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

January 22, 2022rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

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

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

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

Might try for an afternoon nap a little bit later!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Therapy Break and “A Little Friend”

October 14, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did I ever mention that I absolutely love this woman?

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Rupture Repair And Thoughts On Past Therapy.

October 7, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

Hi all!

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

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

Right, let’s do this!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In all honesty, it was pure torture.

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

It’s hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

There was another silence and the room felt really still.

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

Again I replied with, “I don’t know.”

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

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

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

More silence, from me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

I nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she replied with:

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

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

Fine But Not Fine…

September 12, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments

Well, it’s been a while since I have blogged – in fact, it’s probably the longest I have ever gone without writing in any shape or form whatsoever. There’s no real excuse for it, I have had the time (it’s just been the school summer holidays here in the UK), but I just haven’t had the inclination to write. Almost every time I have thought about sitting down at the laptop, I have had a massive internal block, like something or someone inside puts up a massive barrier and so I haven’t bothered pushing it.

Instead of writing, I have sat in the garden, taken the kids to the park, met up with friends, gone for ice cream or to the beach or the woods, or done a million other things. I’ve even sat outside in the middle of the night under a blanket watching shooting stars!…or… I’ve simply done nothing at all…and it’s been great!

There’ve been days, like today, where I have thought I would actually like to write, where I have had stuff to say, and then I’ve procrastinated with the laptop turned on beside me and found other things to do like scroll through Insta, Twitter, Facebook etc on loop (!). I just haven’t managed to get my fingers typing. I guess, it’s probably something about how writing usually just flows for me and if I’m not in that space I find it quite arduous. I spend so much of my time teaching people how to write that I don’t want to have to think about the process when I am actually writing…or trying to find something to say.

The other thing I have noticed is that I have really struggled to read other people’s blogs. It’s not because I am not interested or don’t care – I am and I do…I just couldn’t. So I apologise if I haven’t commented on posts and have been AWOL.

I’m not entirely sure what is going on with me, to be honest. When I sit and try and look inside myself it’s like a vacuum – space – it’s just quiet – still – dare I say it, peaceful…… well, no…that’s not entirely correct…there is some noise from some of the parts…but I have largely been able to switch away from it (and them) and have been able to focus on other things not getting dragged into that mess… which is actually so refreshing.

I honestly don’t know if this is progress, or just another type of dissociation. I hate that I second guess myself like this. It’s like I don’t want to say all this positive stuff and it end up being too good to be true and then end up spectacularly ending up flat on my face in a few weeks (hours) and everyone rolling their eyes – like “uh huh, there she is, the nutter is back!” I suppose it doesn’t really matter what it is right now, because however I have achieved it, I finally have some clear space around and inside of me. Rather than feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders and feeling like I am being crushed in a vice, I feel like I have a little bubble of space around me that is preserving my energy but allowing me a bit of freedom to stretch out and unfurl, too.

This newfound space has been especially apparent this week as I have gone back to work. Although I am tired (OMG I am soooo tired!) and have had some students really trying to push my buttons, I don’t feel like I am having my life force drained from me. I guess, what I am clumsily trying to articulate is like I feel like I might have got myself some kind of energetic boundary installed (finally!). I am not taking on other people’s stuff in the way I have previously and also not letting them take from me. I don’t mean that I am not caring or totally detached, more that I have plugged my leaky bucket and am retaining some of the energy that I need to function for myself which actually means I function better for others, too.

Basically, I am ok enough, and although things are happening (which I’ll get to in a minute) I feel like I have one foot in the process and another on the outside which is allowing me to get on and do things rather than be completely derailed – which is absolutely what would have happened in the past with any hint of stress in the therapeutic relationship… y’all know why I am here blogging today, right?! Don’t worry, the drama is coming soon!

The end of the summer holiday was really really good. I did some brilliant fun things with my wife and kids and made some awesome memories. The last Friday of the holidays we went to totally fabulous place with an inflatable assault course on water and had a blast. It’s the sort of place where you just let go and immerse yourself in the madness. I honestly haven’t had that much fun since I travelled the world in 2005. I felt so free, so full of life….and joy.

Joy??? What is joy?!!

My best friend from university came to stay on Saturday and we spent a fab 24 hours putting the world to rights, sitting in the sun on bean bags, incense burning, eating and drinking, and then retreating into the hot tub to star gaze in the evening. Again, it was another great day and really highlighted how lucky I am to have sound people in my life with whom I can be completely myself and relax with.

Then, last Monday, we took a trip to Harry Potter Studios and had such a magical time. I kept welling up, I was so bloody happy – like my entire system was utterly in its element – I was in my element. I kept stopping and thinking how great everything was. I guess, for the first time – maybe ever – I was able to be completely in the moment and not feel like I was on the outside looking in, or worse, not even there. My mind wasn’t wandering or fixating on stuff. I just enjoyed being present, experiencing life, having fun…

Part of me is so pleased to report this – I’m 38 FFS and maybe, finally, getting a bit more settled…I just wish I could have been like this years ago when I was doing so much amazing stuff and couldn’t really take it in. Oh well, small steps.

What was really a huge milestone, too, was choosing to do this stuff at a time when I would usually have had therapy with Anita. In the past, I would have really not wanted to book anything that would mean missing a therapy session. The insecure attachment I have/had just wouldn’t allow it. It’s bad enough when my therapist/s go away (more on this later, too) but I certainly wouldn’t have wilfully taken myself away from a session because the fallout from that would be too huge and destabilising.

But I did, this time.

Because…well…

I guess I know Anita is there. I know that if I go away or she goes away that she’s there to come back to – that the relationship will survive disruption. I mean there’s been a lot of disruption in the last 20 months. The world won’t collapse if I miss a session or two (Ha…you should hear what the little ones are saying to that!! “Who are you trying to kid, we’re in meltdown here, you gloating cow head and we don’t want Anita to go on her breaks in October and December and we’re not Ok!”).

I suppose what I have just started to take steps into, albeit tentatively, is going out and living my life instead of living from one therapy session to the next. I absolutely need my therapy. I really do benefit from my routine. Twice a week sessions is the sweet spot. And I do not like disruption – I wrote about how unsettling it was recently when A had to cancel a session due to sickness so I am not a bloody pro by any stretch of the imagination, I can’t just take it or leave it all the time. BUT…I can survive a bit of change and disruption…especially if I am doing something fun. And that is massive. Really massive. When I was doing all the things last week I occasionally thought of Anita and how I was looking forward to telling her about what I had done but there wasn’t any desperate missing her…in those moments. There wasn’t the big gaping sore hole #motherwound in my solar plexus screaming out in pain. There were a few bits of that this week as life returned to normal, though so I’m definitely not out the woods where that is concerned.

Yeah, you just read ALL of the above right. Don’t worry. It’s not some imposter having gained access to this blog – it’s still me – just maybe the budding version of a new me. I bloody hope so – anyway. What’s brought about this change, I wonder? I have to say that I think a good part of this more solid footing is down to the work I have been doing with Anita and K over the last couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a colossal mess (highlighted after Friday’s session), but I am not quite a big a mess as I was when Em terminated me in February 2020.

I really feel like the attachment work I have been doing is paying off. I can, a lot of the time, bring Anita to mind when I am not with her. Even the distressed child parts are getting a little more secure…which is amazing. As I say, sometimes it’s a complete shit show but there are glimmers of improvement. Even when I am doubting everything and feeling like things aren’t safe and a sham I can look back at the evidence to the contrary and generally talk myself around quite quickly. I can talk to those parts who are so upset and angry now, and tell them that it’s ok and explain why it’s ok.

I am very very aware that this is slow process and can be like a dance of two steps forward one step back. But I do think it’s important to celebrate small wins.

Another thing that’s jolted me into another space is that my childhood best friend passed away a couple of weeks ago – and suddenly life feels really fragile again. Not in an “OMG everything is dangerous” kind of a way, but in an “I’m only here once so let’s fucking do this!!” So that’s what I am attempting to do.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not going to be plain sailing, I’m not dim, and this was highlighted on Friday when Anita told me she had some breaks lined up.

For Fuck’s Sake…

I’ve just said how well I’ve coped with MY being away. It is an entirely different proposition when SHE is away and I am still here…and I want to be with her!

See, here I am, the RBCG you all know and love! Lol!

Over the last few weeks there’ve been some small rumblings inside from the young parts about the therapy. It’s hard to put my finger exactly on what’s been wrong other than a feeling in my gut that Anita is slightly backing away, maybe. There is no evidence of this whatsoever in the sessions – they are as holding and containing as ever – but outside them it’s felt like she’s taken a step back. But then this might be because she was sick and a few other disruptive things have happened.

We had that difficult conversation about outside contact a while back where she explained that writing was hard and that she hadn’t been responding because it was challenging. We agreed at that point that sending a GIF or an emoji would be fine because it’s really about settling the young parts anyway. And largely she has done that…but also at times she hasn’t. And that’s where it gets difficult for my system.

Consistency is so important for me and so any hint of change or reduction in contact can feel abandoning or rejecting and so set things into a panic internally. I have been sitting with this for a while and not said anything because when I think about it, it’s probably nothing. Most people would probably scan through my WhatsApp messages and see no difference at all. It is that subtle a change, but I feel it. And also people’s lives ebb and flow and their availability changes…I get it…just some parts don’t. And they’re the ones that need the therapy most!

I guess I will need to talk about it tomorrow, now, though, because Friday’s session has set off a landmine which might not have felt so massive if I wasn’t already brooding about the perceived change in our communications.

So, I was really looking forward to seeing Anita on Friday having not had my session on Monday. I had really missed her in the later part of the week and felt like she wasn’t there…ugh…and I felt a bit anxious going to the session. I really just wanted to go in and give her a hug on the doorstep, reconnect, and maybe read some stories on Friday. But I hadn’t even been in there thirty seconds, I’d barely sat down, when she told me she was taking some time off and handed me a piece of paper with the dates on.

