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.
It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.
The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.
It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.
The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!
Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.
I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.
So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.
I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.
Like that’s the idea.
That was our plan.
A kind of gentle reparenting.
Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.
My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.
Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…
Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.
Yikes.
The feelings are big.
I cry a lot.
It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.
One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.
It feels like an act of grief and act of love.
There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.
“It’ll be ok. I’m coming back. Nothing is going to change. I love you.”
Today is the anniversary of the last time I saw Anita as I ‘knew’ her. She was just about to head off on a two-week holiday and we parted on warm hugs and these words of reassurance and care.
With hindsight, these are not promises anyone can every truly make to us, even our family. We don’t know what’s ahead and even with our very best intentions the universe can throw us curve balls and change the trajectory of our lives in a heartbeat.
So, a therapist saying this, whilst absolutely well-intentioned, has actually proved to be massively damaging in the long run. Despite all the good will in the world, Anita has broken those promises and her attempts at reassurance to the youngest, most vulnerable parts of me, have now branded into my brain as individual soundbites of betrayal and lies because nothing was ‘ok’, she didn’t really ‘come back’, everything ‘changed’, and…’I love you’? Well, is what’s happened in the last twelve months the actions of someone who loved me? I wrestle with that a lot.
Adult me can understand this has been a complex situation, but the little ones inside?- not at all. It’s horrific for them. They can’t make sense of it. It’s another mother who has chosen to walk away when she promised she absolutely would stay because I was ‘worth it’ and have never deserved my previous treatment by others.
In the end, though, Anita made the choice to stop work with me (and all other long-term clients…apparently…although who really knows?) whilst still retaining some ‘easy’ clients. She needed to reduce the ‘stress in her life’ and I was part of that package.
I’ll be honest, after three and a half years of consistent love and care and meeting on such an intimate level, it wasn’t a choice I actually thought she’d ever make to dump me and keep going with other people. Despite my issues around trust and abandonment I genuinely believed her when she had said, ‘she’d always have space for me in her world’ and that even when she retired, she’d see me because she ‘couldn’t let me go’. Like I didn’t have a gun to her head to make her say those things, she offered them up freely. And the amount of kind, loving, reassurances that came from her sunk deep down into me. It was all so healing … until this happened.
Well, it turns out it was all lip service, and I was a fucking fool. She left me and has been working consistently since. In fact, she’s been actively advertising her availability for new clients. I understand that her work may look different to how it was. Her caseload has a different complexion but, still, it’s impossible not to see this as a complete and total rejection of me for being ‘too much’ hard work and causing too much ‘stress’.
But actually, truthfully, who wants a burnt-out therapist who declares themselves ‘broken’ but continues to work because they ‘can’t afford not to’? That’s never right…and part of me, at least, knows this. Part of me, knows too, that really none of this is about me at all, and more about Anita’s ability to manage (or not) her personal life.
The work we had been doing had so much been about feeling good enough, worthy enough, lovable enough, valuable…and when it came down to it I was none of those things. I couldn’t even manage to have someone I pay to spend time with me to stay…yet other people can. It’s hard not to allow that critical inner voice to take hold because it’s been so much of my internal narrative over the years – especially after what happened with Em.
I need a therapist who is steady and capable of holding the work. I need someone who can manage their own life without crashing and burning and taking out a vulnerable clients as collateral damage. And Elle, seems to be that. I am aware, though, that I am keeping parts of myself very well protected now.
After all this crap with Anita I am reluctant to let anyone that close to me ever again because, honestly, it’s broken me. Today I was walking out in the countryside and burst into tears because I allowed my mind to wander a bit and it alighted on Anita. This next month is going to be tough as it signals a year for all the hell that was the last few times I saw Anita but also a year where there has been no resolution, no termination session, no return of my books … just a limbo period. It’s A’s birthday and honestly, knowing this time last year I was giving her a gift and this year she’s not part of my world at all is hard.
Therapy is delicate work. As Elle said the other day, when something goes wrong with a therapist it’s like dealing with an engine. You cannot work on it whilst it’s still on, turning over. You have to turn it off, completely stop, and mend you cannot go ramming your hands into the engine when it’s going. What’s worse, she said, is that Anita has been poking her hands in other people’s engines whilst they’re on, too, and doing untold damage. It’s not ok.
And it so isn’t ok – I am not ok… although I am doing my very best to hold it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum.
Anyway, in that last long post I was jumping all over the place- and talked about a session with buttons and another with the lovely hug…and I will continue on from there soon but today, I’ve got derailed by all this sadness and grief about A…and so want to talk a bit about another connecting experience I had with Elle a few months ago.
I mentioned in my last blog about how I keep forgetting how much Elle actually knows about the vulnerable stuff because my mind seems to completely block that from my consciousness when I am with her. I somehow, in the moment face-to-face have no idea that I have sent several ‘exposing’ raw emails to her since we met last August and actually she probably sees me more than I think she does!
Anyway, I hit the skids again and sent this to her in February…I’d had more of those False Adult fronting sessions and was just driving myself fucking mad:
This is the note slid under the door…because frankly no one cares about how tidy (or not) my house is- and I am so fucking good at avoidance that next week I could talk to you about my lost marble collection (not a metaphor – although metaphorical lost marbles would be useful to speak about seeing as I feel like I’m going slowly mad).
I don’t really know where to begin with this because the overriding feeling I am experiencing at the moment is shame – and unlike like you who (weirdly!) seeks out opportunities to sit in shame to prove it’s not going to kill you – I try to avoid it where possible. Having said that, it’s stuck to me like my shadow so I can never truly outrun it. And I guess you’d say don’t run from it, explore it – and believe me I know what it’s all about but that doesn’t mean I want to be covered in its thick tar-like substance for any longer than is absolutely necessary.
I feel a bit like one of those sea birds that’s been caught in an oil slick like you’d see on the news when a tanker would run aground. I know that the only way out of this hell is to bubble up with a massive load of washing up liquid – a soapy shame remover if you like, but right now I am head-to-toe in black, and it feels like there is something terribly wrong with me and I can’t find the soap. There’s also a bit of a problem now because the shame remover I had found that seemed to work really well was connection – but actually a couple of bottles of connection had tar in and so now I don’t seem to trust that either.
Shame has been so present – in me/on me/both – over the years that I am surprised that I haven’t become less sensitive to it or adapted some kind of Teflon type skin – but nope. It’s still that horribly visceral all-consuming visit from a dementor and I feel sick.
You probably have no idea that I have spent the last (almost) six months trying very hard not to allow myself to feel very much at all in the relationship with you. It’s not really worked though. Therapy feels really dangerous – well, at least to some parts of me… and so I am really aware that the person who turns up to therapy is me – but that person is also a really excellent shield for all the hurt and vulnerable parts. I guess it’s a bit like that chicken analogy you used the other day – where the chicken tucks the chicks under their wings. And whilst that seems like a really sensible thing to do- it’s protective- it’s not much good if the chicks actually need the vet!
I read a book years ago by Patricia DeYoung about chronic shame and this bit really stuck out:
In brief and speaking from the perspective of a child’s regulated self, a regulating other is a person on whom I rely to respond to my emotions in ways that help me not to be overwhelmed by them, but rather to contain, accept, and integrate them into an emotional “me” I can feel comfortable being. A dysregulating other is also a person I want to trust – and should be able to trust – to help me manage my affect or emotion. But this person’s response to me, or lack of response to me, does exactly the opposite: it does not help me contain, accept, or integrate.
Then I become a self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other. This is what happens: as an infant, when I am in an affective state of distress, or as a child, when I am feeling a rush of emotion, the other’s response fails to help me manage what I’m feeling. Instead of feeling connected, I feel out of control. Instead of feeling energetically focused, I feel overwhelmed. Instead of feeling that I’ll be ok, I feel like I am falling apart.
This kind of experience is the core experience of shame. All of it has something to do with needing something intensely from someone important, and something going wrong with the interaction between us. I feel, “I can’t make happen what I need from you”. If the sequence is repeated often enough in my development to become and expectable experience, I will have a core propensity to feel shame whenever I have strong feelings, need emotional connection, or feel something is wrong in an interpersonal interaction. In all of those situations, I will be likely to conclude, consciously or unconsciously, “There is something wrong with what I need- with my needy self”.
And that’s kind of how it feels now. It’s not quite the dysregulating other thing because I haven’t told you what’s going on or how I feel but that makes no difference to my inner experience because essentially there’s this really sad, vulnerable, part (several actually) that’s in pieces and feels shame because there’s so much need but it’s hidden and unseen and can’t regulate. And I get this prison is of my own making – which is so fucking annoying – but there is this bit of me that is absolutely fucking terrified of fucking things up, actually trusting you and being seen and then to be deemed unacceptable is a massive fear.
Like I hold myself together with rubber bands and chewing gum which is always a bit problematic at the best of times – they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting in lieu of super glue – but now I feel like I am disintegrating.
I keep circling this drain over and over.
I really can’t overstate how damaging what has happened with Anita is. The reason she gave me for ending seemed legitimate at the time. She was really unwell. But I am really struggling to understand how she can still be working and yet now say that she’s not in a good enough place to meet and to properly end as we had agreed. It all feels like lies now – and avoidance…and really unfair. And unfortunately, my brain’s default programming always lands on “It’s because you’re too much”. So I am having a really hard time because the person I really trusted with me – all of me – has become someone I don’t recognise at all and seems not to care in the least that they’ve hurt me…so that must make this a me problem.
And then of course my mum being … well… gone…feels like a me problem.
This is really not dealing with my adult self…which I guess is why I am seeing you in the first place but ugh…
So now I am really aware of how all this stuff is just swirling around inside and how scared I am of breaking you too.
I can’t make Brian (my nickname for my brain) make sense today. I guess – I like you a lot and there’s a pull to want to be closer to you but it’s terrifying on so many levels.
Anyway, I’ll go hide in my pit of shame and embarrassment now x
-GAHHHH – Fuck! – like, how do I manage to wipe this from my consciousness? I mean it’s clear my brain is wanting to stop me being too exposed or clamming up because I feel like I have been too vulnerable – but it’s so funny in a way. My best-friend had to remind me this week that Elle knows a lot, because she’s had all the letters!
Oh god!
Anyway, Elle replied with something nice and connecting and then in the next session I walked in feeling a bit sheepish and sat down.
She came over to me at the start of the session and told me to hold out my hands.
Errr. Ok??
And she poured a handful of marbles into them and told me that they were for me.
It was a lovely symbolic gesture in reference to the email I’d sent and opened up a really helpful conversation about my literal lost marble collection, but also the wobbly losing my metaphorical marbles.
It’s a slow gentle edging towards trust and safety…
Since then, I have taken one of the marbles with me wherever I go. It’s acting as a transitional object.
Recently, I was at the beach and decided to photograph the marble in different places…and something possessed me to send one of the pictures to Elle. She thought it was one I had found at the beach. I got that immediate squirmy shame feeling and figured I had to be honest and reply, and told her that, no, actually it was one of the ones she had given me.
Anyway, that’s just another example of some of the nice things that have happened in therapy, and I do have to consciously remind myself of them. It’s so hard sometimes to hold onto what’s good because I am so scared of losing it all but also convince myself that none of it is real. It’s very different from the work with Anita and it is hard not to perpetually compare backwards and feel like it’s not enough, or I am not seen or held or *whatever* but actually I think all things considered Elle and I are doing pretty well considering the state I came to her in.
This week, though, is going to be especially hard because I am feeling so vulnerable about the anniversary with Anita and feel acutely how painful this grief is. It’s absolutely live again. It makes me feel alone and isolated and terribly small…and I want to reach out for someone safe and there doesn’t feel like there is anyone. I could email Elle, I suppose, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to overburden her or be too much.
It’s so frustrating being in this place…but that’s the thing with loss and grief and attachment and trauma and all the things…the path isn’t linear. It’s a spiral. Sometimes I am at the top of the spiral and looking down and in reasonable control; other times I am spinning so fast I feel sick and giddy.
