love in therapy

I Was ‘The Good Girl’ In The Therapy Room And I Hurt All The Time

rubberbandsandchewinggum3 Comments

I’ve been in therapy for a long time.
Like, a really long time.
It’s been ten years solid this time around, albeit with four different therapists (not that I am counting!). I’m not sure how to explain how long that is in soul years, but it feels like a thousand.

I am no stranger to the therapy room. Even before this latest solid run of ‘trying to get my mind fixed’ (or should I say my nervous system recalibrated and the mother wound healed?) there have been some hopeful episodes in the ‘room’ over the last twenty-five or so years. But mostly, as is generally the case when you’re a student in college or university, these were relatively short-term therapies.

I went, then, because I was suffering with anxiety or depression or stress, or my eating disorder, or imposter syndrome or whatever (the list goes on and on). I knew deep down that something was very wrong and those sessions acted like sticking plasters for a wound that was far deeper than I ever could have imagined at the time. Little did I know that I needed far more attention than four or six sessions could ever hope to provide.

I remember feeling like I was fully losing the plot as it was coming up to Christmas when doing my MA. I was twenty-two and I realised that I needed to see someone having not been to a therapist since my A Levels. The university I was studying at had a counselling service and, fortunately, as most people had already left for the holidays there was some availability to see someone.

It was in that room that the dam broke. It was a tiny room in the back of an old Victorian red brick building not far from my seminar building. I started to let out ‘all the things’ and although I only had four sessions with that counsellor it was such a relief to finally have someone say to me that I wasn’t overreacting and that actually they thought I could really use some long-term therapy because ‘trauma’…and no, it wasn’t just the stress of deadlines and they didn’t try and ply me with strategies to get through the immediate stress rather just gave me a space to be heard and collapse a bit after trying to hold it together for such a long time.

I might have walked out of those short-term sessions feeling a bit bereft – like, it would have been so great to be able to spend a few months with that particular therapist as a bit of a scaffold around my crumbling self, but that wasn’t how the service worked…and where was the long-term therapy that a student with no money could afford? I certainly couldn’t access the kind of therapy I need/ed back then and so put everything back in the box on the top of the shelf and continued on with life until I couldn’t do it anymore.

One thing I will say, is that these episodes of short-term therapy never did me any harm. They may not have been long enough, but I didn’t leave those sessions in a worse state than when I started. But then perhaps these therapies were never quite long enough to activate my attachment system. I don’t know. But then, that doesn’t work, because I saw a therapist N, for two years after my dad died and it helped, I was attached to her- and we’re still in contact now seventeen years later – certainly no harm done there.

Harm in therapy didn’t become a reality for me until Em – the highly experienced Clinical Psychologist, the person I was led to believe I stood a really good chance of healing with, and so the person I trusted with my whole story and self. Gosh. What a mess it was.

I met Em thirteen and a half years ago, now. I feel so sad, looking back over my life, that I have been trying so hard for so long to feel ‘better’ and yet here I am still working on undoing damage not just from my childhood, my life, but actually my therapies. It’s tragic.

Em and I initially did sixteen months in the NHS — it was the kind of therapy where the clock ticks louder than your voice and the radiator only half-works and my god, those awful shiny yellow gloss-painter woodchipped walls were really something!… but finally getting a space to delve into my psyche with someone who (on paper at least) really had the skill to help was much-needed.

But like every therapy before – the time I had wasn’t long enough. NHS work, even when it’s extended (which mine was) is still time limited. There is only so many sessions you can have and then that’s it – there’s a huge waiting list (three years for me back then) and you can’t clog up the system forever even if you really need the therapy. And surely you should be grateful to get a long stint of therapy in the first place. It’s kind of laughable, because it took me a year to even get close to the work or for my system to activate. In reality a little over a year of once-a-week therapy is nothing for Complex Trauma and quite honestly, the NHS just isn’t at all equipped to help with these kinds of issues.

And my god, opening my version of Pandora’s Box and then being left with no therapy at all really really messed me up. The nightmares. The panic attacks. The eating disorder and self-harming behaviours were triggered again. My child parts (and my structurally dissociated system – not that I knew that that was what it was then) had a complete meltdown. The feelings of abandonment and rejection felt huge. And I didn’t cope at all. But I was completely and utterly alone and without any kind of support…because I’d used it up.

Em had agreed that we could see each other in her private practice when our sessions finished but the NHS had stipulated that there needed to be a three-month break between ending there and commencing with her again. At the time I accepted that as how things had to be – but knowing what I know now about my system I can see how very wrong it was to leave that work wide open and leave me essentially hanging. What I should have done then was reach out to Em and let her know what was going on, but of course, I didn’t know that was possible. I was just following the rules…because I have always followed the rules.