Ugh.

I didn’t even look at the note and placed it face down beside my phone.

The armour that goes on when there has been a break, that I so desperately wanted to take off, stayed on, and I stayed in False Adult for nearly an hour. It was painful. Anita did acknowledge that she never knows when to tell me about her breaks but I was already so into ‘pretend that it’s ok’ that the conversation that I really needed to have, that the young parts needed couldn’t be had.

What I needed when I arrived was to land in the room. To reconnect. But instead it felt like the welcoming space was about to be taken away again so what was the point in getting comfortable? I felt a million miles away from Anita. She was sitting on the same sofa as me but she may as well have been on the moon.

It’s hard to really put into words how this stuff feels and those of you with complex trauma won’t need me to explain. Sometimes that need to be close is so overwhelming that my system shuts down, I am quiet, and it’s clear as day that something is wrong, and often Anita will ask me if I want a hug. However, when False Adult is running the show, chatting away, the young parts are so hidden that it really would take a genius to see that it’s all a front.

With about 15 minutes to go I ran out of steam. I was so frustrated with myself for not getting what I actually needed but I felt unseen too, and I think the Teen felt angry, actually. I might have been in hiding but I guess, I had hoped, by now, Anita would know that there’s more underneath. Sometimes I wish she would say something like,

“You seem really chatty today, and it’s interesting to hear about your work etc, but I am also aware that there are young parts inside that might need some attention after missing a session and also me telling you I’m having some time off. Can I just check in with how they are, too? Do they need space today, or are they ok for us to carry on as we are?”

I can’t remember the last time I spent an hour sitting ‘far away’ from Anita. It just doesn’t happen. So often that space between us gets closed down and it settles things. I felt like I was on an island on my own on Friday. And that’s not Anita’s fault. She was there…but she wasn’t there for the parts that really need her.

In the end I gave up the pretence of being ok and asked for a hug. I spent the last fifteen minutes in silence, crying cuddled into her chest. With a few minutes to go, a little part asked, “Is something wrong?” – it was all the worry about the feeling like she has been trying to get away from me, the missed session, and the upcoming breaks panic.

Anita assured me that nothing was wrong and said that she wondered if this was because of the reasons I’ve just listed above – well the missed session and break. She doesn’t know about the messages.

We didn’t have time to talk about it because it was time to go. I left feeling flat and deflated and disconnected and generally a bit meh.

When I got to my car I took out the piece of paper Anita had given me with the dates of her breaks on…ugh…no…not good. I mentally calculated how many sessions I’d miss and realised that in December the way it might work is that I could potentially not see her for an entire month because of how her break and then the school Christmas break lands…and then of course there is Christmas itself which will be another break.

Deep breaths.

But the thing that really got me as I started to spiral into doom zone was the wording of the note. It’s typed and generic and what she will have printed out to give to all her clients:

Just a quick note to let you know I will be away from

x date -x date

and

x date to x date.

I do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

With warm regards, Anita

And you know what. Adult me is completely fine with this note. It tells me what I need to know. It’s fine…it’s just…ugh…it’s really, really not fine for my young parts who haven’t been told what’s going on, haven’t had it broken down for them and explained that it’s not her leaving them or abandoning them and they haven’t done anything wrong and that it’s just a letter she sends out for information.

What’s sad is it’s that fucking reminder that whatever I think or hope the relationship is, when it comes down to it, I am a client and she can hand over a formal note and disappear. The young parts have seen the note and have no clue who the person is that wrote it. Is it Anita? She never speaks like that to them. And then of course it brings the protective parts rushing in. The Teen is doing her best to soothe the little ones but again is absolutely blind with rage at me for letting myself think there is anything special about the relationship.

Is this note from the same woman that holds me in session, or reads stories, or buys me presents, or tells me that she loves me? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. And I know it isn’t a case of it being one or the other, it’s not black and white, and for fuck’s sake it’s just a note about a fucking set of break dates….but it’s so much more than that. It feels distancing and disconnecting. Breaks do this anyway so the delivery of information about breaks is so important.

I really don’t want to sound like a nit-picking pain in the arse here, I don’t want to be hard work for Anita. But I do want to write about my response to something as innocuous as a note with holiday dates because I think it really demonstrates how complex trauma can come out. I don’t imagine that Anita would have it on her radar that I could have spiralled like this. But even a sign off can be really triggering. Warm regards…lukewarm regards.

And I am fine. Like I am getting on with my life. As I said from the top, I am in so much of a better place than I have ever been before, but these things still sting.

I text Anita on Friday because I knew this was going to fester:

Only having a little (large) meltdown about breaks…next time can you tell me about it first and give me paper/dates later. I’ll explain on Monday but the formal tone of the note just really jarred something internally – and whilst adult me is totally fine, the little parts aren’t at all. X

And there’s been radio silence to that.

Shit.

Arrrghhhh… this is not what I needed!

Like I get I’ve said we’ll talk about it on Monday, but I am surprised given the fact that I have said that the little parts are not ok that she hasn’t sent me a GIF with a hug or something for those child parts. It’s what we agreed before…so what’s going on?

And so of course, this has made me wonder if the niggling doubts I have felt for the last couple of months are actually something rather than nothing. I am hoping that it’s just me, it’s just life, that I haven’t done something wrong. It could be too that Anita thinks that things are ok, but maybe unconsciously they’re not.

Anyway, that’s that. Part of me doesn’t even want to go to session tomorrow now. It’s just so exhausting being like this isn’t it?!

ps. I do see how much of a contradiction this post seems to be! I’m fine/Ahhhh it’s all bad! But I guess what I am saying is although my young parts are reacting/reactive currently I am not overwhelmed or totally consumed by the stuff that is triggered. I see this as information about my internal world to be worked through, rather than a total catastrophe. Having said this it really all does depend on how it goes tomorrow talking about it!

* only if the person you’re working with is safe and trustworthy!

Disruptions Are Unsettling.

August 17, 2021August 17, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum18 Comments

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted. Life has been just as hectic as ever this end. It’s all been pretty same same…where same same is high anxiety, stress, and general survival – holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum!

Therapy over this time has been fine, there’s nothing really ‘big’ or ‘blogworthy’ I can think of to talk about hence the fact that I haven’t posted in a while…and add to the fact it’s the school holidays and we’ve had family visiting, there hasn’t been much available free time to sit and type.

Anita and I have been getting down to work and it’s been good. It’s felt really comfortable in so much as no matter what comes up, we can get through it and process together. I’ve had lots of really strong somatic responses to the stuff we’ve been talking about – I am so over pins and needles in my feet and cramp in my legs! When I am with Anita, I feel confident that she cares and that I am safe with her and that’s a big part of the work – it feels safe to feel the feelings with her.

I wish I still kept notes from my sessions because I literally have no idea what’s gone on in the last few weeks – the specifics escape me almost immediately after a session unless there’s something very important or memorable happened. Instead, what I tend to be left with is a feeling of how things are/have been…and that feeling is that it’s ‘fine’ or ‘good’ even if the content has been ‘hard’ or ‘upsetting’.

I think I had hit a bit of a complacent patch “Ha! I’ve mastered this therapy business.” Because the time between sessions has been ok (even if life is really tough) and it’s felt like two sessions a week has been just the right amount of holding and containment to cope with what the world throws at me…which btw seems to be giant dollops of horse shit a lot of the time!

So…good…it’s been manageable…

It’s not so good, then, when that routine gets thrown out the window at short notice.

Oh no!

It’s a fucking great disaster when that happens! That’s when I realise that things are hanging by a thread and not quite as good as I think…or…I guess a different way of looking at it, is that that my maintenance plan works but is very necessary to keep things going.

Anita and I have had some largely ‘adult’ sessions recently, where I have talked about some really big things that required a lot of trust to bring to the room – one of these sessions was last Thursday. Yeah, Thursday, not Friday. Anita had to reschedule my Friday session last week which was ok (only a little internal wobble!) but I was conscious that it felt longer until Monday. I knew I would cope but would be ready for the Monday session when it arrived.

Over the weekend the young parts started to move in after the string sessions with them being largely absent. I could really feel that little part missing A and wanting to be close to her. Rather than ignore that little voice inside, on Sunday evening I text Anita and asked if we could read stories in our Monday session. I felt really small that evening and like I could just use a session where we would connect and cuddle and hear some of the little one’s concerns. I needed a bit of a break from the hard work I had been doing in previous sessions and to give those child parts space so that they didn’t creep out into the week between sessions and hijack me when the attachment stuff got really activated.

I went to bed early on Sunday night, I felt really tired and a bit hormonal and figured the sooner I went to bed the sooner I’d get to therapy and put some of the things that were bothering me down for a while.

I woke up at 10:20pm and glanced at my phone. There was a message from A. I assumed it would be a message to say that we could read stories and she’d see me in the morning.

It wasn’t.

It took a few seconds to process what was there before my heart sank and that internal wailing from the youngest parts kicked in.

I responded to her message about cancelling the session and then turned over in bed and cried… a lot. Of course, Anita can’t help getting sick. It’s just one of those things that happen. It just felt really bad timing. Adult me gets it – those young parts who were so ready for a story did not.

I hardly slept on Sunday night, my anxiety sky-rocketed and every small sound in the house set my system jangling. On Monday morning I asked my wife if she might be around on Wednesday morning so I could get to session, but she is in meetings and has some big work stuff on this week that was already causing her/us stress and so she wouldn’t be available.

I’ve mentioned before that it’s been a real nightmare these last few months with my wife’s job, anyway, and it’s all coming to a head at the moment so I really, really needed to retreat into that calm space with A this week as I am freaking out inside. Sometimes it just feels like the universe conspires against me!