So… I wish I could say things are getting better this end, but they really aren’t. I haven’t felt this awful in years and honestly, at this point, it’s just my dogged determination not to give up that’s keeping me functional – albeit, barely. Talk about living life in survival…it’s fucking beyond exhausting and I have really just had enough, now.
There’s such a lot of shit going on in one way or another and I haven’t really known where to begin which is why I have been AWOL (mind you, looks like everyone on WP has gone awol this month). I want to write. When I feel isolated and alone like I do now, this blog always helps – but, which therapy do I even talk about?: the one that’s ‘ended but hasn’t really’ with Anita or the new one that seems to be ‘like flying through turbulence and is triggering the shit out of me’?
I was laid up in bed most of last week because my neck seized, and I couldn’t move! The tension was triggered on Tuesday during and after my session with Elle and it’s only today that I have even the slightest bit of movement before hitting the pain. But that’s another story…for another post because I’ve just received an email…
Last time I was here I was telling you all about the messages Anita and I had exchanged at 5 months post ‘end but not end’ (5 FUCKING MONTHS!) and how her lack lustre, ‘I know but I just can’t work at that level of work anymore’ reply just set a fire under my ass and I sent her a long message in reply knowing that really it would signal no going back.
What I hadn’t bargained on was her ghosting me.
When I wrote my last post it was about two weeks after the message I’d sent and there had been total radio silence… well, the radio silence persisted and then it was 6 FUCKING MONTHS on Saturday – and Anita had ignored that message altogether for a month. I can’t even really believe the woman/therapist I worked with for all these years has become this. It makes me wonder who she even is? Was any of it real, or was this version of her there all along and the whole thing has just been some elaborate act? It certainly feels that way.
To say that this whole thing has been driving me insane (making me ill) would be an understatement. I don’t know why I expected better from her – but I really did. I have a tendency to want to see the best in people and remain hopeful even when there’s a shit tonne of evidence to the contrary telling me people are fucking shit.
I didn’t imagine for a minute that when she face planted so badly in May that she wouldn’t at some point reflect, take herself out of the immediate situation, and think about what she had done to her long-term clients – me – and want to make a decent end…because why wouldn’t you? Like if you know you have hurt someone really badly, wouldn’t you want to try and repair as much as possible?
If you genuinely cared about someone then surely, as a therapist, that’s the very least you’d do….ESPECIALLY if you were still working and have a client load. I can’t believe an hour out of her life on a working day is beyond her. I can’t believe she wouldn’t be willing to want to try and make an end that mitigated against how fucking appalling this has been. I can’t believe that she hasn’t taken this to supervision and her supervisor hasn’t given her some advice on how best to handle the clear up…
But there we are. Can’t apply our own standards to others – even if those others have been paid by us for years!
It’s maddening.
As First Aid Kit so accurately wrote,
“I always thought that you’d be here, but shit gets fucked up, and people just disappear”
Anyway, on Saturday I decided to switch to email. You want to ignore my messages then let’s try another prong of attack!
This is what I sent titled ENDING:
I’m guessing that given you’re now completely ghosting me, that the agreement that we’d come back and end properly if things were no better isn’t going to happen either.
I’m at a complete loss to understand how it’s got to this point – as walking out the room six months ago it did not for one minute occur to me that it would be like this now, “It’s not what either of us want”… really?
3.5 years of work and relationship deserves a better close than this and how it’s not, and I’m not, worthy of a proper end even if it would be hard and painful feels shit.
This time three years ago you gave me the beating heart necklace… I can’t understand what’s happened to now be in a place where you won’t even talk to me but it’s really hard to be approaching Christmas and you just not be there.
RB
The weekend has been pretty rough – I’m navigating all kinds of angst and feelings of disconnect with Elle — that of course are intensified because of all this bullshit with Anita so I feel like everything is very very fragile.
Anyway, I’ve been soldiering on and then just now I received this email…
Honestly, guys, tell me what you think because at this point I am just at a loss:
Hi RB,
It’s not I’m ghosting you although can totally understand it feels like that.
I just I have so little capacity at the moment.
I know my friends and family are also struggling with me not being as available as I once was but that’s just how it is for me.
I am also unsure what it is you are looking for from me, I think we both agree we can’t go back to a therapeutic relationship so not sure what it is you are looking for as I am really not able to offer very much in my current situation.
With sincere apologies,
Anita x
I was frankly speechless when I received it. I didn’t even really have many feelings, initially. Part of me locked down somewhere inside is probably crying – but the most dominant parts are really just fucking flabbergasted. This is the best she can muster – after all this time?
Is it not clear what I have been holding out for and asking for over the last few months- to honour the fucking agreement that we would meet in person and try and do a decent end? Like the therapeutic relationship is long gone. My trust is decimated, and I feel so fucking angry and let down by Anita but an end… come on now. Is she that dim?
Never has she checked that I am ok in all this (clearly, I’m not). Even when I left in June, you’d think she’d at least have made some kind of plan with me to ensure that I was ‘emotionally’ looked after, even if it was with a colleague or her supervisor. The level of neglect and basic lack of care is staggering to me. I mean a twice a week client with outside contact who has complex trauma and a history of self harm – of course it’s fine to just drop them and never look back right?!
This email, again, like those sessions in May, is about her: her lack of capacity, her struggle, how hard it is for her… and you know what, I get it, but it’s not fucking good enough. This ‘crisis’ has been coming for years. I can’t understand why, as a therapist, she wasn’t able to see her issues (certainly after her first meltdown in September 2021) and take herself into personal therapy to help get a handle on it before it shattered her world. And to be clear – the issue she’s ‘dealing’ with is not uncommon; her elderly mother needs increased care. Lots of people and families navigate that without completely falling apart and wrecking their careers. I’m sure it’s brought up all kinds of issues from childhood and stuff about meeting other people’s needs – but go do the fucking work before you act it on on your paying clients!!!
Anyway, that’s that. I don’t even know how to reply. It’s not worth my emotion is it? She simply can’t/won’t see what she’s done and cannot give me the closure I so badly need. I need to talk to Elle tomorrow and see what plan I can make for my books (which Anita still has btw!). Anita’s city office if literally across the street from Elle so I am wondering whether I can ask Anita to drop them in the door at Elle’s. At least then I don’t receive them in the post and get body-slammed.
Of course, that all relies on tomorrow with Elle going ok. We are in rupture territory – I’ll come back and write about that next. Needless to say I am not having a very good time.
It just feels like I am screaming into the fucking void: Can’t somebody help me PLEASE!!
A few years ago I wrote a letter to my seventeen year old self here on the blog. It felt quite cathartic at the time. I was still working with Em, and it felt like I was at a place where I needed to open up some big stuff and trust in the relationship. I felt like this teen part was getting in the way and wanted to ask her to step back a bit…big mistake!
These last couple of weeks this particular teenage self is having a really hard time. Things are pretty awful actually…and so I am writing to her again. It has a different flavour to the last one (which I’ll add to the end of this post for anyone that hasn’t been tagging along here for all eternity)
x x x
Dear Seventeen.
I am so fucking sorry for being yet another adult that has let you down and for not protecting you from being hurt again…and again…and again. I need to do better – for both our sakes. Last time I was here I asked you to let your guard down and be more open with Em our old old old therapist…(we’re racking them up aren’t we – I wonder if there’s a record for burning through counsellors?!)
It’s been years since that letter in 2018 but I want you to know that I see that I was really wrong to encourage you to be ‘less resistant’ and wrong to ask you to lean into trusting Em when you clearly felt very reluctant to do so. I should have trusted you then because your inner barometer is (and always has been) spot on. You read people so well, and as much as it can be frustrating for me to have you dig your heels in or go into hiding in the therapy room, I realise now that the only way you’ll trust is if you feel safe. If you don’t feel safe it’s because it isn’t safe– it’s not because you are misreading a situation and viewing everything through a distorted trauma lens.
I told you before that you’ve done a wonderful job of keeping the young ones safe and I need to remember that you are a very experienced protector rather than a barrier to the therapy. You have always let me know when things are off. I want you to know that you weren’t the problem in the therapy with Em and I am sorry that I believed that the reason things felt so difficult with her was because we weren’t giving her the map and keeping her… what did she say?… Blindfolded? … and after a while I felt like it must be true. I felt her frustration with us both and ultimately pushed beyond what felt ok for you – and I regret that. You’d been down that path before and I had forgotten, but I remember now, and I am sorry.
We, so often, ask young people to ignore their gut feelings as if we adults know best (we so don’t – we’re just winging it too!). We ask you to be compliant and disregard your feelings in order to make things easier for us. Actually, what I should have done when you were so vocal and upset was to be far more curious about what was holding you back from opening up to Em in the first place. I know you are incredibly scared of rejection and abandonment – of course you are- but it was more than that wasn’t it?
You inherently know who you feel safe with and with those safe people you feel able to talk and allow yourself to be seen. K doesn’t trigger your nervous system and you are able to stay in the window of tolerance with her. She sees you (and all the others), and she does nothing but understand, make space for, and celebrate you. She is a gift. But you never felt safe with Em, not really. You were attached to her, just like I was but she wasn’t safe. Talk about trauma bonding!
I am so sorry that I pushed and told her things that you weren’t ready for. You were right to be wary and I am sorry. It must feel really painful to keep experiencing the same kinds of rejections and abandonments on repeat because I override you. I promise I won’t do that anymore. I am paying attention now. I hear you. I understand why you think it is safer to stay silent and isolate yourself. It’s lonely inhabiting this space but at least no one can hurt you.
It seems late in the day to be talking about all this stuff with you again now, but this last couple of weeks I have been really aware of how distressed you are and it’s not just about what’s happened with Anita is it? Although that is a massive hurt too – so massive. To be honest, I don’t know how I am going to get us through that stuff right now. I’m struggling too. I can barely breathe through the grief- and I know it’s not just you that’s freaking out now. The entire minibus is screaming… again. I am sorry. I never in a million years she’d do this to us. I never thought she’d walk away knowing what she knows and the damage it would cause. It’s no wonder you’re falling apart. But just hang in there with me, ok? We’ll find a way.
The other day I was telling Elle about some of what has happened to you. Don’t worry, I didn’t go into all of it, but I think you heard enough, and it’s spooked you a bit because there’s the very painful stuff waiting in the shadows isn’t there? I don’t think you want me to go there. It’s been sitting with me for the last 23 years so it can wait a bit longer. I don’t know if I am ready, actually. The anniversary of all that horrible stuff is coming up and I don’t have to resilience I used to have to cope. I don’t feel like I can tolerate any more rejection…the feeling of constant disconnection is painful enough. Part of me knows that the path to connection is being vulnerable but actually vulnerable hasn’t worked out great for us, has it? I don’t know what to do…and I am meant to be the adult here!
I never let Em or even Anita near this stuff of yours so I can understand why you feel terrified of Elle who really doesn’t know us at all. And, honestly, I don’t know if she actually even cares… well, she doesn’t care. Of course, she doesn’t. This is just her job. So why would I expose you when everything is already so fragile?…not fragile…broken…the fragile stuff got smashed didn’t it? God this is so tough.
I like Elle but I can’t figure her out at all, and I know you can’t either because you’ve repeatedly shut things down in session and so False Adult has taken over and filled the space. I hear you screaming not to talk to her about Anita…because it’s not safe to do so. And I am listening. The thing is, I know I need to talk about what’s happened because it is killing me, but I don’t know if she is safe either. It’s a really tricky situation. I just don’t know if we can go where I need to go. I don’t know if it is me making it feel like this or whether it’s just the dynamic.
