harm in therapy

When Safety Feels Unsafe

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

Well, I can’t lie, it’s been a complete and utter disaster zone in my emotional world since I posted a couple of weeks back. What’s happened? Well, my righteous anger about harm in therapy that I channelled into the last blog, where I talked about how I had received an email from a reader about their hideous experience being terminated by a therapist that perhaps could have been Anita (but thankfully wasn’t) as well as harm in therapy more generally, quickly morphed into the biggest fear about being rejected and abandoned and activated all the ‘old’ stuff from Em and Anita but most horribly the absolute terror that something bad would happen with Elle went nuclear. Well of course that would happen, wouldn’t it?

Usually, I am absolutely fine when people share their stories with me about difficult stuff happening in their therapies but, strangely, not in this particular instance. It’s weird, though, because at the same time someone else I have known a while from the blog contacted me about some issues they were experiencing in therapy that also really closely mirrored some things that have happened to me in the past and it’s had no detrimental impact at all. I have received the messages in the way I usually do and responded as I always have…

So, what’s gone wrong then?

I don’t know. I wonder if it’s because what’s happened with this other person has taken place in my city, and so it just makes the therapy world feel all the more unsafe here – I’ve had three therapists who haven’t been up to par, and now there’s another wreaking havoc…not that I ever hope to need to see any therapist but Elle ever again.

Maybe, and more likely, it’s that their experience around termination has so many similar threads to what happened with Em and Anita and so it’s just tapped into the wound more than usual. Like it’s uncanny.

I haven’t been very well lately (physically) either, and I suspect part of it is that my capacity is low. Like I am holding it together very tenuously with my rubber bands and chewing gum right now. It’s not being helped any by the fact that my hormones are really out of whack and so on top of the usual struggles I feel like my emotions are swinging wildly… don’t they say perimenopause is like a second puberty? God help me!

I have been in a really good place with Elle lately and my system has been leaning into the feelings of safety and trust in a way that it hasn’t in a very very long time. Like part of my system had stood down a little bit because maybe I don’t need protectors on duty ALL THE TIME. But then this interaction with this poor therapy client was a reminder, once again, that therapists and therapies that are long-term, deeply connected, supportive, affectionate, and say ‘all the right things’ blow the fuck up in next to no time and it can come almost out of nowhere.

The therapists that we think we know, whom we love deeply, and have trusted with our most vulnerable selves become someone else entirely, unrecognisable, almost overnight and they throw us out the moving vehicle and leave us for dead as they carry on up the road as if nothing happened. And not only that, it seems that it’s perfectly reasonable to disappear without a trace – or at the very fucking least, an onward referral to another therapist!

My total lack of coping and absolute breakdown this last week – looking at what I’ve just said – is due to lots of things all coming together all at the same time. I haven’t been able to think too deeply about it until now because the thinking part of my brain just hasn’t been available to me.

So, yeah, I have been really badly triggered and ended up very very dysregulated this week. Fortunately, I had told Elle about the emails I’d received because I could feel like I hadn’t quite been able to process them in the way that I might usually. I think Elle understood what a big deal it was, because last weekend she sent me a message to please look after myself because … it’s a lot. I assured her that I was totally fine. And in that moment that part of me was. Adult Me was ok. And Adult Me is usually the one that reads the emails and responds and that’s that.

But beneath the coping exterior of my adult self, all the alarm bells were ringing in my system. Essentially, my mini bus was on fire, I’d lost two tires from a blow out, the brakes had stopped working (I keep dreaming that I am driving my car at the moment and my brakes won’t work) and I was heading down a steep and slippery slope at speed in the dark and perhaps most worryingly of all – all the seat belts for the little parts of me had come unclipped. No one was strapped in and a big crash was imminent. This is not a good place to be in.

Part of me knew Elle was there and that we were ok because she kept contact with me a lot last week/weekend because she’s always been there when I have needed her to be – and yet by the time it got to Monday, no matter what I did I just could not ‘find’ or ‘feel’ Elle or believe that things weren’t about to go belly up in the most catastrophic of ways.

I almost cancelled my session on Tuesday last week. My body hurt so much. The anxiety in my stomach was physically painful and I was finding it hard to differentiate between anxiety and hunger. It was like everything in my brain and body was in a total malfunction. I couldn’t eat because I felt sick with anxiety, and then by about three in the afternoon my stomach would hit another level of pain…which I thought was just me getting more and more worked up but in actual fact was that I needed to eat. My system was buzzing with that horrible electrical feeling, too. I couldn’t sleep. I was having nightmares. It was rough.

Part of me wanted to send Elle a text on Tuesday morning to tell her where I was at so that I didn’t end up crashing and burning when I arrived. But a protector part, the one who was already fearing that I/we had teetered into the territory of being too much and that Elle was reaching saturation point decided that it would be a bad move to bombard her any further and the best course of action was to turn up and be ‘fine’ and mask my way through the session.

That part of me is a fucking idiot.

Like for goodness’ sake – don’t do that. Never do that! But it really shows how dysregulated I was. I could not draw on any sense that things were going to be ok – that Elle was ok, that I was ok, that together we were ok. It was just a huge fucking mess.

I can’t remember much about the session now – but I do remember how awful I felt almost the moment I sat down. I was terrified. Of course, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to connect with Elle, be very close to her, and to try and let her in so that I could be reassured that whilst bad stuff might happen out in the world and has happened in my therapies in the the past, in our world right now, there is nothing wrong and I am not about to be unexpectedly dealing with her dropping a termination on me.

The thing is asking for that kind of reassurance when I feel like things aren’t safe feels like a lot, because let’s face it, it is all the ‘crazy’ and it’s ‘hard work’. And I when I feel like this there is a part that doesn’t want to take up any space at all. I don’t want to be seen struggling or behaving weirdly. Tbh, in that moment, if I couldn’t find my way into Elle’s arms I just wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor and hide.

It was agony.

Elle and I always sit together on the sofa. We’re not even sat apart, like we are always physically touching in some way even if it’s just legs touching. I remember that Elle reached for my hand really early on, as she always does, and I pushed it away.

FFS.

Anytime she tried to give me a signal that she was there or it was safe I just retreated further and further into myself because it felt like I was behind glass and I couldn’t allow myself to get what I so badly needed because in that moment I felt so ashamed of having any need of her at all.

Elle asked me if I wanted a hug and I said no – actually I think I just shook my head and continued to stonewall her. Ugh. This is an absolute nightmare kind of a situation for me. Because I know, or part of me does, that if I say no to physical touch then Elle absolutely will honour that. And yet… it’s the very last thing I want. Like that protective part that is working so hard to stop me getting hurt actually is wreaking fucking havoc because my system is screaming for contact and co-regulation. Elle ‘staying away’ (although remember she was sitting right beside me and we were touching) feels like a rejection even though it’s me doing the rejecting. It’s unbelievably painful.

I was completely frozen and then I disappeared altogether. My brain went wild and served me up the most horrible trauma memory soup.

I know I sat in silence for a long time, which I think was probably hard for Elle to know what to do because sometimes I am quiet and there is nothing wrong at all, and then times like these are unbearable, but externally I look the same.

I have no idea how long I was silent for, because I was lost. I kept looping round to Four and she was absolutely distraught. I felt so disconnected that after lots of back and forth in my brain, I told Elle that I wanted to go home.

Ugh.

I didn’t want to go home.

But in that moment the painful feelings of disconnect felt too much to bear. I moved forward on the couch and sat on the edge with my head in my hands. Elle shuffled closer to me and put her arm on my back and told me that she really didn’t want me to leave and that she was there. I didn’t leave. I stayed rooted to the spot for a while but slowly I started to take in Elle’s presence… she’d been there all along…

After a while, Elle asked me to look at her, I think maybe I had let myself reach for her hand by that point, but I just couldn’t look at her. I was so fearful of seeing something disapproving, or angry, or cold…or you know, basically anything negative…that I couldn’t do it. Elle assured me that all I would see if met her gaze would be someone who loved me. But still, I couldn’t do it. There was something, too, about feeling like if I looked at her and she saw what was in my eyes then I’d be really seen and exposed and if she truly got a glimpse of what was going on inside me then that would be too much… and that felt … scary as fuck.

