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.
I’d like to say that the reason I haven’t been blogging much lately is because life is so abundantly filled with exciting and fun and happy things, that things are so smooth and easy, that I simply haven’t had the time to write. I so wish that was the case. But we know that’s not how my life works, don’t we? It’s becoming a bit of a joke between me and my friends that my life just lurches from one big stress to another, and the times of calm never last all that long, or certainly not long enough to regroup and regain my footing, or heal the past. I literally feel like I am endlessly running barefoot through a war zone being shot at and trying my very best not to sustain any more wounds and actually, let’s be real here, just trying very hard not to die. Sometimes I feel like just stopping, giving up altogether, and admitting defeat. Maybe I am just not cut out for this life and this world?
It’s hard navigating the day-to-day fall out of complex trauma: the endless hypervigilance, the lack of a felt sense of safety (both internal and external), the exhaustion that comes from the black void inside, trying to keep all the little parts inside from melting down, feeling broken… but most of the time I am able to manage that – that’s why I go to therapy. Therapy is basically the scaffold I put around my week so that I am able to get on with my adult life and manage all the responsibilities I have as a wife, mother, teacher, friend…blah blah blah… but then sometimes, oftentimes, life throws and extra-large dump of shit on me and I just don’t cope.
That’s where I am right now.
Not coping.
I have spent the last week in a freeze.
I have so many things piling up around my ears because I have literally only managed the most essential tasks- i.e my job because…money (but not enough money). Everything else has fallen apart. My house is a colossal mess. I started putting up Christmas decorations a couple of weeks ago and it’s all ground to a halt midway through, I just can’t find any oomff to do the rest… and yet I have kids, and I want to at least make it look like we are functional even if I feel a million miles away from it. I don’t want me children to be burdened by my failures.
It took everything I had to go to the supermarket this week to buy food, cooking it has been a trial though, and for three days I just didn’t/couldn’t eat at all. I fed everyone else…but stress and anxiety had taken root so deeply that I couldn’t put anything in my mouth without gagging so in the end I gave up trying. I had to be so very very careful not to allow that to trigger the anorexic part of me because when things stressful and out of control anorexia has always been a go to and right now everything is out of control and stressful.
What’s up?
Last week we had a car accident. It was horrible. Noone was hurt but it shook us up, terribly. I keep getting horrible flashbacks and it’s really upsetting me. The car is being written off by the insurers and living rurally there’s no back up for transport with buses. We are in a privileged position that both my wife and I have (had!) cars but it’s meant that I have been doing an hour round trip twice a day to get her to and from work as I also need mine to get around.
We’re in that crap position where the car isn’t worth much because it’s a few years old now but it’s worth a lot to us. It’s reliable and in good condition – or was! What the insurers are offering is nowhere near close to be able to buy a replacement of the same age or mileage and so we’ll have to take out another loan to get another car whilst still paying the loan on the one we had for another three years… of course this is all debt we hadn’t accounted for and really can’t afford…and with my wife’s job being very volatile it feels extra scary as there’s not guarantee her job will be ongoing although she is looking around for something else.
Money.
So yeah.
2025 problems.
It’s always money.
But money = security.
But nothing feels secure when there is no financial buffer. When you live from month to month as it is and still struggle, the idea of not having an income is terrifying and it is filling me with dread and anxiety. I am waking every night with anxiety and last night it escalated into a full-blown panic attack. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heart was racing. It was terrifying. And yet I simply don’t know what to do to make things better.
Even when employment is stable, it seems like no matter how many hours you work, or how many promotions you get the cost of living is accelerating so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep afloat – it’s not even treading water, it’s trying not to drown. All my millennial friends are in the same leaky boat. We’ve all got degrees, we all have professional jobs, we have smaller families than we would perhaps have liked, both partners are working, we don’t lead extravagant lifestyles, and yet we are in a cycle of propping life up on personal loans and credit cards just to cover the basics. Kids feet grow and they need new shoes, trainers, and football boots for PE and that knocks you back.
It feels soul destroying to be perpetually chasing our tails and trying to figure out what can be cut to make ends meet in our forties. Like this isn’t the deal we were sold. We were told that if we worked hard at school, got the grades, got the degrees and the professional jobs, that we would be set. Our parents had the luxury of being able to support a family on one average income, buy a house, a car, have a holiday even, and now that is simply impossible.
I fear for the future too. Savings? Pensions? Will we ever be able to retire? Elderly care? I feel like we’ll be on suicide pacts with our friends at this rate and our student debt and loan and credit card debt will be there forever. Like I just feel thoroughly beaten down in the here and now and as I look forward into the future.
I don’t know what the answer is. But it isn’t about cutting coffee and avocado on toast, or Netflix – let’s be real people have already cut that. The issue is bigger, far bigger than the media would have you believe, and it’s frankly insulting to suggest that to anyone struggling. It drives me insane that older people tell young people that that’s the way to be able to afford a house or whatever. I honestly feel like after working all these years I didn’t ought to have to think about buying a treat here and there. But I do. It’s Christmas and my budget is minimal. I will buy for the kids but that’s it because I still don’t know how to sort out the car, the insurance and all the other things that have now hit as a result of the accident.
I get I am moaning and it all sounds like first world problems. And I also get that there is one expense each month that is crippling us: therapy.
But what do I do? Quitting therapy would significantly ease my financial worries but how would that work for the rest of my life? I am barely hanging it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum as it is. As I have said, therapy is the scaffold I have around my life to make my life doable…but then life is not doable right now and the money worries I have are making me ill.
This is the very real cost of trauma. I’ve talked about this before. Not only do we carry the debt in our bodies and nervous systems, we continue to pay for it financially for years and years in the therapy we need just to be able to function enough to work and exist.
I honestly, don’t know what to do. I have a feeling that before too long my circumstances will force my hand and leave me no choice but to quit therapy or significantly reduce my contact with Elle. That fills me with absolute dread and panic… but…what can I do?
At the end of the day my relationship with Elle is a paid for relationship. Without money we do not/cannot exist. And that is reality to swallow. Because whilst we, as clients, have money to pay our therapists we can keep up the masquerade that the relationship is ‘real enough’ to do the healing work we need and that we are safe and not going to be left (ahem!!).
So much of our wounding comes from the early experiences of being emotionally and/or physically abandonment and not feeling worthy enough to be loved and cared for in the way that we so badly needed as children, so it’s totally shit that the moment we can’t pay for therapy we are abandoned. It is cruel really, that we have to once again endure the feeling of an attachment figure leaving us (even though it’s not quite that) because we aren’t allowed to stay unless we have something to offer other than ourselves. And of course it makes sense. Therapy isn’t a friendship. Our therapists are not our family. Therapy is transactional. And that completely rams a knife into the wound when it ends for financial reasons. Because so much of our system needs to believe we matter in spite of the money.
So yeah, right now I feel angry.
And upset.
And deflated.
And lost.
And just really really sad. Because had things not gone so terribly wrong with Em and then Anita, maybe by now I would be far closer to not actually NEEDING therapy. The damage that has been done in the decade with Em and Anita is huge ON TOP of the damage there already was that sent me into therapy in the first place…and the financial cost of all those years of therapy means I am not in a strong financial position now… because let’s be real £500 a month for a decade…is…eye watering. Not only would I be debt free had I not been in therapy, I would actually have some savings…
So yeah.
I feel flat.
And money is only one thing dragging me down right now… but rather than bleat on about the rest of it. I’ll end this here and maybe speak about therapy and the two year anniversary that happened back in August, and the ongoing repair of the rupture that Elle and I had, and the anxiety about Christmas break coming up, and you know…all the attachment stuff next time.
I feel like this is the biggest depressive post I’ve written in a long time. But that’s the reality. It’s all been too hard for much too long.
There’s a fucking cruel irony here, that today I am writing about lies and betrayal in therapy literally straight after posting up my last blog about not being able to fully appreciate safety in therapy even though I am safe, and the one before that writing about harm in therapy caused by other therapists but being so grateful to my therapist for being safe and consistent and all the good things…but I am beginning to think the universe hates me so why am I even surprised at this point?
What on earth am I talking about?
Have I lost mind?
Well, yes. Yes. I have…
Not again? Ha! Yep. Again.
I am so dysregulated at the moment that I barely know what to do or say but I need to get this out somewhere before I explode. I’ve been so … unwell…since Tuesday after my last session with Elle that I’ve been barely functional. I feel like I have had my legs taken out from beneath me. My stomach hurts. I feel jittery. I’ve had a consistent migraine and tension headache for four days now – and it’s only started to ease today. My back has seized up. Sleep is appalling. Nightmares are rife. I wake up in the middle of the night and just sob for hours.
Like it’s a mess.
What the hell has happened?
Has someone died or something?
Nope. But I am grieving.
I don’t think it’s really very easy to explain just how destabilising it is to have someone you love and trust betray your trust by lying to you…and how much grief that stirs up – especially if you have the sort of relational wounds that I do.
Of course, in this case the ‘someone that I love and trust’ is Elle.
I am devastated.
But I am also locked in an internal battle with myself. I don’t know if I am completely overreacting here or whether what I feel is justified?
Perhaps what’s happened isn’t all that big a deal… or maybe I am just incapable, these days, of noticing when I am standing right slap bang in the middle of a red flag factory until I am fully wrapped in them from head to toe. Do I just not see the colour red anymore? Or is it a washed out pink now, and I am trying to romanticise the flags as pretty blush-coloured bunting?
I feel like this is really cryptic. It’s not meant to be. But my brain is all over the place. My system is in chaos and disarray and I just feel really fucking sad that I hardly know what to say here.
Part of me wanted to write yet another email to Elle today rather than blog. But she’s away and my telling her what’s going on since the last message we exchanged isn’t going to help matters any. I don’t want to disturb her time away. The last break we had was fine (still not written about that) but May was a disaster (finding myself on the online therapist forum)…and frankly, I don’t want to go there EVER again.
Right now, I am not sure if I can even make it to session on Tuesday, though. My system is off its tits and because it’s free to go spiral off in any direction it wants to for the next few days I am struggling to hold tight to the sense that Elle is safe at all, or cares.
I guess I should just cut to the chase, here, but it might take a bit as I can only focus in short bursts and want to escape this emotional agony and so keep getting dragged into ASMR rug cleaning videos, or anything else that will distract from the fact that my heart is broken…over what is essentially a white lie.
The thing is, does it even matter what colour a lie is in therapy? Therapy is (supposed to be) built on trust and honesty – they are the cornerstones of the process – alongside unconditional positive regard…and yet here we are.
I can’t actually believe it.
Right, RB, stop fucking about, just spell it out. Deep breaths…here we go. Brace positions.
A few months ago, Elle set up an ongoing Zoom link for our Friday check in sessions rather than having to send me a new link each week – makes sense. When she did that it meant that all our sessions went into an online calendar that was shared with me. I can see months and months ahead that our time is blocked out. No problems there.
A couple of months ago I got a notification that my session on Friday 10th October was cancelled and it had a line through it on my calendar. Fine. I figured Elle had something on that day and it was no big deal. We’d always said Fridays might change here and there so it was no sweat.
When I next saw Elle in person, she didn’t mention the cancellation and I assumed that at some point down the line she would tell me about it as it was still a way off. But I was certain she’d mention it, either just to confirm the skipped week, or perhaps we would reschedule the slot to some other time in the week.
The weeks have been rolling by and nothing has been said by Elle at all. Part of me wondered this last week if maybe the thing had changed again and perhaps the call was happening as there had been no discussion about it – although nothing had changed on the calendar to suggest that. And the Friday round Christmas got crossed out so I knew that Elle was actively doing things her end.
A week ago, on Friday, I was in session face-to-face with Elle. It was during that appalling week where I had lost the plot and basically felt borderline suicidal in my Tuesday session and had had a Thursday check in and then a Friday session too. It was a bad week! She said she was going away that weekend to see a friend and then mentioned seeing another friend this weekend…but no reference was made to the Friday being off or her being away in the week and so it confused me a bit as in that moment Elle must have been thinking about seeing this friend and knew when it was she’d be going. It was also a Friday morning that I was sitting with her in the room so it’s not like she could forget that we meet on Fridays.
She had to be avoiding talking to me about it – but maybe it was because I had had such a rotten week and the idea of telling me about it felt like it might be destabilising? I dunno. Either way, she kept quiet. Still, I just imagined she’d tell me on Tuesday that Friday was off – even if that felt a bit last minute and a bit crap given how hard things have been as it really didn’t give us much of an opportunity to put anything in place… not that I would have needed much. It’s only a check in and really a text message would have done instead.
Anyway, I went to my session on Tuesday and it was ok but something felt a little off. Perhaps I was just waiting to see if Elle was going to tell me about Friday. She didn’t. Nothing was said at all. At that point I wondered what the hell was going on and why she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she knew that our calendars were synced and I already knew?…but then surely, you’d always mention a break in person? Or at least via email or text?
Whenever I leave my session on a Tuesday Elle ALWAYS says, “See you on Friday”… like ALWAYS. Yet as I left on Tuesday she didn’t. So, I knew that Friday was off but she hadn’t told me herself.
Ugh.
Crap.
But I guess I already knew and had been bracing for it.
But why was she avoiding saying anything? I know breaks can be tricky, but our last one was fine and missing a check in isn’t the end of the world…
What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to receive a breezy email later that afternoon from Elle:
Hello lovely girl 💕🥰
I’ve just been invited away for a long weekend this week with a friend I hardly ever see, which means I won’t be able to make our usual call at 9 on Friday.
Sorry to not give you more notice, or write you something that feels holding, and I hope that feels ok and not too jarring? Rest assured I will return on Monday morning, if not refreshed maybe a little perkier and less coldish.
Tightest of squishes,
(and absolutely no Halloween gooeyness)
🎃👻🫂💕🍂
Elle xxxxx
To say my stomach fell through the floor is not an understatement. I was just about to go online and teach and as I read that I felt like I was going to be sick.
Because what was this?
She’d had all the time in the world to tell me about the cancelled check in, plenty of notice. She could have told me right that afternoon when I was sitting in the room with her as it was clearly on her mind given she consciously omitted her usual, “See you on Friday”. And there had been plenty of time to write something holding (not that that was at all necessary). We could have rearranged the call months back – like there were so many ways of navigating this. And if the message had have been the truth, yes it would have been a little jarring but nothing like the whiplash I was experiencing in that moment seeing that my therapist of two years who knows me so intimately, knows how important trust and honesty is to me, knows how badly harmed I have been by therapists and their lies, and how very difficult I have been finding things lately…had chosen to lie to me like this.
And not only that, but this was all coming from a therapist who says how important honesty is, and integrity, and trust…like wtaf was going on?
Please make it make sense.
And in the big scheme of things, I really get that it’s not a huge lie but my system can’t seem to differentiate between a whopper and a barely noticeable one because to the little parts of my system and the traumatised parts – a lie is a lie. And if she’ll lie about this what else has she said that isn’t true?
So, as I was just about to start work I fired off a quick reply:
I guess you don’t know that your Zoom calendar updates my end too for our stuff, and I’ve known that this Friday has been off the cards for weeks now. Please don’t lie to me. I can handle changes – because we always said Fridays would be moveable and not guaranteed. I’m less good at whatever this is. And I get you probably didn’t want to tell me because there never seems a good time when things are crap – but I’d rather know than you avoid telling me because you think I’ll react badly. I wouldn’t have.
That’s all I could say in the moment – but it was at least better than running away and completely retreating from it – which is what I wanted to do.
And then I had to try and teach three lessons on the bounce as my internal scaffolding collapsed and I wanted to run away and curl up in a ball and cry.
I can’t explain how difficult it is to be present online 1:1 with a student when my emotional world is in meltdown. There is literally nowhere to hide.
Not long after I sent that message email flashed up another notification. Elle again:
I’m so sorry honey, you’re right that she didn’t just ask. I’m so sorry I lied and said that. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten to tell you and for you to feel unimportant and like you don’t matter, But the truth is I had forgotten, and then tried to cover it up.
Will you forgive me for being cowardly? I feel as if I really fucked up.
Not long after this my phone rang and it was Elle but as I was teaching and I couldn’t answer and even if I could have I wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate call from her…or one of those accidental dials because she hadn’t text me, “Can I call you?” not that she’s ever called me unplanned before – and she didn’t leave a voicemail or follow it up with a text.
As it was, I was teaching until 8pm with no gaps and by the time I finished and would have been able to return the call I knew that she was off doing ‘the thing’ she does with my friend (groan) and wouldn’t have been available anyway. Not that I would ever call her ad-hoc even if I wanted to because ‘boundaries’ and ‘good client behaviour’ and all that stuff.
