure on you. I don’t know what that means or how it looks and I feel like right now you’re really not even capable of having the kind of conversation we need because you are so stressed you can’t see the wood for the trees. I’m trying really hard not to freak out and meltdown but this is really really hard for me.
You know me better than anyone. I asked you once how you heal this deep wounding and you said that you were going to sound like Carl Rogers but it was all about the relationship. And you are right. The problem is that wounding happens in relationship, too. And this is not just a bit painful or a bit rejecting to me. It’s huge. Not only does it feel like a complete abandonment and like my trust has been decimated, but it feels like when my dad died. It’s grief. A loss. I had no choice in the matter. I just had to carry on as if it was ok. And it’s not ok Anita. It’s so far from being ok. And it’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you but this isn’t just a simple goodbye. We don’t have a run of the mill therapeutic relationship, the work we have done has been so intimate and deep. You’ve been reparenting me – and yet now you’ve decided that it’s too much.
The stuff we’ve been through together surely can’t just be gone. Can you really honestly walk away from me after everything we’ve been through? I trusted you with all of me – every part- and now every part is being devastated in its own way. When we keep parts concealed, we’re not fully vulnerable and there’s a safety in that but also it prevents really being seen and true emotional intimacy. But it means that when things go wrong there are parts left intact to pick up the pieces. I have let my guard completely down with you and that’s been terrifying but so healing. But how do I mend this wound now because no part of me is not involved there is no part left unaffected. I kept nothing back. Even The Critic was convinced it was ok to stand down because you made me feel good enough and loved and no matter what things would somehow work out.
I’ve been beyond devastated this last week. I don’t know how I have any tears left to cry. I feel so sad. But I also feel so shit about all the times I’ve shutdown or been silent or not looked at you. I don’t look at you because I don’t want to be seen and for you to judge me to be too much. In all those times that you’ve thought I am keeping you out, or angry, or whatever it is it comes across as – all I’ve ever wanted to do is be close to you – that’s all it’s ever been – every time I’m quiet or start to disappear it’s because more than anything I want to be close to you and I am scared of being pushed away. You never have pushed me away, you never have refused a cuddle or to hold my hand, and yet the shame I feel is still so there lots of the time- it’s the legacy of so much of what I experienced in the past with others.
I said when we met that this would be a hard, long process, and it felt unfair because I’d be testing you and putting you through stuff that was not your fault because I had been hurt. And we really have been through it where that’s concerned. And you haven’t budged. You said you were a wall I could push against, but you wouldn’t break. You were a boomerang that no matter how I pushed you away you’d always come back. But now that’s not the case. The thought of not being able to see you, to hug you, to look at your face it’s actually breaking my heart because I’ve missed so many opportunities sitting in my own pain less than a metre from you when you were there waiting for me and now, you’re not going to be. Like that’s how it feels. I feel like my heart is shattering into a million pieces.
There have been so many days when I have come here and … I dunno… filled the space with stuff that hasn’t mattered when all I want to do is come and just be with you. I don’t want drama or even to talk or unpick things because just being with you is so healing to me. Literally just holding your hand or cuddling makes everything feel bearable and regulates my system. I just want to be close to you. I have missed you so much lately. I thought we’d ride this current phase out, though. I don’t want to do trauma processing or fill the space with words. I just want to be with you. And I know I’ve been having wobbles about it all because this stuff has felt big – massive – but when I am faced with the prospect of ‘no’ you or a reduced capacity you – suddenly the things that I’ve been worked up about seem ridiculous. Like so what you haven’t replied to a text…rather that than no contact at all.
I just want to be with you. How many times can I say that?! And that’s not just the young parts, although obviously this is very much about the young parts and the work we have been doing with that early trauma and loss. There’s nowhere I feel safer than with you. And all my panic about you being far away or changing was fear. And it’s like that fear is now being truly realised in the here and now. This is what I’ve been so scared of. But the sad thing is, you weren’t gone then. I might not have been able to connect but you were always there and now you’re not going to be and I can’t get my head round that. I literally can’t see how I can be without you.
I talked about my mini-bus careering down the hill without a driver before the break and when you went away it kind of crashed into the lake and filled with water. I had horrible nightmares the first week you were away. All about this kind of stuff. I really sensed you were not ok when you were away but I didn’t want to bombard you. I really really hoped that you going away would be enough to give you a bit of something to keep going and I am so sad for you that your holiday was so terrible and your health has deteriorated so badly. I wish there was something I could do to help you.
I’ve been trying really hard to not fall apart since Wednesday. I am struggling really hard to get my head round this but the parts are just… freaking out:
The baby – is crying, hungry and uncontained and there’s noone to pick her up and soothe her.
The two-year-old is lost in the cold, grey wasteland and no one is coming she is scared.
The four-year-old is trying to be a good girl because maybe that way you won’t leave and maybe the cuddles and stories won’t have to stop and maybe this mum will stay.
Seven is terrified and frozen and badly needs to be held because she’s been here before and knows it gets worse the longer you’re left alone.
My eleven-year-old self is hiding in the dark underneath the bed trying to disappear and make it all go away.
Fourteen wants to self-harm and not eat.
Seventeen who would usually be raging and angry is just standing – silent tears streaming down her face broken- because of all of them, she needed you the most and whether you realise it or not, her trust was the hardest won because she holds all the others and it’s a heavy weight.
The Critic – well you can imagine the level of sadistic shit it’s coming up with.
Adult me is just so fucking sad because I cracked myself wide open despite the hurt that Em inflicted because I trusted you and you made me believe I was safe with you. We got right into the yolk of the egg -and now what do I do? After Em I was terrified of being seen and rejected again. I was just a parasite that needed to be got rid of. And now you say you’re not rejecting me… but you are – I am a “stress” you have to “cut out of your life”. I understand why but those parts of me that believed the “no matter what” and the “I wish I could have been there then, but I am here now and I won’t let you go” seems like empty words.
But how can they be? And I get I have an Adult self and that part of me is stronger than it’s ever been but it’s still not able to do it all alone. I just can’t be without you – not yet.
Everywhere I look there is evidence of you around me at home. I’m in here too. Will you just sweep it all away and act like I never existed? Is that how it works? You are the rabbit that listens but if I’m not here does the rabbit go, the egg, the pebble from the beach, the dream catcher, windchimes…the ornament…all the other fucking bits of shit that are all around us?
You made me feel like I belonged here and with you and now I suddenly don’t. I don’t get how you can get rid of me but still work with other clients. When I ask you “what have I done wrong?” you say I haven’t done anything wrong and it’s you and your capacity but how can you sit there with someone else next week or next month who has nothing like the level of relationship that I have you and choose that over me? When you know what you mean to me and what I thought I meant to you? And knowing all that you know about me, of what has happened to me? It blows my mind. I know depth work isn’t easy, but I certainly prefer my long-term students where there is a relationship is established and we ‘know’ each other than starting up with new people. Maybe it’s because I know you and see you that’s the problem. You can’t hide with me.
I don’t know what else to say – but it feels like the scaffolding around my building is ripped off and without you I think the whole thing will crumble. And maybe that makes me too dependent but maybe it just means we weren’t done yet. I don’t have the answers and right now I don’t think you do either. But please don’t leave…
You keep saying you need to cut stress out your life. I don’t know if you know how that sounds or feels but it’s not a million miles away from Em’s tick comment. I’m the stress. I’m too much. I’m too needy. I’m the hard work. Mentioning my ‘I miss you’ message just feels like a kick in the stomach. I didn’t reach out first in your holiday – it was you that messaged me. And telling me that my simple reply felt too much right now is just shit. Like any of my feelings about you are too much. It’s such a massive contrast to the person that sent me the message before you left with hearts.
I get when you’re burnt out and sick and stressed and overwhelmed you swing like a pendulum but this, now, is absolutely killing me. I’m trying to be the adult here and be understanding but you have to know that my child parts are in agony Anita. You don’t seem to acknowledge or care what this is doing or going to do to me. I know this is because you are so unwell that you just aren’t fit to be working. You keep saying “we tried”. I don’t understand what that even means. I know you can’t give that care and compassion you usually do as you’re in your own survival hole but this is why we can’t end now like this – because ending like this is harmful. I’m clinging on tight to what I think we had but it’s being decimated right now.
This is attachment work. And you are severing that attachment with a machete. You don’t want to do anything to try maintain it. You don’t seem to want to try and help my parts get through what is a massive shock. It’s like I’m already dead to you and it’s triggering the hell out of me. It’s like the bloody still face exercise. I’m searching for you and you’re just not there…you say you are in self-protect and you know it’s not what I need but if you know that why are we doing this?
