holding it together as I journey through therapy – a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.
The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.
It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.
The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!
Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.
I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.
So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.
I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.
Like that’s the idea.
That was our plan.
A kind of gentle reparenting.
Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.
My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.
Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…
Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.
Yikes.
The feelings are big.
I cry a lot.
It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.
One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.
It feels like an act of grief and act of love.
There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.
“It’ll be ok. I’m coming back. Nothing is going to change. I love you.”
Today is the anniversary of the last time I saw Anita as I ‘knew’ her. She was just about to head off on a two-week holiday and we parted on warm hugs and these words of reassurance and care.
With hindsight, these are not promises anyone can every truly make to us, even our family. We don’t know what’s ahead and even with our very best intentions the universe can throw us curve balls and change the trajectory of our lives in a heartbeat.
So, a therapist saying this, whilst absolutely well-intentioned, has actually proved to be massively damaging in the long run. Despite all the good will in the world, Anita has broken those promises and her attempts at reassurance to the youngest, most vulnerable parts of me, have now branded into my brain as individual soundbites of betrayal and lies because nothing was ‘ok’, she didn’t really ‘come back’, everything ‘changed’, and…’I love you’? Well, is what’s happened in the last twelve months the actions of someone who loved me? I wrestle with that a lot.
Adult me can understand this has been a complex situation, but the little ones inside?- not at all. It’s horrific for them. They can’t make sense of it. It’s another mother who has chosen to walk away when she promised she absolutely would stay because I was ‘worth it’ and have never deserved my previous treatment by others.
In the end, though, Anita made the choice to stop work with me (and all other long-term clients…apparently…although who really knows?) whilst still retaining some ‘easy’ clients. She needed to reduce the ‘stress in her life’ and I was part of that package.
I’ll be honest, after three and a half years of consistent love and care and meeting on such an intimate level, it wasn’t a choice I actually thought she’d ever make to dump me and keep going with other people. Despite my issues around trust and abandonment I genuinely believed her when she had said, ‘she’d always have space for me in her world’ and that even when she retired, she’d see me because she ‘couldn’t let me go’. Like I didn’t have a gun to her head to make her say those things, she offered them up freely. And the amount of kind, loving, reassurances that came from her sunk deep down into me. It was all so healing … until this happened.
Well, it turns out it was all lip service, and I was a fucking fool. She left me and has been working consistently since. In fact, she’s been actively advertising her availability for new clients. I understand that her work may look different to how it was. Her caseload has a different complexion but, still, it’s impossible not to see this as a complete and total rejection of me for being ‘too much’ hard work and causing too much ‘stress’.
But actually, truthfully, who wants a burnt-out therapist who declares themselves ‘broken’ but continues to work because they ‘can’t afford not to’? That’s never right…and part of me, at least, knows this. Part of me, knows too, that really none of this is about me at all, and more about Anita’s ability to manage (or not) her personal life.
The work we had been doing had so much been about feeling good enough, worthy enough, lovable enough, valuable…and when it came down to it I was none of those things. I couldn’t even manage to have someone I pay to spend time with me to stay…yet other people can. It’s hard not to allow that critical inner voice to take hold because it’s been so much of my internal narrative over the years – especially after what happened with Em.
I need a therapist who is steady and capable of holding the work. I need someone who can manage their own life without crashing and burning and taking out a vulnerable clients as collateral damage. And Elle, seems to be that. I am aware, though, that I am keeping parts of myself very well protected now.
After all this crap with Anita I am reluctant to let anyone that close to me ever again because, honestly, it’s broken me. Today I was walking out in the countryside and burst into tears because I allowed my mind to wander a bit and it alighted on Anita. This next month is going to be tough as it signals a year for all the hell that was the last few times I saw Anita but also a year where there has been no resolution, no termination session, no return of my books … just a limbo period. It’s A’s birthday and honestly, knowing this time last year I was giving her a gift and this year she’s not part of my world at all is hard.
Therapy is delicate work. As Elle said the other day, when something goes wrong with a therapist it’s like dealing with an engine. You cannot work on it whilst it’s still on, turning over. You have to turn it off, completely stop, and mend you cannot go ramming your hands into the engine when it’s going. What’s worse, she said, is that Anita has been poking her hands in other people’s engines whilst they’re on, too, and doing untold damage. It’s not ok.
And it so isn’t ok – I am not ok… although I am doing my very best to hold it together with my rubber bands and chewing gum.
Anyway, in that last long post I was jumping all over the place- and talked about a session with buttons and another with the lovely hug…and I will continue on from there soon but today, I’ve got derailed by all this sadness and grief about A…and so want to talk a bit about another connecting experience I had with Elle a few months ago.
I mentioned in my last blog about how I keep forgetting how much Elle actually knows about the vulnerable stuff because my mind seems to completely block that from my consciousness when I am with her. I somehow, in the moment face-to-face have no idea that I have sent several ‘exposing’ raw emails to her since we met last August and actually she probably sees me more than I think she does!
Anyway, I hit the skids again and sent this to her in February…I’d had more of those False Adult fronting sessions and was just driving myself fucking mad:
This is the note slid under the door…because frankly no one cares about how tidy (or not) my house is- and I am so fucking good at avoidance that next week I could talk to you about my lost marble collection (not a metaphor – although metaphorical lost marbles would be useful to speak about seeing as I feel like I’m going slowly mad).
I don’t really know where to begin with this because the overriding feeling I am experiencing at the moment is shame – and unlike like you who (weirdly!) seeks out opportunities to sit in shame to prove it’s not going to kill you – I try to avoid it where possible. Having said that, it’s stuck to me like my shadow so I can never truly outrun it. And I guess you’d say don’t run from it, explore it – and believe me I know what it’s all about but that doesn’t mean I want to be covered in its thick tar-like substance for any longer than is absolutely necessary.
I feel a bit like one of those sea birds that’s been caught in an oil slick like you’d see on the news when a tanker would run aground. I know that the only way out of this hell is to bubble up with a massive load of washing up liquid – a soapy shame remover if you like, but right now I am head-to-toe in black, and it feels like there is something terribly wrong with me and I can’t find the soap. There’s also a bit of a problem now because the shame remover I had found that seemed to work really well was connection – but actually a couple of bottles of connection had tar in and so now I don’t seem to trust that either.
Shame has been so present – in me/on me/both – over the years that I am surprised that I haven’t become less sensitive to it or adapted some kind of Teflon type skin – but nope. It’s still that horribly visceral all-consuming visit from a dementor and I feel sick.
You probably have no idea that I have spent the last (almost) six months trying very hard not to allow myself to feel very much at all in the relationship with you. It’s not really worked though. Therapy feels really dangerous – well, at least to some parts of me… and so I am really aware that the person who turns up to therapy is me – but that person is also a really excellent shield for all the hurt and vulnerable parts. I guess it’s a bit like that chicken analogy you used the other day – where the chicken tucks the chicks under their wings. And whilst that seems like a really sensible thing to do- it’s protective- it’s not much good if the chicks actually need the vet!
I read a book years ago by Patricia DeYoung about chronic shame and this bit really stuck out:
In brief and speaking from the perspective of a child’s regulated self, a regulating other is a person on whom I rely to respond to my emotions in ways that help me not to be overwhelmed by them, but rather to contain, accept, and integrate them into an emotional “me” I can feel comfortable being. A dysregulating other is also a person I want to trust – and should be able to trust – to help me manage my affect or emotion. But this person’s response to me, or lack of response to me, does exactly the opposite: it does not help me contain, accept, or integrate.
Then I become a self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other. This is what happens: as an infant, when I am in an affective state of distress, or as a child, when I am feeling a rush of emotion, the other’s response fails to help me manage what I’m feeling. Instead of feeling connected, I feel out of control. Instead of feeling energetically focused, I feel overwhelmed. Instead of feeling that I’ll be ok, I feel like I am falling apart.
This kind of experience is the core experience of shame. All of it has something to do with needing something intensely from someone important, and something going wrong with the interaction between us. I feel, “I can’t make happen what I need from you”. If the sequence is repeated often enough in my development to become and expectable experience, I will have a core propensity to feel shame whenever I have strong feelings, need emotional connection, or feel something is wrong in an interpersonal interaction. In all of those situations, I will be likely to conclude, consciously or unconsciously, “There is something wrong with what I need- with my needy self”.
And that’s kind of how it feels now. It’s not quite the dysregulating other thing because I haven’t told you what’s going on or how I feel but that makes no difference to my inner experience because essentially there’s this really sad, vulnerable, part (several actually) that’s in pieces and feels shame because there’s so much need but it’s hidden and unseen and can’t regulate. And I get this prison is of my own making – which is so fucking annoying – but there is this bit of me that is absolutely fucking terrified of fucking things up, actually trusting you and being seen and then to be deemed unacceptable is a massive fear.
Like I hold myself together with rubber bands and chewing gum which is always a bit problematic at the best of times – they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting in lieu of super glue – but now I feel like I am disintegrating.
I keep circling this drain over and over.
I really can’t overstate how damaging what has happened with Anita is. The reason she gave me for ending seemed legitimate at the time. She was really unwell. But I am really struggling to understand how she can still be working and yet now say that she’s not in a good enough place to meet and to properly end as we had agreed. It all feels like lies now – and avoidance…and really unfair. And unfortunately, my brain’s default programming always lands on “It’s because you’re too much”. So I am having a really hard time because the person I really trusted with me – all of me – has become someone I don’t recognise at all and seems not to care in the least that they’ve hurt me…so that must make this a me problem.
And then of course my mum being … well… gone…feels like a me problem.
This is really not dealing with my adult self…which I guess is why I am seeing you in the first place but ugh…
So now I am really aware of how all this stuff is just swirling around inside and how scared I am of breaking you too.
