rupture

The Runners Ran: First Session Back And I Legged It Out The Room After Five Minutes

rubberbandsandchewinggum29 Comments

PLEASE, someone, come and have words with my system because it is completely losing its shit at the minute!

Honestly, you just can’t make this stuff up… but as always, here’s the reality of life in the therapy room for RBCG. Brace positions!:

So, after my last post, last week, things were kind of limping along internally and then sort of conked out altogether because I had absolutely nothing left in the tank. It was certainly a relief when the weekend arrived because at least the immediate pressure of work was removed, and I could kind of do the ‘three more sleeps thing’ on Friday night counting down to Christmas seeing Anita!

I didn’t do very much at all over the weekend because I had a bit of a reaction to my flu jab and so just lay, wiped out, on the sofa for the entirety of Sunday!  The young parts were upset and unsettled after what felt like an eternity away for A, and soooooo NOISY but I had nothing to give them because I was completely done in. I was literally willing the time away to get to Monday evening to reconnect with Anita and to be able settle things internally.

We’ve all been there, right?

So, imagine my joy (not) on Monday when I woke up and the protectors had come online. The child parts were still absolutely beside themselves but shielding them were the angry parts that didn’t trust Anita and were raging that she’d left me/us at all. Those protectors had been so absent for the duration of the break that it was a bit of a whiplash effect waking up to that internal narrative of A not caring, and what a waste of time therapy is anyway…

I got on with my day but by the afternoon I had a really strong sense of not wanting to go to my session that evening. I mean the child parts needed to be there, but the protectors and runners had other ideas.

FFS.

I text Anita to confirm that we were still on for our evening session time and explained that I wasn’t really wanting to come. Or at least parts of me didn’t want to.

I think, now, what brought the protectors online was actually the need for connection with Anita. I know that sounds utterly bonkers because, actually, those protectors stop connection- but here’s the theory: the need for holding and containment for the child parts was so strong that the protective parts desperately wanted to save the young ones from the disappointment of that maybe not happening.

So often after a therapy break (with Em) the young parts have been so in need of care and love but it wasn’t forthcoming and so it set off that agony inside where it feels like you’re going to die from the pain of it all. Of course my system wants to save me from experiencing that ever again. Getting close to that acute feeling of abandonment and rejection feels like it’s going to annihilate me.

Anita’s responses to my texts were warm … but left me cold, somehow.

I just felt like something was amiss.

And it was me – my stuff – but could I get a way round the edge of it? Could I fuck!

Driving in the dark to therapy I decided to stop panicking and to just go and get what I so badly needed. Anita had indicated that everything was fine, so I just needed to lean into that and trust it. Stop putting obstacles in the way RBCG and just go see your therapist who cares!

As I walked up her driveway, I could feel those young parts soooooo ready for a hug almost launching themselves out of me and towards Anita.

Anita opened the door, greeted me, and smiled. I went on into the therapy room, sat down and that’s when it all started to go wrong.

“I will warn you that I have a cold” Anita said. “I’ve done an LFT and it’s negative, but it’s just a particularly horrible throat…You’ve struggled to come today?”

Sulkily I replied, “I didn’t want to come at all” then whispered, “Can we turn the big light off?” The main room light felt too bright and jarring and I just wanted the low glow of the side lights and to relax into the space with A. Anita got up, turned off the light and put on the softer table lamp.

As she sat back down she said, “I’m keeping my distance because of the cold, as well…”

And that was it. EVERYTHING went mental inside. It was instant. I felt like I was going to burst into tears right there but, of course, externally I looked fine. No reaction at all. Poker face. Don’t let her see how upset you are!

‘Distance’ is triggering at the best of times but after a break it’s the very last thing I need. I can’t recall a session in the last year where Anita and I have not had any physical contact and here I was so desperate to be close to her, to cuddle and she seemed to be saying that it was off the cards. It was just too much for my system to cope with.

So many thoughts were running through my head all at the same time. My body was in a full on panic and I started to tremble. I can’t really explain how awful it was – there aren’t words. But I felt completely devastated. The protectors inside were lacing up their shoes and ready to bolt. I felt so abandoned and rejected in that moment. It was another episode of having my face glued up against the sweet shop window and being told I couldn’t have anything having waited so patiently to be there.

And yes – I know that this is just a cold, and Anita trying to be careful and not a deliberate rejection – but the young parts DID NOT UNDERSTAND that at all. To them it’s another mother who wouldn’t come anywhere near them when they needed her and it’s massively MASSIVELY triggering.

Totally oblivious to what was now happening inside for me, Anita went on, “What do you need from today? What can help you feel more settled?”

My brain was screaming “I need a hug” but instead I replied a barely audible, “I don’t know.”

“What’re your fears?” Anita asked.

It felt like I was being bombarded with questions and we’d only been in the room thirty seconds.

With a hint of anger I said, “Will you just stop talking to me.”

“Yeah, of course” and Anita sat quietly. I could see she was looking at me in the dark but I was staring into the corner of the room, unable to make any kind of eye contact.

The level of overwhelm I was experiencing was off the chart. The room was so gently lit that Anita had no idea that I was shaking. Where usually she’d have noticed and reached out in some way, I was instead left feeling isolated and abandoned.

A tiny child’s voice whimpered, “I want to go home.”

In that moment things felt so bad, the distance between Anita and I felt so great, and knowing I couldn’t get what I needed from her the only option available seemed to be to leave. It was the last thing I wanted but it would be less painful that sitting apart from Anita when I had already been apart for a week.

Anita replied, “You can go home if you want. The choice is yours.”

Wrong answer.

Look, we all know that therapists have to respect our autonomy and all that jazz, but in that situation, it is completely the wrong thing to say (well for me anyway). I might have been seemingly pushing away but actually when I say that kind of thing, it’s really a desperate call for connection. When we’ve not seen each other for ages being told I can leave is … well…it feels like she doesn’t care and it feels abandoning…EVEN THOUGH IT IS NONE OF THOSE THINGS!

Silence.

Anita continued, “I will never force you to be where you don’t want to be.”

More silence.

I could feel myself starting to head down into that tunnel of dissociation. Anita didn’t seem to get it. She had no idea that I had been triggered into such a deep place of doom and all within the first two minutes of being in the room. She had no idea as she sat on the couch beside me that I felt like I was being rejected and pushed away by her.

I could feel everything kicking off internally and I felt like I was going to fall apart. Not just cry but literally lose my fucking mind in there. I had held on so tightly over the week just to get to be with her and it was unravelling at a speed of knots.

“What part of you brought you here today?” Anita wondered at the same time that I repeated more angrily, “I want to go home.” I quickly put my shoes on, grabbed my keys and phone, and headed for the door “I don’t want you to go home…” Anita replied but it was too late, I was already half way out the door.

“I’m going home.”

I was out the room, down the stairs, and out the front door in seven seconds. My runners were channeling Usain Bolt.

Fuck.

This is new, right? Leaving. Never have I ever run out of a session. I’ve always sat and endured that physical agony of the young parts feeling alone and rejected – but I just can’t do it anymore. I cannot be in that place. It’s too triggering.

I can hear on the recording as I get off the driveway and into the dark that I let out this really pained sob as I burst into tears.

It’s awful to hear it back.

My car was parked round the corner from Anita’s house. I was in a right mess. There was no way I could drive in that moment so I just sat in the driver’s seat with my head in my hands and my knees tucked up into my chest. I basically curled up into ball and trembled and cried.

I was devastated.

How could it have gone so badly?

I sat in the dark for about five minutes – although it felt like seconds – I just completely lost time. And then reached for my phone. I felt really stupid but also really really lost and small.

As you can see from the exchange it felt like the universe was conspiring against us this session. Just as I had got back to my car, all the street lights had gone out and there’d been a powercut at Anita’s. I so badly wanted to go back to the house but also just felt completely stuck, like I said in the message, ‘paralysed’. I guess I was in a freeze response.

I just sat there, unable to move. About five minutes after Anita’s last message to me, a torch shone on the path next to my car door that was still wide open. I hadn’t even been able to shut the fucking car I was in such a state! I hadn’t heard the footsteps and yet despite being down a side road in complete darkness I didn’t react…which is unusual as I am so jumpy normally.

I looked up and there she was in the pitch black, and with a concerned but warm expression. I put I looked away and put my head back in my hands. Anita bent down and said something – and I have no idea what that is because the whole next bit of this isn’t recorded and I was so dissociated I can’t really recall much of the detail!

She asked if I wanted to talk and come back with her or maybe sit in the car together? I couldn’t move and told her that she could come in the car. My car is like bona fide special ecosystem of its own right now and I genuinely can’t believe that it had to be that day when this happened, when usually it’s tidy and smells nice and doesn’t look like trash can!

Ah well.

Anita was incredibly soft and calm and reassuring. My head was still in my hands and I was curled up in a ball but I could feel her even if I couldn’t look at her. She reached out and put her hand on my leg and told me that we’d be ok and could I explain what had happened?

I said she didn’t understand. That she’d never understand because she doesn’t have this wounding. That she has no idea how painful it is to feel rejected and abandoned. She said, “So teach me about it.”

I told her how her ‘keeping her distance’ had triggered me because I had missed her sooooooooooo much whilst she was away and that I really just needed a cuddle that night and it felt like she didn’t want me anywhere near her.

Anita was incredible. She refuted that and said that was not the case at all, of course she wanted to be with me and near me. She heard everything I had to say, which wasn’t a lot in terms of words but was enough to explain what had just happened. She said that telling me about the cold was not her telling me I couldn’t be near her and how in the past she’d told me the same and I have said that I didn’t mind, and we still ended up hugging so what was different?

I couldn’t articulate it in the moment, but I thought about it after and wrote it in a message yesterday which I have attached below.

I remember saying that I lose sight of her care and think things have changed and she replied with “RB, I wouldn’t come walking out in the pitch black in a power cut for anyone else.”

I think this really penetrated through to the parts that needed to hear it and Anita said lots of stuff about our relationship and how solid it is. I realised as she sat beside me in the dark that she really is my rabbit that listens. She is there, always, patient and calm waiting for me.

I wish I could remember the detail but I know that time, albeit in a completely random setting really did a lot of good. I was disappointed that I had completely lost my shit and not got what I needed so far as the physical holding goes, but emotionally Anita was right there with me. We are definitely a team!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that it’s all ok. We got me sorted enough to be able to drive and for her to leave. She asked me if I wanted a hug – which is impossible in the car – so I said, yes, got out the car and we had a really long hug in the dark.

Anita said something like, “I’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday and it really is ok” and I didn’t respond. “I’ll see you on Friday?” she repeated. “I don’t know,” I groaned.

There was so much conflict and shame and all kinds of stuff running round my brain. Deep down I knew we were absolutely fine – but there were a lot of parts still having their moment to speak.

The next morning I asked Anita is she had time for a ten minute check in before Friday and she offered me a time that evening:

I had a bit of time over my lunch break to think and I wrote and sent this message:

Hey A,

I’ve been trying to think about what happened last night and why but it’s not straightforward but all comes down to feeling disconnected and rejected and all that stuff.

Adult me tried really hard to stay away and not bother you while you were away on holiday and communicate in a way that wasn’t super needy, or too frequent, despite really feeling rubbish and like things were really not ok. By the middle of the week – woeful Wednesday – it felt really bad. I kept shaking and it was just horrid. If I had texted you what I wanted/felt over the week it would have been more like this, than stuff about IKEA:

  • I miss you and I’m starting to feel like you’re not real.
  • I’ve been having lots nightmares and feel really unsettled and shaky.
  • It feels like it did when I was little, and I’m scared that when you come back it’ll be different or you won’t want to see me anymore and I feel frightened.
  • I really need a cuddle.
  • Are we still ok?
  • Can we read stories on Monday?
  • I’ve been really sick and dizzy feel really clingy and like everything is too much but really want to see you
  • I feel really exhausted from holding all this and feel sad and overwhelmed but hope that we can reconnect when we see each other
  • All…the…feelings…are too much

And so, what I really needed last week was some kind of connection for that young part who worries so much about things going wrong or being forgotten about. Adult me can cope with you being away but the wounded child parts that struggle so much with disruption can’t, and it felt like you didn’t see/remember them. And I really get that this is me being mental because you did send stuff and I can see that now…but…ugh… I just can’t explain it really. I just really struggle with breaks and when it feels that bad it’s hard to hold onto anything positive.

So yesterday felt really high stakes. I really just needed for all that painful young stuff to be seen, held, and contained because I was wobbling really badly. When I haven’t seen you for a while, I struggle to hold onto all the evidence that has gone before that actually you do care, that I am not a massive pain in the arse (eek…think maybe that’s changed!), and that you do want to see me. I know you sent me that text yesterday telling me that you did want to see me and that you could understand how I was feeling but I was so far down my spiral of doom that it kind of bounced off.

When I arrived, I was so tired and so overwrought – it’s like the weight of the last week just caught up with me and I just wanted to be close to you. When you said you were ‘keeping your distance’ it felt instantly like you were pushing me away and it just lit the petrol that sets off that massive fire where everything is about to burn to the ground.

I get that wasn’t what you meant but that young part that is so used to being pushed away or disregarded got really triggered and really fast. I was totally gone into that place that is terrified. I know in the past when you’ve said something similar, I have said that I didn’t care about the cold, but that’s when I am walking into a situation that feels stable and safe…and after a break it just doesn’t feel like that. I am automatically looking for evidence that something has changed or gone wrong, and this seemed to be it. It felt like you wanted to be far away from me.

The internal reaction to what you said was immense. I felt sick and my heart started racing. I don’t think you noticed, but I was shaking. It felt absolutely horrific. Sitting there having a full-on trauma response to you staying away from me was too much. I had to leave. Staying in that situation was too upsetting and that’s why I ran away. I wanted so much to see you and instead it felt like I was being held at arms length and that’s really hard for me.

I know none of this is what was actually happening. I get it. But I couldn’t see that at the time.

I felt so dissociated last night in the car. I don’t remember much of what happened or what was said because I was so physically affected by what had happened. I really really didn’t want to be like that or for that to happen and I am sorry. I am embarrassed, too. I thought that I had a handle on this stuff but lately it seems like I am so easily triggered by small things. I don’t know if it’s progress that I can at least tell you how it is or whether I am just hopeless.

Thank you for coming and sitting with me in the dark.

On Friday even if you are a snot machine please can we have cuddles because I feel like I have been run over by a bus.

I miss you.

x

The conversation we had on Monday night was holding and connecting and so I’ll leave this there because, yet again, it’s an epic length and the editing tool is not working properly on here today! Sometimes I really feel like this 😉

Rupture Territory…

rubberbandsandchewinggum20 Comments
Actual footage of my child parts right now!

*I started writing this last week and so I suspect the tone changes midway through where I picked it up again this morning as things feel so flat today.

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions this last few weeks (again!). In part, it’s been down to the change in therapy routine over the school holidays but by my last post I was just about finding my equilibrium again – still a bit wobbly but not in a complete meltdown about it all like I had been… and then that fragile sense of safety was smashed by a combination of two things hitting almost simultaneously…and then another body blow on Friday just gone.

The first issue is the reality that financially our life isn’t what it was before my wife lost her job in January, and despite her having found another position we are now a further £500/month down from where we were at the start of the year (and £1100 from where we were this time last year!). That’s huge. I mean it’s really massive. We regrouped and changed things quite dramatically after the redundancy last year. It was tight but manageable but now this…Fuck.

I wrote a while back about how difficult things were financially – basically we had two months of my wife on zero money and so in order to get through that patch I maxed out all the credit cards and hoped for the best. Like many people in their 30-40’s we have no savings but we are lucky enough to have a house (unlike a lot of our friends) but the mortgage is eye-watering- and bills are insane. The council tax alone is over £200/month over 12 months. Whoa.

Compared with a lot of people we are very very lucky but the sudden and dramatic shift in finances has been really hard and it’s stressful. I think financial insecurity is stressful for a lot of people. I was only talking to a friend yesterday and she was saying how she wishes that the constant burden of juggling money (or lack of it) would go away as it’s like carrying an enormous weight all the time. I agreed. That is how it feels.

Anyway, two weeks from payday I looked at the bank account and we were already headed head first into our overdraft. Shit. This is not good at all. Still two weeks left to get through and no money. Straight away my system crashed. I’ve literally crawled my way through the last few months, and the Easter break, hanging on, and now, just as life should hopefully get back on an even keel the reality is there is not enough money to do the things I need to do to keep afloat. That’s gutting. I mean it’s not totally desperate in that I can’t do therapy at all and have to stop altogether but realistically we can only afford for me to go once a week and not twice and I’ll have to give the craniosacral a miss once K is back from lockdown but that’s ok…ish.

