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.
It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.
The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.
It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.
The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!
Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.
I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.
So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.
I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.
Like that’s the idea.
That was our plan.
A kind of gentle reparenting.
Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.
My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.
Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…
Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.
Yikes.
The feelings are big.
I cry a lot.
It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.
One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.
It feels like an act of grief and act of love.
There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.
So, therapy with Elle has been ticking along for several months now. We get on well – I think- and have had some really lovely sessions when I have been brave enough to bring stuff to her. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I get spooked before I even get in the room and so frequently end up talking a lot about mind-numbing shit in my day-to-day life whilst I try and figure out if she’s safe or, rather, if I am safe with her. I think I am…but my system is going to take some convincing after recent therapies.
I feel like there’s a part of me that is constantly seeking out the really ‘deep’ connection with Elle (you know the stuff that’s the therapy equivalent of a class A drug – seriously addictive stuff) and so feel kind of bleurgh when we actually just have a really ‘fine’ time. It’s hard to explain. I guess part of me experiences such a lot of emotional intensity outside the room, and does such a lot of thinking, that it doesn’t know what to do with every day maintenance kind of sessions.
There’s nothing at all wrong with these sessions, they’re a world away from dissociation and painful hell that I used to experience with Em, but I guess, it just feels ‘not enough’ – particularly to the parts of me that long to be seen and held. Another part of me knows, though, that we are still really getting to know each other – it’s going to take time. Steady, consistent, ‘in my window of tolerance’ sessions are probably exactly what I need even if it feels like I have a dam on the verge of bursting behind my cool exterior.
Part of the problem is that I am really fucking good at only showing the parts of me that I think are palatable (and together)! But then, recently, I had a moment where I thought, ‘that’s really boring’ – and actually I suspect Elle would rather be let more fully into my inner world, to see its complexity, rather than be bored shitless listening to me moan about stuff that is actually boring the shit out of me when I say it, too.
Ooohhh…it’s funny – I’ve always feared being left/abandoned for being ‘too much’ but then I became really aware of maybe being left/abandoned for being ‘not enough’ (again!) – like I’ve become ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. I don’t think that would happen (Elle ending because I’m boring her!) but I know what it’s like feeling like you’re watching paint dry with someone and I know I much rather be with someone down in the depths rather than paddling, barely getting my feet wet. I would like to think she’d feel the same.
However, what I will say, is that I am really aware that I can’t force this stuff with Elle – not because of her but because of me – all of the mes (I am so desperate to put an apostrophe on there for how it looks!). I am going to have to go at the pace that my system will allow – even if that means sometimes feeling frustrated or like parts of me are in hiding.
It makes total sense that it’s slow-going because I feel like I am just about holding myself together since the Anita catastrophe and need to be especially careful not to trigger any landmines and blow myself up. I am very aware of how precariously balanced my ‘coping’ is especially with the really active suicidal thoughts over Christmas. After what’s happened with the Em, Anita, and Hannah it’s easy to feel like the situations I have ended up in are a ‘me’ problem and I am super conscious of not wanting to be ‘too much’ for Elle. I need Elle right now so let’s not fuck that up RB.
For a long while I have been trying to figure out what Elle thinks and feels – as I say, trying to gauge what is safe to bring. She tells me what she’s feeling about me sometimes – usually if I ask. I am pretty sure she thinks that having told me that I am ‘delightful’ among other nice compliments and giving several reassurances, alongside being consistently ‘there’ and warm that I must KNOW, by now, that she likes me and that it is safe with her.
Ha! You’d think! But, sadly, not! This is me and my system…I’m the one who literally spends the beginning of every session like it’s our first. ‘Who is this woman (today)? Is it ok?‘ I just can’t hold onto Elle in my mind at all from week to week. Big whoop for my object permanence skills – not! It’s fucking tragic. But, actually, recently I realised that so much of how I view Elle in the room is filtering through the lens of where I am at. If I feel anxious and insecure I’ll be looking super hard for her seeming far away or disconnected… and I’ll convince myself that’s what’s happening – when actually she’s not either of those things.
I can’t always realise this in the moment but oftentimes after a session if I listen back, I hear things in a different way, and this is really helpful. Basically, things are never as disastrous as I might feel. In fact, it’s all pretty good. I just don’t feel it in the moment – and this is actually because so many parts aren’t allowed out. It’s those parts that are having a horrible time because they aren’t getting seen and so for them these sessions are completely disconnected and painful. I am starting to figure a way round this…again.
Still, one of the very good things about Elle (and there are plenty) is that she can read… and gets exactly what I am saying when I share something with her in writing. I realise, now, how much of a hindrance that was with Anita. I communicate best in writing – ha! – and so having a therapist that was so severely dyslexic that she couldn’t really read my stuff meant I either didn’t say what I wanted or had to record a voice note – ugh. It is actually really freeing to be able to have a bit of a meltdown and write and then share it with Elle knowing that even if I can’t bring stuff into the room right now it can at least be expressed and then make it in later – I can forewarn Elle about the state of things and give her a really clear heads up.
Elle and I have a reasonable amount of outside contact, and this goes some way to alleviating the anxiety I feel between sessions. I only see her once a week and it’s quite an adjustment going from two sessions that bookend the week with Anita to this. We do a ninety-minute session and, honestly, this is sooooo much better than an hour for me because … well… *waves hands desperately* this is how I am. But I still find Fridays pretty rough, and I think actually I might see if Elle and I can figure out some way of officially checking in then to make the panic a bit less.
I’ve sent a few ‘big’ emails over the time we’ve worked together outlining some of the huge stuff so haven’t kept her completely in the dark. I have found whenever I have given Elle the map she’s responded in a helpful and holding way – she writes really thoughtful replies and says what feels like the right thing in the room – as I say, it’s really just a case of my system being VERY reluctant to completely let go and trust given everything that’s happened in my previous therapies. It’s not surprising. It’s just kind of disappointing to be in this place after so many years of counselling – and actually so much of the damage being caused by therapists rather than my actual life events.
I’ve been seeing Elle since August – after it all went to shit with Hannah, after it all went to shit with Anita, after it all went to shit with Em! I feel like I have the therapist version of a Russian doll stack! Ha. It’s not funny, though.
I really like Elle, like really like her. I feel like she is actually really steady and safe. I feel like she is present and authentic. We seem to have a lot of similar interests which is nice – obviously it’s not essential, but after Em and her total closed book thing until the day she waxed lyrical about Brexit and outed herself as a tory it’s nice to know that Elle and I have these common interests and reference points.
Anyway, there are two sessions that felt like turning points in our therapy and as much I would like to write in detail about the last several months, I don’t have time – but these, I want to share over the next few posts.
Years ago, when my dad died I saw a therapist who was keen on activities – sand tray, drawing etc and actually sometimes I found doing things that didn’t revolve around me just sitting rigid and intellectualising my way through a session really helpful (because you know that’s what I do a lot of the time, right?). In all the years I worked with Em, she never once tried anything like that with me. She was firmly rooted in her seat and I sat in mine – like a good girl. Anything abstract or conceptual fell on deaf ears…oh my god the fucking pebble!!
With Anita it was different – we were more in touch, connected. We weren’t on opposite sides of the room once I mentioned how much I hated it. The physical touch stuff was really helpful. Reading stories was fab for the young parts. But we rarely did any of that abstract exploratory work – well never, actually. I’d kind of forgotten that there was this side of therapy tbh.
Anyway, in November there was a day where I was just feeling totally off. I still went to my session but I think it was maybe the first time I let my guard down a bit and didn’t perform the RB that Elle had gotten used to. Rather than fill the silence I just didn’t talk. I guess I let her see that maybe I wasn’t completely ok. I dunno.
Anyway, after about ten minutes Elle asked me if I would like to see her button tin. It pulled me from wherever I was, and so I said, ‘sure’.
Now, between Elle’s seat and mine is a low table with an edge – I actually hate that fucking table as it feels like a massive barrier between us but that day it was useful. Elle tipped out hundreds of buttons onto the table and spread them out in a circle around the outside. She told me the collection had come about over years and years and she could remember whose clothes the various buttons had come off as far back as her grandmother. The range of shapes and sizes and textures of buttons was impressive.
I moved from the sofa and sat on the floor and Elle did the same. I’m guessing a lot of you have done an activity like this before, Elle asked me to find a button that represented me. I finally found one after lots of rooting around. It was black and broken in half and so sharp that I said you could use it as a weapon. I then asked Elle which button might represent her? I think she was momentarily shocked, but she poked around in the pile and found a lovely silver embossed kind of bead/button. I commented on how our button selves change periodically, and she smiled. She said this one was definitely her today, but yes we do change.
Anyway, I think the general premise of this activity is to find different buttons that may represent parts of you, or maybe important people in your life/relationships and to talk them through. I didn’t do this. Instead, I found a range of beautiful buttons that all fell along a blue/turquoise/silver colour palette and placed them in a pile nearish to Elle’s button. My black, broken button stayed way over on my side of the table.
We talked about all sorts of stuff but mainly about the actual buttons. I would periodically hand really lovely ones to her, and she would take them to look at them. This was really the closest we had ever got to touching one another in the three months we’d been working together, and this activity felt really intimate and connected – I felt way less self-conscious in that session than I had done previously. Perhaps I showed a little more of the vulnerable self.
Anyway, it all felt so nice but then I clocked that our time was ending and, honestly, I just didn’t want to go and I think I dissociated a bit. Elle noticed. She said that in all the years she’s been a therapist that no one had ever invited her into their button circle, I think I probably blushed a bit – I couldn’t imagine not wanting my therapist to be alongside me in that, I needed to know who she was in order to show who I was. She thanked me for engaging with the task for so long and just as we were about to stop, I slid my black, broken button all the way across the table and put it next to hers.
I know that sounds like a nothing thing, but honestly that was an act of total courage and vulnerability on my part. A signal that I don’t want to be distant, and contained… I want to move closer. She said that I was a gift of a client and told me some stuff about how she experiences our time together and how she feels towards me. It felt like a completely different space to what we had inhabited up until this point. That session felt like it was about us, and our relationship, and our work together and it was so … exactly what I had needed.
We talked a bit more and as I stood up to leave, Mrs Brave came out of nowhere and asked if I could have a hug…
Elle said that of course I could have a hug, and honestly it was just lovely. She gives very good hugs, and she didn’t let go for ages, well actually I let go first, then pulled her back again and she giggled, in fact, she said something about a hug needing to be at least forty seconds to even work and so I didn’t feel like a needy, too much person…it just felt nice. And huge. And a turning point.
As I say, we’ve had some great moments on top of good moments and have been steadily creating something that feels solid. We laugh together a lot…which is nice…because I think I sometimes have a bit of a random sense of humour.
Anyway, it all went quite massively to shit almost immediately after the ‘buttons’ session – because of course it did. I guess the next session being back to ‘normal’ felt off but also, and fuck me, the six degrees of separation thing is just the absolute fucking pits, isn’t it? In that week between buttons and the next session a friend of mine had posted something up online of a performance they had done. Elle had told me she was doing something similar in that last session and low and behold, I could hear Elle laughing on the video my friend had posted. In fact, as I found out, it was Elle that had filmed my friend. I can’t even believe it. Like, why????
My instant reaction to the video was huge jealousy and sadness. Like how fucking unfair that my friend gets to spend time with Elle doing fun things… and I don’t. And, I totally get it, the intimacy in the therapy room is different and like gold at times, and she’s not my friend, but ugh… just ugh! So that set me off! I felt thoroughly shutdown in the next session – but I don’t think it was massively obvious until the end because False Adult is so good at taking the reins and creating a smoke screen!
I left that session and felt like utter shit, though. Like proper crumbling into pieces. I decided to message Elle and ask if she had any availability for another session – huge act of bravery – and her response just triggered the absolute shit out of me. Basically, she said that being like that in session was fine and something about how it’s learning to self-regulate and not to worry, and didn’t offer to see me– looking back at it it’s not terrible but for the part that had been so vulnerable in reaching out to get what felt like a body slam and rejection was just hideous. Ohhh yikes. Red rag to angry teen there. I replied with something to clarify and how bad disconnection feels and I got this back:
OK, so rather than trying to end the feeling of disconnect or the struggle, maybe think about if that has words or a specific fear attached to it. Is there an idea or story about what will happen if you stay disconnected?
I’m still going to be there – same place, same time, next week – and you can tell me anything you figured out then.
I just felt thoroughly let down. And, you know, it’s not even bad is it? But it just felt like she totally didn’t get it and that she just didn’t care…but then of course my short to the point messages don’t really show the extent of what’s underneath and so Elle is only working with what she sees – and up until that point I’ve been quite a closed book. She wouldn’t know what my system would do.
My whole system went wild…and out came the splurge self…and a fucking massive email!
BRACE POSITIONS!
I don’t think you’ll believe the response that triggered in me and I don’t even really know what to say. You don’t need to read this until Tuesday – it’s long – and probably makes no sense as it was written at 2am…couldn’t sleep. x
Sometimes I just need a person. Sometimes it gets so dysregulated inside that I can’t ground and instead dissociate. Yesterday, when I was with you, I was ramming my fingernail into my palm, and I couldn’t feel it at all. Sometimes I am present enough to ground – and have one foot in the shit and one foot in the here and now but sometimes it feels impossible, and I just disappear. And I get that it is ok – on a level- but actually being trapped in that is hideous. I feel disconnected from myself and you, and it just spirals really badly. The longer I am stuck in that space the more I feel like I am being left/abandoned even if that’s not what is happening.
I think you think that just sitting in it proves that it’s fine to be however it is in the moment and that you are there still regardless. However, sitting in that feels a bit like the still face exercise – internally it’s an absolute shit show and so it feels horrid because I need to know you’re actually with me and I can’t feel it at all. Checking in or soothing or telling me you are with me still – or whatever it is that you think is so bad and unhelpful would help me regulate – co-regulation when it’s like that is what I need. Although you probably think it’s what I want and not what I need. But self-regulation in that moment feels like you’re asking a toddler to do algebra when it’s only capable of counting to ten…with a few numbers missing along the way.