I’m still not sure if I can get to Friday’s session this week, and next week looks impossible, too. It’s a nightmare trying to rope in favours for childcare over the summer holidays in order to get to sessions, and whilst I’ve done reasonably well over this break it’s just looking really unlikely that I’ll get to see Anita face to face between now and school returning.

I can, of course, do online sessions which are better than nothing, but are far from ideal especially when my body is off its tits and just won’t calm down and the young parts are really activated.

I feel physically sick from the anxiety I am feeling this week. It’s so annoying because I had been doing well, even though things felt scary and difficult…but now, well, jeez it’s hideous. I think some of it is tied to my cycle too – I feel paranoid about bad things happening when I have PMS and this is really heightened this month…although I think I have mentally adopted the brace position until I know the lay of the land with my wife’s job.

I don’t really have anything much more to say – I guess I just needed to let off steam about this somewhere where people will understand how big a deal not getting to therapy and last minute disruptions are.

Hope you are all holding up ok. x

Chosen Family: A Friend For Over Thirty Years

July 29, 2021July 29, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum24 Comments

I can count on my fingers the people that I hold close and have let into my heart. I’ve never been big on acquaintances – I’d sooner be alone with my thoughts in nature than stuck in a room of fake smiles and raucous artificial laughter. I don’t do surface level friendships or communications; I don’t see the point in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a chameleon (trauma does that to you!) and can float round a large gathering appearing comfortable, being funny, showing interest, bringing people together – but as an introvert, that kind of situation wipes me out for days afterwards and it takes time to regroup. I would rather spend time with one or two close friends in a space that allows quiet for chat than out shouting over music any day of the week.

I am finding more and more that I avoid situations where I get out way less than I put in. I’ve always been a people pleaser, a giver, but I’m nearly forty now and I know that I am finally done wasting energy putting myself in situations that don’t feel good on an energetic level- whether that be with my family or in social situations. I only have so many spoons and these days I am seeing that I am actually worthy of using these spoons to support myself! Who knew?!

I want genuine, authentic, ‘warts and all’ relationships with like-minded souls. I seek people who are able to be vulnerable and show their wounds as well as their triumphs. I want deep conversations and comfortable silences not performance. Life is too short for show. Let’s get down to meeting one another on a soul level and supporting one another in our vulnerable authenticity rather than hiding from one another and putting on a brave face.

Over the course of my life, I have met some truly wonderful people who I cherish – friends that feel like family. And my goodness, I have needed a chosen family with the blood relatives I got dealt! Once that bond is made, once I let you into my circle, there’s no getting out… but then those people who are in that space don’t want out (at least they don’t seem to!).

There is nothing better than connecting with people who know you and see you for who you are, who love you in spite of your flaws and because of your sensitivity, people who celebrate your successes and commiserate with you when you fail, people who just want the best for you…and for all that to be reciprocated, for the love and care to run both ways. I want to know and be known by my chosen family.

Today I want to write about one particular member of this small group of special people that I hold dear in my heart. I don’t know if she’ll get to read this because currently, she’s very ill in a hospice suffering after a long battle with cancer… and also it means sharing the blog which is a vulnerable act in itself – not that she’d share it with anyone, but our mums are friends and I have always been a bit reluctant in case my mum got wind of what I was writing! (Can you even imagine?!)

This is not the first time I have written about the cancer thief on this blog – my darling friend and second ‘mother’ died a couple of years ago from myeloma and it knocked me for six but there was perhaps a bit more acceptance on my part then despite the devastation because she was almost sixty, this time I feel at a complete loss because there is no fucking way that my friend should be in this situation at 38 or having been battling since she was 30. It’s just brutal.

When you keep your world small and your loved ones in single digits I think you feel the loss of these significant people all the more acutely and I want my beautiful friend to know just how very much I love her. I know she knows anyway, but I just want to say it again publicly.

This amazing, strong, selfless, inspiration of woman is my longest standing friend. We met at primary school when we were six and I’d just moved into the area. We struck up an instant friendship. Back then we were all about roller-skating, gymnastics and playing with our dolls ‘Anna’ and ‘Amy’ (seriously, we had the same shivering baby dolls!). We spent hours playing and chatting and just being little girls together. The first time I went to her house to play I stepped in a bowl of custard, and I’ve never been able to live it down! But I love those memories.

It’s funny, really, because I moved away from the area when I was eleven and yet despite years of not really seeing much of each other there has always been this unbreakable bond between us. Whenever we have got together it’s like no time has passed and it hasn’t mattered that we haven’t actively been in one another’s lives. We pick up like there’s been no separation and I guess that is the hallmark of a strong relationship.

In some ways this is odd, isn’t? A friendship forged over just five years in childhood is not like my university friendships formed as a young adult and where you might think there would be a greater degree of like-mindedness and yet it is every bit as strong, every bit as valuable. As small girls we weren’t talking about the tremendous hurts our families caused us, our struggles with our bodies, sexuality, self-harm, health concerns, because that stuff wasn’t there then – back then we were just two little girls who got on well but somehow that deep knowing of those little girls has kept going all these years.

We are now two women, mothers ourselves, who still have each other’s backs and have come through so much – I’d smash anyone who wanted to hurt her in the face with my rollerblades- just you see! When I got diagnosed with Hodgkin’s it was incredible to have a friend who really ‘got it’. She understood the fear, and the bloody awful side effects of the chemo and radiotherapy. I never had to pretend I was ok about my cancer with her. We spend so much time protecting others when we get sick and trying to be ‘ok’ but to have someone who really knew what it was to feel chemically sick, to lose her hair, and all the other shit that comes with it was so valuable to me. I hope that she feels that there never needs to be an act for me even at the end now.

I’m not doing a great job with this today; I keep getting massive waves of grief and overwhelm to think that we are where we are. I so badly want to be able to put into words how very proud and honoured I am to call this special lady my friend. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you what an amazing person she is. The love that she and her family is held in is immense and it’s not surprising because she’s fucking incredible. She set up a charity to support people with cancer whilst battling with her own and has created a legacy that will live on long after she’s gone. I just wish she was going to be here to see it.

There is so so much I could say here about all her achievements but fundamentally I am just so proud to call her my friend and so thankful that she even wanted to be my friend. She has no idea how her friendship when we were kids helped me get through some really tough times. The safety and stability our friendship offered meant I didn’t feel alone when everything was terrible at home. I could at least escape into love and care at school.

Sometimes I think that life just seems to be a series of losses and heartbreaks, and wonder why we do it to ourselves? If essentially all relationships are set to end why bother? Why walk into something that will end causing us pain? But then of course, relationships are what makes life worth living. It’s our interactions with one another, the love we feel for one another that truly makes a life. And whilst I am beyond sad that I am watching, helplessly, as my darling friend faces this horrible time I am so very grateful to have been with her on this journey that we call life.

It’s not what we do in life that matters. It’s how we make others feel. And a lifetime of friendship, care, and love is the greatest gift she has given me. I will be lost without her.

I love you L.

Amnesia, Spinning Plates…And LOTS Of Broken Crockery

July 25, 2021July 25, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum16 Comments

My life is so hectic and busy … stressful… right now that I seem to be hurtling through the weeks and stuff only catches up with me/lands way after the event. Like, in the moment, I know whether something feels good or bad (in therapy) but it doesn’t seem to stick and make a solid memory right there and then. It’s almost as though I have the pictures in my mind but no time to glue them into the scrap book and so instead they fall out and float away when I am whizzing along. It feels like my short-term memory is completely fucked. I’m so forgetful!… I suppose I should be grateful that things catch up eventually.

Time is going so fast that I am struggling to do the basics: my house is a mess, I’m not keeping in touch with my friends, and last week was so dire that I even forgot to send Zoom links for my lessons until they were just about to commence – really professional eh?! I don’t know where my mind is but it’s not here. I think maybe there’s just so much firefighting going on that I can’t keep all my plates spinning. Yeah, that’s it, because as I start to slow a little now the holidays have started I notice there is a lot of broken crockery on the floor.

Ugh.

Last night I took myself off to bed early because I was just totally physically and emotionally done in. Things are really hard again at the moment in my adult life and it’s sent my all of my system into a complete meltdown which is hard going.

Deep breaths.

The therapy session I had on Friday was fronted by the protectors AGAIN and it was agonising for about forty minutes until Anita and I managed to connect and the young parts had a cuddle and sobbed for the remaining part of the session which helped a bit but there just wasn’t enough time and I came away feeling sad and annoyed that yet again the protective parts had ambushed me.

I don’t like it much at the moment. The physical stress my body is under when I am like that is awful. The pain is unreal and the pins and needles and goodness knows what else is just too much. I am constantly fighting dissociation. Inside there’s a part that desperately wants to run away and not be seen. The internal battle is immense…and I just don’t have to energy to be at war right now…and certainly not with myself. Fortunately, Anita is patient and present but those parts are really trying to give her a run for her money. It’s exhausting.

*Honestly, these protectors are ridiculous!*

What’s causing all this? Well, the ‘need’ for Anita feels so massive right now. And because things feel so bad, part of me is absolutely terrified of being too much for her and then being left. Anita assures me that she is not going anywhere and that all she wants to do is be there and make it better for me, but it’s hard to let that filter down after what happened with Em. When I’ve been dropped like a hot potato when I was at my most vulnerable and struggling it’s no wonder the system is doing all it can to prevent that from happening again. I feel like my brain and body have got stuck in flight mode.

Anyway, last night I sent Anita a GIF to say goodnight and few minutes later she’d sent me something lovely back. As I lay there about to go to sleep, in the orange light of my salt lamp, I recalled what I am about to write about now having had it completely skip my memory this last few weeks.

