therapeutic relationship

The End Of An Eating Disorder.

rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

TW: Eating disorders and self-harm.

So, it’s Eating Disorder Awareness Week (EDAW), apparently. I don’t mean to sound so blasé or critical, but I guess like many people who have suffered with an eating disorder and mental health issues I am left feeling a bit cold when ‘awareness’ is mentioned. I think there is a lot of awareness out there but what we really need is adequate funding and investment in training, in order that there is proper provision to support people who are suffering and struggling better (or at all!). We all know that it’s a postcode lottery with what treatment is available not to mention the waiting lists…oh and, of course, the ‘time-limited’ interventions. So, forgive me if I don’t feel all that enthusiastic about this week, or any of the others that come along raising ‘awareness’. I guess I’m just old and over it and would rather see some tangible action so that people like me get the help they need at the time they need it – and don’t spend a lifetime tangled up in pain.

I’ve been saying for a while that I would find some time write about the end of the long-standing ED and so this is my contribution to EDAW – but really, it’s for me, a written acknowledgment, to myself, to honour the journey I’ve been on. I don’t really know where to begin, if I’m honest, but this week seems an especially apt time to finally close the book of many many MANY chapters.

So, I guess I begin at the beginning?… all those years ago when the crafty bastard came along and took root? I suppose that’s as good a place to start as any…but inevitably this will take me back to the very beginning because everything that came before the active anorexia fed into the development of the ED (excuse the pun!).

…

This is probably going to be a pretty long piece – so perhaps go grab a cuppa. I suspect it will be a bit ‘bitty’ and disjointed here and there, too, as there’s lots to say. It has been such a fragmented experience that I can’t see how it will ‘flow’ but I guess if I keep some kind of loose chronology we’ll get to the end and into March 2022 where I am now sitting with a big bar of chocolate and cup of hot milk as I type – and enjoying both with no hint of “I shouldn’t” or “I’ll have to pay for this in exercise later” or hating myself for not having the willpower to resist these treats. I never for one minute believed this would be possible – but here I am…and contemplating a cheese toastie in a bit!

So, deep breaths, ready for vulnerability download:

I have been battling with anorexia since I was 15 which, sadly, is almost 25 years of my life. My goodness, that’s depressing when it’s right there in black and white. 25 years wasted….

Looking back now I feel so much sadness and compassion for that poor young woman (that was me) who found herself deeply distressed, struggling so badly with soooo many different issues, who took to starving herself in order to cope, and was barely holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum. I feel so upset that no one paid attention or saw beneath my coping exterior. I was like a swan to everyone around me, gliding along on the surface whilst desperately kicking legs beneath it in order not to grind to a halt or fall apart. It was exhausting trying to appear ‘fine’ when I was anything but. Parts of me longed for someone to ‘see’ me but my protectors were so strong that no one was ever able to penetrate my defences. No one tried but then I wonder if I’d have trusted them even if they had?

I wish I knew then what I know now about myself, and about the destructive nature of eating disorders. But then I was a kid in the late nineties – information wasn’t readily available, the internet and social media weren’t ‘things’ back then (sending a simple text message took ages repeatedly pressing number buttons to get to each letter) and so much was ‘taboo’  – having said that, I don’t think the internet or social media was what I needed, or more ‘awareness’, as I say, I wish back then there had have been someone, anyone, who would have noticed and helped me through what I was experiencing, someone who could have helped release the strangling grip of the eating disorder and allowed me space to breathe and recover and learn how to be me and to accept myself.

Basically, I wish I’d have had a K or an Anita when I was 15 because there’s so much evidence to suggest that eating disorders that are addressed early have the best success rates for people getting through them and moving on. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those people who got support at the right time, but I feel so blessed that I have support now and I definitely think that my relationships with A and K have done wonders for me, helping me grow stronger. It’s through having their love and care modelled to me that I have learned to love myself and see my own worth. And this is the thing, for me, my eating disorder, when you boil it down, was actually not a great deal to do with food or body image. It focused on those things, but they weren’t the primary drivers.

There are loads and loads of reasons why people fall into eating disordered behaviours, but I can only speak from a personal perspective here, and say how it was for me. Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will know by know that my growing up experience wasn’t exactly what you’d call ‘optimum’. From the very beginning it wasn’t brilliant. I was an accidental pregnancy, a pregnancy that turned out to be fraught with problems, a pregnancy where my mum spent the final three months of her pregnancy in hospital with pre-eclampsia. Poor little me was stuck in a toxic womb environment and then had to be induced 6 weeks early because I ‘was in distress’ and so I wasn’t exactly onto a winner…and have been distressed ever since. Lol.

After a long and difficult labour, I was born, and reportedly didn’t make a sound. They’d pumped my mum so full of drugs that they weren’t sure I was alive or if I would survive. There’s no doubt, now, that I ought to have been delivered by c-section, but this was the early 80’s, on a Sunday, in a hospital that is renowned for its poor practice over the years. Apparently, the doctor on-call was on the golf course and insisted on finishing his game before coming in to assist with the delivery…as you do.

Tiny baby me was whisked off to an incubator which is where I spent the first three days of my life. I’ve written about this before, here, but every time I think about it, no matter how much therapy I have, it still stings. My mum’s ‘go to’ birth story as I was growing up was, “I thought the baby in the incubator next to you was mine, I didn’t even recognise you.” Undoubtedly, my mum was traumatised by both her pregnancy and her labour, and I am not surprised she went on to develop post-natal depression…but what has any of this got to do with my eating disorder you might ask?

Those early hours and days after the birth of a baby are so important for bonding and attachment. The moment my children were born they were put on my chest, and we had skin-to-skin contact. In fact, the moment my son was born he was skin-to-skin and began to breastfeed immediately. Both my babies were elective c-sections so their births were as straightforward as they could be: my daughter was breach presentation, and my son was enormous so I’m glad I was given the option both times to choose what I wanted. I am certain that a calm birth experience meant that I was very able to respond to my babies and bond quickly. I wasn’t in pain or distress, and neither were they.

I know how important it was for me as a new mum to be close to my babies and to bond – I didn’t put either of mine down except for nappy changing in the first twenty-four hours and they slept on me skin-to-skin – not even in a baby grow. My mum was barely in her twenties when she had me, and didn’t have any of that, or any decent antenatal support prior to birth. I can’t imagine how upsetting it must be to not see your baby because it’s been whisked away, not know if its ok, and then not to know which baby is yours when you finally are allowed to see it. My mum used to retell the story like it was funny, but I think, now it must’ve been her way of coping with something awful.

Anyway, the post-natal depression undoubtedly didn’t help with the bonding process. My dad used to come home from work to me and by all accounts I don’t think I was massively well-attended to during the day. I understand it, but it’s still hard to know that as a small child I was not getting what I needed. I don’t blame my mum PND – it is what it is, and there was next to no understanding of it or support for it really then. But if I was left in dirty nappies then I think we can probably infer that there wasn’t a great deal of feeding going on either.

When I was 9 months old my mum left the country with me. Her relationship with my dad had completely broken down and she basically ran away from an intolerable situation with him and my wider family. Again, to be taken from everything I knew at that time must’ve been disruptive for little me. I don’t know much about the three years abroad but I know we moved back to the UK when I was nearly four. I have only a handful of memories before I was seven: one is being sick after my preschool vaccinations, and the other burning myself on a barbecue but being too scared to tell anyone about it when I was just four. I have no recollection of my first day at school — or anything.

My memories only really kick in when I moved house I and started a new school midway though year 2 and the week of my seventh birthday. Before I started therapy, I thought this was normal. I thought most people had no idea about their lives before that age. Apparently not. Sometimes I wonder about what might have happened or what it was like, but I know what it was like from when the memories actually begin, and I can’t see it being very much different. I imagine that my clever young brain wiped out a lot of what was there to make it survivable.

When I was working with Em, I remember a session where I told her about the burn on the barbecue (I still have the scar now). I’d said how I had been told to stay away from the barbecue because it was hot. My dad had put the tongs on the grill to disinfect them in the flames and then taken them off and hung them on the side of the frame. I was alone in the garden and was inquisitive, like children are. I can remember it clear as day…the searing pain when the boiling metal hit my skin and then peeling the tongs off my leg, taking the skin with them, leaving a long burn on my inner thigh.

Em wondered aloud what might have led little me to be in a position where I was too scared to tell an adult that I was severely hurt in that situation. My daughter was about the same age I had been at the time when I was recounting the story, and Em asked me what my daughter would do: run to me crying and seek assistance. There was no doubt in my mind that that is exactly what she’d do. That’s the natural reaction, right?

So, what stopped me as a little girl? Why was I already so terrified of the consequences of being told off for doing something I had been told not to do, doing something ‘wrong’? It didn’t take much to join the dots, but I can infer that I must’ve at least once before got into trouble for something and the reaction been bad enough for me to go into hiding rather than risk a similar response from my mum.

My children do stuff I tell them not to ALL THE TIME but they ALWAYS come and seek help and support if they hurt themselves, even if they’ve hurt themselves after I’ve warned them not to do something. How does all this stuff link into the ED you might be wondering? Like come on RBCG get to the point! Well, I think from the very beginning my needs have not been met, both emotionally and physically, and I think early on I detached from my needs.

As I child I remember being hungry a lot of the time. I was the kid that never had a snack at breaktime at school. It wasn’t that there wasn’t money for it, there just was never anything in the house to take and I genuinely don’t think it occurred to my parents that breaktime was a time when kids had something to eat. Or maybe they were just consumed in their own busy lives and didn’t keep me, or my need in mind…(sigh)… And so, I used to watch while other children tucked into bags of crisps and chocolate biscuits. Again, I never went home and asked for these things to be bought. I didn’t feel like I was worthy of it, I guess.

I used to go to childminders before and after school at when I was at primary school and the childminder used to feed both her children a snack after school but would never offer me anything. My dad didn’t collect me until almost seven most nights so most days I would have just my school dinner which given how crap things are now for kids in the UK with 1/3 in poverty I feel stupid for moaning because I was at least fed and when I got home, too. But what I am trying to say is that for years I was hungry, my stomach would physically hurt, and yet there was no way of getting rid of that feeling and it was horrid.

I guess I got used to it in the end and something switched off, I no longer ‘felt’ hungry although I guess I must have been. I didn’t feel much of anything at all, actually. And it was the same with the emotional stuff. When my mum would come home at the weekends it was horrible most of the time. She’d argue with my dad, sometimes be violent, and generally make me feel like I was in the way and an inconvenience. For years the shouting and the violence scared me and then I learnt to feel nothing.

Everything was numb.

And so fast forward through to my teenage years, my parents had separated again so at least the yelling had stopped. I lived with my mum during the week, and she was stressed and unavailable or vile. By now I had become so self-reliant that I don’t think you’d know I existed in the house. I washed my own clothes, made my own lunches, cleaned the house, and stayed in my room doing my schoolwork. I was no trouble at all. My reports were outstanding. My grades were top. There was nothing you could moan at me about.

Only she did.

Over and over.

Eroding my self-esteem bit by bit over and over for years and years, “I wish you’d never been born”, “You think you’re so perfect”, “You’re so boring”, “You’re just like your dad”, “Who the hell do you think you are?”…on and on and on…

And then when I was about fourteen, I started to realise I was gay and this neatly coincided with the “Don’t hold my hand, people will think we’re lesbians” from my mum one day when we were out and crossing the road. I have no idea why I reached for her hand that day. I guess maybe it was an unconscious throwback to a time where she would keep me safe as a child. I don’t know. But her reaction was nuts. The laugh is we never really touched anyway, there were no hugs, no kisses, no physical signs of affection and certainly no verbal expressions of love or care…so this was the final nail in that coffin for our relationship in lots of ways. It sits in the same pain zone as Em’s ‘tick’ analogy, another complete and utter rejection of me and my ‘self’.

As I’ve said, my mum was rejecting so much of the time, and I’d felt physically abandoned when she was away through primary school, but that sound bite also felt so loaded for future ‘gay’ me. Being gay clearly was ‘bad’, and now something to be hidden, and so I did… but that was yet another burden, another secret, another thing to feel ashamed about.

I fell head over feet in love with an older woman when I was 15 too (big eye roll now I know all about my attachment stuff and mummy issues!) but that felt awful, too. I wasn’t out the closet, she wasn’t gay, and I couldn’t tell her how I felt for fear of being rejected. As I’ve already said, it was the late nineties and things weren’t as they are now (that’s not to say LGBTQ+ kids have it easy, now – they don’t) but there was no space for kids like me particularly in the part of the country I was growing up in. There were no role models. There wasn’t even mention of same sex relationships in Sex Ed for goodness sake … I felt thoroughly alone…weird…an outlier. It was hard. And then the GCSE years really got going and as a perfectionist who was expected to get straight A’s I crumbled under the weight of it all.

The first time I didn’t eat was a day during a school holiday. There was ‘gifted and talented’ evening trip to the Opera that had been arranged by the Head of English and me and a couple of friends had been chosen to go. I don’t know why I didn’t eat that day, but I didn’t (probably no food in the house). I can clearly remember after the interval feeling, sitting in the dark, waiting for the singers to take the stage, and feeling lightheaded and stars going round in my vision. I felt kind of out of myself too (dissociated) and, honestly, it felt such a welcome relief from the usual agony in my solar plexus and feeling on the verge of a breakdown and suffering with that horrible sense of ‘unrequited love’ (ahhh which is not dissimilar to the mother wound) and being thoroughly miserable at home.

I’d never been someone who had eaten breakfast or snacked (that bedded in young!) but I was definitely a solid ‘pasty, chips, and beans with a can of apple Tango for lunch at high school’ kind of a girl. But then I stopped that in year 11. I would maybe have something small or skip lunch altogether by going and working in the school library ‘revising’ (sitting alone with my head in a book trying to not fall apart). It was about this time that I’d started self-harming too. It was getting bad. And yet what could I do? I couldn’t speak to my parents. There was no school counsellor. There wasn’t anyone. And of course I was an ‘outstanding’ student so teachers had worry about me.

Things got worse and worse and one day I made myself a GP appointment in the middle of my GCSE exams and went to see the doctor because surely this would be someone to help. I felt so nervous going into the consulting room. I’d never been to the GP without a parent, and I was about to tell a complete stranger about my secret destructive behaviours. I thought I was going to be sick, but I knew I couldn’t carry on as things were. I was miserable and destroying myself. I trusted that a ‘professional’ would offer me the support I so badly required. So, I told the doctor how I was feeling and what I was doing to myself…and…he dismissed my issues saying, “It’s a phase” and that “everyone gets stressed round exams” and that my self-harm scars were “superficial” and he sent me on my way.

Wow.

Again, I look back at that memory and I have so much sadness and compassion for that brave sixteen-year-old girl who was going through so much and was left unsupported, not ill enough to warrant support and instead left feeling like a time waster and a hypochondriac. I kept quiet after that, but things got worse and worse.

By the time I started A Levels things had really escalated. My mum had taken to being absolutely vile all the time. I was a substitute emotional punching bag now that my dad wasn’t there. And how did I cope? Well, I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch and would purge after all my evening meal which was in the region of 500 calories. I exercised ALL the time, weighed myself daily, and self-harmed at least twice a week. The cuts weren’t superficial anymore and my weight had plummeted. It was absolutely awful. It was completely exhausting, I was completely exhausted and the ED felt like a full time job occupying so much of my headspace…but thankfully it pushed the other horrible stuff – feeling unlovable, untouchable, and not good enough to one side – albeit temporarily.

One day I went to visit ‘the older woman’ who now lived a couple of hundred miles away from me. She took one look at me and cornered me about my eating disorder when we were sitting watching a movie. The dramatic change in my appearance in the 18 months since I’d seen her was unmissable. I was honest about what was going on (for the first time). She asked why I had never told her when I spoke to her on the phone (twice a week). What could I say? It’s not easy to tell someone that you’re not eating, puking every time you eat…and the reason for it… you hate yourself and have unmanageable feelings for the person you’re speaking to!

I felt like I had taken a big step towards H that weekend and then when I got home, and we next spoke on the phone it was like the tide had turned. (The irony is not lost on me with how much this reflects what happened with Em all those years later when I finally told her how bad things were). H delivered me an ultimatum: tell your parents or I will. I begged her to give me time and she agreed. But when she pressed me the next week and I told her I couldn’t she cut me off, told me that she was wrong to get involved, and I could call her in three months but she needed space…

Ouch.

I came out the next day and was in bits and things continued to get worse.

My mental health got so bad that I stopped attending college regularly in the second year of A levels (after a patchy first year) and think clocked up an impressive 30% attendance overall. I was told I shouldn’t sit my A levels as there’s no way I could pass them and to come back and redo the final year. The idea of this felt unbearable – another year at home and no escape to university? I begged my tutor to allow me to at least try the exams and they conceded. Fortunately, I came out with AAAB and it meant I had the grades to move forward.

Essentially, though I spent the years between 16-18 feeling thoroughly depressed and hopeless. How I passed those A Levels I’ll never know, but I am just lucky I guess, to have been academic enough to not need to go to lessons or try too hard. I know that sounds big headed – it’s not meant to be-  I am just so aware that had I have flunked my A Levels rather than getting a string of A’s and B’s life would have been considerably more difficult for me because it was getting away to university that allowed me to escape the worst of what I was going through.

My eating disorder was a crutch, a coping mechanism. Anorexia was something I was good at, too. It took the focus off all the shit I couldn’t deal with – didn’t know how to deal with. I could escape from my mother, from my sexuality, from exam pressure and watch the scale go down and down. As, I said, I learnt not to feel hungry and enjoyed the feeling of being almost delirious. I likened the heightened anorexic state as like being up a mountain above the clouds, one day. to Em. Like it can be swirling shitstorm down below and somehow not eating enough for long enough takes you up to where the air is clear, and the sun is shining. Or at least that’s what my calorie deprived brain believed. Coming out the other side I can see how fucked up that is, but anorexia really messes with your body and brain chemistry.

I think my eating disorder went some way to shutting down the Inner Critic, or appeasing it a bit…only you can never really please that sadistic fucker and so really it was just a vicious cycle. I’d go through phases of my life where the ED would be in the background, subdued – usually when things were going well, I was ‘happy’ with friends or in a relationship and life wasn’t too trying but then there were other times where it would rise up and take over. The irony is, what I needed when things felt overwhelming was care and support and what I delivered to myself was abuse. The world outside felt threatening and too much and I had no sense that what I should be doing was ‘self-caring’ and not ‘self-harming’. I sort of thought that’s how it would always be. I never felt like I deserved love or care from anyone, and certainly not from myself. I literally had no idea how to care for me.

(I am so glad this has shifted!)

I’ve always been body conscious; I could never look in the mirror and be ‘ok’ with what I saw but there were stretches of time when I wasn’t actively restricting or purging which felt like a kind of progress. I just ate once day….which I guess is still restricting because there’s no way on earth I could not eat until the evening now. I get to about 10am and breakfast has to happen…I can tune into my body and respond to it, but it’s taken a lifetime to get here after years of dissociation.

Ugh.