Eye contact in therapy, man!!

I was crying silently. I just felt so lost and sooooo fucking messy and embarrassed about being such a colossal wreck. I think I remember something about Elle saying that she knows trust is really really hard, and something about me being brave…

I can’t remember how I came out of that fucking awful place. Like there’s just a complete blank space where the memory of the session should be but I do know at some point I found my way back to Elle. I don’t think I said anything to her – who knows? But I do know that I ended up snuggled into her for a long time and that felt so much better. Like my system just calmed right down and I was able to tap into the fact that I am safe with Elle. Elle is not Em, or Anita, or Hannah, or anyone else’s dangerous and traumatising therapists – she is Elle…and we are ok.  

It felt so frustrating though – because Elle had been there all along and I just couldn’t let myself believe that she was there for me, or that she wanted to be there with that version of me. It’s a no-win situation – I fear being too much because I am too needy and need to feel so connected all the time but I also know that my shut down is really really hard to be around.

Even though things were fine by the end of the session – I felt so desperately sad when I left. Like, I beat myself up that I had wasted my chance for things to feel ok. When things feel hard in my everyday world – which they really do at the minute – therapy is the one place in the week that feels safe to me. It feels like a refuge. It’s the space where the armour can be removed and I can just be… and yet I just couldn’t do it last week. Instead I left feeling like my opportunity to catch my breath, be safe in the life raft if you will, wasn’t maximised and so leaving the space felt like I was back out at sea drowning without having resourced myself to be able to stay afloat.

I mean it wasn’t completely desperate because I didn’t leave the room dysregulated and upset … I never have with Elle which is really something when I think about how pretty much every session with Em left me feeling distraught and unseen, and how many times I have literally run out the room with Anita.

Elle asked me to text her and let her know I was ok later in the day and I refused!! Ffs. There was still that loud voice going on about not being too much and taking up too much time and space. When I got home, I was checking my phone, and she’d text me and asked me to let her know I was safe and said that she felt sad that I felt so alone.

This felt connecting and reminded me that it is actually ok to take up space, and to ask for support when things feel difficult. And because Elle had shown me that I wasn’t too much in her eyes, I felt brave enough to ask if we might be able to have an check in before our check in on Friday. We fixed something up for Thursday and knowing that was in the diary was sustaining enough to get through.

So,clearly, Tuesday wasn’t great at all…but I think it probably put things in quite sharp focus for both me and for Elle. It shone a spotlight on the deep wounds and although it wasn’t at all comfortable it probably was important that it happened. I guess, also, on a level, it must say something about trust I now have in Elle, because I let her see that completely broken version of me that I keep so hidden from the rest of the world. That part of me sometimes reaches out in email but doesn’t make it into the room in that way very often.

After our extra zoom check on Thursday, I sent an email to Elle (of course!)… she’d said she wanted to know what was going on with me on Tuesday and that when the words eventually came and I felt able to tell her I could send them if I wanted, or talk it through – whatever workes.

Thursday’s Zoom was … I dunno…ok…but not enough. It’s Zoom. And it’s fine… but it’s not the same as being in the room. And whilst I would rather have Zoom than no contact at all, I do need to find a way to get more of what I need from those contact points. I find it so hard to connect when I have needy child parts activated because they tend to go into hiding and then feel unseen and unattended to which is really difficult to manage.

So whilst it was nice to see Elle, it was also kind of traumatic because I couldn’t physically reach through the screen and touch her and that’s what the little parts of me really need. Whenever I see Elle on screen there’s always some really young stuff that wants to come out but it feels sooooo embarrassing. Like I want to say, “I wish I could hold your hand” or “I wish there was a way of having a cuddle today” or “I miss you” or “I love you such a lot” or “do you want to see my teddy?”… I don’t think I could ever say all that on a zoom call. It’s much easier in an email…and sometimes if I take a running jump at it I can say some of that in person but mostly Elle will tell me she loves me as we end the call, and sometimes I will say it back but more often than not I just disconnect the call like I am too cool for school and then cry.

Elle asked if I wanted to still see her on Friday seeing as we were talking on Thursday. I said I didn’t know. Ugh. Once again, that part of me that doesn’t want to be seen as too demanding and needy was fronting but later on in the call Elle said that she would be in the office on Friday if I did decide I wanted to see her. Of course I wanted to see her but I didn’t say anything at the time.

Anyway, after the call on Thursday some words came but I was so filled with anxiety and embarrassment at the time that I couldn’t even proof-read the email, I just sent it. Here’s what I sent:

The words aren’t wording because Brian is fried…and I don’t want to read this over as I feel sick.

Can I come in tomorrow? – and bring drinks.

For the record I will always want to see you in person when I can. I don’t know why I feel like I disappear on zoom, because I don’t feel like that when I am at work at all… and you’d think having teenagers staring at me all day I would feel super self-conscious and want to shrink away and I just don’t. I guess maybe it’s something about knowing that I am good at what I do and I am really good at building relationships with my students…but teacher me is brave and knows stuff and knows what other people need…I think part of me hides when I see you and then I just feel really like I can’t really find you and that feels horrible – sometimes, at least.

Everything feels really disastrous right now and I feel like I am tumbling down in a big hole. I have to hope that at least some of this has to be down to my body giving up on me recently because if that can’t be 50% of the reason then I might as well give up because I am so sick of this cycle and spiral.

I think some of it has to have been triggered by those emails the other week but actually that stuff is always there to an extent anyway shoved into the back of a cupboard with the door wedged closed and me leaning my full body weight against the door so it doesn’t ping open unexpectedly. Only it has.

It’s a bit like that scene in Friends where Chandler discovers Monica’s cupboard and it’s completely full of shit and she’s horrified because everyone thought she was a neat freak and had everything under control and she doesn’t. I mean I’m not pretending the cupboard isn’t full of shit, or that it doesn’t exist… I just can do without everything piling out all at once when I have to actually function.

Tuesday was really awful…well, you know, you were there. It felt like I was cycling through so many memories or feelings where I have felt alone, or abandoned, or disregarded and it’s awful because it’s not like getting wedged in one awful thing from one time, it’s like a video montage. And the scary thing was, after a period of time my brain just couldn’t cope with it anymore and took me off to the cliffs. I find that really scary because there have been loads of times when things have felt really shit (I used to imagine driving my car into a wall when I’d just passed my driving test just to make it all stop) but generally speaking I have enough of a sense that things won’t feel terrible forever and that I should just go and hide in my bed and be safe that way even if it feels unbearable – I don’t have any thoughts about actually ending it all. And I really don’t want one of my favourite places in the world to escape to now feel like it’s almost dangerous.

I know I have been feeling burnt out and exhausted and all the day-to-day life stuff for a while and I think my capacity for holding the cupboard door closed has reached an all-time low – like maybe the thing has just come off its hinges this week.

And I don’t want to shut down or push you away but at the same time that whole thing about being too much/not enough is massive. I feel like I am just being really negative and boring and it’s just really crap because no one wants to be around that. And not connecting with you makes it feel a million times worse but the fear of being seen and then being sent away is real…and that’s what’s happened. I want to trust that it wouldn’t…but it’s hard to believe it. And then I just feel really pathetic and needy.

Then to top it all off there’s the crippling feeling of shame and embarrassment because by now I feel like I should do so much better than I do and not get side-swiped. But it’s like all the alarms go off all at once and I can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess maybe try and tell you…which is fine if there are words and I am half way present but impossible if I am stuck somewhere else entirely. I feel like I need a human version of a retractable dog lead so that when I disappear and feel lost I know that I’m not really. It’s a bit like the story with the invisible string… only that now makes me feel sick.

I love you x

Elle replied with a really holding message and asked me if I would like to do an hour long session instead of the thirty minutes – yep!

So, Friday felt way better. I wasn’t a complete fruit loop. I felt connected to Elle. In the week, I’d bought her a novelty gift based on something that has happened recently and she too had bought me something funny. It felt really nice to feel like all the anxiety and stuff from outside the room was left outside the room and we could just connect as we do. I could lean into the feeling of safety without then being triggered into, “this won’t last, you can’t trust it”. I so needed that.