I was feeling really emotionally triggered by the situation that day, though – young parts in a panic – but resolved to make the best of my therapy session on Friday (17th) because if that was to be the last session until payday I couldn’t afford to leave it feeling upset or unsettled. I hoped I’d get through a couple of weeks on no therapy if I could at least go in and have a connecting session to say goodbye. The previous session had been so holding that I was hopeful we’d temporarily be able to hold things together with rubber bands and chewing gum.

Only…

Well…

You know what I am like!

As it crept towards the session the internal noise from the young parts was nuts. It’s the object constancy stuff again. There’s a reason that two sessions a week space Monday and Friday work for me and why breaks send everything off!! I just don’t do well with separation. Anita knows how hard it is for me but we’re both hoping that over time my system will learn that separations aren’t the catastrophe they used to be for me when I was a child. However, it’s going to take a lot to rewrite the book on that given that from the beginning my life was all about separation and the reuniting was rarely positive.

Then on Thursday night before my Friday session I got a text from A saying she had to take her dog to the vet in the morning and to prewarn me that she might be a couple of minutes late to my session.

No big deal, right?

Well, no.

And, yes.

I didn’t want A to have to rush and I also know that whilst adult me understands why she mightn’t be there on time the child parts would go straight to that abandoned state if she was very late. So, I suggested that maybe we should change the time so she didn’t have to concentrate on anything other than her dog. Anita replied and said that she had got ‘mega busy’ and had no other times. And something massive switched inside.

I mean massive panic and meltdown.

Instead of just sticking with my time because I felt so triggered, I said to A that I would see her at our next session the following Wednesday instead and it was fine to cancel. Given what I have just said about object constancy you can probably see what an insane thing that was to say. But what was going on in my head right at the moment was really messy. It didn’t help, then, that Anita didn’t see the message I had sent until late at night and so I didn’t pick up her reply until the next morning – I had barely slept and felt really out of sorts.

Basically, my system freaked out. And through the night I had been really upset. I knew I was about to have to pause my sessions until the end of the month and then after that probably reduce session frequency – this in itself was unsettling (understatement) but then to be told that Anita is now ‘mega busy’ everything and everyone inside melted down. It was a horrible internal conversation and even typing this now I feel like I could cry:

“She doesn’t care that I am not going to see her tomorrow. She’s probably glad of the break.”

“Why can’t anything ever just be settled for me?”

“What happens if she gets so full and busy that she suddenly finds working with me too much of a drain and terminates?”

“If she’s more tired from seeing more clients then she’ll be less available then she has been. It’ll feel more distanced. She’ll be less attuned… and that feels like abandonment. I’ll be back in that horrible place I was in with Em where it feels like survival mode and dissociation is the norm…and ruptures happen.”

 “I am not stupid. Clients like me are not easy and if she can fill up her week with less demanding clients then why wouldn’t she? Why would she bother with me anymore?”

“It’s over anyway. The wheels keep falling off my life and what I need, I simply can’t have anymore.”

“Why do I always shoot myself in the foot rather than ask for what I need?”

And then of course there was the wailing of the young parts who just felt like everything was broken and felt desperate.

Basically, I was sliding on black ice and into rupture territory and none of it was Anita’s fault. It’s not her fault my situation has changed and I’m sure she’s more than capable of managing her caseload, but the young parts had this sick feeling inside that there is an inevitability that things are going to go wrong and change and simply being told that she is busy made me feel like sooner or later I’d get overlooked, forgotten about, basically not kept in mind…and I suppose this is exactly what happened as a child. I was always at the bottom of the pile. My parents’ work took priority. I never got the time or care that I needed…etc etc.

Anyway, that tiny episode raised my hypervigilance up and few notches and I’m basically now wedged in flight mode which has totally screwed this weekend…but I’ll get to that in a minute.

So, it spiralled very very quickly down into that horrid place of feeling unworthy and I was basically pickled in shame and really fed up. When I turned my phone on in the morning there was a message from A telling me she was sorry that she hadn’t replied until late and that she thought she’d be back in time for our session or, if I wanted to, I could see her on Saturday morning. I wanted to see her on Friday but I was so exhausted from not sleeping and catastrophising through the night that I knew I wouldn’t be safe to drive to her that day so instead I asked to see her on Saturday.

It was so kind of her to see me on the weekend – she doesn’t usually work then (I don’t think) and so at least some of the parts of me that were certain I was on course for being relegated to the side lines realised that someone that doesn’t care doesn’t do this kind of thing. It’s just really really hard to hold onto that when everything feels like it’s going to be ripped away from me.

I don’t really remember anything about that session…

Oh… hang on…

It’s coming back…

Oh god.

Ugh.

Fuck.

I arrived and two dogs were barking. A told me her daughter was there with hers and was going to take them both out in a minute. I felt bad about that. On a sunny day I am guessing Anita would rather have been out walking with her daughter than sitting with me. It felt hard to settle and, in part, this was down to knowing I had to tell Anita that I wasn’t going to be able to see her for a while.

When I walked in, I noticed that the two books I have given Anita in the time we have been working together were out on the table (I had asked her if we could look at them in a text earlier in the week). I was glad she’d remembered but also knew that today was not going to be the time to look at them and that was sad for the young parts that needed that kind of connecting experience.

I told Anita I felt off. She asked if it was something about maybe thinking she didn’t want to see me after the messages with the vet stuff. That wasn’t really it at all, but I didn’t elaborate on all the stuff about her being busy and what that felt like. And I wasn’t ready to talk about having to stop the work.

I was edging closer to a dissociative state.

My head felt floaty and like I wasn’t in the room. I kept trying to focus on items in the therapy room but it was like being in a fog. Eventually, I told Anita that I wasn’t going to be able to see her. I think it came over as adult, but it was the ‘False Adult’ who can talk and seems ok. I was not ok, though. Inside it was absolute carnage and I felt really far away and like Anitwas a million miles away. too. I felt so disconnected and it just kept getting worse. But this is what happens. It’s that pre-empting separation and backing away and shutting down. I know it’s me. It’s my stuff. But when it’s like that it feels like A isn’t there, isn’t connected, doesn’t see me…and that’s not good.

When I explained what was going on. Anita said we could work something out – we have before and we can again. She said that she thought it was important that I keep coming and we’ll find a way forward. She said she was glad we had seen each other that day and not had to wait until Wednesday (my kids were still off school on Monday so couldn’t make my session).

That was a relief and I could feel my system settle a bit. We still haven’t worked out the details of the money stuff and so that needs looking at because I’m already working myself up about not paying ‘enough’ and then that’ll be another reason for things to go wrong between us. I ended up cuddled into A after that ‘big talk’ and just wanted to fall asleep after all the emotional effort the last few days had been.

Wednesday’s session was fine. I gave Anita a present that I had bought for her a while ago for her birthday and she seemed to like it so that was nice. It wasn’t a ‘big’ session but it was nice to be there. I knew there was stuff circling but Wednesday is a massive day for me workwise – I’m flat out until 9pm and so I didn’t want to open up Pandora’s box and then be left with everything spewing out all over the day. Besides, my next session was only two days away. It could wait.

On Friday I had just dropped my kids to school and was about to head up the road to Anita’s when I saw a text from her:

‘My daughter has had a bad headache for the past three days and woken up this morning with no taste. I have been seeing her so thinking maybe we should cancel today. She is booked in for a test this morning. Fingers crossed she is ok. X’

I didn’t really know what to say in that moment, I felt sad and kind of numb but also realised the it’s just unfortunate, so simply responded:

‘Ok. Hope she feels better x’

What else could I say?

As I drove home in the car it all started churning around and the information filtered down through my system. Obviously, I couldn’t see Anita if her daughter might have Covid. I completely understand that and I really hoped that her daughter was ok because having seen how bad it can be when my wife had it and losing my grandad to Covid pneumonia I know worrying it is. I know in that moment, as a mum, Anita would have been worried and panicked probably. I guess that morning she would be sending out texts to anyone she sees face-to-face and just sorting the admin side of things…

By the time I got home, though, the Critic had taken root – to shut the noise down inside from the young parts who felt devastated.

I tried to shut that stuff out
but it’s impossible.

Was Anita taking the day off work to look after her grown up daughter or was she just cancelling her face-to-face sessions to be safe? And if she was still working then why didn’t she ask if I wanted to do online instead? I have no idea what the situation actually was with A, I don’t know what she was doing. I don’t know whether she was working or had just completely cleared her diary to give herself some headspace…but that’s the thing, because I don’t know my brain did that horrible speculating.

“She just doesn’t want to see you online. After the pain in the arse you’ve been with online sessions she’ll never offer those again…right now she can’t deal with you and has enough on her plate without you having a tantrum over this.”

Etc.

And yes, I am not a fan of online sessions but I would rather have had some kind of contact than none. The last-minute cancellation was far more disruptive to my system than having to do a video call would have been. To be honest, even a ten-minute check in would have helped. But of course, I couldn’t respond and ask for that because if she wasn’t working then that it would have felt like I was being demanding and intrusive and I just didn’t want that. Surely, I can just cope until…well…when…a few weeks away if Anita had to isolate.

And so it spiralled further.

When I got home there was another message:

‘Thank you. I am sorry but better safe than sorry. I will keep you updated. If she is positive, I will get a home test for myself x’

I suppose at least that took the doubt of whether I should ask to talk on the phone out of the situation.

I didn’t reply to that message.

It’s unusual for me not to have contact with Anita but I was so conscious of not being a handful that I just drifted away from her. The sense of connection was decimated.

I know how extreme that is. Adult me is fine. I get all of it. But the traumatised child parts are in freefall and so the teen has bundled them up and taken them away.

The next day Anita text me twice – one an update about the Covid situation (negative) and another saying she hoped I was enjoying the sunshine and a big smiling/laughing face emoji.

It took me the day to reply despite having seen it when it came in. I simply wrote a simple sentence saying I hoped her daughter was ok. Because… no… I was not enjoying the sunshine. I was brooding and feeling like everything was unsafe…or at least enough parts of me were to significantly impact my ability to enjoy the day. I was grumpy too. I mean properly snappy with everyone. Part of it is PMS but part of it is that when it’s all crumbling inside I just can’t be the calm, patient mother. I just want to scream and run away.

Then Anita sent me another message saying she hoped I was having a good weekend and more big smiley face emojis.

There was no laughing going on internally for me.

I felt so sad.

I really needed a heart or a hug gif – something that feels connecting and holding and instead it’s like everything is fun and happy and that’s a world away from where I am right now. I wonder if she just has no idea that I might be responding like this?

I absolutely don’t want to be an arsehole over this. It’s embarrassing enough being like this, feeling this stuff, and I would like to think that Anita will understand. BUT there’s that doubting bit which thinks because she’ll be worried and stressed about her daughter the last thing she needs is me having a meltdown over a cancelled session.

In the normal run of things she’d be able to hear it, but what if she’s worn out and stressed out? I am not doing a great job with my kids right now because I am stressed out so it stands to reason that my child parts might just be too much right now too.

It’s a minefield.

Last night I felt so sad that I simply sent this GIF.

The moment I sent it I realised I had just set myself up for another period of feeling abandoned or disconnected. Who knows when Anita might see the message, or even if she would respond…and when…she needs a break and it’s the weekend.

So, that’s basically it. I feel flat and fed up…and just so over having to manage the legacy of the childhood trauma. I wish the message about cancelling on Friday had no impact…or those since. But it’s just not how it works.

I don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go. I had awful dreams therapy last night – what a surprise…

Shoot me now.

Post-session Meltdown!

rubberbandsandchewinggum41 Comments

So, last Monday’s session (where I found out that Anita was actually not now going to be here during lockdown so we can’t have our sessions face-to-face like she’d promised) triggered an EPIC meltdown on my part. I mean it was really something else!

I know how attached I have become to A but I really wasn’t expecting this from my system – or at least I thought I might be able to hide my response a bit if it did happen! – errr that’d be a no then!

I know it’s dramatic, but it felt as though I’d been betrayed on Monday. The rug had been pulled out from beneath my feet and I was left reeling, wondering what on earth had just happened and if what I feel to be true about mine and Anita’s relationship (that it’s real and solid and meaningful) was just lies and wishful thinking. If she could do a U-turn on something like this then what else wasn’t safe?

Needless to say, this week has been an emotional marathon (and I am really more of a 5km girl!!)

I left the session completely bereft. Crying in the car I just did not know what to do with myself. I couldn’t help but catastrophise. After everything that happened with Em it’s so easy to go into panic, fear the worst, lose trust, and this triggers complete survival mode and shut down from my system. The pain in this area – my attachment wound- is so sore that it can feel safer to run away then turn around and face it because what’s the point in trying? I have no control over the other person, I can’t change them or affect their response but I have control of whether I allow them close enough to hurt me, right?

And it’s not like track record for ruptures has been great (Ok actually, Anita has always been brilliant but…that’s not where my brain was at!!). If I try and tell someone how they’ve hurt me or let me down it doesn’t always end in a repair. I mean when Em likened my child parts to a tick, I tried so hard to tell her what was going on with me, in the hope that we could work through it, but instead it just got thrown back in my face and I got terminated. I was the problem. I was too sensitive. Too defensive. Ugh. I know that Anita is nothing like Em but there is a part of me that just doesn’t want to be open to being hurt anymore.

I drove home struggling with some many competing voices in my head and the somatic response was just agony – shaking, nausea, racing heartbeat. I called my friend and thankfully she was on hand to pick me up off the floor and try and help me get some perspective: yes this hurts but Anita is safe.

I was cycling through those really unbearable young feelings at mach speed. The angry mistrusting teen who just wanted to cut and run and the little one who just needs to be held close and told things are ok were so loud. It was like being pulled in two opposing directions. Adult me was nowhere to be seen. My system had gone into flight mode after the freeze response in session and it felt like the end of the world.

I simply cannot do this again. I cannot withstand losing my attachment figure…and whilst that sounds dramatic that is exactly how it felt.

After some discussion with my friend I decided that there was no way I could sit with this until Friday and try and work it through in an online session. I needed to let A know what was going on, I needed her to know the impact that our session had just had on me and to try and help me settle down. I mean I was cuddled into her crying for the last fifteen minutes of the session but I don’t know if she knew it was because I felt so hurt and let down by the news that she was going away for lockdown after promising she’d see me should we get locked down, or whether she thought it was just separation anxiety and I was going to miss her.

One of the many, many positives about my relationship with Anita is that she allows me to contact her between sessions so at least the panic and shame about reaching out isn’t there like it was with Em. I don’t have to jump a bunch of internal hurdles about whether I should contact her and that is such a huge relief.

By the time I was thinking about constructing a message to Anita, there was a message on my phone from her. It was lovely, but I think it shows that she had no idea that I was circling rupture zone:

I spent some time typing out a message on my phone and pressed send:

I know it’s unlikely at this short notice but do you have any free slots on Wednesday? I’m feeling really panicked but also really like I just want to run away and never see you again. The teen part that really believes that this is not real is having a field day – ‘I told you so. It’s all lies’. The other week when I was upset and feeling like things weren’t safe because I sensed a lockdown was inevitable you told me we’d be ok and that you’d still see me because it’s what I need. I wasn’t expecting today to find out that this wasn’t the case now. I understand why you are going away. It makes sense to my adult. But the youngest most vulnerable parts don’t understand at all. It just feels abandoning. It feels like it’s hard to trust what is real and what’s just empty words now. I hate that I am like this. I hate being so affected by things that normal people just don’t even notice. I feel embarrassed that I am so upset. I get that it isn’t easy for anyone and I absolutely don’t want to push you away but equally there’s a really strong pull for me to just cut and run. There’s also another part that feels terribly alone in the snow and the teen part will happily let her freeze x

She responded by offering me a time that I couldn’t make (ARRRGGGHHHH!!!), which obviously isn’t her fault, but it just sent me into a big huff. I was going to be sitting with this for a fucking eternity and there was no possibility of seeing her. I so desperately wanted to see her but I couldn’t possibly let her know! Jeez.

What comes next is the wheels falling off:

Oh sweet mother of God…help me! Or at least stop my hands! – text bomb:

Oh man. Reading it back now I am in proper ‘crawl into a hole and die’ mode. But as you can see I was proper activated. I continued on with my texts…ping ping ping… poor Anita!:

I just feel like nothing is real and it’s terrifying. I just really need a big hug and to make a plan on how to get through this next month…or longer. It’s worse than a break. And whilst I have sensed it coming it’s just too sudden for my system. And I feel like you’re gone. But also like I don’t know who you are ☹

She responded by telling me that she would love to give me a hug and that she was sorry and had herself had a wobble because she didn’t see it coming or that the plans would change, to let’s meet up on Friday and find a way forward followed by a hug GIF for the child parts.