I think last week you wanted me to either map out some stuff about significant relationships in my life or let you see what my internal dynamics and relationship to different parts of myself is with the buttons – and I did a brilliant job of avoiding that because right now that isn’t what feels important – although I guess the inner system would be. You said that no one had ever asked you to be in their button circle and right now that’s what I am trying to figure out. I’m trying to understand what is going on between us. Like there’s a part of me that really wants to connect with you but the moment that comes up I feel myself start to disappear because it feels dangerous on a level but then feeling disconnected is equally as triggering. I can’t win but I absolutely do want to let you in and feel closer to you but that also feels exposing and risky because that opens up space for you to hurt me…and frankly I just don’t think I’d survive that right now.
Remaining disconnected and in the struggle like you’ve suggested, is fucking exhausting and triggers my nervous system. It literally makes me feel sick. I seem to spend a lot of the time trembling at the moment, and I know that this only happens when things are really bad. Not trying to end that feels like … self-harm, really. Not only that, it leaves space for the critical part of me to take root. My inner critic is a sadistic fucker. I know that ultimately it is the biggest protector I have and thinks it’s doing me a massive favour by relentlessly telling me that I am stupid, too much, unlovable, and that I must be a complete moron to even try to do therapy again. Like can’t I see the evidence that people leave because of me? I can’t believe I’m going to quote Taylor Swift (don’t judge!), but it feels like, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me” and that’s sort of stuck after recent events.
It’s like I have a minibus full of traumatised parts of various ages all kicking off in various ways and screaming. In those moments I don’t have an observer self and just get hijacked. This is what it’s been like. And it’s not even like there is a steady slip into that where I can do something to stop it happening or catch myself early. It’s like one minute I am here and the next I’m not and I can’t get out of that on my own – not really.
Over the years I’ve identified eight different parts of the system that sit outside my adult self (and even there, I suspect/know there are quite a few aspects to that self). At the moment, though, I keep dropping into this really desperately sad three-year-old part. It’s always the same, the scene never changes. She is standing in a grey wasteland with her back to me – it’s eerie and scary and cold and just really awful. Sometimes if I am able to remain in my observer self, I can see her but I can’t seem to bridge the gap between because it’s like I am stuck behind glass. There’s no hope of soothing that part because I can’t reach through to her. Other times, though, I feel like I am locked in that little body stranded and alone on the wasteland and I can’t get out of it – which is what happened yesterday.
I really need to feel/remain connected in the moment when I am with you because I struggle so much outside the sessions. My brain is super quick to lean into the narrative that you are pissed off with me, I’m too much, and that something bad is going to happen even when there isn’t evidence for it. Disorganised attachment is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m gutted because I really thought that this wasn’t a thing anymore because for such a long time I felt secure – or a secure as I have ever felt with A…and then it just collapsed, and I feel like I am back at square one trying again to find a way to not let this pattern dictate how I experience people/relationships but I guess it’s not surprising I feel like this now.
You asked if there is there a story and a fear around staying disconnected? Umm how many would you like to hear?… because there’s plenty, but perhaps the most relevant right now would be the ones related to therapeutic relationships going tits up. Ultimately, fear of the effect of disconnection is closely tied to feelings of rejection and abandonment because they’re all stops along the on the same track.
I think this feels so bad right now because I am not out the other side of what’s happened with Anita. It’s still live and so I am already nose deep in the shit of the reality of this story I tell myself. The impact the ‘disconnection’ but not ‘end’ I have experienced with Anita has completely derailed me. I feel like I am literally in survival all the time. The house is still on fire. [this is referencing a previous email] And there’s a part of me that feels like what’s happened there must be my fault because why else would she behave like this? And then I wonder if you’re perhaps consciously keeping your distance because you essentially think you’ve got a fucking disaster zone in front of you…and I get it. Part of me is trying to go with the narrative that this is about the container but mostly it just feels rejecting.
It’s six months this week since I saw A…and a month since she chose to ignore my message and ghost me. I can’t even… and I have no idea what to do about it now. Like I literally have no idea what to do about it. I really hoped there’d be some kind of resolution by now but I have to find a way of moving through it without her input.
Christmas break is imminent, too, and this time of year is never easy but it doesn’t feel safe because of what happened with Em. I guess maybe it’s exacerbated because I happen to be going abroad like I did the year it all disintegrated with her. And whilst that shouldn’t mean anything – I think my brain is terrified of the pattern repeating. I left feeling disconnected and dysregulated in December 2019 but told myself that I was being stupid and that of course it would be ok because why wouldn’t it after so many years?…and then boom – ending in January. So, the idea of remaining in this disconnected state now feels… horrific, actually.
And I get that both those relationships were long term and I barely know you so it seems crazy that any of this feels this massive or intense – but the smallest thing now is like lighting a touch paper into all that gone before because I am so sensitised to feeling like I’ll be left, abandoned or rejected…and all that stuff sits neatly on top of the core wound which is the stuff with my mum. Like I really knew that this wasn’t going to be easy but I didn’t think it would be this hard either.
And as much as I am really trying to fight against all that when I have so many different internal narratives at once it’s hard to hang onto any sense of being ok or safe because I actually don’t really know how you feel because you don’t tell me. Like I felt like last week was quite a big shift into something different and then yesterday it felt like we were a million miles apart and it felt like being held at arm’s length because that’s what I read into silence. And I think this is probably me and my wonky brain but … fuck, it’s so tiring.
There’s a part of me that just thinks, “Fuck it – just give up!” but I don’t want to because … I am hoping that this can actually work – but regulating my system feels like an impossible task.
November has always been a crap month emotionally. It always takes me by surprise and it’s only really afterwards that the dots join up and I figure out why I feel like I am flatlining. I think it’s been particularly hard this year, partly because everything seems to have so spectacularly disintegrated in the here and now as well – although not for the same reason… and so my brain has decided to serve me up a double dose of feeling isolated, unsafe, *more of the crap*. It’s all too familiar. Relationships feel dangerous.
The other week I was really conscious of feeling really just not ok – I mean it’s all on a continuum at the moment but I realised the timing of it tied into what happened when came out in November when I was seventeen having had a friendship end (you know the one where you have feelings for them so it’s way bigger than that). I had finally let this person know about some really vulnerable stuff around my eating disorder – which was huge after hiding it for two years. She decided it was too much, threatened to tell my parents, and then disappeared which was horrific, and I don’t think I ever really got over that acute feeling of being rejected for being *almost* completely myself and trusting her with something so vulnerable.
It’s not like she was a teen either, she was twenty-five. And then this reminded me of something that happened with Em when I told her about the extent of the problems I was having with eating and exercise – and she told me that we’d have to end if I didn’t go to the GP.
To add insult to injury, when I came out, I lost my friendship group all bar two people overnight. I used to walk into rooms at college and it would go silent, people would stare and then do that coughing a word/phrase thing “fucking dyke” or generally something else offensive and so it was really awful because I had been popular across lots of different groups – chameleon skills – although clearly not actually liked for who I was – even if my sexuality is only one part of my identity.
Not long after my best friend also ghosted me but not before writing me an ‘honest’ letter first. We’d been out clubbing on my eighteenth birthday, and I’d kissed a girl which was AMAZING. My friend wrote me a letter the next day and said she couldn’t be my friend anymore because now that she’d seen what it actually meant for me to be gay rather than just a concept, it made her feel physically sick and she would never see me in the same way. So that was pretty shit.
It’s all historical but I think that right now it almost like I’m experiencing multiple layers of disconnect simultaneously through different parts of my internal system – so my seventeen-year-old self is having a shit time but so are most of the young parts, in a different way, because of what’s happened with Anita.
And I really get the need to learn to self-regulate but historically self-regulating has looked liked shutting down, keeping everyone out, leaning into self-harm and an eating disorder and I know that none of that has never done me any good but is highly effective.
It feels like all the years I have been trying to recoil the spring in a different way and approach things differently has been totally wiped out and the spring wants to flip back to its original form because on a level it is safe and known – only it’s not really safe and I do know that. So, I’ve been swimming, and sleeping and breathing and all the self-care things but it hasn’t helped, really.
Reaching out instead of going inward yesterday was difficult because my instinct is to hide or run away instead. It felt vulnerable and exposing but sometimes when it feels like that, I know that actually I can’t do it all on my own and I need a person. It’s about co-regulation. And I think you think that doesn’t help, or reassurance is just fostering dependence or something. But to be told essentially to tough it out and think about what’s going on feels pretty crap when the landscape feels like it’s blowing up.
I already know what’s going on and why – and all the stories and fear behind being disconnected. And that’s why I reached out because sitting in this for any length of time feels utterly unbearable and it’s not like it serves me up any new understanding of what’s going on – because I get it already. But the knowledge of what’s playing out doesn’t seem to make it any easier to endure. I told you I had the Dead Sea Scrolls decoded – and I don’t doubt there are other bits I haven’t fully got the meaning of yet, but largely I understand the story.
Reaching out feels fucking dangerous because I already have the narrative of being left, abandoned, rejected because what I want/need is too much for the other and so getting that response feels like it confirms that. I know you wouldn’t ever want it to come over this way but to part of me, at least, it feels punitive and punishing. It feels like you’re asking me to do an exercise in stress tolerance…
I think I am so used to feeling a lack of care that part of me is always expecting it. And I really get that this, to you isn’t about a lack of care – it’s probably something about encouraging me to try and hold stuff for myself because I am strong enough to do that…or something like that. But this refusal feels like a rejection and also like you don’t really see me…or perhaps you do and that’s why and you want to keep your distance. And my brain has a wonderful capacity to switch into worst case scenarios – but then it’s not really surprising as worst case has happened quite a bit.
Disconnect, on a level, feels like annihilation – and I get for adult me it’s not. Like I will continue to limp through my life until I collapse. But how my system experiences it is so different and it’s so dysregulating. I was really struggling last week even before the absolute colossal shit show that was my weekend and there was a tonne of stuff that I wanted to talk to you about.
So, you might be there next week – and I get that is meant to be reassuring but it doesn’t feel it. Whether I will be there or not largely depends on how vocal and persuasive these protective parts get and, alongside that, how much shame and embarrassment rises up from having reached out and then it landing like this because I already want to crawl into a hole and die.
I get what you’re trying to do here, I think, and I also know what my protective parts are trying to do. Sometimes I can get these gate keepers to stand down and listen to me and other times I am locked in a fucking prison of my own making.
I don’t suppose any of this makes any sense because my brain is in a complete mess and I don’t really have the words – I just know how it feels…which is pretty fucking shit.
So, yeah, this was a nice ‘welcome to my world, Elle’ wasn’t it?
The next session was really great. Giving Elle insight into the behind-the-scenes version of me allowed her to really respond. She apologised for what had happened and said she had no idea that was what was going on. She said she wouldn’t want me to feel like that at all. And then later in the session was when she told me that she thinks I am ‘delightful’ which is really fucking nice. So, yeah, there’s been lots of good. And I feel kind of shit that this blog has fallen so far by the wayside as actually there’s such a lot I would have liked to have said.
Other than the very first session I had with Elle I have never brought up what’s happened with Anita. Although it’s come up in a few emails (of course). But largely there’s been a massive block from talking about it face-to-face. I think it’s to protect myself from feeling the pain of what’s happened which is enormous, and on another level to avoid judgement from Elle. She has never given me any indication that she would judge me negatively, but this is the legacy of what’s happened with Anita…and the other Russian dolls.
I think there’s been a part of me, too, that didn’t want to scare Elle off by being ‘too needy’ and telling her the finer details of what went on in the therapy with Anita just in case she panicked and ran! I think I wanted to establish the relationship between us first, and I guess sort of prove that I am not a total fruitcake before wading in and showing her the really vulnerable stuff.
I’ve sent Elle some blog posts about the ‘Anita Saga’ so it’s not like she doesn’t know about the cuddles and stories and elephant etc –I just feel like I keep what she does know in a particular compartment of my mind so that I can go see her and pretend like I am not some nutter with major attachment issues and a broken heart. It’s funny, though, because I compartmentalise all the vulnerable stuff that I have shared I really forget that Elle actually knows. And having just found that email to her…
Oh my god, she KNOWS it all!!!
She must be wondering what the hell is going on in sessions? Where is the person that sends emails about high anxiety and panic and attachment stuff and our relationship? Because she rarely shows up in the room!
Well, that all changed recently.
What with all that health shit, things have felt really precarious, and it’s triggered no end of anxiety – like a 13/10 rather than the usual 8/10 everyday level. Part of that has manifested in me having terrible nightmares with Elle or Anita in. That old chestnut! It’s been really upsetting, and whilst I know it’s just my brain feeling anxious it’s hard when you go to therapy to put that fear to one side especially when the therapy is relatively new…is 8 months new?!! I would so easily have been able to tell Anita that she had hurt me in a dream and yet I am still in the place where I feel a bit weird even telling Elle I’ve dreamt about her…because CRINGE.
I’m sorry that this is jumping around -there is so much to say!
Anyway, a few weeks ago I emailed Elle the night before the session telling her, what I thought was quite big stuff about how I was feeling – and she didn’t reply. Now, usually, if I send that kind of message, she responds with something really helpful and holding – because she gets me better now! With hindsight, I know that the way I phrased the start of the message didn’t make it clear that it was a ‘now’ problem and it really did seem like ‘for tomorrow’ in session and could wait. Of course, my system didn’t deal with the lack of reply very well and I felt really upset going to my session, in fact, I almost didn’t go.
I felt so bad when I arrived that I dissociated and couldn’t even talk for about ten minutes. This is not something that really happens with Elle, like maybe I’ll check out a bit here and there but it’s not common…so this was BIG. I felt like I was in freeze. However, despite my protectors doing their best to shut down, there was a little part that just would not let itself be hidden… this is new!!
Rather than being stuck, frozen in my isolated misery, I looked up, looked at Elle, made eye contact (whoa!) and asked Elle if I might have a hug. Now, this isn’t completely new, as I said we do tend to have a hug as I leave and that is lovely – but we all know that a goodbye hug is not the same as a hug hug when you don’t have to peel yourself away and leave immediately – and I already probably hang on for way longer than is normal then!
