rupture in therapy

Rupture Patched, Repair Ongoing.

rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

It’ll come as no surprise to those of you that read this blog regularly that I am struggling…when am I not?! Since my last post where I learnt that my therapist, Elle, had lied to me it’s been really tough going and it’s completely caught up with me this weekend. It’s been a month now, and I still feel completely at sea and my system feels really dysregulated even though we have more or less repaired the rupture. This post is an absolutely wild ride of up and down and back to front emotions so…yeah…go me!

At the moment, I seem to swing violently between a flight and freeze response – there is very little sense of feeling safe or grounded, and I guess that’s no surprise because so many parts of my already wounded system have been impacted by Elle’s mistake. Honesty and trust are such important aspects of a therapeutic relationship – and I think this is especially so for those of us with complex trauma who really need to know where we stand, and so to have that side-swiped by an enormous wrecking ball is pretty disastrous, really.

Interestingly it’s usually us, the clients, that are told how important it is to ‘be honest’ and truthful in therapy. We are supposed to be vulnerable and brave and be willing to have the hard conversations and to expose the things we might feel shame or embarrassment about in order to get the work done… a therapist’s honesty is just a given, right? Well, you’d hope. I don’t mean that our therapists should tell us everything about themselves and be completely transparent in that way, all I mean is that they shouldn’t actively mislead us and tell us lies.

Anyway, after my enormous meltdown the other week when Elle told me that she had just been invited away for a last-minute long weekend and so couldn’t do our Friday check (despite my knowing she had something planned weeks in advance due to the shared calendar alerting me to the cancellation). It was time to go and see her face to face. Ugh. God. Just thinking back to that day makes me feel horrible in my stomach.

Having gone quiet and retreated deep into my shell over the course of the weekend while Elle was away – because I wasn’t about to start making a fuss and make Elle’s weekend difficult especially after what happened in May when I had contacted her and thought she was home when she was still away – the next contact we had was when I replied in the afternoon to Elle’s Monday morning ‘personalised session reminder’ in which she acknowledged how fragile trust now was for me and how frightened I probably felt.

I said:

I’m really struggling with all this and I’m trying really hard not to run away but I’ve convinced myself that something terrible is going to happen. I’ll try and be there tomorrow but I feel like I am working against a whole bunch of protectors that absolutely won’t let me. I feel lost and so sad.

And honestly, I was. This whole thing just shattered my trust in Elle, who I thought she was, and I guess most importantly, what I thought our relationship was and what we mean to one another. It’s been totally devastating and had completely derailed me.

Elle replied that she really understood how hard it was and tried to reassure me – she really was trying – and then said that she was on her way home and would be back in a couple of hours if I thought it would help, we could have a call when she got back around five. This was exactly what I needed but there was a part of me that had got into the headspace about being ‘too much’ and not being difficult and needy and demanding or taking up too much space so I replied “Just see how it goes. If you’re back, great. If not don’t worry.” But of course, I wanted to speak with her – needed to speak with her.

So, I moved some stuff around with students to be able to have to call and then shortly before five I got another message saying that whilst Elle was now home, she was tired and was trusting that if we didn’t talk that it would be ok and that we’d see each other the next day.

That felt like a huge sucker punch tbh.

Like I do totally get that my message to her was really open and would totally make her think that it was a take it or leave it sort of a situation. But it really really wasn’t. Having been holding onto all this stuff for six days at this point and not having had any kind of check in before she left what I really needed in that moment was a five-minute call and a tangible reassurance that this was fixable and that I did actually matter and was not just an afterthought or someone who is easily discarded and forgotten about and basically just a bit of an inconvenience.

So not having the call hurt as that’s exactly the messaging I was getting from her having forgotten to tell me about her break and the lie she told to cover it…

And I get she was tired. Had been travelling. All the things. And it was nothing at all about any of my insecurities. But I was also tired, emotionally strung out and hurting and it just seemed to completely replay so many messages from the past. My need isn’t important enough. I am easy to push back or postpone or forget and once again I was left and I just need to find ways to suck that up and cope.

I know it wasn’t lack of care from Elle. Or part of me does. But the young parts that have been so scared by all this just saw it as confirmation, once again, that even when adults hurt me and it’s not because of anything that I have done wrong, it’s still me that has to find a way of holding that for myself – Little Me has always had to find a way to self-soothe and make sense of why the people that are meant to take care of her just don’t, and will always prioritise their need first. And don’t get me wrong. I know what it is to have nothing in the tank at the end of the day, I just don’t understand why Elle even offered the call if she didn’t think she was up to it.