I feel like I am doing what I used to do with Em. I feel like it’s really ok to do the ‘head’ stuff but we are soooo needing the ‘feeling’ stuff. We need a relational experience and relational repair and containment and holding… but I don’t feel like there is a relationship. I feel chronically alone. Perhaps it’s because I’m hiding you and the little ones but ugh…it’s painful. I need a sense of there being an ‘us’ in the room, not just a ‘me’ being watched from the other chair. Wanting to connect feels dangerous and the idea reaching out but then being rebuffed feels worse. We’ve been there before so it’s not surprising we are tentative. The thing is, detached relationships feel so fucking triggering to us – but I also know our need for connection feels stifling…for Em at least. I don’t know what to do.
That’s probably not fair, actually. Elle has no idea of any of the stuff I find really difficult…and not just emotionally, but there’s the simple in the room stuff too. It all works together to make a fucking disaster, doesn’t it?!
UGHHHHHH!!!
Being sat opposite someone again rather than next to them feels really uncomfortable and exposing. The table between us feels like another barrier and evidence of the distance between us that will never close. I create enough glass walls to separate us as it is, but these physical barriers feel like being pushed away. It’s really tricky. I feel like I am under the spotlight and want to hide in a dark corner. I miss Anita being beside me – both literally and metaphorically. Now I feel tense. Exposed. Rigid. I don’t relax. I feel like I need a soft toy to ground…I think you do too. All of this is working against us. I cannot believe just how massive the loss of physical proximity and touch has been. I just cannot regulate at all, and this is causing you, especially, a lot of difficulty. I hate this so much.
Since that session where I talked about what it’s been like for you, it’s as though you have taken over my mind and body…which is probably why we ended up going completely the wrong way in the car the other day! I have been so dissociated, sometimes completely frozen, but mostly I am massively conscious of feeling like I want to self-harm…or worse. And I know that’s not me. It’s you. You are showing me and telling me that you have reached your limit. You have coped and coped and coped and now you’ve run out of coping. I get it. I have no idea what to do about it, though.
I can’t seem to find a way to make this better because my coping has gone too. I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t hold this pain. I sent Elle message and told her I want to leave and run away. I don’t think she cares, she’d fill the time just like Hannah, Anita, and Em. Clients keep coming on the conveyor belt.
I joined some dots in the week, and it was as though yet another trapdoor opened up and another cavern of darkness awaited us. Sometimes inner revelations don’t feel good – I guess this is why our brain hides so much from us- it’s protective. This reminder just felt massively upsetting. It’s been so fucking hard for you hasn’t it? Like always…
I can really understand why you felt so betrayed when I let Em know the extent of the eating disorder that was so active again in 2018. She’d told me that I could bring anything to the room and when I shared the details of the ED with her it felt like a massive weight had been lifted. I’d been holding this ‘secret’ for twenty years and I genuinely believed that we might finally get some help. But then she delivered the ultimatum about ending the therapy shortly afterwards and it felt absolutely horrendous. It had been such a massive exercise in trust letting her know that stuff and then all of a sudden, she was threatening to terminate.
Actually, it was too much for her. And you knew it, didn’t you? I still feel physically sick when I think about it. It was the same when we finally did come to the ending in 2020. She said we could work through anything and that I needed to take a step towards her, that I could express my anger…and then look… she was gone. You knew it would happen. I wanted to believe it wouldn’t.
Anyway, you reminded me why that all felt so bad this week. It wasn’t just Em betraying your trust. It was a replay of H wasn’t it? She did the same. I remember you finally telling her what was going on for you after struggling alone for two years with active anorexia. You hadn’t seen her since you were fifteen and the change in your body had been massive by the time you saw her. You were/are so unwell. She didn’t say anything at the time but when you got back home, she brought it up on the phone didn’t she? She seemed to really listen and after three hours talking you ended the call feeling like maybe things might be ok now – it was that same sense of relief I felt having told Em. There’s something so soothing in being seen…until what you’ve shared gets thrown back in your face.
Your eating disorder is really complex and really dangerous. It know you are desperately trying to cope with feeling out of control but it’s also hiding who you are, taking up less space. Maybe if you can just completely disappear all the pain that you are feeling will disappear too. I don’t think I have ever really looked back at how awful it is for you being in the closet, feeling completely alone and struggling with how you feel about H and your sexuality. I mean add that onto the abuse you’re being put through at home…it’s no wonder things are a mess. I feel that sick feeling in my solar plexus just typing this, so I know that pain hasn’t gone for you and needs to be explored… the fact I have been in therapy for most of my adult life and have never gone near this stuff really shows how vulnerable it feels.
Just like Em, H delivered you an ultimatum. But worse than that, she actually walked away. She told you you were too much and that she needed space. She said that we’d take three months … and then talk. That never happened. We never came back to talking about what happened. It was four years before we caught back up. I was twenty-one then and in a much better place but I’ve never really recovered from what happened for you then and there you are stuck carrying so much still. It’s all so raw. And then of course this all plays into what’s happened with Anita. We were meant to leave it three months so she could figure out where she was at. We were at least meet to properly end if she was no better. It’s five months in now…and we’re in limbo. You and I have been here before.
Rejection and abandonment… I wish I could remove these words from our vocabulary. I am so sorry. I don’t understand how this stuff keeps happening to us. People tell me it’s not me but it feels like I am the common denominator in all this. I don’t know what to do. x
Here’s the original:
Dear Seventeen,
I’ve just read your diary. Please don’t be mad. Wait and hear me out a minute. I know how angry you were when you woke up to find dad reading your diary on holiday in Mexico and how violated you felt back then; but please know that I am not deliberately prying into your private life or being nosy. I’m just trying to understand you better. And honestly, I am good at keeping secrets, in fact I’ve been holding onto yours for the last seventeen years of my life. I’m not here to judge you and I promise that you can trust me.
We haven’t met before. Well, I know all about you (more than you realise) but I don’t think you are aware that I even exist. I’ve been watching you stuck in your own private hell for a long, long time now. It’s like Groundhog Day for you in the year 2000 isn’t it?
Too often I have turned away from you when I should have reached out to you. I have ignored your pain and your suffering because I haven’t known how to help you. Sometimes I have wondered if you even want to be helped.
I don’t know if you know it, but sometimes you take over my body in the present (which, by the way, is 2018 and means you’re often roaming around a stretch-marked 34 year old bod’ – yeah I know, it’s not great – and to think you hate your body now is incredible!) and react to my current day issues as though you are being hurt again in the way that Mum and H hurt you. It’s like my life triggers flashbacks from your life and you (and I) are reliving the pain over and over again.
I can feel your anxiety and fear coursing through my veins. I can’t speak and I go numb. I shake. I feel your frustration. I haven’t know what to do and neither have you. I’ll admit that I have felt overwhelmed by your feelings. I know you have things to say but I also know that you are very very frightened. I understand how desperately alone you feel. It broke my heart reading your account of the pain you feel inside. I know how hard it is. I remember it well.
You feel like you have no one to listen to you and that no one cares. It feels so difficult to trust anyone. You fear getting close to people and letting them in because you think you’re going to be rejected or abandoned or ridiculed – and you don’t think you can survive it again. This year has been the hardest one yet, for you, and I am not at all surprised that you just want to run away from everything and anyone that might hurt you.
So you isolate yourself in order to avoid being hurt but you can’t be alone forever. In your heart, deep in your soul you know you need love and connection. We all do. I know it feels risky seeking that out. I know you fear annihilation. I get how scary it feels to consider opening up again after what’s happened. You are still heartbroken but the only way your heart is going to mend is through letting someone heal it with you; currently you have a handful of shattered pieces and no glue.
There is no shame in wanting to be loved. You needn’t be embarrassed for feeling love either.
You probably won’t believe me (who can blame you after all you’ve been through); but if you can find a way to trust me, I think that I am the person that you have been waiting for. I can help you, listen to you, and love you…if you’ll let me. I really want to make things better for you – for both of us- because right now your pain is my pain and it’s crippling the pair of us.
I’m so sorry, so very sorry that circumstances have made you feel like you are not worthy of love and care. How things have been with mum are not a reflection on you. None of how she has been with you is your fault. You are not unlovable or untouchable even if that’s how you’ve been made to feel over the years.
How things have been for you growing up isn’t normal. I think you know that but really acknowledging that is devastating. You have suffered emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of the person that should have loved you and protected you the most. I assure you that there is absolutely nothing you could have done that would have changed how things have been for you.
I know that’s hard to hear, but I think you need to hear it and try and take this in. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You feel responsible for everything. And darling, some things are simply beyond your control. No matter how good you are or how much you achieve, there are some things you cannot change or control. You can only be responsible for you and not for the actions of anyone else.
What I will say, though, is this: it won’t be long until you are able to start getting away from some of the horrid stuff. Next year you will leave home and go to university, you’ll fall in love (really!), and things will start to get better. I promise you it won’t always feel this bleak. Until then, though, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to hold on tight and keep putting one foot in front of the other like you always have. I know it feels impossible sometimes.
Despite everything that has happened you are still here. You are a fighter. I know there have times when you have been very close to the edge. I know there are days you have thought about driving your car into a wall or overdosing or paddling your surfboard out to sea and never coming back. I felt the pain of each cut you made, and every burn on your skin. I know how you starve yourself. I see how regularly you purge everything from your system. You are punishing yourself over and over again for something that is simply not your fault. I don’t hate you. Why do you hate yourself?
You’ve lost sense of your value – or maybe, more accurately, you have never felt valued or loved. You feel worthless. Don’t get me wrong, I know why you feel this way. Steady and systematic emotional abuse does this to people. Now you feel like you are acting your way through life. You have little idea of who you are because you’ve spent so long trying to be what everyone else wants you to be that you really don’t know how to be yourself. You’ve struggled so hard against yourself for the last couple of years not wanting to disappoint anyone but inside you were dying.
I am so unbelievably proud of you. Coming out was massive. I know right now it feels like the worst thing you’ve ever done and you feel more lonely than ever; but those people that walked away from you, called you names, and bullied you were not your friends. I am telling you that even though it was scary and is still having a huge impact on your day-to-day you have made a huge leap forward into living authentically as who you really are. I know it takes a huge amount of courage to stand up and speak your truth but six months from now, you’ll be surrounded by people who love and accept you for exactly who you are and those people will become lifelong friends – chosen family.
I also want to say thank you. What for? For looking after the little ones. You are a force to be reckoned with, for sure! They are very lucky to have you as a protector. I know it’s difficult living your life when you continually have distraught children demanding your attention. It is not your job to hold them. It was never your job to look after them, but in the absence of an adult to care for them, you’ve done a brilliant job.
I have children (a boy and a girl). I see a lot of you in them because I remember you as a child, too. You were innocent and vibrant and full of life. You had so much love to give and then something happened and you started holding everything inside and that light you exuded steadily faded until it is now barely a flickering flame inside you. I know right now you feel bereft because, to you, coming out equates to you never having children and you so desperately want to be a mum. I’m not a time traveller but I am telling you this – children are going to be part of your future and that flame will burn brightly again in the love you have for your babies.
You are incredibly strong and I recognise just how much effort you put in to surviving. Sometimes the best you can hope for is just to keep on keeping on. You’ve done amazingly. Don’t roll your eyes! I mean it. The fact that in the face of so much pain you have still somehow held it together, passed your exams, can drive, and are alive is testament to your spirit. You are so driven and this is a good thing. It’ll take you a long way in life. But do you know what? You need to learn to relax too.
You need to let your hair down every now and again and have fun. You are so serious – so grown up- because you’ve had to be. As I said earlier, I am here now, for you and for the little ones – if you want me to be. So I am giving you permission – please relax and start to heal. The adult you all need/ed is here now. I’m not super woman but I promise you that if I can be there for you when it starts to feel scary then I am going to be there – and I am not going anywhere.
Things aren’t going to feel better overnight, I think we both know that. If things are to improve then we are going to need to work together on this. And so there’s something I need to ask you to do for me. I know you know about the therapist that I see each week because sometimes you hijack my session and stamp your feet a bit; or sometimes sit there silently raging and planning how you’re going to hurt yourself when you get the chance. Between you and the little ones there’s not a great deal of space for me in the sessions. I am, in no way, complaining about this, but I was wondering something.
