holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
So, the title says it all doesn’t it?… Elle came back off her break last week and, honestly, by the time the therapy break was up, I was in a completely horrible place emotionally. It’s not really any great surprise that everything tanked. I knew this first break with my newest/latest therapist was going to dredge up all kinds of shit – and it REALLY did. It certainly hasn’t helped that my last three therapists have all ended the therapy after a therapy break and so the sense of anticipatory dread about what would happen when Elle came back (if she came back) was intense.
Because I have been in such a bad place mentally – definitely neck deep in a depressive episode (only realised this today!)- I spent a good part of the break second guessing myself, driving myself mad, going round in circles and wondering whether or not I should send Elle the link to the last post I wrote. Part of me thought it might help her understand me a bit better and another part thought it would give her ammunition to cut and run, hence the mental gymnastics!
But, as I have been massively struggling with opening up in my sessions or, rather, have been completely unable to go anywhere near the stuff about Anita (which is absolutely tearing me apart), I eventually decided that it was better to throw a grenade into the mix now and see what the outcome was (if I’m too much better to know) rather than be in hiding and the outcome be the same only a few months and several hundred pounds further down the line.
Another reason I decided to send the blog was because every time I have thought that I might be able to venture towards this really vulnerable, painful stuff in session something has happened to throw me off course and I’ve taken us off in a completely different direction. It doesn’t take much at all. I am so sensitive to feeling rejected or abandoned now that it’s going to take a lot to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with Elle and as much as I really like her, I don’t trust her – at least not with those particular fragile parts of me. I wrote this the other day – this is what I need to say, in part – but it’s too fucking scary:
Look, I really need to take off my armour and have you witness what’s hurting inside because I feel really alone, and I can’t carry on like this. The thing is, I have been encouraged to take off my armour before. Things have been ok when I have taken my helmet off and just exposed my head, but when I have taken off my breast plate the person who told me my heart was safe has run at me with a dagger and stabbed me. There’s a serious wound that needs attention but the thought of exposing that makes me very scared because I think I’ll die if it happens again. My heart just won’t survive another dagger through it.
I also thought it would be good for her to see that blog because it talked about how I had felt about how I had experienced her in the room texting and forgetting to record the last session before the break. Of course, in the ideal world, I would be able to bring that to the session because it’s not that big a deal and any therapist that’s half-way decent can surely manage that…but… I can’t believe how many steps backwards I have taken since leaving Anita and it felt too big to bring to the room. All the things that I had worked so hard at: being able to express how I felt in the moment, to talk about things that hurt or felt off, feeling safe with another person who is meant to help, it’s all just gone now. I feel so unbelievably anxious about therapy. I am absolutely terrified of being found lacking/too much and being sent on my way again.
I thought if I gave her the head’s up pre-session it would give her time to think about it and perhaps give her something to help open the session after the break because I would most certainly be in tortoise mode!
Elle sends text reminders the day before our session and when I received that I sent the link to my post. I hadn’t wanted to send it until I was sure she was back from her break…because, you know…boundaries…! The moment I hit send I immediately felt very very ill. It was like the old days with Em. Absolute terror flooded my system. I felt like I had done something wrong and that there would be ‘consequences’. I have such a lot thank Em for don’t I?! Elle has never given me any cause to think this, but as I said, I had got myself so worked up over the break that I just wasn’t functioning in a very effective way at all.
It got worse and worse as it crept closer to the session. I woke up at 1am on Tuesday morning and had a massive panic attack. Elle didn’t acknowledge my email at all on Monday and so I woke up in panic and basically catastrophised in my head until it got light thinking that she was set to have a ‘difficult conversation’ the next day. I could really have done with some kind of, ‘thanks for this, look forward to seeing you tomorrowand talking this through’ from her but it was radio silence until the session on Tuesday and, honestly, I just wanted the ground to swallow me whole when I arrived. I was absolutely bricking it. The therapy shits were back (haven’t missed those I can tell you!). So, yeah, all in all it was absolutely awful.
As I waited for Elle to come and get me, my heart was racing, and I thought I was going to be sick. She opened the door and seemed…like Elle. I sat down…she looked like Elle. A couple of minutes went by, she grabbed the recorder and turned it on and said nothing. My brain was in a spin. Had she read the blog? Had she suddenly remembered to get the recorder because of the blog? Or had she not read it and just remembered, but forgotten that she’d forgotten to record before the break? I guess if she’d read the blog, she’d have had the recorder ready, wouldn’t she?… anyway I was trying to make sense of what was happening and where we were at. She said nothing about the blog and didn’t ask about the break…so I inferred that she hadn’t read the post because I feel like that was the map for the session and there was no mention whatsoever.
And that set off another reaction in me. Well, inside at least. My face gave nothing away.
For fuck’s sake RB!
I had been so anxious about telling Elle all that stuff, it was exposing but I really felt like she needed to see/know it…and she had chosen not to read it. Oh, good, we’re back into Em territory – just ignore me. My mum is currently in an ‘ignore me’ phase too, so it felt especially triggering alongside Anita’s ‘barely there’ replies to my messages. All in all, I just felt utterly shit, unseen, and circling the drain of ‘no one really cares’. I don’t know why it’s so hard. Like I am not a shit person and yet I feel like I really just don’t matter at all. Like I can’t even pay for someone to care.
I told Elle early on that breaks are a massive issue for me, so blog or not, I am surprised that she didn’t bring it up. I really get that lots of therapists are client led, but I really feel like in this early phase of the therapy I could use a bit of handholding. I feel like a therapy novice again and just don’t know what the fuck to do or say. Like I am doing brilliantly with False Adult and talking A LOT but inside it’s absolute carnage. I feel like I am some kind of glitching hologram. I am desperately trying to figure out ‘how’ and ‘who’ to be in the room to be deemed good enough to stay. I sometimes hear myself and just feel like I am incredibly boring and moaning. I feel like Elle must be watching the clock – because the version of me in the room is fucking tedious.
I honestly don’t know what to do. I know my advice to anyone else would be ‘try and take this to your therapist’…but I am trying to in the only way I can right now and I’m not being met where I am at.
I feel so fucking crap.
As I said, it dawned on me (finally) today that I am depressed. I have been battling with such a lot since May (and longer really) and I just feel so completely at sea now. I feel like I can’t even write properly. My brain is just a miserable fog. I’m spending hours and hours mindlessly scrolling through social media but not engaging. Anything that requires the slightest bit of attention span is a total fail. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked my phone even writing this but can’t even bring myself to proof-read it. I feel so lost. I want to sleep but can’t. I want to rest but my brain won’t stop freaking out. I have absolutely no motivation whatsoever. I need to cry but I have buried my feelings so deep right now because no one is safe enough to feel them with and I can’t manage alone anymore.
It’s crap…so crap.
I keep going to therapy. I keep trying. I keep saying how I need to connect with Elle…and we do…on a level. BUT it’s not the level I need. I’m not talking about hugs and all that stuff – although I am really feeling the ache from not being held by Anita – I feel like Elle and I need a conversation about ‘us’ like what is ‘this’ in the room.
Maybe we’ll get there eventually. I dunno. It’s all just so unbelievably exhausting. I need her now – like this week – but I don’t know her yet … and until I know her I don’t think I’ll trust her with me.
I wish someone would come and find me in the dark because it’s horrible here.
We’re no strangers to me whining on about therapy breaks here on this blog, are we? And as I find myself staring down the barrel of my first break with Elle I am anticipating a hellish experience this time around and I literally only saw her on Tuesday! Give me strength!
Before my last session I could already feel the anxiety and panic creeping in, and it’s got steadily worse as the week has gone on. My heart rate is up. I feel sick. I have a headache that I can’t seem to shift. My jaw is clenched tightly like a steel trap – it’s little wonder I have a headache! I am sooooo tired, yet I can’t switch off and sleep – mind you that’s nothing new, my sleep has been appalling since Anita and I parted ways. Anyway, all things considered, it’s not great and certainly doesn’t bode well for the next 11 days!
You might be wondering why I’ve got myself so worked up given that I’ve only been seeing Elle for a couple of months and that crazy attachment stuff hasn’t gone live yet…or at least not inside the room (it’s complex but more on that another time)! I had really hoped that I would be unfazed by the prospect of a two week break in the new therapy but my mind just isn’t wired like that – read: my brain hates me! #trauma
I mean, let’s be clear therapy breaks have, more often than not, been a challenge for me so this isn’t exactly new territory. Indeed, this horrid sense of dread and doom is all too familiar to me. There have, of course, been rare occasions (working with Anita) where I have sailed through breaks but they’ve strongly correlated with times where I have felt really settled, secure, safe, and contained in the therapeutic relationship. If I have felt there has been a solid connection and that there is a secure base it’s been great (ish) – but, honestly, I am way more familiar with feelings of disconnection that trigger intense panic and a desperate flailing about in emotional quicksand on therapy breaks.
We all know I am not in the ‘settled, secure, safe and contained’ zone right now. I literally couldn’t be further from that. It’s crap. I guess part of me feels like I am still on a therapy break with Anita, we haven’t ‘properly’ ended and so it’s left hanging open (but clearly closed); Hannah and I never returned to the room after our first break (I still can’t believe it went tits up so quickly); and let’s not forget that everything with Em fell apart after the Christmas break and the therapy ended in the most damaging and catastrophic way…well…not as catastrophic as what Anita has done but traumatising all the same #likeatick. So now that another therapist is going away I don’t exactly feel optimistic about the chance of a safe return with my track record as it is.
When I dig beneath all the awful physical sensations I am experiencing and feel down into the emotions I’ve been running from since… May… well…it’s YIKES! I mean it’s utterly utterly utterly heartbreaking stuff. Unsurprisingly, I’m met with the desperate crying of a really young part who’s been abandoned out in the cold, grey wasteland. She’s small, barely three years old. She has her back to me and as much as I want to reach out and help her. I can’t. It’s as though there is a glass wall between us, and I simply can’t get to her. Adult me feels completely powerless.
This internal landscape is so familiar to me. For soooooo long I’ve found this one of the hardest parts to make contact with. I see her so clearly and I feel the pain she feels so intensely. But I can’t get to her. I guess maybe this has, historically, been because there’s been such a lot of shame around acknowledging this vulnerable part of me. She is so needy, so starved of love and affection, so desperate for connection and a sense of safety and yet feels so unlovable and unworthy that expressing any kind of need for the ‘other’ feels chronically dangerous. If ever there was an exile she is it.
But then, this is the part that is behaving exactly as she should given that her caregivers have repeatedly upped and left. Children at this age do have a lot of need don’t they?…it’s normal… and that’s all been frozen in time because those needs were never met when they should have been by the person who was meant to do it. I’m having a really hard time with my mother wound right now for lots of reasons – it’s not only therapy triggering it, my lack of relationship with my mum has been thrown into sharp focus lately and it’s all just a lot. I might have an adult body but all the parts of me are still there inside, and this little girl especially is waiting for someone to come pick her up and hold her.
I don’t feel shame about this or these feelings anymore, but I do feel lost, and stuck, and have no idea how to begin to get the help I need to work with this now having been so badly hurt with Em, Anita, and more recently Hannah. Like what on earth am I meant to do? I do understand that I am the adult that this young part needs, I just need to find out where the sledgehammer is to be able to break through that glass and get to her…and I have been trying for a long time now!
Anita had done so much work on bringing this little girl out of the cold and into the warm. I mean she literally told me, “You don’t have to stay out in the cold anymore. I am here. You are safe with me. I love you and I am not going anywhere” all the while cuddling me into her chest, reminding me over and over that I was loved by her, reading me stories, showing me that the emotional cupboards weren’t bare anymore…and in doing this, so much of my system settled down – both the fragmented parts of me and my nervous system. I felt so much more capable of living in the world knowing that my inner children were held and contained with a safe adult, and I really felt like I was on the right track finding ways to hold these parts more and more for myself…like I was well on the way to the tool shop for that sledgehammer.
But then Anita left and, with that, she discarded all the parts that had learnt to trust her and who loved her so intensely. Each of these parts are experiencing this abandonment in different ways but today it’s all about the small one. Anita left that little girl and returned her to the wasteland. Devastating doesn’t even begin to describe how fucking awful this has been. We see the word ‘retraumatising’ being banded about a lot – but that’s exactly what this is. It’s such a visceral experience. It’s like a bereavement, only it’s one that I can’t talk about. I have to suffer on my own pretending as if everything is completely fine when it absolutely isn’t. I am so fucking far away from fine. Like I said the other week, I am a million miles away from ok and not waving but drowning.
The wasteland space is so bleak. This toddler part has been out here for too long now, shivering, and sad. Time is such a weird concept for kids, isn’t it? Weeks can feel like years. It feels like she’s been on her own for so long now that she can hardly remember how it felt to feel the softness of Anita’s body, to breathe in her comforting smell, and listen to her steady heartbeat. But then when she does remember the agony of recalling what has been lost comes flooding back and is totally overwhelming. It’s difficult to find words to describe the sense of being completely annihilated but so many of you know this feeling already that maybe it doesn’t need explanation here. If you know, you know.
I totally broke on Monday thinking about Anita and how she was my rabbit that listened. I couldn’t stop crying…I reached out again…and I must stop doing it because these replies are hurting me. I don’t know what to do – we need to meet to properly end but I just can’t face it. I don’t want her to be ‘gone’ forever.
My goodness! – this post is meant to be about my therapy break with Elle and yet here I am banging on about Anita again. But it’s because Elle has gone that the void that Anita has left behind is all the more apparent. My young part doesn’t want Elle (but I think she’d like to be seen by her), she wants Anita (sooooo much), but now that Elle is gone there is literally no one there to help. And whilst the young parts have not made it into the therapy room with Elle yet (they’re hiding behind the sofa but I don’t think she has realised), Adult me at least has been getting some space to offload some of my day-to-day crap.
The other day I was texting a friend about all this and she suggested that Elle has been like a shelter from the storm, or an umbrella, she’s not Anita’s cosy snug holding place, but that time and space in the week with Elle has at least offered a window of time to stop me from completely disintegrating. I actually think it’s been like a sticking plaster on an open wound. It’s been just about enough to stop me bleeding out…only that’s been ripped off now and I am really not ok. Like sooooo not ok. I feel like I am screaming for help and yet there’s no sound coming out. I dreamt this week that I was repeatedly telling Em, Anita, Hannah, and Elle that I was suicidal and not one of them could hear me. For the record, I am not suicidal – but I would say that some parts of the system are.