Is it really your world outside that’s the issue or is it something I’ve done? Was it the birthday present I gave you that sent you over the edge?
This is another ornament in the set – I gave A ‘Self-Compassion’ on our 1 year anniversary. They’re made by an artist in Ukraine and I love the style.
Because that was symbolic – it’s what you have done for me. You have held that small part safe. It doesn’t mean I actually think you are my mum – in therapy sure- I have said a lot of times you are the closest I have come to a positive experience of mothering and you have welcomed that, acknowledged that, encouraged it even,but I know outside the room that’s not the case.
But it’s left me wondering is the idea of me just repellent to you now like something you have to untangle yourself from. Or remove like a tick? Because that’s what it feels like. Are you really and truly terminating others or is it just me? You tell me you are authentic with me and that there’s no one else you work with you’d tell what you’ve told me – so can’t you understand then that you have built a particular kind of relationship with me that has let me in to so much of you and now it’s like “Nah, fuck off”. I just can’t get my head round it. Like what we have is special and important…only it’s not?
I didn’t think you could suddenly stop loving someone or being able to or wanting to connect but that’s what’s happened and I don’t understand. I know you have the need for space right now and time because you are drowning. But I can’t really understand how you are willing to cut me off altogether because I love you and you have told me you love me too – and not just once but weekly for years. You sounded like I was weird for saying at I can’t imagine you not in my life last week. I’ve had almost daily contact with you for three years…we’ve been through such a lot together…we’ve survived a fucking pandemic… what do you expect me to feel? You said you’d be there for the long termand I believed you.
I can’t help but think about all the things you’ve said to me over that time. I mean I am not insane for feeling this way, surely? You said you’d never let me go, that even when you retired you’d still have a practice because you couldn’t leave your long term clients, you said even if your house fell down you’d work online… you’ve said so much over the years. And I get this is a tricky situation now, and things have changed – but to be so unwilling to say we’d even try and work this out down the line is just mind blowing and it makes me wonder who you even are.
I get you’re totally overwhelmed but surely you must see how damaging all this is to me, too. Surely, you’d want to find time at some point to help me with this down the line if I’d meant anything to you at all. Can you really have said and meant all that and now run as far away from me as possible…especially knowing my history. It just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know how I’ll cope without you. The routine of seeing you twice a week keeps me level. I wish there was a middle ground, less frequent sessions, a quick WhatsApp call, anything really. Removing all support is going to be hard as my life is about to undergo some big changes anyway and there’s stuff I haven’t been telling you because I just want to keep going. I can feel the abyss inside opening up. You’d always have grabbed my hand but now you won’t, but I need you to try and meet me in this right now. … there’s such a lot to say.
And that’s that… Anita dissociated, I think. At the end of that she said that she’d heard it all but her mind had gone blank to answer. Not even kidding. As I say we just hugged, and cried, and then I came back again…and it was just more disaster zone but I’ll come back with that later.
x
These lyrics from Tiny Love by KT Tunstall have been stuck in my head lately:
And this tiny love Couldn’t have been more true Oh, searching for A home in you I guess you never knew
It’s a lovely track.. I guess the mistake I made was thinking we can find home in another when we need to find it in ourselves.
So, after the break in May I was feeling a bit anxious but largely just really looking forward to seeing Anita and reconnecting. I’d had a bit of a wobble during the break and the mishap with the return to sessions wasn’t ideal, but the fact Anita had rescheduled so I didn’t need to wait until Friday meant that I felt ok enough and was just really ready to process some of my stuff. I’ve been holding onto such a lot for such a long time.
When I arrived on the Wednesday I sat down and took a minute – you know what it’s like after a break. It takes a while to ground back into the space, to settle, to let the parts know things are ok and safe. I began by telling Anita I was a bit stressed, told her a little a bit about something that had happened with my kids, students etc and then think it must have been a couple of minutes in when I dropped False Adult and said, “It’s been hard.”
There was a little bit of silence and then Anita said, “Well done for coming this morning…” I didn’t reply but it felt like we were getting on the page quickly to start to work through the break…wrong! There was maybe fifteen seconds and then she started, “I also need to have a difficult conversation with you – I ended up in A and E when I was on holiday because I couldn’t breathe, they thought it might be my heart. The Doctor says I can’t take any more stress…and my mum’s in hospital, she might die… I am really sorry and I know it’s not we wanted and we hoped I would get through this, but I am going to have to bring the counselling with you to an end…”
I tried really hard to take it all in and not disappear. Whilst part of me had feared this (ending) for a while, there was another part that was utterly stunned. I felt completely pummelled. The night before she’d sent me a message to tell me she was looking forward to seeing me and now this? Wtf?
Anita went on, “I know it’s not what either of us wanted. It really isn’t what I wanted.” And then she told me more about her health concerns, what had happened to her mum, and her very real fears about the future. Her voice was strained and I could hear the wheeze in her chest had got much worse since I had last seen her. She looked utterly exhausted. Broken, if I am honest.
I went through the whole range of emotions in seconds. I was sad, angry, upset… you name it. The parts were going insane. How I didn’t dissociate I have no clue. There was another part, though, that is really good at problem solving and that wanted to fix everything for her and strategically find a way forward – although I know I can’t.
Anita said she was happy to work with me until I found someone else. This sparked Teen off and I angrily responded – with “Shut up!…Have you any idea what you’re saying? What this feels like?…”
Anita replied, “Pretty shit. Devastating. Rejecting. All of it. I don’t know how to change it. I know this isn’t what either of us wants. I’m so sorry.”
I just sat there. It might not be what we want but it was going to happen regardless. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
I don’t know who said this – maybe all of the parts, but I whispered, “What even was this?”
Like honestly? What had this relationship even been if it was so easy to walk away from it now?
Anita was defensive and felt closed down, “It’s not easy for me as well, you know – I haven’t wanted to do this. This is last thing I have wanted to do.” There was a definite sadness in her voice but also, I felt like she was removed – probably in self-protect (which is something she later admitted to).
There was a period of silence. My mind was all over the place. “I just didn’t think you’d do this to me” I sighed.
“I tried not to, but I can’t help it. I can’t carry on like this. I have to get better…”
Adult me stepped up and in. I took her hand and held it for the rest of the session. It was a complete role reversal and at one point Anita even said, “This is meant to be your session, not mine.”
After more of Anita telling me basically that she’s utterly fucked I asked, “Does this have to be for forever?” Anita said she didn’t know. She was so … I don’t know … just in a state of collapse that it was really difficult to get anywhere. All these ending sessions have been impossibly hard because I’ve been dealing with someone who is having a breakdown not with a therapist who is doing a proper ending based on client need. She has no idea what she’s doing or how to get from one minute to the next so she has no idea of the future because right now she can’t even cope with the minute in front of her.
At one point a young part came forward, “What have I done wrong?” I’ve been really struggling to get my head round what’s happening given the quality of the relationship we had. Like how do you go from everything we’ve got to nothing?
Anita replied, “Nothing – you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s my situation, my ability to cope. It’s me. Not you. It really isn’t you. I am broken. My soul is broken right now. I have nothing left to give. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to this. I really did hope it wouldn’t come to this. But I don’t know what else to do…It’s a shame we met like this because if we’d have met as friends we could stay friends. Ethically, we shouldn’t have anything to do with each other for two years after we end. It’s all a pile of shit basically…”
“This doesn’t feel right,” I said.
“I don’t know what to do” replied A, “I can’t carry on. I’ve got to cut the stress out of my life.”
There was another silence. “I can’t just go” I sobbed. “I can’t just disappear. It’s not nothing to me” and I broke down in big tears.
“It’s not nothing to me either,” said Anita.
“…Unless I am completely delusional? If that happens it undoes everything that I thought that this was.”
It was absolute agony. Both of us just hanging on by a thread. There is so much in this relationship but also… not enough it seems.
I haven’t gone into the detail of this session because honestly 90% of it was about Anita and her situation – which isn’t relevant…it doesn’t add anything.
It was coming to the end of the session. I had no idea what was going to happen. Was it just going to end? Earlier in the session I had said there was no point in continuing but at the end Anita said, “Let’s find a way of still connecting. I think we need to come back to this and figure something out”.
I left the session sad but hopeful – like maybe there would be a way to not completely sever the relationship altogether even if the therapy had to stop.