It’s weird, I look back now at photos and can really ‘see’ that I wasn’t well but at the time would have sworn blind there was nothing wrong. In fact, the ED mindset can be so dismissive, defensive, and angry that it makes you almost delusional. The number of arguments I have had with my wife over the years when she’s expressed legitimate concerns to me is staggering. The denial that I built around myself and the eating disorder was insane but after so many years it was like I was brainwashed, or brain-damaged. I genuinely couldn’t see the issue anymore and other people’s concern was an intrusion. How dare they suggest anything was wrong? But also, why would I admit it when doing so might mean I get rejected again?

Again, I just feel so sad that I have spent more than half a lifetime attacking myself – and why? …because the self-image I’d had placed on and in me was so wrong in the first place. I find it so depressing that I bought into the idea of being unworthy of love and care and the only way of coping with it was to make myself smaller, to disappear, to dissociate my needs away. But those needs were still there, lying dormant because look where I am now in my therapy: #1 Neediest Client In The World!

God.

I read somewhere once that ‘we are only as needy as our unmet needs’ and basically this rings so true…does anyone else relate?! Unfortunately for me, A, and K there are quite a number of unmet needs!

Anyway, back to the story and the early naughties: I’d got through my degree, my MA and my PGCE just about in one piece (I do wonder how!). I started teaching and I’d get through the day on a can of coke and then go home and eat a meal. Again, I can see this isn’t ‘normal’ but it was the most normal I had even been in my life to date. I was painfully thin, but I wasn’t deep in the throes of the eating disorder either. I guess what I would say is that my eating disorder would go through phases- never fully gone, but not always massively active either. At this point I could eat and not gag when I put my toothbrush in my mouth so that’s a win.

Then of course, my dad died suddenly and there it was again, my trusty friend ready to help me. My coping mechanism was back front and centre. I got very ill when that happened. My BMI was 14 and I was like a walking skeleton. Only I couldn’t see it. And yet again, despite having medical input for my mental health and weekly weigh ins with the GP I was able to deflect and distract from it. Having been told at 16 that there was nothing wrong with me I had basically learnt that health professionals don’t believe me and that I am not worthy of care and so never told them how bad things were. What was the point? I ran rings around anyone that tried to come near.

I clearly remember one day my GP telling me that “Happy people don’t have eating disorders” and “was there anything I wanted to tell her?” I wished so badly in that moment to be able to share even a tenth of what I was carrying but what can you do in a ten-minute appointment? And how do you hold your hands up as a 26-year-old professional person that you are still stuck in your ‘teenage coping strategies’? Eating disorders are so often framed as a ‘young person’s issue’ because that’s when they often begin, but there are thousands and thousands of people who have continued to struggle well into their adulthood… and so, I said nothing. I was ashamed and embarrassed.

And on and on it went for another few months until she referred me into eating disorder services. The initial appointment with the assessor was a farce. She asked me a series of questions about my eating habits and body image and the part that was fronting that day answered in way that meant I wouldn’t get help, “Do you think you are fat?” – “No” etc. The part that so badly needed help was gagged and bound. I was so deeply in the denial zone at that point that really the person just needed to use her eyes to see that I was FAR from ok but of course she didn’t. It was another example of my being intelligent and articulate enough to be escape the system. I don’t know why I was so terrified of ‘getting help’ but the idea of being made to eat and go to day patient just felt like a huge no. I didn’t want to be scrutinised. I didn’t want to lose control. I didn’t know any other way of coping with what I was feeling and having my ED taken away…well, I needed it to survive.

Still, none of that ever happened because I never got specific ED help but I was put on the waiting list for psychotherapy after writing a letter to my GP and her calling me in to say she thought I was suffering with PTSD! Three years later and I finally got to the top of the waiting list and was working with Em… and the ED kicked in AGAIN about three months away from when we were meant to end, just as the realisation that I would have to stop seeing her became really real and the attachment stuff had become massive. I had genuinely thought I was over my ED by this point, I’d had a baby and things were going well in my ‘adult’ life. So, what the hell was going on? Ahhh the young parts were activating but I had no idea about any of it at this point, I just felt like I was losing my mind.

So, there I was again, sitting with a BMI of 16.5 and not eating ‘normally’ but also ‘normally enough’ to not draw any attention. I was exercising away my ‘baby weight’ (overdoing it to attack myself and escape the emotional pain). I couldn’t tell Em then what was going on. I was too ashamed and embarrassed that the thing that had triggered me trying to ‘cope’ was approaching the end of our time limited therapy on the NHS and the reality of losing her – and besides, there was no time left. It was all the stuff about being alone, left, abandoned, rejected, not being worthy of love or care…it was the mother wound. It totally fucked me up for a long time and I was so distressed for months after that ending but didn’t really understand why.

Yet again, it was a relational ‘injury’ triggering the eating disorder. Yet again it was feeling emotionally out of control and not good enough that sent me into the pattern of trying to gain control – of what I put into my body and what I did to my body, and over my emotions. The older I got the easier it was to spin my anorexia as a ‘health kick’. I’d buy new trainers and sports kit and RUN AND RUN AND RUN away from all that was upsetting me and eat salads and drink smoothies when, really, I wanted cake and chocolate and roast dinner.

I simply wasn’t able to sit with my feelings of pain and loss and all that’s associated with the mother wound because, as I said, I didn’t fully understand it. I just knew that the thought of losing Em felt unsurvivable because of course that is what it felt like to the young parts who were being triggered. It felt like annihilation. Ugh. And how do you tell anyone about this? It’s embarrassing and loaded with feelings of shame. You’re meant to get ‘better’ after sixteen months of therapy not worse…and yet here I was feeling desperate and heartbroken…

HELP!!!

And so that therapy ended, and I bumbled along for six months feeling untethered, having nightmares, and not eating and trying to shift my focus away from the pain I felt inside. Time ticked on, then I got pregnant again and sorted myself out, put on a stone, had my son…it was all settled and going well…and then I got diagnosed with cancer…and had a year of treatment. Steroids saw me balloon, but I didn’t care at that point. I was fighting for my life not my size six and the steroid weight soon fell off when I had finished treatment.

The wheels came off after I finished the chemotherapy and radiotherapy– the PTSD response to the cancer treatment being lumped onto so many other previous traumas meant that I knew I needed to seek support – and I made it back to Em privately…and OMG…as you all know…the mother wound got triggered in the most massive way AGAIN. I thought going back to her would ease some of that ache that I’d felt in the three years since I had seen her, but it didn’t. It ignited again in a flash. Seeing her, as I have said so many times, was perpetually like being a kid stood peering through the window of a sweetshop- I could see what I wanted, smell it, almost taste it – but I couldn’t have it. It was so painful.

Working with Em meant that I became fully aware of my inner dynamics, my attachment style, the dissociation ALL OF IT. And whilst this information was really useful in helping me understand myself better, it didn’t help with the endless triggering of my little selves in the relationship with Em. Her being so emotionally and physically withholding just exacerbated the situation. And then there were the breaks that triggered the abandonment stuff- and my go to coping strategies- when I needed some kind of relational holding with her and it wasn’t forthcoming – think Pebblegate! Oh man!!!!!!

Some of you that have been here for the long haul will recall the Easter break where the shit hit the fan a few years back and I just didn’t cope AT ALL and fell into a really severe period of not eating and over-exercising. I took a leap of faith and told Em what was going on when we got back from the break – all of it, from the beginning, like the stuff in this post and I genuinely felt like I had taken a huge leap forward in being honest and maybe, finally, would be able to get support with this ED that had been plaguing me for years. Only those of you who have read for a while might also remember that it was straight after this that Em delivered me an ultimatum “Go to your GP or we’ll have to work towards an ending.”

I still feel physically sick when I think back to how that was handled. It had taken such a lot of bravery and a leap of faith to trust Em with this vulnerable and sensitive secret and everything I had worried about – being rejected or abandoned because of it- was panning out. It really was a replay of the GP at 16, and H at 17, but in a different way. I never really spoke to Em about my ED again and I genuinely feel like a massive opportunity was missed there.

Flash forward again…the ending with Em two years ago. Another relational injury and back to my trusty friend the ED. The Inner Critic loves the ED, it makes it feel strong, and powerful, and in control, and it likes to punish all the parts of me that suffer. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone when it all went wrong with Em. K was incredible at this time, so holding and caring, and UNDERSTANDING which zapped some of the shame away from the situation. I also met Anita just before it all went catastrophically wrong with Em, and from the get-go I was able to tell her all of the ‘stuff’.

The great thing about starting with a new therapist is you have a window of time before any of the attachment shit really kicks in in the relationship with them, and you can map out all the issues without the fear of judgement or lots of parts being involved. I started working with Anita in January 2020 and it wasn’t until June/July time that my littles switched allegiances to Anita and the attachment stuff felt really live with her. You’d have thought that the need for A becoming live would also trigger the ED, because the fear of rejection and abandonment would come alive and so I’d have gone into hiding and repeated the pattern…

However, the big change this time was that I was able to tell Anita how I felt outright, rather than skirt round the edges and be living in a vat of shame like with Em. Anita has always handled my feelings with such care and sensitivity that I’ve been able to tolerate feelings that I have never been able to before. It’s always felt like Anita is holding my hand – both literally and metaphorically and so I have felt much safer in the relationship even when big things crop up or a rupture happens. I have enough faith, trust, and confidence in what we have built together that I can experience difficult feelings without the need to go and attack myself.

As you guys know. This therapy hasn’t been plain sailing and ‘nicey nicey’-  my god – Anita and I hit rupture territory regularly enough! But what is sooooo different is the speed at which we repair the ruptures. I don’t sit for weeks and months on end ‘building up’ to telling her I’m hurt, wondering whether she’ll flat out reject me, or terminate me, for feeling upset or dissatisfied…for wanting to be close. Of course, my fears of rejection and abandonment get triggered a lot but how Anita handles this is transformational and I do think this relational healing has gone a long way towards me moving away from the ED.

The level of love and care that I feel with both Anita and K is massive and it’s building an inner resource that is supportive. I realise now that I do have needs, that my needs are valid, that there is nothing wrong with me having feelings and that I do not need to punish myself for experiencing BIG emotions or having relational needs. I do want to be loved and cared for – and that’s normal. And it’s normal to hurt when that hasn’t adequately happened growing up.

I don’t need to feel shame or embarrassment for having young parts that need Anita (of course I still do, a lot!) and I know that Anita has invested a lot of time and energy in building a strong therapeutic relationship with me, as has K. More and more I can internalise their love and care which means I am more and more able to tolerate my difficult feelings as I have these steady, consistent compassionate voices telling me I am loved and good enough both in real life and in my head. Those voice counteract the Inner Critic somewhat. I know why the Inner Critic and other protectors have been so vocal – they do not want me to get hurt. But I also understand that their way of ‘protecting’ me has hurt and isolated me at times.

Basically, these last couple of years working with Anita and K have changed my life. Because I now feel compassion for myself and all my parts because I have had it modelled to me by them I want to nurture myself now rather than punish myself. For the longest time I have looked for a home in other people and now, through being loved and cared for I am starting to find a home in myself. I know there’s still a load of work to do, the young parts still need what they need from Anita, but I do feel optimistic that I am a lot closer to a healthy state than I have ever been before. More and more frequently I can find the resources within myself to start to soothe the young parts that are so upset and lost.

The end of the ED (if there is ever a truly an end) has been a steady, slow, barely perceptible bit by bit change in me and how I think about myself. The body work with K has made me so conscious of my body’s reactions and nervous system that I simply can’t not eat at least three meals a day. I register my hunger and I feed myself where before I didn’t ‘feel’ hungry and then if I did feel it, I’d resist it. Over time I have learnt to tune into my body, and I give it what it wants- sometimes that’s a load of fruit and other times it lots of cake…I just intuitively eat what I fancy when I fancy it. I also realise that I am nurturing my adult body, but in taking care of the basic needs to eat I am nourishing that hungry baby and the other small children inside, too.

And this doesn’t just extend to food. I am now, more than ever in tune with what I need emotionally, and I do what I can to meet those needs. I wrote recently about taking a day off to try and regroup, sometimes I don’t try and force ‘adult me’ into carrying on, and if there’s time, I might grab a teddy and watch a kids’ movie when the young parts are massively activated…there’s all kinds of things I do. What I guess I am trying to say is that I don’t run from myself anymore, I try and look at what’s going on and figure out what the need behind it is and if possible, do something to meet it.

But back to the eating disorder stuff – or the food and body bit. Of course, stopping unhealthy eating habits – or lack of eating habits, has resulted in a significant weight gain. I no longer fit into the clothes I’ve had since I was eighteen, and I am not a size six or eight anymore but then I am nearly 40 and have had two kids so that’s perfectly reasonable! Perhaps the hardest thing about moving on from the ED was ‘growing out’ of clothes. I can’t wedge my arse into my wardrobe anymore and that was a bit triggering but it wasn’t enough for me to want to ‘do’ anything about it. Instead of slimming down, I bought some size ten clothes instead and they fit comfortably. Eating what I want when I want has led to my body sitting at a solid 54kg for months – which for my height 5ft 7 is perfect for me. I never thought this could happen. I used to live in fear of 48kg and now…here I am.

Omg this is massive. If you’ve made it to the end with me – kudos to you. As I said at the beginning this was more of me needing to close the book than write a new chapter…and I think I have done that. It’s taken a long time, it’s been a massive struggle, but I am so fucking proud of myself to be where I am today. And I hope, if anyone reading this is experiencing a similar struggle that they can see that it doesn’t have to remain the same and things can change.

x

Regulating, Reconnecting, Repairing…Rupture…REPEAT!

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

This post is massively delayed so the first part feels pretty ancient now – so if this all feels disjointed it’s because there’s a month to catch up on rather than the week I had anticipated when I began. I started writing this the day before my kids were struck down with COVID and ironically was banging on about self-care and taking time out. Life got ridiculously hectic with both kids off school and still trying to work and honestly, that two weeks floored me. I mean, really, it was as though a whole other trapdoor of fatigue opened up beneath me…and of course, there was a massive wobble due to the unscheduled therapy break, well from f2f, too… so there’s lots that’s happened but I can’t necessarily remember the order of events- apologies if there’s a bit of jumping around.

As you all know, I was having a big wobble last week (last month, now!). My energy was so low, my capacity was non-existent, and the resources I usually draw on to get by, were flashing a red warning light. I had to stop. Or rather I could no longer keep going, and so had to take the day off. There really wasn’t a choice, I simply couldn’t keep going.

I’d like to say that taking time out was massively restorative and I bounced back and was good to go again, but it’s not always like that. As I was saying in my last post self-care is often framed as bubble baths, and walks in nature, and eating healthily – simple acts of filling your cup – and it is, but what I was trying to say the other day is that sometimes self-care is none of that, too. Sometimes you don’t have the energy for ANY of that and so self-care can be temporarily stopping the stuff that is depleting you, whittling things down to the absolute essentials in an effort to function. Wednesday was me sticking a band aid over the wound so as not to bleed out.

Taking the day simply meant that I didn’t crash and burn later in the week. I didn’t replenish anything that day. I didn’t top up my internal tank at all – it just meant that I didn’t drain myself dry which meant I could limp towards the weekend instead of stalling and then completely conking out midweek. And that’s good enough. Sometimes self-care is just that, knowing your physical and emotional limitations and listening to your body and inner wisdom and trusting that you know what’s best for you and giving yourself what need.

Honestly, if I wasn’t self-employed I would have taken the week off sick, it felt that bad. There are so many upsides to being my own boss but not being able to afford to get sick is certainly not one of them! In the ideal world I’d have a savings account where I put a percentage of what I earn away into some kind of ‘sick fund’ but the reality is there’s always something that demands money: my car has just cost me a fortune and still has something wrong with it, bills keep creeping up and up, and I have kids…that need clothing and feeding! My life seems to work on the juggling act of 0% balance transfer credit cards – there simply isn’t a pot of money for off days.

Alas. Still, it could be worse. I, at least, have my health (at the minute) and that has not always been a given.

So, back to therapy. And Anita. Oh. Thanks to the universe for sending me this therapist. Because honestly, she’s just exactly the stable loving force I need in my life. I was spiralling like a tornado last week. Everything felt disastrous (and yes, I was due my period so that wasn’t helping!). As I said in my last post, I don’t think I’d really recovered my footing after the breaks in December and the anniversary of all the shit hitting the fan with Em just compounded my sense of things not being ok, not being safe.

Things were so tense in one of my sessions, recently, that Anita asked if we should go and have a walk around her garden. I was in such a protected grumpy teen space that I snarled at her, “No, it’s too cold” and then went back to my silent treatment and feeling like I had been abandoned. On reflection I wish I had taken this opportunity – sure it was cold, but to be invited into another part of Anita’s space and share that would have been nice. Still, my teen wasn’t having it that day, so that’s that.

—– 18th February…

So fast forward several weeks and here I am writing this from 36,000 feet on my way to the sun. THANK FUCK. It’s the first block of free time I have had in weeks, and I cannot tell you how delighted I am to be headed away on a holiday. Having said that, the take off in storm Eunice was….a… bit… (a lot)…HAIRY! I booked and paid for this trip in December 2019 before my wife got made redundant at the start of the pandemic and then went on and lost her next job in the February…it was booked and paid for before everything got so financially stretched and strained.

The trip has been cancelled four times over the course of the last couple of years due to COVID. Every time it’s been cancelled, I have been offered a refund by the holiday company and each time I have been so tempted to take the money and pay off some debt. Each time I have gone to therapy and discussed the situation with Anita, she has encouraged me to keep the holiday (if I can) and I have. And then it gets cancelled again and we have the same chat. For the last couple of years Anita has repeatedly voiced how badly I am in need of a holiday and honestly, she is so right, and I am so glad that we are now able to get away after the couple of years we’ve had.

Because I get a discounted rate in therapy it sometimes feels like I shouldn’t have ‘nice things’ if I am not paying Anita’s full fee. I simply couldn’t afford £120+/week to see her now, so I am really grateful that we have found a rate that works for us both. I pay a flat monthly fee and it’s the same regardless of whether we have breaks or not, or whether we have extra time. So, this month I miss three sessions because I am away and then another session just after I get back because A is away (groan!) but the cost remains the same. I know where I am at with this system, and it means that sometimes it works out better financially for Anita too.

Anyway, nice things…or lack of them! I take care of the kids’ stuff – their trainers were literally falling apart this week, so I had to get them new ones and also had to buy them some summer wear (they’ve grown since last year) but my wife and I are sporting clothes we’ve had for over a decade and topped up with the odd bit of Primani. It’s been a bit of a challenge with clothing for me lately seeing as in the last year I have gained a stone and finally kicked my 25 year ED into touch (I will write about that soon!).