I’ve been so caught up in survival and protection mode in all areas of my life, not just therapy, that remembering this day/session cut through the protective crap I’ve encased myself in and made me realise I bloody don’t have to go to therapy wearing armour and keeping my distance from A! And it’s really settled me down. I felt really unsettled and disconnected yesterday and now I feel like it’s ok. It’s crackers really because there are so many times when Anita has been great, and present, and accommodating but this recent memory recall seems to have settled stuff more.

A few weeks ago, when it was heading towards the anniversary of my dad dying I had a really bad spell of feeling utterly panicked and unsettled. It’s not unusual for this to happen at this time of year – so many memories of that awful time come up and the reality that, now, my dad has been gone longer than half the time he was with me and that hits hard. He’s missed out on a lot…I’ve missed out on so much, too. And thirteen years down the line I feel like I am forgetting things about him and it’s painful. There’s still so much left unprocessed and unhealed – especially where my family is concerned but I realise now, that I will never get the closure I want, and I think I won’t feel like it’s over until my grandmother actually dies. It sounds harsh but I have done all I can and so until she’s gone I can’t fully close the door on it. Anyway, that’s another story…

On this particular week, my wife was away for work too. It’s never brilliant when she’s gone – I never sleep all that well and I generally feel less safe. Even though, rationally, I know nothing bad is going to happen, my body doesn’t get the memo. I’d been to therapy on the Monday and my protectors had been really on guard but fortunately Anita had been her incredible, attuned self and had helped me connect in the end. Phew.

I woke up on the Tuesday and felt absolutely terrible. Everything felt wrong. I knew my wife was going to be away and I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the day, let alone through the week to Friday. Part of me wanted to prove to myself that I can power through like I have always done but another part just wanted to reach out for support and not always have to struggle so hard.

With Em I could never ask for more contact. She didn’t do check ins. She wouldn’t even read my texts (and they were rarely sent). There was no sense of there being a support in her…even in the sessions it felt like I was being watched in my pain rather than being supported in it. So sometimes my brain doesn’t catch on that things are different now and I can ask for what I need with Anita and if she can she will try and help and be there for me.

Tuesday is my biggest teaching day: 9:15-4, 4:30-5:30, and 6:30-7:30 and it’s all one-to-one with high need students. I enjoy what I do, but it takes its toll, especially when I am trying to keep my littles safe inside and function. So, I decided that I would text Anita and asked if we might be able to have a check in sometime during the week just to hold things until Friday. She responded that she could do that evening about 8pm if I wanted. That was a perfect time and I snapped it up and thanked her. She then asked me if I wanted to do WhatsApp or face to face. Of course, as I was alone with my kids that evening it had to be WhatsApp.

As much as I hate online therapy, in this sort of situation any contact is better than no contact and to be honest I only expected to chat for ten or fifteen minutes. It seemed odd therefore, that A had offered face to face as an option seeing as it’s a 40 minute drive to hers but it didn’t matter as I couldn’t see her anyway but it was nice that the offer was there.

Later that afternoon I got a call from my wife to say she would be coming home as there was COVID in the place she was meant to be working the next day and so there was no point in staying over at the hotel as she would work closer to home the next day. My brain took about half a second to realise that perhaps I would now be able to see Anita face to face after all, as my wife would be back on time to be with the kids. IT felt like a massive win.

I text Anita and asked her if I could come and see her in person. The parts that were so upset and struggling would benefit so much from that contact – especially after all the shenanigans that the protectors have been putting me through. That day all I wanted was to go in and have a cuddle and settle those little parts who were struggling so hard. Anita said that she’d look forward to seeing me when I could get there.

So I arrived at 8:10pm and we had a really lovely session. There was a lot of talk and processing of stuff but from the get go it was close and connected. It was an hour session (which I hadn’t expected) and the entire time I was cuddled into A. It felt so safe and holding.

I won’t go into detail because it’s not really relevant now. But what is relevant it that I had ‘forgotten’ about this session until last night. I have been putting myself through the emotional wringer for weeks worrying about whether Anita cares, or wants me near her, or if I am too much for her … when clearly that’s not the case at all. There is no way she’d do the things she does for me if that was how she felt.

So, the upshot is, remembering that extra unscheduled session from a few weeks ago where Anita was so holding and caring and present and attuned and and and… has done a lot to settle the parts that have been freaking out. I’m hoping, therefore, tomorrow that I can just go in and be how it is, not be armoured up and pushing A away. There’s no need to put in a pre-emptive strike…because there isn’t an attack coming …well, not from her at least.

I am so far behind with the blog so hopefully over the next week or so I’ll be able to get up to speed as there’s been some amazing healing work done in between me being shut down and wearing a giant ‘keep out’ sign.

The Protectors Dominate Therapy.

July 10, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments

Therapy this last week or so has been a complete emotional rollercoaster. (How many times have I said this lately?!) Honestly, I can hardly keep up with myself! One minute, things are fine, the next it’s utterly desperate. The various parts of me are in and out on rapid rotation and I don’t know which way is up. It really would be really unnerving if I didn’t already have a reasonably good understanding of my system. Mind you, my teen trying to sabotage the shit out therapy is never a great deal of fun, even if I can see it and make sense of it after the event!

The last two Mondays have been quite similar…oh goody (*not ‘good’ at all) a pattern is emerging! I seem start off with a couple of minutes small talk – everything ‘seems’ fine (False Adult strikes again!) and then the clouds quickly roll in from the horizon and I am totally done for. The feeling of disconnection I feel is massive and rather than reach out for Anita, I freeze and get swept up in my internal storm which rumbles on and on about Anita wanting to get away from me and my not being able to trust her.

HELP ME PLEASE!

Last week (28^thJune) I walked in, sat down, and told Anita that I didn’t feel very good – I had terrible period pain and felt really drained and vulnerable and like my womb was trying to escape from my body. It was shit. I really just wanted a cuddle and to reconnect and feel safe with A – to rest in her presence – but instead of this, my teen went into complete shutdown and “fuck it all!” The young parts desperately wanted to be close, but the teen had gone into protect mode which resulted in a complete stand-off with Anita. It was agony. We’ve all been there haven’t we?!

When it gets like that, it feels like Anita is a million miles away even though it’s really me holding her at arm’s length and avoiding her. I think those young, vulnerable parts need such clear and demonstrative expressions of care and closeness when I feel off from the very outset of the session that a run of the mill, sitting next to me and tentatively asking questions just feels really … crap. Those little ones basically need Anita to be a mind-reader, and that’s never going to happen. Anita is amazingly perceptive, but she won’t know the second I walk in that I am crying out for a cuddle unless I actually tell her.

Anyway, the feeling of both physical and emotional distance between myself and Anita that I felt – or put between us- was absolute hell for the youngest parts and fuelled the anger in the teen. The longer this ‘stand off’ went on the worse it felt inside and the further I retreated. It’s totally infuriating that when the need is massive I retreat…but then of course this response is rooted in not wanting to be ‘too much’ or get ‘rejected’ by the other and so it makes sense.

I sat there rooted to the spot, staring at the door, not looking at Anita. A kept gently asking what was going on with me… but I totally stonewalled her. I’ve listened back to the session and OMG it’s just so fucking painful. When I am in that place, I feel so isolated, so cut off, and nothing Anita says or does feels right or enough, other than her explicitly telling me we are ok, that she cares, and realistically I need her to be physically touching me, either by holding my hand or giving me a hug. When it feels bad, I can’t hear her gentle, calm invitation to join her, to let her know what’s going on, to reconnect. I just feel fucked off and angry! And because I am angry, I push her further and further away.

That day, I think the need for connection was so strong when I arrived at session because I had felt ignored and rejected over the weekend (don’t ask…it was just mega PMS and the wonderful fucked up lens that that brings with it!).

And because I felt abandoned it necessarily brought the protectors online almost instantly when we met. There was a narrative of, “Don’t get too close, she’ll push you away – and she wasn’t interested in you over the weekend” sort of internal dialogue. I always feel like this after a weekend, more than I do on a Friday session – which is nuts because I’m sure if I checked my messages there wasn’t radio silence over the weekend – it just sometimes feels that way.

Anita persisted, “What are you thinking?”

Silence.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

More silence.

Anita persisted, “You feel very distant today…has something happened?” There was so much care in and warmth in her voice that it felt like Anita was begining to get under the surface of my armour.

The teen grunted, “What do you mean?”

Anita was not put off and replied that she wasn’t sure but felt like there was a big distance between us. She asked me whether she had upset me and I replied, “It’s fine.”

Reader. It was not fine!

I’m sure loads of you are familiar with this sort of situation and how agonising it is to be trapped inside yourself screaming to get out but being completely mute so far as being able to say what is going on goes. You’re stuck in your internal prison.

“Can you share with me what you are thinking?” Anita probed.

And out came a really angry, venomous, “I’m not thinking anything!”

Grrrr. Rarrr. My god, the wobbler was coming! Lol.

Anita backed off and tried to soothe me a bit, “Okay… it’s okay”. I could feel myself getting more and more tense and upset as time elapsed. I just wanted to be close to her, but the teen was doing everything in her power to make Anita disappear.

I sat there, frozen, and then I started physically trembling and hid my face in my hands. I did not want to be seen in this state. I was full of anger and shame and embarrassment, and ALL THE FEELINGS and the little parts were beside themselves too.

Anita, as usual managed to cut through and wondered aloud about what could be going on. She said it felt uncomfortable to her, but she didn’t know what had triggered it or what it was about. She expressed that she didn’t know if what she was feeling was hers, mine, or whether it was even real. She said she wanted to give me a hug but wasn’t sure whether that was for her or for me. To hear her think aloud about it and talk about her process in real time helped me a lot because it showed me that she was engaged and thoughtful and trying to find a way through for us both and it made me see that my behaviour was also having an impact on her not just me.