So yeah. That sucked.

With all that on top of the shit pile that was already there, it made even getting myself to go the session hellish. It felt like I wrestling an angry, overtired toddler who didn’t want to put its shoes on but also one who really needed picking up and holding close. The offer of a call had felt like an invitation back to the closeness and safety I had got so used to, and then to have it not happen…well…it felt abandoning on a level.

I felt sick with dread on Tuesday morning heading into the city and was so upset. The teen part of me was fucking angry that I had had to hold onto this stuff for a week, that Elle thought it was good enough to give a symbolic band aid via emails when this wounding had needed a proper bandage – like surely there must’ve been a fifteen-minute window for a phone call somewhere in that week to patch things up and stem the bleed?

Clearly not, or if there had been, I didn’t warrant the time and effort… and yet now I was having to go in and pay to fix a rupture that was not in the least bit of my making. Like fuck that! Don’t get me wrong – Elle does a LOAD for me and gives me a lot of her time, adult me totally sees that but my hurt teenager didn’t.

I ended up being a couple of minutes late to the session because just as I was about thirty seconds away from Elle’s building, I got an overwhelming feeling of nausea and had to stop and sit down on a wall and breathe so I wasn’t actually sick. So, I was pretty worked up by all accounts.

Typing this out now, almost a month on, is really hard because I am so fucking upset that any of this has even happened and that I am still trying to navigate my way through the aftermath of the storm even though the storm is seemingly long gone and to anyone looking in, the sun is out.

I don’t know if things can ever fully repair, some days I think it’s ok and then others I just feel so lost.

It’s like cosmetically the boat looks fine now, but underneath there’s a fucking great hole in the hull and I am really aware that I’m taking on water and slowly sinking – but because the hole is concealed, I think that Elle is blissfully unaware of the situation and I don’t know how to tell her because my confidence in the relationship is so damaged. More than anything I need her to understand where I am at so we can try and really fix this. We need to get the boat out the water and put it in a dry dock and seriously attend to the hole in the hull.

I did ought to be able to tell her. I know this. Two years of steady work and relationship building should mean I can bring this to her. And I want to. My god I’ve been doing therapy long enough to know that the only way out is through.. but …and it’s a huge BUT… I am so aware that it’s times exactly like these where I have pushed myself to talk about my experience of being upset and hurt by a therapist that they often double down rather than accept that they are at fault. They refuse to see how damaging their behaviour has been and because I can’t move on or let it go, it’s now framed as a me problem. It’s my overreaction. It’s my attachment disorder. It’s my not understanding that this is only a therapeutic relationship… and so I’m now braced for the retreat, and the “too dependent” comment or the “like a tick” comment when actually the only reason I ever get super needy and super clingy is due to fear of abandonment and ruptures and in this case I think it’s understandable that I am scared and dysregulated.

Anyway, back to the session.

When I walked into the building Elle was there and honestly, she looked relieved. She said she had been just about to text me and thought that I wasn’t coming. I guess two years of never having missed a session, or cancelled or having been late shows how my not being there on time is a big deal.

I had hoped that I would be able to go in and be open and start to process what had happened but I should know by now what deep hurt does to me. We sat down and Elle sat facing me on the couch and started to apologise. I immediately said, “I don’t want to talk to you”. I don’t know which part that was, maybe the teen again, but actually maybe in part my adult self who has felt so incredibly let down and felt as though I have really done my young parts and system a massive disservice by allowing myself to be so vulnerable and exposed with Elle. My guard has been so down for so long that it’s been really hard having this happen. Like I rely on my wise self to navigate relationships for all of my vulnerable parts and here I am again in pain because I haven’t read the room right…or something like that.

I was quiet for a long time but my heart was racing, and I was physically trembling, and it just felt unbearable. I really needed Elle to reach out for me or say something but I think I was giving off the biggest ‘stay the fuck away from me’ vibes because she checked in and asked if it was ok for her to be sitting next to me. In the end I managed to tell her, “I am so upset and angry with you”.

Elle said she knew.

We ended up having a long long talk about lies and the damage they do to my relationships – how when you lie you are deliberately stepping out of connection with someone and denying them an opportunity to respond to whatever the reality and truth is – and how I can’t trust without truth. Even though it was hard, I was able to express at least some of how I was feeling. I didn’t feel connected to Elle, though, and some of what she said made me feel really sad like it didn’t feel like we were quite hearing or meeting each other or perhaps she just wasn’t saying what I needed to hear in that moment. It’s hard for me to tell when it’s like that whether my protective bubble is working or whether it’s actually stopping me connecting.

