The Chest

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

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Oh good gracious me!!! I stumbled across a huge word file on my laptop today when I was looking for some writing I did around the time my dad died (it’s the anniversary of that horrid event this weekend). The document I actually found was writing I did 6/7 years ago during my NHS therapy with Em. It’s painful to read what I wrote then but also amazing to see how some things have really moved on and how other issues remain stuck. Therapy is clearly a long trek for me! I might get round to putting some extracts here eventually if I can bear the shame 😉 But for now – here’s the piece of huge cringe that I wrote to Em after my last session with her back in 2013 (and proceeded to send her in the mail!). The plan had been to see her in private practice after three months of ending in the NHS but it actually turned out to be three years before I got back into the therapy room with her… and last week was the anniversary of three years more work… I’m surprised she ever agreed to see me again after my teenage self clearly got poetic! Haha.

The Chest

The dust of half a lifetime lies thick on the lid

Carefully, I trace the words ‘KEEP OUT’ with my finger tip-

Those words roughly etched into the surface

during in a time of past desolation.

 

As though it were some mystical chest

I gaze down and wonder at it

 

But I know this box

The one I keep my secrets in

Does not hold treasure

I know too, that finally, it must be opened

 

The lock.

Cold metal.

Sturdy.

Still holds firm.

Even after all these years.

 

I look away…

turn the key…

The bolt gives way

 

Hinges creak loudly and the cool air

rushes in

to fill the dark, silent space within

 

Deep breaths.

 

Staring down

At the clandestine hoard.

It is not quite as I remember it.

 

Some items have been neatly wrapped and carefully placed inside.

Difficult to handle things, thrown in in haste, are strewn untidily.

 

Slowly, slowly I begin to unpack

each individual fragment of a memory:

disappointment

anxiety

inhibition

rejection

abandonment

loss

self-doubt

self-hurt

 

A broken heart

A broken soul.

 

This jigsaw requires careful handling.

 

Piece by piece

one at a time

I free these parts of myself from the mausoleum

Some are so fragile they threaten to disintegrate

Others razor-sharp and still poised to draw blood

 

Little by little

the picture emerges.

 

Tentatively I hold out my hand,

“Look at this”  I say.

I half expect you to run screaming out the door

I know I want to.

 

But there you are- still.

And for that, I thank you.

Unexpected And Unsettling Change

rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if things are ever just going to settle down and get on an even keel here. I know life is never straightforward for anyone but I wish, even for just a couple of years, that it would just be stable and run of the mill for me. I don’t crave excitement. I don’t want anything grand. I simply want boring (but amazing) stability and safety.

My whole life seems to have been punctuated by bloody stresses and traumas and frankly I’m getting a bit fed up about it all as I find myself drowning in another unexpected sea of disaster and worry.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I am far from alone in life throwing shit at me but right now I am feeling a bit sorry for myself and sad and angry and … all sorts of feelings actually!

My therapist and I often joke (serious joke) about how hard I find change and uncertainty. Even this week, something as simple as her putting an I-pad on a tripod in the therapy room to do an EMDR type activity made waves inside me! The room was (slightly) different but we had discussed the change the session before and yet EEEK something was not the same – cue mild panic!…

I’m sure, based on this response you can imagine what happened the time she changed the client chair from an Ikea therapy chair to a pale blue sofa and put the sofa on the other side of the room from where I’d been used to sitting, as well as moving a bookcase, changing the curtains and the wall colour all in one week! The room looked so much better, but Gah! Change!! I need warning about these kind of things! haha.

I mean it’s funny tragic right?!

My childhood was a catalogue of uncertainty and instability and from the earliest times I lacked of a felt sense of safety and it’s carried on into my adult life, unfortunately. I really can’t remember a time when things felt ‘ok’ inside me or externally. I’ve always been on edge/high alert and there are so many factors involved in this.

I don’t suppose it helped that my mum had a terrible pregnancy and was hospitalised for the final two months because things were so crap for her with preeclampsia. I had to be induced in the end because I was in so much distress in the womb (!!) and after a two day labour where both mother and baby almost died I arrived 5 weeks ahead of schedule, tiny, and was put in an incubator for three days. My mum did not to recognise me as hers when they finally gave me to her.

Great start!

Things haven’t really ever improved from that point! I’m not really surprised given what she went through that my mum developed post-natal depression and struggled to be a mum to me. She’s always said she’s not maternal and has made a joke of it, but actually I think that’s a defence for knowing that things weren’t very good for either of us when I was small. It’s easier to joke than to acknowledge the varying degrees of failure that happened. I know what it’s like when your mental health is tanking and I know that looking after babies is no mean feat even when you’re on your A game and so I get that my early days weren’t exactly conducive to developing a sense of security. Bonding was never going to be straightforward.

Now I am on a roll with the moaning about instability I might as well let a bit more out and add that after the trauma of being born there multiple house moves growing up (16 ‘homes’ by the age of 16); several different schools; being ‘looked after’ by people that were not my parents (so many childminders!); being emotionally neglected and abused ‘I wish you’d never been born!’ by my mum when she was around but she wasn’t always around, in fact she was gone a lot!

From the age of four to eleven she was away five days/nights a week. I feel so sad for the little girl inside that just wanted to be loved, to be tucked up in bed at night and read a story by someone that loved her. The ache is huge. Every night when I put my children to bed and tell them stories, and remind them that I love them and tuck them in I feel that young part’s sadness and the little voice saying ‘why did no one love me enough to do this?’ 

I used to witness huge rows between my parents on the weekends when my mum was home before they finally separated when I was 11. You’d think things would have settled down somewhat after the separation but all that happened was an upscaling in the rage directed at me from my mum when there was no longer a husband to absorb it and that carried on til I left for university at 18. I’m not at all surprised that I turned all the hatred in on myself by self-harming, not eating, and generally neglecting and punishing myself.

If you are repeatedly undermined and attacked throughout your life by a caregiver it becomes your inner narrative. You are nothing. You don’t matter. It makes sense to deprive yourself because you are not worthy of anything good. I know my inner critical voice is modelled on my mother. I have left that childhood ‘home’ but that horrible, nasty, soul-destroying voice lives on in me. It’s painstaking work trying to free myself from it…or at least try and understand it better.

So basically because of this (and more…so much more!) I don’t feel safe in relationship but I also don’t feel safe in my wider environment.

I suspect the way I respond to change and upheaval isn’t exactly ‘normal’ (I mean come on, décor change in a therapy room freak out is not usual behaviour!!) because of my previous life experiences. It can feel like the end of the world when stressful stuff happens because I end up on my arse flailing about.

This feeling of doom and Armageddon gets worse with each new traumatic ‘event’. The sense that things are desperate and will never improve take root really quickly. It’s like the floor falls out from underneath me and I start plummeting into the abyss. To be fair to myself the more recent adult triggers haven’t been ‘light’. My dad dying abroad unexpectedly at 47 on a remote island wasn’t an easy thing to navigate even in a purely practical sense let alone emotionally and I am not surprised it still haunts me; getting a late stage cancer diagnosis six months after giving birth wasn’t ideal either and the treatment that followed was gruelling so my health anxieties are probably reasonable.

So, what’s the latest trigger for the zoom into doom? My wife lost her job out of nowhere two weeks ago. This has sent shock waves through my system. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not a death. It’s not cancer. It’s not childhood neglect and abuse. BUT it has sent me through a loop. I don’t like injustice. I feel angry when people treat others badly. I hate that people with power can abuse it. And whilst I (adult) know things will work out in the end I have felt awful and panicked. All the younger parts have been sent plummeting down into a deep deep hole. I have felt scared and paralysed.

Turns out that, as well as death and cancer, financial insecurity is something that terrifies me. I think we all like to think that money isn’t the be all and end all…but you know what? In the society that we live in it really is quite important. If you can’t pay your bills, well… what happens? You’re totally fucked.

As an adult I have tried really hard to create a stable environment for me and my family because I know how ‘unsafe’ I feel just being alive. There have been horrible things happen, losses that I still can’t get over, but until now I have at least felt like I have my home and so a degree of physical safety – somewhere I can escape to when the world feels all a bit too much. I know, that it won’t be long before my wife finds some kind of employment again but I also know that agency work will not pay anywhere like as well as what she has been doing in recent years…and so it’s going to be a struggle. Our life is going to have to change.

She’s already been off two weeks unpaid and that’s two weeks where the mortgage is still running, the bills keep coming in, the cars need fuel, the kids need stuff…….and then there’s that other big bill…therapy.

What do I do about that? I was convinced in week one that I would have to give up my sessions. I was ready to go in and have that conversation – and I cried about it the night before. I guess that’s one plus point…I located where the tears are kept! After all if you have no money coming in and kids to feed and a roof to keep over your head then how can you justify £450/month on therapy? It’s simply not viable.