Elle got up from her chair and asked me whether I would like a stand up or sit-down hug. I shuffled over on the sofa and she sat beside me and folded me into the most lovely snuggle. My system relaxed for the first time in ages (like since Anita and I were ok which is nearly a year ago now) and I just didn’t move for 75 minutes (!). We talked about childhood memories, and she sang me a song that her mother used to sing her. It was just so fucking perfect and needed at that particular time. It felt like maybe my caginess has not been necessary, actually. Maybe Elle has been there the whole time and just waiting for me to come to her.
It was so nice to fully rest and be. No protectors, no rigidity, no fear. I just felt so completely safe and like I could finally breathe. Elle’s heartbeat was regular and steady, she smells lovely (although I already knew this), and the physical touch instantly regulated my completely dysregulated system. The sad thing is, I know exactly what I have been missing for all these months but until I was there in that moment, I didn’t realise just how heavy it has been carrying this weight for so long.
That little part that wanted the hug that day has been patiently watching and waiting since November, hoping that this would/could happen. There’s a lot of longing in that child part. But actually, adult me just really needed to be close too.
Anyway, it felt so nice that week between the sessions…I felt more settled than I have felt in a really long time – that is, until a couple of days before the next session when the panic kicked in:
What if it’s a one off?
What if she thinks I am weird?
What if I get the boundary talk?
It didn’t take long for me to start to unravel once I started turning that over in my head. So, of course, when I arrived at the session I was looking and hoping for some kind of sign or reassurance that the previous session hadn’t been weird for Elle, and that it was ok. Because, you know, SHAME is a fucking bastard. But it didn’t come. I think this is because Elle must think, ‘If I wasn’t ok with a hug I wouldn’t do it’ and so therefore it must be ok, right? But the thing is, I literally didn’t let go for 75 minutes – that is a massive cuddle by anyone’s standards…
I can’t remember what I spoke about that session but suffice to say I was back onto ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. Or just a different me.
I left feeling quite unmoored even though we had ended with a hug.
I realise now, that I really need to bring this stuff up when possible, because when I finally did pluck up the courage to ask, it was clear that Elle was in no way weirded out by me. Like totally not at all.
This is super long – fuckkkkkk – sorry!! -so I’ll end her and then pick up the rest very soon!
I hope that everyone is hanging in there. Take good care of your gentle souls x
According to WordPress this post on Eye Contact In Therapy is six years old today. It’s still one of the most visited posts on my blog, so I think my hunch back then was right: lots of people struggle to make eye contact in their therapy sessions.
This post feels especially poignant at the moment. I wrote it when I was still working with Em…in the time before I started burning through therapists like sand trickling down in an hour glass! The problem with eye contact hasn’t bothered me for years (whilst working with Anita), but I seem be back in the hell zone now with Elle which feels absolutely fucking marvellous – not.
Part of me feels sad about it because it reminds me of what I have lost with A, how easy it felt and safe, but then, actually, I think part of the reason I am struggling so much to let Elle in and to look at her is because of what’s happened with A… because it clearly wasn’t safe at all was it?!
Omfg. Just OMFG! What a bloody few weeks it’s been. Honestly…just once more for festive cheer: OH MY FUCKING GOD! Does the run into Christmas ever get any easier do you think? I’ve been struggling with the ‘season to be jolly’ since I was 14 – or, at least, that’s the first time I really remember feeling like I couldn’t cope and fell face first into the doom vortex on the 26th December before finally getting spat out and back into some semblance of reasonable coping early in the new year.
These days the festive doom and gloom seems to hit hard in mid-November and continue on right through to January…because I like to take my time over these things and really get the full experience of shit for as long as possible (!). To be honest, the moment the Christmas chocs hit the shelves in … October (?)… I start my steady decent into *waves arms around* this fucking mess. It’s gloriously tragic.
Unsurprisingly, this year is/has been terrible – but then it was always going to be, wasn’t it? I probably sound hyper and manic but I am really just trying not to collapse. I’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster lately and it’s been pretty bad at times like I said last time I came here for a moan.
Tbh It’s hard to know where to begin today. I know I’ve been AWOL here again – for a few reasons that seem completely bonkers but then make sense when remembering my system is a fragmented mess of parts:
1) I have had so much to say but just couldn’t find the words or the time (there’s been a tonne of dissociation which hasn’t helped matters)
2) I have been in survival and have spent a lot of time hiding in my bed just to be able to function on a minimal level and every time I have thought about writing I have shrunk away from it
3) Child parts have been pretty activated at times and they just need cats (and Anita…)
4) I’ve been away on holiday this last week (hooray for sunshine, boo for still having to parent!) and have tried to recharge and find some reserves so been reading a lot of books in order to try and escape my brain and all the attachment shit that’s been thrown up lately
5) My laptop decided to get in a big hot huff and then give up the ghost – bloody marvellous!
I mean that list isn’t exhaustive by any means, but you get the picture.
Also, I haven’t really been able to formulate what I want to say about therapy with Elle. That has obviously been ongoing and last time I was here I mentioned that I had been triggered – honestly, it’s been a fucking hellscape navigating this new relationship after what’s happened with Anita and what’s galling is it’s not Elle’s fault or even mine, and yet here we are dodging fucking landmines that keep activating every other fucking minute.
Therapy has always been sensitive work where I am concerned #trauma but I feel like we are now having to work like the bloody bomb squad. It’s gently gently…and even still sometimes we manage to cut the wrong colour wire and BOOM!
I don’t know how to approach writing about the last six weeks or so because I feel like Elle and I have had some ups and downs but the result is that I think we are getting a better sense of each other which is really good. I really like Elle – and I think she is going to be really good for me. But now we are on a three-week break and ARGH fuck me – all the stuff is coming up. Doesn’t take long to feel like it’s all going to shit, and abandonment is imminent, does it?
Perhaps I’ll come back to all that separately because I feel like there are moments that I want to give proper time and thought to…maybe in between Christmas and New Year when I will- without doubt- be struggling (worse than I am now!).
Last time I was here I was talking about the email I had sent Anita reminding her of the agreement to end and holding her to account having ghosted me for a month – and her fucking ridiculous reply, “I am unsure what it is that you are looking for from me” … jesus.
Anyway, I have really struggled these last few weeks. It was inevitable. Christmas over the last few years has been tough (in the way it is always tough) but I have been held through it by Anita’s love and care. She has made the breaks as short as possible, checked in with me (even sending me messages – iniated by her – on Christmas day itself), bought me some really pertinent/heartfelt gifts, washed my elephant … you know, all the stuff that has meant that the young parts have felt loved and cared for even in her absence.
This year that is gone.
And my god it’s painful.
This last few months has been so hard but until now there haven’t been any ‘occasions’ where there has been something to ‘miss’ or be very different outside the sessions being over but Christmas is the first of those massive ouch moments and being faced with just how ‘gone’ Anita is. I’ve been battling with wondering what to do about getting my books/stuff back from A but resolved that was best tackled in the new year because frankly, getting my stories back is going to HARD and the child parts of me don’t need to feel any more rejected than they already do.
I hadn’t replied to Anita’s email either – I’ve been turning it over in my mind a lot (because that’s what I do) and I just hadn’t known how to reply. There’s been a massive part of me that wanted to send her a card this Christmas – which is a massive distance from the gifts we’ve exchanged over the years – but in the end I decided against it. Part of me wanted to reach out and ‘care’ but there was another part that just feels like I am wasting my fucking time and emotional energy on someone who absolutely doesn’t give a shit.
I’ve had a lot of time to think this week being away from life – and as much as I wish I could leave my troubles back in the UK I haven’t been able to. I have been thinking about Anita, I’ve been thinking about the new relationship with Elle. I have been thinking about what I need and how to move things forward.
Anyway, long story short, after weeks of upset and nightmares and generally just not doing great I sent Anita a text last night:
Tbh I didn’t expect her to reply…but when I woke up this morning I see that she’d replied late – 11pm (clearly her work phone boundaries are as appalling as ever) but what came was honestly just a fucking kicker:
I mean I shouldn’t be surprised – she’s been beyond fucking crap this whole time – but seriously?! All the months of how hard it is for her alongside her total failure to show any kind of care about my experience has been rough… would it have killed her to say, ‘Happy Christmas RB’ –
Anyway, I’m sure none of you are shocked by this. I wasn’t. I don’t really know what I feel tbh. Disappointed? Resigned? Numb? I am sure if I felt deep into myself there’d be a lot of feelings, but I am not going to go anywhere near that right now because frankly what’s swirling in that vortex of doom is painful and if I can not get swept up into it then all the better.
I know for so many of us, this time of year is fucking challenging. I mean it’s a bloody melting pot for emotional chaos isn’t? Even without therapy breaks thrown in for seasoning! There’s all sorts of crap about families and expectations and grief and *all the things*…it’s no wonder we struggle because it is fucking hard. So FUCKING HARD!!!
I hate that every year I wish the festive period away. I so desperately need the time off work, but I find this time anything but relaxing. I have a lovely family – my wife and kids are fab…and I try very hard to be present and enjoy making memories with them. We have started new family traditions. We have begun to do Christmas on our own terms…and all that is really great. But there is also that shadow that lingers and the stuff with Anita has totally exacerbated the core issue…this year I have yet another mother figure who has abandoned and rejected me and I REALLY DID NOT NEED THAT.
My own mum is totally absent and ghosting me, too. I don’t know why. Most of the year I can cope with the absence of a caring mother – but that ‘lack’ is all thrown into sharp focus at this time of year. So many of my friends are spending the holidays with their parents. Their parents are massively involved with the grandchildren… and I know I shouldn’t compare but it’s hard not to. When your working narrative is that you aren’t good enough, loved, wanted, etc…you’re perpetually scanning for evidence to either confirm or deny it. Sadly, all I seem to get is confirmation.
I know my journey now is to be my own parent and to stop looking outside of myself for someone to fill the hole inside me. I need to look after myself and all my parts – because I know what they need and how they need to be loved. It’s hard, though, because those parts still really need the ‘other’ sometimes – not all the time, by any means…but Christmas has always been a holiday for kids…and my littles are…out in the cold…again. I honestly wish Anita and I had never undertaken the work we did. Reparenting is such delicate and long-term work, and you cannot just fuck it up and run away. I’ve seen it happen so many times now and seen the devastation it’s left behind.
Complex trauma and attachment injuries are not easy to heal – but therapy didn’t ought to make it all much worse. I totally get that ‘in the therapy’ it can be bumpy and that is all part of the work…what I mean is these fucking awful terminations that we seem to go through. It’s mind-blowing. It’s devastating. We deserve so much better.
I doubt I’ll get back here until after Christmas now – so I’ll send you all big hugs and see you on the other side.
So… I wish I could say things are getting better this end, but they really aren’t. I haven’t felt this awful in years and honestly, at this point, it’s just my dogged determination not to give up that’s keeping me functional – albeit, barely. Talk about living life in survival…it’s fucking beyond exhausting and I have really just had enough, now.
There’s such a lot of shit going on in one way or another and I haven’t really known where to begin which is why I have been AWOL (mind you, looks like everyone on WP has gone awol this month). I want to write. When I feel isolated and alone like I do now, this blog always helps – but, which therapy do I even talk about?: the one that’s ‘ended but hasn’t really’ with Anita or the new one that seems to be ‘like flying through turbulence and is triggering the shit out of me’?
I was laid up in bed most of last week because my neck seized, and I couldn’t move! The tension was triggered on Tuesday during and after my session with Elle and it’s only today that I have even the slightest bit of movement before hitting the pain. But that’s another story…for another post because I’ve just received an email…
Last time I was here I was telling you all about the messages Anita and I had exchanged at 5 months post ‘end but not end’ (5 FUCKING MONTHS!) and how her lack lustre, ‘I know but I just can’t work at that level of work anymore’ reply just set a fire under my ass and I sent her a long message in reply knowing that really it would signal no going back.
What I hadn’t bargained on was her ghosting me.
When I wrote my last post it was about two weeks after the message I’d sent and there had been total radio silence… well, the radio silence persisted and then it was 6 FUCKING MONTHS on Saturday – and Anita had ignored that message altogether for a month. I can’t even really believe the woman/therapist I worked with for all these years has become this. It makes me wonder who she even is? Was any of it real, or was this version of her there all along and the whole thing has just been some elaborate act? It certainly feels that way.
To say that this whole thing has been driving me insane (making me ill) would be an understatement. I don’t know why I expected better from her – but I really did. I have a tendency to want to see the best in people and remain hopeful even when there’s a shit tonne of evidence to the contrary telling me people are fucking shit.
I didn’t imagine for a minute that when she face planted so badly in May that she wouldn’t at some point reflect, take herself out of the immediate situation, and think about what she had done to her long-term clients – me – and want to make a decent end…because why wouldn’t you? Like if you know you have hurt someone really badly, wouldn’t you want to try and repair as much as possible?
If you genuinely cared about someone then surely, as a therapist, that’s the very least you’d do….ESPECIALLY if you were still working and have a client load. I can’t believe an hour out of her life on a working day is beyond her. I can’t believe she wouldn’t be willing to want to try and make an end that mitigated against how fucking appalling this has been. I can’t believe that she hasn’t taken this to supervision and her supervisor hasn’t given her some advice on how best to handle the clear up…
But there we are. Can’t apply our own standards to others – even if those others have been paid by us for years!
It’s maddening.
As First Aid Kit so accurately wrote,
“I always thought that you’d be here, but shit gets fucked up, and people just disappear”
Anyway, on Saturday I decided to switch to email. You want to ignore my messages then let’s try another prong of attack!
This is what I sent titled ENDING:
I’m guessing that given you’re now completely ghosting me, that the agreement that we’d come back and end properly if things were no better isn’t going to happen either.
I’m at a complete loss to understand how it’s got to this point – as walking out the room six months ago it did not for one minute occur to me that it would be like this now, “It’s not what either of us want”… really?
3.5 years of work and relationship deserves a better close than this and how it’s not, and I’m not, worthy of a proper end even if it would be hard and painful feels shit.
This time three years ago you gave me the beating heart necklace… I can’t understand what’s happened to now be in a place where you won’t even talk to me but it’s really hard to be approaching Christmas and you just not be there.
RB
The weekend has been pretty rough – I’m navigating all kinds of angst and feelings of disconnect with Elle — that of course are intensified because of all this bullshit with Anita so I feel like everything is very very fragile.