I can’t make Brian (my nickname for my brain) make sense today. I guess – I like you a lot and there’s a pull to want to be closer to you but it’s terrifying on so many levels.
Anyway, I’ll go hide in my pit of shame and embarrassment now x
-GAHHHH – Fuck! – like, how do I manage to wipe this from my consciousness? I mean it’s clear my brain is wanting to stop me being too exposed or clamming up because I feel like I have been too vulnerable – but it’s so funny in a way. My best-friend had to remind me this week that Elle knows a lot, because she’s had all the letters!
Oh god!
Anyway, Elle replied with something nice and connecting and then in the next session I walked in feeling a bit sheepish and sat down.
She came over to me at the start of the session and told me to hold out my hands.
Errr. Ok??
And she poured a handful of marbles into them and told me that they were for me.
It was a lovely symbolic gesture in reference to the email I’d sent and opened up a really helpful conversation about my literal lost marble collection, but also the wobbly losing my metaphorical marbles.
It’s a slow gentle edging towards trust and safety…
Since then, I have taken one of the marbles with me wherever I go. It’s acting as a transitional object.
Recently, I was at the beach and decided to photograph the marble in different places…and something possessed me to send one of the pictures to Elle. She thought it was one I had found at the beach. I got that immediate squirmy shame feeling and figured I had to be honest and reply, and told her that, no, actually it was one of the ones she had given me.
Anyway, that’s just another example of some of the nice things that have happened in therapy, and I do have to consciously remind myself of them. It’s so hard sometimes to hold onto what’s good because I am so scared of losing it all but also convince myself that none of it is real. It’s very different from the work with Anita and it is hard not to perpetually compare backwards and feel like it’s not enough, or I am not seen or held or *whatever* but actually I think all things considered Elle and I are doing pretty well considering the state I came to her in.
This week, though, is going to be especially hard because I am feeling so vulnerable about the anniversary with Anita and feel acutely how painful this grief is. It’s absolutely live again. It makes me feel alone and isolated and terribly small…and I want to reach out for someone safe and there doesn’t feel like there is anyone. I could email Elle, I suppose, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to overburden her or be too much.
It’s so frustrating being in this place…but that’s the thing with loss and grief and attachment and trauma and all the things…the path isn’t linear. It’s a spiral. Sometimes I am at the top of the spiral and looking down and in reasonable control; other times I am spinning so fast I feel sick and giddy.
So, therapy with Elle has been ticking along for several months now. We get on well – I think- and have had some really lovely sessions when I have been brave enough to bring stuff to her. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I get spooked before I even get in the room and so frequently end up talking a lot about mind-numbing shit in my day-to-day life whilst I try and figure out if she’s safe or, rather, if I am safe with her. I think I am…but my system is going to take some convincing after recent therapies.
I feel like there’s a part of me that is constantly seeking out the really ‘deep’ connection with Elle (you know the stuff that’s the therapy equivalent of a class A drug – seriously addictive stuff) and so feel kind of bleurgh when we actually just have a really ‘fine’ time. It’s hard to explain. I guess part of me experiences such a lot of emotional intensity outside the room, and does such a lot of thinking, that it doesn’t know what to do with every day maintenance kind of sessions.
There’s nothing at all wrong with these sessions, they’re a world away from dissociation and painful hell that I used to experience with Em, but I guess, it just feels ‘not enough’ – particularly to the parts of me that long to be seen and held. Another part of me knows, though, that we are still really getting to know each other – it’s going to take time. Steady, consistent, ‘in my window of tolerance’ sessions are probably exactly what I need even if it feels like I have a dam on the verge of bursting behind my cool exterior.
Part of the problem is that I am really fucking good at only showing the parts of me that I think are palatable (and together)! But then, recently, I had a moment where I thought, ‘that’s really boring’ – and actually I suspect Elle would rather be let more fully into my inner world, to see its complexity, rather than be bored shitless listening to me moan about stuff that is actually boring the shit out of me when I say it, too.
Ooohhh…it’s funny – I’ve always feared being left/abandoned for being ‘too much’ but then I became really aware of maybe being left/abandoned for being ‘not enough’ (again!) – like I’ve become ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. I don’t think that would happen (Elle ending because I’m boring her!) but I know what it’s like feeling like you’re watching paint dry with someone and I know I much rather be with someone down in the depths rather than paddling, barely getting my feet wet. I would like to think she’d feel the same.
However, what I will say, is that I am really aware that I can’t force this stuff with Elle – not because of her but because of me – all of the mes (I am so desperate to put an apostrophe on there for how it looks!). I am going to have to go at the pace that my system will allow – even if that means sometimes feeling frustrated or like parts of me are in hiding.
It makes total sense that it’s slow-going because I feel like I am just about holding myself together since the Anita catastrophe and need to be especially careful not to trigger any landmines and blow myself up. I am very aware of how precariously balanced my ‘coping’ is especially with the really active suicidal thoughts over Christmas. After what’s happened with the Em, Anita, and Hannah it’s easy to feel like the situations I have ended up in are a ‘me’ problem and I am super conscious of not wanting to be ‘too much’ for Elle. I need Elle right now so let’s not fuck that up RB.
For a long while I have been trying to figure out what Elle thinks and feels – as I say, trying to gauge what is safe to bring. She tells me what she’s feeling about me sometimes – usually if I ask. I am pretty sure she thinks that having told me that I am ‘delightful’ among other nice compliments and giving several reassurances, alongside being consistently ‘there’ and warm that I must KNOW, by now, that she likes me and that it is safe with her.
Ha! You’d think! But, sadly, not! This is me and my system…I’m the one who literally spends the beginning of every session like it’s our first. ‘Who is this woman (today)? Is it ok?‘ I just can’t hold onto Elle in my mind at all from week to week. Big whoop for my object permanence skills – not! It’s fucking tragic. But, actually, recently I realised that so much of how I view Elle in the room is filtering through the lens of where I am at. If I feel anxious and insecure I’ll be looking super hard for her seeming far away or disconnected… and I’ll convince myself that’s what’s happening – when actually she’s not either of those things.
I can’t always realise this in the moment but oftentimes after a session if I listen back, I hear things in a different way, and this is really helpful. Basically, things are never as disastrous as I might feel. In fact, it’s all pretty good. I just don’t feel it in the moment – and this is actually because so many parts aren’t allowed out. It’s those parts that are having a horrible time because they aren’t getting seen and so for them these sessions are completely disconnected and painful. I am starting to figure a way round this…again.
Still, one of the very good things about Elle (and there are plenty) is that she can read… and gets exactly what I am saying when I share something with her in writing. I realise, now, how much of a hindrance that was with Anita. I communicate best in writing – ha! – and so having a therapist that was so severely dyslexic that she couldn’t really read my stuff meant I either didn’t say what I wanted or had to record a voice note – ugh. It is actually really freeing to be able to have a bit of a meltdown and write and then share it with Elle knowing that even if I can’t bring stuff into the room right now it can at least be expressed and then make it in later – I can forewarn Elle about the state of things and give her a really clear heads up.
Elle and I have a reasonable amount of outside contact, and this goes some way to alleviating the anxiety I feel between sessions. I only see her once a week and it’s quite an adjustment going from two sessions that bookend the week with Anita to this. We do a ninety-minute session and, honestly, this is sooooo much better than an hour for me because … well… *waves hands desperately* this is how I am. But I still find Fridays pretty rough, and I think actually I might see if Elle and I can figure out some way of officially checking in then to make the panic a bit less.
I’ve sent a few ‘big’ emails over the time we’ve worked together outlining some of the huge stuff so haven’t kept her completely in the dark. I have found whenever I have given Elle the map she’s responded in a helpful and holding way – she writes really thoughtful replies and says what feels like the right thing in the room – as I say, it’s really just a case of my system being VERY reluctant to completely let go and trust given everything that’s happened in my previous therapies. It’s not surprising. It’s just kind of disappointing to be in this place after so many years of counselling – and actually so much of the damage being caused by therapists rather than my actual life events.
I’ve been seeing Elle since August – after it all went to shit with Hannah, after it all went to shit with Anita, after it all went to shit with Em! I feel like I have the therapist version of a Russian doll stack! Ha. It’s not funny, though.
I really like Elle, like really like her. I feel like she is actually really steady and safe. I feel like she is present and authentic. We seem to have a lot of similar interests which is nice – obviously it’s not essential, but after Em and her total closed book thing until the day she waxed lyrical about Brexit and outed herself as a tory it’s nice to know that Elle and I have these common interests and reference points.
Anyway, there are two sessions that felt like turning points in our therapy and as much I would like to write in detail about the last several months, I don’t have time – but these, I want to share over the next few posts.
Years ago, when my dad died I saw a therapist who was keen on activities – sand tray, drawing etc and actually sometimes I found doing things that didn’t revolve around me just sitting rigid and intellectualising my way through a session really helpful (because you know that’s what I do a lot of the time, right?). In all the years I worked with Em, she never once tried anything like that with me. She was firmly rooted in her seat and I sat in mine – like a good girl. Anything abstract or conceptual fell on deaf ears…oh my god the fucking pebble!!
With Anita it was different – we were more in touch, connected. We weren’t on opposite sides of the room once I mentioned how much I hated it. The physical touch stuff was really helpful. Reading stories was fab for the young parts. But we rarely did any of that abstract exploratory work – well never, actually. I’d kind of forgotten that there was this side of therapy tbh.
Anyway, in November there was a day where I was just feeling totally off. I still went to my session but I think it was maybe the first time I let my guard down a bit and didn’t perform the RB that Elle had gotten used to. Rather than fill the silence I just didn’t talk. I guess I let her see that maybe I wasn’t completely ok. I dunno.
Anyway, after about ten minutes Elle asked me if I would like to see her button tin. It pulled me from wherever I was, and so I said, ‘sure’.