I am really aware of that pattern lately, though. I can feel so safe and so connected and so calm and then all of a sudden, I feel like the wind changes inside me for no reason at all, and I feel massively anxious and triggered even though ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS HAPPENED OR CHANGED. It’s almost like my system wakes up and goes, “What the fuck is happening here? What is this feeling? This isn’t familiar – it must be dangerous!”

I think it’s going to take a while for my nervous system to see that safety can be trusted and that being exposed/vulnerable doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is imminently about to happen and that I need to get my shit together and brace for impact.

I think this experience is pretty common for those of us that have experienced trauma, especially attachment trauma whenever we start to experience a felt sense of safety after a lifetime of being unsafe. Until now our entire being has been constructed around adapting to others and the risk they pose to our safety- emotional or physical or both. So of course, sometimes the unknown- feeling safe, held, contained – feels really dangerous because all we’ve ever known is fear, or anxiety, or shame, or disconnect. We have no internal shelf to house safety…so it doesn’t belong.

And because of this, oddly sometimes feeling unsafe feels safer than actual safety because at least it’s familiar. We know it. We have entire rooms dedicated to the different ways we can experience and know lack of safety. It’s like an exquisitely curated library. We have strategies we are able employ to work with being unsafe and we know which shelf each one is on. We know to make ourselves small. We know to shut down. We are excellent at dissociation. We know how to people please and fawn. We know how to overextend ourselves. We know how to pretend we are fine…and on and on…And whilst this all feels pretty horrible, we know that we are protected – to an extent.

I’ll admit it, I feel a bit like I am fumbling around in the dark when I feel still, and safe, and content with Elle. Like what am I meant to do with that? Just enjoy it and be in the moment?! I guess, what I would like to do is build another room in my library dedicated to being safe rather than being unsafe and begin to fill it with all the different ways I know that I am safe – or safe with Elle at least.

I might start that catalogue this week, actually…and if I am brave maybe share it with her!

Anyway, this is enormous and I actually haven’t really delved quite into where I wanted to go – but this has been languishing in my laptop most of the weekend and if I don’t get it posted it will just wither in the depths for another few weeks.

xxx

I’m Still Here And ‘HARM IN THERAPY’ revisited.

rubberbandsandchewinggum22 Comments

Well, in case anyone is wondering, I’m still alive, folks… just about! It’s been months since I last posted anything here. I have been in a total freeze where life and writing is concerned. There’s been lots of times I have wanted to blog but I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even turn the laptop on, let alone start tapping at the keys or come up with anything on the page. I don’t know why exactly, because there’s so much I could have documented – I just couldn’t physically do it.

I have told myself today that I just need to write something, anything, it doesn’t need to be any ‘good’ – I just need to break the back of this horrendous block that I am experiencing. Like I said, the craziest thing is, there is loads to write about – some great and some not so great – but stuff that definitely needs to be here:

  • Elle and I had our two-year therapy-versary back in August and that was really special
  •  We had the summer therapy break (groan) but Elle absolutely nailed it this year by writing me a letter to open during the break and recording a massive eight hour long story for me to listen to whilst she was gone
  • There’ve been a few little bumps in the road (a forgotten/mistimed phone check in) but largely it’s been really good in the room with Elle – and out of it
  • Sex dreams with Elle… god help me!
  • My life has been rough going – body is not behaving- but it’s getting dealt with
  • I managed to lose Monty Mouse the transitional object that Elle gave me last year and basically lost the plot last week

Like there’s plenty I could be writing about and there’s probably heaps I have forgotten about now too… but I just haven’t been able to do anything here or actually in my life if I am honest. I will get to it though. I need to get back into processing like this because it’s such a helpful outlet for me…when I am not frozen!

I experience the freeze response such a lot these days and spend so much of my time trying to circumnavigate my complete inability to function in my free time. Like I am literally shouting at myself to get my shit together and yet I just cannot move. I feel completely burnt out and anxious almost all the time – and even the summer holidays haven’t helped.

The only thing that is at least a part positive is I can generally turn it on for when I need to work… but my own ‘free time’ is a shit show. I waste hours doing nothing. Stuck. Knowing I have stuff to do and yet am completely unable to do anything is so infuriating. When I am like this I don’t think,“Ah well, fuck it, I’ll just give myself permission to do nothing and rest today” instead I feel like the weight of everything is sat on my shoulders and chest and I continue to beat myself up.

Until reasonably recently, I have always been able to keep on top of things at any cost (and there is a cost!). I am used to running on empty and powering on through. I know I need to do the laundry, clean the house, get the ironing done, go to the supermarket, sort out life admin all around actually doing my job…and I just can’t. It’s just fortunate, I guess, that I also have days where I am totally ‘on it’ and just go all out for four or five hours and clear the decks…but it’s all exhausting.

I want to be able to switch off properly, power down and rest. But my system just cannot do it. I think for so long I have had my self-worth tied to the idea of productivity and serving others that it is taking quite a lot to move out of that place. Like my conscious brain is wanting to do the self-care, give myself space and time, allow myself to be human rather than trying and failing to be superhuman … but my system hasn’t got the memo yet.

The only saving grace is that at least some of this (exhaustion, anxiety, brain fog etc) might actually be down to/exacerbated by the fact that my blood chemistry is a bit out and not simply perimenopause and trauma. I found out this week that I am deficient in some areas after going to the GP and getting some tests done. I am hoping that the supplements I have to take will see me bounce back to a more normal state … even if my normal is still a bit whacky! I can’t spend my whole life stuck in a freeze, that’s for sure!!

Anyway – that’s a load of unnecessary preamble… it’s just an explanation of where I have been – if anyone has even noticed I’ve been AWOL. Tbh, I feel like blogs have died these days. Very very few people that I have followed here for years write at all anymore. I miss them and often wonder how they are getting on having been lucky enough to witness parts of their journey. I sincerely hope that life has worked out and they are happy and have no need to write because things are so great, now. But I wonder, too, if like me, people just don’t have time/capacity to post anymore especially when it feels like you’re sending your deepest most vulnerable self out into what can feel like an echo chamber.

I do wonder a bit, too, if the death of blogs is about the way social media works these days and how we consume it.  We need to be grabbed in seconds and have about a ten second window of attention before we scroll on by.  I know that I get a lot more engagement with my mini-posts about Monty over on Instagram and it takes next to no effort or time to keep his page active. Maybe long written posts just aren’t what people want to read anymore –  or perhaps we read them but don’t engage/comment. My stats would suggest this page still gets tonnes of traffic… so who knows?

https://www.instagram.com/montys_awesome_adventures?igsh=YWdyaWQzanhnM2U%3D&utm_source=qr

I guess the place I have always come back round to, is that first and foremost this blog is for me. It is a place for me to put my stuff and have a record of what’s gone on in my therapy and mess of a life. And so, it really doesn’t matter if I blog weekly, monthly, or only occasionally…it’s always here for me. And if it helps anybody else along the way to feel less alone, or get an insight into what therapy can/should/shouldn’t look like then that’s really great.

Like I said, I am definitely going to spend some time and write separate posts about the lovely things that Elle and have done this summer to celebrate our relationship and remain connected but today I want to double back round to something that has come back round to front and centre again for me this week and that is HARM IN THERAPY… and it’s taken me a thousand words to get here – that ten second window has most definitely expired for piquing anyone’s interest. Lol.

Still – fuck it- I’m here so I am going to say it once again:

It never ceases to amaze me what a fucking shit show the profession of counselling and psychotherapy actually is, and the absolute carnage and devastation that therapists leave in their wake after enacting the most heinous gaslighting bullshit on their most vulnerable clients…there should be some serious consequences for that!

It’s almost unbelievable (yet also not unbelievable at all, sadly) what I hear from people who reach out to me when they have come across my blog. So often it seems that having read my account of what’s happened to me over the years they at least feel like they are not alone in experiencing the utter devastation and grief that comes with being unceremoniously, and often unexpectedly, terminated by a therapist who has promised to be in it for the long haul, “no matter what”.