I know you really like therapist but it feels risky to have feelings for her. You are attached to her just like the young ones are, ok perhaps in a slightly different way, but you do love her. And that’s ok. You want to be known by her. The idea of her really seeing you is both appealing and terrifying. Sometimes you let her see you, the real you, and other times you shut her out. When you feel close to her the alarm bells ring and you instantly back away.
Look, I’ve known this woman for six years now and I’ve been in therapy with her for three. I trust her but it’s not me that needs to talk. I’m ok. Do you think that maybe you might tell her how things are for you? Or if you can’t, do you think maybe I could tell her for you?
You’ve been holding onto this pain for such a long time, and I have been sitting on your secrets for as long as you’ve been alive and I think it’s time for us to move on.
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.
After two sessions where Anita and I had essentially got nowhere with processing or dealing with the bombshell of her needing to end the therapy and my, essentially, listening to how hard everything is/was for her, “This is meant to be your therapy not mine” (!), I had to find a way to get her to hear my side, my feelings, my experience because I was absolutely falling apart.
At home, in the car, anywhere I was alone, I was hysterically crying and just couldn’t function. It was so hard trying to hold it together and parent and teach and just generally function, and A just wasn’t able to be there to hold the space or the work…or me… at all – hence the need to end. It was patently clear that A was not up to doing a proper ending and I refused to participate in it- I actually said that to her! I kept telling her we needed to come back to it/us at a later date because I refused to have a half-assed ending but it was a long time coming to that point where we finally left it that later down the line we’d get in touch.
Honestly, it’s really not great having to navigate a broken therapist when you are the one that’s meant to be in therapy! (Although, clearly Anita needs to be in therapy if she isn’t!) I’d spent the two sessions ‘adulting’, trying to hold us both together but it was absolutely killing me. Endings are so important in therapy – in some ways I think they are one of the most important elements of the whole thing given so many of us experience deep-rooted feelings of being rejected or abandoned. A decent ending can perhaps show us a different narrative of how relationships can end – it’s a time where the work and relationship can be celebrated and honoured. And, yet, here I was staring down another unwanted and unsatisfactory termination. Just perfect.
I (well lots of different parts) wrote a really messy, emotional letter to Anita because I needed to give space to my feelings. It’s young, it’s broken, it’s desperate, it’s confused, it’s heartbreak – but this is how it felt and these parts and feelings deserve to be heard because this is where the work is, has been, and if I can’t let it out in therapy then where else can I do it? I knew I would never be able to read what I had written to her in the session because I would fall apart. Instead I recorded it and asked her to play it whilst I was there with her.
Having felt so far apart those previous two sessions I asked her for a hug when I arrived. I spent the entire session in her arms, listening to this, then sobbing my heart out – I mean absolutely sobbing, huge fat tears and convulsive breathing. I wish I could say that the letter had any impact or changed the situation with A but it didn’t. We just sat – broken – together, crying – saying it’s not what either of us want but that she has no choice. Honestly – heartbreaking doesn’t even come close to how it felt.
Anyway, here’s the thing – this is what lurks beneath the capable and coping exterior… I get it doesn’t make lots of sense but it was like trying to get down the thoughts and feelings of the entire mini-bus and everyone was speaking crying at once. I can really picture my new T’s (yeah – I must be mental) face if she saw this.
How this feels…
It’s like being thrown out the nest too soon. It’s like haven’t got the right feathers in place to fly the nest yet. It feels like this is all really wrong.
I think you need time off sick but does it have to be the end? I personally don’t think you’re in a place to be making massive decisions as I think you’re in survival – and flight mode. I think you are panicked – and justifiably so – you have a massive amount on your plate and the last few weeks have really been terrible. It’s no wonder everything is too much. You’re crumbling under stress and so any demands on you are going to break you and feel beyond your scope to cope.
I’m not asking to keep it as it is right now because you’re not up to it. In normal run of things you’d be signed off sick by the doctor and I genuinely think that’s what you need. I know you think things are not going to get better any time soon and that must feel scary and suffocating but I also think that things will improve if you can actually just give yourself a bit of time to breathe. You seem to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and yet the burden is not yours to carry alone.
I saw this coming months ago. I told you you’d burn out and have a break down. Perhaps it was unavoidable, but here we are.
I can’t let you go, though, Anita. Not fully. Our work isn’t done, and our relationship isn’t done either. The relationship we’ve created is important. I can’t just move onto another therapist. I do need therapy – you’re right about that – but I need it with you, not someone else. I love you and I’m attached to you. My healing is happening in relationship with you and because of you. It’s you that I have learned to trust. My young parts love you. It’s with you that I feel safe. I don’t want to have to grieve you if I don’t have to. And I certainly don’t want to do this again with anyone else. The only person I want to read me stories and cuddle is you. And I can’t give that up. I can’t lose another ‘parent’. Not yet. I’m not ready yet.
If we end now the message I get is that I am not good enough or worthy enough to stay. That I don’t matter. That what I thought we had isn’t real and everything that’s been said and felt is a lie. I’m not prepared to trash 3.5 years of therapy that has been so transformational and put in on the pile of the same narrative Em and my mum have given me.
The thing is, you are nothing like them but this ending makes it feel like that. When it comes down to it, I am expendable. I am put back out in the cold. It’s the rescue dog being left at the side of a road because the owner can’t cope with it. The pain round this is different than with Em. It’s actually worse because you have actually loved me. I’ve felt it. You’ve shown it. And the thought of losing that is too devastating. You haven’t been withholding, you’ve always been right there holding my heart in your hands so carefully, and delicately because you’ve known how fragile it is. And yet despite this, somehow it’s not enough.
When you said we’d carry on until I found someone else it felt like you were really diminishing our relationship. I don’t want someone else. It’s not like going and finding a new dentist. Instead, it’s like saying get a new mum – and I just can’t. Because you are it. I can’t replace you. You said I need someone who can really hold me. And we both know that’s not possible. There is absolutely no one that would be with me how you are. If I were to see someone else, I’d always be comparing back to you and everything would feel less than. So I can’t do it.
You need to get you well. You need to function. I need you. But I can do without you for a while if I know you’re still there. I really don’t want to have to test the invisible string or the hugs sent in raindrops like in the books but I will…if it means you can get better and deal with the horrors you face right now. I don’t want to put additional pressure on you. I don’t know what that means or how it looks and I feel like right now you’re really not even capable of having the kind of conversation we need because you are so stressed you can’t see the wood for the trees. I’m trying really hard not to freak out and meltdown but this is really really hard for me.
You know me better than anyone. I asked you once how you heal this deep wounding and you said that you were going to sound like Carl Rogers but it was all about the relationship. And you are right. The problem is that wounding happens in relationship, too. And this is not just a bit painful or a bit rejecting to me. It’s huge. Not only does it feel like a complete abandonment and like my trust has been decimated, but it feels like when my dad died. It’s grief. A loss. I had no choice in the matter. I just had to carry on as if it was ok. And it’s not ok Anita. It’s so far from being ok. And it’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you but this isn’t just a simple goodbye. We don’t have a run of the mill therapeutic relationship, the work we have done has been so intimate and deep. You’ve been reparenting me – and yet now you’ve decided that it’s too much.
The stuff we’ve been through together surely can’t just be gone. Can you really honestly walk away from me after everything we’ve been through? I trusted you with all of me – every part- and now every part is being devastated in its own way. When we keep parts concealed, we’re not fully vulnerable and there’s a safety in that but also it prevents really being seen and true emotional intimacy. But it means that when things go wrong there are parts left intact to pick up the pieces. I have let my guard completely down with you and that’s been terrifying but so healing. But how do I mend this wound now because no part of me is not involved there is no part left unaffected. I kept nothing back. Even The Critic was convinced it was ok to stand down because you made me feel good enough and loved and no matter what things would somehow work out.
I’ve been beyond devastated this last week. I don’t know how I have any tears left to cry. I feel so sad. But I also feel so shit about all the times I’ve shutdown or been silent or not looked at you. I don’t look at you because I don’t want to be seen and for you to judge me to be too much. In all those times that you’ve thought I am keeping you out, or angry, or whatever it is it comes across as – all I’ve ever wanted to do is be close to you – that’s all it’s ever been – every time I’m quiet or start to disappear it’s because more than anything I want to be close to you and I am scared of being pushed away. You never have pushed me away, you never have refused a cuddle or to hold my hand, and yet the shame I feel is still so there lots of the time- it’s the legacy of so much of what I experienced in the past with others.
I said when we met that this would be a hard, long process, and it felt unfair because I’d be testing you and putting you through stuff that was not your fault because I had been hurt. And we really have been through it where that’s concerned. And you haven’t budged. You said you were a wall I could push against, but you wouldn’t break. You were a boomerang that no matter how I pushed you away you’d always come back. But now that’s not the case. The thought of not being able to see you, to hug you, to look at your face it’s actually breaking my heart because I’ve missed so many opportunities sitting in my own pain less than a metre from you when you were there waiting for me and now, you’re not going to be. Like that’s how it feels. I feel like my heart is shattering into a million pieces.
There have been so many days when I have come here and … I dunno… filled the space with stuff that hasn’t mattered when all I want to do is come and just be with you. I don’t want drama or even to talk or unpick things because just being with you is so healing to me. Literally just holding your hand or cuddling makes everything feel bearable and regulates my system. I just want to be close to you. I have missed you so much lately. I thought we’d ride this current phase out, though. I don’t want to do trauma processing or fill the space with words. I just want to be with you. And I know I’ve been having wobbles about it all because this stuff has felt big – massive – but when I am faced with the prospect of ‘no’ you or a reduced capacity you – suddenly the things that I’ve been worked up about seem ridiculous. Like so what you haven’t replied to a text…rather that than no contact at all.
I just want to be with you. How many times can I say that?! And that’s not just the young parts, although obviously this is very much about the young parts and the work we have been doing with that early trauma and loss. There’s nowhere I feel safer than with you. And all my panic about you being far away or changing was fear. And it’s like that fear is now being truly realised in the here and now. This is what I’ve been so scared of. But the sad thing is, you weren’t gone then. I might not have been able to connect but you were always there and now you’re not going to be and I can’t get my head round that. I literally can’t see how I can be without you.
I talked about my mini-bus careering down the hill without a driver before the break and when you went away it kind of crashed into the lake and filled with water. I had horrible nightmares the first week you were away. All about this kind of stuff. I really sensed you were not ok when you were away but I didn’t want to bombard you. I really really hoped that you going away would be enough to give you a bit of something to keep going and I am so sad for you that your holiday was so terrible and your health has deteriorated so badly. I wish there was something I could do to help you.
I’ve been trying really hard to not fall apart since Wednesday. I am struggling really hard to get my head round this but the parts are just… freaking out:
The baby – is crying, hungry and uncontained and there’s noone to pick her up and soothe her.
The two-year-old is lost in the cold, grey wasteland and no one is coming she is scared.
The four-year-old is trying to be a good girl because maybe that way you won’t leave and maybe the cuddles and stories won’t have to stop and maybe this mum will stay.
Seven is terrified and frozen and badly needs to be held because she’s been here before and knows it gets worse the longer you’re left alone.
My eleven-year-old self is hiding in the dark underneath the bed trying to disappear and make it all go away.
Fourteen wants to self-harm and not eat.
Seventeen who would usually be raging and angry is just standing – silent tears streaming down her face broken- because of all of them, she needed you the most and whether you realise it or not, her trust was the hardest won because she holds all the others and it’s a heavy weight.
The Critic – well you can imagine the level of sadistic shit it’s coming up with.
Adult me is just so fucking sad because I cracked myself wide open despite the hurt that Em inflicted because I trusted you and you made me believe I was safe with you. We got right into the yolk of the egg -and now what do I do? After Em I was terrified of being seen and rejected again. I was just a parasite that needed to be got rid of. And now you say you’re not rejecting me… but you are – I am a “stress” you have to “cut out of your life”. I understand why but those parts of me that believed the “no matter what” and the “I wish I could have been there then, but I am here now and I won’t let you go” seems like empty words.