There has been so much up and down, push and pull, connection and disconnection…it’s been an absolute head fuck if I am honest. Part of the problem is Anita didn’t come at these endings with long-term clients with a clear vision of how it would look. I don’t think she and her supervisor have really properly thrashed out what needs to happen and … it’s felt like she’s been winging it on burnout. I feel like she got really scared on holiday, literally thought she was going to die, her mum is really sick in hospital and she’s just panicked and felt like she has to stop. She does but she needed to go off sick – not try and botch endings.
After two sessions of pain and … well… just going round in circles, I realised we were getting nowhere. She was increasingly checked out. It wasn’t intentional – she is very ill. But it means that when I tried to say things she couldn’t hear me and would react from a place of defensiveness. Also, I was trying to rescue her. I’ve been trying to rescue her for a year, really.
It reached a point, though, where I needed to get my feelings heard even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. The pain I was going through was/is off the chart and I was not going to leave this therapy silent and suffering like with Em. I at least needed to give me and my parts a voice even if it wouldn’t change things. I sucked up so much of my hurt with Em and although this situation is different this time, and perhaps Anita in less of a place to hear me than Em was, I was still paying for this mess… don’t let’s get started on that!
So, I wrote a letter and recorded it as a voice note. I knew I wouldn’t be able to read it in session on the Monday (3rd session of trying to figure out what the hell to do) so I asked A to play it on her phone. It was twenty-five minutes long. We cuddled the whole time (it’s so hard when there is so much love there) and I sobbed. I was wondering if this would be the last time she’d ever hold me. If this would be the last time I would hear her heartbeat, be able to breathe in her safe smell. To say that it was utter agony is an understatement.
I still don’t know how I will survive without this… this proximity, closeness, intimacy – call it what you will. How do you replace that? I can’t and don’t want to.
I’ll leave that here. I have the voice note letter ready to go in another post which I’ll post soon (check me out with my organised blogging… lol!). And big thank you to everyone for your support. Yet again this tribe have my back. Big hugs. x
So, last time I was here I was midway through a therapy break and everything with A – or in A’s life- had been unravelling in a big way in the lead up to her break. She really needed the holiday and I had hoped that a couple of weeks abroad would do her the world of good even if I would wobble in her absence. We were both banking on her coming back restored and well. Sadly, things got worse for her, and because of that – us. Before the break, I posted something about feeling like I was watching a slow-motion car crash…well, that crash ended up happening in a huge way, at speed, when she got back and I am essentially in intensive care trying not to die right now.
I realise that it’s been a couple of months since I have posted and that’s because such a lot has gone on. It’s my intention to try and write a few posts over the next couple of weeks or to try and break up what’s happened into manageable chunks and get some kind of clarity on all that’s gone on. I’m not going to beat around the bush and keep you all in suspense, though, whilst I sift through the wreckage. I’m guessing most of you will have worked out that this lengthy absence, here, hasn’t come about because I am busy. I am. But it’s not that. I’m really gutted to say this, but Anita and I have ended the therapy. Or should I say, Anita did.
It’s been a right fucking mess (understatement) and I will get to it bit-by-bit when I can. Suffice to say I am absolutely devastated and just haven’t been able to go anywhere near this on the blog because it’s been survival. I honestly don’t know where to start or what to say. I know that for lots of you who have followed this blog, and me, for a long while will probably feel bloody gutted too. It’s felt like my relationship with Anita has been a beacon for lots of us with C-PTSD, proof that some therapists can go deep, do the work, and are safe.
Turns out, that’s not the case.
Anita is human first, therapist second.
Her handling, or should I say, mishandling of it has utterly broken me. I’ll be ok. I’m a survivor. I just … well… I just never imagined I would ever be writing these blog posts. Part of me feels so fucking stupid for letting my guard down, trusting, believing all that Anita said, allowing my most vulnerable parts to be seen and to be in relationship with her, only to have them discarded and thrown out into the cold again when it was no longer convenient for her to do the work. It’s more complex than that and Adult me understands – sort of – but there are lots and lots of parts that don’t and cant and won’t understand.
My inner critic is having a field day right now, “You fucking stupid moron! Do you never fucking learn? Therapists and you don’t mix. You’re too much and you make them leave. No one can cope with your tick-like need that bleeds them dry. You’re a clingy, pathetic mess. Three years and look what happens, you fuck them up. You fucking loser!”
Yeah, so that’s really fun. Mind you give me the Critic over the screaming young ones… I can’t soothe them or make it any better. Every last one of them is crying out for A because it is only A that knows how to help. Only … she’s gone. So now what?
I know, now, that the critic is only ever there to try and protect me and so right now feels like it’s really needed. The level of devastation is hard to put into words but let’s just say, when Em and I ended it was terrible, but this, with Anita, is just utterly crushing. Everything I thought the relationship was, has gone up in flames…and as much as parts of me know this isn’t my fault. It’s still me that’s ended up being dumped.
So, let’s rewind to the break…
I knew Anita was on her knees headed into her holiday and I had decided very consciously to leave her well alone during her break. The last session before the break she was really sick and had a to take a call mid-session with the emergency doctor. I knew about it beforehand and whilst it wasn’t ideal, with the NHS as it is, you never know when a call-back will happen and I was glad, at least, that Anita was finally getting seen.
During that session A assured me she’d be coming back and we’d be ok- the usual reassurance before a separation. I gave A her birthday gifts for her to open when I got up to leave, gave her a hug, and walked away for what I thought was a three week break.
The next morning she sent me a text:
As you can see, I sent her a GIF on her birthday and then left her to it. Just over a week into her holiday A sent me a message with photos of her holiday:
I was having a tough time by this point. My internal minibus of full of child parts was careering at speed, downhill, without a driver but I really didn’t think sending a long message would help any of us at this point so I just said, ‘looks gorgeous. I miss you x’ and then left it at that. It’s a world away from what I might once have sent but I also knew that Anita was teetering on the edge of complete burnout so didn’t want to add to her stress.
On the Sunday night before A came back I sent her a message to have a safe flight – just as she had when I was away in February and began my countdown to Friday and seeing her again.
So imagine my surprise when on Monday morning, I was dyeing my hair, and when I had finished I saw two missed calls from Anita at 10:07, one on my phone and one on WhatsApp. Wtf?! She’d left a voicemail asking me where I was? Apparently she was expecting me.
Fuck.
When she told me she’d booked her holiday way back in February she’d said she was going for two weeks and was flying on her birthday… I did the maths and this meant she’d be flying on a Monday and returning on a Monday so we’d end up seeing each other on the following Friday. She never gave me dates but this is what I thought a two week break meant.
Nope.
My heart absolutely sank when I received that message. To think I could have seen her and would now have to wait until Friday just sent me through a loop.
I text Anita:
I was so looking forward to seeing her on the Wednesday even though there was a part of me that was upset and hurt that she hadn’t checked her messages before the (failed) session on Monday– had she have done that she would have seen my message about the flight and realised I had thought she was away still. She could have text and told me she was back and I would have been there in a flash. But like everything lately, Anita has been so removed from her work that things have slipped. I was also sad that when I had text her in real time that morning she didn’t say to ring her or to quickly check in knowing I was having a meltdown. It just felt like there was a massive disconnect yet she then sent me the message the night before telling me she was looking forward to seeing me. Maybe it was ok after all.
Nope.
I’ll break here with this as that next session was – well – it broke me really.
Like I say, I am going to try and get up to speed with this all over the next few weeks but it might take some time because such a lot went down and I am really struggling with it.
A couple of years ago I left a therapy session with Anita and as I walked towards the gate, her son had his head in the bonnet of the car on the driveway. He was fixing something for A. Fortunately, he didn’t look up and I was able to leave without being seen. I didn’t feel much about it at the time, and I have literally only just remembered that this had even happened as I lead into the main bit of this post! Isn’t it weird, then, that a chance viewing of one of Anita’s children had absolutely no impact on me at all…and yet seeing the other (her daughter) set all kinds of shit off?! Hmmmm, I wonder why that might be?!
Let’s be clear, Anita is not a blank screen in my therapy AT ALL. Indeed, she is the complete antithesis to Em who revealed absolutely nothing about herself during the time we worked together. I know Anita has two adult kids and some grandkids – she mentions this on her website and occasionally mentions them in session. Most of the time that’s fine…ish (!). It really depends how I am feeling in myself and in the relationship with Anita in the moment.
If I feel settled and secure, then it really doesn’t bother me for her to reference her kids or something she might have done with them but other times (when the young parts are feeling vulnerable) it feels like she’s pouring salt directly into the mother wound. This feeling has got significantly worse in recent months, in part, due to the fact that her adult daughter has moved back in with her so she’s there nearly all the time working from home when I am having my sessions.