After two months on my own without therapy, my graphic nightmares finally stopped in their tracks and I didn’t even dream again for nearly three years– I basically shut off/dissociated my entire system and lived my life in ‘false adult’ I think. And so, I didn’t go back to Em for three years.

You could call it a ‘break’. I call it surviving without witness – but I think there was always a part of me, a child part or five, that I had exiled who was desperate to find my way back to Em. The little parts of me that had been so activated in her therapy room, and all the trauma too, needed a place to go.

And so when I finished my cancer treatment and all the wheels fell off – I went back to her…because… well…to parts of me she was mum, and a kind of safety, and I very badly needed someone because I was very much not ok.

In the intervening three years since I had sat with Em a lot had changed in my world – but underneath or inside I was just the same – all those little parts were frozen inside needing to be seen, held, and attended to. The trauma was there still, unresolved.

I remember the first day I walked back in the room and how hopeful I had been and how excited I had been to see Em again. And yet, it fell flat. I guess there was a part of me that wanted her to welcome me back with open arms or some kind of acknowledgement that it was good to see me again now that we weren’t in the sterile hospital. But she was ever the blank screen, and although my child parts came alive again the moment they saw her, they knew too that the rules were still the same.

And I am nothing if not the girl who follows the rules.

I came to my session/s every week.

I paid on time.

I was never rude.

I never cancelled on her until we were right at the end and broken (but then why would I, my sessions never felt enough and so I would never enact a break willingly).

And I tried so hard to do therapy ‘right’ – and stick within the confines of Em’s very very rigid boundaries (although occasionally failing and texting her – god forbid).

I tried so hard to be grateful for what was on offer. I tried to make it enough. I tried to be insightful and brave and DO THE WORK…and bring everything to the room even when I felt terrified and physically unwell.

I tried not to be too much.  

But man, I felt small and disempowered.

I was the good girl in the therapy room and I hurt all the time.

I could never understand why it felt so painful to be with her…and so painful to be away from her, too.

I guess I  thought I had to earn tenderness and care, and prove myself worthy of it because of course that’s been hard-wired into me from day dot.

I thought being easy to work with would make me lovable – or at least palatable.

It didn’t.

But then why would it?

That strategy had never worked with my mother so why on earth would it work in the therapy room? And yet here I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern with my therapist.

It seemed being the quiet good girl wasn’t ever enough.

So, I changed tack. It took a really long time for me to bring my pain about the relationship with Em into the room unwashed and unedited. Em had said she felt “blindfolded” with me and I thought this meant that my caution and hiding my feelings was stopping us being able to really connect. And man did I want to be connected to her and so I took a leap towards her around about the time I started this blog.

I wrote things down when I couldn’t say them out loud (because shame was so ever-present and dissociation never very far away). I folded pages of typed letters or blog posts inside my pocket like secret spells. Sometimes it would take weeks for me to build the courage to hand them over. Every time I did, I felt like I was giving her the map to the world inside me — it felt like I was screaming over and over, “Please, please just look. Please see what it’s like in here. Please help me not be lost anymore.” And perhaps in also written between the lines was, “Please love me”. But Em would sit and read my words never giving much away as I sat squirming opposite her and then carry on like she already knew the way and didn’t need my map.

And so, I walked alone over terrain that felt like barbed wire and cold rain and shame.

It felt in some ways like I was in the Truman Show – but no one told me what the point of it was, and the lights were much too bright, and whilst I could see Em she was always sitting behind her glass screen taking notes about what I was (or not doing) on her clipboard – she wasn’t in the scene with me. Every now and then she’d tell me where I was going wrong, “Like a tick”. It was as though she was some nasty film director coaching an actor who was absolutely doing their best to act the ‘right’ way but failing miserably time and again.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have ever had to have acted in that room. I should have been able to go and be me – exactly as I was and have that met with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. I should have been able to remove my various masks.

I wish.

I feel so sad when I look at how small I made myself in the room with Em – I don’t mean falling into my child parts small, I mean how little space I took up and how little I asked for from her and yet even that was made to feel like ‘too much’. I feel so sad that I tried to bend and fit to be the client she wanted me to be and it breaks my heart that for all those years my small parts couldn’t get anywhere close to what I needed. There was no we in that therapy- just me…flailing around and hurting.

I took big elephant with me in my bag for years but was never brave enough to take her out even when I had told Em about the many many child parts that were inside me and how they felt and we both knew how much hurt was inside. There was never an invitation from Em to be anything other than my very competent adult self…and that was really hard when my young parts were so very present. Part of me feels angry at my adult self for not doing more to protect my young parts – but I genuinely thought at the time going to therapy was me looking after myself.