Now, between Elle’s seat and mine is a low table with an edge – I actually hate that fucking table as it feels like a massive barrier between us but that day it was useful. Elle tipped out hundreds of buttons onto the table and spread them out in a circle around the outside. She told me the collection had come about over years and years and she could remember whose clothes the various buttons had come off as far back as her grandmother. The range of shapes and sizes and textures of buttons was impressive.
I moved from the sofa and sat on the floor and Elle did the same. I’m guessing a lot of you have done an activity like this before, Elle asked me to find a button that represented me. I finally found one after lots of rooting around. It was black and broken in half and so sharp that I said you could use it as a weapon. I then asked Elle which button might represent her? I think she was momentarily shocked, but she poked around in the pile and found a lovely silver embossed kind of bead/button. I commented on how our button selves change periodically, and she smiled. She said this one was definitely her today, but yes we do change.
Anyway, I think the general premise of this activity is to find different buttons that may represent parts of you, or maybe important people in your life/relationships and to talk them through. I didn’t do this. Instead, I found a range of beautiful buttons that all fell along a blue/turquoise/silver colour palette and placed them in a pile nearish to Elle’s button. My black, broken button stayed way over on my side of the table.
We talked about all sorts of stuff but mainly about the actual buttons. I would periodically hand really lovely ones to her, and she would take them to look at them. This was really the closest we had ever got to touching one another in the three months we’d been working together, and this activity felt really intimate and connected – I felt way less self-conscious in that session than I had done previously. Perhaps I showed a little more of the vulnerable self.
Anyway, it all felt so nice but then I clocked that our time was ending and, honestly, I just didn’t want to go and I think I dissociated a bit. Elle noticed. She said that in all the years she’s been a therapist that no one had ever invited her into their button circle, I think I probably blushed a bit – I couldn’t imagine not wanting my therapist to be alongside me in that, I needed to know who she was in order to show who I was. She thanked me for engaging with the task for so long and just as we were about to stop, I slid my black, broken button all the way across the table and put it next to hers.
I know that sounds like a nothing thing, but honestly that was an act of total courage and vulnerability on my part. A signal that I don’t want to be distant, and contained… I want to move closer. She said that I was a gift of a client and told me some stuff about how she experiences our time together and how she feels towards me. It felt like a completely different space to what we had inhabited up until this point. That session felt like it was about us, and our relationship, and our work together and it was so … exactly what I had needed.
We talked a bit more and as I stood up to leave, Mrs Brave came out of nowhere and asked if I could have a hug…
Elle said that of course I could have a hug, and honestly it was just lovely. She gives very good hugs, and she didn’t let go for ages, well actually I let go first, then pulled her back again and she giggled, in fact, she said something about a hug needing to be at least forty seconds to even work and so I didn’t feel like a needy, too much person…it just felt nice. And huge. And a turning point.
As I say, we’ve had some great moments on top of good moments and have been steadily creating something that feels solid. We laugh together a lot…which is nice…because I think I sometimes have a bit of a random sense of humour.
Anyway, it all went quite massively to shit almost immediately after the ‘buttons’ session – because of course it did. I guess the next session being back to ‘normal’ felt off but also, and fuck me, the six degrees of separation thing is just the absolute fucking pits, isn’t it? In that week between buttons and the next session a friend of mine had posted something up online of a performance they had done. Elle had told me she was doing something similar in that last session and low and behold, I could hear Elle laughing on the video my friend had posted. In fact, as I found out, it was Elle that had filmed my friend. I can’t even believe it. Like, why????
My instant reaction to the video was huge jealousy and sadness. Like how fucking unfair that my friend gets to spend time with Elle doing fun things… and I don’t. And, I totally get it, the intimacy in the therapy room is different and like gold at times, and she’s not my friend, but ugh… just ugh! So that set me off! I felt thoroughly shutdown in the next session – but I don’t think it was massively obvious until the end because False Adult is so good at taking the reins and creating a smoke screen!
I left that session and felt like utter shit, though. Like proper crumbling into pieces. I decided to message Elle and ask if she had any availability for another session – huge act of bravery – and her response just triggered the absolute shit out of me. Basically, she said that being like that in session was fine and something about how it’s learning to self-regulate and not to worry, and didn’t offer to see me– looking back at it it’s not terrible but for the part that had been so vulnerable in reaching out to get what felt like a body slam and rejection was just hideous. Ohhh yikes. Red rag to angry teen there. I replied with something to clarify and how bad disconnection feels and I got this back:
OK, so rather than trying to end the feeling of disconnect or the struggle, maybe think about if that has words or a specific fear attached to it. Is there an idea or story about what will happen if you stay disconnected?
I’m still going to be there – same place, same time, next week – and you can tell me anything you figured out then.
I just felt thoroughly let down. And, you know, it’s not even bad is it? But it just felt like she totally didn’t get it and that she just didn’t care…but then of course my short to the point messages don’t really show the extent of what’s underneath and so Elle is only working with what she sees – and up until that point I’ve been quite a closed book. She wouldn’t know what my system would do.
My whole system went wild…and out came the splurge self…and a fucking massive email!
BRACE POSITIONS!
I don’t think you’ll believe the response that triggered in me and I don’t even really know what to say. You don’t need to read this until Tuesday – it’s long – and probably makes no sense as it was written at 2am…couldn’t sleep. x
Sometimes I just need a person. Sometimes it gets so dysregulated inside that I can’t ground and instead dissociate. Yesterday, when I was with you, I was ramming my fingernail into my palm, and I couldn’t feel it at all. Sometimes I am present enough to ground – and have one foot in the shit and one foot in the here and now but sometimes it feels impossible, and I just disappear. And I get that it is ok – on a level- but actually being trapped in that is hideous. I feel disconnected from myself and you, and it just spirals really badly. The longer I am stuck in that space the more I feel like I am being left/abandoned even if that’s not what is happening.
I think you think that just sitting in it proves that it’s fine to be however it is in the moment and that you are there still regardless. However, sitting in that feels a bit like the still face exercise – internally it’s an absolute shit show and so it feels horrid because I need to know you’re actually with me and I can’t feel it at all. Checking in or soothing or telling me you are with me still – or whatever it is that you think is so bad and unhelpful would help me regulate – co-regulation when it’s like that is what I need. Although you probably think it’s what I want and not what I need. But self-regulation in that moment feels like you’re asking a toddler to do algebra when it’s only capable of counting to ten…with a few numbers missing along the way.
I think last week you wanted me to either map out some stuff about significant relationships in my life or let you see what my internal dynamics and relationship to different parts of myself is with the buttons – and I did a brilliant job of avoiding that because right now that isn’t what feels important – although I guess the inner system would be. You said that no one had ever asked you to be in their button circle and right now that’s what I am trying to figure out. I’m trying to understand what is going on between us. Like there’s a part of me that really wants to connect with you but the moment that comes up I feel myself start to disappear because it feels dangerous on a level but then feeling disconnected is equally as triggering. I can’t win but I absolutely do want to let you in and feel closer to you but that also feels exposing and risky because that opens up space for you to hurt me…and frankly I just don’t think I’d survive that right now.
Remaining disconnected and in the struggle like you’ve suggested, is fucking exhausting and triggers my nervous system. It literally makes me feel sick. I seem to spend a lot of the time trembling at the moment, and I know that this only happens when things are really bad. Not trying to end that feels like … self-harm, really. Not only that, it leaves space for the critical part of me to take root. My inner critic is a sadistic fucker. I know that ultimately it is the biggest protector I have and thinks it’s doing me a massive favour by relentlessly telling me that I am stupid, too much, unlovable, and that I must be a complete moron to even try to do therapy again. Like can’t I see the evidence that people leave because of me? I can’t believe I’m going to quote Taylor Swift (don’t judge!), but it feels like, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me” and that’s sort of stuck after recent events.
It’s like I have a minibus full of traumatised parts of various ages all kicking off in various ways and screaming. In those moments I don’t have an observer self and just get hijacked. This is what it’s been like. And it’s not even like there is a steady slip into that where I can do something to stop it happening or catch myself early. It’s like one minute I am here and the next I’m not and I can’t get out of that on my own – not really.
Over the years I’ve identified eight different parts of the system that sit outside my adult self (and even there, I suspect/know there are quite a few aspects to that self). At the moment, though, I keep dropping into this really desperately sad three-year-old part. It’s always the same, the scene never changes. She is standing in a grey wasteland with her back to me – it’s eerie and scary and cold and just really awful. Sometimes if I am able to remain in my observer self, I can see her but I can’t seem to bridge the gap between because it’s like I am stuck behind glass. There’s no hope of soothing that part because I can’t reach through to her. Other times, though, I feel like I am locked in that little body stranded and alone on the wasteland and I can’t get out of it – which is what happened yesterday.
I really need to feel/remain connected in the moment when I am with you because I struggle so much outside the sessions. My brain is super quick to lean into the narrative that you are pissed off with me, I’m too much, and that something bad is going to happen even when there isn’t evidence for it. Disorganised attachment is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m gutted because I really thought that this wasn’t a thing anymore because for such a long time I felt secure – or a secure as I have ever felt with A…and then it just collapsed, and I feel like I am back at square one trying again to find a way to not let this pattern dictate how I experience people/relationships but I guess it’s not surprising I feel like this now.
You asked if there is there a story and a fear around staying disconnected? Umm how many would you like to hear?… because there’s plenty, but perhaps the most relevant right now would be the ones related to therapeutic relationships going tits up. Ultimately, fear of the effect of disconnection is closely tied to feelings of rejection and abandonment because they’re all stops along the on the same track.