As I said in a recent post, sometimes I can hear her daughter moving around the house and it can feel … I can’t really explain it… awkward, I guess. There’s a kind of jealousy, perhaps, too. I feel jealous that I get so little of Anita’s time and attention these days, and so I really don’t need to be reminded of her daughter being there. I think I also feel a bit weird if Anita is reading me a story and I then hear daughter moving around. Because let’s face it, whilst we are working with my child parts in those sessions – it must sound a bit fucking weird hearing your mum reading kids’ stories to an adult.
Anyway, it is what is and I don’t let this get in the way of me getting what I need in the sessions – I just wish she wasn’t there (read into that what you will!). I try not to bristle when A says something about her family. Her family are clearly really important to her – as they should be. I guess, for lots of us though, when we know our therapists are close with their family, and involved with their kids and grandkids, it can feel like another reminder of exactly what we don’t have.
Like, “Look what you could have won… but didn’t.”
Therapy, at times, can feel like a brief escape into a fantasy world of what it might have been like had things been different (what we needed) when we were kids. Having someone who actually pays attention to us, listens, sees, and responds to us and meets some of our needs, is in so many ways the basics of interaction and caring for a child, but when it’s been missing our whole lives it feels like a magic balm receiving it as an adult! Having an attuned therapist has done such a lot for me…even if I am, yet again, whining about something that’s happened!!
Of course, therapy isn’t just playing at getting the mum we wanted. Well…it’s not only this (LOL!), there’s tonnes of work and pain to sift through as well. Often, it’s the fantasy relationship that triggers the sore points in us so that are then ready to be worked through and with (so long as the therapist is open to that and can cope with attachment stuff). I mean mine and Anita’s relationship is real, not just in my head, not only fantasy, but the child parts definitely see her as a mother figure. Adult me knows she’s my therapist but that’s an important role too and that client therapist relationship is valuable.
I am phrasing this really badly– wandering as usual! – but basically because Anita and I laid some pretty robust foundations at the beginning of my therapy, when the child parts and attachment stuff finally went live in summer 2020, we were well placed to deal with it. All the work we’d done at the beginning when I went to her when Em and I were hitting the skids and then terminated really left a clear map of what was likely to come up eventually between A and I. Anita’s absolute calm, care, and empathy hearing the absolute state of it when we first met meant that I knew that there was space for whatever might come AND THERE HAS BEEN A LOT!
I think this is really different to when I worked with Em and the aching need and attachment stuff came up and I had no idea what was going on, or why, or how to even deal with it. I was just drowning in shame week in week out. But Anita could see from the get-go that I had gone headlong down the hole with Em and triggered all my wounding in the relationship with her. Transference 101.
Anyway, get to the point RB…
So, we all know that my relationship with Anita is…deep? Yeah. It is. It’s close. It’s human and it’s fucking MESSY at times. We work through stuff in the room and it’s very specific to me and my need and my trauma. As we also know, a significant amount of my trauma stems from my mother wound…which leads to fun times! The bits that hurt the most are the bits where the young parts are triggered and feel unseen, unloved, inadequate, ‘less than’ – [insert endless negative feelings list here]…
Sooooo, a few weeks back it was absolutely pissing rain and I arrived at therapy at my usual time. I never arrive early – always bang on 10am – because I know what it’s like when students rock up early and I am still doing something else. Also, I figure if I arrive on time then Anita should be ready for me. So, that particular morning I had driven to therapy feeling a lot of feelings. It was right smack in that time when Anita’s wheels were falling off and my child parts were going wild inside but I had been keeping it to myself for fear of sending her over the edge. I had intended to go to that session and try and articulate what was happening for me because I was out of coping – I was in the zone and ready to go.
So, imagine my shock when I was head down trying to keep dry, little parts on the surface, and I walked through the gate, looked up, and there was Anita’s daughter coming out the front door.
Fuck.
I mean what a fucking fuck?! Of course we know these people exist. Of course I know she bloody lives there! But there’s something really different between having the knowledge of someone or hearing them moving about to being face-to-face with them unexpectedly. I instantly snapped into adult and pasted on a friendly smile and said “Hi”. A’s daughter smiled back and apologised for being there and then carried on out. All the while Anita was at the door – so she saw the whole thing.
Ummm.
Let’s be honest. This completely threw me. I got into the room and expected A to make some reference to it. It can’t just be me that thinks that’s a fairly big deal knowing exactly what we work on? I mean basically I saw the ‘sibling’. The favourite one. In the normal run of things I would have said something to Anita but given how it was then, and her total lack of capacity to hold anything I wasn’t about to bring the, “Seeing your daughter and talking to her felt really weird and it’s upset me a bit because the young parts want you to themselves and I feel like these days I get less and less of you”. Basically, it was the fantasy meeting harsh reality. And of course I know the reality – I guess I just didn’t want to be faced with it like this.
So, that was weird.
Really weird.
But then it happened again a few weeks later.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
This time we had a bit more of a conversation – nothing massive but she recognised me. She must be thinking, ‘There’s that client that’s here all the fucking time and never leaves my mum alone!’
So yeah. That was unexpected and uncomfortable. I mean, I guess sometimes parts of us would like to feel more included in parts of our therapist’s lives – but I can categorically say, that the part I am absolutely not wanting to know or come face-to-face with is her beloved children!
Anyway, I don’t have much more to say on that, I just thought I’d let you know as at this point I don’t think you can make it up! I mean I could unpick the psychology behind it but we know it don’t we? Ugh.
Anita is now away on holiday so it’s a three-week break – just marvellous. I’ve got another post swirling in my brain, so I’ll get to that sometime soon – suffice to say my internal mini bus isn’t in great shape.
They say procrastination is a trauma response and if the lack of being able to write this blog is anything to go by then, yep…! I mean I agree with that statement anyway – I am the queen of avoidance and procrastination and it definitely stems from trauma, a fear of failure, the list goes on…
I have been meaning/wanting to write for ages but every time I think about actually typing what’s been going on I recoil and find something else to do, or do nothing – actually that’s a lot more accurate! – so much time mindlessly scrolling through social media to distract! If I do make it as far as grabbing the lap top I turn it on and just have it sat next to me open and can’t type. There’s a part of me that wants to process and share what’s happening but there’s another part that feels, I dunno, perhaps that if I write it makes it all the more real? And I don’t especially want the last couple of months to be real.
In addition to this, I feel almost like I can’t formulate my thoughts in a logical, readable way and I aware that so many weeks have gone by, and so much has happened, that it’ll come out in a non-sensical mess. I don’t really know why that bothers me – perfectionist streak maybe? Not wanting to be judged by others? I know I used to write so much ‘better’ than I do now. These days it’s about whacking it on the page when I can, whereas before I think I actually crafted stuff before and had stuff to say that was a bit more interesting. Maybe no one else notices and I am just critical of myself, but it is something I am aware of, and I feel like maybe this blog, like my therapy, is in its death throes.
Since my last post where I listed all the random ball dropping that Anita seemed to be doing i.e not holding the frame very well: dogs barking, people wandering around outside, wet hair/not seeming ready, forgetting to put the books out, and of course forgetting to call me before my holiday things got much worse. I guess you could say all the things I have been noticing have really been symptoms of a much larger problem and it was only a matter of time until the bomb went off. However, if I am the Queen of Avoidance I am beginning to see that Anita, in certain aspects of her life, is the High Priestess!
The last year or so has been up and down. We’ve navigated our way through whatever’s come but, frequently, I have felt like what’s been happening is not necessarily ‘my stuff’. Of course, ‘my stuff’ gets triggered in relation to Anita, that’s the nature of what we are working on…but the rupture we had (in err, was it November??) where she said something about me being ‘too dependent’ (which she later swore blind she hadn’t said) felt really off. I felt (and knew) already that her personal life was difficult from a previous ‘honesty session/rupture’ but it seemed now that she was funnelling her frustrations into me and my therapy. It’s easier to feel that a client is too needy than admit her kids, parent, and all the other people that place endless demands on her are causing her to sink. Clients can be moved on and let go, family …less so!
Anyway, therapy this last year has been, I dunno… not especially therapeutic maybe? I mean, on a level it is, because regularly seeing Anita does a lot for the parts of me that fears people disappearing out of nowhere. There are parts of me that feel that after three years we can ride out whatever comes up between us and there is enough of a sense of safety in the relationship to allow me to get on and do what I need to do in my life and in my healing without the need for her to be there 100% of the time. There is an invisible string at work.