My arse simply doesn’t fit into my size 6/8 clothes and for the first time in my life I am wearing a size 10 – which being 5ft 7, being nearly 40 and having birthed two kids feels right for me. Anyway, what  I’m trying to say, is that taking a holiday feels extravagant right now but I am so glad we managed to hang on to it and I intend to make the most of it because, quite frankly, it’s been a really tough two years has been tough…

So, therapy…well… what can I say? The short notice move to online sessions when my kids tested positive with COVID was really hard. Fortunately, the preceding Friday session that Anita I had, had been very connecting and I left feeling really settled…which is lucky because what came next was a complete shit show. The Monday session was ‘meh’ again. False adult fronted and talked shit for an hour. I disconnected the call and felt numb. Empty. Well, that was until all the big feelings from the young parts flooded in and derailed the week.

It was awful.

I felt so disconnected from Anita and it escalated at the week went on. As I’ve said before, lack of physical proximity and working on the phone just plunges me back into my mum being away for all those years when I was a child. It’s really painful.

I text Anita the night before the session to say that things felt bad…

The morning of the session I got up, got showered, got dressed, and got stuck…or rather, frozen. I was sitting on my bed ready for the session. Anita’s name flashed up on the screen. It rang and rang and rang and yet I couldn’t answer the call. My heart was racing but I just felt paralysed. Part of me wanted to talk to Anita and another part couldn’t face the idea of another session like Monday.

I sat staring at the screen and after a few minutes text Anita – here is the exchange:

d parts were absolutely besides themselves. It was agony.

In the end Anita called in and I left the phone on the bed pointing up at the ceiling. My cat had come in for a cuddle and was purring in my arms. Anita began to read ‘The Invisible String’. It took a long time for me to be able to tune into her voice and the story but eventually the child parts felt a little more settled.

The session was over and it felt awful again. There’s so much going on internally that needs sorting through and talking about but I have found lately that I have been so strung out just getting through the weeks that I simply haven’t had the capacity or energy to dig into what’s coming up. I am hoping after this holiday I’ll be able to – once Anita returns from her break.

Fortunately, for my system I was able to go to my Monday session and see Anita f2f as both kids had tested negative and I had avoided it all together. From what I remember we had a connected, holding session but I can’t tell you what happened as I have absolutely no idea!…oh hang on…yes…we’d been talking about how hard disruption is for the young parts and then Anita told me that she was going to be away after I get back from holiday for a week. I burst into tears as I snuggled into her chest.

Poor A! All I seemed to do that session was go through various states of upset and then calm down and then cry again. This extra revelation, I think, meant that the overwhelming feelings just burst their container in a big way. Nightmare. We spent the remainder of the session regulating and containing the young parts who are so scared that something terrible will happen or things will chance when we are apart.

The sessions leading into this holiday have really been a mixed bag. There’ve been really close sessions and ones where I have completely kept my distance and pushed Anita away in anticipation of the separation. I find those sessions really painful. No matter what Anita does it feels impossible to cut through. My protectors are so powerful. And my goodness it’s soooooo exhausting.

And so, to Monday – and our last session before the break. I felt mixed feelings heading to the session. Part of me didn’t want to go and another part felt like the stakes were really high because I so needed to leave feeling settled and connected because of this latest period of disruption heading all the way into mid-March.

Interlude:

Oh good…

”Is there a medic anywhere on the flight?!!! If there’s a medic on the flight PLEASE make yourself known!

 … the joys of being a nurse eh? So that’s been my wife busy for the last hour with a passenger. At least the years in acute care and crash response have been put to good use again! This is the first time in all the years I’ve been travelling this has happened. I think my wife most definitely deserves her holiday now. Still an hour until landing and I’m sure once we land, she’ll be so glad that I pushed her from her seat!

So, back to the final session. Because we were headed into a break, I asked Anita if we might start earlier. As I have said before, 75 minute sessions feel a bit more containing because it feels like there’s enough time to drop the defences (if they’re there), land in the room, connect, do the work, and pack everything back up carefully.

So, it was lucky we had more time as it turned out to be one of those sessions where what was said and what was heard don’t quite marry up – and not in a good way – or at least not for the young parts who are so quick to feel abandoned and rejected – especially around breaks. I’d sat down and downloaded the stresses of the week (too much to do, not enough time, body shakes, nervous system overwrought…blah blah blah) for about fifteen minutes and there was a natural break in the conversation. I felt myself step out of that day-to-day headspace and became quiet as what was underneath came to the surface. I felt the panic that I’d carrying all week acutely, and the memories of the nightmares I’d had came up. Ugh.

Anita wondered aloud where the young parts were at and asked whether I wanted a cuddle. I nodded and shuffled across the sofa towards her and into her familiar warm arms. My heart was racing and I was physically trembling. Anita commented on this and said I felt cold to touch and gently rubbed my back. I tried to tune into A’s heartbeat but the sound of my own heart hammering in my ears meant I couldn’t. After about fifteen minutes my heart rate finally slowed and I could hear A’s slow, steady beat. I felt my whole system settle and felt soothed and calm which was a welcome relief after how hard things had felt these last few weeks.

23rd Feb…(loving the holiday btw!)

There was quiet for a while, and I asked Anita what she was thinking. She said she was thinking about what was going on between us and about Transactional Analysis. I was so deeply in that child state that I felt panic rise through my body as she continued to talk. She said something about how for growth we are aiming for my adult and parent to be able to hold the child parts and how one day she won’t be there.

RED ALERT.

PANIC.

PANIC!

EVERYBODY PANIC!!

From that point everything got messy inside and I felt like I was going to actually going to have a full-blown panic attack. As all this was rising up in me and then something flicked, and I froze. Dead still. Hardly breathing. And I remained that way for a long time. I was completely out of my window of tolerance.

Shit.

This was not the fucking plan for the session.

Just for clarity, what Anita was actually saying is one day I will have done enough work in therapy that I won’t need therapy in the way I do now or need her in the same way I do. But this is not what I needed to hear before a break when the child parts were so present because all they could hear in that moment was ‘She’s gonna leave me – everyone always leaves me’.

Argh nooooooooo!

Anita said something about her acting as like a nanny or grandma who can settle the young parts when everything seems bad, until one day there will a point where my adult can take over and do it for myself. That’s what we’re aiming for. Again, nothing wrong with that, because I’m guessing that when I have worked through the early stuff, I’m unlikely to want to spend hours of my week cuddled into her but it just felt so rejecting in that particular moment in the particular young state I was in. And let’s be clear here, my child parts don’t see her as a nanny or a grandma…they see her as mum. And so, even this very warm, caring statement felt rejecting.

Anita went on to say that we are slowly trying to repair what went wrong as a child and redoing some of the stuff that was missed along the way and there’s a part of me that is glad to hear that after so long being told that, “The time for those needs to be met has passed and you need to mourn for what you didn’t get.” I guess what Anitas is saying is that what we’re doing is a kind of ‘limited reparenting’ perhaps. And I can definitely see that. From the very beginning she has been clear that it’s ok to have needs, express them, and if possible (and within reason) she’ll try and meet them. And she has. She’s been really great in the two years (TWO YEARS) since we met.

As I was lying cuddled into her with my elephant (ready to be washed as there’s one session back before Anita goes away), yet frozen, A talked about how with deep wounds you can’t just put a plaster over them and hope for the best. It’s a long process and the wound has to heal from right deep down in the core. She said she’s in for the long haul and won’t abandon the young parts. She’s there for the journey, but of course the original sound bite that was drowning out everything was “I won’t be able to do this forever” and so lots of the different parts were freaking out, ‘What if she leaves before we have done the work?’…etc etc.

Adult me gets what she was trying to say because it was said with so much warmth and love, and I know the intention was meant to reassure the parts of me that worry about being too much about the strength of the relationship – but the child parts have hung onto this and have filled up with shame about it. I’m going to have to talk about all this on Monday because it’s hurt me and yet I know this is not Anita’s intention at all. She was so good in the session when I was quiet and crying. She asked me to tell her what I had heard and clarified what she meant over and over – and after the session I sent her a message and she reiterated her position again:

I think this episode just really goes to show how easily triggered young, vulnerable parts are. It takes such a long time to build trust in the therapeutic relationship, to let these parts be seen, and then any hint or sense that the safety of the therapy will be taken away is massively triggering. Anita has no plans to stop the therapy. My therapy will end when it feels right for me. But coming off the back of a premature ending of a long-term therapy due to the young parts being ‘adhesive’ and ‘like a tick’ to Em means that I panic if Anita hints at us ending, or her not being there, or me not needing her.

As I’ve said a million times, Adult me gets it. All of it. But man, these child parts are right in the thick of the work and such a long way off ‘not needing Anita anymore’ and as I said, on the eve of a break the last thing I needed to hear was about a future where she isn’t as she is now, when the young parts needed reassurance that nothing is going to change. (And yes she did say all that “I’ll still be here when you come home. I won’t change. We’ll still be ok. And you are not too much for me…” on loop.

I don’t know how much of this has made sense because it’s been so split.

In summary:

The last session before the break wobbled me a lot – but it’s ok!

Lol!

p.s Sorry I have been AWOL on your blogs. I’m hoping to get some time online over the weekend to catch you x

Two Years Since ‘Tick Gate’ And The Body Remembers…

rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

Happy New Year 2022 everyone…it’s been a little (looong) while since I’ve made it here to post but it’s ok, I am not dead, just hanging on by a thread. The fact I’ve not blogged since Christmas is really a reflection on just how fucking busy my life has become not about my interest in my blog or writing. I really miss this space.

I seem to be running on treadmill that’s about two (hundred) speeds too fast for me, and there just aren’t any adequate windows of time in the week to sit down and reflect in my writing (or get any other pressing things done!)…hence the fact, today, I’m sitting here at 7am on a Saturday in my dressing gown carving out some time.

There’s a bloody cruel irony here, though. Every weekday I have to be up at 6am to stand any chance of getting us all out the house and honestly, I feel like I am scraping my half dead body out of bed when the alarm goes off, yet on the weekends when I can sleep in if I want, I wake up automatically at 6:20am and my brain and body goes, “We’re good, LET’S GO!!” If I tried to go back to sleep now I couldn’t, despite the fact I have yawned four massive yawns since starting this and really need to catch up on about a decade’s worth of sleep deficit.

Might try for an afternoon nap a little bit later!

As you can see, nothing has changed with my waffling and rambling ability…get to the point RB!

It’s been an ‘interesting’ month in therapy since coming back from Christmas holiday. The lead into the holidays was a bit tumultuous after Anita had a break at the beginning of December as well as Christmas and it took a good while for me to properly find my feet…well, actually, I am not sure I fully did, I just wasn’t completely on my arse. I said at the time that there were a few sessions where I struggled to connect with her and in one didn’t hug her until I left which really felt bad for the young parts. It’s been more of the same in January. Ugh.

I haven’t been able to put my finger on what has been wrong – only that something feels off. My body is tense, I am getting pins and needles in my hands and feet during the sessions, and I feel like I am drifting away from A…or like she is far far away. Part of me knows that this isn’t the case, she’s right there, she’s present and trying, she says the right things but they seem to bounce off me, I can’t take them in a lot of the time and so it ‘feels’ like there something wrong. My brain can’t find words but my body is in panic.

It’s the child parts that are struggling. Adult, or sometime False Adult, has been showing up quite a lot to cover this up – and for two successive sessions there was no touch in my sessions until walking out the room at the end which was fucking disastrous for the time between the sessions – and I think has led to this spiral of doubt and fear about the relationship.

I know that not being physically close for a couple of sessions doesn’t sound like all that big of a deal. I mean we’re on the same sofa, it’s not like she’s on Mars! In fact, there will be people who will be reading this who desperately want to hug their therapists and that not be an option to them (you know I’ve been there for 8 years with Em and I understand how painful that is), or people who only ever get a quick hug at the end of their sessions who wish they could have more will probably think I’m just moaning and not seeing how lucky I actually am to have Anita and her open season where touch is concerned. I do get it. And I also get that what’s happened in these sessions has been my doing not Anita’s. It’s not like she’s suddenly become withholding or changed the boundary on touch.

There have been sessions where I have done nothing but talk, or as Anita said the other day, “download” in the session… which is partly because my life is so fucking hectic and sooooo much is going on and I haven’t left space for the littles. I pay for it in a big way afterwards and really we need to make time for those young parts in each session, even if it’s only to acknowledge they’re there, in hiding.

The main problem that has arisen is that because there were two successive sessions of the child parts not getting seen they feel like Anita has forgotten about them. Outside the sessions it’s felt like the interactions Anita and I have had have been a bit, I dunno, just not like they used to be?! Again, this is me just being sensitive. When the child parts are really struggling, they need more and yet Anita would have no clue the child parts were there from the types of messages I’ve sent. Unless I am explicit, her responses are never going to meet the need of those little parts that feel scared and forgotten about because they don’t seem to be there communicating.

When I do send a clear message she responds as I need. I think maybe I need to tell A that even if there’s a really adult seeming message, or something very random (something about passports this week), could she please include the young ones in a reply because there’s a lot of shame around how much reassurance the young ones need at the moment. Or maybe I should just warn her that right now there’s a lot that the little ones want to say and to brace for it! I know she’s busy, though, and I don’t want to overwhelm her with, ‘I miss you, I feel like you’re far away, I want a cuddle’ every day! Sometimes, I think a quick five minute check in on the phone during the week would help as it would be a proper connection point…

Anyway, the last few of sessions have been a bit challenging. The child parts just haven’t been let out, whether that’s through endless moaning and chatter (that seems ok on the surface) or through a full on shut down where I feel like I am stuck in jail. Yesterday was a shut down. It was soooo bad. I’d felt really disconnected from Anita during the week, which is hilarious looking back as we have been in touch a lot…but as I said…it hasn’t been for the little ones, or not enough for them, and because there hasn’t been physical reassurance in the sessions (my own fucking fault!) it has led this shitstorm.

You’d think I’d bloody learn by now, wouldn’t you?

By Thursday there was a part of me that really didn’t want to go to therapy on Friday. It felt like Anita was a million miles away (even though she assures me that she is not and has repeatedly tried to reach through my walls over recent weeks). Instead of allowing myself to fester in that, I looked inside and wondered about what was happening, and actually it really boiled down to feeling like I haven’t seen Anita enough. I know that’s nuts, because of course I have seen her. But there has been a lot of disruption for the little parts that really struggle with separation on breaks.

As I said, it takes a while to bounce back from a break and December had two of them. It really destabilises the young ones. I am getting better with breaks (without doubt) but they do still have an impact. It’s so important after a break to work at the reconnection over the next few weeks and for some reason something has just not felt right since January. Often before and after breaks we have done 75-minute sessions which seem to buffer the separation a bit as it gives plenty of time to attend to the child parts who might struggle to come out knowing there’s a break and they have to go away, or after a break when they don’t know if things are still safe.

There’s something about that length of session that really works. I think for people with C-PTSD it takes us a good while to settle/ground into the space as there is so much mental checking that goes on before we ‘relax’. I’ve said lots of times about how I notice insane details, like a light switch, or a different set of fairy lights outside, or what lights are on in the room, or the other tiny things that normal people just wouldn’t see, notice, or care about.

It takes time to orientate to the room and alongside that, orientate to the therapist: is she tired? Is she in a good mood? What is she wearing? Is she sitting further away than last week? Is she listening? Am I safe here? And on and on and on… I linked a great post about this from my friend over at Girl In Therapy and I’ll put it here again because it really does highlight the journey we go on EVERY SINGLE TIME WE ENTER THE ROOM.

So, 75 minutes really takes the stress out of feeling like there ‘isn’t enough time’. In the normal run of things, sometimes half a session can disappear before I feel like I am ready to be how I need to be. And sometimes it’s longer than that. There is nothing worse than glancing at the clock and realising there is only 15 minutes left of a session but knowing now that there isn’t enough time to get what you need. That’s kind of what’s happening at the minute. I honestly don’t know how I managed 50-minute sessions. Well, I didn’t, did I?!

Sometimes, by the time the young parts feel safe enough to move towards Anita there just isn’t time. Like Monday, for example, another day where we hadn’t touched (ARGH!), she asked if I wanted a hug but also said we were nearly at time to finish. I declined because it would actually have been more painful to cuddle for a minute or two and then have to leave when I wasn’t ready to let go. It would actually be more dysregulating. I mean, I am rarely ready to let go, but it would have really hurt those little parts to feel pushed out before they were ready. And yet had that been a longer session, that time to connect would have been there and we could have had that 15 minutes of safety and holding before I left. Instead, I left feeling sad and abandoned – even though that’s not what was going on.

So, rather than run for the hills yesterday (which was what part of me was wanting to do) I decided to instead ask Anita if we could maybe do a longer session on Friday, for the reasons I have just listed. I text her on Thursday and she didn’t respond. Ugh. And, so, of course this fed back into all the stuff about her ‘being too busy’ for me now, and the young parts feeling abandoned and forgotten about and unimportant. Joy. It’s just a perfect storm situation.

I didn’t sleep well on Thursday night and woke up really upset at 4am and couldn’t drift back off. I went through the motions of getting the kids to school and then left for my session. Because Anita hadn’t responded to my message the protectors had come in…you know, the mature one first (the teen 😉) and basically all the way there was going, “Why the fuck are we going? Just turn round and go back to bed! She doesn’t care and is happy to ignore you. You’re such a fucking loser.” Adult me was trying to tell her to “Calm the fuck down” and explain that it’s not the end of the world. But y’all know how this shit plays out inside, right? In the end the teen sat with her arms folded, brooding, staring out the window, and giving me the silent treatment.

I knew this didn’t bode well for my session. When I arrived in Anita’s town, I decided to go and get a drink. (And thinking about this, now,  it’s only just clicked how MUCH my teen was present yesterday!) I had time as there was no traffic on the roads and I’d got the kids to school in good time and not had to dash home to pick up stuff, or go have a shower! When I stopped the car I noticed that Anita had sent me a message:

I’m so sorry. I’ve only just seen this message ☹

Part of me completely understood and the teen just rolled her eyes.

So, the place I went to get my drink is a small chain in the area where I live. I could have gone to Costa or somewhere else closer to Anita’s but I knew there was this particular place where A lives as well as in the city where I live. I basically spent most of my A Levels in there revising or chatting with friends. These days (I mean since I’ve been at Uni which is twenty years ago!) I drink decaf skinny lattes – no sugar…. But yesterday I ordered a steamer with a hazelnut shot as if on autopilot – this is basically steamed milk with a very sweet shot of syrup. And it was autopilot…. for my seventeen-year-old self… man!! Sitting in the café I felt that familiar sense of not being good enough that pervaded that period of my life and honestly, I didn’t feel like a 38-year-old with kids!

By the time I got to Anita’s I didn’t think I felt anything much about it at all. I thought I was fine. To Adult, it is what it is. Sometimes it works out when you ask last minute for things and sometimes it doesn’t. No big deal. Only inside those young parts were scared – as they have been for a while now. Jesus.

Anyway, yesterday I got in the room, and I froze. I couldn’t take Anita is AT ALL for AGES. I know she was trying really hard to get to me. She moved closer to me on the sofa, but I must have been giving ‘fuck off’ vibes and it seemed like I wouldn’t let her close. Of course, the young parts were absolutely beside themselves inside, but I was so trapped and couldn’t reach out or let her in. I really wanted Anita to cuddle me and make things feel better – and bridge that gap that seems to be getting bigger and bigger week on week – but another part was convinced that she wanted to stay away and so I couldn’t accept her care. In these situations, it’s never that I don’t want a cuddle it’s more I feel unworthy of the care, or ashamed that I need Anita so much, and so say no.