I am not the same client I was back then. I have learnt such a lot about myself over the last decade and there is simply no way I would put up with what I did with Em now…or even Anita. And so although this growth and understanding has come at a heavy emotional (and financial cost)…I do at least know myself and have boundaries around how I will let myself be treated now.

But back then, I felt ashamed and embarrassed asking for anything from Em and her NOs to my very few requests cut so deep. Object constancy has always been a massive problem for me and I remember reading an article online by a therapist about how to stay connected to therapists on a break. They’d suggested a simple three dot text message in the week – like it’s bare minimum effort, no words to misunderstand, just a reminder that they are there. But no, she wouldn’t do it.

I remember asking for a simple transitional object – I wanted a short note written on a pebble that I had found on the beach near her house – and that became a torture project for well over six months. But in reality, I didn’t want a rock… I wanted a soft toy like Monty…only I never asked because I knew that was way out of the realms of acceptability for Em…and I was right. We couldn’t even get a few words on a pebble right, a toy for my young parts would have been simply outrageous!

I was made to feel like there was something desperately wrong with me because I wanted her to sit closer to me. I would dissociate so badly when I felt like she was far away but there was never concessions on Em’s part to make a move to adjust how we worked to make things better for me. I wrote in a letter once that I wished I could hug her. Somehow that was really inappropriate and uncomfortable and was addressed only once, “You know I don’t do that”. It felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

And heaven forbid we go anywhere near the ‘L’ word. Love was made to feel like a dirty word and I never once uttered it aloud…I only alluded to it in my maps/letters. And yet it is so much part of the work… talking through human emotions in all their forms is the work. And it shouldn’t matter if they are directed towards the therapist or anyone else. But also, I struggle hard to understand how if you spend years and years of your life with someone picking apart your most vulnerable stuff that love wouldn’t become part of the fabric of the therapy.

Ugh.

I’m not here to talk about her though – although I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit today – I guess I am still reeling from the hurt… and we can totally skip over Anita, and Hannah because – well – I want to talk about now – 2025…

I want to talk about Elle…I want to talk about how I can be who I am, not who I think I need to be with her. I want to say how that the ‘good girl’ part of me has been allowed to rest a bit and that I no longer hurt in the way that I used to – but given this part alone is 2000 words I’ll break this post into two…and believe me, the next part is far more uplifting!…there’s even a picnic to tell you about!!

Grief: When Love Has Nowhere To Go

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It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.

The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.

It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.

The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!

Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.

I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.

So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.

I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.

Like that’s the idea.

That was our plan.

A kind of gentle reparenting.

Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.

My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.

Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…

Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.

Yikes.

The feelings are big.

I cry a lot.

It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.

One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.

It feels like an act of grief and act of love.

There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.

Here’s some for you to see:

Be gentle with your vulnerable hearts xx

Back In The Therapy Room. ‘Hold My Brain; Be Still, My Beating Heart’

rubberbandsandchewinggum19 Comments

*Tea or coffee recommended alongside this post!

I wrote most of this last night and have just finished up this morning…I find it staggering how much my mood can change in just twelve hours. Yesterday I was stuck in the pit of doom – it was awful, and today I feel fine. It’s like bloody Jekyll and Hyde. Or rather, today I think my adult has come back online after a week of being dictated to by the young parts and the protector. I am not going to go back and edit this again to reflect my, now, better mood!

——————————————-

It’s been one of those weeks where everything has just felt terribly wrong and shit. I’ve been drowning in shame and loneliness, and generally just feeling crap in my body: overwhelm, panic, dissociation… the usual attachment stuff – disaster zone!…

And then just to top it off today, the blog post I was about twenty minutes from finishing and posting has disappeared from my laptop without a trace. I hadn’t saved the Word document (I always write on Word first) but usually these things are retrievable… not this time! I mean it’s not the end of the world, losing the post, but having spent a good couple of hours writing I feel like part of me just wants to say, ‘Yeah, the return to face-to-face again has been interesting – good, bad, crazy, and things are going ok-ish’.

I’m actually exhausted and honestly feel like I am playing in my own little orchestra and creating a cacophony of noise with tiny, whiny, little violins! 😦

Anyway, no one wants to hear me rattle on like this, so let’s give this post a whirl (again). Come on RB – get your shit together (my mantra for the last twenty years!!)!

So, last Thursday saw the return to face-to-face therapy (thank god!). Usually, I see Anita on Mondays and Fridays but I am such a monumental loser that I couldn’t actually wait until Friday to see her after how the three weeks online had been. I have been hanging on by a thread and was just desperate to see her again and wanted to try and fast track my way out of the pit of doom and disconnect that I had fallen into online. Frankly, my nervous system needed a break. It’s been in perpetual flight mode this whole time (although that’s pretty much my default…along with freeze!) and needed regulating.