You can probably imagine, that by the time I got done with work I was in a right state so I just took myself off to bed. Sometimes there isn’t anything to be gained by messaging in an upset state and I also knew that I wouldn’t get a reply anyway as Elle wasn’t ‘there’ and that would have triggered me even more.
On Wednesday morning Elle emailed me again:
I’m so sorry I let you down lovely girl, and that I didn’t honour our trust.
Please know though that me lying was never about protecting myself from you or your reaction, it was (and is always) about me feeling like making mistakes or being less than perfectly caring means that I’m not enough.
I’m always fighting that programming, and when my resistance is low, like it is right now, I fuck up. I lie to cover the fact that I’ve been careless or clumsy, because in my world that was the worst thing I could ever do.
I know that for you a lie could mean that everything I have said is now being called into question, and that your trust in me has potentially been broken irrevocably. But please know that I will not and will never avoid talking about these things with you, taking responsibility and doing my best to mend your trust. Because this is just as important for me as it is for you.
I really hope you want to see me on Tuesday.
Elle xxxx
I didn’t really know what to say in that moment. I was so upset still. It’s hard to explain what a sucker punch to the gut being lied to by the person I have trusted the most with my most vulnerable self felt like, and I was without words. I could register that that was an apology but somehow it didn’t land. I guess there were so many parts activated that it would take more than an email to mend.
I had hardly slept on Tuesday night and so once I got the kids off to school I took myself off to bed again, lay under my weighted blanket and cried myself to sleep.
That probably sounds really dramatic but there’s been a lot of tears this week and a lot of crying in bed. But I think those of you that have deep relational wounds and are deeply attached to your therapists will understand what it might feel like for this to happen. It just felt so much like the special thing that I thought we had built, that means so much to me, in reality means nothing much at all to her…because I would never choose to lie if it meant risking our relationship – and from her email she as clearly aware what this might mean for my trust in her and our relationship.
And I know it was only a small lie…and she’s clearly tried to reach out to put it right…but is that enough? I dunno. Not for some parts of me. I was so far gone by that point all that really would have reached through this mess would have been to properly talk and ideally see her in person…and that wasn’t on the cards. If there is a rupture I will never ask for contact like that even if it is what parts of me are screaming out for. If Elle doesn’t offer if then I am not going to ask especially if I am already feeling the very things she didn’t want me to feel, ‘unimportant’ and ‘like I don’t matter’.
When I fell asleep I ended up having a terrible dream about being in a train where the sliding doors wouldn’t close. The train started moving and it was windy and unsafe. I knew I needed to raise alarm but I couldn’t get the control panel to work to stop the train. No matter what button I pressed the system wouldn’t let me raise the alarm. I tried to manually shut the sliding doors even though it was really unsafe to do so and once I did it I held it together with a tiny sticker with a handwritten note on – ‘broken- unsafe- do not use’.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what that’s about. I didn’t feel able to reply properly to Elle’s emails or tell her how I was feeling but I sent her the dream and the Chat GPT analysis…because could it be any better of a metaphor?
Elle replied with something that felt sort of holding but also sort of scary…she told me that she wishes I could see into her heart and see what’s really there – which sounds fine – but then said that “I want to never let you down and to always be a safe person who you feel loved and seen by, but honestly I don’t know if that is possible” and all my alarms started going all at once.
Like total panic.
I had to teach again but I could hardly concentrate.
I felt sick.
All I wanted to do was reach out to Elle, to speak to her, to try and stop this going where my brain was going…and then I did the thing…and I didn’t realise that was what was happening at the time but I fell into the “Shit Shit SHIT she might leave, it sounds like she’s backing away, I need to not be too much and make this all ok before she gives up on me.”
How familiar are we with this pattern? Someone hurts us but if we so much as get a hint of their being wobbly we do all we can to make them feel better even if it means shelving our own hurt and pain. We must preserve the relationship at all costs even if that means denying our own need.
Ugh.
I thought I was being super adult at the time and untriggered (!) and actually all I was doing was fawning. My scared little girl part was doing everything she could to prevent herself from getting left and then went quietly away to her bedroom to cry on her own… again…
Like I don’t not believe what I said in that message, I do, but I didn’t give anything like enough space to the reality of what I was feeling, how much I was struggling, or what I NEEDED in that moment.
This is what I sent:
I think you set entirely too high expectations of yourself. As humans we are always going to make mistakes and let people down and forget things. Because that’s what happens… and when we’re tired and hormones are doing weird things on top it’s even harder. The thing is, all of this could have been so easily avoided by just saying, “RB I thought I’d told you this, and I’ve realised that I haven’t, but I’m not going to be here on Friday” and really what’s the worst that would have happened? Like I might have felt a bit sad about it but we would have talked it though and that would have been that. The world wouldn’t have ended. Instead, you thought it better to lie to me than tell me the simple truth. And I get why you did it. And I get that in some ways it’s not a big deal. But this whole thing is about trust and I have to believe that you don’t lie to me about stuff to stand a chance of believing that you are actually someone safe. Because how am I meant to believe anything you say if you’ll lie about something so minor? And I understand the thing about feeling not enough and having a reaction to feeling like you’ve not been perfect and so it probably feels big in the moment because of the old conditioning around that… but I’ve told you before and I’m saying it again now- I don’t need you to be perfect and I don’t expect it either – I just need you to be real and honest with me. However that looks. Because it’s hurt me that you haven’t trusted me with the truth. And of course it’s triggered all my stuff which I know is exactly the thing you were trying to avoid in the first place… so it’s a bit shit. In your message you said you hoped I would want to see you on Tuesday. And whilst part of me wants to run a million miles in the other direction because I’m hurt, of course I want to see you. Because this is the irritating thing about all this – I’d like to think by now it’s not so fragile that stuff can’t be worked through. But it feels sometimes when this stuff gets triggered – your ‘not enough’ stuff – that you retreat and everything feels different. Like you’re there but it’s not quite you. And I guess maybe there’s a little bit of you that’s hiding too. But I don’t say it lightly when I tell you that I love you and it’s not conditional. But I will have to force feed you soggy orange fondant if you lie to me again xxx 😘
Elle didn’t reply to that on Wednesday so you can only imagine how that felt. Like here I was struggling to even function, crying, and feeling sick and yet trying to make it better her end, trying to fudge a repair and she didn’t even acknowledge it. I didn’t send it late either, 4pm, but apparently it was fine to leave it or leave me in it.
I got that horrible feeling that the thing they (therapists) all do was happening – you know? Where there’s a rupture and the therapist pulls back? They start only replying in office hours, and then in a way that isn’t consistent with their usual tone and manner? The next thing you know you’re in for a boundary talk and everything that had been so much a part of the therapy gets taken away…and not because of anything you even did. The moment they feel the container is leaking or the frame is wobbly they double down. I really hoped that this wasn’t going to happen but I was ready. Been there, done that, seen it all before, got several t-shirts.
The next day Elle replied and she explained some stuff that we’ve spoken about before and I think it was an attempt to justify what had happened. And it made sense. Like we’ve all told lies and we often do it because it’s hard to be seen as we are – especially if we feel like we’ve cocked up. Like we try and cover our tracks and hope that no one notices. I won’t put that here because it feels especially personal to Elle and doesn’t add anything but I think I felt just a bit unseen in the whole thing – like I needed something that acknowledged my pain, not why it happened.
I replied:
Well, I think maybe it’s better to tell the truth and deal with the consequences which are probably always going to be way less bad than you imagine (these days at least – or at least where you and me are concerned), than lie and have the fall out of that. I think most people can cope with people being fallible and making mistakes but struggle far more with being deceived even if it’s meant well. Or that’s how it is for me. I’ve been lied to such a lot in these seemingly benign ways and then what’s actually underneath has been so bad and so painful that it makes me really scared. I don’t want to feel like I’m now having to watch really carefully for patterns repeating but it’s my default. Like this all looks horribly familiar to Anita’s burnout trajectory… even if it’s not. It never starts with a huge thing, it’s always small stuff. So, I’m on high alert for the next thing – which is generally a subtle form of retreat.
This week all just feels like a double whammy of ouch. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to what you see as shrinking in for a second because I feel it acutely as a pulling back. It’s like you disappear, or maybe you’re there but only in 2D and in black and white. And it feels really hard because when this stuff happens all I want to do is disappear and I know that doesn’t really help me so instead I try really hard not to, but also try really hard to not come at things from a really triggered place and ground a bit first…and when I do that and can’t find anything but the hollowed out version of you or feel you’re gone altogether it’s really bad because I feel like I am putting my really vulnerable self out there only to be met with distance. That’s how it feels anyway. I guess it’s probably because in that moment so much of my not enough and too much stuff is triggered that I’m fearing the very worst.
It feels a bit like trying to communicate down one of those telephones with two cups and bit of string and I can kind of see you off in the distance but not quite hear what’s coming down the line and you’re too far away to see your face. I just want to hold your hand and know that this didn’t all happen because of something I’ve done wrong or because you’ve had enough and just need a break from caring for me.
😞
Elle replied and assured me that she wasn’t burning out and that what I feared was happening isn’t and that she’d be there on Tuesday.
But then if she isn’t burning out why did she choose to lie to me?
Knowing Elle was away now with her friend I didn’t bother to reply…and the great news about this not being fully resolved is that my system has had plenty of time to catastrophise about everything that has happened because Elle isn’t here, we haven’t spoken, and I am left hanging with this turning it over in my mind in a million different ways and looking at it through all the lenses of all my little parts like I am staring into a kaleidoscope of fear and heartbreak and turning the dial.
Tbh this all feels a bit like I’ve been in a hit and run and she’s gone, “I can see you might have a few broken bones there and it looks like you’re bleeding out from your chest, but just sit tight for a few days and we can get this patched up next Tuesday.”
And that isn’t great.
I guess from my emails it looks like I am largely fine, in my adult and can see this as a rupture that is perfectly navigable and survivable.
Only that’s not the whole story.
What’s written between the lines?
Oh my god, there’s a story.
The thing I keep circling back round to is that this relationship matters way more to me than it does to her. And I get it. That’s how therapy works. Like this is how it has always been. It’s us (clients) that get really attached and bring all our early wounds into the therapy and the therapist who becomes the stand-in parent. I am just one of Elle’s clients and I am her work. I know that. But to me she is such a lot. Like she is so important…and I usually feel ok about that. I usually feel like my feelings are ok, welcomed, not too much, and that they are reciprocated to a degree – but this week has just triggered the biggest amount of shame in me.
Like how do I find myself here again?
Why do I never learn?
Why have I opened my heart up to someone who clearly doesn’t appreciate what that actually means? I’ve always felt that Elle holds my heart and our relationship so carefully (and I really need to write about our 2 year anniversary and the break we had) but it felt like this week she had a choice to make: lean into and trust in the connection even if she did feel like it might cause a bit of upset or choose to disconnect altogether from me and the relationship in favour of a quick get out of jail free moment. And she chose the disconnect.
Clearly, I really struggle with lying (not just being lied to but even telling lies). It does things in my body. I feel physically uncomfortable. My stomach goes tight. My heart races. My mouth goes a bit dry. I feel a bit prickly behind my eyes. And I just don’t feel ok. Don’t get me wrong though. I am a good liar. Or I used to be, once upon a time. I used to lie like my survival depended on it. Especially when I was consumed by anorexia and was self-harming… I used to be able to look people dead in the eye and lie, because I told it like a truth.
I can’t do that now. Or I could. But I absolutely refuse to.
I have never once told a lie to Elle. I don’t deliberately withhold things from her. One of the things I have vowed to myself in my therapy is that even if the truth feels uncomfortable, it’s worth saying. It might feel scary or downright toe-curlingly shame inducing but I feel like if I tell the truth, and people stay then they are my people and there’s really nothing all that bad that I could ever say anyway. I truly believe that honesty and vulnerability are the only paths to true connection (ha, hello Brene Brown!)…and that’s what I want. I don’t want a half-formed ghost version of a connection. I want the real, warts and all one.
If I feel I have to lie or bend myself to preserve a relationship then I don’t really want it anyway because I’ve done that my whole life growing up. I did it so much with Em – I never lied but I held back a lot…until I didn’t… and the more I let Em see me, the more I told her my reality the less she could cope with me and my feelings. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and misery if I’d not taken years to build up to telling her how I felt. In the end she saw me as a tick but I had always been a tick hadn’t I, she just didn’t know! Certainly those feelings I had for her came about nine months after I met her and yet it took eight years for it to blow up and break the therapy because I hid so well. I won’t do that now.
When I saw Anita I went into it without my armour but as she started to lose her capacity I started to put it back on a piece at a time. I armoured up and withheld stuff in order to be ‘easier’ for her. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t always tell her what was going on because I didn’t want to push her away. I basically reverted to type. I made myself smaller. I hid my struggles and my needs to try and give her space to get through what was going on for her. It didn’t work though, did it? It just delayed the agony ultimately.
With Elle it’s been slow and steady work. I feel like it has been such an exercise in trust and bravery, especially given all that’s come before. I have opened up to her in a way I didn’t think I would be able to. And so to have her so easily lie to me feels like a kick in the teeth. I have tried so hard to connect in an authentic way…and I believed that she was doing the same. But now I just feel like ‘work’ and someone whom she can easily discard and disconnect from. And it hurts.
My most unkind protector – the Inner Critic is having an absolute field day spouting their most favourite lines “You absolute loser, you can’t even pay someone to be in a relationship with you and care. Can’t you see what this is? It’s a game that she plays with you for a couple of hours a week to make you think you matter but the reality is, you’re just money to her. You pay the bills. If you mattered to her she’d show you through the most basic behaviour. She wouldn’t like to you. We don’t lie to people that really matter.”
And it’s really really hard to disagree with that voice.
Part of me wants to think maybe it’s the very opposite that is true. Maybe Elle lied because I matter to her. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me or make me feel any of this painful stuff. I don’t think the logic behind what she’s done is great but I can see why it could be the case.
Either way, this week has activated all my really painful stuff and I haven’t had anywhere at all to put it.
Part of me is really angry too – well isn’t Anger just Hurt’s bodyguard? Like, why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t this therapy just be what it said on the tin? What do I keep doing wrong to make it so that therapists treat me like this? Why can’t I just be safe and loved and matter enough to not have someone hurt me in this way?
It’s hard not to see Elle’s actions as coming from a place of just being completely bored of having to think about how to manage my attachment stuff. Like, her initial message said, she hadn’t had time to write something… and so in her mind any time she leaves I demand time and energy just to get a weekend away. So perhaps this is my fault. Maybe if I wasn’t so high need then she wouldn’t have felt the need to lie. She probably just told her other Friday appointments that she wasn’t available and that was that.
So, this all makes me feel rotten. I feel my usual wonderful combo of ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’. Too much need and too much work and not important enough for anyone to truly care or love me.
I don’t know what the answer is here.
It’s only Sunday. I feel broken…and it’s a long way til Tuesday. Of course, I have no sense of the Elle I know being out there at all now because this is what happens when there’s distance and a rupture. My brain is serving ‘danger’ and all the rest of it.
I soooooo want to believe that we will be ok. I want to believe that if I tell her how hurt I am that she will do her best to repair this and take the time to work through it with me – even if it takes a really long time… I need her not to be defensive or reactive…but I have no idea what state she is in and whether she has the energy or capacity to go with me where I need to go. Because let’s be real, this has hit on a very deep wound and it’s going to take some healing. I feel like this is something that will be dredged up over and over again. I will be constantly looking for reassurance and testing.
I hate this.
Part of me is reluctant to post this blog up because I’m worried that if Elle comes across it – now, or later – she’ll see it as a criticism of her, or somehow see it as sharing too much of what’s gone on between us with the outside world. I imagine she’d feel fucked off that I’ve copied some of the messages she’s sent to me here but I honestly don’t know what to do or where to turn for support or reassurance at the moment.
If Elle and I do make it through this I don’t want her to stop messaging me because she thinks our communications will only end up on the blog because that isn’t how it is. I’ve always been so careful here to not really talk any detail about what she says to me – I’ve protected her/us in a way that I never did Em or Anita because I’ve felt so protective of our relationship and what we’ve created together. I value her and the relationship such a lot…and right now I just don’t know what to do.
I don’t know how we’ll come through this because I feel like there’s a massive part of me that will struggle to trust her ever again. How can I be sure of anything now?
Perhaps a white lie is no big deal. Maybe I am just too sensitive. Maybe my trauma makes me too reactive. All I know is that I feel completely at sea and completely alone. I wish Elle understood how in a simple bending of the truth she’s taken a machete to my trust in her and set fire to the deep connection we were weaving together.