Anyway, I’ve been soldiering on and then just now I received this email…
Honestly, guys, tell me what you think because at this point I am just at a loss:
Hi RB,
It’s not I’m ghosting you although can totally understand it feels like that.
I just I have so little capacity at the moment.
I know my friends and family are also struggling with me not being as available as I once was but that’s just how it is for me.
I am also unsure what it is you are looking for from me, I think we both agree we can’t go back to a therapeutic relationship so not sure what it is you are looking for as I am really not able to offer very much in my current situation.
With sincere apologies,
Anita x
I was frankly speechless when I received it. I didn’t even really have many feelings, initially. Part of me locked down somewhere inside is probably crying – but the most dominant parts are really just fucking flabbergasted. This is the best she can muster – after all this time?
Is it not clear what I have been holding out for and asking for over the last few months- to honour the fucking agreement that we would meet in person and try and do a decent end? Like the therapeutic relationship is long gone. My trust is decimated, and I feel so fucking angry and let down by Anita but an end… come on now. Is she that dim?
Never has she checked that I am ok in all this (clearly, I’m not). Even when I left in June, you’d think she’d at least have made some kind of plan with me to ensure that I was ‘emotionally’ looked after, even if it was with a colleague or her supervisor. The level of neglect and basic lack of care is staggering to me. I mean a twice a week client with outside contact who has complex trauma and a history of self harm – of course it’s fine to just drop them and never look back right?!
This email, again, like those sessions in May, is about her: her lack of capacity, her struggle, how hard it is for her… and you know what, I get it, but it’s not fucking good enough. This ‘crisis’ has been coming for years. I can’t understand why, as a therapist, she wasn’t able to see her issues (certainly after her first meltdown in September 2021) and take herself into personal therapy to help get a handle on it before it shattered her world. And to be clear – the issue she’s ‘dealing’ with is not uncommon; her elderly mother needs increased care. Lots of people and families navigate that without completely falling apart and wrecking their careers. I’m sure it’s brought up all kinds of issues from childhood and stuff about meeting other people’s needs – but go do the fucking work before you act it on on your paying clients!!!
Anyway, that’s that. I don’t even know how to reply. It’s not worth my emotion is it? She simply can’t/won’t see what she’s done and cannot give me the closure I so badly need. I need to talk to Elle tomorrow and see what plan I can make for my books (which Anita still has btw!). Anita’s city office if literally across the street from Elle so I am wondering whether I can ask Anita to drop them in the door at Elle’s. At least then I don’t receive them in the post and get body-slammed.
Of course, that all relies on tomorrow with Elle going ok. We are in rupture territory – I’ll come back and write about that next. Needless to say I am not having a very good time.
It just feels like I am screaming into the fucking void: Can’t somebody help me PLEASE!!
I last saw Anita on June 2nd… five and a half months ago. It was an agonising ‘session’ (if you can even call it that). I realised that day, that no matter how much I wanted to stay and see her for another month, I simply couldn’t keep going when she wasn’t fit to be working or handle an ending effectively – she was in survival and winging it. It was simply too damaging to keep subjecting myself to that. Those couple of weeks after she returned from ‘the holiday that tanked’ and said we had to end were horrific. She was so ill, so stressed, and by the final week so much in self-protect that it was absolutely hideous to go and feel like the person I know and love so well had broken and checked out completely.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – leaving it/her like that. My young parts were devastated…still are. Surely Anita in that state would be better than no Anita at all? Well, to them, yes, but my Adult self knew better (maybe). The level of distress it caused me, going to see, crying my heart out, falling apart, and then feeling like the person that was with me wasn’t even fully there or able to engage with my feelings about the situation because she was in survival was traumatising.
I’m sorry if this isn’t making much sense. It’s taking me ages to write this because thinking about it makes my stomach and chest go tight and I feel sick…it’s been so bad. The physical pain that gets triggered off the back of the emotion of it is so intense that I keep dissociating. I feel like I need to try and get this down but getting it on the page is hard because I lose focus mid-sentence and then when I read the sentences back my brain takes me away elsewhere.
Not ideal…but…
That is the reality…
Dissociation, I mean. It’s been particularly bad the last couple of days – I keep dropping things, misjudging space (walking into things), and then of course losing time…I feel like I am suspended between two worlds and can’t land fully in either.
That is the impact this (what the hell is this?) ‘end but not end’ has had. My brain is desperately trying to protect me from the hurt and pain. I guess it’s doing a good job. It just makes life really tricky. I feel like I am in a daze on a level but then in agony on another. I feel like I have third degree burns over my body and everything that touches me hurts. This is making therapy with Elle hard too. This week I have just wanted to run a million miles away from her because everything just hurts.
I wish I was more robust, less sensitive, *all the things* but I am not. I am someone who *feels* and loves *big*… and there is deep wounding and trauma … hence needing the therapy in the first place…and yet here I am dealing with another abandonment and rejection (with Anita) and my system is experiencing this as survival issue. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And the laugh is, I paid for all this! Being dumped by a friend or a lover is one thing – but mostly they aren’t professional at doing relationships, there’s no training on how to be friend…but therapists are trained professionals in relating. What’s happened with Anita is so weird because she hasn’t done her ‘job’ here – she hasn’t kept her professional hat on at all.
Anyway…get back to it RB.
All the way back in June, we left it that we’d be in touch properly after three months (September) and see how things were for Anita. If she was no better, then we’d come back and do a proper ending. We said we’d spend some time to find a way of keeping connected even if the therapy was done. None of that felt great but it felt like it would at least honour all the work we’ve done and the relationship we had. Looking back, now, I realise there was no thought or provision for me in there. Of course I tried to put things in place to hold myself but Anita never once checked that I would be ‘ok’, or what I would do in this period knowing how badly I would struggle. It’s shit really. Like don’t therapists have a duty of care?
The laugh is, Anita was furious when I told her how Em had ended the therapy. She said the way she terminated was unethical, that Em was dangerous, and should have ensured there was an onward referral… The irony is not fucking lost on me now. And you know what? What Anita has done is ten million times worse than Em. Em was always cold and detached. What I wanted from her and what she was prepared to give were poles apart. Her tick comment and the total shitshow of an ending was really just the icing on the cake.
The therapy with Anita has been soooooo different from the very start. We met on such a deep level. The love and care were tangible. I am not crazy or too attached or delusional…the relationship is/was how I have presented it here. I haven’t made it up. I have every session recorded! So, the contrast from how it was to how it is now is utterly mind-blowing. I feel like I’ve got a whiplash injury. It’s been brutal.
At three months I sent Anita a short text message saying that I missed her and it was a quarter of year… She responded and told me that her inner child was having a really bad time and that she had changed her work into couples’ work because it was more head than heart (really?!). I didn’t push for a meeting, then, because she had told me things were no better for her and so reading between the lines, she’d still be unable to end properly. I knew it was definitely going to be an ending now, no going back to how it was, but I hoped at least at some point she’d be able/want to meet to do that…because it’s the right thing to do and it’s what we agreed!!
As the months have passed, I have tried really hard to give A space. I didn’t want to push her over the edge or further away with my ‘need’ because it’s everyone else’s needs being too much for her that sees her in this place (well, it’s more complex than that!) … but this of course, has meant that I have been left holding an awful lot. There’s been no end. No closure. No celebration of the work we did. It’s just been another situation where I have been dropped from a massive height and left trying to gather all my pieces together and soldier on. Every time the second of the month rolls around, I feel utterly bereft. I struggle to function in any meaningful way and just want to crawl into my emotional hell hole and die.
Don’t get me wrong, things are never good these days – it’s a daily struggle. Inside it’s awful and it’s getting worse as time goes on, not better. There is no sense of distance creating healing – rather, I’ve been hurtling downhill on the struggle bus and there’s no brakes. To say it’s scary is an understatement. I’m in a perpetual state of flight and it’s wreaking havoc with everything. I feel like I am living my life in some kind of bizarre alternate reality, or a movie…you know, like the Truman show or something. Nothing feels real and I am waiting for the ‘scene’ to end and regain some sense of being me again. Or perhaps not that…I don’t want to be stuck in this all too familiar version of me: the one that feels unsafe, lost, alone…unlovable…I want to go back to the one who felt held, safe, and functional the one who was starting to heal.
By not asking anything of Anita, or holding her to the agreement we made, I have been stuck in a kind of awful limbo since September. I really hoped things would improve for A but the reality is she won’t have changed all that much in her life and some of it is not possible to change. She’s still working, though, (ain’t that the kicker!) and although she swears it’s the long-term depth work that’s beyond her capacity, knowing her as I do, she’ll be hanging by a thread even doing what she’s doing.
I guess I just hoped that somehow, she’d want to find some way of not severing our connection altogether. I hoped that everything that she had said over the years was true: that she wouldn’t leave, that she loved me, that no matter what she was there for the journey, that she couldn’t let me go, that I was safe with her… you know the drill. And whilst I know no one can promise ‘forever’, I honestly never believed she could walk away and not look back. When I walked out her house in June we were not leaving on bad terms, it wasn’t a rupture. It was a “neither of us want this”, “I love you”, and “let’s find a way to figure this out” (her words not mine).
But something has happened in the last few months to change that – I don’t know what – but I know now that I am not going to get an ending. In fact…I don’t think I’ll hear from A ever again.
I can’t believe I am even typing that.
So, it’s got to November now and the struggle bus has careered off over the cliff edge and gone up in flames with all the passengers on board. I don’t really know what to do if I am honest.
On the 2nd November I text Anita a simple, “5 months. I miss you”. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess maybe I had hoped that she’d dig deep into her therapist tank and think, “I really need to sort this out with RB. It’s not fair to keep this dragging on and we need to meet so we can end properly”.
But, like most of the interactions we’ve had since June – she replied with something so lack lustre that it just lit the fire under my teen,
“I know but I really can’t work at that level any more xxx”
I’ve been hanging on for 5 fucking months and that’s the best she can do??? Like come on, that’s not fair. She is still working AS A THERAPIST and yet she can’t find an hour to meet me face to face to talk with me and get a sense of closure AFTER EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH…and knowing my history so intimately?
It was just too fucking much.
So…then it came…the words that I have been swallowing. I typed a message on WhatsApp knowing that this was it. But I have been so fucking contained, quiet, giving her space and time….and what about me? Where have I been left in this?
Shafted.
I knew that sending this message would probably stress Anita out. We all know she’s not good at reading, but you know what? What other choice have I been left with? She hasn’t offered to meet. She’s just been waiting it out… I guess hoping I would just disappear, and she wouldn’t have to deal with a difficult emotional situation. She wouldn’t have to face what she’s done. Anita is inherently avoidant in her personal life so it’s hardly surprising that she’s behaving like an ostrich when she knows she’s hurt me. But again…she’s a therapist. Suck it up and do the right thing. Do the right fucking ‘ethical’ thing.
This is what I sent:
I’m not asking you to. It has never been about going back to how things were. I know that would/could never happen and not only because you have no capacity/bandwidth but also because the hurt this has caused me means it would never work again how it did because my trust in you is gone and I’m just in a state of survival now. You don’t want to repair that. Or can’t. And so, it’s really hard.
I don’t know how to explain this or get it to come over in the way it’s meant – because this isn’t a conversation to have on WhatsApp it should be in person.
I know it’s really fucking awful for you, and I really really see that. You know I do. I’ve always seen it, often before you have. And this is why it’s so fucking hard for me now- you let me into so much of what was happening for you – and I’ve watched you get more and more stressed and have been unable to do anything to make any of it any better – it’s been hard watching the person I love so much break bit by bit. I have so wished there was something I could do to make things better for you. But then you slammed the door.
It’s so confusing. I feel like suddenly I became the problem and too much and it’s really hard because I didn’t change and yet it feels like massive displacement – like this isn’t all about me. I get your capacity changed but did the love just die too?
Our relationship moved so far outside of what therapy is but equally we’ve spent so long together that the reality is we are also just two human beings in a relationship and it felt deep and important – to me at least. Like I know it was messy and complex sometimes and I really know I can’t go back there like that (with you or anyone else)- but I do really still love you and care about you and miss you.
And this is why I’m struggling – I can’t believe that how you have been with me all this time is just fake or just ‘work’ because it hasn’t felt like that to me. Like when you take away the work what’s left underneath? Because when I take away ‘therapist you’ and the intensity of seeing you all the time I’ve got Anita – someone who I just really love, who I miss, and who I’d like to see every now and then.
And so, this has completely broken me in ways you would never understand. It’s not just a bit difficult or upsetting it’s totally flattened my inner world. You made me believe that I meant something to you and that I was safe. Stupidly, I thought our relationship would evolve into something else eventually. And yet here I am five months down the line and I’m alone with it. I cannot understand how you can completely cut me out of your life after everything. Like it totally screws my brain up thinking that the idea of seeing me in any way at all feels overwhelming and too much.
I didn’t expect us to return to how things were, but I hoped that we’d find some way through this – somehow. Like find another way of connecting.
I’m just left in a state of complete and utter confusion. There is no closure only me driving myself mad with questions that I have no answers to. I find it very hard to understand how you can just stop caring. Like I can’t get my head round what ‘love’ even is if you can just act as though the relationship was nothing.
And it’s not about therapy now. I feel in lots of ways that it got really blurred anyway but that’s not a bad thing – but it’s a reality. I am seeing someone else now and honestly, it’s just breaking my heart. It’s different. I’m not trying to replicate what I had with you because I’m not interested in that, and I also know I can’t go back to that either. So please know I’m not asking you for that.
When I message you it’s because I miss you. Not because I’m asking you to go back to twice a week and loads of contact. It’s not that. But I’m really really struggling to get my head round this. It’s like I’m grieving you but you’re still alive.
I know this won’t make much sense because I don’t make sense to me either.
A. I love you. That’s really it. I just really love you.
So, I sent that on the 3rd of November and have received precisely NO response.
No acknowledgement whatsoever. Two weeks and nothing at all. Not even a “I need to speak with my supervisor and will get back to you”… zilch.
I never, for one minute in all the years that Anita held me to her chest for hours at a time so I could listen to her heart beat, read me stories, told me she loved me and kissed me on the top of my head, washed my elephant, bought me so many gifts – and even a fucking beating heart necklace to remind me of her heartbeat when I wasn’t with her… would ghost me.