I still don’t know what is going to happen with this but I have decided not to make any panic moves. I’ve told Em what has happened but I didn’t quit therapy there and then because we are just about ok for a month or two with bills.  If things haven’t resolved with my wife’s job by September then there will have to be some serious decisions to be made. The idea of not having therapy right now terrifies me but at the end of the day as much as we might like to pretend it’s a relationship that will be there no matter what… if you can’t pay for it you can’t have it. End of.

Ugh.

Em and I are approaching the summer therapy break. This year she’s taking two blocks of two weeks – one at the start of the school holidays and another at the end. I am dreading it. I am crap with therapy breaks and this summer is going to be the most disrupted time we’ve had in the last three years. I always struggle in the summer break. However, I am trying hard to hang onto a slight positive here. I am trying to see the summer break as a respite from having a therapy bill – there is no therapy but I have not quit therapy… and hopefully this time will allow me and my wife to settle on some kind of financial even keel.

So, yeah, that’s my life right now x

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A Mixed (Mental!) Month

rubberbandsandchewinggum12 Comments

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I realised earlier today that it has been almost a month since my last post here where I wrote about the knackered house and renovation project metaphor for me in therapy… and I know that I also never followed up on what happened after I threw all my toys out the pram and terminated therapy via text only to send a desperate message back to Em less than an hour later to undo it!!

I don’t think I have ever gone more than 10 or 11 days without blogging but lately I haven’t had much time or much to say, or perhaps I have had too much to say and don’t know where to begin because I have had so little time? I dunno.

I guess if I am being completely honest, every time I have thought about writing here there is a part of me that has felt huge resistance to doing so. This is a weird feeling for me because usually I find it really cathartic letting stuff out on the page. I think there’s a bit of embarrassment or shame about the mess I have got myself in over the last month and I feel a bit of a moron and don’t want to publish what’s happening?

There’s a lot of internal conflict going on right now. The Inner Critic has been running free lately. It’s been agony. I guess part of my inability to write boils down to a concern that I simply can’t be doing with any additional external criticism at the moment in addition to the shit I am piling on myself – not that that is what happens here, most people are unbelievably supportive,  but I really don’t need to be told right now that perhaps my therapist isn’t right for me when there are enough of my own doubting parts shouting that! I don’t feel particularly resilient and so I think I’ve buried myself in a pit – it’s meant to be protective but actually is bloody miserable down here!

This blog has always been about me tracking/logging what’s going on in my therapy so that maybe one day I can (hopefully) look and go ‘wow look how far I’ve come!’ I don’t write here to entertain people. My hope is, perhaps, by writing about and sharing my experiences that it might help a few people who are feeling similar feelings to feel less alone but essentially this is my space to rant and moan, be bonkers and try and process the tangled mess that is my inner world… and so that’s what I am going to try and do…

So, rewind to the beginning of May and the meltdown. Yep. I went back to therapy. I mean of course I did. I felt embarrassed about my outburst but the world didn’t end. Em is still there (sitting in that chair that feels a million miles away), I am still in one piece (ok, maybe more of a mosaic of fragmented parts, but you know what I mean!) and the therapy is still ongoing…albeit limping along in a rather painful fashion.

I have been really struggling in my sessions lately. Everything has just felt so difficult.  Honestly – I could run a master class in dissociation! The sessions have been largely excruciating as I have been unable to let Em in and I have been feeling utterly distraught both inside and outside of the therapy room. I’ve been doing  a lot of writing and drawing in my therapy notebook. I have religiously been taking the book to the session and LEAVING IT IN MY BAG!!!

FFS!

It’s not even funny.

During the week, outside the sessions, and as I travel to session I am determined that I will mention that I want to share my writing with her and yet the moment I walk in the room something happens, a part steps up and says, ‘no fucking way!’ and instead I sit struggling to talk, feeling sick, and unable to connect with Em feeling the fifty minutes ebb away and feeling increasingly panicked that I am losing vital time.

I can barely look at her most of the time let alone make eye contact and it feels massively awkward and frustrating. I want to connect but am also terrified of letting her see me. It’s like one part of me is desperate to move forward and has a foot hard on the accelerator and another part has its foot to the floor on the brake. It’s not a pleasant sensation I can tell you … and I don’t think it can be doing the car much good either!

Still, because there are so many parts floating about right now it means I am experiencing a really mixed bag of feelings and I can feel like a hologram flitting sometimes. I know that this is the work and I need to ride it out but blooming heck, it’s not easy!

Despite barely looking at Em or talking to her, a few weeks ago I noticed that she wasn’t quite herself, she had a slight cough and looked really tired. She has never been ill/off sick in all the time I have been seeing her so I noticed even this subtle unwellness. I guess we have been programmed as kids to notice everything, subtle changes have, in the past, signalled danger I suppose.

As much as parts of me have been keeping her at arm’s length (giant monkey arms – that are really long) there are other parts that still want to be close and care deeply about this woman that has been sitting in that chair trying to help me get my shit together for the last few years. Ha.

I love her.

That’s no secret right?

So, one day after yet another painful session where I had failed to tell her that I was freaking out about being too much and worrying that I am ‘bombarding’ her I was in town after teaching my tutees and went into a crystal shop. I am a big fan of gem stones. I like the fact that they are beautiful in their own right but I also like that some people believe that certain gems perform particular roles or have certain healing properties. So far as I can work out it can’t do any harm to carry a few beautiful things around with you and perhaps them do a bit of good too even if it is all just in all in the mind? – lord knows I can do with some assistance with anxiety and communication!

I had gone to the shop with the idea of buying Em something. Gifts in therapy can be a complete minefield can’t they? Actually in all the years I have been seeing Em I have only given her one thing (aside from cards at Christmas and the therapy anniversary). Last year I gave her a small marble with a heart on which cost next to nothing. Similarly, the gem stones are not high value but rather meant to be symbolic, kind of, ‘I know it’s been complete dog shit lately but I care about you and hope these make you feel a bit better’.

Whenever I buy crystals for myself or for other people I choose them based on the colours I associate with them rather than reading all the information about what they are ‘meant to do’. Because Em lives by the sea and generally wears blues and pastel colours I tend to associate her with pale blues and turquoises. I saw these two stones, blue lace agate and amazonite and was instantly drawn to them:

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When I got home I looked up the meanings and they are meant to be helpful for communication (which has been a fucking great problem in our relationship lately!) and soothing physical ailments and emotional issues as well as stresses in the workplace.

Bingo!

So, the next session I went with them in my bag….where they stayed!

The session after that I wore dungarees and put them in the chest pocket…where they stayed! I did make a bit of a move towards giving her them, ‘can I give you something’ with ten minutes to go and then completely dissociated and sat in silence for ten minutes completely gone and didn’t hand them over. I got completely overcome with fear. I was terrified that giving her the stones would let her know that I care about her (which duh was the point, right?!)…which feels scary because it could end up in her rejecting me in some way and quite frankly everything has been so fragile I just couldn’t risk it…even though clearly part of me wanted to.

By the third session Em was completely better and in no need of the crystals at all- ha! I sat pondering what to do. She obviously knew I had wanted to give her something in the last session but didn’t push me to talk about it. This session hadn’t been a complete disaster and with about 5 minutes to go we seemed to finally connect. Man that’d been a long time coming! I felt brave enough to ask her if I could give her the gift with two minutes remaining. She asked me what it was. I was like, ‘I’m not going to tell you what it is before I give it to you, that’s not really how it works!’

She took the gift, unwrapped it, and said she liked them very much. I explained the meaning behind them and she seemed genuinely surprised that I had noticed that she hadn’t been well. Then she did the therapisty bit about saying she thought it would be useful it we could have a conversation about them next time because she thought it would be helpful. I agreed…but before I left she just had enough time to put her foot in it:

‘When people give me gifts it can be really useful to talk about the meaning behind them. Then when the therapy is finishing I get the gift out again (because I don’t throw things away) and we discuss it again. Then people might take it back away with them as a symbol of the work we have done.’

Now. Perhaps it’s me…BUT… this made me bristle hugely for lots of reasons. To start, we had just gone through a month of hell in the therapy and this was, in part, me trying to get reconnected and show that whilst I might be resistant and difficult at times she does really matter to me and that I care about her and think about her when I am not with her. To be reminded at this point of ‘other people who give her gifts’ felt shit.

I mean I know I am ‘one of many’ but at the moment I didn’t need to be reminded of the clinical nature of the relationship. I’m under no illusions that this is a therapeutic alliance but it is our relationship – I don’t particularly want to hear about what she does with other people!

Then for her to say she doesn’t throw things away…I mean it hadn’t occurred to me that something I might give her would end up in the bin and whilst she was saying she doesn’t do that it seemed an odd thing to say.