Even though I was giving off the biggest “Fuck off” vibes, Anita asked me if I would like a hug. I’ve told her a lot recently that when this part is about, I need her to do this because it’s what I want but so often that protective rage won’t let me anywhere near her and vice versa.

A miserable and quiet, “I don’t know” left my lips.

Arghhh. Yes of course I wanted a hug – but I was too ashamed to tell her after the performance I’d just given.

Anita gently asked, “Can you feel this as well, or is it just me?”

I nodded and stared down at the carpet in corner of the room. The atmosphere and disconnect was hard and I didn’t know how to step away from it.

“Yeah. It’s not nice” soothed Anita. That simple acknowledgment that what was going on wasn’t easy for her either, somehow felt connecting. So often Em would leave me struggling in my own misery and just observe me, untouched and unmoved by my pain or whatever it was these protectors were trying to express. Even on our last session when we terminated she watched me cry and said, “It seems you are experiencing a lot of emotion”… FUCK ME! It felt so isolating and like I was completely alone in that room. Well, I was…so…

Anyway, I looked over to Anita and quietly asked, “What’s wrong?” I didn’t mean “What’s wrong with you”, but “What’s wrong here? What’s going on with us?” – I couldn’t work it out. I was just confused and lost.

Anita used her really warm, soothing voice and gently replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know what started it, or where it came from. I’d like to know, but I’m not sure how we find out. I think I might have felt like I’d let you down somehow…”

“About what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had chance to read the blog you sent me…”

I had sent Anita a blog post the night before the session and I guess there’s a part of me that hoped she’d have read it and perhaps I was a bit angry about it knowing she hadn’t. Although up until that point I didn’t actually know she hadn’t sooooo??? I dunno.

It was the post about the False Adult and it’s interesting to me to track back and see that I had a session where the False Adult stole the show and the next session the teen was going berserk. It’s like the protectors are all out and doing their thing right now and I guess we need to try and understand why.

Anyway, what she said resonated and the teen part felt seen and heard which allowed that part to power down.

A little voice whimpered, “You feel really far away.”

And that’s when Anita really took the cue and joined the dots, “Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m feeling too, and I don’t like it…Have I felt far away over the weekend?”

The little one nodded.

Anita said something about never knowing how much of her stuff to share with me and what is useful and what’s not. She told me that it had been a busy weekend and that she had hardly been near her phone and by the time she saw my message about the blog it was so late, and she needed to go to bed because she was really tired.

She didn’t need to justify herself, or explain, but it did really help that part who felt like she had been ignored and side-lined over the weekend. I sat quietly taking it all in and felt myself thawing a bit.

Anita continued on, “It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Distance doesn’t mean not caring. It really doesn’t… does that make sense?”

I shook my head.

That young part was still so upset and now the teen had backed off I was left with that really vulnerable little one that just can’t understand where Anita has gone when I am not with her.

Anita went on to say that, “sometimes people get distracted by things in their lives, but it doesn’t mean that the love isn’t there. It doesn’t mean it’s gone. It doesn’t change. Not if it’s real. It doesn’t change. And it is real.”

This attempt to reassure and reconnect went such a long way. The confirmation that the love isn’t gone was all I needed to hear.

“Why are you so far away?” I whispered.

“Can I come closer?… Do want a hug?…this feels horrible to me too…”

I shuffled over to Anita and snuggled into her and silently cried into her chest. There was so much grief coming up and out. The pain of disconnection is so powerful and it’s really something watching it play out in the therapeutic relationship.

Fortunately, Anita is really patient and really understands what it’s like for the parts. She is so accepting of the angry teen and really wants to give her space to be in the room. She told me that she loves that part just as much as all the others and can really see how traumatised she is and how much care she needs. It’s a new thing for me to hear that the part that is so dismissive and stand-offish has her place and is welcome in the room with Anita. Em ran scared from her when she finally came forward, but Anita wants her to know she’s safe to be out and say what she needs to say.

As I was cuddled into Anita she said, “I think you are so vulnerable to rejection that you see my being distracted as a rejection. And that is the last thing I ever want to do [reject me]. Maybe I am scared of doing that, too, because I know how vulnerable you are to it. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

Anita held me closer into her and gently rubbed my back as I sobbed. Part of me felt so foolish for all the drama I’d created in the session because it’s so fucking obvious that Anita is not setting out to hurt me, or ignore me, or abandon me. How much more evidence do the protective parts require?? It’s so frustrating that sometimes I just cannot see her care or feel it or hold onto it when she’s not there.

I keep banging on about object constancy, here on the blog, but this really is it. That’s the problem. The parts get so spooked and are so poised for rejection that they haven’t yet got the memo that Anita really cares. I know she does. She doesn’t just care – she loves me. I feel it… just not all the time. And that’s the kicker.

Sometimes I sit in my room and look at my lamp, or my necklace, or breathe in the smell of my elephant and I can keep a sense of Anita, I can see all that she does for me. I can feel her love and care…and other times it’s just gone. I just get sucked deep into the black hole of the mother wound and it’s total doom.

“I’m scared” whispered the little one. I think it was the seven-year-old part.

Anita mirrored, “you’re scared?…what are you scared of?”

A barely audible response came out, “Something bad happening.”

Anita questioned, “In what way?… Bad between us?… Scared that the relationship might end?”

There was a barely perceptible nod into Anita’s chest.

“Yeah” she considered, and then so carefully and warmly said, “And I guess, inevitably, relationships do end at some point.” I could feel fear rising in my body fearing what she was going to say next, and I held on more tightly to her. Was she about to tell me we’d have to end one day soon? Panic coarsed through my veins. She continued on, “It could be through death… and it’s always sad when relationships do end… but I have no intentions of not seeing you. I really don’t! I guess none of us really know what life is going to throw at us…does this make sense?…but I have no intentions of going anywhere.”

By this point I was properly sobbing and moaned “It’s just really bad timing”. And it is. It was coming up to the anniversary of my dad dying, and then of course, my family disowning me as a result of what happened, and then my best friend from primary school is terminally ill and has very little time left, and one of my wife’s colleagues had just died of COVID over that preceding weekend despite being young and double vaccinated…and it just felt like everything was funnelling into a horribly scary place and the terror of losing A was huge.

Anita acknowledged that there’s a lot of loss around for me at the moment and at this time of year and reiterated that she wasn’t going anywhere and she said she understands my fear. She then told me I’m the only client she sees without a screen and that she does everything she can to keep herself safe (this in relation to the fear about COVID). I am amazed that she does this for me, then. I am astounded, really, that she is so able to see my need and knows just how triggering distance is for me and so has decided to work with me how I need and keep touch and close physical proximity as part of our work. I am so grateful to her for this.

“I’m sorry” I groaned.

I felt so stupid for how I had behaved. Everyday Anita shows me just how committed to our work she is and yet so often I get triggered and freak out. I guess it is part of the process and it’s really good that these parts are now able to express themselves freely and get the attention and care they need.

Anita responded with, “You don’t have to be sorry. I think it’s important it happens here. Because everything that happens with us is, all the time, helping you to see that it is ok. That’s what we’re doing. It’s like you said the other day, it’s like trying to reconfigure the computer. So, it really is ok. It’s just the protector going by what it’s learnt. It might not feel ok for you, but it really is for me. How I feel about you is not going to change.”

I cuddled further into Anita, content now that everything was ok. My body relaxed and I closed my eyes and focused in on the steady beat of her heart.

“I love you” I murmured.

“I love you too, I really do.” She replied.

The remaining time of the session was just holding and calming and soothing and then it was time to go. I felt utterly knackered once I got home! The emotional marathons are hard work and take their toll and so I climbed into bed for an hour when I made it home.

The next session (Friday) was different again and needs its own post for different reasons – there was no teen or protectors there – so I’ll leapfrog it and go to last Monday which was basically a re-run of the session I’ve just written here! FFS! WTF is happening?!!

Again, I found myself at a complete stand off with Anita. Just before the session I had messaged my best-friend and told her not to let me head into rupture zone this coming week. I could almost feel it bubbling under and was terrified that I would go into session and create a rupture that didn’t need to happen.

Poor Anita!

I sat down and everything felt really wrong. Something had happened that morning that had triggered me around my dad’s anniversary, and I just felt really shaky. Anita listened carefully but I just couldn’t really convey what I was feeling. It was all really messy. I started to disappear inside myself and once again became frozen staring into the corner of the room.

Within a minute Anita asked me if I wanted her to come closer, but already the protectors were up and alert and said, “No.” I knew from there on out I was in for a rough ride because that part was up and proving that she didn’t need anyone.

When Anita asked me what I was thinking, I told her I wanted to go home. Anita replied that I could go home because I am free to do what I want with her, but that she didn’t want me to go home. I could feel myself drifting further and further away. Everything felt so bad inside.

Anita kept gently trying to find her way in, she asked me if I’d like to read a story – I just shook my head. The little ones would have loved to have read stories together but the protector was having none of it. At one point Anita asked what I needed from her and I snapped at her that I just wanted her to, “Leave me alone.” I don’t know why I was so dismissive or rude – it’s really really not like me but like I say it just didn’t feel ok.

I sat pickled in shame and frozen in that disconnected agony again. After a little while Anita said something that completely cut through to my core and disarmed the protector in one sentence, “It’s hard for a rabbit to sit here and watch while you’re in so much pain – when all I want to do is take it away” she said, referencing the book that I gave her for our one-year therapy anniversary, ‘The Rabbit Listened’. When things feel bad, she sometimes sends me emojis or pictures of rabbits – because in the story it is the rabbit that sits patiently with the character as he cycles through all the negative emotions and waits with him and never leaves him. Anita has always been my rabbit from the beginning.

Note to self: Anita is the good guy in this!

