holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Things aren’t great here, still. I am really struggling. I feel more and more like the swimmer in Stevie Smith’s poem ‘Not Waving But Drowning’. I’ve been here before, clearly. Sometimes when it’s like this I feel so fucking hopeless. Like will I ever stop circling this drain at intervals throughout my life, or is this just me and do I need to learn to accept the fact that I just won’t ever really be fully, ok?
I’m forty now, and yet here I am again in a state of utter hell feeling desperately alone and unsupported. It’s all too familiar. My inner world is in collapse. I feel like I am a walking shell and yet no one knows. No one notices. It’s hard to notice, though, when I’m such a good actor. How can anyone see beyond what I put in front of them? I keep thinking about Brene Brown and all her work on vulnerability and connection and I really buy into it -but it’s hard isn’t it? Being exposed is hard. The potential for rejection is huge…but hiding prevents connection. It feels impossible sometimes.
So, right now it feels as though everyone is standing on the shore watching me, believing that I am having a wonderful time because I appear competent and to have my shit together – I look like a good swimmer, and I tell people a lot of the time that I am a good swimmer – but it’s all lies- a distorted version of reality. On closer inspection, if anyone really dared to look beneath the surface, they’d see my legs are tied together, I’m being attacked by sharks, and I am sinking.
I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I am thoroughly exhausted and there just is no sense of there being any relief/rescue any time soon…or ever. I feel so incredibly isolated, unseen, and frankly – desperate, just like the swimmer in the poem:
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
I know I sound like a broken record here, lately – but I spend such a lot of time in my life looking as though I am waving – and the reality is, I am not … not by a long stretch. I am desperately hanging on by a thread and hoping that someone will finally see that I need assistance and step in quick to help me. I need a lifeguard.
This blog space is, at least, somewhere where I can let it out a bit and the support I get here means such a lot to me– honestly, it’s been a lifeline after what’s gone on with Anita. However, I really need to be with someone in ‘real life’ in person who gets it, too. Of course, there is therapy – but as I keep saying, it’s early days and really isn’t getting anywhere near ‘this’ stuff.
I guess I must look like I am waving in the therapy room too, and Elle doesn’t know that because my ‘waving’ can look like I’m doing ‘the work’ so it adds in an extra layer of complication. It’s not like I sit there and talk about nothing – but it’s not the really painful stuff that is impeding my ability to function – it’s not about the loss of Anita and the fears I have about therapy going forward. It’s not about Elle and I and how this relationship is going to work…or not.
I mean, I’ve always had this problem in therapy to an extent – or certainly before a therapist really knows me. I can take the therapist off on a journey where we seem to be doing ‘the work’ and I appear to be letting them in to my world, but actually the ‘trauma’ or ‘issues’ I bring are not the most pressing things; they’re simply a smoke screen and so I frequently leave a session feeling unseen and lost.
There’s such a massive back catalogue of hard shit to choose from that I can be thoroughly avoidant and yet seem like I am opening up about deep stuff. Add to the fact that my day-to-day life is quite bloody challenging and there’s plenty to talk about there, too, means we’ll never get to the really raw stuff in an hour a week. It’s so frustrating. This is part of the reason I need more than one session a week. I almost need a session to process my week and a session to process my pain…whilst also keeping a sense of a solid container and building the relationship. Ugh. I hate this so much.
I can’t stand the disconnect. Being alone with this stuff is bad enough but being with someone else and them not seeing it when you so desperately need them to is really really tough. Don’t get me wrong – this is definitely a ‘me’ problem – I don’t/can’t expect Elle to be a mind reader – she doesn’t know me yet and she can only work with what I bring to her. But it’s just so hard not having a person who can see right through my front and reach down into the vulnerable parts and take their hands and help them feel safe. Anita would know what I needed and I miss that…I miss her.
I know I need to be patient. I can’t expect miracles after only five sessions with Elle. But I need something to shift soon because I’m crumbling, and I can’t afford to. I really need an explicit cue from Elle when we meet that it’s safe and ok to bring the very young and painful experiences to the room. I need those parts to be actively invited and welcomed into the space at the start of a session because they are so scared right now.
It’s been so so hard lately. The three month anniversary of leaving Anita hit me like a tonne of bricks – I mean I had a total collapse that day, ended up reaching out to her (mistake) and ended up in a right state after her lack-lustre reply:
I really needed some physical/tangible support that day but of course, there was no therapy, Elle wasn’t there, and so my online friends patched me up as best they could. I feel like everything Anita and I had is lost. I know she’s not ok but I guess I had hoped she’d reply with, ‘The invisible string never breaks. I still love you.’ But she’s not in that place. And that is why we can’t work together.
I feel absolutely broken by this…and it feels like there is nowhere to put it down to breathe. And the longer I don’t get ‘help’ with it the more shame and embarrassment I attach to what’s happened. Like the longer the topic is avoided the more I feel like it’s something that makes me seem weird or too much. Basically, the Inner Critic is starting to get vocal, and I really don’t need that.
Therapy has not been made any easier due to some issues with my schedule (kids not back at school and wife working away). This meant there was a ten-day break between sessions with Elle – which of course really doesn’t help matters when a week between already feels like too long a gap. I am really struggling with how It feels like everything is stretched so thin and I just can’t seem to get a sense of the relationship being real at all. I just can’t hold it in mind. It’s not enough.
After our last session (31/8) I emailed Elle to ask her to read the last two blog posts I had written ‘Three Months…’ and ‘Dear New Therapist’. She emailed me back thanking me for sending the link and said she would try but couldn’t guarantee she’d always get to read what I write before a session (Adult knows this is fair enough) and she suggested that we maybe begin sessions checking in about anything I have written as she thought that would be better than replying in writing as we’d be more in connection with one another. And I get she’s just trying to manage expectations and boundaries, but it felt distancing in a way…even if it’s not.
Like yep, fine, I get it – but sometimes when you tell someone you’re falling down a hole you just need something a bit more back, you know? Like sometimes you just need, “I really hear this is tough and I want to reassure you that you can bring all of this to the session, and I am not worried about your big feelings”. Of course, I don’t know when she will have read the posts over those intervening ten days – maybe just before the session and so perhaps she wouldn’t/couldn’t reply to the content because she probably hadn’t read them… but I did say in my linked email that things weren’t good.
The result of this ‘long’ break/lack of contact is a greater sense of disconnect and heightened feelings of rejection and abandonment. It’s felt like I am left drowning in hell that whole time. And this is where I am at. This is the legacy of what’s come before. This isn’t Elle’s fault. She’s just working how she works. I get the sense that she will be really businesslike outside sessions – will respond to queries or whatever but not really reach out in a relational/holding way. This is another thing I am going to have to grieve about Anita and I also need to try really hard not to be triggered by it because it feels like this is a step back towards Em…and that sends my system into a massive freak out.
We could go on and on about the pros and cons of between session contact until the world ends – and I don’t necessarily think there is a right way to do any of it and needs to be looked at between client and therapists together – although ultimately, it’s one of those boundaries that we as clients don’t get much say in.
I think I am just finding such huge changes in the way I now have to work incredibly unsettling and upsetting. I genuinely don’t think people can understand what it’s like going from two sessions a week with someone that knows you intimately with between session contact to one session with someone that doesn’t know you at all and isn’t really ‘there’ outside that hour. It’s a lot. As I said in my last post, my emotional scaffold has been ripped away. More than anything I need one of Anita’s warm hugs and to hear her steady heart beat. I need co-regulation.
I think it’s harder too, because the parts that need to be in therapy aren’t even making it into the room in the hour I do have. So ultimately, it feels like I’m on an endless struggle trying to keep all the young parts from melting down without any help. And they are melting down. Big time. That’s the issue. And they need their safe adult and she’s just gone and the new adult isn’t even aware they exist…not really. It’s beyond exhausting.
When I finally saw Elle on Friday, I told her that I was not doing well and had had a terrible time since I had seen her. She asked how she would know that if I’d seen her and she was looking at me. I said she wouldn’t know; she wouldn’t be able to tell at all. She asked if anyone would know. And I said “No”.
Actually, though, there is one person that would know – but she’s gone and that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? I know it’s getting boring, but I just can’t express how fucking devastated I am about what’s happened with me and Anita. She was the safe person, the life raft where I could catch my breath and now it’s all gone.
Elle made reference to one of the posts I had written at the beginning of our session (so I guess she’d read them) in which I had said I found it hard to keep the therapy in mind. She asked me if I’d like her to record the sessions and send them to me in a MP3 afterwards, so I had something to return to – so I do think she gets it to an extent. I also get that this was her attempt to show me that it’s ok and she’s not weirded out by me. The problem is I need so much reassurance now…and I didn’t take it as an opportunity to discuss either of the posts – although I really think we do need to talk about what’s going on in the room with us together…even if it’s fucking terrifying.
So, yeah, that’s where I am. Not in a great place.
Rejection. Let’s be honest, here, it’s one of the more shit things that we, as humans, encounter. I would hazard to say that it’s a pretty much a universally experienced phenomenon- although, obviously, feelings of rejection might be felt to varying degrees and at varying frequencies by different people over their lifetimes.
Like I say, the chances are that most of us have probably all been rejected at some point in our lives. I reckon it would be pretty hard to navigate the world of relationships without encountering some form of rejection at one time or other. When we are young, we can come across so many rejecting experiences: maybe we didn’t get invited to a birthday party, or someone didn’t want to be our friend at school, or perhaps someone we had feelings for didn’t reciprocate them (we all remember those early heartaches!).
I mean there are literally tonnes of rejections that we can experience over the course of our lives, and they will hurt, but most will only sting for a little while. For example, someone not ‘liking’ your holiday pics on social media won’t be the end of the world, and not succeeding at a job interview will probably be a bit harder – but essentially, we get over these ‘little’ rejections and move on… but there are other rejections and, crikey…they can feel like physical wounding and are much harder to move through and past.
Clearly, I am not here today to talk about a time when I didn’t get to go a to a party when I was five…I’m here for those other BIGGER rejections (and abandonments). The ones that really really hurt us. You know, the ones that cause us such intense pain that it feels almost physical. You know where I am going with this, right?
As you might have realised by now, I’m one of those really unfortunate, sensitive types, who feels rejection acutely – and sadly, seem to have been rejected enough by significant enough people over my lifetime that I have what now feels like an unhealable wound. Every time I think I’m getting somewhere with it, and the blood flow is temporarily stemmed, the person that I trusted to help me mend and heal, rams a fucking great rusty dagger into the heart of it, twists it, and walks away without so much as a backward glance… and I am left haemorrhaging again, bleeding out in agony.
This is the problem with relationships. Anytime we put ourselves out there we are opening ourselves up to possible rejection. Most of us crave connection. We are human after all; we’re built for connection and relationship; we want to belong. But my goodness it’s risky, isn’t it? Being vulnerable and unguarded is what is required to connect and most of us, who have been hurt and rejected in the past, take a long time to let others in. We fear rejection so acutely, and understandably so, because it is soooooo frigging painful. As I’ve said so many times before, healing takes place in relationship but so does wounding…and sometimes it feels like you’re playing Russian Roulette with you heart entering into what’s meant to be a ‘healing’ relationship.
Ultimately, I think rejection has to be seen as a relational injury. I think sometimes, too, and it’s important to acknowledge this, we can feel rejected and it’s not the intention of the other person to reject us – and that makes it all the more complex. However, intentional or not, the person that experiences feelings of rejection is the one that is hurt and left to try and navigate it. The real kicker comes in when we feel rejected but there is no repair… we’re just left holding a world of pain.
It’s no secret, here, that the main reason I am in therapy is because of the #motherwound. I guess this early, and ongoing, rejection is the one I can never get away from and it’s the one that is tapped into each time something goes wrong with a therapist. I let someone in, expose that hideous wounding, and my most vulnerable parts, trust and attach to someone who promises that they won’t hurt me, that they’re not like the last one…and then… when it comes down to it the same pattern keeps repeating in slightly different ways and it’s left me feeling broken and bruised. It’s soul destroying.
I’ve definitely been feeling my teen part a lot this last couple of weeks who always turns to Counting Crows lyrics in her despair and self-loathing, “So much rejection in every connection I make”…and I hear her. Fortunately, Adult me knows it’s not EVERY connection…but it’s enough!
Feeling rejected is horrible. As I say it feels literally, physically painful. It’s not just emotional, is it? It evokes a massive somatic response in the body. Or at least it does for me. I’ve never given the physicality of it much thought – all I know is that I am too fucking familiar with the pain of it and, when I am sobbing face down on my bed, that the only way out is through! The antidote to rejection is connection and yet that, so often, is impossible. As I say, frequently, (in a therapeutic context at least) the person that has done the rejecting has no interest in repair or reconnection. They wash their hands clean, sever the connection, you’re no longer their ‘work’ and you’re left wondering what the hell happened?
Interestingly, I was reading something the other day about rejection… because obviously it’s quite a dominant feeling for me right now (AGAIN) after what’s happened with Em, Anita, and now Hannah. And it turns out that researchers and neurobiologists have discovered that we actually do experience rejection in the same way as physical pain. Apparently, rejection triggers a response that travels down the same neuro pathways as physical pain…so that’s why it hurts so fucking much! We’re not all nutters who are too sensitive, then!
That’s something at least!
Another thing about rejection that I find so thoroughly soul destroying is what it does to our relationship with ourselves. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t know about you, but every time I get hurt/rejected my default response is not to be gentle with myself and give myself the ‘it’s not me’ self-talk, far from it! Rejection triggers my Inner Critic who goes on a mission to further destroy my self-esteem. When someone I love or care about rejects me, I automatically run the internal narrative (on repeat and high volume) that I am unlovable, unworthy, too much/not enough… and it’s really hard. We berate ourselves endlessly and sink further and further into isolation believing we are not good enough and better off alone.
The shame we feel is suffocating. We feel ashamed for having cared, for letting people in…and mostly for having a need. I’m not sure there’s anything much worse than having a need not met and then feeling like you have been rejected for being too needy.
We all know by now (I think!) that the Inner Critic, whilst seeming like a grade A sadist is actually our number one protector. When that voice starts calling you all the names, “you fucking pathetic moron!” it’s really only trying to protect you from getting hurt again. If you believe the narrative that you are unworthy of love and care, then you are unlikely to go and seek it out again. And if you don’t seek it out again then you’re safe from rejection, aren’t you? I mean it makes perfect sense. Only, feeling isolated, alone, and uncared for is not really a place you want to be stuck in either. It’s like being broken down in Weston-super-Mare… when you really want to be in the Maldives!
I don’t know where I am going with this, really – just thinking out loud, I suppose. I am really struggling at the moment (I know, broken record). It’s been two months since I last saw Anita and honestly, it just isn’t getting any better. The acute pain of her rejection is just beyond words. And whilst I know what’s happened with H is not intended to feel rejecting and I think she’d be horrified if she knew how her ultimatum has impacted me the last couple of weeks, it does feel rejecting. I feel like I am notching up therapist rejections at a rate of knots. The whole point of therapy was to go and undo a narrative put there by my mum and reinforced by some others over the years…and instead what I am learning is, it’s a ME problem.
Part of me knows this is all just bad luck but I honestly don’t know how much more being open, honest, and vulnerable I can do – because all I seem to do is get hurt…and rejected.
