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I Was ‘The Good Girl’ In The Therapy Room And I Hurt All The Time

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

I’ve been in therapy for a long time.
Like, a really long time.
It’s been ten years solid this time around, albeit with four different therapists (not that I am counting!). I’m not sure how to explain how long that is in soul years, but it feels like a thousand.

I am no stranger to the therapy room. Even before this latest solid run of ‘trying to get my mind fixed’ (or should I say my nervous system recalibrated and the mother wound healed?) there have been some hopeful episodes in the ‘room’ over the last twenty-five or so years. But mostly, as is generally the case when you’re a student in college or university, these were relatively short-term therapies.

I went, then, because I was suffering with anxiety or depression or stress, or my eating disorder, or imposter syndrome or whatever (the list goes on and on). I knew deep down that something was very wrong and those sessions acted like sticking plasters for a wound that was far deeper than I ever could have imagined at the time. Little did I know that I needed far more attention than four or six sessions could ever hope to provide.

I remember feeling like I was fully losing the plot as it was coming up to Christmas when doing my MA. I was twenty-two and I realised that I needed to see someone having not been to a therapist since my A Levels. The university I was studying at had a counselling service and, fortunately, as most people had already left for the holidays there was some availability to see someone.

It was in that room that the dam broke. It was a tiny room in the back of an old Victorian red brick building not far from my seminar building. I started to let out ‘all the things’ and although I only had four sessions with that counsellor it was such a relief to finally have someone say to me that I wasn’t overreacting and that actually they thought I could really use some long-term therapy because ‘trauma’…and no, it wasn’t just the stress of deadlines and they didn’t try and ply me with strategies to get through the immediate stress rather just gave me a space to be heard and collapse a bit after trying to hold it together for such a long time.

I might have walked out of those short-term sessions feeling a bit bereft – like, it would have been so great to be able to spend a few months with that particular therapist as a bit of a scaffold around my crumbling self, but that wasn’t how the service worked…and where was the long-term therapy that a student with no money could afford? I certainly couldn’t access the kind of therapy I need/ed back then and so put everything back in the box on the top of the shelf and continued on with life until I couldn’t do it anymore.

One thing I will say, is that these episodes of short-term therapy never did me any harm. They may not have been long enough, but I didn’t leave those sessions in a worse state than when I started. But then perhaps these therapies were never quite long enough to activate my attachment system. I don’t know. But then, that doesn’t work, because I saw a therapist N, for two years after my dad died and it helped, I was attached to her- and we’re still in contact now seventeen years later – certainly no harm done there.

Harm in therapy didn’t become a reality for me until Em – the highly experienced Clinical Psychologist, the person I was led to believe I stood a really good chance of healing with, and so the person I trusted with my whole story and self. Gosh. What a mess it was.

I met Em thirteen and a half years ago, now. I feel so sad, looking back over my life, that I have been trying so hard for so long to feel ‘better’ and yet here I am still working on undoing damage not just from my childhood, my life, but actually my therapies. It’s tragic.

Em and I initially did sixteen months in the NHS — it was the kind of therapy where the clock ticks louder than your voice and the radiator only half-works and my god, those awful shiny yellow gloss-painter woodchipped walls were really something!… but finally getting a space to delve into my psyche with someone who (on paper at least) really had the skill to help was much-needed.

But like every therapy before – the time I had wasn’t long enough. NHS work, even when it’s extended (which mine was) is still time limited. There is only so many sessions you can have and then that’s it – there’s a huge waiting list (three years for me back then) and you can’t clog up the system forever even if you really need the therapy. And surely you should be grateful to get a long stint of therapy in the first place. It’s kind of laughable, because it took me a year to even get close to the work or for my system to activate. In reality a little over a year of once-a-week therapy is nothing for Complex Trauma and quite honestly, the NHS just isn’t at all equipped to help with these kinds of issues.

And my god, opening my version of Pandora’s Box and then being left with no therapy at all really really messed me up. The nightmares. The panic attacks. The eating disorder and self-harming behaviours were triggered again. My child parts (and my structurally dissociated system – not that I knew that that was what it was then) had a complete meltdown. The feelings of abandonment and rejection felt huge. And I didn’t cope at all. But I was completely and utterly alone and without any kind of support…because I’d used it up.

Em had agreed that we could see each other in her private practice when our sessions finished but the NHS had stipulated that there needed to be a three-month break between ending there and commencing with her again. At the time I accepted that as how things had to be – but knowing what I know now about my system I can see how very wrong it was to leave that work wide open and leave me essentially hanging. What I should have done then was reach out to Em and let her know what was going on, but of course, I didn’t know that was possible. I was just following the rules…because I have always followed the rules.

After two months on my own without therapy, my graphic nightmares finally stopped in their tracks and I didn’t even dream again for nearly three years– I basically shut off/dissociated my entire system and lived my life in ‘false adult’ I think. And so, I didn’t go back to Em for three years.

You could call it a ‘break’. I call it surviving without witness – but I think there was always a part of me, a child part or five, that I had exiled who was desperate to find my way back to Em. The little parts of me that had been so activated in her therapy room, and all the trauma too, needed a place to go.

And so when I finished my cancer treatment and all the wheels fell off – I went back to her…because… well…to parts of me she was mum, and a kind of safety, and I very badly needed someone because I was very much not ok.

In the intervening three years since I had sat with Em a lot had changed in my world – but underneath or inside I was just the same – all those little parts were frozen inside needing to be seen, held, and attended to. The trauma was there still, unresolved.

I remember the first day I walked back in the room and how hopeful I had been and how excited I had been to see Em again. And yet, it fell flat. I guess there was a part of me that wanted her to welcome me back with open arms or some kind of acknowledgement that it was good to see me again now that we weren’t in the sterile hospital. But she was ever the blank screen, and although my child parts came alive again the moment they saw her, they knew too that the rules were still the same.

And I am nothing if not the girl who follows the rules.

I came to my session/s every week.

I paid on time.

I was never rude.

I never cancelled on her until we were right at the end and broken (but then why would I, my sessions never felt enough and so I would never enact a break willingly).

And I tried so hard to do therapy ‘right’ – and stick within the confines of Em’s very very rigid boundaries (although occasionally failing and texting her – god forbid).

I tried so hard to be grateful for what was on offer. I tried to make it enough. I tried to be insightful and brave and DO THE WORK…and bring everything to the room even when I felt terrified and physically unwell.

I tried not to be too much.  

But man, I felt small and disempowered.

I was the good girl in the therapy room and I hurt all the time.

I could never understand why it felt so painful to be with her…and so painful to be away from her, too.

I guess I  thought I had to earn tenderness and care, and prove myself worthy of it because of course that’s been hard-wired into me from day dot.

I thought being easy to work with would make me lovable – or at least palatable.

It didn’t.

But then why would it?

That strategy had never worked with my mother so why on earth would it work in the therapy room? And yet here I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern with my therapist.

It seemed being the quiet good girl wasn’t ever enough.

So, I changed tack. It took a really long time for me to bring my pain about the relationship with Em into the room unwashed and unedited. Em had said she felt “blindfolded” with me and I thought this meant that my caution and hiding my feelings was stopping us being able to really connect. And man did I want to be connected to her and so I took a leap towards her around about the time I started this blog.

I wrote things down when I couldn’t say them out loud (because shame was so ever-present and dissociation never very far away). I folded pages of typed letters or blog posts inside my pocket like secret spells. Sometimes it would take weeks for me to build the courage to hand them over. Every time I did, I felt like I was giving her the map to the world inside me — it felt like I was screaming over and over, “Please, please just look. Please see what it’s like in here. Please help me not be lost anymore.” And perhaps in also written between the lines was, “Please love me”. But Em would sit and read my words never giving much away as I sat squirming opposite her and then carry on like she already knew the way and didn’t need my map.

And so, I walked alone over terrain that felt like barbed wire and cold rain and shame.

It felt in some ways like I was in the Truman Show – but no one told me what the point of it was, and the lights were much too bright, and whilst I could see Em she was always sitting behind her glass screen taking notes about what I was (or not doing) on her clipboard – she wasn’t in the scene with me. Every now and then she’d tell me where I was going wrong, “Like a tick”. It was as though she was some nasty film director coaching an actor who was absolutely doing their best to act the ‘right’ way but failing miserably time and again.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have ever had to have acted in that room. I should have been able to go and be me – exactly as I was and have that met with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. I should have been able to remove my various masks.

I wish.

I feel so sad when I look at how small I made myself in the room with Em – I don’t mean falling into my child parts small, I mean how little space I took up and how little I asked for from her and yet even that was made to feel like ‘too much’. I feel so sad that I tried to bend and fit to be the client she wanted me to be and it breaks my heart that for all those years my small parts couldn’t get anywhere close to what I needed. There was no we in that therapy- just me…flailing around and hurting.

I took big elephant with me in my bag for years but was never brave enough to take her out even when I had told Em about the many many child parts that were inside me and how they felt and we both knew how much hurt was inside. There was never an invitation from Em to be anything other than my very competent adult self…and that was really hard when my young parts were so very present. Part of me feels angry at my adult self for not doing more to protect my young parts – but I genuinely thought at the time going to therapy was me looking after myself.

I am not the same client I was back then. I have learnt such a lot about myself over the last decade and there is simply no way I would put up with what I did with Em now…or even Anita. And so although this growth and understanding has come at a heavy emotional (and financial cost)…I do at least know myself and have boundaries around how I will let myself be treated now.

But back then, I felt ashamed and embarrassed asking for anything from Em and her NOs to my very few requests cut so deep. Object constancy has always been a massive problem for me and I remember reading an article online by a therapist about how to stay connected to therapists on a break. They’d suggested a simple three dot text message in the week – like it’s bare minimum effort, no words to misunderstand, just a reminder that they are there. But no, she wouldn’t do it.

I remember asking for a simple transitional object – I wanted a short note written on a pebble that I had found on the beach near her house – and that became a torture project for well over six months. But in reality, I didn’t want a rock… I wanted a soft toy like Monty…only I never asked because I knew that was way out of the realms of acceptability for Em…and I was right. We couldn’t even get a few words on a pebble right, a toy for my young parts would have been simply outrageous!

I was made to feel like there was something desperately wrong with me because I wanted her to sit closer to me. I would dissociate so badly when I felt like she was far away but there was never concessions on Em’s part to make a move to adjust how we worked to make things better for me. I wrote in a letter once that I wished I could hug her. Somehow that was really inappropriate and uncomfortable and was addressed only once, “You know I don’t do that”. It felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

And heaven forbid we go anywhere near the ‘L’ word. Love was made to feel like a dirty word and I never once uttered it aloud…I only alluded to it in my maps/letters. And yet it is so much part of the work… talking through human emotions in all their forms is the work. And it shouldn’t matter if they are directed towards the therapist or anyone else. But also, I struggle hard to understand how if you spend years and years of your life with someone picking apart your most vulnerable stuff that love wouldn’t become part of the fabric of the therapy.

Ugh.

I’m not here to talk about her though – although I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit today – I guess I am still reeling from the hurt… and we can totally skip over Anita, and Hannah because – well – I want to talk about now – 2025…

I want to talk about Elle…I want to talk about how I can be who I am, not who I think I need to be with her. I want to say how that the ‘good girl’ part of me has been allowed to rest a bit and that I no longer hurt in the way that I used to – but given this part alone is 2000 words I’ll break this post into two…and believe me, the next part is far more uplifting!…there’s even a picnic to tell you about!!

My Wobbly Brain, Lots Of Vulnerable Emails, And A Phone Check In/Session

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This is loooonnnng – so grab a snack, a drink, and a cuddly blanket and settle in for the ride!!

So last time I was here I was trying to catch up from all that happened with the BIG RUPTURE and get back on track more-or-less to the here-and-now on the blog… I’d just come off a phone check in with Elle that had come about because, once again, I had fallen head first into a doom spiral and had, at least, had the bravery (and sense) to ask to talk rather than to continue on down a path of emails where I was getting myself more and more panicked. But, how did I get to the point where I was requesting a phone call and what was the panic about this time???!

Well, you might remember I said it had been a about a month since Elle and I had repaired the BIG RUPTURE, things felt fine, the sessions since then had been connecting, but because we hadn’t doubled-back to what had happened during the break and the rupture my brain was starting to wonder if things were really ok or not. Part of me was looking for a bit of reassurance – you know, just in case behind the scenes Elle was harbouring something and I didn’t know about it. I think when things go wrong, I need to re-tread the ground several times just to be sure nothing terrible is lingering beneath the surface. I don’t want to find myself down in a hole unexpectedly.

Elle has always told me that if I need to reach out and check that she’s ‘still there’ then that’s absolutely fine to do that anytime. In various ways I do this a lot, but maybe not in quite so explicit a way as asking, “Are we ok?” We maintain a connection between our sessions but this will usually be by my communicating everyday stuff. I very rarely say, “I am feeling disconnected and need to know we are ok”. That sort of thing generally happens in the big splurge emails that come after protracted periods of ‘light’ when all the feelings bubble up and it all spews out in a huge vulnerable mess. Those messages are not a very regular occurrence…but they’re often enough.

A couple of weeks after the rupture/repair I did find myself asking for the tangible reassurance via a text. My Monday morning text reminder for our Tuesday session had come through and even though it was most definitely my lovely Elle, I wasn’t able to feel into it or find her in it. It had been Father’s Day that weekend and I think I was just feeling really vulnerable and sad and disconnected. So, I replied, “Are we ok? I totally get that [ref to message] should mean yes, but I’ve wandered away and got lost.” Elle assured me that we were completely fine and I felt lots better.

It really doesn’t take a lot to settle things down but even now, almost two years in, I still struggle to ask for the support and reassurance I need. I think after so many years of feeling the fear of disconnection (that comes with disorganised attachment) so acutely in my therapy with Em where I was actively chastised if I ever reached out outside of the session and then completely ignored, there’s a part of me that still feels like I am doing something wrong when I ask for something from Elle.

It’s not just Em’s legacy that impacts how I relate to Elle. Anita wasn’t like Em. I was able to message her, but there’s a different kind of fear that comes from this. I think in some ways I find it hard to trust Elle is genuine and means what she says because Anita made promises and then suddenly things changed and I was left high and dry. Anita was warm, and accepting, and encouraged me to ask for what I needed… until the day I was “too dependent” and there was a definite pulling back.

So, with both these therapy experiences always bubbling away in the back of my mind, it’s hardly surprising I struggle to ask for what I need with Elle. It’s no fun feeling like you’re ‘too much’ and I am so mindful of not wanting to overstep the ‘boundary line’ – although I am not entirely sure where that is. I guess I hope I don’t find out the hard way one day although I think it is entirely possible that at some point it will happen.

Having asked for reassurance the day before the session I knew that my internal world wasn’t functioning at its best and I was so glad to get into the room that week. I cried quite a lot – there’s a lot of sadness floating around at the minute with loss and grief and it’s coming out a bit – not full-on sobbing, but just slow tears…which for someone that never really cries in session, that is huge. I still can’t fully let go and let it all out but I feel like I’m edging towards that place. Elle says that she thinks there’s a lot of crying inside, from the young parts, but that I only let it out in small amounts – she’s right of course.

It’s felt like I am holding a lot lately and my need for safety and holding feels enormous and therefore the feelings of shame have built up around that. I don’t want to be as needy as I am…and as much as I try to remind myself that we are only as needy as our unmet needs, I have a hard time feeling compassion for those parts of me, when I know that they are the ones that seem to make therapy explode in my face.

In that session, Elle asked me what had prompted me to check if we were ok. I was cuddled in to her and I didn’t say anything, I don’t think. Sometimes there aren’t words in the moment. I was feeling so so sad and not because of anything between us, but I think sometimes when I feel safe with her, in that space, I stop defending myself against my feelings and they come…and bloody hell…it’s a lot. Sometimes an extra wave of grief comes up as I realise that the time with Elle is only short and before too long I will be on my own back in the world. The young parts of me feel devastated.

Elle asked me where I was feeling the sadness in my body. I didn’t answer again – I just cuddled in and clung on even more tightly to her. She understands now, that my silence isn’t avoidance or shutting her out. Actually, it’s really me minus the armour and often when a very small part is there…pre-verbal probably. Part of me really needs those very small parts to have space and time in the room but another part of me is terrified that it’s all too much.

After the session, I had time to think about everything, adult was back online rather than the littles being front and centre and I came up with this and sent it as part of a longer email to Elle:

I feel like I am almost drowning in shame at the moment or in a spin cycle with it. You asked me what had happened to text you on Monday to see if we were ok and if something had happened. Aside from more shit dreams, which don’t help, nothing had happened. The reality is I could send you that message every week, and don’t because … I am trying really hard not to be too much (not massively successful in that right now). But actually, by the time it gets to Friday my entire system is falling down a hole – and it’s all the time not just every now and again.

I try and remind myself that this isn’t new – like I know where the panic comes from – being left when I was small for so many years and then my dad dying after being away for three days … like it’s just really hard because my brain sort of knows that things are ok but how I experience it in my body is a different matter. So, I spend a lot of the weekend in a horrible place of feeling like something is wrong or bad is going to happen. And that’s shit…and then we head back into the shame thing because… I really get how clingy I am and well, then that takes me off on another path of doom…so it’s a lot.

The feelings reside in lots of places. There’s the pain/ache in my solar plexus, the big black hole in my chest that feels like its edges are ulcerated and burning, the tight feeling in my throat, the heaviness but also tingling in my legs that makes me feel like I need to run, pins and needles in my hands…. the hot feeling behind my eyes….sometimes all of those all at once…  I think that’s probably why I would dissociate for the longest time. It’s far easier to feel nothing and sit outside your body than actually be in it. 