My heart was beating rapidly as I walked up Anita’s drive. I was anxious but another part of me felt like I was coming home after the weeks away and working online. She had decorated her garden with Christmas lights and my inner child  – who loves sparkly lights and snowmen – was delighted. Anita opened the door and I hugged her immediately, she told me it was great to see me and I smiled inside and then walked into the room and sat down.

It was so nice to see her but a part of me was terrified that things would have changed, that my complete meltdowns online would have pushed her away (even if she says she’s a boomerang), that I would go in and face some kind of ‘talk’ about boundaries and being ‘intrusive’ and ‘demanding’ – the painful narrative that is branded into my brain.

I appreciate none of this is coming from anything Anita has said or done – I have Em to thank for this –  but I’m noticing more and more that I am struggling with the fears around being rejected and abandoned as we’ve moved into December. I guess it’s hardly surprising as we approach the anniversary of everything going wrong with Em, but it’s not easy to cope with. It’s exhausting in fact. No matter how many times I tell myself that it’s going to be ok, or Anita does, there’s that young part inside that is just absolutely beside herself in a panic…and that can set off a chain reaction inside where all the parts lose their shit!

After all the time online, I really desperately wanted to reconnect with A in our session. The young parts just wanted to cuddle into her and find some sense of safety again after what has been such a destabilising time.

Oh, if only it were as simple as that!

I have been on overdrive panicking about being ‘too much’, ‘too needy’, and ‘too intense’ and so whilst I really wanted to be close to Anita, there was a part of me warning me to stay away because they are terrified of everything going wrong. I may really need and want to be held by Anita but surely at some point she’s going to get fed up of me and push me away. The idea of being rebuffed or kept at arm’s length sends me into a shame spiral – so it’s easier to keep my distance – at least that way I am in control. It might cause me a lot of pain to keep back but at least it’s me that’s causing it.

I know how mental this all sounds but it really is the product of my system being flooded with genuine terror that history is going to repeat itself this year. I’ll lose another therapist…unless I tone it down a bit. And so over this last week, on and off, there has been a desperate battle inside: there’s the part that just so badly needs touch and holding and reassurance and the other part who is trying to make sure we don’t lose that by being too much now- the need is still there but I am trying to hide it – and failing miserably and feeling shit in the process.

I told you I was mental! I understand what’s going on inside but I seem absolutely powerless to do anything about it in the moment. As I have said so many times, adult me just isn’t bloody there when she needs to be and it’s the younger parts and protectors battling it out in the room.

Anyway, back to the room. Anita had sat down in her chair and immediately my system had gone into a panic. ‘Why is she over there? What’s changed? Why does she want to keep her distance?…’ It’s amazing how the smallest of things can trigger and internal meltdown. Anita was warm, open, smiling and yet because she’d sat in her chair everything fell apart inside. Somehow, I managed to tell A that I didn’t want her to sit where she was and she came and sat beside me. It was better, but because my system had triggered into worrying that she wanted to be away from me, it still felt like she was a desperately long way away. I couldn’t look at her and internally it was mayhem.

I felt awkward and just incredibly needy. I wanted to reach out, but there was that internal resistance kicking in fuelled by the doubt of those beginning couple of minutes. What if she doesn’t want me near her now?

I was determined not to get sucked into a huge dissociation and tried to dig myself out before I disappeared. During the break, if you can call it that, I had ordered Anita a sloth Christmas decoration and card to give her when we finally got back to the room and I had it ready to give her when I saw her.

I can’t remember what I wrote inside the card but it was something about thanking her for putting up with me recently (!!!). The sloth was a throwback to a kind of ‘in joke’ we have about having an inner sloth sometimes (all the time!). I really wanted to give it to her because I wanted her to know that I value her and am grateful for what she does for me and that I am aware of how challenging it must be working with a fruit cake like me.

I wish it was as simple as just handing these things over – but it’s not. I felt a wave of nausea and shame engulf me as I gave Anita the envelope. This is the legacy of working with Em and what happened last Christmas and the rejection of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’. There is now so much anxiety around giving gifts that it feels utterly awful – which is such a shame because I definitely think my love language is gift giving. When I give people things it’s never about the cost, it’s about the symbolism, and so a rejection of the gift by Em last year felt like a rejection of me and my love. It’s little wonder I feel nervous now giving A things. Having said that, she seemed to really like the crystal egg I gave her when the first lockdown ended so that’s a start of repairing the damage.   