I smiled inside and reached out to hold her hand, and then moved in for a cuddle and started to cry and Anita just held me to her and let me cry it out. Has anyone noticed how much I seem to cry these days?!

Over the rest of the session, we spoke a lot about the protectors and their role. At one point I asked Anita if that part of me, that is so horrible and pushes her away makes her want to go away. She emphatically replied that this was not the case at all and said that we all have these parts. She knows what it’s like to feel trapped and angry and threatened and attacked and have parts that try and sabotage relationships. She says it comes from trauma and the more trauma we have the louder those protectors can be. It’s needed to be like that to survive.

Then she went on to say, “Even though it’s really hard for them to engage with me, I have an awful lot of empathy for them. They’re so troubled and I get it. It doesn’t mean I can’t love them as much as I do the rest of you.” She explained that she knows that they come up because they are scared: scared of being too much, scared of being abandoned and rejected, scared of everything going wrong between us, scared of being hurt – and hopefully one day they’ll learn that she’s staying.

We had such a productive conversation in the end and the cuddles were very needed. I do feel like I am putting myself through the emotional wringer at the moment. Therapy is seriously hard work isn’t it?! Despite all this, I really feel like we are doing important work and bit by bit this repetitive, painstaking work with the various parts is somehow rewriting the narrative I had forged early on in life and reconfirmed in the therapy with Em.

I really feel like I landed on my feet finding Anita. I know this kind of therapy isn’t for everyone and is probably quite a departure from what a lot of therapists do, but it’s what I need and what works for me. And after years of being left out in the emotional wasteland with Em it feels so good to be brought in out the cold and be cared for by Anita. Her demonstrating that I am lovable is starting to make me believe it and I am far more compassionate towards myself as a result which has to be good thing.

Therapy Break Is Imminent & Storytime For The Young Parts

May 30, 2021May 30, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum21 Comments

It’s been an ‘interesting’ couple of weeks in therapy, but I can’t tell you much about any of it because there are huge voids where the memories should be, still. I don’t know what’s going on, really. Everything is just a bit of a blur and whilst I am aware that I have had quite difficult emotional periods over the last week I am not entirely sure what’s triggering it – other than the upcoming break.

I suppose it’s not just ‘other than the upcoming break’ because the reality is that breaks are a BIG DEAL to the young parts, especially as those little ones haven’t experienced a two-week therapy break since last summer. At that point they weren’t as ‘in the relationship’ with A as they are now because the therapy was still quite new. I wasn’t so attached back then, and we were working online in that first (endless) lockdown, so the absence wasn’t quite as striking as it is when there is a disruption to my face-to-face therapy now.

We all know that I’ve been crap and grumpy when Anita and I have had to revert back to online therapy for some bits of the more recent lockdowns. I can’t help it, I miss the physical contact and the energy in the room…I miss Anita…and the cuddles! The lockdowns weren’t great (understatement) but I didn’t even cope especially well recently even with that one missed/cancelled session when A’s daughter might have had covid…so imagine how it’s going to be with four missed sessions!

Although, to be fair, if you dig beneath all these disruptions to my therapy and the resulting meltdowns there’s more to them than meets the eye. It’s not just because I can’t see A. I freaked out in lockdown two because Anita had promised she’d see me and then ended up going away to bubble with her partner – it felt like she’d lied to me and it felt so abandoning. The mess up with the recent covid cancellation hurt because Anita was actually still working but just didn’t think I’d want to work online…and that stung because it felt like she didn’t see my need.

Shoot me now!

Anyway, it’s bank-holiday this weekend and even though Anita and I have scheduled a session for Tuesday that wasn’t without its stresses/miscommunication either.

FUCK!

Weeks ago, A and I arranged via a text that we would do 10am on Tuesday instead of our regular Monday time. That felt fine…until Friday, last week, when Anita text me after our session and said, ‘I hope your day is improving. I have just realised we haven’t talked about another day for BH Monday. Can you do Tuesday 1^st at 11:15?’

This text immediately set the cat amongst the pigeons internally. She’d obviously forgotten we’d made the plan and whilst the 11:15 was no big deal – the time was fine – to parts inside it felt massive. She’d obviously now booked the 10 o clock session with someone else…and that felt…like… I had been replaced I guess….but also forgotten about and not kept in mind. I dunno. I know it’s not actually a big deal really and so I replied and said that yes, that was fine and that we had had the conversation but 11:15 was fine too. Anita apologised and that was that.

She has no idea how much this tiny thing actually affected or how much it’s been niggling away at me since but really, I can’t even be bothered to go into it with her. She’s so great so much of the time that surely, I can cope with the physical reminder that there are (of course) other people that Anita sees. LOL.

I can’t lie, though. I was disappointed. I guess it’s because I already worry about being forgotten about anyway, and this message seems to confirm that Anita had forgotten me (or at least believed she had).

Also, I quite like the fact that I am the first client of the day. I guess I feel like Anita is fresh/ready for the day ahead and not already on the treadmill of work counting down the hours/clients (not that she probably does this anyway, but…). I also don’t get any sense of anyone else having been there in the room – no perfume, warm chairs or anything like that (which would send me off my rocker – remember the box the other week?!). I guess, also, if I am honest, I know that she hasn’t touched or cuddled anyone else yet that day. The idea of cuddling into her after someone else might have been crying on her just feels…ugh…I dunno…

I am basically just a spoilt brat with massive sibling jealousy. Can you tell I am an only child?! Lol.

Ha!

So, anyway, because of this timetabling mix up I have been pretty discombobulated this week. On Monday I think (having had a conversation about it on Friday with Anita because I couldn’t remember anything that happened – it was just a black hole) it was False Adult that was fronting for a long time in my session, and it wasn’t until about fifteen minutes before the end that I felt like I connected to A and let my vulnerable self come out. I obviously didn’t tell her about the upset about the session for Tuesday … and now I wonder if that’s what was stopping me connecting. Probably. Ugh, maybe I should bring it up…but…oh the SHAME!!!

The way the session went left me feeling quite out of sorts for the whole of Monday. I am so conscious of the fact that everything is getting unsettled, and the break is coming and I really want to feel safe and connected before Anita goes away and not disconnected and far away.

For most of Monday after the session I could feel that angry part who wants to cut and run fronting. Maybe it was the teen? Even though the young parts were in meltdown this protective part was determined not to reach out to Anita or give her any indication that things felt off between us…or at least with me. ‘What’s the point? She’s leaving soon, right?’ –

Ugh. That voice!

FFS.

When will she give up?!

Anyway, by about 9 o clock I was in bed. I was so so tired. I had my salt lamp on (birthday present from A) and I was cuddling into my big dog. The critic and teen or whoever it was had powered down and all I was left with were those little ones who felt desperately sad that they had not been able to get enough of what they needed in the session that morning. Without even thinking I text Anita. I didn’t expect her to respond but I felt better for having let those young parts let something out.

This is the exchange:

It felt so settling and I went to sleep with no bother at all… and no bad dreams for the first time in ages! Win! I know that this is a million miles away from most therapies. I mean I did years with Em stone cold in that room with no contact outside contact at all and I can imagine that this probably feels to some people like there are no boundaries in this relationship. But there are and I am really clear on what they are. Boundaries don’t have to be barriers and the key thing for me doing this work is authenticity. For those of us with complex trauma I think it’s really helpful when we get to see a bit of a real person with feelings and emotions.

You’d think that exchange would have been enough for the week to run smoothly.

Nope.

Because we are right in the thick of my wounding now and the messy attachment stuff. It’s basically developmental trauma #101!!

As the week went on, I felt increasingly disconnected from Anita again. The woeful Wednesday separation anxiety kicked my arse and the young parts were freaking out. Honestly, the anxiety about this summer break is so bad for them but I am not surprised as we have been looking a lot at my early years and how it was with my mum lately so that stuff feels really live. On Thursday night I actually felt like cancelling my Friday session. Things felt that bad.

I text Anita a GIF of a character having a meltdown with their face under a pillow…basically me. And a photo of something I had just let the young parts express:

I had tuned into what was going on and wrote it out. I can’t believe I sent it but hey, there we are – these things happen now and it’s ok. There’s no boundary talk, instead there’s engagement about what it is I am trying to say.

Anita saw the message and told me she was sending me a ‘big hug filled with love’ and a really reassuring message that said we could start earlier on Friday if I wanted as she thought it would be a good idea. There was still so much conflict going on inside that I didn’t actually respond to the message until Friday morning but when I woke up, I was feeling so much better and so relieved that A had suggested we could do a longer session.

Anita says it’s important that we pay attention to all the parts of me and listen to what they are trying to say. She’s sure that at the moment my protectors are doing their best to sabotage the relationship because they think it’s better to leave than get left…and that’s really how it is…EVEN THOUGH IT’S JUST A HOLIDAY AND NOT A FUCKING ENDING!

Sometimes I feel like my protective parts are just arseholes but, I do know they are trying to do their job. It’s just a bit mortifying when this stuff is playing out in your late thirties and not your mid-teens. Although those parts don’t know I am here and are locked back in 1998!

Anyway, I am meandering slowly toward the point here… there’ve been a couple of sessions lately where I have been really unsettled and no matter what we do I just feel like I am cycling through heaps of uncomfortable states. It’s like I’m trying to land myself in my ‘letterbox’ of tolerance but it’s windy and stormy and so the plane keeps missing the spot and instead lands in hypo or hyper arousal. I feel like I am not in the room. Like Anita is not there. My body hurts. I feel sick. I feel dizzy. I go numb. It’s dark. I feel shaky. The parts inside are screaming. You name it and I’ve probably been there in those sessions.