Then finally, and this is the big one…I cannot imagine when my therapy comes to an end Em getting the things I have given her out, talking them through again and then saying I can take them all away with me would feel therapeutic AT ALL. In fact, right now, I think it would send me back into therapy!!

The idea that the things I would give her that have meaning could be given back so easily feels really rejecting. I can’t really explain what I mean but it’s something about me wanting her to have something that symbolises our relationship when I am gone and it feels like what she is saying is at the end she can wipe the slate clean ready for the next person to take the Monday 10:30 slot and the Friday 9:30 slot. Maybe I am just being oversensitive but it felt crap.

I went home and wrote in my book how I was feeling about what she had said and my feelings about it…and the words are still sitting on the page and she hasn’t seen them! By the time it was the next session and she brought up the gift again I had shut down and didn’t want to talk about it at all. She said something about them being about care or something but I can’t even remember now. I just felt angry and hurt. I dunno, something I wanted to be connecting just felt totally crap.

(Remember, I did say it’s been a really bad time lately!)

Then there were a few more hard sessions and then I had a holiday! Hurrah.

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Tbh I was glad to get away. I really needed a break. It was glorious and I wish I was still there! I have been working really hard lately. Teaching loads of sessions (the joy of exam season and teaching both English Literature and English Language GCSE and A Level) which has meant six days a week and lots of late nights. No wonder I have been strung out and useless in therapy!

I have realised that therapy cannot be done effectively when running on empty. It just becomes an exercise in firefighting crisis feelings because my piddly letterbox of tolerance is wedged shut. I am sure that things have felt as bad as they have because my day-to-day life has left me exhausted and overwrought. I just haven’t had capacity to hold all my pieces together properly and so when I have got to my sessions the wheels have fallen off because it’s been the only safe place in the week for that to happen. Pushing Em away has felt like the only thing I can do because if I really say how things are I might actually completely disintegrate.

Anyway, a week in the sun was just what the doctor ordered….actually this is true. At my last cancer follow up it was discovered I am deficient in vitamin D so a bit of sun was perfect (alongside my supplements!).

But of course the holiday also meant THERAPY BREAK – boo hiss – and do you know what made it even worse? She was not on holiday at the same time this year. So parts of me felt really sad that I was missing out on my sessions.

Honestly, this attachment stuff is kicking me in the ass right now!

Whilst the holiday was absolutely fantastic the return to therapy didn’t go brilliantly. What a surprise. The first session back, as I have said a million times before, is rarely easy and this last week was no different. Knowing I had a lot to say but also knowing that I have sat on stuff for six weeks I made the fatal error of sending a text on Sunday night asking Em to go through my writing in the notebooks with me and explaining that she has suggested that maybe I need to take a leap of faith in therapy and that this felt really risky but I was willing to try. I was so desperate to move things forward.

When I arrived Em immediately said that she’d seen I had sent her a text but that she hadn’t read it. FFS. I hate this. Straight away it set the protector parts on guard and I felt instantly like she simply doesn’t give a fuck about me so why on earth would I make a leap towards her when she simply isn’t in the least bit interested in me? Em tried to help me back into the room but I was upset and shut down. I asked her to read the text. She acknowledged how breaks stir things up but that also things had been really hard even before the break blah blah blah.

Then, whoop whoop, another great moment.

A lecture about communications outside the room and how she doesn’t want me to text or email her but wants to get to understand what makes me want to communicate with her when she is not available to me because I can’t seem to let her in when she is there. She used a feeding analogy. She’s done this before. She likens me to a hungry baby that for whatever reason cannot feed when mother is there and available to me and yet when she’s gone I realise just how starving I am and start desperately trying to feed and get increasingly upset. I know why this happens but trying to explain this feels too hard when my adult is unavailable because when the youngest parts are active the words aren’t.

I had been sitting swimming in the room, struggling to stay present, unable to really talk…I could see Em was frustrated and I said, ‘I feel like you are really frustrated with me’. She owned her frustration and said that she’s aware that it’s been awful for me lately and that she wonders if I think what we are doing is ‘good enough’ for me and if ‘she can help me’.

FUCK.

We all know what I heard at that point: she’s given up; my silences and dissociation have finally pushed her away; she doesn’t want to work with me.

She said that she wasn’t saying that the work was over or that she didn’t want to work with me but that she sees how painful it’s been for me. Try telling my brain that! It can’t hear you!!

Ugh.

I did manage to talk a bit and let some stuff out at this point. I think it was a panicked response to feeling like I might get terminated if I didn’t get my start talking soon. I can’t remember what I said now, though! But whatever it was it was vulnerable and open enough that Em said something about how the frustration had gone and that we can work through this together. She said that she thinks we need to work very explicitly with the parts, especially the ones that are resistant and gagging all the others.

This is good.

I think this is what I think needs to happen too.

She suggested maybe when things feel really blocked in session that perhaps I could write or draw…I like this idea but often when I am in a really bad spot there simply aren’t any words or pictures I’m just in a black pit of hell. However, there are times when I am not away in dissociative hell but struggling to speak that I think it might work really well.

Despite all the positives once we connected, I left Monday’s session feeling rock bottom. Everything felt wrong inside. I know I have a tendency to latch onto the one ‘bad thing’ I hear and then fixate on it rather than notice all the evidence of what is good in a session. I felt so far away from Em that my default coping mechanisms kicked in this week…or rather the Inner Critic stepped up to try and get some kind of control over the shit that was consuming me. Step one – incessant self-attacking voice:

‘You’re fucking pathetic. Look at you. Even your therapist can’t fucking stand you. She’s been so patient but you’ve managed to wear her out too. I don’t know why you would think she cares about you – she doesn’t…you’re wasting your time.’

It never takes very long for that incessant nagging to turn its attention to my body and eating. This week saw a rapid descent into being super critical of my figure. I felt like wanted to cut fat off my body. I started restricting what I was eating and got my trainers out after a year and went on a six mile run and then started on the outdoor gym across the road three days on the bounce…and between Tuesday and Saturday lost 3lb.

It’s not brilliant.

I can feel how things have switched in my head.

I knew, on Friday, that I had to tell Em what’s happening.

This, in itself, is a sign of progress, I think. The thing with my eating disorder is that I have always kept it secret when it is active. I have never talked about it in therapy (and it’s been there for twenty years soooo!) until last year when things got really bad and I was barely functioning. It started off ok, talking, and then it turned into nightmare and resulted in Em giving me an ultimatum after a few sessions. One session I came in and she was stony faced and serious. She told me that she wanted me to see my GP or we’d have to work towards an ending. In fairness to her I can see she was acting out of care and worry about my physical health, I had lost heaps of weight really radpidly and it was having an impact on my ability to function but it felt like I had been run over by a bus hearing her tell me that we would be done if things continued as they are.

That session was painful and we did manage to have a really productive conversation in the end and things got much better with me and I got a handle on my ED….however, that threat of an ending has stayed with me and fills me with fear when I think about what might happen in the future if things get bad.

On Friday, therefore I took a bravery pill and towards the end of the session told her things were sliding and that as a result I was worried about ‘losing her’. She responded really well. There was no time left but we have put this discussion on the table for today and I hope that it’ll go ok. I hope she will see that I have brought it into the room (even though it feels dangerous to do so) because that’s what I promised last year. I said to her that if things started to slip I would let her know before it had chance to become a big problem.

I can’t say I am not nervous. I am. But actually, at this point, there is so much work that I have been avoiding since Easter that I just need to dive in and see what happens….like my out of control octopus in my notebook!

bb111138-b4c9-49ae-be62-b2ba317459a1Throughout all this, Em has tried to reach me. Parts of me can hear it….it’s just there’s a couple of really noisy parts that are screaming right now about not trusting her and undermining the therapy. Basically, the house renovation has encountered a few snags lately! But I’m in this for the long haul so I will get things sorted…eventually!

So…that’s about it…up to speed in a very very long post! There’s obviously been a lot more said than all of that but after nearly 4000 words I think I’ll stop.

 

 

 

Therapy Is Hard Work…

rubberbandsandchewinggum15 Comments

Therapy is hard work! But we knew that already, didn’t we?! It’s funny – not funny ‘haha’ more funny ‘strange’ to think a lot of  people still assume that therapy is just going and talking to someone who listens, says nice things, and makes you feel better each week – basically a ‘paid for’ friend. Ha! I wish it were as simple as that!

I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to explain to people whom I know that know I am ‘still in therapy’ (‘how much therapy does one person need?!’) that doing depth work isn’t about pasting over the cracks or simply patching the hole in the roof for a few months and then sending you off out in the big wide world again only now with a thin veneer of ‘coping’ laid on top of whatever the issue is. I’ve done this short-term work in the past (in my early twenties) and I can say it only took a few rainstorms for the problems to be exposed again.