I really need to get it into my head that Anita, is not Em (repeat repeat repeat…when will it sink in?!) and she responded so positively to the card and sloth. You’d think that would be enough for me to go, ‘Phew! It’s safe! She’s the same. Nothing has changed. The relationship is real. There’s no need to be scared.’ But that would be far too logical and straightforward. Because I had been braced for rejection, even when Anita was anything but rejecting, I found it hard to take her in. She felt a million miles away – or I did. I guess I was protecting myself for a possible rejection and had retreated.

It wasn’t her, it was me.

The intense shame I feel for needing her, needing to be close to her, was rising and I could feel myself slipping away.

Anita said, ‘It hasn’t been difficult to put up with you’ – in reference to what I had written in the card.

‘It has. It has been difficult to put up with me’ I moaned.

Anita was using the calm, soothing voice – you know the one – and replied, ‘I think it would be if I didn’t understand it but I do. I really do.’

And I know she gets it. She frequently demonstrates just how much she understands complex trauma and why I am the way I am. As I have said before, she has this amazing capacity to drain the shame away. She talks to me like there’s nothing wrong with me, that how I am is completely reasonable given what’s happened to me. It’s a world away from the pathologising that happened with Em at the end.

‘It’s been hard for you hasn’t it?’ Anita asked.

I nodded.

‘It’s really good to see you’ she said.

I could hear her words but I just had nowhere to hang them.

Silence.

Overwhelm was creeping in.

Anita was giving me all the cues that things were ok and that we were ok still, and yet there was this part of me that just couldn’t move towards her. When it’s like that I need her to physically reach out to me and give me a definitive green light that it’s ok to be close.

I sat there frozen saying nothing for a while. My body felt tense and I wanted to cry. It was agony being so close to A but essentially as far away as ever. ‘What’s happening for you now? You look like you have an internal battle going on’ she wondered. A small voice said, ‘I don’t feel like I am here’ I felt like retreating deep inside myself – I guess trying to find some sense of safety.

With so much understanding and warmth A said, ‘You are here and I am here…. But it feels like it’s not real?’ I sighed. Inside the little part was longing to be told it was ok to come closer. The possibility of sitting there feeling disconnected for very much longer made me feel sick. ‘I don’t feel very good.’ I groaned.

I still hadn’t managed to look at Anita. I think if was able to make eye contact it’d probably make things feel much better but again there is that part that is too scared to look in case there’s something negative to read in her expression – or maybe worse still – no expression at all. Still face is so triggering to my young parts.

Gently Anita asked, ‘Do you want a hug?’

I nodded.

‘Come here and have a hug.’

Hooray – green light, right?

Yes. But no.

Fuck.

I was fixed to the spot. I so badly wanted to move but I couldn’t allow myself to go. You can imagine the wailing that was coming from the little ones inside. How can it be that Anita is reaching out with open arms and yet there is a part of me that can’t trust it, or actually it’s not that, it just doesn’t want to risk it being withdrawn – and I suppose the reality is, in not a great deal of time, the next break begins and so there’s a part that wants to protect against the vulnerability and attachment because when she’s gone the child parts are all at sea again. It makes sense, but disconnecting when I’m in the room makes things so much worse outside it- and yet it’s a pattern I fall into time and again.

‘I’m not going to push anything on you’ she soothed  ‘I am here for when you’re ready – a bit like the story with the rabbit, I’m here to be whatever you want me to be’.

I don’t think I have mentioned about the book, ‘The Rabbit Listened’ here yet, but recently I came across a children’s book (oh but of course!) about a child that was having a bad time, lots of animals came to offer advice on how to get through it but none of it helped. In the end a rabbit showed up and just sat and waited until the child was ready to do whatever he needed to move forward. In the end because it was on the child’s timeline and not the animals’ that had given advice, and he could do all the grieving and raging and feeling that he needed.

I sent Anita the link and told her that she was my rabbit, and just like the sloth had been one of ‘our things’ the rabbit is now another. My young parts really like it when she signs a message with a bunny emoji.

Do you know, writing this now, I feel like such a colossal dickhead behaving the way I have this last week– because thinking about all this here just really demonstrates how safe Anita is. I just wish my system would get the memo and file it somewhere rather than keep getting stuck in this agonising hell hole.

Anita told me a story about a time with her grandson when he’d hurt himself and he’d pushed her away and how she had waited on the floor next to him until he was ready and then eventually he hugged her. She said she felt like what was going on with us, now, was similar. ‘I don’t know what you need’, she said, ‘but you do, so I’m just going to sit here. I can guess what you need and can offer it, but only you know. It might be hard to access it…does this make sense?’

Yep.

Crystal clear.

