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My Wobbly Brain, Lots Of Vulnerable Emails, And A Phone Check In/Session

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This is loooonnnng – so grab a snack, a drink, and a cuddly blanket and settle in for the ride!!

So last time I was here I was trying to catch up from all that happened with the BIG RUPTURE and get back on track more-or-less to the here-and-now on the blog… I’d just come off a phone check in with Elle that had come about because, once again, I had fallen head first into a doom spiral and had, at least, had the bravery (and sense) to ask to talk rather than to continue on down a path of emails where I was getting myself more and more panicked. But, how did I get to the point where I was requesting a phone call and what was the panic about this time???!

Well, you might remember I said it had been a about a month since Elle and I had repaired the BIG RUPTURE, things felt fine, the sessions since then had been connecting, but because we hadn’t doubled-back to what had happened during the break and the rupture my brain was starting to wonder if things were really ok or not. Part of me was looking for a bit of reassurance – you know, just in case behind the scenes Elle was harbouring something and I didn’t know about it. I think when things go wrong, I need to re-tread the ground several times just to be sure nothing terrible is lingering beneath the surface. I don’t want to find myself down in a hole unexpectedly.

Elle has always told me that if I need to reach out and check that she’s ‘still there’ then that’s absolutely fine to do that anytime. In various ways I do this a lot, but maybe not in quite so explicit a way as asking, “Are we ok?” We maintain a connection between our sessions but this will usually be by my communicating everyday stuff. I very rarely say, “I am feeling disconnected and need to know we are ok”. That sort of thing generally happens in the big splurge emails that come after protracted periods of ‘light’ when all the feelings bubble up and it all spews out in a huge vulnerable mess. Those messages are not a very regular occurrence…but they’re often enough.

A couple of weeks after the rupture/repair I did find myself asking for the tangible reassurance via a text. My Monday morning text reminder for our Tuesday session had come through and even though it was most definitely my lovely Elle, I wasn’t able to feel into it or find her in it. It had been Father’s Day that weekend and I think I was just feeling really vulnerable and sad and disconnected. So, I replied, “Are we ok? I totally get that [ref to message] should mean yes, but I’ve wandered away and got lost.” Elle assured me that we were completely fine and I felt lots better.

It really doesn’t take a lot to settle things down but even now, almost two years in, I still struggle to ask for the support and reassurance I need. I think after so many years of feeling the fear of disconnection (that comes with disorganised attachment) so acutely in my therapy with Em where I was actively chastised if I ever reached out outside of the session and then completely ignored, there’s a part of me that still feels like I am doing something wrong when I ask for something from Elle.

It’s not just Em’s legacy that impacts how I relate to Elle. Anita wasn’t like Em. I was able to message her, but there’s a different kind of fear that comes from this. I think in some ways I find it hard to trust Elle is genuine and means what she says because Anita made promises and then suddenly things changed and I was left high and dry. Anita was warm, and accepting, and encouraged me to ask for what I needed… until the day I was “too dependent” and there was a definite pulling back.

So, with both these therapy experiences always bubbling away in the back of my mind, it’s hardly surprising I struggle to ask for what I need with Elle. It’s no fun feeling like you’re ‘too much’ and I am so mindful of not wanting to overstep the ‘boundary line’ – although I am not entirely sure where that is. I guess I hope I don’t find out the hard way one day although I think it is entirely possible that at some point it will happen.

Having asked for reassurance the day before the session I knew that my internal world wasn’t functioning at its best and I was so glad to get into the room that week. I cried quite a lot – there’s a lot of sadness floating around at the minute with loss and grief and it’s coming out a bit – not full-on sobbing, but just slow tears…which for someone that never really cries in session, that is huge. I still can’t fully let go and let it all out but I feel like I’m edging towards that place. Elle says that she thinks there’s a lot of crying inside, from the young parts, but that I only let it out in small amounts – she’s right of course.

It’s felt like I am holding a lot lately and my need for safety and holding feels enormous and therefore the feelings of shame have built up around that. I don’t want to be as needy as I am…and as much as I try to remind myself that we are only as needy as our unmet needs, I have a hard time feeling compassion for those parts of me, when I know that they are the ones that seem to make therapy explode in my face.

In that session, Elle asked me what had prompted me to check if we were ok. I was cuddled in to her and I didn’t say anything, I don’t think. Sometimes there aren’t words in the moment. I was feeling so so sad and not because of anything between us, but I think sometimes when I feel safe with her, in that space, I stop defending myself against my feelings and they come…and bloody hell…it’s a lot. Sometimes an extra wave of grief comes up as I realise that the time with Elle is only short and before too long I will be on my own back in the world. The young parts of me feel devastated.

Elle asked me where I was feeling the sadness in my body. I didn’t answer again – I just cuddled in and clung on even more tightly to her. She understands now, that my silence isn’t avoidance or shutting her out. Actually, it’s really me minus the armour and often when a very small part is there…pre-verbal probably. Part of me really needs those very small parts to have space and time in the room but another part of me is terrified that it’s all too much.

After the session, I had time to think about everything, adult was back online rather than the littles being front and centre and I came up with this and sent it as part of a longer email to Elle:

I feel like I am almost drowning in shame at the moment or in a spin cycle with it. You asked me what had happened to text you on Monday to see if we were ok and if something had happened. Aside from more shit dreams, which don’t help, nothing had happened. The reality is I could send you that message every week, and don’t because … I am trying really hard not to be too much (not massively successful in that right now). But actually, by the time it gets to Friday my entire system is falling down a hole – and it’s all the time not just every now and again.

I try and remind myself that this isn’t new – like I know where the panic comes from – being left when I was small for so many years and then my dad dying after being away for three days … like it’s just really hard because my brain sort of knows that things are ok but how I experience it in my body is a different matter. So, I spend a lot of the weekend in a horrible place of feeling like something is wrong or bad is going to happen. And that’s shit…and then we head back into the shame thing because… I really get how clingy I am and well, then that takes me off on another path of doom…so it’s a lot.

The feelings reside in lots of places. There’s the pain/ache in my solar plexus, the big black hole in my chest that feels like its edges are ulcerated and burning, the tight feeling in my throat, the heaviness but also tingling in my legs that makes me feel like I need to run, pins and needles in my hands…. the hot feeling behind my eyes….sometimes all of those all at once…  I think that’s probably why I would dissociate for the longest time. It’s far easier to feel nothing and sit outside your body than actually be in it. 

So there was that… another big splurge of the vulnerable and more pieces of the road map offered up.

Elle and I remained connected as another week rolled around and then I left another lovely holding session with Elle on the next Tuesday. We had talked about a lot of things. Elle had bought a book I had mentioned and brought it to session for us to read together. You’d think that that would more than show that she wasn’t experiencing the heebie-jeebies post rupture… nope.

Almost as soon as I got out the room, I realised I had neglected to bring up the main thing I wanted to talk about that week…it wasn’t conscious avoidance, though. It just totally left my brain. I do think this is a form of dissociation. Like, part of my system is worried that something is wrong and so wants to protect me from poking at it just in case my fears are confirmed. After the session I felt ALL THE FEELS – you know the big loving ones? – ugh – and decided to send this email – let it all out RB! – looks like this last month or so has been big on the big emails, actually! haha:

I really missed you this week and it felt hard 😞 . Before today I wanted to ask you some things and tell you some things but actually by the time this morning got here I just really needed a cuddle and for the panic in my system to settle down and to feel safer and to reconnect with you…when I am with you I feel like I just want to soak it up as much as I can because the ‘leaky non-existent bucket that’s only just a handle now’ situation means that that feeling is quickly gone when I can’t see you. It’s like trying to hold water in my hands or it’s like sand slipping through my fingers… and it’s really difficult. 

And although it was meant in totally different kind of context today, when I was talking about *friend and her wanting a relationship with me and you said about how hard it is when someone hands you their heart and you have to gently give it back to them…reminded me of something I said to *best friend a few months ago about how I feel really pathetic and sad with you. Like I feel like I have taken my heart out the bottle and am handing it to you like it’s a gift and actually it’s so broken and in pieces and damaged that no one in their right mind would want it. And yet, it’s all there is left…and I feel like I’ve exposed this really vulnerable bit of me, there’s no protection whatsoever, and it is so terrifying because given the state of it, I don’t think it will survive being dropped, stamped on, or in a hit and run again. 

And I think the saddest thing is I feel like love is perhaps the biggest gift we can give or receive and yet I feel like my version of it is like an unwanted Christmas gift, that’s quickly discarded or seen to have no value. I imagine it a bit like when a kid makes something at pre-school out of air-drying clay and brings it home and although it most certainly is the most magnificent snail in their eyes, unfortunately they’ve selected brown clay and the coiled-up shape resembles a turd. It’s ok because I always know it’s a snail – but not everyone does… and then of course it doesn’t take long until it’s starts dissolving into dust and parts start breaking off. 

Part of me doesn’t even want to say this because ugh huge shame 😳 but also there’s a bit that feels really sad when I feel like this and I don’t say. Like it feels a bit like there’s all these parts of me in the room watching and wondering why I don’t let you know they’re there or how it’s been. Although I think you probably do see them because I think these days rather than being locked in a cupboard or hiding behind the couch they’re really just hidden under a flimsy piece of fabric. Or maybe more like when kids cover their eyes and think you can’t see them…🙈

So, I wanted to ask how things are after last month 😬 and I wanted to talk to you about what’ll happen if we end up in that place again. And also, I think we need a code word for when things are bad or a symbol. And then just for added fun content I was going to mention that Brian is having a bit of a meltdown about living in my body right now and whilst I’m on top of it I thought I was over this shit – or maybe it just goes dormant. 🫠 There was something else but I can’t remember now… which bodes really well for teaching – I feel like a hologram.

Elle sent a really lovely expansive reply – here’s some of it:

Hello my sweet girl 🙂

I think you’re right about all of that stuff being totally present in the room, even though it’s not explicitly stated. I absolutely do feel the responsibility of holding your beautifully broken and fragile heart, and I think take that responsibility as seriously and with as much sensitivity as that warrants. I don’t imagine me telling you that holds much weight at all, given that you’ve been told almost the exact same thing many times before, but I always hope that is something you can feel in the room.

She went on to tell me that she promises that she’ll never ‘blindside’ me because when she takes any kind of action it comes from ‘months of consideration’. There was reference to what we spoke of at the time of the rupture. And then she talked about how we got to where we did. Then came:

I think seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been given freely is never helpful in terms of deepening connection, and instead of building closeness I think it has the potential – for you – to create an even more profound sense of isolation, rather than the closeness that is so badly wanted. If there are things I can provide for you between sessions to help you feel connected to me when you feel distant – I was thinking recordings of me reading our stories for example? – then let’s come up with some that feel like they might work. You also mention notes to open, and I think that’s a beautiful idea. Maybe I could write some affirmation cards that feel like they are uniquely special to us? I really like that idea.

The entire email was actually just really considered and thoughtful and lovely … could my brain take it in?

HA! Could it fuck?!

It fixated on two small areas of the message and went into full scale panic.

Firstly, I was wondering what kind of ‘action’ was coming? What could that mean? Was she turning something over in her mind and waiting to see whether or not to act based on what I was doing?

And then I locked on and fixated on the part about “seeking out information about each other that hasn’t been freely given” and it sent me into outer space in terms of panic and shame. I felt like this was a thinly-veiled comment about what had happened with our recent rupture and that she was in some way mad that I had been overstepping boundaries because there are some things I have found out about Elle that she hasn’t expressly shared with me – but then, it was information that was freely available online or that she had reference in an oblique way and I had found as a result.

Great.

So, I decided to reply to her with details of what I was worrying about – it couldn’t wait a week.

Elle replied and tried to address my concerns and she is really considered and careful in how she responds to me.

At the end she wrote:

I can feel myself getting tense as I was writing that, and am now worrying that I’m not communicating all this to you in a way that will land as I want it to, so I’m going to stop now.

I found out when we were in the thick of the big rupture that she has a thing about being misunderstood and says she can sometimes overcompensate to try and be clear and then feel like she’s making it worse. So, the message that she was going to stop didn’t feel like she was refusing to engage with me, rather that she was trying to reassure me but wasn’t sure if it was working and recognised that she didn’t want to make it worse.

I was still pretty activated and overnight had horrible nightmares but had a word with myself and realised that none of what I was experiencing was desperate… but that tying myself up in knots trying to explain what I was feeling in an email wasn’t actually meeting the need underneath. What I needed was to ‘hear’ that Elle and I were not running off in different directions, that she wasn’t annoyed with me or harbouring something from before, and that I hadn’t done something wrong… child parts much??!!

There was absolutely no way I was going to make it to Tuesday in the state I was in and so I text Elle first thing on Thursday morning asking if she might have time for a phone check in sometime before the weekend.

She got back to me immediately and said we could talk that morning… and we fixed up a time. Phew.

I felt nervous picking up the call, but as soon as I heard Elle’s voice, I could hear that there was nothing wrong between us. I could feel that that she was there. She asked me how I was feeling in my body and I replied that I felt like I was locked in a vice and tensing in a brace position. She said she really got that, and the actually she felt the same.

The talk we had was really really helpful. The instant connection and the honesty and being able to ‘feel’ Elle and the safety settled my nervous system so quickly. I felt my body starting to relax, the tension in my solar plexus went and I was able settle into the call.

As we talked, I was able to recognise that I am really good at latching onto the tiniest bit of ‘scary’ and lose all sense of the good in our communications – but it all comes from a place of fear. Elle said that she, too, can worry that she’s getting it very wrong with me when I let her know about the bits that don’t land in our communications and then she worries she’s making it worse for me.  

I told her that it might seem like I am taking the whole message as ‘wrong’ but the reality is I am genuinely only looking for clarification and reassurance on the small bits and that at least part of me knows we are ok to be able to keep going over things with a fine-toothed comb otherwise I wouldn’t bring it to her to begin with and that her messages really really do help me. I am aware, though, that my attention to small details might come over as my being critical at times. But really, I’m just overthinking.

I think this is not just a complex trauma thing; I think there is an element of neurodiversity playing out here, too. Both my kids are autistic and the more they grow the more and more of myself I see in them (both as ac child and now) and so understand how my brain works. Talk about little mirrors! It’s complicated. There’s trauma and there’s neurodiversity, or neuro-complexity, and then there’s the space where it all overlaps… no wonder it’s fucking hard for me sometimes!

The good news is that Elle works with a lot of neurodiverse clients, and has close family members who are also autistic so I know I am not too much for her. When we first started working together, I said about my sensitivities to noise, and smell, and all the other various ‘things’ I struggle with and she said she was definitely somewhere on the bell curve, too. We connect on a level that I don’t with other people. Like I don’t really need to explain some of my ‘weird’ because she’s the same and gets it. Thank god.

One of the reasons I like working with Elle is because I think we are both very invested and committed to deep, authentic, clear communication. Like whenever I bring it to her, she more than meets me in it. I just wish my brain could remember this! – but my trauma history keeps jamming sticks in the spokes of my bike wheels time and again.

Speaking on the phone, then, was so good because it allowed us to clear things up so I wasn’t sitting with my panic and getting more jumbled and disconnected over the weekend.

After the call I sent this, and then carried on with my day like a normalish person!:

Mainly, I think I want to say that when I’m focusing on my scary 1% that absolutely doesn’t mean that I don’t see the 99% and that what you say to me doesn’t land. Because it does. Like it really does. And I am also really conscious that my saying I’m freaking out about the 1% can make you feel not enough – and that really really isn’t my intention at all because actually it’s not about you, it’s me panicking about thinking you’re going to disappear… and you are so right about the too much/not enough runners. I feel like I have magic jet pack running shoes when I think I’ve done something wrong, or that I’ve upset you, or mainly that I am going to lose you because I’ve said or done something off. 

And when I get in that place it’s really hard to remember that things are ok – even though part of me knows it – and I can just disappear off like the Roadrunner leaving a dusty haze in my wake.

So, speaking to you really helps because it reminds me that Brian is frightened but his version of what’s happening isn’t necessarily the reality. 

The weekend after the session was much more manageable than how weekends usually are. Cutting the time down between actually talking made a massive difference despite the panic situation I had got myself into. The emails and texts definitely do help but actually it was speaking made all the difference.

I know I have been talking about it for a while, the need for an extra session or a check in, and this really highlighted to me how needed it was, and I resolved to ask for us to see if there was a way of building a check in to our weeks going forward.