Anyway, none of this feeling of discombobulation has been helped by a couple of things that happened in the last session before the break, either. It’s funny. I’ve been seeing Elle a couple of months now and yet I haven’t really spoken about what it’s been like in the room with her at all yet have I? I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s because I feel quite protective of this new relationship. I so desperately want it to work out but I am so terrified of fucking it all up after recent events with Anita and Hannah. Although, I didn’t fuck it up…
Perhaps there’s an anxiety about writing about the therapy knowing how Hannah upped and left at the thought of making it onto the blog – and although Elle and I have discussed my blogging and she is fine with me writing in an anonymised way I do wonder how it might actually land if she ever sees posts like this where I actually talk about things that she’s said or done that have landed badly. I know I would struggle. I also think on a level I really don’t want to hurt her feelings just because I am clearly having a massive reaction to not a lot this time.
I know how my big feelings about small things can make it feel impossible for people to make mistakes and I really don’t want to create a situation where it feels like Elle is having to tread on eggshells because I’m so fucking sensitive. I keep going back and forth over whether what’s bothering me is something I just process on my own or whether it’s something that I should share with her. I don’t want to seem critical because that’s not it at all. This is all about me and how I react to things.
I know I have mentioned on repeat here about how I need to find a way to talk about Anita having avoided the topic like the plague since the first session where I outlined some of what had happened. I am obviously no further on than that. Every week I think ‘this is the week’ and then I get there and that False Adult (maybe it’s her) turns up and just rattles on about ‘stuff’ for ninety minutes. Oh yeah, that’s something new too. I asked a few weeks ago if we could do a longer session – and it’s become a thing. I find that length of session MUCH better but obviously still not enough to bring out the heartbreak. Ugh.
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase shall we? – 1600 words in! Concise as ever RB! So, I have been super conscious of wanting to find a way to really connect with Elle. I feel like we get on really well as adults (although tbh I don’t trust anything I think or feel now after what happened with A). I really like spending time with her. She is absolutely someone who if I had met them under different circumstances I would want as a friend (ha – that’s just fucking typical!) and I feel like she’s someone I really respect. That sounds so daft doesn’t it and a bit gushy? But I feel for the first time in a really long time that this might be someone who will be able to cut through my avoidant bullshittery once she gets to know me a bit better. At least I hope so … that is, of course, if I don’t frighten her away with the crazy first!
So, yeah, this last session I was so determined to go in and say, “Look, I really need to take off my armour and have you witness what’s hurting inside because I feel really alone and I can’t carry on like this. The thing is, I have been encouraged to take off my armour before. Things have been ok when I have taken my helmet off and just exposed my head, but when I have taken off my breast plate the person who told me my heart was safe has run at me with a dagger and stabbed me. There’s a serious wound that needs attention but the thought of exposing that makes me very scared because I think I’ll die if it happens again. My heart just won’t survive another dagger through it.”
I wanted to tell her that I was nervous about the break and a bit embarrassed that I didn’t want her to go away. I wanted to ask her if it was still her plan to go to working online in December and talk about how that might feel (bad!). I wanted to talk about the dreams I’d had and what I thought they meant (eek!). Like I had such a lot to say and had psyched myself up for it. It was going to be a massive exercise in the vulnerable parts of me taking a step towards her and seeing how it played out but I was hopeful nonetheless.
I think up to now our sessions have been all about what I have bringing from outside the room (obviously useful) but I think I’m needing to feel into what is going on in the room between us too. Like what is this relationship (aside from the obvious)?- How do we connect? – What is going on? – How is it all going to work? And I guess, really importantly, does it feel safe? Basically, it’s the relational stuff… the fucking scary bit!
Right, back to what spooked me…
Whilst I was waiting for the session I buried my head in a book I’d just started that I have totally loved called, ‘Enchantment’ by Katherine May (big recommendation from me – it’s lovely and all about reconnecting with the world around us). Elle came out, noticed I was reading and asked me what it was. I walked into the room, sat down and began to tell her – meanwhile, she had picked up her phone as she sat down and then started texting.
Ummmmm.
She apologised immediately for this and explained that she had made a mistake and had sent one of her clients the wrong time for their session (she sends out text reminders). She told me that she works with a lot of neurodiverse clients and was really aware that this fuck up would send this particular client into a spiral so she needed to quickly sort it out. She was also pretty vulnerable and told me how she experiences it when she makes mistakes with this client group and part of me was glad to see she really does care about the environment and container she creates for her clients BUT in that moment it felt like we were talking like peers and I feel like this is a trap we could easily fall into. Like it’s good. I don’t want there to be a massive power imbalance but equally I need her to realise that I am not maybe as together as I seem (like really not together at all, actually)!
Adult me really gets why she needed to send that text. Teacher me TOTALLY gets it as about half my work is with neurodivergent students. Parent me gets it – both my kids are neurodiverse.
But do you know who doesn’t get it?
Complex trauma client me.
The traumatised child parts DO NOT GET IT at all.
Because whilst it’s really marvellous that Elle is super concerned about her neurodiverse client’s needs what about the complex trauma one sitting right there in the room in her actual session?
And look I really know how much ‘brat’ teen is coming out here, but I need to say it because it really fucked how I thought the session would go because I immediately switched into ‘super competent adult client’ and I closed down all the parts that wanted to reach out and put some trust in her. Because in that moment when she was texting, the message that was being sent to my parts was I was less important than this ‘other’ client, my need was less, and oh my god it just triggered all the stuff about being unworthy of care and attention which are so live after what’s happened with Anita. The little girl suffering out on the wasteland’s hope of being seen was dashed again and I felt that intense tension in my stomach take root.
I had been so ready to connect, needed to connect, and the cues that it was safe to do that weren’t there. I know how massively explicit a therapist needs to be to coax these parts out and that’s part of the battle – Elle doesn’t know any of this, yet. I sometimes feel like Monica in Friends – externally she is super organised and together (if not a little neurotic!) but then there’s the cupboard that’s full years of clutter and tat and she is absolutely mortified when Chandler discovers it. That’s kind of where I am. Only I don’t just have a small closet full of emotional shit it’s a massive great warehouse!
To add insult to injury I quickly noticed that the recorder wasn’t out to record our session. Elle had suggested early on that we could record our sessions when I had shared a blog post with her about the problems I have with object constancy. She has been sending these to me so I can listen to them afterwards as a way of connecting. It’s been good. Only she forgot this time, probably because her mind was elsewhere trying to sort of this other client, or maybe she was heading into holiday mode – and of course that stung too because if ever there was a time to need to feel connected it was now – on a break.
Perhaps I should have said something when I noticed, but I was already lost when she text the client…which by the way was literally only seconds. I know I am making a massive deal over something really small but this is the nature of Complex Trauma isn’t it? We are so quickly triggered into painful states when there is so much of a whiff of feeling abandoned or rejected. It’s extreme. It happens in a split second and we are gone. The smallest misstep can feel like the vinegar being poured on third degree burns and unfortunately for Elle and I, there’s not much of me left that isn’t burnt after recent events with Anita and Hannah…and then, Em. In lots of ways she doesn’t stand a chance.
All I can say, is in that moment I felt painfully unseen. The young parts felt so fucking alone it was awful. Elle would never have known because I talked at her solidly for the entire 90 minutes because I’m so good at hiding in the room and taking us off somewhere else and allowing a capable, competent part to front. I hate that. I am not a massive fan of being plunged into a dissociative silence but I think this might sometimes be easier for the person opposite me to figure out something is amiss. Anyway, the session was ‘fine’ for Adult me but not at all for the parts that needed to be seen that day…or now as the break becomes more of a problem.
Of course, I haven’t been sent a recording – because there isn’t one to send but I don’t think Elle has realised that it’s even a thing. Or if she has, she hasn’t got in touch to say, “Hey RB, I’m sorry, I dropped the ball here”. This hurts because when she’s dropped the ball with a more established client she makes the effort to rectify it in MY session. And I do get it’s different – scheduling is different to this.
If she has realised what’s happened then maybe she’s not wanting to open that up over an email when we are on a break. The thing is, ignoring it doesn’t mean it’s gone away. I am still here holding it and that vulnerable part is upset. I think there’s a part of me that worries that it won’t even have hit her radar and that shows me just how far away we are from really getting into ‘me’. I so miss having a therapist who knows ‘me’ intimately. I miss the things that Anita and I would do to make breaks as easy as possible for these parts. My elephant is sat in my wardrobe now. It no longer smells like Anita’s washing powder and I have had to put it out if sight because the reminder of what I had is just too much. It’s such a huge loss. As I keep saying, it’s like my emotional scaffold has been taken away and I am trying not to crumble.
I so want this relationship to work out because I really like Elle – like I really like her. I really don’t want to be ‘this’ client again. Adult me is really ok about this but those others, the ones who especially need the therapy aren’t. I am just so bloody exhausted by all this now. I hate that this situation feels so much worse than it should because of the state things have been left by Anita. I hate that I have to start over again. I hate that I feel so ungrounded and unsafe inside. It’s massively shit and feels too much…or I feel too much.
I don’t really know what to do. I guess though, this isn’t going to work out unless I find the courage to be brave and vulnerable – like I really am going to have to start talking to Elle about this because … she needs to know. And as much as this is, on the surface, a tiny rupture – it has all the key ingredients of what causes me difficulty. It’s not a big deal but to parts of me it really is…and it’s not just this – I have to address the elephant in the room (A) before it makes its home there like all the others before.
I hate that I know that returning to therapy is going to feel really hard because by the time it’s time to go back I won’t be just be dealing with the young one out on the wasteland – I will have the depressed teen and the sadistic critic to contend with, too. I’ll have gone through the wringer and then end up just about normal by Tuesday. Honestly, I am so over it.
I wish I could say that things were on the up and that I am feeling much better than I did in my last post but, if anything, things are feeling worse. Worse? How can it be worse than that?! I have no idea, but it is how it is. Believe me when I say I am sick of this shit now. Like I am so fucking over it – and yet I have no idea how to get out of it. I mean I am doing the ‘things’: self-care galore (who knew that was a thing for me?!), therapy, (trying to) sleep, doing only the bare essentials in order to keep things running and yet it is still TOO MUCH. Like it’s all TOO HARD now. I just can’t seem to catch my breath at all and am running on fumes.
I told Elle, this week, that my current ‘life’ is easy in comparison to how things were last (academic) year. She assured me that it didn’t sound easy. But then I guess the difference back then was that I wasn’t in this emotional state. My day-to-day life was insanely busy and challenging but I could pull it out the bag because I felt ok in myself – or as close to ok as I have ever felt. The reason things feel so impossible, and exhausting now, is because the floor has fallen out from beneath me. I mistakenly thought I was standing on solid ground with Anita, yet I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It feels like she’d collected all the parts of me together, the ones that had just endured an earthquake when we met #tickgate, wrapped her arms around them (literally), made them believe they were safe enough to rest, that it was possible to rely on someone and trust them, and then suddenly she pushed me headlong into the basement of a haunted house and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, set fire to the building, and walked away. It’s so jarring it’s not even funny.
I have to give myself some credit – I seem to have a tremendous skill for scrabbling round in the dark looking for the light and a way up and out, and instead alighting on unexpected/concealed trapdoors, falling through them, and landing face first in yet another pitch-black room with no ladder or way out. I honestly thought I had hit ‘bottom’ in June when everything ended with Anita. Like I surely must’ve been in the core of the fucking earth at that point…or hell… but, apparently not!
When I said goodbye to Anita, I knew immediately that I needed to get out of that dark place before I either burnt alive or starved to death which is why I quickly sought out Hannah. I did this despite every fibre of my body telling me it was probably better to perish in the basement rather than try and escape…and perhaps I was right, the basement level one would have been the better option because look how that worked out – another fucking trapdoor! Eek.
I keep unlocking new depths of shit and I honestly feel like some poor character in a glitching video game. I keep respawning, although I feel like I am missing the key bits of kit I need each time – like my armour – or at least a bloody torch! I know I need to find a way out and I’m trying so fucking hard and yet, over and over I find myself further down in the deep dark depths. I do wonder how long this can go on for? There’s only so long you can run on empty before everything grinds to a halt. Characters only have so many hearts to lose before it’s GAME OVER.
I am not a gamer so that feels like a really random analogy to have made. Anyway, what I am really trying to say is there has to be another way right? Like maybe rather than trying to climb the walls hoping to find the hole to get back up and out a million times perhaps there needs to be a different strategy. And I think I know what the strategy is but it’s fucking scary option which is why I keep trying to do this all by myself. Like there is a bit of safety in the narrative, ‘Noone can help me but me’…only I am not doing an especially wonderful job of helping me right now.
Elle asked me what the major sources of stress in my life are this week. Ummm. So…what did I answer, do you think? Like what is the one thing that is really making EVERYTHING else feel totally impossible right now?…You’d be seriously out of pocket if you’d placed your bet on ‘the ending with Anita and the fallout of all that it’s dredged up from the trauma vault #motherwound’
Nope. I didn’t say that because, you know, that would be far too fucking straightforward wouldn’t it?
In a stroke of avoidant genius I said, ‘myself’.
Which is true isn’t it? I am the major source of stress in my life. Because all the things that are stressing me out are, in part, down to me. It’s my wonky brain that holds onto shit like my life depends on it. I allow these things to stress me out. I put myself in situations that cause me stress. And even this ‘stuck in the bowels of hell drowning in the depths of depression’ situation isn’t being helped by me, really… like I know I am falling down the fucking holes over and over and when someone is seemingly offering me their hand to try and find a way through it, I don’t take it. I don’t trust it.
Awesome work RB.
Good job.
Slow fucking clap.
To be fair, though, I’m not surprised there are parts of me working really hard to keep me safe from ‘help’ after what ‘help’ has looked like over the years. I sometimes wonder if Elle knows that I am taking us both as far away from the path that we need to be on as is humanly possible in our sessions because there are so many paths that appear to be ‘the path’. Everywhere we go there’s uneven ground, deep bog (oh my god I love the word bog!) brambles, and probably a troll hiding under a bridge ready to jump out, so it looks about right for the therapy room.
I guess you could argue that eventually all the paths will lead to the same place in the end, but these random detours, whilst not completely irrelevant, aren’t doing a lot for my ability to cope with the week or my feelings of isolation and disconnection. Being in hiding means I can control what is going on to an extent – like I am not going to suddenly burst into tears and embarrass myself because I have everything sewn up so tight…or should I say, the parts that need to be in that room are gagged and bound behind the couch.