I think this feels so bad right now because I am not out the other side of what’s happened with Anita. It’s still live and so I am already nose deep in the shit of the reality of this story I tell myself. The impact the ‘disconnection’ but not ‘end’ I have experienced with Anita has completely derailed me. I feel like I am literally in survival all the time. The house is still on fire. [this is referencing a previous email] And there’s a part of me that feels like what’s happened there must be my fault because why else would she behave like this? And then I wonder if you’re perhaps consciously keeping your distance because you essentially think you’ve got a fucking disaster zone in front of you…and I get it. Part of me is trying to go with the narrative that this is about the container but mostly it just feels rejecting.
It’s six months this week since I saw A…and a month since she chose to ignore my message and ghost me. I can’t even… and I have no idea what to do about it now. Like I literally have no idea what to do about it. I really hoped there’d be some kind of resolution by now but I have to find a way of moving through it without her input.
Christmas break is imminent, too, and this time of year is never easy but it doesn’t feel safe because of what happened with Em. I guess maybe it’s exacerbated because I happen to be going abroad like I did the year it all disintegrated with her. And whilst that shouldn’t mean anything – I think my brain is terrified of the pattern repeating. I left feeling disconnected and dysregulated in December 2019 but told myself that I was being stupid and that of course it would be ok because why wouldn’t it after so many years?…and then boom – ending in January. So, the idea of remaining in this disconnected state now feels… horrific, actually.
And I get that both those relationships were long term and I barely know you so it seems crazy that any of this feels this massive or intense – but the smallest thing now is like lighting a touch paper into all that gone before because I am so sensitised to feeling like I’ll be left, abandoned or rejected…and all that stuff sits neatly on top of the core wound which is the stuff with my mum. Like I really knew that this wasn’t going to be easy but I didn’t think it would be this hard either.
And as much as I am really trying to fight against all that when I have so many different internal narratives at once it’s hard to hang onto any sense of being ok or safe because I actually don’t really know how you feel because you don’t tell me. Like I felt like last week was quite a big shift into something different and then yesterday it felt like we were a million miles apart and it felt like being held at arm’s length because that’s what I read into silence. And I think this is probably me and my wonky brain but … fuck, it’s so tiring.
There’s a part of me that just thinks, “Fuck it – just give up!” but I don’t want to because … I am hoping that this can actually work – but regulating my system feels like an impossible task.
November has always been a crap month emotionally. It always takes me by surprise and it’s only really afterwards that the dots join up and I figure out why I feel like I am flatlining. I think it’s been particularly hard this year, partly because everything seems to have so spectacularly disintegrated in the here and now as well – although not for the same reason… and so my brain has decided to serve me up a double dose of feeling isolated, unsafe, *more of the crap*. It’s all too familiar. Relationships feel dangerous.
The other week I was really conscious of feeling really just not ok – I mean it’s all on a continuum at the moment but I realised the timing of it tied into what happened when came out in November when I was seventeen having had a friendship end (you know the one where you have feelings for them so it’s way bigger than that). I had finally let this person know about some really vulnerable stuff around my eating disorder – which was huge after hiding it for two years. She decided it was too much, threatened to tell my parents, and then disappeared which was horrific, and I don’t think I ever really got over that acute feeling of being rejected for being *almost* completely myself and trusting her with something so vulnerable.
It’s not like she was a teen either, she was twenty-five. And then this reminded me of something that happened with Em when I told her about the extent of the problems I was having with eating and exercise – and she told me that we’d have to end if I didn’t go to the GP.
To add insult to injury, when I came out, I lost my friendship group all bar two people overnight. I used to walk into rooms at college and it would go silent, people would stare and then do that coughing a word/phrase thing “fucking dyke” or generally something else offensive and so it was really awful because I had been popular across lots of different groups – chameleon skills – although clearly not actually liked for who I was – even if my sexuality is only one part of my identity.
Not long after my best friend also ghosted me but not before writing me an ‘honest’ letter first. We’d been out clubbing on my eighteenth birthday, and I’d kissed a girl which was AMAZING. My friend wrote me a letter the next day and said she couldn’t be my friend anymore because now that she’d seen what it actually meant for me to be gay rather than just a concept, it made her feel physically sick and she would never see me in the same way. So that was pretty shit.
It’s all historical but I think that right now it almost like I’m experiencing multiple layers of disconnect simultaneously through different parts of my internal system – so my seventeen-year-old self is having a shit time but so are most of the young parts, in a different way, because of what’s happened with Anita.
And I really get the need to learn to self-regulate but historically self-regulating has looked liked shutting down, keeping everyone out, leaning into self-harm and an eating disorder and I know that none of that has never done me any good but is highly effective.
It feels like all the years I have been trying to recoil the spring in a different way and approach things differently has been totally wiped out and the spring wants to flip back to its original form because on a level it is safe and known – only it’s not really safe and I do know that. So, I’ve been swimming, and sleeping and breathing and all the self-care things but it hasn’t helped, really.
Reaching out instead of going inward yesterday was difficult because my instinct is to hide or run away instead. It felt vulnerable and exposing but sometimes when it feels like that, I know that actually I can’t do it all on my own and I need a person. It’s about co-regulation. And I think you think that doesn’t help, or reassurance is just fostering dependence or something. But to be told essentially to tough it out and think about what’s going on feels pretty crap when the landscape feels like it’s blowing up.
I already know what’s going on and why – and all the stories and fear behind being disconnected. And that’s why I reached out because sitting in this for any length of time feels utterly unbearable and it’s not like it serves me up any new understanding of what’s going on – because I get it already. But the knowledge of what’s playing out doesn’t seem to make it any easier to endure. I told you I had the Dead Sea Scrolls decoded – and I don’t doubt there are other bits I haven’t fully got the meaning of yet, but largely I understand the story.
Reaching out feels fucking dangerous because I already have the narrative of being left, abandoned, rejected because what I want/need is too much for the other and so getting that response feels like it confirms that. I know you wouldn’t ever want it to come over this way but to part of me, at least, it feels punitive and punishing. It feels like you’re asking me to do an exercise in stress tolerance…
I think I am so used to feeling a lack of care that part of me is always expecting it. And I really get that this, to you isn’t about a lack of care – it’s probably something about encouraging me to try and hold stuff for myself because I am strong enough to do that…or something like that. But this refusal feels like a rejection and also like you don’t really see me…or perhaps you do and that’s why and you want to keep your distance. And my brain has a wonderful capacity to switch into worst case scenarios – but then it’s not really surprising as worst case has happened quite a bit.
Disconnect, on a level, feels like annihilation – and I get for adult me it’s not. Like I will continue to limp through my life until I collapse. But how my system experiences it is so different and it’s so dysregulating. I was really struggling last week even before the absolute colossal shit show that was my weekend and there was a tonne of stuff that I wanted to talk to you about.
So, you might be there next week – and I get that is meant to be reassuring but it doesn’t feel it. Whether I will be there or not largely depends on how vocal and persuasive these protective parts get and, alongside that, how much shame and embarrassment rises up from having reached out and then it landing like this because I already want to crawl into a hole and die.
I get what you’re trying to do here, I think, and I also know what my protective parts are trying to do. Sometimes I can get these gate keepers to stand down and listen to me and other times I am locked in a fucking prison of my own making.
I don’t suppose any of this makes any sense because my brain is in a complete mess and I don’t really have the words – I just know how it feels…which is pretty fucking shit.
So, yeah, this was a nice ‘welcome to my world, Elle’ wasn’t it?
The next session was really great. Giving Elle insight into the behind-the-scenes version of me allowed her to really respond. She apologised for what had happened and said she had no idea that was what was going on. She said she wouldn’t want me to feel like that at all. And then later in the session was when she told me that she thinks I am ‘delightful’ which is really fucking nice. So, yeah, there’s been lots of good. And I feel kind of shit that this blog has fallen so far by the wayside as actually there’s such a lot I would have liked to have said.
Other than the very first session I had with Elle I have never brought up what’s happened with Anita. Although it’s come up in a few emails (of course). But largely there’s been a massive block from talking about it face-to-face. I think it’s to protect myself from feeling the pain of what’s happened which is enormous, and on another level to avoid judgement from Elle. She has never given me any indication that she would judge me negatively, but this is the legacy of what’s happened with Anita…and the other Russian dolls.
I think there’s been a part of me, too, that didn’t want to scare Elle off by being ‘too needy’ and telling her the finer details of what went on in the therapy with Anita just in case she panicked and ran! I think I wanted to establish the relationship between us first, and I guess sort of prove that I am not a total fruitcake before wading in and showing her the really vulnerable stuff.
I’ve sent Elle some blog posts about the ‘Anita Saga’ so it’s not like she doesn’t know about the cuddles and stories and elephant etc –I just feel like I keep what she does know in a particular compartment of my mind so that I can go see her and pretend like I am not some nutter with major attachment issues and a broken heart. It’s funny, though, because I compartmentalise all the vulnerable stuff that I have shared I really forget that Elle actually knows. And having just found that email to her…
Oh my god, she KNOWS it all!!!
She must be wondering what the hell is going on in sessions? Where is the person that sends emails about high anxiety and panic and attachment stuff and our relationship? Because she rarely shows up in the room!
Well, that all changed recently.
What with all that health shit, things have felt really precarious, and it’s triggered no end of anxiety – like a 13/10 rather than the usual 8/10 everyday level. Part of that has manifested in me having terrible nightmares with Elle or Anita in. That old chestnut! It’s been really upsetting, and whilst I know it’s just my brain feeling anxious it’s hard when you go to therapy to put that fear to one side especially when the therapy is relatively new…is 8 months new?!! I would so easily have been able to tell Anita that she had hurt me in a dream and yet I am still in the place where I feel a bit weird even telling Elle I’ve dreamt about her…because CRINGE.
I’m sorry that this is jumping around -there is so much to say!
Anyway, a few weeks ago I emailed Elle the night before the session telling her, what I thought was quite big stuff about how I was feeling – and she didn’t reply. Now, usually, if I send that kind of message, she responds with something really helpful and holding – because she gets me better now! With hindsight, I know that the way I phrased the start of the message didn’t make it clear that it was a ‘now’ problem and it really did seem like ‘for tomorrow’ in session and could wait. Of course, my system didn’t deal with the lack of reply very well and I felt really upset going to my session, in fact, I almost didn’t go.