I am sure, for some people, CBT and short-term work is totally fine. Maybe if you just have one small hole in the roof, or a bit of wallpaper that keeps flapping in the corner of the room (or you’re just a pro at doing therapy!), then working on some strategies to fix the leak/paste the paper back might be quick work and that’s therapy done. When I first entered the therapy room I hoped my problems were largely cosmetic. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case. Having undergone a full survey it’s pretty apparent that the issues are structural and abundant.

I mean let’s be real here, despite first (misleading) appearances, when you get close, my building is bordering on derelict. There’s more holes in the roof than slates on it, everything has a distinctly precarious off-centre lean, there’s woodworm, rising damp, and all manner of missing bits and pieces: floorboards, doors, windows…! It’s not what you’d call ‘habitable’ right now but it’s all I have so I have to camp out whilst I do the work.

Therapy, for me, is a bit like undergoing a complete renovation. The therapy/my therapist is providing a scaffold to sure up the main frame of the building whilst I painstakingly, bit by bit, strip layer after layer back ready to rebuild from the ground up a solid, storm-proof me… it’s taking a while, longer than I had anticipated, and I’ve gone way over budget (!!! OMG I wince at the $£$£), because every now and again just as I start some delicate reconstruction work a bloody great tempest whips up and starts shaking everything with force and then more bits and pieces fly off and I realise I haven’t actually got back to the base on which it is safe to build. Ugh. Annoying!

Every floor of the building is pretty fucked – so much work to do!… and the central stair well is rickety as hell too. Every tread has an issue on it: C-PTSD, Anorexia, Anxiety, Stress, Depression, Fear, Doubt, Shame, Panic, Lethargy, Grief… I hate walking up and down these stairs but it is unavoidable if I am to sort the building out. I am trying to install a handrail at the minute and make sure there aren’t any sneaky holes on the stairs that I might get my foot wedged in. I’m aware that certain areas are more dicey than others: anorexia looks solid but it’s a bloody nightmare and I can find myself waist deep and dangling if I misjudge my step.

As my holiday approaches in two weeks time signalling a two session therapy break I can see that I need to be especially careful not to go arse over tit as I carry my suitcase out over the C-PTSD step…I want to enjoy my holiday. I want to leave this ramshackle project behind so I can have a rest, regroup, and start again on my return with renewed vigour and energy. I guess we’ll have to see what happens, though.

One thing I can be sure of: no one is going to burgle me whilst I’m gone!

giphy-downsized-10

 

It’s Been A While…

rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments

giphy-3

It’s been a while since I have had a full-on meltdown in therapy…but I fell off the wagon in rather spectacular fashion yesterday and completely lost my mind! Believe me, I totally see the irony in this, especially after how the last post I wrote was about being in an ok place and saying that I felt like I was ready to move forward with some of the stuff that has been bothering me since before the Easter therapy break. Alas, the good intentions were all there but actually doing what is necessary or saying what needs to be said when the entire system is in conflict and the teen parts and Inner Critic take control isn’t easy!

I had intended to go back to my sessions, show Em my picture/diagram about what had caused me to be so upset in the last session heading into the break (the mention of possible ‘bombardment’ in the future being a reason to end therapy and the Friday text being revoked)  and try and unpick what was really going on. Last week I was able to see that my reaction was big and not of the here and now. Something about the idea of one day being too much or overstepping a boundary tapped into something huge and really set the cat among the pigeons. Em was trying to tell me that actually things were ok in the therapy and we weren’t in a dicey place and yet her trying to reassure me just did not work at all…and then a two week break…well, we all know where that sends me!

So on Friday I went in and tried really hard to talk but just couldn’t. The first session back is always notoriously shit. I just can’t really connect and it all feels like a disaster zone. I can’t really remember all the details because I seem to be experiencing a bit of stress amnesia. I know the session was only a week ago but my brain is in panic mode and is muddled. What I do know is that my notebook sat in my bag burning a hole through the fabric asking to be acknowledged but I conveniently ignored it. Shame and embarrassment were bubbling away and the idea of sharing that really vulnerable hurt part of me felt impossible. I did manage to tell Em that I wasn’t ok and that something that had happened before the break had upset me a lot and that whilst I know it wasn’t deliberate I still was hurting about it and part of me hadn’t wanted to come to the session so I suppose that’s something at least!

I left the session a bit frustrated with myself but didn’t beat myself up too much about what had gone on (not gone on!!). I’m used to this funny little dance we do after breaks (more like a game of cat and mouse actually!) and decided that rather than criticise myself about my inability to jump right into the hard, vulnerable stuff I’d instead accept that parts of me just weren’t ready to go there yet and that the time would come and to trust in the process.

I do wonder, though,  why after all these years a couple of weeks break sees my lose all sense of connection and trust in this woman? It’s agony really. I mean I know why it happens but part of me is still like WHHYYYYYYY?!!!!

Still, the session was ok in that we did some ground work – a lot of checking in on my body, noticing all the changes I was experiencing and naming them etc and it felt connecting to talk around the issue even if I couldn’t say exactly what the problem was. I went away from the session and drew another picture in my notebook trying to explain the process that had happened inside when I had told her I hadn’t wanted to come to the session (well, part of me hadn’t wanted to!! Others were desperate to see her!):

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The weekend went by fairly quickly and when Monday arrived I felt nervous about the session. I knew that I just needed to get the bloody notebook out the goddamn bag and get the ball rolling (or open my bloody mouth!) …how hard could that be? – turns out, VERY HARD! By the time I arrived at session I felt so sick and it was hard to distinguish whether I was highly anxious or actually on the verge of sick bug….does anyone else get the complete body meltdown? It’s been a long while since I’ve actually thrown up before a session (it did used to happen a lot) but the unhelpful diarrhoea before a session is really an issue again right now. Clearly I’m really agitated! argh!

Anyway, as I walked up the driveway to Em’s house my body was screaming out that things weren’t safe. I had wound myself up into a tight little ball of stress by the time I walked into the room. During the session my stomach was so noisy that it was utterly embarrassing. It was so clearly audible for such a protracted period of time that it couldn’t be ignored. It became a bit of a joke in the end because I was largely mute and yet my gut was having a conversation! Em was saying how clearly parts of me want to speak and how the stomach/digestive system often expresses emotions — I agreed… tried to laugh it off and couldn’t help but think of the raving shits I have been experiencing lately… obv didn’t mention that, though! 😉

Again we talked about how I was feeling even if I couldn’t tell her exactly what the problem was. It was such a difficult session. I would get to a point where I would feel settled and grounded and ready to talk and then WHAM the moment I brought to mind the feelings about her leaving or being fed up with me or whatever my body would freak out and I’d dissociate. This happened over and over again.

Towards the end of the session I managed to tell Em that it felt like surfing on a stormy day. There are some days you head to the beach, especially in the winter, and look out at the sea and notice that the wave rate is rapid and that because the waves are big and the sea is stormy there is a lot of white water. This makes paddling out to the back really hard because there is so much power in the white water. No matter whether you try and paddle over the waves or dive under them you can you rarely make any forward momentum…it’s just perpetual paddling and pushbacks… and it is exhausting.

Em asked me what I do in that situation. I told her that I ‘get the f*ck out and go home’…which is true but I don’t think really the helpful answer so far as how we tackle the metaphorical surf problem in the therapy room. I basically need to get to beyond the waves that are battering me so I can talk…going home won’t fix it! She said she understood what I was saying and then gently told me that we weren’t in the sea, and I said that I knew that and that this is what was so frustrating for me. Part of me knows I am safe, that symbolically the sea is actually calm, that I am not going drown but my body just doesn’t and my body keeps overriding my attempts to speak.

It was total hell.

With five minutes to go, following that sea conversation we really connected….why? Because I allowed myself to make eye-contact and tune into what she was actually saying. I saw what was in front of me (a caring, warm, patient woman who is consistently there and safe) rather than dreading what I fear her to be (rejecting, abandoning, mocking). I wish I could just do this when I feel scared and disconnected – but as I have said before, eye-contact in therapy is really difficult for me. It feels so exposing… and yet … so necessary for me to feel connected. Every time I avoid looking at Em I starve myself of connection. I know this. I am an idiot, you don’t need to tell me!

I left the session feeling optimistic and seen. I felt like it was going to be ok on Friday despite the hell that it had been for 45 mins in that session. That final connecting conversation was so important. On Monday evening I decided to email Em my two drawings from the notebook with a simple message to ask her to kick me in session on Friday so I didn’t avoid talking again. That filled me with panic (I didn’t want to bombard her) but at the same time I knew that despite my best efforts I had just spent two fucking sessions not talking about what I need to talk about because I haven’t had the balls to get a bloody book out a sodding bag. Ugh.