Nothing quite screams depression like zombie-ing it through the day feeling like you’re about to collapse, then the moment the kids are safely in bed taking yourself off to bed and then sobbing your heart out, huge tears, snot, literally wailing, face down on your bed well into the early hours, then texting your ex-therapist that you love her (groan), and then finally when the tears subside, raiding the fridge for a mini pork pie at 2am… and I don’t even really like pork pies, but turns out I’d ‘forgotten’ that eating was a thing yesterday until I’d had my breakdown. It’s been that bad. The young parts have had a collective meltdown and I just don’t know where to start with strapping them all back in the bus because I think it freewheeled off over the cliff edge and exploded.
I’m trying to make light of all this, but actually it’s really not funny. I feel awful. Some of it is hormonal – but that’s only a really small part. PMS is just exacerbating an already intolerable situation. I feel completely and utterly broken now. It’s weird. I hadn’t realised just how much having Hannah (new therapist) on board was creating just about enough of a dam so that things didn’t flood out. I mean it’s been really really hard in the last couple of months. One therapy session is certainly not enough to hold how I feel, and a new therapeutic relationship is harder work, but at least it was something, a bit of a scaffold if you like – and certainly better than nothing at all.
It would have been a break from therapy for this next couple of weeks anyway, which would have been tough enough – I knew I was going to have to dig deep because alongside no H I wouldn’t be able to see K or have a massage with N – basically I was on my own for the first time since Anita and I ended – yikes. However, knowing that I actually have no therapy at all now to hang on for, or return to is… hard. And I simply don’t have the emotional energy to go through the process of searching for someone else, sending the emails, doing all the communications, and then having to start over AGAIN.
You might be wondering what the hell happened. How have I broken a therapy in only eight sessions? I mean, crikey, that’s impressive, isn’t it? Well, it’s complicated…or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. It’s a mess, that’s for sure. I don’t even know how to write this because as much as think I protect mine, and my therapist’s privacy, ultimately the thing that’s thrown a spanner in the works is this blog.
Groan.
There’ve been eight sessions and this is the first I have got to it – when it is over!
When I met H I immediately liked her. A few things struck me about her – she seemed to have a good sense of humour, she seemed to actually be interested in what I was bringing (well, that’s the job right?!), and she seemed to be my intellectual match (actually, I think if I’d come across her in the real world she’s the sort of person who I would be friends with). I know that sounds like a really weird thing to say (the brain stuff!), but actually I really need someone to meet me where I am at to do this work because I have the capacity to run rings round therapists. It’s not deliberate. It’s a defensive/protective thing that means I can hide my vulnerable parts – but this time I really needed someone to get through my walls because, understandably I am in a cold war bunker right now after my most recent experiences in therapy.
I found that I felt reasonably at ease with H even though parts of me hated everything about being in a new room with someone that wasn’t Anita and wanted to run away. I was able to outline quite a bit of what had happened with A and how I felt as well as some other things that have happened in my life. It was coming from the False Adult self’s perspective but that’s fine – she gets stuff done and protects my little parts. Those small ones are so hidden around others right now that it was never going to be a go in and fall apart and collapse in a puddle on the floor situation – even if part of me felt like that’s what was happening inside and could have done with it!
It was always going to take time to build trust, but I thought that it would be a good enough fit for now and eventually the relationship would develop. I knew that I could never cry (even if it’s screaming inside) in that room because the parts that needed to feel safe just didn’t – and that’s not H’s fault – it’s a time thing and a lack of relationship, but it was fine for now, because I have been crying plenty outside of it so it’s not like I am not releasing emotions…and it would come eventually…maybe.
I realised early on that I was intellectualising my experience, and whilst that’s fine, it doesn’t really get beneath the armour and into the agony that I am feeling. And it is agony. It’s annihilation for the youngest parts. However, I also knew that I needed to lay the groundwork and I would never just go to someone new and let my guard down and I knew the process can’t be rushed so I knew it would take time ESPECIALLY because I’ve just been hurt so badly in therapy. Because I was so stuck in my brain and doing the articulate, ‘this is how it is’ stuff I think it created a dynamic where H probably thought I was looking for solutions and to problem solve the situation which sometimes felt like I wasn’t being seen…but then that’s because I wasn’t letting her see me! I think she wanted to dig down but also knew I was resisting.
Sometimes she’d suggest things, and whilst adult me probably would quite like to go on a retreat one day, right now that isn’t what I need. I am not in need of a journey of self-discovery. I know who I am…I know all the parts of me, their fears, triggers, and what makes things better. The issue I have is the person that helped make it all better has gone before the work was done – it’s been like learning to ride a bike and suddenly whipping the stabilisers off when I was nowhere near ready for that – and I was confidently pedalling along and whoosh -it has floored me.
There are grazed knees, bruises, broken bones even, and what’s worse, no one to help. The little ones are crying on the floor…hurt and abandoned again.
What I really need is someone to sit with me in the grief and make space for all those small parts to feel safe enough to talk about how bad it feels to have Anita gone. I don’t need anything more than that. Of course, that’s where the issue of intellect comes in because whilst I know what I need, I am defending against it and any time H would tentatively edge towards the vulnerable stuff I’d literally tell her no. And so, we’d go back to trying to think of ways to make my day-to-day better.
I would always take my shoes off and curl up on the couch at Anita’s but my shoes remained on and firmly rooted to the floor in the new room with the new therapist – I wasn’t wholly relaxed, and whilst part of me would have loved to have been able to go and sink into the space and perhaps take a soft toy with me to help soothe the parts that are never going to be held again, I just wasn’t there yet. I think, now, I actually probably need an invitation to do these things because I am so scared of being too much. I am so terrified of being vulnerable because I just can’t be hurt and rejected AGAIN.
I realised I had a way to short circuit some of this errr resistance, protectiveness, or whatever it is a few sessions in. But how? Well, I mean I have this blog, don’t I? This is me. Vulnerable and unarmoured. I took a leap of faith and emailed H and asked her to read some posts I’d written because I was struggling with feelings of shame and didn’t know how to break through it. I thought maybe seeing stuff would allow H to know what it’s been like for me and to really see the level of attachment work I’ve been doing…I mean it’s basically been reparenting.
I had mentioned that A had read me stories, hugged me, and given me gifts in session and I felt H bristle a bit even though she hid it well. And I’d felt this a couple of times round other things I had mentioned about how Anita and I had worked. I know how it’s not really in the therapy training modules to work how Anita and I have – but actually it’s not uncommon especially with C-PTSD. H is a relatively new therapist and I think that coming across someone like me and this kind of situation with two therapies that have left me reeling is new territory for her. Or at least I’d hope so because frankly, it seems all too bloody common for those of us here, doesn’t it?
Anyway, she agreed to read my posts over a few weeks, and I think it helped her see what things have been like for me even if I couldn’t tell her completely how it felt in sessions. As I say, I suddenly felt a lot of shame for having had the kind of relationship I have had with A because being in the room with H was such a stark reminder of what normal talking therapy is like. Part of me felt like maybe it was wrong how Anita and I were because I felt like H probably felt it was. And yet in my heart and for those little ones I really refuse to let that take root because how we worked, and that relationship did me such a lot of good for such a long time and it was through that closeness, I was able to get down into the trauma and for the first time in my life feel held and safe. It was Anita’s willingness to meet me exactly how I needed that moved such a lot on. And despite everything that’s happened – the love was so there and it was real…
It’s just an absolute killer that that therapy has been cut short when it has because it’s now so traumatic losing A and the work wasn’t done. It hasn’t reached its natural conclusion, the individuating and moving to independence, and an end because the client was ready…I just wasn’t there yet and so it’s now just another abandonment and rejection to deal with.
Anyway, if I felt shame in the room with H and it stopped me talking then I could at least circumnavigate that via the blog posts and keep things moving forward. I felt like allowing H to see the blog was giving her the map and things seemed to be going ok. It was also a massive exercise in trust.
I had been really guarded for the first seven sessions, then last week something shifted a bit. I don’t know if it was just that I felt like I was getting to know H or what, but we had a more real and vulnerable conversation. Somehow, WordPress had refreshed when H was reading a post I’d sent and taken her to the most recent one I had written about how I had gone about selecting a new therapist. It didn’t talk about the new therapy or her, but it mentioned her. She told me she’d read it and asked if she was Hannah. Initially it shocked me that she’d read it because it wasn’t something I had directed her to. I mentally had to track what I had written as we started talking – but actually there was nothing there other than more reference to Anita and the messages I had sent since we’d finished.
H explained that she’d had a bit of a reaction to realising that she might be in a blog and that it had made parts of her feel vulnerable, and probably tapped into some insecurities but that she’d take it to supervision. I said I understood that, and we talked a bit around it all. It felt like a connecting conversation and I left feeling that for the first time probably we had actually met each other on a deeper level. On the way home from the session I did a lot of thinking and I realised that that I really didn’t want H to feel awkward or for this to get in the way of the therapy and so I sent her an email explaining a bit about the blog and the anonymity etc. That evening I started to get a bit of a sick feeling – anticipating a reply. I had hoped that the blog wouldn’t turn out to be a problem but deep down I could feel that it was going to be.
She replied at length the next day. I won’t copy it here because, ultimately, what came out of it is that she is not comfortable being included on a blog and so I don’t want to disrespect that by putting her words/email here. Essentially, boiling it down, she said that whilst she thinks my writing is a great way to process, she won’t work with me if my experiences of therapy are on a public blog even if it is anonymous because she feels it will affect our developing relationship. She would, instead, want me to write privately and only share it with her.
Basically, I think she feels vulnerable and as if her practice is being scrutinised and no amount of me trying to explain that that’s not how it is will change that which is a massive shame.
She tried to make it land as softly as she could and said she hoped it didn’t feel rejecting, or patronising, or attacking … but, it kind of does – the timing is just crap and it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. I know I had a choice, I could have stopped writing the blog and kept seeing her…and I do get it from her side. She doesn’t know me and how does she know I would never expose her… but I just wouldn’t. I never have with Em or Anita despite what they’ve done to me.
The world is changing such a lot in regard to social media and it’s not uncommon now for clients and even therapists to have TikTok accounts or Instagram accounts with videos detailing therapy. Obviously, therapists can’t speak about clients directly, but lots anonymise interactions in books and articles or talk about general experiences online…some are in ‘therapist’ Facebook groups and aren’t even discreet at all asking about issues in their current practice. ‘I have a client who does x… what should I do?’
So whilst I get it – I also don’t. I feel like I trusted her with a massive part of me and it’s backfired.
Em was Mrs Boundaries (wasn’t she?!) with years and years of experience in the NHS and privately, and Anita has twenty under her belt and neither one of them ever once told me that my blog was a problem or that they wouldn’t work with me because of it. In fact, both of them encouraged me to write it – even if Em once really struggled to read one of the posts after we’d had a massive rupture and were trying to process what had happened together. My blog has never been a huge part of my therapies, my therapists don’t read all my posts, but there have been times when I have written and shared it with my therapists, and it’s been so helpful. But mostly – it is my space to process and my support network.
We all know how useful this space can be for us – and so ultimately, I had to make a horrible decision. And as much as I don’t write as much as I used to, or in the way that I used to (there is no session-by-session accounts anymore and it’s more general or after the event), and the blog sees much less engagement than when I would write regularly, I decided that I couldn’t drop the blog in order to keep the therapy and I wrote an email to outline why:
Hi Hannah,
I’ve tried to formulate my thoughts on this, but there’s a lot of conflict inside and so it’s been really hard to try and listen to all that and give it space. Firstly, though, I just want to say that I am really grateful to you for having seen me when things have so spectacularly disintegrated with Anita. I had hoped that we would, over time, build a good enough relationship to do some of this work, and felt that Thursday had been a shift into something more real and less guarded, but I did also get the sense that this was what you were going to come back at me with after I emailed you so had been preparing for this.
On reflection, letting you see the blog was clearly a mistake – if I hadn’t have shown you, you’d never have known about it, and I guess we would have continued on. As it’s not identifying, had you have ever come across it by chance you’d never have known it was mine. As you said, lots of clients journal, some might bring that to sessions, but actually lots blog, too, now – especially younger people (not that I am young now!). The thing is, I’m not a liar and don’t deliberately conceal things in therapy because I actually think it’s useful for you, or whoever I work with, to know about it and see it here and there when it’s relevant.
I let you into this place in my world because actually it’s my most vulnerable stuff. I could really easily have hidden from you for months and months in the room and never have got beneath what’s really going on. I’m good at running rings round people and looking like I am talking about something important when it’s really just a screen for what’s underneath. The blog might feel exposing to you, but it completely exposes me – hence the fact that it’s anonymous but I wanted you to see it because ultimately that’s me…or the part of me that’s hurting and needs the therapy.
You might wonder why on earth I would bother writing and posting this stuff if it is so vulnerable and exposing? What purpose does it serve? I do it partly because it’s a creative process that allows me to process my feelings. It’s a kind of journal. It’s safely out on the platform and not sitting in my computer possibly being read by someone at home – that happened years ago when I would keep a journal on my laptop and it caused no end of friction. The blog is about me and my experiences and feelings – it’s not a spotlight on the therapist, although I can understand how it might feel that way from your side.
Another reason I write publicly is because it was finding someone else’s therapy blog when I was seeing Em that completely changed things for me. I was in such a bad place. I was constantly dissociated, swimming in shame, and feeling like there was something very wrong with me. I was chronically anorexic and basically just a fucking mess but I was in therapy once a week so surely what I was experiencing was normal…nope. It was finding this person’s blog, that made me feel like there was someone else in the world like me, that I wasn’t somehow defective for feeling how I felt, and it went a long way to dispelling the shame and embarrassment I felt in the therapy…and in my general existence. It was this blog that first introduced me to the idea of structural dissociation and parts.
It also allowed me to see that therapy doesn’t all look the same way and doesn’t have to be a horrible experience of feeling inadequate and defective. It also highlighted to me that big feelings happen in therapy, it’s not always plain sailing, that ruptures happen and can be navigated effectively and you shouldn’t fear being ‘too much’ all the time, or at least if you feel that, that it can be worked with rather than being reinforced. I was always so concerned about not being viewed negatively that I ‘behaved’ – basically spent my time hiding in the room until this point when I realised that actually you ‘should’ be able to bring all of yourself to therapy, not just the bits that seem palatable. The thing is the bits I felt were unpalatable weren’t the angry parts or the teen – it was the youngest, most needy ones. It’s horrific feeling so many feelings but also feeling so embarrassed and ashamed that you dissociate all the time. I mean it doesn’t help when the therapist confirms that narrative of being too much… but there we are.
Clients have no idea what to expect when they enter therapy – TV doesn’t really depict it and books…well, like I say, they’re written from therapists’ and academics’ perspectives. Perhaps the closest we get to something is work by Carolyn Spring but even she doesn’t really delve into the depths of the relationship. Clients just don’t get a voice. The reality of therapy and how it can be is a big void, the unknown. You just go in and give it a go, not knowing what is possible or what to expect but honestly, face planting into attachment injuries is no fucking fun and is actually terrifying.
There’s a lot of good therapists out there, I am sure (maybe!), but there’s also a LOT of bad, and it’s all hidden behind closed doors. The power is so unbalanced from the get-go in therapy and clients, are out on a limb, we’re pretty isolated because most of us don’t talk about our therapy with people in our day-to-day lives. I totally get that lots of clients are ‘easier’ than me, or the people I come across, but Complex Trauma is really a minefield in therapy, and we need all the help we can get both inside and outside the room…but that’s not easy.