I felt so bad when I arrived that I dissociated and couldn’t even talk for about ten minutes. This is not something that really happens with Elle, like maybe I’ll check out a bit here and there but it’s not common…so this was BIG. I felt like I was in freeze. However, despite my protectors doing their best to shut down, there was a little part that just would not let itself be hidden… this is new!!
Rather than being stuck, frozen in my isolated misery, I looked up, looked at Elle, made eye contact (whoa!) and asked Elle if I might have a hug. Now, this isn’t completely new, as I said we do tend to have a hug as I leave and that is lovely – but we all know that a goodbye hug is not the same as a hug hug when you don’t have to peel yourself away and leave immediately – and I already probably hang on for way longer than is normal then!
Elle got up from her chair and asked me whether I would like a stand up or sit-down hug. I shuffled over on the sofa and she sat beside me and folded me into the most lovely snuggle. My system relaxed for the first time in ages (like since Anita and I were ok which is nearly a year ago now) and I just didn’t move for 75 minutes (!). We talked about childhood memories, and she sang me a song that her mother used to sing her. It was just so fucking perfect and needed at that particular time. It felt like maybe my caginess has not been necessary, actually. Maybe Elle has been there the whole time and just waiting for me to come to her.
It was so nice to fully rest and be. No protectors, no rigidity, no fear. I just felt so completely safe and like I could finally breathe. Elle’s heartbeat was regular and steady, she smells lovely (although I already knew this), and the physical touch instantly regulated my completely dysregulated system. The sad thing is, I know exactly what I have been missing for all these months but until I was there in that moment, I didn’t realise just how heavy it has been carrying this weight for so long.
That little part that wanted the hug that day has been patiently watching and waiting since November, hoping that this would/could happen. There’s a lot of longing in that child part. But actually, adult me just really needed to be close too.
Anyway, it felt so nice that week between the sessions…I felt more settled than I have felt in a really long time – that is, until a couple of days before the next session when the panic kicked in:
What if it’s a one off?
What if she thinks I am weird?
What if I get the boundary talk?
It didn’t take long for me to start to unravel once I started turning that over in my head. So, of course, when I arrived at the session I was looking and hoping for some kind of sign or reassurance that the previous session hadn’t been weird for Elle, and that it was ok. Because, you know, SHAME is a fucking bastard. But it didn’t come. I think this is because Elle must think, ‘If I wasn’t ok with a hug I wouldn’t do it’ and so therefore it must be ok, right? But the thing is, I literally didn’t let go for 75 minutes – that is a massive cuddle by anyone’s standards…
I can’t remember what I spoke about that session but suffice to say I was back onto ‘Mrs Dull and Boring’. Or just a different me.
I left feeling quite unmoored even though we had ended with a hug.
I realise now, that I really need to bring this stuff up when possible, because when I finally did pluck up the courage to ask, it was clear that Elle was in no way weirded out by me. Like totally not at all.
This is super long – fuckkkkkk – sorry!! -so I’ll end her and then pick up the rest very soon!
I hope that everyone is hanging in there. Take good care of your gentle souls x
According to WordPress this post on Eye Contact In Therapy is six years old today. It’s still one of the most visited posts on my blog, so I think my hunch back then was right: lots of people struggle to make eye contact in their therapy sessions.
This post feels especially poignant at the moment. I wrote it when I was still working with Em…in the time before I started burning through therapists like sand trickling down in an hour glass! The problem with eye contact hasn’t bothered me for years (whilst working with Anita), but I seem be back in the hell zone now with Elle which feels absolutely fucking marvellous – not.
Part of me feels sad about it because it reminds me of what I have lost with A, how easy it felt and safe, but then, actually, I think part of the reason I am struggling so much to let Elle in and to look at her is because of what’s happened with A… because it clearly wasn’t safe at all was it?!
Omfg. Just OMFG! What a bloody few weeks it’s been. Honestly…just once more for festive cheer: OH MY FUCKING GOD! Does the run into Christmas ever get any easier do you think? I’ve been struggling with the ‘season to be jolly’ since I was 14 – or, at least, that’s the first time I really remember feeling like I couldn’t cope and fell face first into the doom vortex on the 26th December before finally getting spat out and back into some semblance of reasonable coping early in the new year.
These days the festive doom and gloom seems to hit hard in mid-November and continue on right through to January…because I like to take my time over these things and really get the full experience of shit for as long as possible (!). To be honest, the moment the Christmas chocs hit the shelves in … October (?)… I start my steady decent into *waves arms around* this fucking mess. It’s gloriously tragic.
Unsurprisingly, this year is/has been terrible – but then it was always going to be, wasn’t it? I probably sound hyper and manic but I am really just trying not to collapse. I’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster lately and it’s been pretty bad at times like I said last time I came here for a moan.
Tbh It’s hard to know where to begin today. I know I’ve been AWOL here again – for a few reasons that seem completely bonkers but then make sense when remembering my system is a fragmented mess of parts:
1) I have had so much to say but just couldn’t find the words or the time (there’s been a tonne of dissociation which hasn’t helped matters)
2) I have been in survival and have spent a lot of time hiding in my bed just to be able to function on a minimal level and every time I have thought about writing I have shrunk away from it
3) Child parts have been pretty activated at times and they just need cats (and Anita…)
4) I’ve been away on holiday this last week (hooray for sunshine, boo for still having to parent!) and have tried to recharge and find some reserves so been reading a lot of books in order to try and escape my brain and all the attachment shit that’s been thrown up lately
5) My laptop decided to get in a big hot huff and then give up the ghost – bloody marvellous!
I mean that list isn’t exhaustive by any means, but you get the picture.
Also, I haven’t really been able to formulate what I want to say about therapy with Elle. That has obviously been ongoing and last time I was here I mentioned that I had been triggered – honestly, it’s been a fucking hellscape navigating this new relationship after what’s happened with Anita and what’s galling is it’s not Elle’s fault or even mine, and yet here we are dodging fucking landmines that keep activating every other fucking minute.
Therapy has always been sensitive work where I am concerned #trauma but I feel like we are now having to work like the bloody bomb squad. It’s gently gently…and even still sometimes we manage to cut the wrong colour wire and BOOM!
I don’t know how to approach writing about the last six weeks or so because I feel like Elle and I have had some ups and downs but the result is that I think we are getting a better sense of each other which is really good. I really like Elle – and I think she is going to be really good for me. But now we are on a three-week break and ARGH fuck me – all the stuff is coming up. Doesn’t take long to feel like it’s all going to shit, and abandonment is imminent, does it?
Perhaps I’ll come back to all that separately because I feel like there are moments that I want to give proper time and thought to…maybe in between Christmas and New Year when I will- without doubt- be struggling (worse than I am now!).
Last time I was here I was talking about the email I had sent Anita reminding her of the agreement to end and holding her to account having ghosted me for a month – and her fucking ridiculous reply, “I am unsure what it is that you are looking for from me” … jesus.
Anyway, I have really struggled these last few weeks. It was inevitable. Christmas over the last few years has been tough (in the way it is always tough) but I have been held through it by Anita’s love and care. She has made the breaks as short as possible, checked in with me (even sending me messages – iniated by her – on Christmas day itself), bought me some really pertinent/heartfelt gifts, washed my elephant … you know, all the stuff that has meant that the young parts have felt loved and cared for even in her absence.
This year that is gone.
And my god it’s painful.
This last few months has been so hard but until now there haven’t been any ‘occasions’ where there has been something to ‘miss’ or be very different outside the sessions being over but Christmas is the first of those massive ouch moments and being faced with just how ‘gone’ Anita is. I’ve been battling with wondering what to do about getting my books/stuff back from A but resolved that was best tackled in the new year because frankly, getting my stories back is going to HARD and the child parts of me don’t need to feel any more rejected than they already do.
I hadn’t replied to Anita’s email either – I’ve been turning it over in my mind a lot (because that’s what I do) and I just hadn’t known how to reply. There’s been a massive part of me that wanted to send her a card this Christmas – which is a massive distance from the gifts we’ve exchanged over the years – but in the end I decided against it. Part of me wanted to reach out and ‘care’ but there was another part that just feels like I am wasting my fucking time and emotional energy on someone who absolutely doesn’t give a shit.
I’ve had a lot of time to think this week being away from life – and as much as I wish I could leave my troubles back in the UK I haven’t been able to. I have been thinking about Anita, I’ve been thinking about the new relationship with Elle. I have been thinking about what I need and how to move things forward.
Anyway, long story short, after weeks of upset and nightmares and generally just not doing great I sent Anita a text last night:
Tbh I didn’t expect her to reply…but when I woke up this morning I see that she’d replied late – 11pm (clearly her work phone boundaries are as appalling as ever) but what came was honestly just a fucking kicker:
I mean I shouldn’t be surprised – she’s been beyond fucking crap this whole time – but seriously?! All the months of how hard it is for her alongside her total failure to show any kind of care about my experience has been rough… would it have killed her to say, ‘Happy Christmas RB’ –
Anyway, I’m sure none of you are shocked by this. I wasn’t. I don’t really know what I feel tbh. Disappointed? Resigned? Numb? I am sure if I felt deep into myself there’d be a lot of feelings, but I am not going to go anywhere near that right now because frankly what’s swirling in that vortex of doom is painful and if I can not get swept up into it then all the better.
I know for so many of us, this time of year is fucking challenging. I mean it’s a bloody melting pot for emotional chaos isn’t? Even without therapy breaks thrown in for seasoning! There’s all sorts of crap about families and expectations and grief and *all the things*…it’s no wonder we struggle because it is fucking hard. So FUCKING HARD!!!
