depression

A Change Of Plan, A Total Meltdown, And Riding On The Roundabout Of Death…

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

Do you remember the old roundabouts in kids’ play parks that were really super-fast and basically death traps? Everyone would grab the handle and run like hell round and round then jump on and hope not to fucking die as the force was so strong and could ping you off? There was always the potential risk of getting your foot trapped under it when it was getting going, too.

So… that’s one aspect of how it feels at the minute. Like nearly all the parts of me are stuck on this fucking roundabout and feel soooo sick. Some are screaming that they “want to get off!” and to “slow it down!” Some are on the verge of losing their grip on the handle and are soooo scared and crying…and then the Inner Critic keeps spinning the thing faster and faster because suffering is fun…apparently.

It’s disorientating and exhausting and I feel like I am expending a ridiculous amount of energy just trying to hang on and not puke…only it feels worse than that because it feels like it’s life or death in the moment. I am so fed up of feeling ill and overwrought.

I am wondering a bit, whether it would just be best to let go, tumble out, sustain a little bit more injury but at least be off it. Although, given I have to be more-or-less functional I don’t necessarily think that’s possible. Having said that, functionality is riding at about 50% at the moment and I can’t believe how much of my teaching timetable I have cancelled recently. I just can’t do it.

Everything just feels impossibly hard and I feel a little bit like I am splitting apart and don’t have an especially good handle on myself. I guess it’s not surprising everything feels catastrophic for a lot of me – the problem comes when I can’t hold it all, though, because when that happens everything feels unsafe…mixing metaphors really badly, it’s like the little rowing boat has somehow ended up in whitewater rapids. I always thought I’d enjoy rafting until I did it in Thailand and ripped my big toenail off. I still feel sick thinking about that. And so, it’s really not good at all.

So yeah – it’s a mess and because it’s a HUGE mess I feel like everything is about to explode or implode, maybe. It’s like all those alarms are going off again and as much as I’d like to think they’re malfunctioning – or I am – it doesn’t change how scary it all feels. And, it’s nearly Christmas and that’s terrifying in its own way too ☹ especially if this is the starting point.

Ummm so please stay close because it’s bad.

x

This was an email I sent to Elle after a recent session a couple of weeks back. The stuff with Anita and the box still felt really live (my god there’s sooooo much to process there) and I could feel myself edging closer and closer the to place where it gets very very bad.

I had wondered whether or not to even tell Elle how it was feeling, because really what could be done with only two more sessions until Christmas? The holidays were looming large on the horizon and therefore the dreaded therapy break too (the most wonderful time of the fucking grinchy year).

Although it wasn’t a lot of time, I decided I wanted to be able to try and get something in place to hold this…disaster… so that I didn’t combust or disintegrate or get pinged off the roundabout and sustain some nasty injury over Christmas, and the only way that could happen was if I was honest about how bad it was feeling.

I think I was pretty numbed out in session that came after the box and the elephant and Anita’s note and we didn’t really talk about it … but then that’s because I couldn’t see the box in the room and part of me, at least, felt embarrassed to bring it up.

Later on, in that session Elle said she’d had an idea about creating a nice new box for the stories to go in, but tbh I was pretty shut down at that point because I’d felt like she’d forgotten. She absolutely hadn’t. She was being led by me and when I avoided it she brought it up, safely, as I was cuddled into her. So I do get this is me not her – but it’s all VERY VERY sensitive and I feel as though I am edging my way round quicksand. Hence sending the roundabout of death email.

Elle replied kindly and said that she really understood how hard this time of year is calling it “a memory-cake covered in the sparkly frosting of multiple crushing disappointments” and said that she was ready and waiting with a blanket and reckons she can break my fall if I choose to let go of my grip on the roundabout.

It was around then that I had decided that it made sense to use one of the remaining sessions with Elle unpacking more of my box from Anita, and then use the last session on Christmas Eve to really try and connect with Elle, give her my Christmas gifts, settle the little parts, and create enough holding and containment to get through the Christmas week.

I woke up the next morning feeling really sad and little and out of sorts and took myself back to bed for a nap in an attempt try and snap myself into a better, more adult, place before a massive day of lessons. The nap didn’t really help and I felt really unmoored and upset having had some nightmares with Elle in – you know the usual stuff around abandonment and rejection… awesome.

I was just about to get up and shower but checked my phone first, and imagine my absolute horror when I saw and email from Elle telling me that we wouldn’t be able to meet on Christmas Eve having had a an email from the landlord of her building saying they were closing up for the whole of the Christmas week and that the space couldn’t be used. I literally couldn’t believe it. Although, of course, parts of me absolutely could… because this is my life, isn’t it?

The message felt really jarring. Elle basically said that our last session would now be the 17th and that she also would be away on the week of 14th January (I didn’t know about this until then, although the phrasing of her message made it seem like she thought I already knew.) and that she hoped it didn’t feel too “unsettling”.

It wasn’t just unsettling. It felt like a huge body blow and I basically crumbled in a heap and sobbed face down in my bed for half an hour. I left it until the very last minute before I had to teach to get out of bed, quickly washed my face, and tried to adjust my mask so I would be able to work. There were soooo many feelings. But hurt and disappointment felt like the big ones. The email from Elle wasn’t horrific but it wasn’t really holding either. I didn’t know what to say. Part of me had already cut and run and another part didn’t want to be too needy. So, I simply replied:

Ok. If you get a cancellation can I see you?

Because at this point there was still a week and a half until the office shutdown and perhaps this would give her enough of a head’s up that a single session wasn’t going to cut it.

I think I probably need to give Elle a bit of lesson on my communication style and let her know that if I go quiet for a period of time or hardly respond, THINGS ARE BAD… like VERY BAD.

Elle said that she would let me know if anyone cancelled – which is fine – it was the sort of reply my short email required. Only it wasn’t. I just needed a bit more warmth and a bit less admin at this point when I was totally losing my shit… but then I suppose she didn’t know I was losing my shit…but I would expect by now for her to have an inkling because I’ve done the crumple in a heap a few times now around contact/sessions/extra sessions.

So, when I say I fell apart at the news of no Christmas Eve session, it’s no exaggeration. I absolutely and totally crumbled inside. It all just landed so heavily at time when I absolutely don’t have enough coping to handle it. I was mad at myself for being so upset. I was angry that I had let myself get to a point that it mattered to me whether or not we would see each other. I was gutted that the little parts of me had been excited to see her so close to Christmas and that this year the break wouldn’t even really be a break as there wouldn’t be a missed session.

It wasn’t Elle’s fault we couldn’t meet on Christmas Eve but there was a part of me that was really sad that knowing how this might land Elle just seemed not to really care. Like – was there no work around?

To say that I felt totally abandoned would be an understatement and my system went into apocalypse setting. After all the stuff with Anita being so activated again, and it being December and the anniversary of the wheels falling off with Em all the alarms were switching on…plus there’s all the non-therapy trauma with my mum and wider family, the fact that I had an actual mental health breakdown that saw me off work for 17 months that was triggered at Christmas…well, the funnelling into doom was rapid. Like this time of year is not great for my mental health outside of therapy but adding in the complicating factors of failed relationships and then this…well… it was fucking awful.

There was just this horrible empty feeling and the sense of being ‘not good enough’ and ‘unimportant’ and we all know how bloody awful that is. Over the course of the day, I basically unravelled in the biggest way. It was hideous. My runners were running and my protectors were going all out. As I say, when I am in this kind of a place the last thing I do is reach out and say anything or tell the person I am upset, instead I spin in ever tighter spirals until I am so dizzy and sick that I fall off the roundabout.

I was so disappointed. I had genuinely been just a little bit hopeful this year, that despite everything, Christmas might not be quite the shitshow it has been in recent years. I realise too, that a lot of this is about how I struggle with change. Like, I do know that it wasn’t like Elle and I weren’t going to meet at all and she had at least given me the head’s up rather than telling me in the session the next week. It just meant my plan for how I wanted the run into Christmas to be was not going to happen…and…one session instead of two…was a sucker punch.

It was agony. I can’t really put into words how bad this stuff feels when it’s happening but I do understand that it feels so catastrophic because SOOOOOO MANY parts of me are in play. The entire mini-bus is in the mix- and the driver too.

I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and there wasn’t a good option (in my wonky brain at least?!). What should I do? Turn up on the Tuesday and pretend like everything was fine so as to avoid a deeper rupture when there would be a two week break and then another two week break in January? Like, this has probably been the option I have leant towards in the past, but I also know that leaves a lot of my system feeling angry and resentful and hurting afterwards and then I am left in the doom loop.

Then there was a part of me that thought about going and saying how awful this had felt and how unseen and abandoned I felt but then I didn’t want the last session to be fraught and there not be enough time to make a repair… but also, I didn’t want her to know that I needed more than what she’d put on the table. I was already swimming in shame for getting myself in a place where I imagined this sort of thing wouldn’t happen between us.

It wasn’t so much the cancellation, rather that there was no alternative options given. I felt like I had been dealt a hard slap of reality of what our relationship was…and it wasn’t what I had thought. I didn’t want to go in and embarrass myself by showing her how much this had hurt me and for her to come back with something like, “I’m just your therapist.”

And so, then that really only left me with this option… and that was to not go back at all. Told you the protectors were activated! But it’s not surprising. There are only so many knock backs I can cope with and after Anita’s shit note in the box and sending back ‘The Rabbit Listened’ and all that has dragged up, I just wasn’t in a place to hold this, too.

I felt really really sad. I had been planning to write a story for Elle to give to her in our Christmas Eve session. We had talked about writing a story together a while back and she’d told me the animal she thought she’d be. I had ordered a plushie version of this animal and just needed to write the story – I thought I had two weeks to do it and had mostly mapped out the plot line and characters. Now this just felt stupid and my brain was in no place to write.  

There were a few other bits I had ordered over recent months to give Elle this holiday that felt very specific to our work and the conversations that we had had. I had another card with buttons on, referencing back to the year before when we had done the session with the buttons and I had put her in my button circle. At this point I just felt fucking stupid – like really, why bother and what was the point? None of it is real…and of course I have evidence of just how not real even the therapeutic relationships that seem to be galvanised in love are.

There was part of me that had an idea to write the story and leave it with Monty outside the room with a note that said I was done and not coming back just before the session….but as loud as the teen part was, there were lots of littles crying and begging for that NOT to happen.

For fuck’s sake. Like it was seriously all kicking off. Part of me feels really embarrassed that it gets like this but these days there is a huge amount of compassion for all those parts – the reactions I have are only as big as the hurts I have endured over the years…and this with Elle was just poking a massive stick in the mother wound again.

So, I suffered out all of Wednesday and most of Thursday before being talked down by a friend who strongly encouraged me to reach out to Elle and let her know what was going on for me because she probably had no idea at all. She said that Elle always responds well when I let her know what is going on and that I should give her the opportunity to help.

The stubborn protectors didn’t want to contact her at all and were so angry when I sent on Thursday:

I’ve had a massive meltdown.

I couldn’t say more than that. But that really said it all didn’t it?

And thankfully the Elle that I think is Elle, that most of me knows to be Elle showed up. She sent the most holding email and it completely settled my system down – it was like switching my nervous system from complete overwhelm and panic and putting it into safe mode (I really hope she wouldn’t mind me posting this- but I think you can probably see why it was so effective):

Oh lambkin, I feel sad hearing that, and I hope you’re not feeling shame about it, because sometimes a meltdown is exactly the appropriate response.

There is so much happening right now, and this is historically the toughest time for you for so many reasons. I feel so sorry that there’s not more I can do for you, other than offer you my love and understanding, and a hand to hold and a body to lean on every week. And I feel really sorry that we won’t be able to meet on Christmas Eve as we’d planned, as that felt like such a holding thing to do and imagine would potentially have helped with the tricksiest week of the year.

And I wondered if maybe we could possibly have a phone call that day instead? I know you said you struggled with Zoom sessions in the past, but I wondered if it would feel different to maybe have a phonecall, maybe snuggled up in bed with the duvet over your head? Maybe we could try it at least and see how it feels? It might be a good solution for when things get tough or when it’s not an office day for me. 

I hope you feel me holding your hand, even when I can’t physically be there to do it.

Elle x

So, I sent an email back with all kinds of fluff in but also saying that I would really like to talk to her.

My system was still in a state for quite a few days – the hangover from the mess I had got myself into, I think. I felt quite dissociated and just couldn’t really get my brain to work even though things felt tonnes better than they had. I must have read that email a million times last week and each time it had the same calming effect… because even if I don’t remember always, or don’t feel it, she does understand doesn’t she?

I badly wanted to write the story for Elle ready for our last session on Tuesday but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even get myself to go near my laptop until the Friday night because it felt like I was thinking through cotton wool. I have definitely found with my writing that when I am in the zone it just comes and when I am not… well… it’s like wading through treacle. My vocabulary isn’t there, my ability to hold the story in mind, the characters, speech, ALL OF IT feels nearly impossible and honestly, it’s given me a whole new level of compassion for my GCSE students who get 45 minutes to write a story on an unseen stimulus in their exams.

Anyway, I started to write the story but quickly realised I would not be able to finish it in time for Tuesday. I couldn’t even edit what I had done properly… and for someone who generally likes time for things to marinate and settle this felt shit…ESPECIALLY as it was something I wanted to give to Elle. I don’t feel this way with the blog because it’s just me wittering away in a stream of consciousness but a story, for someone whose opinion matters…like I at least wanted to give her something I was happy with and something that was FINISHED. ☹

I’ll write another post on our last face-to-face session (which I did go to!) in the next few days…and the phone call…whatever that ends up being like. Eek. I’m trying hard not to get worked up about it.

Tbh I am feeling a bit meh this weekend. The emotional nose dive is real folks. Christmas is catching up with me. The same old shit is rearing its head. I have retreated into myself and feel pretty fucking shit if I am honest. Once again, I am in that place where I know that if I hide it’ll be way worse than if I reach out…but reaching out feels too much and too scary especially when the Ghost of Christmas Past is sitting on my shoulder reminding me that everyone is tired at this time of year and capacity is at an all time low. And maybe had I not had an emotional meltdown this time five years ago, Em might not have given up.

Most of me knows that to not be true…but…at least some part of me is aware of not wanting to be a burden.

Deep breaths eh?