Either way, I felt like I had listened to what she said and realised that somewhere along the line during these months and years had completely fucking misunderstood what was going on with us. I sat quietly for a bit, thought about getting up and leaving, and then said, “I feel really stupid”. She asked me why. And I said “I thought that this meant more than it does”. My heart felt completely broken in that moment because I have taken so much time and care to build this relationship with Elle and yet I must have been viewing it all through rose-tinted spectacles. Here I was again, so desperate to be loved that I’ll imagine something that just isn’t there.

Elle asked me to explain what I meant by that and I said, “It didn’t matter”. I wasn’t about to tell her how important the relationship is to me, and how I love her and how close and connected I feel to her at times and how much I value her… because what a fucking fool I have been to have believed that this wasn’t a completely one-sided interaction. What a fucking idiot for starting to believe that I actually mattered to her too, and had a space in her heart and that she wasn’t like all the others. I was not about to expose myself in that way.

So, instead Elle asked if she could tell me what it meant to her and that I could choose to believe what she said or not.

And wow.

Ok.

What came next.

That was the gold.

I could feel myself soften because what she was saying is what I had felt to be true…like this was my Elle – the one I had needed all week. I won’t repeat what she said here because it was such an honest and vulnerable moment that I think that stays with us.

But those are the moments I need. I really need the times when she is so explicit and clear with her words that I can be in no doubt what is felt on her side because clearly, I lose sight and hold of that when I am not with her because doubt and fear and shame fill the empty spaces like a thick fog that creeps into every crack and crevice of my being as well as the space between us.

And it’s so funny… I’ve felt so upset and angst filled writing this and then I remember those few minutes and it’s like the dial has been wound back round to low for a minute. Elle does care. She does love me. I do matter to her…a lot. Oh, I so wish I could make that stick.

Elle is truly sorry for hurting me and letting me down. She knew that she had caused a serious amount of damage and that it might not repair but I felt like that mattered to her. We talked a lot about what happened and why. And I really got it. Like it was a real and honest and open conversation and connecting even though it was hard. But, of course, there’s a lot of processing to be done still.

I am still obviously really activated and upset and triggered and all the things at intervals (especially today!) because I have a system that isn’t straightforward for healing and repair. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY PARTS needs to be able to hear what Elle said to me last month…or have some kind of reparative experience that is appropriate to them and not all of them have yet.

So, despite it being as good a repair as it could have been in the moment, I’ve been left feeling really lost and alone and disconnected at periods since. I feel like Elle’s stuff is taking up her time and energy (and I do understand why) and so I haven’t wanted to impose or be difficult even though my need has ramped right up due to the rupture. Because I feel more insecure, I need more from her at the moment and yet don’t feel like I can ask. I am not channeling my inner Brene Brown at all!!!

As a result of all this I find that read more into the silences and times we aren’t in touch because I am coming from a place of fear. I sense a distance between us (rightly or wrongly) and part of me worries she is choosing to retreat and pull back even if there is no evidence for it. It’s just that right now the space between us is too much. Friday check ins don’t feel anything like enough online and I feel too embarrassed to ask if we can meet face to face because…I don’t want to take up more space or get a no which would also feel rejecting.

Sadly, I need more of Elle right not, not less. And so, this has been desperately hard for me. We had got into such a good place before this rupture happened and I just cannot believe I am here now. But this is what happens. I have complex trauma. I have a structurally dissociated system. I have attachment issues. This was never going to be a magically repaired in a session because it has hit some of my deepest wounds and fears.

Of course, I don’t want to be doggedly hanging on to mistrust and fear but it’s almost like my survival instinct has been triggered. I can’t help but be hypervigilant. My system feels it’s in danger anytime I am away from Elle. This, I know, is not ideal! There a part of me that is also sort of mad. Here I am flailing around and sounding like an unhinged fucking nutjob and yet this mess wasn’t of my making. I didn’t cause the rupture and yet here I am trying really hard to figure it out without taking up too much space and time and energy.

The thing is, this needs space and time and energy to repair. Because I am freaking out about being abandoned or rejected or unseen, I actually need proof that I am not being abandoned or rejected or unseen.

Look, I know how dramatic that sounds. Elle made a mistake. She has apologised. I’m an adult. I can understand.

Only it’s not that simple, is it?

I wish it was.