A few years ago I wrote a letter to my seventeen year old self here on the blog. It felt quite cathartic at the time. I was still working with Em, and it felt like I was at a place where I needed to open up some big stuff and trust in the relationship. I felt like this teen part was getting in the way and wanted to ask her to step back a bit…big mistake!
These last couple of weeks this particular teenage self is having a really hard time. Things are pretty awful actually…and so I am writing to her again. It has a different flavour to the last one (which I’ll add to the end of this post for anyone that hasn’t been tagging along here for all eternity)
x x x
Dear Seventeen.
I am so fucking sorry for being yet another adult that has let you down and for not protecting you from being hurt again…and again…and again. I need to do better – for both our sakes. Last time I was here I asked you to let your guard down and be more open with Em our old old old therapist…(we’re racking them up aren’t we – I wonder if there’s a record for burning through counsellors?!)
It’s been years since that letter in 2018 but I want you to know that I see that I was really wrong to encourage you to be ‘less resistant’ and wrong to ask you to lean into trusting Em when you clearly felt very reluctant to do so. I should have trusted you then because your inner barometer is (and always has been) spot on. You read people so well, and as much as it can be frustrating for me to have you dig your heels in or go into hiding in the therapy room, I realise now that the only way you’ll trust is if you feel safe. If you don’t feel safe it’s because it isn’t safe– it’s not because you are misreading a situation and viewing everything through a distorted trauma lens.
I told you before that you’ve done a wonderful job of keeping the young ones safe and I need to remember that you are a very experienced protector rather than a barrier to the therapy. You have always let me know when things are off. I want you to know that you weren’t the problem in the therapy with Em and I am sorry that I believed that the reason things felt so difficult with her was because we weren’t giving her the map and keeping her… what did she say?… Blindfolded? … and after a while I felt like it must be true. I felt her frustration with us both and ultimately pushed beyond what felt ok for you – and I regret that. You’d been down that path before and I had forgotten, but I remember now, and I am sorry.
We, so often, ask young people to ignore their gut feelings as if we adults know best (we so don’t – we’re just winging it too!). We ask you to be compliant and disregard your feelings in order to make things easier for us. Actually, what I should have done when you were so vocal and upset was to be far more curious about what was holding you back from opening up to Em in the first place. I know you are incredibly scared of rejection and abandonment – of course you are- but it was more than that wasn’t it?
You inherently know who you feel safe with and with those safe people you feel able to talk and allow yourself to be seen. K doesn’t trigger your nervous system and you are able to stay in the window of tolerance with her. She sees you (and all the others), and she does nothing but understand, make space for, and celebrate you. She is a gift. But you never felt safe with Em, not really. You were attached to her, just like I was but she wasn’t safe. Talk about trauma bonding!
I am so sorry that I pushed and told her things that you weren’t ready for. You were right to be wary and I am sorry. It must feel really painful to keep experiencing the same kinds of rejections and abandonments on repeat because I override you. I promise I won’t do that anymore. I am paying attention now. I hear you. I understand why you think it is safer to stay silent and isolate yourself. It’s lonely inhabiting this space but at least no one can hurt you.
It seems late in the day to be talking about all this stuff with you again now, but this last couple of weeks I have been really aware of how distressed you are and it’s not just about what’s happened with Anita is it? Although that is a massive hurt too – so massive. To be honest, I don’t know how I am going to get us through that stuff right now. I’m struggling too. I can barely breathe through the grief- and I know it’s not just you that’s freaking out now. The entire minibus is screaming… again. I am sorry. I never in a million years she’d do this to us. I never thought she’d walk away knowing what she knows and the damage it would cause. It’s no wonder you’re falling apart. But just hang in there with me, ok? We’ll find a way.
The other day I was telling Elle about some of what has happened to you. Don’t worry, I didn’t go into all of it, but I think you heard enough, and it’s spooked you a bit because there’s the very painful stuff waiting in the shadows isn’t there? I don’t think you want me to go there. It’s been sitting with me for the last 23 years so it can wait a bit longer. I don’t know if I am ready, actually. The anniversary of all that horrible stuff is coming up and I don’t have to resilience I used to have to cope. I don’t feel like I can tolerate any more rejection…the feeling of constant disconnection is painful enough. Part of me knows that the path to connection is being vulnerable but actually vulnerable hasn’t worked out great for us, has it? I don’t know what to do…and I am meant to be the adult here!
I never let Em or even Anita near this stuff of yours so I can understand why you feel terrified of Elle who really doesn’t know us at all. And, honestly, I don’t know if she actually even cares… well, she doesn’t care. Of course, she doesn’t. This is just her job. So why would I expose you when everything is already so fragile?…not fragile…broken…the fragile stuff got smashed didn’t it? God this is so tough.
I like Elle but I can’t figure her out at all, and I know you can’t either because you’ve repeatedly shut things down in session and so False Adult has taken over and filled the space. I hear you screaming not to talk to her about Anita…because it’s not safe to do so. And I am listening. The thing is, I know I need to talk about what’s happened because it is killing me, but I don’t know if she is safe either. It’s a really tricky situation. I just don’t know if we can go where I need to go. I don’t know if it is me making it feel like this or whether it’s just the dynamic.
I feel like I am doing what I used to do with Em. I feel like it’s really ok to do the ‘head’ stuff but we are soooo needing the ‘feeling’ stuff. We need a relational experience and relational repair and containment and holding… but I don’t feel like there is a relationship. I feel chronically alone. Perhaps it’s because I’m hiding you and the little ones but ugh…it’s painful. I need a sense of there being an ‘us’ in the room, not just a ‘me’ being watched from the other chair. Wanting to connect feels dangerous and the idea reaching out but then being rebuffed feels worse. We’ve been there before so it’s not surprising we are tentative. The thing is, detached relationships feel so fucking triggering to us – but I also know our need for connection feels stifling…for Em at least. I don’t know what to do.
That’s probably not fair, actually. Elle has no idea of any of the stuff I find really difficult…and not just emotionally, but there’s the simple in the room stuff too. It all works together to make a fucking disaster, doesn’t it?!
UGHHHHHH!!!
Being sat opposite someone again rather than next to them feels really uncomfortable and exposing. The table between us feels like another barrier and evidence of the distance between us that will never close. I create enough glass walls to separate us as it is, but these physical barriers feel like being pushed away. It’s really tricky. I feel like I am under the spotlight and want to hide in a dark corner. I miss Anita being beside me – both literally and metaphorically. Now I feel tense. Exposed. Rigid. I don’t relax. I feel like I need a soft toy to ground…I think you do too. All of this is working against us. I cannot believe just how massive the loss of physical proximity and touch has been. I just cannot regulate at all, and this is causing you, especially, a lot of difficulty. I hate this so much.
Since that session where I talked about what it’s been like for you, it’s as though you have taken over my mind and body…which is probably why we ended up going completely the wrong way in the car the other day! I have been so dissociated, sometimes completely frozen, but mostly I am massively conscious of feeling like I want to self-harm…or worse. And I know that’s not me. It’s you. You are showing me and telling me that you have reached your limit. You have coped and coped and coped and now you’ve run out of coping. I get it. I have no idea what to do about it, though.
I can’t seem to find a way to make this better because my coping has gone too. I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t hold this pain. I sent Elle message and told her I want to leave and run away. I don’t think she cares, she’d fill the time just like Hannah, Anita, and Em. Clients keep coming on the conveyor belt.
I joined some dots in the week, and it was as though yet another trapdoor opened up and another cavern of darkness awaited us. Sometimes inner revelations don’t feel good – I guess this is why our brain hides so much from us- it’s protective. This reminder just felt massively upsetting. It’s been so fucking hard for you hasn’t it? Like always…
I can really understand why you felt so betrayed when I let Em know the extent of the eating disorder that was so active again in 2018. She’d told me that I could bring anything to the room and when I shared the details of the ED with her it felt like a massive weight had been lifted. I’d been holding this ‘secret’ for twenty years and I genuinely believed that we might finally get some help. But then she delivered the ultimatum about ending the therapy shortly afterwards and it felt absolutely horrendous. It had been such a massive exercise in trust letting her know that stuff and then all of a sudden, she was threatening to terminate.
Actually, it was too much for her. And you knew it, didn’t you? I still feel physically sick when I think about it. It was the same when we finally did come to the ending in 2020. She said we could work through anything and that I needed to take a step towards her, that I could express my anger…and then look… she was gone. You knew it would happen. I wanted to believe it wouldn’t.
Anyway, you reminded me why that all felt so bad this week. It wasn’t just Em betraying your trust. It was a replay of H wasn’t it? She did the same. I remember you finally telling her what was going on for you after struggling alone for two years with active anorexia. You hadn’t seen her since you were fifteen and the change in your body had been massive by the time you saw her. You were/are so unwell. She didn’t say anything at the time but when you got back home, she brought it up on the phone didn’t she? She seemed to really listen and after three hours talking you ended the call feeling like maybe things might be ok now – it was that same sense of relief I felt having told Em. There’s something so soothing in being seen…until what you’ve shared gets thrown back in your face.
Your eating disorder is really complex and really dangerous. It know you are desperately trying to cope with feeling out of control but it’s also hiding who you are, taking up less space. Maybe if you can just completely disappear all the pain that you are feeling will disappear too. I don’t think I have ever really looked back at how awful it is for you being in the closet, feeling completely alone and struggling with how you feel about H and your sexuality. I mean add that onto the abuse you’re being put through at home…it’s no wonder things are a mess. I feel that sick feeling in my solar plexus just typing this, so I know that pain hasn’t gone for you and needs to be explored… the fact I have been in therapy for most of my adult life and have never gone near this stuff really shows how vulnerable it feels.
Just like Em, H delivered you an ultimatum. But worse than that, she actually walked away. She told you you were too much and that she needed space. She said that we’d take three months … and then talk. That never happened. We never came back to talking about what happened. It was four years before we caught back up. I was twenty-one then and in a much better place but I’ve never really recovered from what happened for you then and there you are stuck carrying so much still. It’s all so raw. And then of course this all plays into what’s happened with Anita. We were meant to leave it three months so she could figure out where she was at. We were at least meet to properly end if she was no better. It’s five months in now…and we’re in limbo. You and I have been here before.
Rejection and abandonment… I wish I could remove these words from our vocabulary. I am so sorry. I don’t understand how this stuff keeps happening to us. People tell me it’s not me but it feels like I am the common denominator in all this. I don’t know what to do. x
Here’s the original:
Dear Seventeen,
I’ve just read your diary. Please don’t be mad. Wait and hear me out a minute. I know how angry you were when you woke up to find dad reading your diary on holiday in Mexico and how violated you felt back then; but please know that I am not deliberately prying into your private life or being nosy. I’m just trying to understand you better. And honestly, I am good at keeping secrets, in fact I’ve been holding onto yours for the last seventeen years of my life. I’m not here to judge you and I promise that you can trust me.
We haven’t met before. Well, I know all about you (more than you realise) but I don’t think you are aware that I even exist. I’ve been watching you stuck in your own private hell for a long, long time now. It’s like Groundhog Day for you in the year 2000 isn’t it?
Too often I have turned away from you when I should have reached out to you. I have ignored your pain and your suffering because I haven’t known how to help you. Sometimes I have wondered if you even want to be helped.
I don’t know if you know it, but sometimes you take over my body in the present (which, by the way, is 2018 and means you’re often roaming around a stretch-marked 34 year old bod’ – yeah I know, it’s not great – and to think you hate your body now is incredible!) and react to my current day issues as though you are being hurt again in the way that Mum and H hurt you. It’s like my life triggers flashbacks from your life and you (and I) are reliving the pain over and over again.
I can feel your anxiety and fear coursing through my veins. I can’t speak and I go numb. I shake. I feel your frustration. I haven’t know what to do and neither have you. I’ll admit that I have felt overwhelmed by your feelings. I know you have things to say but I also know that you are very very frightened. I understand how desperately alone you feel. It broke my heart reading your account of the pain you feel inside. I know how hard it is. I remember it well.
You feel like you have no one to listen to you and that no one cares. It feels so difficult to trust anyone. You fear getting close to people and letting them in because you think you’re going to be rejected or abandoned or ridiculed – and you don’t think you can survive it again. This year has been the hardest one yet, for you, and I am not at all surprised that you just want to run away from everything and anyone that might hurt you.
So you isolate yourself in order to avoid being hurt but you can’t be alone forever. In your heart, deep in your soul you know you need love and connection. We all do. I know it feels risky seeking that out. I know you fear annihilation. I get how scary it feels to consider opening up again after what’s happened. You are still heartbroken but the only way your heart is going to mend is through letting someone heal it with you; currently you have a handful of shattered pieces and no glue.
There is no shame in wanting to be loved. You needn’t be embarrassed for feeling love either.
You probably won’t believe me (who can blame you after all you’ve been through); but if you can find a way to trust me, I think that I am the person that you have been waiting for. I can help you, listen to you, and love you…if you’ll let me. I really want to make things better for you – for both of us- because right now your pain is my pain and it’s crippling the pair of us.
I’m so sorry, so very sorry that circumstances have made you feel like you are not worthy of love and care. How things have been with mum are not a reflection on you. None of how she has been with you is your fault. You are not unlovable or untouchable even if that’s how you’ve been made to feel over the years.
How things have been for you growing up isn’t normal. I think you know that but really acknowledging that is devastating. You have suffered emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of the person that should have loved you and protected you the most. I assure you that there is absolutely nothing you could have done that would have changed how things have been for you.
I know that’s hard to hear, but I think you need to hear it and try and take this in. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You feel responsible for everything. And darling, some things are simply beyond your control. No matter how good you are or how much you achieve, there are some things you cannot change or control. You can only be responsible for you and not for the actions of anyone else.
What I will say, though, is this: it won’t be long until you are able to start getting away from some of the horrid stuff. Next year you will leave home and go to university, you’ll fall in love (really!), and things will start to get better. I promise you it won’t always feel this bleak. Until then, though, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to hold on tight and keep putting one foot in front of the other like you always have. I know it feels impossible sometimes.