I imagine lots of you are feeling a similar kind of heaviness and … ugh… sadness…and grief…and ALL THE THINGS right now. So, sending out heaps of love of Christmas as you run the gauntlet of the holidays and corresponding therapy breaks. xx

When The Container Isn’t Big Enough: How Much Therapy Do You Need?

rubberbandsandchewinggum25 Comments

I’ve been struggling a lot with therapy, lately… Actually, no, that’s not quite right -therapy is fine, good, really good (when I am there!)… but what isn’t so good is the *time between sessions* and the shitstorm that can (and does) blow up in the gaps between seeing Elle.

My system seems to be perpetually activated these days, and I find it thoroughly exhausting and stressful navigating the nightmares (usually with Elle in), the intense panic, and the heightened fear of being left or abandoned that escalates in intensity as the week goes on.

There’s always the huge separation anxiety that builds and builds during the week before triggering the protectors at the weekend which sends me through a whole other set of loops. I don’t know what’s worse, the small parts sad, lost, and crying or the angry protectors wanting to burn everything to the ground.

Like today, Monday, I feel like I just want to quit therapy altogether because this emotional cycle feels so painful and too hard. I feel thoroughly disconnected from Elle and the idea of even going tomorrow feels impossible because my mind has convinced me that I am set for rejection and that there is no solid base or relationship and so I am wasting my time.

The sensible thing would be to reach out and tell her that this is happening but what’s the point? (Is that the teen? Probably).

I will go because I know that I need to, but pushing through the wall of protectors to even get there means that there will there will be consequences. I will struggle to sleep tonight, mind you my sleep is appalling anyway so I guess that’s nothing new. When it feels bad like this, there is always a total and absolute physical terror in my body. Sometimes it’s just on the day of the session, but today it’s really live, too, and I feel horrible.

To get to my session I have about a ten minute walk across town from where I park my car, and the whole time my heart races, I feel physically sick, and my mouth is dry even though parts of me are desperate to see Elle…it’s honestly fucking horrific. When I am waiting for Elle to come and get me, I feel completely terrified and like I will burst into tears and often my body trembles. It’s so hard. My entire system is in chaos at that point – and yet you’d never know. Externally I appear completely fine – but that comes from years of hiding how I am really feeling in order to survive in the world.

Let’s be clear, this hellscape isn’t because of anything that Elle is or isn’t doing – like there’s no suggestion that she’s suddenly going to end, or leave, or suddenly be horrible and attacking and do something to hurt me (I need to make a big sign with this on!) – it is simply because my system has been triggered off its tits after what happened with Anita and Em. Because of what’s happened with them I can’t get a sense of feeling safe or ok in myself at all – let alone safe with Elle when I am not with her – and of course I am not with her for quite a few days at a time. I know it’s only a week between sessions, but my system just doesn’t cope at all – it’s too long.

Part of the problem is that I struggle a lot with ‘forgetting’ Elle between sessions even though we have a reasonable amount of contact during the week. When I finally see her after a week it can feel like I don’t really know who she is, or whether she’s safe, or… basically it’s the object constancy stuff isn’t it?! Not only that, even if I can hold onto Elle as someone who is safe there is the constant worry that she might change…I think probably we need to do some work with the scared parts so they understand she isn’t Anita or Em…teens particularly just see her as ‘therapist’ and therapists cannot be trusted.

Because of all this, it can take me quite a while to settle into the session because I feel like I am doing my fifty-point check to assess where we are at. Thankfully, generally speaking, when I am actually with Elle it feels fine – especially now that she sits on the sofa beside me rather than in the chair across the room. This, at least, removes the need for any additional mental gymnastics about whether or not she feels disgusted by me and wants to keep her distance which of course are all part of the internal narrative that gets super loud during the week.

I am really glad that we do a ninety-minute session because it can take a good half an hour to relax into the space when I have got myself so worked up (I have no idea how I used to cope with 50 minute sessions with Em- oh of course, I didn’t cope at all!!!) .

It obviously takes a while to trust that the person in the room with me is the same one that I saw last week (and for the previous fourteen months) and that nothing has changed – because therapists do change and drop unexpected bombs (mentioning no names!). I guess to the protector parts it’s important not to remove my armour prematurely in case I get an unexpected grenade launched at me – you know the type that rolls and lands just under my ribcage and stops just where my heart lies – Boom! It’s happened before and I really hope it doesn’t happen again.

If False Adult doesn’t take my session, then it’s all good. At least in the session it feels safe and connected. But no matter who turns up to the session, I feel like when I leave, I almost instantly fall into a panic, not because anything is especially wrong in that immediate moment, but more because I know what’s coming. I only see Elle once a week despite us having a really decent length session (and I really know that I am so lucky to have that), by the time it gets to Friday it’s really not great inside. The wheels on my mini-bus have pretty much fallen off and all the littles have unclipped their seat belts and someone has to take charge – and that’s the dream team of protectors. It’s awful.

Basically, by Friday, my ability to hang it together feels massively reduced and the days until I next see Elle seem to stretch out endlessly. I feel like I am always stretching that bit too far between our sessions and so never really feel properly settled/safe. It feels a bit like a fuck tonne of water is building up behind the emotional dam but the release valve is never activated early enough and so there’s always going to be a flood – despite the high-tech flood management system I have in place.

I am really conscious of not being ‘too needy’ or ‘too much’ or ‘too dependent’ and I really don’t want to run the risk of burning Elle out or, probably more apt for this metaphor, drowning her! So, what do you do when the container isn’t big enough to hold everything from week to week?…or rather, what do I do when I seem to be too much for the container I’ve got?

I have no fucking idea.

It feels like an impossible bind. I don’t want to stop the therapy because actually what all this is telling me is that I need more therapy at the moment, not less…but making what there is ‘enough’ is a challenge especially when I am already exploiting every self-care strategy I have available to me. I don’t just sit and mope about in the week (well, perhaps I did a bit this weekend!) and still this stuff is activated in the biggest way.

I guess part of it is that it feels like there is never quite enough time to get through all the things that I need to talk about or that need space and attention. For example, it might be that we do some really great work on big important stuff. Last week we spoke at length about Anita (which stirred a lot up on its own), but because of this, the young parts that need a degree of reassurance and a different kind of interaction weren’t attended to (even though I was leaning against Elle the entire time and she held my hand…ugh…make my Brian function better please!) and that has unleashed carnage inside this week!

Whereas the week before last, I was in a right fucking mess and so we read a lovely story and had a really calm, nurturing session. It was absolutely what I needed, but then there was all sorts of adult stuff that didn’t get space that really could have done with some time, too. Neglecting adult is far less problematic than neglecting the little parts – and it’s not even neglecting, it’s simply time – but it all needs space and time and there just isn’t enough…even with ninety minutes (talk faster and get to the point sooner, eh?!).

So this is why there is always too much building up behind the dam wall… then throw in the hideous attachment shit on top and frankly, I’m fucked.

This would be a really useful conversation to have with Elle, wouldn’t it? But the problem is, I can’t see a solution to my problem. Elle only works face-to-face two days a week and is always busy. So, what I think would help (i.e another session) and what is actually possible just doesn’t align at the moment and so I have to keep trying to make this work as it is.

The feelings of shame are huge right now. I am so sick of being like this. I hate that I seem to need so much more fucking input and care than everyone else. Like, part of me gets there’s been a lot of trauma and then all the more recent shit on top with therapy going wrong really hasn’t helped…but still. Like why can’t I just be relatively fucking normal and behave like a fucking adult and be bloody fine on a session a week. Why do I seem to spend my life in the fucking hole? Like this week I feel like I have got my legs dangling over the edge of another trapdoor and rather than edging away from it, the protectors want me to jump in the next dark pit.

Ugh…

I used to see Em and Anita on Mondays and Fridays and that spacing felt really good. Like there was enough time between the sessions to process whatever was going on, but there wasn’t too much time until the next session for things to get too much or go too wrong.

I feel a bit like a toddler that’s learning to walk. I can do quite a few steps on my own but by Friday I need a hand to hold for a minute to stop me falling on my arse before I can carry on again. But there is no hand on Friday and so I find that I fall down and it is pretty painful over the weekends.

Every now and then when things are hard, I have asked about seeing Elle for an extra session on the Wednesday but she is always booked up. To be honest, Wednesday probably wouldn’t really help with this problem long-term, as it’s the longer time between sessions that is the issue and this would still leave a big gap the other side.

Elle has offered to so a Zoom session on a Friday before – but I have a feeling (given my online therapy track record) that this might actually make things worse. When I am struggling with distance and connection seeing Elle through a screen rather than in person would likely only intensify the feeling of being far apart and left and lost and all the other shit. Perhaps I need to suggest it here and there, though, because I don’t think I can do many more weeks like this one and perhaps I am only basing my expectations of what online sessions were like with Em and Anita.

This weekend has been terrible. I’ve felt so tired and overwhelmed but I couldn’t seem to rest or sleep because it’s felt like all the little parts of me are crying. There is no soothing that. And I have really tried. I get that this week has probably felt harder because Elle and I properly ventured into the Anita territory in the session and of course that would send seismic waves through my system because there is such a lot of pain there that needs to be looked at. The saga is ongoing with A and it’s just so upsetting.

It feels really difficult. Like I know when I avoid the ‘big’ stuff I am much better equipped to manage the week between sessions. The thing is, I am in therapy to work through this ‘big’ stuff and it feels really helpful to look at it with Elle. I can’t avoid it for much longer because it has a way of catching up with me, anyway. I don’t really know what to do though, because the moment we go there the whole fucking place is underwater as a result. I’m equipped to deal with high tide but this is a fucking tsunami heading my way.

I have no idea what to do. Maybe I should write more? Try and process more that way? Although that doesn’t solve any of the internal panic about Elle, does it? The more we look at Anita and Em the more wobbly I am going to feel about Elle.

I just don’t know. what to do.

What I do know is that this level of activation and upset is crazy-making and exhausting and scary because when this stuff isn’t contained enough I know that I am much harder work, more demanding, more likely to end up in rupture territory because everything is out of control inside…and you don’t have to go too far down the path to see where this can lead. I don’t want to be difficult or create a dynamic where Elle dreads seeing me… I just wish I had a different brain and the ability to make one session and a week between enough!

Right, that’s enough of that… I don’t think there’s much more I can say tbh. Does anyone have any ideas to help with symbolically increasing the capacity of my container??…Any ideas that don’t actually involve me having to bring this to Elle and see me die in a big pit of shame and embarrassment would be lovely! 😉

I get that at some point I am going to have to bring this up because I know the longer I don’t the worse it’s going to get… ffs! HELP!!

Mental Health Crash: Stuck In The Hole

rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

Well, shit, I have been stuck deep down in the emotional black hole this last week (again). Tbh, I am always in the hole somewhere, it’s just distinguishing in which part of it and at what depth of it I am located. Sounds cryptic but it’s not really. You see my ‘hole’ (not a euphemism so stop that!) has a very particular quality to it– it’s like a bloody endless underground cave system these days rather than an open pit! Awesome. What a gift long-term and enduring mental health issues are!

I imagine a lot of people when they hit the skids with their mental health probably feel like they tumble and fall into a dark hole. These pits all look slightly different – we all have our own personal holes that come with our own specific and individual décor! It would make for a really great issue of an interior design/mental health magazine if people submitted plans and images of their nightmare hell zones wouldn’t it?…  

Anyway…

When we fall in, I guess it’s common to get stuck at the bottom for a bit, feel pretty hopeless and alone, and then try and scrabble our way back up and out to ground level when we feel able to – maybe with the help of someone else. Assistance can certainly expediate things but unfortunately a by-product of landing face first in the hole is that we often don’t believe there is anyone else who can see us or help us. And even if there is, there is a very real fear that we may inadvertently end up dragging that person into the hole with us, and if/when we do manage to get out together, they’ll leave/abandon us because they’ll be so horrified by what they witness in that hole alongside us. (It happens, sadly).

The hole is a bit like ‘Fight Club’. You do not talk about the hole. What happens in the hole stays in the hole. Because even though the hole itself is fucking terrifying enough on its own – how we behave in the hole can also be problematic. It can be a place where we fall into self-harming behaviours, self-neglect, and addiction to name but a few issues – and let’s keep that shit secret! Well, that’s what our shame would tell us, anyway.

We are not always our best-selves down in the hole – we’re simply trying to survive using whatever tools we have available to us in the moment and, honestly, even after years of therapy, my go-to self-care strategies often feel completely out of reach when I am suffering in the depths. It’s amazing how quickly I can slip into negative coping strategies just like a comfy pair of slippers…only, actually, these ones are full of thorns and hurt every time I move!

The goal, then, when you find yourself stuck in this cess pit of doom is to get the fuck out of the trench as quickly as you can. Of course, that’s much easier said than done. There can be a lot of slipping, sliding, and stumbling on the way back up because the way out isn’t easy and it’s fucking exhausting work trying to drag your dead weight back to relative normality.

I really feel like the struggle isn’t understood or appreciated enough, and I think sometimes people make the assumption that we must like being down in the hole, or that we are deliberately careless because we keep tumbling in and spend such a lot of time in there. It’s hard enough when friends and family might hint at this sort of thing but it’s especially awful and shaming when therapists comment on how “stuck” you are and that maybe you’re not trying hard enough to get out… FUCK OFF!! (I’d forgotten about this until now, and so that’s just given me the rage when I am already in a rage!!!)

Of course, if and when you successfully make it out the hole, it’s super important to try and be mindful going forward. I really try and scan the path ahead. I’m constantly trying to spot any future holes so that I can try sidestep them should any come into view – but we all know it isn’t that simple! My life has been riddled with concealed hole entrances and at times it can feel like an endless landscape of craters waiting for me rather than solid ground. It’s inevitable that I will, at intervals, be unlucky and end up in the dark…and actually, I have been consistently feeling my way through the dark for almost two years now and so it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not being in the hole.

So, what’s my hole like? (stop it!) Well, I suppose my hole isn’t really a hole at all, rather it’s a series of holes or dark rooms stacked on top of another linked by unseen trapdoors going deep into the depths of the earth. The further down we go, the spaces stop being dark rooms with manmade walls and instead become cold, dark, damp caves almost like prison cells buried deep into rock. I’ve spoken about falling through endless trapdoors before, and this analogy far better fits my experience of being in the dark depths for me than in a singular sticky shit hole.