The next Tuesday came along and OMFG it was hotter than hell and I thought I was going to melt when I went to my session – like blimey the UK is in a serious heatwave right now and I hate it. I can’t concentrate and it’s absolutely terrible for cuddles!!

We weren’t many minutes into our session when Elle told me that she had enjoyed talking to me on the phone and she wondered whether I might like to figure out a time when we can speak each week. I said that would be lovely and she said we could talk about it the following week when we had two face-to-face sessions booked in. Yes two!

Why?

Well, during the rupture repair session when Elle came back from break, I had commented how ropey May and June felt due to the Anita ending anniversary stuff and how that had undoubtedly made our rupture a billion times worse… but that July was a different kind of hard due to the anniversary of my dad’s death and the month following that had some very complicated shit happen. Elle asked me then when the hardest bit of July was and I told her. She said, that we would book in an extra session on that day (the actual anniversary of my dad dying) and have two sessions that week if I wanted.

So that’s what we did, last week…and I’ll tell you all about it next time. We had a picnic! It was lovely.

The BIG Rupture: What Happened Next…

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I realised something this week – and that is, because I blog way less frequently than I used to (although my summer resolution to myself is to make time to write again), that often I post about HUGE OUCH things that happen in therapy and then don’t come back here and talk about the ‘what happened next’ for ages, if at all. For example, a couple of my more recent posts have been about ruptures in my relationship with Elle (remember the slogan t-shirt debacle and then finding myself on a therapist forum? – groan) and this is the first time I have returned to discuss the repairs Elle and I have made, and so these ruptures are sort of left hanging on the blog.

I imagine it’s starting to look like Elle and I are lurching from one terrible mishap to another without any sense of there being a resolution in between. That would be fucking terrifying, wouldn’t it?!…and it simply isn’t how it is. Thank goodness! Let’s be clear – I am not the same client I was back in the day with Em where she would say or do something to upset me, we’d be in massive rupture territory, and I’d just tough it out on my own because I was so frightened of her reaction to what I might say and the potential for abandonment and rejection that it felt safer to keep it inside (or here on the blog with you guys!) than talk to her. I didn’t dare raise my head above the parapet for years – turns out that wasn’t completely stupid given what happened when I did! #likeatick

It’s so funny – not funny haha, just funny TRAGIC looking back on that total mess (shitshow) with Em. In therapy, so much of the work is about building trust and working through/round your defences and so the main advice we generally see online for people when they are struggling about something in the therapeutic relationship is, “Take this to your therapist and try and have the difficult conversations because THEY WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT. They are trained professionals, have done their own work, and see this stuff ALL THE TIME.” Only it’s not always the case, is it? How many of us have had therapists who have shit the bed the moment you challenge them, or tell them you’ve been hurt by them, or tell them you love them? How many of us know what it is to feel the walls go up, the air in the room drop to below freezing, to get the ‘boundary talk’, or worse – terminated?

So, the advice to bring the tough stuff to the therapist ‘should’ absolutely be correct – but I think really it also needs a caveat: if you think your therapist is safe enough to hear it.

The thing is how do we know if a therapist is safe?

Blimey, isn’t that a question?!

There should be that ‘felt sense’ of safety with your therapist (eventually), but sometimes that doesn’t come…and then all we are left with is a therapist saying, “You can trust me” – #Icallbullshitonthat – and a desperate hope that it’s an ‘us problem’ rather than a ‘them problem’.

Safety never came with Em – even though the really strong attachment (disorganised of course) did. The parallels between her cold, detached personality and the almost literal begging for evidence of care mirrored my relationship with my mother so perfectly that it’s little wonder I stayed for so long. Therapy felt horrible but so fucking familiar to me. This is how relationships were, right?

I was stuck in a place of paralysis waiting for my protectors to stand down, wanting to trust her, and after a few years of feeling more and more unsafe I found myself forcefully working against my protectors – hitting override again and again – making myself jump into the shark infested waters… and no doubt that might work (in a safe therapy where there are no sharks)…but it can be catastrophic in a ‘disaster therapy’. I used to laugh about getting the ‘therapy shits’ before sessions – but what a ridiculous situation to be in week in, week out – anxiety was sooooooo high that I felt physically sick before every session… and yet I wrote that off as ‘part of the process’. Fuck me. That’s never right.

I think one of the things I regret most about working with Em was that I went against my gut ALL THE TIME. I felt her frustration at how little I shared with her and how strong my protectors were (queen of dissociation!)…but I realise, now, that I must’ve had a sixth sense about how things would eventually go because when I did push myself to BRING IT ALL to her, the shit hit the fan on high speed didn’t it? My bravery and vulnerability were met with stone cold still face, topped with thinly veiled psychobabble insults “adhesive like a tick, taking whatever it wants, like you almost need a permanent breast, pushing the boundaries with no regard for what I want”  … Ouch.

So – yeah – building trust and feeling safe is so hard, especially when you’re in therapy working with core messaging from childhood about being ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ and perhaps never having even known what safety would feel like.It’s understandable that sometimes we, as clients, are scared stiff and the idea of being vulnerable freaks the living daylights out of us. It’s hard sometimes when we hit the skids to figure out how much of what we are feeling is because, “I recognise on an emotional and somatic level that this person is not safe!!!” and how much is the wonky brain making you think past patterns are repeating when actually things are fine.

It’s all the harder when you have also experienced harm in therapy as well. My therapists ALWAYS trigger complicated mother transference in me (ugh!) – but poor Elle also bloody triggers SHITTY THERAPIST transference too!

After my recent experiences with Em and Anita, Elle is basically doomed because in so many ways she isn’t like them but SHE IS A THERAPIST and Brian (my brain) doesn’t really trust therapists anymore. Thankfully, enough of my system does trust Elle…wholeheartedly…and so this means I can bring ALL OF THE THINGS TO HER EVEN IF IT FEELS SCARY OR UNCOMFORTABLE.

It’s taken a while but we have built a strong foundation of trust that can withstand my wobbles. It feels like I can safely show up and work through the ruptures or miscommunications we have because every time I do it’s more evidence that I am safe to be me, bring my feelings, and that Elle is committed to working whatever it is through with me. As she said the other day, “I’m here for it all”.

Thankfully, I am not in that horrible place that I was with Em where I felt that there was no choice but to hide my feelings and hope that things would work out without my saying anything…and to be honest, that’s how it got with Anita towards the end. I was so conscious of her wheels falling off that I tried to be as little work as possible for her. Didn’t exactly work out, though, did it? That’s definitely a throwback to my early years – suffer alone and get over it – but it’s so sad when you think that I have been paying for therapy for so long and been in hiding for so much of it trying to make it so the other person can stay. UGH. I am still really mad with Anita…but that’s for another blog post as this is sure to be lengthy enough as it is.

It’s no secret that I absolutely am still ridiculously sensitive to perceived rejection and abandonment but the difference is I ALWAYS tell Elle when I feel there is something wrong between us – even if it’s just that she’s turned up in my dreams and hurt me – and even then, she’s kind and lovely about it and not weirded out! But it’s all these little moments of connection and understanding that ultimately build the trust so that when there is something bigger, I have the confidence to tackle it.

Bear with me, I’m circling back round to the point – of ‘WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?’ – slow burn…

So, as I said earlier, I think at the moment my writing here makes it look like my therapy is just one long protracted shit show/mess when actually it’s mostly just steady, consistent, safe work but also it’s not really all that interesting. I mean, it is interesting to me, but the safe, familiar, connected, conversations and sessions aren’t really exciting to read about. We talk, we connect, sometimes we read stories, we laugh, we cry, we cuddle, we do the work…mostly.

Week in week out I show up, she shows up, and we keep going deeper and deeper into the deep darkness of my psyche, but we’re holding hands and, generally speaking, there’s a candle to light the way and so it feels safe because I am not doing it alone anymore.

I think, therefore, that ruptures take me all the more by surprise these days because Elle and I have such a solid relationship and so it completely knocks me for six when things go wrong. When we lose connection it feels like our hands separate and the candle blows out for a minute and it’s fucking scary because I really don’t like it in the dark on my own.

But I guess there are ruptures in any therapeutic relationship – I mean there’s so much written on rupture/repair in therapy that it would be naïve to think that any therapy is perfect. The important thing, though, is that ruptures aren’t too frequent and that the repair is effective and fast. Just like parenting, therapy on balance needs to be ‘good enough’. Elle is really good like this. She doesn’t leave me hanging when I tell her I am in a pickle and to date, she has always received whatever I have to say with openness and curiosity.

Until recently there hasn’t really been anything ‘major’ happen outside the normal run of me getting angsty and upset around breaks, or feeling disconnected and so the rupture has been triggered by my attachment issues rather than something being properly amiss. I might be activated and upset but not because of anything that Elle has done ‘wrong’. This last couple of months, however, has seen us step up a gear in working through some big rupture content. Like it’s not “Like a tick” (Em) or “too dependent” (Anita) – but it’s felt like it was in that sort of sphere and that triggered the shit out of my system.

The good news is Elle has been so receptive to what I have to say when I bring it to her. She doesn’t run and hide. She knows how to apologise and take responsibility/accountability for her part in things. She never shames me (which is huge), and as much as we have had some really BIG conversations lately, it’s honestly really refreshing to be working with someone who is able to reflect and is always wanting to do the best by me and really invites me into bringing EVERYTHING to her even if I am swimming in shame and embarrassment.

This is especially helpful after Anita became so incredibly defensive and avoidant in the last year of our work together. Of course, I would rather not have had these ruptures with Elle but at the same time it feels like we a doing some serious rewiring of the system when I see that I can bring my big feelings to her and she will do her best to repair. She shows me again and again that I am important to her.

I won’t lie. The most recent rupture when I found reference to my work with Elle on a therapist forum (albeit anonymous on both sides) really floored me and it was a right fucking mess. I truly believed that the person I thought I know and loved was someone other than she had presented herself to be – and that felt so upsetting and dangerous to my system. To think that Elle was feeling like I was some kind of pathetic client who refused to see that we were in a therapeutic relationship was so painful…even though that isn’t what it was at all.

My ability to take really small snippets of info and join a handful of dots and turn them into a spectacular constellation of horror is nothing if not impressive. I wish that I could see the 99% of brilliant alongside the 1% of terror – but when I am in the scary zone I can’t remember anything good at all. My fear takes over and all my stories about being too much, and being unlovable, and that I can’t trust anyone get really loud…but mostly I feel my system collapsing internally because this is how we get left isn’t it? This is the start of the abandonment playbook.

Elle being away on holiday and it all tying in with the anniversary of the end of seeing A was just the icing on the cake really, like if I was ever going to be primed for being sensitive to perceived abandonment and rejection – this was it.

So, what happened after I posted the blog?

OMG RB are you actually going to cut to the fucking chase? – after 2000 words?!

Well, I sat on my hands for a few days, tried to keep myself busy, and basically got more and more upset at the idea that I had misread the relationship that I have with Elle. I know I am client but I had never imagined that she felt that I was a problem, or that I didn’t understand the boundaries of the relationship, or that she saw me very much in a black and white way as a ‘client’ that needs to understand I am just paying for her time.

Seeing that online post title (but not being able to see the actual post as it was deleted) and the replies from other therapists hit me so hard because…well, it sounded so much like something Em would have said…and nothing at all like how I have experienced Elle in the room. It confused me, but mainly it devastated me, because in that week I was completely unable to reference any of the last nearly two years of work with Elle where she has demonstrated care and that she is a safe person…and instead my Inner Critic went, “See, this is it, behind the mask, it’s all just a façade to get you to part with money each week and make you keep coming back. The reality is you’re a fucking loser and here’s another therapist that can’t tolerate you.”

As we all know, part of complex trauma means it takes me a very long time to trust people and yet I really and truly believed that I could trust Elle…and now here I was…once again falling face first into the reality that there’s something wrong with me. I felt like my barometer for safety had royally let me down. Like, given EVERYTHING that has happened with Em and Anita, you’d think I’d spot inauthentic communication and relationship a mile off…and yet I hadn’t. In fact, I’d completely missed it. If anything, all I have found with Elle is someone who seems to be really honest and real.

So yeah.

It stung.

Then I started down the spiral. Maybe I’d just let my guard down too much. Maybe I was hurting so badly after what happened with Anita that I would overlook anything to feel safe and held. Maybe my search for ‘mother’ meant I’d latched onto Elle’s care that simply wasn’t there and created a version of her that simply wasn’t real – it was all just wishful thinking that maybe, just maybe this time someone would see me as I am and love me for it.

But that simply isn’t the case because she is real and I feel her care. If anything, Elle has had to work three times as hard to earn my trust BECAUSE of the damage that has been done by others that have come before her. My protectors are elite level royal marine commandos at this point, not sleepy security guards.

I wrote that post about what I’d found on the Saturday and by Thursday night I was … down in the depths of the spiral. I was swimming in shame. I was so hurt. I was so badly disconnected that I had no idea how I would come back from it…and my runners were ready to run.

So, thinking Elle would be more or less back from her time away because the thing that her and my friend do together was happening that evening, I sent the blog by email because I just couldn’t wait another five days to see her or start to try and fix it.

And then I heard nothing.

Fuck.

This was not like Elle AT ALL.

(Of course, I didn’t know she was still away with patchy signal up a mountain…)

Twenty-four hours after I sent the email I got a long email in my inbox. It spooked me a bit because well, there was a lot and my scared little heart was scanning for rejection and also I know that that post was A LOT. I can see now that she was really trying to reassure me and explain as best she could what had gone on whilst also being aware we were not in the room and that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix via messages…

The end of the message said:

I feel sorry you don’t believe that I love you and that my care for you is anything other than a real human emotion grown from knowing everything about you that I do, but I think I really do understand why.

And just because you don’t believe me, and even try to find evidence that I don’t, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop, or punish you for it. I am a person who loves you and wants to support you, that’s all I’ll ever be, and every decision I’ll ever make is based on that.

And you can ask me anything you want about any of this on Tuesday, and I promise I’ll answer you carefully and honestly from that same place.

And I can see that this, and the paragraphs that came before it all come from a really caring place. But because my system and runner ducks had had almost a week’s head start on her, my protectors, my teen, all the hurt parts simply replied:

I don’t want to see you anymore.

Fuck.

And then there was more silence from Elle’s end which freaked the absolute living shit out of me because what if she took that at face value and was so hacked off with me that she would let me go.

When she finally did reply, it didn’t sound enough like the Elle that the littles needed – and it panicked me. I realise now what was going on but in the moment the fear was massive on my part. She didn’t do an Em on me, by any means, and she did tell me that she felt sad and heavy and that she understood that it felt too much for me but that she was there and would always want to see me if I wanted to and that she very much would want to see me on Tuesday if I felt able to… it didn’t land how I needed it to, but I was able to see enough that she was trying and not giving up but I could also read that she was struggling too.  

Fortunately, her message was enough of a way in for me just do the vulnerable and tell her what I needed in no uncertain terms – that I was scared, that I needed a hug, for her to hold my hand and to hear her voice – and then she replied with exactly what I needed and it sounded like her:

I’m super conscious that – halfway up a mountain with shitty reception, broken glasses, and just my phone – I’m in the worst place to be reassuring you that I’m close to you right now, but I am, and yes, very very definitely holding your hand.

I’ve had lots of feelings about this, but not one of them has been to let go of it. I also wish I could be there for an all-encompassing hour-long hug, but I absolutely promise from the side of a windswept mountain that I will be again very very soon. xxx

It wasn’t until this point that I realised that she wasn’t actually home yet and had been communicating with me as best she could from a tricky location. I felt bad because the one thing I had wanted to avoid was encroaching into her holiday time with this mess…and it turns out I had.

On the Monday morning, I got my personalised session reminder telling me that she was just home and looking forward to seeing me the next day. I felt way more settled even though we were still going to have to talk it all through…and repair…and it wasn’t going to be an easy session by any means.

As I said earlier, this whole thing was made so much worse because we were on a break and the break also coincided with the anniversary of Anita telling me she had to end therapy…I was looking for danger and seeing it EVERYWHERE. If we could have sorted it out immediately when it was happening it would have been so much better, but that’s the sod’s law of therapy (and my world) the shit rarely hits the fan at a point where it can be contained and not cause much damage! It ALWAYS comes about when I am a million miles away from a shower.