But, still, I was frozen. I so desperately wanted to reach out. But I was so dysregulated that it was reaching the point where I wanted to run away because it felt like I was torturing myself. It is so fucking painful when this stuff happens. It’s like being trapped. Why is it so hard to be vulnerable and get what you need- even when it’s being given to you on a platter? I mean thinking back to an earlier metaphor, Anita was literally showing me the cupboard full of chocolate, offering me it, had actually unwrapped a bar, and yet the part of me that is so conditioned to only being allowed pears couldn’t reach for it.

‘What’s happening? What are you thinking?’ she wondered. ‘I can’t come into your world if you don’t let me… What do you need?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I whispered. At this point I was so far gone that there weren’t even the words to say, ‘I need a cuddle’ but actually whenever I go silent and frozen that is what I need. Always. Touch is such a powerful tool. It tells me I am safe, that I am accepted, and that I’m ok as I am. It reaches through the protector and soothes the youngest parts.

It was quiet for a while and Anita asked me again what I was thinking. I managed to tell her that I didn’t feel safe. I don’t know what wasn’t feeling safe, I think probably the feeling of being disconnected and alone. I find that really scary. Being in the presence of another person but being unable to connect with them feels really awful to me even when it is me that is in hiding. Anita asked me what would help to make it feel safe and again I couldn’t respond because there is so much shame wrapped up in, ‘I need you’.

‘I want to tell you’ Anita said, ‘I’ve bought you a present as well. I’ve bought you your own beating heart necklace. I just haven’t collected it yet…’

Wait…

Whatttttt?!!

I literally could not believe what I was hearing. I mean…that’s huge…MASSIVE huge…in that couple of sentences it was like Anita had taken a great big sledgehammer to the wall that I had built around myself and was showing me in no uncertain terms that she cares about me – a lot. I mean I honestly cannot believe that she would do this for me. I couldn’t even drag so much as ‘I care about you’ out of Em and here is A thinking about me and buying me something that is meaningful and significant. Blown away doesn’t even cover it.

I felt really stupid for sitting there silent and distanced when it was clearly not coming from Anita. I mean I do get it, this is my messy system doing it’s thing, but here was yet another enormous reminder that Anita is real and genuine…and gets me…and isn’t going anywhere.

I instantly moved over to her and cuddled her. My body was shaking and all the stuff I had been holding for the last few weeks came up and out. The tears…oh my fucking god…for someone that has never cried in therapy until this year I seem to be crying quite a bit! The rest of this session was lots of crying and sniffing and generally being an emotional wreck and feeling all the feelings. All the grief and the stuff about fear of abandonment was right there but I was only able to get to it because I was close to A. The littlest parts can’t say what’s wrong or let themselves express this stuff if they aren’t held. I guess this comes from a lifetime of no one being there and so learning it’s not safe to feel.

‘I feel stupid’ I moaned.

A replied, ‘You’re hurt, that’s what it is, you’re not stupid.’

And having gone from feeling like I was on a completely different planet to A a few minutes before I now felt so connected that I was able to tell her that I loved her.

‘I love you too, I do’ she said.

That was exactly what I needed to hear and it felt so settling but then behind that, a sadness washed over me. I told A what I was feeling. She asked me what the sadness was about but I didn’t know or have words for it at that point. I think it’s something about how kind and nice Anita is to me and yet Em was repulsed by me and my child parts. Trying to take in the love and care that Anita gives so freely is bittersweet, in a way, because the contrast against what I am used to is so enormous.

How can one therapist be so cold, mean, and dismissive (her last words to me were, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you but it is what is and it’s time to stop’. There wasn’t even a ‘goodbye’ or a ‘take care’.) and the other so warm and loving… when I am the same? Or actually, I am a fucking clingy, needy nightmare now (!) and yet Anita still loves me despite all this. I am really, really struggling with it because to hold the idea that Anita actually can love me means that I have to change the patterning that is ‘there is something fundamentally wrong with me’ and somehow adjust it to, ‘it wasn’t my fault’ (what happened with Em).

Easier said than done, that’s for sure.

As the young parts had settled in and felt safe, the gushy stuff flowed, ‘I missed you’ I whined. I find it amazing that I can even say that, when expressing anything remotely vulnerable used to make me feel sick because it was never met well.

‘I missed you too.’ Replied Anita ‘And you’re right it’s not the same as on a screen’ and she hugged me closer into her body. I said how hard it had been working online and A acknowledged it and agreed that it has been tough for me.

The conversation shifted and we spoke about all sorts of stuff from books to emails from my blog readers.

‘I’m sorry’, I said. Sometimes I smack face first into the reality of how I have behaved and reacted and I realise just how bloody difficult I have been. I don’t mean to be. I am not planning to be a nightmare but so much has been triggered lately that it’s been hard to hold it. It’s all coming out in a tangled mess.