Which helped no end! I could feel myself starting to settle a bit. The panic was subsiding. Things would be ok. She wasn’t abandoning me. I would be able to see her on Friday before she leaves and a face-to-face repair felt possible. Her willingness to engage with me, to try to make things better showed that she is the Anita I think she is. She is not Em. I was still massively hurting but could see now that whatever has happened hasn’t been deliberate.

But still the texts continued. FUCK ME…the shame…:

I know it’s really really hard for everyone – all of us – and I’m not trying to be a difficult pain in the arse psycho because I get that you are human too and it’s been an impossible fucking year – and we’re not unhinged (well I am!) is anyone’s guess. I did see it coming. I’ve just been surprised it’s taken so long. I’m always frightened of change because I don’t cope very well with it which is why everything is so controlled in my life and I need tonnes of notice and preparation to get my youngest parts safe before things happen. Adult me can, and will, power through this because that’s what I have trained into myself: keep going no matter what…. It’s just underneath it’s a fucking shambles. And there is so much stuff trying to work its way out at the moment internally that I feel like I have third degree burns all over my body – this last 48 hours (since lockdown announced) feels like I have been thrown into a vat of vinegar. I literally don’t know what to do because it’s so painful. I don’t want to feel like I can’t trust you – but that’s how sensitive my system is. Flight mode is pretty much default. I love you x

Anita replied with another kind message apologising and acknowledging that she had let me down, saying she really knows that she needs to be grounded and solid for me and that she hadn’t been in that session because of her own panic around the lockdown. It really helped to see her human side. I told her that I actually needed authenticity and the truth above anything else. I would rather her be her than attempt being solid when she isn’t feeling it. If she had told me she wasn’t feeling brilliant herself in the session it would have made sense – the mutual disconnect and the fact that she wasn’t really on the ball with letting me know what was going on or making any kind of plan.

I then told her that my meltdown simply stemmed from my being scared of distance, ‘I don’t like feeling far away from you and the littlest parts don’t feel safe unless I can hear your heart beating…which is just fucking cringey’. And that’s the reality, those youngest parts only seem to regulate when they are being held and I can actually hear her steady heartbeat. My breathing slows down, the tension in my system slowly ebbs away, and eventually my breathing matches hers – long and slow rather than rapid and shallow. It’s at this point that the young parts can really come out and tell her what’s going on for them.

The little four-year-old self can’t speak unless she feels contained and right now the only way that she feels safe is being physically close. This is why therapy with Em was so traumatic. The young part would be there, terrified, dysregulated, alone, and Em would just leave her…not just physically, but emotionally too. Being stranded in that pain is hideous. Anita recognises that and responds to it and it is so healing.

Anyway, there was more back and forth – honestly the poor woman got totally spammed on Monday! She reiterated that she really does care and loves me and that she would never purposefully hurt me and we continued working things through and we sort it all out on Friday.

I still felt out of sorts through the week but it would come in waves. Adult me was more available at times, but at other times I’d descend into panic again.

I had a really horrible dream- an old favourite- on Tuesday night where I was in a plane feeling scared, holding onto the seat and repeating ‘I am safe…I am safe…I am safe’ only everyone else was up in the aisles screaming at each other. I went and sought refuge in the toilet for some peace. It was different to a normal plane. There was window. As I looked out, I realised we were too low, skirting alongside some snowy mountains. Suddenly the plane nose dived and started corkscrewing down. I smashed my head on the ceiling and was terrified. The falling seemed to last forever and then suddenly the plane righted itself. Only, now there was another problem, the mountain range surrounded the plane on three sides. We were set to crash into the face of the mountain. The pilot pulled the plane up into an almost vertical ascent….and then I woke up!

FUCKING STRESS!!

Somehow, I made it through the week. I changed my craniosacral session to Wednesday from Thursday as it wasn’t completely clear whether K will be able to work. I needed to get some kind of nervous system regulation and talk about what had happened with A. K was incredible and if I get chance, I will write about these sessions with her soon because they too are soooooo helpful and holding in a different way. Body work has been such a brilliant addition to my talk therapy.

However, despite the lovely session with K, I didn’t sleep properly Wednesday night. The panic about Anita was ramping up. I genuinely felt like I was going to get a text to tell me she wasn’t going to be there on Friday. That she’d left on Wednesday night and we’d have to work online. I could feel the disappointment and rage flooding in. So, I text her and told her. She quickly put my mind at ease and told me she was looking forward to seeing me. Thank god.

And that is the frigging stress of the week before the repair session!! I’ll write another post about that as it’s loooooonng!!

—————————————————

I appreciate that there’s a window of a couple of HUGE weeks missing in this blog and reading between the lines here you’ll have probably worked out that the stuff that’s really changed has been about expressing love and the level physical holding in the relationship with A. It’s been transformational for me which is also why I have reacted so terribly to needing to return to online. The thought of losing all this is just totally overwhelming.

I have been reluctant to talk about it publicly due to the fact that so many people are struggling with remote therapy and having all kinds of new boundaries in place in the therapy room, losing hugs and touch, and I feel like it could be triggering for some and I really don’t want to make things worse for any of us in a pretty fucking unbearable situation.

I know, in the past this sort of thing (reading about the holding and expressions of love on blogs) has triggered me because I have so badly wanted this from Em and never got anywhere close. I am delighted for the people that receive it but I have felt literal pain in my stomach when I realise how strong the need has been in me and how painful it has been not to receive it. Throw in the pandemic and I don’t want to be seen as insensitive to other people. So, I will get to it, but as I said, it’ll probably be passworded.

There’s also a fear on my part. I just don’t want any backlash for what is happening in my therapy because frankly I have had years and years of shit, traumatising experiences in the room, and want to be able to celebrate what’s going on with you and feel good about it. And I know the vast majority of you will be cheering for me, but I also know that when we are struggling ourselves it’s hard not to project our own feelings of anger and dissatisfaction onto others – ‘this is wrong, she shouldn’t do that, social distancing…’ blah blah blah.

So, thanks for being patient but also sorry for the break in chronology and weird cryptic stuff! I just don’t know what to do for the best.

Enjoy your Sundays x x

Another Rupture…Over A Walk!

rubberbandsandchewinggum48 Comments

It’s certainly been an interesting couple of weeks in my head. And when I say ‘interesting’, I really mean a complete emotional shit show at times! It’s safe to say that all the attachment stuff has gone fully live in the therapeutic relationship with Anita and all the parts are starting to jiggle about for attention!…and (over)reacting left, right, and centre to the smallest of things. Eek!

Give me strength! … and moreover give my poor therapist strength as she’s certainly earning her money at the moment!

Anita has been so great, I mean really, she is just bloody amazing and is doing such great work trying to help me repair the damage done by Em…but she accidentally dropped the ball on Monday and it sent me into freefall for a bit. But I’ll come to that drama in a minute! 

I don’t think it’s any secret that the last few months have been a challenge so far as life and therapy goes. Everything with Em completely destabilised me and then just as I was settling into work with Anita, the pandemic hit. It’s hard to believe that the last session I had face to face with A was the 16th March although in all honesty I feel like I have been aware of every slow second of those five l-o-n-g months!

Despite working online, I have felt a bit like I’ve been in hovering in ‘break territory’ (and we all know how well I do with therapy breaks!) – in so far as I have been holding a lot of stuff that I simply can’t process properly if we are not together in the room. The main issue has been about not getting the regulation and connection for the young parts that happens face to face – the non-verbal stuff that you get from being with another person, absorbing their calm energy, making eye contact, seeing them breathe etc…all the cues that the youngest parts tune into in order to feel safe. And because I haven’t been able to access this stuff my system has just got more and more wound up as time has gone on.

I understand that COVID has been a nightmare for everyone. I mean honestly, whoever imagined that we’d be living through a fucking pandemic in our lifetime?! For those of us in therapy trying to work through complex trauma and histories of childhood neglect and abandonment it’s been huge, I mean super huge having our routine disrupted. Suddenly going from face to face therapy to working online away from our attachment figure has been such a shock to the system and it’s sent my system into a tailspin (and to be fair it was already in freefall after what happened with Em!)

I think because I have been in survival for so long now, my nervous system is just totally on edge but also kind of stuck in flight mode. My body is so overwhelmed from having to ‘hold on’ that when K came for the first time, a few weeks ago, to have a craniosacral session she walked in my gate, saw me, was standing about 5 metres away and the first words out her mouth were, “I can feel your nervous system from here!”.

Months of holding myself tightly in order that I didn’t completely fall apart has left me in a right state. I am so sensitised to the slightest thing now, my hypervigilance is off the chart and I am expecting something bad to happen. So of course when something in the field of rejection comes up I am on it in a flash.

Sigh.

Anita and I have been steadily building up trust in the relationship. I have been sharing quite a bit with her in my sessions but also reaching out outside them with various things and she’s been faultless with her responding – i.e an emoji or a quick reply. It honestly, has helped so much, especially as we’ve been working remotely.

I sent her a link to an article I had read online on the 5th that a friend had posted up and it really resonated so much that I wanted A to see it along with the caption:

Uggggh this resonated so much 😞 I can’t believe how much grief there is – my whole body is hurting x

For those that are interested, here’s the link to the article:

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/08/dear-therapists-stop-with-the-testimonial-injustice/

Anita, replied:

Wow, it’s as it you had written it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I know it’s hard to trust again and I will always try to be there but like everyone I don’t know what life holds in the future, but even if my house falls down we can always work online. I also know you have heard all this before and it’s daring to take the risk again.

I mean, she really is great, right? Like just nails it. And this is why I struggle looking back at what happened with Em. It doesn’t take ‘War and Peace’ to settle the anxious young parts – it’s not hours of time to formulate something holding…and yet she just couldn’t/wouldn’t do it.

I responded with:

Thank you. I just need a hug. I feel like I am going to cry but it doesn’t come. It’s like there’s a tsunami on the way. So exhausted. And I really hope your house doesn’t fall down  😬 x

And then she sent this and oh my god, the little parts inside melted:

It was all going so well!

Then it was Monday morning and I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a couple of brilliant things from Beacon House that I forwarded to her – one was a graphic with a swan that said, ‘Inside even the most composed and competent adult is a little child who is still learning to trust, love, and be loved.’ Like really, that’s totally me…

Anyway, the session was largely fine. I actually can’t remember any of it apart from the last ten minutes! But I know it was ok…

We got talking about work and how I feel like I might have overextended myself in September. She asked me how I was thinking about managing face to face sessions (tutoring) and I explained my plans. All very adult. All very competent. I said how not all students will return straight away as some are happy working online but that some of my students absolutely need face to face. I mentioned again one particular student with whom I resumed my sessions just before the summer holidays and how beneficial it had been to him….and then this is where the shit hit the fan with a minute to go…

Anita said:

I have a couple of clients who have really struggled and so I have done walk and talk therapy.

BOOM.

Cue internal collapse.

I hid how I felt – mask on – and fortunately that was the end of the session but SHITTTTTT everything went up in smoke. I was totally distraught.

Like really?

Honestly?

How could she not see that I have been hanging on by a thread? It’s always the same shit.

I text my friend about it. She talked me down a bit but was able to understand why this news was such a shock to the young parts. She asked me if I felt able to let Anita know what had happened when she said that? Whether I trusted her enough to tell her how upset I was rather than spiral out of control.

It was hard to see a way through the painful feelings of feeling unseen, rejected, abandoned it just felt like ‘here’s another therapist that just doesn’t care and doesn’t get me’ but I also realised that I was responding from a really hurt place that Anita isn’t even responsible for. She’s just tapped into the mother wound and the hurt around what’s happened with Em.

I didn’t feel able to construct a new text to A. I was overwhelmed, sad, and tired. So I just copy and pasted my text to my friend and sent it to A. I was hurting but when I thought about it there was part of me that believed she would respond kindly and not just ignore me in the way Em would have:

I’m trying to side step an internal meltdown before it plunges into total collapse. So I’m sending you this … which is what I sent my friend when we got off the call. I’m drowning in the shame and embarrassment but actually if you don’t know then it doesn’t help:

Argh. Bloody therapy has just triggered a landmine 😩. I was talking about how I was planning to manage face to face working in September in my office and said that some students will likely stay online through choice but there are a few that absolutely need face to face work, and how transformational it was going back to face to face with boy. This was end of session and with a minute to go Anita tells me ‘yes, I agree, some of my clients need face to face work and there are a couple who have really struggled so I’ve done walk and talk therapy’

Like wtf?? 😭

How is it that I come across as a person that doesn’t need face to face even when I’ve said as much as I can about how much I’m struggling? Why, because I’m articulate and controlled and ‘together’ enough do people not hear my words when I say it’s felt bad and like I’m hanging by a thread? I’m never going to scream or meltdown or cry
or beg because that’s not how I am- especially after what happened with Em I’m
terrified of being seen as too demanding or needy.

I’m so upset that she didn’t even have me on the radar as ‘having that need’. I know you understand the stuff I wrote in my blog the other week about how hard it is for someone with disorganised attachment, childhood trauma and neglect, dissociation, parts that struggle with feelings abandonment and rejection to work online because all the usual cues are missing and the coregulation just doesn’t happen – I’ve said it enough times… I know I’m like a broken record.

You can guess exactly how that information feels to young parts- confirmation of the narrative ‘she hates me, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t really see me’ and all I want to do is run away now because I’m so over trying to teach people about me and my needs. I can’t be any more explicit than I am.

And yes I am hormonal 😳. But I just want to cry. It’s the same stuff playing out time and again – ‘she’s a good girl, seems fine’ and people never noticing that the walls are crumbling because the mask is glued to my face.

I just feel like a bomb has been dropped internally on the youngest most vulnerable parts… I get it’s an overreaction but it’s tapped right into that thing about not being seen, not mattering and being left to cope. And I totally get that there’s tonnes of evidence to the contrary but these little ones don’t understand – it’s been like an ongoing re-enactment of how it was when my mum was away … just hanging on til she came back. Only I don’t know when Anita will be back 😕

I wish I was a rager who could express what I am feeling rather than a quiet person that takes everything underground and inside. 😞 Maybe I should just give up. I’m clearly fucking rubbish at therapy.

I don’t have the resources or energy to deal with this right now.

I miss you.

——

That’s the rant.

And within half an hour there was a reply. Not a three day radio silence…or a complete lack of acknowledgement which is what I have come to expect from a therapist:

Thank you for your honesty. I am so so sorry for my complete blunder. I honestly have only done one walk and talk just once with a client that won’t work remotely at all not even over the phone. I have been working with them for years. This is no excuse and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about offering that to you. I think because we have been connecting on line. But I am more then happy to arrange one. I can not apologise enough. With regret, Anita

Then I saw I also had a missed call from her.

Damn.

By the time all this came through on my phone my period had arrived (!!!!) and I felt slightly less insane. I was still hurting a lot but I had got a little bit of my adult online and could see that whilst it feels enormous to the young parts who are so badly hurt it’s not really the end of the world. It just feels impossible when it’s like this. It’s evidence of my system at work – this is the work I need to do with A.

I responded:

It’s fine. I understand. I’m just tired and overwrought. It’s like an overflowing bath and I can’t work out how to turn taps off.

I thought that would be it. We’d talk later in the week and sort it out. I felt much better just that she had acknowledged that I was hurting and didn’t try and blame it on me or tell me I was overreacting, or that she’s just my therapist or any of that other gaslighting shit that used to happen with Em:

It’s not fine and what I have said is the truth but don’t know how to say it without it sounding like a lame excuse. Let’s sort out a time for a walk and talk. 💜

I sent her three GIFs that basically summarised my internal response from different parts and she replied:

Yes I understand all of those reactions and wish I had done things differently. Like in all relationships ours will have bumps because humans don’t always get it right. I believe it’s how we grow and own our mistakes that really count. Where trees fall foxgloves grow.

We’ve messaged back and forth quite a bit this week. Just short check ins, emojis, GIFs etc but it felt really connected and helpful – holding. Later in the week I sent her a link to one of my old blog posts about therapy being a bit like and emotional rollercoaster and she told me that when she read it she just wanted to give me a hug… which again made me feel like she really is there, gets it, and is committed to helping.

So you would think my session yesterday would have been a breeze after all the mini bits of repair and settling since Monday wouldn’t you? Well, sure. that’d make sense. Only no. That’s just not how I work! haha.

By Thursday night I had started to feel really ashamed and embarrassed at my reaction to finding out she’d seen another client face to face. Like proper internal cringeing. I started to panic that Anita would think I was too much like hard work, too needy, too mental…and would just think, ‘fuck this, it’s too much effort’ just like Em.