So much of the progress I have made with my mental health has happened as a result of the relationship with Anita but the work doesn’t just happen in the room. However the security that is built in the room and the safety that I feel in the relationship and in myself now means that I have been able to do so much better out of it. And of course there have been plenty of really connected sessions over the course of the year. So it’s not all bad. Far from it!
I think the early days of the therapy were really intense with Anita. I had just come out of the HORRIFIC termination with Em and there was a lot of massive stuff coming up and out then. The therapy felt really huge and helpful. Tbh it was pretty life-saving. I was so broken by what happened with Em that Anita saw me warts and all from the beginning. Anita’s approach was so different to Em’s and it felt so nurturing and holding and basically a massive fucking contrast to what I was used to.
It felt like I was having an enormous corrective experience from the get-go with Anita and she didn’t even know me. The compassion and care just came out of Anita is endless waves. I couldn’t not take it in even if a lot of it bounced off – enough of it was able to trickle down through the cracks and soothe the hurt places. The best thing about seeing Anita in the early days is there was no guess work involved for the young parts. Anita said exactly what she thought- and felt- and saw and it was so unbelievably refreshing. She didn’t hide her emotions from me, nor was she afraid to tell me how she felt about me. It wasn’t ‘love’ at that point but I was someone who was lovable and worthy of her time and care.
Then the pandemic hit a couple of months in, and we moved online for all those looooonnnnggggg months which meant there was a lot of time to get to know Anita without the room dynamic. She got a lot of my back story and bit by bit parts of me started to trust her. And then of course the attachment stuff went live (!!!) about six months in, but magically I was able to tell her (!) and it was completely accepted, welcomed even. The return to the room was unreal for the relationship and so so healing. The first session back saw our first hug. I’d spent years sitting across from Em dying inside because I felt so unlovable and untouchable and here was A opening her arms to me and pulling me into a proper, deep squeeze.
That, first, barely twenty second hug at the end of that session will stay with me forever. I felt like years of trauma was being released. The biggest thing was that she didn’t let go. It was me that pulled away and it has continued to be that way always – she never lets me go. Then of course actual massive holding happened in the sessions and this led to the me and the young parts being able to tell her I loved her in words to her face and having that reciprocated.
I mean ALL of that was massive and did such a lot to help heal the wounded young parts of me. Then there’s the heart necklace she gave me…
all the gifts over the years…the texts, check ins… there’s just been such a lot of ground work that’s been put into the relationship. The healed ruptures have been instrumental in my growth, too. It’s been far from easy at times (embarrassing as hell but never shaming) but Anita has been there rock solid throughout. I could go on and on but most of you have been here a long time and have been alongside me for the journey, so you know.
And…being realistic about things, my therapy – even now, despite all the changes – is still what a lot of people dream of. The level of intimacy there is in the relationship is … huge. And so no matter what happens I am just eternally grateful for what I’ve had, and what the relationship has allowed in terms of healing. When I think about what it would be like to not have A and start again I literally can’t imagine doing it. I don’t want to be without her. I don’t want to build another therapeutic relationship. I also know that no matter how good the next person would be I would probably negatively compare back to A because what we have/had has been more than I imagined possible and has held me through some massive emotional stuff. I can’t imagine anyone else doing the work A has with the young, traumatised parts.
I mean, perhaps now I wouldn’t need or look to another therapist to do the things Anita has done for me, because to an extent I don’t look to Anita in the same way for those things anymore, either. Our relationship is different now, or I am… we both are. I have deeper roots and am more able to withstand storms and there is a level of trust and knowledge of her care and love that means I bounce back quicker when things go wrong.
The intensity of the young part/s to need to be endlessly connected to Anita isn’t there in the same way now because we’ve moved through that stage a bit (!). Of course, that part still wants to be close and the cuddles and stories in sessions are really important – but what’s different is the need for holding ‘all the time’ (because that’s how it used to feel) or the hanging on desperately for sessions because the need to be connected and attached in a tangible physical sense was so intense and the time between felt painful. It’s not like that now.
I am not triggered out my brain when she doesn’t respond to a text whereas there have been times when I have gone belly up in the early days (you’ve seen the posts, so you know! Cringe!) and whilst I miss her sometimes I don’t feel like my life is revolving around those couple of hours a week. It’s taken a long time and a lot of work, but it is possible to move through this stuff. I don’t think I could ever go back to needing her like I did.
I want her in my life, and I want to continue on with the work (if possible) but I don’t think my world would fall apart if I go in on Monday and we have to end. I’d be gutted. Of course, I would. But I also feel like the work we have done so far has been game-changing for me. When we started the work, I needed her to keep me from drowning because I was sinking under the water. Whereas now I can swim doggy paddle. I’d like to think with more work I’ll be capable of butterfly, but I know that if she goes now that I won’t drown. And that’s huge. That’s a massive gift. Her love and care has been internalised enough so that I can actually live well.
I can really see how far I have come and how much work has been done on the various parts of me that were so wounded where previously the slightest misstep (perceived or real) on A’s part felt like vinegar being poured straight into the open ulcerated (mother) wound. That’s not so much the case now. Case in point is when she didn’t call me in February before my holiday. That would have been absolutely unsurvivable for parts of me a couple of years ago, but now, it hurt some parts but not enough for me to have a complete breakdown about it.
It didn’t completely derail me and the therapy altogether. I wasn’t caught circling the drain of being unlovable and unimportant. I didn’t spend months and months silently brooding in pain about it. That’s not to say there was no reaction – there absolutely was but it was just part of the story. I (and the parts) reacted to Anita’s poor handling of it at the time but then, I think most importantly is that I was able to bring it to Anita and tell her exactly how I felt the next session with adult telling the story and thank goodness I was able to be adult because that was fucking fateful session…
Yikes…
Soooo….here we go!!! … y’all ready?! Deep breaths.
What I hadn’t banked on that next session after my walking out, coming back to repair, and having a cuddle, was Anita hitting burnout and breakdown. Like I’d sensed she wasn’t ok – well more than sensed it, I felt it – but at the end of February it came out properly in that session. It was a session that was not therapy but was at least honest and allowed me to know what was happening. In some ways it was good to finally hear the truth. It made me feel less mental, actually. But crikey it was once of those situations we all dread. I spent a lot of time fearing being ‘too much’ in therapy but I hadn’t really ever banked on my therapist falling apart. FFS!
Sometimes I think it’s possible to join dots in the wrong ways and get in a muddle in therapy. It’s a tendency of mine to feel like something is off and then look for reasons that it could be my fault. What is it that I am doing wrong? Why does Anita feel distant/far away? It must be because her feelings towards me have changed or are negative and it sets the young parts off in a panic. I mean it’s more complex than that but that’s a simplified version of what can happen. Only it wasn’t me. It isn’t me…not this time (mind you was it me with Em, either?!). Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the situation though – because even though what’s happening is nothing to do with me, it’s my therapy, and my relationship that is teetering on the edge of the abyss.
I can’t tell you how many times over the last few months I have said to Anita that she’s changed or that I have felt that she’s not there. My antennas are so honed and are perpetually scanning for threat of abandonment that I pick up on the tiniest thing. Anita has acknowledged that this both a superpower and a burden for me at times but knows that she can’t hide from me because I see stuff before she even does. Thanks trauma!
She’s sworn blind this last year that nothing has changed and that everything is ok, even so far as saying “I am not in the place I was last year” at one point (EYE ROLL!). And I suppose on a level that’s correct in so far as her feelings towards me haven’t changed but she has changed. Her capacity has changed, and she is on her edge and no she is not where she was last year…in fact it’s much much worse than she was last year – she’s so overwhelmed she said that sometimes she can’t see a way out of her situation.
To be fair, I think when we’re in an impossible situation our minds hide the extent of how bad it is from us…or at least I think this is what’s happened with A. But as I said, none of this fucking helps me, or my therapy which has hit the skids as a result.
Anyway, I’ll try and condense this as it’s just a long drawn-out pile of shit to be honest with you. I had thought of typing the transcript of the bomb drop session but I am not sure there is anything to be gained by it. I might post it separately another time.
Basically, what happened was that I arrived and quickly felt a bit sick and unsettled but I couldn’t locate any reason for it in me. I told Anita I felt off and she said, “I wonder if you are picking up on my being overwhelmed?” This set alarm bells ringing but also another part was like, “Phew I am not going mad, after all!”