The week took a nose dive. I couldn’t hang on to that sense lovely sense of connection as I moved through the week. It was like groundhog day with a spiralling sense of panic and disconnection. I honestly felt like I wanted to crawl into a hole and die on Wednesday because the attachment pain had got so bad. I had convinced myself (again) that Em wasn’t safe, that I couldn’t trust her, and that she doesn’t care. Fun times!

So, after what seemed like a million long drawn out minutes it was finally Friday. Whooop whoop/EEEEEEEeeeeKKKKK!!! I drove to my session and could feel the shame rising and my entire system was in panic. I arrived at Em’s and sat down. I couldn’t look at her. I joked that I was swimming in a pool of shame and then retreated deep into myself. I had hoped at things would be ok. That somehow I’d get out of my hole and connect and get over this stupid stuckness. Adult Me know that what’s going on has spiralled into something huge and actually Em doesn’t hate me….but try telling that to the teen parts that are so massively activated.

Usually when I send something via email to Em she doesn’t read it (which is a boundary I don’t like but can just about accept). We have agreed that I can send stuff but that we will talk about it in the room…and this is what I wanted to happen. The general run of things would go something like, ‘you sent me a message would you like to talk about it?’  (meanwhile getting her ipad ready). I usually say ‘no but yes’ and then we get to it…and it’s ok. Only this didn’t happen on Friday. Em said, ‘You emailed me, but I haven’t opened it, I just saw the title’… there was no invitation to discuss it and it felt like a huge rejection That was enough for me to go into hiding but oh my god the teens were absolutely raging.

From that point on I could not hear a thing Em was saying to me. I was furious and hurting. Why am I not important? Why doesn’t she care? She can see I am struggling and hurting but isn’t helping me talk…blah blah. It wasn’t long before The Inner Critic showed up and went to town on me. I was sitting on the sofa. Still. And yet inside I was thinking of all the horrible things I would do to myself when I got home. It was like mentally flicking a catalogue in self-harm. It was just hideous.

Anyway, I don’t actually remember much of the session – i.e what Em said because I was trapped in my own personal abandonment hell. I have since gone back over the session and it sounds so different to what I experienced. Em was trying really hard with me and yet at every turn I was shutting her out.

I could feel time drifting away and knew we were near the end of the session. I asked how much time was left and no surprises I’d sat brooding in near silence for the best part of forty minutes. We were into that special ten minute window where I panic and have to get stuff said for fear of being left with crap til the next session…really I only need ten minute sessions! haha. Em asked what I was thinking. I quietly said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’. That was the teen who is just desperately sad, wants to be seen, to connect, but despite everything keeps pushing away and in doing so feels like Em is a million miles away.

You can probably guess what came next?!

Em replied, ‘you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to’… and there was the stinging rejection (to that part at least!). When it’s like that all I want is to be told that I am safe in the relationship and we can work through it. Being told I can leave whenever I want feels like she doesn’t care whether I stay or go. (I know this is NOT what she is saying, it’s just how it feels!) Em continued and said something about different parts feeling different things but that the part that hates therapy and struggles with opening up and being seen was really present. She was right, of course. She gently asked me what was making that part feel like she needed to leave.

I started saying something about how in the previous session Em had told me that I had an intense need for connection and how rubbish that felt because it made me feel like I am too much, too intense, too bad. Em immediately countered by saying that this is not what she had meant me to take from that at all. That connection is not a bad thing and we all have an intense need to connect…and that it is unsurprising I need the connection so badly because it was so lacking as I grew up. This bolstered me somewhat and I alluded to feeling like I didn’t know where the line/boundary is and that since she had said the word ‘bombardment’ (even though it wasn’t about something in the here and now and is about a hypothetical future) I have just gone into hiding because I am scared to talk and ‘bombard’ her and be too much and too intense and then she’ll end the therapy.

Look, I know this is bonkers but it is coming from a young and wounded place and that part of me has been abandoned and rejected and told I am too much in the past. This is just playing out again in the therapy now. Em was so nice and validating and warm and….I just didn’t hear her at all! I was so caught up in my shame and embarrassment and hurt that everything she said felt wrong (to the part that was fronting) and then the session was up and that pissed me off too. I was angry at myself and angry at Em for not helping me talk. Which is ironic because now I have heard it back that was all she was trying to do!! FFS!

Anyway, I left the session feeling totally distraught. I got in my car. Turned my stereo up loud and drove away boiling with rage and hurt. I had to go to work but I was so overcome that I pulled the car over after about five minutes and fired off a text.

FUCK.

I DON’T DO THAT!

After the shit show that was Christmas 2017 I am done with complicated angry texts! haaha. But I literally was so ‘done’ yesterday that there was no adult to talk me down. I didn’t need time to think about it I just went ahead and quit therapy.

Like really.

Then I drove the forty minutes into the city and on the journey adult came back online…OMFG WTAF have I done???????

I didn’t know what to do. What if Em just accepted my message and didn’t reply?

Oh god.

I’ve really done it now.

Panic.

What do I do?

So I sent a second message trying to explain I was having a complete meltdown and wanted to come back on Monday and hoped for the best.

I sent the message and stared at my phone. I could see she’d read the termination message and hadn’t replied…fuck…

But the minute I sent that second message I could see Em was replying (the joy of I-message …) and she responded with ‘Ok, see you on Monday’…which on any other day of the week would probably send me into a spiral but frankly I am taking it as a win because I haven’t just flushed my therapy down the toilet and can go do the talk of shame on Monday!

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This isn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last time that I throw my toys out the pram in therapy. I have been in this territory before … but the thing that has shocked me is that I really thought I was past having tantrums. Clearly not! ha.

So, yeah, there we are. I’m just laughing at myself really. And you know what’s even funnier? I have spent the last month getting fixated on a word and digging a deep trench and feeling like Em doesn’t care and building walls and pushing her away…and yet I know Monday will be fine because the relationship is solid, she cares about me is committed to helping me and can handle my meltdowns…

Still, that’s what teenagers do isn’t it? Push and see where the boundaries are?!!

Time To Move On…

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

Oh crikey! It’s a little bit (a lot) messy in my brain right now! It’s not a complete disaster/shit show…it’s just… I dunno…I can’t quite put my finger on what’s going on inside. I don’t feel anything major – I am not down, or manic, or anything really – I just am.  I wrote a while back (sometime last year!) about being in a good place and I guess that’s sort of where I am again now – or perhaps I should say, like the therapists do a ‘good enough’ place. lol!

Thankfully, I got over my stuckness/ennui that I was suffering when I wrote my last blog post and have had a thoroughly enjoyable, relaxing end to my Easter holiday. I am still in denial about having to return to work… even though I went back yesterday! Ha. I swear that Tuesday was the most Monday I have ever experienced! The next few days are enormous so far as workload goes – the only saving grace is that it’s payday next week and so at least I get to see some reward for all the hard work….although once all the bills go out – pah – there’s not much left! Ah well, I am not going lament the lack of cash because I know that I am very lucky in the grand scheme of things and whilst I might like more treats (shoes!) I am able to feed us all and keep a roof over our heads – and that, in today’s world is no mean feat.

So, back to whatever this is…

In the last week of the school holiday we were blessed her in the UK with totally gorgeous weather – it was 23-25 degrees and sunny most days where I live (that’s Summer done now, then!) and we found ourselves relaxing into living outdoors: barbecues, bike rides, reading books under the cherry tree, going for ice-cream etc. The whole pace of life slowed down and the days seemed to last forever – you know like when you were a kid? It was great AND very very necessary. I posted a few things about living my best life on other social media platforms and that’s really how it felt. To be able to breathe deeply and slow down for a bit was so restorative.

Despite being active with the kids this last week (lie ins are a thing of the past!) I feel well-rested and that is very good news given the half-term of work that lies ahead (buries head in sand! ‘lala lala I can’t hear you!’). I think that says a lot about just how tiring day-to-day life can be having to hold so much in mind and be in so many places… breaks are necessary! (just not for therapists 😉 !! haha) On the plus side it has also started raining here today which means that I don’t feel rubbish about having to do work now when I would much rather be relaxing in my garden under this beauty!

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Interestingly, as the working week started up again yesterday, and real life/work life got moving all kinds of anxieties about therapy came flooding back in that have been largely silent this last week. BUMMER! I have started having a belting number of therapy dreams too!! Ha – that old chestnut!

I have written a few posts about therapy dreams over the last couple of years and how they seem to happen when I am on a therapy break so I am hardly surprised that just as sessions are about to resume on Friday that all the stuff about being abandoned and rejected and uncared for and bleurgh! puke! ugh! starts marinating in my unconscious. Joy! It’s almost like my mind is getting ready for what lies ahead by shovelling heaps of turd on my head before I go to session. Like, perhaps if my mind repeatedly makes me live out ‘worst case scenario’ in my dreams then it likely to not be as bad in real life….you know, fear the worst and hope for the best sort of thing?!