I wish it wasn’t the case. I wish that my experiences with damaging therapists were isolated, that I was just unlucky, or that what’s happened happened because it’s fundamentally a ‘me problem’ and that’s why things have gone wrong with those whom I have invested time and energy and love into to try and help me.

But no.

It’s not just me.

I’ve met so many lovely, yet wounded clients that have been basically left for dead in callous hit and run jobs via this blog. And every single time I get an email about a rogue therapist it actually breaks my heart a bit. I hate that we, as clients, go and seek out therapy for wounds that are already incredibly painful and are then made a million times worse in the therapy.

There’s a reason the wounded child parts of us went into hiding when we were kids, why we shelved our needs, why we overcompensated, why we were so compliant, why we suffer with eating disorders and addiction…we’ve tried to adapt and morph ourselves into something that allows us to survive what in reality is unsurvivable unless we severely contort ourselves and armour up and DISSOCIATE THE SHIT OUT OF OUR LIVES. Attachment is key to our existence as kids and we will do whatever we can to preserve even the worst kind of connection to our caregivers- even if it comes at the expense of our soul.

Therapists know this, or at least, therapists SHOULD know this.

Relational trauma is serious shit… you can’t just wing it and hope for the best as a therapist. It’s not good enough to be well-meaning and think that just being warm and compassionate will be enough.

I mean you’d think that was self-evident. So why does I find my inbox peppered with heartbreak time and again year on year? Why on earth are people still getting so badly hurt and harmed in therapy? Why, when these therapists actually say they are trauma informed, specialise in complex trauma, and even work with an IFS leaning do they fuck it up, fuck us up? Why do they not learn from their mistakes?

Sometimes it really feels like it’s the clients that are the sane ones and the therapists that are completely screwed up.

I do wonder, though, how many people go into training as therapists unconsciously looking to heal their own wounds?

I’m not against the concept of a wounded healer at all. In fact, I think sometimes it’s really helpful when a therapist has a lived experience of some of what their clients are going through — but if this is the case it is absolutely essential that therapists are VERY AWARE OF THEIR OWN SHIT, UNDERTAKE THEIR OWN THERAPY, SEEK OUT PLENTY OF SUPERVISION where they tell the fucking truth to their supervisors, and most importantly don’t start unconsciously working out their own shit in their client’s therapy.

We are not there to be their relational guinea pigs. We are not there for them to enact their fucking rescuer complexes… and when we trigger their own wounded child and disgruntled teen and all the other parts, we sure as shit are not there to bear the brunt of their anger, their frustration, their unacknowledged inadequacies, and god knows what else! But it happens all the time.

It is so incredibly traumatising – or retraumatising – to the client when therapy goes wrong. My biggest fear about myself is that I am ultimately “too much” and “not enough” to be loved by anyone. And my therapies with Em and Anita did an epic job of driving that message home. Rather than rewriting the narrative they wrote it in permanent ink – tattooed it into my skin. I can’t just scrub it off. It feels like the core messaging has been backed up time and again.

So what do I do after every rejection and abandonment yet still crazy enough to believe that therapy can help me if only I find the right person to work with?

I go to therapy armoured up. My system watches carefully to see whether a therapist seems safe or not. It’s very hard to bypass my protectors. But steady work, and reassurance that I am cared for, that I matter, that this time I am not going to be left or punished simply for having needs means that I will eventually remove my armour…and be completely vulnerable. And be needy. And let’s be clear, I have a lot of unmet needs from childhood…and life, tbh. And for a long time that’s no problem… until one day it is.

It’s always when a therapist is burning out in their own life that I start to trigger them. What used to evoke compassion and care now provokes scorn and the need to distance and self-protect. Anita said that her own inner child was struggling and she couldn’t deal with mine. That’s not my fault. It’s hers for not getting into therapy and attending to her own inner child. She ignored her wounding and then bled out all over me. It was me that bore the brunt of her failure to look after herself.

It was slightly different with Em. I don’t think she ever really liked me much. But I am certain my very active and vocal (in email!) system triggered the shit out of her. I became so aware of my parts and how they operated that I think it freaked her out. I truly believe that she hadn’t done enough work on herself and my need of her scared the shit out of her. I think she spent her working life in False Adult or Acting Professional Adult but underneath was a whole heap of exiled young parts.

I think what spooked her more than anything wasn’t my ‘tick like’ need for her and the attachment – we’d been working on that for years. It was my suddenly feeling brave enough to bring my anger and dissatisfaction to her. It was when I started to challenge what was going on in the therapy that she found an entirely new level of cold and distance – despite telling me it was safe to bring my anger for years and that there was nothing I could do that would make her end the therapy aside from physical violence…which would never ever happen.

But what happened when I got justifiably angry but in my very measured and clear way? What happened when I really started to advocate for myself? Withdrawal of already (lukewarm) warmth as a punishment…followed shortly after by a character assassination and termination.

It’s all here on the blog. It’s not new news. All I am saying is, this stuff shouldn’t happen. And it does. Time and again.

The reason I am writing today is actually because someone reached out to me this weekend who is going through the wringer right now and it’s made me angry. I am mad that yet another vulnerable person is suffering at the hands of professional who thinks it’s fine to wash their hands clean of them when the going gets tough.

This person had read enough of my blog to consider it possible that their therapist might actually be Anita because there were so many similarities in what had just happened to them and what happened to me and it seemed we are in the same area of the country.

I can’t lie, part of me felt sick at the idea that Anita might still be working with someone with complex trauma after her swearing blind that she no longer did that sort of work, and the idea that she’d possibly let me go and kept this person on, felt sickening. But, of course, it wasn’t Anita. It was another fucking rogue bastard ‘therapist’ in my city behaving in a completely terrible way and leaving their client in a state.

Like me this client had already experienced harm in therapy before and so it is even more galling that the current therapist is reenacting the same old stuff.

How on earth does this keep on happening?

I think part of it is that the world of therapy is so closed doors. Who really knows what happens in these rooms unless we say something? Most people go to therapy and trust that the person sitting opposite them knows what they are doing. Most people see that these therapists belong to a professional body and therefore, surely, that means it’s safe enough.

Only it’s not.

So often it’s not.

Because what happens when things go wrong? Most of us just leave with our tail between our legs and go off into a dark corner to lick our wounds. I have never made formal complaints about either Em or Anita…and maybe I should have. Therapists have told me I would have a very strong case against them both. But I have zero faith in the system and governing bodies to act appropriately when faced with the evidence.

I know that Em and Anita would do everything in their power to save their skins rather than take any kind of accountability for what they did to me. And not only that, in those attempts to protect themselves they would have thrown me under the bus, labelled me, blamed me, shamed me, and I know I would not have survived that.

It seems to me that unless a therapist has crossed a sexual boundary everything else is garners a little slap on the wrist and some advice to seek out more training and supervision for the therapist – especially if they say they were ‘stressed’ or ‘burnt out’. There is nothing in it for the client…and let’s be real here, even when we have been hurt really badly we don’t suddenly stop loving these people. We don’t want to hurt them…we just want them to say sorry and admit that maybe they fucked up but it wasn’t because they didn’t love us. But they’d never utter the ‘L’ word again and I think that would hurt us such a lot.

So instead, we try and navigate being suddenly cast adrift. We are terrified, traumatised, triggered. Panic floods our systems. We are left without any support at all – there is no safety net. The grief is unreal. It feels like a bereavement… it’s not even funny.

Even now, five years on I still feel sick when I think about Em. I was in therapy this week, not feeling very well, and suddenly I dissociated when I thought about how neither Em or Anita cared enough to stay despite knowing my history – both emotional and physical. It was too much to cope with and my brain vacated the space. Elle was sitting right beside me but I couldn’t feel her. It was awful.

I am not completely overcome by this stuff all the time – thank god. Time is a great healer -or at least gives a bit of distance. But I am not free of it either. I know the pain of what has happened to me in my therapies will never completely go away. It feels to me like shrapnel in my body. I am always trying to move in a way that prevents me from feeling the pain of the sharp waste inside me. Mostly I am successful at it. But not always.