I braved up when I had seen Elle’s morning text and sent her a message which alluded to something she wrote in her original email response to me where she has said something about how it was her job to always think carefully about what she shares of her process and only telling me what she thinks is beneficial for me to hear:

Glad you’re back safe. I feel really anxious and like I have inadvertently thrown a grenade in between us that’s just about to explode. I need you to be honest with me tomorrow. Not ‘honest but couched with a “this is beneficial for you to hear”’ like the actual truth even if I might not like what you have to say because I’d rather that and know exactly what’s going on rather than some half-truth and also it’s absolutely fine to walk away if that’s easier.

At the exact moment I sent the text I got a notification came up on my phone that Elle had sent me an email.

And talk about synchronicity – what she sent me couldn’t have been more real and honest if it had tried. I knew from that email that we were going to be fine, and actually will continue to be fine as we bump along down this road together.

By the time it got to Tuesday I was just desperate to reconnect and sort things out.

And we did.

It was a proper digging in deep, honest, raw session that felt really connecting. We talked about such a lot of stuff. Elle apologised for the post and explained where she had been coming from. And of course, her intentions and my version of her intentions couldn’t have been further away from each other.

I won’t go into lots of detail about the ins and outs of what was said but what I will say is that it is incredibly refreshing to be able to bring the biggest scariest fears and hurt to someone and for them to own their part in it, and be completely present and willing to talk about ALL of what has happened. No blaming, no shaming, no putting it squarely back on me, no clipboards, no withdrawal or freezing me out – just getting in the tough stuff together and forging a deeper understanding of how we impact one another and what that means for us going forward – and how to manage things in the future.

I don’t like ruptures… but I am confident in Elle’s ability to make repairs. And this is a lot of my work having grown up in an environment where I could never speak up about how hurt I was, or if I did so much as show hurt or dissatisfaction it would bring on another barrage of abuse.

One of the things that Elle and I have committed to is trying to bring stuff up in closer connection to each other. I write a lot, and it is helpful, but I think we both find it hard reading about ourselves in the third person… I mean, she’ll never write about me again and has shut down that social media account altogether now, but I know she doesn’t find it especially easy reading what I have to say without my being there either… because just like I focus in on the scary 1% rather than being able to hold in mind the 99% she’s human and does the same sometimes especially if it looks like she’s really hurt me and HASN’T MEANT TO.

She’s really good at doing her own internal work but we’ve figured out that we have similar stories around being too much/not enough. So, my ‘too much’ can often trigger her own countertransference about being ‘not enough’ or being ‘misunderstood’. And so sometimes sending things in written format can make it so we don’t see the entirety of what’s really happening. The good thing is we are now both really conscious of this and so can work with that explicitly.

And this week, yet again, this stuff was tapped into.

It’s been a month since we repaired the rupture, but we haven’t returned to it explicitly and I think sometimes I need to keep doubling back and checking in on this kind of thing. So, after my session last Tuesday (which was lovely and holding and connecting) part of my system piped up and started wondering where we were at now. Was everything really ok, or was anything festering on Elle’s side. So, I decided to ask Elle where we were at and what would happen if we found ourselves in that place again in an email.

I’ll write about that next post because this is insanely long already. But one good thing to come out of the haze was that rather than continuing down a road of trying to find her in the fog, I just asked for a phone call to check in…and that was gold. So, that’s my next plan – try and build in a regular check in at the end of the week regardless of where we are at.

I’m sure this post is vague…and frustratingly lacking in detail about the rupture… but mainly I wanted to come back and say that it’s all ok. I wanted to write this sooner, but I have been really struggling with going anywhere near the laptop to write about it even though it’s fine. It’s weird. Sometimes I can just write and it comes freely and other times my brain just won’t allow it.

Anyway, if you got through this, well done!

Dear A, It’s been Two Years…

rubberbandsandchewinggum15 Comments

Dear A,

It’s hard to believe that it’s two years since the Anita that I knew and loved was last properly in the room with me. It’s two years this weekend since you went off on your holiday for your birthday, full of reassurances, telling me that “nothing will change” and that you would be “coming back” and that you “love(d) me very much”. Little did I know, then, what would happen to us barely two weeks later. Little did I know you’d never properly come back to me. Had I have known you would pull the plug on us, on me, I would have made more of an effort to take in those last moments of feeling (relatively) safe and held.

I would have taken so many mental pictures of the room, and of you, and tried so much harder to commit the feelings of connection and safety to memory so that I could refer back to them and use them to soothe all the hurting parts of me later down the line. I would have breathed your familiar smell in, carefully listened for your slow, steady heartbeat all the while soaking up every last second of feeling safe in the moment because I can count on one hand the times that I have managed to settle my nervous system since we ended.

Having said that, I think it’s actually all the memories of the connected moments that now hurt me the most. I find it so difficult to sit in this place where I know what we had, how it felt, how you made me feel…and to now be here – it’s all gone… Of course, I have so much of ‘us’ evidenced in my writing and in voice recordings as ‘proof’ but I can’t bear to read back over my blogs or listen to our sessions anymore.

It hurts, too, that the tangible items that you gave me, gifts and transitional objects, now only bring me pain. On the one hand they serve as evidence that we really did exist for a moment in time, well three-and-a half years, but on the other hand that no matter how much “love and care” there was, it wasn’t enough to make you stay. We don’t exist in the here and now and it breaks my heart.

Sometimes I wonder if there was anything I could have said or done differently in those last sessions before your holiday? Could I have said something to pull at your heart enough so that you wouldn’t have ever considered leaving me in the first place? It’s hard to know. I spent months saying ‘less’ and hiding myself away, trying to give you space for fear of being too much because I knew that you weren’t well and things were hard in your personal life…as it was I ended up being “too much” and “not enough” all at the same time regardless of my best efforts to behave in the right way.

When you came back from your trip you were not the same Anita. From the moment I walked in the door I knew something was wrong and it took less than five minutes for you to say, “I’m going to have to bring the counselling with you to an end” and that you were ending with all your “long-term clients”. It’s funny. It’s so much easier to say “counselling” rather than “relationship” and for you to refer to me now as a “client” rather than “RB”. It’s easier to say “I need to cut the stress out of my life” rather than “I am cutting you from my life.”

For someone with the kind of wounding I have, and the issues around rejection and abandonment I struggle with, the way you handled our ending…or should I say ‘not ending’ (?!) couldn’t have been worse.

The day you told me we needed to end, you broke down, there was a complete role reversal, and you even said, “This is meant to be your session not mine.” And yet, I still paid you for it – and for all of those ridiculous sessions where my heart was basically being emotionally stomped all over in hobnail boots.

I focused on trying to save you (not for the first time), because if I could rescue you then it would mean I would be saved too. At the end of that first bomb-drop session, you shifted and said that we would, “find a way to connect” and that we would “figure something out.” I left devastated but somewhat hopeful because this back and forth with you wasn’t completely new territory for me.

Looking back over the last eight or so months of our time together, there was such a lot of push/pull and it wasn’t coming only from my end. I absolutely have a wonky brain, and things get messy, but there is generally a trigger. One minute I was “too dependent” and the next you’d tell me that you “love” me “such a lot.” It’s weird being someone’s “stress” but also being “so important” to them. It’s no wonder I got more and more panicked, and more and more clingy because things weren’t really safe, were they? – I wasn’t imagining it, even though you tried to tell me it was all in my head and that you “hadn’t changed”.

You said so many times in those weeks, “This isn’t what I want” but it was you who made this happen. You chose to cast me adrift and yet keep working with your other clients even if it was because you couldn’t “afford not to work”. I will never ever be ok with that. No matter how many angles I come at this from, and no matter how much benefit of the doubt I want to give you, I can’t let that go. You chose to sever our connection and chose to maintain others. It doesn’t make sense to me. I get that different clients demand different things from you but I just don’t understand how if anything you ever said to me was true that you would do this to me…and to others like me.

You wax lyrical about the importance of ethical practice but I am struggling hard to find anything ethical in how this all went down. At the very least, surely you would ensure that the clients that you were letting go were safe, and had someone else to go to. Like what on earth were you and your supervisor doing when all this was happening? You must have been speaking with her throughout this car crash time. Surely, there’s a fundamental understanding that you, as a therapist, safeguard your vulnerable clients – I mean you do understand complex trauma, don’t you?

And on a human level…well, on a human level you just do better.

Perhaps I am just too sensitive. Maybe I care too much. I have always worn my heart on my sleeve and this has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. But I sure as hell know that if I had hurt someone in the way that you have hurt me that I couldn’t just let it go. I couldn’t just bury my avoidant head in the sand and pray that when I came up for air that everything had gone away. I would have to try and make amends even if the other party didn’t want to hear it. Like how can you sit in your therapy room week in, week out and not be perpetually reminded of what you have done? Are you really able to just blank it all from your mind? – I just don’t know how you possibly could.

I think this is partly why, now, even two years later I am struggling to let the last bit of hope of you go. There’s a little bit of me that wonders if one day you’d try and repair because this isn’t how we treat people we love is it? Surely, somewhere in you there is a part that wants a proper resolution, a proper goodbye, to know that you have repaired some of the harm you’ve done…because that’s what I would want if it were me.

I know that is really only the hope of a little part that thinks you might come back, the one that trusts and always wants to see the best in people…and ultimately the one that always gets so very badly hurt. It’s certainly not my adult self, because there is no way on earth I’d let you near my poor vulnerable heart ever again. Even if you did muster up an apology that acknowledged and reflected the magnitude of the damage that you did to me, I could never trust you again and I think I would even struggle to accept an apology now. I no longer respect you. In fact, I think you are pretty dangerous.

I know too, that I cannot continue to judge your actions and behaviour by my standards. You are not me. And whilst I couldn’t do what you’ve done to me and your other poor clients…you clearly aren’t bothered by your conduct. You probably now just notch it up to having burnt out and “stress” so of course you weren’t at your best…but that doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for what you did and the harm you caused…it just gives you a sense of justification for it.

I have spent years and years waiting for people to change and do better – but the thing is, people rarely change. It’s a good thing then, that the majority of my system has, not exactly let you go, or moved on, but there’s some thick scar tissue forming where that open wound was. I’ve protected myself from what’s happened – to an extent. I don’t long for you anymore. I don’t look for you out in the world. In fact, if I were to come across you now, I imagine I would walk the other way and avoid meeting you because really, what is there to say?

It’s done now. You’ve moved so far past it and our relationship. You’re still working. You’re still advertising that you work with trauma and on a long-term basis. None of the things you said about moving to “couples work” or “online work only” and “no more trauma clients” are remotely true. And I think maybe that’s one of the hardest parts. The lies. Like why bother? It hasn’t protected me any. It hasn’t made it easier. All it’s done is make me question everything about what I thought to be true between you and me.

And where am I left in all this? Well, it’s two years on and I am still hurting – although not like I was. Anniversaries – or should I say ‘traumaversaries’ are rough. I hate the fact that once again I am super aware of dates and how they correspond to our relationship disintegrating.

I hate the fact that I have been a depressed, frozen, dissociative wreck all week.

I hate that once again I am left trying to process all this by writing you a letter that you will never see.

I hate that I will spend the next month struggling hard to keep my head above water as the various anniversaries of aspects of our final month together unfold.

I especially hate that the emotional upset is already making its way into my relationship with my therapist Elle. I am scared stiff that something bad is going to happen between us because I am hard-wired to look for problems and the slightest sense of something being ‘off’ feels completely catastrophic – and it’s not fair.

Elle is going to be away in May right at the time that it was all unravelling with me and you… it couldn’t be worse timing. She did ought to be able to go away without my wheels falling off… and yet there seems to be almost an inevitability that the shit will hit the fan this month. I get that I should be able to circumnavigate that, but when all my system is activated it’s so much harder to hang onto any sense of safety.

Part of me is so angry about all this. I am mad that two years down the line I am still trying to undo the damage that you have done. And I am mad that I’ve basically spent the last five years trying to heal from failed therapeutic relationships on top of the original traumas I came into therapy for.

So, happy birthday Anita, I’m sure you will have a wonderful time… I hope you choke on your cake and the candles set fire to the table cloth! See… I don’t even mean it. I really want to but the truth is, I still wish you nothing but love and happiness because as much as I wish I didn’t, I still love you. x

The Therapist, The T-shirt, And The Trigger: A Journey Of Doubt And Vulnerability…And A Massive Meltdown/Rupture

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

There’s a certain kind of raw vulnerability that comes with the territory when you’re in therapy – or at least that’s the case when the protectors aren’t running the show and shutting things down! I spend most of my time here writing about my therapy and the messy process of confronting and working with parts of myself- my minibus.

Currently, it’s a bit of a disaster on board the RB bus, and all the passengers/parts seem to be noisily vying for various kinds of care and attention. These parts of me have so many different wounds and so many different needs that it can be very hard to strike the balance of what is needed and whom to focus on in therapy – especially if several parts of different ages are activated all at the same time (like now – groan!).

When the conditions are just right, the alchemy that happens in the therapy room can feel amazing can’t it? Life changing, actually. And sessions can feel like a much-needed balm. Sadly, though, for those of you that have followed this blog a while, you’ll also know that it doesn’t always work out and it’s not always positive. I’ve spent a great deal of time talking about when therapy goes wrong and the damage that gets done time and again.

Therapy is (supposed to be) a safe space, a place where you can unpack your baggage and work through it without judgment, a place where all of you can be seen and held and understood – a place where you can metaphorically get out your favourite pair of rather faded, threadbare pants, the ones that don’t really fit anymore, hold them up the light and try figure out why you just can’t seem to let them go despite having many pairs of ‘good’ pants… and why despite having lost one of the socks in a pair some time ago, you daren’t part with the remaining one just in case the other should one day miraculously show up again…even though you probably did leave the other under a bed in a holiday apartment in Spain.

Throughout all this your therapist won’t flinch or mock you for your terrible underwear but stare at it alongside you and help you work out what’s really going on and what the pants and socks symbolise…or something like that. LOL!

So, yeah, it’s a safe space.

But, like with everything else in life, the boundaries between “safe” and “unsafe” aren’t always as clear as we think they should be. Sometimes, the things that trigger us don’t come in the form of some big, glaring issue: “like a tick” or “holy fuck RB – those pants are truly disgusting, how could you possibly still want them?”; sometimes they show up in the tiniest, most unexpected moments – wearing a slogan t-shirt, for example.

I guess I should back up and start from the beginning.

Last week, thanks to the wonders of the almighty ‘algorithm’, Instagram chose to hand me a fucking doozy: one my therapist Elle’s ‘open’ profiles – one that’s apparently been out in the magical internet universe for a good while, but because I don’t actively search Elle out (anymore!), I had no idea that it existed.

Typically, this all happened on a day where I was feeling disconnected and distant from Elle, a day where I had actually wanted to email her and reach out for reassurance, but had stopped myself. Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot of shame around my ‘need for Elle’ and have felt myself backing away a bit. I don’t think she’s got any idea that this is where I am at right now, but I feel the gap between us opening up week on week…or at least some part of me is experiencing our relationship in this way and it’s not great. I’d go so far as to say a good half of the passengers in the mini-bus aren’t strapped in and we’ve veered off-road.

Brace positions folks…we all know how this ends.

Of course, Elle’s personal Insta account is locked down (thank goodness…I think…) but this one isn’t. What showed up on my feed wasn’t some professional ‘therapist’ account; it was personal-ish – well without giving too much away, it’s a page that she’s made to showcase something she’s taken up relatively recently – a performance-based activity. This new ‘thing’ is something I’ve known about for a long time and something we’ve discussed on and off over the last eighteen months so I wasn’t completely surprised when I saw she had made a page for it.

This ‘thing’ has caused me some angst before- I think I mentioned it at the time. As bad luck would have it, one of my friends was also doing the ‘thing’ at the same time and had met Elle and become friends with her through this activity. That has been really hard for me to manage on lots of levels. I have wanted to go support my friend and watch her perform but have deliberately kept away from going to see her knowing that Elle would likely be there, too, and so instead I watch her from her online videos (my friend…not Elle!).

Our city is relatively small and so there is always going to be a chance of running into each other anyway- but I would never deliberately put myself in the same space that Elle might occupy because – ouch… it would physically hurt to have her ignore me…or of course, the Elle I meet in the outside world not be the person I see in the therapy room.