I really struggled to answer to video call yesterday. It must have rung for nearly a minute. And when I did pick up I felt myself freeze. Child parts were there and my words just weren’t. I told her I felt embarrassed. Anita quickly realised what was going on and worked really hard at trying to reassure me that my reaction made so much sense and that she was so sorry for hurting those vulnerable parts and how scary it is to them because they are trying to trust and then they get let down by her. 

A few weeks ago I drew an analogy between me and her dog, who is a rescue, and it seems to have really resonated with her. She said that she can really see how traumatised I am and how like the dog I am and how much care I need because of what I have experienced at the hands of others. I’ve explained that terribly!! haha.

Anita genuinely really cares. I know she does. I can feel it. She understands how painful this kind of thing is (with the walk) and did everything she could to make amends. I could feel myself slipping further into the young parts, the toddler part and even the baby. She talked to them a lot and I could feel them crying inside. I just really wanted a hug. I could feel tears pricking in my eyes but I shut them down…another part moved in, an older part. She noticed the change.

I was able to tell her that I felt like I was trying to protect myself – like a tortoise in its shell. I said that this kind of protection is also really disconnecting and not what I need and when it happens in the room that distancing feels shit, but actually online it’s really shit because not only am I locked away inside myself, she is also locked away in my phone and it’s so hard to connect and it feels horrid. I don’t think I’ve been as explicit as this before. i.e I have told her I am struggling but not actually how hard I am struggling with the constraints of online therapy. We have talked about how different it is and how hard it is not to have eye contact but I haven’t expressly said “I can’t reach you”.

I think it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for her alongside the events of the weeks and she asked me if I wanted to book in a walk.

…

…

…

What do you think I said?

Go on…I’ll give you a prize for the right answer!

Well, of course, that’s the moment when the petulant, angry teen came up and just said, “No”.

Like WTAF?! I make all that fucking fuss about her having a walk with a client who hasn’t had any therapy at all in 5 months and then I get what I want and I refuse it. You literally cannot make this shit up!

Anita didn’t push it. I think she could tell there was a lot of internal conflict going on. So she told me then that she is actively working with the guy that owns the therapy room that she works out of on Wednesdays in my city to see about how viable it is to go back to face to face work when she gets back from her holiday on the 7th September.

I usually see her at her home but I can understand why she might want to extend her working in the rented room for now. Tbh it’s a ten minute drive to that venue rather than the forty to her home. I am just not massively keen on the idea of a new place, it won’t feel so ‘homely’ (I’ve seen the pictures) or have her stuff in it but to be honest I need to not let those picky parts start splitting hairs. Being able to meet A in person in a room, after what will then be six months, is really what I need to focus on.

She says she won’t know what the plan is for a bit as it depends on lots of things like insurance etc and she also said that she doesn’t think that working in masks or visors is really appropriate to the kind of work we do because facial expressions are so important and particularly for clients with childhood trauma because it’s just like the still face experiment.

I am glad she is aware of this and is thinking carefully about things. I am not going to get my hopes up too much as there are so many factors that need working through, but for her to tell me that she is trying to get back to face to face was helpful and for her to ask me if I would want to come back…well internally I was doing a happy dance but externally I gave absolutely nothing away….

FFS!

The session was coming to the end and she asked me again to think about the walk before she goes on holiday at the end of next week and coming back to the room and let her know what I think.

After the session, I was scrolling on Facebook and a video came up of a challenge where you go and sit with your toddler whilst they’re watching their favourite show and film their reaction. They were lovely. All the kids stop what they are doing and kiss or cuddle their parent – and connect. It made me cry…because I know this was never my reality.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to see A for a walk, but equally was terrified that because I want it but there is only a week until she goes on holiday there would be a strong chance we wouldn’t be able to find a time. I sent this:

Thank you for being there and trying to be reassuring today. It’s so hard. I just saw this video https://www.facebook.com/199098633470668/posts/7821700421210413/?vh=e&d=w and it properly broke my heart because this is what it feels like inside – and even younger still – and yet there never was anyone there. There was never this kind of experience – no ‘I love you’ no holding, no attunement. I look at the connection and love in this video and there’s nowhere in my internal experience to hang it on and I just feel immense loss. Like I know that child is there inside, wanting to love and to be loved and instead is spiralling out of control in the dark, alone. The grief feels completely overwhelming.

I am beyond terrified of being rejected and abandoned for being too much, too needy, annoying. And It’s really huge because it’s happened recently (with Em) not just in my past. I really really do want to see you in person – for a walk, back in the room, whatever … but there’s also a part of me that doesn’t want to need or want that, or for you to know how hard it is. Also, I was wondering, can I send you something in the post before you go on holiday? 

She messaged me back and said that she knows that lots of therapists would say no to me sending something but to her that feels rejecting so I could send her something if I wanted so long as it wasn’t a bag of 💩😂!

I laughed and said that it definitely wasn’t a bag of 💩 and then told her I missed her. She sent me a hug and then asked me if I was able to get childcare anytime this week to have a walk. Anyway after a bit of back and forth we are booked in for a walk on Tuesday afternoon… I’ll let you know how we get on! The good news is that at least a part of me is excited!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Navigating Our First Rupture…

rubberbandsandchewinggum29 Comments

I made it through last weekend a little haphazardly and as it got to Monday, and almost time for my session, I felt anxious. I had every intention of telling Anita that her not replying to some of my recent (vulnerable) texts had unsettled me in a big way. I mean surely the evidence was there that she is safe enough to express that with? She may not have replied to me but we had talked in sessions about what I had said, more or less, and when I had reached out in the middle of the week and asked for a check-in she’d accommodated that. If I don’t tell her what’s going on how is she meant to know…and how can we sort it out?

I took a deep breath and waited for Anita’s call to come in, 10:00…10:01…10:02…10:03… wtf? I started to feel pissed off, angry, forgotten about…abandoned…rejected…and then I closed down. I know this is not all about Anita, that everything she does is also filtered through the lens of how Em behaved, but I nose-dived really quickly, ‘She’s the same as Em. She doesn’t really care. You’re a fucking moron for hoping that this time things would be different because the problem is you…not them…’

So with the Critic ranting in my head and my body feeling I almost just left it, ‘Sod her. I don’t even care anyway…’

Only of course I do care.

Having stared at my home screen for the last four minutes I opened up my Whatsapp and saw that I had a missed called from A at 10:01. My phone hadn’t rung or notified me of the call.

Really?

For fuck’s sake! I returned the call and A picked up. I told her my phone had glitched and she said she was glad to see me and was worried something might have happened. You’d think that might have been enough for me to settle down, connect, and talk but of course it isn’t that easy. In the intervening four minutes between expecting the call and realising I had missed the call I had run the attachment gauntlet and my body was in flight mode.

I wish I had have been brave enough to say, ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me and I feel panicked’ but of course because I was hanging on to all the worry about the last two weeks and her not acknowledging those few texts it felt impossible. I was already armoured up and so I did the thing… I talked BUT NOT ABOUT WHAT WAS REALLY BOTHERING ME. I spoke about work, my daughter’s return to school, and you guessed it… COVID!

Give me fucking strength!!

I’m not saying that what I spoke about isn’t a concern or wasn’t helpful it’s just on my list of ‘what’s bothering me’ those things probably come about 15 places down. Like even if I couldn’t tell her about the fear surrounding being rejected or her seeming to have backed away, maybe I could have talked about the fact I was upset about the anniversary of my dad dying which was happening the next day having touched on it in our Friday session, or told her about the fact that I had looked at Em’s website over the weekend – you know how I like to self-harm – and had seen that she’s updated her page to specifically list the issues she deals with. There are tonnes but imagine my horror when she lists: attachment disorders, dissociation, eating disorders, and trauma…

I wanted to puke.

I knew the, ‘I have reached the limit of my competency’ and I do not have ‘the relevant skills or training’…was utter fucking bullshit when she said it. It’s like the therapist’s get out of jail free card. How can you argue with that? It’d be like a student asking me to teach them German – it just wouldn’t be possible. They’d have to seek support elsewhere. But to see that she is advertising her services in these areas tells me that she has learned absolutely nothing from what has happened between us. That she takes zero responsibility for her part in it.

To think that she genuinely thinks she has the skills to treat people with these issues is absolutely beyond words. I am upset. I am hurt. But I am absolutely terrified that she’ll do the same to someone else. Perhaps someone else who doesn’t have quite as much resilience as I have. And it might sound dramatic but it’s not beyond the range of possibility that someone might really hurt themselves facing the situation I did.

If it weren’t for my kids and the fact that I quickly found Anita just as things began to unravel (tick gate!) I think there would have been a strong possibility that I may have hurt myself…or worse. Because annihilating a person’s young parts when they have been exposed and vulnerable is just about the worst thing that can happen for people with attachment problems.

Everything went wrong when we were kids, we learnt to protect ourselves, often using maladaptive coping mechanisms that hurt us further, and in many cases the damage that was done to us as kids led to us developing problematic relational patterns…this all causes us problems in later life and that’s how we end up in therapy depressed, empty, anxious, hurting…

We are encouraged to try again at letting people in, trusting some with the most vulnerable parts of ourselves… and it took years for me to let Em see what I was struggling with, how badly hurt I was, and when she saw the full extent of the need and pain, she abandoned me…only this time it feels worse because unlike my mother, she’s also rejected my adult self, too, so I feel utterly heartbroken.

But no. I didn’t bring ANY OF THAT to the session…because people refusing to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces is clearly of greater concern for me! Jeez!

Anyway, the session ended it was fine, but not fine you know? I doubt Anita even knew I was keeping her at arm’s length. I felt so pissed off with myself afterwards, though. I convinced myself that she was fed up with me, disinterested in me, that I was wasting my time. And yet, there was still a part that wanted to connect.

On Tuesday I had a good day with work, back to face to face, but by the evening the grief around my dad loomed large. I had told Anita that I was really sad that this year I would not be able to go to the beach and ‘connect with my dad’ like I usually do, to mark the anniversary. I mean I know technically we are allowed to travel wherever we like but I don’t think that a trip out of county is essential right now.

On Tuesday evening I sent Anita some pictures I took from my trip last year with the caption ‘If Only…’

img_8103img_8079img_8101

And sure enough she did not reply.

And that is when my system went into full scale meltdown. Usually, before the message when I let her in, she would at least send an emoji and now nothing.

I had bad dreams all week. One where I was watching Anita with someone (aspects of me) at an outdoor café. As I watched I could tell that something wasn’t right. It looked fine on the surface but I just knew it wasn’t as it appeared. As she got up to leave, she handed me a rolled-up piece of paper that looked like a receipt and on it written in pencil were the words, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t work with you’.

Then I woke up on Thursday morning having had a dream about being on a paddle board with both my kids in a harbour (where I used to live). The paddle board had a puncture and was rapidly deflating. Neither of my kids (in the dream) were competent swimmers and I knew I couldn’t save both of them. I noticed Anita was on the harbour wall. I called for help and she turned and walked away.

I know they’re both dreams. Not reality. That these are my fears coming out. But it’s horrid because I ignored my dreams about Em and look what happened. What happens if my dreams are trying to tell me something again?

I felt so triggered and upset that I sent Anita a message to cancel the session on Friday. This is so unlike me. I never cancel sessions…ok so I cancelled that one with Em just before Christmas but never before! So I sent this:

Can we have a break tomorrow and talk on Monday instead? I feel really unsettled, disconnected, and that things aren’t ok/safe/something has changed between us. Bad dreams aren’t helping. Maybe it’ll feel less bad after the weekend. July is always hard.

I wasn’t sure what she would come back with but I wasn’t really expecting this:

Of course, that’s no problem.

I mean sure, I asked to not do the session but I explained why and for me to be saying I am feeling shit and unsafe in the relationship I basically did not need her to agree that it was fine to ignore that for another few days. The child parts felt so abandoned. I needed Anita to see past my defences and reach through to the little ones and she didn’t. I left it a few hours and felt really unseen and disappointed.

I am good at catastrophising and was really seriously thinking that this was it…it wasn’t going to work out – she just doesn’t get it. To be fair I also need make it clear that I was massively hormonal and I am never at my most rational when in the throes on PMS!

A few hours later I replied:

It doesn’t feel like no problem ☹

And then this came in:

No, I can hear that but not sure how to try and reassure you in a text. My guess is the closer we get the more your defences will try to sabotage the relationship to try and keep you safe. It’s a system that works as in it keeps you guarded but it also isolates you. I can hear July is a triggering month so maybe letting your defences step in for a few days is what you need and gives your defences the respect they deserve for trying to keep you safe. So try not to be too hard on yourself and try to give yourself the empathy you deserve.

Ugh. Yes. But. No.

Absolutely, the closer we get the more spooked parts will feel because the fear of loss and rejection becomes more acute but there’s more to it than that … and telling me not to be too hard on myself when I am depriving myself of connection feels like we’re letting the protector win when actually sometimes she needs to be shown that we’re ok and that it’s safe. But that message was enough for me to see that actually A is not trying to ignore me or disconnect…I don’t think… and so I asked if we could still have our session, feeling like a bloody dickhead!:

I hate feeling like this. And yes, you’re right. But I don’t want to feel triggered and then run scared from people because it is isolating. It’s that thing about leaving before I get left. I was hypervigilant before January but now it’s off the chart ☹ . I’m sorry. Is it too late to change my mind about tomorrow?

And of course, this is Anita we are talking about and she came back:

You really don’t need to say sorry and tomorrow at 10am is absolutely fine 😊

And so that was that. Fun times.

When it came to the session on Friday, I felt a bit nervous. I knew I had to tell her what was really going on if I was going to really sort it out. So we started and I said I was a bit embarrassed that I had made such a fuss and actually still ended up in the session…what a 24 hours! She was really warm and understanding. I asked her outright, ‘has something changed?’ and she was adamant from her side that no, nothing had changed, or yes, something had changed, but positively, she said she felt like we are getting closer.

I smiled.

Good. It’s not just me moving towards her then and her feeling repulsed and backing away.

She said that I had mentioned some bad dreams and asked me if I would tell her about them. So, I started with the one about the café and she said that sounded really hard and that she wanted to reassure me that she really has no intention of leaving and that I am not too much for her. She said she understood that might be hard to take on board, or believe, because Em will have said the same thing and then left (the warmth that she exuded as she said it is like nothing Em ever expressed in all the time I worked with her). It was easy to believe what she was saying because it felt real and genuine.

I told her about the second dream and she was really moved and replied that she could see how hard that was for me. Two dreams on the bounce where she’d abandoned me. She could understand my concern, what if I allowed myself to get into the water and it got emotionally overwhelming could I be sure that she wouldn’t let me drown, would she reach out and save me? And the answer to that was an emphatic ‘yes!’. We are in this together and she has absolutely no intention of letting me or my child parts drown.

I can’t tell you how much my body relaxed when she said that. I have never experienced any real reassurance in the relationship with Em. I’ve always been left second guessing, hoping for the best but fearing the worst…and then frequently hearing the worst. Anita isn’t like that. It’s so unbelievably refreshing. Healing.

She said that my protector is really strong and good at her job. I agreed but said, ‘the thing is Anita, I need you to be stronger than she is. I need to you to be able to meet her and diffuse her or at least side step her to get to the young ones because that will make her stand down.’ She repeated the idea she had said in the text about giving the protector space and respect. I said, ‘no’. ‘No?’ she wondered. ‘No. Because if we let her have free reign then the little ones lose out again, they remain isolated and unseen, and they’re the only reason she’s there in the first place’.

Anita asked me to explain further. I said, ‘my system works in a particular way. It’s always the same. If the young parts reach out and are vulnerable but aren’t met they are left in a whole world of pain, it’s awful. So in order for me to function, first the teen steps in with her bubbling rage which is externalised, and then if she can’t get a handle on it all,  the critic steps up and starts attacking me. The teen part is like a really angry big sister. When the young ones are abandoned, she loses her shit. There is absolutely nothing she won’t do to protect them from another unsafe adult hurting them. She’ll cut all ties before things get worse. She struggles to trust anyway but if the young ones are hurting it’s like all hell breaks loose.’

Anita really seemed to get it and said, ‘so what you need then, is for me to see the young parts and help them and the teen will step down a bit?’.

Bingo.

I think at this point she thought that the teen was having a meltdown because of the dreams. It felt like we were moving in the right direction but I still didn’t quite feel like I could tell her that I had been so upset about the texts. It felt stupid. Being face to face – or screen to screen – or whatever I could see that Anita was not trying to abandon me at all. I guess, though, there was a little bit of me that was thinking, ‘she only cares in the paid for time, outside that I don’t matter’… you know all the great stuff!