I’m sure Elle is having a wonderful time away, though…lucky her.
I think this may be the longest post I have ever written – shoot me now.x
It’s two years this coming week since I walked into Elle’s therapy room completely broken and in pieces, vowing that I would never again allow myself to get close to, or attached to, a therapist. I promised myself that this time, I had one simple focus: I would go in and work through the damage done by Anita (and maybe the others) and get the hell out! Bugger the rest of the trauma – I’d lived with it for my whole life and I’d manage on my own.
Yeah, that really worked, didn’t it?!
Elle and I have come such a long way since that warm day back in August 2023, where I think I turned up in one of my homemade tie dye t-shirts (don’t judge!) and basically talked at her for well over an hour basically giving a high-speed but potted version of ‘all the things’ and praying that whatever I said wasn’t going to be ‘too much’. I remember emailing Elle after that first session and basically apologising for the splurge and telling her I hoped that I wasn’t too much… which is really sad when I think about it – but shows the damage that’s been done in previous therapies…as well as by my mum growing up.
I couldn’t have imagined back then that we’d be where we are now, and I know that could never have happened if I hadn’t have felt safe (enough) with Elle. My runners are so quick out the blocks these days that they’d give Usain Bolt a run for his money! But because it’s been such slow, steady, safe work and our relationship has been constructed so carefully and with consideration my runners never get too far down the track with Elle – it’s almost like there’s an invisible elastic bungee tied to my ankles and it pings me back to her.
I feel like in the last couple of years we’ve built solid foundations and that even when things feel stormy and rough, we can weather whatever comes our way TOGETHER…which I guess is the idea of it all!
I have absolutely no doubt that Elle is holding my hand no matter what (even on days like today when a lot of my system is in a total all out panic about a call we had this morning – I was in a FREEZE and barely spoke). I am hanging on tightly to what I know to be true: Elle cares no matter who shows up, or doesn’t show up.
All the steady months (and years!) of work and reassurance is finally starting to bed in. I think I might finally be getting to a place where I am able to see Elle for her – rather than worry about everyone who has come before her and then believing she’ll repeat their patterns on me. Maybe, just maybe, we are rewriting the script a bit. Or some of my system is seeing things a little differently and it’s tipping the balance in a more positive direction. Actually it’s a lot like trying to coil a spring in the opposite direction. We are doing a good job of it – but occasionally it pings back. Like today, the panic is there- but I know it won’t last for weeks on end…maybe the weekend, or just today (please let it be this!), and sometimes it’s just a few hours.
I think part of the reason things are as strong as they are is because I have a voice that I am not afraid to use now (says the girl who was basically mute in our check-in today! – go figure)…or, if I am afraid, I say it anyway! Being a veteran therapy-goer who’s been through the wringer a fair few times, I know what I want and need now, and I ask for it…I suppose I keep showing up with the map, and the emails, and with my armour off and Elle pays attention to what I am saying.
Elle really listens. And the more I am prepared to share with her the stronger our bond and her understanding of me becomes. She actively invites me to tell her what I need – no shame…and even today’s silence and freeze WAS TELLING HER something is up, because I wasn’t masking or pretending. False Adult wasn’t there… instead, a hurting part of me was, and she may not have a voice but she was on the call at least.
Of course, I’ve still got a bloody long way to go. I feel like we’re four miles into a marathon and so sometimes my old friends Shame and Embarrassment show up at the side of the road to ‘cheer me on’ in the only way they know how (throwing things at me and trying to take my legs out from underneath me) and then a little further along the road Fear Of Abandonment and Rejection turn up and tell me that I am “shit at running and should go home now” but I recognise this is old programming and whilst these protective parts might slow me up, they don’t stop me altogether.
I one hundred percent know Elle can handle what I bring to her and I one million percent have faith that she isn’t going to tap out on me when the going gets tough. Elle sits beside/with me with a softness and care that comes out of her in waves. She doesn’t flinch. Like she’s a pro at unconditional positive regard…or shall we just call it love? I feel better when I am with her…and even if I start off rough, by the time we end I’m in a way better than I was.
But Elle thinks outside the box too…and this really appeals to me. She isn’t rigid and boundaries for boundaries’ sake. After so many years of rigid therapy with Em it’s nice to feel like our relationship and how we work together has a bit of an organic quality to it. It’s different to how things were with Anita, too.
It was recently coming up to the anniversary of my dad’s death which is always a rotten time for me. Elle had suggested a few weeks before that we could have two sessions that week and that maybe we could do something nice to put a different association on the day, make something beautiful out of something heavy. This sounded really lovely to me – and it felt so nice that Elle was looking ahead and thinking about what kind of support I might need rather than just letting a hard time pass by in the usual run of things.
When she mentioned booking the additional session I’d literally just told her about a dream I had had with her in (not a nice one), and she said that she too had dreamt about me that same week but that hers was really lovely dream – because we’d had a picnic together in the room with tiny cucumber sandwiches that I had brought in…and then she said, “I think that would be a really lovely thing to do – let’s have a picnic on the day you come in for the extra session”.
So that’s what we did.
On that hard Monday (I’d cried a lot in the morning – floodgates had opened), we both came in loaded with food, drink, and treats. Elle had brought a proper picnic hamper with her and a picnic blanket and we laid it out on the floor of the therapy room and ate and chatted and laughed. I’d made a YouTube playlist the weekend before, and we played it in the background. And honestly it was just so lovely.
We had a serious feast…much better than the one in the picture!
Elle brought in little ham sandwiches and some cucumber sandwiches (because of the dream she’d had!). We had ginger beer (just like the Famous Five), chocolate, fruit, crisps, dips, homegrown tomatoes from Elle’s garden, Belgian buns (although we were too full to eat those and saved them for the session the next day). Elle even brought me in a can of cherry coke because she knows it’s my absolute favourite. But perhaps most special was that she brought me in sausages and cheese on cocktail sticks. I had said that it was a happy memory from when I was small, and so she brought it to life.
Do you know what that feels like? To be held in the details? To be seen and held with so much care that someone brings your fleeting moments of childhood joy into the present? In that moment time folds in half and you get to be little and loved as well as seen and cared for in the here and now.
It’s everything.
And after years of an eating disorder to actually sit in the therapy room and not be at all self-conscious about eating… HUGE!
I could cry writing this because I can just deeply feel and see the love and I feel like my heart could burst – and so often I lose sight of it when my system goes into freefall (like this morning) when I feel like I am simultaneously too much and not enough and on the verge of overwhelming Elle.
There would be some therapists (Em for one) who would have an absolute meltdown at the idea of what Elle and I did on that lovely Monday afternoon sitting on a picnic rug spitting our cherry pips into a flask and genuinely just having a really nice time together…but in negatively judging, they would neglect to see that Elle and I connecting in a real way, opened up a safe enough space for me to finally be able to open and read some letters from my dad that I haven’t been able to look at in the seventeen years since he died.
With Elle by my side, I felt safe enough to dip into that pain and that is enormous. This particular anniversary is so full of grief and yet I was able to access my grief in a far more helpful way than ever before. I wasn’t drowning in it – because Elle had a life vest for me. She held my hand and stopped me from sinking and as a result I feel like something has metabolised this year. Like I have moved something on that has been stuck for nearly twenty years.
So, tell me how that is a problem, or bad practice? It’s not. It’s meeting a client where they are at and creating the kind of space that is needed for the healing to be done.
There are so many therapists who get bent out of shape even at the idea of a client bringing in their own drink for their session, and aren’t sure whether to have a box of tissues to hand, or you know have strong opinions on moving a chair…so let’s not even go there with between session contact and physical touch!
Yet I can say some of the most connecting moments with Elle have been when we’ve been sitting next to each other and had drinks, or biscuits, or played roulette with jellybeans creating some really weird combos, or recently when we totally overloaded on sugar from some seriously dense cakes from a local shop and neither of us were able to eat for the rest of the day. Or the other day when we tried out the new M&S strawberries and cream sandwich (not a fan!). Like all these little moments work on so many layers of my system.
There’s something really human in those moments. It’s connecting when I bring a coffee from the shop round the corner and it’s fucking terrible. We each taste it and agree it’s a flop. Or recently we were wincing at a crazy bitter lemonade. It’s been north of 30 degrees Celsius here lately and the UK just doesn’t even attempt to do air con – so bringing in cold drinks to share has been a hydration thing…but it’s also therapeutic for me!
Relational wounds need healing in safe relationships and Elle has created an environment with me that allows me to be and do exactly what I want or need in the moment. Sometimes that’s really deep soul and heart work, and sometimes it’s being silly and childish. Sometimes it’s food and drinks. Sometimes it’s playdoh. Sometimes it’s stories. Sometimes it’s saying nothing at all and having a long hug and nearly (or actually) falling asleep. Other times it’s me chewing her ear off for the whole ninety minutes – but whatever it is and however I come to the room, I am very much welcome.
But it’s not just what happens in the room that makes a difference – it’s what happens throughout the week. I can email Elle or text her if I want. I can ask for a check in. I can ask for transitional objects – and Monty has had a really fun year over on Insta since he came to live with me.
And all of that is ok. I am learning that Elle is open to hearing whatever I think might help me – and will always give what I say proper consideration…unlike Em who was a hard “No” on almost everything I suggested…and we all know how the pebble transitional object bombed… six months of hoping and believing she was going to finally give me something close to what I needed…ha. So disappointing.
Turns out that so far, I am pretty good at not stepping over lines and invisible boundaries. Of course, I don’t ring her or turn up out the blue – or whatever it is that therapists seem to panic about happening with clients with complex trauma…because as much I have a lot of trauma, and as much as my inner children are in a state, I do also have an adult self who operates in the world fairly successfully and I know what is and isn’t ok. Of course, I would like to be able to spend more time with Elle. I would love to not be ‘on the clock’ and just spend a day with her where I wasn’t aware of having to squeeze everything into ninety minutes but the only way that would ever happen is if we decided for that to happen.
It makes me laugh, really. I remember when I was working with Em how I would trawl the internet searching and trying to find evidence of what was acceptable or possible in therapy because I felt like my therapy was just … not meeting me where I needed – and more often than not I felt that what I came across was a highly defended, almost paranoid approach to therapy by therapists.
Clients were so often pathologised and infantilised – it was as though if you gave a client an inch, they’d take a mile and the next thing you know you’d be needing a restraining order. It’s total bullshit. To be honest, the longer I have been online blogging and communicating with people in therapy, the real danger seems to be the therapists and not the clients!! #harmintherapy
I know counselling and therapy is all about processing and thinking – but sometimes I feel like therapists get caught in a trap of overthinking a situation and lose sight of the fact that therapy is really just about two people having a relational experience together. Of course, there are boundaries and rules to how it works but it doesn’t need to cold and sterile. If I wanted a sterile experience, I would type my woes into ChatGPT and let it be my therapist for free…or you know, have a relationship with my mother.
Fortunately, there are some therapists who are human and discuss how they work online – and of course clients who write and give a window into their therapy. I guess, what I would say is there isn’t a one size fits all approach and each therapy needs to be co-created between the therapist and client. It should be a collaborative experience, not a place where the client is powerless and ‘done to’. There will always be a power imbalance, but it doesn’t need to be a central tenet of the work. For those of us who had no power or control as children that sort of therapy doesn’t help at all.
I stayed with Em for all those years because how she made me feel was familiar… it wasn’t healing. I gained a lot of insight, for sure…but that came from all the suffering. Ugh.
The thing I love so much about therapy with Elle is that there is space for all the parts of me. The littles who cling and ache and need. The teenage part who hides behind eye rolls and survival. The adult who tries to keep it all tidy but is tired. They all get to show up. They all get to belong. They are all loved.
I am loved – just as I am.
I don’t have to shrink myself into something that I think makes me ‘manageable’ or ‘palatable’ anymore – both literally and metaphorically. I don’t have to apologise for being messy or needy or too much. I can just ‘be’. Although, of course I do sometimes reach out and apologise for being all of the above – but not because I think Elle wants me to. In fact she would say there is never any need to apologise for how I am.
I love Elle and that terrifies me sometimes. When I feel vulnerable and small, sometimes the fear of losing her is too much to bear. Sometimes I carry it around in my chest like a second heartbeat that almost drowns out my own. But I don’t doubt her care for me. I see her gentle, thoughtful love EVERYWHERE. It’s in her remembering, in her words, in the way she sits with me instead of away from me. It’s in the sausages on sticks. It’s stories. It’s in the way she meets me wherever I am and says yes, this too can come in. It’s in the way she holds me – physically and emotionally.
It’s our two-year anniversary this week and do you know what was really lovely? Last session she asked me, “So, are we celebrating our two-year anniversary next week?” and I replied that we were. She said, “Good, because I’ve made something!” So I’m intrigued about that, but also touched – because yet again Elle is showing me in the most certain of terms that what we are doing together matters.
x
And I’ll leave this on one of my favourite Andrea Gibson quotes:
I’ve been in therapy for a long time. Like, a really long time. It’s been ten years solid this time around, albeit with four different therapists (not that I am counting!). I’m not sure how to explain how long that is in soul years, but it feels like a thousand.
I am no stranger to the therapy room. Even before this latest solid run of ‘trying to get my mind fixed’ (or should I say my nervous system recalibrated and the mother wound healed?) there have been some hopeful episodes in the ‘room’ over the last twenty-five or so years. But mostly, as is generally the case when you’re a student in college or university, these were relatively short-term therapies.
I went, then, because I was suffering with anxiety or depression or stress, or my eating disorder, or imposter syndrome or whatever (the list goes on and on). I knew deep down that something was very wrong and those sessions acted like sticking plasters for a wound that was far deeper than I ever could have imagined at the time. Little did I know that I needed far more attention than four or six sessions could ever hope to provide.
I remember feeling like I was fully losing the plot as it was coming up to Christmas when doing my MA. I was twenty-two and I realised that I needed to see someone having not been to a therapist since my A Levels. The university I was studying at had a counselling service and, fortunately, as most people had already left for the holidays there was some availability to see someone.
It was in that room that the dam broke. It was a tiny room in the back of an old Victorian red brick building not far from my seminar building. I started to let out ‘all the things’ and although I only had four sessions with that counsellor it was such a relief to finally have someone say to me that I wasn’t overreacting and that actually they thought I could really use some long-term therapy because ‘trauma’…and no, it wasn’t just the stress of deadlines and they didn’t try and ply me with strategies to get through the immediate stress rather just gave me a space to be heard and collapse a bit after trying to hold it together for such a long time.
I might have walked out of those short-term sessions feeling a bit bereft – like, it would have been so great to be able to spend a few months with that particular therapist as a bit of a scaffold around my crumbling self, but that wasn’t how the service worked…and where was the long-term therapy that a student with no money could afford? I certainly couldn’t access the kind of therapy I need/ed back then and so put everything back in the box on the top of the shelf and continued on with life until I couldn’t do it anymore.
One thing I will say, is that these episodes of short-term therapy never did me any harm. They may not have been long enough, but I didn’t leave those sessions in a worse state than when I started. But then perhaps these therapies were never quite long enough to activate my attachment system. I don’t know. But then, that doesn’t work, because I saw a therapist N, for two years after my dad died and it helped, I was attached to her- and we’re still in contact now seventeen years later – certainly no harm done there.
Harm in therapy didn’t become a reality for me until Em – the highly experienced Clinical Psychologist, the person I was led to believe I stood a really good chance of healing with, and so the person I trusted with my whole story and self. Gosh. What a mess it was.
I met Em thirteen and a half years ago, now. I feel so sad, looking back over my life, that I have been trying so hard for so long to feel ‘better’ and yet here I am still working on undoing damage not just from my childhood, my life, but actually my therapies. It’s tragic.
Em and I initially did sixteen months in the NHS — it was the kind of therapy where the clock ticks louder than your voice and the radiator only half-works and my god, those awful shiny yellow gloss-painter woodchipped walls were really something!… but finally getting a space to delve into my psyche with someone who (on paper at least) really had the skill to help was much-needed.
But like every therapy before – the time I had wasn’t long enough. NHS work, even when it’s extended (which mine was) is still time limited. There is only so many sessions you can have and then that’s it – there’s a huge waiting list (three years for me back then) and you can’t clog up the system forever even if you really need the therapy. And surely you should be grateful to get a long stint of therapy in the first place. It’s kind of laughable, because it took me a year to even get close to the work or for my system to activate. In reality a little over a year of once-a-week therapy is nothing for Complex Trauma and quite honestly, the NHS just isn’t at all equipped to help with these kinds of issues.