I read over my last post before starting this one and I was struck by this bit:
I feel absolutely broken by this…and it feels like there is nowhere to put it down to breathe. And the longer I don’t get ‘help’ with it the more shame and embarrassment I attach to what’s happened. Like the longer the topic is avoided the more I feel like it’s something that makes me seem weird or too much. Basically, the Inner Critic is starting to get vocal, and I really don’t need that.
Ouch.
Fucking true, though.
That critical voice has got louder and louder these last few weeks and as much as I know it’s trying to keep me safe – my dysfunctional protector in rusty armour – I could seriously do without it. I know I am on dodgy ground…bog… ha!… when the Critic is running free.
And then my absolute favourite thing started happening. The dreams. Fucking loads of them again. Now we really are in the shit…bog. Honestly, it’s exhausting being so tired, trying to sleep, and then finally getting to sleep and being pummelled repeatedly every night. The icing on the cake was last Friday night, though. It began with a fairly run of the mill anxiety dream involving Elle…this is the first time she’s come into my sleep but it’s not like ‘therapy’ dreams haven’t been a thing over the years and tbh this one was nothing like some of the horrors I have had! Excuse the condensed style, I shoved it all on the notes page on my phone as I woke up so I wouldn’t forget:
Running with no shoes in woods in pants and a vest- it’s raining – I’m cold but have to keep going-I run past a group of people well-dressed in expensive wet weather gear and good boots -as I run past I hear Elle’s voice coming from the group, “Oh my god, that’s one of my clients- what a fucking state!”
I mean, it’s not that big a deal. I can see that it’s all about being exposed and about how others who seem to have their shit together (dressed for the weather) perceive me. The painful bit was hearing Elle’s mockery when I had run past. Like I hadn’t seen her at all, but when she thought I couldn’t hear her she was mean, and not only that, clearly didn’t think that maybe there was something wrong and instead chose to be horrid based on her perception of what she saw – I wasn’t wanting to be running with no shoes and in next to nothing! This dream reminds me a bit of a dream I had years ago with Em in and her wearing a raincoat in the therapy room as if it would protect her from my storm.
There’s a part of me wondering ‘why do I care what she thinks anyway?’ I thought I had got to a point in my life where I really couldn’t care less about other people’s opinion of me – or perhaps not quite that, but I certainly give much less of a shit about this kind of thing than I used to (and that’s been hard won, I can tell you).
So why is this different? I guess in the wider world people might form an opinion but not really know ‘me’, so I just let them get on with that…but therapy – well it’s a bit different, isn’t it? We expose all of ourselves: the most vulnerable bits, the most shame-filled bits, the weird bits, and the whole point of it is about being seen, known, and accepted by someone else so that we can see, know, and accept ourselves. So, when the vulnerable parts are ‘rejected’ by that person we have trusted with the most delicate and fragile bits of ourselves stuff – it feels massive. Being wholly known and then to be thrown into the basement on repeat is fucking shit…and so I understand why this feels such a massive issue right now. I am sick of the fucking basement.
I am utterly crap a navigating my way through the dark.
Anyway, I didn’t think much on this dream because when I went back to sleep another one happened and OH MY FUCKING GOD!:
I give birth to a massively premature baby in the toilets of an airport terminal. It’s absolutely tiny – size of my hand.
The airport is huge, white, light, reasonably quiet but also completely useless as there’s no facilities or shops- I guess it’s like a vacuum. The plane I have to get is cancelled but I can’t not go to wherever it was (even though I wanted to stay behind) so am offered a reroute on another flight. I am concerned if I fly out on the reroute I won’t be able to get home on my original flight…I don’t feel like I have a choice, though.
Whilst I’m trying to sort this my dad shows up (?) and has taken my baby but I don’t know where. I start panicking and trying to find it like a crazed lunatic.
My plane is about to leave and I discover there are only two seats booked-what would I do with the baby who doesn’t have a passport?
I finally find my dad and ask where the baby is and he says he’s put in daycare because it can’t come with us. I am furious. I need to feed it or it’ll die. I can’t go away for a week on holiday!
He’s taken it to somewhere next to a run down shopping centre. I open the door and have to go down loads of winding corridors, dark, narrow, crap carpet- like not been touched since the 80s. I eventually arrive at what looks like a busy doctors waiting room- not day care. It’s really gloomy and no staff. It’s packed with people everywhere looking totally depressed.
I’m really aware of being massively under pressure and feeling panicked and overwhelmed. I scream “Where’s my baby?!” at the empty reception desk and someone pops out from under the desk and says it’s in a room behind her unattended.
I find it and it’s dirty and hungry. I ask if my dad left it a change bag, nappies, clothes etc – nope. I am so angry that he’d think this was an ok place to leave a newborn and do absolutely nothing to make sure it was safe or provided for. I realise I have no money, am bleeding heavily from giving birth, and am totally panicked now and feel like I’m going to cry.
The woman at the desk says she’ll look after the baby whilst I go find supplies in the playroom. Like everywhere else it’s grim, dirty, broken toys, torn books, totally neglected, and strangely, there’s noone in there (probably because is so crap). I find a box meant for nappy changes under a chair and it’s empty. Get back to the reception and ask where my baby is and the woman says she has wrapped it up safely and put it in a box.
I get to it and can’t find it because it’s been completely smothered, face covered etc. I desperately peel away the layers round its face and it’s dead. Try to do CPR but there’s no chance. “You’ve killed my baby” I cry.
I mean wow – right? That’s a big one. There’s such a lot I can pick out from that. But to go really simple with it -it’s all about my inner child and what’s happened with Anita and what’s happening with the therapy now.
I felt absolutely distraught when I woke up from this one and it’s stayed with me. The baby was so tiny and vulnerable – it wasn’t ready to be born, or in a safe environment for that to happen, then no one in the dream cares for it properly (story of my fucking life!) – even the person I trusted most in the world (my dad)- and in trying to sort things out and being so consumed with figuring out what to do and how to fly, Adult me let go of caring for it and then it’s too late. It’s dead. Mind you I am not in a particularly great state – bleeding out. I think we both could have done with a hospital and some professional help. But this is kind of what’s happening… really? Yeah… bear with me!
I think the cancelled plane symbolises what’s happened with Anita. The journey I thought I was going on just isn’t going to happen now and the reroute isn’t going to be easy or how I thought it would be either, even if I end up at the same destination eventually.
There’s certainly a part of me that is reluctant to get on Elle’s plane because I know that means I’ll never get back to Anita…but Anita’s plane is gone, it’s cancelled, and I cannot stay in that airport that’s completely barren and unhelpful because I have to go somewhere because I have some serious problems, and I have a really vulnerable self to keep alive… but then that part doesn’t seem to have a place on the plane so that’s a nightmare.
I think the biggest worry I must have, then, is that getting on Elle’s plane means I need to leave the most vulnerable part of me behind. It must feel on some level somewhere in my brain that the child parts of me can’t go on this flight or into this therapy and instead that part of me will end up stuck back where it originally came from in the 80s and die there in a place that is completely unsuitable for a child and where there is nothing but neglect. I don’t like the sound of that much.
But there just doesn’t seem to be any place for that baby, or by extension any of those really vulnerable child parts I’ve been working with in the therapy with Anita. And I am really conscious of this – I can feel how fucking distraught that young part of me is, and how much need there is. Like I am really aware of how much care that little one needs and yet no matter how I try I can’t seem to find the resources I need to keep it safe or alive.
And then there’s the part about feeling like I can’t go away for a week in the state I am in. Well, it’s not me going away, actually, it’s Elle. She’s got a break coming up and I thought that was ok…but obviously on a level it’s not. We all know how much I love therapy breaks!
So I guess this is why I am so fucking exhausted. I am perpetually searching for safety and help in what feels like a life-or-death situation… at least that’s the reality for my internal world. And all the while I am trying to keep up the act of being a capable and coping adult in my day-to-day life. That’s getting increasingly difficult to do and I can see my spinning plates are starting to fall off the poles and are smashing on the floor. I can’t do anything about it – there’s too many fucking plates. How on earth have I got so many fucking plates anyway?! Maybe I just need to lean into it and reframe it as a Greek wedding and celebrate the shattering of all that I thought I had to hold up. You know what I am like though, I’ll cut my feet on the shards as I try and walk away.
Anyway, back to the point…
I know that the therapy with Elle will never be anything like what I had with Anita – I wouldn’t want it to be, and I can’t replicate how it was. However, I really do need to grieve what I have lost because what I have lost is massive. It’s not just a person, it’s the sense of feeling safe and held and like my nervous system wasn’t completely fucked. It’s the also coming to terms with the fact that the person I trusted above all others has discarded me. That dead baby in the box feels really relatable.
I hate it. I hate how this feels. I hate that I seem to be unable to make any of this any better for myself and probably most of all I hate that despite what she’s done and how badly this has all been left, I just really wish that I could see Anita, sink into one of her long cuddles, listen to some stories and hear her steady heartbeat, and fall asleep for an hour.
My whole system is so dysregulated that I can’t find any sense of peace, or relaxation, or safety anywhere now, because it was with Anita that I found all that. The saddest thing is I was starting to be able to internalise that felt sense of safety and take it out into the wider world…but then the basement happened and here I am and I can’t tap into it at all because every time I bring that space with A to mind my stomach goes tight, I feel sick, and tears prick in my eyes. I can’t even begin to explain how massive a loss this has been but I feel it in my soul.
Fuck. Will someone please just hold my hand?
This song… man… I came across KT Tunstall almost twenty years ago, now, and Through The Dark couldn’t be more relevant. Tbh I should have just posted this and the lyrics. It says it all.
Things aren’t great here, still. I am really struggling. I feel more and more like the swimmer in Stevie Smith’s poem ‘Not Waving But Drowning’. I’ve been here before, clearly. Sometimes when it’s like this I feel so fucking hopeless. Like will I ever stop circling this drain at intervals throughout my life, or is this just me and do I need to learn to accept the fact that I just won’t ever really be fully, ok?
I’m forty now, and yet here I am again in a state of utter hell feeling desperately alone and unsupported. It’s all too familiar. My inner world is in collapse. I feel like I am a walking shell and yet no one knows. No one notices. It’s hard to notice, though, when I’m such a good actor. How can anyone see beyond what I put in front of them? I keep thinking about Brene Brown and all her work on vulnerability and connection and I really buy into it -but it’s hard isn’t it? Being exposed is hard. The potential for rejection is huge…but hiding prevents connection. It feels impossible sometimes.
So, right now it feels as though everyone is standing on the shore watching me, believing that I am having a wonderful time because I appear competent and to have my shit together – I look like a good swimmer, and I tell people a lot of the time that I am a good swimmer – but it’s all lies- a distorted version of reality. On closer inspection, if anyone really dared to look beneath the surface, they’d see my legs are tied together, I’m being attacked by sharks, and I am sinking.
I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I am thoroughly exhausted and there just is no sense of there being any relief/rescue any time soon…or ever. I feel so incredibly isolated, unseen, and frankly – desperate, just like the swimmer in the poem:
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
I know I sound like a broken record here, lately – but I spend such a lot of time in my life looking as though I am waving – and the reality is, I am not … not by a long stretch. I am desperately hanging on by a thread and hoping that someone will finally see that I need assistance and step in quick to help me. I need a lifeguard.
This blog space is, at least, somewhere where I can let it out a bit and the support I get here means such a lot to me– honestly, it’s been a lifeline after what’s gone on with Anita. However, I really need to be with someone in ‘real life’ in person who gets it, too. Of course, there is therapy – but as I keep saying, it’s early days and really isn’t getting anywhere near ‘this’ stuff.
I guess I must look like I am waving in the therapy room too, and Elle doesn’t know that because my ‘waving’ can look like I’m doing ‘the work’ so it adds in an extra layer of complication. It’s not like I sit there and talk about nothing – but it’s not the really painful stuff that is impeding my ability to function – it’s not about the loss of Anita and the fears I have about therapy going forward. It’s not about Elle and I and how this relationship is going to work…or not.
I mean, I’ve always had this problem in therapy to an extent – or certainly before a therapist really knows me. I can take the therapist off on a journey where we seem to be doing ‘the work’ and I appear to be letting them in to my world, but actually the ‘trauma’ or ‘issues’ I bring are not the most pressing things; they’re simply a smoke screen and so I frequently leave a session feeling unseen and lost.
There’s such a massive back catalogue of hard shit to choose from that I can be thoroughly avoidant and yet seem like I am opening up about deep stuff. Add to the fact that my day-to-day life is quite bloody challenging and there’s plenty to talk about there, too, means we’ll never get to the really raw stuff in an hour a week. It’s so frustrating. This is part of the reason I need more than one session a week. I almost need a session to process my week and a session to process my pain…whilst also keeping a sense of a solid container and building the relationship. Ugh. I hate this so much.
I can’t stand the disconnect. Being alone with this stuff is bad enough but being with someone else and them not seeing it when you so desperately need them to is really really tough. Don’t get me wrong – this is definitely a ‘me’ problem – I don’t/can’t expect Elle to be a mind reader – she doesn’t know me yet and she can only work with what I bring to her. But it’s just so hard not having a person who can see right through my front and reach down into the vulnerable parts and take their hands and help them feel safe. Anita would know what I needed and I miss that…I miss her.
I know I need to be patient. I can’t expect miracles after only five sessions with Elle. But I need something to shift soon because I’m crumbling, and I can’t afford to. I really need an explicit cue from Elle when we meet that it’s safe and ok to bring the very young and painful experiences to the room. I need those parts to be actively invited and welcomed into the space at the start of a session because they are so scared right now.
It’s been so so hard lately. The three month anniversary of leaving Anita hit me like a tonne of bricks – I mean I had a total collapse that day, ended up reaching out to her (mistake) and ended up in a right state after her lack-lustre reply:
I really needed some physical/tangible support that day but of course, there was no therapy, Elle wasn’t there, and so my online friends patched me up as best they could. I feel like everything Anita and I had is lost. I know she’s not ok but I guess I had hoped she’d reply with, ‘The invisible string never breaks. I still love you.’ But she’s not in that place. And that is why we can’t work together.
I feel absolutely broken by this…and it feels like there is nowhere to put it down to breathe. And the longer I don’t get ‘help’ with it the more shame and embarrassment I attach to what’s happened. Like the longer the topic is avoided the more I feel like it’s something that makes me seem weird or too much. Basically, the Inner Critic is starting to get vocal, and I really don’t need that.