I think maybe when this happens, we need to think of a way around it. Like, Anita might say, “Can I give you a hug? I’d like to give you a hug” and that sad, lonely, not good enough part shakes her head and pushes A away, and so Anita respects that- but it isn’t what I need in that moment. If I start crying or trembling, then Anita always shuffles over to me and wraps me in a cuddle, but it’d be better if it didn’t escalate to the point where I am so distressed that my body is having a meltdown before she realises it’s safe to come closer and is actually what I need -as it’s so hard to come back from.

I think if she said, in follow up to her question about a hug, “is there a part of you that feels like you don’t deserve to be cuddled, or that I don’t want to give you a cuddle, really?…and are the little ones inside ok? Do they need a cuddle? – because it feels like they are hidden away but we both know they are there watching.” it would go a long way to circumvent the part that is terrified of being too much, and then being abandoned and rejected.

Anyway, I could feel myself drifting away yesterday. It felt like I was in the sea and the current was pulling me further and further away from A. Somehow, I asked if we could read a story – thank god, as this is what I have needed for weeks. Anita got up and went to get the books and said she also had ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ if I wanted to read that. I instantly bristled inside and felt sick. I said I hated ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and Anita asked me why. I didn’t have the words in the moment for all that the book now signifies. When we hadn’t connected all session and I’d been silent how could I jump into all the stuff about Em and how awful it had been when I gave her the book for Christmas?

Anita didn’t push it and asked me what I’d like to hear. “I don’t care” I replied. Honestly, I was like a brick wall, but the unexpected mention of T.V.R had rattled me. Anita read , ‘Barbara Throws A Wobbler’ and I could feel the little parts inside start to settle. I wanted to move across the sofa and snuggle into A but I couldn’t move. There was another part keeping me frozen and thinking about the stuff with Em.

When the story was finished, I asked Anita if I could read her something. I don’t know what possessed me, but I think it was starting to click that it wasn’t Anita that was the issue and it was the stuff around the anniversary of Em and I terminating. I got out my phone and found the blog post I had written on ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and scrolled down to the part where I started talking about the book and what it felt like for me in the wake of the therapeutic relationship with Em ending.

I cuddled into Anita and read the post. I could feel myself shaking. At times I had to stop reading because I felt so upset but I persisted, all the while Anita held me tightly into her body. We didn’t have time to discuss the , but I don’t think we really need to. Just having her hear it was huge. I felt incredibly vulnerable sharing that with Anita but also it felt good to have her know about this stuff.

After the session my brain started whirring and overthinking shit – like it always does. I wish it would just rest in the moment and be content with how things are, realise that mine and A’s relationship is solid, and it doesn’t matter what she does or is like with other clients because when I am with her it’s only me and her in the room. Only it doesn’t work like that does it? There’s always that client sibling rivalry whether we like to admit it or not.

So, my mind got to wondering where ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ had come from. Had another client brought it with them to therapy? And if so, does Anita read ‘our’ story books to other clients? And, of course, that felt horrible because the young parts hate sharing Anita, as it is, without thinking that ‘our’ stories are not just special to us. And so many people have emailed me since I wrote that blog post on ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ saying how they’d bought it and taken it into their therapy that I thought it seemed fairly likely that this is why Anita has the book – it is therapy gold, after all…and whilst part of me knows this, part of me doesn’t want it confirmed because the idea that Anita is just going through the motions with me and that she has a conveyor belt of books and cuddles………..

For Fuck’s Sake RB when will you just chill out????

Anyway, I sent a message to Anita after session explaining a bit about why ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ was a trigger and she sent a lovely message back and things felt ok.

Last night I took myself up to bed and then it hit. Floods of tears out of nowhere. I was sobbing for ages. What was happening? Then the penny fully dropped about why things have been so difficult this week. The body remembers even if the brain doesn’t. I went back over my emails with Em and saw that the date for ‘tick gate’ was two years on Thursday and “Sorry I couldn’t help you, I wish you well for the future” was yesterday. I’ve been aware that this time of year, round Christmas is hard because it was when everything started to blow up with Em but the sucker punch of ‘adhesive’ and ‘like a tick’ and then being dropped like a hot potato is still so painful.

On a positive, it’s two years since I met Anita…and we got on this crazy ride. I don’t think either one of is especially fond of rollercoasters, but we haven’t got off yet!

I’ll leave this here for now. Sorry for the novel xx

A Long December… and here’s to 2022

rubberbandsandchewinggum16 Comments

So, we’re in that weird bit between Christmas and New Year again. That notorious chunk of time where I seem to flatline and become incapable of doing anything much at all after running at 1000mph into Christmas. There’s been no deviation from the long-established pattern this year: CRASH AND BURN baby! It’s like I have entered into a state of inertia…or maybe it’s just burnout…or depression…hormones…all of the above! – but whatever it is I’ve been completely out of it for the last several days – and not in a good way.

It’s not unusual not to know what day it is in this weird ‘no man’s land’ – I mean that’s everyone right? I wouldn’t say I am dissociated, either. I have a shit tonne going on in my brain but I feel paralysed and unable to do any of what’s on my list and that’s what I hate. It’s mental torture. I want to be able to relax and switch off and yet I get plagued by crap. To be fair, my tax return is like a dementor right up the last minute on January 31st so I may as well accept that that won’t be done just yet!

So, what can I say? It’s been a while since I have posted (again). I’ve been meaning to post something, the laptop has been on beside my bed for three days solid now, with the screensaver endlessly going. I keep looking at it, thinking I’ll write, seeing as I have some time (and that would be a good use of time rather than endlessly scrolling through social media on my phone and then feeling pissed at myself that I am not using my time off more effectively. Honestly, I think I need a tech detox for the next little while!…Ummm, well, WordPress excluded obviously.

There’s quite a lot of bits I could write about here, stuff to catch up on – like, perhaps I should go back to a few weeks ago and fill in from there? – well, what I can remember of it! Or perhaps I should write something thematic – I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘senses’ in therapy – particularly smell and touch, oh an let’s not forget the x-ray vision! And then there’s Christmastime itself and all that that can bring up. Or gifts in therapy (in a good way). Or a reflection on the year (what a bloody year!). I don’t know. This will probably end up a mash up of all of it, span 4000 words and end up making no sense…so same as usual then eh?!

Maybe go get a cuppa before we begin!

And also, before I get going, I just want to say that I hope you are all hanging in there. My reader has been fairly empty of posts this last month from what I can see and I suspect that’s partly because it’s been the mad time heading into the holidays but also that people might be feeling similar to how I have been – kind of in a limbo, not feeling quite right, and not being able to reach out.  If that’s the case then, I get it. Lots of us have also had that hell time of impending therapy break to manage and then the actual break too so solidarity there. And I just want you to know that those of you who have written posts that I haven’t yet commented on, I will get to it…and I do see that you are there. So, that’s a long-winded way of saying I hope you are all hanging in there and that I see you x

Right, so where to start? The last few weeks have been a bit of trial. I mean I honestly was dragging my arse towards the finish line and the end of term. Only it’s not the finish line when you have kids and a family. It’s just dropping one set of responsibilities and commitments so you can focus on the others. Somehow, we got to Christmas day in one piece and the kids had the things they wanted. To be honest though, with a partner that works in health and social care it was inevitable that Christmas was going to a fucking washout. And we were correct. There were calls to Public Health on Christmas Day to report a COVID breakout and Boxing Day was trying to spread a very thin layer of staff across an already stretched service.

My wife has been working 14-hour days and has now, today, taken a suitcase to work and will be sleeping there- there physically aren’t enough nurses and care staff around and there is no alternative.

People might think that this new COVID variant isn’t a problem, “It’s just a cold” they say – but it is a problem when it’s EVERYWHERE and staff have to isolate who have got it. The workforce is decimated. Sure, we might not be getting the COVID deaths we’ve seen previously but when you can’t care for the most vulnerable in society in the health and social care sector because we’ve allowed the virus to run wild and there are NO STAFF…well, it’s criminal.

People are not receiving the care they deserve. Hospitals are cancelling procedures. Cancers are being picked up late. People are being discharged back into the community to free up acute beds when they aren’t really safe to be discharged because there is such a pressure on beds. I could go on and on.

I honestly can’t believe the burden that has been placed on key workers and healthcare staff throughout this pandemic. People are on their knees. The system is at breaking point. And the system isn’t a system. It’s people. People like my wife. People like my colleagues in schools. I am white hot with rage, and I cannot believe our government have allowed this to happen. Only I can. A bin fire of self-serving shits are running this country and we seem powerless to do anything to hold them to account.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a rant about the state of things, but I just feel so fucking angry. I’m angry that the government has shafted us. I am angry that some people aren’t doing more to limit the spread of the infection by just being fucking sensible. I am angry that the people that end up suffering the consequences are the people who have sacrificed enough already. I am beyond pissed off that we are throwing the clinically vulnerable under the bus as if having ‘a pre-existing condition’ means you are collateral damage for keeping the economy moving. And apparently, I am meant to send my kids back to school on Wednesday where no mitigations other than some open windows are in place, and primary aged kids are not being offered the vaccine in the UK. I mean for the love of GOD!!!!!!

Whew.

Deep Breaths RB!

So, back to therapy, which is what you are all here for, right?!…

The run in to the Christmas holiday was a bit fraught. Anita had a week’s break at the beginning of December (I think that was when I last posted) and so that set things off a bit internally knowing there was going to be so much disruption over the month. There were a few sessions between her coming back from that break and before the Christmas break – I think two weeks/four sessions. The first session back was really connecting but also really hard.

I’d asked Anita if we could start sooner that day, but she couldn’t which set some of the parts off. I was anxious that I might arrive and get derailed by the protectors who were feeling pushed away. It was the last thing I needed but always possible after a break. Fortunately, Anita and I reconnected really quickly (thank goodness!), she felt really attuned and pleased to see me and I settled quickly. I was cuddled into her and catching up when ‘out of nowhere’ (but also not out of nowhere) all the stuff about being a tick came up for the young parts and it was agony.

I guess I was panicking that after the separation we’d just had she may find my need to be close too much, like Em. Anita was incredible, really reassuring and holding, but there just wasn’t enough time to put it all back away at the end of the session. I left feeling a bit unsettled and off for the next few days. Anita and I exchanged some messages and she was really responsive and containing and it was enough to get through to Friday but I was more than ready for the session by the time it got to Friday morning. The young parts felt like they were hanging over a precipice and I just very badly needed to connect.

My best friend ‘Girl In Therapy’ wrote and published an excellent article that weekend that describes perfectly how triggering talk therapy can be for people with CPTSD – here’s the link:

https://www.girlintherapy.co.uk/articles/7fmjc9tewgc7nucxol32yhhk7x2c4q

– definitely worth a read if you haven’t already seen it.

The huge irony wasn’t lost on me as the next hour played out with Anita and how closely it matched the article.

I felt a sort of anticipatory dread as I walked up the drive. Something felt off. The dog started barking at the window and then I noticed her daughter’s dog was there, too. Ugh. I never have to ring the doorbell as the dog always alerts Anita that there’s someone there. That day the noise of the dogs really fucking irritated me – even though they settle once I’m there. I guess I was feeling sensitive and seeing her daughter’s dog triggered the jealousy and all that stuff about being inadequate and ‘less than’. Great.

It took a while for Anita to come to the door that day, not ages, maybe a minute or two – but that’s REALLY unusual. I started to feel myself panic. Anita finally opened the door and she had wet hair and looked absolutely done in. Basically, she didn’t look ready or in the right space for therapy which sent the parts that were already in a panic into freefall.

My need was huge that morning, I was already experiencing a vulnerability hangover from the tick stuff earlier in the week, and so it didn’t take much for me to read the evidence before me “Anita isn’t up to ‘me’ today” and go into hiding. I need Anita on her A game, not an Anita who was trying to ‘phone it in’. I’d clocked all this before I had even got into the room, and so by the time I sat down False Adult had taken over and was shielding the young parts. As children we were so good at knowing how to behave and adjusting to what was ahead of us and this hypervigilance has stuck. Sometimes I think it’s a superpower and sometimes it’s a complete bind.

Even though Anita had been so present and available and validating earlier in the week, I still feel a lot of shame about my insatiable ‘need’ and so my perception that Anita wasn’t fully there meant I could just avoid what was going on – pretend like Monday had never happened. I still feel so embarrassed that I am so affected by what happened with Em. I am terrified of Anita finally seeing me for what I am. She swears blind that what happened isn’t my fault and that Em is not fit for practice. She told me she thinks I have a very strong case for a complaint to Em’s governing body but also said that she doesn’t recommend a complaint because it’s a horrific process to go through (having raised a complaint herself).

Anyway, as the session went on, I could feel my young parts getting more and more distraught inside but the False Adult was so good, there’s no chinks in her armour, that there’d have been no way of Anita knowing. Especially as Anita was a million miles away. She had no idea what was going on. She didn’t seem curious, either… like, “RB, last session was really really hard and we left things a bit up in the air. You text me in the week and I know you feel unsettled after the break too…and you’ve spent half an hour talking about COVID and Brexit. Is there anything else going on for you that maybe we need to look at? Are the child parts ok? What do you need today?”

I could see the clock ticking down and I felt sick inside. I knew I wasn’t going to get what I needed that session and that I was going to be left holding all this over the weekend and it would be carnage. The session was over. I felt abandoned and rejected … unseen. I stood up and gave Anita a half-hug as I left. It was weird. I can’t remember the last time we didn’t touch in a session but it was setting all kinds of fireworks off inside. Mentally I was calculating that there were only two sessions now until Christmas break….AND IT ALL FELT LIKE A HUGE DISASTER.

Touch is such an important part of my therapy now. After all those years of there being ‘no touch’ and being made to feel like I was some kind of…tick…a parasite…for wanting to be close to Em I can say that the physical proximity and closeness that I usually have with Anita has done so much for moving things forward for me. I have said before that it is often when I am safely physically held that I feel able to look at the hardest, most vulnerable stuff. Anita can be so much more attuned – she can physically feel when I start to tremble, or I hold my breath, or whatever the fuck else happens that might not be evident or visible from a distance and respond accordingly. There’s just more of that co-regulation and so my nervous system can settle quicker and we can do the work.

Anyway, it sucked that day when I really needed to be seen and held both emotionally and physically and instead left feeling completely untethered and alone. It’s hard enough ‘detaching’ at the end of a ‘good’ session but never having connected in the first place is agony.

I text and called my friend when I got home – False Adult had gone offline and the Angry Teen had taken root. I was so upset, angry…all the feelings. Anita not being ‘present’ sent shockwaves through my system. There was a part that felt like I wasn’t deserving of her attention and care and so felt awful, there was another part that couldn’t work out ‘what had changed’ and another part that was furious that she wasn’t doing her ‘fucking job’! Somewhere on the outside of that was Adult who knows that A was probably tired or just a bit off, like we all are sometimes, but unfortunately all the noisy parts weren’t having it, “She’s just had a fucking holiday, she should be better than this!”

Anyway. Fortunately for both me and Anita I had to teach a double lesson that afternoon which meant no one could take to WhatsApp and let rip. Lol. After my lesson I had simmered down a bit and all that was left was a little part wondering where Anita was. What had happened? What had gone wrong?

So, I simply text:

Where were you today?

A replied that she wasn’t very well, had started to feel ill in the session, and had taken herself to bed, and was sorry that she’d felt distant.

Adult me understood it but there was another voice that couldn’t understand why she hadn’t said this during the session. If she’d have said, “RB, I’m really sorry but I don’t feel great and so I’m sorry if I don’t seem myself…” or anything really. Trying to carry on like I wouldn’t notice she ‘wasn’t there’ is daft. I could see it. The problem is, the narrative I create when she seems far away isn’t that she’s sick, it’s that she’s ‘sick of me’ and wants to be away. Ugh.

Anyway, I got through to Monday’s session which had to be an evening because my kids had broken up. And ARRRGGGHHHHHH fuckola. BAD BAD BAD. I don’t remember what happened – dissociation! Anita felt a long way away again. The distance was unbearable. Having listened back to the recording I can hear she was trying really really hard to get to me but I was totally frozen. At one point she asked if I would like a hug because she would like to hug me…and I just shook my head. I hate it when that happens. Every little part inside was screaming out and there I was frozen and unable to get out my prison.

The session ended and I felt absolutely desperately sad. I moved to put my shoes on and just fell apart, crying with my head in my hands and shaking. Anita shuffled over to me and wrapped me in her arms and I just sobbed as she held me close into her body. It was awful. I felt like the time had just slipped through our fingers again but at least I wasn’t going to leave completely disconnected.

Fortunately, my session being the last session of the evening Anita had a bit of time to run over and we had fifteen minutes where we really connected, and fixed things as she held me and I cried. She reassured me that she was still there and that we were going to be ok and that she understood that my defences were up because parts don’t feel safe and are scared. She acknowledged my fears and things felt sooooo much better.

It was time to go, though, and Anita gave me one last tight squeeze, kissed me on the top of my head, and said, “I love you, you know. I really do. You are very precious.” I got my elephant out my bag and handed it over. She took it and said she’d have it washed and ready for me for Friday ready for the break.

The week flew by as it always does at this time of year. I had to pack a lot into the week and before I knew it, it was Christmas Eve and the final session of the year. It felt nice to see Anita so close to Christmas and for the break not to be three weeks long like it used to be with Em.

I walked into the room and sitting there was my elephant and next to it, a gift bag of presents. Our stories were out on the side, too. The session was light but connected. I asked for a hug pretty close to the start of the session so there was none of that horrible feeling of space and distance. I have no idea what we spoke about but I know that it felt fine and safe. Anita said that she’d bought me some little things that were silly but had made her think of me and that I could take them away for Christmas and handed the bag to me as I left.

I gave her a big hug as I left and walked out feeling about as good as I could going into a break.

Earlier in December I had bought Anita a Christmas gift of a glass rabbit ornament with snowflake patterns on.  

She always does her house nicely at Christmas and so it felt like a perfect present given our story ‘The Rabbit Listened’. She placed the bunny beside the candle lantern I had given her last year. I didn’t notice it as I was walking up the stairs and she said, “Did you see bunny? He’s sitting next to the present you gave me last year.” It doesn’t sound like a lot but actually, to have A remember what I got her last year and to put these things up in her home…well… I don’t need to explain do I?

Oh, and just an aside whilst I think about Christmas and hypervigilance…GROAN… last year I had an evening session before Christmas and got to see all Anita’s lights outside her house (in the day you don’t notice them). This year, again, I got to see them in the evening. As I walked in the door I said, “Did you change the lights on that bush?” and she said that she had as the set from last year had broken. This is how much shit my brain stores- a single evening session a year ago and remembering the type of lights on a bush in a fully lit and decorated garden…trauma anyone?!