My wife knows nothing of my therapies, or what’s happened in them. She doesn’t even know your name. I haven’t said a word about any of it to anyone. I don’t talk to my friends in my everyday world about it because – well – can you even imagine? I felt you bristle when I told you about Anita and how it had been with her, and you’re a therapist, so imagine having a coffee with a friend and trying to explain to them that you feel suicidal because someone who you’ve seen for years, who has read you stories and held you for hours without words just so you can hear their heartbeat, and worked extensively with your young parts, and essentially been a mother figure to you, has dumped you!
If I said that my young selves were totally broken and feel like self-harming – they just wouldn’t get it. If I said that I miss her and cry most days – most people would think I was a fucking lunatic because how could anyone understand? Most of my friends are lucky enough to have had good enough childhoods so they don’t understand the mother wound at all. I mean I guess you don’t either [for x reason]. And yet it is breaking me inside. I have this great coping exterior, but I am so tired of trying to hold it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum. All I want to do when it’s like this is be back in that familiar space, with Anita who knows me inside out, and put the weight of the world down and fall asleep. My nervous system is … fucked.
Only she’s gone and no one knows or gets it…except these merry band of bloggers.
It was so helpful to me to alight on a community of people who experience similar things to me because there are a lot of us out there with significant trauma and attachment injuries and we speak a language that most people just don’t understand. In fact, lots of therapists don’t understand it either. When I talk about what feels like a black hole in my chest that has edges that are ulcerated and there’s just a sense of falling through an endless abyss because there has never been any containment or holding for parts of me… they get it. Therapists don’t. If you haven’t felt it, you just cannot begin to truly know how fucking debilitating it is. It’s beyond words. It’s trauma so deeply locked in the body from a pre-verbal time and it’s impossible to understand…but these people do.
I know that my blog has really helped other people and whilst I don’t feel like I have to write because of this, I do it for me first and foremost, it feels like it would be a shame to stop that when it has done such a lot of good not just for me but for others, too. I’ve been blogging for seven years now. It’s been massive in my processing and growth but at times it’s also literally been a lifeline. The handful of people that I know via the blog that have become friends have got me through some really tough times. When everything went south with Em it was that group of people that assured me that I was not a tick, that I wasn’t all the things that she made me believe and the Inner Critic was screaming at me. People that had followed my journey had seen how things had developed and were there to help me when I was completely alone in my ‘day-to-day’ life. Same goes with what’s happened with Anita. It’s a peer support network. And there’s no guarantee it would work out with you and then I’d be left totally stranded…again.
Clients are usually really discreet in their day-to-day lives about their therapy. Noone in my [county] world knows who Em is or Anita is or what they’ve done to me. I could have spoken to people in this area, used their names, slammed them, made public comments on their social media… but I haven’t. I haven’t done that on the blog, either. As I said, I never would because I’m just not that type of person. None of what I write is about wanting criticise practice…it’s about what’s happening to me. How what has happened has impacted me – good and bad. But it is sooooooo private. And I know that seems absolutely bonkers to say when it’s online, but it is.
Therapists get supervision and peer supervision…and personal therapy, and clients get absolutely nothing – and yet it is us who often suffer harm at the hands of therapists. As I say, it is rife. You wouldn’t believe it, or perhaps you might be beginning to. I don’t follow many blogs but five of my online friends have been terminated since October alone and are left to pick up the pieces. If it wasn’t for this network online, it would be really crap. I can honestly say that it’s been a couple of these people checking in with me on a daily basis that has got me through this recent shit show because it is pretty bleak inside.
Like last night, I dreamt about my daughter when she was a tiny baby, not old enough to support her own head. She was locked inside a car. I couldn’t get in to get her out. Someone had put her in a car seat but not strapped her in properly and she was slumped forward screaming and stuck. It doesn’t take a genius to see what that’s about…but I am literally stuck in this kind of loop. And I need help to reach into that stuff. But I see you an hour a week – and there one hundred and sixty seven others I need to get through.
You say you’d like me to continue to write in some kind of capacity and maybe process that together. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wanted to share stuff with you and that’s why I let you into that part of my world. My writing a blog doesn’t mean that part of the process gets skipped, it’s not like because I blog, I then withhold important stuff in sessions, and I can understand how that might be seen as a problem. As I said the other day, so much of a client’s experience never makes it into the room anyway and this is for lots of reasons – so sharing writing helps. I get you would prefer me to write like this, to you, and not online… I just don’t know how I feel about it.
Part of me thinks it’s not a huge deal because I don’t write like I used to anyway. I don’t write session by session accounts. But I think the biggest kick back I am getting is the fact I feel like my blog and whether I have it should be my choice.
I get that you’ve issued this ultimatum and I get that it’s where you are at. I understand how from your side you feel like me writing would potentially jeopardise the relationship because you would feel exposed. From my side, I know that if I stopped writing because you’ve told me I have to or that’s the end of things, and I agree to stop writing to try and keep the relationship, then I think there’d be parts of me that would really resent that. Here, yet again, is someone with power dangling the relationship over me and making it conditional. And that’s fine. I really do get it. And to be honest it’s such early days that I can just chuck this on the pile with Anita and process it all at once… but on my own.
I feel like I am done with therapy now. I can’t do this to myself again…which ironically kind of means the end of the blog doesn’t it? So why am I having such a strong reaction to your request? Don’t blog and keep the new therapist. Or have a dead blog and no therapist. Great.
I was trying to think of a work around – what would happen if I made the blog private accessed with a password, and it was there only for a handful of people that I actually have contact with… but then that doesn’t work because they can still see it and I don’t think given what you’re saying that would be any better. Then I thought I could try and write like I sometimes do about particular issues, like eye contact in therapy, or shame, or the mother wound…but then that all is through a lens of my experience so that doesn’t really work. I thought about not writing at all for a while – because I really have been AWOL on the blog for the last year – and seeing where things got with us but then I wouldn’t want to develop a relationship and then have the same ultimatum when I actually care more.
So, I don’t think I have a solution that works for either of us and so that just leaves it that I’ll have to say goodbye. It’s not that I value the blog more than I do spending time with you working together but it is/has been a really important part of my journey and I just don’t think I can cut off that support network in the hope that things, this time, work out…because things just don’t seem to work out where I am concerned with therapy.
Thank you for your time. I don’t see any point in coming in on the 10th because that won’t change anything. I don’t need help finding someone else. I thought I had done a good job this time around, but I’m just not interested in doing this again. I’m sorry that this has happened but to be honest I think you’ve probably dodged a bullet anyway. I know you haven’t meant for any of this to feel rejecting or attacking or patronising…I do get where you are coming from. This has to be a new record even for me, though, I usually manage three years before it goes to shit!
Take care,
RB
So, there we are. I haven’t heard back from her – I don’t really expect to as she’s on a break until the 10th. I imagine when she does eventually read it, I’ll get something back like:
Hi RB,
Thank you for your email. I understand your decision and I am sorry that we can’t agree on this aspect of the therapy together. I wish you well for the future.
Best wishes,
H
And that’s fine. That’s what they do isn’t it? It’s about the best I can expect from someone who’s seen me for eight weeks and doesn’t really care about me or know me. So, I’m ready for that. But there’s a part of me that feels massively disappointed about all this. I hate that I have had to choose between two sources of support because they are both important in different ways. It’s just awful timing, and whilst this is not anything like what Em or Anita have done, it is yet another example of me not fitting with a therapist, and my need being shelved as ultimately, we don’t have much power in our own therapies and the therapist holds all the cards.
To say that this has been a difficult week would be the most epic understatement. I have been emotionally flat-lining and barely holding it together with rubber bands and chewing gum. Externally, I have been running on a kind of righteous anger about what’s happened with Anita, and it’s given me the energy to function, to a degree.
My last blog post probably seemed reasonably together and optimistic…I guess that’s the False Adult self again trying to keep me functional because underneath that, there is absolute and total devastation. Maybe that’s not quite right – I guess, there was a bit of optimism because at least things seemed to be moving in the right direction with the new therapy and I was settling into that so it was like having a bit of a life belt even if I was trying to swim in a stormy ocean. Only I’ve managed to fuck that up already sooooo maybe that’s why I have crashed and burned – or drowned – overnight and things feel so shit. I don’t know if I’ll bother to write about that – and there’s a huge irony there.
The reality of what I have lost with Anita has come into even sharper focus – I mean how much sharper does it have to get?! And as much as I am angry with her, mostly I am just terribly sad. Anger is a mask for such a lot of feelings isn’t it?
I am exhausted from holding myself together when everything is falling apart inside. I feel like I am looping on an endless marathon – there is no finish line and I just have to keep going putting one foot in front of the other in the hope at some point there’ll be somewhere to rest. Only, my legs are done and there are no rest points. I feel like I am on the verge of stumbling, tripping, and landing face first in the shit if I’m honest.
I just need… well…I need Anita (before she lost it). I need someone who really knows me. I need that comfortable relationship and space where I can go and catch my breath. I need to not have to work so hard to just be seen. I need more holding and containment – or in fact – ANY holding and containment. I feel like such a lot has been ripped away from me and I just, honestly, don’t know what to do now. I won’t give up – but I really feel like it right now.
I have tried so fucking hard to do the right things since A and I ended in order to support myself. I’ve gone big on self-care: been for massages to try and ease this horrid tension I’m holding in my body; tried to get lots of sleep (ha – insomnia has other ideas and is kicking my ass, though!); been to see K to try and calm my nervous system down but she says she can feel how desperate it is for my young parts and I’m desperately holding on; I’m eating well; I’ve written to try and process; and I had gone to therapy and tried to build a new relationship… As I say, though, I’ve already fucked that up, so as of now am back to my own devices and I am just so done. You know? I am so sick of battling through.
I realise this is moaning. It feels quite teenage tbh… but ugh…I just can’t right now. Sometimes you just need someone else when it’s like this and sadly it’s just me, myself, and I…plus the mini bus of little ones. The small parts of over-tired and overwrought. I’m surprised there’s any screaming left in them…but there is.
Anyway, enough of this doom. Really, I just wanted to share a poem I found the other day. It’s a break up poem, but it resonates so much. I know it’s not just me that’s navigating the termination of long-term depth therapy and I think you’ll get it.
Big hugs x
I Should Hate You
I should hate you. For running, and taking your reasons with you. The questions left behind like little thorns of the mind. I’m trying like hell to pull them out hoping to spot the warning signs missed.
Why couldn’t you help me understand? Why didn’t I deserve the reprieve? How were you unfazed by my bleeding?
I should hate you. For discarding my heart and history as if it were throwaway cheap. The way you disposed of my spirit left me shredded. Cut to ribbons that I’m sewing back together. I’ll never be the same after you. You didn’t leave me better off than you found me. You stole what we shared.
It’s unnatural to move on from someone who resides inside me. I can’t shake loose or free. The painful truth is I don’t want to forget you. I won’t act as if we never existed. After all this time together, all this life together, you detached with such ease that I must have dreamt it all.
What I wasn’t prepared for – choking down answers I’ll never receive.
Your indifference is brutal. Something reserved for savages. All decency is disposed of once someone decides to run. Fiendish for distance between you and them. No long goodbyes. Nothing resembling a semblance of closure. Their own embarrassment brings about avoidance.
I should hate you. See, needing to do what’s best for your life, at the expense of mine, doesn’t make you right. Quite the opposite. And what’s most troubling is how often I still think of you. I still imagine hypothetical scenarios of you coming back around. Showing up on my doorstep. And how I’d react to your negligence. What would you say? What could you possibly say that would fix the damage done where I’d even take you back?
A couple of years ago I left a therapy session with Anita and as I walked towards the gate, her son had his head in the bonnet of the car on the driveway. He was fixing something for A. Fortunately, he didn’t look up and I was able to leave without being seen. I didn’t feel much about it at the time, and I have literally only just remembered that this had even happened as I lead into the main bit of this post! Isn’t it weird, then, that a chance viewing of one of Anita’s children had absolutely no impact on me at all…and yet seeing the other (her daughter) set all kinds of shit off?! Hmmmm, I wonder why that might be?!
Let’s be clear, Anita is not a blank screen in my therapy AT ALL. Indeed, she is the complete antithesis to Em who revealed absolutely nothing about herself during the time we worked together. I know Anita has two adult kids and some grandkids – she mentions this on her website and occasionally mentions them in session. Most of the time that’s fine…ish (!). It really depends how I am feeling in myself and in the relationship with Anita in the moment.
If I feel settled and secure, then it really doesn’t bother me for her to reference her kids or something she might have done with them but other times (when the young parts are feeling vulnerable) it feels like she’s pouring salt directly into the mother wound. This feeling has got significantly worse in recent months, in part, due to the fact that her adult daughter has moved back in with her so she’s there nearly all the time working from home when I am having my sessions.
As I said in a recent post, sometimes I can hear her daughter moving around the house and it can feel … I can’t really explain it… awkward, I guess. There’s a kind of jealousy, perhaps, too. I feel jealous that I get so little of Anita’s time and attention these days, and so I really don’t need to be reminded of her daughter being there. I think I also feel a bit weird if Anita is reading me a story and I then hear daughter moving around. Because let’s face it, whilst we are working with my child parts in those sessions – it must sound a bit fucking weird hearing your mum reading kids’ stories to an adult.
Anyway, it is what is and I don’t let this get in the way of me getting what I need in the sessions – I just wish she wasn’t there (read into that what you will!). I try not to bristle when A says something about her family. Her family are clearly really important to her – as they should be. I guess, for lots of us though, when we know our therapists are close with their family, and involved with their kids and grandkids, it can feel like another reminder of exactly what we don’t have.
Like, “Look what you could have won… but didn’t.”
Therapy, at times, can feel like a brief escape into a fantasy world of what it might have been like had things been different (what we needed) when we were kids. Having someone who actually pays attention to us, listens, sees, and responds to us and meets some of our needs, is in so many ways the basics of interaction and caring for a child, but when it’s been missing our whole lives it feels like a magic balm receiving it as an adult! Having an attuned therapist has done such a lot for me…even if I am, yet again, whining about something that’s happened!!
Of course, therapy isn’t just playing at getting the mum we wanted. Well…it’s not only this (LOL!), there’s tonnes of work and pain to sift through as well. Often, it’s the fantasy relationship that triggers the sore points in us so that are then ready to be worked through and with (so long as the therapist is open to that and can cope with attachment stuff). I mean mine and Anita’s relationship is real, not just in my head, not only fantasy, but the child parts definitely see her as a mother figure. Adult me knows she’s my therapist but that’s an important role too and that client therapist relationship is valuable.
I am phrasing this really badly– wandering as usual! – but basically because Anita and I laid some pretty robust foundations at the beginning of my therapy, when the child parts and attachment stuff finally went live in summer 2020, we were well placed to deal with it. All the work we’d done at the beginning when I went to her when Em and I were hitting the skids and then terminated really left a clear map of what was likely to come up eventually between A and I. Anita’s absolute calm, care, and empathy hearing the absolute state of it when we first met meant that I knew that there was space for whatever might come AND THERE HAS BEEN A LOT!
I think this is really different to when I worked with Em and the aching need and attachment stuff came up and I had no idea what was going on, or why, or how to even deal with it. I was just drowning in shame week in week out. But Anita could see from the get-go that I had gone headlong down the hole with Em and triggered all my wounding in the relationship with her. Transference 101.