So there was that… another big splurge of the vulnerable and more pieces of the road map offered up.

Elle and I remained connected as another week rolled around and then I left another lovely holding session with Elle on the next Tuesday. We had talked about a lot of things. Elle had bought a book I had mentioned and brought it to session for us to read together. You’d think that that would more than show that she wasn’t experiencing the heebie-jeebies post rupture… nope.

Almost as soon as I got out the room, I realised I had neglected to bring up the main thing I wanted to talk about that week…it wasn’t conscious avoidance, though. It just totally left my brain. I do think this is a form of dissociation. Like, part of my system is worried that something is wrong and so wants to protect me from poking at it just in case my fears are confirmed. After the session I felt ALL THE FEELS – you know the big loving ones? – ugh – and decided to send this email – let it all out RB! – looks like this last month or so has been big on the big emails, actually! haha:

I really missed you this week and it felt hard 😞 . Before today I wanted to ask you some things and tell you some things but actually by the time this morning got here I just really needed a cuddle and for the panic in my system to settle down and to feel safer and to reconnect with you…when I am with you I feel like I just want to soak it up as much as I can because the ‘leaky non-existent bucket that’s only just a handle now’ situation means that that feeling is quickly gone when I can’t see you. It’s like trying to hold water in my hands or it’s like sand slipping through my fingers… and it’s really difficult. 

And although it was meant in totally different kind of context today, when I was talking about *friend and her wanting a relationship with me and you said about how hard it is when someone hands you their heart and you have to gently give it back to them…reminded me of something I said to *best friend a few months ago about how I feel really pathetic and sad with you. Like I feel like I have taken my heart out the bottle and am handing it to you like it’s a gift and actually it’s so broken and in pieces and damaged that no one in their right mind would want it. And yet, it’s all there is left…and I feel like I’ve exposed this really vulnerable bit of me, there’s no protection whatsoever, and it is so terrifying because given the state of it, I don’t think it will survive being dropped, stamped on, or in a hit and run again. 

And I think the saddest thing is I feel like love is perhaps the biggest gift we can give or receive and yet I feel like my version of it is like an unwanted Christmas gift, that’s quickly discarded or seen to have no value. I imagine it a bit like when a kid makes something at pre-school out of air-drying clay and brings it home and although it most certainly is the most magnificent snail in their eyes, unfortunately they’ve selected brown clay and the coiled-up shape resembles a turd. It’s ok because I always know it’s a snail – but not everyone does… and then of course it doesn’t take long until it’s starts dissolving into dust and parts start breaking off. 

Part of me doesn’t even want to say this because ugh huge shame 😳 but also there’s a bit that feels really sad when I feel like this and I don’t say. Like it feels a bit like there’s all these parts of me in the room watching and wondering why I don’t let you know they’re there or how it’s been. Although I think you probably do see them because I think these days rather than being locked in a cupboard or hiding behind the couch they’re really just hidden under a flimsy piece of fabric. Or maybe more like when kids cover their eyes and think you can’t see them…🙈

So, I wanted to ask how things are after last month 😬 and I wanted to talk to you about what’ll happen if we end up in that place again. And also, I think we need a code word for when things are bad or a symbol. And then just for added fun content I was going to mention that Brian is having a bit of a meltdown about living in my body right now and whilst I’m on top of it I thought I was over this shit – or maybe it just goes dormant. 🫠 There was something else but I can’t remember now… which bodes really well for teaching – I feel like a hologram.

Elle sent a really lovely expansive reply – here’s some of it:

Hello my sweet girl 🙂

I think you’re right about all of that stuff being totally present in the room, even though it’s not explicitly stated. I absolutely do feel the responsibility of holding your beautifully broken and fragile heart, and I think take that responsibility as seriously and with as much sensitivity as that warrants. I don’t imagine me telling you that holds much weight at all, given that you’ve been told almost the exact same thing many times before, but I always hope that is something you can feel in the room.

She went on to tell me that she promises that she’ll never ‘blindside’ me because when she takes any kind of action it comes from ‘months of consideration’. There was reference to what we spoke of at the time of the rupture. And then she talked about how we got to where we did. Then came:

I think seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been given freely is never helpful in terms of deepening connection, and instead of building closeness I think it has the potential – for you – to create an even more profound sense of isolation, rather than the closeness that is so badly wanted. If there are things I can provide for you between sessions to help you feel connected to me when you feel distant – I was thinking recordings of me reading our stories for example? – then let’s come up with some that feel like they might work. You also mention notes to open, and I think that’s a beautiful idea. Maybe I could write some affirmation cards that feel like they are uniquely special to us? I really like that idea.

The entire email was actually just really considered and thoughtful and lovely … could my brain take it in?

HA! Could it fuck?!

It fixated on two small areas of the message and went into full scale panic.

Firstly, I was wondering what kind of ‘action’ was coming? What could that mean? Was she turning something over in her mind and waiting to see whether or not to act based on what I was doing?

And then I locked on and fixated on the part about “seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been freely given” and it sent me into outer space in terms of panic and shame. I felt like this was a thinly-veiled comment about what had happened with our recent rupture and that she was in some way mad that I had been overstepping boundaries because there are some things I have found out about Elle that she hasn’t expressly shared with me – but then, it was information that was freely available online or that she had reference in an oblique way and I had found as a result.

Great.

So, I decided to reply to her with details of what I was worrying about – it couldn’t wait a week.

Elle replied and tried to address my concerns and she is really considered and careful in how she responds to me.

At the end she wrote:

I can feel myself getting tense as I was writing that, and am now worrying that I’m not communicating all this to you in a way that will land as I want it to, so I’m going to stop now.

I found out when we were in the thick of the big rupture that she has a thing about being misunderstood and says she can sometimes overcompensate to try and be clear and then feel like she’s making it worse. So, the message that she was going to stop didn’t feel like she was refusing to engage with me, rather that she was trying to reassure me but wasn’t sure if it was working and recognised that she didn’t want to make it worse.

I was still pretty activated and overnight had horrible nightmares but had a word with myself and realised that none of what I was experiencing was desperate… but that tying myself up in knots trying to explain what I was feeling in an email wasn’t actually meeting the need underneath. What I needed was to ‘hear’ that Elle and I were not running off in different directions, that she wasn’t annoyed with me or harbouring something from before, and that I hadn’t done something wrong… child parts much??!!

There was absolutely no way I was going to make it to Tuesday in the state I was in and so I text Elle first thing on Thursday morning asking if she might have time for a phone check in sometime before the weekend.

She got back to me immediately and said we could talk that morning… and we fixed up a time. Phew.

I felt nervous picking up the call, but as soon as I heard Elle’s voice, I could hear that there was nothing wrong between us. I could feel that that she was there. She asked me how I was feeling in my body and I replied that I felt like I was locked in a vice and tensing in a brace position. She said she really got that, and the actually she felt the same.

The talk we had was really really helpful. The instant connection and the honesty and being able to ‘feel’ Elle and the safety settled my nervous system so quickly. I felt my body starting to relax, the tension in my solar plexus went and I was able settle into the call.

As we talked, I was able to recognise that I am really good at latching onto the tiniest bit of ‘scary’ and lose all sense of the good in our communications – but it all comes from a place of fear. Elle said that she, too, can worry that she’s getting it very wrong with me when I let her know about the bits that don’t land in our communications and then she worries she’s making it worse for me.  

I told her that it might seem like I am taking the whole message as ‘wrong’ but the reality is I am genuinely only looking for clarification and reassurance on the small bits and that at least part of me knows we are ok to be able to keep going over things with a fine-toothed comb otherwise I wouldn’t bring it to her to begin with and that her messages really really do help me. I am aware, though, that my attention to small details might come over as my being critical at times. But really, I’m just overthinking.

I think this is not just a complex trauma thing; I think there is an element of neurodiversity playing out here, too. Both my kids are autistic and the more they grow the more and more of myself I see in them (both as ac child and now) and so understand how my brain works. Talk about little mirrors! It’s complicated. There’s trauma and there’s neurodiversity, or neuro-complexity, and then there’s the space where it all overlaps… no wonder it’s fucking hard for me sometimes!

The good news is that Elle works with a lot of neurodiverse clients, and has close family members who are also autistic so I know I am not too much for her. When we first started working together, I said about my sensitivities to noise, and smell, and all the other various ‘things’ I struggle with and she said she was definitely somewhere on the bell curve, too. We connect on a level that I don’t with other people. Like I don’t really need to explain some of my ‘weird’ because she’s the same and gets it. Thank god.

One of the reasons I like working with Elle is because I think we are both very invested and committed to deep, authentic, clear communication. Like whenever I bring it to her, she more than meets me in it. I just wish my brain could remember this! – but my trauma history keeps jamming sticks in the spokes of my bike wheels time and again.

Speaking on the phone, then, was so good because it allowed us to clear things up so I wasn’t sitting with my panic and getting more jumbled and disconnected over the weekend.

After the call I sent this, and then carried on with my day like a normalish person!:

Mainly, I think I want to say that when I’m focusing on my scary 1% that absolutely doesn’t mean that I don’t see the 99% and that what you say to me doesn’t land. Because it does. Like it really does. And I am also really conscious that my saying I’m freaking out about the 1% can make you feel not enough – and that really really isn’t my intention at all because actually it’s not about you, it’s me panicking about thinking you’re going to disappear… and you are so right about the too much/not enough runners. I feel like I have magic jet pack running shoes when I think I’ve done something wrong, or that I’ve upset you, or mainly that I am going to lose you because I’ve said or done something off. 

And when I get in that place it’s really hard to remember that things are ok – even though part of me knows it – and I can just disappear off like the Roadrunner leaving a dusty haze in my wake.

So, speaking to you really helps because it reminds me that Brian is frightened but his version of what’s happening isn’t necessarily the reality. 

The weekend after the session was much more manageable than how weekends usually are. Cutting the time down between actually talking made a massive difference despite the panic situation I had got myself into. The emails and texts definitely do help but actually it was speaking made all the difference.

I know I have been talking about it for a while, the need for an extra session or a check in, and this really highlighted to me how needed it was, and I resolved to ask for us to see if there was a way of building a check in to our weeks going forward.

The next Tuesday came along and OMFG it was hotter than hell and I thought I was going to melt when I went to my session – like blimey the UK is in a serious heatwave right now and I hate it. I can’t concentrate and it’s absolutely terrible for cuddles!!

We weren’t many minutes into our session when Elle told me that she had enjoyed talking to me on the phone and she wondered whether I might like to figure out a time when we can speak each week. I said that would be lovely and she said we could talk about it the following week when we had two face-to-face sessions booked in. Yes two!

Why?

Well, during the rupture repair session when Elle came back from break, I had commented how ropey May and June felt due to the Anita ending anniversary stuff and how that had undoubtedly made our rupture a billion times worse… but that July was a different kind of hard due to the anniversary of my dad’s death and the month following that had some very complicated shit happen. Elle asked me then when the hardest bit of July was and I told her. She said, that we would book in an extra session on that day (the actual anniversary of my dad dying) and have two sessions that week if I wanted.

So that’s what we did, last week…and I’ll tell you all about it next time. We had a picnic! It was lovely.

The BIG Rupture: What Happened Next…

rubberbandsandchewinggum7 Comments

I realised something this week – and that is, because I blog way less frequently than I used to (although my summer resolution to myself is to make time to write again), that often I post about HUGE OUCH things that happen in therapy and then don’t come back here and talk about the ‘what happened next’ for ages, if at all. For example, a couple of my more recent posts have been about ruptures in my relationship with Elle (remember the slogan t-shirt debacle and then finding myself on a therapist forum? – groan) and this is the first time I have returned to discuss the repairs Elle and I have made, and so these ruptures are sort of left hanging on the blog.

I imagine it’s starting to look like Elle and I are lurching from one terrible mishap to another without any sense of there being a resolution in between. That would be fucking terrifying, wouldn’t it?!…and it simply isn’t how it is. Thank goodness! Let’s be clear – I am not the same client I was back in the day with Em where she would say or do something to upset me, we’d be in massive rupture territory, and I’d just tough it out on my own because I was so frightened of her reaction to what I might say and the potential for abandonment and rejection that it felt safer to keep it inside (or here on the blog with you guys!) than talk to her. I didn’t dare raise my head above the parapet for years – turns out that wasn’t completely stupid given what happened when I did! #likeatick

It’s so funny – not funny haha, just funny TRAGIC looking back on that total mess (shitshow) with Em. In therapy, so much of the work is about building trust and working through/round your defences and so the main advice we generally see online for people when they are struggling about something in the therapeutic relationship is, “Take this to your therapist and try and have the difficult conversations because THEY WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT. They are trained professionals, have done their own work, and see this stuff ALL THE TIME.” Only it’s not always the case, is it? How many of us have had therapists who have shit the bed the moment you challenge them, or tell them you’ve been hurt by them, or tell them you love them? How many of us know what it is to feel the walls go up, the air in the room drop to below freezing, to get the ‘boundary talk’, or worse – terminated?

So, the advice to bring the tough stuff to the therapist ‘should’ absolutely be correct – but I think really it also needs a caveat: if you think your therapist is safe enough to hear it.

The thing is how do we know if a therapist is safe?

Blimey, isn’t that a question?!

There should be that ‘felt sense’ of safety with your therapist (eventually), but sometimes that doesn’t come…and then all we are left with is a therapist saying, “You can trust me” – #Icallbullshitonthat – and a desperate hope that it’s an ‘us problem’ rather than a ‘them problem’.

Safety never came with Em – even though the really strong attachment (disorganised of course) did. The parallels between her cold, detached personality and the almost literal begging for evidence of care mirrored my relationship with my mother so perfectly that it’s little wonder I stayed for so long. Therapy felt horrible but so fucking familiar to me. This is how relationships were, right?

I was stuck in a place of paralysis waiting for my protectors to stand down, wanting to trust her, and after a few years of feeling more and more unsafe I found myself forcefully working against my protectors – hitting override again and again – making myself jump into the shark infested waters… and no doubt that might work (in a safe therapy where there are no sharks)…but it can be catastrophic in a ‘disaster therapy’. I used to laugh about getting the ‘therapy shits’ before sessions – but what a ridiculous situation to be in week in, week out – anxiety was sooooooo high that I felt physically sick before every session… and yet I wrote that off as ‘part of the process’. Fuck me. That’s never right.

I think one of the things I regret most about working with Em was that I went against my gut ALL THE TIME. I felt her frustration at how little I shared with her and how strong my protectors were (queen of dissociation!)…but I realise, now, that I must’ve had a sixth sense about how things would eventually go because when I did push myself to BRING IT ALL to her, the shit hit the fan on high speed didn’t it? My bravery and vulnerability were met with stone cold still face, topped with thinly veiled psychobabble insults “adhesive like a tick, taking whatever it wants, like you almost need a permanent breast, pushing the boundaries with no regard for what I want”  … Ouch.

So – yeah – building trust and feeling safe is so hard, especially when you’re in therapy working with core messaging from childhood about being ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ and perhaps never having even known what safety would feel like.It’s understandable that sometimes we, as clients, are scared stiff and the idea of being vulnerable freaks the living daylights out of us. It’s hard sometimes when we hit the skids to figure out how much of what we are feeling is because, “I recognise on an emotional and somatic level that this person is not safe!!!” and how much is the wonky brain making you think past patterns are repeating when actually things are fine.

It’s all the harder when you have also experienced harm in therapy as well. My therapists ALWAYS trigger complicated mother transference in me (ugh!) – but poor Elle also bloody triggers SHITTY THERAPIST transference too!

After my recent experiences with Em and Anita, Elle is basically doomed because in so many ways she isn’t like them but SHE IS A THERAPIST and Brian (my brain) doesn’t really trust therapists anymore. Thankfully, enough of my system does trust Elle…wholeheartedly…and so this means I can bring ALL OF THE THINGS TO HER EVEN IF IT FEELS SCARY OR UNCOMFORTABLE.

It’s taken a while but we have built a strong foundation of trust that can withstand my wobbles. It feels like I can safely show up and work through the ruptures or miscommunications we have because every time I do it’s more evidence that I am safe to be me, bring my feelings, and that Elle is committed to working whatever it is through with me. As she said the other day, “I’m here for it all”.

Thankfully, I am not in that horrible place that I was with Em where I felt that there was no choice but to hide my feelings and hope that things would work out without my saying anything…and to be honest, that’s how it got with Anita towards the end. I was so conscious of her wheels falling off that I tried to be as little work as possible for her. Didn’t exactly work out, though, did it? That’s definitely a throwback to my early years – suffer alone and get over it – but it’s so sad when you think that I have been paying for therapy for so long and been in hiding for so much of it trying to make it so the other person can stay. UGH. I am still really mad with Anita…but that’s for another blog post as this is sure to be lengthy enough as it is.

It’s no secret that I absolutely am still ridiculously sensitive to perceived rejection and abandonment but the difference is I ALWAYS tell Elle when I feel there is something wrong between us – even if it’s just that she’s turned up in my dreams and hurt me – and even then, she’s kind and lovely about it and not weirded out! But it’s all these little moments of connection and understanding that ultimately build the trust so that when there is something bigger, I have the confidence to tackle it.