Anyway, we’re kind of up-to-date again. This holiday has been ok. Like I said, I have been quite lacking in energy and not doing much but I haven’t been overwhelmed with that attachment slime. Last night I was struggling to sleep- after really doing nothing but sleep in the last week – I missed A (very ready for Tuesday session now) and so I grabbed my elephant and breathed in its smell – Anita – and fairly quickly the young parts settled and fell off to sleep. I felt settled because that young needy part of me was quickly transported into the safety of Anita’s arms through the smell of the elephant.

I can’t say strongly enough that it is these things, the touch, the texts, and the willingness to try and meet the needs of the young parts (within reason) that have meant I can do a better job of regulating myself outside the room and holding the young stuff for myself. And it’s because I have something tangible to tap into. There is evidence all around me of my relationship with Anita, and it’s within me, too.

I can imagine what it is to feel safe because I have felt safety with Anita. I can imagine how it is to feel held because I have been held by her. I no longer have this longing and unmet need to be held – because she’s done that for me. And whilst I might miss her and wish I could see her, it’s not the same pain of wanting but having that need unmet – deliberately withheld week in week out.

I can easily bring Anita to mind and feel grounded because I can feel her. I know she’s out there and will be back on Tuesday – which is huge because in the past she’d disappear cease to exist, and it was massively distressing. I know I have a disorganised attachment style (I mean duh!) but I do think that bit by bit A and I are working towards building an earned, secure attachment. I’m not there yet – but things are so much better than they were!

I wish I had more energy to write that out properly and explain it as I am sure there will be some people rolling their eyes – but it’s really down to infant experiences that were missed being filled (to an extent). I guess it’s a kind of limited reparenting. Parts of me are healing through Anita’s willingness to repair some of what was missing.

Some people believe that the time for those wounds to be healed and those needs to be met has passed – we, as clients are not children anymore, and so instead we need to grieve for what we didn’t have and accept that. We need to hold everything on our own. Be our own parent. That was Em’s philosophy.

No touch. No outside session contact. No transitional objects… no “colluding with that young part that wants to be held” (puke!).

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I don’t think it’s an either or. I still have to grieve for all that never was and that should have been. I am regularly faced with the limitations of the therapeutic relationship and have to grieve what I can’t have in Anita. But that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot to celebrate, because there is a lot that I do have and there is a lot that has been soothed that was left raw and in agony before. It’s ok for there to be a level of dependency because eventually there’ll be interdependency and then independency… or at least that’s the plan.

Anyway, this is SOOOO long and I need to go and feed the kids!

Take care and here’s to a better 2022. X

Oh, and here’s my gifts! 😊

Sometimes We Just Need A Mum…

rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

I want to try and put into words something that has been weighing heavily on me the last month or so, especially. I mean, to be honest, it’s always there isn’t it – the mother wound – but I guess at the minute I just feel acutely aware how big of a deal it really is, and how heavy a burden it is to carry, particularly when I need some support and care as I struggle under the almost crippling weight of my day-to-day life.

I’ve written about the mother wound in detail before, here, but that was a long while back and maybe this, today, will have a slightly different quality to it. I know I make mention of this issue a lot on the blog because it really is the foundation that my shaky house is built upon. Today, once again, I feel the need to give it full attention because parts of me feel like I am crumbling right now.

It’s weird. When I try and look at this…this…’stuff’… the words just don’t come, or certainly not in the articulate, polished way I would like them to. There’s so much pain and shame wrapped around it like barbed razor wire, and this wounding spans so much of my life too, so it’s hard to really to find the right words to explain something that feels like it’s part of me, part of my make up.

If I listen deep inside myself, looking for the words, there’s just the overwhelming howl of a massively distressed baby and the screams of other very young children… and maybe if I listen very, very carefully, there’s a little voice whimpering and whispering, ‘Mummy’ over and over again.

It’s actually heart breaking.

Sometimes I think I struggle to write about this because the experience of this… feeling of… annihilation started before there even were words available to describe it. At other times, I just think it’s impossible to find the vocabulary to capture just how massive the sense of being ‘motherless’ is.

There is so much loss attached to what I am experiencing at the moment. Of course, I do have a mum… it’s just I need/ed a different kind of mothering, a different relational experience, and so the continual reminders of what I ‘don’t have’, even now, as an adult, is like being plunged into a vat of vinegar and, unfortunately, I don’t have any skin.

Ouch.

I can’t say that feeling of loss I experience is the sense that I’m now missing something that I have formerly had – rather it’s the loss of something I wish I had have had – something I very badly needed- it’s the felt sense of there having been something ‘missing’ my whole life, something that is integral to a healthy functioning.

You, know, sometimes I think it feels as if there’s a vital organ missing inside me and I’m continually aware of the cavernous void left behind. I feel this ‘empty’ space acutely in my chest – a black dark hole that seems totally unfillable. It’s the space left where a mother’s love and care should have been. I’ve spoken before about how the edges of this place feel almost ulcerated. It’s angry and burning…it’s bloody painful. No. It’s worse than that. It’s pure agony.

If you met me in-person you’d never guess I suffered with any of this. You’d probably experience me as a high functioning, self-sufficient, independent person who is always busy and keeps things going for myself and my family. In my day-to-day life I am successful, popular, and funny (omg imposter syndrome just kicked in big time there!). I don’t really lean on anyone or ask for support even though I really need it sometimes. My friends are absolutely amazing but there’s just some things they can’t do for me – like take my kids for a weekend so I can get on with jobs. And lately, I guess this is where that lack of ‘mother’ has really shown itself and had the spotlight shone on it.

I’ve spoken about my childhood many times here. How my mum would go away during the week and come back at weekends and how the legacy of that plays out even now – especially in my therapy with Anita. I hate the time between sessions and our breaks feel unbearable. I can’t stand being ‘left’ or feeling like I’ve been ‘forgotten’ and I am terrified of change when we are reunited after a break largely because I was never sure what kind of mood my mum would be in when she came back.

Lately, I’ve had a strong sense that my mum is avoiding me – or rather stonewalling me. I haven’t actually seen her since August, and she only lives 20 miles from me! I get that she may not want to see me – for whatever reason- but I really struggle with how little she engages with my children. They are great kids and what’s really sad is that they really like to spend time with her and yet…what can I say to them? She’s not in touch. She doesn’t ask after them… or at least, she hasn’t in a good while.

I sent a photo of my daughter putting decorations on the tree the other week and it wasn’t even acknowledged. I saw the blue ticks appear on WhatsApp and I saw she was online…but there has been no response… and I have no idea why. Other family members have rushed in with ‘OMG she looks just like you did at her age’ or ‘what a lovely photo’…but nothing from mum.

I try not to feel upset by it. I have said many times how my mum and I have a relationship that has reached a kind of equilibrium. It is what it is. It’s not close but it worked well enough – ’til now. But I think doing this deep attachment and trauma work with Anita has kind of lifted a bit of the scab on this stuff. Where I had convinced myself that I was ok, and things had moved on into a place that was ‘good enough’, the truth is I feel hurt that my mum seems completely uninterested in me. But the real big sense of hurt comes from the feeling that she’s rejecting my kids and by extension it’s like my inner child is experiencing that pain of abandonment all over again seeing just how ‘unimportant’ they are to her.

Recently, I had a real hard smack in the face when I was speaking with Anita. Don’t you just love the unexpected landmines you can trigger in therapy?! We were just chatting near the end of session. It was winding down and coming out of the deeper stuff and into more day-to-day. I said how I had taken my kids to a fireworks display that week and she told me how she was taking her grandchildren (her son’s kids) to the big fireworks display with her daughter the next day. It felt like being on that awful gameshow ‘Bullseye’ where when the contestants failed to win the presenter would say, “look what you could have won!” A sucker punch as they stared at speedboats and his and hers matching shellsuits. I find myself staring at a kind of mothering I just can’t have.

In that moment as I was cuddled into her, I felt so many things. Jealousy was definitely one of them and then hot on its heels – grief. Anita, of course, is involved with her kids and grandkids – it’s as it should be, but it just threw my experience with my mum into even sharper relief. It wouldn’t even occur to her to take the kids to something like this, or offer to take them for me. When the kids were very little we went on a Christmas train one year, or sometimes we’d go to see Santa, but lately there’s been nothing and I don’t know why.

Sometimes I wonder if she’s somehow come across this blog because I can’t fathom any other reason for the radio silence. I tied myself in knots for weeks trying to work out ‘what I had done’ for things to be as they are now. I know that if she had found this writing she’d be hurt. Of course, it would be hard to read this stuff in black and white. I think anyone’s first reaction would be to feel wounded and the victim and then shut down. But the thing is, I’m not trying to blame her for my experience of her when I was growing up. Like any mother she did the best she could with the tools she had available – and as a young mum, they were few.

I don’t think for one minute she set out to be how it was. As a mum myself, I know how it is to be stressed, tired, and at the end of my tether, and hand on heart I know I do not always get it right. Far from it! I’m a sensitive person and perhaps other children would not have been as impacted as I was by her absence, or her wanting me out the way, or the fighting and violence I witnessed…or the difficult teenage years we had. But it has impacted me and I am trying to heal from it. It’s not easy healing from something when you can’t have a reparative experience with the person who you experienced the wounding with.

So I take myself off to therapy twice a week and rake over this attachment stuff – and it’s hard because as an adult who has done pretty well for myself and feels like I have a reasonable insight into what’s gone on, I still haven’t done enough work in the therapy room to escape the sense that I haven’t done enough to make my mum want to stay (and, yes, I know that is the voice of my inner child).

I used to make excuses as to why my mum wasn’t all that involved with me and my kids. She had a massively stressful high-powered job and so there simply wasn’t the time or energy for us. Then she retired, and it was still the same… but then COVID hit, and we were in a pandemic so therefore couldn’t spend time… but then the restrictions lifted and it’s more of the same. It feels so rejecting. I don’t know if it’s intentional. I don’t know if she genuinely doesn’t want us in her life or whether she is so busy with other things that we’re an afterthought.

Again, this is where the contrast with Anita really stings. Anita obviously works but she takes an afternoon off each week to collect her grandkids from school, takes them to swimming lessons, and then often has them overnight. K does similar things for her granddaughters. So many of my friend’s parents are active participants in their grandchildren’s lives, too. They’ve taken on regular childcare – not because of the financial savings for the family (although that was a factor when the kids were pre-school age) but because they actually want to spend time with their family. My kids have never spent a night at my mum’s, or been picked up from school…and my god, sometimes I could really use the help given I work after school every weeknight until late. Having someone collect the kids, feed them, and put them to bed would be amazing!

It’s not just that I could do with a bit of help now and again, though. I feel so sad for the relationship that they, too, aren’t getting. My mum’s parents were incredible with me growing up. Despite living hundreds of miles away they’d have me for holidays, write me letters and send me magazines and sweets in the post. There was no sense, ever, of being ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and it’s continued through into my adult life. I ring my grandma every day to check in now she’s alone, following my grandad’s death last year, and I do that because we have built a relationship over my entire lifetime, and it is solid. It’s such a pity my kids won’t have that. I feel so sad, too, because my dad would have been such an amazing, involved grandparent. He loved kids. Although my mum makes not bones about the fact that she ‘doesn’t like children’.

I really need to get over this stuff, though, because whilst there’s this wish for something better all that happens is I get hurt over and over again. I need to realise that things are never going to change and move on from it. I’ve said in the past that I can’t expect people to be mind readers so if I keep stuff to myself and then don’t get what I need I shouldn’t really feel disappointed so this summer I did something a bit different. I let my mum see what some of the reality was for me – I don’t know what I expected but I know, deep down, I hoped for some tangible care and support.

In the summer my wife and I were going through a particularly tough time – tbh this whole year has been devastatingly hard for us. In January my wife got very ill with COVID, then lost her job, all the while trying to manage a serious health condition that could end her career. She found a new job (yay) but was immediately put under immense pressure with unrealistic working patterns and conditions which put her health at serious risk again and there were threats of ‘failing her probation period’.

We were both at our wits end. It felt like we were lurching from one disaster to the next. Stress exacerbates my wife’s condition and it was a vicious cycle. Financially, it was a really hard year, too, as after my wife lost her job in January we also had a period of time where she couldn’t work due to an operation that saw her out of action for almost a month. Then she was having to pick up agency work whilst she looked for a new position which pays nothing like enough and isn’t guaranteed hours. We were literally a couple of weeks away from not being able to pay the mortgage and bills.

The stress levels were making me ill. I couldn’t sleep, my anxiety was off the chart, I genuinely thought I would have a breakdown at times. And I certainly would have had it not been for Anita and K. No doubt about it. It’s been their love and care got me through this year – when really what I needed was my mum…or a mum that does being a mum.

Like I said, I never really share anything with my mum, I think she knows I am in therapy but we don’t talk about it! This summer she had asked me to collect her from a trip she’d been on. I’d cancelled work to enable me to do it – so lost two hours pay (which we really couldn’t afford), asked a friend to have my kids so I had space in the car to put her and her husband’s luggage, and then drove across the city and waited in a coach station steadily unravelling. My wife was away from home for work and had been driving hundreds of miles on top of working 14 hour shifts. She was suffering with her health and I felt completely exhausted. I’d been juggling my kids and work all week alone and by the time it reached Friday I just couldn’t cope anymore.

I was driving down the motorway with my mum and step-dad and I just let it all out. I was on the verge of tears but angry too. I was in a place of complete overwhelm. The dam burst. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but I guess maybe I thought showing how stressed and anxious I was might maybe elicit some support from her side.

Nope.

If anything, she’s distanced herself since then. She hasn’t asked about my wife’s health or job. Her health is massively deteriorating but thankfully she’s found another job. She hasn’t asked how I am. When my childhood friend died a couple of months ago she went to the funeral when I couldn’t. I just don’t understand it.

I feel like I am moaning- and I guess I am. I just really wonder what it takes for the little girl inside to finally give up hope of being seen and loved by a woman that seems incapable of seeing me and accepting me for who I really am. I would literally walk over hot coals for my kids. Having just seen her friend’s daughter die of cancer you’d think she might see the parallels – I was the one of us that survived the cancer but the roles could so easily be reversed. Wouldn’t you want to invest in a relationship with your child?

It’s Christmas time. It’s a difficult time of year for me. Mind you, when isn’t eh?!

As my kids rehearse for performances (streamed online this year via zoom) it reminds me of the years standing on stage and staring out into the audience and seeing the faces of my friends’ mothers but not my own. I feel silly, as a grown-up woman still being upset by these ‘small’ things but I really wish my mum had have been there more when I was a kid…I wish that her physical and emotional absence hadn’t have left this gaping great hole inside. I feel like it’s going to be my life’s work getting over this.

Like I say, I am so lucky to have a couple of amazing therapists in my life. But they’re not my mother. I can’t call them at 10pm and ask them to come over because I need them, and things feel overwhelming. I ought to be able to do that with my mum – but I can’t – because she doesn’t know how to be that type of mum.

I have to mother myself.

And my god I am trying but sometimes we just need to be held by someone else.

(And yes, Anita is on holiday – ANOTHER break in the therapy – so it’s hardly surprising timing that this has come up so forcefully now!)

Triggered By Testimonials

rubberbandsandchewinggum13 Comments

Oh man…here we go! I think it’s fair to say that I am right in the thick of exploring my wounding, now, through being triggered over and over again in therapy…

Don’t worry.

Everything is still fine.

Just…crikey…there’s always something isn’t there?!

Where shall I begin?

I guess maybe I should provide some context and say that therapy, this week, is disrupted again because Anita is away doing some CPD. This has meant my usual Friday and Monday sessions have been changed. Not lost. Not cancelled. Just changed. We rescheduled these appointments weeks ago so that I would be able to still see her. So, I saw her on Thursday and I will see her on Tuesday evening BUT as anyone with this kind of attachment crap will know, disruption to routine isn’t easy even if materially not a great deal has altered.

So, that’s probably why I have had yet another mini-meltdown/tantrum this week. The impending sense of disconnection from Anita had set all the littles inside into a bit of a panic.

Great.

Not.

I can’t remember a great deal about Monday’s session. It was fine. Sometime in the middle I asked for a hug, and we chatted as I snuggled into Anita. At one point Anita and I were talking about photographs and blogs and she said that she’d just updated some pictures on her website as now she will only use her own pictures to avoid any copyright issues. I know it’s a random conversation, but the backstory to how we got there isn’t worth the time here.

One thing I don’t do since working with Anita is go looking on her website. Even when I first came across her, I didn’t read every page of her site. I didn’t need to. She’d been on my radar for a few years, anyway. Every time the shit would hit the fan with Em, I’d do a search for therapists, and she’d pop up at the top of the results page. In addition to this, my friends also found her for me, saying ‘I think she looks like she’d be a good match for you’.

I know what a minefield therapy and looking online for stuff can be and so that’s why I tend to avoid it. Stick with what you have in the room, don’t go searching on the web. Only, this week, because I was already starting to feel disconnected from Anita I stupidly took to the internet in hope of finding something connecting.

YEAH.

Fucking idiot.

I know.

So, there I was migrating round her website and it was all fine…until…I clicked on the testimonials page.

Oh holy shit…

Deep breaths RB!

Of course, as you’d expect, the testimonials were lovely. Really, lovely. You can see as you read them that the work that Anita has done with these clients has been life-changing. The comments are warm and there’s a real sense of how important and transformational the therapeutic relationship has been for them.

I mean, as a prospective client, it’s good to see this, right? You don’t want to see ‘This therapist is utter crap – don’t touch with a barge pole.’ (which is what should be on Em’s site!). However, reading those comments as an existing client TRIGGERED THE SHIT OUT OF ME.

I find it hard enough at the best of times to believe that what Anita and I have is real and important, but the slap in the face reminder that I am, yet again, one of many, and I am just Anita’s job…well, I really didn’t need that kind of spotlight shone on the relationship this last week.

So many feelings were sparked. I felt sooooo fucking sad. The little parts, for whom Anita is so very important, were in tears. It felt like yet another reminder, to them, that no one really wants them, and that they are never really deserving of anyone’s full love and attention. Basically, it just tapped into that wound where I was never central for my own mother and so I am certainly not with this mother substitute.

Ouch.

Fortunately, I have some great friends whom I can talk this stuff through with and get some perspective.

My best friend pulled no punches when I told her about what happened, ‘So you went looking for connection in her testimonials page when you can have real connection with her in WhatsApp?’ she said.

And yep. I shan’t be doing that again – there’s nothing good to come from stalking people’s social media ☹. Although having visited Em’s site a few times in the last two years, reading hers make me see what a fucking bullet I have dodged not working with her anymore!

My friend reminded me of my own words about love. So many times, I have said that we can have lots of different relationships and love different people and that doesn’t make one relationship better than another. She also suggested I let the young parts really speak this time and give them a voice. So, I wrote some things down that they were saying. Unfiltered. And it is so painful to see it.

Basically they were calling bullshit on my adult wisdom and want the strength of their feelings to be seen as important and for the relationship to be significant and not just one of many. Basically, these little ones want to be loved by Anita like a mother should love them. I know that’s not possible. It’s the fantasy and coming face to face with what the relationship isn’t and can’t be is painful – and there’s a lot of grieving that will have to happen around that…but it’s the work.