Anyway, get to the point RB…
So, we all know that my relationship with Anita is…deep? Yeah. It is. It’s close. It’s human and it’s fucking MESSY at times. We work through stuff in the room and it’s very specific to me and my need and my trauma. As we also know, a significant amount of my trauma stems from my mother wound…which leads to fun times! The bits that hurt the most are the bits where the young parts are triggered and feel unseen, unloved, inadequate, ‘less than’ – [insert endless negative feelings list here]…
Sooooo, a few weeks back it was absolutely pissing rain and I arrived at therapy at my usual time. I never arrive early – always bang on 10am – because I know what it’s like when students rock up early and I am still doing something else. Also, I figure if I arrive on time then Anita should be ready for me. So, that particular morning I had driven to therapy feeling a lot of feelings. It was right smack in that time when Anita’s wheels were falling off and my child parts were going wild inside but I had been keeping it to myself for fear of sending her over the edge. I had intended to go to that session and try and articulate what was happening for me because I was out of coping – I was in the zone and ready to go.
So, imagine my shock when I was head down trying to keep dry, little parts on the surface, and I walked through the gate, looked up, and there was Anita’s daughter coming out the front door.
Fuck.
I mean what a fucking fuck?! Of course we know these people exist. Of course I know she bloody lives there! But there’s something really different between having the knowledge of someone or hearing them moving about to being face-to-face with them unexpectedly. I instantly snapped into adult and pasted on a friendly smile and said “Hi”. A’s daughter smiled back and apologised for being there and then carried on out. All the while Anita was at the door – so she saw the whole thing.
Ummm.
Let’s be honest. This completely threw me. I got into the room and expected A to make some reference to it. It can’t just be me that thinks that’s a fairly big deal knowing exactly what we work on? I mean basically I saw the ‘sibling’. The favourite one. In the normal run of things I would have said something to Anita but given how it was then, and her total lack of capacity to hold anything I wasn’t about to bring the, “Seeing your daughter and talking to her felt really weird and it’s upset me a bit because the young parts want you to themselves and I feel like these days I get less and less of you”. Basically, it was the fantasy meeting harsh reality. And of course I know the reality – I guess I just didn’t want to be faced with it like this.
So, that was weird.
Really weird.
But then it happened again a few weeks later.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
This time we had a bit more of a conversation – nothing massive but she recognised me. She must be thinking, ‘There’s that client that’s here all the fucking time and never leaves my mum alone!’
So yeah. That was unexpected and uncomfortable. I mean, I guess sometimes parts of us would like to feel more included in parts of our therapist’s lives – but I can categorically say, that the part I am absolutely not wanting to know or come face-to-face with is her beloved children!
Anyway, I don’t have much more to say on that, I just thought I’d let you know as at this point I don’t think you can make it up! I mean I could unpick the psychology behind it but we know it don’t we? Ugh.
Anita is now away on holiday so it’s a three-week break – just marvellous. I’ve got another post swirling in my brain, so I’ll get to that sometime soon – suffice to say my internal mini bus isn’t in great shape.
So – it’s been a very BIG month, or so, with Anita and therapy. I mean, wow – talk about rupture! I will try telling you all about it as ‘calm me’ after you first see the ‘not calm me’ below, in a sec (which was written in the thick of it) but since ‘calm me’ is now back online all that transpired has all gone a bit hazy – or deliberately dissociated?! I feel like I might be a bit of an unreliable narrator now (no change there, then!). And since things are largely resolved and settled again it is hard dragging my mind back to the stress of the rupture and the detail of it.
I’m in that post-Christmas fog of procrastination and borderline depression, too, so I need to be careful not to pick at a scab (throwing myself back in to remembering details of the horror) when it’s still a long time until I actually get to see Anita again because man, I am really feeling the ache right now. I really miss Anita (no surprises there!) and am consciously trying to ensure I don’t fall down the hole of doom when there’s still 10 days until I see A again…10 DAYS. Argh!
Still, I thought I would write a post today (beware it is absolutely mammoth) to try and keep a log and update where I am at because it all moved so fast, is more-or-less resolved, and I realise that I won’t have logged this at all. Next week work will be back up and running and I’ll be busy, busy, busy again so it’s now or never. This blog was always intended to be an online therapy diary, but over the last year I have had less and less time to write and so I don’t really know what it is anymore…a webspace I pay for?! Lol! I have noticed that lots of people I follow are writing less regularly these days, but I am always glad to see their posts when they show up on my reader, so I hope that that is still the case with this blog.
Anyway, I have just got to the computer and seen that this is not the first time I have tried to start a post about the rupture. Ummm, that’s news to me! Shit… I know I was dissociated and it’s been a very bonkers time with two sick kids, a broken-down boiler, car packing up… [insert endless list of mishaps HERE]… as well as my therapy falling out its arse all before Christmas break, but really? What the actual fuck is/was going on in my poor little brain? Ah, yes, system meltdown. My absolute favourite.
This…this…’mess’..below…well I don’t even remember typing it! I can see how disjointed it is. How panicked it feels…and yet, as I said, I have no recollection whatsoever of writing it. So, here it is. It won’t make sense, it doesn’t even make sense to me! But I think it’s interesting to see just how bad it gets on an unfiltered level. So, bear with me – I’ll, (usual blogging RB) be back after this:
Honest to fucking god, I think I’ve done it this time. Just lock me up and throw away the fucking key where therapy is concerned because, frankly, I’m shit at it and shouldn’t be let loose on therapists… I feel sick. I’ve had the ‘therapy’ shits (ffs!). My heart is racing. Basically, my nervous system is in free fall and my body is freaking out.
So, here I am again. Facing down a massive rupture. But this one feels really scary…usually I meltdown and Anita is solid – but she’s wobbled this week. She doesn’t feel grounded. She is frustrated and that doesn’t feel safe AT ALL. The end of that session was – bizarre, to say the least. I can’t believe she just cut it dead like that. How did she think I would react? You can’t just randomly drop information like ‘I know I’m going to be getting married at some point and I don’t know what I’ll be doing’ in an argument, three minutes before the end of an already hideous session -and there not be some fall out.
I’ve listened to the session on my way home, and she says all the right things, but it just feels like empty words. Like it’s therapist 101 not the Anita I have a relationship with. To the outside world it probably feels and sounds fine…but it’s not…It feels like she’s distancing. And the end – well that was just a fucking disaster.
And that was where it ended….my typing in the moment freak out. But how did I get there?
I had been having a panic about something that had happened between a friend and her therapist– I was basically fearing that the same would happen to me and Anita and it had sent the child parts into a right state. I didn’t tell A about it in the week between sessions because I felt it could wait. But by Thursday evening I was really desperate to reconnect with Anita and see her in person to ‘confirm’ everything was still ok and to settle those panicking parts…and basically have a cuddle. The week had been hard – everything was tough, you know? Like every day was like trudging through treacle. I even managed to slam my finger in my car door! It was just one of those weeks.
Then, Anita cancelled our session Friday session last minute late Thursday night. I didn’t actually see the message until I woke up on Friday morning. I was gutted. And so I think that maybe acted as a catalyst for the acceleration into this rupture but it wasn’t the reason for it. I wasn’t angry that she was sick or anything, she can’t help that, and I really understood her need to cancel. In fact, that day I ended up taking a nap on the couch for two hours when I would have been driving to and from therapy, so it wasn’t like I sat crying about it. However, what the last-minute cancellation meant was that I had more time to work myself up about whether A and I were still solid because there was now going to be a longer gap between sessions.
The Monday session was a bit meh, it was hard to connect, and I left feeling disappointed because I think essentially ‘False Adult’ had taken over when I really really needed for A and I to be close. It was that annoying thing where the momentum of the therapy was interrupted and the need had ramped up, but alongside that so had the fear of being too much and so I failed to allow A in.
Things felt really crap and on Tuesday I sent Anita a message that on reflection didn’t make it massively explicit what was wrong as it was wedged between nothing stuff. Anita didn’t see it and didn’t reply. But from my side all I got was radio silence from her. No, “I hear you, I am here, let’s talk about this properly on Friday” or “We’re fine, I promise”. Just nothing. On Thursday night I was worked up and texted – “Are you ok?” No reply. Then in the morning a few minutes before our session, “Yes, just really busy”. Ffs we’ve been here before. Too ‘busy’ to pay attention, running about like a headless chicken, dropping balls…I sent a message, “I don’t want to come today”…and she obviously didn’t check her phone.
The message wasn’t an “I’m not coming” it was really a “I don’t want to come because I can’t face any more of the feeling of you letting me drift away and us not connecting”. I did go to session, though. I hoped that at least being in the room would enable us to talk things out. I arrived both angry (teen) and anxious (little ones). I sat down and just froze. Silent. Ugh. Not this again. I reached for Anita’s hand and started crying. Told her I felt like I was drowning, and she was just standing watching. I told her that it felt like everything was broken. “It doesn’t have to be broken” she soothed. But it just felt so fucking crap – I was too far gone.
In a barely audible whisper, I asked for a story and of course Anita got the pile of books from the table and asked me which one I wanted. I said I didn’t mind and she selected, ‘Dragon Loves Penguin’ which is a REALLY lovely book that we’ve had for a couple of months now. We’ve read it quite few times and the child parts ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. The story is really beautiful, and it’s been so connecting. BUT not this time.
FUCK!
Why?
Well, simple.
SHAME.
Yep. My longstanding best-friend decided that today was the day to bulldoze the very thing that is so helpful in connecting young parts to Anita.
It all started to go wrong when Anita didn’t invite me in for a cuddle when she opened the book – or I didn’t shuffle in like I might usually…I was already in a state of freeze, though, and really needed her to reach out to me. As Anita began to read, I felt more and more distant from her and more and more distressed.
But why?
Why did I suddenly feel shame listening to a story with Anita after so many years of listening to stories snuggled in close to her? Even after listening to this very story several times in the last couple of months? Well, the previous week we’d been reading and cuddling and generally just talking and she’d said something about me having a massive inner child. It wasn’t meant unkindly, rather it was acknowledging the vulnerability of the young parts and the need. But you know how it is. There’s always that internal searchlight scanning for change in the relationship, change in Anita, change in how she feels towards me…and my system clocked ‘massive’ as a potential negative and obviously put it in the bank for later.
That later was this story time. I wish I had been able to tell Anita what was going on when she asked what was wrong/happening – but I was deep down in the shame zone, drowning in the dark by then. And so, it all started unravelling from there. RB was triggered and off we went down a road that really wasn’t a lot of fun. I felt upset that Anita didn’t seem to be ‘there’ (she was there) and trying to ‘connect’ (she was trying) but you know how it is when things feel really bad. It can feel like you’re on the other side of the world to the person sitting barely two feet from you and there seems no way to bridge the gap. This distance always makes me feel abandoned even when Anita isn’t abandoning me and so EVERYTHING she says gets filtered through a lens of mistrust and fear.
I’d been sitting there silent internally crying out for her but externally stonewalling her. At one point Anita asked me what I get from therapy – it was an open question but it felt accusatory. Like “Why are you even here?” A snarling, angry, (hurting) teen part replied, “Oh, I don’t know, nightmares, anxiety, and panic attacks!” Anita took that and seemed to run with it without realising it was coming from the hurt teen who felt unseen and abandoned and was lashing out.
Anita said it wasn’t ok, and if therapy is detrimental to me then we needed to look at that. Which is all perfectly reasonable but to the part that was freaking out it came over as if A was about to dump me/us. Anita later asked, “What keeps you in therapy?” – this kind of question made me wonder what the fuck is going on and who the hell is sitting in front of me. Like she surely knows, right? Surely, she must know after all these years WHY I am there. Because I love her, am attached to her, and want to heal my mother wound through our relationship. Because therapy is helping me work through this EXACT shit. That her steady, consistent support is allowing ALL of my parts to come to therapy and do the work (even if it is fucking cringey). But when she asked the question, I could say nothing. When the child parts are feeling like abandonment is imminent there is no chance of me saying that to her.
And then it went SOUTH in a big way. I said that I felt she’d changed (she has changed the boundaries this year and is less responsive than she used to be due to changes in her personal life) and she said she hadn’t changed, that she didn’t feel like she’d changed. Then said that perhaps there was a pattern developing because I had felt similar with Em. She said that I had been anxious and panicked whilst seeing Em and stayed. What Anita meant by that and how I received it were worlds apart. She was coming at it from a place of not wanting me to stay in something that was damaging for me (if that was what was going on) BUT how I heard it? Oh my fucking god!
I was absolutely raging. I felt so upset that she seemed to be suggesting that this was a ‘me problem’ and that the common denominator is me and therefore it must be me that’s causing these issues and ruptures. I was silent for a bit but also so fucking angry. I told Anita I felt insulted because the relationship I had with Em and the relationship she and I have built are poles apart. Yes, the same issues are coming up but fuckkk it is just not the same. Anyway, my angry teen part went to town. It escalated and after telling me she might not be around forever, and that she was going to get married soon (great time to throw that in the mix!), A shut down the session really abruptly at the end (SHE HAS NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE). I told her it was bullshit and left. She was clearly frustrated, and a bit rattled at the end – actually it turns out she was anxious.
Looking back now, actually I think what I can see coming from all this is two people converging on something that escalated and there was a lot of transference and countertransference. I don’t like ruptures AT ALL but having now worked our way through the bracken and weeds and back onto a clearer path I can see that really it comes from care: my not wanting to lose A, and A not wanting to hurt me. But being human can be incredibly messy at times and things got worse before they got better.
When I got home, I decided to make a voice note to send to Anita trying to outline what the fuck had just happened and why I was so upset. Despite it feeling really bad it wasn’t so bad that I thought we were done. I guess that’s the one thing I can always land on or take comfort in. No matter how bonkers I feel, or what I throw at Anita, I don’t think she’s ever going to do an Em on me. I feel safe enough to really ‘bring it’ to her and feel confident enough that we will come out the other side.
By the time I had done that and sent it I saw a message on my phone from Anita:
I feel really sad that we ran out of time this morning and wondered if you would like to speak on the phone later today or I have a free slot at midday tomorrow?
That went some way to alleviating the panic of needing to wait until Friday to begin to sort stuff out but also showed me that A recognised that how things had been in that session/how we had left it wasn’t great and that it wouldn’t be ideal leaving it for the rest of the week. This was also sent before I had sent her my voice message. Basically, it showed me that even when it is messy and difficult, she’s still there and still cares. I asked to see her in person on the Tuesday as it really felt like we needed to be f-2-f to work this stuff out and I didn’t think a phone call would cut it when a sense of physical connection is so important to be able to even talk.
The session on Tuesday began with a long cuddle the moment I arrived. I started crying and felt so sad but also really relieved to be there. Anita and I sat down on the sofa, she opened her arms up and welcomed me in for a cuddle. If only that had happened in the last session! We said nothing for ten minutes, I just listened to heartbeat and eventually our breathing was in time and it felt calmer. Then I said, “I don’t want to lose you.” She replied, “I know.” Which did absolutely nothing to allay my fears about things going down the shitter and her wanting to find a way to end. My heart started to race again, and I felt a sense of panic flood my system.
Everything was so easily triggered.
Anita said she was concerned and was worried that the therapy was becoming detrimental for me. She then said something about wondering about growth. This pissed me right off, but you’ll see why in the letter that I wrote later…because in my view there is a LOT of growth. She was trying to find words and basically said the absolute kicker – that lodged like a thorn in my brain for weeks. She said something about wondering if I had become “too dependent” and then corrected herself and said “no, that’s not the right words.” But this ‘thinking out loud’ at that particular time was not what I needed to hear. She told me a bit later that she had thought that this rupture had been caused wholly by her cancelling the session the other week and had run off down a path of thinking that I was stuck because I was freaking out over her having one day off sick and that her not being available had sent me into a massive spiral and it that she felt like it was going backwards. Of course that wasn’t the case at all!!