Despite everything that has happened you are still here. You are a fighter. I know there have times when you have been very close to the edge. I know there are days you have thought about driving your car into a wall or overdosing or paddling your surfboard out to sea and never coming back. I felt the pain of each cut you made, and every burn on your skin. I know how you starve yourself. I see how regularly you purge everything from your system. You are punishing yourself over and over again for something that is simply not your fault. I don’t hate you. Why do you hate yourself?
You’ve lost sense of your value – or maybe, more accurately, you have never felt valued or loved. You feel worthless. Don’t get me wrong, I know why you feel this way. Steady and systematic emotional abuse does this to people. Now you feel like you are acting your way through life. You have little idea of who you are because you’ve spent so long trying to be what everyone else wants you to be that you really don’t know how to be yourself. You’ve struggled so hard against yourself for the last couple of years not wanting to disappoint anyone but inside you were dying.
I am so unbelievably proud of you. Coming out was massive. I know right now it feels like the worst thing you’ve ever done and you feel more lonely than ever; but those people that walked away from you, called you names, and bullied you were not your friends. I am telling you that even though it was scary and is still having a huge impact on your day-to-day you have made a huge leap forward into living authentically as who you really are. I know it takes a huge amount of courage to stand up and speak your truth but six months from now, you’ll be surrounded by people who love and accept you for exactly who you are and those people will become lifelong friends – chosen family.
I also want to say thank you. What for? For looking after the little ones. You are a force to be reckoned with, for sure! They are very lucky to have you as a protector. I know it’s difficult living your life when you continually have distraught children demanding your attention. It is not your job to hold them. It was never your job to look after them, but in the absence of an adult to care for them, you’ve done a brilliant job.
I have children (a boy and a girl). I see a lot of you in them because I remember you as a child, too. You were innocent and vibrant and full of life. You had so much love to give and then something happened and you started holding everything inside and that light you exuded steadily faded until it is now barely a flickering flame inside you. I know right now you feel bereft because, to you, coming out equates to you never having children and you so desperately want to be a mum. I’m not a time traveller but I am telling you this – children are going to be part of your future and that flame will burn brightly again in the love you have for your babies.
You are incredibly strong and I recognise just how much effort you put in to surviving. Sometimes the best you can hope for is just to keep on keeping on. You’ve done amazingly. Don’t roll your eyes! I mean it. The fact that in the face of so much pain you have still somehow held it together, passed your exams, can drive, and are alive is testament to your spirit. You are so driven and this is a good thing. It’ll take you a long way in life. But do you know what? You need to learn to relax too.
You need to let your hair down every now and again and have fun. You are so serious – so grown up- because you’ve had to be. As I said earlier, I am here now, for you and for the little ones – if you want me to be. So I am giving you permission – please relax and start to heal. The adult you all need/ed is here now. I’m not super woman but I promise you that if I can be there for you when it starts to feel scary then I am going to be there – and I am not going anywhere.
Things aren’t going to feel better overnight, I think we both know that. If things are to improve then we are going to need to work together on this. And so there’s something I need to ask you to do for me. I know you know about the therapist that I see each week because sometimes you hijack my session and stamp your feet a bit; or sometimes sit there silently raging and planning how you’re going to hurt yourself when you get the chance. Between you and the little ones there’s not a great deal of space for me in the sessions. I am, in no way, complaining about this, but I was wondering something.
I know you really like therapist but it feels risky to have feelings for her. You are attached to her just like the young ones are, ok perhaps in a slightly different way, but you do love her. And that’s ok. You want to be known by her. The idea of her really seeing you is both appealing and terrifying. Sometimes you let her see you, the real you, and other times you shut her out. When you feel close to her the alarm bells ring and you instantly back away.
Look, I’ve known this woman for six years now and I’ve been in therapy with her for three. I trust her but it’s not me that needs to talk. I’m ok. Do you think that maybe you might tell her how things are for you? Or if you can’t, do you think maybe I could tell her for you?
You’ve been holding onto this pain for such a long time, and I have been sitting on your secrets for as long as you’ve been alive and I think it’s time for us to move on.
So, the title says it all doesn’t it?… Elle came back off her break last week and, honestly, by the time the therapy break was up, I was in a completely horrible place emotionally. It’s not really any great surprise that everything tanked. I knew this first break with my newest/latest therapist was going to dredge up all kinds of shit – and it REALLY did. It certainly hasn’t helped that my last three therapists have all ended the therapy after a therapy break and so the sense of anticipatory dread about what would happen when Elle came back (if she came back) was intense.
Because I have been in such a bad place mentally – definitely neck deep in a depressive episode (only realised this today!)- I spent a good part of the break second guessing myself, driving myself mad, going round in circles and wondering whether or not I should send Elle the link to the last post I wrote. Part of me thought it might help her understand me a bit better and another part thought it would give her ammunition to cut and run, hence the mental gymnastics!
But, as I have been massively struggling with opening up in my sessions or, rather, have been completely unable to go anywhere near the stuff about Anita (which is absolutely tearing me apart), I eventually decided that it was better to throw a grenade into the mix now and see what the outcome was (if I’m too much better to know) rather than be in hiding and the outcome be the same only a few months and several hundred pounds further down the line.
Another reason I decided to send the blog was because every time I have thought that I might be able to venture towards this really vulnerable, painful stuff in session something has happened to throw me off course and I’ve taken us off in a completely different direction. It doesn’t take much at all. I am so sensitive to feeling rejected or abandoned now that it’s going to take a lot to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with Elle and as much as I really like her, I don’t trust her – at least not with those particular fragile parts of me. I wrote this the other day – this is what I need to say, in part – but it’s too fucking scary:
Look, I really need to take off my armour and have you witness what’s hurting inside because I feel really alone, and I can’t carry on like this. The thing is, I have been encouraged to take off my armour before. Things have been ok when I have taken my helmet off and just exposed my head, but when I have taken off my breast plate the person who told me my heart was safe has run at me with a dagger and stabbed me. There’s a serious wound that needs attention but the thought of exposing that makes me very scared because I think I’ll die if it happens again. My heart just won’t survive another dagger through it.
I also thought it would be good for her to see that blog because it talked about how I had felt about how I had experienced her in the room texting and forgetting to record the last session before the break. Of course, in the ideal world, I would be able to bring that to the session because it’s not that big a deal and any therapist that’s half-way decent can surely manage that…but… I can’t believe how many steps backwards I have taken since leaving Anita and it felt too big to bring to the room. All the things that I had worked so hard at: being able to express how I felt in the moment, to talk about things that hurt or felt off, feeling safe with another person who is meant to help, it’s all just gone now. I feel so unbelievably anxious about therapy. I am absolutely terrified of being found lacking/too much and being sent on my way again.
I thought if I gave her the head’s up pre-session it would give her time to think about it and perhaps give her something to help open the session after the break because I would most certainly be in tortoise mode!
Elle sends text reminders the day before our session and when I received that I sent the link to my post. I hadn’t wanted to send it until I was sure she was back from her break…because, you know…boundaries…! The moment I hit send I immediately felt very very ill. It was like the old days with Em. Absolute terror flooded my system. I felt like I had done something wrong and that there would be ‘consequences’. I have such a lot thank Em for don’t I?! Elle has never given me any cause to think this, but as I said, I had got myself so worked up over the break that I just wasn’t functioning in a very effective way at all.
It got worse and worse as it crept closer to the session. I woke up at 1am on Tuesday morning and had a massive panic attack. Elle didn’t acknowledge my email at all on Monday and so I woke up in panic and basically catastrophised in my head until it got light thinking that she was set to have a ‘difficult conversation’ the next day. I could really have done with some kind of, ‘thanks for this, look forward to seeing you tomorrowand talking this through’ from her but it was radio silence until the session on Tuesday and, honestly, I just wanted the ground to swallow me whole when I arrived. I was absolutely bricking it. The therapy shits were back (haven’t missed those I can tell you!). So, yeah, all in all it was absolutely awful.
As I waited for Elle to come and get me, my heart was racing, and I thought I was going to be sick. She opened the door and seemed…like Elle. I sat down…she looked like Elle. A couple of minutes went by, she grabbed the recorder and turned it on and said nothing. My brain was in a spin. Had she read the blog? Had she suddenly remembered to get the recorder because of the blog? Or had she not read it and just remembered, but forgotten that she’d forgotten to record before the break? I guess if she’d read the blog, she’d have had the recorder ready, wouldn’t she?… anyway I was trying to make sense of what was happening and where we were at. She said nothing about the blog and didn’t ask about the break…so I inferred that she hadn’t read the post because I feel like that was the map for the session and there was no mention whatsoever.
And that set off another reaction in me. Well, inside at least. My face gave nothing away.
For fuck’s sake RB!
I had been so anxious about telling Elle all that stuff, it was exposing but I really felt like she needed to see/know it…and she had chosen not to read it. Oh, good, we’re back into Em territory – just ignore me. My mum is currently in an ‘ignore me’ phase too, so it felt especially triggering alongside Anita’s ‘barely there’ replies to my messages. All in all, I just felt utterly shit, unseen, and circling the drain of ‘no one really cares’. I don’t know why it’s so hard. Like I am not a shit person and yet I feel like I really just don’t matter at all. Like I can’t even pay for someone to care.
I told Elle early on that breaks are a massive issue for me, so blog or not, I am surprised that she didn’t bring it up. I really get that lots of therapists are client led, but I really feel like in this early phase of the therapy I could use a bit of handholding. I feel like a therapy novice again and just don’t know what the fuck to do or say. Like I am doing brilliantly with False Adult and talking A LOT but inside it’s absolute carnage. I feel like I am some kind of glitching hologram. I am desperately trying to figure out ‘how’ and ‘who’ to be in the room to be deemed good enough to stay. I sometimes hear myself and just feel like I am incredibly boring and moaning. I feel like Elle must be watching the clock – because the version of me in the room is fucking tedious.
I honestly don’t know what to do. I know my advice to anyone else would be ‘try and take this to your therapist’…but I am trying to in the only way I can right now and I’m not being met where I am at.
I feel so fucking crap.
As I said, it dawned on me (finally) today that I am depressed. I have been battling with such a lot since May (and longer really) and I just feel so completely at sea now. I feel like I can’t even write properly. My brain is just a miserable fog. I’m spending hours and hours mindlessly scrolling through social media but not engaging. Anything that requires the slightest bit of attention span is a total fail. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked my phone even writing this but can’t even bring myself to proof-read it. I feel so lost. I want to sleep but can’t. I want to rest but my brain won’t stop freaking out. I have absolutely no motivation whatsoever. I need to cry but I have buried my feelings so deep right now because no one is safe enough to feel them with and I can’t manage alone anymore.
It’s crap…so crap.
I keep going to therapy. I keep trying. I keep saying how I need to connect with Elle…and we do…on a level. BUT it’s not the level I need. I’m not talking about hugs and all that stuff – although I am really feeling the ache from not being held by Anita – I feel like Elle and I need a conversation about ‘us’ like what is ‘this’ in the room.
Maybe we’ll get there eventually. I dunno. It’s all just so unbelievably exhausting. I need her now – like this week – but I don’t know her yet … and until I know her I don’t think I’ll trust her with me.
I wish someone would come and find me in the dark because it’s horrible here.
We’re no strangers to me whining on about therapy breaks here on this blog, are we? And as I find myself staring down the barrel of my first break with Elle I am anticipating a hellish experience this time around and I literally only saw her on Tuesday! Give me strength!
Before my last session I could already feel the anxiety and panic creeping in, and it’s got steadily worse as the week has gone on. My heart rate is up. I feel sick. I have a headache that I can’t seem to shift. My jaw is clenched tightly like a steel trap – it’s little wonder I have a headache! I am sooooo tired, yet I can’t switch off and sleep – mind you that’s nothing new, my sleep has been appalling since Anita and I parted ways. Anyway, all things considered, it’s not great and certainly doesn’t bode well for the next 11 days!
You might be wondering why I’ve got myself so worked up given that I’ve only been seeing Elle for a couple of months and that crazy attachment stuff hasn’t gone live yet…or at least not inside the room (it’s complex but more on that another time)! I had really hoped that I would be unfazed by the prospect of a two week break in the new therapy but my mind just isn’t wired like that – read: my brain hates me! #trauma
I mean, let’s be clear therapy breaks have, more often than not, been a challenge for me so this isn’t exactly new territory. Indeed, this horrid sense of dread and doom is all too familiar to me. There have, of course, been rare occasions (working with Anita) where I have sailed through breaks but they’ve strongly correlated with times where I have felt really settled, secure, safe, and contained in the therapeutic relationship. If I have felt there has been a solid connection and that there is a secure base it’s been great (ish) – but, honestly, I am way more familiar with feelings of disconnection that trigger intense panic and a desperate flailing about in emotional quicksand on therapy breaks.
We all know I am not in the ‘settled, secure, safe and contained’ zone right now. I literally couldn’t be further from that. It’s crap. I guess part of me feels like I am still on a therapy break with Anita, we haven’t ‘properly’ ended and so it’s left hanging open (but clearly closed); Hannah and I never returned to the room after our first break (I still can’t believe it went tits up so quickly); and let’s not forget that everything with Em fell apart after the Christmas break and the therapy ended in the most damaging and catastrophic way…well…not as catastrophic as what Anita has done but traumatising all the same #likeatick. So now that another therapist is going away I don’t exactly feel optimistic about the chance of a safe return with my track record as it is.
When I dig beneath all the awful physical sensations I am experiencing and feel down into the emotions I’ve been running from since… May… well…it’s YIKES! I mean it’s utterly utterly utterly heartbreaking stuff. Unsurprisingly, I’m met with the desperate crying of a really young part who’s been abandoned out in the cold, grey wasteland. She’s small, barely three years old. She has her back to me and as much as I want to reach out and help her. I can’t. It’s as though there is a glass wall between us, and I simply can’t get to her. Adult me feels completely powerless.
This internal landscape is so familiar to me. For soooooo long I’ve found this one of the hardest parts to make contact with. I see her so clearly and I feel the pain she feels so intensely. But I can’t get to her. I guess maybe this has, historically, been because there’s been such a lot of shame around acknowledging this vulnerable part of me. She is so needy, so starved of love and affection, so desperate for connection and a sense of safety and yet feels so unlovable and unworthy that expressing any kind of need for the ‘other’ feels chronically dangerous. If ever there was an exile she is it.