So instead I decided to tell her something else that I felt shame about but not quite as much shame as I did about overreacting to the texts… I decided to tell her that I had looked online at Em’s website earlier in the week. I waited for it…a raised eyebrow… look of disgust…an uncomfortable shuffle in her chair. Of course, none of those things happened. Just a look of care and understanding as though it were the most natural thing in the world that I’d be searching my ex-therapists website after terminating five months ago!

I expressed how upset I felt knowing that she had learnt nothing, took no responsibility, and basically that left me in no doubt that she absolutely thinks I was the problem. Anita empathised. I said I was angry. She asked me what I wanted to do with my anger and I said that I didn’t know right now, but that I was certain that I didn’t want to turn it in on myself…it’s not always possible but if I do that then she’s really won. Anita agreed and said she was glad that even though it was painful that I wasn’t abusing myself as well.

Anyway, we spoke about that and then I built up a bit more confidence…and asked again, ‘Are you absolutely sure that we are ok and that nothing has changed?’ She replied again ‘I’m sure’. I sat there quiet. ‘In the last few weeks you’ve taken steps closer to me’ she looked thoughtful for a second ‘and I really feel like we are getting closer… Do you think I have stepped back?’ I nodded. She told me that if I had felt that she is sorry but that absolutely had not been her intention. A little voice murmured, ‘but you’ve ignored me’. Anita looked shocked. ‘In session?’ she wondered. ‘No’ I whispered. I felt so small at that point and it was really clear to me that it was the young part that was talking to her. She was quiet for a moment. ‘Is this about texts?’ I nodded again. She thought for a few seconds and then started talking in a really open and vulnerable way,

‘I’m sorry if my text replies have felt not good enough or what you’ve needed. I think I told you before that I have really bad dyslexia. I almost couldn’t complete my training because of the written component of the course. I needed a lot of support from my supervisor and had to use voice technology to write my essays because I struggle so much with writing and typing. I could never offer email therapy for this reason. So, when I text I have to think really, really hard and the harder I try the less authentic it might feel because I lose myself in trying to get it right when I know I am likely to get it wrong. I’m sorry.’

Honestly, it was so heartfelt that I melted a bit inside. Like I really felt for her and was so pleased that she was able to be vulnerable with me. To have authentic communication modelled is really something. I hadn’t really thought about it from her side despite having been told in our first session together that she prefers to check in via calls rather than texts because she struggles with dyslexia and finds calls more connecting. I really heard it now, and realised that it probably feels especially pressured knowing I am an English teacher and will notice any errors in what she sends.

I suppose I tend to communicate in writing because it’s what I find easier but it’s also that I have not been allowed calls or any outside contact with Em and writing is all I had – even though I really shouldn’t text or email! In all the years we worked together we only had one phone check in…and it was a game changer for me…and yet the next time I walked into the room she raised the drawbridge and told me she’d stepped outside her role as a therapist by doing it. It was devastating.

I said to Anita that I really understood that, but actually I really didn’t have a problem with her texts, that her replies up until two weeks ago have been phenomenal, so holding, so attuned, and exactly what I had needed. I said that she had felt so connected, even when she might just reply with a smiley face emoji. I told her that two weeks ago, when I told her that my young parts missed her she stopped responding and since then every time I have reached out with something vulnerable she’s made no reply at all and it’s made me worry that something is wrong, that I am too much, and that she is backing away.

If I had said any of this to Em she would have thrown it back at me, telling me how I am just being sensitive and that the feelings are coming from the past and that it’s not how it is and that we need to keep communication inside the room and that this is her boundary. She could never step towards me in a rupture and instead left me hanging having to work through it on my own.

What did Anita do?

She leant in towards the camera and gently said, ‘I am so so sorry for letting your young parts down, I really didn’t mean to. I am so glad you’ve been able to tell me this because now I can make sure I don’t do it again. I have been really busy at home the last couple of weeks and I am sorry if it’s come across as me not caring. It’s not that, at all. I have been aware of how you’ve moved towards me and I didn’t want to get it wrong with you or give you an inadequate response’.

I explained that I really don’t need long or complicated responses to my texts and that I really understand the feelings around being exposed and not feeling good enough due to the dyslexia. I said I am not judging and that she’s always felt really authentic to me. My young parts just need to know that she’s still there when I reach out. I told her again about how I really struggle with object constancy and so that it really is the young parts seeking reassurance and an emoji can be enough…but getting no reply at all sends me into panic.

I told her that I genuinely thought she was trying to find a way to tell me she wasn’t able to work with me which is what’s been coming up in my dreams and why I had backed away on Thursday. She said she understood that there felt like there was safety in leaving before I got left. I said having just talked in the way we have it seems like a massive reaction to three texts being left hanging especially when in the same block of time I’d reached out and she had made time for a check in. I said it’s just really hard coming from a place where texts, emails, and calls hadn’t been allowed. I said how I had been ignored for years and years and it felt like a narrative repeating.

She reiterated that she is not Em but acknowledged how badly Em had hurt me in various ways and understands how sensitive this is. I said how I had worried that she’d been to supervision or peer support and she’d been told that she shouldn’t work with me in this way, and that if she took away the outside contact I’d really struggle because it’s been so important to me. I think she was genuinely surprised by my mental gymnastics and assured me that it was all ok and that she knows what I need now. She reiterated that the way we can keep moving forward together is by talking and communicating this stuff even when it’s tough.

I haven’t really done that exchange any justice at all but what I can say is that it is probably the single most healing moment I have experienced in talk therapy in all the years I’ve been doing it. Being listened to, seen, understood, and accepted (even if I was being dramatic and over the top)  is so healing. And it is such a contrast to being ignored, blamed, or shamed for how I feel. To effectively repair a rupture rather than be left holding the pain and upset is amazing. To know I can express how I feel and that be met well is so much healthier than feeling like there is no choice but to move through a rupture and let it go as it’s better than risking losing everything. I mean the last time I tried to sort a rupture I got terminated…but I couldn’t allow my therapist to think it was ok to call me a tick, could I?!

Anyway, after the session I sent A a short text thanking her for being real, and open, and hearing me. And she replied by thanking me for my honesty and signed off with a hug emoji.

And, that, my friends is how it is done! This tick is doing therapy! x

Shouldn’t Have Skyped…

rubberbandsandchewinggum46 Comments

I’m really aware that I have been AWOL here since before Christmas and have kind of left everything hanging for weeks on the ‘live rupture’ that started in the last session before the break. There are a few reasons for me not writing here, but the main one is I don’t even know where to begin. Things have been so bloody awful that I haven’t been able to formulate my thoughts or ideas about what’s happening.

I have been flipping massively between, ‘I have to leave therapy with M’ and ‘Maybe it’s just me and things can get better’… I guess deep down I have been hoping this stuckness we’ve been experiencing and the feeling of being on completely different pages might resolve and I could come back here and basically go, ‘Haha, look at me being an idiot, freaking out and creating another Christmas rupture… but it’s ok now.’ Only I can’t say that even a few weeks and sessions down the line and I am not sure that it’s all me. Lots has happened and it’ll have to go over a few posts which may take some time.

Also, I just want to quickly say a huge thank you to all the people who have been checking in with me on email. It means a lot that this community cares and we notice when people might not be ok. Also to my closer friends, thank you for putting up with me these last few weeks and not muting your WhatsApp but also being patient when I haven’t responded to you.

So here goes. I am the ‘ringmaster of the shit show’ right now. I saw a hoodie online the other day with that slogan and I am so tempted to buy it because that’s exactly how I feel.

Christmas break was a bit different this year. I wasn’t drowning in young parts’ attachment pain and managed to immerse myself in my family life (well until my wife had a meltdown and threatened to leave…the joys of menopause!). Actually,  I just had a huge resistance to even thinking about therapy on the break and had absolutely zero desire to go back to my sessions on the 3rd January.

Sometimes I can feel a bit distant and detached but as the sessions approach the needy parts come back online and I literally cannot wait to see my therapist. Not this time, though. I just felt so disconnected and disappointed by everything that had happened before Christmas that there was a part of me that just couldn’t face more of the same. There is only so much abandonment and rejection I can cope with. I am sure she wouldn’t see her behaviour as abandoning or rejecting but that’s how it felt to me.

As it turned out I couldn’t get to my session on the Friday because my wife was working and my kids hadn’t gone back to school yet. I spent a good while pondering  what I should do. Should I just cancel my session again like I did on holiday? Would it be better to wait til we were face to face to talk? But of course I am no so used to looking at things from a multitude of angles that I began to wonder whether I was just being avoidant and needed to push through and have the hard conversations.

On the morning of the session I text M and asked to Skype which she agreed to. I was not feeling all that great as I dialled in and the moment she popped up on screen I knew immediately that something was up. It was like the still face exercise – she didn’t smile and gave absolutely nothing away. Her voice was cold and it felt like she didn’t want to be on the line. I felt the same.

I didn’t know where to start the conversation so basically did a fill in about the stress that my wife having a meltdown on Boxing Day and how it had really unsettled the young parts who fear abandonment. She asked me how I felt about the Skype and I conceded that I wasn’t keen.

And then it began…

The boundary talk.

Again.

I could feel myself brace ready for what was coming next.

The usual stuff about keeping therapy in the room, how she doesn’t do outside contact and whilst other therapists may do all kinds of things (i.e when I text her cancelling the session from holiday I had said about other people getting check ins, transitional objects, notes, being encouraged to write, getting tangible reassurances, playing games, therapists sitting closer to clients etc etc) she doesn’t work like that, that I am self-sabotaging by reaching out and essentially I know her parameters. I felt like she had slammed a door in my face.

She made no reference to the difficult last session we’d had or the fact that I was clearly massively unsettled as the break began. It felt like it was all on me and nothing about what may have triggered me to reach out, cancel sessions etc… which is odd because I would have thought after nearly 5 years and never having cancelled on her that this might be something big on her radar.

She then decided to launch into some shit about me maybe wanting her to be my friend, or be partners, and that I might have erotic fantasies about her… honestly I nearly fell off the chair. Like WTAF?? And even if this were the case is this how to reconnect about a 3.5 week break that was in rupture? I felt like she was in total panic mode… ‘must reassert boundaries!’

She was so far off base. It felt like she’s read my notebooks, freaked out about the need of the young parts and suddenly thinks I want to move in with her and start fucking her. Talk about snowballing and overreacting.

And then it got worse.

The boundary talk became a gift talk…

I was already reeling from all that had just happened when she said: ‘I didn’t want to reject your gift when you gave it to me at the end of the last session but in future I think it’s best that you do not give me gifts. You pay me already and I am just your therapist. I am not rejecting you’.

Wow. Way to go M. Thanks. The young parts fell apart at that moment. It was like, what am I doing laying myself bare with this woman who clearly doesn’t give a shit. And honestly, not rejecting? How else would I see it after the last ten minutes of her talking at me?

She missed a massive opportunity to explore why I had decided to give her a present this year after all these years of working together and the meaning behind them. I gave her a copy of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ (which basically is a must read for anyone with attachment wounds and in therapy) and a glass snowflake Christmas tree decoration – because I have previously likened the therapeutic relationship to a snowflake: there are lots of snowflakes (clients) but each one is different and so each relationship is meaningful…

What could have been a connecting moment was just shat on.

I couldn’t cope.

And I couldn’t believe she was dropping this on me via Skype. Surely these kind of conversations need to happen in person.

Usually, I would dissociate at moments like this and internalise everything, feel bad, and just tolerate what was going on despite being massively hurt and angry. But I didn’t. I don’t know what came over me but I just felt so missed, so unseen, so badly judged that I said, ‘I don’t want to talk you to you’ and disconnected the Skype call at 10am with twenty minutes of the session left!

I sat staring a the screen for five minutes (felt like seconds- think I may have dissociated) hardly believing what I had just done and then I panicked.

Clearly she wasn’t going to dial back in but I could see she was still online.

So I typed into the message bar on the Skype:

Me (10:05am): I can’t do this over Skype. It’s too hard. You feel really far away.

M (10:06): Ok, I understand that it’s hard. See you on Monday.

[I couldn’t quite believe she was just going to leave it at that and panicked. I sat there for a minute and fell apart]

Me (10:08): I am sorry for hanging up on you. Everything feels wrong.

M (10:12): I think that the younger parts of you feel stirred up and ambivalent.

Me (10:16): Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just I feel completely at sea and like you actually don’t really care about any of it and it hurts. This is absolutely not how I wanted it to be after the break btw. I really missed you. It’s felt horrible. See you Monday.

M (10:20): Yes, I imagine that you didn’t want this and so it feels particularly hard, but I think it’s best to talk about it on Monday. See you then.

I felt sooooo upset after this. I haven’t gone into huge detail because I can’t actually face going back to the recording now to give a better account of it. All I can say is it felt shit and it was enough to make me make contact with another therapist and arrange an appointment.

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I wrote the email below after the Skype disaster – but I haven’t sent it or taken it in to session. I don’t see the point really. It’s long and would take a lot of time to go through when it can be boiled down to some simple things. Since I wrote this I have verbally brought some of what’s bothering me to session and had some helpful discussion but I will post about that in another post when I get chance. For now, I am just trying to keep swimming and keep adult me front and centre. It’s hard.

M,

I don’t even know where to begin… Seriously.

My brain can’t even process what’s going on. I keep trying to make sense of it all but I’m so confused, angry, and overwhelmed by where things have got to this last month that it just feels like a massive mess and part of me can’t even see the point in trying to fix this. My gut is telling me to call it a day and yet part of me is thinking I should give things a chance to work out…I don’t know what’s best or even if things can mend?

It feels like the need to run away is perhaps just a trauma response and maybe I need to stick with it and try and create a different narrative… but then maybe keeping battling on is actually just another example of a trauma response because I keep trying to adapt to fit in with someone else when it doesn’t work for me and I’ve done that my whole life.
I don’t know how you think the lead into the Christmas break was, but from my side it was a complete disaster.

I was so upset at the end of the last session that I ended up texting you. I never want to text you because it makes me feel completely rubbish and full of shame because time and again you ignore me. I suspect you’ll say, ‘this is the boundary, and if you choose to ignore it, you’re knowingly walking into that rejection’. It’s not as simple as that, though, because that scared, connection-seeking part is already so frightened that something is terribly wrong in that moment that it can’t really imagine it getting any worse. Of course, it usually does.

With the break looming and my holiday just about to begin I knew myself well enough to know how it gets if things are left to escalate. I was already really unsettled and I absolutely did not want a repeat of Christmas break two years ago. I hoped that you would reply to me, say something reassuring, but no. It felt utterly abandoning and rejecting…and I think I used the word ‘punishing’ in the letter I put in with the notebooks. That is how it feels even though you say that’s not what you’re doing.

Things felt so bad that over that weekend that I was certain that if I Skyped from holiday it would be a complete shit show and I didn’t want to be stressing about how bad things felt all week whilst I was away. If we can’t connect in person then how likely is it to happen over the phone? And that’s why I sent the books to you before I left. It’s not something I would generally do and I get that it was stepping completely outside the regular boundary. I just felt like things have been so stuck for so long that maybe if you could see what it’s been like in my head it might move things along a bit.

I thought that I might change my mind as the week wore on and want to talk to you by the Friday but I absolutely didn’t want to have any contact with you at all and so that’s why I text you asking you to read the books instead.

Of course, I was worried about your reaction to what I had written but at the same time another part of me just didn’t care anymore. What is there left to lose when everything already feels so bad? You always ask me what I imagine the worst thing is that can happen if I tell you whatever it is that I am struggling with– it’s this: that you will finally confirm what I have believed all along, that I am too much for you, that you don’t care, and finally something will happen that’ll push one or other of us to terminate the therapy.

I have felt ill when I have thought about you actually reading some of what’s in the books. The fact that it’s taken a year for me to let you see that stuff shows how difficult it is to let you in and how unsafe I have felt in the room. I started writing in the books last year because my hope was that somehow, it’d contain what was going on and help stick within the no outside contact boundary. If I could write down what had been triggered in the room it would be out, to a degree, and then we could work with it in the sessions. It seemed like a reasonable plan because so much hadn’t been making it into the room because I dissociate the moment I get close to that stuff.

Only it hasn’t worked, has it? It’s been so rare that I have felt able to let you see any of what I’ve been struggling with because the parts that are so terrified of being abandoned haven’t felt like it’s worth the risk opening up to you. You say you aren’t frustrated or annoyed with me, and maybe you haven’t been, but I also haven’t felt like you really want to connect to those vulnerable, young parts either. It so often feels like I’m being observed rather than met where I am at– like you can see things are wrong, tell me even, but there is this huge wall that stops any real connection. I feel totally stranded and exposed and want to disappear because you feel so far away.