This week, for the first time in a long time I longed for Anita. I wanted to hear her voice, be in her presence, and have her hold me in the way she used to. I know that version of Anita is long gone and another part of me would never want to see her again. But there are parts that still miss her. There are parts that miss Em and wish there was a way of at least getting closure if nothing else. I think that’s the hardest part in lots of ways – having to pick up the pieces and try and make sense of it when the other party refuses to.

So yeah, I get it when these emails hit my inbox. I will never not be moved by someone’s story. I will never not feel sad when I see the same promises that were made to me being broken. I will never not be able to relate to the absolute devastation that this sort of ending causes. I feel it in my body every time I read it. I am just so sorry that so many people are still getting harmed in therapy. We deserve so much better. We have always deserved so much better.

x

A Special Picnic And Almost Two Years With Elle.

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

It’s two years this coming week since I walked into Elle’s therapy room completely broken and in pieces, vowing that I would never again allow myself to get close to, or attached to, a therapist. I promised myself that this time, I had one simple focus: I would go in and work through the damage done by Anita (and maybe the others) and get the hell out! Bugger the rest of the trauma – I’d lived with it for my whole life and I’d manage on my own.  

Yeah, that really worked, didn’t it?!

Elle and I have come such a long way since that warm day back in August 2023, where I think I turned up in one of my homemade tie dye t-shirts (don’t judge!) and basically talked at her for well over an hour basically giving a high-speed but potted version of ‘all the things’ and praying that whatever I said wasn’t going to be ‘too much’. I remember emailing Elle after that first session and basically apologising for the splurge and telling her I hoped that I wasn’t too much… which is really sad when I think about it – but shows the damage that’s been done in previous therapies…as well as by my mum growing up.

I couldn’t have imagined back then that we’d be where we are now, and I know that could never have happened if I hadn’t have felt safe (enough) with Elle. My runners are so quick out the blocks these days that they’d give Usain Bolt a run for his money! But because it’s been such slow, steady, safe work and our relationship has been constructed so carefully and with consideration my runners never get too far down the track with Elle – it’s almost like there’s an invisible elastic bungee tied to my ankles and it pings me back to her.

I feel like in the last couple of years we’ve built solid foundations and that even when things feel stormy and rough, we can weather whatever comes our way TOGETHER…which I guess is the idea of it all!

I have absolutely no doubt that Elle is holding my hand no matter what (even on days like today when a lot of my system is in a total all out panic about a call we had this morning –  I was in a FREEZE and barely spoke). I am hanging on tightly to what I know to be true: Elle cares no matter who shows up, or doesn’t show up.

All the steady months (and years!) of work and reassurance is finally starting to bed in. I think I might finally be getting to a place where I am able to see Elle for her – rather than worry about everyone who has come before her and then believing she’ll repeat their patterns on me. Maybe, just maybe, we are rewriting the script a bit. Or some of my system is seeing things a little differently and it’s tipping the balance in a more positive direction. Actually it’s a lot like trying to coil a spring in the opposite direction. We are doing a good job of it – but occasionally it pings back. Like today, the panic is there- but I know it won’t last for weeks on end…maybe the weekend, or just today (please let it be this!), and sometimes it’s just a few hours.

I think part of the reason things are as strong as they are is because I have a voice that I am not afraid to use now (says the girl who was basically mute in our check-in today! – go figure)…or, if I am afraid, I say it anyway! Being a veteran therapy-goer who’s been through the wringer a fair few times, I know what I want and need now, and I ask for it…I suppose I keep showing up with the map, and the emails, and with my armour off and Elle pays attention to what I am saying.

Elle really listens. And the more I am prepared to share with her the stronger our bond and her understanding of me becomes. She actively invites me to tell her what I need – no shame…and even today’s silence and freeze WAS TELLING HER something is up, because I wasn’t masking or pretending. False Adult wasn’t there… instead, a hurting part of me was, and she may not have a voice but she was on the call at least.

Of course, I’ve still got a bloody long way to go. I feel like we’re four miles into a marathon and so sometimes my old friends Shame and Embarrassment show up at the side of the road to ‘cheer me on’ in the only way they know how (throwing things at me and trying to take my legs out from underneath me) and then a little further along the road Fear Of Abandonment and Rejection turn up and tell me that I am “shit at running and should go home now” but I recognise this is old programming and whilst these protective parts might slow me up, they don’t stop me altogether.

I one hundred percent know Elle can handle what I bring to her and I one million percent have faith that she isn’t going to tap out on me when the going gets tough. Elle sits beside/with me with a softness and care that comes out of her in waves. She doesn’t flinch. Like she’s a pro at unconditional positive regard…or shall we just call it love? I feel better when I am with her…and even if I start off rough, by the time we end I’m in a way better than I was.

But Elle thinks outside the box too…and this really appeals to me. She isn’t rigid and boundaries for boundaries’ sake. After so many years of rigid therapy with Em it’s nice to feel like our relationship and how we work together has a bit of an organic quality to it. It’s different to how things were with Anita, too.

It was recently coming up to the anniversary of my dad’s death which is always a rotten time for me. Elle had suggested a few weeks before that we could have two sessions that week and that maybe we could do something nice to put a different association on the day, make something beautiful out of something heavy. This sounded really lovely to me – and it felt so nice that Elle was looking ahead and thinking about what kind of support I might need rather than just letting a hard time pass by in the usual run of things.

When she mentioned booking the additional session I’d literally just told her about a dream I had had with her in (not a nice one), and she said that she too had dreamt about me that same week but that hers was really lovely dream – because we’d had a picnic together in the room with tiny cucumber sandwiches that I had brought in…and then she said, “I think that would be a really lovely thing to do – let’s have a picnic on the day you come in for the extra session”.

So that’s what we did.

On that hard Monday (I’d cried a lot in the morning – floodgates had opened), we both came in loaded with food, drink, and treats. Elle had brought a proper picnic hamper with her and a picnic blanket and we laid it out on the floor of the therapy room and ate and chatted and laughed. I’d made a YouTube playlist the weekend before, and we played it in the background. And honestly it was just so lovely.

We had a serious feast…much better than the one in the picture!

Elle brought in little ham sandwiches and some cucumber sandwiches (because of the dream she’d had!). We had ginger beer (just like the Famous Five), chocolate, fruit, crisps, dips, homegrown tomatoes from Elle’s garden, Belgian buns (although we were too full to eat those and saved them for the session the next day). Elle even brought me in a can of cherry coke because she knows it’s my absolute favourite. But perhaps most special was that she brought me in sausages and cheese on cocktail sticks. I had said that it was a happy memory from when I was small, and so she brought it to life.

Do you know what that feels like? To be held in the details? To be seen and held with so much care that someone brings your fleeting moments of childhood joy into the present? In that moment time folds in half and you get to be little and loved as well as seen and cared for in the here and now.

It’s everything.

And after years of an eating disorder to actually sit in the therapy room and not be at all self-conscious about eating… HUGE!

I could cry writing this because I can just deeply feel and see the love and I feel like my heart could burst – and so often I lose sight of it when my system goes into freefall (like this morning) when I feel like I am simultaneously too much and not enough and on the verge of overwhelming Elle.

There would be some therapists (Em for one) who would have an absolute meltdown at the idea of what Elle and I did on that lovely Monday afternoon sitting on a picnic rug spitting our cherry pips into a flask and genuinely just having a really nice time together…but in negatively judging, they would neglect to see that Elle and I connecting in a real way, opened up a safe enough space for me to finally be able to open and read some letters from my dad that I haven’t been able to look at in the seventeen years since he died.

With Elle by my side, I felt safe enough to dip into that pain and that is enormous. This particular anniversary is so full of grief and yet I was able to access my grief in a far more helpful way than ever before. I wasn’t drowning in it – because Elle had a life vest for me. She held my hand and stopped me from sinking and as a result I feel like something has metabolised this year. Like I have moved something on that has been stuck for nearly twenty years.

So, tell me how that is a problem, or bad practice? It’s not. It’s meeting a client where they are at and creating the kind of space that is needed for the healing to be done.

There are so many therapists who get bent out of shape even at the idea of a client bringing in their own drink for their session, and aren’t sure whether to have a box of tissues to hand, or you know have strong opinions on moving a chair…so let’s not even go there with between session contact and physical touch!