So how do I end up in this place?

Imagine being at ground level, wandering along the street, minding your own business, living your day-to-day as best you can, occasionally getting your foot stuck in a puddle that actually turns out to be a pot hole, twisting your ankle, but generally maintaining momentum and keeping in touch with the world and people around you. You’re functional even if you have a bit of a limp. You can usually feel the sunlight on your skin – well, more likely it’s a dark and cloudy day, but you at least have sense that it is daytime – it’s ‘good enough’. Life above ground isn’t perfect by any means but it isn’t terrible, either.

Then imagine, unexpectedly, falling down an open hole – you know, like how pubs have cellar trapdoors outside in the street? Well, that first fall down into the dark is bloody shocking and painful and you want to scream “OUCH!” but generally it doesn’t take too long to assess the situation and start looking for a way out. You brush yourself off, check for any broken bones, and start shouting up to the world above “HELP ME!!!” because you can very clearly see the sky and the people walking along outside and you believe that there is a way out. You’re probably only 12 feet below ground at this point and a return to the world above is completely possible.

The problems really start to come when you repeatedly fall down the hole. Bones break. Bruises never quite seem to heal before you fall again. Fatigue kicks in from the endless effort of trying to escape. It gets harder and harder to crawl back out the more times you fall. At times it can feel completely pointless even trying as you know it’s only going to be a matter of time until you’re back in the dark and honestly, I feel like maybe I should just accept that the hole is where I actually belong and make the best of it.  

Sometimes, there’s a complicating factor – especially for those of us with childhood trauma and relational injuries. I can be doing absolutely everything right. I’m checking every step I take and can be wandering along quite happily and then some fucker (who I really trust) deliberately pushes me down into the hole and runs off! I mean that’s just fucking horrific.

That’s where I am now. Only, it’s worse than that because I wasn’t at ground level to begin with when I got pushed. I had Anita in a mid-level hole with me having worked our way up through quite a few levels after Em had done a fab job at leaving me for dead down in the depths in 2020. Anita was holding my hand and it felt like we were successfully navigating our way through the dark…and then she decided to leave me, but not just leave me on level -5 of the hole, she forcefully pushed me down through another trapdoor.

As I have fallen, I have kind of rolled and rolled and unfortunately found more and more trapdoors. I’ve passed the place where Em left me and have kept tumbling and tumbling. Surely, I must be pretty close to rock bottom now. There simply can’t be any more trapdoors to fall through, can there?

The saddest thing about all this is that it isn’t just adult me in the hole. I could cope with that. But there are all the child parts too – and they are so scared. Every single one of them is terrified of the dark and it is totally pitch black. There’s not even the tiniest bit of light where we are. It’s like their worst nightmares playing out in waking time and as much as I try, I don’t always have to ability to contain them all. No matter how I try to reassure them and say we are safe and that it will be ok, it just doesn’t land…because I am not sure I really believe that either, now.

To say that it’s really not nice in the cave/pit/hole would be a huge understatement. My brain can attack me/us with some pretty shit messages about being “a burden” and “unlovable” and “too much” or “not enough” – the list is literally fucking endless…! If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably been there. You know the drill. Basically, you’re stuck in the dark with a sound system that only plays your Inner Critic’s hit list on full volume and on repeat the whole time you’re down there.

Just glorious!

I mean who doesn’t love their deepest wounds and insecurities coming at them on loop? Who wouldn’t want to be told that “you’d be better off dead” or that “no one would miss you if you were gone” and that “even your ‘friends’ only tolerate you” or that “you’re disgusting” or “pathetic” or “worthless” or a “fraud” or that you “deserve this” and “what kind of loser can’t even pay someone to stay and care?”… and then of course throw in real life soundbites from people who have really hurt you, “you’re so sensitive and defensive”, “you’re too dependent”, “your child parts are adhesive like a tick” and … well… it’s not brilliant is it? I could go on and on and on but you all know your soundtrack and will be familiar with how hearing it makes you feel. I mean it is a total immersion in the shit and shame isn’t it?

The messages of doom and isolation have never really changed much since I first found myself in my dark place back in my early teens – perhaps the messages are more insistent and louder than they were initially, and the shape and dimensions of my hole (honestly, every time I type that I am giggling like a fourteen-year-old kid!) have definitely changed. As I say, these days it’s not just a hole or cellar – it’s a much more complex subterranean structure. It’s not a dark hole with a consistent depth and bottom – I’d take that any day of the week.

Despite how crap it is, I’ve come to accept that this multi-floored/roomed/cave system is just part of my internal landscape now. I know that I can’t avoid it, it can’t be filled – there is not enough concrete in the world for that! – all I can do is tread carefully and try my best to keep feet on solid ground if I do ever make up to ground level and I will continue to put things in place for the next fall.

When I am in the dark, feeling scared and really suffering like I am now, it’s really really important to try and remember that the Inner Critic is only trying to protect me. As loud and terrifying as it is, it really doesn’t want to harm me – it’s scared too, it just doesn’t know how best to express it. Perhaps there is a little bit of comfort in knowing that all my system is ever trying to do is look after me – it just has some pretty fucked up ways of doing it.

When it is awful, like it is now, I need to trust that it is always worth taking the chance on screaming and asking for help even if I believe that no one can hear me, because there are people who care and who do want to help…and have ladders and torches… I just need to let them know where I am rather than cowering silently in the dark.

Last week, before our session, I pre-warned Elle that I was in the hole and unravelling – which felt like a big thing to do. I needed to do that, though, because False Adult is so skilled at pretending that everything is ok and denies that there even is a hole (A ‘Fight Club’ hole pro!), let alone that we may be stuck in it. As I result of letting Elle know quite how bad it feels, I’ve been hit with some huge feelings of shame and panic. I feel like I’ve dragged her down into the hole and am terrified that she, too, will freak out and run off, but not before giving me a hearty push down through another trapdoor. She’s given me absolutely no sense that this would happen…but my brain can’t help but worry.

It’s really sad that I feel this way and it hurts a lot to know that my trust is so fragile. For now, Elle and I are just sitting together, waiting for some of the painful injuries to heal a bit before trying to make a plan to find our way out of this mess. It doesn’t feel quite so cold and scary with her sitting beside me and the dark doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming when I can physically feel her holding my hand. The problems happen when I lose contact for a bit (you know, like the six days between sessions!) and can’t immediately find her…it doesn’t take long for the Critic to get back in my head and the panic to take hold.

I will write a post about why things are particularly hard right now, next time. But needless to say, it involves Anita… bleurgh.

Sending love and light (candles, torches, flares!) down into your holes. Whatever your Inner Critic may have you believe, you are not alone and you are worthy of love and care. x

A Year With Elle – Now The Fun Really Begins!

rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

Well, fuck, I’ve got so far behind with this blog and everything again that it’s hard to know where to begin – such a lot has been going on, in various ways, and part of me just wants to bring you up to date by saying ‘same shit different day’ and be done with it! The ‘same shit’ being my impressive ability to live as an emotional kangaroo and trying to navigate all the mess that goes with bouncing around like that.

Things are still an absolute colossal steaming pile of shite in my everyday adult life and the last month or so has really been all about survival and wading through the general bollocks that is my existence! My son is still sick, it’s back in the full flow of term and teaching, and then last week my estranged grandmother died so it’s felt a lot just to keep my head above water.

Of course, alongside this there’s all the stuff that hides beneath the surface that’s always pulling at my ankles dragging me down – namely the crazy mental health stuff, the attachment stuff, and trying to move through all the pain from, well, all of it really…

I imagine a lot of us feel like this, but I find I am way more capable of managing my inner world when the day-to-day stuff in my actual adult life isn’t going down the toilet. If daily ‘life stress’ picks up and reaches a critical point then it starts to get super bumpy on the inside. The safety features in my internal mini-bus seem to be a bit hit and miss, and would certainly fail a MOT, when the road gets lumpy and full of pot holes. Like sometimes all the seatbelts just unclip all at the same time and then I’m completely and utterly deep in the emotional shit.

Usually, if one or two parts of my system are in a panic I can just about hold their hands, keep them safe, and remain broadly functional…but if everyone is unstrapped – including the driver (me!) then…yikes. I mean big YIKES!

Some things never change, eh?!

I guess, there are some positives to be had … maybe? I feel, these days, when my system gets triggered, I am far more able to move through it and get out the other side of the worst of it in a ‘reasonable’ time frame…whereas, back in the day I could get stuck for weeks and weeks in the emotional hell zone and be totally hijacked by my system. Now, it’s a bit like doing the hokey cokey – and having one foot in then one foot out on repeat!

I’d like to say that I know myself so well these days that I don’t get upset or triggered by ridiculous things, but that would be a total fallacy. Small things can still act like a massive wrecking ball and send me sideways. I think it’s probably this kind of thing that I struggle with most-  knowing full well that whatever is upsetting me is tiny in the big scheme of things – but my system feels like it is enormous and runs off into catastrophe canyon. I still have an impressively speedy set of runners who bolt when things feel off.

Knowing my response is sometimes like that of a toddler having a big tantrum because they can’t get ice cream evokes feelings of shame and embarrassment but it is what it is and it is all information isn’t it? I suppose, now I am far more accepting of my system no matter how it is presenting in the moment. Like today I am really aware of the needy little ones who desperately want a cuddle and to connect with Elle…and that’s fine…just hard to feel because it’s so visceral.

So, where to begin with this catch up?

I guess I should mention the fact that Elle and I made it to a year working together back in August without any serious mishaps or ruptures (go us! … although it’s the three-year mark that things generally go to shit with my therapies so let’s watch and wait!) AND immediately after this birthday/anniversary we also got through another therapy break without me completely losing my shit (I only partially lost it – small triggers and big reactions again!).

I wish I was better at keeping up-to-date with the ins and outs of my sessions because the content of it all sort of melts away pretty quickly afterwards and then I can’t remember what happened when. I guess, this might be seen as a positive – like nothing really massive and disastrous is going on and my brain can let the sessions go rather than filing into my long-term memory bank alongside ‘like a tick’ and ‘too dependent’! However, it feels more like an unwanted amnesia tbh because I lose all sense of EVERYTHING.

Elle more or less falls out of my universe altogether when I can’t physically see her and it’s tough going. The object constancy stuff is just fucking dire. I feel sorry for Elle. I don’t imagine for one second that when she first met me, she would have thought the person she sees now was in there hidden away! I think at this point she must be wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. Like I leave a session, appear completely fine, and the next minute I am freaking out and texting her, asking her if we are ok or not. It’s horrible.

I hate that I need such a lot of reassurance…but I am not really surprised given how people (therapists!) go from being ‘ok’ to ‘not ok’ in the blink of an eye. As much as Elle gives me no reason to think she’d just fuck off one day without warning – my system doesn’t trust anymore after what’s happened to me, and because I am invested in the relationship and am attached to Elle now, all this crap has gone live… I hoped it wouldn’t but it has… with alarm bells on!

This round of therapy has my brain doing something that has never really happened too much before. I don’t know if it’s dissociation or what, but I find that not only do I forget the sessions and lose Elle to a degree – but even if I can hold onto the fact that she and I exist and have a relationship, I have zero recollection of the times when I have been really vulnerable/open/honest with Elle both in the room and outside it. So, I lose her, but I guess my brain thinks that she loses me too. It’s hard to explain this…

Like sometimes I’ll email her the unfiltered version of what’s going on in my brain and when I see her, I have no sense of that big stuff being in her field of vision at all. My brain likes me to think that she has only ever experienced the capable, together person …and that is SOOOO not the case!

I wonder if it’s a protective thing? My system somehow needs to feel in control and so hides the bits that make me feel exposed when I get to session? It’s frustrating, though, because I think I waste a lot of time edging my way closer to being how it really is underneath, tentatively peeking out from behind the sofa, and Elle already knows me and all this stuff. In the moment none of that is there, though.

Isn’t it amazing what our brains do to try and stop us from feeling unbearable feelings. I think I am so sensitive to rejection and abandonment that my system is doing all it can in person to prevent that happening and sadly, it must feel like the young parts of my system are a liability and need hiding away until we figure out what is happening on the day in the session.

I can’t lie, it is incredibly difficult doing therapy in the wake of what has happened with Em, Anita, and Hannah. I think my poor system was sent spiralling off into orbit last year. The string catastrophic fails in my therapeutic relationships on top of childhood trauma have done something terrible to my onboard circuitry. Elle and I are trying to do our therapy with a busted circuit board and wiring system and we’re desperately trying to rewire as we go but it’s a challenge. If we were just dealing with childhood trauma I think we’d be ok but things are so massively complicated by the shit that has happened with therapist…what shall we call it? Shithousery??!!

The problem is when lights should be green my system shines red…and the smoke alarm feature is constantly screaming because there’s a hair or cobweb over the sensor. I can’t differentiate between true danger and a malfunction now. Sometimes Elle feels like she’s a decent enough electrician and sometimes I worry she’s just another cowboy tradesperson (this isn’t because she’s done anything to suggest that though!) and I’m about to have my tentative renovation project demolished again.

Anyway, there have been some really lovely times with Elle – the problem is – I forget! So, instead of building on something great from week to week, I instead, seem to not notice that works have been carried out already. I seem to yo-yo between False Adult and days where my armour is off. Still, there have been quite a few ‘armour off’ days over the last couple of months and I guess these are important to recognise.

You might remember a while back I was brave and told Elle that I loved her in an email (!) which was a huge deal because I’ve been guarding my little broken heart very carefully this last year knowing that it doesn’t have much hope of withstanding very much more hurt and wounding. The problem is, I feel like the only way to really heal a broken heart is to let love in (and out) but if you’re always in hiding and armoured up how can you? I guess this is where my texts and emails have been doing some heavy lifting behind the scenes.

I’d been slowly gaining some momentum here and there in my sessions … you know, one step forward three steps back, four steps forward…and so on. But in one particular session I must’ve been feeling particularly safe and connected, or unguarded. I was cuddled into Elle’s body (I know I have said it SOOOOO many times over the years but physical touch sends a clear message to my system that things are safe – I don’t have to do any guesswork at all). and a very quiet, “I love you” crept out.

Fuck!