Over the last month, our sessions have been ok enough – as in they look and sound fine…but because so much of me is hurting and in hiding at intervals the connection to Elle feels off. Even when she is holding me tightly, I feel far away because I drift so far away between the sessions. I can’t relax into being with her fully, or parts of me can’t. Elle says that she does she all the parts. I think her strategy is just to keep showing up and being there and hoping that at some point my system settles and believes it is safe to trust again. I think that could be a really long road.

I emailed her the other day and just asked “Are we ok?”

Elle replied with a holding message and acknowledged that she recognises that even when we are physically close, I can feel like the space between our hearts is a mile wide but that she doesn’t feel that way and assured me she is right there and that she feels close to me. She knows I feel lost but that I am not lost to her and she is right there.  And that helped…but I feel like at the moment I need that kind of very clear and direct reassurance every day because so much of me is unsettled now. Like we might calm down one part but then another rears its head with its fears and mistrust and it’s back to square one. I get that it’s not realistic and I would never ask Elle for that, and I will just tough this out and hope that eventually things settle.

I think one of the hardest things for me right now is that I feel so incredibly needy and whilst I am able to reach out some of the time and ask whether we are ok or for a metaphorical hand hold and give a flavour of what I need and what’s really going on for me, I probably only do this 50% of the time. The other messages I send don’t seem to need anything at all and yet I would say that right now ALL my communications are really about reassurance and connection seeking.

I totally get that I need to be more direct. I know that Elle is not a mind reader and will go on what she sees from me. BUT it’s not easy to be really and truly how it is in this moment when my fear is that she will burn out or I’ll hit the threshold of ‘too much’.

I hate how awful the disorganised attachment push/pull thing is. I feel so much the need to be close but there’s also the parts that are pulling away and shutting down. All the old stuff with shame feels really potent too. And I hate this so much because it shows me how default programming is hardwired. I’ve been working so hard for that earned secure attachment…but…I don’t honestly even know it that is possible.

So yeah.

It’s a mess.

It’s fixed…but it’s not…

And I can see how fucking screwed up I am right now because I can’t even maintain a consistent fucking feeling in a blog post. But this is how it is, my emotions are all over the shop this is why I am struggling. Ugh.

If (When) I Run Away – Please Come And Find Me.

rubberbandsandchewinggum4 Comments

Last year Elle and I were talking about when things have gone wrong in my therapies (there’s plenty of content there and we visit it regularly!) and situations where a client might choose to ‘end’ and not come back to therapy but it feels somehow unexpected or not the ‘natural end’. I was in one of those sensible adult places, not activated (!), and so able to express some of what goes on for me when the wheels feel like they are falling off in the therapeutic relationship and how panicked I get. I recognise that sometimes the reasons I bolt for the door (sometimes literally) are often not what appears to be happening on the surface in the moment.

What can seem like a very small trigger can send me totally spiralling…but then that’s hardly surprising when we look at this through a Complex Trauma lens, or the fact that I have tonne of parts who are all processing stuff in their own ways – many of which are not particularly sophisticated! Of course, my four-year-old self and teen parts don’t see things the same way my adult self does, nor have they the skills to manage things in the way that my adult does. You’d think I’d be ok, though, seeing as I have a really fucking competent adult self. The problem is, my system is complicated, has the capacity to hijack me, and I am really really good at dissociating. Adult self is rarely there when I need her when I am freaking out.

Let’s face it – what scares me (all of me) more than anything is broken connection, feeling like the attachment is severed, and that I am on the verge of being abandoned. This is not at all surprising given my history because there was a time when disconnection really was a life-or-death situation. My mother’s PND did nothing for my little baby self or my developing nervous system and I have spent so much of my life in survival because my caregivers have never been reliable.

It’s hardly surprising that when I feel like the relationship with Elle (or A or Em…) is headed towards a cliff edge I am the first to run away. I am the absolute queen of ‘leave before I get left’ which is why I absolutely need my therapist to know this pattern and make sure I don’t bolt and disappear when there is a rupture (even if from their side it might seem small, repairable, or can wait). Ruptures can feel catastrophic to my system these days because … well… there have been ruptures where I have been hurt really badly and basically been abandoned and rejected because of my responses. Think of Em. My reaction to being called a tick, calling her out on it, and running scared didn’t see her try hard to meet me in it, to apologise, to understand why I was terrified, she just saw it as a perfect opportunity to let me go.  