But how can they be? And I get I have an Adult self and that part of me is stronger than it’s ever been but it’s still not able to do it all alone. I just can’t be without you – not yet.
Everywhere I look there is evidence of you around me at home. I’m in here too. Will you just sweep it all away and act like I never existed? Is that how it works? You are the rabbit that listens but if I’m not here does the rabbit go, the egg, the pebble from the beach, the dream catcher, windchimes…the ornament…all the other fucking bits of shit that are all around us?
You made me feel like I belonged here and with you and now I suddenly don’t. I don’t get how you can get rid of me but still work with other clients. When I ask you “what have I done wrong?” you say I haven’t done anything wrong and it’s you and your capacity but how can you sit there with someone else next week or next month who has nothing like the level of relationship that I have you and choose that over me? When you know what you mean to me and what I thought I meant to you? And knowing all that you know about me, of what has happened to me? It blows my mind. I know depth work isn’t easy, but I certainly prefer my long-term students where there is a relationship is established and we ‘know’ each other than starting up with new people. Maybe it’s because I know you and see you that’s the problem. You can’t hide with me.
I don’t know what else to say – but it feels like the scaffolding around my building is ripped off and without you I think the whole thing will crumble. And maybe that makes me too dependent but maybe it just means we weren’t done yet. I don’t have the answers and right now I don’t think you do either. But please don’t leave…
You keep saying you need to cut stress out your life. I don’t know if you know how that sounds or feels but it’s not a million miles away from Em’s tick comment. I’m the stress. I’m too much. I’m too needy. I’m the hard work. Mentioning my ‘I miss you’ message just feels like a kick in the stomach. I didn’t reach out first in your holiday – it was you that messaged me. And telling me that my simple reply felt too much right now is just shit. Like any of my feelings about you are too much. It’s such a massive contrast to the person that sent me the message before you left with hearts.
I get when you’re burnt out and sick and stressed and overwhelmed you swing like a pendulum but this, now, is absolutely killing me. I’m trying to be the adult here and be understanding but you have to know that my child parts are in agony Anita. You don’t seem to acknowledge or care what this is doing or going to do to me. I know this is because you are so unwell that you just aren’t fit to be working. You keep saying “we tried”. I don’t understand what that even means. I know you can’t give that care and compassion you usually do as you’re in your own survival hole but this is why we can’t end now like this – because ending like this is harmful. I’m clinging on tight to what I think we had but it’s being decimated right now.
This is attachment work. And you are severing that attachment with a machete. You don’t want to do anything to try maintain it. You don’t seem to want to try and help my parts get through what is a massive shock. It’s like I’m already dead to you and it’s triggering the hell out of me. It’s like the bloody still face exercise. I’m searching for you and you’re just not there…you say you are in self-protect and you know it’s not what I need but if you know that why are we doing this?
Is it really your world outside that’s the issue or is it something I’ve done? Was it the birthday present I gave you that sent you over the edge?
This is another ornament in the set – I gave A ‘Self-Compassion’ on our 1 year anniversary. They’re made by an artist in Ukraine and I love the style.
Because that was symbolic – it’s what you have done for me. You have held that small part safe. It doesn’t mean I actually think you are my mum – in therapy sure- I have said a lot of times you are the closest I have come to a positive experience of mothering and you have welcomed that, acknowledged that, encouraged it even,but I know outside the room that’s not the case.
But it’s left me wondering is the idea of me just repellent to you now like something you have to untangle yourself from. Or remove like a tick? Because that’s what it feels like. Are you really and truly terminating others or is it just me? You tell me you are authentic with me and that there’s no one else you work with you’d tell what you’ve told me – so can’t you understand then that you have built a particular kind of relationship with me that has let me in to so much of you and now it’s like “Nah, fuck off”. I just can’t get my head round it. Like what we have is special and important…only it’s not?
I didn’t think you could suddenly stop loving someone or being able to or wanting to connect but that’s what’s happened and I don’t understand. I know you have the need for space right now and time because you are drowning. But I can’t really understand how you are willing to cut me off altogether because I love you and you have told me you love me too – and not just once but weekly for years. You sounded like I was weird for saying at I can’t imagine you not in my life last week. I’ve had almost daily contact with you for three years…we’ve been through such a lot together…we’ve survived a fucking pandemic… what do you expect me to feel? You said you’d be there for the long termand I believed you.
I can’t help but think about all the things you’ve said to me over that time. I mean I am not insane for feeling this way, surely? You said you’d never let me go, that even when you retired you’d still have a practice because you couldn’t leave your long term clients, you said even if your house fell down you’d work online… you’ve said so much over the years. And I get this is a tricky situation now, and things have changed – but to be so unwilling to say we’d even try and work this out down the line is just mind blowing and it makes me wonder who you even are.
I get you’re totally overwhelmed but surely you must see how damaging all this is to me, too. Surely, you’d want to find time at some point to help me with this down the line if I’d meant anything to you at all. Can you really have said and meant all that and now run as far away from me as possible…especially knowing my history. It just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know how I’ll cope without you. The routine of seeing you twice a week keeps me level. I wish there was a middle ground, less frequent sessions, a quick WhatsApp call, anything really. Removing all support is going to be hard as my life is about to undergo some big changes anyway and there’s stuff I haven’t been telling you because I just want to keep going. I can feel the abyss inside opening up. You’d always have grabbed my hand but now you won’t, but I need you to try and meet me in this right now. … there’s such a lot to say.
And that’s that… Anita dissociated, I think. At the end of that she said that she’d heard it all but her mind had gone blank to answer. Not even kidding. As I say we just hugged, and cried, and then I came back again…and it was just more disaster zone but I’ll come back with that later.
x
These lyrics from Tiny Love by KT Tunstall have been stuck in my head lately:
And this tiny love Couldn’t have been more true Oh, searching for A home in you I guess you never knew
It’s a lovely track.. I guess the mistake I made was thinking we can find home in another when we need to find it in ourselves.
So, the last time I was here talking about therapy– rather than how my day-to-day life is on the rocks- I wasn’t in a great place AT ALL. I had written a letter to Anita that I was debating sending it to her as a voice note outlining just how desperate it was all feeling. We were on a therapy break and everything just felt desperate and like the foundations that I thought we had built our relationship on over the last couple of years were not, in fact, rock solid but actually built on sand. It was terrifying and crazy making.
The session before the break I had walked out and it just felt like Anita wasn’t there anymore, didn’t care, you know…all the stuff??! It was bad but things had been escalating for a while. I was tying myself in ever tight knots and feeling more and more distant from A. I longed to be close to her but my protectors were on sentry duty and there was nothing I could do, or A could do, to get round them.
Tbh it’s not surprising. It had felt like Anita and I were stuck spiralling in a never ending rupture that had been triggered when I had got back from holiday in February. Things had been plodding along, I knew what was what, and then suddenly the longer sessions were off the table and outside contact felt dramatically reduced. Looking back now I think that my sense of texts being lack-lustre and not enough was driven by how terribly I took not being able to do 75-minute sessions. Anita was still responsive but the lens I viewed our less frequent interactions through was through about scarcity and abandonment and I literally could not see the wood for the trees.
All at once it felt like Anita had withdrawn – taken herself away from me, or worse, taken herself away from the young parts who need her so badly. She insisted that her need to step back was nothing to do with me and all about her life (which has shifted dramatically), and how she needed to reconfigure things to be able to give anything at all. Adult me could hear it but the child parts were devastated.
I mean to have the sense of someone being so close to you, so connected, so safe and then to be hit with that all too familiar feeling of being pushed away is hard. But it’s especially difficult for those of us with childhood trauma and attachment issues. It felt like a re-enactment, yet again here is a mum who is too busy for me, I am not ‘important enough’ to make time for, I just have to fit it with what’s available. And I get that – I am a client after all, Anita’s job, but the young parts that were affected, the parts of me that need the therapy, don’t see Anita as just a therapist, they see her as the caregiver, the attachment figure… they see her as mum and it was heartbreaking.
And so, unsurprisingly, being flung back headfirst into the motherwound I had a long long long meltdown about it. Every time I thought I was rounding a corner and getting my feet back on the ground, something would trigger me and it all went to shit again. It was like climbing up a hill, nearing the top, and then losing my footing and rolling right back down to the bottom again.
There was a lot of silence and tension. Lots of feeling like Anita ‘wasn’t there’, ‘didn’t care’, was ‘rejecting’ me and FUCK it was uncomfortable (understatement) for both of us. I felt she was pushing me away she felt I was pushing her away…it was utterly horrific. There was a lot of testing. And pushing. And withdrawal. And dissociation. Desperation. Tears. Walking out the sessions!! (ffs RB!)… Oh, look I don’t need to explain to you guys, you know the drill!!
So, when I wrote that letter it was from a place of feeling completely at sea, not waving but drowning, and like I was losing Anita…or had already lost her.
And I so hadn’t.
I so HAVEN’T.
But I just couldn’t feel it.
I couldn’t feel her. And that feeling of disconnect feels like annihilation to the young parts.
Throughout all this time, Anita has remained steady and present. I’ve just looked back over messages from this time and honestly, she really bloody dug deep and tried to show me she was there I just couldn’t see it – as I said, I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t take her love and reassurance in because my armour was keeping her out. My teens were locking everything down and couldn’t trust or be vulnerable because they felt so hurt.
It wasn’t ideal, and I am not sure it was helpful for Anita to tell me this, but her supervisor had mentioned that with Anita’s change in schedule and how badly I was reacting to it that maybe she should refer me out to someone who could give me all of what I need. This set the cat among the pigeons in a massive way. Anita told me that she didn’t want to do that, that she hoped that she could be enough for me, that she loved me, but that if she wasn’t enough then we had to look after me and do what was best for me because this is my therapy and not about her or her needs. I remember crying and whimpering into her chest “I don’t want anyone else” and her holding me tightly and saying, “I don’t want you to have anyone else, but I don’t want you to be hurt if I can’t give you all that you need, I need to look after you.”
It probably sounds like a complete shitshow these last few months and it’s felt it!- but oh my god it has also been so fucking human, so real, and so intimate. Like we really have gone deep into the trenches – face first into the shit together – and somehow come out the other side. And dare I say it, there’s been healing in it all…but it’s been hard won.
The stuff with the supervisor really wobbled me but it was also a moment where I took stock and thought, what the actual fuck am I doing here?! (working through a lot of triggered trauma obv!) Am I really going to let Anita go because she can’t do the odd extra 15 minutes in a session every now and then and isn’t texting quite so frequently (but still very regularly) ? How many therapists out there give anything like what Anita gives me? Two sessions a week at a massively discounted rate, outside contact, touch, presents for the young parts, washing elephant so it smells right, reading stories…and ALL the other things… and I think I’d find the answer is NOONE.
When I was able to take a slight step out of the feeling of being abandoned and triggered, get a little bit of Adult online, I realised that Anita is the person I want to work through this with. It takes a long time to get to the point where the shit comes to the surface and all the mess is laid bare. I could go to another therapist and eventually these same triggers would come up again and would need working through. I don’t want that… and actually… I don’t need that. I want and need A.
During this period since February I have had a no holds barred fuck off meltdown on and off on repeat. I mean it was VERY bad. Part of me (probably the Teen) felt like I was going to be got rid of because I was reacting to the changes strongly and having a full-on wobbler even though that is not ever what Anita had said. I was so angry that the supervisor seemed to be saying that I should be moved on and not taking into account how fucking damaging this would be given what happened with Em and how much time A and I have had building trust and the relationship.
Anita totally got it and fought hard for me I think, she said that her supervisor is there to discuss thing with but can’t tell her what to do, and that after twenty years as a therapist she can make her own choices and work with what is best for the client. I told her just how awful being referred on would be and what message that would send to the young parts. Anita was very clear that she wasn’t trying to get rid of me, wanted to work with me, thinks we can do this work but that I need to do what’s right for me and if that means finding someone else then she’d support me in that. But in that moment, snuggled into her and feeling both seen and held in the pain of it all there was absolutely no way I was going anywhere.