Therapy has not been made any easier due to some issues with my schedule (kids not back at school and wife working away). This meant there was a ten-day break between sessions with Elle – which of course really doesn’t help matters when a week between already feels like too long a gap. I am really struggling with how It feels like everything is stretched so thin and I just can’t seem to get a sense of the relationship being real at all. I just can’t hold it in mind. It’s not enough.
After our last session (31/8) I emailed Elle to ask her to read the last two blog posts I had written ‘Three Months…’ and ‘Dear New Therapist’. She emailed me back thanking me for sending the link and said she would try but couldn’t guarantee she’d always get to read what I write before a session (Adult knows this is fair enough) and she suggested that we maybe begin sessions checking in about anything I have written as she thought that would be better than replying in writing as we’d be more in connection with one another. And I get she’s just trying to manage expectations and boundaries, but it felt distancing in a way…even if it’s not.
Like yep, fine, I get it – but sometimes when you tell someone you’re falling down a hole you just need something a bit more back, you know? Like sometimes you just need, “I really hear this is tough and I want to reassure you that you can bring all of this to the session, and I am not worried about your big feelings”. Of course, I don’t know when she will have read the posts over those intervening ten days – maybe just before the session and so perhaps she wouldn’t/couldn’t reply to the content because she probably hadn’t read them… but I did say in my linked email that things weren’t good.
The result of this ‘long’ break/lack of contact is a greater sense of disconnect and heightened feelings of rejection and abandonment. It’s felt like I am left drowning in hell that whole time. And this is where I am at. This is the legacy of what’s come before. This isn’t Elle’s fault. She’s just working how she works. I get the sense that she will be really businesslike outside sessions – will respond to queries or whatever but not really reach out in a relational/holding way. This is another thing I am going to have to grieve about Anita and I also need to try really hard not to be triggered by it because it feels like this is a step back towards Em…and that sends my system into a massive freak out.
We could go on and on about the pros and cons of between session contact until the world ends – and I don’t necessarily think there is a right way to do any of it and needs to be looked at between client and therapists together – although ultimately, it’s one of those boundaries that we as clients don’t get much say in.
I think I am just finding such huge changes in the way I now have to work incredibly unsettling and upsetting. I genuinely don’t think people can understand what it’s like going from two sessions a week with someone that knows you intimately with between session contact to one session with someone that doesn’t know you at all and isn’t really ‘there’ outside that hour. It’s a lot. As I said in my last post, my emotional scaffold has been ripped away. More than anything I need one of Anita’s warm hugs and to hear her steady heart beat. I need co-regulation.
I think it’s harder too, because the parts that need to be in therapy aren’t even making it into the room in the hour I do have. So ultimately, it feels like I’m on an endless struggle trying to keep all the young parts from melting down without any help. And they are melting down. Big time. That’s the issue. And they need their safe adult and she’s just gone and the new adult isn’t even aware they exist…not really. It’s beyond exhausting.
When I finally saw Elle on Friday, I told her that I was not doing well and had had a terrible time since I had seen her. She asked how she would know that if I’d seen her and she was looking at me. I said she wouldn’t know; she wouldn’t be able to tell at all. She asked if anyone would know. And I said “No”.
Actually, though, there is one person that would know – but she’s gone and that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? I know it’s getting boring, but I just can’t express how fucking devastated I am about what’s happened with me and Anita. She was the safe person, the life raft where I could catch my breath and now it’s all gone.
Elle made reference to one of the posts I had written at the beginning of our session (so I guess she’d read them) in which I had said I found it hard to keep the therapy in mind. She asked me if I’d like her to record the sessions and send them to me in a MP3 afterwards, so I had something to return to – so I do think she gets it to an extent. I also get that this was her attempt to show me that it’s ok and she’s not weirded out by me. The problem is I need so much reassurance now…and I didn’t take it as an opportunity to discuss either of the posts – although I really think we do need to talk about what’s going on in the room with us together…even if it’s fucking terrifying.
So, yeah, that’s where I am. Not in a great place.
It’s coming up to three months since I last saw Anita and I can honestly say that the feelings of grief, hurt, rejection, abandonment, anger…the list goes on…aren’t getting any better, easier, or more manageable. I remember angrily spitting “Oh shut up!! -What would you know?!” at Anita when she told me, “You’ll get through this, you know”, as she was physically and emotionally peeling herself away from me in May.
Her meaningless platitudes infuriated me at the time, and seemed to completely miss how big a deal our termination would be given where we were in the work and the nature of what we had been working on for more than three years. I mean you can’t do deep attachment work with so much focus on young child parts and trauma and then just walk the fuck away leaving all those young parts rejected and abandoned AGAIN. It’s fucking retraumatising, which in case anyone is in any doubt, that is not the aim of therapy!
I remember how I felt really upset that Anita couldn’t/wouldn’t truly acknowledge/understand just how devastating the end would be for me in that really horrible couple of weeks where we just weren’t able to find a way to resolve things. She kept repeating “I know this is hard for you.” Hard? This isn’t fucking hard. It’s been completely catastrophic…and that’s not me being hyperbolic, it’s completely floored me.
I honestly can’t find the words to describe just how utterly horrific this has been on so many levels. ‘Hard’ feels insulting, frankly. But then I think if she truly entered into the reality of what she’s done, the guilt and shame would have been overwhelming for her. She always prides herself on working ‘ethically’ but in so many ways what’s happened this last year or so has been miles away from ethical. And by the very end, she simply didn’t have the capacity to hold anything of my experience. She couldn’t even hold her own.
Still, the downplaying or avoiding the magnitude of the situation felt shit even if what she was saying was meant to appeal to the resilient part of me that refuses to give up and powers on through regardless. Of course, I’ll ‘get through it’ because I have no choice but to get through it. I have kept going, but it has come at a massive cost. What I really needed was for those young parts, the ones that have been left feeling so hurt and confused, was to be seen and held in what has been one of the most distressing emotional experiences of my life.
Instead, I was left and had to watch the person who has seen more of me than anyone else and mothered me and loved me in a way that I’ve never experienced before, walk away with what seems like not so much as a backward glance.
As a child I had to wave my mum off on a train every Sunday and wait until Friday for her to return…for six years… I seemed to spend my whole life hanging on for her to come back. And what/who came back was not the mother I needed…she’s never been able to be that from the beginning. I know that’s partly why time between sessions has always been so difficult for me, that an my dad dying suddenly out of nowhere three days into a holiday. I haven’t got a secure base. And yet now, I feel like I am standing on the platform staring down the track and Anita just isn’t coming back. It’s breaking my heart.
I just can’t get my head round it after all the promises and reassurances…the relationship…like how can this even be happening? I feel like a total idiot a lot of the time for thinking that what we had was special or important but then I look around me and see so much evidence of the relationship in a physical form in my house that I just don’t know how to make my brain make sense of it all. Like tell me I am insane – do your therapists give you things like this?
I said in my last post, I think, that Anita had text me the morning before I met Elle for the first time. That was the same day I got the pretty empty message from H too. Anita and I have had a weird kind of contact here and there since we stopped meeting. Invariably, the messages have been pictures or quotes or very short ‘I miss you’ type things and Anita has generally replied with something short and then a heart. It’s been confusing to the young parts because … well, it is confusing! The young parts don’t know what’s going on, or why A has left them. They see the hearts and think, maybe there’s still some love there…an Invisible String…but then… how can there be?
I had sent a message to A on a Monday night – midway through another of my epic convulsive crying episodes. On the Wednesday I got this message from A:
Ouch. More mention of how ‘hard’ it is. Groan. Reading between the lines she’s not coming back. She’s changed her work. She still isn’t ok. And I don’t fit her ‘criteria’ anymore… but where does that leave me? We said we’d come back to do a proper end at some point but there’s no reference to anything about that. I guess she’s still not in a place to do it. So much of it is about her experience – how things are for her and how broken she is. I’ll admit, I feel pretty sorry for her clients in couple’s work. I know it’s probably not the same as the relational depth of long-term work but even so…who needs a therapist who is hanging by a thread and emotionally checked out? Of course, there’s the rescuer in me who desperately wants to try and make things better for her…but can’t because she’s shut me out…not that it’s my role anyway, but I have been let into so much of what’s going on for her over the years that this is a really weird space to inhabit.
This message came in three weeks ago and I haven’t responded to it at all. I don’t know how to respond. I’ve never not replied to her – or had this long in radio silence…but things are so fucked that I feel like there is nothing I can say that won’t end up hurting me more in the end. I guess asking to see her to end makes it so final that part of me can’t bear it. Asking for clarification of what she means is really just asking for another sucker punch. It just feels so utterly shit. I miss her such a lot and can’t believe it’s got to this point. You can probably understand how I ended up crying in the swimming pool changing room for ten minutes after that combined with Hannah’s message.
I absolutely hate this.
Having been in similar territory with Em (well – an unexpected end – and I’m still not recovered from that) I knew that losing Anita was going to be totally disastrous for my system…for me – all of me. And it has been. I’d like to say that I’m doing better, that the pain is less intense, that I no longer find myself sobbing face down on my bed for hours at time – but that simply isn’t the case. Of course, grief, comes in waves, and there are some days that feel more doable than others, but ultimately, when I stop and feel into where I am at rather than avoiding and trying to hold myself together, the truth is, it’s really fucking bad.
I think I spend a lot of my time in denial or dissociated where this stuff is concerned. It’s simply too much, too big, too overwhelming to deal with on my own – and whilst I am not quite ‘on my own’, I am still only four sessions in to work with Elle having had it all go tits up with Hannah after eight sessions, and so I feel like I am right back at the beginning again. It’s not ideal. I feel like I am in a spin cycle in a washing machine and just don’t know which way is up…and am drowning too. Awesome.
The kind of holding and space I need to really deal with losing A isn’t there yet – and probably never will be simply because one session a week just isn’t enough – but it’s what I can afford. Honestly, I really feel like people like us have been dealt a massive heap of shit. It’s bad enough experiencing the debilitating trauma related stuff in the first place, but not being able to fully access what we need to heal it is total bollocks. This is another horrible side effect of ending work with Anita. We had agreed a payment that worked for both of us and enabled me to access the frequency of therapy I needed. Two sessions a week makes life feel just about doable for me and so losing that, and her, is such a massive blow on so many levels.
Elle is ‘there’ in the session, and I really like her, but she’s new to me and she’s not Anita. Of course, the outside session contact has disappeared too… and with that, another level of holding and containment has just evaporated overnight. It’s massive really how much of my emotional scaffolding has been ripped away from me. It’s so hard because I just really struggle to hold any sense of Elle being real from week to week and so I guess I feel like I am almost starting afresh every week…and we kind of are because it’s so new, but this is also the fall out of complex trauma and the whole lack of object constancy stuff. It’s utter shit. But I just don’t have the energy to broach any of it. Any ‘no’ right now is just going to feel epically rejecting and I just can’t go there.
I am struggling such a lot in the week right now and really really need to be ‘seen’ but then there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be viewed as some pathetic blubbering mess who can’t cope with a therapeutic relationship ending (although we all know it was so much bigger than that) even if that’s exactly what the most pressing issue is. I don’t want to overwhelm Elle with my massive feelings. I don’t want her to freak out and go, “Oh shit, this is going to be a right fucking mess in a few months!” and exit stage left because, let’s face it, ‘stage left’ is getting kind of cluttered with exiting therapists now!
I guess, I don’t want to lose yet another therapeutic support by being too much, albeit in a different way to how it was with H. At least I still have my writing! What happened with H has thrown a massive spanner in the works and I feel like I have had my legs taken out from beneath me again – mind you I wasn’t standing, merely trying to get back up after what’s happened with Anita. It feels like being a contestant in that gameshow ‘Gladiators’ from the 90s. I feel like I am running the gauntlet being repeatedly pummelled…I mean I guess I should be grateful that it’s not being done by anyone in a scary Lycra number, but it’s shite all the same!
Sorry, I am really rambling today…I could have just written a sentence today:
This is killing me.
But hey, let’s keep going with too many words!
Part of me is desperate to take off my armour when I see Elle and just cry in her presence – because thirteen weeks carrying this stuff on my own is too much. Thirteen weeks without Anita is…just…soul destroying. Part of me wants to turn up to Elle’s with my soft toy, take off my shoes, and just let that stuff be there in the space because it is so fucking heavy carrying this alone. But I can’t seem to go anywhere near what’s happened with Anita when I get in the room. I outlined a bit in week one but since then I go anywhere but there. I guess there’s a part of me that is anxious and has no idea how she’d respond to my uncalibrated emotion because I don’t know her…and she doesn’t know me. I literally have no idea what her opinion of me is. Does she even like me? Who knows? Could I ask? Yes – but would I want the possible answer? Nope. Not right now.
I think there’s a part of me that worries if I am really vulnerable and exposed, she’ll be like Em and leave me stranded in agony and so right now it’s easier to suffer on my own because I can manage that pain (sort of). Showing someone the reality of just how terrible this all is and for them to sit there like they’re watching a spectator sport would make me feel even more alone and isolated than I already do. I’m not saying any of this because of anything that Elle has said or done to make me think she’d do that – it’s purely my own fear driving this. I am scared. And ultimately, who I really want to be there with me in this and to hold me through it, is gone.
There’s probably another part of me that is reluctant to get too close to Elle because she is looking to move to purely online work in December and as much as I thought I would be just about ok with that (I am actually delusional aren’t I?!) , I really won’t be if I get too used to being with her in person and feeling like that room and that space with her is my safe place. The idea of having that taken away would be too much so it’s probably best not to go there, not to get to used to it, and not be reliant on it/her – whatever. Yeah, yeah, I know I am meant to be my own safe space, place, person…but let’s be real here – I am not! Yet.
So, instead of falling apart… and letting Elle into that part of my experience…I find myself talking about stuff that, I guess, lets her get to know me (because there’s significant back catalogue of shit), or a side of me – but it’s not the broken, vulnerable, utterly desperate part/s of me. It’s not false adult, either. I think it’s my actual adult-self that’s turning up, but it’s an adult self that is now so fucking fragile that I’m using every adaptive skill and strategy I have to make sure I don’t fuck this up. I imagine I come over as competent, emotionally intelligent, and generally ‘reasonably’ together (don’t laugh!). In fact, Elle wondered in one of our first sessions why I am not doing her job. H said exactly the same thing. K says it all the time, too. But being told I’d make an excellent therapist – or that adult me would (!) – doesn’t really do much for the little parts who are just crying out to not be left alone any longer. There are so many ‘not together’ parts that need attention.