Bear with me, I’m circling back round to the point – of ‘WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?’ – slow burn…

So, as I said earlier, I think at the moment my writing here makes it look like my therapy is just one long protracted shit show/mess when actually it’s mostly just steady, consistent, safe work but also it’s not really all that interesting. I mean, it is interesting to me, but the safe, familiar, connected, conversations and sessions aren’t really exciting to read about. We talk, we connect, sometimes we read stories, we laugh, we cry, we cuddle, we do the work…mostly.

Week in week out I show up, she shows up, and we keep going deeper and deeper into the deep darkness of my psyche, but we’re holding hands and, generally speaking, there’s a candle to light the way and so it feels safe because I am not doing it alone anymore.

I think, therefore, that ruptures take me all the more by surprise these days because Elle and I have such a solid relationship and so it completely knocks me for six when things go wrong. When we lose connection it feels like our hands separate and the candle blows out for a minute and it’s fucking scary because I really don’t like it in the dark on my own.

But I guess there are ruptures in any therapeutic relationship – I mean there’s so much written on rupture/repair in therapy that it would be naïve to think that any therapy is perfect. The important thing, though, is that ruptures aren’t too frequent and that the repair is effective and fast. Just like parenting, therapy on balance needs to be ‘good enough’. Elle is really good like this. She doesn’t leave me hanging when I tell her I am in a pickle and to date, she has always received whatever I have to say with openness and curiosity.

Until recently there hasn’t really been anything ‘major’ happen outside the normal run of me getting angsty and upset around breaks, or feeling disconnected and so the rupture has been triggered by my attachment issues rather than something being properly amiss. I might be activated and upset but not because of anything that Elle has done ‘wrong’. This last couple of months, however, has seen us step up a gear in working through some big rupture content. Like it’s not “Like a tick” (Em) or “too dependent” (Anita) – but it’s felt like it was in that sort of sphere and that triggered the shit out of my system.

The good news is Elle has been so receptive to what I have to say when I bring it to her. She doesn’t run and hide. She knows how to apologise and take responsibility/accountability for her part in things. She never shames me (which is huge), and as much as we have had some really BIG conversations lately, it’s honestly really refreshing to be working with someone who is able to reflect and is always wanting to do the best by me and really invites me into bringing EVERYTHING to her even if I am swimming in shame and embarrassment.

This is especially helpful after Anita became so incredibly defensive and avoidant in the last year of our work together. Of course, I would rather not have had these ruptures with Elle but at the same time it feels like we a doing some serious rewiring of the system when I see that I can bring my big feelings to her and she will do her best to repair. She shows me again and again that I am important to her.

I won’t lie. The most recent rupture when I found reference to my work with Elle on a therapist forum (albeit anonymous on both sides) really floored me and it was a right fucking mess. I truly believed that the person I thought I know and loved was someone other than she had presented herself to be – and that felt so upsetting and dangerous to my system. To think that Elle was feeling like I was some kind of pathetic client who refused to see that we were in a therapeutic relationship was so painful…even though that isn’t what it was at all.

My ability to take really small snippets of info and join a handful of dots and turn them into a spectacular constellation of horror is nothing if not impressive. I wish that I could see the 99% of brilliant alongside the 1% of terror – but when I am in the scary zone I can’t remember anything good at all. My fear takes over and all my stories about being too much, and being unlovable, and that I can’t trust anyone get really loud…but mostly I feel my system collapsing internally because this is how we get left isn’t it? This is the start of the abandonment playbook.

Elle being away on holiday and it all tying in with the anniversary of the end of seeing A was just the icing on the cake really, like if I was ever going to be primed for being sensitive to perceived abandonment and rejection – this was it.

So, what happened after I posted the blog?

OMG RB are you actually going to cut to the fucking chase? – after 2000 words?!

Well, I sat on my hands for a few days, tried to keep myself busy, and basically got more and more upset at the idea that I had misread the relationship that I have with Elle. I know I am client but I had never imagined that she felt that I was a problem, or that I didn’t understand the boundaries of the relationship, or that she saw me very much in a black and white way as a ‘client’ that needs to understand I am just paying for her time.

Seeing that online post title (but not being able to see the actual post as it was deleted) and the replies from other therapists hit me so hard because…well, it sounded so much like something Em would have said…and nothing at all like how I have experienced Elle in the room. It confused me, but mainly it devastated me, because in that week I was completely unable to reference any of the last nearly two years of work with Elle where she has demonstrated care and that she is a safe person…and instead my Inner Critic went, “See, this is it, behind the mask, it’s all just a façade to get you to part with money each week and make you keep coming back. The reality is you’re a fucking loser and here’s another therapist that can’t tolerate you.”

As we all know, part of complex trauma means it takes me a very long time to trust people and yet I really and truly believed that I could trust Elle…and now here I was…once again falling face first into the reality that there’s something wrong with me. I felt like my barometer for safety had royally let me down. Like, given EVERYTHING that has happened with Em and Anita, you’d think I’d spot inauthentic communication and relationship a mile off…and yet I hadn’t. In fact, I’d completely missed it. If anything, all I have found with Elle is someone who seems to be really honest and real.

So yeah.

It stung.

Then I started down the spiral. Maybe I’d just let my guard down too much. Maybe I was hurting so badly after what happened with Anita that I would overlook anything to feel safe and held. Maybe my search for ‘mother’ meant I’d latched onto Elle’s care that simply wasn’t there and created a version of her that simply wasn’t real – it was all just wishful thinking that maybe, just maybe this time someone would see me as I am and love me for it.

But that simply isn’t the case because she is real and I feel her care. If anything, Elle has had to work three times as hard to earn my trust BECAUSE of the damage that has been done by others that have come before her. My protectors are elite level royal marine commandos at this point, not sleepy security guards.

I wrote that post about what I’d found on the Saturday and by Thursday night I was … down in the depths of the spiral. I was swimming in shame. I was so hurt. I was so badly disconnected that I had no idea how I would come back from it…and my runners were ready to run.

So, thinking Elle would be more or less back from her time away because the thing that her and my friend do together was happening that evening, I sent the blog by email because I just couldn’t wait another five days to see her or start to try and fix it.

And then I heard nothing.

Fuck.

This was not like Elle AT ALL.

(Of course, I didn’t know she was still away with patchy signal up a mountain…)

Twenty-four hours after I sent the email I got a long email in my inbox. It spooked me a bit because well, there was a lot and my scared little heart was scanning for rejection and also I know that that post was A LOT. I can see now that she was really trying to reassure me and explain as best she could what had gone on whilst also being aware we were not in the room and that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix via messages…

The end of the message said:

I feel sorry you don’t believe that I love you and that my care for you is anything other than a real human emotion grown from knowing everything about you that I do, but I think I really do understand why.

And just because you don’t believe me, and even try to find evidence that I don’t, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop, or punish you for it. I am a person who loves you and wants to support you, that’s all I’ll ever be, and every decision I’ll ever make is based on that.

And you can ask me anything you want about any of this on Tuesday, and I promise I’ll answer you carefully and honestly from that same place.

And I can see that this, and the paragraphs that came before it all come from a really caring place. But because my system and runner ducks had had almost a week’s head start on her, my protectors, my teen, all the hurt parts simply replied:

I don’t want to see you anymore.

Fuck.

And then there was more silence from Elle’s end which freaked the absolute living shit out of me because what if she took that at face value and was so hacked off with me that she would let me go.

When she finally did reply, it didn’t sound enough like the Elle that the littles needed – and it panicked me. I realise now what was going on but in the moment the fear was massive on my part. She didn’t do an Em on me, by any means, and she did tell me that she felt sad and heavy and that she understood that it felt too much for me but that she was there and would always want to see me if I wanted to and that she very much would want to see me on Tuesday if I felt able to… it didn’t land how I needed it to, but I was able to see enough that she was trying and not giving up but I could also read that she was struggling too.  

Fortunately, her message was enough of a way in for me just do the vulnerable and tell her what I needed in no uncertain terms – that I was scared, that I needed a hug, for her to hold my hand and to hear her voice – and then she replied with exactly what I needed and it sounded like her:

I’m super conscious that – halfway up a mountain with shitty reception, broken glasses, and just my phone – I’m in the worst place to be reassuring you that I’m close to you right now, but I am, and yes, very very definitely holding your hand.

I’ve had lots of feelings about this, but not one of them has been to let go of it. I also wish I could be there for an all-encompassing hour-long hug, but I absolutely promise from the side of a windswept mountain that I will be again very very soon. xxx

It wasn’t until this point that I realised that she wasn’t actually home yet and had been communicating with me as best she could from a tricky location. I felt bad because the one thing I had wanted to avoid was encroaching into her holiday time with this mess…and it turns out I had.

On the Monday morning, I got my personalised session reminder telling me that she was just home and looking forward to seeing me the next day. I felt way more settled even though we were still going to have to talk it all through…and repair…and it wasn’t going to be an easy session by any means.

As I said earlier, this whole thing was made so much worse because we were on a break and the break also coincided with the anniversary of Anita telling me she had to end therapy…I was looking for danger and seeing it EVERYWHERE. If we could have sorted it out immediately when it was happening it would have been so much better, but that’s the sod’s law of therapy (and my world) the shit rarely hits the fan at a point where it can be contained and not cause much damage! It ALWAYS comes about when I am a million miles away from a shower.

I braved up when I had seen Elle’s morning text and sent her a message which alluded to something she wrote in her original email response to me where she has said something about how it was her job to always think carefully about what she shares of her process and only telling me what she thinks is beneficial for me to hear:

Glad you’re back safe. I feel really anxious and like I have inadvertently thrown a grenade in between us that’s just about to explode. I need you to be honest with me tomorrow. Not ‘honest but couched with a “this is beneficial for you to hear”’ like the actual truth even if I might not like what you have to say because I’d rather that and know exactly what’s going on rather than some half-truth and also it’s absolutely fine to walk away if that’s easier.

At the exact moment I sent the text I got a notification came up on my phone that Elle had sent me an email.

And talk about synchronicity – what she sent me couldn’t have been more real and honest if it had tried. I knew from that email that we were going to be fine, and actually will continue to be fine as we bump along down this road together.

By the time it got to Tuesday I was just desperate to reconnect and sort things out.

And we did.

It was a proper digging in deep, honest, raw session that felt really connecting. We talked about such a lot of stuff. Elle apologised for the post and explained where she had been coming from. And of course, her intentions and my version of her intentions couldn’t have been further away from each other.

I won’t go into lots of detail about the ins and outs of what was said but what I will say is that it is incredibly refreshing to be able to bring the biggest scariest fears and hurt to someone and for them to own their part in it, and be completely present and willing to talk about ALL of what has happened. No blaming, no shaming, no putting it squarely back on me, no clipboards, no withdrawal or freezing me out – just getting in the tough stuff together and forging a deeper understanding of how we impact one another and what that means for us going forward – and how to manage things in the future.

I don’t like ruptures… but I am confident in Elle’s ability to make repairs. And this is a lot of my work having grown up in an environment where I could never speak up about how hurt I was, or if I did so much as show hurt or dissatisfaction it would bring on another barrage of abuse.

One of the things that Elle and I have committed to is trying to bring stuff up in closer connection to each other. I write a lot, and it is helpful, but I think we both find it hard reading about ourselves in the third person… I mean, she’ll never write about me again and has shut down that social media account altogether now, but I know she doesn’t find it especially easy reading what I have to say without my being there either… because just like I focus in on the scary 1% rather than being able to hold in mind the 99% she’s human and does the same sometimes especially if it looks like she’s really hurt me and HASN’T MEANT TO.

She’s really good at doing her own internal work but we’ve figured out that we have similar stories around being too much/not enough. So, my ‘too much’ can often trigger her own countertransference about being ‘not enough’ or being ‘misunderstood’. And so sometimes sending things in written format can make it so we don’t see the entirety of what’s really happening. The good thing is we are now both really conscious of this and so can work with that explicitly.

And this week, yet again, this stuff was tapped into.

It’s been a month since we repaired the rupture, but we haven’t returned to it explicitly and I think sometimes I need to keep doubling back and checking in on this kind of thing. So, after my session last Tuesday (which was lovely and holding and connecting) part of my system piped up and started wondering where we were at now. Was everything really ok, or was anything festering on Elle’s side. So, I decided to ask Elle where we were at and what would happen if we found ourselves in that place again in an email.

I’ll write about that next post because this is insanely long already. But one good thing to come out of the haze was that rather than continuing down a road of trying to find her in the fog, I just asked for a phone call to check in…and that was gold. So, that’s my next plan – try and build in a regular check in at the end of the week regardless of where we are at.

I’m sure this post is vague…and frustratingly lacking in detail about the rupture… but mainly I wanted to come back and say that it’s all ok. I wanted to write this sooner, but I have been really struggling with going anywhere near the laptop to write about it even though it’s fine. It’s weird. Sometimes I can just write and it comes freely and other times my brain just won’t allow it.

Anyway, if you got through this, well done!

Some Real (Unfiltered!) Therapist Testimonials

rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

Have you ever wished there was a space where you could see the real experiences that other clients have had with your next/potential therapist rather than relying solely on unverified ‘glowing’ testimonials that therapists place on their own websites to help you decide whether they’re the ‘one’?

Shopping for a new therapist isn’t easy. You can do all the due diligence in the world: research, ask questions about their practice, their modality, how they view the therapeutic relationship etc… but you’re rarely going to get a therapist admit to their previous mistakes, difficulties, or lack of competence in the early days (although it would be really great if they did!!).

Not very many therapists open themselves to Google reviews (unsurprisingly!) as they have no control over what’s posted and it’s almost impossible to get a Google review removed. The thing is, you’d think on balance if these ‘professionals’ are even half of what they promote themselves to be online then their ratings would even out over time. The odd unfavourable review pitted against a stream (tsunami) of gushing five star ones wouldn’t be enough to paint a wholly negative picture would it?

There surely can’t be all that many of us out there that have been so harmed in therapy that we want to give our honest zero star reviews and warn other clients off can there?

I think we know the answer to this question 😆.

So, given that ‘Trust Pilot For Therapists’ doesn’t actually exist, we’re left with no option but to try and trust and put faith in what we see online. Most unwitting clients take therapists at face value from the glossy bios on the BACP website, or other therapy advertising page, or a therapist’s own personal website (cue soft lighting, benevolent smile, a nice cardigan, or some outdoor woodland scene) and the likelihood of us ever finding out what might have happened in the past that might be – how shall I put it? – less than optimal remains concealed in the shadows.

I think it’s tricky, too, when we do take steps to book a session and go and meet someone new because although we might get a ‘gut feeling’ about someone from the off it can take a while to get a sense of whether someone might be a good fit or not. This is especially the case if we’ve been hurt in therapy before. Our antennas are looking for it feeling ‘wrong’ but there’s also a part where we think we should override doubts because it’s probably our defences.

Meeting with Elle for first time was hard. I’d just come out the long-term therapeutic relationship with Anita and then done eight sessions with Hannah that crashed and burned. Therapy wasn’t ever going to feel safe and part of me hated Elle because she wasn’t Anita and she didn’t know me.

Still. We made it through to where we are now- almost two years in.

Last night I decided I’d write my own therapist reviews for some of the ex-therapists I’ve had and let my claws out – it was more Wolverine than cute kitty. Can’t see these ever making it onto their testimonial pages, can you?!!

Enjoy. 😉

P.S – If anyone feels like they’d like to write their own (positive or negative) and ping them into the comments, I’d love to see them! You’ve got to laugh otherwise you’d cry…and man, I’m all too familiar with the crying.

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EM:

As a highly trained and experienced clinical psychologist, I had high hopes for my therapy with Em. She said she specialised in trauma as well as many other of my presenting issues. It turned out that Em is frightened of entering into relationship with her clients and thinks that any move on the client’s part to try and discuss the therapeutic relationship or feelings that arise in the relationship is getting away from the therapy and is in fact ‘pushing the boundaries’. Em is unwilling to meet the client where they are at and operates from a one size fits all model (although she would call herself ‘integrative’). As a therapist, Em says that she is able to handle all the feelings a client might feel and welcomes them – only I wouldn’t recommend expressions of love or anger should you enter into therapy with her as these may trigger her into calling you an adhesive parasite as well as suggesting that you may secretly want to fuck her. If you have any feelings of compassion for those with mental health issues – she is not the therapist for you, as she believes that the majority of her NHS clients are ‘playing the system to get their PIP’ and if this isn’t enough to put you off- I found out much too late that she is a tory (as well as a class A cunt). 0/10

*

ANITA:

Anita presents herself as an ‘ethical’ therapist who takes great care and pride in her work. This could not be further from the truth. She is, in fact, more damaged than the clients she professes to help. Indeed, she is the equivalent of an emotional wrecking ball. Her avoidant personality means she is unable to take accountability for her actions and behaves very much like an ostrich. Anita is neither emotionally intelligent or competent enough to be working as a therapist and it is laughable that she believes her services are worth £60 an hour. My advice would be take your money and set fire to it. It’ll do less damage to you in the long run. Don’t be fooled by her website and the extensive list of glowing testimonials. The truth of the matter is that Anita has left a trail of devastation in her wake and justifies her serious failings by repeatedly citing her ill health and ‘situation’. Her situation is of her own making, and her health has been steady enough to get married as well as sustain her counselling business. If you are seeking a therapist with integrity and honesty – Anita is not the therapist for you. Steer well clear. 0/10

*

HANNAH:


Hannah is an inexperienced therapist who really should only focus on light work – she is certainly not equipped to deal with trauma. As with many therapists, her ego is far larger than her capability and she is prone to bite off more than she can chew. As much as suggestions of practising ‘yoga’ and going on a ‘retreat’ would maybe be welcome from a friend when sharing your struggles, it is hardly helpful advice from a therapist talking with a client who has been in therapy for many years who has a complex trauma history and recent trauma from therapy harm. This is straight out the playbook of CMHT suggesting a warm bath and cup of tea to people suffering suicidal ideation and self-harm. Chat GPT would dish out more helpful strategies than this at no cost and from the comfort of your own home and phone. Hannah does, however, have a nice set of colouring books and pens. 2/10 Give her five years and she might be worth a visit.