At this point I didn’t know where all this crap was coming from. All I had heard so far was “where’s the growth”, “I feel like we’re stuck” and “maybe it’s become too dependent.” I felt really hurt but also really confused because ostensibly my needs haven’t changed. It has been Anita that has changed, her life that’s become more demanding, her that has become more thinly stretched – and as a result it is my therapy that has suffered the consequences of that. We don’t do the longer sessions anymore (that were so containing and helpful) and we have way less between session contact than before (again removing a level of containment).
These changes haven’t happened because I no longer need longer sessions or contact. It hasn’t been something we’ve contracted for or mutually agreed. It’s been something that’s been done because Anita’s life and capacity changed so dramatically last year. I realise I still get a lot more than most people in my therapy and so I would never leave based on those changes, but it seemed really unfair to say I was (potentially) too dependent when actually she gives me less now and I have stop asking for what I used to have.
To be honest, when it was all coming out it felt ‘off’ but it still hurt because I couldn’t really work out where this was all coming from. What was going on really didn’t feel like it was about ‘us’ in lots of ways. On my side it was certainly a re-enactment of stuff around my mum. I was feeling unseen, unimportant, and just vulnerable as hell. It’s also a shit time of year because it’s around this time that the wheels started to massively fall off with Em. Naturally I am hypervigilant, but at this time of year I am poised for another ‘tick’ situation. And a ‘too dependent’ came pretty close, I can tell you!
And for Anita, the stuff she was saying (it turns out) wasn’t about me. Really it came back round to her family’s endless demands on her, and her feeling trapped by her mum’s level of need. It was countertransference 101. It’s easier to make a client who you see 2 hours a week and has a need the problem though, rather than fully acknowledge that the family member who has made your life unrecognisable from what it was a 18 months ago and now lives with you makes you feel trapped and stuck. It wasn’t me and Anita that were “stuck” and it wasn’t me that was making her feel “trapped.” Anita is usually so ‘together’ and ‘grounded’ but she wasn’t – but I can understand it. I guess my needing her or my feeling like she’s not there when she feels like she is giving me all that she can probably feels frustrating when she has such a lot going on.
Arguably, this shouldn’t have happened. But at the same time, it is a very real and human relationship, and it takes place in real time. As much as we’d like to think therapists have completely got their shit together and are totally ‘on it’ so far as knowing what’s going on with them, I do think we all have blind spots. Fortunately, like I say, there is a strong enough foundation to our relationship that we can weather the storms and talk things through and afterwards it feels like we’ve made another load of progress.
It’s not comfortable by any means but it is another lesson in ‘you can go through hard things, act up, act out, shout, and it doesn’t mean the relationship will end…and not everything that happens is always about you and not everything is your fault’. I would rather Anita be able to put her hands up and tell me what’s going on when we have these things happen (when she is aware of it!) than have a situation like with Em where stuff would happen and I’d be completely in the dark and left thinking everything was always my fault because she was such a blank screen – or the fact she’d blame me for everything!
Anyway, we limped along for a few sessions. I was so exhausted with work, end of term, life…that there was one session where I just turned up and said, “Can we just be together today. I am too exhausted for this, and it can wait.” And so we had a lovely hour of cuddles, gentle chat, and stories. I get how nuts that sounds. To be in the thick of a rupture and then go, “Ah fuck it, it’ll work out, we are ok really, let’s just catch our breath!” But that is the lovely thing about where Anita and I have got to. It is safe enough to do this. We can have a rupture. I know it’ll repair. On a core level no matter what’s being thrown up, and what chaos I am working out, underneath Anita is there, my rabbit that listens.
I do wonder if I sound completely unhinged. Like how can I hold so many seemingly opposing ideas at the same time?! Ruptures used to absolutely terrify me. My nervous system still gets thrown through a loop even now. It’s old programming. But there is a toe out of the water that knows there’s dry land and I am not going to be fully swept away by the storm. So, yes, parts of me freak out, have their reactions, go through the motions of it all…but there is another part that’s like, “RB you are ok. No matter what happens, you’ll be ok…because you have YOU now.”
Anyway, after a gentle couple of sessions I built myself up to tell Anita that she had hurt me with her comment about “too dependent”. It was about three minutes before the end of the session (nice one RB!) and I was snuggled into her chest when I said it. Anita went rigid and then swore blind she hadn’t used those words. But of course, she had…even if she’d corrected herself immediately and there was no intention of hurting me. The session ended and I went home and typed up a letter than I decided I would send as a voice note. It had been several weeks since everything had started and I felt like I wanted to get stuff of my chest.
It is not always easy to do that in session. Especially when young parts are so present. So, here’s what I wrote and sent to her:
What I’m left with-
Is it really only since you got sick you feel we’re ‘stuck’? Has it really just gone to shit in two weeks?
You said I was “too dependent” and although you backtracked and said “maybe that’s not the right words” that’s sent waves through my system because I don’t know how to fix that other than take myself away and I really don’t want to do that because that is the very last thing I need. I know you said it because you thought my meltdown or struggling to reconnect had come from you being poorly – it wasn’t – but even if it was that it feels like a really shaming thing to say. I do know that’s not how you would have intended it to come across but also using words like “unhealthy” as well just really hurt me. And adult me can sidestep it but the younger parts do feel hurt and so I need to tell you.
I can already feel the protectors stepping in to protect the vulnerable parts from being hurt more- I already feel a lot of shame about my “huge” inner child (again something I don’t think was meant to be shaming but it’s how I received it and that impacted how it felt reconnecting after you were sick) but I genuinely thought it was ok with you to work with this really vulnerable needy stuff.
I was struggling to feel like I was in the room with you the other Monday when it all blew up. I asked for a story because I felt like I was floating away, you started reading, and I could just feel myself face plant in shame and instead of feeling closer to you, I dissociated – because I felt too much, and that the inner child need was too “huge”, and it really went downhill thereafter. I really like listening to you read stories and so this felt absolutely hideous because it’s been something that’s really helped, does help, but in that moment it felt like I was pathetic and too needy.
I feel stupid. I’ve heard that “too dependent” (and you did say it) as young parts are not welcome, that I’m not ‘growing up’ quickly enough and obviously it’s all too much. I now really worry it’s going to be a problem this Christmas if I so much as struggle with the break (and of course I will struggle because duh – two weeks at this time of year always feels hard – it’s a time when I am acutely reminded of exactly what I don’t have). I’m worried that my missing you or having a reaction to you being gone now makes you feel ‘trapped’ and want to get away from me and so then that sets off a panic you’ll take the care away/step back even more.
This happened on Friday just gone – you told me about your Christmas break and I felt myself freeze – not because you are will be away but I was panicking that you will find me having any kind of reaction to it “too dependent” or “unhealthy” and that’s just fucking awful. I feel I have to hide what I am feeling so that I don’t get branded negatively and that sucks.
Even if I had have had a meltdown about the cancelled session the other week in the way you think I did (rather than panicking about what had happened to my friend maybe happening with you)- I think the issue is less about being too dependent but what or who is being triggered by you being gone suddenly. Why is that young part so affected and impacted by separation? Is it really being too dependent and therefore deficient – or does it make sense in the context of a caregiver being unexpectedly absent, unavailable, and un-contactable. We both know this comes back to my mum and my childhood – years of hanging on for Friday and feeling profoundly lost and lonely in the week…and then of course, my dad just dropping dead and never seeing him again three days into a separation doesn’t help.
I have spent a lifetime hanging on to see people I love and then being overlooked or forgotten about or worse, them never returning. It might not seem logical or proportionate of a response when I struggle with your absence but it is rooted in trauma and it feels really shaming to think there are things I might do that are seen as ‘too dependent’ and ‘unhealthy’ because I can’t help how I feel and I should be able to bring that to you if it was the case – it doesn’t mean you have to do anything about it. You can’t help getting sick, you are more than entitled to take time off, have holidays – be a human – but equally my reaction (if there was one) doesn’t make our relationship suddenly unhealthy, stuck, or problematic. And again – adult me can see how much of a reaction I am having to all this and that it’s all going to be ok…but the young parts are less certain.
And this is really evident – with this bit I wrote a couple of weeks ago because I know that you are still here- mostly, it’s felt fine the last couple of sessions, but it really didn’t the other week – and this is what I said:
I feel embarrassed and ashamed to have let you see that need for you when it’s now seemingly ‘too much’. I don’t know where you are. Where is the Anita that talked about going to the beach and having an ice cream so the little parts could just play and be kids for once, the one who said she wanted to tuck the young parts up in bed safe and take all the pain away, who said I didn’t need to stay out in the cold anymore, that her cupboards were full of chocolate, that said she understood trauma doesn’t always work on a timetable, that said I was easy to love and who kissed me on the head and held me close and said she didn’t want to let me go and could hold me forever, who noticed when I felt cold or shaky, the A who washes my elephant and bought me a beating heart necklace because you know separation is hard and hearing your heart beat makes me feel safe, and the squishmallow, the bunny that represented the rabbit that listened, a salt lamp to help me sleep… so many things… the A that reads stories- where did she go this week? Part of me feels like I’m insane and imagining a relationship that simply doesn’t exist. But those things have been said and happened – so what happened this week?
All that steady acceptance and reassurance and relationship building that you did, we’ve done, made it feel safe to bring the small parts to session so why am I now too dependent? Why is it now stuck? It’s years of relational trauma that needs working through in this therapy. I’m not getting a divorce! I’m not a bit stressed out at work. I’m not feeling a bit lacking in self-esteem. And there are loads of parts and therefore lots of perspectives, fears, and triggers. It will take time. There will be hard times it doesn’t mean it’s stuck or unhealthy.
Do you still love me… and the parts you worked so hard at connecting with? And if so, can you please explain that to them again and reassure them because right now they’ve got another mother figure who can’t tolerate their need and is leaving them alone and seemingly feels trapped. And I know you’re not my mum, you’re not my family, I wish you were. As I’ve said lots of times, you’ve given me a better experience of mothering than I ever had growing up which is why this all feels so confusing and painful now.
And yes, I get I need to parent these parts by myself but I am trying but I have needed it modelled to me. I’ve needed your care and compassion to begin to feel any compassion towards myself. But whether you like it or not- you are my attachment figure. And right now, I don’t want anyone else and I don’t think we’re done. And unfortunately for you, I do think you are the right person for me.
When you asked me what I get from this- I was upset and hurt and told you it was anxiety, panic, and nightmares. That’s definitely something that teen part experiences and has been really present at times lately. But there’s clearly more than that. If it was only that I wouldn’t have stayed. There is no way I would stay if I genuinely thought a pattern was repeating and it was heading the way things with Em went. But how things are with you and how they were with her couldn’t be more different. What do I get from this? I thought I was getting a relationship with you. I believed you loved me. I believed that you were safe to heal wound with, venture into that egg yolk with… and now I’m not sure if I’m even welcome and would you just let me go?
One day are you just going to tell me it’s over?…because I don’t get how we can have been through all this together and it just be in my head that this relationship means something – that this is just run of the mill therapy. I don’t believe it for one second. This therapy doesn’t look like anyone else’s I know. But then perhaps I am just delusional.
Also. Please know you are interacting with lots of parts right now. I can even feel the shifts as I’m writing this now. As I said, the teen has been about in a massive way that week and she is fucking angry but underneath she’s just really hurting and crying “please not again” and wants to connect. Yes- I have had nightmares and panic attacks and God knows what else but it doesn’t mean that’s all there is- but in that moment for that teen that’s how it felt. I need you to recognise that, and not panic that suddenly everything is detrimental for me and that this isn’t working. That teen needs to be heard but also, I need you to hold that in the wider frame of all of me. Sometimes I think it isn’t very clear who is in front of you but maybe ask. Because my quiet can be for lots of reasons…or for none at all! And whilst I can be really grumpy – there’s plenty of times when I tell you how much I value you, and love you, too because more than anything they are the dominant feelings.
And so, here’s some questions- Why does it make me too dependent to want you in my life? Why would I actually choose to have to not have you in my life when I have experienced so many losses already? It feels human to need to connect not wrong. I can’t help that you’re ‘just’ my therapist. I wish I could turn myself into a robot so not care about you or the relationship we’ve created and turn off my feelings when I’m not in the room …but I am not a robot, I’m a person and you’re a person too. I’m not wrong for how I feel and yet all of a sudden something that felt so good feels dangerous – and that’s how it spirals down. I don’t want to be too much. And I don’t want to feel like we’re broken. You usually sound so steady and certain when I am wobbling but you didn’t the other week.
And the thing about growth or lack of it- really feels quite shaming and insulting too. On Friday you said it was about ‘reviewing’ but when it was all going off it didn’t feel like a review, it felt like a threat or an ultimatum – your ‘concern’ came across in a way that made me feel like you didn’t see me or understand where things were. I shouldn’t need to justify why I am still in therapy or explain- and for you to insinuate or worry that there’s no growth because you thought I’d had a meltdown about our session being cancelled feels really shit. I shouldn’t feel like I am taking too long or not doing therapy right or not working hard enough – but that’s what that implies to me. Where is the growth? It’s fucking everywhere!
I’m sorry if my fear of abandonment flares up and my child parts still need stories and hugs. I’m sorry if I like being with you and feel like these hours each week help me actually just survive in the world. I’m sorry I’m not someone who rapidly transforms and fucks off into the sunset after six neat, easy sessions. I’m sorry that I need a deep and authentic connection. I’m sorry that my trying to repair a completely broken and fragmented structurally dissociated system has led to you feeling me too dependent and you now seem resentful of that.
Where’s the growth? I came to you with an eating disorder that had been rife for twenty years, where I had never once achieved a healthy BMI and been stuck in chronically underweight anorexic state. My body image was so screwed up. I had systematically starved myself for years, used exercise as a weapon and my inner critic was rampant. That voice has settled so much and I’m now in a healthy weight range. I eat what I want when I want and even though I’ve put on loads of weight I just bought bigger clothes – I didn’t try and go back. I accepted it. That’s huge on its own.
I haven’t self-harmed in years – even when the urge has been there, I’ve chosen a healthy option. I have reached out for help believing I was worthy of love and care rather than punishing myself.
I am able to work and manage my kids despite the stress of it all and always being up against it.
The constant fear of my cancer returning has eased a bit and I feel like I am more present in my life and can enjoy things where I never used to feel anything other than ‘I should enjoy this. I should feel something’.
I can actually tell you how I feel rather than keeping everything inside – you may think I don’t talk, or shut down and keep you out, but I have told you such a lot. I can be angry with you – I genuinely believed I wasn’t ever angry as it wasn’t an emotion I connected with but I do now. Not because you make me angry(!) but I feel safe to express anger with you. So that’s good- even if you don’t like me shouting at you and telling you everything is bullshit … that is massive progress and growth. I could never express that kind of thing as a kid. I’d have been flattened. But growth too is also telling you all the feelings – it takes a lot to tell someone you love them, especially when there’s a good chance they’ll reject you for it. I’m scared now that my telling you that ‘I love you’ is my being too dependent and that actually makes me want to cry.
I had started to believe what happened with Em was not my fault – that I’m not actually a tick because you loved me and therefore there must be good in me. Now I’m not sure- so perhaps that is a sliding back but it’s not surprising when it’s been like this this week.
So growth? My growth and healing isn’t necessarily obvious (although lots of people say they see a big change in me). It’s the deep deep wounding that’s repairing. I didn’t come to therapy with a surface wound. You can’t see a scab forming. But deep inside there’s so much change. It’s like a tree in winter. It looks fucked and dead above ground, but so many roots are stretching out beneath the earth ready to send nutrients up in spring to grow and create a canopy of leaves and fruit. It’s not spring yet but it’s not stuck or dead. I want to be an oak with huge, strong roots that can weather any storm rather than a tree with a shallow root system that will get battered by the slightest bit of wind…and that is what is happening…even if you can’t see it.