Anyway, all I can say is that thank god I am a little better at not acting on the feelings or paying too much heed to what I am left with after these kind of horrible dreams. There have been times when I have gone through the whole gamut of emotions and all the parts would have had some kind of meltdown revolving around: sadness, rage, no fucks given….and would seriously have considered terminating therapy because I was emotionally overwrought and triggered! A bad dream could completely derail me and leave me not properly talking to my therapist for a month (really – that did happen!) but now I can see that the messages that are coming up for me are important but are not real life and actually probably aren’t really rooted in the here and now….like I have anxieties about the therapeutic relationship (no shit!) but my therapist has not ever actually physically pushed me away or mocked me or told me I am overreacting – this is old stuff replaying in this relationship….I still go through the emotional cycle of sadness/rage/no fucks given but actually I am aware of the cycle now and can notice it and wonder about it rather than being completely swamped by it for days and weeks on end. Phew!

So, yeah, there’s lots to be bringing to session on Friday! My notebook is full of dreams and bits and bobs… Although I doubt my dream world will get a look in this week because I have other stuff to attend to too….like the last session before the break (eek!) and the fact that last week I seriously, and calmly, considered whether I need to do therapy any more – whether I really need two sessions a week – whether it was time to move on from therapy? When I ask myself this question, usually I get a resounding ‘Nooooooooo!!!’ from the little parts who balk at the very thought of leaving Em, but last week there was no internal noise at all.

I suspect this is, in part, because I have those parts on lockdown. After the disaster in attachment hell that happened last Easter and a rapid descent into an anorexic nightmare I have been super mindful of not giving those parts and those painful feelings too much space. I don’t want rerun of all that agony again…

Still, it is interesting for me to think about where I am at with therapy and my ‘healing journey’. I think it’s important to reflect on where I am at and notice what feelings come up when I consider the end of therapy as they can change so rapidly. Deep down I know I have a shit tonne more work to do with Em but I also need to give myself credit that there is progress being made and that I am actually even able to consider the end of therapy when the time is right.

I think it’s natural, too, to question why you would put yourself through a significant period of therapy. Because it certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted! This isn’t surface level stuff. It’s deep-diving. It’s not easy. It requires a lot of commitment and, dare I say it, bravery. Sometimes it feels like an exercise in masochism (!) and I wonder, when, like on this holiday, I get over the initial hell that is the start of a therapy break and settle into just living my life (where I am actually fine) if therapy is actually doing me any good. My adult life is pretty good. I am quite adept at adulting, actually….so then I wonder what drives me to keep repeatedly picking at the scab of the past. Why don’t I just put everything behind me, live in the now, and stop dredging, and poking, and prodding the Mother Wound week in week out year after year??? That’s a question!!

I absolutely have made progress with my therapy. I am still bothered by LOTS of stuff but I am a little more accepting of myself now and have a greater ability to step back and let things settle rather so that’s all good. I do wonder a little bit, though, if sometimes the ‘I’m gonna go it alone’ thought comes, in part, because when my therapist is not here I have to do it for myself. Maybe not going back is like an, ‘I don’t need you’ ?  I don’t know! I’d like to think the thoughts I have been having this week have been coming from an adult place, but who bloody knows?! haha.

Anyway, whilst my adult has been in the driving seat this last week or so, I can’t say that was the case in my last session before the break. Cringe! Em and I discussed at length how I was feeling about the break. I managed to say quite a bit and not get too dissociated but … ugh… I hate these conversations. I hate when we skirt around the edges but I also hate being under the full beam of the spotlight. Telling Em I hate breaks and that I feel unstable and worried and all that jazz is just horrid. It was a good conversation, to be fair, and did make me feel safe enough to get Em to have another look at the picture in my book I had drawn where I had drawn her tangled in barbed wire on her chair and me – labelled ‘toxic’- sitting on the sofa.

Em, bless her, was really ‘puzzled’ as to why I would think that she would see me as a toxic person, because she said this is ‘absolutely not the case’. Then she tried, I think, to try and make me see that things are ok and that therapy, as it is, is fine and secure….only it didn’t quite come off!

This part of the session went like this:

“The time I would stop seeing you would either be when I am ill, or on breaks…but breaks is not stopping seeing you. We’d have to end if you started being physically violent towards me – but I personally don’t see that in you…or if it was very very difficult to… if you bombarded me with stuff and we couldn’t move on that then that would be difficult. I’ve said to you many times that it’s preferable if you bring things here and we can talk about things here because this is where it happens other than that I…’

Then she elaborated on how she sees me as a person who has had to go through some really difficult stuff and have developed some coping mechanisms that aren’t easy – and that I need to control stuff and cover stuff and that there are some extremely disturbed parts inside. She said she is not blind to the impact of prolonged self-harm but that she does in no way see me as toxic and she wonders what it is that I could say to her that makes me think that she will end the therapy. I didn’t really hear this part at the time because I was in full-blown panic about the idea of ‘bombardment’.

The session was finished and right at the end she told me that I need not text her on Friday mornings to tell her I was going to be there in person because lately I have been able to get there and not Skype and so now just to text her if I can’t get there and need to Skype. That’s simple enough right? Sure. BUT not when my brain is having a complete meltdown about worrying that my therapist feels bombarded by outside contact (not that there is much at all)…

Anyway it was enough to send me into a steep nosedive as I drove home. I ended up writing this out in my notebook to try and explain what was going on for me during that part of the session – I don’t know if it is very readable on screen:

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So yeah, there’s plenty to talk about on Friday! Aaargghh! I guess there’s a bit of irony in the fact that I have been considering whether I need to be in therapy when this is the sort of stuff a five minute conversation can generate! The positive is that, now I can actually take this stuff to session and talk it through – I can do the work…whereas before I would have sat brooding on it and attacking myself for how I feel. That’s good right?!

I won’t lie. I am shitting it a bit about Friday. I don’t ever really like the first session back after a break. I behave strangely…like testing the waters…is she still safe??? etc. So, it’ll be a miracle really if I do tackle this stuff head on…might wait til Monday!! HA!

 

Ennui

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

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I remember coming across the word ‘ennui’ years (and years!) ago when I was studying for my A Level in English Literature. I liked the word (I was one of those weird kids that used to like reading the thesaurus and trying to expand my vocabulary! #geek) and related to it instantly (as well as the character who was stuck in this lethargic state in the novel we were studying).

Almost twenty years down the line I can safely say that ennui has been a state I have visited regularly enough…. for me it’s on the road to depression but not fully there, kind of like a half-way point. It’s irritating beyond words because it feels like a paralysis in a similar way to how a full-blown depressive episode is only I don’t feel desperately sad or hopeless…I just have no energy to do anything. I am bored and unoccupied. I should motivate myself to do something but feel devoid of ‘get up and go’ so have just moped about doing nothing, and in doing nothing I am getting increasingly frustrated. It is bonkers!

I have done absolutely nothing with my day today. I have literally been sitting on the couch sighing long deep sighs. My wife suggested I go out for a few hours on my own: I couldn’t be arsed. She encouraged me to go read a book: ‘I have nothing to read’ (despite the huge pile of books beside my bed!). I have had all day to maybe sit here and write this blog: I couldn’t even be bothered to go get the laptop. It’s like that. I am not depressed (I don’t think) I am just tired and I have nothing to do (despite there being loads I could be doing!)…I feel like a fractious toddler who is overtired and no matter what you try and do for it you can’t please it.

I know usually I am moaning on about being ‘too busy’ or being ‘spread a bit thin’, or feeling ‘overwrought’… for a long time I have not had time or space to plunge into a state of ennui. BUT my god am I stuck in a stupor now!! Jeez. It’s madness. I have been hanging on by the skin of my teeth to get to this Easter holiday. I have absolutely needed a break from work and the pressure of being in so many places all the time…and yet, now I have the luxury of staying in bed a little longer in the morning or sitting on the sofa and doing nothing, I feel stir crazy…but also can’t be bothered to do anything about it.

I wonder what this is about?

Maybe I just don’t know how to relax? My life is generally on fast forward and so anything other than 100mph feels alien. I dunno.  I am now on a therapy break and that stirred up all kind of feelings … until today where I simply can’t be arsed to care (dissociation maybe!). Perhaps this feeling is something to do with all that? Like there’s some part of me that is a saboteur? Maybe I can’t actually just sit back, relax, and enjoy my time off because it’s a therapy break. I don’t think it’s so cut and dried as that….but I suspect (know) that not being back in session until the 26th has something to do with it.

I actually don’t have very much more to say on the matter right now –  I can’t even think about it properly – I’m just a big blob of ‘meh’. So, I am just going to go lie down and sigh a bit more like Duck! ha!