Anita was way better at handling ruptures… until her life collapsed around her ears and she couldn’t hold herself let alone anyone else. The damage from that ending is ongoing and painful. I feel so sad that in the two years since I last saw her, she hasn’t been able to step outside of her struggles and meet to end but that’s not what I am here to talk about today… although it definitely fed into the intensity of the panic I have felt with Elle during our recent rupture. 

So, what’s this post all about?

This is a pre-curser post to help understand a bit of what happened in the most recent rupture with Elle (i.e when I brought it to her attention). Because yes. I got myself in a mess. A big one. And I ended up sending her this message:

I don’t want to see you anymore.

You can only imagine what sort of a state I had got myself into to send that. Eek. Like, I am the person will ALL THE WORDS… not none!

I’m almost done writing that post – and it’ll be up soon. But suffice to say it’s been a wild ride.

I am glad, then, that over the time I have been working with Elle, I have given her pieces of the map of me so that she has been able to understand me better and figure out what I need.

Most of the time I probably appear pretty together when I see her despite the crap that keeps hitting my day-to-day life. I probably seem a bit wounded and in need of support for my little parts but also seem generally functional. Sometimes I am a bit closed off but I am present in the room rather than off in space dissociated. The completely derailed, panicked, reactive, scared stiff self hasn’t really made it to the room (she’s done some emailing though!) – or if she has, she’s not been triggered BY ELLE. Elle has been a witness to the struggle and in support role in the room, not the trigger. It’s only this last month that Elle has had to misfortune of meeting that part of me in person.

Anyway, back to last year. I was testing the water with Elle knowing that it was only ever going to be a matter of time before something triggered my runners and protectors and I needed to know how she would respond if I unexpectedly disappeared. We all know that there are those diehard therapists who will say “I respect client autonomy, and if they choose to leave that’s their choice and I will not contact them thereafter. It’s up to them to contact me should they want to resume therapy.”

Puke.

Honestly, this kind of therapist really annoys me more than anything. If that’s your stance as a therapist then you absolutely should not be working with C-PTSD or people with multi-part systems. This ‘in the service of the client’s autonomy’ is bullshit. I’m not for one minute saying to beg and plead for a client to come back, that’s not realistic. But so often when we start running and slamming doors behind us, it’s not because we want to leave – it’s because we are scared! And we need for the adult, regulated nervous system (therapist) to remind us that we can come back, that we are wanted (even if we are having a tantrum and full of shame), and that they are committed to working through EVERYTHING with us even if it is HARD. Letting a triggered client disappear out the door is abandonment… it’s not kind.

And so, that day I asked Elle if she had ever made a mistake with a client that led to termination and what she did, or what she would do differently. Elle told me the about the biggest regret of her career was a time when she wasn’t as sensitive as she could have been with a client who kept cancelling last minute. She reached the point where she enacted her cancellation policy after several missed sessions – i.e charging for the session by sending an email, and the client left as a result – never came back in. Elle said she had failed to recognise potential wounding around money and still feels terrible to this day.

Mistakes and missteps happen, but what I wanted to know was what she did when the client said they were not coming back. Was she a ‘respect client’s autonomy and let them go’ therapist, or did she do something different?

Elle assured me that she had reached out and suggested that they meet in person but that the client didn’t want to come back, that there were some back and forth communications but that the client ended.

[For the record there was nothing identifying or specific – merely Elle’s feeling that she fucked up and had learnt a lot from that.]

I told her that I would always want her to reach out to me because it made me think about all the times I ran out of Anita’s and how when I am upset I can pull the plug (or parts of me can) and how it is really important to me that my therapist recognises when I am truly wanting to end and when I feel backed into a corner and feel like I need to leave because I can’t tolerate the feelings of disconnect etc.

Even though Elle was clear that she would always contact me in a rupture situation – my brain was whirring after the session and so I wrote her this letter at the time:

I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about the client that never came back – because of course that’s what my brain does at 3am when I can’t sleep and the anxiety is doing its thing. I actually had a lot of thoughts, like I can think of hundreds of reasons of why that all happened, but I am sure there’s nothing you haven’t thought about over the years so it’s not relevant.

However, what it did make me really think about was what would happen if something similar happened with us. You’ve probably figured out by now that I am not someone who cancels last minute and, generally speaking, if I did it would be because something was out of my control with the kids or something. But, actually, there are times when I get completely hijacked by my system and the “I don’t want to go” (it’s much bigger and more complicated than that) is really hard to get around.