After that emotional session where we’d finally reconnected really powerfully after weeks of distance I messaged her with a picture of a rabbit:
You have been, and will always be, my rabbit that listens. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want to replace you – because it’s simply NOT possible to replace you! – that’s not how this works and anyone that thinks otherwise really doesn’t understand deep attachment work. I know it’s not been easy lately and it’s been really messy (total carnage!) but then relationships aren’t easy – and I think this is the work. I genuinely think we can come through this – because from my side (at least) the love is there (soooo much) and I hope we’ve done enough foundation building so far to be able to survive big earthquakes. I just need a lot of handholding whilst I learn to stand up in the wobble. A you are so important to me and the reason I have lost my shit so badly is because this relationship matters such a lot to me. I love you x
And so, we have carried on working through bits and hitting more landmines on repeat…and somehow it is nearly July!
Anita couldn’t always reach me over this long drawn out rupture, but she has really tried. And that is one of the benefits of the messages and of having recordings of the sessions. Sometimes I was so triggered and so dissociated that I really and truly believed that Anita had abandoned me in the room, that she had given up, that she was happy to let me suffer (hence the running out of the session before her break and losing my shit). But when I have listened back to the sessions – there was lots of silence (mine)- but I could hear Anita trying so hard to break through and reach me. So often she’d ask if I wanted a hug – of course I did. But I responded with a venomous ‘NO’ and refused to look at her and so returned to feeling trapped in my own misery.
Anita and I definitely need to find a strategy when things are like that because of course she has to respect my ‘no’ even if that ‘no’ is only from a protector and the rest of the rabble inside is wailing ‘yes’ and wanting to be held close but we do have these conversations – we can talk about the hard stuff. It’s such a huge contrast to sitting in agony with Em and just feeling chronically abandoned always.
So, it’s nearly 2000 words in and here we get to the bit with ‘what happened next?’ I am clearly not good with the economy of words. Lol!
After so many of you guys coming forward with supportive comments to the feelings spurge I had written, I felt so much better than I had done. Honestly, this space has been such a lifeline over the years, and you really are fab cheerleaders 😊. So, later in the week I sat down and recorded the letter as a voice note for Anita…all 27 minutes of it! The voice note is so helpful as there is no way A would get through reading that with her dyslexia and hearing it, I think, connects us in a different way. She can hear my voice and the feeling behind what I am saying.
I waited until the Friday to send the voice note as A was on holiday- not away- but not in work mode and I knew she needed time out as she’s been so stretched and . I didn’t expect A to reply before our session but she sent a holding message on the Friday and Saturday and Sunday:
I felt worried and anxious about how she might respond but she was fine. She’d really listened to the message and this was demonstrated through a reassuring message on the Sunday of a photograph she’d taken of where she had gone away for the weekend. Since then things have been much more settled. There’s been contact between sessions (probably the same as it’s been since February!) but how I am reading it is so different. I feel like Anita is there again…or… I am connected again. Whatever it is, it feels much better.
So much of what has happened has been my processing and my trauma responses flaring in a big way. Because my life has been so up in the air I’ve felt like Anita and I weren’t safe too. But we are. She has been so lovely these last couple of weeks since the puppy died and when I can let myself be present and connected with her I see that nothing is wrong, nothing has changed, and I have a rock in A.
Don’t get me wrong, I know this will all go up in flames again shortly – as we hit another trigger point but what I can see is that Anita isn’t going anywhere. She is in it for the long haul and will be there alongside me even if I won’t let her in, waiting until I can.
So I’ve come up for air and am not drowning as we speak!
I have other things to write about – I’ve experienced somewhat of a parallel process with what’s happened in my therapy and what happened with my friend ending our friendship. It’s interesting how things play out and give you a different understanding and perspective. Because of what’s just happened with my friend I feel a different level of compassion for Anita’s situation now. All the times she’s told me that she is trying hard to make it so that she can be as good a therapist as she can, but that her life has changed and that’s meant there’s some things she can’t do, have left me feeling rejected and abandoned and like she doesn’t really care.
No matter how many times she has said her feelings for me haven’t changed, it’s her situation that has changed, I have struggled against it with a voice saying “if I really mattered then she’d make the time”. But then a similar thing has happened with my friend. I am not able to be as present or available as I once was but have been trying my best with the time that I have but ultimately my family have to come first right now.
I can see that can be read as not giving adequate time and care to nourish the relationship, though. And what I can offer isn’t enough. But losing a friend when my feelings never changed, my love and care are still as strong as they ever were – well it’s gutting, really. But then I guess that is life. Relationships are complex because there are two people in them and people have different needs and expectations of what they want and need in a relationship. I decided to stay with A because even though I get ‘less’ than I perhaps used to, what I do get is so valuable to me. Other people would make different choices, I’m sure.
But losing a friend has given me a weird kind of security in my relationship with A. I know I love my friend – I always will. Even if we are not connected anymore I am grateful for the time we did have and will always hold that dear. So even though I am busy I know my feelings didn’t change and therefore I know that A loves me even though her life has changed beyond recognition. I feel it.
Hi everyone – it’s been ages since I have blogged. And even this, today, isn’t really a blog, it’s a letter that I have written that I am debating recording in a voice note for A. We are on a break (ffs!). Things have been horrible for ages now. This ongoing rupture is bloody agony and is driving me crazy. My life is also falling apart… not because of therapy but the instability in the therapy is certainly not helping matters.
I don’t know what to do, really. I appreciate I sound like a brat in what comes below (which is why I have put it here first whilst I decide what to do). I get that this feels quite out of context as it’s been such a long time since I have posted and so the background isn’t there and there’s a lot of ‘big feelings’ coming out.
Anyway, I’m hoping to write something and catch up soon as I have a few days off now. I am sorry I haven’t been commenting much on your blogs. I just haven’t been here…although looking at my reader today, I think a lot of us are AWOL. I’d like to think it’s because things are going well for everyone but I suspect it may be that people are worn out and on their edge. Big hugs x
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A, everything is a right mess and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve written something in order to try and process things a bit but I don’t know if it makes any sense because I feel so upset. I’m going to read it anyway because I need you to hear it.
The first time I contacted you to see about starting therapy with you I grilled you on whether you thought you were able to work with complex trauma and if you had done enough of your own work to work with someone like me. I remember sending the email and thinking I was probably asking a bit much, probably overstepping what was acceptable to ask a new therapist, but it was all heading south with Em and there was no way I was going to go blind into another therapeutic relationship and I really needed to be sure that any new therapist really understood what they would be dealing with.
You assured me that you had experience of working with CPTSD and that having received my message you had thought carefully about whether you had the capacity to take on a complex client because you understood the need and how delicate the work is …but yes, you thought you could and you commended me on trying to take care of myself in asking those questions and so we arranged to meet.
Our first session felt so different to anything I had experienced in therapy before. It felt like you were really ‘there’ with me and for the first time in ages I felt seen and heard. But not only that, I felt ACCEPTED and UNDERSTOOD. There was no sense of being judged, you just felt warm, and open, and perhaps someone who might be safe enough to work through a lifetime of trauma with. The relief I felt was palpable, but I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy transition leaving Em…little did I know at that point just how bad it would get and the lasting damage that would be done.
Em’s tick analogy has lodged inside me like a jagged piece of shrapnel. It is so painful. I feel sick and tearful every time I think about it – which is daily, and to be honest it’s not even conscious thought, instead it’s like a shadow that follows me around, or worse, a deep sense of shame that I carry inside me. I’ve told you about that thick tar that I feel like I am coated in and runs through my veins – well it’s that. Even though all this happened a couple of years ago, it’s not gone away, and I am not sure that it ever will.
I don’t know if you know how much this enduring sense of shame and of being ‘too much’ is present in the room when we are together and in our relationship in general? Whenever I want to be close to you, to hug you, or to see you, or now simply reach out and text you my brain serves me up those words “It’s like you want to be inside me, your young parts want a constant drip feed of what they need, a permanent breast, they are adhesive, like a tick…” and I am floored. I can’t really explain how bad it is, but it makes that vulnerable part want to curl up and die.
The steady work we have done together on building trust and safety had silenced that voice a lot, the one that tells me I am draining you dry and am an unwanted parasite – the one that says I need to be careful, or you’ll leave. But it’s got louder and louder again in recent months since you’ve stepped back. The part that feels ‘unlovable’ and ‘too much’ is always looking for confirmation of that and so not being able to do longer sessions and you not replying to my texts is taken as evidence that I’m finally too much for you too, and it’s so painful. As much as I try and work round it it’s playing out in our sessions over and over again.
I know you say your need to retreat isn’t about me and you have tried to reassure me that this is your stuff and Adult Me can hear that and gets it. But the young parts, the bits that actually need to be in therapy, don’t get it and I need you to understand what’s been happening for me since February because things aren’t ok. Well, clearly, they’re not. I’ve run out of the therapy room so many times now because it feels unbearable being so disconnected, and other times I have struggled to make it into the room. I know things aren’t going to change but we still need to look at this because whilst you probably think it’s settled down now, it hasn’t, I’ve just taken it inside and it’s eroding my sense of safety in the relationship.
I feel so far away from you now. My protectors are on high alert because when they look for evidence that you’ve gone, it’s all they can find. The week before your break I texted you and told you I missed you. You didn’t acknowledge it. Then I asked if we could find a way to connect so that I didn’t feel so alone, and you said “absolutely” – but then the Friday session happened, and it felt like you hadn’t understood how desperate it actually felt. On Thursday before our session I sent you a picture of a crying child. Nothing. You used to send me messages saying things like, “looking forward to seeing you” before our sessions but you don’t now and so when I have already spiralled off it feels really precarious coming. Like do you want to see me or am I just another thing on the list that you have to get through?
The week leading into Friday’s session was awful. I was falling apart. Massively. For the first time in years, I seriously considered self-harming. My brain was wandering into not being here anymore. Things felt so bad, and I just felt like there was no way through it. I felt so alone and scared. You couldn’t have known from the messages I sent you how bad it was because I didn’t say it explicitly, but there would have been a time when I would have text you and told you that, or at least asked to check in or if we could do a longer session. But I don’t ask now because I know you don’t have capacity and so instead, I try and hold it on my own.
I didn’t self-harm but it was there like a shadow all week. What I did slip into like a comfy pair of slippers was not eating. I didn’t even know it had happened until Friday when I realised I hadn’t actually eaten a meal all week and had just been dashing about and had a few biscuits here and there. Fortunately, I caught myself quickly and have been on top of it. The last thing I want to do is go back down that road- especially on autopilot. Things are really bad at the moment – it doesn’t really get much scarier than thinking you could lose everything, but it’s been compounded by feeling like I am on my own now. I felt like I had dragged myself through the week and just needed to be able to put it all down for a bit and be safe with you but that didn’t happen. I worry that telling you that makes me sound manipulative but it’s not, I’m not trying to make you do or feel anything, it’s just a reflection of how bad it’s been feeling and I think you need to know because I always seem to be ‘coping’ when actually I am so far from it.
I miss feeling connected to you and I know I have to learn to find another way, but it feels like a big shock to my system. I miss the goodnight messages you would send. I miss the photos of places you’d been that helped bridge the gap when you were away. I miss you checking in with me when things were difficult. And I know it’s not like that’s completely stopped but I miss feeling like you were ‘there’ and I hate that you being ‘gone’ makes me feel like it’s happened because I am not important enough or worthy enough of your care and attention. Things are really bad at the moment, terrible in fact, and it feels like you just don’t care at all.