It’s been hard in other ways too. As time has gone on, I can’t help but feel more and more jealous that my friend gets to spend time with Elle – doesn’t have to pay to see her – isn’t on the clock and kicked out when the time is up – can send her WhatsApp messages and memes and basically have a ‘normal’ relationship/friendship with her…and, I’m not stupid, I get that Elle is my therapist and not my friend and I undoubtedly get a different kind of relationship with her – but ugh.

It’s not even like my friend is someone that only lives in my phone and I rarely see. I see this woman every single fucking day, our kids are in the same class at school FFS, we hang out and go on walks with my bloody dog…and yet there’s this unspoken thing between us. I told her the Elle is my therapist early on…but thereafter we’ve both ignored the fact but it sort of feels like an elephant in the room.

But that’s not the problem this week. It’s just there always in the background.

Back to the Insta page. Perhaps I should not have clicked on the page when it came up. But then, it’s not like it’s a secret Elle has kept from me – the thing she’s doing, I mean. And as I said, I felt disconnected from her that day and suddenly here she was in my phone. I had chance to see what Elle had been talking about all these months. I find it hard to hold her in mind at the best of times, and I was floundering last week and here were actual videos of Elle that I could watch and I was curious… and desperate to feel like she was still real…and so I started scrolling through the page.

Big error.

And, you could laugh…I probably should…but it wasn’t anything that she said or did that upset me. Nope. It was a t-shirt that’s fucked everything up…you can’t make it up, can you?

On one of the videos Elle was wearing a shirt with a phrase on it that hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. I’m not going to tell you exactly what the t-shirt said. That’s not the point. The point is that the words, the design, everything about it felt painful to me. It felt like Elle was wearing something that spoke directly to me – even if it wasn’t intended to. She knows a lot about me and she knows what my life is like and how it is set up. And here was a slogan that ripped into an aspect of that. Noone needs to see ‘Fuck your ______’ and a picture of that burning…and no one needs to see that on the body of their therapist on an online video.

I get it. It’s not meant to be personal. Elle would never in a million years think that I would see this. She probably didn’t think at all –  

But it’s hard not to wonder: is this a sign? Is it a cosmic nudge that the safe space I thought I had built around her is, in reality, much smaller than I thought? – or possibly totally non-existent? That in fact, she is not at all who I thought she was, or hoped her to be. The truth is, I’ve been struggling with a deep sense of doubt all week and really couldn’t connect this week in my session (although it wouldn’t have been apparent because I am SOOOOOO good at looking fine when I am anything but!).

I kept my most vulnerable parts firmly locked away and I felt as though something was wrong the whole time…but that’s because for me, or several parts of me, there is now something wrong. It wasn’t helped at all when, that was the first session in as long as I can remember that Elle didn’t reach for me. She didn’t hold my hand…and as I got up to leave, she opened the door. We usually hug at the end and it was as though she had forgotten…or maybe she just didn’t want to? I did ask for a hug but it all just landed really flat for me. This has added an extra dimension of fear around our relationship heading south even without the fucking t-shirt.

How do I even bring this to her?

How do you sit across, well next to, the person who’s been helping you heal and admit that you feel suddenly unsafe in the therapy? How do you tell them that you feel like they might just be humouring you or tolerating you because it’s their job to, and not because they genuinely care about you as a person? How do you say, “I see and recognise EVERYTHING that you do for me, but my brain can’t hang onto that in the face of a perceived abandonment or rejection and right now I feel like everything is an act and I want to run away before you hurt me any more. My little parts are terrified that you are going to leave too…and tell me I am too much.”

I know. I know. I need to say exactly that, don’t I?!

For those of us who have spent years, a life-time even, feeling like we don’t quite belong in the world, who have never felt quite good enough, feel as though we have to work doubly hard to be accepted and that love and connection comes with a catch…it’s hard to build trust and even harder to maintain it. This is especially the case after everything that happened with Em and Anita and Hannah.

It’s taken a good while for me to really feel safe with Elle, to trust that what she says is true, and that she is there for me. And my goodness, she demonstrates it in so many ways time and again…and so seeing this version of Elle online has basically felt like the universe is playing a cruel joke on me – AGAIN. Because I so want to believe that Elle is the person I have come to know over the last eighteen months and not the person my phone sent me last week…she is, of course, both…so what do I do with that?

I know I need to find a way to bring this up because literally just now – writing this post – the joy of the algorithm has done another two things to me – it’s shown me that my friend is going to be doing the ‘thing’ again next week with Elle (groan) and Facebook has also decided that Elle’s child may be on the list of ‘someone I know’ despite me not being friends with Elle online, us having only one mutual friend, and my NEVER having searched her child out… just no…no more of this cruel hell please!

I am so activated and upset and basically overwhelmed by this whole situation this last week and the longer I keep quiet about it the worse it gets. I can feel myself drifting away from Elle. There are a lot of competing voices inside, though – and it really isn’t helpful when some of them are saying to “shut the fuck up and keep your mouth shut”…because what if what I have to say doesn’t go down well? What if Elle feels like her privacy has been intruded upon. What happens if she gets defensive- or worse – reactive? I am imagine her first action would be to block me from seeing that account because I clearly can’t handle it and that would feel rejecting too.

I don’t want her to think that I’m some kind of stalker that’s sought her out on social media and then had a meltdown about what I’ve seen. Because that isn’t it AT ALL. And, then there’s the other bit -the self-doubting part of me that is so used to me being the problem that I tend to look inside and find fault with myself first. So, I am not even sure whether or not I am just overreacting to the whole thing in the first place and should just get over it and let it go? Maybe I am just being super sensitive and dramatic? I’m more or less over the ‘group email’ now and I never told Elle about what had happened maybe I can move through this alone, too, and not risk fucking things up with another therapist.

The thing is – it’s still in there somewhere, isn’t it? Like, it’s stored away as a nugget of doubt and this latest thing with the shirt feels like another added to the pile…and I don’t want there to be a pile building up because I’ve found that once you start to accumulate doubt nuggets they seem to grow exponentially and before you know it, you’re surrounded by doubts and can see little else.

And perhaps I need to be less judging of myself. Maybe I am overreacting – but what I know is this: the heavy feeling in my chest and the sick feeling in my stomach are real…and the sadness I feel is there regardless of the trigger. It’s not the same as Em calling me a tick, but it’s in the same zone… basically something about me is unlikeable and deficient in Elle’s eyes and that hurts because more than anything I want her to judge me as worthy.

The video was filmed back in November and honestly, since that time Elle and I have done some incredible work, we have got closer and closer to each other, and I have felt so safe and contained with her (just haven’t caught myself up from Christmas here yet have I?!)…and yet, it was a choice she made to wear that t-shirt that day…having already known me for 15 months at that point, told me that she loves me, and you know all the lovely things…

Ugh.

I get that life as a therapist is a bloody minefield – because Elle is a human and not just a therapist, isn’t she? She exists in the world outside the room as a person with all sorts of feelings and opinions that may not necessarily align with the clients she sees. Like of course, I know that. But there is always a chance a client may come across you in the wider world- or even actively seek you out…and…well…fuck it…all I can say is this t-shirt has really upset me and I don’t know what to do about it.

There’s a part of me—the protector part—that wants to quit therapy entirely. That part of me feels it would be easier to cut and run, and avoid having to squirm in discomfort about this whole thing. My track record for bringing difficult stuff to therapists and it working out positively hasn’t been exactly great and honestly, I don’t want to be in a situation where I feel ‘done to’ again when things don’t work out. Like I don’t want to feel the pain of rejection or abandonment again…although on a level I already feel this this week. I don’t want to lose Elle but also, I don’t want to be in therapy with someone who is just tolerating me and behind the scenes thinks badly of me.

Complex trauma really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? I know that how I feel right now is being exacerbated by the fact that we are headed into May – and 2 years since Anita went away and never really came back. My safe person went away on holiday full of reassurances and returned a different person. Elle is going away in May too. Like, what happens if it all happens again? And the pattern repeats because once again I am being too much, having too many big feelings, and the hard work to be around me is simply not worth it?

So here I am, sitting with all of this discomfort, trying to figure out how to move forward. Trying not to let the Inner Critic get too loud. The fear is real. The uncertainty is paralyzing. But I know that if I don’t bring it up, if I don’t address it somehow, I’ll be stuck in this cycle of self-doubt and avoidance all the while losing connection with Elle and that is frankly terrifying.

So, here’s to the T-shirt, the trigger, and the uncomfortable journey ahead…2025 can, frankly, go do one!

Update: Life Is A Shitshow

rubberbandsandchewinggum14 Comments

Where do I even start with this? Seriously, why oh why is my life so endlessly fucking challenging? I often wonder if I must’ve been a colossal asshole in a previous life because the unending piles of shit that land over and over seem just really too much. Surely, life isn’t meant to be an ongoing struggle that involves jumping hurdle after hurdle without ever having much time to recover and breathe before the next? But that’s how it feels.

It’s little wonder I am always so strung out – even when things seem to be going relatively well, I feel as though I am waiting for the next barrage of shit to hit…and it always always comes without fail. It might sound dramatic but I really feel like I have had more than my fair share of crap in this lifetime. Like living with an abusive parent, the death of the safe parent, and cancer at 31 was enough thank you very much… ugh.

So, it’s been a little (long) while since my last post where I was having a meltdown about the group email that Elle sent out about her fee increase in April. I honestly wish I could go back to that time and only be dealing with that level of shit in my life – you know, alongside having a chronically sick kid and all the other bits that I navigate on the daily…but I was just about head above water then even though it’s felt like I have been drowning emotionally for the best part of six months.

As it turned out, I never got round to telling Elle about the meltdown I had about being ‘one of many’ and her group email, because as life would have it, my life got turned upside down AGAIN and that seemed really insignificant in the big scheme of things . Ironically, the thing that wasn’t a worry at all in that message, i.e the fee increase has now become a real and present stress alongside the not wanting to share Elle. What’s happened you might wonder? Well, let’s just say, it doesn’t seem pay to speak up when things are wrong – or to care in this world.

My wife recently took on a new role in a new organisation in order to be able to work closer to home now that one of our kids has been diagnosed with a chronic lifelong condition. She’d been in post for a week when she had to escalate some serious findings to the CEO and rather than listen to what she had to say they got irate and told her to leave…basically they didn’t want to know. This was shocking… like honestly, mind-blowing…you just wouldn’t quite believe that companies run like this…especially when people’s lives are in the mix but it is all too common unfortunately.

So, what does that even mean? Well, this is the sixth week she’s been out of work and no money coming in. She has several ongoing interviews at the moment (at her level most jobs have a minimum of three interviews and some kind of presentation to the directorate), but these things take a loooonnnggg time and meanwhile our main earner isn’t earning.

Can you imagine the stress? For someone that has a bit of a scarcity complex it has really triggered me.

Of course, my system is in absolute meltdown about it. I am hardly sleeping, my back seized up the first week, then I came down with a stinking cold/flu which has lasted the best part of a month now and I have had to work through it when had I not been self-employed I’d have been in bed sick.

It’s not surprising I got pummelled with this though and just haven’t been able to bounce back, as alongside all of this we spent most of the first week post ‘no job’ in hospital with our son who is immune suppressed due to his medication regime and had developed an infection.

It’s been exhausting.

I am exhausted.

Burnout is real.

And it is nigh on impossible to hang it all together when so much feels so out of control and dangerous. This post has actually been half-started and languishing in my laptop for ages now, and really I thought about deleting it as it’s not even really about ‘therapy’ – but I want to post so that my next ‘therapy’ post will make some kind of sense…when I get round to writing it… because no surprise, I have hit huge skids with Elle this week (not that she knows it yet) and it has felt like the biggest rupture to my system.

My inner world is in turmoil and I think it must have at least something to do with my external world going tits up…but you can figure that out with me next time. Maybe I am overreacting or maybe Elle has just been unconsciously insensitive and maybe I am justified in feeling really hurt. I don’t know.

Still, back to the shitshow that is my day-to-day!

As we all know, life doesn’t happen for free… gotta love capitalism! lol. I have juggled some bits around for now – taken on some extra debt to cover the immediate expenses, but there is a real worry that this can’t go on for too long before I’ll have to make some hard choices about my therapy with Elle. And whilst it would be me putting things on pause for financial reasons, my system won’t understand that at all especially given the recent ‘rupture’ stuff that’s just been triggered.

The universe has been delivering a total avalanche of shit since my wife became unemployed… not only were me and my son ill… but the car got a puncture and needed a new tyre, the dishwasher blew up, the boiler broke and flooded the bedroom – because – why??? Then my car engine light came on last week and was an £800 fix…umm….HELP!! There’ve been a few more of these unexpected financial sucker punches but I can’t remember what they are…dissociation is such fun! But it’s meant the safety net I put in place to tide us over whilst my wife gets a new position is spring huge tears left and right.

Not seeing Elle would feel like an abandonment to my young parts who already struggle such a lot because of what’s happened in previous therapies. How many times have I heard that “I’m with you for the entire journey. No matter what.” Or “It’s not about money to me” or “I will keep showing up for you.” And then something happens and oh look, it’s Me, Myself and I figuring things out alone – it certainly doesn’t help that we are rapidly approaching May and two years since Anita went on holiday and then came back and ended the therapy…or you know, didn’t actually end or say goodbye…

FFS.

As much as I’d love to pretend that Elle and I have a relationship that is important and matters no matter what – the reality is, my time with her is a paid for slot and … well… if things don’t shift for the better in the next few weeks then… Elle and I don’t exist. And that is super painful and is sending me into freefall. It’s hard to imagine the person that has been so present and available and just plain loving and kind mightn’t be there for me for much longer – and I do wonder if I have latched on to this ‘rupture’ this week to make it easier for me to detach from her if I have to.

I’d like to think I was better at navigating ruptures now – but I think my ability to be able to bring hard things to the room depends largely on how solid and safe I feel – not only with Elle but in life…and frankly – safe isn’t a feeling I am tapping into right now. Ugh.

I won’t keep you hanging for months on end with the next bit…I just haven’t been well enough to write until now.

xx

C-PTSD Triggers – Episode 5723: Therapist’s Generic/Impersonal Group Emails

rubberbandsandchewinggum22 Comments

Oh lordy! I honestly feel like I am navigating a fucking gator-infested swamp of Complex Trauma Doom right now…Seriously, it’s like running through a minefield of endless triggers at the moment, and I seem to be setting them off with nearly every step I take. It’s starting to do my head in, frankly – and my entire system is taking a lot of hits! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was an off switch for all our sensitivities?…or a reset for trauma brain…

What’s the problem today you ask? – I mean there are several ongoing issues and upsets #breakdown but today’s bit of bollocks is that I have been once again upended by a seemingly innocuous email communication from my therapist Elle.

Oh, but of course this would happen today! –  the first day in a really long time where I have been able to carve out some space and time for myself in a place that I love- and then rather than be able to sink into safe and calm I have spent the day ruminating on the message! – let’s be clear, group mail outs trigger the shit out of me. FFS.

This is not the first time I have had a reaction to an impersonal email or communication from a therapist. Years ago I remember Anita handing me a printed sheet of paper at the end of a session with her holiday dates on and it signing off with something like ‘sorry for the inconvenience it may cause…best wishes…’ and it sent me into outer space because how could it possibly be that one minute I was snuggled into her body with her telling me that she loved me and the next minute I was being presented with cold admin related paperwork and sent on my merry way? This kind of thing jars my system so badly… because, yay for relational trauma and the fear of people turning cold and leaving.

Early on in my work with Elle a similar situation to today happened (a group email to all clients) and I went belly up then, too. It was the first time that my mask of coping slipped with Elle. I had read her message that began with, ‘Dear All, My apologies for the impersonal nature of this group email…’ and it landed really hard. At the time I felt like the group email was a backhanded way of her addressing something with me and feeling like I was getting rejected for something I didn’t know about – basically WhatsApp communication being a ‘no’. I absolutely crumbled. I was able to tell her in an email:

The email you sent on Friday made me cry. Like I actually fell apart. I felt like I’d pissed you off, and rather than tell me directly you’d done it in a ‘send to all’. The feeling of needing to run away and self-protect was massive and really highlights to me what a fucking massive mess I am in. Literally everything feels like a rejection or an abandonment or like I have done something wrong or that I’m fucking things up and my system just can’t cope.

Elle replied with a really holding/caring message to that and I think it was probably the start of me moving into trusting her a bit with ‘messy me’. At that point I wasn’t especially triggered by the fact I was receiving a mail out to all clients because I was still getting to know her and wasn’t all in – but that has certainly shifted today because crikey…it’s been a lot.