I hate that every year I wish the festive period away. I so desperately need the time off work, but I find this time anything but relaxing. I have a lovely family – my wife and kids are fab…and I try very hard to be present and enjoy making memories with them. We have started new family traditions. We have begun to do Christmas on our own terms…and all that is really great. But there is also that shadow that lingers and the stuff with Anita has totally exacerbated the core issue…this year I have yet another mother figure who has abandoned and rejected me and I REALLY DID NOT NEED THAT.
My own mum is totally absent and ghosting me, too. I don’t know why. Most of the year I can cope with the absence of a caring mother – but that ‘lack’ is all thrown into sharp focus at this time of year. So many of my friends are spending the holidays with their parents. Their parents are massively involved with the grandchildren… and I know I shouldn’t compare but it’s hard not to. When your working narrative is that you aren’t good enough, loved, wanted, etc…you’re perpetually scanning for evidence to either confirm or deny it. Sadly, all I seem to get is confirmation.
I know my journey now is to be my own parent and to stop looking outside of myself for someone to fill the hole inside me. I need to look after myself and all my parts – because I know what they need and how they need to be loved. It’s hard, though, because those parts still really need the ‘other’ sometimes – not all the time, by any means…but Christmas has always been a holiday for kids…and my littles are…out in the cold…again. I honestly wish Anita and I had never undertaken the work we did. Reparenting is such delicate and long-term work, and you cannot just fuck it up and run away. I’ve seen it happen so many times now and seen the devastation it’s left behind.
Complex trauma and attachment injuries are not easy to heal – but therapy didn’t ought to make it all much worse. I totally get that ‘in the therapy’ it can be bumpy and that is all part of the work…what I mean is these fucking awful terminations that we seem to go through. It’s mind-blowing. It’s devastating. We deserve so much better.
I doubt I’ll get back here until after Christmas now – so I’ll send you all big hugs and see you on the other side.
I last saw Anita on June 2nd… five and a half months ago. It was an agonising ‘session’ (if you can even call it that). I realised that day, that no matter how much I wanted to stay and see her for another month, I simply couldn’t keep going when she wasn’t fit to be working or handle an ending effectively – she was in survival and winging it. It was simply too damaging to keep subjecting myself to that. Those couple of weeks after she returned from ‘the holiday that tanked’ and said we had to end were horrific. She was so ill, so stressed, and by the final week so much in self-protect that it was absolutely hideous to go and feel like the person I know and love so well had broken and checked out completely.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – leaving it/her like that. My young parts were devastated…still are. Surely Anita in that state would be better than no Anita at all? Well, to them, yes, but my Adult self knew better (maybe). The level of distress it caused me, going to see, crying my heart out, falling apart, and then feeling like the person that was with me wasn’t even fully there or able to engage with my feelings about the situation because she was in survival was traumatising.
I’m sorry if this isn’t making much sense. It’s taking me ages to write this because thinking about it makes my stomach and chest go tight and I feel sick…it’s been so bad. The physical pain that gets triggered off the back of the emotion of it is so intense that I keep dissociating. I feel like I need to try and get this down but getting it on the page is hard because I lose focus mid-sentence and then when I read the sentences back my brain takes me away elsewhere.
Not ideal…but…
That is the reality…
Dissociation, I mean. It’s been particularly bad the last couple of days – I keep dropping things, misjudging space (walking into things), and then of course losing time…I feel like I am suspended between two worlds and can’t land fully in either.
That is the impact this (what the hell is this?) ‘end but not end’ has had. My brain is desperately trying to protect me from the hurt and pain. I guess it’s doing a good job. It just makes life really tricky. I feel like I am in a daze on a level but then in agony on another. I feel like I have third degree burns over my body and everything that touches me hurts. This is making therapy with Elle hard too. This week I have just wanted to run a million miles away from her because everything just hurts.
I wish I was more robust, less sensitive, *all the things* but I am not. I am someone who *feels* and loves *big*… and there is deep wounding and trauma … hence needing the therapy in the first place…and yet here I am dealing with another abandonment and rejection (with Anita) and my system is experiencing this as survival issue. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And the laugh is, I paid for all this! Being dumped by a friend or a lover is one thing – but mostly they aren’t professional at doing relationships, there’s no training on how to be friend…but therapists are trained professionals in relating. What’s happened with Anita is so weird because she hasn’t done her ‘job’ here – she hasn’t kept her professional hat on at all.
Anyway…get back to it RB.
All the way back in June, we left it that we’d be in touch properly after three months (September) and see how things were for Anita. If she was no better, then we’d come back and do a proper ending. We said we’d spend some time to find a way of keeping connected even if the therapy was done. None of that felt great but it felt like it would at least honour all the work we’ve done and the relationship we had. Looking back, now, I realise there was no thought or provision for me in there. Of course I tried to put things in place to hold myself but Anita never once checked that I would be ‘ok’, or what I would do in this period knowing how badly I would struggle. It’s shit really. Like don’t therapists have a duty of care?
The laugh is, Anita was furious when I told her how Em had ended the therapy. She said the way she terminated was unethical, that Em was dangerous, and should have ensured there was an onward referral… The irony is not fucking lost on me now. And you know what? What Anita has done is ten million times worse than Em. Em was always cold and detached. What I wanted from her and what she was prepared to give were poles apart. Her tick comment and the total shitshow of an ending was really just the icing on the cake.
The therapy with Anita has been soooooo different from the very start. We met on such a deep level. The love and care were tangible. I am not crazy or too attached or delusional…the relationship is/was how I have presented it here. I haven’t made it up. I have every session recorded! So, the contrast from how it was to how it is now is utterly mind-blowing. I feel like I’ve got a whiplash injury. It’s been brutal.
At three months I sent Anita a short text message saying that I missed her and it was a quarter of year… She responded and told me that her inner child was having a really bad time and that she had changed her work into couples’ work because it was more head than heart (really?!). I didn’t push for a meeting, then, because she had told me things were no better for her and so reading between the lines, she’d still be unable to end properly. I knew it was definitely going to be an ending now, no going back to how it was, but I hoped at least at some point she’d be able/want to meet to do that…because it’s the right thing to do and it’s what we agreed!!
As the months have passed, I have tried really hard to give A space. I didn’t want to push her over the edge or further away with my ‘need’ because it’s everyone else’s needs being too much for her that sees her in this place (well, it’s more complex than that!) … but this of course, has meant that I have been left holding an awful lot. There’s been no end. No closure. No celebration of the work we did. It’s just been another situation where I have been dropped from a massive height and left trying to gather all my pieces together and soldier on. Every time the second of the month rolls around, I feel utterly bereft. I struggle to function in any meaningful way and just want to crawl into my emotional hell hole and die.
Don’t get me wrong, things are never good these days – it’s a daily struggle. Inside it’s awful and it’s getting worse as time goes on, not better. There is no sense of distance creating healing – rather, I’ve been hurtling downhill on the struggle bus and there’s no brakes. To say it’s scary is an understatement. I’m in a perpetual state of flight and it’s wreaking havoc with everything. I feel like I am living my life in some kind of bizarre alternate reality, or a movie…you know, like the Truman show or something. Nothing feels real and I am waiting for the ‘scene’ to end and regain some sense of being me again. Or perhaps not that…I don’t want to be stuck in this all too familiar version of me: the one that feels unsafe, lost, alone…unlovable…I want to go back to the one who felt held, safe, and functional the one who was starting to heal.
By not asking anything of Anita, or holding her to the agreement we made, I have been stuck in a kind of awful limbo since September. I really hoped things would improve for A but the reality is she won’t have changed all that much in her life and some of it is not possible to change. She’s still working, though, (ain’t that the kicker!) and although she swears it’s the long-term depth work that’s beyond her capacity, knowing her as I do, she’ll be hanging by a thread even doing what she’s doing.
I guess I just hoped that somehow, she’d want to find some way of not severing our connection altogether. I hoped that everything that she had said over the years was true: that she wouldn’t leave, that she loved me, that no matter what she was there for the journey, that she couldn’t let me go, that I was safe with her… you know the drill. And whilst I know no one can promise ‘forever’, I honestly never believed she could walk away and not look back. When I walked out her house in June we were not leaving on bad terms, it wasn’t a rupture. It was a “neither of us want this”, “I love you”, and “let’s find a way to figure this out” (her words not mine).
But something has happened in the last few months to change that – I don’t know what – but I know now that I am not going to get an ending. In fact…I don’t think I’ll hear from A ever again.
I can’t believe I am even typing that.
So, it’s got to November now and the struggle bus has careered off over the cliff edge and gone up in flames with all the passengers on board. I don’t really know what to do if I am honest.
On the 2nd November I text Anita a simple, “5 months. I miss you”. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess maybe I had hoped that she’d dig deep into her therapist tank and think, “I really need to sort this out with RB. It’s not fair to keep this dragging on and we need to meet so we can end properly”.
But, like most of the interactions we’ve had since June – she replied with something so lack lustre that it just lit the fire under my teen,
“I know but I really can’t work at that level any more xxx”
I’ve been hanging on for 5 fucking months and that’s the best she can do??? Like come on, that’s not fair. She is still working AS A THERAPIST and yet she can’t find an hour to meet me face to face to talk with me and get a sense of closure AFTER EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH…and knowing my history so intimately?
It was just too fucking much.
So…then it came…the words that I have been swallowing. I typed a message on WhatsApp knowing that this was it. But I have been so fucking contained, quiet, giving her space and time….and what about me? Where have I been left in this?
Shafted.
I knew that sending this message would probably stress Anita out. We all know she’s not good at reading, but you know what? What other choice have I been left with? She hasn’t offered to meet. She’s just been waiting it out… I guess hoping I would just disappear, and she wouldn’t have to deal with a difficult emotional situation. She wouldn’t have to face what she’s done. Anita is inherently avoidant in her personal life so it’s hardly surprising that she’s behaving like an ostrich when she knows she’s hurt me. But again…she’s a therapist. Suck it up and do the right thing. Do the right fucking ‘ethical’ thing.