Anita told me she was really struggling to the extent that she was wondering whether she might have to take a break from work altogether. She said she was having extra supervision but didn’t know how things were going to pan out. She told me she’d cut her client load down significantly and hadn’t taken on any trauma clients in over a year… she was on the verge of tears and I took her hand and held it for the duration of the session. Inside part of me was panicking at what this might mean for me and another part was ok. Thankfully, there is that part now that feels strong enough to withstand the thing I have always feared most – being left.
The session was hard. A was not in a good place at all but we spoke a lot. At one point I asked her whether she wanted me to leave (as in end the therapy). She emphatically said no, that wasn’t what she wanted. And I believe her when she says that’s not what she wants at all…but that she also said doesn’t want the therapy to be detrimental to me and she has to be in a good enough place to hold the work and she wasn’t sure that she was.
Anyway, it was a weird session because on a level it wasn’t about me at all, but on the other hand it allowed me to see exactly how things were and see that my anxiety was 1) founded and 2) I was not nuts. It was heartfelt and gut-wrenching session. There was talk about the love and the care and how none of that stuff has changed at all between us. What’s happening for A is nothing about our relationship (but our relationship may end up being collateral damage). It’s everything to do with her own life. And that fucking sucks balls, but at the same time there’s a part of me that can accept that life is a bloody rollercoaster sometimes and we can’t predict the future.
By all accounts A has tried really hard to protect me and my therapy through her life collapsing around her ears. I haven’t been let go and she has tried really hard to be there as much as she can be. She told me she is committed to me and to being there, but she is also aware that that may not be enough for me. Over the last few weeks, we keep coming back round to the same thing, and it’s her saying that she doesn’t think what she offers is enough because it’s so much less than she used to give. It’s interesting. Of course, I miss what we’ve had but at the same time we are not in the same place that we used to be.
I told her that I feel like a lot of this is her stuff and not coming from me – i.e it’s her guilt perhaps about knowing she isn’t how she was rather than me having a meltdown about it in the here and now. I think she wants to be able to give more, perhaps feels I deserve more, and feels like she’s failing me or causing me harm because she can’t give it. As I say I might at some point write up part of that session because it was HEAVY and REAL but we’ll see. Time keeps marching on and as I said at the beginning I’m not finding it very easy to write.
Don’t get me wrong – I (and the parts) did fully have a meltdown starting in Feb 2022 for a fucking really long time about ‘everything’ being taken away and the feeling of her stepping back – but I am not there in the same way now but I can imagine that A is very aware of how much I have struggled. Sometimes stuff gets triggered – of course it does. When I am wobbling I long for the old Anita who I could reach out to and who would reply almost immediately, offer an extra session, or a longer session – but at the same time, I know that I can be ok without all that I had before because what I have got is still valuable and I have moved a long way since the time when that need was really there.
As I have said what I still have is what a lot of people wish for: the outside contact (never had a shaming boundary talk about that with Anita – unlike with Em), Anita and I still have regular contact, she sends me Gifs and replies to my messages, the physical touch and holding, the stories for the young parts, transitional objects, washing my elephant, the safe enough space to express my feelings – I can’t tell you how big a deal it is to be able to say “I love you” most sessions and to have it responded to with the same, and the gifts (despite being mired in shit she still remembered my birthday the other week and bought me some really lovely presents)…
I mean there’s loads of stuff that is so much more than your average therapy and so it’s about taking a reality check – it’s still more than I could ever have hoped for when I was with Em.
So, although I haven’t spoken in detail about that session what I can say is it wasn’t easy and left me feeling a bit unsure of the best course of action. Anita and I agreed that neither of us wanted to the therapy to end but that we had to keep checking in with where things were at. It turns out that is easier said than done! I took False Adult to quite a few sessions and talked about stuff like work rather than us or where things were going… which was a mistake. I think I was trying to be the ‘easy’ client and not give Anita any reason to feel stressed by me so she wouldn’t pull the plug on us. I recognise that this is a well-worn pattern – autopilot if you like. I have spent so many years of my life in hiding that I don’t think I always recognise when it’s happening…until there’s a kick back from other parts. Which is what happened.
A few weeks after the session where it felt like things might end, I had worked myself up to a state of high anxiety. Basically, I’d kept the young parts out the room altogether, hadn’t hugged Anita at all (although she had offered hugs), and felt really far away. The first ten minutes of the session were small talk and then I told A that I was having nightmares and struggling with sleep. The conversation meandered a bit and then A asked, “Are you feeling anxious?” I nodded. Part of me felt relieved that she’d ‘seen’ me and what was going on because I had been masking so well. I felt like I needed to be able to let out my fears and just be held and give space to those little parts who were feeling scared. Of course, this is what Anita would have done previously when she was fully functional…but that isn’t who I have right now.
Instead, the other shoe dropped. It’s what I had been panicking about and why I had kept False Adult front and centre. Anita continued, “Are you anxious about us?” Again, I nodded. “Wondering if I have got the capacity?” Another nod. Then came the sucker punch. “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that too.” I felt my stomach fall through the floor. “And I think the saddest thing is my situation is going to get worse, not better” …
Silence.
“I’m wondering if it’s – and as much as I don’t want to and you don’t want to – I’m wondering if it’s time to start looking around for someone else who has got the capacity – and I really I don’t want to say that – I really don’t but I think you are feeling the same aren’t you?…what are you feeling?”
I was feeling sick. This couldn’t really be it could it?
I replied, “I feel like I am watching a car crash in slow motion.” Anita looked really sad and then simply said, “Yeah, I get that.”
Then she said, “Can I give you a hug?”
I was a bit blown away tbh. Teen sullenly replied, “What’s the point?” I mean wtf was going on here? Was she ending the therapy or what?
Anita was on the verge of tears at this point and with so much feeling in her voice said, “It’s not what either of us want. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It really doesn’t…this isn’t what I want. Do you believe me?”
The adult that had been available to me in the last session was not there in the same way this time. I felt like I had been upended and went into myself to protect myself, but I stayed as present as I could because despite how fucking scary it felt there was still a part of me that felt like it might be ok. Maybe I was delusional?! But it allowed me to stay and to listen and to try and make sense of what was going on.
Anita and I battled on through the session. It was heart to heart stuff. There were tears. I mean it was fucking hideous but at the same time it was absolute stripped back, honest, and real – and because of that…connecting. I explained what I thought was going on about her feeling like she’s not giving enough, and she agreed that she was really struggling with feeling like she wasn’t giving like she used to. I said that lots of that was her not me. Time was up and I left feeling exhausted.
I sent Anita a message after the session:
If it was down to me, you know I would never let you go because I can’t imagine my world without you in it. But I get it’s not my choice and I don’t want to be the thing that pushes you over the edge because I love you way too much for that. I’ve clearly not got it right lately. I’ve been hiding to try and give you space. That’s what’s unsettled me. I haven’t wanted to talk or fill space at all with general life irritations. I’ve just wanted to be close to you – to cuddle and ride it out quietly. But I have kept away because I don’t want to break you and haven’t known what’s ok, or if you even want me to be there. It’s the distance in the room that panics me. I know it’s of my own making. You have asked me if I have wanted hugs. I just want you to be ok.
We kept in touch back and forth that week with short messages and gifs and it’s felt ok. Anita has been poorly and so I’ve been keeping my distance because she has been really breathless with asthma and a chest infection. It’s not been easy for the young parts because I really want to cuddle and be close and reconnect after all that’s been going on but don’t want to put any additional pressure on A when she’s not well. Having me stuck on her when she can’t breathe wouldn’t help would it?!
Then it was the bank-holiday weekend and a break (yuck!) and so we did Tuesday instead and a bit of a bumpy re-entry. I wasn’t feeling great, and I kept her at arm’s length which is pretty usual territory round breaks. She’d asked if I wanted a cuddle early on, but the protectors were having none of it. Some things never change! GROAN!
However, I’d got over myself a bit over the course of the week and on Friday she asked me again if I wanted a hug at the beginning of the session. There was no internal resistance at all, and I shuffled across the couch and we spent the entire hour cuddling. I said only three words in the entire time, “I love you”. Anita replied, “I love you too” and held me even more tightly.
A few times over the session she asked me what was going on for me or if there was anything I wanted to say… but I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t say anything. I just cuddled her tighter, listened to her heartbeat and allowed my system to take her in and relax. At the end she said it felt like we had had a really grounding session where we had reconnected after a long time…and sometimes we don’t need words. And, she’s right. That hour was so needed after the last couple of months.