*I give full permission for people to give me giant kicks up the backside next week when I am back at work and moaning about being stressed and over-stretched for not fully appreciating time off. I will get my shit together and write a proper post before I go back to work too.

 

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Therapy: Beware Of The Emotional Rollercoaster!

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

I’m off to Alton Towers for a couple of days with my kids after my therapy session tomorrow… it reminded me of this post!! I don’t know which I’m more nervous about- the rollercoaster in the room or actual rides in the park! 🙄😂 Lots of you will have seen this before but there’s been quite a few new followers here over the last couple of months and I think this is probably one of my better blog posts!

Therapy: Beware Of The Emotional Rollercoaster!

https://rubberbandsandchewinggum.com/2018/07/14/therapy-beware-of-the-emotional-rollercoaster/
— Read on rubberbandsandchewinggum.com/2018/07/14/therapy-beware-of-the-emotional-rollercoaster/

Blogs Don’t Write Themselves!

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

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Oh the irony! I’ve just been sitting here for a couple of minutes, with an empty screen, not knowing what to write, with no title in mind, and then just near the publish button a red note flashed up ‘you haven’t written anything yet’…like seriously give me a bloody break already! I know this!! I’m here and trying – and even the platform is giving me hell for being wordless! haha.

Seriously, though, I am yet again very aware that time is motoring on and I have written nothing here again. There’s been a lot of really good (but hard) stuff going on in my therapy and yet I just haven’t made it here to log it/blog it. Look, I know the earth isn’t going to fall off its axis if this blog suddenly dies but as I frequently keep saying, I actually enjoying writing it and want to keep this going if I can.

Next week is actually the start of the school Easter break here in the UK so I think I might actually get some time to sit and drink coffee and type (kids permitting!)…and lord knows once Em goes on her holiday I’ll have plenty of content won’t I? #therapybreak #abandonment #arghhhh! So hopefully I can get myself back up to speed.

It’s not helped that this last week I have been struck down with a monster lurgy and have basically been surviving on a cocktail of painkillers and sleep (my teaching hasn’t been up to much!…present in body and that’s about it!). It’s not even funny. I honestly thought I had dodged the bullet this winter having avoided getting anything that involved snot and/or too much coughing but no – it all went to shit on Saturday night at rapid pace when I was out with a friend for a belated birthday celebration.

It’s typical. I NEVER go out in the evening for social things because 1) I am usually working or 2) I am too tired…but my friend and I booked ourselves a date two months in advance (as you have to when you have kids! – spontaneity died in 2012 with the birth of my first child!) and we had a lovely evening planned. The evening was still nice but I felt like I had a neck full of razor blades and so swallowing and talking was a bit of a challenge.

Sunday was Mother’s Day in the UK….and what did that entail? Family time? A nice meal out? Memory making? Ah nope. I basically stayed in bed all day sleeping and my wife kept bringing me hot drinks and pain relief at intervals. Fortunately, I had been out with my mum earlier in the week so hadn’t had to cancel any plans or go to something feeling rotten.

I felt quite a bit more human on Monday morning (compared with how it had been on Sunday – I felt more or less ok I just sounded funny) and went to my therapy session and then to work. However, I think in fairness, I should really have cancelled my day because by the time I got home from my kids’ swimming lessons in the evening I was dying – it all caught up with me and my symptoms had got worse – cough, sore throat, running nose, weepy eyes, burning ears…and now I am panicking that I might have passed it on to Em. I really hope I haven’t – I wasn’t coughing or sneezing or anything in session – I wouldn’t have gone if I was like that but …. argh. I hope she is ok.

Tbh she seems to be made of tough stuff. She has never cancelled a session because she’s been ill and there’s been maybe once or twice in the whole time I have worked with her that she’s looked a bit coldy but otherwise she seems hardy! haha. I guess maybe working with so many people all the time you get a super immune system. When I worked in schools I was wiped out in the first year but after that was like some kind of mutant super-hero so far as bugs were concerned.

Anyway, I am completely rabbiting on here. Note to self- no fucker cares about your physical ailments they want to know about your crazy! 😉

So, like I said, recently therapy has been really good but really hard. Some stuff I had not had in my conscious mind has reared it’s head over the last few weeks. I’ve been having some horrid flashbacks and memories and wondering, now that I have remembered (and in technicolour) how I could ever have had this stuff out of mind. Anyway, the focus has been largely the time between me being 6-11 years old with some toe dipping in the early anorexic years around 14-17…

Interestingly the stuff I have been talking about I’ve just been recounting as though they are normal day-to-day events no emotion behind it imagine ‘I went to the shop to buy a loaf of bread’ (matter of fact, unaffected) but replace with, ‘I remember being taken see my aunt in ITU when I was six after she’d been involved in a massive RTA that nearly killed her and seeing her in traction from her broken pelvis and all the wounds and scars from all the surgery she’d had to have and how swollen and bruised she was and having to sit quietly on a chair and wait for it to be over and being frightened to look at her and no one ever telling me what was going on or if she’d be ok….and now I have a hospital phobia which really isn’t helpful when I so regularly have to attend hospital for my cancer follow ups….’. Or ‘My mum got physically attacked by the next door neighbour when I was ten and there was so much blood pouring from her head that it drenched her top and was all over the floor and the police came…’ You know, just by the by!

It was only after my session last Friday that I realised it’s all completely insane and ABNORMAL….because this sort of thing was all so very ‘run of the mill’ to me at the time – going to hospital to stitch my dad’s face up because mum had thrown a coffee cup at his  head and it had smashed and cut him…doesn’t every one do that?! My aunt was regularly sectioned and did some pretty extreme stuff when she was unwell and had a lifetime of pain from the fallout of the car accident and so I spent a lot of time sitting in my gran’s car in the psychiatric hospital carpark during holidays. I would be sent to my grandparents as my parents worked and my grandma visited my aunt. So.… yeah…. I dunno gotta love sitting in a hot car with a dog for hours on end!

I’m only really now twigging that how my family has historically dealt with traumatic experiences isn’t normal or should I say ‘not dealt’ with them! (which is probably why my aunt was so unstable too- intergenerational trauma anyone!)….

I was talking about the incident with my mum’s assault by the neighbour on Monday and after I had talked about it about and how I had felt at the time Em asked me how my parents had responded to it, i.e what they’d said to me.

‘Was it ever talked about?’

‘Nope’

Her face looked genuinely shocked and her tone changed and she leaned forward in her chair, ‘What? Never ever?

‘Nope’

‘Honestly? They never made any comments about it?

‘No’

‘So that’s how it was. They didn’t acknowledge what had happened?’

‘No’

‘They didn’t say something like “That was really horrible and shouldn’t have happened and I feel really angry about it and how do you feel?”‘

‘Nope. Why are you so surprised by this? It follows the pattern. No one ever said anything when bad things happened’.

‘I don’t disbelieve you. I just… I don’t know how to put it…’

Basically we talked about the insanity of the situation and how scary it must have been for me at the time and more about it and how if it were me now with my children what I would have done differently and basically Em said, ‘it’s horrendous – what happened’.

That’s a really short hand snapshot of a conversation that took about 35 minutes. I can’t explain how it felt to have someone listen to stuff like that. Stuff that just ‘happened’ when I was a kid and was never mentioned again and to get a completely different response – in fact a response and acknowledgement of how horrible it must have been. Em is not big on letting me know explicitly what she’s feeling in the moment – she’s not blank screen but she’s very measured – usually. But this really got to her. I think I have said a lot these last couple of weeks that has given her another window into what was going on in another aspect of my childhood and it affected her.

It affected me too.

Unfortuantely, feeling connected to and being seen by Em does that bloody horrible thing where suddenly all the need rushes to the surface. In those moments I just want to tell her I love her and how much she means to me – I just want to be with her in the safety of that space. She makes those memories of being unsafe feel ok…and that is intoxicating to someone who has been starved of that kind of interaction and care. But of course hot on the heels of those warm connected feelings comes SHAME and I shut down. I can’t let her really know how much need there is so I go quiet.

Em, tried really hard to figure out what was happening for me and wondered whether her reaction to what I had said was overwhelming, or too much, or felt intrusive and maybe compared with what I have been used to historically (no reaction from caregivers) it might have felt overpowering. She said that what she was feeling was complete disbelief – not that I wasn’t telling the truth, but that a parent could not have their child in mind. She said she felt angry at my parents on my behalf.

This, for me felt so connecting. So validating. And yet she thinks she’s overstepped the mark. I couldn’t tell her that actually the reason I am shut down is because I want to feel this level of connection and more but am terrified of her rejecting me or seeing me as too needy and so am protecting her from me.

I did manage to tell her I felt really sad, though.

Then time was nearly up – isn’t it always just as you hit your stride?!