This is what I sent:
I’m not asking you to. It has never been about going back to how things were. I know that would/could never happen and not only because you have no capacity/bandwidth but also because the hurt this has caused me means it would never work again how it did because my trust in you is gone and I’m just in a state of survival now. You don’t want to repair that. Or can’t. And so, it’s really hard.
I don’t know how to explain this or get it to come over in the way it’s meant – because this isn’t a conversation to have on WhatsApp it should be in person.
I know it’s really fucking awful for you, and I really really see that. You know I do. I’ve always seen it, often before you have. And this is why it’s so fucking hard for me now- you let me into so much of what was happening for you – and I’ve watched you get more and more stressed and have been unable to do anything to make any of it any better – it’s been hard watching the person I love so much break bit by bit. I have so wished there was something I could do to make things better for you. But then you slammed the door.
It’s so confusing. I feel like suddenly I became the problem and too much and it’s really hard because I didn’t change and yet it feels like massive displacement – like this isn’t all about me. I get your capacity changed but did the love just die too?
Our relationship moved so far outside of what therapy is but equally we’ve spent so long together that the reality is we are also just two human beings in a relationship and it felt deep and important – to me at least. Like I know it was messy and complex sometimes and I really know I can’t go back there like that (with you or anyone else)- but I do really still love you and care about you and miss you.
And this is why I’m struggling – I can’t believe that how you have been with me all this time is just fake or just ‘work’ because it hasn’t felt like that to me. Like when you take away the work what’s left underneath? Because when I take away ‘therapist you’ and the intensity of seeing you all the time I’ve got Anita – someone who I just really love, who I miss, and who I’d like to see every now and then.
And so, this has completely broken me in ways you would never understand. It’s not just a bit difficult or upsetting it’s totally flattened my inner world. You made me believe that I meant something to you and that I was safe. Stupidly, I thought our relationship would evolve into something else eventually. And yet here I am five months down the line and I’m alone with it. I cannot understand how you can completely cut me out of your life after everything. Like it totally screws my brain up thinking that the idea of seeing me in any way at all feels overwhelming and too much.
I didn’t expect us to return to how things were, but I hoped that we’d find some way through this – somehow. Like find another way of connecting.
I’m just left in a state of complete and utter confusion. There is no closure only me driving myself mad with questions that I have no answers to. I find it very hard to understand how you can just stop caring. Like I can’t get my head round what ‘love’ even is if you can just act as though the relationship was nothing.
And it’s not about therapy now. I feel in lots of ways that it got really blurred anyway but that’s not a bad thing – but it’s a reality. I am seeing someone else now and honestly, it’s just breaking my heart. It’s different. I’m not trying to replicate what I had with you because I’m not interested in that, and I also know I can’t go back to that either. So please know I’m not asking you for that.
When I message you it’s because I miss you. Not because I’m asking you to go back to twice a week and loads of contact. It’s not that. But I’m really really struggling to get my head round this. It’s like I’m grieving you but you’re still alive.
I know this won’t make much sense because I don’t make sense to me either.
A. I love you. That’s really it. I just really love you.
So, I sent that on the 3rd of November and have received precisely NO response.
No acknowledgement whatsoever. Two weeks and nothing at all. Not even a “I need to speak with my supervisor and will get back to you”… zilch.
I never, for one minute in all the years that Anita held me to her chest for hours at a time so I could listen to her heart beat, read me stories, told me she loved me and kissed me on the top of my head, washed my elephant, bought me so many gifts – and even a fucking beating heart necklace to remind me of her heartbeat when I wasn’t with her… would ghost me.
A few years ago I wrote a letter to my seventeen year old self here on the blog. It felt quite cathartic at the time. I was still working with Em, and it felt like I was at a place where I needed to open up some big stuff and trust in the relationship. I felt like this teen part was getting in the way and wanted to ask her to step back a bit…big mistake!
These last couple of weeks this particular teenage self is having a really hard time. Things are pretty awful actually…and so I am writing to her again. It has a different flavour to the last one (which I’ll add to the end of this post for anyone that hasn’t been tagging along here for all eternity)
x x x
Dear Seventeen.
I am so fucking sorry for being yet another adult that has let you down and for not protecting you from being hurt again…and again…and again. I need to do better – for both our sakes. Last time I was here I asked you to let your guard down and be more open with Em our old old old therapist…(we’re racking them up aren’t we – I wonder if there’s a record for burning through counsellors?!)
It’s been years since that letter in 2018 but I want you to know that I see that I was really wrong to encourage you to be ‘less resistant’ and wrong to ask you to lean into trusting Em when you clearly felt very reluctant to do so. I should have trusted you then because your inner barometer is (and always has been) spot on. You read people so well, and as much as it can be frustrating for me to have you dig your heels in or go into hiding in the therapy room, I realise now that the only way you’ll trust is if you feel safe. If you don’t feel safe it’s because it isn’t safe– it’s not because you are misreading a situation and viewing everything through a distorted trauma lens.
I told you before that you’ve done a wonderful job of keeping the young ones safe and I need to remember that you are a very experienced protector rather than a barrier to the therapy. You have always let me know when things are off. I want you to know that you weren’t the problem in the therapy with Em and I am sorry that I believed that the reason things felt so difficult with her was because we weren’t giving her the map and keeping her… what did she say?… Blindfolded? … and after a while I felt like it must be true. I felt her frustration with us both and ultimately pushed beyond what felt ok for you – and I regret that. You’d been down that path before and I had forgotten, but I remember now, and I am sorry.
We, so often, ask young people to ignore their gut feelings as if we adults know best (we so don’t – we’re just winging it too!). We ask you to be compliant and disregard your feelings in order to make things easier for us. Actually, what I should have done when you were so vocal and upset was to be far more curious about what was holding you back from opening up to Em in the first place. I know you are incredibly scared of rejection and abandonment – of course you are- but it was more than that wasn’t it?
You inherently know who you feel safe with and with those safe people you feel able to talk and allow yourself to be seen. K doesn’t trigger your nervous system and you are able to stay in the window of tolerance with her. She sees you (and all the others), and she does nothing but understand, make space for, and celebrate you. She is a gift. But you never felt safe with Em, not really. You were attached to her, just like I was but she wasn’t safe. Talk about trauma bonding!
I am so sorry that I pushed and told her things that you weren’t ready for. You were right to be wary and I am sorry. It must feel really painful to keep experiencing the same kinds of rejections and abandonments on repeat because I override you. I promise I won’t do that anymore. I am paying attention now. I hear you. I understand why you think it is safer to stay silent and isolate yourself. It’s lonely inhabiting this space but at least no one can hurt you.
It seems late in the day to be talking about all this stuff with you again now, but this last couple of weeks I have been really aware of how distressed you are and it’s not just about what’s happened with Anita is it? Although that is a massive hurt too – so massive. To be honest, I don’t know how I am going to get us through that stuff right now. I’m struggling too. I can barely breathe through the grief- and I know it’s not just you that’s freaking out now. The entire minibus is screaming… again. I am sorry. I never in a million years she’d do this to us. I never thought she’d walk away knowing what she knows and the damage it would cause. It’s no wonder you’re falling apart. But just hang in there with me, ok? We’ll find a way.
The other day I was telling Elle about some of what has happened to you. Don’t worry, I didn’t go into all of it, but I think you heard enough, and it’s spooked you a bit because there’s the very painful stuff waiting in the shadows isn’t there? I don’t think you want me to go there. It’s been sitting with me for the last 23 years so it can wait a bit longer. I don’t know if I am ready, actually. The anniversary of all that horrible stuff is coming up and I don’t have to resilience I used to have to cope. I don’t feel like I can tolerate any more rejection…the feeling of constant disconnection is painful enough. Part of me knows that the path to connection is being vulnerable but actually vulnerable hasn’t worked out great for us, has it? I don’t know what to do…and I am meant to be the adult here!
I never let Em or even Anita near this stuff of yours so I can understand why you feel terrified of Elle who really doesn’t know us at all. And, honestly, I don’t know if she actually even cares… well, she doesn’t care. Of course, she doesn’t. This is just her job. So why would I expose you when everything is already so fragile?…not fragile…broken…the fragile stuff got smashed didn’t it? God this is so tough.
I like Elle but I can’t figure her out at all, and I know you can’t either because you’ve repeatedly shut things down in session and so False Adult has taken over and filled the space. I hear you screaming not to talk to her about Anita…because it’s not safe to do so. And I am listening. The thing is, I know I need to talk about what’s happened because it is killing me, but I don’t know if she is safe either. It’s a really tricky situation. I just don’t know if we can go where I need to go. I don’t know if it is me making it feel like this or whether it’s just the dynamic.
I feel like I am doing what I used to do with Em. I feel like it’s really ok to do the ‘head’ stuff but we are soooo needing the ‘feeling’ stuff. We need a relational experience and relational repair and containment and holding… but I don’t feel like there is a relationship. I feel chronically alone. Perhaps it’s because I’m hiding you and the little ones but ugh…it’s painful. I need a sense of there being an ‘us’ in the room, not just a ‘me’ being watched from the other chair. Wanting to connect feels dangerous and the idea reaching out but then being rebuffed feels worse. We’ve been there before so it’s not surprising we are tentative. The thing is, detached relationships feel so fucking triggering to us – but I also know our need for connection feels stifling…for Em at least. I don’t know what to do.
That’s probably not fair, actually. Elle has no idea of any of the stuff I find really difficult…and not just emotionally, but there’s the simple in the room stuff too. It all works together to make a fucking disaster, doesn’t it?!
UGHHHHHH!!!