Yet I can say some of the most connecting moments with Elle have been when we’ve been sitting next to each other and had drinks, or biscuits, or played roulette with jellybeans creating some really weird combos, or recently when we totally overloaded on sugar from some seriously dense cakes from a local shop and neither of us were able to eat for the rest of the day. Or the other day when we tried out the new M&S strawberries and cream sandwich (not a fan!). Like all these little moments work on so many layers of my system.

There’s something really human in those moments. It’s connecting when I bring a coffee from the shop round the corner and it’s fucking terrible. We each taste it and agree it’s a flop. Or recently we were wincing at a crazy bitter lemonade. It’s been north of 30 degrees Celsius here lately and the UK just doesn’t even attempt to do air con – so bringing in cold drinks to share has been a hydration thing…but it’s also therapeutic for me!

Relational wounds need healing in safe relationships and Elle has created an environment with me that allows me to be and do exactly what I want or need in the moment. Sometimes that’s really deep soul and heart work, and sometimes it’s being silly and childish. Sometimes it’s food and drinks. Sometimes it’s playdoh. Sometimes it’s stories. Sometimes it’s saying nothing at all and having a long hug and nearly (or actually) falling asleep. Other times it’s me chewing her ear off for the whole ninety minutes – but whatever it is and however I come to the room, I am very much welcome.

But it’s not just what happens in the room that makes a difference – it’s what happens throughout the week. I can email Elle or text her if I want. I can ask for a check in. I can ask for transitional objects – and Monty has had a really fun year over on Insta since he came to live with me.

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

And all of that is ok. I am learning that Elle is open to hearing whatever I think might help me – and will always give what I say proper consideration…unlike Em who was a hard “No” on almost everything I suggested…and we all know how the pebble transitional object bombed… six months of hoping and believing she was going to finally give me something close to what I needed…ha. So disappointing.

Turns out that so far, I am pretty good at not stepping over lines and invisible boundaries. Of course, I don’t ring her or turn up out the blue – or whatever it is that therapists seem to panic about happening with clients with complex trauma…because as much I have a lot of trauma, and as much as my inner children are in a state, I do also have an adult self who operates in the world fairly successfully and I know what is and isn’t ok. Of course, I would like to be able to spend more time with Elle. I would love to not be ‘on the clock’ and just spend a day with her where I wasn’t aware of having to squeeze everything into ninety minutes but the only way that would ever happen is if we decided for that to happen.

It makes me laugh, really. I remember when I was working with Em how I would trawl the internet searching and trying to find evidence of what was acceptable or possible in therapy because I felt like my therapy was just … not meeting me where I needed – and more often than not I felt that what I came across was a highly defended, almost paranoid approach to therapy by therapists.

Clients were so often pathologised and infantilised – it was as though if you gave a client an inch, they’d take a mile and the next thing you know you’d be needing a restraining order. It’s total bullshit. To be honest, the longer I have been online blogging and communicating with people in therapy, the real danger seems to be the therapists and not the clients!! #harmintherapy

I know counselling and therapy is all about processing and thinking – but sometimes I feel like therapists get caught in a trap of overthinking a situation and lose sight of the fact that therapy is really just about two people having a relational experience together. Of course, there are boundaries and rules to how it works but it doesn’t need to cold and sterile. If I wanted a sterile experience, I would type my woes into ChatGPT and let it be my therapist for free…or you know, have a relationship with my mother.

Fortunately, there are some therapists who are human and discuss how they work online – and of course clients who write and give a window into their therapy. I guess, what I would say is there isn’t a one size fits all approach and each therapy needs to be co-created between the therapist and client. It should be a collaborative experience, not a place where the client is powerless and ‘done to’. There will always be a power imbalance, but it doesn’t need to be a central tenet of the work. For those of us who had no power or control as children that sort of therapy doesn’t help at all.

I stayed with Em for all those years because how she made me feel was familiar… it wasn’t healing. I gained a lot of insight, for sure…but that came from all the suffering. Ugh.

The thing I love so much about therapy with Elle is that there is space for all the parts of me. The littles who cling and ache and need. The teenage part who hides behind eye rolls and survival. The adult who tries to keep it all tidy but is tired. They all get to show up. They all get to belong. They are all loved.

I am loved – just as I am.

I don’t have to shrink myself into something that I think makes me ‘manageable’ or ‘palatable’ anymore – both literally and metaphorically. I don’t have to apologise for being messy or needy or too much. I can just ‘be’. Although, of course I do sometimes reach out and apologise for being all of the above – but not because I think Elle wants me to. In fact she would say there is never any need to apologise for how I am.

I love Elle and that terrifies me sometimes. When I feel vulnerable and small, sometimes the fear of losing her is too much to bear. Sometimes I carry it around in my chest like a second heartbeat that almost drowns out my own. But I don’t doubt her care for me. I see her gentle, thoughtful love EVERYWHERE. It’s in her remembering, in her words, in the way she sits with me instead of away from me. It’s in the sausages on sticks. It’s stories. It’s in the way she meets me wherever I am and says yes, this too can come in. It’s in the way she holds me – physically and emotionally.

It’s our two-year anniversary this week and do you know what was really lovely? Last session she asked me, “So, are we celebrating our two-year anniversary next week?” and I replied that we were. She said, “Good, because I’ve made something!” So I’m intrigued about that, but also touched – because yet again Elle is showing me in the most certain of terms that what we are doing together matters.

x

And I’ll leave this on one of my favourite Andrea Gibson quotes:

Some Real (Unfiltered!) Therapist Testimonials

rubberbandsandchewinggum23 Comments

Have you ever wished there was a space where you could see the real experiences that other clients have had with your next/potential therapist rather than relying solely on unverified ‘glowing’ testimonials that therapists place on their own websites to help you decide whether they’re the ‘one’?

Shopping for a new therapist isn’t easy. You can do all the due diligence in the world: research, ask questions about their practice, their modality, how they view the therapeutic relationship etc… but you’re rarely going to get a therapist admit to their previous mistakes, difficulties, or lack of competence in the early days (although it would be really great if they did!!).

Not very many therapists open themselves to Google reviews (unsurprisingly!) as they have no control over what’s posted and it’s almost impossible to get a Google review removed. The thing is, you’d think on balance if these ‘professionals’ are even half of what they promote themselves to be online then their ratings would even out over time. The odd unfavourable review pitted against a stream (tsunami) of gushing five star ones wouldn’t be enough to paint a wholly negative picture would it?

There surely can’t be all that many of us out there that have been so harmed in therapy that we want to give our honest zero star reviews and warn other clients off can there?

I think we know the answer to this question 😆.

So, given that ‘Trust Pilot For Therapists’ doesn’t actually exist, we’re left with no option but to try and trust and put faith in what we see online. Most unwitting clients take therapists at face value from the glossy bios on the BACP website, or other therapy advertising page, or a therapist’s own personal website (cue soft lighting, benevolent smile, a nice cardigan, or some outdoor woodland scene) and the likelihood of us ever finding out what might have happened in the past that might be – how shall I put it? – less than optimal remains concealed in the shadows.

I think it’s tricky, too, when we do take steps to book a session and go and meet someone new because although we might get a ‘gut feeling’ about someone from the off it can take a while to get a sense of whether someone might be a good fit or not. This is especially the case if we’ve been hurt in therapy before. Our antennas are looking for it feeling ‘wrong’ but there’s also a part where we think we should override doubts because it’s probably our defences.

Meeting with Elle for first time was hard. I’d just come out the long-term therapeutic relationship with Anita and then done eight sessions with Hannah that crashed and burned. Therapy wasn’t ever going to feel safe and part of me hated Elle because she wasn’t Anita and she didn’t know me.

Still. We made it through to where we are now- almost two years in.

Last night I decided I’d write my own therapist reviews for some of the ex-therapists I’ve had and let my claws out – it was more Wolverine than cute kitty. Can’t see these ever making it onto their testimonial pages, can you?!!

Enjoy. 😉

P.S – If anyone feels like they’d like to write their own (positive or negative) and ping them into the comments, I’d love to see them! You’ve got to laugh otherwise you’d cry…and man, I’m all too familiar with the crying.