I know all this is hurting much more than it should because of how things used to be when I was little. But it’s very hard for the young parts who grew up without a mum in the week. You had begun to feel ‘real’ and I had started to get a sense that there was something maybe a bit solid and safe in the relationship even when I can’t physically see you. I was heading towards the sense of there being an ‘invisible string’ and I felt myself relaxing and beginning to breathe in the relationship. But now – to go back to what they’ve always known – well it’s like being body slammed. I know that seems extreme, but it is how I am experiencing it.
The young four-year-old part of me that had started to cry and reach out has gone back to silence and hiding because no one cares, and no one comes. She’s used to coping alone…surviving…and so it’s returning back to what is known. The baby is still screaming to be picked up and soothed but again it’s a scream that is going unheard and cry that will eventually stop. You told me once that a baby doesn’t try and annoy its mother by crying when it’s hungry and that needs don’t work on a timetable – but now we are trying to work on a timetable and it’s so hard because so much of the upset I experience is triggered from being left. It’s the sense of abandonment is what sets everything off inside. I try and get through the week and not be ‘too much’ and not contact you ‘too much’, but the internal chaos and upset is intense.
I try and coach myself and all the young parts through the week. I tell the parts to “hold on” and say that, “it’ll be ok” when I see you and that “nothing has changed”- but more often than not, when I arrive now, the despondent older child parts (especially the teenager) won’t let you anywhere near. They feel rejected and abandoned in the week so why would they let you close in person? That’s what happened on Friday. I was in complete agony, trapped and terrified. I don’t think you really got how bad it was, I could hardly speak and it was an effort to tell you anything at all. When I say things like “my body is in pain”, it’s physically excruciating and a symptom of how much emotional distress I am in.
Earlier that week I had I told you I needed cuddles in a text. I feel really stupid asking for anything like this, stories, whatever, but what you tend to get in messages is the youngest parts’ needs being expressed. They’re the ones that get imprisoned in the room and can’t reach out easily. So even if I arrive and seem stand-offish or shutdown or whatever it is that keeps you far away as you said, “keeping you at arm’s length” (which incidentally is how I feel about you – I feel like I am being pushed away and that’s why I am so protected) I need you to reach through that and get to those young parts. I know you asked if I wanted stories but I was already so far gone that I couldn’t get back to you.
I need you to know that when I say “no” to a hug it’s only the protector saying “no”. There has never been a time in the entire time I have been seeing you when I have not wanted you to come closer to me or hug me or hold my hand or give me some physical signal that things are still ok. I don’t know how we get round this, but I think I said before, maybe you could ask, “Is that what all the parts of you want, or is it a protector trying to stop the little ones from getting what they need because it thinks you’ll get hurt?” That sort of thing really cuts through that protective part that feels like it’s unsafe and you don’t want to be with me. When you acknowledge the young parts it gives the protector permission to step back.
I know how nuts that sounds – and I think you asked me twice on Friday if I wanted a hug. So I do get you were trying. You’d think I would be able to respond to that, wouldn’t you? And I REALLY wanted to. I wanted to shuffle over to you and snuggle in and just feel safe. You’d think I would understand that you asking me more than once if I want a hug means you aren’t trying to get away from me or push me away, but I get frozen in fear. I don’t want to be too much and the longer we are far apart and silent the worse that feeling gets.
I can see the time ticking away and I feel desperately sad. Those little ones have been hanging on all week to see you and then this happens. It’s so painful, and so reflective of what it was like when I was a child. I needed my mum to look like she was pleased to see me when she came back after a week away, to give me some kind of physical cue that everything was ok, that I was still wanted…and this is what is playing out with us and going so badly wrong at the minute.
I am so filled with shame for needing you so much that I can’t even look at you now. I don’t know what your facial expression is like so can’t read what’s there, but it feels too scary to look at you or make eye contact. When I am frightened, we hardly talk so I can’t even judge your tone of voice and I read your silence as frustration, anger, or lack of care. I really, really just need for you to reach out and let me know it’s safe. I need for us to find a way to connect quickly at the beginning of sessions so it doesn’t spiral into something terrible where I feel like there is no option but to leave.
I’d told you I felt like I was drowning in that last session. You told me that people who are drowning usually put their arms out for help. That might be the case – but when I feel like you are not even ‘there’ I don’t register that I can reach out. That’s how bad it feels. The level of dissociation was off the chart. I genuinely felt like I was in freezing water, in a choppy, grey sea, and was totally alone. I might have looked like I am with you, but I was nowhere close. Adult me is a really strong swimmer but when it’s like that, and I tell you I am drowning I’m little and I am scared and I can’t swim.
You said once that you wouldn’t let me drown. You said there would always be space for me with you. You told me that I didn’t need to stay out in the cold. And I trusted that. You told me I was brave for trying again and you understood that coming to therapy was almost like asking me to run back into a burning building when I have already have third degree burns. It felt like you got it, but now I tell you it feels like you are watching me drown and you tell me it’s because I’m not accepting help. It feels like you don’t really care. If I was able to reach out and ask for help I would.
It feels like such a long time since you laughed and told me that you had a cupboard full of chocolate. With Em I had been told the cupboards were bare and that statement felt like you really saw me, understood the trauma I had experienced and knew what I needed. You said I needed a different experience of relationship – I was looking to do the deep relational work and you said you could do that with me. I don’t know if that’s how you feel now, or whether I’m too much for you. I get that all this is probably a reflection of the depth of the relationship we have. It’s messy and sticky and covered in feathers not neat and clean…and maybe this is where the healing will come but right now I am face down in the pain.
You have never shamed me for my big feelings, you say that I am not too much, and sometimes you say you love me… but not as frequently as you used to. After years and years of feeling chronically unsafe things had begun to settle but now… it feels like I’ve lost you or I am losing you. Or as I said last week, like I am lost. And it’s scary. I don’t even know if I am making sense it’s such a mess inside.
When it’s really bad, I sometimes wonder if I was sitting in floods of tears instead of frozen and silent whether you would still stay away from me? My silence and freeze is how I express overwhelm – that is my crying. Sometimes I cry with you but it’s not even a tenth of what’s stuck inside, it’s still ‘controlled’. I wish I could just fall apart and let it out but it wasn’t safe to cry as a child, and I learnt early on that no one comes anyway. But that’s the reframe that needs to happen – if I am silent and still, I am not keeping you at arm’s length, I’m massively distressed and need you to come close. I know this is a difficult area but we need to figure something out because I can’t keep getting to the place where it feels so intolerable that I can’t bear to stay and run out because it feels like I am being abandoned and that is how it feels.
When I said I was going home last week you didn’t say anything – I guess you’d had enough too – but the message it sent to the young parts, again, is that you just don’t care. Rather than try and fix things you let me leave and then stayed to chat with whoever it was that was sitting on your front step. That really didn’t help. I guess it’s my fault for leaving before the session was over, but that whole episode just made me feel exposed but also highlighted that other people are more important to you even if I am falling apart.
With a break coming up it was always going to be tricky, but it really couldn’t have been a worse way to leave with a long break looming. Usually, I would have given you my elephant to wash just before a break but I didn’t this time. This wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it’s because I didn’t feel like I could, it didn’t feel safe for the young parts to express that need…and that’s where I am at. It feels like those young parts have been completely forgotten about and abandoned. There’s been no preparation for the break and now I just have to tough it out and frankly it’s not been going all that well.
It’s Thursday now and this is the longest period of time we’ve ever had no contact and I suspect that you won’t contact me before Tuesday’s session. It feels like a punishment. I get you need a break. I get that you are tired. I get that you have a lot on. And I get that I am hard work…but it gets to be even harder work when the young parts aren’t attended to, and it feels just like total confirmation that you have had enough. You’ve totally backed away. And I get why you are doing it – a bit – but the impact it’s having on me is enormous. I get you have to look after you, of course you do, and I have to look after me but so much of my looking after me comes through the relationship I have with you right now. I get I need to ‘individuate’ and take care of the little parts inside and I am getting better at that but we are still in the thick of this work and …I don’t even know what to say.
The fact that you and your supervisor have had discussions about referring me on makes me so unsafe because I feel like if I don’t do what I am meant to do or I get too upset about how different things are you get to decide to get rid of me. In so many ways I feel like the rock I was standing on has turned to quicksand. And none of this is meant as a criticism. I don’t want you to hear it in that way at all. I know this is the work. All these triggers and feelings need working through. This is life. But I need you to know that this is really painful and I am bracing myself for you to tell me that you can’t work with me anymore after this holiday… which on top of all the stuff that is going on in my day-to-day life feels horrendous.
There’s a part of me that feels like I should just tell you I am not coming anymore and protect myself from more pain because I can’t see how it’ll be anything close to Ok on Tuesday as things stand. There is so much hurt right now. And I don’t know if you are meaning to hurt me or whether is accidental but either way I am struggling. If things can be mended, then I really need us to find a way to connect in our sessions and to have a plan for when things hit the skids because I am finding it hard enough to adjust to feeling like you’re gone in the week without also feeling like you’re not in the room with me. I need to feel like you have your end of the rope, or invisible string, and lately it feels like you’ve taken scissors to it and I am left completely alone.
So, somehow or other I got through five weeks of no face-to-face therapy (man I still hate summer therapy break with a passion!) and last Monday saw the long-awaited return to the room and, more importantly, my therapist…not that I had missed her or anything!
As the day approached I started feeling conflicted about going to my session (no change there, then!) What is that about?- The absolutely overwhelming desire to see someone gets replaced with an ‘I don’t want to go’ a couple of days before and ramps up steadily until on the day, on my way to the session, I text my friend saying that I wanted to turn around and go home because I felt sick amongst other things.
I recognise, these days, that this resistance that happens when I’m within touching distance of my therapist is the time where some of the parts start speaking up. The young parts finally settle when therapy is in sight and that allows the teen part some additional space to express how she’s feeling. (She’s pissed off!) She can’t bear the thought of therapy being awful, feeling disconnected, and the young parts getting irate again when they’ve only just stopped screaming. The teen harbours a fair amount of anger about being left (rejected/abandoned) in the first place, and then to be ignored on top (texts) doesn’t make the reunion any easier.
Despite all the misgivings I have never yet not turned up to a session. Sometimes I feel like I am dragging myself there but the need of the youngest parts always gets me into the room … even if all I do is sit there and say nothing!
I felt nervous as I rang the doorbell to my therapist’s house but as she came to the door adult went online (thank god!) and walked in, sat down, and just started talking…about life stuff. The small talk was comfortable; catching up on day-to-day stuff that’s been going was fine. I don’t remember trying to gauge where my therapist was at or whether she was safe. I think I had maybe subconsciously decided to keep the session adult. I don’t know. I can’t remember now what we talked about but basically for twenty minutes it was absolutely ok and then bam – I was gone- instant dissociation the moment she asked if I wanted to talk about the picture I’d sent her via text during the break.
You’d think that opening up that discussion might’ve been a good thing (and ironically most of the time it would be – I want her to help open up difficult conversations) but on Monday, even after twenty settled minutes, it spooked me. ‘Agh I’m exposed. This is scary!’ and off I went deep into myself.
My therapist noticed that I was barely breathing and suggested that I was doing everything I could to hide. Yep! My body was killing me. My legs were heavy/achy. I was able to tell her how I felt in my body. And the moment I told her all that physical pain in my legs evaporated and I thought I was going to throw up. The nausea was incredible. I could hardly speak for fear of vomiting. It was horrendous.
She valiantly attempted to bring me back to her but all I could do was listen to what she was saying. I couldn’t even look at her, let alone make eye contact. Does that happen to anyone else? You want to connect but can’t- the fear is too great- and so instead just listen very very carefully to what they say trying to see if they ‘get it’ and whether or not you might be able to connect eventually?
This is a bit of a strange analogy but sometimes it feels to me when I dissociate badly that I have an internal power cut – mains power is lost. I lose my ability to be present. It’s far from ideal. My therapist has to scrabble around to try find an alternative power source. Most of the time she finds some rechargeable batteries but, unfortunately, they’re dead. She doesn’t give up though. She slowly starts charging the batteries up with her insights, validation, and care. If we are lucky she might do enough to give me enough power to work again before the end of the session. Sometimes the charge happens really quickly and other times it take nearly all session.