It’s one thing typing it into a screen and hitting send (and then wiping it from your consciousness and having several days until a session) and something altogether different saying it to someone when you are right there with them and being physically held by them. And even though parts of me know how Elle feels about me BECAUSE SHE’S TOLD ME ENOUGH TIMES in various ways, I nearly cried when she replied, “I love you too”.

Like…thank fuck. No rejection there. No bristling. No change in body language. No “I’m just your therapist”. It was all just really fine. Like yep, of course there is care between us – duh! I wish I could hold onto that better. Now that I have Monty I do have a constant reminder of Elle with me and that does help a bit, but there is a little part of me that fears that Elle will change how she feels towards me if she really ‘sees me’ and that is scary.

I think it was that session- I’d been in a bit of a state (although can’t remember why) and stuck in my own personal hell until I managed to ask for her to come sit with me and have hug. She’d been gently stroking my head and it was almost time to go when she asked me to give her my arm. She took the bracelet she was wearing off and tied it around my wrist. She said it needed to be on my left wrist as it was closest to my heart … honestly, it was such a lovely gesture and I wear it all the time (although in this picture Monty was wearing it as a necklace!).

https://www.instagram.com/montys_awesome_adventures?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

So – I may have more evidence than ever that Elle is real and we are ok enough AND YET STILL I FUCKING HAVE TO ASK WHETHER OR NOT WE ARE OK!!! – but this is because people change (Anita) and one minute you’re safe with someone and they say they care about you and love you and the next they are completely gone.

I was quite excited about getting to a year with Elle because about a month beforehand I had stumbled across something I thought she would really like and was desperate to give it to her as a gift but it really was something that needed an occasion. I wouldn’t necessarily say that gift giving is one of my primary love languages but I think in this case it was a definite expression of love. I can’t really say what the thing was here because it is sooooo niche that it would be pretty identifying. She seemed to like it, though, if an excited “holy shit, you’re kidding me!” and “this might be the most impressive thing anyone has ever got me!” is anything to go by.

I think I have probably been so cagey this year that she couldn’t really miss that this was a huge expression of care and thanks. Like so much goes on in my head but I realise I’m like an iceberg and Elle only gets to see a bit of what I show her.

And then it was summer break.

Damn!

The break itself wasn’t desperately bad. I had a lot going on with my son and as much as I missed Elle, we did have some contact whilst she was away. The morning of our first session back I must’ve been on a roll with bravery because I had text Elle and asked her if she might spray Monty with her perfume when I saw her. I had pretty much figured out that that is what she had done when she gave him to me and so decided to ask. Elle didn’t bat an eyelid and at the end of our session sprayed Monty and me and that was that.

You’d think that would be proof enough that things were really ok between us and that the little parts were acknowledged and more than welcome too… but the age-old problem of physical distance had proximity cropped up the moment I saw her and it sent me spiralling.

Breaks are hard because they are a total severing of physical connection, so when I return to the room, I am looking for evidence of what might have changed or if things are still safe. Elle did nothing wrong by sitting in her chair (because that’s her fucking chair!) the first couple of sessions back – she, after all, at that point had no clue that I read so much into where she is in relation to me and how difficult I find it to ask for her to come closer to me – especially if there’s been a break. But for me, her being across the room and behind the coffee table sent the littles into a panic.

As a result, things in the bus were getting more and more dicey, seat belts were unclipped and the terrain was getting bumpy…and we were travelling much too fast. I think when I was leaving and hugged Elle at the end of the session (like always) I hung on for a reaalllly long time because I was devastated to have missed the chance to actually be how it was and connect in that physical way during the session. I’d done a tremendous job with False Adult and it was only at the end, when I was clinging on like a baby monkey, that I think she picked up that I wasn’t ok and said something about having a really long hug the next session.

I cried on the way home and ended up texting her when I got back because my system was in freefall. I think we can just about hold it together in breaks but it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on that first session back. If that session isn’t ‘enough’ then the water that has been building up behind the dam during the break floods out. I actually feel like sometimes I could do with two sessions the week following a break in order to ensure that I feel properly reconnected.

This is what played out that day:

I feel like I can’t find you at the moment and I’m lost. I know it’s a post-break thing – because I find them really hard and the disconnect feels like a total severing of connection. It feels really bad now and scary x

She replied almost immediately with a heart and:

I feel sad hearing that because you felt very connected to me before you left the room. Let’s think about how to use the time better next week. I wasn’t joking about the hour-long hug btw…

It was a quick message between her sessions to not leave me hanging and it was enough to open up the flood gates. Now came the ‘how it really felt’ message… brace positions everyone!:

I’m really a long way off my ok place at the moment. Like, yep, my life is a complete fucking shitshow on the outside so it’s understandable, but it’s much more than that. My internal world is in meltdown and week on week it’s getting worse. I feel as though I’ve been furiously spinning plates this last year and now, I’ve just reached a point where there are several crashing to the ground all at once as I don’t have energy or capacity to keep it all going and it feels like I’m watching everything go wrong in slow motion.

I feel really far away from you – or like I can’t find you – and I get that this is me and not you, but it doesn’t make it any easier to navigate even knowing what the problem is. It feels really terrifying being in this place and it’s not just emotional – it has a massive physical quality to it, too. 

I find breaks really hard and actually I find the time between sessions hard on its own and so coming back off a break is always really hard for me. It feels like I’m starting from the very beginning and lose all sense of things being ok or safe or actually that you have any idea of who I am at all or that we have any kind of relationship- which is obviously really shit and I feel really dysregulated. I can’t really put into words how bad it feels.

I don’t suppose this is evident at all. I probably appear ok, calm, present – but I’m anything but. Inside I feel panicked and fearful and like I’m going to cry. I struggle a lot with feeling like you are far away in your chair – even though you’re not- and my brain tells me it’s because you don’t want to be near me and that it’s because I am too much and it just spirals.

Occasionally, I can find a way round it and ask you to come sit with me but I find this especially difficult if there’s a sense of being very disconnected and it will always feel like this if there’s been a break and so I need to find a way of quickly reconnecting after breaks- and actually, really, just week to week. 😞

I hate feeling like this because it totally derails me and then just getting through the usual life shit feels extra difficult. And I get that it’s a lot and it’s really hard to not get engulfed by shame. Lots of the time I am just about capable of outrunning this stuff … and then other times I get caught up and start to drown.

So, yeah… another one of ‘those’ messages that I wipe from my conscious mind.

Elle replied with some very holding messages that really soothed my system and that week we had quite a lot of contact as I limped my way through the week and into the next session where she sat with me from the very beginning and asked me if I wanted to hug.

Around that time, I wrote my last blog post about what a perfect therapy room would look like and I sent it to Elle. She seemed to like it and replied to the message and at the same time asked if it would be ok to share with her supervisees and people starting their own practice which is nice…what was less good was that she also told me that the bear I had seen in the room one day (that I had mentioned in the blog post) actually belonged to someone else and that it was still there in the room but put away – and I am guessing we don’t need to detail how that landed.

OH MY FUCKING GOD!

The runners were in full Usain Bolt mode. It was really fucking awful. Like of course I knew that’s what it would be – but ugh. Any mention of any other clients just sends my system into a full-blown meltdown. Adult me is fine (just about!) but eek – the littles just weren’t. I think it’s because I have found it sooooo hard to get anywhere near my young parts in the sessions with Elle and then I learn that actually the very things that would help she’s already doing with someone else.

Fuck my life!

I had just about gathered myself back together by the time I saw her, because of course there are other clients working out their own shit in a way that works for them and if I was a bit braver then I could too…and I swear to god, next week I am taking my bloody elephant out the fucking bag even if it kills me! (it won’t kill me).

The session after all that I walked in and she said, “I was thinking of moving the table but seeing as I’m going to sit right here with you, I haven’t, as it’s not in the way between us.” And the second clock was gone, too! And then she said she’d ordered a new couch for the room and was wanting to get a load more cushions! I don’t suppose the new couch was off the back of my blog but it felt nice that she had really listened to what I had said. She said she was really keen to get the space right for me and this felt … lovely. And the irony about that whole blog post really, is that the space doesn’t matter at all so long as I feel connected to Elle.

This is getting really long so I’ll end it here for now – but let’s just say, we’ve leapt forward quite a few steps… I guess, I just need to be myself in all my messy glory so Elle can respond to what’s there!

The Struggle Is Real

rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments

*not my finest hour of writing!

I think I might be having a breakdown guys…honestly, I am just so fucking sick of living in my head right now. (Tell it like it is, eh, RB?!). I actually don’t really even know where to begin because it’s just fucking whining, really – another big heap of ‘woe is me’. And frankly, who cares? No one wants to listen to this crap AGAIN. I certainly don’t!

The place I am in right now is driving me mad so why burden anyone else with this endless bullshit? I am so bored of feeling this way – bored of myself – bored of ending up stuck in this shitty emotional place time and again – I’m just so fucking bored of the perpetual fucking struggle to be alive. Like what’s the point?! Ooffff. It’s tough. And, it seems, exceptionally sweary today!

Deep breaths… count to…eleventy billion… think of the sea… imagine your feet on the sand…distract with music…take a bath…light a candle and try not to burn the house down!

Nope. That’s not working today. Fucking useless bullshit grounding exercises. Lol! I don’t need that. What I need someone to take hold of my hand, breathe with me, BE WITH ME, and help me regulate.

Actually, really, what I really want is Anita (the old one not the new faulty Shein version). I want to be safe in her arms, to listen to her regular rhythmic heartbeat, to feel her steady breathing, breathe in her familiar safe smell, and to be able to properly rest. I want for her to read me some of our stories, and to look at the pictures together…and not feel like any of that is weird or too much. I miss it, and her, such a lot.

Being endlessly hypervigilant is exhausting. To think I used to see Anita twice and week and get that consistent co-regulation, it’s not surprising that after fourteen months without her/it I am at breaking point. I so want a safe place to put down all the shit and be…seen and held…as I am…and right now – ‘as I am’ is in a right state. The littles are not ok but to be fair, none of me is ok. Adult has been through the wringer recently and there’s just nothing left to hold me together. My rubber bands have perished and snapped, and the chewing gum is dried out, rock hard, and now crumbling.

I’m done.

It’s hard not to keep spiralling downwards when you feel completely hopeless. I feel like perhaps this is bottom – again. But as I have said many times before, there always seems to be a few extra trapdoors ready to fall down through!

I think this blog is something like seven years old now – and what’s different from back at the start, really? Some of you have been here since the very beginning and have been alongside me for what?…three failed therapies…some growth (perhaps)… but essentially it’s the same old me tapping away at the keys struggling with the same old shit. Here I am, once again, circling the emotional drain and on the limits of what I can reasonably manage. And you know what? – it’s really depressing. I’ve tried so hard to get myself into a better place over the years but look where we are…

Slow clap RB. ‘A’ for effort ‘E’ for execution.

In some ways, this, this…’bonkers rage depression crap spew’ today… is probably really needed – and yet writing has been out of reach for a while now. I just can’t even bring myself to turn on the laptop…even if writing is helpful a lot of the time. There have been no words.

This last week or so I’ve been almost paralysed with depression and that awful attachment panic and disconnect that the young parts struggle with so much. It’s been pretty rough for the last few weeks but reached its peak on Thursday and that upset of – what? – abandonment, rejection, all that horrific stuff – has been visceral. When it’s like that I’m instantly thrown into the cold, grey wasteland and my three-year-old self is terrified. It completely overtakes me. There is no adult self to help, and it feels incredibly isolating.

I stupidly looked back over some messages from Anita and the instant physical pain in my chest and stomach was immense and I just fell apart crying. Everything caught up with me. There’s such a lot of grief still to process…and probably, new grief coming if we can ever find a time to meet and end but I’ll save that stuff for another, more together post! But suffice to say, the moment I get anywhere close to that stuff I’m done for. It’s been too much to hold for too long now and I guess life throwing in a whole lot of stress has meant that my capacity to hold this stuff just isn’t there.

Alongside all this, the desire to reach out and connect with Elle has been huge but there’s another part of me that wants to run for the hills and never see her again at the moment. I get this is because actually my need for connection is sooooo BIG and so the fear of not being met where I need her to meet me, or worse being completely ignored, or in some way rejected feels too much. It’s a mess. I’m so sensitive to even the slightest hint of rejection … or no… just subtle shifts in energy…that it’s a disaster. Any normal person wouldn’t even notice this stuff…because it’s probably not even there – but… ugh…complex trauma is just the gift that keeps on giving isn’t it?

It’s embarrassing to even have to try and explain why I feel like this because from the outside there would seem to be nothing wrong at all between Elle and I…because there really isn’t anything wrong! In fact, so much is really right – and this is where I begin to despise my wonky brain and the attachment trauma and the legacy that Em and Anita and Hannah have left for me in terms of therapy, and trust, and *all the things*.

Honestly, when I look back over the last few months with Elle it has been so good on so many levels…and then…my system has to go and complicate it all.

You know what it’s like – when you feel really close to someone for a moment, that’s how you want it to feel *always*, and any perceived slight difference in the room feels rejecting. (EVEN if there IS NO DIFFERENCE other than sitting in a fucking chair that she’s sat in ALL YEAR!)

I imagine you’re all thinking, ‘What the fuck are you talking about RB??!’

Ok, so here we are again…been here before…no change there, then! Ugh.

Some of you might remember how after about nine months when I was working with Anita, we’d reached a place where the walls came down and there were those mammoth sessions where the young parts finally made it into the room and Anita held me and told me she loved me? It was incredible and did amazing things for my nervous system.

But then one day she started a session back in her chair rather than beside me on the couch and I immediately felt far away and disconnected from her. I was thoroughly dysregulated and then dissociated because all the parts that so desperately needed proximity and physical reassurance saw the distance between us in our chairs as a signal that something was now wrong, that the young parts weren’t palatable, and I must be too much. I think she had a cold or something and didn’t want to pass it on, but I saw it as a rejection. It felt horrid.

And of course, none of it was about rejection or abandonment but my system is hard-wired to view things in this way. Fortunately, I was able to bring that to Anita and from then on, we had it that she’d sit beside me on the couch this is how it was for the next three years.

Yep… so I’m in the same fucking mire again… only this time with a couple more episodes of being abandoned and rejected under my belt and so the sensitivity levels are massively high and so it feels really difficult addressing this with Elle.