And my god, opening my version of Pandora’s Box and then being left with no therapy at all really really messed me up. The nightmares. The panic attacks. The eating disorder and self-harming behaviours were triggered again. My child parts (and my structurally dissociated system – not that I knew that that was what it was then) had a complete meltdown. The feelings of abandonment and rejection felt huge. And I didn’t cope at all. But I was completely and utterly alone and without any kind of support…because I’d used it up.
Em had agreed that we could see each other in her private practice when our sessions finished but the NHS had stipulated that there needed to be a three-month break between ending there and commencing with her again. At the time I accepted that as how things had to be – but knowing what I know now about my system I can see how very wrong it was to leave that work wide open and leave me essentially hanging. What I should have done then was reach out to Em and let her know what was going on, but of course, I didn’t know that was possible. I was just following the rules…because I have always followed the rules.
After two months on my own without therapy, my graphic nightmares finally stopped in their tracks and I didn’t even dream again for nearly three years– I basically shut off/dissociated my entire system and lived my life in ‘false adult’ I think. And so, I didn’t go back to Em for three years.
You could call it a ‘break’. I call it surviving without witness – but I think there was always a part of me, a child part or five, that I had exiled who was desperate to find my way back to Em. The little parts of me that had been so activated in her therapy room, and all the trauma too, needed a place to go.
And so when I finished my cancer treatment and all the wheels fell off – I went back to her…because… well…to parts of me she was mum, and a kind of safety, and I very badly needed someone because I was very much not ok.
In the intervening three years since I had sat with Em a lot had changed in my world – but underneath or inside I was just the same – all those little parts were frozen inside needing to be seen, held, and attended to. The trauma was there still, unresolved.
I remember the first day I walked back in the room and how hopeful I had been and how excited I had been to see Em again. And yet, it fell flat. I guess there was a part of me that wanted her to welcome me back with open arms or some kind of acknowledgement that it was good to see me again now that we weren’t in the sterile hospital. But she was ever the blank screen, and although my child parts came alive again the moment they saw her, they knew too that the rules were still the same.
And I am nothing if not the girl who follows the rules.
I came to my session/s every week.
I paid on time.
I was never rude.
I never cancelled on her until we were right at the end and broken (but then why would I, my sessions never felt enough and so I would never enact a break willingly).
And I tried so hard to do therapy ‘right’ – and stick within the confines of Em’s very very rigid boundaries (although occasionally failing and texting her – god forbid).
I tried so hard to be grateful for what was on offer. I tried to make it enough. I tried to be insightful and brave and DO THE WORK…and bring everything to the room even when I felt terrified and physically unwell.
I tried not to be too much.
But man, I felt small and disempowered.
I was the good girl in the therapy room and I hurt all the time.
I could never understand why it felt so painful to be with her…and so painful to be away from her, too.
I guess I thought I had to earn tenderness and care, and prove myself worthy of it because of course that’s been hard-wired into me from day dot.
I thought being easy to work with would make me lovable – or at least palatable.
It didn’t.
But then why would it?
That strategy had never worked with my mother so why on earth would it work in the therapy room? And yet here I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern with my therapist.
It seemed being the quiet good girl wasn’t ever enough.
So, I changed tack. It took a really long time for me to bring my pain about the relationship with Em into the room unwashed and unedited. Em had said she felt “blindfolded” with me and I thought this meant that my caution and hiding my feelings was stopping us being able to really connect. And man did I want to be connected to her and so I took a leap towards her around about the time I started this blog.
I wrote things down when I couldn’t say them out loud (because shame was so ever-present and dissociation never very far away). I folded pages of typed letters or blog posts inside my pocket like secret spells. Sometimes it would take weeks for me to build the courage to hand them over. Every time I did, I felt like I was giving her the map to the world inside me — it felt like I was screaming over and over, “Please, please just look. Please see what it’s like in here. Please help me not be lost anymore.” And perhaps in also written between the lines was, “Please love me”. But Em would sit and read my words never giving much away as I sat squirming opposite her and then carry on like she already knew the way and didn’t need my map.
And so, I walked alone over terrain that felt like barbed wire and cold rain and shame.
It felt in some ways like I was in the Truman Show – but no one told me what the point of it was, and the lights were much too bright, and whilst I could see Em she was always sitting behind her glass screen taking notes about what I was (or not doing) on her clipboard – she wasn’t in the scene with me. Every now and then she’d tell me where I was going wrong, “Like a tick”.It was as though she was some nasty film director coaching an actor who was absolutely doing their best to act the ‘right’ way but failing miserably time and again.
The thing is, I shouldn’t have ever had to have acted in that room. I should have been able to go and be me – exactly as I was and have that met with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. I should have been able to remove my various masks.
I wish.
I feel so sad when I look at how small I made myself in the room with Em – I don’t mean falling into my child parts small, I mean how little space I took up and how little I asked for from her and yet even that was made to feel like ‘too much’. I feel so sad that I tried to bend and fit to be the client she wanted me to be and it breaks my heart that for all those years my small parts couldn’t get anywhere close to what I needed. There was no we in that therapy- just me…flailing around and hurting.
I took big elephant with me in my bag for years but was never brave enough to take her out even when I had told Em about the many many child parts that were inside me and how they felt and we both knew how much hurt was inside. There was never an invitation from Em to be anything other than my very competent adult self…and that was really hard when my young parts were so very present. Part of me feels angry at my adult self for not doing more to protect my young parts – but I genuinely thought at the time going to therapy was me looking after myself.
I am not the same client I was back then. I have learnt such a lot about myself over the last decade and there is simply no way I would put up with what I did with Em now…or even Anita. And so although this growth and understanding has come at a heavy emotional (and financial cost)…I do at least know myself and have boundaries around how I will let myself be treated now.
But back then, I felt ashamed and embarrassed asking for anything from Em and her NOs to my very few requests cut so deep. Object constancy has always been a massive problem for me and I remember reading an article online by a therapist about how to stay connected to therapists on a break. They’d suggested a simple three dot text message in the week – like it’s bare minimum effort, no words to misunderstand, just a reminder that they are there. But no, she wouldn’t do it.
I remember asking for a simple transitional object – I wanted a short note written on a pebble that I had found on the beach near her house – and that became a torture project for well over six months. But in reality, I didn’t want a rock… I wanted a soft toy like Monty…only I never asked because I knew that was way out of the realms of acceptability for Em…and I was right. We couldn’t even get a few words on a pebble right, a toy for my young parts would have been simply outrageous!
I was made to feel like there was something desperately wrong with me because I wanted her to sit closer to me. I would dissociate so badly when I felt like she was far away but there was never concessions on Em’s part to make a move to adjust how we worked to make things better for me. I wrote in a letter once that I wished I could hug her. Somehow that was really inappropriate and uncomfortable and was addressed only once, “You know I don’t do that”. It felt like a sucker punch to the gut.
And heaven forbid we go anywhere near the ‘L’ word. Love was made to feel like a dirty word and I never once uttered it aloud…I only alluded to it in my maps/letters. And yet it is so much part of the work… talking through human emotions in all their forms is the work. And it shouldn’t matter if they are directed towards the therapist or anyone else. But also, I struggle hard to understand how if you spend years and years of your life with someone picking apart your most vulnerable stuff that love wouldn’t become part of the fabric of the therapy.
Ugh.
I’m not here to talk about her though – although I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit today – I guess I am still reeling from the hurt… and we can totally skip over Anita, and Hannah because – well – I want to talk about now – 2025…
I want to talk about Elle…I want to talk about how I can be who I am, not who I think I need to be with her. I want to say how that the ‘good girl’ part of me has been allowed to rest a bit and that I no longer hurt in the way that I used to – but given this part alone is 2000 words I’ll break this post into two…and believe me, the next part is far more uplifting!…there’s even a picnic to tell you about!!
I realised something this week – and that is, because I blog way less frequently than I used to (although my summer resolution to myself is to make time to write again), that often I post about HUGE OUCH things that happen in therapy and then don’t come back here and talk about the ‘what happened next’ for ages, if at all. For example, a couple of my more recent posts have been about ruptures in my relationship with Elle (remember the slogan t-shirt debacle and then finding myself on a therapist forum? – groan) and this is the first time I have returned to discuss the repairs Elle and I have made, and so these ruptures are sort of left hanging on the blog.
I imagine it’s starting to look like Elle and I are lurching from one terrible mishap to another without any sense of there being a resolution in between. That would be fucking terrifying, wouldn’t it?!…and it simply isn’t how it is. Thank goodness! Let’s be clear – I am not the same client I was back in the day with Em where she would say or do something to upset me, we’d be in massive rupture territory, and I’d just tough it out on my own because I was so frightened of her reaction to what I might say and the potential for abandonment and rejection that it felt safer to keep it inside (or here on the blog with you guys!) than talk to her. I didn’t dare raise my head above the parapet for years – turns out that wasn’t completely stupid given what happened when I did! #likeatick
It’s so funny – not funny haha, just funny TRAGIC looking back on that total mess (shitshow) with Em. In therapy, so much of the work is about building trust and working through/round your defences and so the main advice we generally see online for people when they are struggling about something in the therapeutic relationship is, “Take this to your therapist and try and have the difficult conversations because THEY WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT. They are trained professionals, have done their own work, and see this stuff ALL THE TIME.” Only it’s not always the case, is it? How many of us have had therapists who have shit the bed the moment you challenge them, or tell them you’ve been hurt by them, or tell them you love them? How many of us know what it is to feel the walls go up, the air in the room drop to below freezing, to get the ‘boundary talk’, or worse – terminated?
So, the advice to bring the tough stuff to the therapist ‘should’ absolutely be correct – but I think really it also needs a caveat: if you think your therapist is safe enough to hear it.
The thing is how do we know if a therapist is safe?
Blimey, isn’t that a question?!
There should be that ‘felt sense’ of safety with your therapist (eventually), but sometimes that doesn’t come…and then all we are left with is a therapist saying, “You can trust me” – #Icallbullshitonthat – and a desperate hope that it’s an ‘us problem’ rather than a ‘them problem’.
Safety never came with Em – even though the really strong attachment (disorganised of course) did. The parallels between her cold, detached personality and the almost literal begging for evidence of care mirrored my relationship with my mother so perfectly that it’s little wonder I stayed for so long. Therapy felt horrible but so fucking familiar to me. This is how relationships were, right?
I was stuck in a place of paralysis waiting for my protectors to stand down, wanting to trust her, and after a few years of feeling more and more unsafe I found myself forcefully working against my protectors – hitting override again and again – making myself jump into the shark infested waters… and no doubt that might work (in a safe therapy where there are no sharks)…but it can be catastrophic in a ‘disaster therapy’. I used to laugh about getting the ‘therapy shits’ before sessions – but what a ridiculous situation to be in week in, week out – anxiety was sooooooo high that I felt physically sick before every session… and yet I wrote that off as ‘part of the process’. Fuck me. That’s never right.
I think one of the things I regret most about working with Em was that I went against my gut ALL THE TIME. I felt her frustration at how little I shared with her and how strong my protectors were (queen of dissociation!)…but I realise, now, that I must’ve had a sixth sense about how things would eventually go because when I did push myself to BRING IT ALL to her, the shit hit the fan on high speed didn’t it? My bravery and vulnerability were met with stone cold still face, topped with thinly veiled psychobabble insults “adhesive like a tick, taking whatever it wants, like you almost need a permanent breast, pushing the boundaries with no regard for what I want” … Ouch.
So – yeah – building trust and feeling safe is so hard, especially when you’re in therapy working with core messaging from childhood about being ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ and perhaps never having even known what safety would feel like.It’s understandable that sometimes we, as clients, are scared stiff and the idea of being vulnerable freaks the living daylights out of us. It’s hard sometimes when we hit the skids to figure out how much of what we are feeling is because, “I recognise on an emotional and somatic level that this person is not safe!!!” and how much is the wonky brain making you think past patterns are repeating when actually things are fine.
It’s all the harder when you have also experienced harm in therapy as well. My therapists ALWAYS trigger complicated mother transference in me (ugh!) – but poor Elle also bloody triggers SHITTY THERAPIST transference too!
After my recent experiences with Em and Anita, Elle is basically doomed because in so many ways she isn’t like them but SHE IS A THERAPIST and Brian (my brain) doesn’t really trust therapists anymore. Thankfully, enough of my system does trust Elle…wholeheartedly…and so this means I can bring ALL OF THE THINGS TO HER EVEN IF IT FEELS SCARY OR UNCOMFORTABLE.
It’s taken a while but we have built a strong foundation of trust that can withstand my wobbles. It feels like I can safely show up and work through the ruptures or miscommunications we have because every time I do it’s more evidence that I am safe to be me, bring my feelings, and that Elle is committed to working whatever it is through with me. As she said the other day, “I’m here for it all”.
Thankfully, I am not in that horrible place that I was with Em where I felt that there was no choice but to hide my feelings and hope that things would work out without my saying anything…and to be honest, that’s how it got with Anita towards the end. I was so conscious of her wheels falling off that I tried to be as little work as possible for her. Didn’t exactly work out, though, did it? That’s definitely a throwback to my early years – suffer alone and get over it – but it’s so sad when you think that I have been paying for therapy for so long and been in hiding for so much of it trying to make it so the other person can stay. UGH. I am still really mad with Anita…but that’s for another blog post as this is sure to be lengthy enough as it is.
It’s no secret that I absolutely am still ridiculously sensitive to perceived rejection and abandonment but the difference is I ALWAYS tell Elle when I feel there is something wrong between us – even if it’s just that she’s turned up in my dreams and hurt me – and even then, she’s kind and lovely about it and not weirded out! But it’s all these little moments of connection and understanding that ultimately build the trust so that when there is something bigger, I have the confidence to tackle it.
Bear with me, I’m circling back round to the point – of ‘WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?’ – slow burn…
So, as I said earlier, I think at the moment my writing here makes it look like my therapy is just one long protracted shit show/mess when actually it’s mostly just steady, consistent, safe work but also it’s not really all that interesting. I mean, it is interesting to me, but the safe, familiar, connected, conversations and sessions aren’t really exciting to read about. We talk, we connect, sometimes we read stories, we laugh, we cry, we cuddle, we do the work…mostly.
Week in week out I show up, she shows up, and we keep going deeper and deeper into the deep darkness of my psyche, but we’re holding hands and, generally speaking, there’s a candle to light the way and so it feels safe because I am not doing it alone anymore.
I think, therefore, that ruptures take me all the more by surprise these days because Elle and I have such a solid relationship and so it completely knocks me for six when things go wrong. When we lose connection it feels like our hands separate and the candle blows out for a minute and it’s fucking scary because I really don’t like it in the dark on my own.
But I guess there are ruptures in any therapeutic relationship – I mean there’s so much written on rupture/repair in therapy that it would be naïve to think that any therapy is perfect. The important thing, though, is that ruptures aren’t too frequent and that the repair is effective and fast. Just like parenting, therapy on balance needs to be ‘good enough’. Elle is really good like this. She doesn’t leave me hanging when I tell her I am in a pickle and to date, she has always received whatever I have to say with openness and curiosity.
Until recently there hasn’t really been anything ‘major’ happen outside the normal run of me getting angsty and upset around breaks, or feeling disconnected and so the rupture has been triggered by my attachment issues rather than something being properly amiss. I might be activated and upset but not because of anything that Elle has done ‘wrong’. This last couple of months, however, has seen us step up a gear in working through some big rupture content. Like it’s not “Like a tick” (Em) or “too dependent” (Anita) – but it’s felt like it was in that sort of sphere and that triggered the shit out of my system.
The good news is Elle has been so receptive to what I have to say when I bring it to her. She doesn’t run and hide. She knows how to apologise and take responsibility/accountability for her part in things. She never shames me (which is huge), and as much as we have had some really BIG conversations lately, it’s honestly really refreshing to be working with someone who is able to reflect and is always wanting to do the best by me and really invites me into bringing EVERYTHING to her even if I am swimming in shame and embarrassment.
This is especially helpful after Anita became so incredibly defensive and avoidant in the last year of our work together. Of course, I would rather not have had these ruptures with Elle but at the same time it feels like we a doing some serious rewiring of the system when I see that I can bring my big feelings to her and she will do her best to repair. She shows me again and again that I am important to her.
I won’t lie. The most recent rupture when I found reference to my work with Elle on a therapist forum (albeit anonymous on both sides) really floored me and it was a right fucking mess. I truly believed that the person I thought I know and loved was someone other than she had presented herself to be – and that felt so upsetting and dangerous to my system. To think that Elle was feeling like I was some kind of pathetic client who refused to see that we were in a therapeutic relationship was so painful…even though that isn’t what it was at all.