I plan to take that stuff to session on Tuesday night, if I am feeling brave enough, as I think those little ones really need to express their hurt. It’s not Anita’s fault and there’s nothing that can change, but the feelings deserve time to be heard and felt, I think. And I trust Anita will handle what I have to say with compassion and care.

Anyway back to earlier in the week – I muddled my way through Monday and Tuesday and then hit another wall on Wednesday morning. I needed to go into town to run some errands and I knew it was the same day that Anita works in the city. I felt so sad knowing that I would be about 150m from where she was working and yet could not see her. Again, those feelings that had been activated when I saw the testimonials on Monday came up again, because now she was with other clients and not me.

FFS RB!

Anyway, on Wednesday I sent Anita a text which obviously made no sense to her:

And so had to try and explain better what was going on. I was flooded with shame and embarrassment but at the same time it wasn’t doing any good me festering away in pain:

Anita responded kindly:

but I felt GRRRRR and tearful and it seemed to get worse as the day went on as you can see from the messages! I was so glad that we had a session scheduled for Thursday morning as the week seemed to be going at snail pace and having to wait for a regular Friday slot would have sent me over the edge.

We had a good session on Thursday once I landed and came back in touch with the feelings I had struggled with. Anita did her best to reassure me before she went away. I was quite shaky for a period of time, and I sobbed quietly into her chest for quite a while. It took some time for me to regulate and feel safe, but I got there eventually, listening to Anita’s slow and steady heartbeat.

Anita commented that she could feel I was tense and brought up the message I had sent her on Wednesday morning. She said something about how every relationship she has is different and that she never works with two people the same. That didn’t really help. She said something about how there are so many different kinds of love and I don’t know what because it all kind of blurred as my brain fixated on not being good enough, or special enough, and all that crap.

It was quiet for a bit and then I said, “Do you think I am weird?” It’s not the first time that I have asked this question but the answer from Anita doesn’t deviate much.

“No” she replied. “You’re not weird. I think you’re scared. It can be very easy for you to go into fight, flight, freeze. That’s not weird. When you think about it, it makes sense. It’s very easy to spook. I think we’re all a bit like that. It’s like when I walk in the dark, I’m fine, but if I think about ghosts I am petrified. And it can be anything that can trigger that feeling rejected or abandoned for you. It’s the same. When it happens it can feel so real. Suddenly every noise you hear is scary and every little thing can trigger you. It’s what’s inside to keep us safe…but sometimes we can play tricks on ourselves. Especially if we’re hypervigilant already.”

We spoke a bit about this and then there was a pause.

I took a deep breath and then I asked her if “is this real?” (honestly, this particular young part keeps asking the same questions over and over again. Anita must be so bored of it!)

Anita pulled me in closer to her and with so much warmth in her voice said, “I’m real, and how I am is very real. I don’t think I could be something that I am not. I wouldn’t know how.” She spoke about how every relationship is unique and blah blah blah. I know it sounds like I am being a brat here but when I am struggling like this I don’t want to hear about everyone else or how everything is equal, I just want reassurance that our relationship is solid and important.

There was another period of just quiet as I snuggled into A.

A little voice said, “I love you.” Anita replied, “I love you, too. You’re very precious to me and I love you lots.”

Then it was the end of the session and time to go. I felt ok-ish but as I drove home I had a good think about things and drafted a long message to Anita. I knew she wouldn’t respond to it as she’d be away but I felt like I needed to say it before five days rolled around:

A.

It must feel like you are banging your head up against a brick wall working with me, sometimes. You said when I first came to see you that it would take a long time for me to trust you, and I told you it would be hard because my system would be perpetually testing you after what happened with Em, and I hated that because it wasn’t fair when you hadn’t done anything wrong. I guess, at least, we partly knew what was coming back then, although I don’t think I was prepared for the level of crazy that was going to come up.

I feel so stupid sometimes. Lately, I just seem to lurch from one overreaction to another and I know it’s hard work for you. It’s driving me mad, so I really don’t know how you don’t just throw your hands in the air and tell me to ‘get a fucking grip’ and give up on me…but you haven’t yet, and instead you offer more reassurance, care, and time.  

Every time I have a massive meltdown about something really small: not replying to that text about breaks, not getting a hug after the break, or testimonials on your website (and all the other things I’ve lost my shit over!) I get so flooded with shame and embarrassment by the way I have behaved and the strength of my reaction. If anyone was looking in it must seem so disproportionate to what’s actually happened.

There’s lots of reasons why I get so upset over seemingly small things – but I guess really it all boils down feeling inadequate and unworthy of your love and care but also being terrified that it’ll be taken away. I am always looking for evidence of something going wrong or proof that something is wrong. I am so determined that I won’t get hurt again, that I’ll leave before I get left, and so the moment there is even a hint of a perceived rejection or that what we have is ‘not real’, I’m running.

I know you care about me. The evidence speaks for itself. Week in, week out you demonstrate your commitment to this therapy – and us, and me – our relationship. I really, really see it. Or at least adult me does. And I am so grateful to you for everything that you do for me and all the various ways that you show me and all my tangle of parts inside that you’re safe.

I can’t imagine that there are many people that would tolerate my mess and still be there time and again, rescheduling so we don’t miss sessions, giving me extra time, wandering around in the dark when I’ve had ANOTHER meltdown, allowing out of session contact, discounts, gifts, stories, and even washing soft toys. So, I REALLY REALLY do see it. And I do trust you. And I love you. And this is why it’s so scary now and why when things blow up, they blow up massively.

I’m more vulnerable than I have ever been. It’s like my armour is off and that’s never happened before. In the past, everything I have felt has been kept close to my chest and rather than express anything I’ve dissociated. But that doesn’t happen now and so when something gets triggered, I’m more prone to being hurt because there’s no protection. So small things feel painful. I’ve never really let anyone in before and there was a level of safety in that.

I prefer not being armoured up – it’s bloody heavy defending myself from everything all the time. But when an arrow creeps through that’s when things go really wrong. My protectors get the rage and go to war and that’s what’s been happening lately.

So, it’s not a text being ignored, or your telling me you’re keeping your distance because you have a cold, or other clients saying nice things about you that’s the issue – they’re just the triggers. It’s feeling like I am being rejected, or abandoned, or that I just don’t measure up compared to other people that’s the problem.

I’ve always struggled with the fear of being rejected or abandoned. I’ve always felt that there’s something wrong with me because it’s so easy for people to leave me. That’s where my wounding is. And it keeps happening. It’s not just the original ‘mother wound’ that’s the problem it’s all the rejections since, too. Then what happened with Monika seemed to confirm the narrative again and I guess I just really really don’t want the pattern to repeat again with you.

More recently having had my grandma tell me how my mum really didn’t care that she was leaving me when I was five has really opened up that wound again. I always knew she didn’t care, I felt it, but I guess part of me wanted to think it was just my take on things and maybe it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. To have my felt sense validated is in some ways positive but in other ways it’s completely devastating, and I think this is probably why I am even more wobbly than usual. There’s a lot of grief to work through.

The problem with this early attachment wounding that happened from the beginning is that it triggers a response that feels like it’s life and death…because years ago it would have been. I get it’s not now, but my brain hasn’t quite caught up with that.

Anyway, this is a really long-winded way of saying…I don’t know, really…I love you and I am sorry I am a crazy, jealous, easily triggered nutcase.

Big hugs x

So, I sent that on Thursday afternoon…and there was radio silence. As I said, I didn’t expect a response to the detail of that but we had agreed that an emoji or gif is useful when I reach out with something big or vulnerable.

I got my knickers in a bit of a twist by Friday evening and decided that I wouldn’t contact Anita at all until I saw her on Tuesday night. Grrr. Raarr. Good thing she’s on a course about anger right?! Timely CPD if ever there was any! Lol. Fortunately, yesterday morning a message came through:

Sending a big hug your way with a hug and heart emoji

And then today there was another one:

 Sending big hugs filled with love xx

And they’ve done a lot to settle my system.

So, yeah, it’s all ok. Some big feelings to work through again but I am looking forward to reconnecting on Tuesday night and feel like it’s all ok enough.

Everything Is Fine.

rubberbandsandchewinggum34 Comments

Hi all,

Hope you’re all hanging in there in this bloody bleak misery that is ‘post clocks going back knackeredness and lethargy’! I don’t know about you but, honestly, I am completely done in. I haven’t acclimatised at all to the time change and my poor brain and body just can’t get to grips with the dark evenings and working to what feels like the middle of the night when it is, in fact, only 8:30pm when I stop work. I hope something gives soon because I really don’t think I’ll make it to Christmas in one piece if it doesn’t!

Zoom isn’t doing me any favours, either. Having myself reflected back on screen – crikey – talk about tired-looking! I really need a sunshine break and about a month off from the day-to-day grind or, failing that, some makeup that I can put on with a trowel! LOL. I really need a permanent filter on my face. My brain hasn’t caught up with the fact that I’m not twenty five anymore and am, actually, creeping towards forty!

Help!

I realise that I am blogging really infrequently these days and I wonder, actually, if anyone’s still reading this blog very much anymore. I rarely look at the data but today I did, and the stats seem high but the engagement not so much. Social media success (not that’s what I want or am looking for) seems to be built around putting out lots of content and hitting some secret crap tick on algorithms to keep ‘current’ and ‘visible’. I just don’t do that, nor do I have the time to, but I know what I am like online, I think we’ve all be programmed to be drip fed regular content and when that content doesn’t come we go and look for it somewhere else.

Anyway, that’s just some random thoughts because this blog really hasn’t been for anyone but me, it’s been my personal account of the ups and downs of my healing journey in therapy over the last several years. I am delighted, of course, to have come across some fabulous people along the way and your support has been so welcome and valuable. I guess there’s a part of me just wondering where I go from here. I think it’s perhaps because WordPress updated my site today and took another year of subscription payment and I thought, ‘Wow, do I even want to blog for another year?’

I’ve been so aware that I don’t have time to really write ‘properly’ anymore. I bang stuff out rather than craft it like I used to in the early days, and I notice it. Lots of the people I follow have fallen away over the years, too, they just stop blogging and I wonder if that’s kind of just what happens? People get to a point where they’re healed enough or bored enough and go do something else with their time?! Therapy is not central to their existence anymore and so they don’t need to write about it. I don’t know.

I know that when I first started this blog, and I was right stuck in the thick of that agonising attachment pain ALL THE TIME, I mean literally ALL THE TIME and being triggered week in week out by my therapy that I found it really comforting to be alongside other people who seemed to be in the same boat and at similar points along their therapy and mental health journey as me. It made me feel less alone, for sure. I often wondered, though, where the people who had come out the other side of the process were? Where were those people who had put the time in and gone the distance with therapy and were ‘better’ or at least ‘better than they were at the start’? And maybe I just haven’t come across many of those people but it’s a shame as I think it gives us all hope to know that it won’t always be terrible and triggering and …all the stuff.

I guess I feel, a bit, like I am transitioning into that space a bit now. I know that a lot of what I write here comes when I have had something blow up in therapy or there’s a rupture of some kind, but, actually, a lot of the time things are smooth and fine. Like today, I am here because I know the blog is sort of shrivelling up and dying, and I want to check in, but there’s nothing much to report right now. I mean, I’ve just eaten half a packet of bourbon biscuits Anita and I are doing the work, but I’m not sure if there’s anything especially interesting happening that you guys would want to read about. (Actually, there’s a blog that I need to write about what I think is/has signalled the end of my eating disorder – and I think that is massive!…)

That’s the thing, you know?- drama is interesting, ruptures get us engaged, BUT smooth, easy, doing the work with a solid therapist where things are connected and contained isn’t all that exciting is it? Does anyone want to hear about that, really? I know, in the past, when I would read stuff about therapists physically holding their clients or giving them transitional objects or washing something for the client so it smelled like them, and there seeming to be a really solid, loving connection, I would find it really painful to read because I so badly wanted that from Em and she would not budge on her boundary.

In some ways it felt like I was self-harming reading that stuff. I used to get that stabbing pain in my solar plexus and it would feel like that massive mother wound was just bleeding out. The thing is, reading those posts from those bloggers also helped me to see that my needs weren’t wrong, and that actually they could be met I just wasn’t with the right therapist for my needs and in the wrong environment to start healing my wounding.

So, what I hope, more than anything, for those of you that have read along with my significant struggles over the years in the therapeutic relationship with Em, is that you can see that it can get better but sometimes things have to get worse first. Sometimes therapeutic relationships don’t work out how you want- it’s not your fault- and there is the chance of something better elsewhere you just have to be brave enough to search for it.

If therapy tanks with one therapist that isn’t necessarily a reflection on you. It might seem to be repeating a pattern from the past, (we’re the common denominator), and we sooooo don’t want that to be the case, so we keep bailing out the leaky boat and trying to be what the therapist wants us to be…but that’s the problem. It’s not about fitting yourself into someone else’s idea of how you should be or behave ESPECIALLY IN THERAPY THAT YOU PAY FOR!! Sometimes, then it’s better to jump ship, swim in the cold water for a bit, and get to shore because the swim is easier than you imagine.

It’s really the thought of the cold water and the currents that keep us desperately clinging on and bailing out water with our hands as bucket loads flood in…and I swear to you, you’ll get through that bit where you feel untethered and alone. Not being triggered all the time and held ‘stuck’ in that desperate state of the sinking boat is so much of a relief especially when you make it onto dry land and find someone who is fully in your corner and actually can do ‘unconditional positive regard’.

Right, I’ll leave that absolute crap of a metaphor up there, now!

But without sounding gushy, I really can see how far I have come in the last couple of years. The shift inside has been so massive and it has meant that my life feels so much more manageable (even if I am always tired!).

I feel like Anita and I have reached that really lovely place where we ‘know’ each other, it’s safe (SAFE?? OMG I know what safe feels like now!), and no matter what comes up we can work through it. I am not scared of conflict or ruptures anymore – because when they happen there is such a lot of learning and growth, and most importantly, healing that comes from them. All of me, all the parts, KNOW that Anita can handle my rage and my love and all the feelings in between and that she actually welcomes all of me and all of my feelings. I am safe to feel my feelings and express them with her. She isn’t in the least bit bothered by my messy, unfiltered, reactive feelings and that’s so bloody freeing. To know I can have a hissy fit and run out the door one week and still be welcomed with open arms in the very same moment is massive. It’s something that was never afforded me as a child, and certainly not in my last therapy.

I know that maybe what I have written mightn’t make sense because, clearly, I still get triggered and there are ruptures – but relationships aren’t smooth all the time. What I am trying to say is that even when my ‘stuff’ is triggered in relation to Anita and the youngest parts are freaking out – deep down I know that the relationship I have with A is built on solid ground and there’s nothing we can’t find our way through, and because of that I can let out what needs to come, all the pain and anger and jealousy and god knows what that’s there and that’s so helpful. Anita sees me, all of me, all of my wounding, and she cares for all of the parts – even the ones that are complete pains in the arse!

Anyway, I am rattling on about not much here and I’m not convinced any of it makes sense! – so I’ll go make a cup of tea and have a few more biscuits and ponder on the post about the end of a twenty year eating disorder.

Take care all x

The Runners Ran: First Session Back And I Legged It Out The Room After Five Minutes

rubberbandsandchewinggum29 Comments

PLEASE, someone, come and have words with my system because it is completely losing its shit at the minute!

Honestly, you just can’t make this stuff up… but as always, here’s the reality of life in the therapy room for RBCG. Brace positions!:

So, after my last post, last week, things were kind of limping along internally and then sort of conked out altogether because I had absolutely nothing left in the tank. It was certainly a relief when the weekend arrived because at least the immediate pressure of work was removed, and I could kind of do the ‘three more sleeps thing’ on Friday night counting down to Christmas seeing Anita!

I didn’t do very much at all over the weekend because I had a bit of a reaction to my flu jab and so just lay, wiped out, on the sofa for the entirety of Sunday!  The young parts were upset and unsettled after what felt like an eternity away for A, and soooooo NOISY but I had nothing to give them because I was completely done in. I was literally willing the time away to get to Monday evening to reconnect with Anita and to be able settle things internally.

We’ve all been there, right?

So, imagine my joy (not) on Monday when I woke up and the protectors had come online. The child parts were still absolutely beside themselves but shielding them were the angry parts that didn’t trust Anita and were raging that she’d left me/us at all. Those protectors had been so absent for the duration of the break that it was a bit of a whiplash effect waking up to that internal narrative of A not caring, and what a waste of time therapy is anyway…

I got on with my day but by the afternoon I had a really strong sense of not wanting to go to my session that evening. I mean the child parts needed to be there, but the protectors and runners had other ideas.

FFS.

I text Anita to confirm that we were still on for our evening session time and explained that I wasn’t really wanting to come. Or at least parts of me didn’t want to.

I think, now, what brought the protectors online was actually the need for connection with Anita. I know that sounds utterly bonkers because, actually, those protectors stop connection- but here’s the theory: the need for holding and containment for the child parts was so strong that the protective parts desperately wanted to save the young ones from the disappointment of that maybe not happening.

So often after a therapy break (with Em) the young parts have been so in need of care and love but it wasn’t forthcoming and so it set off that agony inside where it feels like you’re going to die from the pain of it all. Of course my system wants to save me from experiencing that ever again. Getting close to that acute feeling of abandonment and rejection feels like it’s going to annihilate me.

Anita’s responses to my texts were warm … but left me cold, somehow.

I just felt like something was amiss.

And it was me – my stuff – but could I get a way round the edge of it? Could I fuck!

Driving in the dark to therapy I decided to stop panicking and to just go and get what I so badly needed. Anita had indicated that everything was fine, so I just needed to lean into that and trust it. Stop putting obstacles in the way RBCG and just go see your therapist who cares!

As I walked up her driveway, I could feel those young parts soooooo ready for a hug almost launching themselves out of me and towards Anita.

Anita opened the door, greeted me, and smiled. I went on into the therapy room, sat down and that’s when it all started to go wrong.

“I will warn you that I have a cold” Anita said. “I’ve done an LFT and it’s negative, but it’s just a particularly horrible throat…You’ve struggled to come today?”

Sulkily I replied, “I didn’t want to come at all” then whispered, “Can we turn the big light off?” The main room light felt too bright and jarring and I just wanted the low glow of the side lights and to relax into the space with A. Anita got up, turned off the light and put on the softer table lamp.

As she sat back down she said, “I’m keeping my distance because of the cold, as well…”

And that was it. EVERYTHING went mental inside. It was instant. I felt like I was going to burst into tears right there but, of course, externally I looked fine. No reaction at all. Poker face. Don’t let her see how upset you are!

‘Distance’ is triggering at the best of times but after a break it’s the very last thing I need. I can’t recall a session in the last year where Anita and I have not had any physical contact and here I was so desperate to be close to her, to cuddle and she seemed to be saying that it was off the cards. It was just too much for my system to cope with.