With so much feeling and kindness in her voice A said, ‘You don’t need to be sorry. You haven’t chosen any of this. It’s not your fault. And you’re ok. And I’m ok with you. I really am. I don’t have to be here. I am here because I want to be. There’s a big difference. And you are worth it.’ Those words felt like another warm, soapy bucket of ‘Shame Remover’ had been thrown over me and it felt so nice. I appreciate it’s nuts just how much reassurance I seem to need but these buckets need to fill an empty reservoir and it’s going to take time.

A and I both seem to like nature. Or at least we both own dogs and have to go outside quite a lot! Sometimes we send each other photos of the walks we have been on and recently A sent me some of a place she had been where lots of trees had been felled. It looked so barren and empty. I don’t know why I asked about it in the session but somehow it came up and we spoke about how it looks awful now but it will make way for other things to grow. A said that actually that was a good metaphor for me, ‘Once the scars of the abuse have been healed you’ll see how beautiful you are.’

The problem is, it feels like that healing is such a long way off. I mean part of me knows it’s not. Part of me sees it happening every day, in little bits…but sometimes when things feel so desperately hard and I am struggling to keep all my plates spinning and am down to my last spoon, healing this complex trauma feels like an impossible task.

The other week I sent A something about Object Constancy – it really explained how it feels to not be able to hold ‘the other’ in mind and the panic that happens as a result. I asked A how she thinks something so fundamental can heal. Like if you miss a foundational developmental milestone then how on earth can you mend it?

‘How does it fix?’ A asked. ‘I’m going to sound like Carl Rogers here, but I really believe it’s all in the relationship, it makes a huge difference.’ She talked about how the need for unconditional love was important because that’s the area where the damage had occurred. Our parents should have done this and yet instead this is where things went wrong. She talked about how our relationship was different from others in my life which is something we had spoken about at the very beginning when we met. I told her, then, that I wanted a real and genuine relationship that felt connecting but that I needed her to be my therapist…after Em I was clear what I was looking to avoid!

Anita continued, ‘I want to say it’s a healing relationship -because that’s what I want it to be. I really want it to be that.’ She went on, ‘I know sometimes along the path -as I have already- I’ll say and do things that may not be helpful, but it can be healing if we work with it well.’ Essentially, I think what this comes down to the transformative power of relationship, the healing capacity of rupture and repair, and the balm of ‘unconditional positive regard’ or what the rest of us like to call ‘love’. Anita commented that she thinks that Em works differently to her and we giggled. I mean talk about chalk and cheese!

We talked a lot over the next few sessions about how painful it has been, being separated and working online, how it hooks into so many painful areas of my past. As I said there was a lot of crying alongside the cuddles but also there has been a surprising amount of narrative coming out that I hadn’t shared with Anita before.

Talking about needing to collect my kids on time led to a load of stuff about how no one was ever there for me as a child and about all kinds of horrible experiences of being left and the craziness that has been part of my growing up. We’ve touched on the eating disorder, self-harm, the violence, hiding under the bed…I mean it’s all leaking out now! It’s funny, really, how you get used to your own story and sometimes it’s only in the retelling that you realise that it was completely fucked up. I mean we know it’s damaged us, but it’s not until you share it that you understand just how messed up things have been.

There’s been a lot of grieving in the last week. I feel so sad for the little parts of me. Nearly every session has felt like a battle at the beginning. I have wanted to be close to A but the fear of her getting fed up with me and leaving has escalated session on session. Anita has been patient and sat with me in it, reassured me, ‘I’ll be here no matter what’, but the toll it takes on my system is immense.

The other day I was frozen AGAIN and the young parts were crying out (inside) to cuddle into her and yet the powerful feelings of being too much and possibly pushing her away were just totally debilitating. As Christmas approaches this panic is escalating. Anita held out her hand to me and yet I couldn’t take it. I told her she felt far away and she offered me a hug and again I couldn’t accept it. It feels like I am punishing myself for having a need and yet in those moments I can do nothing to help myself. On Friday she put her hand on my leg and I still couldn’t feel it. When it gets bad, I retreat so deeply into myself that it’s like being lost in the dark and I need someone to come in and grab me and shine a light on the pathway out. Fortunately, we always seem to get there in the end and so I don’t walk out the room feeling completely bereft.

On Monday Anita handed me a little package wrapped in tissue paper. It was my beating heart necklace. I opened it and it is gorgeous. I absolutely adore it. I love silver, and blue is my favourite colour so it could not have been better for me.