If (When) I Run Away – Please Come And Find Me.

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

Last year Elle and I were talking about when things have gone wrong in my therapies (there’s plenty of content there and we visit it regularly!) and situations where a client might choose to ‘end’ and not come back to therapy but it feels somehow unexpected or not the ‘natural end’. I was in one of those sensible adult places, not activated (!), and so able to express some of what goes on for me when the wheels feel like they are falling off in the therapeutic relationship and how panicked I get. I recognise that sometimes the reasons I bolt for the door (sometimes literally) are often not what appears to be happening on the surface in the moment.

What can seem like a very small trigger can send me totally spiralling…but then that’s hardly surprising when we look at this through a Complex Trauma lens, or the fact that I have tonne of parts who are all processing stuff in their own ways – many of which are not particularly sophisticated! Of course, my four-year-old self and teen parts don’t see things the same way my adult self does, nor have they the skills to manage things in the way that my adult does. You’d think I’d be ok, though, seeing as I have a really fucking competent adult self. The problem is, my system is complicated, has the capacity to hijack me, and I am really really good at dissociating. Adult self is rarely there when I need her when I am freaking out.

Let’s face it – what scares me (all of me) more than anything is broken connection, feeling like the attachment is severed, and that I am on the verge of being abandoned. This is not at all surprising given my history because there was a time when disconnection really was a life-or-death situation. My mother’s PND did nothing for my little baby self or my developing nervous system and I have spent so much of my life in survival because my caregivers have never been reliable.

It’s hardly surprising that when I feel like the relationship with Elle (or A or Em…) is headed towards a cliff edge I am the first to run away. I am the absolute queen of ‘leave before I get left’ which is why I absolutely need my therapist to know this pattern and make sure I don’t bolt and disappear when there is a rupture (even if from their side it might seem small, repairable, or can wait). Ruptures can feel catastrophic to my system these days because … well… there have been ruptures where I have been hurt really badly and basically been abandoned and rejected because of my responses. Think of Em. My reaction to being called a tick, calling her out on it, and running scared didn’t see her try hard to meet me in it, to apologise, to understand why I was terrified, she just saw it as a perfect opportunity to let me go.  

Anita was way better at handling ruptures… until her life collapsed around her ears and she couldn’t hold herself let alone anyone else. The damage from that ending is ongoing and painful. I feel so sad that in the two years since I last saw her, she hasn’t been able to step outside of her struggles and meet to end but that’s not what I am here to talk about today… although it definitely fed into the intensity of the panic I have felt with Elle during our recent rupture. 

So, what’s this post all about?

This is a pre-curser post to help understand a bit of what happened in the most recent rupture with Elle (i.e when I brought it to her attention). Because yes. I got myself in a mess. A big one. And I ended up sending her this message:

I don’t want to see you anymore.

You can only imagine what sort of a state I had got myself into to send that. Eek. Like, I am the person will ALL THE WORDS… not none!

I’m almost done writing that post – and it’ll be up soon. But suffice to say it’s been a wild ride.

I am glad, then, that over the time I have been working with Elle, I have given her pieces of the map of me so that she has been able to understand me better and figure out what I need.

Most of the time I probably appear pretty together when I see her despite the crap that keeps hitting my day-to-day life. I probably seem a bit wounded and in need of support for my little parts but also seem generally functional. Sometimes I am a bit closed off but I am present in the room rather than off in space dissociated. The completely derailed, panicked, reactive, scared stiff self hasn’t really made it to the room (she’s done some emailing though!) – or if she has, she’s not been triggered BY ELLE. Elle has been a witness to the struggle and in support role in the room, not the trigger. It’s only this last month that Elle has had to misfortune of meeting that part of me in person.

Anyway, back to last year. I was testing the water with Elle knowing that it was only ever going to be a matter of time before something triggered my runners and protectors and I needed to know how she would respond if I unexpectedly disappeared. We all know that there are those diehard therapists who will say “I respect client autonomy, and if they choose to leave that’s their choice and I will not contact them thereafter. It’s up to them to contact me should they want to resume therapy.”

Puke.

Honestly, this kind of therapist really annoys me more than anything. If that’s your stance as a therapist then you absolutely should not be working with C-PTSD or people with multi-part systems. This ‘in the service of the client’s autonomy’ is bullshit. I’m not for one minute saying to beg and plead for a client to come back, that’s not realistic. But so often when we start running and slamming doors behind us, it’s not because we want to leave – it’s because we are scared! And we need for the adult, regulated nervous system (therapist) to remind us that we can come back, that we are wanted (even if we are having a tantrum and full of shame), and that they are committed to working through EVERYTHING with us even if it is HARD. Letting a triggered client disappear out the door is abandonment… it’s not kind.

And so, that day I asked Elle if she had ever made a mistake with a client that led to termination and what she did, or what she would do differently. Elle told me the about the biggest regret of her career was a time when she wasn’t as sensitive as she could have been with a client who kept cancelling last minute. She reached the point where she enacted her cancellation policy after several missed sessions – i.e charging for the session by sending an email, and the client left as a result – never came back in. Elle said she had failed to recognise potential wounding around money and still feels terrible to this day.

Mistakes and missteps happen, but what I wanted to know was what she did when the client said they were not coming back. Was she a ‘respect client’s autonomy and let them go’ therapist, or did she do something different?

Elle assured me that she had reached out and suggested that they meet in person but that the client didn’t want to come back, that there were some back and forth communications but that the client ended.

[For the record there was nothing identifying or specific – merely Elle’s feeling that she fucked up and had learnt a lot from that.]

I told her that I would always want her to reach out to me because it made me think about all the times I ran out of Anita’s and how when I am upset I can pull the plug (or parts of me can) and how it is really important to me that my therapist recognises when I am truly wanting to end and when I feel backed into a corner and feel like I need to leave because I can’t tolerate the feelings of disconnect etc.

Even though Elle was clear that she would always contact me in a rupture situation – my brain was whirring after the session and so I wrote her this letter at the time:

I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about the client that never came back – because of course that’s what my brain does at 3am when I can’t sleep and the anxiety is doing its thing. I actually had a lot of thoughts, like I can think of hundreds of reasons of why that all happened, but I am sure there’s nothing you haven’t thought about over the years so it’s not relevant.

However, what it did make me really think about was what would happen if something similar happened with us. You’ve probably figured out by now that I am not someone who cancels last minute and, generally speaking, if I did it would be because something was out of my control with the kids or something. But, actually, there are times when I get completely hijacked by my system and the “I don’t want to go” (it’s much bigger and more complicated than that) is really hard to get around.

Tbh it’s rarely an “I don’t want to go” because there is lots of me that absolutely does but it’s sometimes more of a “things feel very wrong, something is up, I’m scared that it’s all going to blow up, I don’t feel safe, I feel hurt, abandoned, rejected, maybe even angry… [on and on and on]…and so I need to protect myself from that and stay away – and she doesn’t care anyway so what’s the point?! It’s better to leave before I get left…”

I mean I totally get what happens, where it comes from, what parts of me are involved, and yet when it’s happening it is not always easy to sidestep it. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic but I guess at least there’s a really clear trajectory on how it all runs which I guess at least I am aware of now. And I see it a lot. Clients, for whatever reason, find it difficult to go to their therapy, maybe don’t show up, and might seem to be ghosting but actually it’s not because they don’t want to be there it’s because there is some kind of a rupture (that maybe the therapist has absolutely no clue about) and they, for whatever reason, can’t bring it to the room.

So many of us are conflict avoidant and even though bringing ‘big feelings’ shouldn’t be a problem, I guess most of our experiences have been that when we have, we’ve been mocked, or shamed, or abandoned, or gaslit…you know the deal… and so we’d rather not risk that repeating. I think sometimes, too, part of us knows that our reaction to whatever has been triggered is MUCH BIGGER than it ‘should’ be and so there’s shame and embarrassment there too because we feel completely derailed and it’s not even that big a deal (only it is a massive deal!).

I think it can be all the more unsettling for people that don’t really spend much time contemplating the therapeutic relationship and so when something between the therapist and client happens it’s hard to know what to do with it. Like it’s much easier to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sick” rather than, “I feel really anxious and something you said has really upset me” when they thought they were there to talk about their work stress and all of a sudden all this other shit is stirred up.

Sometimes it feels like a toddler or a teenager having a tantrum but actually I think that’s exactly what is happening – whatever is being triggered isn’t necessarily conscious and, in that moment, the adult self isn’t available enough to navigate the situation and all we know is that it just feels huge and insurmountable and overwhelming and completely in our bodies – and so the instinct is to run away and hide.

In some ways I think this can be really hard to manage because whatever is happening to stop a person turning up to therapy feels massive to them, and acting out can bring on all the massive feelings of shame and embarrassment afterwards and basically like you just want to crawl into a hole and die. It takes a lot to feel brave enough to come back and talk it through, and there has to be a strong enough sense that the person opposite you isn’t going to confirm everything that you fear is happening. It really is like with toddlers and teens. They need an adult to help them out of their meltdowns sometimes and an invitation back to work things out.

It is really complicated (but also not). I think when people don’t show up, rather than being flaky or disrespectful (I mean I guess there must be some people like that), is about testing whether the therapeutic relationship is strong or not. Like do you care enough to come find me if I disappear or will you just let me go? And I really get that this is complicated because all the training is like, ‘therapists should respect client autonomy’ and all the shit about not creating a dynamic that encourages ‘game playing’… only that is really pathologising and really makes it seem like everything that happens is down to us. It’s not game playing, it’s trying to protect ourselves.

As I said, lots of us have been hurt over the years and haven’t had the experience of managing conflict in a way that doesn’t somehow burn the house down and so rather than face a situation that potentially will hurt us more on top of whatever hurt feelings we are already feeling, we disappear. I think, for me at least, if I experience something as being abandoning or rejecting then it absolutely triggers the need to run away.

I’m not explaining this brilliantly well, and this is looooonnnggg, but I guess what I am trying to say is, if I cancelled last minute, or didn’t show up it’s not because I am rude, or don’t respect boundaries or whatever else – it’s because something is really wrong (from my side) and it feels too hard to come. If you just let me go and never contacted me to find out what was up or didn’t reach out and invite me to come and try and figure out what’s going on with you in person, actually what it confirms to me is probably everything I was running away from in the first place which is the feeling that you don’t care…

I’d like to think that a situation like this would never happen – but I also live in my head and experience often enough my runner ducks bolting. Just usually I have enough time to gather them back together before I see you.

Having a therapy go south in this way is sooooo common and causes such a lot of hurt to those involved. I have way too many stories – not just my own! – and I was wondering whether after the event a therapist reaching out would make any difference. And I think it would. An opportunity to talk through what happened when it’s not live would probably be really helpful because I think we tend to carry this shit around for a long time. 

Anyway, that’s… a lot. I’ll try not to run away, but if I do, please come and find me. X

And so… I guess it was helpful that I sent that last year, because Elle did come and find me…and the session when we did get to meet was HUGE. I’ll get the ‘what happened next’ post up asap.

Dear Therapist. Just Because We Don’t Want Reminding That We Are Therapy Clients Doesn’t Mean That We Don’t KNOW That We Are Just Your Job.

rubberbandsandchewinggum34 Comments

Today has been rotten. I’ve spent weeks trying very very hard to keep my chin up – or should I say, keep my nostrils above the shit soup that I have been neck, or even, mouth deep in for the longest time. I have painstakingly worked my way through the metaphorical ‘A-Z Book of Self Care’ – exhausting all my tools and strategies in an almost frenzied attempt to stave off sinking beneath the surface (again). I really don’t want to drown in the emotional cesspit!

My social media accounts look like I am living my absolute best life right now, but as we all know there’s often quite a distance between appearance and reality. My exterior looks one way (picture perfect), but I can tell you with complete confidence that my inner world is mired in the deepest, darkest shit right now. I have always been good at masking, though.

Knowing that Elle would be on a break right at the same time that all the anniversaries of Anita pulling the plug on my therapy two years ago has meant that May has been one hell of a messy month inside of me – my minibus has been renamed ‘The Struggle Bus’ and has some wicked looking decals on the side – not that anyone would know. I haven’t just wallowed in the ache and panic of it, though. I’m not lying when I say that I have been making herculean efforts to keep afloat. I have been trying to keep my life vest inflated by blowing into the little tube meanwhile pretending that I am not actually drowning…in shit. My friend said that perhaps I should start flashing the little light and blowing on the whistle…but I don’t want to disturb anyone. And who is going to want to rescue me from a huge vat of shit anyway?!

I took myself away this week, on my own and have been immersing myself in nature, living on my own timetable largely off the clock. I have tried to take out any of the stresses and strains that can leave me feeling overstimulated and overtired – and snappy, and on the verge of meltdown (!)… and it has been great, and I genuinely thought I had warded off the emotional disaster that felt inevitable with the break looming… but today I woke up and felt off. That familiar sense of painful ache and emptiness had rooted and the emotional dark cloud had firmly placed itself above my head.

Despite all the effort to avert the emotional crash it’s happened anyway. Of course it would. I walked 26km of coast path yesterday in an attempt to not end up where I am now (in my bed all day, in a freeze with the curtains closed feeling hopeless and sad). I thought that if I just kept moving, I would be ok. I kept finding a point on the path in the distance and walking to it, then finding another, and another, and before I knew if I was miles and miles from home.

I should know better by now than to try and outrun (walk) something that lives inside me. I can’t run away from my parts and my pain. Sometimes it feels like I live with pieces of shrapnel inside and have learnt to move and bend in particular ways in order to try and avoid the worst of the hurt. Most of the time I am successful. Unless of course I trip and jerk in an unexpected movement and then … OUCH!

And that’s what’s happened today.

Again.

I probably should have made more of an effort to let Elle know what was going on inside me in the two sessions before she left. I have a children’s book called ‘A Shelter For Sadness’ that I read once with Anita. When I got ‘the box’ back from her in December it was the one I picked to show Elle. It’s lovely and talks about making different spaces to house Sadness (or I guess, this expands to whatever other feelings you need to hold). To be honest, I think the sessions before a break need to be all about creating not only a shelter for sadness but for all the little parts that struggle so much. I need a youth hostel!

Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?  

It would be if ‘False Adult’ hadn’t been fronting quite a bit. There’s also been another active protector part – probably a slightly ‘low volume’ version of the ‘Inner Critic’ piping up here and there warning me not to be “too needy” or “too honest” about how things feel for fear of being “too much”. The very last thing I want to happen is have another therapist go off on their holiday and then decide that I am too much like hard work and terminate when they come back.

The thing is I don’t help myself at all by avoiding saying, “The idea of you being gone is really unsettling me” or “I really need for us to do some focussed work before your break with the little parts” or “I might turn up and be adult but the reality is the young parts need stories and cuddles before you go” or “I hate to be like this but can you give me some kind of tangible reassurance that we are ok because my system is in freefall” or “Can we maybe organise a check in later in the week so that it cuts down the break a bit?” or “I am swimming in shame right now and feel so untethered. Can you tell me how you are feeling right now about me so I don’t create stories in my head when you are gone?” or “Can you remind me that just because Anita left at this time of year that you aren’t going to, too?” or “Can you write me a note for when you are away that I can open in our usual session time to keep connected?”…. You know… any of the things…but I know why I do.

I don’t want to be ‘that client’ even if I am so totally ‘THAT CLIENT’. So instead, I spent the last couple of sessions before the break wittering on about my day-to-day (which to be fair is full of serious shit as well). I felt like I wasn’t even in the room for the very last session before Elle left and I went away feeling really sad and disconnected which is never the ideal situation to be in when there’s two weeks between sessions.

I know it is a tendency of mine to emotionally check out as a kind of protective measure before a break. You know, leave before you get left. It wouldn’t have been obvious to Elle. I looked ‘there’ enough. But I think actually I was dissociated – or parts of me certainly were.

So yeah, May has been tough for the most part.

But it’s especially tough today.

I started to feel myself edging towards the shame slide on Thursday night thinking about how hard I struggle with separation and how it ALWAYS feels like a rejection or abandonment. I feel embarrassed about having given something to Elle before she’s gone away that on one level, I think is really thoughtful and shows exactly how important she is to me…but then as time has gone on I wonder if it’s too much? Like, get in your lane RB and remember that you are just a therapy client. And with that has come that painful reminder of the time I gave Em a copy of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and a glass snowflake for Christmas and she basically rejected them telling me that I paid her for her time and that’s enough.

I sent Elle a short message about feeling ashamed but not why I was feeling that way or any detail at all and she reminded me to stay off that “slippery slip”. But it’s not that easy, is it?

You may be wondering how any of what I am saying has any bearing on the title of this blog post?

I don’t know how to get this out to be honest because it’s swirling in my mind and nothing has landed yet.

But I suppose the thing about breaks is it’s another reality check that therapy is just therapy and we are our therapist’s work. Nothing more than that.