My ability to take really small snippets of info and join a handful of dots and turn them into a spectacular constellation of horror is nothing if not impressive. I wish that I could see the 99% of brilliant alongside the 1% of terror – but when I am in the scary zone I can’t remember anything good at all. My fear takes over and all my stories about being too much, and being unlovable, and that I can’t trust anyone get really loud…but mostly I feel my system collapsing internally because this is how we get left isn’t it? This is the start of the abandonment playbook.
Elle being away on holiday and it all tying in with the anniversary of the end of seeing A was just the icing on the cake really, like if I was ever going to be primed for being sensitive to perceived abandonment and rejection – this was it.
So, what happened after I posted the blog?
OMG RB are you actually going to cut to the fucking chase? – after 2000 words?!
Well, I sat on my hands for a few days, tried to keep myself busy, and basically got more and more upset at the idea that I had misread the relationship that I have with Elle. I know I am client but I had never imagined that she felt that I was a problem, or that I didn’t understand the boundaries of the relationship, or that she saw me very much in a black and white way as a ‘client’ that needs to understand I am just paying for her time.
Seeing that online post title (but not being able to see the actual post as it was deleted) and the replies from other therapists hit me so hard because…well, it sounded so much like something Em would have said…and nothing at all like how I have experienced Elle in the room. It confused me, but mainly it devastated me, because in that week I was completely unable to reference any of the last nearly two years of work with Elle where she has demonstrated care and that she is a safe person…and instead my Inner Critic went, “See, this is it, behind the mask, it’s all just a façade to get you to part with money each week and make you keep coming back. The reality is you’re a fucking loser and here’s another therapist that can’t tolerate you.”
As we all know, part of complex trauma means it takes me a very long time to trust people and yet I really and truly believed that I could trust Elle…and now here I was…once again falling face first into the reality that there’s something wrong with me. I felt like my barometer for safety had royally let me down. Like, given EVERYTHING that has happened with Em and Anita, you’d think I’d spot inauthentic communication and relationship a mile off…and yet I hadn’t. In fact, I’d completely missed it. If anything, all I have found with Elle is someone who seems to be really honest and real.
So yeah.
It stung.
Then I started down the spiral. Maybe I’d just let my guard down too much. Maybe I was hurting so badly after what happened with Anita that I would overlook anything to feel safe and held. Maybe my search for ‘mother’ meant I’d latched onto Elle’s care that simply wasn’t there and created a version of her that simply wasn’t real – it was all just wishful thinking that maybe, just maybe this time someone would see me as I am and love me for it.
But that simply isn’t the case because she is real and I feel her care. If anything, Elle has had to work three times as hard to earn my trust BECAUSE of the damage that has been done by others that have come before her. My protectors are elite level royal marine commandos at this point, not sleepy security guards.
I wrote that post about what I’d found on the Saturday and by Thursday night I was … down in the depths of the spiral. I was swimming in shame. I was so hurt. I was so badly disconnected that I had no idea how I would come back from it…and my runners were ready to run.
So, thinking Elle would be more or less back from her time away because the thing that her and my friend do together was happening that evening, I sent the blog by email because I just couldn’t wait another five days to see her or start to try and fix it.
And then I heard nothing.
Fuck.
This was not like Elle AT ALL.
(Of course, I didn’t know she was still away with patchy signal up a mountain…)
Twenty-four hours after I sent the email I got a long email in my inbox. It spooked me a bit because well, there was a lot and my scared little heart was scanning for rejection and also I know that that post was A LOT. I can see now that she was really trying to reassure me and explain as best she could what had gone on whilst also being aware we were not in the room and that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix via messages…
The end of the message said:
I feel sorry you don’t believe that I love you and that my care for you is anything other than a real human emotion grown from knowing everything about you that I do, but I think I really do understand why.
And just because you don’t believe me, and even try to find evidence that I don’t, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop, or punish you for it. I am a person who loves you and wants to support you, that’s all I’ll ever be, and every decision I’ll ever make is based on that.
And you can ask me anything you want about any of this on Tuesday, and I promise I’ll answer you carefully and honestly from that same place.
And I can see that this, and the paragraphs that came before it all come from a really caring place. But because my system and runner ducks had had almost a week’s head start on her, my protectors, my teen, all the hurt parts simply replied:
I don’t want to see you anymore.
Fuck.
And then there was more silence from Elle’s end which freaked the absolute living shit out of me because what if she took that at face value and was so hacked off with me that she would let me go.
When she finally did reply, it didn’t sound enough like the Elle that the littles needed – and it panicked me. I realise now what was going on but in the moment the fear was massive on my part. She didn’t do an Em on me, by any means, and she did tell me that she felt sad and heavy and that she understood that it felt too much for me but that she was there and would always want to see me if I wanted to and that she very much would want to see me on Tuesday if I felt able to… it didn’t land how I needed it to, but I was able to see enough that she was trying and not giving up but I could also read that she was struggling too.
Fortunately, her message was enough of a way in for me just do the vulnerable and tell her what I needed in no uncertain terms – that I was scared, that I needed a hug, for her to hold my hand and to hear her voice – and then she replied with exactly what I needed and it sounded like her:
I’m super conscious that – halfway up a mountain with shitty reception, broken glasses, and just my phone – I’m in the worst place to be reassuring you that I’m close to you right now, but I am, and yes, very very definitely holding your hand.
I’ve had lots of feelings about this, but not one of them has been to let go of it. I also wish I could be there for an all-encompassing hour-long hug, but I absolutely promise from the side of a windswept mountain that I will be again very very soon. xxx
It wasn’t until this point that I realised that she wasn’t actually home yet and had been communicating with me as best she could from a tricky location. I felt bad because the one thing I had wanted to avoid was encroaching into her holiday time with this mess…and it turns out I had.
On the Monday morning, I got my personalised session reminder telling me that she was just home and looking forward to seeing me the next day. I felt way more settled even though we were still going to have to talk it all through…and repair…and it wasn’t going to be an easy session by any means.
As I said earlier, this whole thing was made so much worse because we were on a break and the break also coincided with the anniversary of Anita telling me she had to end therapy…I was looking for danger and seeing it EVERYWHERE. If we could have sorted it out immediately when it was happening it would have been so much better, but that’s the sod’s law of therapy (and my world) the shit rarely hits the fan at a point where it can be contained and not cause much damage! It ALWAYS comes about when I am a million miles away from a shower.
I braved up when I had seen Elle’s morning text and sent her a message which alluded to something she wrote in her original email response to me where she has said something about how it was her job to always think carefully about what she shares of her process and only telling me what she thinks is beneficial for me to hear:
Glad you’re back safe. I feel really anxious and like I have inadvertently thrown a grenade in between us that’s just about to explode. I need you to be honest with me tomorrow. Not ‘honest but couched with a “this is beneficial for you to hear”’ like the actual truth even if I might not like what you have to say because I’d rather that and know exactly what’s going on rather than some half-truth and also it’s absolutely fine to walk away if that’s easier.
At the exact moment I sent the text I got a notification came up on my phone that Elle had sent me an email.
And talk about synchronicity – what she sent me couldn’t have been more real and honest if it had tried. I knew from that email that we were going to be fine, and actually will continue to be fine as we bump along down this road together.
By the time it got to Tuesday I was just desperate to reconnect and sort things out.
And we did.
It was a proper digging in deep, honest, raw session that felt really connecting. We talked about such a lot of stuff. Elle apologised for the post and explained where she had been coming from. And of course, her intentions and my version of her intentions couldn’t have been further away from each other.
I won’t go into lots of detail about the ins and outs of what was said but what I will say is that it is incredibly refreshing to be able to bring the biggest scariest fears and hurt to someone and for them to own their part in it, and be completely present and willing to talk about ALL of what has happened. No blaming, no shaming, no putting it squarely back on me, no clipboards, no withdrawal or freezing me out – just getting in the tough stuff together and forging a deeper understanding of how we impact one another and what that means for us going forward – and how to manage things in the future.
I don’t like ruptures… but I am confident in Elle’s ability to make repairs. And this is a lot of my work having grown up in an environment where I could never speak up about how hurt I was, or if I did so much as show hurt or dissatisfaction it would bring on another barrage of abuse.
One of the things that Elle and I have committed to is trying to bring stuff up in closer connection to each other. I write a lot, and it is helpful, but I think we both find it hard reading about ourselves in the third person… I mean, she’ll never write about me again and has shut down that social media account altogether now, but I know she doesn’t find it especially easy reading what I have to say without my being there either… because just like I focus in on the scary 1% rather than being able to hold in mind the 99% she’s human and does the same sometimes especially if it looks like she’s really hurt me and HASN’T MEANT TO.
She’s really good at doing her own internal work but we’ve figured out that we have similar stories around being too much/not enough. So, my ‘too much’ can often trigger her own countertransference about being ‘not enough’ or being ‘misunderstood’. And so sometimes sending things in written format can make it so we don’t see the entirety of what’s really happening. The good thing is we are now both really conscious of this and so can work with that explicitly.
And this week, yet again, this stuff was tapped into.
It’s been a month since we repaired the rupture, but we haven’t returned to it explicitly and I think sometimes I need to keep doubling back and checking in on this kind of thing. So, after my session last Tuesday (which was lovely and holding and connecting) part of my system piped up and started wondering where we were at now. Was everything really ok, or was anything festering on Elle’s side. So, I decided to ask Elle where we were at and what would happen if we found ourselves in that place again in an email.
I’ll write about that next post because this is insanely long already. But one good thing to come out of the haze was that rather than continuing down a road of trying to find her in the fog, I just asked for a phone call to check in…and that was gold. So, that’s my next plan – try and build in a regular check in at the end of the week regardless of where we are at.
I’m sure this post is vague…and frustratingly lacking in detail about the rupture… but mainly I wanted to come back and say that it’s all ok. I wanted to write this sooner, but I have been really struggling with going anywhere near the laptop to write about it even though it’s fine. It’s weird. Sometimes I can just write and it comes freely and other times my brain just won’t allow it.
Last year Elle and I were talking about when things have gone wrong in my therapies (there’s plenty of content there and we visit it regularly!) and situations where a client might choose to ‘end’ and not come back to therapy but it feels somehow unexpected or not the ‘natural end’. I was in one of those sensible adult places, not activated (!), and so able to express some of what goes on for me when the wheels feel like they are falling off in the therapeutic relationship and how panicked I get. I recognise that sometimes the reasons I bolt for the door (sometimes literally) are often not what appears to be happening on the surface in the moment.
What can seem like a very small trigger can send me totally spiralling…but then that’s hardly surprising when we look at this through a Complex Trauma lens, or the fact that I have tonne of parts who are all processing stuff in their own ways – many of which are not particularly sophisticated! Of course, my four-year-old self and teen parts don’t see things the same way my adult self does, nor have they the skills to manage things in the way that my adult does. You’d think I’d be ok, though, seeing as I have a really fucking competent adult self. The problem is, my system is complicated, has the capacity to hijack me, and I am really really good at dissociating. Adult self is rarely there when I need her when I am freaking out.
Let’s face it – what scares me (all of me) more than anything is broken connection, feeling like the attachment is severed, and that I am on the verge of being abandoned. This is not at all surprising given my history because there was a time when disconnection really was a life-or-death situation. My mother’s PND did nothing for my little baby self or my developing nervous system and I have spent so much of my life in survival because my caregivers have never been reliable.
It’s hardly surprising that when I feel like the relationship with Elle (or A or Em…) is headed towards a cliff edge I am the first to run away. I am the absolute queen of ‘leave before I get left’ which is why I absolutely need my therapist to know this pattern and make sure I don’t bolt and disappear when there is a rupture (even if from their side it might seem small, repairable, or can wait). Ruptures can feel catastrophic to my system these days because … well… there have been ruptures where I have been hurt really badly and basically been abandoned and rejected because of my responses. Think of Em. My reaction to being called a tick, calling her out on it, and running scared didn’t see her try hard to meet me in it, to apologise, to understand why I was terrified, she just saw it as a perfect opportunity to let me go.
Anita was way better at handling ruptures… until her life collapsed around her ears and she couldn’t hold herself let alone anyone else. The damage from that ending is ongoing and painful. I feel so sad that in the two years since I last saw her, she hasn’t been able to step outside of her struggles and meet to end but that’s not what I am here to talk about today… although it definitely fed into the intensity of the panic I have felt with Elle during our recent rupture.
So, what’s this post all about?
This is a pre-curser post to help understand a bit of what happened in the most recent rupture with Elle (i.e when I brought it to her attention). Because yes. I got myself in a mess. A big one. And I ended up sending her this message:
I don’t want to see you anymore.
You can only imagine what sort of a state I had got myself into to send that. Eek. Like, I am the person will ALL THE WORDS… not none!
I’m almost done writing that post – and it’ll be up soon. But suffice to say it’s been a wild ride.
I am glad, then, that over the time I have been working with Elle, I have given her pieces of the map of me so that she has been able to understand me better and figure out what I need.
Most of the time I probably appear pretty together when I see her despite the crap that keeps hitting my day-to-day life. I probably seem a bit wounded and in need of support for my little parts but also seem generally functional. Sometimes I am a bit closed off but I am present in the room rather than off in space dissociated. The completely derailed, panicked, reactive, scared stiff self hasn’t really made it to the room (she’s done some emailing though!) – or if she has, she’s not been triggered BY ELLE. Elle has been a witness to the struggle and in support role in the room, not the trigger. It’s only this last month that Elle has had to misfortune of meeting that part of me in person.
Anyway, back to last year. I was testing the water with Elle knowing that it was only ever going to be a matter of time before something triggered my runners and protectors and I needed to know how she would respond if I unexpectedly disappeared. We all know that there are those diehard therapists who will say “I respect client autonomy, and if they choose to leave that’s their choice and I will not contact them thereafter. It’s up to them to contact me should they want to resume therapy.”
Puke.
Honestly, this kind of therapist really annoys me more than anything. If that’s your stance as a therapist then you absolutely should not be working with C-PTSD or people with multi-part systems. This ‘in the service of the client’s autonomy’ is bullshit. I’m not for one minute saying to beg and plead for a client to come back, that’s not realistic. But so often when we start running and slamming doors behind us, it’s not because we want to leave – it’s because we are scared! And we need for the adult, regulated nervous system (therapist) to remind us that we can come back, that we are wanted (even if we are having a tantrum and full of shame), and that they are committed to working through EVERYTHING with us even if it is HARD. Letting a triggered client disappear out the door is abandonment… it’s not kind.
And so, that day I asked Elle if she had ever made a mistake with a client that led to termination and what she did, or what she would do differently. Elle told me the about the biggest regret of her career was a time when she wasn’t as sensitive as she could have been with a client who kept cancelling last minute. She reached the point where she enacted her cancellation policy after several missed sessions – i.e charging for the session by sending an email, and the client left as a result – never came back in. Elle said she had failed to recognise potential wounding around money and still feels terrible to this day.
Mistakes and missteps happen, but what I wanted to know was what she did when the client said they were not coming back. Was she a ‘respect client’s autonomy and let them go’ therapist, or did she do something different?
Elle assured me that she had reached out and suggested that they meet in person but that the client didn’t want to come back, that there were some back and forth communications but that the client ended.
[For the record there was nothing identifying or specific – merely Elle’s feeling that she fucked up and had learnt a lot from that.]
I told her that I would always want her to reach out to me because it made me think about all the times I ran out of Anita’s and how when I am upset I can pull the plug (or parts of me can) and how it is really important to me that my therapist recognises when I am truly wanting to end and when I feel backed into a corner and feel like I need to leave because I can’t tolerate the feelings of disconnect etc.
Even though Elle was clear that she would always contact me in a rupture situation – my brain was whirring after the session and so I wrote her this letter at the time:
I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about the client that never came back – because of course that’s what my brain does at 3am when I can’t sleep and the anxiety is doing its thing. I actually had a lot of thoughts, like I can think of hundreds of reasons of why that all happened, but I am sure there’s nothing you haven’t thought about over the years so it’s not relevant.
However, what it did make me really think about was what would happen if something similar happened with us. You’ve probably figured out by now that I am not someone who cancels last minute and, generally speaking, if I did it would be because something was out of my control with the kids or something. But, actually, there are times when I get completely hijacked by my system and the “I don’t want to go” (it’s much bigger and more complicated than that) is really hard to get around.