From James Norbury’s ‘Big Panda and Tiny Dragon’
Sometimes stuff happens and it looks like I’m back to square one…but I’m not. I would hope you would know all this and I’m sad that my expressing upset and telling you how stuff has been has made you think it’s crap. I don’t know what to say but I need you to recognise my growth even because sometimes I can’t and be proud of that and celebrate that change with me. I don’t need you to shame me because there’s change and growth that hasn’t come yet. I’m a tortoise not a hare. And I know you aren’t shaming me, it’s my response…
You asked what keeps me in therapy? I do. You do. How I feel about you keeps me in therapy. My attachment to you keeps me in therapy. But not because I am stuck but because I feel like our relationship does me good. I love you. And the love has made huge shifts in me and how I perceive myself. And I’m sorry if that’s too much or makes you feel trapped or that I’m too dependent. I never wanted to make you feel like that.
You said once you were like a boomerang because no matter how much I push you away you’ll keep coming back. I am worried I have broken you in half and now you’re just a stick. I hope not.
So that was an outpouring from so many different parts – you can clearly see how fixated I got on some of the words Anita had said even though Adult me knew what she meant and her intention. The issue, though, is therapy isn’t just for my adult self…and that’s why it gets so messy.
Anita listened to the message. She really heard what I had to say. And we really processed what’s happened together. I mean talk about ‘the work’. Fortunately, we got the bulk of this out the way before Christmas and left feeling connected and safe. And to be honest, writing this out and reading it all…I think I just feel a bit like, ‘WTAF happened?!’…I think another thing I am going to have to really look at is my menstrual cycle…because guess when this all kicked off? Yeah – ‘then’.
Humph!
I am not enjoying the Christmas break AT ALL. I have been struggling quite a lot but also really conscious of not reaching out to Anita unnecessarily (I will talk to her about this on the 9th). However, what was really lovely was that on Christmas day she reached out and sent me a message on WhatsApp first. It was a GIF saying Merry Christmas and a message sending ‘lots of love xx’ This in addition to the lovely Christmas gift she sent really helped settle the young parts that just miss her A LOT. Yesterday I sent her a message with a quote from a book that I gave her for Christmas called ‘The Journey’ by James Norbury, the second book in his series about the two friends Big Panda and Tiny Dragon (I highly recommend both):
and today she has sent me some photographs of a place she’s been. It feels good…although obviously I wish I could see her in person!
Anyway, this was a really long long post which really could be summarised by this:
RB wobbled in November/December. It should have been called ‘Rupture Season’ not ‘Christmas Season’ 2022. This year RB and Anita had a humdinger. But it’s all ok. They got through it. Oh, and C-PTSD is hardwork!
If you made it to the end of this – there really did ought to be a prize. Wishing you all a happy new year…let’s see what 2023 brings eh?!
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast by my favourite astrologer, Molly McCord, and she spoke briefly about something she called ‘relational laziness’. I’d never heard to term before but essentially (I think) what she was saying is that some of us are on this earth and really prioritise relationships, relational experiences, and emotional intimacy, connection and all that that entails (hell?!) and others of us centre our lives round other factors such as jobs, financial security, projects…etc. This second group of people are less impacted or affected by relationships, of course they have them – it’d be hard to live on the planet and not have relationships – but they aren’t the be all and end all for them.
I’m paraphrasing and massively condensing but she basically said something along the lines of: we are not all here on the same journey and those of us who are really motivated by relational depth can often end up feeling crappy when we come across people who aren’t on the same relational wavelength that we are on. Being in a relationship with someone who isn’t relationally motivated or is ‘relationally lazy’ can sometimes feel rejecting or abandoning. We feel like we are putting in all the hard work whilst they coast through life, dipping in and out of ‘us’ whenever suits them and seemingly not really valuing us or the connection.
This got me thinking.
Uh oh!
I think it’s fair to say I’ve met a few relationally lazy people in my life…hello Mum! But then I started to wonder, am I relationally lazy? Or, at least, could I be perceived as relationally lazy?
My first response was – No – I am not relationally lazy but then thought – Yes- I could be perceived as relationally lazy.
But how can I answer both yes and no? I’ll get to it in a minute.
So, I continued pondering this stuff a bit further and it made me think about our ‘perception’ of both ourselves and others in the relationships we have – which then made me think of the love languages.
Yes, my mind jumps around like a bouncy ball and my thoughts resemble a tangled ball of string so that’s why these blogs are always so random!
I guess in relationships it tends to help if you mix with people who understand and speak your own love language/s. Essentially it makes sense that you’d feel happiest around people that communicate their love in the way that you do – and in the way your value. This is a bit tricky, though, because we are obviously drawn to people and connect with them and it’s not always immediately apparent you don’t talk the same language or, at least, prioritise the same things.
If you haven’t heard of this stuff before then there are, apparently five love languages:
Acts of service
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
Follow this link to find out more about them and discover your own love language/s www.5lovelanguages.com
Fortunately, I don’t think many people only speak one language which is a relief, or we’d all be screwed especially when you factor in our differing attachment styles too! But simplifying these ideas a bit. I guess, someone who demonstrates their love care through ‘quality time’ or words of reassurance and ‘affirmation’ probably won’t be all that impressed by the person whose primary love language is gift giving. To them they might feel like it’s ‘buying’ love or ‘just’ a gift and yet to someone that expresses love through gifts it is actually a huge gesture of care and love because of what the gift represents. It’s not just a gift but a symbol of thought and love. Equally, someone whose love language is ‘touch’ is probably not going to feel especially loved and connected when someone else’s love language is ‘acts of service’.
I just did the quiz on 5lovelanguages.com and was actually really surprised by the outcome:
I really wouldn’t have said my dominant love language would be acts of service but then I guess it’s come out in my career choice as a teacher and then over the years as I have become a wife and then a mother… a lot of my life has been acts of service – doing things for other people that may seem inane to some but are clear demonstrations of my care: there is a lot of love that goes into daily packed lunches, school runs, swim lessons, and the laundry – especially when it comes at the expense of ‘me time’.
I guess now that I am running too fast in the hamster wheel of life, I really now do value when someone lightens my load more than a gift – that is ultimate love. And yet years ago I probably would have said my dominant love language was gift giving. I would show people how I cared through gifting and would equally feel valued through gifts I received. That’s really not how I am now. I really don’t care about presents but I do care about ‘presence’.
Interestingly, touch is right at the bottom at only 10%. It makes me wonder if this stems from a deficit in touch that I had as a child. Like maybe I don’t see it as important as other languages because I didn’t experience it enough as a child to register it as a love language. But then that seems off/wrong, because look at how I am with Anita. My child parts’ love language by FAR – like 80%- is touch closely followed by words of affirmation and quality time. Those are absolutely essential to feeling loved and cared for and good enough in my relationship with A. It has been the lack of touch, quality time, and affirmations growing up that has led me to feel so unlovable and untouchable in the first place. Those are the core wounds.
So, I wonder, then, if I speak to the various parts of me and check in, if they have different love languages. As I said, the young parts are absolutely fixed on touch, time, and affirmations – basically keep throwing the cuddles and reassurance their way please AND LONGER SESSIONS! But what about the teen? What does she need? Probably quality time and words of affirmation and not so much the touch. This is something I will keep thinking on.
Anyway, I am really rambling – but I guess getting back to my original point. Am I relationally lazy? No. But could I be perceived as relationally lazy? ABSOLUTELY yes. I think this is really more down to love languages and also TIME.
Over the years most of my friends and I have walked down similar paths. Years ago, we used to be able to meet up regularly coffee, lunch, dinner, go for weekends away, spend loads of quality time together but that’s less and less the case as we get older. This has nothing to do with the love and care we feel for each other.
It’s life.
Life gets in the way.
We all have kids and busy demanding jobs.
And anyone with kids (and no childcare) knows that planning get togethers with friends can be a real struggle.
My oldest and best friend from university lives about two hours away. We put our diaries together in September via WhatsApp and have found a weekend in February 2023 where we are both not committed and can sort childcare to have a weekend together.
That’s just how it is.
A few weeks ago, I ran into another really good friend at a school open day (our kids are the same age). We used to meet up every week when the kids were little but somehow, it’s been two years – pre-covid since we last saw each other. We both now work more than we did when the kids were little. There are no blocks of time on weekdays off for a cheeky swim and a coffee and throw in the 45-minute drive to get to one another it all just gets a bit tricky! Yet we made a massive effort and met up last weekend and it was like no time had passed.
This week I managed to see a friend who lives in my city, and lives literally 10 minutes away. She’s my kids’ godmother and one of my very best friends. We haven’t seen each other since January and spoke on the phone May.,,like wtaf?!
Crikey I have been busy being social– which is obviously why I am on my arse. LOL.
Sometimes I feel really guilty about not being social ‘enough’ or checking in enough with people but actually when we get together, we are all in the same boat. I don’t think my friends suddenly don’t care because they haven’t text in a few months because I haven’t either. BUT because our lives are running down similar tracks, we all understand and are singing from the same page. We are all exhausted, hanging it together by a very frayed thread, verging on burn out, and the ‘to do list’ never gets any shorter -and at the bottom of that list is often our friends and loved ones.
Difficulties, I think, can arise when people’s lives don’t align in similar ways. If one person has no time to fart and is literally cramming stuff into every available minute, then someone who isn’t under those pressures mightn’t get it and might feel rejected or not prioritised enough when they would like to talk and hang out. AND of course, throw in the mix our varying attachment styles and quite frankly we’re all fucked aren’t we??!
The irony is not lost on me about what I am about to say now.
Brace yourselves!
Why it is then that with my friends I can totally understand that they care for me, I can keep them in mind, and don’t need continual evidence of their care because I am a busy person too… I don’t see them or myself as relationally lazy….and yet…oh CRINGE…when Anita is busy and is less available, I literally have a fuck off meltdown?! Like why is she so busy? Why can’t she find time for me? Cue big dumping of toys out pram!
ALERT!
RUPTURE ZONE!
Honestly, it’s been fucking embarrassing this last week or so. I had a full-blown wobble this week and then today and it was just agony in session. I will blog about it over the weekend if I get chance. I mean, I get it, things work differently with Anita she is my attachment figure, I relate to her in a different way to my friends -she’s ‘just’ my therapist, but man it’s just bloody painful.
Argh – so I began writing this on the 17th October…and then…well… time evaporated again and it’s now midway through November and it’s just been festering in the hard drive like so many other blog posts I’ve started over the last year or so. So much for the idea of being able to find the time to post more ‘regularly’! – Ah well, rewind a bit and I’ll take you back to the first session post two-week therapy break!
——–
So, this morning I felt a bit out of sorts as I drove towards therapy. No bloody surprises there! It was the first session back after the break and here I was, again, nursing those horrible feelings of isolation and disconnect that I am so familiar with. I guess, it was self-imposed, forged out of panic. My system so massively fears the potential of there being a true isolation and disconnect enacted by Anita (which essentially amounts to an abandonment) that I get in there first. It’s a protective withdrawal on my part. If my system checks out first, it beats Anita to it, and therefore, she can’t hurt me. Only…my being distant ‘first’ does hurt me…so how is that any better?!
Of course, it’s not better, ESPECIALLY when Anita ISN’T trying to be disconnected or distant -far from it. She wants to be there for me and to connect. But when will I stop reacting from a place of fear whenever we come back from a break? Not today, it seems. Sadly, that anxiety spring is coiled tightly in my nervous system and it’s taking a long long long LOOONNNGGG time to convince my system that in the here and now things are ok, and that Anita is not going to repeat the relational pattern I have come to expect.
I am so shit at this (therapy/relationship) game of snakes and ladders, aren’t I? Honestly, I really messed up when the rules of life and relationships were being explained to me. I must have been napping at some of the crucial junctures because I keep hitting the same pitfalls over and over again. More often than not, I roll the dice I land on a snake and go sliding on my arse back to the beginning again. The thing is, I don’t think this is all my fault – I am trying so hard to navigate the board, to make it so that I go up ladders, make positive forward movement and dodge the snakes…but it just doesn’t always work out.
I think, perhaps, the problem came from the fact that relationship rules were explained to me by people who also didn’t understand how to play the game (my family) – and yet, because we all followed the same ‘made up rules’ it wasn’t apparent there was anything wrong until I ventured out into the world and tried to play the game with other people and they were like, “This isn’t how to play the game!” So, in order to make it through life and relationships, I’ve found some work arounds – paid attention to how it’s meant to be done. I continue on in the game but not, always, in the usual way, I don’t think – especially when there’s been a break.
I trusted that Em knew how the game worked, but it turns out that she, too, had some random, off brand, version of the rules and so that was really fucking confusing for me because I tried to play the game her way but it wasn’t right. Anyway… that’s a fucking bizarre metaphor that’s run out of legs…sorry!
I arrived a bit early to Anita’s and sat in the car scrolling through my phone – trying to settle the parts that were having a bad time, panicking that it wouldn’t be ok when I went in, fearing that something might have changed, and dreading a rupture because the parts were not in a good place. I had elephant ready in my bag to take in, but there was a part that was baulking against taking it to the session. I knew, however, that if I left elephant in the car there would be zero chance I would let the young parts out. Even if elephant stays in the bag in the therapy room it’s very clear it’s in there and if Anita has eyes (reader- she does) then she’ll know young parts are at least somewhere in the vicinity and hopefully will be able to reach through protective barriers and to the parts that so need reassurance and reconnection.
As I walked up the drive, I felt a bit checked out, on that path towards dissociation but not quite fully there. I was kind of apathetic and “What’s the point?” You know – disgruntled teen. Anita opened the door and smiled at me and asked me how I was, “tired” I replied flatly. That is my go to…because I am ALWAYS tired but also it’s just how it is: no energy, done in, running on empty. I wandered into the room and sat down on the couch. From what I could see, everything was still the same, my story books were out on the side, Anita sat on the couch beside me, there wasn’t anything ‘obviously’ different. I had no idea how it was going to be, though. I felt a bit overwhelmed and was all set for false adult to dive in and take the session and then for the teen to shut it all down at some point, but the moment I sat down A said, “I’ve got something for you from my trip” and handed me a little fabric bag with a chocolate lolly attached to it.
I was not expecting that. At all.
I said, “thank you” and put it to one side without looking in the bag and immediately asked for a cuddle. Whilst I was intrigued to see what was in the bag, I was more desperate to physically reconnect with A after the break. That couple of seconds together, to hear she’d thought of me on her trip, took a sledgehammer to my apathetic self and the young parts just wanted to be as close to her as possible (Cringe!).
I’m not a big fan of Autumn and Winter (I’m actually really struggling with SAD this year really badly -it’s either that or a colossal whack of post-viral fatigue) but the one positive about the changing season is that the temperature has really dropped these last few weeks and so there was no fear about it being ‘too hot’ to touch (hug) which is what happened over the summer and triggered the young parts…
The young parts immediately relaxed into being with her. It felt so nice to snuggle into her warm body, to be back in that familiar safe space, to hear her heartbeat, to breathe in her comforting smell of fresh washed clothing and clean hair (look don’t judge – you know how it is!). All the armour was off, everything I had been holding for the last few weeks could be put down, and I could just rest for an hour. So, that’s how it was for the entirety of the session – I just cuddled into Anita and it was exactly what I had needed.