One of the things I struggle such a lot with is the authenticity of the therapeutic relationship. Like it’s so hard to settle in the space that is, “my therapist genuinely cares…but it is a paid-for relationship”. I think that is especially the case for those of us with early trauma and attachment issues…and *all the things*!

I would hazard to say that most of us would rather not be perpetually reminded of the fact that the relationship we have with our therapist only exists if we can pay for it, and the moment that we can’t we’re out the door (this has been very present in my mind since my wife is out of work and finances are an absolute disaster). Or that in reality the relationship as we know it only really exists for that hour or two each week. Outside that, you’re on your own – and we need to be soooo careful about hitting the concrete walls of boundaries we don’t know about outside that time don’t we?

Like who doesn’t love, “If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t be working with you…but I will not respond to or even read your emails and should you choose to contact me in that way you are deliberately walking yourself into rejection and pushing boundaries…” Cheers Em. It was very hard to believe that she saw me as anything other than someone who reliably showed up every week and handed over money. She never wanted to enter into the ‘us’ of the therapeutic relationship and I felt horrible all the time.

I guess some people find the transactional nature of therapy easier than others. I mean, sure, if you are going to talk through work stress, or getting divorced or whatever – I am sure it’s no problem at all to have the ongoing reminders that your weekly session is an ‘appointment’ because perhaps the sessions are less about the relationship with the therapist and more about what needs immediately fixing in the world outside the room. I know people who think of their therapy sessions in the same way that they think about going to the GP or the dentist… but Elle doesn’t occupy that zone in my head at all…and I know a lot of the people that read this blog don’t think of their therapists like this either.

Get to the fucking point RB!

So… I guess what I am trying to say, and have said it in so many different ways over the years, is that I am not stupid: I know my therapist is my therapist. I know my relationship with Elle is a paid-for relationship. I know she is not my friend. I know that there are clear boundaries around our relationship. I know that although she’s supportive, she’s not there at 3am to call when I wake from yet another nightmare feeling panicked and like I want to give up on life altogether. I know that she sees other clients. I know that as much as I would like to be ‘special’ to her, that I am just one of many people she sees, and in fact – my experience would tell me that when it comes down to it, I am not one of those clients that therapists want to hang onto. I am one of the first to be chopped when things are hard.

But you know what?

I know it, but I don’t need reminding of it.

It’s there all the time.

That doesn’t mean I am in denial. That doesn’t mean I hope that one day our relationship will be something different than it is now. It doesn’t mean that I am living in some kind of fantasy about the therapy being anything other than therapy. I am not hiding from reality.

The parts of me that want to feel safe, and loved, and like I matter are constantly aware of exactly what therapy is and what it is not. I know I am a client. But forgive me if I don’t want it ramming down my throat.

And yes, I’ll be the first to put my hands up and say that I find it hard navigating the therapeutic relationship… I mean, this blog shows that doesn’t it?! And I absolutely do get triggered by things that maybe I shouldn’t. Well, ‘shouldn’t’ is bollocks anyway…because my experience is my experience. But I can’t believe that I am in unusual in feeling how I do, in reacting how I do to certain kinds of communication. I bet, actually a lot of people have a response but feel too embarrassed or ashamed to even bring it up. Sometimes it feels easier to keep quiet and move on through triggers alone than let our therapist see how ‘small things’ can really ‘hurt a lot’.

I did absolutely find the weekly automated texts from Elle reminding me of my session time painful – for lots of reasons. I don’t think that impersonal communications are easy to metabolise for the parts of us that aren’t ‘adult’. I have C-PTSD – and structural dissociation with a system of at least nine parts so is it really surprising that my four-year-old self feels upset when ‘the Elle that she knows’ sends group emails ‘to all clients’ when she has no idea what ‘a client’ even is when she is used to being referred to with more affectionate terms. It’s jarring.  

The other thing is: I DO NOT NEED REMINDING OF MY SESSION TIME … because I am pathetic counting down to 12 o’ clock on a Tuesday from the moment I leave the room and by Friday I am really struggling. Having what felt like a sterile and cold message on a Monday morning when I was so far away from a state of connectedness was just endlessly triggering. That doesn’t mean I don’t know that I am a client. It just means that my system needs something different. And you know what? That brings up so much shame and embarrassment for me.

I spend so much of my time second-guessing what is ‘real’ and what isn’t in the therapeutic relationship. I want to feel like the relationship I have with Elle means something to her too when it means such a lot to me. I don’t want to feel like I am on her conveyor belt of people to see. I don’t want to be reminded that I am on a conveyor belt at all – even though I know it completely and feel it all the time.

That doesn’t mean I have a sense of grandiosity or that I feel like I am more important than other clients, or that I am not ‘a client’. In fact, it is the very opposite. I hate group emails and impersonal communication because my self-esteem is so low that being reminded that I am just ‘one of many clients’ directly taps into the recent trauma with Anita ending our long-term work. I couldn’t even pay her to stay. She chose to keep other people on and not me. I don’t think Elle understands what that rejection has done to me and how hard it is to trust in her and how much of myself I hold back or keep out the room because of what happened with A.

I feel like I have never been enough for people to stay. Or to care.

The person that should have loved me no matter what (my mother) has happily disappeared from my life again, too. Although the abandonment started young of course…

So with all this in mind, knowing why I am in therapy at all, is it any wonder then that I don’t want to be reminded that I am just a client? Is it so very wrong of me to want a place and a person that feels safe and where I feel like I matter? Is it wrong to want to believe that someone might actually care just because I am enough as I am? Is it wrong to want to feel like the person sitting with me might just love me not just despite my flaws but because of them? It’s scary being seen but therapy is sometimes the only place where that truly happens.

I thought Elle of all people would understand this.

Although, I’m not sure now.

I always imagined that if she was struggling with something between us, she would tell me first…or you know, take it to supervision and then come to me. But imagine my horror to discover a post in an online therapist forum by her (albeit under a pseudonym – but it is most definitely her from other comments and posts) that talks about a client that has issues being reminded they’re a client and asking advice.

The original post has been deleted – but the comments from other therapists and her replies that are attached to it are still there – and you can imagine how reading a string of thirty comments about yourself and what might be ‘wrong’ with you feels. And I can infer enough from those that she doesn’t know what to do to handle it delicately because I have a total emotional shutdown in our next session any time she sends something formal or automated or a change in office hours (that last one really upset me because the reason I got upset at Christmas when we couldn’t see each other on Christmas Eve wasn’t just a change in office hours – it was so much more than that). And there’s a reference to something that she can only have read in a blog post of mine because I never shared it with her directly but actually – she’s misread that too – she said I was angry about something A did in communication – it wasn’t that AT ALL. What I was feeling was scared.

One of the horrible side effects of developmental and relational trauma is hypervigilance. I have always had to carefully watch for change in people because so often there was a form of abuse coming with change. One minute things would be fine enough and then all of a sudden the wind would change and it was fucking terrifying. You get really good at ‘noticing’ when you are scared all the time. A simple shift in tone of voice, body language or whatever could often be the signal to get out of the way in order to not be hurt. But then there was also the stuff around silent treatment as punishment and I think sometimes more formal/sterile communications can feel like a withdrawing of warmth (and therefore care). It’s complex. But has absolutely fuck all to do with my not wanting to be reminded that I am in therapy and a client.

I am so hypervigilant, though. I notice everything. So of course if I get some kind of written communication that feels very different to what I am used to experiencing with someone my brain is scanning for meaning in that. I would love for my brain to be able to switch into, “this is just admin, everything is fine” but that’s not how it works. It starts with stories about how “something must have changed” or “watch out because something bad is going to happen”. And it’s not as though there isn’t evidence for this bad stuff happening. I’m not stuck in old patterns and unable to make a leap into the here and now, because the reality is, not all that long ago my sense of things being off wasn’t wrong…despite Anita’s protesting otherwise…and the next thing I knew I was dumped. So yeah. I do worry when there is inconsistency and that isn’t because I don’t want to be reminded that I am client, it’s because I am terrified that change means abandonment or rejection.

I just don’t understand how someone who is so big on authenticity and honest communication and you know all the Brene Brown stuff about being vulnerable and open has chosen to go online to figure this stuff out rather than come to me directly because I thought by now we had a strong enough relationship to have those conversations.

The irony is not lost on me that this is exactly what I am doing now! Running into the safety of the online world rather than reaching out. But I am the client… or capitalise that… CLIENT… you know, the thing I don’t want to be reminded about – and she is the therapist – the therapist who is currently away on a break. I am just a client who will not bring this up in an email right now (even though it’s really knocked me for six) and will hold onto it for as long as I can because I respect the fact that she is on holiday from her job – which is me – and therefore this ‘work’ can wait. But hey, I have problems with being reminded I am a client. Like, seriously, please do fuck off.

So, I have felt hurt today…and also maybe a bit angry it seems based on that last line.

This probably sounds so much worse than it is. There is nothing ‘identifying’ about me (in the real world) in that post or in some of the other comments elsewhere that reference how we work. But I can identify myself clearly from them and so, it seems, could someone else who has been following my blog in the background for years and thought that they recognised me through one of Elle’s descriptions of how she works with a particular client on another post – such a small world – ugh. That person clicked through Elle’s posts and was able to join enough dots from stuff I have said about me that they thought they should reach out to me and let me know that they thought they could identify me via what my therapist had posted – albeit still in an anonymous way. Ugh.

So of course I checked this out. And this is when I came across the stuff about not wanting to be reminded of being a client. Elle would never for one minute think that I would have found this stuff but I think she underestimates my ability to take very small snippets of information and make links – or it seems, for readers of mine to… she ought to , though, because I know she is the same with this kind of thing. Neither one of us is not very familiar with the online world. This is why I stay away from forums generally, there’s so much crossover and I don’t want chance encounters (well not like this)! I do also get that the reason I was identifiable is because of what I’ve written on the blog…so it’s not straightforward.

So, yeah, this is utterly fucking rubbish isn’t it?! I so wish that when this happened a couple of months ago, she’d have said to me, “RB, last session you were really shutdown but you didn’t tell me why and hardly talked – you just snuggled into me and cried. I sometimes read your blog when you seem far away and shutdown to give a me a clue of what’s going on for you because you said from the start that I could have access to your blog before we even started working together and often you send posts to me. I know that you found the automated texts hard a while back and we’ve changed that, but then I see from your post that the email I sent about fee increase has been triggering too but not because of the money – which is often what people feel upset by. Do you think we might be able to talk about this together?”

Like, please please Elle – come to me before you head out online for advice…because although I can’t read exactly what you posted originally, surely – surely by now you know me enough to know that I am not some delusional fucking freak who has no grip on reality. The thing is, because I only have what I can see to go on, the story I am telling myself is exactly that – and not only that, but that you find me hard work, that I am in some way problematic, that how I react sometimes is too much and that I am making you feel uncomfortable and that there is a big problem you don’t know how to solve, and probably too that you don’t really even like me very much. It’s basically activated my Inner Critic and given it a megaphone.

As a result I am completely triggered and stressed and worried that history is going to repeat itself and you’ll decide that I am a pain in the arse and get rid of me because I can already see how this could land. And that hurts such a lot because I trusted you with me and this just feels like a massive betrayal of that trust. But not only that, there’s a part of me that now feels like I need to go into hiding – because obviously my reactions to some things are extreme and that is a horrible place to inhabit…albeit really familiar.

I just want my 90 minutes a week to feel important, and protected, and safe, and like I actually have some sort of value even if I have to pay for that and that I don’t have to think about anyone else and can be in the moment just with you. And I am sorry that I struggle when faced with the stark difference between the warm person I see each week who sends me really lovely emails and holds me so carefully and the one who is running a ‘business’. But sure. It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me... because it always is a me problem.

It seems kind of cruel that this had to all happen today on the anniversary of the day that Anita dropped the bombshell that she needed to end with me – and when it’s fucking ages until the break is over…but it’s my own fault. I should never have gone down the rabbit hole in the first place. But it was that thing, feeling far away, disconnected, sad, lost, and looking for a sense of the person I think I know…and finding the person I think I know…but also not.

All I am hoping for now, really, is that I don’t get myself so worked up between now and the 27th that I end up backing so far away that there’s no going back. A triggered system left in freefall is never a good combination.

I think the best thing I can do is retreat into myself and try very hard not to catastrophise…

Good luck with that!

Dear A, It’s been Two Years…

rubberbandsandchewinggum15 Comments

Dear A,

It’s hard to believe that it’s two years since the Anita that I knew and loved was last properly in the room with me. It’s two years this weekend since you went off on your holiday for your birthday, full of reassurances, telling me that “nothing will change” and that you would be “coming back” and that you “love(d) me very much”. Little did I know, then, what would happen to us barely two weeks later. Little did I know you’d never properly come back to me. Had I have known you would pull the plug on us, on me, I would have made more of an effort to take in those last moments of feeling (relatively) safe and held.

I would have taken so many mental pictures of the room, and of you, and tried so much harder to commit the feelings of connection and safety to memory so that I could refer back to them and use them to soothe all the hurting parts of me later down the line. I would have breathed your familiar smell in, carefully listened for your slow, steady heartbeat all the while soaking up every last second of feeling safe in the moment because I can count on one hand the times that I have managed to settle my nervous system since we ended.

Having said that, I think it’s actually all the memories of the connected moments that now hurt me the most. I find it so difficult to sit in this place where I know what we had, how it felt, how you made me feel…and to now be here – it’s all gone… Of course, I have so much of ‘us’ evidenced in my writing and in voice recordings as ‘proof’ but I can’t bear to read back over my blogs or listen to our sessions anymore.

It hurts, too, that the tangible items that you gave me, gifts and transitional objects, now only bring me pain. On the one hand they serve as evidence that we really did exist for a moment in time, well three-and-a half years, but on the other hand that no matter how much “love and care” there was, it wasn’t enough to make you stay. We don’t exist in the here and now and it breaks my heart.

Sometimes I wonder if there was anything I could have said or done differently in those last sessions before your holiday? Could I have said something to pull at your heart enough so that you wouldn’t have ever considered leaving me in the first place? It’s hard to know. I spent months saying ‘less’ and hiding myself away, trying to give you space for fear of being too much because I knew that you weren’t well and things were hard in your personal life…as it was I ended up being “too much” and “not enough” all at the same time regardless of my best efforts to behave in the right way.

When you came back from your trip you were not the same Anita. From the moment I walked in the door I knew something was wrong and it took less than five minutes for you to say, “I’m going to have to bring the counselling with you to an end” and that you were ending with all your “long-term clients”. It’s funny. It’s so much easier to say “counselling” rather than “relationship” and for you to refer to me now as a “client” rather than “RB”. It’s easier to say “I need to cut the stress out of my life” rather than “I am cutting you from my life.”

For someone with the kind of wounding I have, and the issues around rejection and abandonment I struggle with, the way you handled our ending…or should I say ‘not ending’ (?!) couldn’t have been worse.

The day you told me we needed to end, you broke down, there was a complete role reversal, and you even said, “This is meant to be your session not mine.” And yet, I still paid you for it – and for all of those ridiculous sessions where my heart was basically being emotionally stomped all over in hobnail boots.

I focused on trying to save you (not for the first time), because if I could rescue you then it would mean I would be saved too. At the end of that first bomb-drop session, you shifted and said that we would, “find a way to connect” and that we would “figure something out.” I left devastated but somewhat hopeful because this back and forth with you wasn’t completely new territory for me.

Looking back over the last eight or so months of our time together, there was such a lot of push/pull and it wasn’t coming only from my end. I absolutely have a wonky brain, and things get messy, but there is generally a trigger. One minute I was “too dependent” and the next you’d tell me that you “love” me “such a lot.” It’s weird being someone’s “stress” but also being “so important” to them. It’s no wonder I got more and more panicked, and more and more clingy because things weren’t really safe, were they? – I wasn’t imagining it, even though you tried to tell me it was all in my head and that you “hadn’t changed”.

You said so many times in those weeks, “This isn’t what I want” but it was you who made this happen. You chose to cast me adrift and yet keep working with your other clients even if it was because you couldn’t “afford not to work”. I will never ever be ok with that. No matter how many angles I come at this from, and no matter how much benefit of the doubt I want to give you, I can’t let that go. You chose to sever our connection and chose to maintain others. It doesn’t make sense to me. I get that different clients demand different things from you but I just don’t understand how if anything you ever said to me was true that you would do this to me…and to others like me.

You wax lyrical about the importance of ethical practice but I am struggling hard to find anything ethical in how this all went down. At the very least, surely you would ensure that the clients that you were letting go were safe, and had someone else to go to. Like what on earth were you and your supervisor doing when all this was happening? You must have been speaking with her throughout this car crash time. Surely, there’s a fundamental understanding that you, as a therapist, safeguard your vulnerable clients – I mean you do understand complex trauma, don’t you?

And on a human level…well, on a human level you just do better.

Perhaps I am just too sensitive. Maybe I care too much. I have always worn my heart on my sleeve and this has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. But I sure as hell know that if I had hurt someone in the way that you have hurt me that I couldn’t just let it go. I couldn’t just bury my avoidant head in the sand and pray that when I came up for air that everything had gone away. I would have to try and make amends even if the other party didn’t want to hear it. Like how can you sit in your therapy room week in, week out and not be perpetually reminded of what you have done? Are you really able to just blank it all from your mind? – I just don’t know how you possibly could.

I think this is partly why, now, even two years later I am struggling to let the last bit of hope of you go. There’s a little bit of me that wonders if one day you’d try and repair because this isn’t how we treat people we love is it? Surely, somewhere in you there is a part that wants a proper resolution, a proper goodbye, to know that you have repaired some of the harm you’ve done…because that’s what I would want if it were me.