That’s what happened on Monday. She was really insightful and understanding and validating. She spoke about the really strong emotions that I was feeling: the anger that she felt in the text that I had sent her ‘file under unread’; the horrible feelings of rejection and abandonment I experience when she doesn’t reply to me; the belief that she doesn’t care about me. She talked to me about it all but I could only nod here and there. The batteries we soooooooooooo dead after the break that it took a long time to power them up.
With about five minutes to go I could feel myself starting to connect to her. The vulnerable parts wanted to talk to her and the teen had felt like she got it and cared. She asked me how I felt and I said ‘sad’. She asked if it was because we were coming to the end of the session and there were things I needed to say that I hadn’t been able to. I nodded. She told me we still had a bit of time left and maybe I could make a start now and we could pick it up on our first Friday session. So, once again I took a running jump and said perhaps the most expensive sentence I have said in a while:
‘I really missed you; five weeks is really a long time.’
It mightn’t seem like much but it really was after such a difficult session. Saying something that feels so exposing after a break feels really hard. I always struggle to tell my therapist how I feel about her. I feel like she’ll think I am weird. I don’t want to embarrass her. Of course, any time I let her know how I feel she is really kind and non-shaming. It’s just so hard to reverse the automatic pilot that tells me feelings are bad and dangerous, that showing someone that you care for them and need them will result in something negative.
I guess I just need to keep saying how I feel, keep getting met well, and maybe eventually I might feel differently.
Anyway, that was Monday! I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that I was left with an almighty therapy hangover! I’ve come to expect it now after a long break. I’m starting to recognise it as part of the process and just see it for what it is rather than feeling bad about how things are. I think all the stuff I had kept at bay over the break came flooding out and had me flailing about on my arse for most of the week. It was initially quite hard to work out whether I was heading into a depressive state or whether it was what was left from the break and the session. I tend to fear the worst when I am stuck on the couch for hours at a time unable to complete the tiniest of tasks.
I felt totally incapacitated. I felt ugh. I wanted Friday to get here so I could have another stab at connecting and feeling better. The great thing about this week was that I knew Friday (yay for two sessions a week) was coming and so even though the young parts were feeling separation anxiety and attachment pain it was nowhere near as bad as it has been previously. Wednesdays have been notoriously bad when I have had one session a week. I have felt stranded and uncontained. It’s been god awful! So, even though things were pretty bad they were WAY better than I am used to.
My Friday session isn’t a face-to-face session at the moment. The session time is too early for me to be able to make it in person and be able to get my kids to school and so we are Skyping. I’d had mixed feelings about this. The irony is not lost on me that only a few months ago I would have been ripping my therapist’s arm off for any extra contact – even a midweek text and now I am whinging about an extra session via Skype. *eye roll* I guess there’s just a part that wants to be with her in person. I’ve asked that when a later session becomes available that she lets me know so I can swap into it, but it’s likely to be several months.
When it came to it it was actually nice to do the session at home. I was snuggled up on my sofa with a coffee and it was nice and quiet. There’d been no rushing in the car to get to my session and I felt pretty relaxed. I think this feeling relaxed made a difference to how I was. Usually I only Skype when I can’t get to session because I have my kids at home (holidays or sick) and it certainly changes how I am. I am on ‘mum duty’ and don’t open up in the same way. Anyway, this session felt really nice. I remembered how much I like seeing my therapist’s face close up. Ha! And even better I DID NOT DISSOCIATE AT ALL!
Bonus!
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t dive headlong into how the break felt or how difficult I have found being in therapy the last few months but we did lots of connecting work that I feel is paving the way for me to be able to have those conversations. I was able to tell my T how bad I had felt during the week and how just the day before I had burst into convulsive tears whilst running on my treadmill.
I don’t really ever cry and I certainly don’t cry in front of people. My therapist mentioned that I don’t cry when I am with her but that she feels I am fighting back tears sometimes and that occasionally a single tear will escape. She said that the idea of someone seeing me crying is hard for me. She talked about the huge expectations my parents placed on me to be a certain way as a child and that I had had to grow up too quickly and be what they wanted rather than who I am. It’s true. I never expressed how upset I was when my mum wasn’t there when I was a kid. It was just how it was and something I had to get used to.
I am realising now just how sad that little girl was to not have mum there from Sunday to Friday- from the age of 5 even if mum wasn’t perfect or especially nurturing. I look at my daughter who is now six and my son who is four and know how they hate it if I am not there for bedtime. I have to leave home at 6pm a couple of nights per week if I am going out to tutor and they moan (fair enough! I am glad they can!). I always give them a kiss and cuddle before I leave and come and kiss them goodnight (even if they are asleep) when I am back –they have never had to not have their mum/mums there for protracted periods. I am there for breakfast; I am there to take them to school and pick them up; I am there for dinner; I am there for parents’ evenings; I go to sports day; I drop everything when they are sick; I ask them how they are EVERYDAY. I hold them and tell them I love them EVERYDAY.
I had none of that.
I was a good girl who got on with it quietly. Accepted that I didn’t have a say in how things were.
That little girl doesn’t want to be quiet and accept it anymore.
She wants to cry about it.
And maybe she might start crying about it in therapy.
I’m feeling a bit bleurgh at the moment (a technical term I’ll have you know!). It’s not a full-on depressive episode yet (I don’t think) but it’s feeling like a huge struggle just to remain in a relative coping place…but then when is mental health ever a walk in the park, really? It pretty much always feels like I am struggling in one way or other.
For now, at least, I feel like I have done with sliding down the hill towards rock bottom, which was what happened at the start of the therapy break, and have finally got a fingertip hold on something semi-solid that has allowed me to stop and take stock. I daren’t move though, rock bottom is still a long way off, thank god, but I feel like adjusting my position may result in me losing my precarious grip and careering at speed downwards again. I can’t risk that so I am staying here stuck in a kind of uncomfortable limbo.
Put it this way, I am not where I would like to be at this point in the holidays!
I don’t feel especially solid.
I’m certainly not grounded.
I can feel anxiety creeping around the edges.
I’ve woken up feeling queasy for the last four days.
The attachment pain is really there just before bed and any time I let my mind drift towards therapy.
It’s all a bit shit really.
Moan. Moan. Moan!
I daren’t look too far ahead because 3rd September feels like a very long time in the future and it makes me even more aware that I’m not even half way through the break yet – it’s still three weeks until I see my therapist in person – nooooooooooo! Having said that, I am meant to have a Skype on the 20th so I shouldn’t complain. I am just massively aware that it could go belly up next week.
I am experiencing the usual conflicting feelings:
I love you/I hate you
Please come back/Fuck off I never want to see you again
and what I really don’t want to happen is to have a Skype session that semi opens up stuff, doesn’t really do the job, isn’t especially connecting, and then be left for a further two weeks for phase two of the therapy break.
I think I just about have a handle on things right now but I’m not stupid, I’ve been here enough times to know that there is a real possibility of me trying to sabotage my therapy before September is here. The teen part of me that wants to give up is never far from the surface and on breaks, especially long ones, she gets quite vocal. She’s still angry about the last session before the break. Seriously, ‘imagine something you like doing’….FFS!
Feeling stuck in this limbo state/place is pants. My last session seems a long time ago (eve though it was actually only two weeks ago) and all the good things I feel about my therapy/therapist seem to have evaporated now…. and yet the crap parts haven’t, they remain there! It’s not ideal. I’m beginning to put my therapist in the bracket of people that reject and abandon me rather than who do their best to help me. (I do know how crazy it is – but it is how it is!).
You can probably tell from this post that my mind is all over the shop. In addition to this, I seem to have no energy at all. My motivation has gone on holiday (along with my therapist – grr!), and all I really want to do is lie in bed and sleep for hours on end or, failing that, sprawl out on the sofa and eat biscuits and chocolate. Essentially once the kids get to bed at 6pm that is exactly what I have been doing- filling my face with sugary things in some mindless stupor state in front of the TV and then crawling into bed and sleeping for as long as I can reasonably get away with (which, to be fair, with two young kids never extends much beyond 6:45am).
Put it this way, I’m not scoring big on the mindfulness and self-care scales right now! Although I am not over-exercising or under-eating (clearly!) so I suppose generally vegetating and resting shouldn’t be seen as a criminal activity. The critical voice in my head is starting to give me a hard time, though:
Lazy.
Fat.
Sloth-like creature.
I am just not particularly good at stopping and doing nothing. I always feel like I ought to be doing something, keeping busy, achieving things. I’m not working again for a couple more weeks as it’s the school holidays. I need to keep reminding myself that it’s A HOLIDAY – not just other people’s (my T, the kids I teach, my own children) mine too and that means a break from the usual drudgery of school runs, work, having to be in a specific place at a particular time etc.
As much as I moan about it when I am in it, I think routine does me good to an extent. I’m not great at this long drawn out time off. I do wonder, though, how much of this is because in the back of my mind (ok quite close to the front!) is the fact that I am on a therapy break and frankly I am not someone who does especially well without regular therapy. Ha! I mean I am not exactly willing the clock forward to September to re-enter the world of ‘Please put your shoes on! I’ve asked you four times already. We are going to be late.’
Having said that, I think with young kids, time off is rarely ‘time off’. Since my son’s birthday last Monday we’ve been busyish: swimming lessons, cinema, ice cream parlour, farm park, a couple of playdates, baking, making pizzas from scratch, a visit to a soft play centre as well as a fair bit of playing in the garden, oh, and we/the dog delivered a litter of puppies yesterday. It’s not exactly been a dull existence!
I don’t know what’s wrong with me really. I just feel a bit stuck. Whilst, clearly, elements of my life are carrying on as normal and I would say I’m doing a good enough job at parenting at the minute- the kids are happy- underneath the exterior of ‘with it and together mum’ the other stuff is bubbling away. I guess that’s the problem. Usually I have somewhere to let ‘the other stuff’ out and right now I don’t. I’m very much aware of operating of multiple levels. I find it tiring at the best of times and perhaps without my release valve I’m finding it all a bit more exhausting?
Who knows?
Maybe I am just getting depressed. Or maybe I am about to get sick. Or perhaps it’s just that my period is on its way… whatever it is I want to feel a bit more energised and less like I am going through the motions. I want to feel present in my life rather than as though I am spectating from the sidelines. The only saving grace is that no one would know I feel this way. It is not evident that I am struggling. I would hate for my kids to feel like ‘mummy is checked out’….and I guess they don’t know because it’s only parts of me that are. I guess maybe it’s part of the beauty of being fragmented – the bits that can’t cope aren’t really seen and the ‘carrying on with everyday life self’ is a damn good autopilot.
Errr what else? I’m scraping the barrel a bit with this post – no therapy to talk about!! haha.
I’ve been without internet for the last few days due to a cock up with changing provider. Seamless transition it was not! And so the one positive was that I haven’t been in this ‘bleurgh’ state and additionally whiling away the hours mindlessly on my phone flicking between WhatsApp, Facebook, WordPress, Instagram. Even NetFlix hasn’t been a possibility!
A social media blackout is not necessarily a bad thing every now and again. I do it at Christmas and always feel quite good having gone screen-free for a bit. You might be thinking, why not use your phone for the internet…well, I live in a signal/data blackspot and so have to go in the garden and stand in a specific place to get anything at all and it’s so intermittent that it’s not even worth it. It’s so circa 1995!
Everything went live again yesterday evening and actually it felt like a bit of an attack to the system. I have been off radar with a few friends this last week due to feeling so crappy and so I’ve been trying to be a bit present again. I just find it really hard.
I really have nothing at all to say today!… but having already gone more than a week between posts I wanted to write something. This, post, shall hereby be filed under ‘bleurgh’ and sink to the depths of unread trash!
Actually. I posted this on my Twitter feed the other day…and it says it all x
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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