A few weeks ago, around the anniversary of my dad dying, I left my session and literally within seconds had that crushing feeling of separation anxiety and panic. I had wanted to ask Elle for a hug in the session because my system was going mental but instead False Adulted my way through the session and I left with a hug – but we all know a goodbye hug is not the same…in fact sometimes it feels really hard because that closeness is so short-lived and then you’re out in the world again.

Anyway, July is always a shitty month but that day I really couldn’t see how I was going to get through the next week in one piece and less than an hour later sent Elle a message telling her that I was in a mess and asking if she had any space to see her again that week. I have really noticed lately that one session a week is just a little bit of a bridge too far. By Friday I am on my knees and it’s a real struggle – it’s the object constancy stuff and it really fucking causes me difficulties. Elle works online and face to face, but she didn’t have an f2f that week. She offered a zoom call as stop gap or if I’d prefer, said I could write to her, and she’d reply.

I decided that a zoom call probably wouldn’t help because actually what I really wanted in that moment is to be in the same physical space as her. So often I’ve found online triggers my system when I am like that…it almost makes it worse. I guess maybe it would be good to try again at some point as it might feel different with Elle and be helpful -but it didn’t feel right then.

My brain has been so frazzled lately that writing has been almost impossible – but I did manage to send something late that night explaining how lost I felt and how the minibus is out of control. It was ok but the next morning I realised that the bit I really needed to say was missing and so sent it:

Oh and I think the bit that’s missing is that actually because it feels so bad internally right now there’s huge anxiety about being too much. Because actually when I see you, I feel really far away and feel like I just want to be next to you and hold your hand so I don’t drift away.

It’s weird. It can feel so risky sending this sort of vulnerable message in the moment because I completely forget ALL the lovely messages and things that Elle has said in the time we’ve been working together and how accepting of me and whatever I bring she is. Like how can I not remember that she replied to my message telling her that I love her with ‘I love you too’? and all the other incredibly holding attuned messages over the last year?

I know it’s my brain trying to keep me safe but it’s actually a hindrance – especially when I feel like I do now- because I really struggle to dredge any of this up to the surface and just see her as someone who doesn’t care – and barely exists. As much as this blog today has been a sweary rant so far, it’s actually done me some good because I have remembered this and some other things…and that actually has settled something a tiny bit.

Phew.

That day she responded with the most perfect holding message. I hope she wouldn’t mind me putting this here – but it feels important – to remind me that there is good. I actually feel like I should make a scrapbook of our emails and text for when I am having a meltdown!:

Sitting next to each other and holding hands seems like a really good place to start. Maybe we could do that when I see you next?

When I was reading your description I remembered how my mum used to always tell me that – if I ever got lost – that I should go back to the last place I saw her and wait there, and that she would find me. Maybe we can work out a safe place where we can always return to to find each other, and then breathe together for a good long while as well. It’s incredible to me how learning to breathe in using my whole lungs and then breathe out super slowly like I’m trying to move an invisible toy sailboat has an almost immediate effect on my nervous system. It’s like having a release valve on all the internal pressure.

I like your (horrible) mini-bus analogy, even though driving the bus and being responsible for the safety of all those passengers feels like a lot, especially when you’re well into overtime having already driven a full day’s shift. 

I know these are just words and that you’re reading them not hearing them, so it’s that much harder to feel them, but you are safe with me. I am a safe person, because I know very well how to keep myself safe and I work really hard at it all the time.

Not everyone is good at keeping themselves safe, because from the outside it can sometimes look like the opposite of ‘really caring deeply’ which invites judgment (both internal and external), but it’s an essential skill in order to show up again and again and to be able to tell you with authority and total honesty that I’m here and will continue to be here for you. 

Waiting in the safe place. 

With a Chupa-Chup.

Elle x

There has been such a lot of this over the last few months that…I suddenly feel a bit of a wally for wobbling like I am now. To feel so much upset and disconnect when there is so much evidence that there is no disconnect is really hard. But this is the problem with parts when they take over and adult loses the capacity to hold them and be alongside.

I get that some of this horrible feeling of panic and fear of being abandoned will be complicated by the fact that Elle and I have a break coming up soon. Adult me has no problems with this – of course – but the young parts are just not ok at all…because it opens up space for more of *this*.

I really don’t want the young parts to be in long-term distress so that the protectors feel the need to step in and go on bouncer duty. The young parts have experienced too much pain for too long now and the protectors have come online to do what they think they do best…but it isn’t best. It’s not helpful. Attacking myself and unpicking anything good with Elle isn’t protective. It’s damaging.

I hate this!

It’s insane to see notice how different I feel writing now, to when I started an hour ago…yikes…but I have had weeks of really vocal young and protector parts and seemingly have lost my grip on adult and that’s what comes out. Frustration, upset, despondency, hopelessness… and I get it. Adult feels it all too – but just not quite to the point of feeling like self-harm might be a good idea… ugh.

Anyway, back to the stuff about seats putting the heebie-jeebies into the system.  After my reaching out to Elle that week I just about made it through to Tuesday and by that point realised that I really needed to do something to help the young parts – alongside holding hands. I sent Elle a text on the morning of our session and asked if maybe we could look at doing something with a transitional object. She responded that she loved the idea and would bring in some things unless I had any particular ideas of what I wanted.

After all the hell with the pebbles with Em and the months of shit round that, it felt really nice that Elle had responded so positively and as though it wasn’t a weird thing to request. I know Anita had always been amazing with this kind of thing but it’s hard to know how people will respond and it’s easy to hold on to the worst-case scenarios and panic.

That week between sessions seemed quite massive in lots of ways. There’d been between session contact that felt like it really moved things along. I had taken more steps towards Elle and opened up more about the struggles I was having and now we were going to do a transitional object… and we all know transitional objects are really for the littles so I guess this was my way of showing Elle that there are parts in the mix now that require attention.

When I arrived, Elle sat straight down beside me on the couch and pulled me in for a cuddle. It was exactly what I needed. Only, typically, it was a warm day and I felt too hot! So, as much as I would have loved to have stayed snuggled in close I couldn’t. Instead, we sat together, I leant up against her, and she got out some items that she had brought that she thought might be good transitional objects. She told me the stories behind each of them and then put them on the table and I reached for her hand and held it. It felt really lovely, and my system settled right down.

Of course, when it came time to leave, I picked the soft toy option. A little mouse called Monty.

I think Elle had sprayed him with her perfume because he smelled really nice- it’s fading a bit now so I think I may have to be brave RB and ask her if that is what she’d done and if she might do it again before her holiday…and if I am wrong, I can just die in a pit of shame can’t I?!

I decided to make Monty his own Instagram account and take pictures of him out and about…because I am completely fucking unhinged! After the first week I shared the link with Elle. She responded really positively to it and actually it felt really connecting. Like maybe I am not a complete weirdo and she gets it? Or maybe she’s just kind! Lol.

If any of you want to see what Monty is up to then this is the link:

https://www.instagram.com/montys_awesome_adventures?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

hmmm not sure that’s working but the handle is montys_awesome_adventures

As I said, off the back of all that it’s opened up a lot of the young stuff inside again. So, imagine the bloody horror of walking into the last two sessions and Elle sitting in her seat across from me and the table being there between us. The table isn’t a new thing, but it does always feel like a barrier between Elle and I.

So, yeah, the distance thing has triggered my system into this fucking mess…well, not just that, but it certainly hasn’t helped. It’s ironic really – I’m probably closer to Elle than I have ever been but because of that, my vulnerability is off the charts. The moment the hurt parts and needy parts have been properly exposed the whole thing has blown up… but it’s not surprising that my system would want to protect me – I don’t want to be hurt again. More than ever, I need proximity and reassurance until the littles and the rest of my system understand that they are not imminently going to be dumped. I don’t think Elle would have even the slightest clue that this is what’s going on behind the scenes.

Although, maybe she does… the other day she referred to something in session that I hadn’t told her that she could only have found out from Monty’s page. I have absolutely no problem with that at all – in fact I think that it might be a really useful tool for Elle to see what I am posting via Monty…as it gives an insight into what’s really going on. But then this made me think about this blog.

Does Elle ever read it? She has the link to it, and I’ve sent her specific posts before to read. But I wondered the other day if she’s ever gone off and read any other the other stuff here. It’s in the public domain after all.

When I first approached her with the idea of maybe working with her, I obviously mentioned the blog straightaway and what had happened with Hannah because I needed to be sure that whomever I chose as my next therapist would be ok with me writing about my experiences of therapy. I didn’t want to get two months in to work again and then be told it wasn’t ok.  Elle said she was completely fine with my writing and also asked if she might have the link just because she’s interested in MH regardless of whether we ended up working together.

Thinking about this the other day I realised that there are probably quite a few posts that I have written that I would really like Elle to read because I think it would give her a good insight into what it’s been like for me –  you know, the uncurated mess of it all!…and then there are others where I would probably want to the ground to open up and swallow me whole if she were to read them…which probably means they would also be useful for her to read! It would be nice for her to see some actual writing rather than ranting…which is really what this blog has descended into this last year or so!!

Tbh I can’t imagine she has the time or energy to read any of this, but I know I would find it really hard to know that someone might be writing about me and no want to see what was being said!! Lol.

Anyway, this is long… and… bumpy! If you made it to the end – kudos to you.

Next week will be a year since Elle and I started working together and I think it’s safe to say the work has well and truly begun!

On The Outside It’s Crazy… Inside It’s Comfortably Numb

rubberbandsandchewinggum8 Comments

Time is flying at the moment. Life is going by in a sort of out of control careering down an unmade mountain road kind of a way! Same old. Same old. Busy. Busy. Argh! I’m hanging on in there and by some miracle seem to be doing just about ok. I guess ‘just about’ isn’t exactly brilliant but I haven’t totally slipped up on my arse/hurtled off the edge yet (YET!).

I am somehow surviving each day and achieving the things that need to be done so far as work and family life go. I haven’t lost my shit…and feel strangely calm despite the chaos, so that’s a win. Slight  Very big problem is that I am still not quite finding time for the things I need for myself to be ok (and sane) in the longer term: regular exercise, the great outdoors, adequate sleep, relaxation, this blog…and bloody therapy!!!! To be honest I am being steamrollered by life in general…  I just haven’t become a complete pancake yet but it won’t be long!

You can probably tell from this that I am in a manic high, nervous energy type state; this is all well and good, for now, BUT it is only a matter of time until the burnout happens. It always does. I feel like I am yo-yoing a bit at the minute. My last blog post was very much struggle and doom and gloom and yet here I am today full of beans. Living as I am right now is not sustainable and once I get totally exhausted I know I will crash big time. I do need to try and find time in the day to totally unwind and relax but it’s not easy. I feel like I am on a treadmill that never slows down.

How many times have a talked about self-care? Talked about how important it is? So why is it always the first thing to go when it absolutely should be the thing that I hang on tightly to? Ugh! I guess self-neglect is hard-wired into me and it’s going to take a serious amount of effort to change the direction of the auto-pilot.

Doing self-care when things feel ok is pretty easy, I think; the real challenge comes when you are in the thick of struggle and mental hell. One thing I do know, and that my friends keep telling me is that I really have to make myself a priority in my own life. It’s my life so it’s perfectly acceptable for me to take up space in it. It just feels so bloody alien. Like I don’t see myself as important or my needs as being as valid as anyone else’s. I think when you have spent your formative years trying to not take up space or get in the way or even really be noticed it’s a switch that gets stuck permanently on. Still, self-care has to be top of 2019’s resolutions list. In fact really that’s it, the only thing -take more care of me.

Anyway, last post I was banging on about work and stress and people not taking my ‘no’ seriously and finding myself in situations I am not happy about. blah. Fortunately, teaching last week was really good with my new group. Don’t get me wrong, it was challenging but the time with the group of 13 was actually really restorative and positive for me. I know that sounds weird. But I went in and was just me, me on my teacher ‘A game’ but also me as a ‘human’.

I know these people have had tough lives and so started simply by talking to them, telling them that I was there to help, and hopefully we’d get to the end and succeed but all I was really asking for was their commitment to have a go. Teaching, like therapy, is all about forging positive relationships with the students, building trust and safety, creating an environment that feels inclusive, safe, and nurturing. This has always been a strength of mine (god that sounds so fucking egotistical) but I guess because I know how it feels to feel unsafe and not fit in or be accepted I am especially mindful of this in my classroom.

I asked each student to write something about themselves for me: their name, age, their interests, anything they think it might be useful for me to know about them, and then a strength and perceived weakness in English.  Immediately one guy said ‘what do you mean about useful things for you to know about me?’ and here’s where I brought a bit of myself to the room. It could’ve backfired. They could have seen it as a sign of weakness and capitalised on it, but they didn’t.  I said, ‘well, it could be anything, but for me, I’d probably say something like I struggle with anxiety and depression and sometimes it feels really hard’….and then they looked at me and put their heads down and wrote. Reponses included:

  • I get angry fast
  • I get low easily and struggle with depression
  • I have BPD and dyslexia
  • I have ADHD and get frustrated
  • I have health needs and need a full time carer
  • I am on parole
  • I struggle with drugs and alcohol
  • My mental health is bad

Just by opening up the space for them I could see that they felt like I was interested in them and listening but that I am just like them – human. I already knew some of the specific learning needs before I went in but to have them tell me themselves what their challenges are was really helpful.

Anyway, we had a good giggle, got some work done, and at the end one of the guys, 20 years old, 6ft 3 built like a tank said, ‘Thank you so much for today. The session went really quickly and I learnt loads. I thought Maths was my subject but after today I think I like English best’. Mic drop! I was so pleased and it made all the prep and effort feel worthwhile.

So, yeah, that was nice and a confidence boost. The rest of work is what it is. Challenging and lots of it but generally fine. And to be fair, not gonna lie, this week’s session with group was like herding snakes! I am exhausted from today with them!

AND THEN THERE’S THERAPY which, I guess, is why you lot are here.

I call it therapy, but maybe I should say, ‘the space I have been going to and moaning about my daily life but refusing to go to the difficult places despite knowing I need to’ …

That’s a bit long-winded though isn’t it?!!

So, therapy. It’s been disrupted these last couple of weeks. Em was away last Friday and I was working so there was no session which felt just about ok because neither of us were available and so I didn’t feel too much like I was missing out. I saw her on Monday in person. And then today (Friday) the was no session again because I was teaching…she was there though. And so this is not good! At all! As if we didn’t already know this, I am not good with disruptions and breaks in my therapy!! I am still very much in recovery from the break at half-term and with two successive weeks of the pattern being changed I had totally detached until today.