I know that is really long-winded and probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ll try and keep up with this a bit better going forward! So really I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe we’ll make it through this, maybe we won’t. However, if it does end it won’t be for the lack of love.
So, it’s been another while since I have posted again… This is mainly because life is so unbelievably busy that I simply haven’t had time to sit and write – but it’s also because really I haven’t found my feet back in therapy since the Christmas break (yes – I know it’s almost March!). It’s felt like there’s been a catalogue of ‘mini-disasters’ in the room with Anita since the holidays which has made it feel difficult to drop into feeling completely safe – or at least safe enough to address some of the lingering murk that always rears its head in the early part of the year – namely the catastrophic end that Em and I went through three years ago … THREE YEARS AGO!!
Because that stuff around Em (and by extension the mother wound) is so huge, and so painful, I have to feel so completely contained and safe in the relationship with Anita to be able to go anywhere near it….and I just haven’t. Parts of me have gone into hiding and it’s not helped things in the room at all. I mean it’s been ok, but just not ok enough for me to get to the parts that are requiring attention and care…and because time is rolling on and those parts are not getting what they need, it’s making it feel crappy inside. I feel abandoned and rejected – and part of that is my doing because I haven’t let Anita in, she doesn’t know what’s going on.
My system is having a bit of a malfunction and it feels really disappointing to be in this place tbh. I am trying not to judge myself and just accept that whatever is coming up is just part of what needs to happen right now – but I can’t lie, I am not enjoying the levels of upset and dissociation that has crept back in. I know that I need to find a way to get properly back to A this coming week because I can feel myself starting to fall down a hole that I haven’t been in for a long while and I know that if I don’t send out an SOS cry then I am going to be…well…I just can’t go there again. I feel really lost. And the young parts – particularly the teen is not ok.
I tend not to write mid ‘crap’ on the blog these days. I prefer to write and process things a bit after whatever was going on has run its course and things have resolved a bit…basically when things feel a bit more together. I want to reflect from my Adult self rather than post in a triggered state – but the rate things are going it could be 2024 before I am able to do that so I guess I’ll just do a quick catch up before this blog dies altogether. I know I keep saying this, but I think I need to carve out some time somewhere for me to be able to write – even if it’s not blogging- because it has been such a helpful tool over the years…I just don’t know where that time will come from!
Anyway, here goes…
It’s clear as day to me that I am swimming (drowning) in the shit infested emotional seas right now. I feel like I am lost. And where in the past I’ve used the analogy of Stevie Smith’s poem, ‘Not Waving But Drowning’ – where people on the shore mistake the drowning swimmer for someone who is waving at them so they don’t respond. However, right now I feel like I am not even trying to get noticed – I couldn’t be mistaken for waving because I’ve almost resigned myself to drowning. Well not that, exactly, but I am not sending up the signal to show that I am not ok because the fact is there is no one standing on the beach watching. There is no one to notice the distress to come and help. There is no one to save me, and so I am trying hard to muster the energy to save myself but it’s not easy when you’re exhausted.
We’ve all been here.
We know we need to do better but sometimes all you can do is just keep treading water until things ease off…but it’s hard. Fortunately, I am a strong swimmer and I have been in choppy waters and rip currents enough to know that the sea will calm and I will find my way out of it…eventually.
I seem to be triggered left, right, and centre- and just as I feel like I am getting my head above water I get hit with something else. I really don’t think perimenopause is helping with this– and that’s not me playing the crazy hormones card, but honestly I am finding that my emotions are very heightened alongside my cycle now. I feel so bonkers around ovulation, and even paranoid at times – so, I am sure that’s an exacerbating factor in all this, too. Unfortunately, there’s not a great deal I can do about that other than up the self-care, be mindful, and take the supplements, eat better, and try and get the sleep in. Ah sleep…that elusive balm. Again, I am sure this is perimenopause. ARGH!!
Anyway, I am struggling a bit and the reality is, the anniversary of mine and Em’s end really hit me hard this year. I don’t know why – you’d think the further I get away from that the easier it would be, but sadly, “like a tick” is stuck deep in my young parts’ psyche and whilst Adult me knows what she said was completely out of order, as we well know, a hurt young part holds onto these negative soundbites like a security blanket confirming why we are unworthy of love and care.
Christmas was especially hard this year, too, when my mum failed to acknowledge me, my wife, or my children. And whilst our relationship is patchy at best these days, it felt like a deliberate and calculated kick in the teeth – a punishment for I have no idea what…?
Let’s be clear – I am in therapy because of my mother wound and whilst events in the here and now aren’t the end of the world (and they really aren’t) what these rejections or abandonments tap into is all the pain I experienced as a child and it seems to pour petrol on the fire. And that’s when it all goes wrong!
So, my mum not really engaging with me anymore is what it is – no worries – I have a wonderful little family unit and we are happy as we are – but to the little parts that are so hurt it just twists the knife again into that wound…and of course that then plays out in my therapy with Anita as I search and scan for evidence that she, too, doesn’t really care and would rather not be around me. And of course, breaks do this. Again, breaks are just breaks to Adult me…but breaks to the young parts…well, it’s not great is it?! #therapybreakhell
I think sometimes as an adult you can really sometimes doubt your childhood experience and wonder if you are just stuck and locked in victim mode and perhaps it wasn’t really that bad. I mean, seriously, I am getting really bored of navigating this emotional territory over and over but I am not doing it on purpose! I am not choosing to be here. I am trying hard to heal this stuff so I don’t keep falling flat on my face…and it’s working…I think. But some weeks are better than others. Today just happens to be part of one of the bad weeks but there have been months of much much better weeks.
Adult is gaining power, but the young parts are obviously still very much part of the system and I think will continue to be. I don’t see the goal as ‘getting rid’ of those younger parts – they are there to give me information about my feelings and need listening to – and dare I say it, are welcome…even the critic! The more I can give them space whilst being able to keep a foot in adult the better.
The biggest difference that I feel now is that where previously the young parts could completely steam roller me and almost take Adult hostage (kind of how it feels this weekend), there is a move towards Adult being able to communicate with those small parts and hold and soothe them to a degree. I mean obviously I am not the preferred Adult/parent but this is a million miles further forward from when I was working with Em. Back then I could see and feel these distressed young parts but I could do absolutely nothing to help them. Because of the work I’ve done with Anita I know what it is to feel held, loved, cared for and can now copy that, sort of.
Anyway, back to actual therapy:
The first session back after the break was 9th of January…which felt like an eternity after Christmas. So, it had been a looooooooong break – not ideal. My mum had been shit – again, not ideal. It was knee deep into the anniversary period of the notoriously bad time when Em and I colossally collapsed – not ideal…and so, yeah, I was very fragile, sensitive, and hypervigilant heading back to A… I was desperate to see her. I mean the little ones were absolutely in need of hugs and stories and reassurance that everything was ok.
It’s been such a long time since those early sessions that I can’t even really remember the details of what happened and I can’t be arsed to go back and listen to see what happened. What I can tell you is that there have been a few hiccups that have meant I haven’t been able to quite settle into the therapy. You’ll laugh when you read this, because I think on their own these things perhaps aren’t a big deal – but cumulatively they’ve felt big enough to stop me doing the work I really need to do. It’s felt like the safe container is a bit of a leaky bucket and so I’ve been waiting, poised in false adult a lot of the time waiting for ‘safe Anita’ to be there consistently.
Tbh I can’t quite remember the chronology of the little things that happened with Anita but I know the first session back she opened the door and her hair was still wet. “Big deal” I hear you say, but what that signalled to me was that she wasn’t quite ready for me, had been rushing, and probably wasn’t in the zone. Perhaps she was not wanting to be back to work and would not on her A game. I know that’s a lot of projection but that’s what we do isn’t it? When we feel vulnerable and uncontained, we really badly need our container (person and space) to be robust and any hint that they may not be sends things off.
The next session her dogs barked loudly for almost the entire session and I just couldn’t relax at all. I was jumpy and stressed out. I’d needed to talk the first session back but it was just filler and False Adult and now it felt like she wasn’t providing a safe, calm therapeutic space. I felt angry that day. I had stuff I really needed to dig into and I was left feeling like she didn’t really care enough to make sure the space was ‘therapeutic’.
In another one I could hear her adult daughter wandering around in the corridor right out outside the room which again made me not be able to relax (I think this is the one that pissed me off the most!).