I know that is really only the hope of a little part that thinks you might come back, the one that trusts and always wants to see the best in people…and ultimately the one that always gets so very badly hurt. It’s certainly not my adult self, because there is no way on earth I’d let you near my poor vulnerable heart ever again. Even if you did muster up an apology that acknowledged and reflected the magnitude of the damage that you did to me, I could never trust you again and I think I would even struggle to accept an apology now. I no longer respect you. In fact, I think you are pretty dangerous.

I know too, that I cannot continue to judge your actions and behaviour by my standards. You are not me. And whilst I couldn’t do what you’ve done to me and your other poor clients…you clearly aren’t bothered by your conduct. You probably now just notch it up to having burnt out and “stress” so of course you weren’t at your best…but that doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for what you did and the harm you caused…it just gives you a sense of justification for it.

I have spent years and years waiting for people to change and do better – but the thing is, people rarely change. It’s a good thing then, that the majority of my system has, not exactly let you go, or moved on, but there’s some thick scar tissue forming where that open wound was. I’ve protected myself from what’s happened – to an extent. I don’t long for you anymore. I don’t look for you out in the world. In fact, if I were to come across you now, I imagine I would walk the other way and avoid meeting you because really, what is there to say?

It’s done now. You’ve moved so far past it and our relationship. You’re still working. You’re still advertising that you work with trauma and on a long-term basis. None of the things you said about moving to “couples work” or “online work only” and “no more trauma clients” are remotely true. And I think maybe that’s one of the hardest parts. The lies. Like why bother? It hasn’t protected me any. It hasn’t made it easier. All it’s done is make me question everything about what I thought to be true between you and me.

And where am I left in all this? Well, it’s two years on and I am still hurting – although not like I was. Anniversaries – or should I say ‘traumaversaries’ are rough. I hate the fact that once again I am super aware of dates and how they correspond to our relationship disintegrating.

I hate the fact that I have been a depressed, frozen, dissociative wreck all week.

I hate that once again I am left trying to process all this by writing you a letter that you will never see.

I hate that I will spend the next month struggling hard to keep my head above water as the various anniversaries of aspects of our final month together unfold.

I especially hate that the emotional upset is already making its way into my relationship with my therapist Elle. I am scared stiff that something bad is going to happen between us because I am hard-wired to look for problems and the slightest sense of something being ‘off’ feels completely catastrophic – and it’s not fair.

Elle is going to be away in May right at the time that it was all unravelling with me and you… it couldn’t be worse timing. She did ought to be able to go away without my wheels falling off… and yet there seems to be almost an inevitability that the shit will hit the fan this month. I get that I should be able to circumnavigate that, but when all my system is activated it’s so much harder to hang onto any sense of safety.

Part of me is so angry about all this. I am mad that two years down the line I am still trying to undo the damage that you have done. And I am mad that I’ve basically spent the last five years trying to heal from failed therapeutic relationships on top of the original traumas I came into therapy for.

So, happy birthday Anita, I’m sure you will have a wonderful time… I hope you choke on your cake and the candles set fire to the table cloth! See… I don’t even mean it. I really want to but the truth is, I still wish you nothing but love and happiness because as much as I wish I didn’t, I still love you. x

The Therapist, The T-shirt, And The Trigger: A Journey Of Doubt And Vulnerability…And A Massive Meltdown/Rupture

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

There’s a certain kind of raw vulnerability that comes with the territory when you’re in therapy – or at least that’s the case when the protectors aren’t running the show and shutting things down! I spend most of my time here writing about my therapy and the messy process of confronting and working with parts of myself- my minibus.

Currently, it’s a bit of a disaster on board the RB bus, and all the passengers/parts seem to be noisily vying for various kinds of care and attention. These parts of me have so many different wounds and so many different needs that it can be very hard to strike the balance of what is needed and whom to focus on in therapy – especially if several parts of different ages are activated all at the same time (like now – groan!).

When the conditions are just right, the alchemy that happens in the therapy room can feel amazing can’t it? Life changing, actually. And sessions can feel like a much-needed balm. Sadly, though, for those of you that have followed this blog a while, you’ll also know that it doesn’t always work out and it’s not always positive. I’ve spent a great deal of time talking about when therapy goes wrong and the damage that gets done time and again.

Therapy is (supposed to be) a safe space, a place where you can unpack your baggage and work through it without judgment, a place where all of you can be seen and held and understood – a place where you can metaphorically get out your favourite pair of rather faded, threadbare pants, the ones that don’t really fit anymore, hold them up the light and try figure out why you just can’t seem to let them go despite having many pairs of ‘good’ pants… and why despite having lost one of the socks in a pair some time ago, you daren’t part with the remaining one just in case the other should one day miraculously show up again…even though you probably did leave the other under a bed in a holiday apartment in Spain.

Throughout all this your therapist won’t flinch or mock you for your terrible underwear but stare at it alongside you and help you work out what’s really going on and what the pants and socks symbolise…or something like that. LOL!

So, yeah, it’s a safe space.

But, like with everything else in life, the boundaries between “safe” and “unsafe” aren’t always as clear as we think they should be. Sometimes, the things that trigger us don’t come in the form of some big, glaring issue: “like a tick” or “holy fuck RB – those pants are truly disgusting, how could you possibly still want them?”; sometimes they show up in the tiniest, most unexpected moments – wearing a slogan t-shirt, for example.

I guess I should back up and start from the beginning.

Last week, thanks to the wonders of the almighty ‘algorithm’, Instagram chose to hand me a fucking doozy: one my therapist Elle’s ‘open’ profiles – one that’s apparently been out in the magical internet universe for a good while, but because I don’t actively search Elle out (anymore!), I had no idea that it existed.

Typically, this all happened on a day where I was feeling disconnected and distant from Elle, a day where I had actually wanted to email her and reach out for reassurance, but had stopped myself. Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot of shame around my ‘need for Elle’ and have felt myself backing away a bit. I don’t think she’s got any idea that this is where I am at right now, but I feel the gap between us opening up week on week…or at least some part of me is experiencing our relationship in this way and it’s not great. I’d go so far as to say a good half of the passengers in the mini-bus aren’t strapped in and we’ve veered off-road.

Brace positions folks…we all know how this ends.

Of course, Elle’s personal Insta account is locked down (thank goodness…I think…) but this one isn’t. What showed up on my feed wasn’t some professional ‘therapist’ account; it was personal-ish – well without giving too much away, it’s a page that she’s made to showcase something she’s taken up relatively recently – a performance-based activity. This new ‘thing’ is something I’ve known about for a long time and something we’ve discussed on and off over the last eighteen months so I wasn’t completely surprised when I saw she had made a page for it.

This ‘thing’ has caused me some angst before- I think I mentioned it at the time. As bad luck would have it, one of my friends was also doing the ‘thing’ at the same time and had met Elle and become friends with her through this activity. That has been really hard for me to manage on lots of levels. I have wanted to go support my friend and watch her perform but have deliberately kept away from going to see her knowing that Elle would likely be there, too, and so instead I watch her from her online videos (my friend…not Elle!).

Our city is relatively small and so there is always going to be a chance of running into each other anyway- but I would never deliberately put myself in the same space that Elle might occupy because – ouch… it would physically hurt to have her ignore me…or of course, the Elle I meet in the outside world not be the person I see in the therapy room.

It’s been hard in other ways too. As time has gone on, I can’t help but feel more and more jealous that my friend gets to spend time with Elle – doesn’t have to pay to see her – isn’t on the clock and kicked out when the time is up – can send her WhatsApp messages and memes and basically have a ‘normal’ relationship/friendship with her…and, I’m not stupid, I get that Elle is my therapist and not my friend and I undoubtedly get a different kind of relationship with her – but ugh.

It’s not even like my friend is someone that only lives in my phone and I rarely see. I see this woman every single fucking day, our kids are in the same class at school FFS, we hang out and go on walks with my bloody dog…and yet there’s this unspoken thing between us. I told her the Elle is my therapist early on…but thereafter we’ve both ignored the fact but it sort of feels like an elephant in the room.

But that’s not the problem this week. It’s just there always in the background.

Back to the Insta page. Perhaps I should not have clicked on the page when it came up. But then, it’s not like it’s a secret Elle has kept from me – the thing she’s doing, I mean. And as I said, I felt disconnected from her that day and suddenly here she was in my phone. I had chance to see what Elle had been talking about all these months. I find it hard to hold her in mind at the best of times, and I was floundering last week and here were actual videos of Elle that I could watch and I was curious… and desperate to feel like she was still real…and so I started scrolling through the page.

Big error.

And, you could laugh…I probably should…but it wasn’t anything that she said or did that upset me. Nope. It was a t-shirt that’s fucked everything up…you can’t make it up, can you?

On one of the videos Elle was wearing a shirt with a phrase on it that hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. I’m not going to tell you exactly what the t-shirt said. That’s not the point. The point is that the words, the design, everything about it felt painful to me. It felt like Elle was wearing something that spoke directly to me – even if it wasn’t intended to. She knows a lot about me and she knows what my life is like and how it is set up. And here was a slogan that ripped into an aspect of that. Noone needs to see ‘Fuck your ______’ and a picture of that burning…and no one needs to see that on the body of their therapist on an online video.

I get it. It’s not meant to be personal. Elle would never in a million years think that I would see this. She probably didn’t think at all –  

But it’s hard not to wonder: is this a sign? Is it a cosmic nudge that the safe space I thought I had built around her is, in reality, much smaller than I thought? – or possibly totally non-existent? That in fact, she is not at all who I thought she was, or hoped her to be. The truth is, I’ve been struggling with a deep sense of doubt all week and really couldn’t connect this week in my session (although it wouldn’t have been apparent because I am SOOOOOO good at looking fine when I am anything but!).

I kept my most vulnerable parts firmly locked away and I felt as though something was wrong the whole time…but that’s because for me, or several parts of me, there is now something wrong. It wasn’t helped at all when, that was the first session in as long as I can remember that Elle didn’t reach for me. She didn’t hold my hand…and as I got up to leave, she opened the door. We usually hug at the end and it was as though she had forgotten…or maybe she just didn’t want to? I did ask for a hug but it all just landed really flat for me. This has added an extra dimension of fear around our relationship heading south even without the fucking t-shirt.

How do I even bring this to her?

How do you sit across, well next to, the person who’s been helping you heal and admit that you feel suddenly unsafe in the therapy? How do you tell them that you feel like they might just be humouring you or tolerating you because it’s their job to, and not because they genuinely care about you as a person? How do you say, “I see and recognise EVERYTHING that you do for me, but my brain can’t hang onto that in the face of a perceived abandonment or rejection and right now I feel like everything is an act and I want to run away before you hurt me any more. My little parts are terrified that you are going to leave too…and tell me I am too much.”

I know. I know. I need to say exactly that, don’t I?!

For those of us who have spent years, a life-time even, feeling like we don’t quite belong in the world, who have never felt quite good enough, feel as though we have to work doubly hard to be accepted and that love and connection comes with a catch…it’s hard to build trust and even harder to maintain it. This is especially the case after everything that happened with Em and Anita and Hannah.

It’s taken a good while for me to really feel safe with Elle, to trust that what she says is true, and that she is there for me. And my goodness, she demonstrates it in so many ways time and again…and so seeing this version of Elle online has basically felt like the universe is playing a cruel joke on me – AGAIN. Because I so want to believe that Elle is the person I have come to know over the last eighteen months and not the person my phone sent me last week…she is, of course, both…so what do I do with that?

I know I need to find a way to bring this up because literally just now – writing this post – the joy of the algorithm has done another two things to me – it’s shown me that my friend is going to be doing the ‘thing’ again next week with Elle (groan) and Facebook has also decided that Elle’s child may be on the list of ‘someone I know’ despite me not being friends with Elle online, us having only one mutual friend, and my NEVER having searched her child out… just no…no more of this cruel hell please!

I am so activated and upset and basically overwhelmed by this whole situation this last week and the longer I keep quiet about it the worse it gets. I can feel myself drifting away from Elle. There are a lot of competing voices inside, though – and it really isn’t helpful when some of them are saying to “shut the fuck up and keep your mouth shut”…because what if what I have to say doesn’t go down well? What if Elle feels like her privacy has been intruded upon. What happens if she gets defensive- or worse – reactive? I am imagine her first action would be to block me from seeing that account because I clearly can’t handle it and that would feel rejecting too.

I don’t want her to think that I’m some kind of stalker that’s sought her out on social media and then had a meltdown about what I’ve seen. Because that isn’t it AT ALL. And, then there’s the other bit -the self-doubting part of me that is so used to me being the problem that I tend to look inside and find fault with myself first. So, I am not even sure whether or not I am just overreacting to the whole thing in the first place and should just get over it and let it go? Maybe I am just being super sensitive and dramatic? I’m more or less over the ‘group email’ now and I never told Elle about what had happened maybe I can move through this alone, too, and not risk fucking things up with another therapist.

The thing is – it’s still in there somewhere, isn’t it? Like, it’s stored away as a nugget of doubt and this latest thing with the shirt feels like another added to the pile…and I don’t want there to be a pile building up because I’ve found that once you start to accumulate doubt nuggets they seem to grow exponentially and before you know it, you’re surrounded by doubts and can see little else.

And perhaps I need to be less judging of myself. Maybe I am overreacting – but what I know is this: the heavy feeling in my chest and the sick feeling in my stomach are real…and the sadness I feel is there regardless of the trigger. It’s not the same as Em calling me a tick, but it’s in the same zone… basically something about me is unlikeable and deficient in Elle’s eyes and that hurts because more than anything I want her to judge me as worthy.

The video was filmed back in November and honestly, since that time Elle and I have done some incredible work, we have got closer and closer to each other, and I have felt so safe and contained with her (just haven’t caught myself up from Christmas here yet have I?!)…and yet, it was a choice she made to wear that t-shirt that day…having already known me for 15 months at that point, told me that she loves me, and you know all the lovely things…

Ugh.

I get that life as a therapist is a bloody minefield – because Elle is a human and not just a therapist, isn’t she? She exists in the world outside the room as a person with all sorts of feelings and opinions that may not necessarily align with the clients she sees. Like of course, I know that. But there is always a chance a client may come across you in the wider world- or even actively seek you out…and…well…fuck it…all I can say is this t-shirt has really upset me and I don’t know what to do about it.

There’s a part of me—the protector part—that wants to quit therapy entirely. That part of me feels it would be easier to cut and run, and avoid having to squirm in discomfort about this whole thing. My track record for bringing difficult stuff to therapists and it working out positively hasn’t been exactly great and honestly, I don’t want to be in a situation where I feel ‘done to’ again when things don’t work out. Like I don’t want to feel the pain of rejection or abandonment again…although on a level I already feel this this week. I don’t want to lose Elle but also, I don’t want to be in therapy with someone who is just tolerating me and behind the scenes thinks badly of me.

Complex trauma really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? I know that how I feel right now is being exacerbated by the fact that we are headed into May – and 2 years since Anita went away and never really came back. My safe person went away on holiday full of reassurances and returned a different person. Elle is going away in May too. Like, what happens if it all happens again? And the pattern repeats because once again I am being too much, having too many big feelings, and the hard work to be around me is simply not worth it?

So here I am, sitting with all of this discomfort, trying to figure out how to move forward. Trying not to let the Inner Critic get too loud. The fear is real. The uncertainty is paralyzing. But I know that if I don’t bring it up, if I don’t address it somehow, I’ll be stuck in this cycle of self-doubt and avoidance all the while losing connection with Elle and that is frankly terrifying.

So, here’s to the T-shirt, the trigger, and the uncomfortable journey ahead…2025 can, frankly, go do one!

Not Doing Brilliantly Well: Breakdown And Burnout

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

So, it’s been a while since I have been here to update the blog…months in fact…

I guess it was inevitable, but I had a total breakdown in January, folks, and just couldn’t do anything with it or myself at all. I was barely functional let alone able to write. It’d been coming on steadily for months, well, let’s be real, since May 2023 when everything with Anita disintegrated before my very eyes. Something had to give sooner or later – and that something was me.

I have been muddling through, hanging it together with rubber bands and chewing gum for such a long time, but then, OOooofffffff  November was ROUGH, December was BRUTAL, Christmas was UGH, and January … well… FUCK ME!! …The crash was real!

Somehow, we are almost at the end of February now, and I’m more or less functional again but it’s VERY tentative – cue full blown anxiety attack earlier today and the realisation that I am probably less ok than I think. Yikes.

I am floundering around and trying to put one foot in front of the other and not fall flat on my face again because there just isn’t capacity for me not to be ok any longer. The reality is that work kicks back in tomorrow after half term break (and several weeks preceding this of cancelling lots of work) and people need me to be on my ‘A game’…or at least ‘present’. The GCSE and A Level exams are looming and I simply can’t get away with any more sick days. I need to be the calm and supportive person that my students need – but it takes a lot. Somehow or other I need to pull something out of the bag – even if the bag has a fucking great hole in it and its contents have long been lost.

When things went south last month, Elle and I were on a therapy break (what a surprise)! I wrote a bit then to try and process and make sense of what was going on for me, but then I shut the laptop and it’s been sitting there as an open tab of shame ever since.

So, I guess maybe, I’ll post that here now and then try and get back to filling in blanks of what’s been happening more generally in another post – i.e bring things up to speed and talk about what happened when Elle and I met face-to-face after Christmas and her being sick and all the stuff since…but I don’t have the brain for that right now.