Tbh it’s rarely an “I don’t want to go” because there is lots of me that absolutely does but it’s sometimes more of a “things feel very wrong, something is up, I’m scared that it’s all going to blow up, I don’t feel safe, I feel hurt, abandoned, rejected, maybe even angry… [on and on and on]…and so I need to protect myself from that and stay away – and she doesn’t care anyway so what’s the point?! It’s better to leave before I get left…”

I mean I totally get what happens, where it comes from, what parts of me are involved, and yet when it’s happening it is not always easy to sidestep it. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic but I guess at least there’s a really clear trajectory on how it all runs which I guess at least I am aware of now. And I see it a lot. Clients, for whatever reason, find it difficult to go to their therapy, maybe don’t show up, and might seem to be ghosting but actually it’s not because they don’t want to be there it’s because there is some kind of a rupture (that maybe the therapist has absolutely no clue about) and they, for whatever reason, can’t bring it to the room.

So many of us are conflict avoidant and even though bringing ‘big feelings’ shouldn’t be a problem, I guess most of our experiences have been that when we have, we’ve been mocked, or shamed, or abandoned, or gaslit…you know the deal… and so we’d rather not risk that repeating. I think sometimes, too, part of us knows that our reaction to whatever has been triggered is MUCH BIGGER than it ‘should’ be and so there’s shame and embarrassment there too because we feel completely derailed and it’s not even that big a deal (only it is a massive deal!).

I think it can be all the more unsettling for people that don’t really spend much time contemplating the therapeutic relationship and so when something between the therapist and client happens it’s hard to know what to do with it. Like it’s much easier to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sick” rather than, “I feel really anxious and something you said has really upset me” when they thought they were there to talk about their work stress and all of a sudden all this other shit is stirred up.

Sometimes it feels like a toddler or a teenager having a tantrum but actually I think that’s exactly what is happening – whatever is being triggered isn’t necessarily conscious and, in that moment, the adult self isn’t available enough to navigate the situation and all we know is that it just feels huge and insurmountable and overwhelming and completely in our bodies – and so the instinct is to run away and hide.

In some ways I think this can be really hard to manage because whatever is happening to stop a person turning up to therapy feels massive to them, and acting out can bring on all the massive feelings of shame and embarrassment afterwards and basically like you just want to crawl into a hole and die. It takes a lot to feel brave enough to come back and talk it through, and there has to be a strong enough sense that the person opposite you isn’t going to confirm everything that you fear is happening. It really is like with toddlers and teens. They need an adult to help them out of their meltdowns sometimes and an invitation back to work things out.

It is really complicated (but also not). I think when people don’t show up, rather than being flaky or disrespectful (I mean I guess there must be some people like that), is about testing whether the therapeutic relationship is strong or not. Like do you care enough to come find me if I disappear or will you just let me go? And I really get that this is complicated because all the training is like, ‘therapists should respect client autonomy’ and all the shit about not creating a dynamic that encourages ‘game playing’… only that is really pathologising and really makes it seem like everything that happens is down to us. It’s not game playing, it’s trying to protect ourselves.

As I said, lots of us have been hurt over the years and haven’t had the experience of managing conflict in a way that doesn’t somehow burn the house down and so rather than face a situation that potentially will hurt us more on top of whatever hurt feelings we are already feeling, we disappear. I think, for me at least, if I experience something as being abandoning or rejecting then it absolutely triggers the need to run away.

I’m not explaining this brilliantly well, and this is looooonnnggg, but I guess what I am trying to say is, if I cancelled last minute, or didn’t show up it’s not because I am rude, or don’t respect boundaries or whatever else – it’s because something is really wrong (from my side) and it feels too hard to come. If you just let me go and never contacted me to find out what was up or didn’t reach out and invite me to come and try and figure out what’s going on with you in person, actually what it confirms to me is probably everything I was running away from in the first place which is the feeling that you don’t care…

I’d like to think that a situation like this would never happen – but I also live in my head and experience often enough my runner ducks bolting. Just usually I have enough time to gather them back together before I see you.

Having a therapy go south in this way is sooooo common and causes such a lot of hurt to those involved. I have way too many stories – not just my own! – and I was wondering whether after the event a therapist reaching out would make any difference. And I think it would. An opportunity to talk through what happened when it’s not live would probably be really helpful because I think we tend to carry this shit around for a long time. 

Anyway, that’s… a lot. I’ll try not to run away, but if I do, please come and find me. X

And so… I guess it was helpful that I sent that last year, because Elle did come and find me…and the session when we did get to meet was HUGE. I’ll get the ‘what happened next’ post up asap.

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!