I just REALLY DON’T EVER want to be receiving a ‘Notice to all clients’.

When I feel attached to a therapist the last very fucking thing I want is the reminder that I am one of many clients that my therapist sees on her conveyor belt of losers each week, or that the carefully constructed relationship we have only exists in the room for the time I am there and is nothing more than an elaborate paid for pantomime full of smoke and mirrors. Elle is running a business (ugh she said that today in the email ‘rising costs of running a business’) and that is therapy. Anything beyond that is just wishful thinking on my part.

Being just a ‘client’ is hard enough but being reminded of the ‘others’ that I have to share Elle with triggers all kinds of sibling jealousy…I don’t want to be conscious of the fact that there will be other people Elle likes better than me, others who she would choose to see over me if there was a choice to make… it’s all just too painful. I do understand that this is ‘the work’ but sometimes when you have had a childhood of never being put first, never feeling important, never having someone’s undivided attention…then it’s not surprising that we might just want that in therapy (even though it can’t really ever happen – the fantasy of that is important).

Some of you might remember when I, idiotically, asked Anita about a box on the shelf in her room one day and she told me that a client who had anxiety and trust issues had given it to her and that inside there was a stone with the word ‘trust’ on it and I wanted to curl up and die and for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

Recently, I wrote about what a perfect therapy room would look like and shared it with Elle. She emailed back to say she really liked it, that she’d like to share it with supervisees, and then commented that the soft toy I had seen in the room (that I had mentioned in the post) belonged to another client… Oh holy fucking hell. Like no. Please no. Just no. I can’t explain how having that confirmed triggered the shit out of me. Of course I know that there’ll be loads of people working on their inner child in therapy with Elle- like I’m not stupid…but I don’t need reminding that there are other people that Elle might cuddle, read stories to…basically, I don’t want to know that she’s probably replicating what she’s doing with me with others.

I didn’t tell Elle this because honestly, I don’t want to come over as a needy, selfish brat… but it is how it is.

So, umm what else can I say about all this stuff?? It’s not just group emails that are problematic, generic communications aren’t great for me – full stop. Recently the ‘automated session reminder texts’ stopped because I let Elle know that they trigger me and I find them upsetting – like, the day before a session when I have drifted off into panic and doom because it’s been soooo long since I have seen her the last thing I want is stone cold admin… and so Elle has been sending me personalised messages that are far more in keeping with how we communicate both inside and outside the sessions and I have found them so much better.

So, it’s hardly surprising that today’s email landed so painfully. It’s been a bit of a week with one thing and another, anyway, but I just about got to the weekend in one piece with a bit of slipping and sliding. The irony in all this is, Elle and I had a really lovely reconnecting session this week after my holiday – like it was just so great to see her, we laughed a lot, and she surprised me with a really beautiful, thoughtful, handmade present that was so personal to our work I just wanted to cry – like my heart was fit to burst and I just can’t even begin to explain how much it meant to me. We’ve remained in close touch most of the week and it’s felt so nice…until today and this email.

But this is Complex Trauma brain for you, isn’t it? One minute things are going great, are doable and the next moment everything feels like it’s complete shit, and not real, and basically the protectors go wild trying to stop us from getting hurt. Adult me can see that today’s email is just a fucking admin email – but try explaining that to the minibus inside who wonder where ‘our Elle’ is. Like where’s the Elle that calls us ‘sweetpea’ and ‘lambkin’ and ‘flower’…now we are ‘client’.

Ugh. It’s just ugh.

So, what was it all about then? Well, Elle is putting her fees up from April – which is…fine. I mean, I get it, this is how things are. I know that money in therapy can be a minefield in itself for some of the reasons I have listed above – i.e it making the relationship seem fake. Like it’s very clearly a transactional relationship and without that exchange of money the therapy ceases to exist but over the years I have managed, just about, to see that actually just because I pay for my therapist’s time it doesn’t necessarily follow that the care and love I experience from her isn’t real…at least I feel that’s the case most of the time!

However, seeing things today like:

I appreciate that, for some of you, this will mean you will have to consider whether to continue working with me, or perhaps decrease the number of sessions you attend per month. If this is the case, please let me know as soon as you can so we can discuss the best way forward.

Are a reminder/warning that maybe things aren’t as solid as I think. I would like to think that if I couldn’t manage the increased fee that Elle wouldn’t just ditch me, or I’d have to see her less… but who knows from that email? Fortunately, I can absorb this increase – well, right now I can…June-September is always tricky as my work pretty much disappears.

I think the hardest thing about therapy in general is that for me therapy isn’t a six month or year-long financial commitment that I am investing in but will end soon and so it’s a stretch now but fundamentally worth it…but there is an end point.

For me therapy is going to be long-term and so it’s literally like having taken on a mortgage term and equates to about 25% of my income over the course of a year. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Elle and I have a 90-minute session each week – and I’d love to say I could go down to an hour, but we all know that that wouldn’t work, that it takes me so long to ground and feel safe in the first place that an hour just isn’t enough – and that even as things are now I am in a state of perpetual struggle because there actually isn’t enough contact. I miss having two sessions a week like I did with Em and A and how containing that felt.

I am really aware of the need to have some kind of regular, agreed upon contact on a Friday with Elle– even if it’s just a fifteen-minute call … but it’s all money isn’t it? Especially now. And don’t get me wrong, my time with Elle is worth every penny and then some! I really really get that she gives me WAY MORE than she has to – she is so available to me outside the sessions … and I am so grateful to her. She demonstrates in so many ways that I matter to her – but my belief in that is so fucking fragile and today has left me feeling like I need some serious reassurance.

I feel like a fucking fool getting so upset about this that I will go hide in my hole until Tuesday and in the meantime the littles will get more and more worked up because how embarrassing is it to say, “I have been completely derailed by your group email today and the little parts of me wonder if all of what I think our relationship is is a lie – am I delusional?”

Sometimes it feels so unfair that those of us with Complex Trauma who badly need therapy to keep afloat are always having to juggle finances to make it possible to do the therapy just to help us recover from things that weren’t even our fault to begin with. Childhood and life trauma are bad enough, but it’s especially galling to think about this when you’ve also experienced harm in therapy – all those years with Em and Anita for what? Debt and more trauma lumped on top!

I already work more hours than I want to/feel able to in order that I can keep going to my sessions but that’s a choice I have made because the therapy is so necessary. My last evening teaching session of the day (7pm) wipes me out and by Friday I am dying, but what other option is there? In the ideal world I would reduce my hours and this would stop me feeling so fucking burnt out all the time… but if I don’t see Elle my emotional world unravels.

So yeah…bleurgh..! Receiving this message on a Saturday has totally bummed me out. I wish Elle had have joined some dots and realised that this kind of generic communication might not land brilliantly well. Even, if she’d just sent a quick message with it at the top – ‘hey sweetpea, I hope you’re having a good weekend. I know this is a formal looking email below, but please know it’s just admin and doesn’t change us but I do understand how the mechanics of money in therapy can feel triggering sometimes and  I really don’t want for you to feel like I am pushing you away’. I dunno – anything really but she clearly has no idea how this has landed and is probably having a wonderful weekend enjoying the sun and blue skies we’re finally getting here in the UK.

In true RB style I’ve been stuck in a ruminating brain loop all day and just feel really far away from Elle…let me just say this one last time: impersonal group emails are not for me! – ugh. I feel like they are a pushback… and adult me knows it’s just life…

But right now, just fuck my life! And fuck CPTSD.

x

I could really use a hug right now – and a new brain!

Not Doing Brilliantly Well: Breakdown And Burnout

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

So, it’s been a while since I have been here to update the blog…months in fact…

I guess it was inevitable, but I had a total breakdown in January, folks, and just couldn’t do anything with it or myself at all. I was barely functional let alone able to write. It’d been coming on steadily for months, well, let’s be real, since May 2023 when everything with Anita disintegrated before my very eyes. Something had to give sooner or later – and that something was me.

I have been muddling through, hanging it together with rubber bands and chewing gum for such a long time, but then, OOooofffffff  November was ROUGH, December was BRUTAL, Christmas was UGH, and January … well… FUCK ME!! …The crash was real!

Somehow, we are almost at the end of February now, and I’m more or less functional again but it’s VERY tentative – cue full blown anxiety attack earlier today and the realisation that I am probably less ok than I think. Yikes.

I am floundering around and trying to put one foot in front of the other and not fall flat on my face again because there just isn’t capacity for me not to be ok any longer. The reality is that work kicks back in tomorrow after half term break (and several weeks preceding this of cancelling lots of work) and people need me to be on my ‘A game’…or at least ‘present’. The GCSE and A Level exams are looming and I simply can’t get away with any more sick days. I need to be the calm and supportive person that my students need – but it takes a lot. Somehow or other I need to pull something out of the bag – even if the bag has a fucking great hole in it and its contents have long been lost.

When things went south last month, Elle and I were on a therapy break (what a surprise)! I wrote a bit then to try and process and make sense of what was going on for me, but then I shut the laptop and it’s been sitting there as an open tab of shame ever since.

So, I guess maybe, I’ll post that here now and then try and get back to filling in blanks of what’s been happening more generally in another post – i.e bring things up to speed and talk about what happened when Elle and I met face-to-face after Christmas and her being sick and all the stuff since…but I don’t have the brain for that right now.

However, I feel like if I don’t try and post something now despite being overwhelmed with ‘everything’ another month will roll by and I’ll lose sense of where I am at. So apologies that the chronology is off but I’ll get back on track eventually.

It’s so hard when my brain stops working properly writing is the one thing that just falls away. I just can’t do it. My attention span is minimal and my ability to hold anything in mind just goes. I feel like I have been stuck in procrastination and freeze for pretty much the last six weeks and it’s been hard. Everything has suffered…self-care…everything.

So… buckle up for what was in the laptop and written in the height of the meltdown.

This was mid-January and Elle was away, it was all kinds of tough with anniversaries and bleurgh – it’s not pretty but is exactly how it was in the moment – my poor poor brain, system, self:

The fast acceleration into the place that is super scary happened this last week again. I could feel the wheels starting to fall off, the nightmares were relentless, the feeling of intense panic and overwhelm were all consuming; my system activated so massively (including all the protectors) and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t regulate AT ALL and the spiral down into total meltdown and collapse happened. It’s hardly surprising, though, what with all the ‘shitty’ anniversaries landing: five years since I met Anita (and she’s no longer part of my life) and therefore also five years since Em called me a ‘tick’ and my therapy with her blowing up. There is so much hurt and grief. Like I don’t think I will ever get over this… it’s too much and sometimes it just catches up with me.

I always feel so vulnerable around now, understandably, but it’s been made a million times worse by the fact the Elle has been on a break this last week, too. It’s been two weeks between sessions at a time where, in all honesty, I could have used two sessions each week AND check ins not her absence and physical disconnect.

Instead of a feeling of safety and connection, it’s been the complete opposite of the level of holding and containment I needed. I’ve felt so far away from her and, of course, that’s also further triggered my system around the abandonment and rejection stuff that is already so live at this time of year. I have been certain that something bad is coming on Tuesday when we meet again, and have been in a place where I was really and truly considering leaving before I get left (god I am so sick of this horrid process!). There’s no evidence to suggest anything is wrong between Elle and I, but my system doesn’t understand that, all the alarms are blaring and it’s full-scale panic. It’s a total system malfunction.

Truthfully, Elle being away for this particular week in the year could not have been worse timing. Like it just felt like an absolute sucker punch. I felt my heart sink when she told me she’d be away, but’s it’s been especially tough having this happen on top of all the bumping along and disruption with the therapy pattern around Christmas holidays. Not seeing her face-to-face as planned on Christmas Eve was hard, and finding out that she had this current break coming the same day she let me know I couldn’t see her on the 24th was really painful, and then there was the cancellation on the 31st because she was sick which really unsettled me. Like it’s been a lot…even though we did end up speaking on the phone on Christmas Eve and seeing each other on the 1st January which was so needed (I’ll come back to this ‘good’ stuff next time).

On paper it would seem like not a lot changed, then, like Elle has really done her very best to minimise the disruptions and accommodate me. The fact that she came in on New Year’s day whilst still clearly unwell because she knew how much I needed the session shows she cares and gets it. And sane and rational me really sees it and appreciates it such a lot… but the rollercoaster my system has been on around all this at a hard time of year has been insane.

I’ve been holding on so tightly to what is left of my sanity and coping for such a long time now that I guess it was inevitable that something would give sooner or later. And so, this break on top of all that has gone before has just been too much and the final thread that was holding me together just snapped on Saturday in the BIGGEST way.

I am usually able to keep what’s going on internally (even if it is horrific) fairly locked up inside and suffer my way through alone whilst appearing largely normal and ‘functional’ in my day-to-day life but as this week has gone on my filter between my inner world with the distress I am feeling and my outer presentation has totally crumbled.

My mask has slipped, not just slipped- shattered – and this weekend I just completely fell apart. My usual relative calm disappeared and the snappy, angry, hurting parts of me were on full show and then shortly after that I broke and just sobbed and sobbed for hours – ugly crying, snot, convulsive sobs…you know? Full mental collapse. This wasn’t a ‘healthy’ release of emotion. I was completely out of control.

It’s hard to really explain because I think most of the time, I seem to be pretty unhappy and struggling, don’t I? So how is this any different? The last time I was here I was at a pretty low ebb. I spend so much time writing out my feelings, trying to process, doing the self-care, doing the therapy, blah blah fucking blah tick box of survival strategies, but sometimes I get so sick of how hard everything feels. I try so hard to drag myself through and into a better place but I feel like I am dragging the weight of the world behind me. It’s exhausting.

Like at what point do I just stop and admit defeat? I honestly can’t keep going like this anymore. I do get that I am neck deep in a depressive episode at the moment, and that it’s winter, and that this is the very fucking worst week of my calendar year but ugh…just really, when will it get easier?

As I said to Elle the other day in a message, “surely life isn’t meant to be this hard” and it shouldn’t. To find myself back in a place where self-harm seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do and suicidal thoughts are coming through my mind like buses- it’s not good. Like it’s really fucking shit in fact. It all just feels desperately bad and I can’t seem to get out of it. I feel like I am screaming underwater.

I was meant to go away this weekend, alone, but I realised that this would be a very bad move and as much as being around people feels intolerable, I am at least safe.

So yeah, I’m having all the fun of the fair right now! I know if I wait it out things will get better. I just wish there was a magic wand I could wave to make all the hurt and distress stop and allow some space to breathe and settle. I feel like I just can’t land in my window of tolerance at all…or letterbox.

I was feeling fairly connected to Elle at the start of this break even if I was overwhelmed but the steady sense of disconnect started as the first weekend approached, the panic kicked in, and from Tuesday (the day of our usual session) onwards it’s felt like any connection we have has been completely severed.

I was so painfully aware of needing my session with Elle on Tuesday because so much was being activated around the old stuff with Anita and Em, so to not see her or even check in via a message felt really difficult. I could have reached out – I am sure she wouldn’t have minded – but then she’s on a holiday and look how many times things have gone to shit with therapists during or directly following a break. I don’t want to do anything that might make Elle get fed up with me and so I have backed right off. The fear of history repeating is huge.

Sadly, my mind can’t seem to differentiate that this disconnect from Elle has come purely from my side. All it knows is that disconnect feels terrifying and that if it goes on for long enough it’s hard to come back from it. This horrible feeling has got worse and worse through the course of this week. I have been steadily drifting away on the ocean in my little boat and now I can’t see the land at all and the seas are getting rougher and rougher and Elle has no idea.

The sadness of the little parts is big but there’s also some anger coming up from the protective parts who I think have just about had enough of feeling ‘left’. It’s hard enough getting through the regular week and only having a single session after so many years of two sessions a week with Anita and Em. It feels like I am always stretching just that little bit too far between sessions and it takes its toll. I wish that I could land in a space where I wasn’t hitting a panic on a Friday each week and then hanging on by the skin of my teeth to get to Tuesdays.

Holidays are very necessary, but my god they suck balls too! That probably makes me too needy or too dependent or whatever else – but it is how it is right now. Parts of me are so mad that it’s like this again but part of me really gets it. It’s all been a lot for too long and there is only so much I can hold on top of the demands of my exhausting day-to-day life.