We chatted about all sorts of stuff: her holiday, my being very ill, an episode with a wetsuit, my delinquent puppy and menace of a kitten, random life stuff – it was just really nice and connected. We laughed a lot. Anita asked me midway through if I wanted to look at what she’d given me and said that it wasn’t much, but she’d thought of me. Even half an hour in I just didn’t want to move from the safety of her arms. I guess after the separation I felt like I needed a huge top up of touch. I told A that I didn’t want to let her go and didn’t want to move, which I would have had to do to get the bag, and she held me tightly to her and instead told me about the pebble and shell that she’d found on the beaches whilst on her holiday and that she’d brought home for me. When the pebble is wet it sparkles from the quartz that is dotted on it.
She said that she’d been walking, the tide had just gone out, so the pebble was wet, and it had shone out on the beach reflecting in the sun. Knowing I collect pebbles (I had given her one that I had found for her from my favourite beach recently) she picked it for me. Then she told me about a beach she had been on that was completely made of shells and had picked one for me too. She also collects pebbles and shells and so it’s something we connect with. It’s a fucking world away from pebblegate with Em, that’s for sure!
I can’t really explain how cared for I felt in that moment with Anita but it felt healing. During the week before the session, she’d sent me a video of where she’d been, and then to know she’d consciously been thinking of me when I was out of sight (and I feared ‘out of mind’) was really, I dunno, special? I so often believe I am forgettable, unlovable, and frankly just not very important and yet here was really clear evidence (again) that that wasn’t the case at all. It was so nice because I have been wobbling such a lot over recent months on and off – almost creating a narrative that Anita wasn’t interested in me anymore – and yet here was a clear demonstration that Anita, the Anita I have built a relationship with over nearly three years, really is still there – invested – and she really cares.
I know that the doubting and the anxiety and the protectors are all there on loop. And whilst it is sometimes (always!) frustrating that despite doing this steady reparative work for so long, I still get plunged into the hell zone because of the attachment trauma, I guess there’s another part of me that can see that my panic and fear of abandonment can be heard, seen, and metabolised with Anita. I don’t have to live in fear of even telling her what’s going on for me (like I did with Em…WTAF was I doing in that therapy?!). Now, lots of the time my system is settled. Being with Anita is lovely, we do the work, her presence and care is so regulating for my system – there are plenty of ladders. But when stuff is triggered and awful and painful and I am sliding my ass down the snakes, there’s something really comforting in knowing that no matter how bad it might feel in the moment, A isn’t going anywhere. She tells me this often enough. And enough of me must believe it to have to meltdowns and throw ALL MY crazy into the ring.
In one of our very first sessions together we talked about the importance of building strong foundations so that we could weather whatever storms came our way – and we have done just that. The number of times I wanted to tell Em how I was feeling, to be able to express the most vulnerable parts of myself to her but got choked and dissociated was just hideous. It’s so different with A.
Towards the end of the session, with about ten minutes to go, and after a few minutes of calm silence, a young part quietly murmured, “I missed you” into Anita’s chest. She responded with, “I know.” Part of me baulked at this and that perfect peace was fractured. To at least some part of me it felt, I don’t know, dismissive somehow. I guess, it’s that thing about having unrequited feelings; fearing that my feelings are too big, too much, not reciprocated in any way. There I was being vulnerable and rather than replying with “I missed you too” which is what Anita has said a million times before, she came back with that. Had something changed? It was literally a split-second reaction in me – but it really goes to show how instantly the system can be triggered despite all the evidence to the contrary. The next words out of Anita’s mouth, literally continuing on the sentence were, “I’m back now. I still love you and still care about you…very much…I really, really do.” And with that the panic that flared up dispersed and everything was ok. BUT MAN…what a reminder of the work there is to do.
Of course, there’s been nearly a month since this first session back…and it wouldn’t be me if it had been plain sailing – lol – but it’s been ok. More than ok. There’s been lots of attending to the young parts through reading stories, plenty of hugs, and plenty of connected silence where nothing needs to be said because so much is ‘felt’. I’ve been so used to excruciating, dissociated, painful silences in therapy over the years but I have to say, I love that quiet, connected, safe silence where there are no words needed, when it’s just calm and safe. And frankly it’s good that we are in this sort of semi-rest phase because I have nothing at the moment. I am running on fumes.
Of course, there’s just one bloody problem – and the irony isn’t lost on me! – It’s going well, it’s safe, connected, and loving but MY FUCKING GOD it’s SOOOOOOOOOO hard to leave A and be thrown back into the real world to face the relentlessness of life. I am on hyperdrive in my day-to-day life and I am really on the edge of burnout after being so poorly and so of course the young parts are activated in the week and are yearning for that safe, holding space with A more than ever. Yikes! I really really need it to be Friday.
I hope you’re all hanging on in there. Yet another ‘brief’ 2500 word update! So concise 😉
I’m still here – just very very busy but also plagued with procrastination where my writing is concerned. I started this post AGES ago and yet here we are in October…two months between posts, whoops!…
Anyway – here goes:
Oh, the fucking irony! I’ve got to laugh, really. Last time I was here rabbiting on, I said that I thought I’d finally got through/over the ongoing feeling of disconnect that had been caused by the rupture that was triggered in February when Anita took a step back and stopped our longer sessions.
Ha.
Boy, was I wrong!
Oh, well, I guess that day-and-a-half of relative calm was nice while it lasted! Lol.
As you can see from the title of this post, things hit the skids in a big way just as the break was about to begin. Ugh. Are you guys getting as bored of this pattern as I am?
It feels a long while since this all happened so it’s not especially fresh in my memory but from what I can remember it was, once again, sweltering for my Monday session and so, yet again, there weren’t hugs (even though I had promised myself I would ask for one…) That’d been the norm for a lot of the summer, but after the session the young parts were massively triggered, especially as Anita’s looooooonnnnngggg break was creeping ever nearer. It was that panic, “We only have one more session and then there will be no cuddles with Anita for AGES.”
Adult me knew the lack of hugs wasn’t a rejection, had I have asked, Anita would certainly have given me a hug, but honestly the heat – it was like being in hell at 30 degrees and so adult just chatted away and the session felt light and fine… but of course you don’t have to dig too deep beneath the surface to see the shit starting to hurtle towards the full speed fan when there’s a break looming and the inner creche isn’t attended to! [We’re on a break again now so I really am going to have to pull my finger out and get caught up!]
Whilst the evening sessions have been a lifeline this summer, when I have ‘lived the day’ somehow, I find it hard to peel back the many layers that shroud my vulnerable parts. I really wanted this summer to be a time to ‘do the work’. When I am not at work myself and manically trying to squeeze every last drop of productivity out the day whilst juggling the kids, it frees up headspace and time to really focus on the therapy…or it would, if I could only have got there on the schedule I am used to.
As I said in my last post, I was fortunate to be able to see Anita but it wasn’t in the usual routine, and so the ‘frame’ felt wobbly. I didn’t know most weeks whether I would see her once or twice in person and the times I could see her twice meant the spacing was off…and I’ve come to realise over the years just how important that structure is. 10am Monday and Friday…that’s MY time! (more on this in a minute!)
So, lack of touch was a trigger but then so was lack of talk about the actual break. I can’t remember what we spoke about that final Monday, just ‘stuff’ – you know ‘filler’ when really what I needed was a way in to talking about the underlying panic about being left, how we would manage the break, you know a bit of housekeeping before three LONG weeks apart. Anyway, it didn’t happen and I left feeling a bit annoyed with myself.
Thankfully, Anita had washed elephant for me, which was a massive bonus so at least that was one thing that was settling for the upcoming break but that’s about all.
Unsurprisingly, the wheels started to fall off a bit on the Tuesday as my final session approached on the Wednesday. It felt like there was going to be an impossibly long separation of 3 ½ weeks (how many times have I said this is a long break here????!!!) and the anxiety began to creep in like the tendrils of Dementors. I badly WANTED to see Anita on the Wednesday because I felt like I was unravelling inside but I was also very conscious of the length of the break.
My plans for the week had changed as my wife was now going to be at home rather than working on the Friday and so she was available and could look after the kids. I asked if I could see Anita on Friday instead of the scheduled Wednesday because I thought it would be better to cut the break down. To be honest I really wanted to see her both days…or to do a longer session, but I didn’t ask because I don’t want any more ‘Nos’ and it would have made the unsettled feeling even worse. However, that is what I needed and when things settle a bit again I am going to have to really talk this through with Anita so that this doesn’t happen again.
Still, as it turned out, no matter how I tried to avoid triggers I somehow managed to seek them out like dog shit in long grass. And so, it began…
Anita replied to my message that she could see me on Friday but that “Unfortunately, I have booked someone in at 9:30” so could I do 10:45 instead?
Reader… it was like a bomb went off inside me. Scrap the dog shit analogy, I’d walked over a fucking great landmine…or setting off something nuclear inside. (I am nothing if not dramatic!)
Of course, it was possible that Anita would have filled ‘my’ time but 9:30??? She’d told me in February that our early starts had had to stop because they put too much pressure on. And yet, here she was booking someone in half an hour before my usual start time. And I get it, before her break she was probably trying to squeeze people in here and there, but it triggered the shit out of me. And then hot on the heels of that message came:
Also noticed the Monday after my break is a BH so wondered if you could make 12 noon or 8pm on Tuesday 30th?
This was a like pouring petrol on an already blazing fire. Internally, I was really upset. Had she only just realised that HER break carried into a BH? Like honestly? I had clocked it when she told me the dates, ages ago. Knowing that I was facing a massive break I had decided to go away until the Thursday and be back in time for my Friday session and now here, at the eleventh hour she’s offering me a session.
I tried to play it cool:
Yeah that’s fine. I’m not here until the Thursday after your break so it’ll be a while until I can see you.
She replied:
Oh, Ok, I didn’t realise that (with a heart).
And this is when it started to boil over inside. No, Anita, you didn’t realise it because we’ve done absolutely nothing around this break…and so things then erupted:
It was then that I realised just how much I had been holding in and holding back from the parts that feel so hurt and abandoned. As I have said lots of times Adult me gets what’s happened and why. I really do understand capacity changes, life events, and all the rest of it because I have had lots shift in my world lately, BUT the thing to remember her is that I am largely in therapy to address and heal the young parts, the past trauma, the stuff about feeling unimportant, forgettable, unlovable and all the rest of it that stems from childhood. Anita is not responsible for that wounding, but our relationship triggers it A LOT and we need to actively work with what comes up when it does… and we do…but fuck me it’s hard work and agony when it’s all live.
The message exchange went on a while, and I was throwing every single toy I had out the pram. Anita kept steady but it felt like she wasn’t there and to the parts in panic it felt like things were desperately bad. My Adult had was offline and I was operating from inner child chaos. I told her I was ‘done’ and it was fucking painful but when I say ‘done’ I mean I can’t tolerate how bad it feels. Anyway, long story short is I had my tantrum, asked her if she still loved me even if I was losing my shit and she came back with, Of Course. And that was enough. Simply that. She had not gone. She still cares.
So, of course (!) I went to the session on Friday, and it was hotter than hell again. Anita told me she was so glad I had come and that she knew it took guts to come when I felt like this. My heart was racing, and I felt shaky, it was almost like a panic attack (I’m getting this a lot at the moment). Anita ‘seemed’ to be Anita, the one I love, the one with the voice, the one who gets it. (I know she exists all the time but sometimes parts of me don’t feel her or can’t allow myself to access her because I am scared).
Anita asked if I would like a story (yes please!) and I chose ‘The Wobbler’ which seemed apt given what had happened that week. I really was channelling my inner Barbara!
And so, I ended up snuggled into A for a rather warm hug for the story and remained like that for the rest of the session. We settled the young parts and then just talked – although I can’t remember really what about…
It was one of those sessions where once we had ‘reconnected’ and dealt with the blow up that had happened it just felt really easy and safe and just what my nervous system required. I would, of course, like to not have to keep experiencing this horrible feeling of disconnect and intense feeling of abandonment but I realise this is my work and sadly I am going to get triggered. We just need to keep meeting it and working with it when it happens.
I decided to take Anita up on the offer of the Tuesday evening session at the end of the break and adjust my holiday, so I was back in the area to see her. It seemed like a good idea, and I started the break feeling pretty good all things considered.
The break itself was pretty fine, too.
What?
Really?
Yes, really!
It was actually really fine.
I wasn’t saturated by thoughts of Anita, of missing her, or of that deep ache and longing that can happen with separation where the young parts are screaming inside and need to be picked up and held – and that was a huge relief. I thought of her, of course. She is a big part of my emotional world. But I wasn’t wracked with that desperate need to be with her, to be physically held safely by her, or repeatedly needing to reach out and find some sort of connection. We exchanged a couple of messages here and there through the holiday (I’d just got a new kitten and wanted to show her) and she initiated a few ‘I’m still here and thinking of you, sending a big hug’ type messages but otherwise I got on with my summer holiday and enjoyed myself.
I think being away in a place I love also really grounded me. Being able to be where my fondest memories of my dad and share in that with my kids did something to me inside. Em used to always want me to create visualisations to help ground me and I never could. But recently, I have found that when I feel anxious and stressed, I can close my eyes and transport myself to that special place, I can feel myself on my favourite beach with my bare feet sinking into the wet sand and water lapping my ankles. I can feel the hot sun on my back, and I feel like I am ‘held’ in nature and return to my ‘happy place’.
And that’s great.
Alongside that I am also now more able to feel Anita when I am away from her. I mean if things are really fucking triggered there’s no chance (like in that rupture where it went tits up in seconds!) but if I can catch myself when the young parts are just feeling a ‘bit’ needy in the general run of things, I can soothe myself by imagining being close to her, hearing her heartbeat, and feeling safe with her.
I can ONLY do this, of course, because I have a template for it. I KNOW how it feels for her to hold me and to be able to hear her heartbeat, for her to tell me she loves me, and to be able relax into feeling ‘safe’ – it’s in my memory not just my imagination. It’s not always easy to hook back into that when I can’t see her, but I do, at least, have a reference point now, and this is especially helped by my soft elephant that Anita washes for me at intervals.
My elephant smells like her and so when I am feeling ‘off’ I can grab it and breathe in the smell to help ground myself. It’s not just the smell of the elephant (Anita) that helps but it’s the fact that I have a therapist that will do this for me. Anita has never batted an eyelid when I asked her to wash elephant. She’s never shamed me for wanting or needing this level of connection to her and that is something I can hold in my mind when things feel bad, “Look RB you are holding a soft toy that your therapist has washed for you because she cares about you enough to want to make your separations as easy as possible”. Actions speak louder than words sometimes – and I have actions and words.
I know some people will raise eyebrows at this, but I don’t care because I know a lot of you ‘get it’ and if I am a needy weirdo then so be it, because I am certainly not alone in this. When you think about this need through the lens of child development (and of course this is something A and I do for my child parts) then it makes sense. Babies have a really powerful sense of smell. They can ‘smell’ their mothers before they can even focus in on them with sight. It’s a biological imperative. When I got sick and had to stop breastfeeding overnight to begin chemo I couldn’t be in the same room as my baby when he was due a feed because he would arch his body over to me (and the smell of breastmilk) rather than take a bottle of formula from my wife. It was awful and heart-breaking…but that’s a whole other story.
The importance of smell and how it intertwines with safety is seen as children get bigger, too. My kids both have snuggly items they sleep with. I am not ‘allowed’ to wash them because they don’t smell ‘right’ if I do. There’s something about cuddling up at bedtime with an item that is both soft and smells familiar. So, this is why elephant works for me, it’s a throwback to that young child stuff. Anita feels safe and I associate her smell with safety and elephant smells like her.