However, I feel like if I don’t try and post something now despite being overwhelmed with ‘everything’ another month will roll by and I’ll lose sense of where I am at. So apologies that the chronology is off but I’ll get back on track eventually.

It’s so hard when my brain stops working properly writing is the one thing that just falls away. I just can’t do it. My attention span is minimal and my ability to hold anything in mind just goes. I feel like I have been stuck in procrastination and freeze for pretty much the last six weeks and it’s been hard. Everything has suffered…self-care…everything.

So… buckle up for what was in the laptop and written in the height of the meltdown.

This was mid-January and Elle was away, it was all kinds of tough with anniversaries and bleurgh – it’s not pretty but is exactly how it was in the moment – my poor poor brain, system, self:

The fast acceleration into the place that is super scary happened this last week again. I could feel the wheels starting to fall off, the nightmares were relentless, the feeling of intense panic and overwhelm were all consuming; my system activated so massively (including all the protectors) and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t regulate AT ALL and the spiral down into total meltdown and collapse happened. It’s hardly surprising, though, what with all the ‘shitty’ anniversaries landing: five years since I met Anita (and she’s no longer part of my life) and therefore also five years since Em called me a ‘tick’ and my therapy with her blowing up. There is so much hurt and grief. Like I don’t think I will ever get over this… it’s too much and sometimes it just catches up with me.

I always feel so vulnerable around now, understandably, but it’s been made a million times worse by the fact the Elle has been on a break this last week, too. It’s been two weeks between sessions at a time where, in all honesty, I could have used two sessions each week AND check ins not her absence and physical disconnect.

Instead of a feeling of safety and connection, it’s been the complete opposite of the level of holding and containment I needed. I’ve felt so far away from her and, of course, that’s also further triggered my system around the abandonment and rejection stuff that is already so live at this time of year. I have been certain that something bad is coming on Tuesday when we meet again, and have been in a place where I was really and truly considering leaving before I get left (god I am so sick of this horrid process!). There’s no evidence to suggest anything is wrong between Elle and I, but my system doesn’t understand that, all the alarms are blaring and it’s full-scale panic. It’s a total system malfunction.

Truthfully, Elle being away for this particular week in the year could not have been worse timing. Like it just felt like an absolute sucker punch. I felt my heart sink when she told me she’d be away, but’s it’s been especially tough having this happen on top of all the bumping along and disruption with the therapy pattern around Christmas holidays. Not seeing her face-to-face as planned on Christmas Eve was hard, and finding out that she had this current break coming the same day she let me know I couldn’t see her on the 24th was really painful, and then there was the cancellation on the 31st because she was sick which really unsettled me. Like it’s been a lot…even though we did end up speaking on the phone on Christmas Eve and seeing each other on the 1st January which was so needed (I’ll come back to this ‘good’ stuff next time).

On paper it would seem like not a lot changed, then, like Elle has really done her very best to minimise the disruptions and accommodate me. The fact that she came in on New Year’s day whilst still clearly unwell because she knew how much I needed the session shows she cares and gets it. And sane and rational me really sees it and appreciates it such a lot… but the rollercoaster my system has been on around all this at a hard time of year has been insane.

I’ve been holding on so tightly to what is left of my sanity and coping for such a long time now that I guess it was inevitable that something would give sooner or later. And so, this break on top of all that has gone before has just been too much and the final thread that was holding me together just snapped on Saturday in the BIGGEST way.

I am usually able to keep what’s going on internally (even if it is horrific) fairly locked up inside and suffer my way through alone whilst appearing largely normal and ‘functional’ in my day-to-day life but as this week has gone on my filter between my inner world with the distress I am feeling and my outer presentation has totally crumbled.

My mask has slipped, not just slipped- shattered – and this weekend I just completely fell apart. My usual relative calm disappeared and the snappy, angry, hurting parts of me were on full show and then shortly after that I broke and just sobbed and sobbed for hours – ugly crying, snot, convulsive sobs…you know? Full mental collapse. This wasn’t a ‘healthy’ release of emotion. I was completely out of control.

It’s hard to really explain because I think most of the time, I seem to be pretty unhappy and struggling, don’t I? So how is this any different? The last time I was here I was at a pretty low ebb. I spend so much time writing out my feelings, trying to process, doing the self-care, doing the therapy, blah blah fucking blah tick box of survival strategies, but sometimes I get so sick of how hard everything feels. I try so hard to drag myself through and into a better place but I feel like I am dragging the weight of the world behind me. It’s exhausting.

Like at what point do I just stop and admit defeat? I honestly can’t keep going like this anymore. I do get that I am neck deep in a depressive episode at the moment, and that it’s winter, and that this is the very fucking worst week of my calendar year but ugh…just really, when will it get easier?

As I said to Elle the other day in a message, “surely life isn’t meant to be this hard” and it shouldn’t. To find myself back in a place where self-harm seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do and suicidal thoughts are coming through my mind like buses- it’s not good. Like it’s really fucking shit in fact. It all just feels desperately bad and I can’t seem to get out of it. I feel like I am screaming underwater.

I was meant to go away this weekend, alone, but I realised that this would be a very bad move and as much as being around people feels intolerable, I am at least safe.

So yeah, I’m having all the fun of the fair right now! I know if I wait it out things will get better. I just wish there was a magic wand I could wave to make all the hurt and distress stop and allow some space to breathe and settle. I feel like I just can’t land in my window of tolerance at all…or letterbox.

I was feeling fairly connected to Elle at the start of this break even if I was overwhelmed but the steady sense of disconnect started as the first weekend approached, the panic kicked in, and from Tuesday (the day of our usual session) onwards it’s felt like any connection we have has been completely severed.

I was so painfully aware of needing my session with Elle on Tuesday because so much was being activated around the old stuff with Anita and Em, so to not see her or even check in via a message felt really difficult. I could have reached out – I am sure she wouldn’t have minded – but then she’s on a holiday and look how many times things have gone to shit with therapists during or directly following a break. I don’t want to do anything that might make Elle get fed up with me and so I have backed right off. The fear of history repeating is huge.

Sadly, my mind can’t seem to differentiate that this disconnect from Elle has come purely from my side. All it knows is that disconnect feels terrifying and that if it goes on for long enough it’s hard to come back from it. This horrible feeling has got worse and worse through the course of this week. I have been steadily drifting away on the ocean in my little boat and now I can’t see the land at all and the seas are getting rougher and rougher and Elle has no idea.

The sadness of the little parts is big but there’s also some anger coming up from the protective parts who I think have just about had enough of feeling ‘left’. It’s hard enough getting through the regular week and only having a single session after so many years of two sessions a week with Anita and Em. It feels like I am always stretching just that little bit too far between sessions and it takes its toll. I wish that I could land in a space where I wasn’t hitting a panic on a Friday each week and then hanging on by the skin of my teeth to get to Tuesdays.

Holidays are very necessary, but my god they suck balls too! That probably makes me too needy or too dependent or whatever else – but it is how it is right now. Parts of me are so mad that it’s like this again but part of me really gets it. It’s all been a lot for too long and there is only so much I can hold on top of the demands of my exhausting day-to-day life.

I feel like I have mentioned this struggle between sessions in so many different ways over the last eighteen months but it feels really hard to ask for more from Elle. I think we need a Friday check in… I mean, I’d love to see her twice a week in person but I don’t think that’s on the cards. I get the sense that she is carefully managing what she can cope with and probably two sessions would feel a lot of me… and that’s hard isn’t it?

Thinking you’re only tolerable for a certain amount of time each week but any more than that risks burning them out is hard. Again, Elle hasn’t said this AT ALL and so it could be my projection given what’s happened before with other therapies but I am just not willing to reach out and ask for something and be told no. Elle has invited me so many times to ask her for what I need and has said she would try and give me what I need.

I just wish it felt easier to make requests but I know right now my reluctance is due to how live the memory of stuff with Em is. Like, all the times I braved asking for things: transitional object (ugh pebblegate), three dots in a text mid-week, sitting next to me, playing games, ANYTHING AT ALL REALLY, and getting no…it’s hard to feel like I want to brave more of getting that feeling of rejection and shame that arises.

Elle is not Em, or A…she’s really great…and I really want to trust Elle – I do trust her- but when I feel vulnerable, I just can’t get out of my shell or ask for help. I hide.

I have been especially conscious of all the soundbites that haunt me during this break, “adhesive like a tick”, “too dependent”, “you want more than I can give” etc and have been so terrified of being ‘too much’ so as I say, I have really backed away from contact with Elle despite needing it. I don’t want her to feel the need to escape my neediness. I really want her to be able to have a break … just not in January 😉.

I think it would have probably helped if when the wheels had started to fall off I’d have been able to reach out and ask for some reassurance that we were still ok…but I was set dead against it in my head. I just told myself to tough it out…get your shit together RB! I see now that that was an error because it’s much harder to get back on track from this point although I guess at some point I am going to have to make a choice – to either continue on in this misery or reach out and ask for support because this isn’t just a small wobble that I can handle on my own, this is a scary crisis point that I haven’t found myself in for several years.

I am trying to hang onto the good… because there is and has been such a lot of it. But it’s hard to remember that when your brain is working against you and all your body knows is terror. I honestly hate how when my system gets hijacked and adult me loses the capacity to hold it all that it gets so bleak so quickly. I guess this really is a reminder of a patterning that must have been forged early on in my childhood. This terror – it’s visceral – and so familiar.

It feels really bonkers to be here because even in the last session before the break, Elle demonstrated that she clearly had my littles in mind and was doing everything she could to settle them before she left. I had been waffling on in false adult moaning about some daily life shit and she stopped me when there was a natural pause. It was about half an hour before the end of the session and she asked me if I wanted a story and a cuddle…yep…

I think in the sessions before a break I am always preparing to be left and almost pretend like I am fine, and coping, and adult … but inside it’s a different story. I’m so glad she knows this about me now and reached for me rather than allowing me to run down the clock and then feel awful and unseen afterwards. I just need to remind myself of this when I feel like I have been abandoned.

After the story, Elle had asked if she could take Baby-Elly and Monty away with her on her break and send me photos of what they got up to, she thought it might be a nice thing for them to do. She then asked me if I would take Hare Bunny (that I gave her for Christmas) home with me so that he didn’t get lonely in the office whilst she was gone. Like that’s really lovely isn’t it? And I really really loved that she thought of that. It’s a world away from the no contact breaks with Elle, or even the texts from Anita.

Like how nice to take our transitional object away, and include the little elephant that’s been held hostage all these months with Anita. Adult me can see how hard Elle is working to keep my system in connection with her… it’s just a lot when I need a big cuddle, some reassurance, and to hear her voice.

Elle sent me a picture of Monty and Baby-Elly waiting to go on their holiday last week and on Monday one from their break. It made me smile. But then as the week went on it felt so so hard for me and I felt so far away and as much as I wanted to reach out and send a message ‘how is everyone enjoying their holiday?’ or ‘I miss you all’.

I didn’t. Because I can’t forget when Anita went on holiday, sent me messages, sent me photos, told me she was thinking of me….and I literally sent, ‘Looks lovely, I miss you’ back…that I was told that when she’d read the message she felt pressured and stressed and that this was probably part of what led her to end the therapy. I know this says more about her than me, and her mental state and how she’d allowed herself to burnout…but it was me that was taken out in the crossfire and it is me that is now terrified of a repeat.

I still wonder how I was supposed to glean from the messages from A that we were in serious trouble and that she was going to terminate. Before she left, she told me everything was fine, that we were going to be ok, that she would come back… and even the night before that hideous ‘I need to bring the counselling with you to an end’ session she sent me a message telling me she was looking forward to seeing me…. Looking forward to seeing me so she could end???? Like make it make sense!

So it’s little wonder that I am reluctant to reach out – because even when things look fine on the surface, the amount of times I have walked back into a problem is… staggering really.

On top of the absolute emotional hell I am navigating my way through during the day, I’ve been absolutely plagued by nightmares. They’re really something and don’t take a lot of unpicking. One particularly distressing one that apparently had me screaming in my sleep was me standing on a cliff near my house and the waves were ENORMOUS. It was grey and stormy and lashing it down with rain. Despite the cliffs being at least 100 feet high the waves were flooding over the top and the buildings were flooded and being completely attacked by the sea.

I commented to whoever I was with that “I have never ever seen it as bad as this before” and that’s when I heard screaming to the right of where I was standing. My attention had been so focused on the town and the buildings that I hadn’t noticed what was going on to the right of me. A child about four years old, was clinging on desperately to the rocks and crying. There was no way down to it and I saw it get washed off the rocks and into the sea. I reached for my phone in order to call the emergency services and no matter how I tried I couldn’t unlock my phone to make the call. No matter what I did it just wouldn’t work. All the while I could see this tiny kid being pummelled by the sea and hitting up against the rocks. I felt so completely powerless.

It’s hardly surprising I woke up screaming and crying and in a drenching sweat. I can still feel the complete panic I felt just typing that. As I said it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out but it is a real indicator of just how distressed I have felt.

The week has been lots of that sort of thing and by yesterday I had worked myself up into a right state. The protectors were so vocal and honestly, I just wanted to know that I wasn’t going fucking mad…because that’s what it’s felt like.

I just want to say, too, that I haven’t just been head in the sand this break letting the shit come at me, knowing Elle was away I booked in for a two hour massage, I have really careful to take proper breaks, eat well, sleep (!), and get out in nature…but you know, sometimes there is only so much you can do. My system is in freefall, it’s been flashback galore on top of regular therapy break shit… I just … well… didn’t have enough resource in the tank to get through it.

I ended up sending Elle an email yesterday:

I’ve got myself stuck in a deep hole and as much as I’m trying to claw my way out there’s some really vocal and aggressive bastards stamping on my hands. I’m sending this now because I think by Tuesday I might actually not turn up at all.

Elle usually responds with pretty holding and containing stuff and I hoped so much that she would send something like, “I am sorry that it’s so tough Sweetpea. Tell Brian and the bastards to behave themselves. I am looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday but until then the biggest of hugs to you.”

Or any variation on the kind of thing she usually sends.

But this came…and honestly I just felt so sad.

I really really hope you do. Elle xxx

Like, it’s not terrible is it? Not by any means, but I guess having not seen Elle for a while, or heard her voice, or any of the things that we usually do to connect, and my being in such a desperate headspace it just felt distant and triggered total panic.

Like, this is it then – she’s had enough hasn’t she?

And then because I felt so upset about it, the protectors have really stepped up their game – of course they would.

Sometimes if I have felt a response from Elle has missed the mark I will email her back and clarify how I am feeling and she generally replies with something holding. I held off this time and continued to suffer. This really tells me how scared I have been feeling. I had been messaging a friend all week and she encouraged me to reach out to Elle again and let her know exactly what was going on. On Sunday I did… I screenshot some of my conversation with my friend and sent it…and this is what came back almost immediately:

Oh my poor love, I’m so sorry you’ve been struggling so badly this week, and I feel very grateful that you trusted me enough to send me all this.

We are always ok, and I promise you with my hand on my heart, I would always talk to you if there was anything going on between us that I felt needed addressing. I see you struggling here with the idea that you can do the same, and you can, and I will do my best to offer you what you tell me you need in terms of reassurance and care, however that looks like for you. 

I’m imagine you feel asking me for specific things that would help you to feel more cared for feels unreasonable, and I would really love you to ask me for them, and let me decide if it feels like something I’d be willing to do. I know that probably feels like a very risky thing to do, and I want you to know you can ask and I will do my utmost to offer you what you need. You are loved and respected and giving you whatever you need to feel safe is my priority.

Please do come in on Tuesday, and we can try and talk through what might be helpful to you in future, or you can just snuggle up to me and cry for a full 90 minutes and be broken in complete safety.

And honestly, that’s the Elle I have been trying to find inside myself all this break.

I responded to her:

💜 thanks. 

I’ve just got really panicked because coming back from Christmas break and into this time now in 2019/20 was when it all went to shit with Em – sometimes I think it would be useful for you to see what happened back then but anytime I even think about going back to dec/jan posts to send you the links to what I wrote it has such a massive physical reaction just remembering that time and how bad it felt that I can’t do it… And as much as you might think it’s ok to ask for things it’s hard to really put into words what it feels like to ask for actually not much at all and get hard nos. There’s a lot of really shit stuff that’s happened over the years and my brain doesn’t let it go. 

And breaks are bad for lots of reasons – I mean it doesn’t help that after a few days there’s a panic that people are actually going to die on me – I’ve got my dad to thank for that one, dying three days into a holiday… and then there’s all the shit from my mum being away from Sunday-Friday when I was small and how insane and volatile she was when she came home…like those things have always been problematic… but breaks have certainly been exacerbated by the fact that three times I’ve been on a break and come back to discover that actually:

Em – Nothing is too big that we can’t work through it

A- I’m only going away for two weeks, nothing is wrong with us and I promise you nothing will change and I’m coming back 

H- I think it’s great that you write, I’ll take how I’m feeling to supervision and see you in a couple of weeks

Were all lies. 

And as much as things might look ok … apparently they weren’t. Like I don’t get how I was ever supposed to know that there was a problem, particularly with Anita. But apparently my saying I missed her felt overwhelming (see the screenshot)… but then literally the day before I saw her to be told she was ending she said “I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow”. I don’t really know how that works.