But then, this is the part that is behaving exactly as she should given that her caregivers have repeatedly upped and left. Children at this age do have a lot of need don’t they?…it’s normal… and that’s all been frozen in time because those needs were never met when they should have been by the person who was meant to do it. I’m having a really hard time with my mother wound right now for lots of reasons – it’s not only therapy triggering it, my lack of relationship with my mum has been thrown into sharp focus lately and it’s all just a lot. I might have an adult body but all the parts of me are still there inside, and this little girl especially is waiting for someone to come pick her up and hold her.
I don’t feel shame about this or these feelings anymore, but I do feel lost, and stuck, and have no idea how to begin to get the help I need to work with this now having been so badly hurt with Em, Anita, and more recently Hannah. Like what on earth am I meant to do? I do understand that I am the adult that this young part needs, I just need to find out where the sledgehammer is to be able to break through that glass and get to her…and I have been trying for a long time now!
Anita had done so much work on bringing this little girl out of the cold and into the warm. I mean she literally told me, “You don’t have to stay out in the cold anymore. I am here. You are safe with me. I love you and I am not going anywhere” all the while cuddling me into her chest, reminding me over and over that I was loved by her, reading me stories, showing me that the emotional cupboards weren’t bare anymore…and in doing this, so much of my system settled down – both the fragmented parts of me and my nervous system. I felt so much more capable of living in the world knowing that my inner children were held and contained with a safe adult, and I really felt like I was on the right track finding ways to hold these parts more and more for myself…like I was well on the way to the tool shop for that sledgehammer.
But then Anita left and, with that, she discarded all the parts that had learnt to trust her and who loved her so intensely. Each of these parts are experiencing this abandonment in different ways but today it’s all about the small one. Anita left that little girl and returned her to the wasteland. Devastating doesn’t even begin to describe how fucking awful this has been. We see the word ‘retraumatising’ being banded about a lot – but that’s exactly what this is. It’s such a visceral experience. It’s like a bereavement, only it’s one that I can’t talk about. I have to suffer on my own pretending as if everything is completely fine when it absolutely isn’t. I am so fucking far away from fine. Like I said the other week, I am a million miles away from ok and not waving but drowning.
The wasteland space is so bleak. This toddler part has been out here for too long now, shivering, and sad. Time is such a weird concept for kids, isn’t it? Weeks can feel like years. It feels like she’s been on her own for so long now that she can hardly remember how it felt to feel the softness of Anita’s body, to breathe in her comforting smell, and listen to her steady heartbeat. But then when she does remember the agony of recalling what has been lost comes flooding back and is totally overwhelming. It’s difficult to find words to describe the sense of being completely annihilated but so many of you know this feeling already that maybe it doesn’t need explanation here. If you know, you know.
I totally broke on Monday thinking about Anita and how she was my rabbit that listened. I couldn’t stop crying…I reached out again…and I must stop doing it because these replies are hurting me. I don’t know what to do – we need to meet to properly end but I just can’t face it. I don’t want her to be ‘gone’ forever.
My goodness! – this post is meant to be about my therapy break with Elle and yet here I am banging on about Anita again. But it’s because Elle has gone that the void that Anita has left behind is all the more apparent. My young part doesn’t want Elle (but I think she’d like to be seen by her), she wants Anita (sooooo much), but now that Elle is gone there is literally no one there to help. And whilst the young parts have not made it into the therapy room with Elle yet (they’re hiding behind the sofa but I don’t think she has realised), Adult me at least has been getting some space to offload some of my day-to-day crap.
The other day I was texting a friend about all this and she suggested that Elle has been like a shelter from the storm, or an umbrella, she’s not Anita’s cosy snug holding place, but that time and space in the week with Elle has at least offered a window of time to stop me from completely disintegrating. I actually think it’s been like a sticking plaster on an open wound. It’s been just about enough to stop me bleeding out…only that’s been ripped off now and I am really not ok. Like sooooo not ok. I feel like I am screaming for help and yet there’s no sound coming out. I dreamt this week that I was repeatedly telling Em, Anita, Hannah, and Elle that I was suicidal and not one of them could hear me. For the record, I am not suicidal – but I would say that some parts of the system are.
Anyway, none of this feeling of discombobulation has been helped by a couple of things that happened in the last session before the break, either. It’s funny. I’ve been seeing Elle a couple of months now and yet I haven’t really spoken about what it’s been like in the room with her at all yet have I? I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s because I feel quite protective of this new relationship. I so desperately want it to work out but I am so terrified of fucking it all up after recent events with Anita and Hannah. Although, I didn’t fuck it up…
Perhaps there’s an anxiety about writing about the therapy knowing how Hannah upped and left at the thought of making it onto the blog – and although Elle and I have discussed my blogging and she is fine with me writing in an anonymised way I do wonder how it might actually land if she ever sees posts like this where I actually talk about things that she’s said or done that have landed badly. I know I would struggle. I also think on a level I really don’t want to hurt her feelings just because I am clearly having a massive reaction to not a lot this time.
I know how my big feelings about small things can make it feel impossible for people to make mistakes and I really don’t want to create a situation where it feels like Elle is having to tread on eggshells because I’m so fucking sensitive. I keep going back and forth over whether what’s bothering me is something I just process on my own or whether it’s something that I should share with her. I don’t want to seem critical because that’s not it at all. This is all about me and how I react to things.
I know I have mentioned on repeat here about how I need to find a way to talk about Anita having avoided the topic like the plague since the first session where I outlined some of what had happened. I am obviously no further on than that. Every week I think ‘this is the week’ and then I get there and that False Adult (maybe it’s her) turns up and just rattles on about ‘stuff’ for ninety minutes. Oh yeah, that’s something new too. I asked a few weeks ago if we could do a longer session – and it’s become a thing. I find that length of session MUCH better but obviously still not enough to bring out the heartbreak. Ugh.
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase shall we? – 1600 words in! Concise as ever RB! So, I have been super conscious of wanting to find a way to really connect with Elle. I feel like we get on really well as adults (although tbh I don’t trust anything I think or feel now after what happened with A). I really like spending time with her. She is absolutely someone who if I had met them under different circumstances I would want as a friend (ha – that’s just fucking typical!) and I feel like she’s someone I really respect. That sounds so daft doesn’t it and a bit gushy? But I feel for the first time in a really long time that this might be someone who will be able to cut through my avoidant bullshittery once she gets to know me a bit better. At least I hope so … that is, of course, if I don’t frighten her away with the crazy first!
So, yeah, this last session I was so determined to go in and say, “Look, I really need to take off my armour and have you witness what’s hurting inside because I feel really alone and I can’t carry on like this. The thing is, I have been encouraged to take off my armour before. Things have been ok when I have taken my helmet off and just exposed my head, but when I have taken off my breast plate the person who told me my heart was safe has run at me with a dagger and stabbed me. There’s a serious wound that needs attention but the thought of exposing that makes me very scared because I think I’ll die if it happens again. My heart just won’t survive another dagger through it.”
I wanted to tell her that I was nervous about the break and a bit embarrassed that I didn’t want her to go away. I wanted to ask her if it was still her plan to go to working online in December and talk about how that might feel (bad!). I wanted to talk about the dreams I’d had and what I thought they meant (eek!). Like I had such a lot to say and had psyched myself up for it. It was going to be a massive exercise in the vulnerable parts of me taking a step towards her and seeing how it played out but I was hopeful nonetheless.
I think up to now our sessions have been all about what I have bringing from outside the room (obviously useful) but I think I’m needing to feel into what is going on in the room between us too. Like what is this relationship (aside from the obvious)?- How do we connect? – What is going on? – How is it all going to work? And I guess, really importantly, does it feel safe? Basically, it’s the relational stuff… the fucking scary bit!
Right, back to what spooked me…
Whilst I was waiting for the session I buried my head in a book I’d just started that I have totally loved called, ‘Enchantment’ by Katherine May (big recommendation from me – it’s lovely and all about reconnecting with the world around us). Elle came out, noticed I was reading and asked me what it was. I walked into the room, sat down and began to tell her – meanwhile, she had picked up her phone as she sat down and then started texting.
Ummmmm.
She apologised immediately for this and explained that she had made a mistake and had sent one of her clients the wrong time for their session (she sends out text reminders). She told me that she works with a lot of neurodiverse clients and was really aware that this fuck up would send this particular client into a spiral so she needed to quickly sort it out. She was also pretty vulnerable and told me how she experiences it when she makes mistakes with this client group and part of me was glad to see she really does care about the environment and container she creates for her clients BUT in that moment it felt like we were talking like peers and I feel like this is a trap we could easily fall into. Like it’s good. I don’t want there to be a massive power imbalance but equally I need her to realise that I am not maybe as together as I seem (like really not together at all, actually)!
Adult me really gets why she needed to send that text. Teacher me TOTALLY gets it as about half my work is with neurodivergent students. Parent me gets it – both my kids are neurodiverse.
But do you know who doesn’t get it?
Complex trauma client me.
The traumatised child parts DO NOT GET IT at all.
Because whilst it’s really marvellous that Elle is super concerned about her neurodiverse client’s needs what about the complex trauma one sitting right there in the room in her actual session?
And look I really know how much ‘brat’ teen is coming out here, but I need to say it because it really fucked how I thought the session would go because I immediately switched into ‘super competent adult client’ and I closed down all the parts that wanted to reach out and put some trust in her. Because in that moment when she was texting, the message that was being sent to my parts was I was less important than this ‘other’ client, my need was less, and oh my god it just triggered all the stuff about being unworthy of care and attention which are so live after what’s happened with Anita. The little girl suffering out on the wasteland’s hope of being seen was dashed again and I felt that intense tension in my stomach take root.
I had been so ready to connect, needed to connect, and the cues that it was safe to do that weren’t there. I know how massively explicit a therapist needs to be to coax these parts out and that’s part of the battle – Elle doesn’t know any of this, yet. I sometimes feel like Monica in Friends – externally she is super organised and together (if not a little neurotic!) but then there’s the cupboard that’s full years of clutter and tat and she is absolutely mortified when Chandler discovers it. That’s kind of where I am. Only I don’t just have a small closet full of emotional shit it’s a massive great warehouse!
To add insult to injury I quickly noticed that the recorder wasn’t out to record our session. Elle had suggested early on that we could record our sessions when I had shared a blog post with her about the problems I have with object constancy. She has been sending these to me so I can listen to them afterwards as a way of connecting. It’s been good. Only she forgot this time, probably because her mind was elsewhere trying to sort of this other client, or maybe she was heading into holiday mode – and of course that stung too because if ever there was a time to need to feel connected it was now – on a break.
Perhaps I should have said something when I noticed, but I was already lost when she text the client…which by the way was literally only seconds. I know I am making a massive deal over something really small but this is the nature of Complex Trauma isn’t it? We are so quickly triggered into painful states when there is so much of a whiff of feeling abandoned or rejected. It’s extreme. It happens in a split second and we are gone. The smallest misstep can feel like the vinegar being poured on third degree burns and unfortunately for Elle and I, there’s not much of me left that isn’t burnt after recent events with Anita and Hannah…and then, Em. In lots of ways she doesn’t stand a chance.
All I can say, is in that moment I felt painfully unseen. The young parts felt so fucking alone it was awful. Elle would never have known because I talked at her solidly for the entire 90 minutes because I’m so good at hiding in the room and taking us off somewhere else and allowing a capable, competent part to front. I hate that. I am not a massive fan of being plunged into a dissociative silence but I think this might sometimes be easier for the person opposite me to figure out something is amiss. Anyway, the session was ‘fine’ for Adult me but not at all for the parts that needed to be seen that day…or now as the break becomes more of a problem.
Of course, I haven’t been sent a recording – because there isn’t one to send but I don’t think Elle has realised that it’s even a thing. Or if she has, she hasn’t got in touch to say, “Hey RB, I’m sorry, I dropped the ball here”. This hurts because when she’s dropped the ball with a more established client she makes the effort to rectify it in MY session. And I do get it’s different – scheduling is different to this.
If she has realised what’s happened then maybe she’s not wanting to open that up over an email when we are on a break. The thing is, ignoring it doesn’t mean it’s gone away. I am still here holding it and that vulnerable part is upset. I think there’s a part of me that worries that it won’t even have hit her radar and that shows me just how far away we are from really getting into ‘me’. I so miss having a therapist who knows ‘me’ intimately. I miss the things that Anita and I would do to make breaks as easy as possible for these parts. My elephant is sat in my wardrobe now. It no longer smells like Anita’s washing powder and I have had to put it out if sight because the reminder of what I had is just too much. It’s such a huge loss. As I keep saying, it’s like my emotional scaffold has been taken away and I am trying not to crumble.
I so want this relationship to work out because I really like Elle – like I really like her. I really don’t want to be ‘this’ client again. Adult me is really ok about this but those others, the ones who especially need the therapy aren’t. I am just so bloody exhausted by all this now. I hate that this situation feels so much worse than it should because of the state things have been left by Anita. I hate that I have to start over again. I hate that I feel so ungrounded and unsafe inside. It’s massively shit and feels too much…or I feel too much.
I don’t really know what to do. I guess though, this isn’t going to work out unless I find the courage to be brave and vulnerable – like I really am going to have to start talking to Elle about this because … she needs to know. And as much as this is, on the surface, a tiny rupture – it has all the key ingredients of what causes me difficulty. It’s not a big deal but to parts of me it really is…and it’s not just this – I have to address the elephant in the room (A) before it makes its home there like all the others before.
I hate that I know that returning to therapy is going to feel really hard because by the time it’s time to go back I won’t be just be dealing with the young one out on the wasteland – I will have the depressed teen and the sadistic critic to contend with, too. I’ll have gone through the wringer and then end up just about normal by Tuesday. Honestly, I am so over it.