I was dreading Friday’s session and almost cancelled again. I felt off. It felt like everything was wrong. I knew that Skype was risky and so there was a potential that things could get worse but at the same time I am trying to be less avoidant and what if not talking to you is just running away? Now, I wish I had trusted myself and not bothered because now we are here.

I am so sick of you returning to the boundaries of the therapy and outside contact with me after almost every break. I get it. It’s rigid not flexible. There is nothing I can do to change it. You didn’t even really make any sense on Friday when you were trying to tell me why you still think it’s the best thing…you changed the subject telling me you were glad I’d let you see the notebooks. The idea that it’s best to keep the therapy in the room makes total sense to me. I don’t disagree with you. I am REALLY trying…hence the books. HOWEVER, no matter how many times you state this stuff about texting and emails it doesn’t help the parts that are sometimes terrified that something is wrong or that you’re gone. The problem I have with object constancy is real. And the shame I feel around this is massive. And I have no idea what to do to help make this feel better.

It’s not the case that forcing me into the room by refusing to acknowledge me out of it will somehow suddenly make me more engaged and trusting in the room. If that was working, I don’t think we’d be where we are right now. All that seems to happen is I dissociate more and more because nothing feels secure. I am trying to bug you as little as possible but that in itself is making this feel worse because the parts that are absolutely certain you don’t like me keep getting the same message – she’s not safe and she doesn’t care. This is absolutely hellish for me. I literally want to crawl into a hole and die because it’s so painful and embarrassing.

I am trying to do what you want but at the same time what do I with the parts of me that are really struggling – what do I do to help myself when the abandonment and rejection stuff is so live because nothing works? When things feel pretty ok with the relationship, I have zero desire to contact you. I don’t need to. I am fine. But when things feel really unsteady it escalates so quickly and then it’s awful because the moment I reach out to you all hell breaks loose inside. There is so much shame and self-attacking that goes on, but also so much sadness from the young parts that keep getting the same message – ‘you’re unimportant and she doesn’t care’. The worst thing is that when it gets bad I seem to reach out more and more. It doesn’t work for either of us. It irritates you and it just reinforces the fact that there is nothing for me to connect to and so then when I see you I don’t trust you.

It’s way more complicated than this but essentially it all comes down to being too much and also being easily ignored or feeling unimportant. I don’t want to text you all the time. I don’t want to do the therapy outside the room. But I am struggling with how to make things feel safe enough with you. The sad thing is that actually there have been some times when you have responded to me when I’ve reached out and it’s made a huge difference. It’s like a switch gets flicked and absolutely everything settles immediately. I know that sounds insane. It feels like this is an ongoing problem and we haven’t come up with any strategies to make this better.

I wish you could understand how bad it feels when everything is falling to pieces for those young parts. I know you can’t fix what’s gone in the past and you can’t fill the hole that I feel inside. But we need to find a way of settling that part that gets triggered sometimes, that fears that you’re dead or in some way not safe anymore…because it’s so bad when it’s happening. I can’t regulate that part very well…at all…and when it’s terrible I need to feel like you are there…and I don’t.

And yes, I know you are just my therapist, I’m not stupid. Oh god, and that’s something else…

You’ve said it a maybe two or three times over the years and I have always noted it as feeling ‘off’ but never responded to it, but I am genuinely really confused that yet again you have brought up the idea that I might want you to be my partner and that I have sexual/erotic feelings towards you. I don’t know what I have ever said to give you that impression but it really isn’t how I see you at all. It actually makes me feel a bit weird even trying to put you into that place in my mind.

The mother transference stuff is absolutely accurate but even then I still do know you are my therapist and not my mother – and not my partner, my friend, or anything else…and I don’t want you to be any of those things because I have all of them in my life already. I need you to be my therapist. However, I don’t think therapist should feel like it’s a nothing relationship – you are important to me and every time you say ‘I am just your therapist’ it feels so clinical, sterile even and what does ‘just’ mean, anyway?

All I can think of to make you say this again now (thinking I think about you in a sexual way) is that it comes from the dream I wrote about in the notebooks [*I was showing M my rearranged wardrobes and she asked me about my sex toys that were in a drawer!…CRINGE!] – but that wasn’t a sexual dream at all – it was like asking me what my favourite colour or flavour ice cream was – really matter of fact and at a time when I was showing you a reorganised wardrobe. And I think this dream has way more to do with the fact that we have never discussed sex at all in all the time we’ve been working together rather than it being something about the dynamic between me and you or having those kinds of feelings for you.

I don’t know?

And then this has made me wonder if you seem to be keeping your distance because you think I want to be with you and are in some way finding it awkward with me because of that. I’m gay and you are a woman…but you’re not my type!

Anyway, that all felt off because I am really clear about who you are in my life and I am not interested in the least about our relationship existing in any other capacity. However, I do very much need you as my therapist and I want you to help me work through everything. I want to be able to talk to you but something is wrong and I can’t fix the attachment stuff on my own. You often say that we can’t repair what went wrong when I was little. I get that I can’t change what happened and you can’t be all that I needed then but actually I know that repair can be made in the relationship because sometimes I can feel it happening. Sometimes you feel really present and connected and caring and it really helps…and then other times you don’t at all. You’ll probably say this is me projecting.

It feels like giving you those notebooks has fucked everything up even worse than it was before. First sessions back are never easy but again this one felt really bad. The fact that I disconnected the Skype should tell you how terrible it felt. I’m sorry I did that but I couldn’t bear it. I can’t understand how you might think that saying what you did when we weren’t actually face to face would be in any way helpful after what’s happened lately. I get that you have stuff to say and maybe it felt really important to you to restate your boundaries in the first session back but it just felt like you have put your walls up in the biggest way and you felt so cold.

It would be hard to tell over Skype what was going on for me. You probably wouldn’t be aware that my heart was racing from the moment I saw you on the screen, that I felt sick and shaky, that I wanted to hide because you didn’t feel safe to me, that I was trying really hard not to slip into dissociation, that the young parts were absolutely terrified and were hoping that you’d say something that would be connecting and settle them after what has been a hellish month but it just kept getting worse and worse. It felt like you were a stranger…which I guess, in lots of ways, you are.

I was reeling from the stuff about the boundaries and the relationship and then you added in the bit about gifts. And that was me done. Saying ‘I am not rejecting you’ doesn’t make it feel any less rejecting. I’ve known you eight years now and whilst maybe that doesn’t make any difference to you it means something to me. Without doubt, gifts are a communication and have meaning and it is important to work out what they are but all you seemed to do on Friday was reinforce your fortress. It is so hard to get close to you.

I didn’t want to hurriedly throw the gifts at you as I was leaving in December but the last session did not go in the way that I had imagined. I had wanted to give you the gifts at the beginning and explain why I had given them to you and what they meant – because there is a lot behind them.

You have told nothing about yourself in all this time – I mean you really excel at blank screen/Teflon – and then on that day spent twenty minutes animatedly telling me how you think Corbyn is a communist and the labour party is antisemitic and why the EU parliament is flawed and how Scotland wouldn’t get accepted into the EU and taking the piss out of the Lib Dem leader and how loads of people lie about needing benefits… I mean I wasn’t really expecting that to happen especially as it was our last session. Next time if you get the urge to reveal stuff can you maybe tell me something about the music you like, books you’ve read, or places you’ve travelled to instead?!

So much of that session was taken up with that, that there was no opening to discuss Christmas or how I might be feeling about the break. I mean I guess we both know by now that it’s never easy for me so what’s the point in going on about it but actually it needs to be talked about over and over again …because when we don’t it makes me feel like my feelings aren’t really welcome and that I must be embarrassing you and it just makes the anxiety I feel a million times worse. So, it’s little wonder everything was rushed at the end. I wish I hadn’t bothered now.

I don’t understand why, on Friday, you didn’t have the conversation with me first about why I had given these things to you, unpicked it, done the work round it. Instead it was just another pushback. You say you don’t want to hurt me but I don’t see how you think how you handled this would do anything but hurt me. You didn’t check in with who was there on Friday and just leapt in with both feet- it was really hard. It would have been hard to hear, anyway, but when I had just told you that [wife] had threatened to leave on Boxing Day I would have thought it would be clear that my system would have been activated and feeling vulnerable and worrying about abandonment and rejection.

It feels like we are on completely different pages right now – I don’t mean about the politics; I don’t really care about that. I mean about the relationship. It feels like all the things I have worried about, about being too much is exactly right. It feels like you have taken a big step back from me when actually that’s opposite of what I needed. I can’t seem to fully explain what I mean but what seems really complex is actually really simple.

I need you to help me hold the feelings I have and normalise them and actually accept them. I need you to help me break through the shame I feel about needing connection to you and work with me to find workable solutions to the problems I have with outside contact when things get bad because it’s not going away. It just feels like we are perpetually re-enacting what happened when I was little. My mum and wider family were so emotionally and physically withholding that just being in the room with you feels traumatic because you are so distant.

I need you to know that despite how ‘much’ there is in those books and how intense my feelings seem I am not suddenly going to start texting you all the time, ringing you, turning up on your doorstep or whatever else it is that you think might happen – I’m not that crazy and I don’t want you to be anything but my therapist. And also, just because I’ve let you see that stuff doesn’t mean it all feels ok or that I can just start discussing it because it’s out. I still feel really shutdown and fearful about it.

There’s loads I could say but I’ll stop now – it all feels shit.

And So This Is Christmas (Therapy Break).

rubberbandsandchewinggum12 Comments

Right then, folk, looks like it’s time to buckle up and hold on tight for the next few weeks because it’s that time of year again… oh yes, it’s the time we’ve all been excitedly anticipating – Christmas therapy break!

Oh how I love Christmas: the twinkly lights, the presents, the excitement, the movies… the enforced extended time with family, the building stress levels,  the missed therapy sessions, the activation of the attachment pain, the bedding in of the belief that ‘my therapist doesn’t care about me’, the mounting anxiety, the feelings of abandonment and rejection, the wading in of the Inner Critic to come add some festive self-hatred into the mix, and the steady descent into breakdown. If things follow this usual pattern then there’ll be a desperate reaching out to therapist which will result in either a) a reply that doesn’t meet the need or b) no reply at all…and voila RUPTURE!!!

Oh it’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Look, I have to make light of this right now (#sarcasm and #humour shield) because I am in that terrified denial/manic stage. Basically I am like Denver the dog – forced smile hoping that if I say, ‘I am ok’ enough then I might start to believe it and might just fool those around me and might even avoid a disaster like last year!

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Yesterday was the last session of the year. Without doubt, this has been a really hard year so far as therapy goes. It’s been about staring down the #Motherwound and, in doing so, working through a lot of pain that gets activated in the therapeutic relationship because of this. It’s basically maternal transference 101 in my sessions. It’s so hard.

Those of you that have been following this blog for a while will know that I keep rapidly swinging between two extremes: knowing that Em is there, as my therapist, every single week to try and help me process years of trauma and neglect, that she is safe and trustworthy and that I love and respect her; and then there’s the other side that I’ve been inhabiting lately- the horrible place where I feel she doesn’t care enough, is withholding, is deliberately making me suffer, and is basically retraumatising me. UGH!!!

These feelings are really hard to manage (the doubting the relationship ones). Part of the problem with therapy (but also why I need to be in therapy) lies in the fact that I have so many different parts and they feel and need so many different things – often all at the same time.

I’m more-or-less ok when my Adult Self is online alongside the young parts and I can see what’s going on. I can accept that the feelings I am experiencing come from a young place and are being replayed in the here and now. It’s not comfortable but I’m able to tolerate it. I can feel care and even love towards those younger parts and do try and soothe myself. The real problems happen when my Adult fucks off somewhere and leaves the child parts to run the show. We’ve all seen ‘Home Alone’ right?!

Ages ago I wrote something about structural dissociation and fragmented parts after having read an amazing book by Janina Fisher called, ‘Healing The Fragmented Selves Of Trauma Survivors’. Reading that book was really helpful and gave me a much better insight into what was going on for me. It was a kind of lightbulb moment. Later I read Patricia A. DeYoung’s ‘Understanding Chronic And Treating Chronic Shame: A Relational/Neurobiological Approach’ and that really helped move things on for me too.

Of course, my rational intellectual brain can see all of this therapy break hell for what it is. There’s no problem with being able to see where my issues come from on an intellectual level. It’s the emotional brain that is having such a hard time. It literally has no freaking clue what’s going on and reacts to everything like a child would – and the children vary in age.

Nightmare!

I am aware of a very young baby part, a two year old, a four year old, a seven year old, an eleven year old, a young teen, and an older teen part and so sometimes it gets very noisy inside my head in therapy. I switch about and it is really disconcerting: one minute I can be raging and the next I want to crawl into Em’s lap and fall asleep. Ugh.

I don’t know how Em keeps up with me, to be honest, but she’s really quick to spot when things change in me now, sometimes even before I’ve noticed. I know weird things happen in my body (numbness/heaviness/pain/pins and needles…) and I think I blink a lot/don’t blink at all/close my eyes when things are shifting. I know my breathing goes very shallow and I know that if I am talking my voice goes much quieter. Sometimes I lose time – not for very long – but Em will ask me something and I will have absolutely no idea what she’s just said. I take my hat off to her for seeing what’s going on, working with it and trying to talk to the various parts and bring me back to her.

(Can you see I am trying to hang onto the gratitude and sense of there being consistent ‘good enough’ care today?! – Don’t worry, I’m sure next week it’ll be back to ‘it’s all shit’. LOL)

Anyway, I’m going to try and bring things up to speed quickly before I sign off for the next few days.

It’s been a really hard time these last couple of weeks after the dots thing. 

OMG such painful, excruciating conversations about how that all felt punctuated with spells of dissociation.

OUCH.

Everyone turned up on Monday! The Teens were so resistant to talking about the feelings when Em brought the conversation round to what it had been like since she said she couldn’t/wouldn’t do the dots texts. Picture huffy teen, arms folded, snapping ‘what’s the point in talking about this, it won’t change anything?!’ Em stuck with it acknowledging how I might be angry and hurt and did that therapist thing, ‘here we are, in this space to talk about the feelings, give them space, and to let’s try and work out what they mean and where they come from’. There was an actual eye roll on my part and a fuck off big sigh… Em kept pressing gently and then I snapped at her, ‘Why do you keep poking a massive stick in a really sore hole, now?

And there it was.

You’ve hurt me. Massively.

And that opened up a helpful conversation about feeling abandoned and uncared for and about the (god damn) break for and wondering what feeling cared for might feel like. She used the voice…you know the one, the soothing one that makes you feel held and seen and like you aren’t going to die of emotional pain. Sure, I didn’t get what I wanted (texts), but in her not giving me what I wanted we had a healing conversation and I guess that is the work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not happy about it. I still feel anxious that when the shit hits the fan she isn’t going to be there for me…but actually being able to tell her how sad and hurt I felt and for her to hear it, not react negatively or shame me for it was really helpful and I think this also helped open another door for yesterday’s session.

It was a bit of a car crash at the beginning – it was never going to be easy. I’ve been in therapy long enough now to know that sessions are tricky leading into breaks. There were a lot of feelings flying around and as a result a great deal of pained silence. Em kept with me, kept trying to open up conversations and address the break. Part of me was just trying to hold myself together and not disintegrate. I had an image come to me the night before therapy and it hit me again when she asked me how I was feeling.

I know how strange it sounds but I’ll say anyway. I got an image of myself as an octopus in a really rough sea. The octopus was struggling, being battered by the waves. In a calm sea it usually has a reasonable grip on the parts it is trying to hold onto – each part is reasonably well wrapped in a tentacle, still away from the body, but just about held together and safe enough. When the sea is as rough as it is now the grip loosens and all the parts are barely hanging on to the tip of each tentacle. I am scared I can’t hold onto them and they’re going to get washed away and drown. I know it’s weird. But essentially when there’s a storm (the break) adult me feels like I can’t contain all my vulnerable parts….

And so I told Em this. Sure I think this weird stuff all the time, I blog about it, but I don’t always share this kind of thing with her. She thinks that what’s going on right now is another step in the right direction so that’s something. She was able to acknowledge the fear and the panic and tell me that it’s ok.  Then the session was up. Oh god. She said some lovely things about the Christmas card I had given her and said that she knows how hard it’s been recently but that we are getting through.

I left feeling sad and ok.

I immediately missed her.

I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to reach out to her already.

I haven’t.

I can’t guarantee I won’t message her but my aim right now is to write in a book every time I want to contact her and write it down with a time and a date and what’s actually been going on in my day. I know it’s going to be fully cringe but I hope that I will be able to take it all into therapy on the fourth and hand it over and we can start to unpick the feelings and the triggers. I think it might be interesting to see what two weeks of need and fear looks like…….. eeek!!