So many thoughts were running through my head all at the same time. My body was in a full on panic and I started to tremble. I can’t really explain how awful it was – there aren’t words. But I felt completely devastated. The protectors inside were lacing up their shoes and ready to bolt. I felt so abandoned and rejected in that moment. It was another episode of having my face glued up against the sweet shop window and being told I couldn’t have anything having waited so patiently to be there.

And yes – I know that this is just a cold, and Anita trying to be careful and not a deliberate rejection – but the young parts DID NOT UNDERSTAND that at all. To them it’s another mother who wouldn’t come anywhere near them when they needed her and it’s massively MASSIVELY triggering.

Totally oblivious to what was now happening inside for me, Anita went on, “What do you need from today? What can help you feel more settled?”

My brain was screaming “I need a hug” but instead I replied a barely audible, “I don’t know.”

“What’re your fears?” Anita asked.

It felt like I was being bombarded with questions and we’d only been in the room thirty seconds.

With a hint of anger I said, “Will you just stop talking to me.”

“Yeah, of course” and Anita sat quietly. I could see she was looking at me in the dark but I was staring into the corner of the room, unable to make any kind of eye contact.

The level of overwhelm I was experiencing was off the chart. The room was so gently lit that Anita had no idea that I was shaking. Where usually she’d have noticed and reached out in some way, I was instead left feeling isolated and abandoned.

A tiny child’s voice whimpered, “I want to go home.”

In that moment things felt so bad, the distance between Anita and I felt so great, and knowing I couldn’t get what I needed from her the only option available seemed to be to leave. It was the last thing I wanted but it would be less painful that sitting apart from Anita when I had already been apart for a week.

Anita replied, “You can go home if you want. The choice is yours.”

Wrong answer.

Look, we all know that therapists have to respect our autonomy and all that jazz, but in that situation, it is completely the wrong thing to say (well for me anyway). I might have been seemingly pushing away but actually when I say that kind of thing, it’s really a desperate call for connection. When we’ve not seen each other for ages being told I can leave is … well…it feels like she doesn’t care and it feels abandoning…EVEN THOUGH IT IS NONE OF THOSE THINGS!

Silence.

Anita continued, “I will never force you to be where you don’t want to be.”

More silence.

I could feel myself starting to head down into that tunnel of dissociation. Anita didn’t seem to get it. She had no idea that I had been triggered into such a deep place of doom and all within the first two minutes of being in the room. She had no idea as she sat on the couch beside me that I felt like I was being rejected and pushed away by her.

I could feel everything kicking off internally and I felt like I was going to fall apart. Not just cry but literally lose my fucking mind in there. I had held on so tightly over the week just to get to be with her and it was unravelling at a speed of knots.

“What part of you brought you here today?” Anita wondered at the same time that I repeated more angrily, “I want to go home.” I quickly put my shoes on, grabbed my keys and phone, and headed for the door “I don’t want you to go home…” Anita replied but it was too late, I was already half way out the door.

“I’m going home.”

I was out the room, down the stairs, and out the front door in seven seconds. My runners were channeling Usain Bolt.

Fuck.

This is new, right? Leaving. Never have I ever run out of a session. I’ve always sat and endured that physical agony of the young parts feeling alone and rejected – but I just can’t do it anymore. I cannot be in that place. It’s too triggering.

I can hear on the recording as I get off the driveway and into the dark that I let out this really pained sob as I burst into tears.

It’s awful to hear it back.

My car was parked round the corner from Anita’s house. I was in a right mess. There was no way I could drive in that moment so I just sat in the driver’s seat with my head in my hands and my knees tucked up into my chest. I basically curled up into ball and trembled and cried.

I was devastated.

How could it have gone so badly?

I sat in the dark for about five minutes – although it felt like seconds – I just completely lost time. And then reached for my phone. I felt really stupid but also really really lost and small.

As you can see from the exchange it felt like the universe was conspiring against us this session. Just as I had got back to my car, all the street lights had gone out and there’d been a powercut at Anita’s. I so badly wanted to go back to the house but also just felt completely stuck, like I said in the message, ‘paralysed’. I guess I was in a freeze response.

I just sat there, unable to move. About five minutes after Anita’s last message to me, a torch shone on the path next to my car door that was still wide open. I hadn’t even been able to shut the fucking car I was in such a state! I hadn’t heard the footsteps and yet despite being down a side road in complete darkness I didn’t react…which is unusual as I am so jumpy normally.

I looked up and there she was in the pitch black, and with a concerned but warm expression. I put I looked away and put my head back in my hands. Anita bent down and said something – and I have no idea what that is because the whole next bit of this isn’t recorded and I was so dissociated I can’t really recall much of the detail!

She asked if I wanted to talk and come back with her or maybe sit in the car together? I couldn’t move and told her that she could come in the car. My car is like bona fide special ecosystem of its own right now and I genuinely can’t believe that it had to be that day when this happened, when usually it’s tidy and smells nice and doesn’t look like trash can!

Ah well.

Anita was incredibly soft and calm and reassuring. My head was still in my hands and I was curled up in a ball but I could feel her even if I couldn’t look at her. She reached out and put her hand on my leg and told me that we’d be ok and could I explain what had happened?

I said she didn’t understand. That she’d never understand because she doesn’t have this wounding. That she has no idea how painful it is to feel rejected and abandoned. She said, “So teach me about it.”

I told her how her ‘keeping her distance’ had triggered me because I had missed her sooooooooooo much whilst she was away and that I really just needed a cuddle that night and it felt like she didn’t want me anywhere near her.

Anita was incredible. She refuted that and said that was not the case at all, of course she wanted to be with me and near me. She heard everything I had to say, which wasn’t a lot in terms of words but was enough to explain what had just happened. She said that telling me about the cold was not her telling me I couldn’t be near her and how in the past she’d told me the same and I have said that I didn’t mind, and we still ended up hugging so what was different?

I couldn’t articulate it in the moment, but I thought about it after and wrote it in a message yesterday which I have attached below.

I remember saying that I lose sight of her care and think things have changed and she replied with “RB, I wouldn’t come walking out in the pitch black in a power cut for anyone else.”

I think this really penetrated through to the parts that needed to hear it and Anita said lots of stuff about our relationship and how solid it is. I realised as she sat beside me in the dark that she really is my rabbit that listens. She is there, always, patient and calm waiting for me.

I wish I could remember the detail but I know that time, albeit in a completely random setting really did a lot of good. I was disappointed that I had completely lost my shit and not got what I needed so far as the physical holding goes, but emotionally Anita was right there with me. We are definitely a team!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that it’s all ok. We got me sorted enough to be able to drive and for her to leave. She asked me if I wanted a hug – which is impossible in the car – so I said, yes, got out the car and we had a really long hug in the dark.

Anita said something like, “I’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday and it really is ok” and I didn’t respond. “I’ll see you on Friday?” she repeated. “I don’t know,” I groaned.

There was so much conflict and shame and all kinds of stuff running round my brain. Deep down I knew we were absolutely fine – but there were a lot of parts still having their moment to speak.

The next morning I asked Anita is she had time for a ten minute check in before Friday and she offered me a time that evening:

I had a bit of time over my lunch break to think and I wrote and sent this message:

Hey A,

I’ve been trying to think about what happened last night and why but it’s not straightforward but all comes down to feeling disconnected and rejected and all that stuff.

Adult me tried really hard to stay away and not bother you while you were away on holiday and communicate in a way that wasn’t super needy, or too frequent, despite really feeling rubbish and like things were really not ok. By the middle of the week – woeful Wednesday – it felt really bad. I kept shaking and it was just horrid. If I had texted you what I wanted/felt over the week it would have been more like this, than stuff about IKEA:

  • I miss you and I’m starting to feel like you’re not real.
  • I’ve been having lots nightmares and feel really unsettled and shaky.
  • It feels like it did when I was little, and I’m scared that when you come back it’ll be different or you won’t want to see me anymore and I feel frightened.
  • I really need a cuddle.
  • Are we still ok?
  • Can we read stories on Monday?
  • I’ve been really sick and dizzy feel really clingy and like everything is too much but really want to see you
  • I feel really exhausted from holding all this and feel sad and overwhelmed but hope that we can reconnect when we see each other
  • All…the…feelings…are too much

And so, what I really needed last week was some kind of connection for that young part who worries so much about things going wrong or being forgotten about. Adult me can cope with you being away but the wounded child parts that struggle so much with disruption can’t, and it felt like you didn’t see/remember them. And I really get that this is me being mental because you did send stuff and I can see that now…but…ugh… I just can’t explain it really. I just really struggle with breaks and when it feels that bad it’s hard to hold onto anything positive.

So yesterday felt really high stakes. I really just needed for all that painful young stuff to be seen, held, and contained because I was wobbling really badly. When I haven’t seen you for a while, I struggle to hold onto all the evidence that has gone before that actually you do care, that I am not a massive pain in the arse (eek…think maybe that’s changed!), and that you do want to see me. I know you sent me that text yesterday telling me that you did want to see me and that you could understand how I was feeling but I was so far down my spiral of doom that it kind of bounced off.

When I arrived, I was so tired and so overwrought – it’s like the weight of the last week just caught up with me and I just wanted to be close to you. When you said you were ‘keeping your distance’ it felt instantly like you were pushing me away and it just lit the petrol that sets off that massive fire where everything is about to burn to the ground.

I get that wasn’t what you meant but that young part that is so used to being pushed away or disregarded got really triggered and really fast. I was totally gone into that place that is terrified. I know in the past when you’ve said something similar, I have said that I didn’t care about the cold, but that’s when I am walking into a situation that feels stable and safe…and after a break it just doesn’t feel like that. I am automatically looking for evidence that something has changed or gone wrong, and this seemed to be it. It felt like you wanted to be far away from me.

The internal reaction to what you said was immense. I felt sick and my heart started racing. I don’t think you noticed, but I was shaking. It felt absolutely horrific. Sitting there having a full-on trauma response to you staying away from me was too much. I had to leave. Staying in that situation was too upsetting and that’s why I ran away. I wanted so much to see you and instead it felt like I was being held at arms length and that’s really hard for me.

I know none of this is what was actually happening. I get it. But I couldn’t see that at the time.

I felt so dissociated last night in the car. I don’t remember much of what happened or what was said because I was so physically affected by what had happened. I really really didn’t want to be like that or for that to happen and I am sorry. I am embarrassed, too. I thought that I had a handle on this stuff but lately it seems like I am so easily triggered by small things. I don’t know if it’s progress that I can at least tell you how it is or whether I am just hopeless.

Thank you for coming and sitting with me in the dark.

On Friday even if you are a snot machine please can we have cuddles because I feel like I have been run over by a bus.

I miss you.

x

The conversation we had on Monday night was holding and connecting and so I’ll leave this there because, yet again, it’s an epic length and the editing tool is not working properly on here today! Sometimes I really feel like this 😉

Another Therapy Break and “A Little Friend”

rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

So here we are then, half-way through my least favourite thing – another therapy break – and ugh, I just feel utterly bleurgh. It’s not been helped by getting my period yesterday, either. TMI?! I always feel drained, and tired, and in need of care at this time of the month anyway, so having Anita away, too, has felt especially shit this last couple of days. Thank goodness for endless cups of tea, cake, soft toys and my weighted blanket…it’s just a shame I can’t hibernate, really.

Things are still as relentless as ever with work and life, and it’s still another week until half term break from work so I feel as if I am running on fumes right now. It’s that juddering, lurching motion before I completely conk out. Eek. I’m really just hoping that I can free-wheel my way into next Friday. I desperately need some time off and some serious sleep. I think the first few days of the holiday are going to be spent in pjs watching movies with the kids and recharging our batteries.

So, I guess I should backtrack a bit and fill in to how I got to this midway point of the therapy break.

Actually, the lead into this therapy break wasn’t too bad. Well, I mean, I had the usual internal panic about it (but of course!) and felt a bit sad about it (no surprises there), but Anita and I were able to talk about it several times before it actually happened which makes such a difference.

Break anxiety is not the elephant in the room (I don’t think there are any elephants in our therapy room, actually!) like it was with Em. I don’t have to feel shame or embarrassment about the feelings that come up around disruptions to my therapy. I don’t have to pretend that I am not impacted by breaks and separation from Anita. AND perhaps most importantly, I am not made to feel like there is something wrong with me for experiencing feelings of abandonment and rejection (even if adult me knows that’s not what’s happening) when Anita goes away – and it is such a relief.

I definitely think that being ‘left’ with my painful feelings around breaks exacerbated the actual time of the breaks I had with Em. But then I felt so alone with my feelings, before, during, and after breaks so, maybe it’s just that the whole thing was a disaster! Ugh. Never mind!

So, anyway, a couple of sessions before the break Anita directed our attention towards the upcoming separation. I had obviously, already, had my big meltdown last month when she told me about the breaks she had planned – or rather the meltdown about the way the information was delivered with the formal seeming note -and so we had discussed how hard breaks felt for me then, during that big rupture repair session, too.

On our last Monday session before the holiday, I was cuddled into Anita – I can’t remember what we’d been talking about during the session – all sorts of random shit about the trip I’d just taken (we’d missed previous Friday’s session), I think, but there was a period where it went quiet, and I felt so relaxed and safe. After a little while, I asked what she Anita was thinking.

She replied, “I am thinking about the gaps that we are having… how we haven’t had any gaps recently, really, and now there seem to be quite a lot in one go – with you going away last week and then me going away next week… and I’m wondering how you are with that, really, as I’m guessing you’re not very good with that?”

She held me closer to her and I started to cry. I really wasn’t expecting my reaction having been so settled a minute before. I guess I was in no way armoured up in that moment and so the genuine reaction just came. It felt really freeing that Anita had brought the subject up and given the little parts (and all the others) space to feel whatever was there in that moment – especially in the safety of being physically cuddled.

I have been so used to pretending I am ok about breaks (with Em) and masking what I really felt, or at least downplaying it if it did come out, that having the reality of how I actually might feel acknowledged by Anita let me be exactly how it was in the moment. It’s ok to feel sad and to cry about this stuff because it feels huge to parts of me.

I had felt moments of really deep sadness and longing when I was away on the previous Friday (missing my session), not enough to not enjoy myself, but when I was sitting down alone waiting for my wife and kids I felt a real ache in my chest that I wasn’t able to be in the room that morning. I text Anita a GIF to say I missed her, and amazingly we both sent each other a message at the same time.

It felt really lovely, to see that she was thinking of me and reaching out, not just responding to a message I’d sent. It felt connecting. I think so often we worry that being out of sight means being out of mind, but here, again, was Anita demonstrating not only that she does exist outside the room but that I am thought about occasionally, too. Those moments go such a long way in showing my system how things can be in a relationship. How I am not a burden, or unwanted, or too much etc.

So that Monday was our first session back…but there were only two sessions between the breaks and it felt really crappy. Anita went on, “I just want to reassure you that it will be ok. I know that’s not always easy to believe.”

I sniffed and my tears kept coming. Anita gently rubbed my back and held me close to her. I felt so sad. Like in that moment, all the feelings of how it was when I was small and my mum going away time and again just came flooding up and out. Part of me wanted to tell her I didn’t want her to leave me, but I guess those are really the words I swallowed so many times over the years as a kid that I needed my mum to hear. Watching her disappear on a train week in week out for years really has taken its toll on me and here it was playing out again.

Anita reassured me, “It will be ok. I promise. It will.”

I so badly wanted to believe her and clung on tightly to her. There would have been a time where an angry teen part would have shouted something internally, like “Fuck off! What do you know? You fuckers always leave. You don’t care! And I’m left here trying to hold it together through the shit storm.” But the teen was silent – or rather, she wasn’t even there. Instead, I just allowed myself to sink into the immediate moment of safety, connection, and reassurance rather than fight against it.

I guess, when it’s like that I am trying to absorb as much ‘the good stuff’ as I can so that this week, when things start to wobble, I can remember how it feels to be connected and held. And it is working. When I feel distressed or upset, I can now call to mind all the times that I have been safe and held by Anita. I don’t have to try and imagine what it might be like to get what I need because I know it, now. I have experienced it.

I used to find it so difficult when Em would say things like, “that young part of you wants to be held. Can you imagine what it would be like for that part to get what it needs?” It always felt so rejecting when she was sitting right there and yet a million miles away. I’ve said before that it felt like having my nose pressed up against the window of a sweet shop and the owner saying, “you can’t have any of what’s in here, but try and imagine what it would be like to taste this stuff.” It felt so rejecting and cruel.

I knew what I needed, she knew what I needed, but I couldn’t get it. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be held and the longing for it felt so fucking painful.  Em wanted me to take my young parts and hold them but I didn’t know how to do that for myself because I had never experienced being held. She used to say things like, “you do it for your kids so you can do it for yourself” again it felt so alienating and so distancing. Fuck.

Thankfully, now, I have experienced enough actual holding with Anita that when it feels bad, I can take myself to a place where I can go some way towards soothing that little part that needs cuddling. However, my visualisation doesn’t involve adult me holding that young part, it’s remembering how it ACTUALLY feels to be held by Anita. That’s what helps me. It is self-soothing, but I can only do it because I have a built-in reference point now. I can tap into that place and part that knows what it feels like to feel safe, and cared for, and held.

Asking someone to imagine being held when they have never ever had that is like trying to get someone to bring the smell of the sea to mind when they’ve never been there and only ever experienced the city. It’s impossible. It’s frustrating. And it makes you feel like you’re stupid for not being able to do something really simple… but it’s not simple when you haven’t got a basis to work on.

So, there I was in the moment with A, absorbing all the love and care I could. I’d stopped crying and was feeling settled and calm. I glanced up at the clock and noticed it was coming to the end of the session. Adult me had spoken a lot about my trip away but it wasn’t until the end that the important stuff (for the young parts) came. A little part of me whispered, “I missed you when I was away.”

With so much warmth in her voice, Anita replied, “I know. I missed you too. It felt very strange on Friday not seeing you. I’ll see you this Friday, though.” And then that was the end of the session, she gave me a big squeeze and kissed me on the head and I got up, put my shoes on, asked her if she would wash my elephant for me, (“of course”) and then we chatted about something random and adult.

We hugged again, at the door, as I left and I walked out feeling pretty good, but also knowing that it wasn’t going to be easy that week as there was only one session remaining before the break and that anticipation of A being away was sure to hit the various parts of me as the week progressed. I felt a bit clingy and A and I exchanged a few pictures, GIFs, and texts over the course of the week.

Thursday night was terrible, though. I was really looking forward to seeing Anita and felt quite ok in my mind, but my body had a completely different narrative going on. At about 8 o clock I’d just settled down from finishing work when I got the sensation of trembling throughout my body. I didn’t seem to be outwardly shaking but internally I was juddering. Sometimes I physically shake, and it looks like I am shivering, but it wasn’t like this that evening it was more subtle. I couldn’t seem to settle myself and eventually fell asleep but feeling really unsettled and not ok.

To add insult to injury my unconscious fired out a spectacular nightmare that culminated in me being attacked and then strangled by a family member (just wonderful!) and the last thing I remember was me trying to scream “help me!” over and over again but no sounds coming out until I woke up crying and shaking. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and the feeling of pressure in my neck was intense.