I know the numbing/avoidance of my feelings and the dissociation is how I cope and it gets me through but it’s not a fantastic strategy really. However, this morning was like an emotional car crash. The reality of two missed sessions and not being able to see her was agony. I woke up feeling anxious and desperately wanting to reach out to check she was still out there. My mind had gone to the place where she’s gone/dead… ugh. I didn’t text her to ask her to reassure me because I wasn’t sure that she would and that would have upset me even more and to be honest, the times she has text back have been hopeless too! So I have spent the day sitting on young feelings and trying to be a fully functioning adult. It’s not easy!

In and out of sessions for the last month or so, I have been cross with myself for going and ‘talking but not really’. Sure, I have had plenty to moan about but I don’t need to go to therapy and moan about work. I can speak to my wife and my friends about this stuff. I need to be in therapy and do the work on the relational trauma, the past, the stuff that keeps tripping me up and making me feel inadequate and full of shame. I need to connect with my therapist. I need to get in touch with the young parts and try and help heal them. So, knowing this, why the fuck have I been fucking about like I have?!?!! So frustrating and EXPENSIVE. Every time I don’t talk it’s a pair of new shoes I can’t have. AND I LOVE SHOES!

My session on Monday ran like so many recent others. I went in and I talked about stuff that was stressing me out in my adult life….you know, work and being busy. I failed to mention any of the other things that have been steadily getting me down. I didn’t mention the therapeutic relationship or how I have been struggling to connect on a deeper level or be vulnerable with Em. The difference this week, though, was that Em picked up on what’s been going on and asked me about it. She commented on how lately my life has been really hectic and I’ve come and just offloaded that stuff but that perhaps there have been things I have been avoiding talking about because I don’t have the reserves to go there. I nodded and then off I went, switch, adult was gone, I was numb and seeing stars and feeling little and desperate to connect…but SILENT.

Em talked to me, asked me what she could do when things get like this because we have been here so many times before. Of course, when I get into that state I have no words and as much as I would like to ask her to come and sit beside me or speak directly to the little parts and explain that they are safe and she is there I just sit frozen like some insufferable mute.

It’s agony.

Time seems to accelerate and then the session is almost up.

And then I have to leave…and lately it’s been for a whole 7 days…which feels like a very long time now that my internal clock is used to two sessions a week.

I was frustrated with myself because knowing I have been doing ‘capable adult’ lately I have been very aware of this avoidance of the big stuff. The attachment stuff. The relationship. The goddamn breaks in therapy. So on Sunday night I had quickly written out some stuff to take to the session to hand over and try and get the conversation moving in the right direction even if my adult was not on board. Thing is, adult is the one with the bag and the hands isn’t she?! So even though with fifteen minutes to go I knew I needed to get the writing out I remained frozen, paralysed, and internally distraught. FUCK. Adult wasn’t playing ball.

I managed to tell Em that she was right about everything that she’d been saying about me having things to talk about but feeling unable to. She said that it was understandable that when the pattern of therapy is so important to me…i.e regular and uninterrupted sessions –  that it might have been difficult to go there and open up these last few weeks but that as of Monday, when we are back to two sessions a week, that it might be helpful to really try and attend to these bits that have been neglected.

Yes. BUT eeek!! That is exactly what I needed to hear but in doing so it also woke up all the silent and resistant parts and everyone wanted to have a chat…but the session was over!!! You all know how that is! So, what did I do? You bet, I sent a screen shot of the letter I had written in a text with a short message saying I had chickened out of discussing it in session but that next week we needed to. Face palm!

Basically what I sent at 2pm was an incoherent 11:30pm mind dump from the previous evening – but hey it’s a way in…:

November – Therapy Stuff

  • I feel anxious…really anxious!
  • I don’t like feeling disconnected but that is how it is right now.
  • I don’t want to leave without addressing breaks: 1/2 term (sad face emoji), these two consecutive Fridays (sadder face emoji), and the upcoming Christmas holiday (crying emoji). I don’t know what the solution is but we need to work together to put things in place to try and avert a crisis like last year…which was hell.
  • I feel like a protector part has been doing therapy since 1/2 term break. There has been plenty of ‘daily life stress’ but I could easily have discussed this stuff with my friends. The young parts feel really sad and scared and several ‘older’ parts don’t want you anywhere near the ‘little ones’ after the phonecall we had. Even though we talked it through I still don’t feel ok. It doesn’t take a lot to hurt the most vulnerable parts but it takes ages to repair and regain trust
  • I have really missed seeing you but/and there are parts that have been unable to cope with feeling like you’re gone/dead. Initially it was really upsetting and now parts of me feels completely cut off … like I just don’t care. I hate how painful, physically painful, it feels when the needy parts feel abandoned but I also hate that when I have most needed to reach out I have built huge walls around me
  • I don’t think you realise any of this… but it is all mess of contradictions!
  • Adult me needs help getting the other parts safe enough to be in the room – and for that protector part to take a backseat for a while…but I am so wary of that because Christmas is coming up. The space that opens up is overwhelming and I can’t fix this alone. I feel like therapy is all about counting down from one break/disruption to the next. I never feel settled because you are always almost gone…

And so basically that’s where we are at right now! I feel like my blog is totally falling by the wayside but this is really a reflection of where my life is right now. I really hope that soon I can free up some time to write and wind down a bit.

I found this earlier…wondering if I should have it as the main ‘go to’ page on this…save everyone the bother of reading! haha! x

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rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

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So it looks like I have made it through the three session therapy break. I have been ‘just about’ holding it together with my trademark rubber bands and chewing gum but it’s all feeling a bit fragile today; it feels like the makeshift glue that holds the pieces together is liable to give way at any moment. It’s not great.

The last couple of weeks haven’t been a complete depressive washout by any means,  but it’s taken a ridiculous amount of energy to simply keep treading water in an uninviting, swirling, choppy, cold emotional sea and not drown. I’m tired and cold now. I am so over the break!

I’ve noticed that, often, the closer I get to the shore (i.e end of the therapy break) the harder those last few days in the water are: it’s as though, for some reason, the waves pick up and a strong rip current running along the water’s edge does everything in its power to stop me getting onto the safety of dry land. I don’t know if it’s something about the consistent and sustained effort that is required to hold it all together and keep swimming that finally takes its toll; the sheer exhaustion of it takes over when the end in sight?: maybe I don’t quite have the stamina to get through a break?; or perhaps it’s something to do with self-protection – I sort of bury my head in the sand (sorry for the mixed metaphors ) at the beginning of the break and then as I hit the marker of ‘last missed session’ (today/Friday) it all falls apart.

Like maybe the fatigue and fear really hit now, because I am almost there, back in the room. Perhaps it is only now that I can finally allow myself to really feel what I have been keeping inside for the entirety of the break. Although tbh it doesn’t feel like there is much ‘choice’ or ‘allowing’ in the matter.

I don’t know how to put it.

I am overwhelmed.

With just three more sleeps until Monday things are getting really really hard. Part of me needs to keep repeating Dory’s mantra ‘just keep swimming’ but other parts of me are just so physically and emotionally exhausted that it feels impossible to keep going. I feel almost paralysed by the emotions. I want to give up. I want to sink beneath the surface of the water and rest – even if that means drowning. I know it sounds really dramatic. I can’t really describe how utterly shit things feel right now. I feel overwhelmed and empty at the same time.

It’s weird.

I feel like that huge gaping hole inside, the mother wound, is sucking everything into it like some enormous black hole. That’s kind of what I mean by empty and overwhelmed…from the outside the hole seems empty, a pit of darkness, and yet I know that in the black pit of doom is so much pain, so much fear, so much need, and overwhelm. OMG just thinking about it all sends me into a panic.

Until today I think I have been doing pretty well. The attachment pain has been there consistently (it never really goes away) but most of the time it has felt manageable or I have found time to honour it so that it doesn’t ruin my day and I have been able to function well enough. It’s been half-term here this week and so having the kids off school has been a welcome break from the usual routine. No school runs or teaching has meant that things have been reasonably relaxed.

My wife and I took the children away for a couple of days to a theme park and stayed in a nice hotel overnight. It was a lovely break for us all but really tiring! Traipsing around the park, queuing, and riding rollercoasters is not exactly relaxing. And I have found that, actually, my days of enjoying adrenaline rides has long passed. I get an immediate headache the moment the adrenaline floods in and I am actually a bit of a chicken. I feel actual fear on the rides – like I am going to die! Where on earth did my fearless fourteen year old self go?! Oh, and, in addition to the physical discomfort of actually doing the rides I was really reminded that I don’t really like crowds (or people!)!!!

So, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I am tired now…but this empty feeling is more than just tiredness, you know? I think when I am tired I have fewer resources available to cope with all the ‘other stuff’ and so it sneaks up on me and takes root. The young parts are more vocal and the need feels huge. I know at times like this I should be going all out with the self-care but sometimes the slide into emotional overwhelm feels more like a switch suddenly being flicked than a gradual unravelling. One minute I am ok…and the next I am sooooo not ok. Once I am in ‘the not ok’ state it’s all a bit late for self-care (yeah yeah, ok baby steps and deep breaths and all that can be done at any time…) I feel incapacitated. I just can’t fucking do anything.

Today was a disaster. I did not get dressed. I willed myself to do some ironing but that was all I could manage. I spent most of the day beating myself up about not doing anything which in itself is hugely tiring and stressful. I wish I could just give myself permission to acknowledge I am having a bad day, to rest up, to give things space…but I don’t. I just sit/lie there thinking about all the things I should be doing but am failing to do. I brood on all the work I have to manage next week. I get angry with myself that I am not 1) resting and recharging properly when there is so much coming next week or 2) getting planning and prep done for the week ahead so that it doesn’t feel so massively hard next week.

Basically I spent the day feeling incredibly anxious and stressed about next week but not doing anything to make it better, or resting to give myself energy to do the things I need to when the teaching kicks back in. It’s so annoying but so familiar. It really does feel like a mental paralysis.

UGH!!!

The problem is, when I get this frozen thing it’s not really like I have an executive in charge who can direct everything or even the critic on hand to bully me into doing stuff. Fuck knows where she is! Instead I am left with all the various young parts freaking out and not knowing how to get help. It’s just ridiculous.

I need therapy!!!

There is so much I want to say to Em when I go back on Monday. I have been talking round the edges of a lot of really big feelings for a while now and I really think I need to push on through the shame and embarrassment and let some more of it out. I am, of course, terrified that what I have to say is ‘too much’. The thing is, even if it is ‘too much’ it is how I feel and it’s doing me no good at all hanging onto it.

I just don’t know if I am brave or strong enough to go through the inevitable grief that will come about as a result of really tackling the issues I have around the breaks (feelings of abandonment) and touch (or lack of it) in the therapeutic relationship. When I think about that need for closeness and containment it really aches. I know that the ache stems from years ago and the relationship I have with my mum. But as much as I know this is an old injury, the mother wound, I am not sure I am resilient enough to hear the ‘I am not your mother and this is a therapeutic relationship’ thing at the moment.

I know she’ll deliver it more kindly than that but this is essentially what we’re dealing with isn’t it? Facing that pain, that grief that feels totally annihilating – our mothers weren’t ‘good enough’ and the attachment figure in the here and now is unable to meet the need that got neglected in our childhoods. Intellectually I get it. Can handle it. I know I need to accept that Em is with me on the journey and is there to help me through the grief but that she cannot take it away or be a replacement mother. Adult Me gets it. Adult Me is ok with it – welcomes it even.

The relationship I have with Em is important to my Adult too. I like it when we get to talk together and it’s not emotionally fraught and I don’t dive down into dissociation to get away from the pain.

Emotionally…I don’t know if I am ready to face the truth. I am not sure whether I can kill off the hope of the young parts that so desperately want to be close to Em, for her to be there to make things better…but I guess I’m not doing myself any favours in prolonging the agony. It makes me feel ill and actually more than that, it makes me feel really alone…again…just like I was as a kid.

I don’t know. I guess maybe this week is not the best week go poking at the mother wound given Monday also coincides with the first anniversary of my very good friend/mother figure’s death but maybe because it is now because these feelings of grief and loss are so potent that I need to address them.

I don’t know.

I just want to hide under a blanket and have a story read to me. I don’t want to be Adult Me right now. It all feels too much.

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Limbo

rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

I’m feeling a bit bleurgh at the moment (a technical term I’ll have you know!). It’s not a full-on depressive episode yet (I don’t think) but it’s feeling like a huge struggle just to remain in a relative coping place…but then when is mental health ever a walk in the park, really? It pretty much always feels like I am struggling in one way or other.

For now, at least, I feel like I have done with sliding down the hill towards rock bottom, which was what happened at the start of the therapy break, and have finally got a fingertip hold on something semi-solid that has allowed me to stop and take stock. I daren’t move though, rock bottom is still a long way off, thank god, but I feel like adjusting my position may result in me losing my precarious grip and careering at speed downwards again. I can’t risk that so I am staying here stuck in a kind of uncomfortable limbo.

Put it this way, I am not where I would like to be at this point in the holidays!

I don’t feel especially solid.

I’m certainly not grounded.

I can feel anxiety creeping around the edges.

I’ve woken up feeling queasy for the last four days.

The attachment pain is really there just before bed and any time I let my mind drift towards therapy.

It’s all a bit shit really.

Moan. Moan. Moan!

I daren’t look too far ahead because 3rd September feels like a very long time in the future and it makes me even more aware that I’m not even half way through the break yet – it’s still three weeks until I see my therapist in person – nooooooooooo! Having said that, I am meant to have a Skype on the 20th so I shouldn’t complain. I am just massively aware that it could go belly up next week.

I am experiencing the usual conflicting feelings:

I love you/I hate you

Please come back/Fuck off I never want to see you again

and what I really don’t want to happen is to have a Skype session that semi opens up stuff, doesn’t really do the job, isn’t especially connecting, and then be left for a further two weeks for phase two of the therapy break.

I think I just about have a handle on things right now but I’m not stupid, I’ve been here enough times to know that there is a real possibility of me trying to sabotage my therapy before September is here. The teen part of me that wants to give up is never far from the surface and on breaks, especially long ones, she gets quite vocal. She’s still angry about the last session before the break. Seriously, ‘imagine something you like doing’….FFS!