*

EM:

As a highly trained and experienced clinical psychologist, I had high hopes for my therapy with Em. She said she specialised in trauma as well as many other of my presenting issues. It turned out that Em is frightened of entering into relationship with her clients and thinks that any move on the client’s part to try and discuss the therapeutic relationship or feelings that arise in the relationship is getting away from the therapy and is in fact ‘pushing the boundaries’. Em is unwilling to meet the client where they are at and operates from a one size fits all model (although she would call herself ‘integrative’). As a therapist, Em says that she is able to handle all the feelings a client might feel and welcomes them – only I wouldn’t recommend expressions of love or anger should you enter into therapy with her as these may trigger her into calling you an adhesive parasite as well as suggesting that you may secretly want to fuck her. If you have any feelings of compassion for those with mental health issues – she is not the therapist for you, as she believes that the majority of her NHS clients are ‘playing the system to get their PIP’ and if this isn’t enough to put you off- I found out much too late that she is a tory (as well as a class A cunt). 0/10

*

ANITA:

Anita presents herself as an ‘ethical’ therapist who takes great care and pride in her work. This could not be further from the truth. She is, in fact, more damaged than the clients she professes to help. Indeed, she is the equivalent of an emotional wrecking ball. Her avoidant personality means she is unable to take accountability for her actions and behaves very much like an ostrich. Anita is neither emotionally intelligent or competent enough to be working as a therapist and it is laughable that she believes her services are worth £60 an hour. My advice would be take your money and set fire to it. It’ll do less damage to you in the long run. Don’t be fooled by her website and the extensive list of glowing testimonials. The truth of the matter is that Anita has left a trail of devastation in her wake and justifies her serious failings by repeatedly citing her ill health and ‘situation’. Her situation is of her own making, and her health has been steady enough to get married as well as sustain her counselling business. If you are seeking a therapist with integrity and honesty – Anita is not the therapist for you. Steer well clear. 0/10

*

HANNAH:


Hannah is an inexperienced therapist who really should only focus on light work – she is certainly not equipped to deal with trauma. As with many therapists, her ego is far larger than her capability and she is prone to bite off more than she can chew. As much as suggestions of practising ‘yoga’ and going on a ‘retreat’ would maybe be welcome from a friend when sharing your struggles, it is hardly helpful advice from a therapist talking with a client who has been in therapy for many years who has a complex trauma history and recent trauma from therapy harm. This is straight out the playbook of CMHT suggesting a warm bath and cup of tea to people suffering suicidal ideation and self-harm. Chat GPT would dish out more helpful strategies than this at no cost and from the comfort of your own home and phone. Hannah does, however, have a nice set of colouring books and pens. 2/10 Give her five years and she might be worth a visit.

Procrastination? A Therapy break. And Musing On The Cost Of Failed Therapies. Part 1

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

Oh my god…this was meant to be a single post but once I got going I was up at 5000 words and had to split it into two posts – so it’s a bit slow going with this first bit… sorry!

Do you know what? I just don’t know how to label what it’s like in my head at the moment other than ‘bleurgh’. I feel so completely lacking in energy and oomph that I don’t know whether it’s an ongoing depressive episode, burnout, illness (I’ve just got a nasty cold and been in bed for three days but this is merely the cherry on top of things!), generally just being shit at life, or what?

I have been thinking about writing here for a while but it’s taken me nearly all weekend with the laptop sat open beside me for me to now, at 5pm on Sunday, start typing anything. I’ve been doom scrolling social media, watching the day sort of disappear from my bed, and having absolutely zero will or motivation to do anything outside of attending to my kids. I haven’t even showered today…or got dressed! This is so far removed from how I usually am…but I have got NOTHING TO GIVE.

To be fair to myself I have had an utterly bonkers week away from home and have crashed and burned as a result of too much peopling and visits and location changes and juggling the needs of everyone else AND being unable to sleep … sounds dreamy doesn’t it?! Of course, all of this overstimulating away from home ‘vacation’ (?!) stuff has also meant that I had a dreaded THERAPY BREAK. But I’ll talk about how I haven’t (!) managed that a bit later.

Lately, I find myself more and more in the worst kind of procrastination – not just with the blog, but with pretty much everything…even really simple tasks feel absolutely impossible – even things that will make my life EASIER feel beyond me. A prime example of this is work admin. I need to make a spreadsheet for payments – and I just can’t – it’s honestly a ten-minute job but I feel like I am running at a concrete wall – I just can’t get through it.  So instead, I am juggling twenty students in my head rather than having it easily on a screen. FFS RB!

Another ridiculous thing just like this, was the new laptop I bought last December but only took out the box and set up in September. Nine months! Wtaf? And the only reason I got to it in September was because I absolutely had to before the new term began as it the old one was crashing left and right…AND Elle had pretty much coached me through it the session before I did it.

I can’t tell you how many times Elle and I spoke about what I needed to do in order to get it sorted though–  like lots of times over that nine months – she even suggested taking my old laptop and new one to someone who would transfer everything over and set it up for me- but I simply couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it. It’s not that I didn’t want a laptop that was reliable, didn’t overheat, or have keys that would work consistently. It just all felt totally overwhelming even thinking about it and so I went into a ridiculous freeze and watched the monthly direct debit leave my account paying for something I wasn’t even using.

AND IT IS A REALLY GREAT LAPTOP…and I love it for work now, even if I find it hard to use for anything other than work.

I wonder a bit if I have some now conscious (but until literally thirty seconds ago unconscious) associations with my laptop. I work completely online these days and whilst I like my teaching job, I find it exhausting and draining. I give a lot to my students and working 1:1 day-in day-out on Zoom is hard. I wonder if there is a little part of me that wanted to push the laptop to the point of extinction so I had a legitimate reason to not work for a day or two? Like I just wanted something to happen to ease my pressures a bit.

Probably.

I wonder, too, whether I am now finding it hard to get on the laptop and blog because it symbolises work, I spent twenty hours a week on Zoom and then goodness knows how long around my actual contact time farting around planning lessons and making resources etc… but also there has been so much pain written and explored here it’s not only about work?

As much as writing and the connections I have made here have been absolute lifelines, it’s hard seeing so much hurt in post after post and to know that most of you guys who regularly comment have survived longer than my therapists! There are a handful of you who have been here from the very beginning and sometimes I wonder what keeps you following along when all I seem to do is lurch from one crisis to another. Like I am not exactly a great advert for therapy… more of a stark warning of the pitfalls of therapy and all that can go wrong!

I recently screenshot the last few years of blog titles and sent them to Elle…and you know what, it’s tough. It’s hard seeing and knowing how much struggle there has been. It’s hard seeing how much I invested into therapies and seeing where I am now. I tallied up how much I spent on therapy just with Em and Anita the other day and it was a staggering £37,000 …

Deep breaths into a paper bag RB!!

I would have ZERO credit card debt, or car loans, AND would have some savings in the bank had I not gone to therapy with them. In fact, had I found someone who could have done the work with me and stayed the course, I might not even be in therapy at all now!

That’s really hard to take in and metabolise. I suspect there are a few of you, too, who would wince at how much you have spent on your therapy, how much you have sacrificed or gone without in order to attend sessions, only to end up dumped and hurt and damaged.

It’s hideous.

I am a big believer in attending to our mental health, but you know what? I am not sure the ‘investment’ was worth it. I went into therapy with Em and Anita with past Trauma and came out additionally retraumatised TWICE over.

This is never right, is it?

Like in what other situation would you go and spend significant amounts of money only to come out worse? If you bought a faulty product you’d get a refund; or if the product you bought exploded and damaged you then you’d get compensation…not with therapy. We just have to suck it up, pretend like it never happened, and try and make the best of a bad situation. Harm in therapy is really a big deal, it’s widespread…and nothing ever seems to happen unless it’s something to do with inappropriate sexual conduct because that’s easier to prove…I guess.

So, here I am in therapy with Elle, working at a painstakingly slow pace just trying to recover from past ‘therapy’…we don’t really even go anywhere near the trauma I went to therapy for in the first place! I mean we do, because let’s be real – lots of it is relational trauma and the mother wound – but there’s a lot of stuff from my past I need to talk about but we are constantly trying to bail out my boat from the massive amount of water that’s flooded in due to the shit tonne of bullet holes that the hull has been peppered with over the last four years…well longer – I started seeing Em again in 2016 and it wasn’t great from the beginning, was it?!