I text Anita that morning to give her the heads up about how bad things felt. And she replied with a lovely warm, holding message telling me that she was really looking forward to seeing me and sending hugs and love – but part of me was disappointed that we frequently do 75 minute sessions when we’ve had breaks or breaks are coming  (we’d done that on the Monday) but that day we weren’t when I really felt like I needed it and so whilst the message was really perfect at least part of me felt like she didn’t see how much I was struggling.

I arrived at my session at 10am, our storybooks were on the side next to my elephant and something else that I couldn’t quite see. I sat down. Anita said, “I thought we were starting at 9:45 today and doing longer?” I cannot explain how gutted I was when she said that. She had thought we were starting early which is obviously why she hadn’t asked if I wanted to start earlier in her text that morning. Ugh. Fuck. So, I said that I didn’t think we had agreed that – but had for Monday and never mind, but the little parts were wailing that they could have had another 15 minutes that day and hadn’t.

Anita could see immediately that I was really not ok. I knew I felt off after the nightmare but thought I was just about hanging it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum. Anita asked me straight away if I wanted a hug. I nodded and sort of collapsed into her arms. “I can feel you’re shaking” she said. I hadn’t been aware of that, or at least it felt similar to how it had been during the night, I didn’t realise it could actually be felt by someone else.

As I lay still, I became really aware of how badly I was trembling. It must’ve taken a good thirty minutes for my body to stop shaking and for everything to regulate. Anita and I didn’t really talk much until I got my system and breathing settled. Once things levelled out and I felt normal again we chatted about all kinds of stuff, but I wasn’t able to before then. I wasn’t in my window of tolerance.

I am so grateful to have a therapist like Anita. So much of my wounding is early, preverbal, trauma and so the touch and the holding does such a lot to soothe and calm that terrified, traumatised part of me. Once I am in my window of tolerance, I am good to go but it can take a while to get there and I really need that connection with Anita, the coregulation to get me to a place to do the work.

I spent the entire session cuddled into A. She asked me if I wanted a story about fifteen minutes from the end but I said no, I didn’t want to have to move from where I was in order to have a story. Anita then said to me that she’d got me “a little friend” to go with my elephant and that she’d washed it alongside him, so it smelled the same.

Did I ever mention that I absolutely love this woman?

Again, it’s these sort of things that really do so much for my young parts. She’s not in the least bit weirded out that I ask her to wash a soft toy for me before breaks so that it smells like her, and I can have that whilst she’s gone. At the end of the session, she gave me a bag and inside it was a little soft toy rabbit. “I saw this and thought of you”, she said. I wanted to cry because it was so thoughtful and relevant to our relationship.

Anita and I have this thing where I call her my rabbit. I gave her the storybook, ‘The Rabbit Listened’ for our first therapy-anniversary last January because I really related to the fact that through everything this rabbit stayed alongside the boy and never went away and heard and helped him through all his emotions. She reads this book to me a lot when we have stories.

Anita sometimes refers to herself as the rabbit so the fact that she’d bought me a soft toy rabbit as a transitional object for the young parts felt really lovely. Really, really, lovely actually.

I felt sad leaving the session knowing it would be a while until I saw A again, but at least I was as well-equipped as I could possibly be going into it. I decided I wouldn’t text her over the break, or at least try not to.

So, on Sunday evening I was so delighted when I got message from A with three pictures of the landscape of where she was that day – and again, I thought how really lucky I am to have a therapist who really gets how attachment wounding can play out and what is needed to try and repair that for the young parts. I sent her some pictures back of where I’d been that day and felt good for having checked in.

I miss A, a lot, but I feel safe in the knowledge that she is out there, that she cares, and that she will be back on Monday evening. She’ll not be back in time for our Monday morning session so she scheduled me in a late appointment so I don’t have to wait even longer to see her. I know I say it all the time, but what a massive contrast to what I used to get with Em.

More Rupture Repair And Thoughts On Past Therapy.

rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

Hi all!

It’s been a while since I last posted (again!). Don’t worry, everything is completely fine, it’s just that every time I sit at this laptop I just can’t find the words I want, or even really channel my thoughts in a logical direction. I am so busy with work and juggling my day-to-day life at the minute (lots of spinning plates and a few smashed bits of crockery to boot) that I simply don’t have stretches of time to sit and write and so instead I just go and crack on with something I can do in twenty minutes because I seem to have an endless list of chores and jobs and emails and bleurgh to suffocate under!

Anyway, I am here now and hopefully over the next few days might be able to cobble something together before Anita goes off on her holiday on Monday. Boooo! It’s probably best I get up to speed before that inevitable shitshow commences and I go mental (again)! Obviously, that’s not my plan, but there’s a good chance that when I am THIS tired and creeping towards being THAT hormonal that things mightn’t be smooth sailing…and I hate boats anyway, always get sea sick…so….

Right, let’s do this!

Anita was so attuned and responsive to me in the days between our ‘shit hit the fan’ day/session on the Monday and our next face to face session on the Friday. She clearly had heard and taken on board everything I had said to her in that intense heart-to-heart session and despite my having left that session feeling ok, seen, heard, held, safe…I did check in with her quite a bit over the course of that week via text – nothing major but just the usual pre-meltdown/withdrawal kind of levels. I guess the part of me that was wondering if she was really stable and safe needed to keep testing that – but also that young part that so fears abandonment was checking ‘Are you still there?’

I was so looking forward to seeing Anita on Friday. Monday had been such a balls-up with time because I had had my big tantrum and stayed at home when I should have gone to session, and then I went when I realised I was burning the house down round the relationship – which meant we only had like 35 minutes together instead of the hour. Usually, if something feels off or has gone wrong I might ask for a slightly longer session, I find 75 minute sessions the best length – it’s enough time to land, do the work, and pick up again at the end. But I didn’t ask for this on that Friday because I was so aware of how stressed Anita had been on Monday. She had told me explicitly that I didn’t need to take care of her and yet here I was, not asking for what I needed to try and not add to her burden. Ugh. FFS RBCG!

Looking back now, I think, perhaps, I was unconsciously trying to stay away from anything that might be ‘too much’ for Anita in that Friday session too, as I spent the first forty minutes talking about stuff outside the room. But actually, at the same time I had stuff that I needed to talk about that wasn’t about ‘us’ or what had happened on Monday. It had been my childhood bestfriend’s funeral the day before the session, and it had kicked up some more gripes about my relationship with my mother (ugh the woman is just fucking useless). I needed to get it off my chest and also feel into the grief – so maybe I wasn’t being totally avoidant, but just prioritising what felt front and centre in that moment when I arrived.

As I said in my last post, even though what happened with Anita on the Monday felt like a catastrophe at the time, in reality the rupture was repaired, or was a good way towards being repaired, all in the space of that same Monday morning. I had been given space for my wounded and angry outburst and discovered what the reality of the situation was with Anita…and it wasn’t about me and her, although obviously it had crept into the work like smoke under a door.

So, on Friday I wasn’t wracked with anxiety and dread about whether Anita and I were solid enough to withstand what had happened. I knew we were. The worst of the anxiety was done and over with and I felt pretty ok, like I say, I genuinely feel like the foundation that Anita and I have built our therapeutic alliance on is like a really solid granite bedrock – not some shifting sand. Even when things get unsettled, which is bound to happen on and off given the nature of the issues I struggle with, things resettle sooooooo quickly.

I can’t really explain how much of a contrast this is to how things were with Em. I mean, those of you who have followed this blog for a while will surely see it. The days, weeks, months…years…that things would fester with Em was ridiculous. I would sit on my anxiety and stress about what things felt like between us for AGES, waiting for the ‘right time’ to bring it up. But there never being a ‘right time’ everything always felt so precarious and I felt like if I made the wrong move she’d terminate me…(oh the irony!…how right I was!)

Instead, I would suffer that agony of broken attachment and lack of connection that becomes so horrifically somatised for people with complex trauma on my own. It was safer to manage that than risk rejection from Em which felt like it would be unsurvivable to the young parts. It felt almost like a life-or-death situation at times – the body was endlessly in survival mode. That constant feeling of anxiety, the nausea, pain in the solar plexus, an empty black hole of ache in the chest, tension headache, tight jaw, poor sleep, or nightmares when I did sleep, the racing heart, the jumpiness, oh, and the physical shaking… I mean my poor fucking nervous system was in tatters.

I would suffer so much during the time between sessions and ‘hang on’ for the Monday and Friday session times, hoping so badly that the person sitting opposite me would for once show me some warmth and create an environment where it felt safe to express how I was feeling in the relationship with her. But more often than not, when it was apparent that that long hoped for relational experience was not going to materialise, I’d end up feeling even worse than I had outside the room, to the point where I would dissociate to escape how painful it all was.

In all honesty, it was pure torture.

In addition to this, the ruptures we had weren’t even really repaired – it was more that I had to let things go, paste over the cracks, because I was so scared of losing her. Em was never willing to apologise and instead rigidly stuck to her position making me feel like I was deficient and defective which confirmed the narrative I already had playing inside me. Of course, none of this did me any good at all!

It’s hard.

I knew really a few months into the therapy resuming, with Em, that it wasn’t right for me. The level of distress I felt in relation to her was unbelievable when I think about it now. The problem with this deep knowing (that things weren’t right) is that it’s not what so many parts of me wanted to hear. You’ve got to remember, too, that when you’ve grown up being gaslighted and emotionally abused by a parent it’s hard to trust your gut because you’re so often told you are wrong or that something is wrong with you.

It’s not surprising that I felt attached to Em – in so many ways my relationship with her replicated the experience I had growing up as a child with my mum. She was another emotionally unavailable woman who disappeared in the week and then put me down, eroded my sense of self, and told me I was wrong when I (occasionally) expressed dissatisfaction or had a need.

I mean it was maternal transference 101 – only in the very worst way.

I sometimes wonder why things had to get SO bad before we terminated and why I didn’t quit sooner rather than have it all get so horrifically traumatic, but it’s so hard to leave someone you’re so deeply attached to when part of you in still hanging onto that tiny glimmer of hope, that maybe, just maybe this time if you behave in the right way, this new ‘mother’ will accept you and not abandon you.

I mean we, as humans, are hardwired for connection and more than anything I just wanted to be accepted by this person that I cared so much about even if I was pushing my way through a jungle of red flags week in week out – but I’ve been brought up in that jungle and have never seen anything but red so I stuck with what felt familiar even if it was painful. It really wasn’t until I returned to K and regular craniosacral sessions that I realised that the alternative version of connection that I had in my mind was possible and not some unachievable fantasy – like Em had led me to believe.

I used to wonder why people in abusive relationships didn’t just up and leave and now I know. I know I wasn’t married to Em (!), but I think similar things are in play with domestic abuse victims. It’s so complex and taps into so much wounding from so long ago. I should have left so many times, but I always went back, gave it another go, tried to bend myself into the mould that she wanted. It didn’t work though, did it? What she wanted me to be was at complete odd with and who I am and what my needs were.

I’m so sad now to look back and see how much emotional pain I put myself through. I really feel like a faithful dog that just kept going back to get kicked over and over and over again. And it wasn’t until she delivered the killer blow that I got free of it all.

Ugh.

Anyway -that’s not how it is with Anita, thank goodness! Writing that, I can see there is still so much work to do on that stuff with Em. Bloody therapy to recover from therapy…isn’t that just the gift that keeps on giving?! I think I could have gone on an around the world trip with the money I’ve put into therapy over the years!

So…back that Friday session. After I had spoken about the immediate stresses and upsets of my daily life there was a natural pause in the conversation. I guess that’s when I really landed in the room properly. I was quiet for a minute and felt the young parts move to the front. I could feel that worry about being too much – that’s always there-  and, despite, wanting a hug I didn’t ask for one. Adult me knew everything was ok but those more vulnerable parts didn’t.

Anita gently broached the subject of Monday gently, “How are you feeling about us now?”

I whispered a barely perceptible, “Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” Anita mirrored. “That’s what I wondered.”

There was another silence and the room felt really still.

“What do you need? What can I do?” Anita asked.

Again I replied with, “I don’t know.”

In that moment I don’t think I was being avoidant or obstructive or not asking for what I needed. Sometimes when things feel overwhelming I literally don’t have a clue what I need. I mean looking at this now, clearly I needed to feel connected to Anita but when I’m stuck behind my glass wall, I don’t remember that it doesn’t need to be there.

I let out a long sigh and felt like I wanted to curl up in a ball.

“It’s hard isn’t it?” said Anita with so much warmth and care in her voice.

More silence, from me.

“Because I am thinking about what a difficult situation it all is. I think that it’s going to happen where I am not in an ok space and it’s going to feed back because you are so sensitive to change because you’ve always had to be, you notice things in me that I might not… and it’s like I was saying to my supervisor and was saying to you on Monday, that I am not taking on any new clients because I don’t feel I can take on any more than I have at the moment – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect clients that I have now… and our relationship… and my relationship with my family, even. It affects everybody around me but it’s really hard for me to know what to do with that. Does any of this makes sense?” She sounded so apologetic but also just really real.

I let out a small, “Yeah” but I couldn’t work out where the conversation was going and sighed deeply and felt myself starting to drift. The bit about not knowing what to do with that set of a panic inside, was she about to tell me she was going to stop working for a bit? I had no idea.

“What do you want to happen?” I asked.

Anita paused, took a deep breath, and said, “I feel like I have broken your trust. And I know it’s going to take time to regain that again. And I wish I had a magic wand to make that happen, but I don’t. Because part of me, no, no I know, I don’t know why I brought that up, cos I know that it’s natural for you to think that it’s you and not me – and actually it is me and not you. You haven’t done anything wrong or different. It’s me. But like I said on Monday when you [Anita] get down, I don’t think you always realise how much it’s affecting you until… you don’t function properly…but I don’t want to lose the relationship, I really don’t. I am hoping we can learn from this, both of us. Because I think if we lose it [deep sigh] what would be the point? That’s not what I want, but obviously for  a relationship to work be both need to want the same.”

I honestly couldn’t believe that she might be thinking that I didn’t want to work with her anymore over what had happened. As I said, it felt huge in the moment but in the big scheme of things it wasn’t a deal breaker because we’d done so much repair on the Monday. If anything it brought us closer together.

“I just don’t want to be too much for you” I replied.

“You’re not too much for me! You’re not too much for me! It’s not you that’s too much for me. And you’re really not! It’s other areas of my life that’s too much and I am trying to sort that out. But you are not too much for me… I know it’s hard to believe that isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“And I guess that’s what I’m thinking. That’s the learning. That whoever you work with – if it’s not me – if you choose not be with me – and I want to work with you – don’t take that the wrong way and think I don’t want to work with you because I do – I don’t want to lose this relationship. But I think the learning is that you will go into relationships and things will happen to the other person but that doesn’t meant they want the relationship with you to end. I don’t. you’re not too much for me – others areas of my life are, but you’re not, you’re not part of that. Can you hear that?”

I didn’t know what to say, the mention of not working together (even though that’s not what she was saying set parts of me off running away).

After a little while Anita asked, “What are you hearing?”

And I whispered, “I feel like I’m not here.”

“Uh hmm, like you’ve detached a little bit?”

I nodded.

Anita asked if she could give me a hug, and again I nodded and then shuffled across the sofa and  snuggled in for a cuddle. I listened to Anita’s steady heartbeat and eventually I started to breathe more regularly, in time with Anita. When I get stressed I seem to hold my breath without even realising I am doing it. It’s nice when A and I hug because eventually my system settles and I feel my body relax bit by bit. I can go from a state of panic, heart racing, etc to a point where I almost fall asleep.

We didn’t really say anything in the remaining ten minutes of the session but that hug felt so healing and holding and by the time it was time to leave I felt so much better.

On the drive home I was thinking about what Anita had said to me, the bit about her breaking my trust really sat uncomfortably with me because that’s not how I had experienced the last week. When I got home I wrote out a massive long message – I think pretty much all my worries came out – and I sent it to Anita:

Things I need you to know. I trust you and I love you…too much probably…and that makes me really vulnerable in this relationship. When I get triggered badly, like on Monday morning, I will look to run away and push you away and act as though I could easily just end things – even though it’s the very last thing I want to do – but I do it because I’d sooner be the one to pull the plug on us than you do it and have to deal with that pain because honestly I can’t even let myself imagine how crushing that would be. It’s bad enough when you are away for a little while, but actually gone… I just can’t…

You say that what’s happened is not because of me and that I am not too much for you, and I really do hear that. I actually really understand that what has happened isn’t actually anything to do with ‘me and you’ and that’s really positive. The flip side of that, though, is that when things are wrong with us, we can do something about it together, or I can do something about how I am, and that will probably help move things forward. In this situation I have absolutely no way of knowing what will happen and I can’t affect any change or take steps to make sure things go ok for you, and by extension – us. But it doesn’t stop my brain trying to think a way round it, “maybe if I don’t text her this…” or “keep the young, needy parts hidden for a while”… you know how my brain works!

I genuinely don’t feel like things are badly broken. I just don’t know how I need to be to give you the space you need to get yourself into a better place. I absolutely don’t want to work with anyone else ever. I think you know that – at least I hope you do. I don’t feel like you have broken my trust. I am actually really glad that you could tell me how things were for you and be authentic and real with me. I actually feel like that was a big moment for us. Not a bad one. I just wonder whether you regret letting me see that, and then I wonder if you’ll take a step back from me again to regroup.

What’s panicking me is that ultimately, no matter how much I’d like to pretend otherwise, when it comes down to it, I am just your work. And we both know that when the shit hits the fan in our personal lives often the only area we can make changes to relieve pressure is in our work lives. I know that ‘currently’ I am not too much for you but what if that changes?

I am so sensitive to how you are, and I feel when you are withdrawing…and that’s difficult for me even if I now know why that happened recently. But what happens if one day I have a meltdown, or am just too clingy and you think, “fuck it, I just don’t have the energy for this anymore?”…you can just walk away. And I’ve been there before….and it was bad. But if you were to go, I honestly don’t know how I would cope. It makes me cry even thinking about it.

I feel like I am in this impossible bind – not because of what’s happened this week – but with therapy in general. Like I feel like there’s a real closeness between us and the relationship matters to both of us, and yet look how readily I lose my shit (the note with the break dates on) when I get faced with the reality that I am just another of your clients. It’s just a bloody nightmare.

I don’t know what I am trying to say, really, other than I am not going anywhere unless you push me away and that you mean a lot to me. Big hugs x

And she replied with:

Thank you for sharing. I don’t regret opening up to you- I feel honesty is really important between us. I just didn’t realise how badly I was failing at holding it all together after years of growing my self-awareness – I’m not sure I’ll ever fully get there! You are right. When things aren’t good we often need to change our work balance. So, I’m not taking on new clients and looking to see what I can let slide – but honestly, you aren’t even on my list of things to change. Yes, reading on Monday sounds good. Sending you lots of love and care xx. [and a load of hearts]

Crikey, this is really long so I’ll leave it there for now. But, good news is everything is good, settled, back to normal with Anita…well, that is, of course, until the weekend comes and she disappears for a week! More on that next time! x