I mean, it’s tough. It takes me such a long time to build trust and feel safe in a relationship and that isn’t going to get any better after what’s just happened, is it?! As much as I need somewhere and someone to process this with, I am so fucking wary now. I obviously want to do the work. I want to build a relationship with Elle. I just also know I don’t have it in me to be hurt very much more. I know at some point I’m going to have to take a step towards her…but I actually feel a bit sick thinking about doing that. That’s the level of anxiety and fear I have around this now.
Oh, fuck me. This is beyond exhausting. And yeah, I think I am circling the next trapdoor as I fall into a deeper depression. Most excellent.
Dear New Therapist – Hello And Welcome To The Shit Show!
Given where I am currently at, staring down the barrel of three consecutive failed therapies, I thought it might be interesting to write an open letter to you, Elle, my ‘latest’ and ‘newest’ therapist (*yeah – I must be fucking insane!)…so buckle up.
To be honest, how I am feeling about your profession right now isn’t great. I feel like I have been thrown out a moving vehicle, run over, and left for dead one too many times now. How I am still here is anyone’s guess. I reckon I must have some cockroach DNA in me somewhere because I simply refuse to give up and die…are ticks and cockroaches related I wonder? Either way, it seems I’ll be here after the apocalypse because I just don’t know when to stop trying, to stop hoping that there is a way to heal this… this…devastation inside…in therapy…even if it has been exacerbated by your therapist colleagues.
I may look ok enough on the outside. I may smile and make light of my situation, but the reality is, internally at least, I am not in one piece at all. I am shattered. I have tried to patch myself back together with my trusty rubber bands and chewing gum but, in reality, I have desperately needed some plaster casts and bandages – surgery even – I really need someone to help me glue all my pieces back together and instead have been left bleeding out, alone. I honestly don’t think I have it in me to be in a hit and run again and so this is it…this is the last time I am doing ‘therapy’ and so I guess I am putting a lot of faith in the pair of us, and our ability to form a relationship, to get this right…no pressure, then!
Ultimately, there’s still a part of me that hopes, that somewhere, out there, well actually not out there – right here- there is a therapist who genuinely cares about their clients’ emotional well-being and wants to do the deep work that’s not always a walk in the park. I hope that you will be a good fit for me, and that you will want to work ethically and effectively with me and be able to go the distance without you crashing and burning at some point along the line. I know we can’t predict the future: Anita didn’t mean for what’s happened to happen but she was blind to her ‘blindspots’ – and so I hope that you are self-aware enough to know when you are on ice and to put things in place to support yourself before they spiral out of control leaving me and our therapy as collateral damage.
I’d like to think that you are a therapist who doesn’t always seek to work with the ‘easy’ clients who can be turned around in six or twelve sessions and are then out the door ready for the next one on an endless therapy conveyor belt. I would hope there’s a part of you who enjoys doing depth/long-term relational work with those of us who are so often labelled ‘complex’, and probably behind closed doors ‘difficult’, ‘needy’, and ‘attention-seeking’. I’d like to think that rather than being intimidated or scared by those of us who’ve got a lot going on in our emotional worlds that we might, instead, be seen as people who are actually a bit interesting and people who you can learn from, too.
Please know that it takes enormous amounts of courage for us, as clients, to enter into a therapeutic relationship…and especially if we have already been hurt in therapy/by a therapist (or in my case, therapists). I mean there’s a part of me standing off to one side at the minute shaking her head in disbelief that I have searched you out and want to try AGAIN. Like what the hell am I doing?! I must be nuts…which is why I need the therapy, right?!
I feel like I gave my last two therapists (A and H) a pretty good road map of ‘me’, having been body-slammed by Em and yet here I find myself, in your office, having to start over again. The good news is, so far, I think it’s going ok. I feel like you are on the same page as me and I like that you haven’t been freaked out by the fact that I write. I’m glad we got that cleared up in the initial email as it means I don’t have to second guess myself or feel like I need to keep secrets from you. I really feel like honesty is massively important and I feel like I need to be completely stripped back and authentic.
I know that, so far, I am doing the brain thing…intellectualising…but also maybe distancing a bit. That’s not being dishonest – it’s just trying not to fall apart. I’m not surprised. Whilst I really want to let my guard down, it’s going to be really hard to get close to the reality of the pain ending with Anita has caused me because it’s raw and the parts that are impacted are so very different to the person that has been sitting in front of you so far. I know I’ve told you a bit about what’s happened but what’s there is HUGE and I don’t want to frighten you away. Although I get the impression you can handle whatever I bring.
Please, please be gentle with me…and please can you not go online in December! 😉
RB
P.S- I like your shoes.
*Sometimes the universe just seems to deliver, doesn’t it? Everything went belly up with Hannah, she hadn’t replied to my email about her blog ultimatum, and so I took it that she wasn’t going to come back to me with a ‘let’s talk this through and have a proper end’ which is what I was hoping for. I knew we probably wouldn’t find a middle ground but a session to end properly would have been nice given everything that has happened with Anita and Em. Alas. It wasn’t to be.
I ended up texting her the day before the session we were due to have had to check whether she had received my email. She had. She text back and said she had and that she respected my decision and the message was much like I had thought it would be – short and to the point, but essentially washing her hands clean! I was a bit disappointed that I had had to chase her on that and that it seemed that she was potentially not going to acknowledge my email…but then I guess that’s another indication that it wasn’t quite right.
Fortunately, by the time I got her reply on the Wednesday I was already set to meet with Elle later that day and so whilst it hit hard (much harder than I had anticipated after only 8 sessions), alongside an unexpected text from Anita (more on that another time), I at least had something in place and wasn’t left in limbo. But let’s just say picking up two texts from two ex-therapists in a swimming pool changing room and ugly crying in the cubicle for ten minutes wasn’t on my bingo card for that day!
How did I come across Elle? And what made me decide to take one last leap into therapy having sworn I would NEVER go there again? Well, I was online randomly googling (as you do) and a blog post came up that I found really interesting…I liked what the writer had to say and loved their style of writing. I proceeded to read and like a few posts and saw that the writer was a therapist… IN MY CITY!
So, I thought, well, she writes so I wonder what she would think about working with someone who writes too? I mean I know it was not a problem for Em or Anita but after what’s just happened with H I thought it would be sensible to talk about it from the get-go.
I fired off an email outlining what has happened to me with therapy ending with Anita and then the impasse due to the blog with Hannah. Elle responded warmly and insisted that my blogging would not be a problem for her at all – PHEW – and she said that even if I didn’t want to meet with her, she’d be interested to have the link to my blog if I wanted to share it. It felt like a massive relief knowing that, the blog was not going to be a problem. So we agreed to meet that week.
We’ve met twice now, and I think this might actually end up being a really good therapeutic alliance! It’s going to be really different from Anita – but perhaps exactly what I need for the next stage of the journey. The only downside is that she’s contemplating going online from December…and that really doesn’t fill me with joy.
We all know how terribly I did when it was lockdown and online with Anita. But now, there is an additional issue: privacy. My wife works from home most of the time and sound travels like crazy in our house. There is literally nowhere that I could have a completely private conversation and – let’s face it – the stuff I have to talk through requires my being completely relaxed and not worrying about being overheard. I really think the in-person energy is really important and so I really hope that she changes her mind on this… but then I’d rather have someone who really gets it online than an in-person who doesn’t quite.
I guess we’ll just have to see what the universe delivers but keep your fingers crossed for me x
Nothing quite screams depression like zombie-ing it through the day feeling like you’re about to collapse, then the moment the kids are safely in bed taking yourself off to bed and then sobbing your heart out, huge tears, snot, literally wailing, face down on your bed well into the early hours, then texting your ex-therapist that you love her (groan), and then finally when the tears subside, raiding the fridge for a mini pork pie at 2am… and I don’t even really like pork pies, but turns out I’d ‘forgotten’ that eating was a thing yesterday until I’d had my breakdown. It’s been that bad. The young parts have had a collective meltdown and I just don’t know where to start with strapping them all back in the bus because I think it freewheeled off over the cliff edge and exploded.
I’m trying to make light of all this, but actually it’s really not funny. I feel awful. Some of it is hormonal – but that’s only a really small part. PMS is just exacerbating an already intolerable situation. I feel completely and utterly broken now. It’s weird. I hadn’t realised just how much having Hannah (new therapist) on board was creating just about enough of a dam so that things didn’t flood out. I mean it’s been really really hard in the last couple of months. One therapy session is certainly not enough to hold how I feel, and a new therapeutic relationship is harder work, but at least it was something, a bit of a scaffold if you like – and certainly better than nothing at all.
It would have been a break from therapy for this next couple of weeks anyway, which would have been tough enough – I knew I was going to have to dig deep because alongside no H I wouldn’t be able to see K or have a massage with N – basically I was on my own for the first time since Anita and I ended – yikes. However, knowing that I actually have no therapy at all now to hang on for, or return to is… hard. And I simply don’t have the emotional energy to go through the process of searching for someone else, sending the emails, doing all the communications, and then having to start over AGAIN.
You might be wondering what the hell happened. How have I broken a therapy in only eight sessions? I mean, crikey, that’s impressive, isn’t it? Well, it’s complicated…or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. It’s a mess, that’s for sure. I don’t even know how to write this because as much as think I protect mine, and my therapist’s privacy, ultimately the thing that’s thrown a spanner in the works is this blog.
Groan.
There’ve been eight sessions and this is the first I have got to it – when it is over!
When I met H I immediately liked her. A few things struck me about her – she seemed to have a good sense of humour, she seemed to actually be interested in what I was bringing (well, that’s the job right?!), and she seemed to be my intellectual match (actually, I think if I’d come across her in the real world she’s the sort of person who I would be friends with). I know that sounds like a really weird thing to say (the brain stuff!), but actually I really need someone to meet me where I am at to do this work because I have the capacity to run rings round therapists. It’s not deliberate. It’s a defensive/protective thing that means I can hide my vulnerable parts – but this time I really needed someone to get through my walls because, understandably I am in a cold war bunker right now after my most recent experiences in therapy.
I found that I felt reasonably at ease with H even though parts of me hated everything about being in a new room with someone that wasn’t Anita and wanted to run away. I was able to outline quite a bit of what had happened with A and how I felt as well as some other things that have happened in my life. It was coming from the False Adult self’s perspective but that’s fine – she gets stuff done and protects my little parts. Those small ones are so hidden around others right now that it was never going to be a go in and fall apart and collapse in a puddle on the floor situation – even if part of me felt like that’s what was happening inside and could have done with it!
It was always going to take time to build trust, but I thought that it would be a good enough fit for now and eventually the relationship would develop. I knew that I could never cry (even if it’s screaming inside) in that room because the parts that needed to feel safe just didn’t – and that’s not H’s fault – it’s a time thing and a lack of relationship, but it was fine for now, because I have been crying plenty outside of it so it’s not like I am not releasing emotions…and it would come eventually…maybe.
I realised early on that I was intellectualising my experience, and whilst that’s fine, it doesn’t really get beneath the armour and into the agony that I am feeling. And it is agony. It’s annihilation for the youngest parts. However, I also knew that I needed to lay the groundwork and I would never just go to someone new and let my guard down and I knew the process can’t be rushed so I knew it would take time ESPECIALLY because I’ve just been hurt so badly in therapy. Because I was so stuck in my brain and doing the articulate, ‘this is how it is’ stuff I think it created a dynamic where H probably thought I was looking for solutions and to problem solve the situation which sometimes felt like I wasn’t being seen…but then that’s because I wasn’t letting her see me! I think she wanted to dig down but also knew I was resisting.
Sometimes she’d suggest things, and whilst adult me probably would quite like to go on a retreat one day, right now that isn’t what I need. I am not in need of a journey of self-discovery. I know who I am…I know all the parts of me, their fears, triggers, and what makes things better. The issue I have is the person that helped make it all better has gone before the work was done – it’s been like learning to ride a bike and suddenly whipping the stabilisers off when I was nowhere near ready for that – and I was confidently pedalling along and whoosh -it has floored me.
There are grazed knees, bruises, broken bones even, and what’s worse, no one to help. The little ones are crying on the floor…hurt and abandoned again.
What I really need is someone to sit with me in the grief and make space for all those small parts to feel safe enough to talk about how bad it feels to have Anita gone. I don’t need anything more than that. Of course, that’s where the issue of intellect comes in because whilst I know what I need, I am defending against it and any time H would tentatively edge towards the vulnerable stuff I’d literally tell her no. And so, we’d go back to trying to think of ways to make my day-to-day better.
I would always take my shoes off and curl up on the couch at Anita’s but my shoes remained on and firmly rooted to the floor in the new room with the new therapist – I wasn’t wholly relaxed, and whilst part of me would have loved to have been able to go and sink into the space and perhaps take a soft toy with me to help soothe the parts that are never going to be held again, I just wasn’t there yet. I think, now, I actually probably need an invitation to do these things because I am so scared of being too much. I am so terrified of being vulnerable because I just can’t be hurt and rejected AGAIN.
I realised I had a way to short circuit some of this errr resistance, protectiveness, or whatever it is a few sessions in. But how? Well, I mean I have this blog, don’t I? This is me. Vulnerable and unarmoured. I took a leap of faith and emailed H and asked her to read some posts I’d written because I was struggling with feelings of shame and didn’t know how to break through it. I thought maybe seeing stuff would allow H to know what it’s been like for me and to really see the level of attachment work I’ve been doing…I mean it’s basically been reparenting.
I had mentioned that A had read me stories, hugged me, and given me gifts in session and I felt H bristle a bit even though she hid it well. And I’d felt this a couple of times round other things I had mentioned about how Anita and I had worked. I know how it’s not really in the therapy training modules to work how Anita and I have – but actually it’s not uncommon especially with C-PTSD. H is a relatively new therapist and I think that coming across someone like me and this kind of situation with two therapies that have left me reeling is new territory for her. Or at least I’d hope so because frankly, it seems all too bloody common for those of us here, doesn’t it?