I gave her a massive hug. I felt completely overwhelmed. I am still utterly stunned that A would do this for me. I don’t know if she realises how massive it feels to me or the impact that it has had on me. I wear it all the time. It’s a reminder that we are connected and evidence that she is not freaked out by my need to be close. Hearing her heart beating settles the young parts (I still cannot believe I told her this) but when she’s not there I have this beating heart from her.

I think some of my panic this week is really coming from what it would mean to lose her now. Anita has seen me at me most vulnerable and needy…and horrid! (eek) … and the attachment to her is strong. I feel like I don’t want to put a foot wrong by being too much because the loss would be just unbearable and so as I said at the top, there’s a part that feels it’s better to brace for it, even if it hurts.

I guess it’s just going to take time to settle and I’ll need to be patient with myself over the next few weeks. Maybe I should keep a diary of all the nice things A says to me so when I am freaking out that she’s going to leave I can remind myself that she says things like,

‘I wish I could have been there when you were small and made things different for you back then, I wish I could take the pain away, then but I am here now.’

Did you know that I really love my therapist?

‘I love you too’

rubberbandsandchewinggum15 Comments

After promptly diving down into the black hole of shame on Friday and then young parts suffering with all the attachment stuff and fear of being left over the weekend, I decided to send my blog post about expressing loving feelings and being the Queen of Avoidance to Anita shortly after I’d written it on Sunday.

I figured I had nothing to lose, really, because whilst parts of me were in a tail spin about being so vulnerable and worrying massively about being rejected for being ‘too much’, there were other parts who know that A and I can work through whatever I bring to her. Enough of me trusts her for me to be able to tell her I am struggling and knows that she won’t shame me for my feelings. And because it’s ok for me to communicate with her outside session, and she’s been happy read my blog posts when I have shared them with her in the past, it seemed silly to continue suffering when actually I could give her the heads up and then we would be on the same page for our session the next day.

I didn’t expect her to read it until Monday or reply but I felt much better for just getting it off my chest. When I am dysregulated, I find expressing how I feel in writing much easier than trying to explain it verbally and Anita really understands this. That’s not to say I don’t talk in the room (I really do!), or that the therapy is taking place outside the room and not in it because I write to her or blog.

A knows there are parts that will take time to trust, need to test her and the relationship (repeatedly) and by allowing me to check in outside those two contact hours a week, those tentative, vulnerable, scared, flighty parts of me are able to do what they need to do, express what they need to, and this has enabled them to make it into the space face to face more often.

I am certain that it is Anita’s flexibility and presence outside the room that has actually allowed me take more risks and do more work in the room. I haven’t developed some unhealthy addiction to her because I check in during the week and she hasn’t bred some terrible dependency because she acknowledges the child parts need something more (which is what Em was certain would happen).

A understands that the attachment happens regardless. If the feelings are there lying dormant then they’ll be ignited in the therapy, but how this is all handled definitely impacts on us as clients. We either feel seen and held or abandoned and rejected…and I know which one is accelerating my path to healing!

I mean it’s not rocket science, relational trauma needs healing in relationship.

I saw this on Carolyn Spring’s Twitter the other day which totally summed it up:

When we are in distress, whether as a baby or as an adult, we want a person, not a technique. Human beings don’t respond to techniques. We respond to feeling seen, and feeling heard. and feeling felt.

And this is where the problems were with Em, a clinical psychologist. She had so many techniques but refused time and again to let herself into the relationship. I’ve never experienced anyone more blank screen in my life. And for those of us with CPTSD that way of interacting is so traumatising. I mean honestly if I could imagine my way out of my trauma with visualisation then I’d have bloody done it!

Anyway…A is not Em. Thank god!

A is brilliant.

Have I said that before?

As I said, I wasn’t expecting a reply to my blog on Sunday and I didn’t feel stressed worrying about a reply/or not getting one because ultimately I knew A would understand, so I was just getting on with things when I got a message later that morning…like the best message. I have literally waited years to be told something like this:

O my goodness. I am not going anywhere. You really aren’t too much. I care about you sooo much and I love you too, in a caring loving way 💜🧡💛. I am aware Em saw the love in a romantic way. I don’t think she got how the love between client and therapist is so different but can definitely be there if the relationship is allowed to grow x

I couldn’t believe me eyes. All the parts inside, even the critic, just melted. I felt so reassured. So accepted. So understood. So cared for. So loved. And that outside communication that some therapists seem so scared of entering into, and A actually being real enough to express love in a clearly boundaried way, well I can tell you, that alone has done more good and been more healing than the entirety of my therapy with Em. My child parts took the risk, expressed vulnerable feelings, and have had them accepted and reciprocated…and that’s therapy gold. And I feel so much more able to bring the really hard stuff to her now, because I believe she’s in it for the long haul with me, and she genuinely cares.

Did I mention that I love my therapist?!