And with about sixty seconds to go she told me that she felt really sad for the little girl who had to witness such horrible things. She said I didn’t get anywhere near like enough physical holding when I was small. That she felt I needed to have been picked up and put on someone’s lap and cuddled and held, or to have an arm wrapped around me and been given the chance to talk.

Yep.

But ouch.

Because whilst that is most certainly the truth. When I am there in session like that, that little girl is sitting in the room too. She’s not back in 1993. I know what I didn’t have when I was a kid. I know that my therapist knows it too. But god – when she is less than two metres from me it feels impossibly painful to not be able to reach out to her in a physical way. The words help….but they don’t quite do it. And whilst they are meant to feel in some way holding (and they do a bit) – actually what often happens is that I feel like I am untouchable…TOXIC even because she won’t hug me.

I’ve drawn another (dreadful picture) that sort of describes the process….and I’ll leave that here until next time because I must sleep! x

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One Small Step At A Time

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

Time seems to be motoring on doesn’t it?…Thank god! I am so over Winter now. I can’t even explain how much happier I feel since the sun came out this week and we’ve had a few solid days of blue skies here in the UK (well, where I am at least). January felt unending but honestly I don’t even know where March has gone?…

Today I received a text from a friend whom I had met for a coffee last Wednesday saying how nice it had been to catch up and sorry it’d taken a week for her to acknowledge that. My response was, ‘A week? Already?! I’m such a headless chicken right now! So lovely to see you and thank you for the lovely treat. See you soon!’…S and I usually meet up for coffee every couple of months but when we were chatting realised it had been well before Christmas that we had last got together.

I am usually pretty good at sending people messages after I’ve seen them to say how much I enjoyed spending time with them and yet somehow I have barely blinked, a week has passed, and there I am belatedly thanking someone for taking me out for my birthday! It’s not like me at all.

My blog is completely falling by the wayside, too. I can’t believe there was ever a time when I had space in my week to write one or two posts here each week. Now I hurriedly type something in order that I don’t forget where I am at. This is meant to be my mental health/therapy journal of sorts – but lately I feel I am missing a good deal of ‘content’ because I haven’t time to get it down on the page…and then when I do get a minute I forget what’s happened or how I felt when reflecting back – how much of that is dissociation and how much of that is goldfish memory is anyone’s guess!

I miss having a couple of quiet hours in an afternoon to sit at my laptop and write, drink coffee, and splurge my emotional stuff – pain pain pain ugh! Having said that, the one thing that has come of being so busy all the time (other than being perpetually tired!) is that there is much less time to fester on the attachment stuff during in the daytime AND THIS IS VERY GOOD NEWS. Lately, before I even know it, it’s either Monday or Friday and it’s time to see Em again and I can’t get fully engulfed in the attachment pain.

Don’t get me wrong – the attachment stuff is still there BIG TIME bubbling under the surface (Still a long way to go to earned secure attachment!), and sometimes it is bloody agonising/debilitating …but because I have so much to cram in I can’t get swallowed up by my feelings in the way that I have done in the past. I used to mope about hanging on between my sessions literally counting down the days (minutes!) to when I could see Em and felt as though I would die from the pain of being away from her (not joking) – now I have to get on with my ‘professional’ life and hold the young feelings as best I can. Sometimes I am successful at it – sometimes I fall flat on my face/arse/both.

To be honest, what seems to happen is the days are largely ok, I’m aware of the parts feeling sad and can give that some space but put it to one side… and then when I get tired and it’s close to bedtime the younger more needy feelings come up to the surface and I feel really quite sad. I miss Em. I suspect that is quite common.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about – love the fact that I am saying how I have no time to write and then essentially write bog all for loads of paragraphs!

Soooo…..where am I?

Right now I feel upbeat-ish which I appreciate is a bit of a (huge) sea change from all the stuff I was talking about in my recent post. That either makes me properly fucking bonkers or clearly demonstrates how quickly feelings can move in and out for me. The other week I felt stuck fast in the pit of attachment pain and now… well… I don’t – not really- or certainly not in the same way as I did…and why is this?

Guess?

Because of a twenty minute conversation with my therapist!

I wish I was able to remember that when things feel bad talking about them with Em usually helps! Like duh -that’s what’s meant to happen. Unfortuantely, I seem to be hard-wired to protect myself from her – well – protect myself from being hurt by her and so we do this little dance back and forth every few months….almost like clockwork. Or, more realistically AROUND THE BLOODY THERAPY BREAKS!

The few months from January to March were pretty hard so far as painful attachment feelings went. One shit dream where Em was misattuned and seemingly abandoning sent me deep into my real life tortoise shell in my sessions. I was stuck in that place where I doubted Em, struggled to trust her, and felt disconnected which meant that sessions were ‘fine’ on the surface for a while whilst competent adult showed up and sent smoke signals to hide what was going on underneath. But before long, as things spiralled downwards, full on dissociation took hold and therapy was really really tough. I wanted to connect (that’s all I ever want) but I couldn’t and I felt like Em wasn’t seeing me because I wasn’t allowing her in. Of course, when I am in hiding I also feel like she is keeping me at arm’s length and so it’s a negative spiral where I feel increasingly disconnected.

NOT GOOD.

Anyway. Em and I did quite a lot of talking around the issue for a few weeks, i.e acknowledging that there was difficult stuff that needed to be talked about. I think sometimes those laying the groundwork sessions can feel frustrating because like, really, why can’t I just spit it out already? Why do I need to keep doing flypasts to check it’s safe to land. However, that is how it is, and eventually, after checking everything was safe enough I finally asked if I could show Em my book…not all of it….just the last picture I had drawn:

And whilst handing that image over was a big deal in the moment, in the big scheme of things this is really nothing compared with some of what I have shared with her over the years.

The response?

Exactly what I needed to hear. Em used the voice (you know the one!) and really ‘talked’ to me. She acknowledged what I was saying in the picture and how it relates to what I have said many times before – and she really understood how I was struggling with what was going on in the room between us. That the relationship, for me, has been the hardest thing. She held up her hands and took some of the ‘responsibility’ (her word) for skirting round the issue sometimes. She told me that she realises that there have been times where she has said or done things that haven’t met me where I am at, have been misattuned, and that at times this has meant I have been left feeling really horrible at the end of the session and having to carry that on my own and of course that understandably makes it really hard to open up because the fear (that was already huge) has had some level of reinforcement before.

That’s the long and short of it.

Basically, it was one of those moments where you get real human connection, you realise you are both human and absolutely doing your best but sometimes it falls short…on both sides…and that has been enough to make me feel anchored in the relationship and like she really does care.

It seems nuts really that I have been in hiding for months and a simple twenty minute ‘proper’ vulnerable conversation sorted it out….FOR NOW…because we all know this stuff has a habit of coming back round again….like in a few weeks when it’s her Easter holiday.

HELP!

So, we ran out of time that session but agreed to try and keep the connection and communication going – even if it was hard. She asked me to try and tell her when I felt disconnected or that she was misattuned even though it is really hard to in the moment. I left feeling so much lighter.

Part of me wanted to jump into the next session and show her more of the book but actually, another part just wanted to talk without an agenda. And that is what has happened. The last two sessions have been really nice. On Friday I showed Em the YouTube video that I posted here with the failed divers. It was good to lighten the mood and laugh together – but also to try and explain why I made the analogy with my therapy.

I feel like I have an A for effort but an E for execution so far as therapy goes. I turn up every week. I want to do the work….but fuck… most of the time it’s not a smooth move! Em told me that it wasn’t a performance and that I could be just how it is. On some level I know that but that also requires a level of vulnerability that I just can’t achieve.

Sooooo…to Monday and an unexpectedly HUGE session. Again, I just sat down, no real agenda, and started blathering on about work and then suddenly a load of buried stuff came out about early in my career missing a student with anorexia and the guilt that I still feel for ‘failing her’. Anyway, that developed into a massive conversation about when and how my eating disorder started in my teens. My ED is something I struggle to get to in my therapy (especially after the nightmare that happened last year) but somehow I could talk about it this week and god, it’s been so long buried, it was good to give it some light and air.

Whilst Em and I didn’t talk about our relationship at all – which has been ‘the big thing’ bugging me lately, strangely it’s kind of not front and centre at the minute. Talking about this ‘old but huge thing’ was incredibly connecting. Sharing something so personal and guarded and having it responded to kindly and with empathy was soooooo connecting.

So yeah, it’s a weird one right now. There are all kinds of things going on and there are certainly some more big (scary!) conversations to be had but right now I am optimistic about it all.

But don’t let me fool you into thinking everything is rosy in the internal landscape of yours truly. Hell no! That’s not how it is. So, it was bad from January to March because I felt unseen and disconnected from Em – booooo hiss!! BUT NOW because I feel connected to Em I feel really needy and just have that ache to be close to her. Oh the joys of attachment eh?!

FFS! Gimme a break!!! Haha…just remember this:

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