In another she’d forgotten to put our stories out, which again signalled that she wasn’t really ready – or more over, didn’t have the young parts and me kept in mind. She forgot the books once before a long while back and I went belly up about it. It was a big rupture. This time I didn’t say anything – teen me was just thinking “what’s the point?” because we were traversing this weird not quite right space and quite frankly, I didn’t have the energy for it. But of course, the little parts were upset and disappointed.
In and of themselves these things above don’t seem like that big a deal but as I have said, cumulatively I just felt so off – such a departure from the Anita I used to see. So, False Adult turned up to lots of the sessions because I just did not want a rupture…but inside there was a lot up upset and unrest. The head injury I sustained at Christmas really affected me for most of the month of January too. I felt dissociated but not. My short term memory was awful and I would forget trains of thought and words and….well basically it was a nightmare. There was one session where I just sat there. My mind was completely empty. Peaceful even (Wow!). But it meant that there wasn’t really much therapy. I wasn’t sad about it though because I was so cognitively zoned out. I literally had no fucks to give!
Then anniversary of ending with Em rolled around and I didn’t speak about it despite the fact it was swirling inside. It was mine and Anita’s three-year anniversary but I felt awkward somehow. I gave her a gift, but it just felt a bit…I dunno…strange this year. I think that’s definitely me, not her.
That’s not to say during this period A and I haven’t connected. We have had a few hugs and stories – it’s not been completely distant…but I just haven’t felt quite right. Stuff was building up and up and up and then I had a very bad dissociative day and it hit me afterwards that it was the actual day of ‘tick gate’. The body remembers even if the mind isn’t quite on it!
The next session I was determined to go and talk things through with Anita. You know when it’s just built up to a point where you have to? Avoidance is out. You just need to do the work. You need to take a risk and oftentimes when you do that that’s when things feel most held and connected. Anita is not a mind reader and so if I come in in False Adult I think she can think I am ok…enough. If I actually show her or tell her I am struggling then she’s there. Sometimes I think I don’t give her the opportunity to meet me, but then there’s another part of me that feels like by now she should know me and my patterns well enough to spot when I might be hiding away.
So, that day a few weeks back (the ‘let’s do it’ day) it felt like the internal fog had lifted, the mistrust and crap about not feeling held or contained was gone. Anita and I have been together long enough for me to know that she’s there. She cares. And she’s human. (Am still fucked off about the disruptions though!) But it wasn’t serving me to keep stuff to myself. The child parts needed to be seen and held and to talk through the break and all the feelings of being left and abandoned.
It’s a 45 minute drive to Anita’s and I had just arrived in her town when I got a phone call from my wife telling me she needed to go to hospital urgently but didn’t think she could drive. So, that was therapy out. I text Anita just 15 minutes before my session and cancelled. I was gutted, but obviously my wife’s health and well-being take precedence. When I arrived home, I saw a message from A saying she hoped everything was ok and she was sorry not see me. I spent the day in hospital with my wife and it triggered a lot of the trauma from being young and also when I had to have all the chemo and radiotherapy for cancer- I wasn’t in a very good place and also so sad about not being able to see Anita when I had REALLY needed to and was REALLY ready to let stuff out.
I text Anita in the afternoon explaining what was going on (bad) and asked if she might have time for a quick check in before Friday and…she didn’t reply until the afternoon of the next day. That triggered me. Ugh. But not only that she said she didn’t have any space for me.
Ouch.
I wasn’t asking for a f-2-f session, I literally just wanted a five minute phonecall to touch base and she was too busy.
I was really upset about that. I mean really upset.
The next session was quite shutdown I think until I started crying and told her I had really needed to see her on Monday and then all the stuff about hospital trauma and stuff from being little came out. I thought Anita knew about this part of my story, but I think I must have shared it with Em (this is one thing I really hate about having switched therapists – I feel like so much of my story is held with Em). A responded with lots of love and care but, despite this I wasn’t able to tell her how hurt I felt about not having a check in. She’d brought it up and said she was sorry…but I was hurting a lot and the young parts just felt like she would have made time in the past.
I was due to go on holiday in half-term and so that was creeping ever closer…another break. Another disruption. I was flying on the Friday before half-term and I had asked again in a text if we might be able to check in. Again she said she was full. When I saw her in session she said she was sorry that she had no space in the week. I moodily replied, “I don’t want to see you, I don’t have time this week either, I just wanted to talk to you.” Anita hadn’t realised the check in I was asking for was a phone call and said that she could talk to me on the Wednesday evening before I went. It’s a day she has her grandchildren overnight but once she’d got them in bed we could talk. That sounded good to me.
So I left on the Monday feeling sad that it would be two weeks until I saw A, but grateful that at least we would talk and the child parts would get a bit of reassurance on the Wednesday.
Wednesday evening rolled around…and my phone didn’t ring. There was no text. Nothing. I went to bed upset but also kind of resigned to the fact that she’d not remembered me. On Thursday my phone remained blank. No contact.
By the evening part of me was panicking that something had happened to Anita…but more voices were shouting, “She’s forgotten about you. She doesn’t care. Out of sight, out of mind! You’re just not that important anymore.” – that stuff on a loop. I felt really sad. I went to bed on Thursday ready to fly on Friday and when I woke up at 3am there was a message from Anita on my phone sent at 11pm Thursday night:
I am so sorry about last night. Not only was it children, but our electric kept tripping off on the sockets, so (partner) had to come down to sort it. I hope you have a lovely time away and can fully recharge xx (heart).
I looked at the message and was just really fucking mad. Like, really? Sure things go wrong and perhaps it all got chaotic that evening. But the thing that really hurt me was that she was only acknowledging this more than 24 hours after we were meant to check in. It hurt because the reason I had asked for the check in in the first place was because there was a break coming up and the little parts get so distressed. Anita knew this. And so that message just felt shit on so many levels.
In the past I would have replied to that message and fired something back showing just how hurt and upset I was. But I didn’t. I just didn’t reply at all. I was sick for the first part of my holiday which was a real pisser and I was having nightmares with Anita in them. By Monday evening I was really struggling with the little parts. I sent Anita a message with something from Carolyn Spring about shame and the link to a song, a friend had shared with me by Sia which really encapsulated how I was feeling.
I heard nothing from Anita.
In the past when I have been away and it’s been our session time she’s sent me a text to tell me she’s thinking of me. Not this time.
On Friday she sent me a text wishing me a safe journey home and sending a hug…but by that time I just felt really cut off. Like, really? Can she really not know how upset I am.
Ugh.
Monday ended up a complete shitting disaster. I could barely speak to her and dissociated so badly that it felt like there was literal grey fog in the room. I couldn’t see properly. I was quiet. I was hoping Anita would say something early on about the missed check in but she didn’t and this shut me down even further. I had expected her to say something – surely that text wasn’t adequate and she couldn’t feel like that was the matter closed? The pain inside was intense and A just seemed to leave me in it. She didn’t reach out, ask to hold my hand, see if I wanted a hug, enquire which parts were there. At around the half hour mark she asked if what was going on was due to gap or her not calling on the Wednesday.
I couldn’t speak.
And then she said, “In hindsight, I won’t do that again. I should have said no in the first place.”
With that I got up and said, “I’m so done. That’s not fair.” And walked out.
I was so upset.
Maybe she shouldn’t have offered the check in, and maybe with hindsight it was a mistake but the mistake has been made and surely it’s up to her to try and find a repair and allow the hurt parts to talk about what it felt like to be let down and seemingly forgotten about. Instead, it felt like I was being punished for her cock up. My reaction was making her uncomfortable, obviously another example of being ‘too dependent’, and so rather than look at that, just withdraw yet another thing that helps. We don’t do longer sessions anymore, now check ins are off the cards. I am waiting to see what happens with bank holidays. Previously, we’ve always rescheduled to another time in the week but I am guessing now I’ll just miss the session…that I have paid for.
Oh, and don’t get me started on that. She’s upped her prices too.
So, yeah. It’s all been a bit bumpy to say the least. We have managed to repair things a bit. I went back after walking out and a glimmer of old Anita was there. She had softened a lot and told me she cares, loves me etc etc and held me in tight hug for the remainder of the session…
But…
Ugh…
It feels like we are a long way off base right now.
Part of me is wondering how much of this has been triggered by all the stuff I am carrying emotionally and so I am just being over sensitive. Another part is wondering if I just need to be realistic and adjust my expectations of the therapy. Anita’s capacity has changed. She isn’t the same as she was, but I still get a lot… I dunno. And after all, she is just a therapist.
I guess we’ll see. Apologies that this is just a moaning rant of nothing. I don’t have much reflective capacity right now. I just feel sad. I’ll get through it, though, I always do.
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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