Anyway, she agreed to read my posts over a few weeks, and I think it helped her see what things have been like for me even if I couldn’t tell her completely how it felt in sessions. As I say, I suddenly felt a lot of shame for having had the kind of relationship I have had with A because being in the room with H was such a stark reminder of what normal talking therapy is like. Part of me felt like maybe it was wrong how Anita and I were because I felt like H probably felt it was. And yet in my heart and for those little ones I really refuse to let that take root because how we worked, and that relationship did me such a lot of good for such a long time and it was through that closeness, I was able to get down into the trauma and for the first time in my life feel held and safe. It was Anita’s willingness to meet me exactly how I needed that moved such a lot on. And despite everything that’s happened – the love was so there and it was real…
It’s just an absolute killer that that therapy has been cut short when it has because it’s now so traumatic losing A and the work wasn’t done. It hasn’t reached its natural conclusion, the individuating and moving to independence, and an end because the client was ready…I just wasn’t there yet and so it’s now just another abandonment and rejection to deal with.
Anyway, if I felt shame in the room with H and it stopped me talking then I could at least circumnavigate that via the blog posts and keep things moving forward. I felt like allowing H to see the blog was giving her the map and things seemed to be going ok. It was also a massive exercise in trust.
I had been really guarded for the first seven sessions, then last week something shifted a bit. I don’t know if it was just that I felt like I was getting to know H or what, but we had a more real and vulnerable conversation. Somehow, WordPress had refreshed when H was reading a post I’d sent and taken her to the most recent one I had written about how I had gone about selecting a new therapist. It didn’t talk about the new therapy or her, but it mentioned her. She told me she’d read it and asked if she was Hannah. Initially it shocked me that she’d read it because it wasn’t something I had directed her to. I mentally had to track what I had written as we started talking – but actually there was nothing there other than more reference to Anita and the messages I had sent since we’d finished.
H explained that she’d had a bit of a reaction to realising that she might be in a blog and that it had made parts of her feel vulnerable, and probably tapped into some insecurities but that she’d take it to supervision. I said I understood that, and we talked a bit around it all. It felt like a connecting conversation and I left feeling that for the first time probably we had actually met each other on a deeper level. On the way home from the session I did a lot of thinking and I realised that that I really didn’t want H to feel awkward or for this to get in the way of the therapy and so I sent her an email explaining a bit about the blog and the anonymity etc. That evening I started to get a bit of a sick feeling – anticipating a reply. I had hoped that the blog wouldn’t turn out to be a problem but deep down I could feel that it was going to be.
She replied at length the next day. I won’t copy it here because, ultimately, what came out of it is that she is not comfortable being included on a blog and so I don’t want to disrespect that by putting her words/email here. Essentially, boiling it down, she said that whilst she thinks my writing is a great way to process, she won’t work with me if my experiences of therapy are on a public blog even if it is anonymous because she feels it will affect our developing relationship. She would, instead, want me to write privately and only share it with her.
Basically, I think she feels vulnerable and as if her practice is being scrutinised and no amount of me trying to explain that that’s not how it is will change that which is a massive shame.
She tried to make it land as softly as she could and said she hoped it didn’t feel rejecting, or patronising, or attacking … but, it kind of does – the timing is just crap and it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. I know I had a choice, I could have stopped writing the blog and kept seeing her…and I do get it from her side. She doesn’t know me and how does she know I would never expose her… but I just wouldn’t. I never have with Em or Anita despite what they’ve done to me.
The world is changing such a lot in regard to social media and it’s not uncommon now for clients and even therapists to have TikTok accounts or Instagram accounts with videos detailing therapy. Obviously, therapists can’t speak about clients directly, but lots anonymise interactions in books and articles or talk about general experiences online…some are in ‘therapist’ Facebook groups and aren’t even discreet at all asking about issues in their current practice. ‘I have a client who does x… what should I do?’
So whilst I get it – I also don’t. I feel like I trusted her with a massive part of me and it’s backfired.
Em was Mrs Boundaries (wasn’t she?!) with years and years of experience in the NHS and privately, and Anita has twenty under her belt and neither one of them ever once told me that my blog was a problem or that they wouldn’t work with me because of it. In fact, both of them encouraged me to write it – even if Em once really struggled to read one of the posts after we’d had a massive rupture and were trying to process what had happened together. My blog has never been a huge part of my therapies, my therapists don’t read all my posts, but there have been times when I have written and shared it with my therapists, and it’s been so helpful. But mostly – it is my space to process and my support network.
We all know how useful this space can be for us – and so ultimately, I had to make a horrible decision. And as much as I don’t write as much as I used to, or in the way that I used to (there is no session-by-session accounts anymore and it’s more general or after the event), and the blog sees much less engagement than when I would write regularly, I decided that I couldn’t drop the blog in order to keep the therapy and I wrote an email to outline why:
Hi Hannah,
I’ve tried to formulate my thoughts on this, but there’s a lot of conflict inside and so it’s been really hard to try and listen to all that and give it space. Firstly, though, I just want to say that I am really grateful to you for having seen me when things have so spectacularly disintegrated with Anita. I had hoped that we would, over time, build a good enough relationship to do some of this work, and felt that Thursday had been a shift into something more real and less guarded, but I did also get the sense that this was what you were going to come back at me with after I emailed you so had been preparing for this.
On reflection, letting you see the blog was clearly a mistake – if I hadn’t have shown you, you’d never have known about it, and I guess we would have continued on. As it’s not identifying, had you have ever come across it by chance you’d never have known it was mine. As you said, lots of clients journal, some might bring that to sessions, but actually lots blog, too, now – especially younger people (not that I am young now!). The thing is, I’m not a liar and don’t deliberately conceal things in therapy because I actually think it’s useful for you, or whoever I work with, to know about it and see it here and there when it’s relevant.
I let you into this place in my world because actually it’s my most vulnerable stuff. I could really easily have hidden from you for months and months in the room and never have got beneath what’s really going on. I’m good at running rings round people and looking like I am talking about something important when it’s really just a screen for what’s underneath. The blog might feel exposing to you, but it completely exposes me – hence the fact that it’s anonymous but I wanted you to see it because ultimately that’s me…or the part of me that’s hurting and needs the therapy.
You might wonder why on earth I would bother writing and posting this stuff if it is so vulnerable and exposing? What purpose does it serve? I do it partly because it’s a creative process that allows me to process my feelings. It’s a kind of journal. It’s safely out on the platform and not sitting in my computer possibly being read by someone at home – that happened years ago when I would keep a journal on my laptop and it caused no end of friction. The blog is about me and my experiences and feelings – it’s not a spotlight on the therapist, although I can understand how it might feel that way from your side.
Another reason I write publicly is because it was finding someone else’s therapy blog when I was seeing Em that completely changed things for me. I was in such a bad place. I was constantly dissociated, swimming in shame, and feeling like there was something very wrong with me. I was chronically anorexic and basically just a fucking mess but I was in therapy once a week so surely what I was experiencing was normal…nope. It was finding this person’s blog, that made me feel like there was someone else in the world like me, that I wasn’t somehow defective for feeling how I felt, and it went a long way to dispelling the shame and embarrassment I felt in the therapy…and in my general existence. It was this blog that first introduced me to the idea of structural dissociation and parts.
It also allowed me to see that therapy doesn’t all look the same way and doesn’t have to be a horrible experience of feeling inadequate and defective. It also highlighted to me that big feelings happen in therapy, it’s not always plain sailing, that ruptures happen and can be navigated effectively and you shouldn’t fear being ‘too much’ all the time, or at least if you feel that, that it can be worked with rather than being reinforced. I was always so concerned about not being viewed negatively that I ‘behaved’ – basically spent my time hiding in the room until this point when I realised that actually you ‘should’ be able to bring all of yourself to therapy, not just the bits that seem palatable. The thing is the bits I felt were unpalatable weren’t the angry parts or the teen – it was the youngest, most needy ones. It’s horrific feeling so many feelings but also feeling so embarrassed and ashamed that you dissociate all the time. I mean it doesn’t help when the therapist confirms that narrative of being too much… but there we are.
Clients have no idea what to expect when they enter therapy – TV doesn’t really depict it and books…well, like I say, they’re written from therapists’ and academics’ perspectives. Perhaps the closest we get to something is work by Carolyn Spring but even she doesn’t really delve into the depths of the relationship. Clients just don’t get a voice. The reality of therapy and how it can be is a big void, the unknown. You just go in and give it a go, not knowing what is possible or what to expect but honestly, face planting into attachment injuries is no fucking fun and is actually terrifying.
There’s a lot of good therapists out there, I am sure (maybe!), but there’s also a LOT of bad, and it’s all hidden behind closed doors. The power is so unbalanced from the get-go in therapy and clients, are out on a limb, we’re pretty isolated because most of us don’t talk about our therapy with people in our day-to-day lives. I totally get that lots of clients are ‘easier’ than me, or the people I come across, but Complex Trauma is really a minefield in therapy, and we need all the help we can get both inside and outside the room…but that’s not easy.
My wife knows nothing of my therapies, or what’s happened in them. She doesn’t even know your name. I haven’t said a word about any of it to anyone. I don’t talk to my friends in my everyday world about it because – well – can you even imagine? I felt you bristle when I told you about Anita and how it had been with her, and you’re a therapist, so imagine having a coffee with a friend and trying to explain to them that you feel suicidal because someone who you’ve seen for years, who has read you stories and held you for hours without words just so you can hear their heartbeat, and worked extensively with your young parts, and essentially been a mother figure to you, has dumped you!
If I said that my young selves were totally broken and feel like self-harming – they just wouldn’t get it. If I said that I miss her and cry most days – most people would think I was a fucking lunatic because how could anyone understand? Most of my friends are lucky enough to have had good enough childhoods so they don’t understand the mother wound at all. I mean I guess you don’t either [for x reason]. And yet it is breaking me inside. I have this great coping exterior, but I am so tired of trying to hold it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum. All I want to do when it’s like this is be back in that familiar space, with Anita who knows me inside out, and put the weight of the world down and fall asleep. My nervous system is … fucked.
Only she’s gone and no one knows or gets it…except these merry band of bloggers.
It was so helpful to me to alight on a community of people who experience similar things to me because there are a lot of us out there with significant trauma and attachment injuries and we speak a language that most people just don’t understand. In fact, lots of therapists don’t understand it either. When I talk about what feels like a black hole in my chest that has edges that are ulcerated and there’s just a sense of falling through an endless abyss because there has never been any containment or holding for parts of me… they get it. Therapists don’t. If you haven’t felt it, you just cannot begin to truly know how fucking debilitating it is. It’s beyond words. It’s trauma so deeply locked in the body from a pre-verbal time and it’s impossible to understand…but these people do.
I know that my blog has really helped other people and whilst I don’t feel like I have to write because of this, I do it for me first and foremost, it feels like it would be a shame to stop that when it has done such a lot of good not just for me but for others, too. I’ve been blogging for seven years now. It’s been massive in my processing and growth but at times it’s also literally been a lifeline. The handful of people that I know via the blog that have become friends have got me through some really tough times. When everything went south with Em it was that group of people that assured me that I was not a tick, that I wasn’t all the things that she made me believe and the Inner Critic was screaming at me. People that had followed my journey had seen how things had developed and were there to help me when I was completely alone in my ‘day-to-day’ life. Same goes with what’s happened with Anita. It’s a peer support network. And there’s no guarantee it would work out with you and then I’d be left totally stranded…again.
Clients are usually really discreet in their day-to-day lives about their therapy. Noone in my [county] world knows who Em is or Anita is or what they’ve done to me. I could have spoken to people in this area, used their names, slammed them, made public comments on their social media… but I haven’t. I haven’t done that on the blog, either. As I said, I never would because I’m just not that type of person. None of what I write is about wanting criticise practice…it’s about what’s happening to me. How what has happened has impacted me – good and bad. But it is sooooooo private. And I know that seems absolutely bonkers to say when it’s online, but it is.
Therapists get supervision and peer supervision…and personal therapy, and clients get absolutely nothing – and yet it is us who often suffer harm at the hands of therapists. As I say, it is rife. You wouldn’t believe it, or perhaps you might be beginning to. I don’t follow many blogs but five of my online friends have been terminated since October alone and are left to pick up the pieces. If it wasn’t for this network online, it would be really crap. I can honestly say that it’s been a couple of these people checking in with me on a daily basis that has got me through this recent shit show because it is pretty bleak inside.
Like last night, I dreamt about my daughter when she was a tiny baby, not old enough to support her own head. She was locked inside a car. I couldn’t get in to get her out. Someone had put her in a car seat but not strapped her in properly and she was slumped forward screaming and stuck. It doesn’t take a genius to see what that’s about…but I am literally stuck in this kind of loop. And I need help to reach into that stuff. But I see you an hour a week – and there one hundred and sixty seven others I need to get through.
You say you’d like me to continue to write in some kind of capacity and maybe process that together. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wanted to share stuff with you and that’s why I let you into that part of my world. My writing a blog doesn’t mean that part of the process gets skipped, it’s not like because I blog, I then withhold important stuff in sessions, and I can understand how that might be seen as a problem. As I said the other day, so much of a client’s experience never makes it into the room anyway and this is for lots of reasons – so sharing writing helps. I get you would prefer me to write like this, to you, and not online… I just don’t know how I feel about it.
Part of me thinks it’s not a huge deal because I don’t write like I used to anyway. I don’t write session by session accounts. But I think the biggest kick back I am getting is the fact I feel like my blog and whether I have it should be my choice.
I get that you’ve issued this ultimatum and I get that it’s where you are at. I understand how from your side you feel like me writing would potentially jeopardise the relationship because you would feel exposed. From my side, I know that if I stopped writing because you’ve told me I have to or that’s the end of things, and I agree to stop writing to try and keep the relationship, then I think there’d be parts of me that would really resent that. Here, yet again, is someone with power dangling the relationship over me and making it conditional. And that’s fine. I really do get it. And to be honest it’s such early days that I can just chuck this on the pile with Anita and process it all at once… but on my own.
I feel like I am done with therapy now. I can’t do this to myself again…which ironically kind of means the end of the blog doesn’t it? So why am I having such a strong reaction to your request? Don’t blog and keep the new therapist. Or have a dead blog and no therapist. Great.
I was trying to think of a work around – what would happen if I made the blog private accessed with a password, and it was there only for a handful of people that I actually have contact with… but then that doesn’t work because they can still see it and I don’t think given what you’re saying that would be any better. Then I thought I could try and write like I sometimes do about particular issues, like eye contact in therapy, or shame, or the mother wound…but then that all is through a lens of my experience so that doesn’t really work. I thought about not writing at all for a while – because I really have been AWOL on the blog for the last year – and seeing where things got with us but then I wouldn’t want to develop a relationship and then have the same ultimatum when I actually care more.