Feeling stuck in this limbo state/place is pants. My last session seems a long time ago (eve though it was actually only two weeks ago) and all the good things I feel about my therapy/therapist seem to have evaporated now…. and yet the crap parts haven’t, they remain there! It’s not ideal. I’m beginning to put my therapist in the bracket of people that reject and abandon me rather than who do their best to help me. (I do know how crazy it is – but it is how it is!).

You can probably tell from this post that my mind is all over the shop. In addition to this, I seem to have no energy at all. My motivation has gone on holiday (along with my therapist – grr!), and all I really want to do is lie in bed and sleep for hours on end or, failing that, sprawl out on the sofa and eat biscuits and chocolate. Essentially once the kids get to bed at 6pm that is exactly what I have been doing- filling my face with sugary things in some mindless stupor state in front of the TV and then crawling into bed and sleeping for as long as I can reasonably get away with (which, to be fair, with two young kids never extends much beyond 6:45am).

Put it this way, I’m not scoring big on the mindfulness and self-care scales right now! Although I am not over-exercising or under-eating (clearly!) so I suppose generally vegetating and resting shouldn’t be seen as a criminal activity. The critical voice in my head is starting to give me a hard time, though:

Lazy.

Fat.

Sloth-like creature.

I am just not particularly good at stopping and doing nothing. I always feel like I ought to be doing something, keeping busy, achieving things. I’m not working again for a couple more weeks as it’s the school holidays. I need to keep reminding myself that it’s A HOLIDAY – not just other people’s (my T, the kids I teach, my own children) mine too and that means a break from the usual drudgery of school runs, work, having to be in a specific place at a particular time etc.

As much as I moan about it when I am in it, I think routine does me good to an extent. I’m not great at this long drawn out time off. I do wonder, though, how much of this is because in the back of my mind (ok quite close to the front!) is the fact that I am on a therapy break and frankly I am not someone who does especially well without regular therapy. Ha! I mean I am not exactly willing the clock forward to September to re-enter the world of ‘Please put your shoes on! I’ve asked you four times already. We are going to be late.’

Having said that, I think with young kids, time off is rarely ‘time off’. Since my son’s birthday last Monday we’ve been busyish: swimming lessons, cinema, ice cream parlour, farm park, a couple of playdates, baking, making pizzas from scratch, a visit to a soft play centre as well as a fair bit of playing in the garden, oh, and we/the dog delivered a litter of puppies yesterday. It’s not exactly been a dull existence!

I don’t know what’s wrong with me really. I just feel a bit stuck. Whilst, clearly, elements of my life are carrying on as normal and I would say I’m doing a good enough job at parenting at the minute- the kids are happy- underneath the exterior of ‘with it and together mum’ the other stuff is bubbling away. I guess that’s the problem. Usually I have somewhere to let ‘the other stuff’ out and right now I don’t. I’m very much aware of operating of multiple levels. I find it tiring at the best of times and perhaps without my release valve I’m finding it all a bit more exhausting?

Who knows?

Maybe I am just getting depressed. Or maybe I am about to get sick. Or perhaps it’s just that my period is on its way… whatever it is I want to feel a bit more energised and less like I am going through the motions. I want to feel present in my life rather than as though I am spectating from the sidelines. The only saving grace is that no one would know I feel this way. It is not evident that I am struggling. I would hate for my kids to feel like ‘mummy is checked out’….and I guess they don’t know because it’s only parts of me that are. I guess maybe it’s part of the beauty of being fragmented – the bits that can’t cope aren’t really seen and the ‘carrying on with everyday life self’ is a damn good autopilot.

Errr what else? I’m scraping the barrel a bit with this post – no therapy to talk about!! haha.

I’ve been without internet for the last few days due to a cock up with changing provider. Seamless transition it was not! And so the one positive was that I haven’t been in this ‘bleurgh’ state and additionally whiling away the hours mindlessly on my phone flicking between WhatsApp, Facebook, WordPress, Instagram. Even NetFlix hasn’t been a possibility!

A social media blackout is not necessarily a bad thing every now and again. I do it at Christmas and always feel quite good having gone screen-free for a bit. You might be thinking, why not use your phone for the internet…well, I live in a signal/data blackspot and so have to go in the garden and stand in a specific place to get anything at all and it’s so intermittent that it’s not even worth it. It’s so circa 1995!

Everything went live again yesterday evening and actually it felt like a bit of an attack to the system. I have been off radar with a few friends this last week due to feeling so crappy and so I’ve been trying to be a bit present again. I just find it really hard.

I really have nothing at all to say today!… but having already gone more than a week between posts I wanted to write something. This, post, shall hereby be filed under ‘bleurgh’ and sink to the depths of unread trash!

Actually. I posted this on my Twitter feed the other day…and it says it all x

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Grief (again): 10 Years On

rubberbandsandchewinggum16 Comments

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I’ve been wanting to something here all week but I haven’t felt able to. It’s not because I have been too busy to write (which is why I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to);  sure, I have been running about like a headless chicken, been ill, and been suffering the fall out of some tricky emotions stirred up in therapy last week, but really there’s nothing terribly new in any of that and I still usually find a way to put something on the page.

Arguably, this week, I have had a little more time on my hands than usual because I didn’t work yesterday (mind you I was very ill and even went completely blind for a few minutes so perhaps writing wasn’t really possible!) but still I haven’t been able to find words. I am floundering about now. I can feel it. The feelings are so there but the words just aren’t. It’s like being in therapy on a dissociated day- ffs!

I think it’s maybe the topic that’s the problem.

Grief.

This is not the first time I have written about grief. When my friend died after battling with myeloma last year I posted something, and when my dog died I even rattled a piece off. Both those times the grief was acute and immediate. The feelings were there, fresh, and I could tap into them, skim off the surface if you like. It’s different today.

I suppose, in reality, you could argue that most of my blog talks about grief in one way or another. Essentially, the majority of my work in therapy comes down to grieving losses: sometimes it’s the death of a loved one; sometimes it’s the loss of the image I had of who I might become before I got cancer; but mainly, week in week out, it’s steadily grieving the loss of a mother (my mother as well as the concept of the ideal mother) that I never had. The mother wound is going to take years to get over and heal. I know this.

But this post isn’t about grieving mother (although my next post most certainly will be after the internal shit storm that has blown up after my session this week!). No. Today this is all about the grief surrounding my biggest unexpected loss, my biggest tangible emotional trauma (in the eyes of a normal person – i.e an actual bereavement), the one that still gives me nightmares and accounts of some of the PTSD.

This is about the loss of my dad who throughout my life did his very best to be both mother and father to me. The one who tried to prevent the mother wound being too big, too gaping, too devastating. I suppose, given how bad things are it didn’t really work, but he gave it a damn good go!

I’ve been just about holding it together with my trusty rubber bands and chewing gum this week knowing that today was coming. It’s been a dire week in many ways. I’ve been ready to chuck in the therapy towel because I feel so stuck, so unseen, and so uncared for. I’ve been cycling through various emotions but mainly the two stand out ones are anger and devastation. But I suspect that this is in part because my feelings around my dad’s death were bubbling away underneath and manifesting in that way…I guess I’ll know more after Monday!

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So grief.

It’s really just another word we use for a response to trauma isn’t it?

And trauma is weird isn’t it? (‘weird’ – oh so bloody articulate!)

I know well enough that the trauma I am trying to process from my childhood has a kind of timeless quality. Or rather, my brain can’t readily distinguish between current trauma and past trauma. In therapy, I can be plunged headlong into the feelings I had as a young kid. I lose sense of my adult self and am right back in the moment – even if it was thirty plus years ago. My body remembers.

A similar thing has happened this week and today so far as where in time I feel. Part of me is certainly here in 2018 but part of me is stuck back in 2008 and of course others are further back in my childhood. The parts are all over the place!

Today marks ten years since I received the call that my dad had been found dead in his room by his friend whilst holidaying/teaching diving on a remote island abroad. He’d only been gone three days, literally just arrived there after two flights and a boat ride and had died in his sleep on the first night. He was 47 years old. Massive heart attack.

Even now, despite having had a decade to process this loss. I still can’t fully get my head round it.

Part of it is because I still can’t believe it. I think he’s still there having the time of his life doing what he loved. I know exactly where he was having been on holiday there myself twice with him.

I never saw his body. Not that I think I would have wanted to. He was cremated abroad not in the UK.

It’s complicated but essentially it all came down to the fact that had we have had his body flown back to the UK we would not have automatically got the body released for burial/cremation. A second post-mortem would have been needed and the pathologists over here said that given the body had been in 40 degree heat for over a week before it was moved to the mainland for a post mortem it would not be pleasant for us. We wouldn’t actually want to see the body. We were warned. It wouldn’t be him. Add to that a potential wait of six months for the body to be released to us there wasn’t really very much choice.

So, in the end, I only received a box of ashes and his dive gear a month after he died. The insurance company flew his stuff home to a local undertakers and the undertaker left the stuff out on his driveway for me to pick up as he had gone out. Imagine that. Your dad dies suddenly, you have no goodbye, and you receive a box of ashes and a bag of dive gear from a block paved driveway.

I still can’t even believe it.

How can that be? How can the person that was my rock and anchor be gone, and not only that, suddenly just become some ‘remains’ to be boxed and left outside? I can’t even … ugh.

I miss him.

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It’s weird too. Like, literally, just now I checked my emails on my phone and I have received an email from PADI about diving in Thailand. Like what are the odds? I maybe get a PADI email once a month, perhaps not even, and yet this morning I get one about diving in Thailand on the day my dad died about the place he was set to teach diving for a month. It’s weird how the universe communicates with us.

Actually I can’t talk any more about this today because this was only the beginning  of the trauma that kicked off with my family and led to an eight year estrangement and a complete mental breakdown. I thought writing might help but actually it’s just making it worse today. It’s too raw.

I know I am not especially coherent.

Today I need to take things slowly. I need to rest. I am very aware that I have one foot in the now but also one foot back in the past. I don’t want to be grumpy or short with my family and I’d like to find a way of celebrating his life rather than getting consumed by the horror and the grief of that time a decade ago.

There’s another problem with ‘old’ grief, too…people don’t really get it. They can’t understand why I could be as upset today as I was ten years ago when I found out the news. They can’t understand why I feel sick and need to cry and wail…

But that’s trauma isn’t it? It transcends time.

 

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Ultimatum

rubberbandsandchewinggum33 Comments

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So I realise that my blog has fallen by the wayside a bit these last few weeks (but I’m back now with a humdinger of a post!). I usually try and write something here at least once a week in order for me to keep some kind of regular record of what’s going on for me. I used to write a journal on my computer following each therapy session I had; the blog became a bit of a replacement for that – a sort of diary that the public can read (although I have been having some thoughts about that, lately, too – weird paranoia maybe? Or just a need to draw close and be private…I don’t know).

I’ve been so busy running around like a headless chicken or maybe, more accurately, with my head wedged up my vaguely anorexic arse, sorting my kids out, and tutoring most days that now there is very little time to actually sit down and reflect on what is going on in my internal world on the page (currently writing this from the edge of a swimming pool while my daughter has her lesson!). I haven’t not been writing because I’m short of things to say- far from it- my mind is all over the place and overflowing with the usual angsty crap: attachment pain, therapy worries, bad dreams, health, the eating (or not) stuff… and now, in addition to all that, I’m in a spin over my therapist’s ‘ultimatum’…

I have really missed my writing time. I so need it! Hence stealing time where I can now before I explode! A couple of hours each week to ponder and process, I am discovering, is more important to me/necessary than I thought. I need to try and find time for this but like so many of ‘my’ things, it doesn’t take precedence when there are so many other pressing things that actually have to be fit into the day. I do need to prioritise time for me, not just for writing, before I sink even further into quicksand I seem to find myself in.

Even if I write reams (maybe piles!) of emotional diarrhoea here (and having just proof-read this it does turn into a big splurge- sorry) and it makes no sense to anyone but me, I find the writing process really cathartic. It helps me get my head above water/out the sand a bit. It’s a good way of letting stuff out when all too often I feel overwhelmed or full of emotion.

I think some of why I find it so helpful might be that I actually sit down in one place for a block of time and have a hot (rather than luke warm/forgotten about) cup of coffee – it certainly can’t hurt! I was speaking to a friend the other day and I likened myself to a bee stuck in a jar. I am always buzzing around like a crazy thing. I don’t really stop.

Of course, I also have my therapy session on a Monday which is where I should get stuff off my chest, slow down, decompress, but more often than not the session stirs up more than it lays to rest and then I am left trying to make sense of it all on my own during the week. I find the first couple of days post-session extremely hard going and it’s no secret that I feel emotionally at sea and struggle for a good part of the time between my therapy sessions. I really haven’t got to grips with that emotional containment thing yet.

Actually, I’m having a hideously rough time this week and it’s crap right now, so I am looking forward to Friday and feeling like I am over the worst of the week. Having said that, usually I am pleased to get to Friday because it means it’s actually almost Monday…but this week I am not sure how I feel about my session on Monday. I am not sure if I am going to go yet. I don’t know if I can face it. Of course the little parts want to go and have some chance of reconnecting with my therapist but right now my teen part is off the chart raging, angry and let down. Underneath that, there’s also a real fear that I have broken my therapist and it’s all going to be downhill from here.

I’ll get to the point shall I?

Last week’s session (1st May) feels a really long time ago now. I can’t really remember what happened. I sometimes get this weird amnesia following a therapy session. Does anyone else? Like I have a vague idea of what happened or sense the general feeling of the session but it’s not clear exactly what happened. I usually have a very good memory for detail in my life and remember all sorts of useless information so I wonder if I am so frequently dissociated in session that I lose what’s gone on?

I do know that we talked about the eating disorder stuff – again. My therapist asked me how things were going and said that although I may not like her bringing the subject up, that it was too important for her to just let go – indeed she couldn’t/wouldn’t let it go. The session was fine. I told her how things were and filled her in on what was going on now (level of exercise, what I am eating, how I feel about my body, and the physical symptoms I was experiencing) and what it’s been like in the past. It was ‘the no-filtered version’ of life with an eating disorder.