I wish I could say that things were on the up and that I am feeling much better than I did in my last post but, if anything, things are feeling worse. Worse? How can it be worse than that?! I have no idea, but it is how it is. Believe me when I say I am sick of this shit now. Like I am so fucking over it – and yet I have no idea how to get out of it. I mean I am doing the ‘things’: self-care galore (who knew that was a thing for me?!), therapy, (trying to) sleep, doing only the bare essentials in order to keep things running and yet it is still TOO MUCH. Like it’s all TOO HARD now. I just can’t seem to catch my breath at all and am running on fumes.
I told Elle, this week, that my current ‘life’ is easy in comparison to how things were last (academic) year. She assured me that it didn’t sound easy. But then I guess the difference back then was that I wasn’t in this emotional state. My day-to-day life was insanely busy and challenging but I could pull it out the bag because I felt ok in myself – or as close to ok as I have ever felt. The reason things feel so impossible, and exhausting now, is because the floor has fallen out from beneath me. I mistakenly thought I was standing on solid ground with Anita, yet I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It feels like she’d collected all the parts of me together, the ones that had just endured an earthquake when we met #tickgate, wrapped her arms around them (literally), made them believe they were safe enough to rest, that it was possible to rely on someone and trust them, and then suddenly she pushed me headlong into the basement of a haunted house and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, set fire to the building, and walked away. It’s so jarring it’s not even funny.
I have to give myself some credit – I seem to have a tremendous skill for scrabbling round in the dark looking for the light and a way up and out, and instead alighting on unexpected/concealed trapdoors, falling through them, and landing face first in yet another pitch-black room with no ladder or way out. I honestly thought I had hit ‘bottom’ in June when everything ended with Anita. Like I surely must’ve been in the core of the fucking earth at that point…or hell… but, apparently not!
When I said goodbye to Anita, I knew immediately that I needed to get out of that dark place before I either burnt alive or starved to death which is why I quickly sought out Hannah. I did this despite every fibre of my body telling me it was probably better to perish in the basement rather than try and escape…and perhaps I was right, the basement level one would have been the better option because look how that worked out – another fucking trapdoor! Eek.
I keep unlocking new depths of shit and I honestly feel like some poor character in a glitching video game. I keep respawning, although I feel like I am missing the key bits of kit I need each time – like my armour – or at least a bloody torch! I know I need to find a way out and I’m trying so fucking hard and yet, over and over I find myself further down in the deep dark depths. I do wonder how long this can go on for? There’s only so long you can run on empty before everything grinds to a halt. Characters only have so many hearts to lose before it’s GAME OVER.
I am not a gamer so that feels like a really random analogy to have made. Anyway, what I am really trying to say is there has to be another way right? Like maybe rather than trying to climb the walls hoping to find the hole to get back up and out a million times perhaps there needs to be a different strategy. And I think I know what the strategy is but it’s fucking scary option which is why I keep trying to do this all by myself. Like there is a bit of safety in the narrative, ‘Noone can help me but me’…only I am not doing an especially wonderful job of helping me right now.
Elle asked me what the major sources of stress in my life are this week. Ummm. So…what did I answer, do you think? Like what is the one thing that is really making EVERYTHING else feel totally impossible right now?…You’d be seriously out of pocket if you’d placed your bet on ‘the ending with Anita and the fallout of all that it’s dredged up from the trauma vault #motherwound’
Nope. I didn’t say that because, you know, that would be far too fucking straightforward wouldn’t it?
In a stroke of avoidant genius I said, ‘myself’.
Which is true isn’t it? I am the major source of stress in my life. Because all the things that are stressing me out are, in part, down to me. It’s my wonky brain that holds onto shit like my life depends on it. I allow these things to stress me out. I put myself in situations that cause me stress. And even this ‘stuck in the bowels of hell drowning in the depths of depression’ situation isn’t being helped by me, really… like I know I am falling down the fucking holes over and over and when someone is seemingly offering me their hand to try and find a way through it, I don’t take it. I don’t trust it.
Awesome work RB.
Good job.
Slow fucking clap.
To be fair, though, I’m not surprised there are parts of me working really hard to keep me safe from ‘help’ after what ‘help’ has looked like over the years. I sometimes wonder if Elle knows that I am taking us both as far away from the path that we need to be on as is humanly possible in our sessions because there are so many paths that appear to be ‘the path’. Everywhere we go there’s uneven ground, deep bog (oh my god I love the word bog!) brambles, and probably a troll hiding under a bridge ready to jump out, so it looks about right for the therapy room.
I guess you could argue that eventually all the paths will lead to the same place in the end, but these random detours, whilst not completely irrelevant, aren’t doing a lot for my ability to cope with the week or my feelings of isolation and disconnection. Being in hiding means I can control what is going on to an extent – like I am not going to suddenly burst into tears and embarrass myself because I have everything sewn up so tight…or should I say, the parts that need to be in that room are gagged and bound behind the couch.
I read over my last post before starting this one and I was struck by this bit:
I feel absolutely broken by this…and it feels like there is nowhere to put it down to breathe. And the longer I don’t get ‘help’ with it the more shame and embarrassment I attach to what’s happened. Like the longer the topic is avoided the more I feel like it’s something that makes me seem weird or too much. Basically, the Inner Critic is starting to get vocal, and I really don’t need that.
Ouch.
Fucking true, though.
That critical voice has got louder and louder these last few weeks and as much as I know it’s trying to keep me safe – my dysfunctional protector in rusty armour – I could seriously do without it. I know I am on dodgy ground…bog… ha!… when the Critic is running free.
And then my absolute favourite thing started happening. The dreams. Fucking loads of them again. Now we really are in the shit…bog. Honestly, it’s exhausting being so tired, trying to sleep, and then finally getting to sleep and being pummelled repeatedly every night. The icing on the cake was last Friday night, though. It began with a fairly run of the mill anxiety dream involving Elle…this is the first time she’s come into my sleep but it’s not like ‘therapy’ dreams haven’t been a thing over the years and tbh this one was nothing like some of the horrors I have had! Excuse the condensed style, I shoved it all on the notes page on my phone as I woke up so I wouldn’t forget:
Running with no shoes in woods in pants and a vest- it’s raining – I’m cold but have to keep going-I run past a group of people well-dressed in expensive wet weather gear and good boots -as I run past I hear Elle’s voice coming from the group, “Oh my god, that’s one of my clients- what a fucking state!”
I mean, it’s not that big a deal. I can see that it’s all about being exposed and about how others who seem to have their shit together (dressed for the weather) perceive me. The painful bit was hearing Elle’s mockery when I had run past. Like I hadn’t seen her at all, but when she thought I couldn’t hear her she was mean, and not only that, clearly didn’t think that maybe there was something wrong and instead chose to be horrid based on her perception of what she saw – I wasn’t wanting to be running with no shoes and in next to nothing! This dream reminds me a bit of a dream I had years ago with Em in and her wearing a raincoat in the therapy room as if it would protect her from my storm.
There’s a part of me wondering ‘why do I care what she thinks anyway?’ I thought I had got to a point in my life where I really couldn’t care less about other people’s opinion of me – or perhaps not quite that, but I certainly give much less of a shit about this kind of thing than I used to (and that’s been hard won, I can tell you).
So why is this different? I guess in the wider world people might form an opinion but not really know ‘me’, so I just let them get on with that…but therapy – well it’s a bit different, isn’t it? We expose all of ourselves: the most vulnerable bits, the most shame-filled bits, the weird bits, and the whole point of it is about being seen, known, and accepted by someone else so that we can see, know, and accept ourselves. So, when the vulnerable parts are ‘rejected’ by that person we have trusted with the most delicate and fragile bits of ourselves stuff – it feels massive. Being wholly known and then to be thrown into the basement on repeat is fucking shit…and so I understand why this feels such a massive issue right now. I am sick of the fucking basement.
I am utterly crap a navigating my way through the dark.
Anyway, I didn’t think much on this dream because when I went back to sleep another one happened and OH MY FUCKING GOD!:
I give birth to a massively premature baby in the toilets of an airport terminal. It’s absolutely tiny – size of my hand.
The airport is huge, white, light, reasonably quiet but also completely useless as there’s no facilities or shops- I guess it’s like a vacuum. The plane I have to get is cancelled but I can’t not go to wherever it was (even though I wanted to stay behind) so am offered a reroute on another flight. I am concerned if I fly out on the reroute I won’t be able to get home on my original flight…I don’t feel like I have a choice, though.
Whilst I’m trying to sort this my dad shows up (?) and has taken my baby but I don’t know where. I start panicking and trying to find it like a crazed lunatic.
My plane is about to leave and I discover there are only two seats booked-what would I do with the baby who doesn’t have a passport?
I finally find my dad and ask where the baby is and he says he’s put in daycare because it can’t come with us. I am furious. I need to feed it or it’ll die. I can’t go away for a week on holiday!
He’s taken it to somewhere next to a run down shopping centre. I open the door and have to go down loads of winding corridors, dark, narrow, crap carpet- like not been touched since the 80s. I eventually arrive at what looks like a busy doctors waiting room- not day care. It’s really gloomy and no staff. It’s packed with people everywhere looking totally depressed.
I’m really aware of being massively under pressure and feeling panicked and overwhelmed. I scream “Where’s my baby?!” at the empty reception desk and someone pops out from under the desk and says it’s in a room behind her unattended.
I find it and it’s dirty and hungry. I ask if my dad left it a change bag, nappies, clothes etc – nope. I am so angry that he’d think this was an ok place to leave a newborn and do absolutely nothing to make sure it was safe or provided for. I realise I have no money, am bleeding heavily from giving birth, and am totally panicked now and feel like I’m going to cry.
The woman at the desk says she’ll look after the baby whilst I go find supplies in the playroom. Like everywhere else it’s grim, dirty, broken toys, torn books, totally neglected, and strangely, there’s noone in there (probably because is so crap). I find a box meant for nappy changes under a chair and it’s empty. Get back to the reception and ask where my baby is and the woman says she has wrapped it up safely and put it in a box.
I get to it and can’t find it because it’s been completely smothered, face covered etc. I desperately peel away the layers round its face and it’s dead. Try to do CPR but there’s no chance. “You’ve killed my baby” I cry.
I mean wow – right? That’s a big one. There’s such a lot I can pick out from that. But to go really simple with it -it’s all about my inner child and what’s happened with Anita and what’s happening with the therapy now.
I felt absolutely distraught when I woke up from this one and it’s stayed with me. The baby was so tiny and vulnerable – it wasn’t ready to be born, or in a safe environment for that to happen, then no one in the dream cares for it properly (story of my fucking life!) – even the person I trusted most in the world (my dad)- and in trying to sort things out and being so consumed with figuring out what to do and how to fly, Adult me let go of caring for it and then it’s too late. It’s dead. Mind you I am not in a particularly great state – bleeding out. I think we both could have done with a hospital and some professional help. But this is kind of what’s happening… really? Yeah… bear with me!
I think the cancelled plane symbolises what’s happened with Anita. The journey I thought I was going on just isn’t going to happen now and the reroute isn’t going to be easy or how I thought it would be either, even if I end up at the same destination eventually.
There’s certainly a part of me that is reluctant to get on Elle’s plane because I know that means I’ll never get back to Anita…but Anita’s plane is gone, it’s cancelled, and I cannot stay in that airport that’s completely barren and unhelpful because I have to go somewhere because I have some serious problems, and I have a really vulnerable self to keep alive… but then that part doesn’t seem to have a place on the plane so that’s a nightmare.
I think the biggest worry I must have, then, is that getting on Elle’s plane means I need to leave the most vulnerable part of me behind. It must feel on some level somewhere in my brain that the child parts of me can’t go on this flight or into this therapy and instead that part of me will end up stuck back where it originally came from in the 80s and die there in a place that is completely unsuitable for a child and where there is nothing but neglect. I don’t like the sound of that much.
But there just doesn’t seem to be any place for that baby, or by extension any of those really vulnerable child parts I’ve been working with in the therapy with Anita. And I am really conscious of this – I can feel how fucking distraught that young part of me is, and how much need there is. Like I am really aware of how much care that little one needs and yet no matter how I try I can’t seem to find the resources I need to keep it safe or alive.
And then there’s the part about feeling like I can’t go away for a week in the state I am in. Well, it’s not me going away, actually, it’s Elle. She’s got a break coming up and I thought that was ok…but obviously on a level it’s not. We all know how much I love therapy breaks!
So I guess this is why I am so fucking exhausted. I am perpetually searching for safety and help in what feels like a life-or-death situation… at least that’s the reality for my internal world. And all the while I am trying to keep up the act of being a capable and coping adult in my day-to-day life. That’s getting increasingly difficult to do and I can see my spinning plates are starting to fall off the poles and are smashing on the floor. I can’t do anything about it – there’s too many fucking plates. How on earth have I got so many fucking plates anyway?! Maybe I just need to lean into it and reframe it as a Greek wedding and celebrate the shattering of all that I thought I had to hold up. You know what I am like though, I’ll cut my feet on the shards as I try and walk away.
Anyway, back to the point…
I know that the therapy with Elle will never be anything like what I had with Anita – I wouldn’t want it to be, and I can’t replicate how it was. However, I really do need to grieve what I have lost because what I have lost is massive. It’s not just a person, it’s the sense of feeling safe and held and like my nervous system wasn’t completely fucked. It’s the also coming to terms with the fact that the person I trusted above all others has discarded me. That dead baby in the box feels really relatable.
I hate it. I hate how this feels. I hate that I seem to be unable to make any of this any better for myself and probably most of all I hate that despite what she’s done and how badly this has all been left, I just really wish that I could see Anita, sink into one of her long cuddles, listen to some stories and hear her steady heartbeat, and fall asleep for an hour.
My whole system is so dysregulated that I can’t find any sense of peace, or relaxation, or safety anywhere now, because it was with Anita that I found all that. The saddest thing is I was starting to be able to internalise that felt sense of safety and take it out into the wider world…but then the basement happened and here I am and I can’t tap into it at all because every time I bring that space with A to mind my stomach goes tight, I feel sick, and tears prick in my eyes. I can’t even begin to explain how massive a loss this has been but I feel it in my soul.
Fuck. Will someone please just hold my hand?
This song… man… I came across KT Tunstall almost twenty years ago, now, and Through The Dark couldn’t be more relevant. Tbh I should have just posted this and the lyrics. It says it all.
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 
You must be logged in to post a comment.