Tbh it’s rarely an “I don’t want to go” because there is lots of me that absolutely does but it’s sometimes more of a “things feel very wrong, something is up, I’m scared that it’s all going to blow up, I don’t feel safe, I feel hurt, abandoned, rejected, maybe even angry… [on and on and on]…and so I need to protect myself from that and stay away – and she doesn’t care anyway so what’s the point?! It’s better to leave before I get left…”
I mean I totally get what happens, where it comes from, what parts of me are involved, and yet when it’s happening it is not always easy to sidestep it. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic but I guess at least there’s a really clear trajectory on how it all runs which I guess at least I am aware of now. And I see it a lot. Clients, for whatever reason, find it difficult to go to their therapy, maybe don’t show up, and might seem to be ghosting but actually it’s not because they don’t want to be there it’s because there is some kind of a rupture (that maybe the therapist has absolutely no clue about) and they, for whatever reason, can’t bring it to the room.
So many of us are conflict avoidant and even though bringing ‘big feelings’ shouldn’t be a problem, I guess most of our experiences have been that when we have, we’ve been mocked, or shamed, or abandoned, or gaslit…you know the deal… and so we’d rather not risk that repeating. I think sometimes, too, part of us knows that our reaction to whatever has been triggered is MUCH BIGGER than it ‘should’ be and so there’s shame and embarrassment there too because we feel completely derailed and it’s not even that big a deal (only it is a massive deal!).
I think it can be all the more unsettling for people that don’t really spend much time contemplating the therapeutic relationship and so when something between the therapist and client happens it’s hard to know what to do with it. Like it’s much easier to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sick” rather than, “I feel really anxious and something you said has really upset me” when they thought they were there to talk about their work stress and all of a sudden all this other shit is stirred up.
Sometimes it feels like a toddler or a teenager having a tantrum but actually I think that’s exactly what is happening – whatever is being triggered isn’t necessarily conscious and, in that moment, the adult self isn’t available enough to navigate the situation and all we know is that it just feels huge and insurmountable and overwhelming and completely in our bodies – and so the instinct is to run away and hide.
In some ways I think this can be really hard to manage because whatever is happening to stop a person turning up to therapy feels massive to them, and acting out can bring on all the massive feelings of shame and embarrassment afterwards and basically like you just want to crawl into a hole and die. It takes a lot to feel brave enough to come back and talk it through, and there has to be a strong enough sense that the person opposite you isn’t going to confirm everything that you fear is happening. It really is like with toddlers and teens. They need an adult to help them out of their meltdowns sometimes and an invitation back to work things out.
It is really complicated (but also not). I think when people don’t show up, rather than being flaky or disrespectful (I mean I guess there must be some people like that), is about testing whether the therapeutic relationship is strong or not. Like do you care enough to come find me if I disappear or will you just let me go? And I really get that this is complicated because all the training is like, ‘therapists should respect client autonomy’ and all the shit about not creating a dynamic that encourages ‘game playing’… only that is really pathologising and really makes it seem like everything that happens is down to us. It’s not game playing, it’s trying to protect ourselves.
As I said, lots of us have been hurt over the years and haven’t had the experience of managing conflict in a way that doesn’t somehow burn the house down and so rather than face a situation that potentially will hurt us more on top of whatever hurt feelings we are already feeling, we disappear. I think, for me at least, if I experience something as being abandoning or rejecting then it absolutely triggers the need to run away.
I’m not explaining this brilliantly well, and this is looooonnnggg, but I guess what I am trying to say is, if I cancelled last minute, or didn’t show up it’s not because I am rude, or don’t respect boundaries or whatever else – it’s because something is really wrong (from my side) and it feels too hard to come. If you just let me go and never contacted me to find out what was up or didn’t reach out and invite me to come and try and figure out what’s going on with you in person, actually what it confirms to me is probably everything I was running away from in the first place which is the feeling that you don’t care…
I’d like to think that a situation like this would never happen – but I also live in my head and experience often enough my runner ducks bolting. Just usually I have enough time to gather them back together before I see you.
Having a therapy go south in this way is sooooo common and causes such a lot of hurt to those involved. I have way too many stories – not just my own! – and I was wondering whether after the event a therapist reaching out would make any difference. And I think it would. An opportunity to talk through what happened when it’s not live would probably be really helpful because I think we tend to carry this shit around for a long time.
Anyway, that’s… a lot. I’ll try not to run away, but if I do, please come and find me. X
And so… I guess it was helpful that I sent that last year, because Elle did come and find me…and the session when we did get to meet was HUGE. I’ll get the ‘what happened next’ post up asap.
Today has been rotten. I’ve spent weeks trying very very hard to keep my chin up – or should I say, keep my nostrils above the shit soup that I have been neck, or even, mouth deep in for the longest time. I have painstakingly worked my way through the metaphorical ‘A-Z Book of Self Care’ – exhausting all my tools and strategies in an almost frenzied attempt to stave off sinking beneath the surface (again). I really don’t want to drown in the emotional cesspit!
My social media accounts look like I am living my absolute best life right now, but as we all know there’s often quite a distance between appearance and reality. My exterior looks one way (picture perfect), but I can tell you with complete confidence that my inner world is mired in the deepest, darkest shit right now. I have always been good at masking, though.
Knowing that Elle would be on a break right at the same time that all the anniversaries of Anita pulling the plug on my therapy two years ago has meant that May has been one hell of a messy month inside of me – my minibus has been renamed ‘The Struggle Bus’ and has some wicked looking decals on the side – not that anyone would know. I haven’t just wallowed in the ache and panic of it, though. I’m not lying when I say that I have been making herculean efforts to keep afloat. I have been trying to keep my life vest inflated by blowing into the little tube meanwhile pretending that I am not actually drowning…in shit. My friend said that perhaps I should start flashing the little light and blowing on the whistle…but I don’t want to disturb anyone. And who is going to want to rescue me from a huge vat of shit anyway?!
I took myself away this week, on my own and have been immersing myself in nature, living on my own timetable largely off the clock. I have tried to take out any of the stresses and strains that can leave me feeling overstimulated and overtired – and snappy, and on the verge of meltdown (!)… and it has been great, and I genuinely thought I had warded off the emotional disaster that felt inevitable with the break looming… but today I woke up and felt off. That familiar sense of painful ache and emptiness had rooted and the emotional dark cloud had firmly placed itself above my head.
Despite all the effort to avert the emotional crash it’s happened anyway. Of course it would. I walked 26km of coast path yesterday in an attempt to not end up where I am now (in my bed all day, in a freeze with the curtains closed feeling hopeless and sad). I thought that if I just kept moving, I would be ok. I kept finding a point on the path in the distance and walking to it, then finding another, and another, and before I knew if I was miles and miles from home.
I should know better by now than to try and outrun (walk) something that lives inside me. I can’t run away from my parts and my pain. Sometimes it feels like I live with pieces of shrapnel inside and have learnt to move and bend in particular ways in order to try and avoid the worst of the hurt. Most of the time I am successful. Unless of course I trip and jerk in an unexpected movement and then … OUCH!
And that’s what’s happened today.
Again.
I probably should have made more of an effort to let Elle know what was going on inside me in the two sessions before she left. I have a children’s book called ‘A Shelter For Sadness’ that I read once with Anita. When I got ‘the box’ back from her in December it was the one I picked to show Elle. It’s lovely and talks about making different spaces to house Sadness (or I guess, this expands to whatever other feelings you need to hold). To be honest, I think the sessions before a break need to be all about creating not only a shelter for sadness but for all the little parts that struggle so much. I need a youth hostel!
Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?
It would be if ‘False Adult’ hadn’t been fronting quite a bit. There’s also been another active protector part – probably a slightly ‘low volume’ version of the ‘Inner Critic’ piping up here and there warning me not to be “too needy” or “too honest” about how things feel for fear of being “too much”. The very last thing I want to happen is have another therapist go off on their holiday and then decide that I am too much like hard work and terminate when they come back.
The thing is I don’t help myself at all by avoiding saying, “The idea of you being gone is really unsettling me” or “I really need for us to do some focussed work before your break with the little parts” or “I might turn up and be adult but the reality is the young parts need stories and cuddles before you go” or “I hate to be like this but can you give me some kind of tangible reassurance that we are ok because my system is in freefall” or “Can we maybe organise a check in later in the week so that it cuts down the break a bit?” or “I am swimming in shame right now and feel so untethered. Can you tell me how you are feeling right now about me so I don’t create stories in my head when you are gone?” or “Can you remind me that just because Anita left at this time of year that you aren’t going to, too?” or “Can you write me a note for when you are away that I can open in our usual session time to keep connected?”…. You know… any of the things…but I know why I do.
I don’t want to be ‘that client’ even if I am so totally ‘THAT CLIENT’. So instead, I spent the last couple of sessions before the break wittering on about my day-to-day (which to be fair is full of serious shit as well). I felt like I wasn’t even in the room for the very last session before Elle left and I went away feeling really sad and disconnected which is never the ideal situation to be in when there’s two weeks between sessions.
I know it is a tendency of mine to emotionally check out as a kind of protective measure before a break. You know, leave before you get left. It wouldn’t have been obvious to Elle. I looked ‘there’ enough. But I think actually I was dissociated – or parts of me certainly were.
So yeah, May has been tough for the most part.
But it’s especially tough today.
I started to feel myself edging towards the shame slide on Thursday night thinking about how hard I struggle with separation and how it ALWAYS feels like a rejection or abandonment. I feel embarrassed about having given something to Elle before she’s gone away that on one level, I think is really thoughtful and shows exactly how important she is to me…but then as time has gone on I wonder if it’s too much? Like, get in your lane RB and remember that you are just a therapy client. And with that has come that painful reminder of the time I gave Em a copy of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and a glass snowflake for Christmas and she basically rejected them telling me that I paid her for her time and that’s enough.
I sent Elle a short message about feeling ashamed but not why I was feeling that way or any detail at all and she reminded me to stay off that “slippery slip”. But it’s not that easy, is it?
You may be wondering how any of what I am saying has any bearing on the title of this blog post?
I don’t know how to get this out to be honest because it’s swirling in my mind and nothing has landed yet.
But I suppose the thing about breaks is it’s another reality check that therapy is just therapy and we are our therapist’s work. Nothing more than that.
One of the things I struggle such a lot with is the authenticity of the therapeutic relationship. Like it’s so hard to settle in the space that is, “my therapist genuinely cares…but it is a paid-for relationship”. I think that is especially the case for those of us with early trauma and attachment issues…and *all the things*!
I would hazard to say that most of us would rather not be perpetually reminded of the fact that the relationship we have with our therapist only exists if we can pay for it, and the moment that we can’t we’re out the door (this has been very present in my mind since my wife is out of work and finances are an absolute disaster). Or that in reality the relationship as we know it only really exists for that hour or two each week. Outside that, you’re on your own – and we need to be soooo careful about hitting the concrete walls of boundaries we don’t know about outside that time don’t we?
Like who doesn’t love, “If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t be working with you…but I will not respond to or even read your emails and should you choose to contact me in that way you are deliberately walking yourself into rejection and pushing boundaries…” Cheers Em. It was very hard to believe that she saw me as anything other than someone who reliably showed up every week and handed over money. She never wanted to enter into the ‘us’ of the therapeutic relationship and I felt horrible all the time.
I guess some people find the transactional nature of therapy easier than others. I mean, sure, if you are going to talk through work stress, or getting divorced or whatever – I am sure it’s no problem at all to have the ongoing reminders that your weekly session is an ‘appointment’ because perhaps the sessions are less about the relationship with the therapist and more about what needs immediately fixing in the world outside the room. I know people who think of their therapy sessions in the same way that they think about going to the GP or the dentist… but Elle doesn’t occupy that zone in my head at all…and I know a lot of the people that read this blog don’t think of their therapists like this either.
Get to the fucking point RB!
So… I guess what I am trying to say, and have said it in so many different ways over the years, is that I am not stupid: I know my therapist is my therapist. I know my relationship with Elle is a paid-for relationship. I know she is not my friend. I know that there are clear boundaries around our relationship. I know that although she’s supportive, she’s not there at 3am to call when I wake from yet another nightmare feeling panicked and like I want to give up on life altogether. I know that she sees other clients. I know that as much as I would like to be ‘special’ to her, that I am just one of many people she sees, and in fact – my experience would tell me that when it comes down to it, I am not one of those clients that therapists want to hang onto. I am one of the first to be chopped when things are hard.
But you know what?
I know it, but I don’t need reminding of it.
It’s there all the time.
That doesn’t mean I am in denial. That doesn’t mean I hope that one day our relationship will be something different than it is now. It doesn’t mean that I am living in some kind of fantasy about the therapy being anything other than therapy. I am not hiding from reality.
The parts of me that want to feel safe, and loved, and like I matter are constantly aware of exactly what therapy is and what it is not. I know I am a client. But forgive me if I don’t want it ramming down my throat.
And yes, I’ll be the first to put my hands up and say that I find it hard navigating the therapeutic relationship… I mean, this blog shows that doesn’t it?! And I absolutely do get triggered by things that maybe I shouldn’t. Well, ‘shouldn’t’ is bollocks anyway…because my experience is my experience. But I can’t believe that I am in unusual in feeling how I do, in reacting how I do to certain kinds of communication. I bet, actually a lot of people have a response but feel too embarrassed or ashamed to even bring it up. Sometimes it feels easier to keep quiet and move on through triggers alone than let our therapist see how ‘small things’ can really ‘hurt a lot’.
I did absolutely find the weekly automated texts from Elle reminding me of my session time painful – for lots of reasons. I don’t think that impersonal communications are easy to metabolise for the parts of us that aren’t ‘adult’. I have C-PTSD – and structural dissociation with a system of at least nine parts so is it really surprising that my four-year-old self feels upset when ‘the Elle that she knows’ sends group emails ‘to all clients’ when she has no idea what ‘a client’ even is when she is used to being referred to with more affectionate terms. It’s jarring.
The other thing is: I DO NOT NEED REMINDING OF MY SESSION TIME … because I am pathetic counting down to 12 o’ clock on a Tuesday from the moment I leave the room and by Friday I am really struggling. Having what felt like a sterile and cold message on a Monday morning when I was so far away from a state of connectedness was just endlessly triggering. That doesn’t mean I don’t know that I am a client. It just means that my system needs something different. And you know what? That brings up so much shame and embarrassment for me.
I spend so much of my time second-guessing what is ‘real’ and what isn’t in the therapeutic relationship. I want to feel like the relationship I have with Elle means something to her too when it means such a lot to me. I don’t want to feel like I am on her conveyor belt of people to see. I don’t want to be reminded that I am on a conveyor belt at all – even though I know it completely and feel it all the time.
That doesn’t mean I have a sense of grandiosity or that I feel like I am more important than other clients, or that I am not ‘a client’. In fact, it is the very opposite. I hate group emails and impersonal communication because my self-esteem is so low that being reminded that I am just ‘one of many clients’ directly taps into the recent trauma with Anita ending our long-term work. I couldn’t even pay her to stay. She chose to keep other people on and not me. I don’t think Elle understands what that rejection has done to me and how hard it is to trust in her and how much of myself I hold back or keep out the room because of what happened with A.
I feel like I have never been enough for people to stay. Or to care.
The person that should have loved me no matter what (my mother) has happily disappeared from my life again, too. Although the abandonment started young of course…
So with all this in mind, knowing why I am in therapy at all, is it any wonder then that I don’t want to be reminded that I am just a client? Is it so very wrong of me to want a place and a person that feels safe and where I feel like I matter? Is it wrong to want to believe that someone might actually care just because I am enough as I am? Is it wrong to want to feel like the person sitting with me might just love me not just despite my flaws but because of them? It’s scary being seen but therapy is sometimes the only place where that truly happens.
I thought Elle of all people would understand this.
Although, I’m not sure now.
I always imagined that if she was struggling with something between us, she would tell me first…or you know, take it to supervision and then come to me. But imagine my horror to discover a post in an online therapist forum by her (albeit under a pseudonym – but it is most definitely her from other comments and posts) that talks about a client that has issues being reminded they’re a client and asking advice.
The original post has been deleted – but the comments from other therapists and her replies that are attached to it are still there – and you can imagine how reading a string of thirty comments about yourself and what might be ‘wrong’ with you feels. And I can infer enough from those that she doesn’t know what to do to handle it delicately because I have a total emotional shutdown in our next session any time she sends something formal or automated or a change in office hours (that last one really upset me because the reason I got upset at Christmas when we couldn’t see each other on Christmas Eve wasn’t just a change in office hours – it was so much more than that). And there’s a reference to something that she can only have read in a blog post of mine because I never shared it with her directly but actually – she’s misread that too – she said I was angry about something A did in communication – it wasn’t that AT ALL. What I was feeling was scared.