So, I don’t think I have a solution that works for either of us and so that just leaves it that I’ll have to say goodbye. It’s not that I value the blog more than I do spending time with you working together but it is/has been a really important part of my journey and I just don’t think I can cut off that support network in the hope that things, this time, work out…because things just don’t seem to work out where I am concerned with therapy.
Thank you for your time. I don’t see any point in coming in on the 10th because that won’t change anything. I don’t need help finding someone else. I thought I had done a good job this time around, but I’m just not interested in doing this again. I’m sorry that this has happened but to be honest I think you’ve probably dodged a bullet anyway. I know you haven’t meant for any of this to feel rejecting or attacking or patronising…I do get where you are coming from. This has to be a new record even for me, though, I usually manage three years before it goes to shit!
Take care,
RB
So, there we are. I haven’t heard back from her – I don’t really expect to as she’s on a break until the 10th. I imagine when she does eventually read it, I’ll get something back like:
Hi RB,
Thank you for your email. I understand your decision and I am sorry that we can’t agree on this aspect of the therapy together. I wish you well for the future.
Best wishes,
H
And that’s fine. That’s what they do isn’t it? It’s about the best I can expect from someone who’s seen me for eight weeks and doesn’t really care about me or know me. So, I’m ready for that. But there’s a part of me that feels massively disappointed about all this. I hate that I have had to choose between two sources of support because they are both important in different ways. It’s just awful timing, and whilst this is not anything like what Em or Anita have done, it is yet another example of me not fitting with a therapist, and my need being shelved as ultimately, we don’t have much power in our own therapies and the therapist holds all the cards.
To say that this has been a difficult week would be the most epic understatement. I have been emotionally flat-lining and barely holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum. Externally, I have been running on a kind of righteous anger about what’s happened with Anita, and it’s given me the energy to function, to a degree.
My last blog post probably seemed reasonably together and optimistic…I guess that’s the False Adult self again trying to keep me functional because underneath that, there is absolute and total devastation. Maybe that’s not quite right – I guess, there was a bit of optimism because at least things seemed to be moving in the right direction with the new therapy and I was settling into that so it was like having a bit of a life belt even if I was trying to swim in a stormy ocean. Only I’ve managed to fuck that up already sooooo maybe that’s why I have crashed and burned – or drowned – overnight and things feel so shit. I don’t know if I’ll bother to write about that – and there’s a huge irony there.
The reality of what I have lost with Anita has come into even sharper focus – I mean how much sharper does it have to get?! And as much as I am angry with her, mostly I am just terribly sad. Anger is a mask for such a lot of feelings isn’t it?
I am exhausted from holding myself together when everything is falling apart inside. I feel like I am looping on an endless marathon – there is no finish line and I just have to keep going putting one foot in front of the other in the hope at some point there’ll be somewhere to rest. Only, my legs are done and there are no rest points. I feel like I am on the verge of stumbling, tripping, and landing face first in the shit if I’m honest.
I just need… well…I need Anita (before she lost it). I need someone who really knows me. I need that comfortable relationship and space where I can go and catch my breath. I need to not have to work so hard to just be seen. I need more holding and containment – or in fact – ANY holding and containment. I feel like such a lot has been ripped away from me and I just, honestly, don’t know what to do now. I won’t give up – but I really feel like it right now.
I have tried so fucking hard to do the right things since A and I ended in order to support myself. I’ve gone big on self-care: been for massages to try and ease this horrid tension I’m holding in my body; tried to get lots of sleep (ha – insomnia has other ideas and is kicking my ass, though!); been to see K to try and calm my nervous system down but she says she can feel how desperate it is for my young parts and I’m desperately holding on; I’m eating well; I’ve written to try and process; and I had gone to therapy and tried to build a new relationship… As I say, though, I’ve already fucked that up, so as of now am back to my own devices and I am just so done. You know? I am so sick of battling through.
I realise this is moaning. It feels quite teenage tbh… but ugh…I just can’t right now. Sometimes you just need someone else when it’s like this and sadly it’s just me, myself, and I…plus the mini bus of little ones. The small parts of over-tired and overwrought. I’m surprised there’s any screaming left in them…but there is.
Anyway, enough of this doom. Really, I just wanted to share a poem I found the other day. It’s a break up poem, but it resonates so much. I know it’s not just me that’s navigating the termination of long-term depth therapy and I think you’ll get it.
Big hugs x
I Should Hate You
I should hate you. For running, and taking your reasons with you. The questions left behind like little thorns of the mind. I’m trying like hell to pull them out hoping to spot the warning signs missed.
Why couldn’t you help me understand? Why didn’t I deserve the reprieve? How were you unfazed by my bleeding?
I should hate you. For discarding my heart and history as if it were throwaway cheap. The way you disposed of my spirit left me shredded. Cut to ribbons that I’m sewing back together. I’ll never be the same after you. You didn’t leave me better off than you found me. You stole what we shared.
It’s unnatural to move on from someone who resides inside me. I can’t shake loose or free. The painful truth is I don’t want to forget you. I won’t act as if we never existed. After all this time together, all this life together, you detached with such ease that I must have dreamt it all.
What I wasn’t prepared for – choking down answers I’ll never receive.
Your indifference is brutal. Something reserved for savages. All decency is disposed of once someone decides to run. Fiendish for distance between you and them. No long goodbyes. Nothing resembling a semblance of closure. Their own embarrassment brings about avoidance.
I should hate you. See, needing to do what’s best for your life, at the expense of mine, doesn’t make you right. Quite the opposite. And what’s most troubling is how often I still think of you. I still imagine hypothetical scenarios of you coming back around. Showing up on my doorstep. And how I’d react to your negligence. What would you say? What could you possibly say that would fix the damage done where I’d even take you back?
After two or three sessions of trying to figure out what to do with Anita after she dropped the bomb on me that she was stopping the therapy (forever? for a bit?… who knows?) it was painfully apparent that we were getting nowhere in the ‘ending that isn’t an ending… or is it?’ and it was increasingly painful going to see her and for her to not be able to hold the work, the space, me… but also to not have any kind of a plan on how to handle whatever ‘this’ was. I would just end up crying and she would keep saying she was “sorry”. It was all utter shit. Traumatising, really.
As much as I didn’t want to see another therapist (and still don’t), I knew that whatever ‘this’ is/was with Anita there was definitely, and minimally, a protracted break coming, and I would need some support to process what is essentially a massive abandonment and rejection from my attachment figure…again. No matter how you look at it, Anita has handled ‘this’ all appallingly and I have been left reeling and just utterly bereft. It’s hard to put into words just how awful this has been, but it feels like every part of me has been body slammed and then left for dead. Ugh.
Whilst Anita and I were still seeing each other, I started hunting online for someone who might be able to catch me as I fell headfirst out the nest. I’m sure many of you have scrolled through therapist’s profiles on the internet on therapy platforms and kept scrolling and scrolling looking for a face that looks at least half-way like someone you might want to sit in a room with. It’s funny – credentials are important, but I literally scrolled pasts loads of people without clicking into their profile because I didn’t like their photo! And of course, I didn’t really want to see any of them…because the only person I want is A, or Anita before she lost the fucking plot!
When looking for someone, there were a few things I definitely avoided this time. I didn’t want anyone in the ‘mum’ age category, and I also wanted the therapy to be in a space that wasn’t in the therapist’s home. I didn’t want to go anywhere close to replicating the experience I have had with Anita (as good as loads of it has been I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth). I know attachment wounds are kind of unavoidable and transference happens, but I didn’t want to accelerate that stuff if I didn’t need to. I’m there to process what happened with Anita not to replicate the relationship. That’s done. It’s burnt me really badly and, frankly, my young parts will never be coming out again in a therapeutic setting as they did with Anita. I’m not interested in cuddles or stories or any of the stuff that was so helpful with A, because to have it suddenly ripped away is just horrific and worse than not having had it at all.
I feel like she took me in, symbolically adopted the child parts, encouraged the attachment, started to reparent them, and then when her life got hard, decided it wasn’t for her and has sent me away – but not even to a ‘foster’ family, just turfed me out onto the street and closed the door. Her and Em have more similarities than I realised.
Anyway, back to therapist shopping…I decided that if I am paying for a time and space (which is what it is, right?!) then I don’t want dogs barking, the postman banging on the door trying to deliver stuff, daughter walking around outside the room or bumping into her on the doorstep, navigating my way past mum on the driveway…NONE OF IT. All of these things were annoyances with A but worth it in the big scheme of how it felt with her in the room (before it went to shit)…but now that’s gone I just want a simple place to be that hasn’t got any baggage attached to it. AND this time I wanted a therapist who would just do therapy and hold the frame and boundaries and all the other stuff that has got so lax with Anita. Basically, I wanted therapy 101 – back to basics. Dare I say it, I almost wanted an Em…only Em with a little more relational capacity!
So, I found a therapist who looked nice enough. She seemed to be around my age and had a profile that seemed ok. Given that I am not looking to do long-term, deep work, I just wanted ‘good enough’ and someone who might have space to meet before I was completely cast adrift. I emailed Hannah asking about her availability and outlining what had happened with A and why I wanted to see her. She responded warmly and we fixed up a meeting a couple of weeks ahead. Phew. At least there was something in place.
Things, obviously, got no better with Anita. I was breaking my heart and she just couldn’t give me anything. It was headed to the end of May, and she offered to keep working with me until the end of June. As much as parts of me would have loved to have seen her for nine more hours – I just couldn’t do it to myself – or more specifically all the child parts that were absolutely devastated. On the 2nd June I resolved before I went to see Anita that it would be my last session. I simply couldn’t keep hurting myself and when it came down to it, I couldn’t justify the money to keep doing it for another month. To be honest, I really don’t feel like I should have paid for any of the sessions in May either – it wasn’t therapy and it wasn’t about my need.
About five minutes from the end Anita apologised again and acknowledged that she probably seemed distant and cold which wasn’t what I needed but that she was in self-protect and survival. I knew definitely, then, that I had to leave. Through tears (of course) I said to her that I didn’t want to drag this out anymore because she wasn’t up to it, I didn’t want to make things worse for her, but that this was really hurting me. So, I asked her if I could just leave things as they were and maybe get back in touch properly in September and see how things were after the summer, not to continue, but to see if she was in any better a place to do a proper ending that fully honours the work we have done and the relationship. She agreed and said she just didn’t know how she was going to be and as much as she would like to give me something to hang onto she thinks she’s probably going to have to give up her job altogether and retire. And then I got up, gave her one last hug, and walked away.
The pain has been unbelievable.
The grief. I mean… there just aren’t words.
Almost immediately after the session I sent her a text. I know. I know. One of the books we read together a lot was ‘No Matter What’ by Debbie Gliori – it’s gorgeous… but… well, it all seems like empty words now…
This is what we’ve exchanged since we finished. I don’t even really know what to think.
I have so much to say and so much left hanging that part of me thinks, “Well fuck it, surely she can cope with a couple of texts here and there on her work phone when we’ve gone from two hours a week and between session contact to this. It’s not like she’s not ‘working’ she ‘s just not working with poor fuckers like me who really need her.” But I’ve stopped texting now, I think I needed to reach out when it was all so fresh – and I’ll maybe get back in touch in September – but more likely I’ll just ask to arrange to get my books back.
There are so many feelings of hurt and anger coming up and the more time goes on the worse it’s actually getting and I think what might come next if I gave it space would be really fucking mean – and I don’t really want to do that – even though the teen has some choice words ready to fire!
Right now, I don’t see there’s much to be gained by maybe eventually meeting again. The hurt is too big and there’s no going back. Ill or not, I deserved better than this. So I need to try and process this with Hannah and let Anita go. I don’t want to reopen a wound – and if I saw Anita and she was still in self-protect it would send me over the edge – I don’t need cold, still face…
It’s not easy writing that – but she’s let me go – and all the trust and care and love that I thought were real…well… what was it? Really? … ‘therapy’…
Anyway, I’ll leave that there for today and come back and introduce you to Hannah next time.
After two sessions where Anita and I had essentially got nowhere with processing or dealing with the bombshell of her needing to end the therapy and my, essentially, listening to how hard everything is/was for her, “This is meant to be your therapy not mine” (!), I had to find a way to get her to hear my side, my feelings, my experience because I was absolutely falling apart.
At home, in the car, anywhere I was alone, I was hysterically crying and just couldn’t function. It was so hard trying to hold it together and parent and teach and just generally function, and A just wasn’t able to be there to hold the space or the work…or me… at all – hence the need to end. It was patently clear that A was not up to doing a proper ending and I refused to participate in it- I actually said that to her! I kept telling her we needed to come back to it/us at a later date because I refused to have a half-assed ending but it was a long time coming to that point where we finally left it that later down the line we’d get in touch.
Honestly, it’s really not great having to navigate a broken therapist when you are the one that’s meant to be in therapy! (Although, clearly Anita needs to be in therapy if she isn’t!) I’d spent the two sessions ‘adulting’, trying to hold us both together but it was absolutely killing me. Endings are so important in therapy – in some ways I think they are one of the most important elements of the whole thing given so many of us experience deep-rooted feelings of being rejected or abandoned. A decent ending can perhaps show us a different narrative of how relationships can end – it’s a time where the work and relationship can be celebrated and honoured. And, yet, here I was staring down another unwanted and unsatisfactory termination. Just perfect.
I (well lots of different parts) wrote a really messy, emotional letter to Anita because I needed to give space to my feelings. It’s young, it’s broken, it’s desperate, it’s confused, it’s heartbreak – but this is how it felt and these parts and feelings deserve to be heard because this is where the work is, has been, and if I can’t let it out in therapy then where else can I do it? I knew I would never be able to read what I had written to her in the session because I would fall apart. Instead I recorded it and asked her to play it whilst I was there with her.
Having felt so far apart those previous two sessions I asked her for a hug when I arrived. I spent the entire session in her arms, listening to this, then sobbing my heart out – I mean absolutely sobbing, huge fat tears and convulsive breathing. I wish I could say that the letter had any impact or changed the situation with A but it didn’t. We just sat – broken – together, crying – saying it’s not what either of us want but that she has no choice. Honestly – heartbreaking doesn’t even come close to how it felt.
Anyway, here’s the thing – this is what lurks beneath the capable and coping exterior… I get it doesn’t make lots of sense but it was like trying to get down the thoughts and feelings of the entire mini-bus and everyone was speaking crying at once. I can really picture my new T’s (yeah – I must be mental) face if she saw this.
How this feels…
It’s like being thrown out the nest too soon. It’s like haven’t got the right feathers in place to fly the nest yet. It feels like this is all really wrong.