So. Friday was ugh. Not because Anita was distant, or I was a million miles from her – that wasn’t how it was. I hugged her the moment she opened the front door and snuggled into her within a minute of getting in the room. There was nothing at all wrong in that regard and yet still I couldn’t properly settle. We spoke about it. Tried to pinpoint what was going on. Dipped in and out of a lot of different conversations. We laughed. I cried. But despite all this I felt really really agitated and disconnected – or at least a key part did. It was as if I couldn’t relax into this calm, nurturing space properly……………… WHY?? ….. well, probably because that calm nurturing space isn’t there on Monday and then won’t be there for two weeks soon.

Groan.

Anita wondered if I felt frustrated that I couldn’t connect in the way I wanted and I said that was the case. She asked me if I wanted to do some drawing because we had spoken about how maybe doing something creative might help when it feels like this. I said I didn’t want to. Basically the idea of being even slightly separated from her in the room felt awful…again right now it’s the really young stuff being triggered.

A couple of weeks ago when I was in a similar state Anita read me a story I had brought in called, ‘Barbara Throws A Wobbler’ by Nadia Shireen and it really settled those child parts.

Listening to a story read by A, written in language that was accessible to them and with pictures to look at grounded those parts and I felt way more connected and present in the room.

I sometimes feel like my young parts are just outside the door or are suspended just out of reach looking in and it’s horrible until they can get inside and close to A.

I had seen the book not long after having a massive wobbler in a session earlier that week and it really captures just how awful it feels when that angry tantruming part takes over and freaks out over really small things. In the end, the main character realises that this big scary Wobbler is actually a part of her, and she has the power to shrink it rather than be taken over by it. She knows it will come back but she isn’t frightened of it anymore.

At the end of the book there are pictures of a bunch of other characters (that don’t have their own story) and I asked if maybe we could draw our own versions of these character soon. I had said my Wobbler wasn’t a red angry jelly and was more like a black smoky Dementor out of Harry Potter but I thought there was probably some good work to be done here.

So, on Friday when I was struggling to connect despite the closeness A wondered if maybe it’d help if she read me another story rather than drawing? I bought her ‘The Rabbit Listened’ on the first therapy anniversary and we haven’t looked at it together yet, and at Christmas I gave her ‘The Hug’. I joked that one day I would stop giving her kids’ books. Although probably not just yet!

Whilst I really did want a story the idea of Anita getting up and moving even to the other side of the room felt unbearable. I said to A, “I don’t want to let go.” A wondered whether I thought that if I let go I might disappear and I nodded into her chest and murmured – “or you might.” A held me close for a while and I settle more and eventually I said that I would like a story. She asked which I’d prefer. The Hug was already in the room on the shelf and the other books were in another room. I opted for The Hug – less far to go.

Anita sat back down on the sofa and I cuddled back into her and she read the story to me. Her voice was so soothing, and she did the voices of the characters and everything. No joke, all that agitated shit I’d been battling just disappeared and I landed in the room and into the moment with a gentle thud. It was so nice to feel the tension leave my body and feel fully present (all the parts).

Up until that point I felt like even though I had been cuddling A, listening to her heartbeat, talking, laughing etc there had been a part of me holding myself so tightly inside. It’s almost like being in a full body shackle – it protects that most vulnerable bit of me but it’s hideous. But the story did something and all that just fell away. I really enjoyed looking at the pictures and felt so held and contained.

I haven’t read the story before but have seen snippets of it online and knew enough about it to want to send it to Anita at Christmas. It’s really lovely and simple. It’s about a hedgehog and a tortoise who are both desperate for a hug but all the animals they meet won’t give them one. They’re too busy for a hug, but also, as it turns out people are put off by the hedgehog’s spikes and the tortoise’s hard shell. The book runs half-way on the hedgehog’s story then you flip it over and read the tortoise’s story from the back to the middle. In the centre pages of the book the two characters meet and get to hug each other because they are perfect for each other. The book says ‘there is someone for everyone’.

Anita finished the book and said, “hugs are really really important, aren’t they?” I didn’t say anything but seeing as I was cuddled into her body and had been for the entire session I wasn’t about to disagree!

After the story the young parts told Anita about my tortoise that I had been looking after for someone, but they have given him to me. It was small talk, but it felt really connecting. I guess because I felt so much more present and connected.

I left feeling so much better than I had done when I arrived and throughout the week. I feel settled even though it’s a BH weekend. I’ve been productive in my garden – turning the meadow back into a lawn! Can I get a shout out for the sunshine? After a month of solid rain and cloud here I hardly know myself now there is blue sky and wall to wall sunshine.

I hope you guys are all making the most of it too (UK readers obvs as no idea what it’s like elsewhere on the planet!)x

‘Sibling’ Jealousy In The Therapy Room: Don’t Ask Questions You Don’t Really Want The Answers To.

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021rubberbandsandchewinggum39 Comments

So, following on from my last post here things got much worse and I found myself deep down the rabbit hole of doom! I felt so terrible by the time Sunday rolled around that I just didn’t know what to do with myself. Anita acknowledged my crying bear message in the afternoon on Sunday with what felt like a really formal ‘un-Anita-y’message. She asked if I was ok (uh no, not really) and then sent quite a long message that talked about discussing working out payment stuff and how she had meant to discuss it on Friday but how ‘obviously that didn’t happen’ (yeah, that’s because my session was cancelled…and I am still having a meltdown about it!).

The message landed badly. It felt really off because there I was feeling really upset and abandoned and disconnected and all the bad feelings over the session cancellation on Friday – wondering whether she had chosen to just cancel me rather than work online and here was a message about ‘boundaries’ and ‘therapy dynamics’ and admin, basically. Because I was so triggered already, the message felt cold and just really missed where I was at. I felt like I was invisible to her.

Even though boundaries are very important it can be such a triggering word to those of us with C-PTSD. I think it’s because so often when therapists start banging on about boundaries it can often seem to be something about distancing themselves from us. Like the boundary talk happens because we’re seen to be pushing boundaries, we’re trying to be too close. So, when there’s talk of boundaries from the therapist it often feels like barriers being put up etc…’here’s the boundary, don’t step over it’. Basically ‘back off’ – ‘I’m just your therapist’.

Looking back, I don’t think that’s what was intended and I really don’t ever feel like Anita is a ‘boundaries for boundaries’ sake’ therapist. I think A was just trying to put my mind at rest that we would find a way forward but phrases like ’I’m not going to just drop you’ still sent panic through my system especially as the messages over the weekend had so clearly missed what was going on after Friday and even the word ‘drop’ made me feel vulnerable because of course she could ‘drop’ me at any time.

I didn’t know what to do so I just sent Anita the link to the blog I’d just posted about all the shit that was swirling and asked her to read it. Thankfully, she read it and it clearly made sense to her because the response she sent afterward felt much more like the Anita I am used to. The problem was by the time she sent it, I was so tangled up in knots and had been putting all the jigsaw pieces from the last few days together and creating some kind of impressionist image – you know where the nose is where the ear should be and the mouth is up on the forehead. All the elements are there, just all in totally the wrong place.

My teen felt so wounded that I sent this:

and said ‘I think I need to stay away for a while’.

Anita was lovely and somehow coaxed me back out of that dark internal dungeon to a place where it felt possible to go to see her because I believed that she actually wanted to see me, too. Before that point I had convinced myself she was fed up and wanted away from me. I told her I needed a hug and she said she would give me one in person, I just had to come to my session. I was physically and emotionally exhausted by the time the weekend was over. Man this is hard going!

When I arrived at Anita’s on Monday morning, I hugged her as soon as she opened the door. I felt shaky and sad but also relieved to be there. Anita acknowledged that it must have been hard for me to come to the session and I agreed. It was. There were so many different activated parts that it’s so hard to know what to do for the best sometimes. I guess just keep turning up and giving myself the opportunity to talk?

Anita told me that she had had no idea where I was with everything until she’d read my blog. And this is the problem. I can drift so far away so quickly because on the surface I seem fine when, really, I am not. Things blow up inside and a lot of the time it is masked by my False Adult who glosses over everything ‘Ok’ and smiles to cover what’s underneath. Of course, if I am not even in the room and something happens then it’s even less visible.

I’m my own worst enemy sometimes.

Then the truth came out about Friday.

Anita was honest but…ouch.

She told me that she hadn’t offered me an online session on Friday because she felt like I would find it insulting (given how hard they have been over lockdown) and how far they are from what I really need. She apologised and said that she’d got that wrong and was really sorry not to have given me the option. I felt really sad about it, I’d really missed her on Friday and had really needed some reassurance that things were ok with us because the cancellation had let all sorts rip through my system. I was glad she wasn’t trying to paste over it but it was still painful.

I think she probably now understands that whilst online isn’t ideal, in that situation some kind of contact is much better than a complete severing of contact and whilst I might respond with ‘OK’ when I resort to short replies and don’t reach out, I am anything but ‘Ok’. It’s like the shutters go down and I go into self-protection mode. It was so painful on Friday and I couldn’t stop myself from spiralling down.

She acknowledged that she had been in a bit of panic about her daughter which is what I suspected. It felt ok having this conversation – or rather her telling me her side of things. She’s human, after all and we don’t always get things right but it’s not because we are deliberately trying to hurt the other person. I asked her if I could have a hug and basically just started trembling and crying. The impact the weekend, or last couple of weeks had had on my system was really something else. This feeling of abandonment stuff is really tapping into the deep mother wound and it’s fucking exhausting navigating it.

Again, I don’t remember much of that session. When the young parts are so activated and I am teetering on the edge of dissociation my memory seems to just go blank. I remember Anita saying something about how sometimes separation is good because we can learn that separation doesn’t have to mean abandonment but that what had happened in the last two weeks was too much, too sudden, and like I had been thrown in the deep end. I mean the reality is her dog had to go to the vet and her daughter might have had COVID but everything that got wrapped around those two events was massive. Anita said I had joined all the dots wrongly in my head (written in the blog) but that’s it’s not surprising because that’s what trauma does.