Frequently, therapists want us to conjure images of safety up out of nowhere to help us ground but when you don’t have them to draw on in the first place it is upsetting and frustrating. Em never really understood this, and insisted over and over that I must be able to think of a time I felt really safe… what she didn’t get was that at that time I didn’t need to be imagining a time I watched a comedy and felt good (do you guys remember that? GROAN!) but actually I needed to feel her, as my attachment figure, I needed to be able to connect to that/her when we were apart.
Of course, she didn’t want me to be reliant on her for any sense of emotional safety or foster ‘dependency’ and was intent on her blank slate approach and placed a cavernous distance (both physical and emotional) between us. The most she gave me was a visualisation to imagine us sitting in ‘the consulting room’ together which obviously missed the mark for the upset young parts who couldn’t understand the language of the message. Anyway, lots has changed since then – thank goodness for Anita!
So, because I can now bring to mind and almost ‘feel’ Anita I can use that when I most need it. It’s often when I am really tired at bedtime where this makes the biggest difference – again just like kids needing their comforter. I used to really struggle with that felt sense of being completely alone and abandoned at bedtime and fall into that black hole of attachment pain and doom. The physical searing sense of ulceration in my chest that and deep sick feeling in my stomach was agony. I would get more and more distressed as time went on and then fall asleep to nightmares.
I guess things being most difficult at night is because when I am tired my adult is least available but also, bedtime as a child was a time when my mum wasn’t there…for 6 years. I would put myself to bed, read my own stories, and feel chronically alone. The young parts that needed my mum and maternal nurturing had to make do with a short phone call on a Wednesday. It simply wasn’t enough.
Anyway, this is not new news.
Sooooo…the break came to an end and whilst I was looking forward to seeing Anita. I wasn’t desperate, though. In fact, I was almost late getting there. The weather had been amazing at the beach and part of me wished I hadn’t decided to come back two days early and had have stayed surfing instead.
The thing is, I never know how things will be. Breaks usually are a real trial and the idea of three weeks gap was just too much at the start of it. But by the end, well, I could easily have stayed away a bit longer. Which is why what came next is so bloody infuriating!!!
That first session back was adult, as they usually are. I brought Anita up to speed with what had been going on for the last few weeks and it was completely fine. The hour sped by and when I got up to leave, I gave her a kind of lack lustre half hug at the door. The session was, ummm, I don’t know how to put it really – it was ok – one of those ones where it wasn’t especially connecting because it wasn’t about ‘us’, it lacked any real emotional intensity or intimacy, but then at the same time it was comfortable and ok, you know? I guess the child parts weren’t ‘there’ and so it had a different quality to it.
I wish I was better at coming back from breaks and being vulnerable and could let the most vulnerable parts out, but it takes time, and unless Anita is massively attuned and guides the conversation to say something like, “It was a long break, how was it for the young parts, and how does it feel for them coming back today?” I will stay in hiding. It takes a while for my system to judge if things are still the same and if everything is ok for all the parts to come out.
When we were talking Anita asked me if I was back now and around on Friday. I sort of semi-clocked it but just shrugged it off and said “Yes” and carried on with whatever I was talking about. When I was about halfway home my phone rang, I saw it was Anita but couldn’t pick up immediately because I was driving and I don’t like driving and talking using the car phone setting as the quality is pretty shit. I pulled over and called Anita back confused. “Hi, did you mean to call me?” It was 9:30 at night so I thought maybe she’d misdialled.
No. It was deliberate.
When I had had my meltdown before the break and ‘cancelled’ everything until the 5th September she hadn’t clocked that we had clearly sorted out the rupture and I had come to my session on the Friday and booked in to see her on that Tuesday. It was a diary malfunction but OMG it set off another landmine. I didn’t say anything at the time. Anita apologised and asked if I could make a 6pm session instead. I said I could and put the phone down abruptly.
Suddenly ALL THE FEELINGS came up and my calm ‘break’ mentality was gone. Instead, I was furious and upset. Yet again, she’d booked someone in ‘my session’ time. It was a cock up and not deliberate but to the young parts and protectors it sent the message that she doesn’t keep me in mind and doesn’t have her eye on the ball.
Anita text me to apologise and thanked me for moving my session. I didn’t reply. Then the next day to make matters even worse she texted me again to ask me to move the following week’s Friday session because she’d just found out she had a funeral to attend. Part of me wanted to rage but another part of me could really see that this was just a lot of bad timing. So, I told her I could move the session and agreed a time.
By the time it reached Friday everything was a mess inside. I felt really unsettled and generally like everything was going to shit. I sent Anita a picture message about needing to talk and she replied by saying she understood but that the relationship needed to feel safe first. She’d clearly picked up on things not quite being back to how they normally are and so I asked, “How does that happen when everything feels chronically unsafe?” She sent me a hug gif and said, “Let’s talk about this this evening”.
When I arrived I was not in a great headspace. I was overtired, overwrought, and the young parts were desperate to connect but I felt like Anita wasn’t there. I felt abandoned by her (AAAARRRRGHHHH please just give me a break, already). I felt panicked and shaky and like I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look at Anita and I couldn’t let her close. I could feel everything unravelling at pace and slid off the sofa and sat on the floor with my knees up and my head in buried into the and covered my head with my arms. I was dissociative as fuck.
The only reason I know what happened in the session is because I have a recording of it. In the moment I was in complete agony. My body was trembling. I felt sick. My heart was racing. I felt like I was totally alone.
Anita and I couldn’t find each other at all. It was bloody awful. The time disappeared and it was time to go. A asked me what I was thinking and I said I felt like I wouldn’t come back. It felt that bad. Anita said she’s be sad and disappointed if I left but it just felt empty. I left feeling awful and like a baby whose mother was mis-attuned and had left the baby screaming.
It was far from ideal.
I cried all the way home from the session. I think in reality it was a culmination of the whole summer. Feeling like we hadn’t really connected properly throughout. The lack of touch. The break… I was just feeling vulnerable and needy and it’s taken a lot of time to recalibrate into the relationship…there’s more (yes MORE!) However, I’ll leave that here for now as it’s another epic post with not much to it.
I will get my shit together eventually… in all areas…but probably AFTER this current break. Two weeks… based on the above, I wonder how I’ll get on. Place your bets!
Well, blimey, where did July go? Ah, yes, work, work, more work, the kids, a bit of therapy thrown in here and there…and a lot of time at the beach! #Heatwave. You’d think July would be the time for things easing off and winding down in teaching but, honestly, it was like everything went on overdrive both with my work and all the stuff I needed to organise or attend for my kids: sports days x2, residential for my daughter, end of year assembly, random parents’ evening, school taster days, and end of year parties. It was full-on and I was on my knees a couple of weeks before term finished (honestly, some days I was close to tears I was so knackered) but somehow, I got to the finish line in one piece – or a collection of pieces deftly held together with rubber bands and chewing gum!
It’s week two of the ‘holidays’, now, and this is the first day where I have actually stopped and given myself permission to do nothing – it’s the anniversary of my dad’s memorial and picking up his ashes from a driveway next to his dive gear (don’t ask!) and so I feel a little fragile. I’m a long way on from that initial grief and pain of fourteen years ago, but I still find this time of year difficult. I get plagued by nightmares and I can’t help but remember just how bloody awful that time was.
Fortunately, I have Anita to take this stuff to and so I feel pretty ok having been able to let it out. I’ve had a cry and I feel sad to think how much I’ve missed out on with my dad over the years, but I can now see things in a different light. Watching my kids enjoy the waves and share in the place that my dad and I loved so much is so special and healing after so many years away from it – I can almost feel his presence when we’re there. I am loving being back on my surfboard and in the water enjoying the coastline where my soul feels most at home.
So, even when things feel unbelievably tough (which they really have done recently – our life seemed to just get wiped-out and body-slammed all at the same time), somehow, I am finding ways to not sink altogether and also trust in the fact that the universe will deliver, eventually. It’s not always easy to do that, especially when you suffer from anxiety. It is so easy to get caught in the endless spiral of doom when things are going wrong because it’s such a felt sense of panic, it triggers the flight response (for me at least) and the associated somatic experience is just fucking awful…
BUT…
I have made it through every tough part of my life so far, and frankly even though the money stuff isn’t great (I have always really needed a sense of financial security to feel safe but am learning again that safety comes from within and not only from what you have) I’ve been through worse. It’s not a sudden, unexpected death of a loved one, and it’s not critical illness and a year of cancer treatment. THOSE things were the big deals. Money makes the world go round and that sucks but currently I have my health, a partner, two great kids, wonderful friends, and a roof over my head so really, I am winning at life. My bank balance is pretty ummm…’low’ (read empty!)…but I can work more hours (might have a breakdown in October though!).
This year, unfortunately, I am working a full day each week with a student in the break (fortunately one of my home-school kids wanted lessons – phew) so it’s not quite the long holiday I had envisioned earlier this year but it’s a financial imperative after everything that’s happened with my wife’s work and so I’m making the best of it. To be honest, doing 7.5 hours once a week is way less stressful than my usual 25 (28 in Sept – eek!) hours contact time plus school runs etc so I can’t moan. The fact I only have to get up early one morning a week is a game changer and the fact I am lying on my bed in my pjs at 11am on a Thursday…well, that’s pretty good. So, yeah, all in all it’s ok. Great, in fact.
Don’t get me wrong. I have had weeks and weeks of stress and panic about our situation but there’s another part of me that’s trying to have a chat with those freaking out parts who is saying, “Look, right now, we’re still afloat. We’re doing what we can to make the situation better. The winter is going to be difficult, but we can’t change anything more right now so try and enjoy what we do have and make the most of the summer” — I don’t know who this pep talker is but right now the other parts are paying attention. I think the reality is that adult me knows I am going to be up against it in a huge way in September and I need to go into the new academic year as refreshed and recharged as possible or I don’t stand a chance.
Anyway, what else? I’ve been away from the blog for a long while. As usual I haven’t been posting because I haven’t had the time to write but I have also been thinking about the blog, too, and social media in general, lately. In recent weeks I have spent much less time on SM and I have to say I think it’s done me the world of good. Despite my best efforts to keep the majority of the SM content that I access light and uplifting (thinking Instagram here – cue astrology, spirituality, and comedy…oh and crazy animals!) I have found in recent months that my feeds across other social media platforms have been really negative. And it’s not surprising. Life is hard for so many people right now and everywhere you look there is injustice and that is playing out on the internet.
I am socially minded, and politically…what’s the word??… Appalled?! And so, I find it hard to switch off from it altogether because I don’t think we can live in a bubble. I like to know what’s going on, even if it is heart-breaking. However, I am finding places like Twitter and the comment feed on news posts really depressing. It feels like there are so many angry and disenfranchised people out there on all sides that take to social media and let it all out – but at strangers. The projection and the vitriol are really horrific. It reeks of bullying behaviour. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s doing me any good absorbing it in large quantities which is why I am spending less time online.
I think too, that what I have realised more and more is sometimes I want to respond to stuff online or defend someone or something but sometimes it just fuels a fire, and it isn’t worth it. Thankfully, I think WordPress falls into a different category where this is stuff concerned (thank goodness). In my experience over the years blogging here, it is rare to see abusive content or bullying or personal attacks. I think I can remember two or three pile-ons over the years on some accounts I follow (from people being in very bad places or who are massively triggered) but otherwise I have always found it to be a welcoming, supportive place. And I am grateful for that but I am also aware that these public platforms are open and so you’re never completely immune to someone wading in.
So yeah, I can wholeheartedly recommend a social media cleanse every now and then.
And therapy, what of that?
Well, you’ll probably be pleased to hear the Anita and I are out the other side of that epic rupture that was triggered in February when the time and contact boundaries changed. To be honest we’ve just been ticking along doing the work. It’s been ok enough. Sometimes it’s felt disconnected but that is linked to touch (or lack of it). Since the holidays started the sessions have been disrupted which has been a bit stressful, but so far I have managed to see her twice a week (Monday and Tuesday evenings). I’m not massively keen on the spacing – it feels like there’s a huge gap between the sessions after Tuesday but at the same time I am seeing her in person twice a week when I had thought I would only see her Monday. I still don’t know about next week.
It’s been so hot here that it’s caused the young parts a few problems here and there. As I said, I haven’t been hugging Anita in sessions because frankly it’s like a sauna here right now and it would just be too uncomfortable. Of course, the longer this has gone on the more the young parts have started to activate and wonder what’s wrong? Why doesn’t Anita want to be near them?…blah blah blah…which of course is not what’s going on but you know how little ones think!
Fortunately, though, it’s not been too loud and boisterous because a few weeks ago there was a slightly cooler evening and having refused the offer of a hug when I sat down (ffs RB!)) I broke my walls down for the last fifteen minutes and snuggled in and it felt lovely and deeply connected. I told Anita I had missed her, and she told me she’d missed me too. Sometimes those small interactions are everything and do so much to solidify things. The heat has definitely been the biggest driver for not asking for a hug but there is also another part underneath that is starting to retreat in preparation for the upcoming break.
Since that evening it’s been a bit of a touch drought and it’s just now starting to feel a bit eeek because Anita is off on holiday after next week for two weeks but I won’t actually see her for three weeks. This is going to be the longest I haven’t seen her I think (excluding the lockdowns – but then we were at least working online). Again, I am trying to employ the ‘don’t panic’ stuff and face it when it comes – but I know it’s going to be messy on Monday! Heat or not I think I’m just going to have to suck it up and ask for a sweaty snuggle!
I asked for stories at the end of the session on Tuesday after spending 45 minutes having a huge sweary outpouring about my mum, so the young parts are at least getting something but we need to make next Monday count. It must have seemed really incongruous, “Fuck this, fuck that, FFS…” and on and on and then…“Can we have a story?” I text Anita yesterday and acknowledged just how much I was swearing in my session and how really my anger is a body guard for sadness. I am free flowing with my ‘fucks’ in therapy but Tuesday was something else – there was more than one ‘c’ bomb and even for me I was like “whoa I am mad!!” Anita text me back this infographic and said I think there’s more than sadness under your iceberg with two hearts:
Of course, she’s right. And I knew this. And a part of me chuckled at how ‘therapisty’ that reply was.
Last Monday night as I was leaving Anita asked if she could give me a hug (thank god)…so it’s not that she’s not wanting to touch me it really is the heat and it felt good for her to reach out to me when I have retreated from it. I will be so glad when autumn comes, I can tell you!
So, the touch stuff has been a bit of an issue and then, to add insult to injury, on Tuesday my new puppy (yes, I am mental – but he’s a rescue and I couldn’t say no! especially after the heartbreak of losing our pup on Father’s Day) stole elephant and covered him in drool. You cannot even begin to imagine the internal meltdown the young parts had. I cried.
At that point I didn’t know I would see Anita that evening and though that I would only have one face-to-face session before the big break…and elephant would be stinking and untouchable because there was no time to get it washed by Anita. Mannnnnnn! It was very bad. I text K about it because she is one of the few people who really get it. She responded with such understanding that it took away any shame I was feeling but not the disappointment of having my transitional object out of action.
However, as luck would have it, Anita had a cancellation and offered me a session that evening and so elephant is now with her being washed ready for Monday and so the break …well, it’s going to be tough, but it’s a whole lot less tough when elephant is there and smells right!
Anyway, that’s about it I think. Bit of a boring, non-post but that’s sort of life right now. I’m sure to get in touch with my feelings from next Friday and then we’ll see what kind of carnage ensues!
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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