So it’s not easy navigating anything when my experience is that people say things that suggest one thing and then the reality is quite different… and not only that but it’s me that’s misread the situation or been too much despite CHECKING so as not to end up being a problem.

It’s all just a lot and so live right now and it’s hard because I try really hard to not get things wrong and somehow still manage to fuck things up. And it’s hard to not think it’s a me problem.

I could really use a big hug and a lobotomy 

X

And once again the Elle I know and love came back with such care and holding that my system just settled right down and I wondered how I had got myself in such a fucking mess again:

My lovely girl, will you believe me if I say I always have all of those things in my mind whenever we have a break? 

I think about how A gave you no clue about what was going on for her, and how Em reassured you, and how H wasn’t confident enough to say how she felt, and I think “what can I do differently?” And the only answer I ever come up with is to just be consistently me; honest about how I feel, open to hearing anything you believe will help and support you, and reassuring you that I am capable of telling you if I feel anything other than happy and calm about any of it.

And I am genuinely confident that – in time – you will trust that what I say is what I mean, but that earning that trust is going to be that much harder – both to build and maintain – due to all of that damage that was done. 

And enormous all-encompassing hugs are always available and in plentiful supply.

Lobotomies however, are only available on request every second Weds.

Elle xxx

PS I read the message you sent to [friend] about you finding the automated texts triggering, and so tomorrow…I will send you something just for you! 😀

And so, since then in January…I’ve had no more automated reminder texts about sessions and perfect personalised ones…and our sessions have been lovely (as always) and I’ve muddled along.

We’ve literally just been on ANOTHER BREAK now because I have been on holiday but I’ll get to that next time.

So yeah – big meltdown was had since I was last here. I am steadily finding my feet again…and ugh…life eh? Thank you for everyone that has messaged to check in and I am sorry I haven’t had the bandwidth to even reply. And amazing work if you got to the end of this – it’s almost the length of my undergrad dissertation!! xxx

“A Memory-cake Covered In The Sparkly Frosting Of Multiple Crushing Disappointments”: The Last Face-to-face Session of The Year,  The Phonecall, And A Cancellation…

rubberbandsandchewinggum43 Comments

When I was staring down this Christmas period at the start of December it looked like it might actually be one that would be almost doable – or at least one where therapy and the therapy break would not be complicating factors. Elle and I had a session together booked in the room for Christmas Eve (I was so excited about this) and then we’d be back in on New Year’s Eve…so really there was not even a break (yay!). This year, I’d only have to get through the Christmas stuff with family and all the mess that entails, plus the usual hell of the crap with Em and Anita being thrown into sharp focus…but otherwise it should be fine, right?!

Having had my therapy with Em blow up so spectacularly in December ‘19/January ‘20 I now suffer really bad anxiety about my therapy ending, or being rejected by my therapist after a break…this hasn’t been helped at all by Anita ending our therapy when she came back from a break, either… but despite all this, I felt like it would be ok this year because Elle and I are ok…I think. I was ready for what was inevitably coming, but confident that the scaffolding that was around me with the sessions with Elle would be strong enough so that I didn’t fall apart. Or that was the plan… only… you can so guess where this is going can’t you?

Elle wasn’t wrong when she referred to the Christmas period as “a memory-cake covered in the sparkly frosting of multiple crushing disappointments.” This insight came a few weeks back in response to the email I sent with the extended metaphor about the roundabout of death that I seem to be stuck spinning on. I have been struggling a lot after getting the box of things back from Anita and if I am honest, I’ve been hanging on by my fingertips for most of this year. I certainly can’t do another year like this one. I simply don’t have it in me.

I sent that message about my struggling to Elle the night before the news that we wouldn’t be able to see each other on Christmas Eve as planned. It was bad. Like what timing! I obviously had my massive meltdown when I found out I wouldn’t see Elle face-to-face (fuck me that was a rotten few days) but recovered a bit when we scheduled in the phone session for Christmas Eve instead. It’s obviously nowhere near the same as being together in the same space, but it was something at least…and of course we’d still have the final face-to-face on the 17th.

On the day I learnt that Christmas Eve was off I also got the added and unexpected news that Elle was going to be away in January – neatly coinciding with the time when it all went to shit with Em, “Like a tick”. Eek…never my best week and honestly, I can already feel a massive sense of dread being ‘alone’ that week. It’s hard to put into words the kind of response those words trigger in me even now but I find January really rough because it was such a horror show ending with Em. And what if Elle doesn’t come back?

I know that I am really bad with disruption and change, anyway, but I had no idea back in early December just how fucking many crushing disappointments would materialise in this window of glittery Christmas hell… but Elle’s words have continued to ring so ear-piercingly true it’s not even funny. Like really? Is the universe taking the fucking piss? Or do I just have a ridiculous amount on negative karma that I am working out in this lifetime because really, sometimes, it just feels so unfair.

It’s that bleurgh period between Christmas and New Year, the time where I traditionally fall into a bout of deep depression and freeze…and guess what? Yep. Here I am again. Same shit, different year. I’ve had the laptop beside me for a couple of days thinking that I would write…I’ve got plenty I could be working on (including my story for Elle) but nope. I’ve been completely stuck in overwhelm and instead of being productive or actually just being at (much-needed) peace – I’m doom scrolling and fitfully sleeping and generally beating myself up for yet again not making the most of my time off work.  More than anything I really need proper rest and care – and I don’t mean more of the self-care, I actually just need taking care of. I could really use a week of mothering rather than being the one doing the mothering… that’s it.

I know I am not alone in finding this time of year tough. Christmas is a lot. And even though I actually managed to pull off a pretty decent Christmas Day and Boxing Day, I have both emotionally and physically crashed and burned since then. I am in the place where I want to be completely away from people – at the beach in my hideaway but know also that I can’t go and escape and run away because ‘it’s Christmas’. The only person I want to see right now is Elle…and I think that is because I have done such a lot of adulting that the parts of me that need a bit of nurture and attention are starting to get really restless….they’re desperately upset, in fact.

These last few days I have been riding massive waves of anxiety. It’s got so bad that I have dreams that I am being physically sick and throwing up and the experience is so visceral that it wakes me up and I am instantly aware of the sick feeling of high anxiety in my body. If I didn’t have an empty stomach, I most certainly would be sick at that point. Talk about somatic response to emotional upset. Ugh.

As much as I have tried to keep my mind away from the usual triggers, it’s nigh on impossible not to be reminded of what happened with Em or to drift into thinking about all that has happened with Anita at this time of year. I don’t miss Em in the least but I am still reeling from the hurt she caused. And Anita, well, I miss her but I have let her go now. This year I didn’t bother to text her over Christmas. Although I know she’d reply there’s no point in trying to keep any channel of communication open with her. Her behaviour towards me this last year tells me everything I need to know about her feelings towards me and I need to find a way of moving through the pain of it all.

Parts of me have wanted to reach out to Elle and forewarn her that I am not in a great place. I have been really conscious of wanting to see her the last few days, especially having not seen her in person last week, but there is also another part that’s really prominent and activated and is just full of shame and terrified of reaching out because what if something has changed?

I have been really conscious that when I see her, I could end up being totally shut down and avoidant and pretend like everything is ok when it really isn’t. I haven’t told her how it is, because it’s Christmas, it’s a break, and also…there’s that heightened awareness of everything that went wrong with Em playing out in my brain. I so badly don’t want to be perceived as ‘adhesive’ and ‘like a tick’, ‘pushing boundaries’, ‘trying to get inside her’ being ‘demanding’ and ‘intruding’ and make her feel like she can’t get away from me because my need for her is ‘all the time’ etc. And I know none of these are Elle’s words but they are branded into my brain…thanks Em! But maybe I am ‘too dependent’ (the words that Anita denies ever having left her lips) and so I have stayed quiet and suffering.

It feels like with all this being so live at the minute it would be a really good time to talk to Elle about it when I see her – because the feelings are right here on the surface rather than pushed down in the depths. Of course, Elle knows a bit of what happened with Em but largely we’ve been firefighting the Anita stuff. Part of me was almost tempted to share the blogs from the time when Em and I ended with Elle so she can really see exactly what went on…but I haven’t…because it’s a lot.

I had decided last night that when I woke up this morning I would send Elle a text after I got her reminder text about our session and let her know that I needed her to stay close tomorrow because things are hard. I’m sure she knows this already. I had a terrible night of nightmares and was up a lot through the night so didn’t end up waking up until 10:30 this morning. I looked at the clock and mentally felt the relief of knowing it was only just over twenty-four hours and then I’d see Elle. When I checked my phone Elle’s normal message wasn’t there. Instead, there was a message telling me she was sick and that she didn’t think she’d be ok for tomorrow.

You can only imagine how that landed.

Of course, I am really sorry that she is poorly and I more than anything hope she gets better soon because she’s not immune to how fucking hard this year has been either, and I think she desperately needed a break. There’s some horrible viruses going around at the minute and it’s not exactly restful being sick even if you are laid up in bed is it? It’s just like being pummelled. Adult me wishes there was something I could do to help her feel better. I hope there is someone looking after her but I get the impression she is the one who looks after everyone else.

Aside from my big feelings of care for Elle there is absolutely the hugest feelings of sadness and disappointment again. To have hung on so tightly to get to tomorrow to see her and for it be taken off the table at the last minute is just gutting – especially after what happened with Christmas Eve. I had just about got myself in a place to handle the January break thinking we at least had two sessions before that to reconnect and put something holding in place…and yet here we are… I feel like I am running on a track that keeps crumbling just ahead of me.

I just can’t.

I am really out of coping at the moment.

I wish I could say it wasn’t like this, but I’m devastated. I just want a cuddle.

And then of course I feel ashamed and embarrassed that this has affected me the way it has because I know that none of this is intentional. I know Elle can’t help being ill. It happens. But the little parts of me that so badly needed to see her on Christmas Eve are still hurting about that, and here we are again…another disappointment. The littles don’t understand the ‘reasons’ that they haven’t been able to see Elle they only feel what it is to be ‘left’. It feels abandoning and rejecting. AND I KNOW IT ISN’T but we’re not dealing with Adult Me, are we?

Elle even told me in her message this morning “please don’t see this as a sign of anything more than the worst kind of luck […] I know this is horrible timing”… like I know she will get how this has landed…or at least, she might have a bit of an idea…but it’s just so painful. This sort of thing taps deeply into the bit when I was a kid always waiting for my mum to come back. She was away Sunday through to Friday and I would always feel so disconnected and lonely in the week. And this is the same. I am always on a countdown to see Elle, and it’s hard, especially as I only see her once a week and that feels it’s too long as it is.

I just feel like I am stretched so far beyond my capacity right now…because Christmas did, of course, throw up shit. My wonderful mother failed to acknowledge me or my kids for the third year running, and didn’t even send a text to acknowledge the gift I had sent her. I just can’t even. What kind of person doesn’t even send a ‘thank you’? Or a ‘happy christmas’? Well, I know the answer to that, but it doesn’t stop it from hurting. The original wound was right there with the spotlight on it. My mum doesn’t care about me and … well what more is there to say? Well, plenty, actually, just not today.

Ugh.

So, this has all got a bit out of chronology, hasn’t it? I was meant to talk about the last face-to-face session and the phone call. What can I say. Feeling like I do right now? And please don’t read this as ‘spoiled brat’, it’s ‘desperately sad and hurt little parts’.

Actually, I don’t remember a whole lot about the last time I ‘saw’ Elle. I know that I was massively conscious that it would be the last time I would see her for a while and it triggered the smalls a lot which meant that False Adult was pretty present for a fair bit of it, I think.

In the few days leading into the session, I had finally begun writing the story I wanted for Elle but it was nowhere near finished or even edited by the time it got to Tuesday. Despite this, I printed it off and wrapped it with part of the gift I had bought Elle for Christmas. It was all in my bag but there was a part of me that feared giving Elle the present – yet again another throwback to Em when she rejected my gift of a snowflake and copy of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’. Again, there was absolutely no reason to think that this would happen with Elle. I have given her all sorts of stuff over the last eighteen months but this time of year is so ridiculously triggering – ESPECIALLY after recent events with Anita.

It was quite a bit of time before I allowed myself to relax into being with Elle in the session. I always find it hard when there is going to be a break. Part of me longs for closeness and connection but part of me is so painfully aware that it/she is going to be taken away that I rarely ask for what I need before a break and pretend like I am fine. I think this is also a hangover from working with Em where my needs were never met and so I stopped asking.

Still, I did eventually cuddle into Elle and stop jabbering on about meaningless shit. I felt sad. And empty. And far away…even though I was now close to Elle. I could almost feel the clock running down and with every passing minute the deep sadness seemed to get bigger and bigger.

I hate breaks.

LOL.

After a period of quiet, Elle told me that she had something she wanted to give me, a present to open on Christmas Eve when we would have our call. She said that the thing she had given me is very special to her and that she really liked the idea of my having it and that she also really wanted to talk to me on Christmas Eve to check that I was ok.

I could feel tears coming in my eyes but pushed them away. I don’t think I said anything to Elle. She must think I am really rude sometimes. Like she had been so thoughtful and taken a step towards me and there I was silent. If anything, I was completely overwhelmed. There is always such a lot I want to say but I can feel myself pulling back…afraid of being ‘too much’.

Can you all see how much the young parts are struggling right now?

After a while I told Elle I had something for her and that she could open part of it then. I felt really exposed and stupid handing over the present – which is really really sad. I suddenly felt really idiotic having tried to write Elle a story and embarrassed giving her the soft toy that went with it. I gave myself a really hard time all the next week about it.

There wasn’t time for Elle to read the story in what was left of the session and she asked if she could read it at her leisure. Of course. I didn’t hear anything all the last week about it in the few interactions we had but it wasn’t surprising, that week was like groundhog week and I think everyone was hanging on by a thread. It didn’t stop the inner critic having a good old taunt, though. The erosive power of that part of me is so strong and it takes away anything good.

I had really badly wanted to write the story – and it got fucked by my wonky brain having a meltdown over the change to Christmas Eve, then what I did finally write was ‘ok ish’ but not ‘good enough’…and so my brain decided to really go to town on me. Elle’s silence seemed to confirm that I was a fucking moron for trying. I am trying to think where all this comes from but all I can think is that there must’ve been times when I have tried to do something like paint a picture, or write something, and it’s been disregarded. Highly likely tbh.

So yeah, that week leading into the call was a bit rough.

Because everyone was at home and sound travels in my house, I couldn’t do my session at home. The ideal would have been to have been alone in the house, snuggled up in bed. Instead, I made up a little den in the backseat of my car with pillow and blankets and Monty and my soft dog toy and took the car across to the park to where there is a reasonable mobile signal. Sadly, the signal isn’t really strong enough for a video call – or at least I didn’t want to ty that and it not work, so opted for a voice call.

It was ok- certainly better than not talking at all that’s for sure. Elle mentioned a couple of times how it was not to be able to see each other…and it was hard because I really would have liked to have seen her face (and hold her hand!). Although, tbh there’s a chance I might have dissociated. I work 100% online in my job and video calls are all that I do, and yet I think seeing Elle over a screen might have made me feel even further away. I don’t know. I don’t exactly have a good track record with Em and Anita but then I don’t know how it would feel with Elle and maybe I need to try.

Again, I don’t really remember much of the call. Elle said that she liked the story – I think – although don’t really know what she said. I think I may have said something dismissive or shut the conversation down. I think I was probably embarrassed to talk about it – especially as I had convinced myself that it was utter shit and that she hated it in the week since I had given it to her.

I think I told her a bit about how sick I have been feeling and the anxiety stuff. I think there was mention of my mum… and some past Christmases but honestly, I don’t know. I know there was a huge part of me who was trying very hard to stay present but kept wandering away. There was a part of me that felt very very sad. I think November and December have just been really hard and I so badly wanted to be near Elle…and whilst she was trying really hard to be there…it’s just not the same is it? I have spent so many years on the phone as a kid trying to connect with my mum on a Wednesday when she’d call home but never being really given space to express how it felt. I was ‘fine’…. But I wasn’t.

Anyway, there’s a lot stirred up and going on BUT I was really glad to have spoken to Elle because even though it wasn’t the same as face-to-face, it was still contact, I could still hear her voice, and know on a level that she was still there even if I couldn’t see her and it made me think that this is an option for the future for sessions if they need to be moved or maybe just check ins. I actually think if we could talk on the phone in the week just for ten or fifteen minutes it would make things feel a whole lot easier than they have been.

Near the end of the call, I opened the present that Elle had given me and it was just lovely. It was a beautifully bound folio copy of her favourite childhood book…and really it was just one of the most special things anyone has given me. This was especially the case this year where Christmas was the usual of me arranging my own presents – and this year even wrapping them. It felt really lovely that Elle would share something that felt so meaningful and important to her with me. She directed me towards her favourite chapters and I read them on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day which felt really connecting.

It was surprising how fast the ninety minutes went and I could feel a massive pang of sadness come as I realised it was time to hang up. Elle told me she would message me on Christmas Day when she had opened the other things I had given her and that she was looking forward to seeing my face next week…

It was lovely to receive a really warm connecting message on Christmas morning, then. She seemed genuinely to really appreciate what I had given her and so that felt nice.

I am trying really hard to hang on to all of how this lovely connecting stuff has felt today and am really trying not to let the sad take hold…but it’s hard. Tomorrow is going to be hard.

I won’t get to post again before the new year (relief!)…but I guess I will just round off with the Counting Crows lyrics that always resonate so much at this time of year:

A long December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last. I can’t remember, the last thing that you said as you were leaving, now the days go by so fast.