I think you need time off sick but does it have to be the end? I personally don’t think you’re in a place to be making massive decisions as I think you’re in survival – and flight mode. I think you are panicked – and justifiably so – you have a massive amount on your plate and the last few weeks have really been terrible. It’s no wonder everything is too much. You’re crumbling under stress and so any demands on you are going to break you and feel beyond your scope to cope.
I’m not asking to keep it as it is right now because you’re not up to it. In normal run of things you’d be signed off sick by the doctor and I genuinely think that’s what you need. I know you think things are not going to get better any time soon and that must feel scary and suffocating but I also think that things will improve if you can actually just give yourself a bit of time to breathe. You seem to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and yet the burden is not yours to carry alone.
I saw this coming months ago. I told you you’d burn out and have a break down. Perhaps it was unavoidable, but here we are.
I can’t let you go, though, Anita. Not fully. Our work isn’t done, and our relationship isn’t done either. The relationship we’ve created is important. I can’t just move onto another therapist. I do need therapy – you’re right about that – but I need it with you, not someone else. I love you and I’m attached to you. My healing is happening in relationship with you and because of you. It’s you that I have learned to trust. My young parts love you. It’s with you that I feel safe. I don’t want to have to grieve you if I don’t have to. And I certainly don’t want to do this again with anyone else. The only person I want to read me stories and cuddle is you. And I can’t give that up. I can’t lose another ‘parent’. Not yet. I’m not ready yet.
If we end now the message I get is that I am not good enough or worthy enough to stay. That I don’t matter. That what I thought we had isn’t real and everything that’s been said and felt is a lie. I’m not prepared to trash 3.5 years of therapy that has been so transformational and put in on the pile of the same narrative Em and my mum have given me.
The thing is, you are nothing like them but this ending makes it feel like that. When it comes down to it, I am expendable. I am put back out in the cold. It’s the rescue dog being left at the side of a road because the owner can’t cope with it. The pain round this is different than with Em. It’s actually worse because you have actually loved me. I’ve felt it. You’ve shown it. And the thought of losing that is too devastating. You haven’t been withholding, you’ve always been right there holding my heart in your hands so carefully, and delicately because you’ve known how fragile it is. And yet despite this, somehow it’s not enough.
When you said we’d carry on until I found someone else it felt like you were really diminishing our relationship. I don’t want someone else. It’s not like going and finding a new dentist. Instead, it’s like saying get a new mum – and I just can’t. Because you are it. I can’t replace you. You said I need someone who can really hold me. And we both know that’s not possible. There is absolutely no one that would be with me how you are. If I were to see someone else, I’d always be comparing back to you and everything would feel less than. So I can’t do it.
You need to get you well. You need to function. I need you. But I can do without you for a while if I know you’re still there. I really don’t want to have to test the invisible string or the hugs sent in raindrops like in the books but I will…if it means you can get better and deal with the horrors you face right now. I don’t want to put additional pressure on you. I don’t know what that means or how it looks and I feel like right now you’re really not even capable of having the kind of conversation we need because you are so stressed you can’t see the wood for the trees. I’m trying really hard not to freak out and meltdown but this is really really hard for me.
You know me better than anyone. I asked you once how you heal this deep wounding and you said that you were going to sound like Carl Rogers but it was all about the relationship. And you are right. The problem is that wounding happens in relationship, too. And this is not just a bit painful or a bit rejecting to me. It’s huge. Not only does it feel like a complete abandonment and like my trust has been decimated, but it feels like when my dad died. It’s grief. A loss. I had no choice in the matter. I just had to carry on as if it was ok. And it’s not ok Anita. It’s so far from being ok. And it’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you but this isn’t just a simple goodbye. We don’t have a run of the mill therapeutic relationship, the work we have done has been so intimate and deep. You’ve been reparenting me – and yet now you’ve decided that it’s too much.
The stuff we’ve been through together surely can’t just be gone. Can you really honestly walk away from me after everything we’ve been through? I trusted you with all of me – every part- and now every part is being devastated in its own way. When we keep parts concealed, we’re not fully vulnerable and there’s a safety in that but also it prevents really being seen and true emotional intimacy. But it means that when things go wrong there are parts left intact to pick up the pieces. I have let my guard completely down with you and that’s been terrifying but so healing. But how do I mend this wound now because no part of me is not involved there is no part left unaffected. I kept nothing back. Even The Critic was convinced it was ok to stand down because you made me feel good enough and loved and no matter what things would somehow work out.
I’ve been beyond devastated this last week. I don’t know how I have any tears left to cry. I feel so sad. But I also feel so shit about all the times I’ve shutdown or been silent or not looked at you. I don’t look at you because I don’t want to be seen and for you to judge me to be too much. In all those times that you’ve thought I am keeping you out, or angry, or whatever it is it comes across as – all I’ve ever wanted to do is be close to you – that’s all it’s ever been – every time I’m quiet or start to disappear it’s because more than anything I want to be close to you and I am scared of being pushed away. You never have pushed me away, you never have refused a cuddle or to hold my hand, and yet the shame I feel is still so there lots of the time- it’s the legacy of so much of what I experienced in the past with others.
I said when we met that this would be a hard, long process, and it felt unfair because I’d be testing you and putting you through stuff that was not your fault because I had been hurt. And we really have been through it where that’s concerned. And you haven’t budged. You said you were a wall I could push against, but you wouldn’t break. You were a boomerang that no matter how I pushed you away you’d always come back. But now that’s not the case. The thought of not being able to see you, to hug you, to look at your face it’s actually breaking my heart because I’ve missed so many opportunities sitting in my own pain less than a metre from you when you were there waiting for me and now, you’re not going to be. Like that’s how it feels. I feel like my heart is shattering into a million pieces.
There have been so many days when I have come here and … I dunno… filled the space with stuff that hasn’t mattered when all I want to do is come and just be with you. I don’t want drama or even to talk or unpick things because just being with you is so healing to me. Literally just holding your hand or cuddling makes everything feel bearable and regulates my system. I just want to be close to you. I have missed you so much lately. I thought we’d ride this current phase out, though. I don’t want to do trauma processing or fill the space with words. I just want to be with you. And I know I’ve been having wobbles about it all because this stuff has felt big – massive – but when I am faced with the prospect of ‘no’ you or a reduced capacity you – suddenly the things that I’ve been worked up about seem ridiculous. Like so what you haven’t replied to a text…rather that than no contact at all.
I just want to be with you. How many times can I say that?! And that’s not just the young parts, although obviously this is very much about the young parts and the work we have been doing with that early trauma and loss. There’s nowhere I feel safer than with you. And all my panic about you being far away or changing was fear. And it’s like that fear is now being truly realised in the here and now. This is what I’ve been so scared of. But the sad thing is, you weren’t gone then. I might not have been able to connect but you were always there and now you’re not going to be and I can’t get my head round that. I literally can’t see how I can be without you.
I talked about my mini-bus careering down the hill without a driver before the break and when you went away it kind of crashed into the lake and filled with water. I had horrible nightmares the first week you were away. All about this kind of stuff. I really sensed you were not ok when you were away but I didn’t want to bombard you. I really really hoped that you going away would be enough to give you a bit of something to keep going and I am so sad for you that your holiday was so terrible and your health has deteriorated so badly. I wish there was something I could do to help you.
I’ve been trying really hard to not fall apart since Wednesday. I am struggling really hard to get my head round this but the parts are just… freaking out:
The baby – is crying, hungry and uncontained and there’s noone to pick her up and soothe her.
The two-year-old is lost in the cold, grey wasteland and no one is coming she is scared.
The four-year-old is trying to be a good girl because maybe that way you won’t leave and maybe the cuddles and stories won’t have to stop and maybe this mum will stay.
Seven is terrified and frozen and badly needs to be held because she’s been here before and knows it gets worse the longer you’re left alone.
My eleven-year-old self is hiding in the dark underneath the bed trying to disappear and make it all go away.
Fourteen wants to self-harm and not eat.
Seventeen who would usually be raging and angry is just standing – silent tears streaming down her face broken- because of all of them, she needed you the most and whether you realise it or not, her trust was the hardest won because she holds all the others and it’s a heavy weight.
The Critic – well you can imagine the level of sadistic shit it’s coming up with.
Adult me is just so fucking sad because I cracked myself wide open despite the hurt that Em inflicted because I trusted you and you made me believe I was safe with you. We got right into the yolk of the egg -and now what do I do? After Em I was terrified of being seen and rejected again. I was just a parasite that needed to be got rid of. And now you say you’re not rejecting me… but you are – I am a “stress” you have to “cut out of your life”. I understand why but those parts of me that believed the “no matter what” and the “I wish I could have been there then, but I am here now and I won’t let you go” seems like empty words.
But how can they be? And I get I have an Adult self and that part of me is stronger than it’s ever been but it’s still not able to do it all alone. I just can’t be without you – not yet.
Everywhere I look there is evidence of you around me at home. I’m in here too. Will you just sweep it all away and act like I never existed? Is that how it works? You are the rabbit that listens but if I’m not here does the rabbit go, the egg, the pebble from the beach, the dream catcher, windchimes…the ornament…all the other fucking bits of shit that are all around us?
You made me feel like I belonged here and with you and now I suddenly don’t. I don’t get how you can get rid of me but still work with other clients. When I ask you “what have I done wrong?” you say I haven’t done anything wrong and it’s you and your capacity but how can you sit there with someone else next week or next month who has nothing like the level of relationship that I have you and choose that over me? When you know what you mean to me and what I thought I meant to you? And knowing all that you know about me, of what has happened to me? It blows my mind. I know depth work isn’t easy, but I certainly prefer my long-term students where there is a relationship is established and we ‘know’ each other than starting up with new people. Maybe it’s because I know you and see you that’s the problem. You can’t hide with me.
I don’t know what else to say – but it feels like the scaffolding around my building is ripped off and without you I think the whole thing will crumble. And maybe that makes me too dependent but maybe it just means we weren’t done yet. I don’t have the answers and right now I don’t think you do either. But please don’t leave…
You keep saying you need to cut stress out your life. I don’t know if you know how that sounds or feels but it’s not a million miles away from Em’s tick comment. I’m the stress. I’m too much. I’m too needy. I’m the hard work. Mentioning my ‘I miss you’ message just feels like a kick in the stomach. I didn’t reach out first in your holiday – it was you that messaged me. And telling me that my simple reply felt too much right now is just shit. Like any of my feelings about you are too much. It’s such a massive contrast to the person that sent me the message before you left with hearts.
I get when you’re burnt out and sick and stressed and overwhelmed you swing like a pendulum but this, now, is absolutely killing me. I’m trying to be the adult here and be understanding but you have to know that my child parts are in agony Anita. You don’t seem to acknowledge or care what this is doing or going to do to me. I know this is because you are so unwell that you just aren’t fit to be working. You keep saying “we tried”. I don’t understand what that even means. I know you can’t give that care and compassion you usually do as you’re in your own survival hole but this is why we can’t end now like this – because ending like this is harmful. I’m clinging on tight to what I think we had but it’s being decimated right now.
This is attachment work. And you are severing that attachment with a machete. You don’t want to do anything to try maintain it. You don’t seem to want to try and help my parts get through what is a massive shock. It’s like I’m already dead to you and it’s triggering the hell out of me. It’s like the bloody still face exercise. I’m searching for you and you’re just not there…you say you are in self-protect and you know it’s not what I need but if you know that why are we doing this?
Is it really your world outside that’s the issue or is it something I’ve done? Was it the birthday present I gave you that sent you over the edge?
This is another ornament in the set – I gave A ‘Self-Compassion’ on our 1 year anniversary. They’re made by an artist in Ukraine and I love the style.
Because that was symbolic – it’s what you have done for me. You have held that small part safe. It doesn’t mean I actually think you are my mum – in therapy sure- I have said a lot of times you are the closest I have come to a positive experience of mothering and you have welcomed that, acknowledged that, encouraged it even,but I know outside the room that’s not the case.
But it’s left me wondering is the idea of me just repellent to you now like something you have to untangle yourself from. Or remove like a tick? Because that’s what it feels like. Are you really and truly terminating others or is it just me? You tell me you are authentic with me and that there’s no one else you work with you’d tell what you’ve told me – so can’t you understand then that you have built a particular kind of relationship with me that has let me in to so much of you and now it’s like “Nah, fuck off”. I just can’t get my head round it. Like what we have is special and important…only it’s not?
I didn’t think you could suddenly stop loving someone or being able to or wanting to connect but that’s what’s happened and I don’t understand. I know you have the need for space right now and time because you are drowning. But I can’t really understand how you are willing to cut me off altogether because I love you and you have told me you love me too – and not just once but weekly for years. You sounded like I was weird for saying at I can’t imagine you not in my life last week. I’ve had almost daily contact with you for three years…we’ve been through such a lot together…we’ve survived a fucking pandemic… what do you expect me to feel? You said you’d be there for the long termand I believed you.
I can’t help but think about all the things you’ve said to me over that time. I mean I am not insane for feeling this way, surely? You said you’d never let me go, that even when you retired you’d still have a practice because you couldn’t leave your long term clients, you said even if your house fell down you’d work online… you’ve said so much over the years. And I get this is a tricky situation now, and things have changed – but to be so unwilling to say we’d even try and work this out down the line is just mind blowing and it makes me wonder who you even are.
I get you’re totally overwhelmed but surely you must see how damaging all this is to me, too. Surely, you’d want to find time at some point to help me with this down the line if I’d meant anything to you at all. Can you really have said and meant all that and now run as far away from me as possible…especially knowing my history. It just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know how I’ll cope without you. The routine of seeing you twice a week keeps me level. I wish there was a middle ground, less frequent sessions, a quick WhatsApp call, anything really. Removing all support is going to be hard as my life is about to undergo some big changes anyway and there’s stuff I haven’t been telling you because I just want to keep going. I can feel the abyss inside opening up. You’d always have grabbed my hand but now you won’t, but I need you to try and meet me in this right now. … there’s such a lot to say.
And that’s that… Anita dissociated, I think. At the end of that she said that she’d heard it all but her mind had gone blank to answer. Not even kidding. As I say we just hugged, and cried, and then I came back again…and it was just more disaster zone but I’ll come back with that later.
x
These lyrics from Tiny Love by KT Tunstall have been stuck in my head lately:
And this tiny love Couldn’t have been more true Oh, searching for A home in you I guess you never knew
It’s a lovely track.. I guess the mistake I made was thinking we can find home in another when we need to find it in ourselves.
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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