One of the horrible side effects of developmental and relational trauma is hypervigilance. I have always had to carefully watch for change in people because so often there was a form of abuse coming with change. One minute things would be fine enough and then all of a sudden the wind would change and it was fucking terrifying. You get really good at ‘noticing’ when you are scaredall the time. A simple shift in tone of voice, body language or whatever could often be the signal to get out of the way in order to not be hurt. But then there was also the stuff around silent treatment as punishment and I think sometimes more formal/sterile communications can feel like a withdrawing of warmth (and therefore care). It’s complex. But has absolutely fuck all to do with my not wanting to be reminded that I am in therapy and a client.
I am so hypervigilant, though. I notice everything. So of course if I get some kind of written communication that feels very different to what I am used to experiencing with someone my brain is scanning for meaning in that. I would love for my brain to be able to switch into, “this is just admin, everything is fine” but that’s not how it works. It starts with stories about how “something must have changed” or “watch out because something bad is going to happen”. And it’s not as though there isn’t evidence for this bad stuff happening. I’m not stuck in old patterns and unable to make a leap into the here and now, because the reality is, not all that long ago my sense of things being off wasn’t wrong…despite Anita’s protesting otherwise…and the next thing I knew I was dumped. So yeah. I do worry when there is inconsistency and that isn’t because I don’t want to be reminded that I am client, it’s because I am terrified that change means abandonment or rejection.
I just don’t understand how someone who is so big on authenticity and honest communication and you know all the Brene Brown stuff about being vulnerable and open has chosen to go online to figure this stuff out rather than come to me directly because I thought by now we had a strong enough relationship to have those conversations.
The irony is not lost on me that this is exactly what I am doing now! Running into the safety of the online world rather than reaching out. But I am the client… or capitalise that… CLIENT… you know, the thing I don’t want to be reminded about – and she is the therapist – the therapist who is currently away on a break. I am just a client who will not bring this up in an email right now (even though it’s really knocked me for six) and will hold onto it for as long as I can because I respect the fact that she is on holiday from her job – which is me – and therefore this ‘work’ can wait. But hey, I have problems with being reminded I am a client. Like, seriously, please do fuck off.
So, I have felt hurt today…and also maybe a bit angry it seems based on that last line.
This probably sounds so much worse than it is. There is nothing ‘identifying’ about me (in the real world) in that post or in some of the other comments elsewhere that reference how we work. But I can identify myself clearly from them and so, it seems, could someone else who has been following my blog in the background for years and thought that they recognised me through one of Elle’s descriptions of how she works with a particular client on another post – such a small world – ugh. That person clicked through Elle’s posts and was able to join enough dots from stuff I have said about me that they thought they should reach out to me and let me know that they thought they could identify me via what my therapist had posted – albeit still in an anonymous way. Ugh.
So of course I checked this out. And this is when I came across the stuff about not wanting to be reminded of being a client. Elle would never for one minute think that I would have found this stuff but I think she underestimates my ability to take very small snippets of information and make links – or it seems, for readers of mine to… she ought to , though, because I know she is the same with this kind of thing. Neither one of us is not very familiar with the online world. This is why I stay away from forums generally, there’s so much crossover and I don’t want chance encounters (well not like this)! I do also get that the reason I was identifiable is because of what I’ve written on the blog…so it’s not straightforward.
So, yeah, this is utterly fucking rubbish isn’t it?! I so wish that when this happened a couple of months ago, she’d have said to me, “RB, last session you were really shutdown but you didn’t tell me why and hardly talked – you just snuggled into me and cried. I sometimes read your blog when you seem far away and shutdown to give a me a clue of what’s going on for you because you said from the start that I could have access to your blog before we even started working together and often you send posts to me. I know that you found the automated texts hard a while back and we’ve changed that, but then I see from your post that the email I sent about fee increase has been triggering too but not because of the money – which is often what people feel upset by. Do you think we might be able to talk about this together?”
Like, please please Elle – come to me before you head out online for advice…because although I can’t read exactly what you posted originally, surely – surely by now you know me enough to know that I am not some delusional fucking freak who has no grip on reality. The thing is, because I only have what I can see to go on, the story I am telling myself is exactly that – and not only that, but that you find me hard work, that I am in some way problematic, that how I react sometimes is too much and that I am making you feel uncomfortable and that there is a big problem you don’t know how to solve, and probably too that you don’t really even like me very much. It’s basically activated my Inner Critic and given it a megaphone.
As a result I am completely triggered and stressed and worried that history is going to repeat itself and you’ll decide that I am a pain in the arse and get rid of me because I can already see how this could land. And that hurts such a lot because I trusted you with me and this just feels like a massive betrayal of that trust. But not only that, there’s a part of me that now feels like I need to go into hiding – because obviously my reactions to some things are extreme and that is a horrible place to inhabit…albeit really familiar.
I just want my 90 minutes a week to feel important, and protected, and safe, and like I actually have some sort of value even if I have to pay for that and that I don’t have to think about anyone else and can be in the moment just with you. And I am sorry that I struggle when faced with the stark difference between the warm person I see each week who sends me really lovely emails and holds me so carefully and the one who is running a ‘business’. But sure. It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me... because it always is a me problem.
It seems kind of cruel that this had to all happen today on the anniversary of the day that Anita dropped the bombshell that she needed to end with me – and when it’s fucking ages until the break is over…but it’s my own fault. I should never have gone down the rabbit hole in the first place. But it was that thing, feeling far away, disconnected, sad, lost, and looking for a sense of the person I think I know…and finding the person I think I know…but also not.
All I am hoping for now, really, is that I don’t get myself so worked up between now and the 27th that I end up backing so far away that there’s no going back. A triggered system left in freefall is never a good combination.
I think the best thing I can do is retreat into myself and try very hard not to catastrophise…
There’s a certain kind of raw vulnerability that comes with the territory when you’re in therapy – or at least that’s the case when the protectors aren’t running the show and shutting things down! I spend most of my time here writing about my therapy and the messy process of confronting and working with parts of myself- my minibus.
Currently, it’s a bit of a disaster on board the RB bus, and all the passengers/parts seem to be noisily vying for various kinds of care and attention. These parts of me have so many different wounds and so many different needs that it can be very hard to strike the balance of what is needed and whom to focus on in therapy – especially if several parts of different ages are activated all at the same time (like now – groan!).
When the conditions are just right, the alchemy that happens in the therapy room can feel amazing can’t it? Life changing, actually. And sessions can feel like a much-needed balm. Sadly, though, for those of you that have followed this blog a while, you’ll also know that it doesn’t always work out and it’s not always positive. I’ve spent a great deal of time talking about when therapy goes wrong and the damage that gets done time and again.
Therapy is (supposed to be) a safe space, a place where you can unpack your baggage and work through it without judgment, a place where all of you can be seen and held and understood – a place where you can metaphorically get out your favourite pair of rather faded, threadbare pants, the ones that don’t really fit anymore, hold them up the light and try figure out why you just can’t seem to let them go despite having many pairs of ‘good’ pants… and why despite having lost one of the socks in a pair some time ago, you daren’t part with the remaining one just in case the other should one day miraculously show up again…even though you probably did leave the other under a bed in a holiday apartment in Spain.
Throughout all this your therapist won’t flinch or mock you for your terrible underwear but stare at it alongside you and help you work out what’s really going on and what the pants and socks symbolise…or something like that. LOL!
So, yeah, it’s a safe space.
But, like with everything else in life, the boundaries between “safe” and “unsafe” aren’t always as clear as we think they should be. Sometimes, the things that trigger us don’t come in the form of some big, glaring issue:“like a tick” or “holy fuck RB – those pants are truly disgusting, how could you possibly still want them?”; sometimes they show up in the tiniest, most unexpected moments – wearing a slogan t-shirt, for example.
I guess I should back up and start from the beginning.
Last week, thanks to the wonders of the almighty ‘algorithm’, Instagram chose to hand me a fucking doozy: one my therapist Elle’s ‘open’ profiles – one that’s apparently been out in the magical internet universe for a good while, but because I don’t actively search Elle out (anymore!), I had no idea that it existed.
Typically, this all happened on a day where I was feeling disconnected and distant from Elle, a day where I had actually wanted to email her and reach out for reassurance, but had stopped myself. Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot of shame around my ‘need for Elle’ and have felt myself backing away a bit. I don’t think she’s got any idea that this is where I am at right now, but I feel the gap between us opening up week on week…or at least some part of me is experiencing our relationship in this way and it’s not great. I’d go so far as to say a good half of the passengers in the mini-bus aren’t strapped in and we’ve veered off-road.
Brace positions folks…we all know how this ends.
Of course, Elle’s personal Insta account is locked down (thank goodness…I think…) but this one isn’t. What showed up on my feed wasn’t some professional ‘therapist’ account; it was personal-ish – well without giving too much away, it’s a page that she’s made to showcase something she’s taken up relatively recently – a performance-based activity. This new ‘thing’ is something I’ve known about for a long time and something we’ve discussed on and off over the last eighteen months so I wasn’t completely surprised when I saw she had made a page for it.
This ‘thing’ has caused me some angst before- I think I mentioned it at the time. As bad luck would have it, one of my friends was also doing the ‘thing’ at the same time and had met Elle and become friends with her through this activity. That has been really hard for me to manage on lots of levels. I have wanted to go support my friend and watch her perform but have deliberately kept away from going to see her knowing that Elle would likely be there, too, and so instead I watch her from her online videos (my friend…not Elle!).
Our city is relatively small and so there is always going to be a chance of running into each other anyway- but I would never deliberately put myself in the same space that Elle might occupy because – ouch… it would physically hurt to have her ignore me…or of course, the Elle I meet in the outside world not be the person I see in the therapy room.
It’s been hard in other ways too. As time has gone on, I can’t help but feel more and more jealous that my friend gets to spend time with Elle – doesn’t have to pay to see her – isn’t on the clock and kicked out when the time is up – can send her WhatsApp messages and memes and basically have a ‘normal’ relationship/friendship with her…and, I’m not stupid, I get that Elle is my therapist and not my friend and I undoubtedly get a different kind of relationship with her – but ugh.
It’s not even like my friend is someone that only lives in my phone and I rarely see. I see this woman every single fucking day, our kids are in the same class at school FFS, we hang out and go on walks with my bloody dog…and yet there’s this unspoken thing between us. I told her the Elle is my therapist early on…but thereafter we’ve both ignored the fact but it sort of feels like an elephant in the room.
But that’s not the problem this week. It’s just there always in the background.
Back to the Insta page. Perhaps I should not have clicked on the page when it came up. But then, it’s not like it’s a secret Elle has kept from me – the thing she’s doing, I mean. And as I said, I felt disconnected from her that day and suddenly here she was in my phone. I had chance to see what Elle had been talking about all these months. I find it hard to hold her in mind at the best of times, and I was floundering last week and here were actual videos of Elle that I could watch and I was curious… and desperate to feel like she was still real…and so I started scrolling through the page.
Big error.
And, you could laugh…I probably should…but it wasn’t anything that she said or did that upset me. Nope. It was a t-shirt that’s fucked everything up…you can’t make it up, can you?
On one of the videos Elle was wearing a shirt with a phrase on it that hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. I’m not going to tell you exactly what the t-shirt said. That’s not the point. The point is that the words, the design, everything about it felt painful to me. It felt like Elle was wearing something that spoke directly to me – even if it wasn’t intended to. She knows a lot about me and she knows what my life is like and how it is set up. And here was a slogan that ripped into an aspect of that. Noone needs to see ‘Fuck your ______’ and a picture of that burning…and no one needs to see that on the body of their therapist on an online video.
I get it. It’s not meant to be personal. Elle would never in a million years think that I would see this. She probably didn’t think at all –
But it’s hard not to wonder: is this a sign? Is it a cosmic nudge that the safe space I thought I had built around her is, in reality, much smaller than I thought? – or possibly totally non-existent? That in fact, she is not at all who I thought she was, or hoped her to be. The truth is, I’ve been struggling with a deep sense of doubt all week and really couldn’t connect this week in my session (although it wouldn’t have been apparent because I am SOOOOOO good at looking fine when I am anything but!).
I kept my most vulnerable parts firmly locked away and I felt as though something was wrong the whole time…but that’s because for me, or several parts of me, there is now something wrong. It wasn’t helped at all when, that was the first session in as long as I can remember that Elle didn’t reach for me. She didn’t hold my hand…and as I got up to leave, she opened the door. We usually hug at the end and it was as though she had forgotten…or maybe she just didn’t want to? I did ask for a hug but it all just landed really flat for me. This has added an extra dimension of fear around our relationship heading south even without the fucking t-shirt.
How do I even bring this to her?
How do you sit across, well next to, the person who’s been helping you heal and admit that you feel suddenly unsafe in the therapy? How do you tell them that you feel like they might just be humouring you or tolerating you because it’s their job to, and not because they genuinely care about you as a person? How do you say, “I see and recognise EVERYTHING that you do for me, but my brain can’t hang onto that in the face of a perceived abandonment or rejection and right now I feel like everything is an act and I want to run away before you hurt me any more. My little parts are terrified that you are going to leave too…and tell me I am too much.”
I know. I know. I need to say exactly that, don’t I?!
For those of us who have spent years, a life-time even, feeling like we don’t quite belong in the world, who have never felt quite good enough, feel as though we have to work doubly hard to be accepted and that love and connection comes with a catch…it’s hard to build trust and even harder to maintain it. This is especially the case after everything that happened with Em and Anita and Hannah.
It’s taken a good while for me to really feel safe with Elle, to trust that what she says is true, and that she is there for me. And my goodness, she demonstrates it in so many ways time and again…and so seeing this version of Elle online has basically felt like the universe is playing a cruel joke on me – AGAIN. Because I so want to believe that Elle is the person I have come to know over the last eighteen months and not the person my phone sent me last week…she is, of course, both…so what do I do with that?
I know I need to find a way to bring this up because literally just now – writing this post – the joy of the algorithm has done another two things to me – it’s shown me that my friend is going to be doing the ‘thing’ again next week with Elle (groan) and Facebook has also decided that Elle’s child may be on the list of ‘someone I know’ despite me not being friends with Elle online, us having only one mutual friend, and my NEVER having searched her child out… just no…no more of this cruel hell please!
I am so activated and upset and basically overwhelmed by this whole situation this last week and the longer I keep quiet about it the worse it gets. I can feel myself drifting away from Elle. There are a lot of competing voices inside, though – and it really isn’t helpful when some of them are saying to “shut the fuck up and keep your mouth shut”…because what if what I have to say doesn’t go down well? What if Elle feels like her privacy has been intruded upon. What happens if she gets defensive- or worse – reactive? I am imagine her first action would be to block me from seeing that account because I clearly can’t handle it and that would feel rejecting too.
I don’t want her to think that I’m some kind of stalker that’s sought her out on social media and then had a meltdown about what I’ve seen. Because that isn’t it AT ALL. And, then there’s the other bit -the self-doubting part of me that is so used to me being the problem that I tend to look inside and find fault with myself first. So, I am not even sure whether or not I am just overreacting to the whole thing in the first place and should just get over it and let it go? Maybe I am just being super sensitive and dramatic? I’m more or less over the ‘group email’ now and I never told Elle about what had happened maybe I can move through this alone, too, and not risk fucking things up with another therapist.
The thing is – it’s still in there somewhere, isn’t it? Like, it’s stored away as a nugget of doubt and this latest thing with the shirt feels like another added to the pile…and I don’t want there to be a pile building up because I’ve found that once you start to accumulate doubt nuggets they seem to grow exponentially and before you know it, you’re surrounded by doubts and can see little else.
And perhaps I need to be less judging of myself. Maybe I am overreacting – but what I know is this: the heavy feeling in my chest and the sick feeling in my stomach are real…and the sadness I feel is there regardless of the trigger. It’s not the same as Em calling me a tick, but it’s in the same zone… basically something about me is unlikeable and deficient in Elle’s eyes and that hurts because more than anything I want her to judge me as worthy.
The video was filmed back in November and honestly, since that time Elle and I have done some incredible work, we have got closer and closer to each other, and I have felt so safe and contained with her (just haven’t caught myself up from Christmas here yet have I?!)…and yet, it was a choice she made to wear that t-shirt that day…having already known me for 15 months at that point, told me that she loves me, and you know all the lovely things…
Ugh.
I get that life as a therapist is a bloody minefield – because Elle is a human and not just a therapist, isn’t she? She exists in the world outside the room as a person with all sorts of feelings and opinions that may not necessarily align with the clients she sees. Like of course, I know that. But there is always a chance a client may come across you in the wider world- or even actively seek you out…and…well…fuck it…all I can say is this t-shirt has really upset me and I don’t know what to do about it.