I feel like I have mentioned this struggle between sessions in so many different ways over the last eighteen months but it feels really hard to ask for more from Elle. I think we need a Friday check in… I mean, I’d love to see her twice a week in person but I don’t think that’s on the cards. I get the sense that she is carefully managing what she can cope with and probably two sessions would feel a lot of me… and that’s hard isn’t it?

Thinking you’re only tolerable for a certain amount of time each week but any more than that risks burning them out is hard. Again, Elle hasn’t said this AT ALL and so it could be my projection given what’s happened before with other therapies but I am just not willing to reach out and ask for something and be told no. Elle has invited me so many times to ask her for what I need and has said she would try and give me what I need.

I just wish it felt easier to make requests but I know right now my reluctance is due to how live the memory of stuff with Em is. Like, all the times I braved asking for things: transitional object (ugh pebblegate), three dots in a text mid-week, sitting next to me, playing games, ANYTHING AT ALL REALLY, and getting no…it’s hard to feel like I want to brave more of getting that feeling of rejection and shame that arises.

Elle is not Em, or A…she’s really great…and I really want to trust Elle – I do trust her- but when I feel vulnerable, I just can’t get out of my shell or ask for help. I hide.

I have been especially conscious of all the soundbites that haunt me during this break, “adhesive like a tick”, “too dependent”, “you want more than I can give” etc and have been so terrified of being ‘too much’ so as I say, I have really backed away from contact with Elle despite needing it. I don’t want her to feel the need to escape my neediness. I really want her to be able to have a break … just not in January 😉.

I think it would have probably helped if when the wheels had started to fall off I’d have been able to reach out and ask for some reassurance that we were still ok…but I was set dead against it in my head. I just told myself to tough it out…get your shit together RB! I see now that that was an error because it’s much harder to get back on track from this point although I guess at some point I am going to have to make a choice – to either continue on in this misery or reach out and ask for support because this isn’t just a small wobble that I can handle on my own, this is a scary crisis point that I haven’t found myself in for several years.

I am trying to hang onto the good… because there is and has been such a lot of it. But it’s hard to remember that when your brain is working against you and all your body knows is terror. I honestly hate how when my system gets hijacked and adult me loses the capacity to hold it all that it gets so bleak so quickly. I guess this really is a reminder of a patterning that must have been forged early on in my childhood. This terror – it’s visceral – and so familiar.

It feels really bonkers to be here because even in the last session before the break, Elle demonstrated that she clearly had my littles in mind and was doing everything she could to settle them before she left. I had been waffling on in false adult moaning about some daily life shit and she stopped me when there was a natural pause. It was about half an hour before the end of the session and she asked me if I wanted a story and a cuddle…yep…

I think in the sessions before a break I am always preparing to be left and almost pretend like I am fine, and coping, and adult … but inside it’s a different story. I’m so glad she knows this about me now and reached for me rather than allowing me to run down the clock and then feel awful and unseen afterwards. I just need to remind myself of this when I feel like I have been abandoned.

After the story, Elle had asked if she could take Baby-Elly and Monty away with her on her break and send me photos of what they got up to, she thought it might be a nice thing for them to do. She then asked me if I would take Hare Bunny (that I gave her for Christmas) home with me so that he didn’t get lonely in the office whilst she was gone. Like that’s really lovely isn’t it? And I really really loved that she thought of that. It’s a world away from the no contact breaks with Elle, or even the texts from Anita.

Like how nice to take our transitional object away, and include the little elephant that’s been held hostage all these months with Anita. Adult me can see how hard Elle is working to keep my system in connection with her… it’s just a lot when I need a big cuddle, some reassurance, and to hear her voice.

Elle sent me a picture of Monty and Baby-Elly waiting to go on their holiday last week and on Monday one from their break. It made me smile. But then as the week went on it felt so so hard for me and I felt so far away and as much as I wanted to reach out and send a message ‘how is everyone enjoying their holiday?’ or ‘I miss you all’.

I didn’t. Because I can’t forget when Anita went on holiday, sent me messages, sent me photos, told me she was thinking of me….and I literally sent, ‘Looks lovely, I miss you’ back…that I was told that when she’d read the message she felt pressured and stressed and that this was probably part of what led her to end the therapy. I know this says more about her than me, and her mental state and how she’d allowed herself to burnout…but it was me that was taken out in the crossfire and it is me that is now terrified of a repeat.

I still wonder how I was supposed to glean from the messages from A that we were in serious trouble and that she was going to terminate. Before she left, she told me everything was fine, that we were going to be ok, that she would come back… and even the night before that hideous ‘I need to bring the counselling with you to an end’ session she sent me a message telling me she was looking forward to seeing me…. Looking forward to seeing me so she could end???? Like make it make sense!

So it’s little wonder that I am reluctant to reach out – because even when things look fine on the surface, the amount of times I have walked back into a problem is… staggering really.

On top of the absolute emotional hell I am navigating my way through during the day, I’ve been absolutely plagued by nightmares. They’re really something and don’t take a lot of unpicking. One particularly distressing one that apparently had me screaming in my sleep was me standing on a cliff near my house and the waves were ENORMOUS. It was grey and stormy and lashing it down with rain. Despite the cliffs being at least 100 feet high the waves were flooding over the top and the buildings were flooded and being completely attacked by the sea.

I commented to whoever I was with that “I have never ever seen it as bad as this before” and that’s when I heard screaming to the right of where I was standing. My attention had been so focused on the town and the buildings that I hadn’t noticed what was going on to the right of me. A child about four years old, was clinging on desperately to the rocks and crying. There was no way down to it and I saw it get washed off the rocks and into the sea. I reached for my phone in order to call the emergency services and no matter how I tried I couldn’t unlock my phone to make the call. No matter what I did it just wouldn’t work. All the while I could see this tiny kid being pummelled by the sea and hitting up against the rocks. I felt so completely powerless.

It’s hardly surprising I woke up screaming and crying and in a drenching sweat. I can still feel the complete panic I felt just typing that. As I said it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out but it is a real indicator of just how distressed I have felt.

The week has been lots of that sort of thing and by yesterday I had worked myself up into a right state. The protectors were so vocal and honestly, I just wanted to know that I wasn’t going fucking mad…because that’s what it’s felt like.

I just want to say, too, that I haven’t just been head in the sand this break letting the shit come at me, knowing Elle was away I booked in for a two hour massage, I have really careful to take proper breaks, eat well, sleep (!), and get out in nature…but you know, sometimes there is only so much you can do. My system is in freefall, it’s been flashback galore on top of regular therapy break shit… I just … well… didn’t have enough resource in the tank to get through it.

I ended up sending Elle an email yesterday:

I’ve got myself stuck in a deep hole and as much as I’m trying to claw my way out there’s some really vocal and aggressive bastards stamping on my hands. I’m sending this now because I think by Tuesday I might actually not turn up at all.

Elle usually responds with pretty holding and containing stuff and I hoped so much that she would send something like, “I am sorry that it’s so tough Sweetpea. Tell Brian and the bastards to behave themselves. I am looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday but until then the biggest of hugs to you.”

Or any variation on the kind of thing she usually sends.

But this came…and honestly I just felt so sad.

I really really hope you do. Elle xxx

Like, it’s not terrible is it? Not by any means, but I guess having not seen Elle for a while, or heard her voice, or any of the things that we usually do to connect, and my being in such a desperate headspace it just felt distant and triggered total panic.

Like, this is it then – she’s had enough hasn’t she?

And then because I felt so upset about it, the protectors have really stepped up their game – of course they would.

Sometimes if I have felt a response from Elle has missed the mark I will email her back and clarify how I am feeling and she generally replies with something holding. I held off this time and continued to suffer. This really tells me how scared I have been feeling. I had been messaging a friend all week and she encouraged me to reach out to Elle again and let her know exactly what was going on. On Sunday I did… I screenshot some of my conversation with my friend and sent it…and this is what came back almost immediately:

Oh my poor love, I’m so sorry you’ve been struggling so badly this week, and I feel very grateful that you trusted me enough to send me all this.

We are always ok, and I promise you with my hand on my heart, I would always talk to you if there was anything going on between us that I felt needed addressing. I see you struggling here with the idea that you can do the same, and you can, and I will do my best to offer you what you tell me you need in terms of reassurance and care, however that looks like for you. 

I’m imagine you feel asking me for specific things that would help you to feel more cared for feels unreasonable, and I would really love you to ask me for them, and let me decide if it feels like something I’d be willing to do. I know that probably feels like a very risky thing to do, and I want you to know you can ask and I will do my utmost to offer you what you need. You are loved and respected and giving you whatever you need to feel safe is my priority.

Please do come in on Tuesday, and we can try and talk through what might be helpful to you in future, or you can just snuggle up to me and cry for a full 90 minutes and be broken in complete safety.

And honestly, that’s the Elle I have been trying to find inside myself all this break.

I responded to her:

💜 thanks. 

I’ve just got really panicked because coming back from Christmas break and into this time now in 2019/20 was when it all went to shit with Em – sometimes I think it would be useful for you to see what happened back then but anytime I even think about going back to dec/jan posts to send you the links to what I wrote it has such a massive physical reaction just remembering that time and how bad it felt that I can’t do it… And as much as you might think it’s ok to ask for things it’s hard to really put into words what it feels like to ask for actually not much at all and get hard nos. There’s a lot of really shit stuff that’s happened over the years and my brain doesn’t let it go. 

And breaks are bad for lots of reasons – I mean it doesn’t help that after a few days there’s a panic that people are actually going to die on me – I’ve got my dad to thank for that one, dying three days into a holiday… and then there’s all the shit from my mum being away from Sunday-Friday when I was small and how insane and volatile she was when she came home…like those things have always been problematic… but breaks have certainly been exacerbated by the fact that three times I’ve been on a break and come back to discover that actually:

Em – Nothing is too big that we can’t work through it

A- I’m only going away for two weeks, nothing is wrong with us and I promise you nothing will change and I’m coming back 

H- I think it’s great that you write, I’ll take how I’m feeling to supervision and see you in a couple of weeks

Were all lies. 

And as much as things might look ok … apparently they weren’t. Like I don’t get how I was ever supposed to know that there was a problem, particularly with Anita. But apparently my saying I missed her felt overwhelming (see the screenshot)… but then literally the day before I saw her to be told she was ending she said “I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow”. I don’t really know how that works.

So it’s not easy navigating anything when my experience is that people say things that suggest one thing and then the reality is quite different… and not only that but it’s me that’s misread the situation or been too much despite CHECKING so as not to end up being a problem.

It’s all just a lot and so live right now and it’s hard because I try really hard to not get things wrong and somehow still manage to fuck things up. And it’s hard to not think it’s a me problem.

I could really use a big hug and a lobotomy 

X

And once again the Elle I know and love came back with such care and holding that my system just settled right down and I wondered how I had got myself in such a fucking mess again:

My lovely girl, will you believe me if I say I always have all of those things in my mind whenever we have a break? 

I think about how A gave you no clue about what was going on for her, and how Em reassured you, and how H wasn’t confident enough to say how she felt, and I think “what can I do differently?” And the only answer I ever come up with is to just be consistently me; honest about how I feel, open to hearing anything you believe will help and support you, and reassuring you that I am capable of telling you if I feel anything other than happy and calm about any of it.

And I am genuinely confident that – in time – you will trust that what I say is what I mean, but that earning that trust is going to be that much harder – both to build and maintain – due to all of that damage that was done. 

And enormous all-encompassing hugs are always available and in plentiful supply.

Lobotomies however, are only available on request every second Weds.

Elle xxx

PS I read the message you sent to [friend] about you finding the automated texts triggering, and so tomorrow…I will send you something just for you! 😀

And so, since then in January…I’ve had no more automated reminder texts about sessions and perfect personalised ones…and our sessions have been lovely (as always) and I’ve muddled along.

We’ve literally just been on ANOTHER BREAK now because I have been on holiday but I’ll get to that next time.

So yeah – big meltdown was had since I was last here. I am steadily finding my feet again…and ugh…life eh? Thank you for everyone that has messaged to check in and I am sorry I haven’t had the bandwidth to even reply. And amazing work if you got to the end of this – it’s almost the length of my undergrad dissertation!! xxx

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

Shifting Gears In Therapy

rubberbandsandchewinggum19 Comments

So, therapy with Elle has been ticking along for several months now. We get on well – I think- and have had some really lovely sessions when I have been brave enough to bring stuff to her. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I get spooked before I even get in the room and so frequently end up talking a lot about mind-numbing shit in my day-to-day life whilst I try and figure out if she’s safe or, rather, if I am safe with her. I think I am…but my system is going to take some convincing after recent therapies.

I feel like there’s a part of me that is constantly seeking out the really ‘deep’ connection with Elle (you know the stuff that’s the therapy equivalent of a class A drug – seriously addictive stuff) and so feel kind of bleurgh when we actually just have a really ‘fine’ time. It’s hard to explain. I guess part of me experiences such a lot of emotional intensity outside the room, and does such a lot of thinking, that it doesn’t know what to do with every day maintenance kind of sessions.

There’s nothing at all wrong with these sessions, they’re a world away from dissociation and painful hell that I used to experience with Em, but I guess, it just feels ‘not enough’ – particularly to the parts of me that long to be seen and held. Another part of me knows, though, that we are still really getting to know each other – it’s going to take time. Steady, consistent, ‘in my window of tolerance’ sessions are probably exactly what I need even if it feels like I have a dam on the verge of bursting behind my cool exterior.

Part of the problem is that I am really fucking good at only showing the parts of me that I think are palatable (and together)! But then, recently, I had a moment where I thought, ‘that’s really boring’ – and actually I suspect Elle would rather be let more fully into my inner world, to see its complexity, rather than be bored shitless listening to me moan about stuff that is actually boring the shit out of me when I say it, too.

Ooohhh…it’s funny – I’ve always feared being left/abandoned for being ‘too much’ but then I became really aware of maybe being left/abandoned for being ‘not enough’ (again!) – like I’ve become ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. I don’t think that would happen (Elle ending because I’m boring her!) but I know what it’s like feeling like you’re watching paint dry with someone and I know I much rather be with someone down in the depths rather than paddling, barely getting my feet wet. I would like to think she’d feel the same.

However, what I will say, is that I am really aware that I can’t force this stuff with Elle – not because of her but because of me – all of the mes (I am so desperate to put an apostrophe on there for how it looks!). I am going to have to go at the pace that my system will allow – even if that means sometimes feeling frustrated or like parts of me are in hiding.

It makes total sense that it’s slow-going because I feel like I am just about holding myself together since the Anita catastrophe and need to be especially careful not to trigger any landmines and blow myself up. I am very aware of how precariously balanced my ‘coping’ is especially with the really active suicidal thoughts over Christmas. After what’s happened with the Em, Anita, and Hannah it’s easy to feel like the situations I have ended up in are a ‘me’ problem and I am super conscious of not wanting to be ‘too much’ for Elle. I need Elle right now so let’s not fuck that up RB.

For a long while I have been trying to figure out what Elle thinks and feels – as I say, trying to gauge what is safe to bring. She tells me what she’s feeling about me sometimes – usually if I ask. I am pretty sure she thinks that having told me that I am ‘delightful’ among other nice compliments and giving several reassurances, alongside being consistently ‘there’ and warm that I must KNOW, by now, that she likes me and that it is safe with her.

Ha! You’d think! But, sadly, not! This is me and my system…I’m the one who literally spends the beginning of every session like it’s our first. ‘Who is this woman (today)? Is it ok?‘ I just can’t hold onto Elle in my mind at all from week to week. Big whoop for my object permanence skills  – not! It’s fucking tragic. But, actually, recently I realised that so much of how I view Elle in the room is filtering through the lens of where I am at. If I feel anxious and insecure I’ll be looking super hard for her seeming far away or  disconnected… and I’ll convince myself that’s what’s happening – when actually she’s not either of those things.

I can’t always realise this in the moment but oftentimes after a session if I listen back, I hear things in a different way, and this is really helpful. Basically, things are never as disastrous as I might feel. In fact, it’s all pretty good. I just don’t feel it in the moment – and this is actually because so many parts aren’t allowed out. It’s those parts that are having a horrible time because they aren’t getting seen and so for them these sessions are completely disconnected and painful. I am starting to figure a way round this…again.