Oh, and when I decided to try and hold myself a bit closer and breathe through the storm, look what came in my cracker last night….

A sign?!!

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Octopus from a cracker last night!

 

I won’t get chance to post again before Christmas now so I just want to wish everyone a lovely Christmas, to thank you for following me on my journey, and to say to the cheerleading squad (you know who you are) – your support has been amazing this year. I really hope that between us we can find a way of hanging it together with rubberbands and chewing gum and survive the holidays but I know that the reality might more readily be this:

‘Tis the season to be jolly for a rupture fa la la la la la la la la!

xxx

 

Rupture Repaired…Sort Of!

rubberbandsandchewinggum11 Comments

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Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with talking about this… mess…

Like really, it’s Wednesday, now, and I am looking back over the last week, or so, and shaking my head in disbelief.

Wtaf is going on? (*let’s be upfront and clear, there’s going to be some swearing in this post!)

What on earth is happening with me and my therapy?

It’s a freaking catastrophe! (Again!)

When we started to discuss the possibility of moving from one session a week to two, my therapist, Em, said that two sessions a week could lead to a greater sense of containment (win!); she also mentioned that there was also possibility of more regression (eek!); BUT. BUT. BUT. She never fucking mentioned that the whole process could go to shit in the blink of an eye and all sense of safety, trust, and containment could evaporate in one fifty minute phonecall. I know that I seem to forget a lot at the moment but I’d have remembered that!

So, brief recap, last Monday’s session (1st Oct) saw the Inner Critic stepping up and shutting things down again. It was awkward, no -more than that- it was massively uncomfortable and really hard. I felt really unsettled after having been so open and vulnerable in the previous few sessions and looking back, I am not surprised that the angry protective part waded in and tried to take over control. She’s not a big fan of the young parts saying how they feel to Em and frankly she was stressing out after the marble thing.

Anyway, after a lot of internal raging basically screaming ‘shut up’ she managed to tell Em ‘To fuck off and leave me alone’ and basically shutdown the session. Wow! Nice one! Thanks so much for that lovely one. Jeez. Apparently I’m meant to befriend this part and find out what’s pissing her off so much but frankly when she behaves like this I want to disown her even more! ha.

The time between Monday’s session and Friday was yuck. I am still super busy in my everyday life and I am finding that I am feeling increasingly exhausted just trying to squeeze everything in that I am meant to in the week. A lot of the time I feel like I am on a mission, spinning plates, trying to be everywhere I am meant to at the right time…it just about hangs together if things are feeling ok in therapy, i.e if the bulk of the stuff that I carry around feels largely contained then I can function pretty well in my day-to-day life. If therapy feels ‘iffy’ and the attachment stuff is massively activated I am fucking useless, though. It’s the difference between a high-functioning adult fronting the majority of the day or letting the distressed kids behind the wheel (they don’t know how to drive btw!).

By Thursday night I was shitting myself. I both desperately wanted to talk with Em and to try and explain why things had been so shit for me on Monday. I wanted to try and allow the little ones a chance to connect but at the same time, there was a part of me that just didn’t want to talk at all. I sensed that Skype would be a disaster and as it turned out I wasn’t able to Skype anyway. I wasn’t at home and where I was had a patchy 3G signal – not adequate for a decent call. To be honest, I really didn’t want to be seen either so I text to ask if we could do the session on the phone and then dialled in at 9:30am.

I suspect it was me wearing my ‘worst case scenario’ hat, but the moment the call connected I felt like something wasn’t right. Immediately, Em asked me if I wanted to talk about the text message I had sent her after the last session:

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Errr.

Let me think….

hmmm….

Nope!

I said as much, but also said I guess we needed to.

Deep breaths!

Unbelievably, Em was adamant that I hadn’t told her to go ‘do one’ in the session, and that how she’d understood it was ‘fuck off and leave me alone’ is what I (adult) was wanting to say to the Inner Critic when she piped up and took over.  I know I should have put her right on that, but frankly the way things felt I didn’t feel able to say, ‘errr no, you were really pushing me and it was getting on my nerves and the Critic was telling you to back off’.

Anyway, somehow or other it got onto feelings of care and expressions of love. Gulp. It felt difficult but I needed to tell her how difficult it was for me to be vulnerable with her and let her know how I feel about her and explain why the previous session had seen me put the barriers up. I rarely verbally tell Em how I feel about her. I have written plenty (!!) down and made her read it over the years but I have never said ‘I care about you’ or ‘I love you’ in person. After giving her the marble the other week and Eleven briefly coming to the front I really felt like it was important to bit the bullet and tell her how I feel face-to-face.

So I did.

‘I really care about you’.

Cue internal meltdown, nausea, breaking out into a sweat.

(THANK GOD I WAS ON THE PHONE!)

It was a big moment. It was another step towards her after the huge leap backwards in the previous session lumped with a huge dollop of vulnerability on top.

How did she respond?

I can’t remember it verbatim but something along the lines of:

‘You may want me to say something similar back to you but this is a different kind of relationship….blah…blah….therapeutic relationship… blah blah boundaries’

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

YOU CANNOT BE FUCKING SERIOUS.

The first time I express my feelings out loud and this? I am not suggesting for one minute that I was expecting her to come back gushing (she’s not that kind of therapist) but she has, on many occasions told me that she cares about me and wants to work with me etc. Why, on Friday, couldn’t she have rattled that shit back at me? Why couldn’t there have been a moment of connection and mutual expression of care and that, even though it is a therapeutic relationship it is still a genuine relationship? Why when, after all these years I have sat mute and reserved couldn’t she have realised what a big healing opportunity it potentially was. After years of hiding my feelings and feeling shame about my feelings this could have been massive…but it wasn’t. It was horrendous.

I have no idea what happened. BUT guess who did have ideas? Yes, of course, The Critic:

‘How many times do we need to go through this? She does not care about you. You are her job – nothing more. It’s utterly pathetic…and now look what you’ve done!…every single one of those young parts is screaming in pain. Why on earth would you do that to them? It was never going to be any different. This is what therapists do: they draw you in; try and get you to trust them; encourage you to be open and vulnerable; and the moment you do it, the reminder – it’s all just paid for time with a professional in a room. I feel sorry for you. Please, now, will you listen to me? I have never done you harm. I am merely here to protect you from people like her…and yourself!’

So, I really can’t remember very much of the session after that. I felt so unsettled. I kept hearing snippets of what Em was saying – something about ‘intense emotions’ which I heard as ‘too much’, ‘bad’, ‘misplaced’ emotions… something about it feeling ‘similar to April when we spoke about the eating disorder’ (my brain took me straight to ‘we’ll have to work towards and ending if you don’t contact your GP’)…and then right at the end another kicker, ‘I really feel like you need holding and cuddling and picking up BUT we don’t do that here, it’s not that kind of relationship…’ and then I was lost again.

Don’t get me wrong. I get it. It’s not new news to me – the touch boundary thing- but basically from the moment Em responded in the way she did when I told her that I cared about her it was all downhill and so everything from that point saw me looking for evidence of her lack of care, rejection, there being something wrong with me. It’s all I could hear…even if that was not at all what was meant. It was the young parts following a script. They know how it goes. It’s horrible.

I couldn’t get off the phone quick enough at the end of the session and then sat in my car, stunned for about five minutes before picking myself up and having to get on with the day. It was an enormous struggle to do anything. My wife kept giving me concerned looks, asking me if I was ok, and then eventually after hours of me sighing and moping about got frustrated and said I had been moody and snappy pretty much all day and she didn’t know why? And if therapy did this to me then why was I bothering?

Good question.

I was so upset by the phonecall that I wasn’t sure I would go back to Em again. I seriously considered sending a message to tell her that I just couldn’t do this to myself any more because the impact is so severe when things feel bad. However, I have learnt a few things about texting when things feel really bad…and that is I rarely get the response I am looking for. I wasn’t sure she’d even respond if I terminated by text and that would have riled me even more.

Of course, I didn’t want the therapy to end…but I didn’t ever want it to be like it felt again. And maybe walking away would be less painful in the long run. If I had text her I know, in my heart, I would’ve been hoping that she would reply in some way that would make me feel like she cared, and would be prepared to fight for me, asking me to come back and talk it through. Essentially I would have been testing her and I am not sure what would have happened. She may have let me go and that would have crushed me.

So, I decided that the best course of action was to go to session on Monday and try and explain what was going on on my side and then, if no progress was made, leave.

OMG. Driving to therapy was horrendous. I was so scared. I was sad. I was angry, too. It was a right tumultuous mess inside.

I arrived at session. Em was as she always is. We started the session. She had absolutely no idea that there was anything wrong at all. She started to tune in to where I was at and asked me how I had felt after Friday?

‘Horrid’.

She asked me to elaborate.

Silence.

She talked a bit trying to draw me out.

More silence.

Painful silence…and The Critic going mental inside, ‘see she doesn’t get it at all. Why are you here wasting your time and money?’

I felt after a while that maybe Em was angry or frustrated with me. So I asked her if that was the case. Shock! ‘No! Why would I be angry with you? I feel like you are maybe angry or frustrated with me? And I guess, if anything, I am feeling frustrated with myself for not making it feel safe enough for you to talk to me when clearly there is something very difficult going on for you today. I guess, I am feeling a bit useless. But no. I am not angry or frustrated with you’.

Phew.

I told her that I wasn’t angry or frustrated with her. She asked what I was feeling. I told her I was sad.

She asked me some questions about how I was feeling and about when the sadness had started. I told her ‘it was when I was speaking to you’. She seemed concerned and asked when? I said ‘You really upset me on Friday’. She seemed genuinely surprised and immediately apologised saying that she was sorry if she had said something that was insensitive and had upset me but could I tell her more because she had no idea what it might be.

I was cringing inside. Part of me wanted to keep her at arms length and part of me wanted to see what would happen if I told her what the matter was.

I sat in silence a little longer mulling over what to say. Where on earth should I begin?:

‘Do you even care about me at all?’

More genuine surprise on Em’s part and an immediate launch into the how she cares and is interested in me and wants to help all the parts of me and blah blah… basically it was about a minute of her saying all the things she’s said before but that I really needed to hear and she finished up with ‘I’m sorry that I have said something that has made you feel like I don’t care. I’m guessing you feel more than just sad. I’d imagine you might feel really hurt and maybe a bit angry?’

I said I felt crushed.

She said she had genuinely no idea what she might have said that was so blunt as to make me feel this way and could I maybe tell her, although she understood that I mightn’t want to for fear of feeling worse than I already did. I nodded.

More silence.

She asked what the fear of telling her was. Was it that I was worried she’d get angry or defensive? I said it wasn’t that. She asked what it was. I said I was worried it’d be the same. To which she responded, ‘the same? What? Careless?’  I nodded again.

Em again told me how she cares and how she wouldn’t have offered me two sessions a week if she didn’t and reiterated her commitment to all the parts of me. She said that she understood how the therapeutic relationship can feel not enough and maybe that was making me feel bad and sad.

I said it wasn’t that, but why couldn’t she have said this stuff on Friday?

More blank looks, she said she knows we talked a lot about expression of love and care but couldn’t think what she could have said to hurt me and asked me to elaborate.

I explained that I just ‘didn’t get it. You know how I find it really hard to talk to you, to express anything vulnerable, and lately I have been trying to do that more. On Friday I told you that I cared about you and rather than meet it with something like you’ve just said, that you’ve said lots of times before, it felt like you met me with a ‘fuck you’ forcefield. You basically seemed to shut the door on me and instead told me that you wouldn’t say anything back because ‘this is a different kind of relationship’. It felt to the young parts who had trusted you that they’d said too much, got the wrong end of the stick, and now you were restating the boundaries. It really really hurt. It made me wonder what the hell I’m doing here, trying to work on expressing feelings that are hard for me and then I get met with that…I just don’t understand.’

Em got it immediately and apologised again. She said she was sorry and could understand how what she’d said could feel abrupt and uncaring and that there were a lot of better ways that she could have responded.

This gave me a bit of courage to say more:

‘I just can’t understand how you thought that response would be helpful to me’

She agreed that it wasn’t.

I went on:

‘So you can imagine, then, how after you saying that and me feeling like you don’t like me all session, at the end of the session to be told that you won’t touch me felt like you really were just going all out to remind me of exactly what the relationship isn’t. I know you didn’t mean it like that but that’s how it felt.’

We talked a little bit about that but, as usual, the session was up. Em thanked me for being brave enough to let her know what had upset me so much and that she appreciated how difficult it was to bring this to session when it was so painful, especially for the young parts. We agreed to talk more on Friday and she apologised again for making me feel like this.

I felt awkward. There is still a lot more to say but at least that sick feeling has gone now. Fortunately I can go to session on Friday in person and hopefully we can talk more about what’s been triggered in me. I know this all harps back to what’s happened in relationships in the past and if I can work through these ruptures or my feeling like there is an empathic failure with Em then that’s a huge part of the work. It’s hideous going through it but the repair is where the healing comes, I think.

I am dreading Friday in some ways. I have two more sessions until a three session break. It doesn’t feel like very much time to talk through what I need to. I also really wanted to be able to talk about doing the power stones as a transitional object before the break but I am not sure, even though things have been repaired somewhat, whether the young parts will feel brave enough to come forward and ask for what they need now. They are still reeling from Friday.

I get it was a simple miscommunication but this is what can happen when all the parts are active and listening in. As I have said heaps of times before, the adult part of me gets it….it’s all the others than need work!

x

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Anxiety and the wrong shoes

rubberbandsandchewinggum15 Comments

img_2559I am fluctuating wildly in my moods and behaviours at the minute. One minute I feel borderline suicidal and the next full of fight and motivation. I’d like to blame it on being hormonal – but I know it’s not just that. Sigh!

Last week I briefly spoke about how I had manically cleaned my house within an inch of its life in preparation for a therapy session via Skype (it doesn’t sound any less mental a week on does it?!) and how perhaps I was in avoidance mode; cleaning the house meant I didn’t have to focus on the ‘real issue’ at hand which was the rupture that my therapist and I had over Christmas and that we are (still) steadily trying to repair bit by bit.

I recognise that some of my behaviour recently has been a bit ‘on the edge of normal’ (whatever that is) and on reflection I realise that I have been operating from a point of high anxiety and it’s been subtly seeping into my day-to-day.

To be honest I am always slightly (a lot) anxious and/or depressed (what fun!) and am acutely sensitive to seemingly small things: changes in routine (especially my therapy) knock me for six and send me spiralling.

Apparently, I am a highly sensitive person (HSP); whilst this trait certainly has some benefits (being intuitive, empathic, feeling, with a complex inner life!) some aspects of it can be debilitating (social anxiety, noise intolerance, being overstimulated/terrified by violent movies, needing to retreat from the world when it feels overwhelming).

My anxiety escalated to an unmanageable level over the Christmas therapy break (anyone notice?) and although things are a little better now, particularly now that my therapy has resumed, I feel that the residual levels of stress and anxiety I am carrying are higher than normal and are massively impacting on my life.

Why am I anxious right now?

How long have you got?!

Clearly the usual things that bother me are still there:

  • My physical health (or lack of it) concerns me. I have been ill pretty much consistently since September and have so little energy that I have stopped exercising altogether (good for my weight but not a lot else) and am barely making it through the day even when trying to conserve my energy. My bloods suggest that I am still in remission from my Hodgkins but living on an 8 week turn around for check-ups is anxiety-inducing in itself. I live in a state of constant worry about if and when I’ll get ill again.
  • My fragile mental health – ugh! Therapy is causing me anxiety because although things are slowly getting better, my therapist and I still have a great deal of talking to do about the rupture that happened at Christmas. Whilst things feel so tentative my internal child parts are even less settled and contained than usual and so it is really hard to manage. This week all I have wanted to do is reach out to my therapist and seek some kind of reassurance. Don’t worry! I’m not stupid. I am not going to go down that route again. One rupture and sense overwhelming sense of rejection is enough to be dealing with; I don’t need to add any fuel to the fire. But it does nothing to alleviate my anxiety about feeling abandoned or rejected when I can’t reach out or even the thought of doing so reminds me of all that has recently happened.

 

Then there’s the extra shit – icing on the cake if you will:

  • My wife’s skin cancer is stressing me out. We are waiting on the results of her biopsies to know where to go from here-  but right now it’s a crazy limbo type space trying not to overthink things but underneath it gnaws away at me. I don’t have a brain that just shuts off, unfortunately. Oh my goodness I would love an ‘off’ button.
  • My best friend from primary school has been hit by the big C again and I am utterly devastated. As if it wasn’t bad enough getting diagnosed with breast cancer the day before your thirtieth birthday, going through chemo and having a mastectomy, she then relapsed eighteen months later – the breast cancer had metastasised and was now in her lymph nodes under her arm. More treatment. And now last week they’ve found it in her bones. I mean seriously. Wtf? I am so sad for her and her family. To face fighting cancer three times in less than five years with a young family is just hideous. I can’t help but become even more anxious about my own future, too.