My system definitely started to settle and calm down throughout the session. I cried a lot and just snuggled into her. That’s really all the young parts need or are capable of when things have been so badly triggered. Calm care and reassurance are everything and settling my nervous system is essential before I can ‘think’ about what’s gone on. I saw something the other day from Margaret Atwood.

It’s true. And I think this is where talk therapy so often falls down. When we hit the deck and start sliding with the pre-verbal young stuff, words just don’t cut it and I am so grateful to Anita that she is ok with physical touch because it has definitely enabled the most wounded parts of me to feel safe to come out.

The time between sessions this week seemed to go by really slowly and whilst I felt like we’d repaired some of the hurt feelings and settled the young parts that had got so worked up over the weekend, in the Monday session, I’d still felt really vulnerable and exposed during the week and not very sure-footed. I went to see K for a cup of tea on Thursday and had broken down crying when speaking to her about what the last few weeks had been like and the stuff about the cancelled session on Friday with Anita. She saw immediately how impacted my inner child had been by the messages and cancellation, and was both validating and understanding and it took some of the shame and embarrassment out of my meltdown. By the time it got to Friday I was so ready to see Anita as things felt really wobbly.

My best friend had a horrific week this week as her work with her long-term therapist came to an abrupt end. I am absolutely devastated for her. It’s set some things jangling internally for me, too. Her therapist was so much like Anita in the early days of their work together -so attuned and holding – and over time things have just got more and more distanced, less and less caring, and I can’t help but panic. What happens if this happens with Anita? I’ve been terminated by Em for being a ‘tick’ (and I never showed her ANYTHING like as much as I do A) and now my friend has lost her therapist…it just seems like people like us end up hurt and abandoned time and again. It’s so painful…and terrifying to those parts that are so scared of being hurt.

What’s happened with my friend is absolutely not her fault, nor was what happened with Em mine, but it’s not the therapist that is left bereft and retraumatised when, yet again, the narrative of being too much and toxic gets replayed. They can just move onto the next poor, unsuspecting client, and here we are left trying to pick up the pieces again.

I spoke to Anita about that situation and said how frequently my friend had been misled and gaslit and how really you can’t bullshit clients like us, it’s better to be honest because we see through lies. Anita agreed. I could feel myself getting upset. I asked for a hug (check me out asking for what I need!). Things settled inside a bit and then Anita told me that she needed to tell me about the holiday she has coming up. Oh god. She said she was waiting for the right time to tell me but realised there’s no good time to let me know but wanted to give me plenty of notice. The reaction to the news wasn’t desperately bad inside but it wasn’t great either. Anita said we can text whilst she’s away and last year that was nice, and I didn’t drop dead during the break (much). I am thinking of asking her whether she’ll take the little blue elephant with her so he can see some of the places too.

Just as I’d got over my mini internal meltdown over the upcoming holiday I opened my eyes and looked up and wondered about a box on the shelf. It’s beautiful and ornate. For some reason I decided to ask what was inside the box – and this, my friends, is a lesson on not asking questions when you haven’t really considered what the answer may be! In the past I had asked about what was in another, bigger, carved, wooden box in the room. Anita had said there were colouring pens for when people do art or drawing/writing in their session. However, this box is high up, safely placed in the middle of the shelf and clearly would not be housing pens.

I don’t know why, but I was not ready for what was coming and yet clearly the answer was going to be something like this. Anita told me that one of her long-term clients (a trauma client like me) had given her the box for Christmas because it was important to her (the client), and inside it is a stone with the word ‘trust’ on it and I could have a look at it if I liked.

I’m guessing for most of you reading this that I needn’t say any more about how this felt.

I realise in this situation Anita really couldn’t win, earlier in the session we’d only just spoken about how you can’t bullshit clients like me/us because we see through it, but at the same time this revelation was just too much information and NO I did not want to look at the box.

I am so sensitive at the moment. After the session on Friday I text Anita and used the analogy that I feel like I am tiptoeing so carefully at the minute, trying to avoid danger, but no matter how I try almost every step I take I seem to set off a landmine beneath me…

…and this wasn’t just a landmine, this was a nuclear bomb going off inside.

Everything fell apart in that moment. I dissociated immediately. I was so far gone. It was awful. I felt like I was tumbling over and over through black space. It was dizzying and made me feel physically sick. The feelings of not being good enough, being insignificant, and unimportant flooded my system. It was the same stuff that was triggered the other week by Anita telling she was ‘mega busy’ when I suggested rescheduling because her dog was going to the vet, and also when my session got cancelled last Friday because her daughter might have had COVID.

The voice says that the relationship isn’t real – is meaningless – and I am deluded for thinking otherwise got really loud really quickly. And to be honest it has a point, because, when it comes down to it, I’m just one of many clients and not only that, I’m someone who can be left and let go because there are always going to be people who are more worthy and have more of a claim to Anita’s care and time than I do. Even when we think things are ‘safe enough’ it can turn sour in a matter of weeks and we’re let go, terminated, and left stranded. My experience with Em showed me that but also what’s happened to my friend this last week.

My body was frozen. I felt like I stopped breathing. I think it must’ve been a freeze response. I felt so sad and had no idea I was crying silent tears until I felt my hand was wet.

I think Anita felt the change in me. I was cuddled into her so she couldn’t see my face but I could hear her talking to me but I just didn’t have any words to respond to her and I think this is because what this episode triggered was down into that really young, preverbal stuff. She tried to check in with me about how I was feeling soon after she’d told me about the box but I couldn’t respond. She told me explicitly that just because she’s been seeing this other client a long time it didn’t make our relationship less than. She said something about her having a big heart. And I get it…or Adult Me does, sort of.

It’s like with my kids. When my son arrived, my daughter didn’t suddenly get half the love she had received before he was born because my finite supply of love now had to be split two ways. It doesn’t work that way. Our capacity to love is not finite at all. It’s something that keeps growing. I don’t love my son more than my daughter. I love them both ‘the same’ for who they are and because they are different. I don’t prefer one over the other or compare one to the other. And I guess this must kind of be how it is in therapy…maybe…but then I’m not her child I’m just a client and I come back to that horrible stuff about everyone else being better than me, less difficult, more lovable etc etc. I’m sure other clients have fewer tantrums, are less demanding, less needy…

A small voice said, ‘I want to go home’. It felt so broken at that point. It’s horrible how fragile everything feels. When it feels like that the only sensible option seems to be to run away and protect myself like I always have done before.

It would be so easy to say that this episode on Friday with the box is just a case of ‘jealousy’ and that client ‘sibling rivalry’ stuff that we feel sometimes – but when you dig beneath it it’s not as crazy as it all sounds… or at least I hope not! We all know we aren’t the only client a therapist sees and as much as we’d like to think we’re their favourite (thinking about LS here! 😉) it’s pretty unlikely. But it’s hard because our therapists are so important to us – I think it’s natural that we would want to feel important to them, too, especially when we have a lifetime of not mattering.

When I think about my own teaching work. I like all my students BUT there are some I look forward to working with more than others…and what if I’m one of those ‘less favoured and sometimes dreaded’ hours in Anita’s week? The thought of that really upsets me. And that’s why I am doomed because even Adult Me can’t convince all those hurting parts that everything is ok and that it’s not ‘pretend’ with Anita, because Adult Me has preferences about who I work with, too… and so I can’t help but feel like I am walking my way blindfolded into getting hurt again. Even if there is SO SO SO much evidence to the contrary (which there really is!).

To be honest, when I am like this, Anita must be banging her head up against a brick wall because she shows me ALL THE TIME in SO MANY WAYS that she cares and that I am important. She doesn’t just demonstrate it through her actions, she tells me she ‘loves me’ and ‘thinks the world of me’…so why can’t these scared young parts let that evidence override the doubting parts? Why do I have to let a fucking gift from another client derail my time with Anita?

Trauma.

Simple.

I think it’s just going to take time and patience on both our parts – I just hope she doesn’t get fed up with me first. This work is like recoiling a spring the other way. It’s a repetitive process and sometimes the spring just pings back to how it was before…and it’s not surprising really. I learnt pretty early on that I wasn’t central and my needs didn’t matter. It continued on and on being left at childminders and never feeling like I was wanted or important enough to be made a priority. I just had to fit in and get on with it. I was seen as easy-going child and no trouble – amenable – but that’s because I had to be. There’s no point in acting up when nothing will change.

And this is really the legacy I’ve been left with. In some ways being adaptable is good, but so often it means I put my own needs at the bottom of the pile and try and make things right for everyone else. When I get hurt, I take that pain inwards and spare the other person the hassle of dealing with me. The other day Anita said she thought there were a lot of tears bottled up inside. And she’s right -there’s a lifetime of them. I never cried as a child…because what was the point? There was never anyone there to wipe them away. I learnt not to express my feelings and that runs both ways. I struggle even to show or feel joy. I have the best poker face.

Ugh.

Anyway, I don’t remember much about that session because I was so far gone and so upset. I felt like I had drifted away. What I do know is that Anita was holding me more tightly than usual and whilst I felt a million miles away there was a part of me that could feel how hard she was trying to help bring me back to her. She didn’t let me go until I was more together and settled – she is amazing like that.

I feel like such a bloody idiot after all this but I am trying to show myself some compassion. It’s been a hard few weeks/months…and I guess what’s happening is the young stuff is far closer to the surface than it’s ever been before and so it gets triggered more easily. In some ways it’s mortifying but I guess in other ways it’s progress. Noone wants to be a mute sobbing wreck in therapy but this is clearly a big indicator that this attachment and relational stuff is where the work is (as if we didn’t already know!) and it’s far better that it comes up with Anita where it can be worked on then pretending it’s all ok when something hurts and then going home and going through all the feelings alone and catastrophising even more.

I’ll end there because this is already long.

God give us strength!

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