Still, one of the very good things about Elle (and there are plenty) is that she can read… and gets exactly what I am saying when I share something with her in writing. I realise, now, how much of a hindrance that was with Anita. I communicate best in writing – ha! – and so having a therapist that was so severely dyslexic that she couldn’t really read my stuff meant I either didn’t say what I wanted or had to record a voice note – ugh. It is actually really freeing to be able to have a bit of a meltdown and write and then share it with Elle knowing that even if I can’t bring stuff into the room right now it can at least be expressed and then make it in later – I can forewarn Elle about the state of things and give her a really clear heads up.

Elle and I have a reasonable amount of outside contact, and this goes some way to alleviating the anxiety I feel between sessions. I only see her once a week and it’s quite an adjustment going from two sessions that bookend the week with Anita to this. We do a ninety-minute session and, honestly, this is sooooo much better than an hour for me because … well… *waves hands desperately* this is how I am. But I still find Fridays pretty rough, and I think actually I might see if Elle and I can figure out some way of officially checking in then to make the panic a bit less.  

I’ve sent a few ‘big’ emails over the time we’ve worked together outlining some of the huge stuff so haven’t kept her completely in the dark. I have found whenever I have given Elle the map she’s responded in a helpful and holding way – she writes really thoughtful replies and says what feels like the right thing in the room – as I say, it’s really just a case of my system being VERY reluctant to completely let go and trust given everything that’s happened in my previous therapies. It’s not surprising. It’s just kind of disappointing to be in this place after so many years of counselling – and actually so much of the damage being caused by therapists rather than my actual life events.  

I’ve been seeing Elle since August – after it all went to shit with Hannah, after it all went to shit with Anita, after it all went to shit with Em! I feel like I have the therapist version of a Russian doll stack! Ha. It’s not funny, though.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

I really like Elle, like really like her. I feel like she is actually really steady and safe. I feel like she is present and authentic. We seem to have a lot of similar interests which is nice – obviously it’s not essential, but after Em and her total closed book thing until the day she waxed lyrical about Brexit and outed herself as a tory it’s nice to know that Elle and I have these common interests and reference points.

Anyway, there are two sessions that felt like turning points in our therapy and as much I would like to write in detail about the last several months, I don’t have time – but these, I want to share over the next few posts.

Years ago, when my dad died I saw a therapist who was keen on activities – sand tray, drawing etc and actually sometimes I found doing things that didn’t revolve around me just sitting rigid and intellectualising my way through a session really helpful (because you know that’s what I do a lot of the time, right?). In all the years I worked with Em, she never once tried anything like that with me. She was firmly rooted in her seat and I sat in mine – like a good girl. Anything abstract or conceptual fell on deaf ears…oh my god the fucking pebble!!

With Anita it was different – we were more in touch, connected. We weren’t on opposite sides of the room once I mentioned how much I hated it. The physical touch stuff was really helpful. Reading stories was fab for the young parts. But we rarely did any of that abstract exploratory work – well never, actually. I’d kind of forgotten that there was this side of therapy tbh.

Anyway, in November there was a day where I was just feeling totally off. I still went to my session but I think it was maybe the first time I let my guard down a bit and didn’t perform the RB that Elle had gotten used to. Rather than fill the silence I just didn’t talk. I guess I let her see that maybe I wasn’t completely ok. I dunno.

Anyway, after about ten minutes Elle asked me if I would like to see her button tin. It pulled me from wherever I was, and so I said, ‘sure’.

Now, between Elle’s seat and mine is a low table with an edge  – I actually hate that fucking table as it feels like a massive barrier between us but that day it was useful. Elle tipped out hundreds of buttons onto the table and spread them out in a circle around the outside. She told me the collection had come about over years and years and she could remember whose clothes the various buttons had come off as far back as her grandmother. The range of shapes and sizes and textures of buttons was impressive.

I moved from the sofa and sat on the floor and Elle did the same. I’m guessing a lot of you have done an activity like this before, Elle asked me to find a button that represented me. I finally found one after lots of rooting around. It was black and broken in half and so sharp that I said you could use it as a weapon. I then asked Elle which button might represent her? I think she was momentarily shocked, but she poked around in the pile and found a lovely silver embossed kind of bead/button. I commented on how our button selves change periodically, and she smiled. She said this one was definitely her today, but yes  we do change.

Anyway, I think the general premise of this activity is to find different buttons that may represent parts of you, or maybe important people in your life/relationships and to talk them through. I didn’t do this. Instead, I found a range of beautiful buttons that all fell along a blue/turquoise/silver colour palette and placed them in a pile nearish to Elle’s button. My black, broken button stayed way over on my side of the table.

We talked about all sorts of stuff but mainly about the actual buttons. I would periodically hand really lovely ones to her, and she would take them to look at them. This was really the closest we had ever got to touching one another in the three months we’d been working together, and this activity felt really intimate and connected – I felt way less self-conscious in that session than I had done previously. Perhaps I showed a little more of the vulnerable self.

Anyway, it all felt so nice but then I clocked that our time was ending and, honestly, I just didn’t want to go and I think I dissociated a bit. Elle noticed. She said that in all the years she’s been a therapist that no one had ever invited her into their button circle, I think I probably blushed a bit – I couldn’t imagine not wanting my therapist to be alongside me in that, I needed to know who she was in order to show who I was. She thanked me for engaging with the task for so long and just as we were about to stop, I slid my black, broken button all the way across the table and put it next to hers.

I know that sounds like a nothing thing, but honestly that was an act of total courage and vulnerability on my part. A signal that I don’t want to be distant, and contained… I want to move closer. She said that I was a gift of a client and told me some stuff about how she experiences our time together and how she feels towards me. It felt like a completely different space to what we had inhabited up until this point. That session felt like it was about us, and our relationship, and our work together and it was so … exactly what I had needed.

We talked a bit more and as I stood up to leave, Mrs Brave came out of nowhere and asked if I could have a hug…

Elle said that of course I could have a hug, and honestly it was just lovely. She gives very good hugs, and she didn’t let go for ages, well actually I let go first, then pulled her back again and she giggled, in fact, she said something about a hug needing to be at least forty seconds to even work and so I didn’t feel like a needy, too much person…it just felt nice. And huge. And a turning point.

As I say, we’ve had some great moments on top of good moments and have been steadily creating something that feels solid. We laugh together a lot…which is nice…because I think I sometimes have a bit of a random sense of humour.

Anyway, it all went quite massively to shit almost immediately after the ‘buttons’ session – because of course it did. I guess the next session being back to ‘normal’ felt off but also, and fuck me, the six degrees of separation thing is just the absolute fucking pits, isn’t it? In that week between buttons and the next session a friend of mine had posted something up online of a performance they had done. Elle had told me she was doing something similar in that last session and low and behold, I could hear Elle laughing on the video my friend had posted. In fact, as I found out, it was Elle that had filmed my friend. I can’t even believe it. Like, why????

My instant reaction to the video was huge jealousy and sadness. Like how fucking unfair that my friend gets to spend time with Elle doing fun things… and I don’t. And, I totally get it, the intimacy in the therapy room is different and like gold at times, and she’s not my friend, but ugh… just ugh! So that set me off! I felt thoroughly shutdown in the next session – but I don’t think it was massively obvious until the end because False Adult is so good at taking the reins and creating a smoke screen!

I left that session and felt like utter shit, though. Like proper crumbling into pieces. I decided to message Elle and ask if she had any availability for another session – huge act of bravery – and her response just triggered the absolute shit out of me. Basically, she said that being like that in session was fine and something about how it’s learning to self-regulate and not to worry, and didn’t offer to see me– looking back at it it’s not terrible but for the part that had been so vulnerable in reaching out to get what felt like a body slam and rejection was just hideous. Ohhh yikes. Red rag to angry teen there. I replied with something to clarify and how bad disconnection feels and I got this back:

OK, so rather than trying to end the feeling of disconnect or the struggle, maybe think about if that has words or a specific fear attached to it. Is there an idea or story about what will happen if you stay disconnected?

I’m still going to be there – same place, same time, next week – and you can tell me anything you figured out then.

I just felt thoroughly let down. And, you know, it’s not even bad is it? But it just felt like she totally didn’t get it and that she just didn’t care…but then of course my short to the point messages don’t really show the extent of what’s underneath and so Elle is only working with what she sees – and up until that point I’ve been quite a closed book. She wouldn’t know what my system would do.

My whole system went wild…and out came the splurge self…and a fucking massive email!

BRACE POSITIONS!

I don’t think you’ll believe the response that triggered in me and I don’t even really know what to say. You don’t need to read this until Tuesday – it’s long – and probably makes no sense as it was written at 2am…couldn’t sleep. x

Sometimes I just need a person. Sometimes it gets so dysregulated inside that I can’t ground and instead dissociate. Yesterday, when I was with you, I was ramming my fingernail into my palm, and I couldn’t feel it at all. Sometimes I am present enough to ground – and have one foot in the shit and one foot in the here and now but sometimes it feels impossible, and I just disappear. And I get that it is ok – on a level- but actually being trapped in that is hideous. I feel disconnected from myself and you, and it just spirals really badly. The longer I am stuck in that space the more I feel like I am being left/abandoned even if that’s not what is happening.

I think you think that just sitting in it proves that it’s fine to be however it is in the moment and that you are there still regardless. However, sitting in that feels a bit like the still face exercise – internally it’s an absolute shit show and so it feels horrid because I need to know you’re actually with me and I can’t feel it at all. Checking in or soothing or telling me you are with me still – or whatever it is that you think is so bad and unhelpful would help me regulate – co-regulation when it’s like that is what I need. Although you probably think it’s what I want and not what I need. But self-regulation in that moment feels like you’re asking a toddler to do algebra when it’s only capable of counting to ten…with a few numbers missing along the way.

I think last week you wanted me to either map out some stuff about significant relationships in my life or let you see what my internal dynamics and relationship to different parts of myself is with the buttons – and I did a brilliant job of avoiding that because right now that isn’t what feels important – although I guess the inner system would be. You said that no one had ever asked you to be in their button circle and right now that’s what I am trying to figure out. I’m trying to understand what is going on between us. Like there’s a part of me that really wants to connect with you but the moment that comes up I feel myself start to disappear because it feels dangerous on a level but then feeling disconnected is equally as triggering. I can’t win but I absolutely do want to let you in and feel closer to you but that also feels exposing and risky because that opens up space for you to hurt me…and frankly I just don’t think I’d survive that right now.

Remaining disconnected and in the struggle like you’ve suggested, is fucking exhausting and triggers my nervous system. It literally makes me feel sick. I seem to spend a lot of the time trembling at the moment, and I know that this only happens when things are really bad. Not trying to end that feels like … self-harm, really. Not only that, it leaves space for the critical part of me to take root. My inner critic is a sadistic fucker. I know that ultimately it is the biggest protector I have and thinks it’s doing me a massive favour by relentlessly telling me that I am stupid, too much, unlovable, and that I must be a complete moron to even try to do therapy again. Like can’t I see the evidence that people leave because of me?  I can’t believe I’m going to quote Taylor Swift (don’t judge!), but it feels like,  “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me” and that’s sort of stuck after recent events.

It’s like I have a minibus full of traumatised parts of various ages all kicking off in various ways and screaming. In those moments I don’t have an observer self and just get hijacked. This is what it’s been like. And it’s not even like there is a steady slip into that where I can do something to stop it happening or catch myself early. It’s like one minute I am here and the next I’m not and I can’t get out of that on my own – not really.

Over the years I’ve identified eight different parts of the system that sit outside my adult self (and even there, I suspect/know there are quite a few aspects to that self). At the moment, though, I keep dropping into this really desperately sad three-year-old part. It’s always the same, the scene never changes. She is standing in a grey wasteland with her back to me – it’s eerie and scary and cold and just really awful. Sometimes if I am able to remain in my observer self, I can see her but I can’t seem to bridge the gap between because it’s like I am stuck behind glass. There’s no hope of soothing that part because I can’t reach through to her. Other times, though, I feel like I am locked in that little body stranded and alone on the wasteland and I can’t get out of it – which is what happened yesterday.

I really need to feel/remain connected in the moment when I am with you because I struggle so much outside the sessions. My brain is super quick to lean into the narrative that you are pissed off with me, I’m too much, and that something bad is going to happen even when there isn’t evidence for it. Disorganised attachment is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m gutted because I really thought that this wasn’t a thing anymore because for such a long time I felt secure – or a secure as I have ever felt with A…and then it just collapsed, and I feel like I am back at square one trying again to find a way to not let this pattern dictate how I experience people/relationships but I guess it’s not surprising I feel like this now.

You asked if there is there a story and a fear around staying disconnected? Umm how many would you like to hear?… because there’s plenty, but perhaps the most relevant right now would be the ones related to therapeutic relationships going tits up. Ultimately, fear of the effect of disconnection is closely tied to feelings of rejection and abandonment because they’re all stops along the on the same track.

I think this feels so bad right now because I am not out the other side of what’s happened with Anita. It’s still live and so I am already nose deep in the shit of the reality of this story I tell myself. The impact the ‘disconnection’ but not ‘end’ I have experienced with Anita has completely derailed me. I feel like I am literally in survival all the time. The house is still on fire. [this is referencing a previous email]  And there’s a part of me that feels like what’s happened there must be my fault because why else would she behave like this? And then I wonder if you’re perhaps consciously keeping your distance because you essentially think you’ve got a fucking disaster zone in front of you…and I get it. Part of me is trying to go with the narrative that this is about the container but mostly it just feels rejecting.

It’s six months this week since I saw A…and a month since she chose to ignore my message and ghost me. I can’t even… and I have no idea what to do about it now. Like I literally have no idea what to do about it. I really hoped there’d be some kind of resolution by now but I have to find a way of moving through it without her input.

Christmas break is imminent, too, and this time of year is never easy but it doesn’t feel safe because of what happened with Em. I guess maybe it’s exacerbated because I happen to be going abroad like I did the year it all disintegrated with her. And whilst that shouldn’t mean anything –  I think my brain is terrified of the pattern repeating. I left feeling disconnected and dysregulated in December 2019 but told myself that I was being stupid and that of course it would be ok because why wouldn’t it after so many years?…and then boom – ending in January. So, the idea of remaining in this disconnected state now feels… horrific, actually.

And I get that both those relationships were long term and I barely know you so it seems crazy that any of this feels this massive or intense – but the smallest thing now is like lighting a touch paper into all that gone before because I am so sensitised to feeling like I’ll be left, abandoned or rejected…and all that stuff sits neatly on top of the core wound which is the stuff with my mum. Like I really knew that this wasn’t going to be easy but I didn’t think it would be this hard either.

And as much as I am really trying to fight against all that when I have so many different internal narratives at once it’s hard to hang onto any sense of being ok or safe because I actually don’t really know how you feel because you don’t tell me. Like I felt like last week was quite a big shift into something different and then yesterday it felt like we were a million miles apart and it felt like being held at arm’s length because that’s what I read into silence. And I think this is probably me and my wonky brain but … fuck, it’s so tiring.

There’s a part of me that just thinks, “Fuck it – just give up!” but I don’t want to because … I am hoping that this can actually work – but regulating my system feels like an impossible task.

November has always been a crap month emotionally. It always takes me by surprise and it’s only really afterwards that the dots join up and I figure out why I feel like I am flatlining. I think it’s been particularly hard this year, partly because everything seems to have so spectacularly disintegrated in the here and now as well – although not for the same reason… and so my brain has decided to serve me up a double dose of feeling isolated, unsafe, *more of the crap*. It’s all too familiar. Relationships feel dangerous.

The other week I was really conscious of feeling really just not ok – I mean it’s all on a continuum at the moment but I realised the timing of it tied into what happened when came out in November when I was seventeen having had a friendship end (you know the one where you have feelings for them so it’s way bigger than that). I had finally let this person know about some really vulnerable stuff around my eating disorder – which was huge after hiding it for two years. She decided it was too much, threatened to tell my parents, and then disappeared which was horrific, and I don’t think I ever really got over that acute feeling of being rejected for being *almost* completely myself and trusting her with something so vulnerable.

It’s not like she was a teen either, she was twenty-five.  And then this reminded me of something that happened with Em when I told her about the extent of the problems I was having with eating and exercise – and she told me that we’d have to end if I didn’t go to the GP.

To add insult to injury, when I came out, I lost my friendship group all bar two people overnight. I used to walk into rooms at college and it would go silent, people would stare and then do that coughing a word/phrase thing “fucking dyke” or generally something else offensive and so it was really awful because I had been popular across lots of different groups – chameleon skills – although clearly not actually liked for who I was – even if my sexuality is only one part of my identity.