 

Then there’s the minging glace cherry on top of the cake:

  • My neighbours. Ugh. It’s too long and dull a story to recount here but suffice to say I am not a crier (I struggle to hit those buried emotions) and yet found myself in tears on Friday due to an incident that happened. The ‘thing’ itself is not a big deal and yet because I am so on a knife edge with my ‘everyday life’ what happened last week sent me over the edge. My brain has run wild and my anxiety has spiked horrendously. When you don’t feel secure or safe in your home it’s horrid. I really struggle with conflict and even when I know I have done nothing wrong I struggle to not find fault or blame myself. I need to get better at managing stress!

Anyway. It’s been a bit tentative this week for sure. One minute I am desperately sad and frightened hiding in my bed, the next I am driving my car with the stereo on full blast belting out something from Pink’s new album (I think my teen part is quite lively at the moment – perhaps after the letter I wrote to her).

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Today Pink’s ‘Secrets’ was on loop in my car… the lyrics really resonate with me/the teen right now – it’s kind of how I feel about therapy like there’s a few things I need to let out the bag. It’s a right belter of a track too:

Secrets

What do we conceal? What do we reveal?
Make that decision every day
What is wrong with me, it’s what’s wrong with you
There’s just so much I wanna say

I like to make-believe with you
Da, da, da, da, do, do, do
That we always speak the truth…ish
I like how we pretend the same
Da, da, da, da, do, do, do
Play this silly little game, hey!

I’ve got some things to say
‘Cause there’s a lot that you don’t know
It’s written on my face, it’s gonna be hard to swallow
(Everybody’s got a secret)
I got some things to say
(Everybody’s got a secret)
‘Cause there’s a lot that you don’t know
(Everybody’s got a secret)
It’s written on my face
(Everybody’s got a secret)

I let the walls come down
I let the monster out, and it’s coming after me
Do you feel exposed where it hurts the most?
Can you wear it on your sleeve

Put it in the closet, lock the doors
Wondering which one is worse
Is it mine or is it yours
Put it in the closet, lock the doors
Wondering which one is worse
I’ll show mine if you show yours
I’ll show mine if you show yours, hey, hey, hey!

*

So, yeah, it’s been very up and down emotionally for me lately…To Monday morning, though. Get to the point eh?!

Usually I am pretty particular about what I wear to therapy. I try and dress well – not smart or anything like that, I just want to feel good in what I am wearing. I’m generally in some kind of jeans or dungarees (don’t judge me! I am a lesbian after all!) but I am fairly well put together – everything is clean and I make an effort with my appearance. Legs are shaved, eye brows are shaped, socks and pants are good! (like it even fucking matters! ha!)

I don’t usually wear makeup day-to-day but I generally slap on some foundation to cover the greyness and a bit of mascara to make my eyes look less tired on a Monday. I don’t think it achieves much but it is the mask I put on to go pour my heart out.

I’d describe how I dress for therapy as one of those casual no one would know you’ve made any effort looks – surf style. However, if I don’t blow dry and straighten my hair there’s an issue! I look like my granddad with his crazy bouffant hairdo. Oh man I miss my long hair that I could just whack in a tucked under pony tail. Damn you fucking cancer!

Sometimes I really cover up – even in the summer I can sit in a jumper with my arms concealed not wanting to draw attention to my scars or bony/skinny body. Other times I might choose to be more revealing – it’s a weird one. Sometimes I want to hide everything from my therapist and other times I want her to see me – I want her to know how things are. I’ve read a few posts about what people wear to therapy and I think it does tell you a lot about what might be going on both consciously and unconsciously.

Anyway. I felt pretty vulnerable on Monday (what with the rupture and having had the Skype session rather than a face-to-face) and wanted to snuggle up into something cosy and comfy (a onesie would’ve totally been perfect – but not ever going to happen!) and so I ended up in a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in a year or two (I have 25+ pairs – a bonus of having had the same frame since 17 years old) and a jumper I found when I cleared the loft out the other weekend… that come to think of it I had when I was in college too (hmmm maybe the teen part is more present than I thought!).

I was happy enough with the outfit but as it came time to leave home I had a problem. Shoes. Shoes? Yes. Shoes. I couldn’t find a pair that went with the outfit. Granted jeans and a jumper is pretty much all I wear and so really ALL my shoes go with this. But not on Monday. I couldn’t find a pair that felt ‘right’. I have 8 different pairs of Rocket Dog sneakers in various colours, trainers galore, and loads of other shoes…and yet for some reason nothing I put on my feet felt ok with what I was wearing. I don’t know what was wrong but I felt self-conscious about my feet…

The outcome? I changed my entire outfit to accommodate the shoes. I opted for my current favourite pair of shoes and dressed around them. I know. I think, maybe I need A LOT MORE help.

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All of the recent crazy has alerted me to the fact that I need to be very gentle with myself for the next few weeks – when possible. I know I am walking a fine line here and I absolutely cannot afford to crash and burn like I did at Christmas.

Positively, the session, once I arrived went well. My therapist and I really talked and I once I had got through moaning on about my current life annoyances/worries the conversation changed tack and went to a place that I am usually wary of going to for fear of judgement and feeling ashamed.

My therapist asked me outright about my eating disorder and self-harm. Yikes! Usually I recoil a bit from that kind of thing but I tried to stay present and open with her. Little by little we got onto talking about the therapy and our relationship. I told her how I have been feeling when I dissociate and how we need to find a way of working more effectively with the traumatised attach parts.

I managed, somehow, to stay in my adult but was able to be open and vulnerable with her for the remainder of the session and it paid off. I might be imagining it but things felt different. The session had a different quality to it and my therapist who almost NEVER self-discloses shared something with me and that made me feel much closer to her.

Anyway, the real challenge now is to keep on this path. I need to try and keep letting her know how things are and work through everything that has come up as a result of Christmas and before. I know she doesn’t deliberately do things to hurt me but because I am so frigging sensitive even the hint of a wrong word or tone can send me out into orbit. It’s really tricky.

My young ones are beginning to really struggle and it seems a very long time until Monday. I hate that it makes no difference to those vulnerable parts of me whether I have a good therapy session or a not so good one. I can leave the room feeling connected and cared for and yet I can’t hold onto any of it and still find myself feeling desperately alone and lost and abandoned by Wednesday. It’s devastating really. My stomach actually aches knowing that it is still four more sleeps until Monday. Adult me needs to try and soothe the upset little ones but unfortunately it is much easier said than done.

I don’t have a lot else to say really, so I’ll leave it there for now.

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Skype Session #2

rubberbandsandchewinggum13 Comments

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I wonder if I am just really rubbish at managing my time or if life is just taking the piss out of me right now? Finding time in my week to write is proving really difficult and so I’m not doing very well with keeping up to date with my blog at the moment. I know it’s not exactly a priority task, it can wait (of course it can), but actually this page has proven a very useful outlet and so I resent not being able to write. I have loads I want to say – but who knows when I will actually get round to writing it all down?

More often than not, I don’t even get to the ‘sitting down to write’ stage. This week has just been unrelenting. The level of stress and anxiety I have been under has been hideous and whilst I have longed for an hour to myself to be able to sit, splurge, and get it all out (the therapy stuff), the opportunity hasn’t presented itself until now.  Having said that, I am glad that I spent a bit of time writing to my teen midweek as things were/are pretty dire inside.

Frankly, it’ll be some kind of miracle if this post gets finished before I leave for my session tomorrow. I am so tired and overwrought that my brain just won’t work quite as it usually does.

Tomorrow is Monday and whilst I don’t necessarily want to write a blog post about every session I have – frankly that’d be dull as shit most of the time:

It started off fine; something happened and I got upset; my body reacted –numb/shaking; I dissociated; I couldn’t talk; child/teen felt distressed, critic dropped by; managed to talk a bit in last ten minutes; did/did not feel connected at end of session! Went home and brooded all week…attachment pain hell.

(Honestly, I really don’t need to any write new posts after that, do I? I can just keep posting that paragraph over and over! Time problems and blog writing issue solved – yay!)

Seriously though, I do want to keep myself in some kind of sensible chronology with these posts. i.e if there’s a session I want to talk about then I did ought to try and write about it before the next session comes along and shunts it into the half-remembered place in my brain where everything gets even more scrambled.

Right so, onwards to the ‘post’ – 400 words in and I’ve not said a thing yet. Is this procrastination or just an over-tired semi-manic state? Both probably.

This time last week I was stuck here writing about what to do about my session, knowing I couldn’t make it in person because my kids had been sick. In fact I was still stuck at 8:30am on Monday morning – the last moment I had to cancel or ask for a Skype session. The internal conflict was still going strong but in the end I did ask to do a session by Skype because I felt that I’d probably have a meltdown midweek if I passed up the opportunity to talk….turns out I had a spectacular meltdown even with the session, though. Ugh!

Once I decided that Skype was what I wanted to do I ….prepared for my session by thinking about what I wanted to say cleaned the house! (I’m not sure strike through always shows up on the WordPress reader so for those of you who are on it I DID NOT SPEND TIME thinking about my session until two minutes before I dialled in but blitzed my house instead!)

So yeah, by 10:28am the house was lovely and tidy: I’d hoovered, steam mopped the floors, cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms, dusted, cleaned mirrors, watered the plants, etc. I know. That’s fucking mental isn’t it?! Like seriously, the camera on the laptop probably gives a square metre of visibility and the place that I sat on the sofa in my dining room had received no special attention at all- but for some reason it seemed completely sensible to run round the house like a headless chicken/possessed domestic goddess/Cinderella creature and clean, clean, clean!

I don’t know if it was avoidance or what. I left myself just enough time to get showered and dressed before plonking myself on the couch and scribbling some very last minute prompts on some post it notes…something I had been meaning to all week (the notes, not the shower!)

Things have been a bit (a lot) difficult since coming back after the Christmas therapy break. The rupture that happened over the exchange of a couple of texts which led to me feel even more abandoned and rejected than usual hasn’t been repaired yet. We’ve made inroads into discussing what happened and, had I have had a face-to-face session last Monday, I knew there were things I absolutely needed to bring up and work though – even though it would be excruciating.

Sitting staring at the screen I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to bring those things up via Skype. Part of me thought that knowing that I tend to remain in a more adult headspace via Skype might allow me to speak more freely and tackle the difficult stuff because it would be unlikely that I’d switch into a young trauma part. On the other hand, not being in the room with my therapist might make it feel even more difficult to bring up some of the stuff that was hurting me still because the sense of connection would feel more stretched.

With a couple of minutes remaining before the session I wrote some questions/prompts (I’ve since tidied them up as the initial ones were barely legible and non-sensical) and stuck them round the edge of my laptop screen:

  • Last week I started crying when you moved and sat closer to me to do the migraine exercise. Can we talk about what happened and think about our proximity to one another?
  • You said in the first session back that you felt that my texts at Christmas were me trying to script you to say something, and that you wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t have helped if you’d have said exactly what I’d have wanted – why then have you asked me so many times about what I might want you to write on the pebbles?
  • In September it was you that suggested writing me a note for on breaks. It/the pebbles haven’t happened and the break was dire. Can we work on this please?
  • You said something about not colluding with the child part that wants to be held because we can’t recreate what that part needs and the time has passed for that. I understand that but it felt like you were saying that working with the child parts explicitly is a no go – is this what you were saying?
  • When I dissociate I often end up stuck in a very young child part and it is really traumatised. When you sit and wait for me to say something I can’t, the adult part is offline, but your stillness makes it feel like the still face exercise* and it is agony. How can we work round this?

Anyway, I was all prepped and ready to go… and those post-it notes did not get a look in! Sigh! It’s almost comical isn’t it?!

Actually, the session was good despite my not bring up ANY of that stuff. To be honest just talking about how ill my kids and I had been; how exhausted and drained I have felt; how worried I am about my wife’s skin cancer; and a bunch of other things about my mum was what I needed. I just needed someone to listen to me about my life in the here and now – the hard stuff that is going on for me the adult and how some of it is triggering stuff for the young parts.

My therapist asked how I felt about Skype. I said that it felt different and like the session was really bad timing given where we were at right now, and that I felt like all the stuff that was bothering me was on hold. She acknowledged that it felt different, that there had been a lot that had come up recently in the therapy, how difficult breaks are, and that she hoped we could come back to that material and work through it together when I am ready.

So yeah, it wasn’t like we completely ignored the ‘therapeutic relationship’ stuff. We just didn’t dive right in. My therapist said she thought that given everything that was going on in my life right now it might be a good thing to have the lighter sort of session. I agree.

I spoke a lot about my mum – which actually doesn’t happen all that often. She’d gone off on holiday and hadn’t told me when she was going or where she was going. This is unusual. I usually get some kind of text as they are in the airport departure lounge and so it stuck me a couple of weeks ago that perhaps she was gone but hadn’t contacted me to let me know. This triggered all sorts of panic in me. No joke.

Firstly, I like to know when she is gone/due back and a brief itinerary of her whereabouts, travel insurance details because my dad died abroad whilst on holiday and it fell to me to liaise with the travel insurance company to get his body moved from a remote Thai island to Bangkok, to arrange his cremation, and then for his ashes and belongings to be flown home to the UK. I literally have panic attacks thinking about that month in 2008 and whilst I doubt very much my mum is going to die abroad, I’d at least like to know where she was if that did happen.

Anyway, then I started to get into an anxious spiral. Why did she leave without telling me? Had something happened and she’s in a mood with me? Cue all the young parts in terror. ‘What could I have done to annoy her? Why is she mad? Why is she withholding? What if she’s stumbled across this blog?’ And other totally irrational thoughts. The parallels between this and how things have been in therapy with my therapist are not lost on me!

I sent a couple of emails to my mum but knew she wouldn’t have her phone set up where she was going. Eventually on Wednesday she text me and then we spoke on the phone. NOTHING WRONG AT ALL. She’d had a great holiday and had been back a few days…

Panic over.

The thing is, she has no idea that a change in the pattern of our communications basically sent me over the edge into full blown anxiety. Whilst I clearly am not massively close to my mum our relationship has come on a very long way since my teens. I am processing a lot in therapy. I am both angry and disappointed that what I had growing up was lacking and has, in part, caused me such relational difficulties.

I wish I felt loved by mum, or the little girl part longs for that still – hence the mess in therapy with my therapist. That part so desperately wants to feel loved and is attached to my therapist now. My adult understands that my mum did her best, it just wasn’t quite enough. I understand that how she demonstrates care and love is not through the more regular channels of affirmations and holding.

The thought of what we have built up now being eroded because of her finding this blog was horrendous. I don’t want to hurt her. It’s not like anything I write isn’t true. It’s just that the adult part of me is learning to settle for what I do have now, and I appreciate the relationship that I have with her as her adult child. This blog, and my therapy, are about processing the pain of my childhood. So it’s tricky. I couldn’t bear to lose what I have now even though it is not quite enough for the young parts.

Anyway, I’ve gone off on tangent there. What a surprise! Ha.

So, yeah, the therapy session via Skype was good. It felt connecting. I think, in part, this is also down to the sense of proximity. That might sounds bonkers given that we were clearly 30 miles apart and communicating through a screen. But what is different in Skype is how much closer to me my therapist feels – i.e her face is closer to the screen and so she appears closer to me than when she is in her chair.

This is what I had sort of discovered with her moving closer to me in the previous session and why I really want to work on getting the chairs right now. It seems like such a small thing, but I think it could make a huge difference. I just need to pluck up the courage to talk about it ‘please sit closer to me!’ Knowing me I’ll just hand over the post-its and go from there! Lol.

Just before the end of the session I took my laptop into my living room and showed my therapist my, now, nearly six year old daughter and they had a little chat together. It was lovely. The last time my therapist saw my daughter she was 15 months old. She used to come to my therapy sessions as I started psychotherapy on the NHS when she was a month old and I was breastfeeding and didn’t have childcare.

My therapist said some lovely things about my daughter and how I was doing a really good job with her (of course I rebuffed that with a sarcastic comment – but I did feel happy inside!) then it was time to go.

It was a good session.

Sadly the rest of the week since then has been complete shit. I won’t go into it now…it’s a whole other post….when I get round to it! Just suffice to say, I thought I was at bottom a couple of weeks ago. Turns out there was a trap door. Ffs.

Anyway, that’s that. Wish me luck tomorrow!

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