I think she finally has an accurate picture of what it’s like  for me and she seemed to get it. I guess part of me was quite relieved for her to show she cared and build on the phone check in we had had on the Thursday night. I felt exposed but also like I wasn’t completely alone with this burden anymore. Yet again, I failed to bring up any of the issues about the attachment and the feeling disconnected from her but on the whole it was ok.

The week was a bit wobbly between that session and the one I just had on Monday (8th) – but when is it ever not wobbly?! I can’t suddenly let the cat out the bag about the anorexia and not be impacted by it can I? So, yeah, it was very bad in the early part of the week again. My tolerance levels were shot, my temper was short, and I was beating myself up in a big way. It wasn’t good. Some of it was undoubtedly hormonal but I know a larger part came not having really eaten properly in weeks: my blood sugar was low, fatigue was massive, and all the stuff that I just about have a handle on from week to week was suffocating me.

On Wednesday evening things felt so utterly overwhelming that I almost just got in my car and drove away….you know, just wanted to leave everything? I was done. It wasn’t good. I’d been having dreams about all the stuff surrounding my dad, friend, dog, all dying – upsetting as hell. I had also dreamt that my therapist had left me – nooooo. Oh and then I had a dream about my very good childhood best-friend, the one with metastatic breast cancer, and planning her funeral with her. It was a week where my sleep was filled with death and loss. The feelings crept into my waking life and I felt on the verge of tears every time I woke up, and every time I felt a bit tired.

Thank god for good friends with an ability to talk me down is all I can say. A twenty minute phone call was the difference between me falling off the edge altogether and regrouping and having another stab at moving forward. Things are on a knife edge.

By the end of the weekend I had reached a place where I wanted to really talk about ‘big stuff’ with my therapist and had steadily been eating a bit more each day which undoubtedly helped with my mood. Don’t get me wrong, there was still the voice telling me I was fat, and lazy, and can’t even succeed at an eating disorder… yeah, really!…and that is not easy to have doing the rounds in my head. But there was a part of me that was trying hard to hang on and not sink down into the place where I would, before long, have been passing out. Dizzy spells, cold hands and feet are enough. I was pushing myself too far. I know that how things have been since Easter is not sustainable. I was losing the battle with the eating and it wasn’t good. I wanted to unpick this properly.

I needed to explain why the attachment stuff feeds this kind of damaging behaviour and relationship with food and how things need to change – although I have no idea how to get round this myself but if my therapist at least has an accurate picture of just how bad it can feel we might be able to put a plan in place. The eating disordered behaviour simply masks other issues. Sure there is a large dose of body image stuff thrown in the mix but primarily not eating allows me to focus on something other than feeling the pain of neglect and abandonment. It temporarily shifts focus away from the Mother Wound.

Despite feeling embarrassed – mortified, even- that my young parts are so traumatised and get triggered every time I see my therapist, I think it’s time she heard the truth about how affected I am when I can’t see her…the real truth, not just the watered down insinuated version of things. I wanted to explain how I long to connect with her but part of me feels distant and like I can’t trust her. I want her to know that when I am not with her in session the young parts cannot cope at all and it is utterly overwhelming. I need her to know that breaks aren’t just ‘a bit difficult’ they are ‘a fucking disaster zone’. I wanted her to know that touch, or lack of it, has become such a huge issue for me that it’s massively impacting my ability to function in the relationship and is attacking my self-esteem.

I sit in session every week feeling like there is something wrong with me because we are so physically distant. I need more proximity if I can’t have touch because my mind tells me that my therapist doesn’t want to hug me because there is something disgusting and repulsive about me and she is only tolerating me because she has to. It must be the idea of touching me, even holding my hand, that is nauseating to her. It’s not the first time this physical rejection has happened to me and it’s hardly surprising it’s coming out in the therapeutic relationship now when so much of the work is about my mother. Yay for huge whacks of maternal transference with my therapist! Ugh!

For me, the ‘no touch’ boundary feels just the same as my mum refusing to touch me at fourteen saying ‘don’t hold my hand. People might think we are lesbians’. We’re twenty one years down the line and since then I’ve never had any holding from my mum (I mean there wasn’t much before that point either!) and the sense that ultimately ‘being a lesbian’ is a bad thing has stuck. Little did my mum know when she said her casually homophobic remark that I would turn out to be gay and those words branded into my brain.

I know it’s not my therapist’s job to physically hold me but I am not sure she realises how traumatising not being touched at all is for me. Every session with her reminds me that I am not worthy of her physical care – and might it be because I am gay? Is that the problem? I know it’s not rational. Adult knows this. But there are plenty of others inside that feel it to be absolutely true. The young parts of me want to be physically close to her and not being able to be feels utterly rejecting. How can a young three year old part make any sense of why an attachment figure won’t come close?

To my therapist, no physical contact is just a therapy boundary but to me it confirms everything I believe about myself as being unlovable, untouchable, and repellent to be true. That’s how it is. It’s hurting me. It properly makes my stomach ache and my chest feel tight and I want to cry when I think about it. It’s a big wound.

So yeah, with all that ready to air it was going to be a big session! I had reached that ‘now or never’ place. I was feeling brave. Go me!

So, I walked in, sat down, made some passing comment about the lovely weather and how I wanted to go to the beach – I’d actually been considering asking if maybe one day we could have our session on the beach seeing as it’s only about a five minute walk away. I looked at my therapist and immediately sensed something was up.

Fuck.

What was wrong?

My internal system went on high alert. My poker face went on. I steadied myself. I waited.

And then out it came…

We needed to talk about the eating disorder stuff and she said it couldn’t wait until the last few minutes of the session. She’d been thinking a lot since the last session about what I’ve told her since coming back from Easter break. She said that she was very very concerned about my well-being. She was worried about my low BMI. She was worried about the fact that my body is clearly struggling and shutting down. She was aware that the dynamic between us had shifted and that she’d fallen into being more like my mother and almost policing me by talking about what exactly I’m eating and suggesting strategies to eat more [sounds fair enough]

But then came…

She was not prepared to hold this level of risk and be so worried about my physical safety. It was not her job. She wanted me to go to the doctor, get bloods taken, have an ECG, and get weighed. She wanted the doctor to confirm I’d been seen and communicate with her. Or if I wouldn’t go of my own volition she wanted to write to my GP and ask for these things to be done. She wanted someone else to be responsible for my physical well-being. She needed a safety net.

She said I was either agree to all that or we’d have to work towards an ending.

After the words ‘work towards an ending’ I didn’t hear a great deal more. I shut down. Properly shut down. I was a mess inside, though. Like utter full-on flat-out panic. The young ones wanted to burst into tears right there and then. It felt like a hole had opened up beneath me and I was falling. Not seeing my therapist anymore would be akin to a bereavement. This. Cannot. Be. Happening.

The Teen part stepped up, though and waded in. Her thoughts?:

There we are then. Confirmation that when I let stuff out and trust someone with my shameful secret it backfires. I am too much for my therapist. I am too much for everyone. She isn’t prepared to work with me alone. She said she would be here for as long as I needed and now there are conditions attached. Why did I trust her with this? I’m an idiot. I fucking hate her.

Look. I (adult) absolutely get that what was said, and what came afterwards in the rest of the session, was coming from a place of care and it wasn’t only about my therapist covering her back. It is completely reasonable that she would need a safety net for if things get bad so she has somewhere to touch base and get me help if I needed it. It’s no different from when I saw her in the NHS and she had my details on record. But that wasn’t how it came across at the beginning of the session. To be given an ultimatum within three minutes of sitting down where the choice was ‘go on record about your eating disorder and enter into the NHS circus again or we’re done’ didn’t feel like much of a choice if I am honest.

I’m glad that she didn’t leave this stuff until the end of the session because we needed an entire session of talking about this stuff back and forth – as painful as it was. The moment she mentioned the possibility of ending I felt so sad and scared.

We like to convince ourselves that our therapists will be there no matter what. Well actually, I struggle to believe that is the case and am always feeling as though shit is going to blow up at any given moment so I best be vigilant. For me it’s been about trying to believe she is as good as her word. That she is reliable. That she won’t abandon me when the big stuff comes out. I was starting to believe that maybe she won’t leave and that as long as I need her she won’t let me go – hence finally telling her fully about the eating. It’s not true though. When it comes down to it, she can and will sever the tie. It is just a job to her. Sure she cares but she has to work within a framework and that means being hard line sometimes.

I get that she wasn’t actually saying ‘you’ve said x and now I am terminating you’ far from it, she said it isn’t her job to be neglectful and I’ve had too much of that from others in the past. She isn’t trying to let me down, in fact it is the very opposite… but the very mention of the ending sent me into orbit. I know it was probably a bit of tough love and she was maybe riding on the fact that my attachment to her is strong that I would help myself rather than lose her. I dunno.

Even though we’ve left things on ok terms I still feel massively unsettled now. I mean things were already a bit all over the place and now it’s like I am on very shaky ground. Unsurprisingly the eating is feeling really hard again now…because I feel out of control and like I am going to maybe lose the person that I need to help me.

The initial request/insistence that I must go and get checked out or work to ending has changed a bit/been negotiated over the course of the session we had. Somehow in amongst the teen shut down there were periods were I strongly advocated for myself. I have now given her my GP details and agreed that she can contact my GP if we discuss it beforehand. I’ve said that if she thinks things are bad she can act but I have to know about it first; I don’t want to suddenly get a call from my GP asking me to come in because my therapist has contacted them and me not be aware it was happening.

The reasons we got to this point are that I had been eating and had been looking after myself a little better this week. I was honest with her and said that things haven’t gone away but that I am not in immediate danger right now. I probably was the week before and so her reaction was entirely reasonable. She had cause to be genuinely worried about me last week. I was genuinely worried about me too. I told her I would tell her if I was slipping. I know that this is going to be a challenge because part of me is worried about ever bringing up this topic again.

I also reminded her that as part of my cancer follow up care I get full bloods taken every eight weeks and I get weighed (which I hate but I can’t really argue with). They monitor me very closely and so I said that if they are not overly concerned about my BMI (it has been mentioned but nothing done) or my blood chemistry then I think that’s good enough. She wasn’t aware I had such a thorough work up at the hospital so this went some way to settling her concerns.

I said that my eating disorder is definitely an issue, has been massively active, and it is absolutely something I need to work on but the idea of going back to weekly weigh-ins and GP appointments would actually make things worse for me. I don’t want to run away from this stuff anymore (hence letting her know about it) but equally I know what hasn’t worked for me in the past. If I get weighed all I want to do is chase the scales downwards – not maintain.

There were times in the session where I was really reactive and grumpy and shut down and dismissive and ‘I don’t care’ and ‘what’s the point?’ but she could see it was all a reaction to what she’d said. I’d sent her my post about the Mother Wound and asked her to read it because, actually, I know that this is where so many of my issues stem from. She didn’t have time to read it before the session and so I felt a bit irritated about that. Remember I was in pissed off Teen 😉 and when she offered to read it in the session I just couldn’t bear the idea of her sitting there reading the vulnerable stuff and then having no time left to discuss it.

I left the session. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to settle things properly and leave feeling better. Doesn’t work like that though does it?! Time’s up. We over ran by five minutes but I knew I had to leave. I drove home and had a good think about what had happened and then sent this text to her about one o’ clock:

Today felt really hard for me. Having had some time to reflect and untangle – actually the request for my GP details really is a non-issue and had you just asked for them and explained that it was because you feel like it’s important to have back up, I would’ve given them to you. I completely understand why it’s a good idea that you have them and it’s fine if we agree communication beforehand if it becomes necessary. The thing that shut me down/activated stuff was how what you said was delivered. It felt like you were giving me an ultimatum along the lines of – ‘see your doctor or we’ll have to work towards and ending’. All I heard was ‘we’ll have to work towards an ending’ and so every vulnerable part felt the rug come out from underneath me. This is the sort of thing I dread happening but am always sort of expecting, and why I am always reluctant to let stuff out. When it feels like things are so tenuous my instinct is to leave before I get left- hence how I was today. It’s been really hard opening up about all this stuff especially just after the Easter break when I feel like trust is an issue and still feel disconnected (I really missed you) – and to feel like that was essentially being me with ‘it’s too much’ (even if that’s not what was intended) is not easy. Unfortunately, there is a part that struggles to believe that this isn’t actually just about getting rid of me and there are other parts that feel completely bereft. Trying to be rational but it’s not always my strong suit. Anyway, that’s about it I think.

Of course there was no reply to that. And then I started second guessing myself. Texts haven’t gone well for us and after what happened at Christmas where she thought I was criticising her and nothing was good enough I wondered if what I had text might be read as another criticism of her rather than just saying how it felt for me. So at six pm I sent this (groan….when will I learn to just shut the fuck up and manage for myself?!):

And none of what I said in that message is meant as a criticism – in case it comes over that way –it’s definitely not my intention. It’s just what happened in my head when you said what you did. What I hear and what is meant can be quite a distance apart…which highlights to me just what a mess my head is. I wish this young attachment stuff would just go away but it gets triggered so easily. That part is always there listening, and then it doesn’t settle down and becomes another jumble of mess to manage. On the plus side, I’m delighted that you don’t feel I’m psychotic.

(We’d had a bit of a joke at the end and that was what the end bit of the text was about.)

Obviously, it’s been complete radio silence since those messages on Monday – which sucks. But it’s the boundary…another that I seem to have no say in. Ugh. It’s felt pretty rotten at times over the last few days and yet now I feel I can’t reach out to my therapist for help or support. I can’t text and ask for a check in or an additional session like I did a couple of weeks ago because I feel like I am already too much for her. It’s horrible. I need to work this stuff out with her more thoroughly and yet it feels impossible and so I am sitting on it all, brooding, and cycling through the whole range of emotions. I don’t like rollercoasters but I seem to stuck riding one right now.

This morning I woke up at 5am feeling sick after having another dream about my therapist leaving. I’m just about hanging together with rubber bands and chewing gum but it feels like I have done it now- I have broken the therapeutic relationship. I am frightened that I will go back in on Monday and she’ll terminate me. She’ll have had some more time to think and that’ll be that. It’s a complete head fuck. I’m trying not to get worked up about something that is unlikely to happen but unfortunately some of the parts have different ideas!

So that’s that. Nothing earth shattering or insightful – just how it is in the therapy and life of yours truly!

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