I probably sound bitter. I’m not. I am just sad. I am sad for all of me. I am sad for the little parts that trusted and loved and got so badly hurt. I am sad for the protectors who stood down despite feeling it was a bad idea because Adult Me insisted that it was safe and believed Anita’s promises of love, and care, and staying for the ‘entirety of the journey’. I am sad for my family who have not had the things they could have had: holidays, treats…no debt!! It’s gutting on so many levels.

And here I am. Still trying. But out of energy, now. As I say, the effect of living with the battery light flashing red for such a long time now is that I feel like this is just how it is to live. I have no idea how to get enough charge to start functioning more effectively because it feels like existing just takes way more than ever gets put back in. I do get that I am sick right now, too, so have hit a really low ebb – but honestly, I cannot remember the last time I felt really well, energised, and happy. That sucks.

It’s really hard to explain just how eroding the experiences/endings with Em and Anita have been – although I have given it a damned good go here on the blog! It’s actually hard feeling into it because the pain is so all-encompassing. But what I can see very clearly, even if there aren’t words, is how all this crap has impacted my day-to-day functionality…or should I say lack of functionality.

I am not a lazy person at all but I am really struggling to move through my weeks and do what I am supposed to. I am not even sure procrastination really fits what is going on for me a lot of the time. I am honestly in a complete freeze or dissociated…or in survival really. That’s really more reflective of the current state of things. I absolutely am pushing myself up hill and just can’t seem to make much forward progress.

So yeah…it’s not great.

Happy gloom-day RB! I bet you are all really glad I decided to start tapping away today like a suicidal Eeyore!…1800 words in and I actually wanted to talk a bit about the therapy break and the rocky road into it… cut to the chase eh?! —

I’ll break this here, and I promise that the next part is actually somewhat more interesting and about my therapy and break with Elle and not just me whining on about how fucking tired I am – I’ll try and pop it up tomorrow – although if I shut this laptop down it could take me a week to be able to turn it back on and get back to this – GROAN!! x

The Massive Thing…

rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

Last time I posted here I alluded to a ‘massive thing’ that Anita had told me towards the end of our first session back after the break. The ‘thing’ had really helped me feel loads better about myself and about how I had experienced the therapy (and end of it!) with Em.

Before this revelation I had been worrying about being too much and Anita being fed up of me – even though she’d done absolutely nothing to indicate this. During the break I was panicked that she would come back from the holiday and like Em (after our Christmas break 2019) everything would go down the toilet and we’d end up terminating because I was ‘too much’. I worried that Anita would have had a break from me and realise that working with me is a massive drain and she’d want to get away from my smothering her or sucking the lifeblood out of her ‘like a tick’.

I still can’t believe Em used this analogy – apparently this GIF is my child parts…

Rational Adult knows I’ve actually got more chance of winning the lottery than Anita doing this to me (my god that’s a big statement on trust isn’t it?!) but the young parts who have been so badly hurt by the way Em ended things still worry that something bad will happen and they need a lot of reassurance…which btw Anita is always happy to give.

I’d spent the entire session cuddled into Anita and it was so grounding and soothing. However, I find this sense of safety comes (and goes) in waves and even when I am perfectly safe my brain and body will wander and flip into panic. This is usually when another part will make its fears and doubts known. It must be like Groundhog Day for Anita repeatedly reassuring the various young parts that we are ‘still ok’ and she’s ‘not going anywhere’ but she doesn’t seem to get frustrated or annoyed.

When the little one asked “Are you fed up with me?” She emphatically told me that this was not the case at all, that I was “easy to love”, and that I am not hard work or a problem which is what I was made to feel with Em. It was lovely to hear. Anita was quiet for a moment, I guess pondering whether she was going to tell me what came next.

Anita has been nothing but supportive of me since coming to her and has never once made me feel like what happened with Em was my fault. She has been clear that what happened was harmful and has done her very best to help me get over the trauma of it and validated my experience saying that both her and her supervisor believe I have grounds to make a complaint to her governing body.

In the back of my mind, though, there’s always been a little bit of me that wonders whether it was me, you know? Like maybe if I’d just done x, or said y, or not got so upset when she called me a ‘tick’…perhaps it’s me and my trauma that did this and maybe Em is a good therapist and I’m the useless client that can’t heal and is resistant. Maybe I overreacted. Maybe she handled things as they should have been handled… ugh.

Last year when Em and I terminated I think I very loosely mentioned ‘something I have learnt about her that might explain why she was not firing on all cylinders and could have impacted her’ but went no further with it at the time here. But given I am talking about ‘massive things’ I think I’ll say what that was about- this is anonymous and so it won’t impact her but I think it’s important that people know that this kind of thing happens…and us clients usually have no idea about it.

Last year my wife was working closely with a Clinical Psychologist in the NHS in our area as part of a multidisciplinary working team supporting a client. She’d become quite friendly with this CP and had got to chatting about their own various lives over lunches – you know, like you do with friends. My wife was talking about me (thanks wife!) and mentioned that I had been in therapy for a really long time but seemed to be really unhappy and she felt almost like therapy wasn’t helping, just hurting me. The CP said something along the lines of ‘people with complex trauma can need years of therapy and this is really common’ trying to put my wife’s mind at rest, I think. My wife then said something like “Her and Em have been working together on and off since 2012 – they met in x (where the CP works)”.

Apparently at this the CPs face dropped and she looked really concerned. My wife asked what was wrong. And that’s when the CP said, “I don’t know what to say. I really, really shouldn’t be telling you this, but it’s your wife and you say she’s in a really bad place with her therapist. Is that ‘Em X’ she works with?” My wife confirmed it was.

The CP then told her that other therapists in the NHS MH trust had raised concerns about Em and she had been ‘asked to leave’. Now we all know how underfunded and short-staffed NHS mental health services are, don’t we? I mean it took three years on a waiting list for me to get psychotherapy on the NHS. So to give a senior CP her marching orders is quite something.

Em wasn’t ‘sacked’ the NHS rarely do this. They just move the problems around. I know Em is now working in an MH trust in a neighbouring county from some Google sleuth work at the time. Of course, I know now that all of this was going on in the six months before we terminated. I imagine the stress that would have put her under would have been immense. It’s not justifying what happened, but it does give me and insight into her as well as how other professionals perceive her practice.

I feel sorry for all the clients that have suffered – probably like me. I guess in the NHS it’s not quite so bad because therapy is time-limited and so perhaps the damage is not quite so massive. The 16 months work I did with her in the NHS did enough to awaken all my attachment shit and lead me deep back into anorexia…which in hindsight clearly shows that things weren’t great!  

Anyway, like I said, that information helped me a bit at the time of termination to see that maybe it wasn’t ALL my fault. Even with that, though, it’s hard to make it stick inside. Anita told me, last week, that she had been speaking to a friend/colleague (who she really rates and admires) recently who knows Em and her husband (also a therapist) well from living and working in the same town and crossing paths regularly in various working capacities. Apparently, this therapist is really horrified by how both Em and her husband conduct themselves and said that she would never in a million years refer a client to either of them because ‘they are horrible people’. She’s also certain that Em and her husband work as each other’s clinical supervisors……like what could possibly go wrong there?! No conflict of interest whatsoever, right?!

I know it sounds really gossipy, and probably not very professional for A and her friend to have that conversation in the first place – but I am sure people do it. Even in my line of work there are people I would recommend and those I DEFINITELY wouldn’t. Therapists know by reputation, through personal interactions, and through people like us who come through their door having experienced harm who they rate and who they wouldn’t.

I am glad Anita told me about this conversation – whether she was right to do it or not – because it really validated my experience again of what happened with Em not being my fault. I know Anita believes me when I tell her the things I do about how things were with Em, but to have this experience of Em corroborated by not just Anita’s friend but also the CP in the NHS might just now really start to help me let that self-hating, self-blaming, shaming narrative go.

I loved Em (and still do love her) but she really did a lot of damage and it wasn’t (all) my fault…