There’s a part of me—the protector part—that wants to quit therapy entirely. That part of me feels it would be easier to cut and run, and avoid having to squirm in discomfort about this whole thing. My track record for bringing difficult stuff to therapists and it working out positively hasn’t been exactly great and honestly, I don’t want to be in a situation where I feel ‘done to’ again when things don’t work out. Like I don’t want to feel the pain of rejection or abandonment again…although on a level I already feel this this week. I don’t want to lose Elle but also, I don’t want to be in therapy with someone who is just tolerating me and behind the scenes thinks badly of me.
Complex trauma really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? I know that how I feel right now is being exacerbated by the fact that we are headed into May – and 2 years since Anita went away and never really came back. My safe person went away on holiday full of reassurances and returned a different person. Elle is going away in May too. Like, what happens if it all happens again? And the pattern repeats because once again I am being too much, having too many big feelings, and the hard work to be around me is simply not worth it?
So here I am, sitting with all of this discomfort, trying to figure out how to move forward. Trying not to let the Inner Critic get too loud. The fear is real. The uncertainty is paralyzing. But I know that if I don’t bring it up, if I don’t address it somehow, I’ll be stuck in this cycle of self-doubt and avoidance all the while losing connection with Elle and that is frankly terrifying.
So, here’s to the T-shirt, the trigger, and the uncomfortable journey ahead…2025 can, frankly, go do one!
Where do I even start with this? Seriously, why oh why is my life so endlessly fucking challenging? I often wonder if I must’ve been a colossal asshole in a previous life because the unending piles of shit that land over and over seem just really too much. Surely, life isn’t meant to be an ongoing struggle that involves jumping hurdle after hurdle without ever having much time to recover and breathe before the next? But that’s how it feels.
It’s little wonder I am always so strung out – even when things seem to be going relatively well, I feel as though I am waiting for the next barrage of shit to hit…and it always always comes without fail. It might sound dramatic but I really feel like I have had more than my fair share of crap in this lifetime. Like living with an abusive parent, the death of the safe parent, and cancer at 31 was enough thank you very much… ugh.
So, it’s been a little (long) while since my last post where I was having a meltdown about the group email that Elle sent out about her fee increase in April. I honestly wish I could go back to that time and only be dealing with that level of shit in my life – you know, alongside having a chronically sick kid and all the other bits that I navigate on the daily…but I was just about head above water then even though it’s felt like I have been drowning emotionally for the best part of six months.
As it turned out, I never got round to telling Elle about the meltdown I had about being ‘one of many’ and her group email, because as life would have it, my life got turned upside down AGAIN and that seemed really insignificant in the big scheme of things . Ironically, the thing that wasn’t a worry at all in that message, i.e the fee increase has now become a real and present stress alongside the not wanting to share Elle. What’s happened you might wonder? Well, let’s just say, it doesn’t seem pay to speak up when things are wrong – or to care in this world.
My wife recently took on a new role in a new organisation in order to be able to work closer to home now that one of our kids has been diagnosed with a chronic lifelong condition. She’d been in post for a week when she had to escalate some serious findings to the CEO and rather than listen to what she had to say they got irate and told her to leave…basically they didn’t want to know. This was shocking… like honestly, mind-blowing…you just wouldn’t quite believe that companies run like this…especially when people’s lives are in the mix but it is all too common unfortunately.
So, what does that even mean? Well, this is the sixth week she’s been out of work and no money coming in. She has several ongoing interviews at the moment (at her level most jobs have a minimum of three interviews and some kind of presentation to the directorate), but these things take a loooonnnggg time and meanwhile our main earner isn’t earning.
Can you imagine the stress? For someone that has a bit of a scarcity complex it has really triggered me.
Of course, my system is in absolute meltdown about it. I am hardly sleeping, my back seized up the first week, then I came down with a stinking cold/flu which has lasted the best part of a month now and I have had to work through it when had I not been self-employed I’d have been in bed sick.
It’s not surprising I got pummelled with this though and just haven’t been able to bounce back, as alongside all of this we spent most of the first week post ‘no job’ in hospital with our son who is immune suppressed due to his medication regime and had developed an infection.
It’s been exhausting.
I am exhausted.
Burnout is real.
And it is nigh on impossible to hang it all together when so much feels so out of control and dangerous. This post has actually been half-started and languishing in my laptop for ages now, and really I thought about deleting it as it’s not even really about ‘therapy’ – but I want to post so that my next ‘therapy’ post will make some kind of sense…when I get round to writing it… because no surprise, I have hit huge skids with Elle this week (not that she knows it yet) and it has felt like the biggest rupture to my system.
My inner world is in turmoil and I think it must have at least something to do with my external world going tits up…but you can figure that out with me next time. Maybe I am overreacting or maybe Elle has just been unconsciously insensitive and maybe I am justified in feeling really hurt. I don’t know.
Still, back to the shitshow that is my day-to-day!
As we all know, life doesn’t happen for free… gotta love capitalism! lol. I have juggled some bits around for now – taken on some extra debt to cover the immediate expenses, but there is a real worry that this can’t go on for too long before I’ll have to make some hard choices about my therapy with Elle. And whilst it would be me putting things on pause for financial reasons, my system won’t understand that at all especially given the recent ‘rupture’ stuff that’s just been triggered.
The universe has been delivering a total avalanche of shit since my wife became unemployed… not only were me and my son ill… but the car got a puncture and needed a new tyre, the dishwasher blew up, the boiler broke and flooded the bedroom – because – why??? Then my car engine light came on last week and was an £800 fix…umm….HELP!! There’ve been a few more of these unexpected financial sucker punches but I can’t remember what they are…dissociation is such fun! But it’s meant the safety net I put in place to tide us over whilst my wife gets a new position is spring huge tears left and right.
Not seeing Elle would feel like an abandonment to my young parts who already struggle such a lot because of what’s happened in previous therapies. How many times have I heard that “I’m with you for the entire journey. No matter what.” Or “It’s not about money to me” or “I will keep showing up for you.” And then something happens and oh look, it’s Me, Myself and I figuring things out alone – it certainly doesn’t help that we are rapidly approaching May and two years since Anita went on holiday and then came back and ended the therapy…or you know, didn’t actually end or say goodbye…
FFS.
As much as I’d love to pretend that Elle and I have a relationship that is important and matters no matter what – the reality is, my time with her is a paid for slot and … well… if things don’t shift for the better in the next few weeks then… Elle and I don’t exist. And that is super painful and is sending me into freefall. It’s hard to imagine the person that has been so present and available and just plain loving and kind mightn’t be there for me for much longer – and I do wonder if I have latched on to this ‘rupture’ this week to make it easier for me to detach from her if I have to.
I’d like to think I was better at navigating ruptures now – but I think my ability to be able to bring hard things to the room depends largely on how solid and safe I feel – not only with Elle but in life…and frankly – safe isn’t a feeling I am tapping into right now. Ugh.
I won’t keep you hanging for months on end with the next bit…I just haven’t been well enough to write until now.
Oh lordy! I honestly feel like I am navigating a fucking gator-infested swamp of Complex Trauma Doom right now…Seriously, it’s like running through a minefield of endless triggers at the moment, and I seem to be setting them off with nearly every step I take. It’s starting to do my head in, frankly – and my entire system is taking a lot of hits! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was an off switch for all our sensitivities?…or a reset for trauma brain…
What’s the problem today you ask? – I mean there are several ongoing issues and upsets #breakdown but today’s bit of bollocks is that I have been once again upended by a seemingly innocuous email communication from my therapist Elle.
Oh, but of course this would happen today! – the first day in a really long time where I have been able to carve out some space and time for myself in a place that I love- and then rather than be able to sink into safe and calm I have spent the day ruminating on the message! – let’s be clear, group mail outs trigger the shit out of me. FFS.
This is not the first time I have had a reaction to an impersonal email or communication from a therapist. Years ago I remember Anita handing me a printed sheet of paper at the end of a session with her holiday dates on and it signing off with something like ‘sorry for the inconvenience it may cause…best wishes…’ and it sent me into outer space because how could it possibly be that one minute I was snuggled into her body with her telling me that she loved me and the next minute I was being presented with cold admin related paperwork and sent on my merry way? This kind of thing jars my system so badly… because, yay for relational trauma and the fear of people turning cold and leaving.
Early on in my work with Elle a similar situation to today happened (a group email to all clients) and I went belly up then, too. It was the first time that my mask of coping slipped with Elle. I had read her message that began with, ‘Dear All, My apologies for the impersonal nature of this group email…’ and it landed really hard. At the time I felt like the group email was a backhanded way of her addressing something with me and feeling like I was getting rejected for something I didn’t know about – basically WhatsApp communication being a ‘no’. I absolutely crumbled. I was able to tell her in an email:
The email you sent on Friday made me cry. Like I actually fell apart. I felt like I’d pissed you off, and rather than tell me directly you’d done it in a ‘send to all’. The feeling of needing to run away and self-protect was massive and really highlights to me what a fucking massive mess I am in. Literally everything feels like a rejection or an abandonment or like I have done something wrong or that I’m fucking things up and my system just can’t cope.
Elle replied with a really holding/caring message to that and I think it was probably the start of me moving into trusting her a bit with ‘messy me’. At that point I wasn’t especially triggered by the fact I was receiving a mail out to all clients because I was still getting to know her and wasn’t all in – but that has certainly shifted today because crikey…it’s been a lot.
I just REALLY DON’T EVER want to be receiving a ‘Notice to all clients’.
When I feel attached to a therapist the last very fucking thing I want is the reminder that I am one of many clients that my therapist sees on her conveyor belt of losers each week, or that the carefully constructed relationship we have only exists in the room for the time I am there and is nothing more than an elaborate paid for pantomime full of smoke and mirrors. Elle is running a business (ugh she said that today in the email ‘rising costs of running a business’) and that is therapy. Anything beyond that is just wishful thinking on my part.
Being just a ‘client’ is hard enough but being reminded of the ‘others’ that I have to share Elle with triggers all kinds of sibling jealousy…I don’t want to be conscious of the fact that there will be other people Elle likes better than me, others who she would choose to see over me if there was a choice to make… it’s all just too painful. I do understand that this is ‘the work’ but sometimes when you have had a childhood of never being put first, never feeling important, never having someone’s undivided attention…then it’s not surprising that we might just want that in therapy (even though it can’t really ever happen – the fantasy of that is important).
Some of you might remember when I, idiotically, asked Anita about a box on the shelf in her room one day and she told me that a client who had anxiety and trust issues had given it to her and that inside there was a stone with the word ‘trust’ on it and I wanted to curl up and die and for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
Recently, I wrote about what a perfect therapy room would look like and shared it with Elle. She emailed back to say she really liked it, that she’d like to share it with supervisees, and then commented that the soft toy I had seen in the room (that I had mentioned in the post) belonged to another client… Oh holy fucking hell. Like no. Please no. Just no. I can’t explain how having that confirmed triggered the shit out of me. Of course I know that there’ll be loads of people working on their inner child in therapy with Elle- like I’m not stupid…but I don’t need reminding that there are other people that Elle might cuddle, read stories to…basically, I don’t want to know that she’s probably replicating what she’s doing with me with others.
I didn’t tell Elle this because honestly, I don’t want to come over as a needy, selfish brat… but it is how it is.
So, umm what else can I say about all this stuff?? It’s not just group emails that are problematic, generic communications aren’t great for me – full stop. Recently the ‘automated session reminder texts’ stopped because I let Elle know that they trigger me and I find them upsetting – like, the day before a session when I have drifted off into panic and doom because it’s been soooo long since I have seen her the last thing I want is stone cold admin… and so Elle has been sending me personalised messages that are far more in keeping with how we communicate both inside and outside the sessions and I have found them so much better.
So, it’s hardly surprising that today’s email landed so painfully. It’s been a bit of a week with one thing and another, anyway, but I just about got to the weekend in one piece with a bit of slipping and sliding. The irony in all this is, Elle and I had a really lovely reconnecting session this week after my holiday – like it was just so great to see her, we laughed a lot, and she surprised me with a really beautiful, thoughtful, handmade present that was so personal to our work I just wanted to cry – like my heart was fit to burst and I just can’t even begin to explain how much it meant to me. We’ve remained in close touch most of the week and it’s felt so nice…until today and this email.
But this is Complex Trauma brain for you, isn’t it? One minute things are going great, are doable and the next moment everything feels like it’s complete shit, and not real, and basically the protectors go wild trying to stop us from getting hurt. Adult me can see that today’s email is just a fucking admin email – but try explaining that to the minibus inside who wonder where ‘our Elle’ is. Like where’s the Elle that calls us ‘sweetpea’ and ‘lambkin’ and ‘flower’…now we are ‘client’.
Ugh. It’s just ugh.
So, what was it all about then? Well, Elle is putting her fees up from April – which is…fine. I mean, I get it, this is how things are. I know that money in therapy can be a minefield in itself for some of the reasons I have listed above – i.e it making the relationship seem fake. Like it’s very clearly a transactional relationship and without that exchange of money the therapy ceases to exist but over the years I have managed, just about, to see that actually just because I pay for my therapist’s time it doesn’t necessarily follow that the care and love I experience from her isn’t real…at least I feel that’s the case most of the time!
However, seeing things today like:
I appreciate that, for some of you, this will mean you will have to consider whether to continue working with me, or perhaps decrease the number of sessions you attend per month. If this is the case, please let me know as soon as you can so we can discuss the best way forward.
Are a reminder/warning that maybe things aren’t as solid as I think. I would like to think that if I couldn’t manage the increased fee that Elle wouldn’t just ditch me, or I’d have to see her less… but who knows from that email? Fortunately, I can absorb this increase – well, right now I can…June-September is always tricky as my work pretty much disappears.
I think the hardest thing about therapy in general is that for me therapy isn’t a six month or year-long financial commitment that I am investing in but will end soon and so it’s a stretch now but fundamentally worth it…but there is an end point.
For me therapy is going to be long-term and so it’s literally like having taken on a mortgage term and equates to about 25% of my income over the course of a year. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Elle and I have a 90-minute session each week – and I’d love to say I could go down to an hour, but we all know that that wouldn’t work, that it takes me so long to ground and feel safe in the first place that an hour just isn’t enough – and that even as things are now I am in a state of perpetual struggle because there actually isn’t enough contact. I miss having two sessions a week like I did with Em and A and how containing that felt.
I am really aware of the need to have some kind of regular, agreed upon contact on a Friday with Elle– even if it’s just a fifteen-minute call … but it’s all money isn’t it? Especially now. And don’t get me wrong, my time with Elle is worth every penny and then some! I really really get that she gives me WAY MORE than she has to – she is so available to me outside the sessions … and I am so grateful to her. She demonstrates in so many ways that I matter to her – but my belief in that is so fucking fragile and today has left me feeling like I need some serious reassurance.
I feel like a fucking fool getting so upset about this that I will go hide in my hole until Tuesday and in the meantime the littles will get more and more worked up because how embarrassing is it to say, “I have been completely derailed by your group email today and the little parts of me wonder if all of what I think our relationship is is a lie – am I delusional?”
Sometimes it feels so unfair that those of us with Complex Trauma who badly need therapy to keep afloat are always having to juggle finances to make it possible to do the therapy just to help us recover from things that weren’t even our fault to begin with. Childhood and life trauma are bad enough, but it’s especially galling to think about this when you’ve also experienced harm in therapy – all those years with Em and Anita for what? Debt and more trauma lumped on top!
I already work more hours than I want to/feel able to in order that I can keep going to my sessions but that’s a choice I have made because the therapy is so necessary. My last evening teaching session of the day (7pm) wipes me out and by Friday I am dying, but what other option is there? In the ideal world I would reduce my hours and this would stop me feeling so fucking burnt out all the time… but if I don’t see Elle my emotional world unravels.
So yeah…bleurgh..! Receiving this message on a Saturday has totally bummed me out. I wish Elle had have joined some dots and realised that this kind of generic communication might not land brilliantly well. Even, if she’d just sent a quick message with it at the top – ‘hey sweetpea, I hope you’re having a good weekend. I know this is a formal looking email below, but please know it’s just admin and doesn’t change us but I do understand how the mechanics of money in therapy can feel triggering sometimes and I really don’t want for you to feel like I am pushing you away’. I dunno – anything really but she clearly has no idea how this has landed and is probably having a wonderful weekend enjoying the sun and blue skies we’re finally getting here in the UK.
In true RB style I’ve been stuck in a ruminating brain loop all day and just feel really far away from Elle…let me just say this one last time: impersonal group emails are not for me! – ugh. I feel like they are a pushback… and adult me knows it’s just life…
But right now, just fuck my life! And fuck CPTSD.
x
I could really use a hug right now – and a new brain!
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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