Not long after my best friend also ghosted me but not before writing me an ‘honest’ letter first. We’d been out clubbing on my eighteenth birthday, and I’d kissed a girl which was AMAZING. My friend wrote me a letter the next day and said she couldn’t be my friend anymore because now that she’d seen what it actually meant for me to be gay rather than just a concept, it made her feel physically sick and she would never see me in the same way. So that was pretty shit.

It’s all historical but I think that right now it almost like I’m experiencing multiple layers of disconnect simultaneously through different parts of my internal system – so my seventeen-year-old self is having a shit time but so are most of the young parts, in a different way, because of what’s happened with Anita.

And I really get the need to learn to self-regulate but historically self-regulating has looked liked shutting down, keeping everyone out, leaning into self-harm and an eating disorder and I know that none of that has never done me any good but is highly effective.

It feels like all the years I have been trying to recoil the spring in a different way and approach things differently has been totally wiped out and the spring wants to flip back to its original form because on a level it is safe and known – only it’s not really safe and I do know that. So, I’ve been swimming, and sleeping and breathing and all the self-care things but it hasn’t helped, really.

Reaching out instead of going inward yesterday was difficult because my instinct is to hide or run away instead. It felt vulnerable and exposing but sometimes when it feels like that, I know that actually I can’t do it all on my own and I need a person. It’s about co-regulation. And I think you think that doesn’t help, or reassurance is just fostering dependence or something. But to be told essentially to tough it out and think about what’s going on feels pretty crap when the landscape feels like it’s blowing up.

I already know what’s going on and why – and all the stories and fear behind being disconnected. And that’s why I reached out because sitting in this for any length of time feels utterly unbearable and it’s not like it serves me up any new understanding of what’s going on – because I get it already. But the knowledge of what’s playing out doesn’t seem to make it any easier to endure. I told you I had the Dead Sea Scrolls decoded – and I don’t doubt there are other bits I haven’t fully got the meaning of yet, but largely I understand the story.

Reaching out feels fucking dangerous because I already have the narrative of being left, abandoned, rejected because what I want/need is too much for the other and so getting that response feels like it confirms that. I know you wouldn’t ever want it to come over this way but to part of me, at least, it feels punitive and punishing. It feels like you’re asking me to do an exercise in stress tolerance…

I think I am so used to feeling a lack of care that part of me is always expecting it. And I really get that this, to you isn’t about a lack of care – it’s probably something about encouraging me to try and hold stuff for myself because I am strong enough to do that…or something like that. But this refusal feels like a rejection and also like you don’t really see me…or perhaps you do and that’s why and you want to keep your distance. And my brain has a wonderful capacity to switch into worst case scenarios – but then it’s not really surprising as worst case has happened quite a bit.

Disconnect, on a level, feels like annihilation – and I get for adult me it’s not. Like I will continue to limp through my life until I collapse. But how my system experiences it is so different and it’s so dysregulating. I was really struggling last week even before the absolute colossal shit show that was my weekend and there was a tonne of stuff that I wanted to talk to you about.

So, you might be there next week – and I get that is meant to be reassuring but it doesn’t feel it. Whether I will be there or not largely depends on how vocal and persuasive these protective parts get and, alongside that, how much shame and embarrassment rises up from having reached out and then it landing like this because I already want to crawl into a hole and die.

 I get what you’re trying to do here, I think, and I also know what my protective parts are trying to do. Sometimes I can get these gate keepers to stand down and listen to me and other times I am locked in a fucking prison of my own making.

I don’t suppose any of this makes any sense because my brain is in a complete mess and I don’t really have the words – I just know how it feels…which is pretty fucking shit.

So, yeah, this was a nice ‘welcome to my world, Elle’ wasn’t it?

The next session was really great. Giving Elle insight into the behind-the-scenes version of me allowed her to really respond. She apologised for what had happened and said she had no idea that was what was going on. She said she wouldn’t want me to feel like that at all. And then later in the session was when she told me that she thinks I am ‘delightful’ which is really fucking nice. So, yeah, there’s been lots of good. And I feel kind of shit that this blog has fallen so far by the wayside as actually there’s such a lot I would have liked to have said.

Other than the very first session I had with Elle I have never brought up what’s happened with Anita. Although it’s come up in a few emails (of course). But largely there’s been a massive block from talking about it face-to-face. I think it’s to protect myself from feeling the pain of what’s happened which is enormous, and on another level to avoid judgement from Elle. She has never given me any indication that she would judge me negatively, but this is the legacy of what’s happened with Anita…and the other Russian dolls.

I think there’s been a part of me, too, that didn’t want to scare Elle off by being ‘too needy’ and telling her the finer details of what went on in the therapy with Anita just in case she panicked and ran! I think I wanted to establish the relationship between us first, and I guess sort of prove that I am not a total fruitcake before wading in and showing her the really vulnerable stuff.

I’ve sent Elle some blog posts about the ‘Anita Saga’ so it’s not like she doesn’t know about the cuddles and stories and elephant etc –I just feel like I keep what she does know in a particular compartment of my mind so that I can go see her and pretend like I am not some nutter with major attachment issues and a broken heart. It’s funny, though, because I compartmentalise all the vulnerable stuff that I have shared I really forget that Elle actually knows. And having just found that email to her…

Oh my god, she KNOWS it all!!!

She must be wondering what the hell is going on in sessions? Where is the person that sends emails about high anxiety and panic and attachment stuff and our relationship? Because she rarely shows up in the room!

Well, that all changed recently.

What with all that health shit, things have felt really precarious, and it’s triggered no end of anxiety – like a 13/10 rather than the usual 8/10 everyday level. Part of that has manifested in me having terrible nightmares with Elle or Anita in. That old chestnut! It’s been really upsetting, and whilst I know it’s just my brain feeling anxious it’s hard when you go to therapy to put that fear to one side especially when the therapy is relatively new…is 8 months new?!! I would so easily have been able to tell Anita that she had hurt me in a dream and yet I am still in the place where I feel a bit weird even telling Elle I’ve dreamt about her…because CRINGE.

I’m sorry that this is jumping around -there is so much to say!

Anyway, a few weeks ago I emailed Elle the night before the session telling her, what I thought was quite big stuff about how I was feeling – and she didn’t reply. Now, usually, if I send that kind of message, she responds with something really helpful and holding – because she gets me better now! With hindsight, I know that the way I phrased the start of the message didn’t make it clear that it was a ‘now’ problem and it really did seem like ‘for tomorrow’ in session and could wait. Of course, my system didn’t deal with the lack of reply very well and I felt really upset going to my session, in fact, I almost didn’t go.

I felt so bad when I arrived that I dissociated and couldn’t even talk for about ten minutes. This is not something that really happens with Elle, like maybe I’ll check out a bit here and there but it’s not common…so this was BIG. I felt like I was in freeze. However, despite my protectors doing their best to shut down, there was a little part that just would not let itself be hidden… this is new!!

Rather than being stuck, frozen in my isolated misery, I looked up, looked at Elle, made eye contact (whoa!) and asked Elle if I might have a hug. Now, this isn’t completely new, as I said we do tend to have a hug as I leave and that is lovely – but we all know that a goodbye hug is not the same as a hug hug when you don’t have to peel yourself away and leave immediately – and I already probably hang on for way longer than is normal then!

Elle got up from her chair and asked me whether I would like a stand up or sit-down hug. I shuffled over on the sofa and she sat beside me and folded me into the most lovely snuggle. My system relaxed for the first time in ages (like since Anita and I were ok which is nearly a year ago now) and I just didn’t move for 75 minutes (!). We talked about childhood memories, and she sang me a song that her mother used to sing her. It was just so fucking perfect and needed at that particular time. It felt like maybe my caginess has not been necessary, actually. Maybe Elle has been there the whole time and just waiting for me to come to her.

It was so nice to fully rest and be. No protectors, no rigidity, no fear. I just felt so completely safe and like I could finally breathe. Elle’s heartbeat was regular and steady, she smells lovely (although I already knew this), and the physical touch instantly regulated my completely dysregulated system.  The sad thing is, I know exactly what I have been missing for all these months but until I was there in that moment, I didn’t realise just how heavy it has been carrying this weight for so long.

That little part that wanted the hug that day has been patiently watching and waiting since November, hoping that this would/could happen. There’s a lot of longing in that child part. But actually, adult me just really needed to be close too.

Anyway, it felt so nice that week between the sessions…I felt more settled than I have felt in a really long time – that is, until a couple of days before the next session when the panic kicked in:

What if it’s a one off?

What if she thinks I am weird?

What if I get the boundary talk?

It didn’t take long for me to start to unravel once I started turning that over in my head. So, of course, when I arrived at the session I was looking and hoping for some kind of sign or reassurance that the previous session hadn’t been weird for Elle, and that it was ok. Because, you know, SHAME is a fucking bastard. But it didn’t come. I think this is because Elle must think, ‘If I wasn’t ok with a hug I wouldn’t do it’ and so therefore it must be ok, right? But the thing is, I literally didn’t let go for 75 minutes – that is a massive cuddle by anyone’s standards…

I can’t remember what I spoke about that session but suffice to say I was back onto ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. Or just a different me.

I left feeling quite unmoored even though we had ended with a hug.

I realise now, that I really need to bring this stuff up when possible, because when I finally did pluck up the courage to ask, it was clear that Elle was in no way weirded out by me. Like totally not at all.

This is super long – fuckkkkkk – sorry!! -so I’ll end her and then pick up the rest very soon!

I hope that everyone is hanging in there. Take good care of your gentle souls x

Letter From Love

rubberbandsandchewinggum19 Comments

Hi guys,

It’s been a while since I made it here to post anything. I will catch up with the last couple of months soon. Suffice to say it’s been hard and I have been stuck in a hole and haven’t really been able to do very much other than get through the day-to-day dodging panic and anxiety attacks – and that hasn’t been a wholly successful enterprise I can tell you. My brain has had no capacity to write BUT that changed yesterday and so here I am with something a little different to usual.

For a bit of context, I am an avid listener of the ‘We Can Do Hard Things’ podcast with Glennon Doyle (love), Abby Wambach (swoon) and Amanda Doyle (is she my twin?!) – honestly these women get me through the week most weeks. The topics they address, the raw vulnerability and honesty they bring, the humour, the love, and the brilliant guests they have (Brene Brown, Liz Gilbert, Lindsay C. Gibson…endless list of brilliance) lifts me out of my life and makes me feel like there are kindred spirits out there – the pod squad! I really recommend finding this podcast if you haven’t already and giving it a whirl. It never disappoints.

Anyway, recently the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert was on talking about something she’d begun as a daily practice called ‘Letters From Love’ – you can find her on her Substack page:

https://open.substack.com/pub/elizabethgilbert/p/welcome-to-letters-from-love?r=3g0cmo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Basically, the premise is you ask Love what it would have you know…and you listen and then you write it down. And frankly, it’s mind-blowing what comes out. Some people would say that this is their God Self, or from an Internal Family Systems (IFS) lens it would be the Self, others might say it’s Source, Spirit, The Universe…Love… whatever… but what it is the wise, knowing, benevolent voice that we so often miss and can be so drowned out by the negative, critical voices that are SOOOOO Fucking loud! It’s the one we could all do with finding. It reminds me a bit of the posts I wrote to my seventeen year old self in 2018 and 2023 but better?! I don’t know.

I’ll post link to the first podcast here and from there you’ll be able to find the others as they are so worth a listen if you have time – the episodes you want are 268, 269, 281:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/we-can-do-hard-things/id1564530722?i=1000640284400

And here’s what came up for me – in twenty minutes- uncurated, unedited, just how it was… and honestly, I am going to do this more often. Give it a go. You may get a short message, or you may get loads…the lovely thing is, that voice is there, residing inside all of us, if only we dare to look.

Big love to you all xxx

Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

It’s funny, RB, you’ve been yo-yoing for weeks now – flipping between asking me to come to you so you can hopefully hear the words that you so badly need to hear (but wonder if I will even tell you), or instead whether to spend your time writing a piece called, ‘Inadequate’ for your blog. I can tell you I am so glad you chose to come to me today although I know that other piece is bubbling up inside you, too and that’s fine – there is space for all of you with me.

You may feel inadequate. You may see nothing but evidence in the world around you to prove this narrative to yourself, but I can assure you are not inadequate. Far from it. You are not even simply ‘adequate’… I see you roll your eyes at that, but I hope one day you will see how truly brilliant you are. Your light shines in so many ways and yet you feel like you are trapped in darkness and coated in shame as thick as tar. That darkness isn’t yours though, honey. And I promise you that the brightest, whitest, most spectacular blinding light is there waiting, like me, ready to banish that darkness for good if you’ll let it.

The shame you feel is not yours to carry, either little one. You can set it down and know that all of you is worthy, all of you is lovable, and all your feelings are valid. You are, after all, a perfectly imperfect human being. You are meant to be a mess. You are meant to figure it out as you go along. You are meant to make mistakes. You are you, and you need be nothing more or less than who you are. The vulnerable, needy, scared, loving, loyal, cynical, raging, despondent, lazy, perfectionist …the list goes on and on… parts are all welcome and I love ALL of them – I love all of YOU – no matter what that critical voice inside your head tells you. You are enough. More than enough. Just as you are.

I know no one ever explained all this to you – in fact you’ve been drilled with the total opposite, “ace the test”, “be perfect”, “be strong”, “have a plan”… and so you’ve spent your life trying to meet totally unrealistic expectations placed on you by others in the hope that if you played exactly by the rules then you’d finally win the love and approval of those that you should NEVER have had to prove yourself to in the first place. You’ve valiantly risen to the challenge, but I think you’ve also realised that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you strive, or how much of yourself you sacrifice it will never be enough for some people.

The lesson, here, love, is to look inside and listen to me. Know this: there is nothing you could ever do that would make you ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ for me. You don’t have to be perfect to be loved. It is ok to rest. It is ok to play. You do not need to be endlessly productive to prove your worth. If you completely unravelled and failed to function (which I know you fear) it would still be ok. Honestly it would. And you know what? Sometimes we need to break a bit to be able to rebuild better. We’d fill your cracks with gold and your scars would be the very thing that shine.

I know you’ve been put off reaching out – or in – to me because you wondered whether I would even be there, wondered whether I would have anything to say to you, or in searching for me you might find only a silent black void proving once and for all that you are as completely and totally alone as you feel. You couldn’t face another one of your calls for care and reassurance going unanswered. Rejection and abandonment have been so much a part of your journey and I understand your need to self-protect sometimes even if hiding yourself and favouring isolation keeps you trapped in the darkness. I want you to know that even in the darkest times I have been with you. Darling, I am always with you. I always have been, and I always will be. Whenever you speak to me, I will answer. I may not tell you what you want to hear but what I say will always be exactly what you need to know. I promise you that.

I want you to know that I see and know all the hurting places inside you. I know how you struggle to keep going when you seem to hit wall after wall. You feel like the unluckiest crash test dummy in the world – the one that never wholly breaks and so keeps being tested time and again. I know you are tired. I know you are weary. I know that you feel like you are on empty. But you’re still here. It’s miraculous, really. You hate the word resilient but that’s what you are. So many people would have given up (and I know you nearly have sometimes) and yet your dogged determination – and let’s be honest here, your belief in love and your massive heart, has meant you keep showing up over and over– for you, for your family, for your friends and that is commendable…no… it’s remarkable.

In a world that can feel so devoid of love and care your complete refusal to give up hope and your commitment to opening up your heart even if that means continuing to risk heartbreak is EVERYTHING. It is your softness that is your strength. Despite the hurt you have experienced in life you still believe in the power of connection. You still feel the biggest gift in life is the connection you make with others. I see too, the hard work you are putting in with yourself. You know yourself so well now, and this relationship to yourself will serve as an anchor in the stormiest of seas…and let’s be real here, you hate boats and the sea is always rough so good going, girl – you’re well prepared!

So, my love, what do I want you to take from this?

I want you to know that I am always with you in those dark places. Those lonely places. The times when you feel like you cannot go on. I have been waiting for you to come to me, or rather, take a chance on believing that I might be here for you and to tell you that you, too, are worthy of love. I am here for you. I love you. So much. But, my darling, you are here for you too – and you are all you need in this world. I promise I am alongside for the journey and you are not, and will never be, alone.