Being sat opposite someone again rather than next to them feels really uncomfortable and exposing. The table between us feels like another barrier and evidence of the distance between us that will never close. I create enough glass walls to separate us as it is, but these physical barriers feel like being pushed away. It’s really tricky. I feel like I am under the spotlight and want to hide in a dark corner. I miss Anita being beside me – both literally and metaphorically. Now I feel tense. Exposed. Rigid. I don’t relax. I feel like I need a soft toy to ground…I think you do too. All of this is working against us. I cannot believe just how massive the loss of physical proximity and touch has been. I just cannot regulate at all, and this is causing you, especially, a lot of difficulty. I hate this so much.
Since that session where I talked about what it’s been like for you, it’s as though you have taken over my mind and body…which is probably why we ended up going completely the wrong way in the car the other day! I have been so dissociated, sometimes completely frozen, but mostly I am massively conscious of feeling like I want to self-harm…or worse. And I know that’s not me. It’s you. You are showing me and telling me that you have reached your limit. You have coped and coped and coped and now you’ve run out of coping. I get it. I have no idea what to do about it, though.
I can’t seem to find a way to make this better because my coping has gone too. I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t hold this pain. I sent Elle message and told her I want to leave and run away. I don’t think she cares, she’d fill the time just like Hannah, Anita, and Em. Clients keep coming on the conveyor belt.
I joined some dots in the week, and it was as though yet another trapdoor opened up and another cavern of darkness awaited us. Sometimes inner revelations don’t feel good – I guess this is why our brain hides so much from us- it’s protective. This reminder just felt massively upsetting. It’s been so fucking hard for you hasn’t it? Like always…
I can really understand why you felt so betrayed when I let Em know the extent of the eating disorder that was so active again in 2018. She’d told me that I could bring anything to the room and when I shared the details of the ED with her it felt like a massive weight had been lifted. I’d been holding this ‘secret’ for twenty years and I genuinely believed that we might finally get some help. But then she delivered the ultimatum about ending the therapy shortly afterwards and it felt absolutely horrendous. It had been such a massive exercise in trust letting her know that stuff and then all of a sudden, she was threatening to terminate.
Actually, it was too much for her. And you knew it, didn’t you? I still feel physically sick when I think about it. It was the same when we finally did come to the ending in 2020. She said we could work through anything and that I needed to take a step towards her, that I could express my anger…and then look… she was gone. You knew it would happen. I wanted to believe it wouldn’t.
Anyway, you reminded me why that all felt so bad this week. It wasn’t just Em betraying your trust. It was a replay of H wasn’t it? She did the same. I remember you finally telling her what was going on for you after struggling alone for two years with active anorexia. You hadn’t seen her since you were fifteen and the change in your body had been massive by the time you saw her. You were/are so unwell. She didn’t say anything at the time but when you got back home, she brought it up on the phone didn’t she? She seemed to really listen and after three hours talking you ended the call feeling like maybe things might be ok now – it was that same sense of relief I felt having told Em. There’s something so soothing in being seen…until what you’ve shared gets thrown back in your face.
Your eating disorder is really complex and really dangerous. It know you are desperately trying to cope with feeling out of control but it’s also hiding who you are, taking up less space. Maybe if you can just completely disappear all the pain that you are feeling will disappear too. I don’t think I have ever really looked back at how awful it is for you being in the closet, feeling completely alone and struggling with how you feel about H and your sexuality. I mean add that onto the abuse you’re being put through at home…it’s no wonder things are a mess. I feel that sick feeling in my solar plexus just typing this, so I know that pain hasn’t gone for you and needs to be explored… the fact I have been in therapy for most of my adult life and have never gone near this stuff really shows how vulnerable it feels.
Just like Em, H delivered you an ultimatum. But worse than that, she actually walked away. She told you you were too much and that she needed space. She said that we’d take three months … and then talk. That never happened. We never came back to talking about what happened. It was four years before we caught back up. I was twenty-one then and in a much better place but I’ve never really recovered from what happened for you then and there you are stuck carrying so much still. It’s all so raw. And then of course this all plays into what’s happened with Anita. We were meant to leave it three months so she could figure out where she was at. We were at least meet to properly end if she was no better. It’s five months in now…and we’re in limbo. You and I have been here before.
Rejection and abandonment… I wish I could remove these words from our vocabulary. I am so sorry. I don’t understand how this stuff keeps happening to us. People tell me it’s not me but it feels like I am the common denominator in all this. I don’t know what to do. x
Here’s the original:
Dear Seventeen,
I’ve just read your diary. Please don’t be mad. Wait and hear me out a minute. I know how angry you were when you woke up to find dad reading your diary on holiday in Mexico and how violated you felt back then; but please know that I am not deliberately prying into your private life or being nosy. I’m just trying to understand you better. And honestly, I am good at keeping secrets, in fact I’ve been holding onto yours for the last seventeen years of my life. I’m not here to judge you and I promise that you can trust me.
We haven’t met before. Well, I know all about you (more than you realise) but I don’t think you are aware that I even exist. I’ve been watching you stuck in your own private hell for a long, long time now. It’s like Groundhog Day for you in the year 2000 isn’t it?
Too often I have turned away from you when I should have reached out to you. I have ignored your pain and your suffering because I haven’t known how to help you. Sometimes I have wondered if you even want to be helped.
I don’t know if you know it, but sometimes you take over my body in the present (which, by the way, is 2018 and means you’re often roaming around a stretch-marked 34 year old bod’ – yeah I know, it’s not great – and to think you hate your body now is incredible!) and react to my current day issues as though you are being hurt again in the way that Mum and H hurt you. It’s like my life triggers flashbacks from your life and you (and I) are reliving the pain over and over again.
I can feel your anxiety and fear coursing through my veins. I can’t speak and I go numb. I shake. I feel your frustration. I haven’t know what to do and neither have you. I’ll admit that I have felt overwhelmed by your feelings. I know you have things to say but I also know that you are very very frightened. I understand how desperately alone you feel. It broke my heart reading your account of the pain you feel inside. I know how hard it is. I remember it well.
You feel like you have no one to listen to you and that no one cares. It feels so difficult to trust anyone. You fear getting close to people and letting them in because you think you’re going to be rejected or abandoned or ridiculed – and you don’t think you can survive it again. This year has been the hardest one yet, for you, and I am not at all surprised that you just want to run away from everything and anyone that might hurt you.
So you isolate yourself in order to avoid being hurt but you can’t be alone forever. In your heart, deep in your soul you know you need love and connection. We all do. I know it feels risky seeking that out. I know you fear annihilation. I get how scary it feels to consider opening up again after what’s happened. You are still heartbroken but the only way your heart is going to mend is through letting someone heal it with you; currently you have a handful of shattered pieces and no glue.
There is no shame in wanting to be loved. You needn’t be embarrassed for feeling love either.
You probably won’t believe me (who can blame you after all you’ve been through); but if you can find a way to trust me, I think that I am the person that you have been waiting for. I can help you, listen to you, and love you…if you’ll let me. I really want to make things better for you – for both of us- because right now your pain is my pain and it’s crippling the pair of us.
I’m so sorry, so very sorry that circumstances have made you feel like you are not worthy of love and care. How things have been with mum are not a reflection on you. None of how she has been with you is your fault. You are not unlovable or untouchable even if that’s how you’ve been made to feel over the years.
How things have been for you growing up isn’t normal. I think you know that but really acknowledging that is devastating. You have suffered emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of the person that should have loved you and protected you the most. I assure you that there is absolutely nothing you could have done that would have changed how things have been for you.
I know that’s hard to hear, but I think you need to hear it and try and take this in. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You feel responsible for everything. And darling, some things are simply beyond your control. No matter how good you are or how much you achieve, there are some things you cannot change or control. You can only be responsible for you and not for the actions of anyone else.
What I will say, though, is this: it won’t be long until you are able to start getting away from some of the horrid stuff. Next year you will leave home and go to university, you’ll fall in love (really!), and things will start to get better. I promise you it won’t always feel this bleak. Until then, though, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to hold on tight and keep putting one foot in front of the other like you always have. I know it feels impossible sometimes.
Despite everything that has happened you are still here. You are a fighter. I know there have times when you have been very close to the edge. I know there are days you have thought about driving your car into a wall or overdosing or paddling your surfboard out to sea and never coming back. I felt the pain of each cut you made, and every burn on your skin. I know how you starve yourself. I see how regularly you purge everything from your system. You are punishing yourself over and over again for something that is simply not your fault. I don’t hate you. Why do you hate yourself?
You’ve lost sense of your value – or maybe, more accurately, you have never felt valued or loved. You feel worthless. Don’t get me wrong, I know why you feel this way. Steady and systematic emotional abuse does this to people. Now you feel like you are acting your way through life. You have little idea of who you are because you’ve spent so long trying to be what everyone else wants you to be that you really don’t know how to be yourself. You’ve struggled so hard against yourself for the last couple of years not wanting to disappoint anyone but inside you were dying.
I am so unbelievably proud of you. Coming out was massive. I know right now it feels like the worst thing you’ve ever done and you feel more lonely than ever; but those people that walked away from you, called you names, and bullied you were not your friends. I am telling you that even though it was scary and is still having a huge impact on your day-to-day you have made a huge leap forward into living authentically as who you really are. I know it takes a huge amount of courage to stand up and speak your truth but six months from now, you’ll be surrounded by people who love and accept you for exactly who you are and those people will become lifelong friends – chosen family.
I also want to say thank you. What for? For looking after the little ones. You are a force to be reckoned with, for sure! They are very lucky to have you as a protector. I know it’s difficult living your life when you continually have distraught children demanding your attention. It is not your job to hold them. It was never your job to look after them, but in the absence of an adult to care for them, you’ve done a brilliant job.
I have children (a boy and a girl). I see a lot of you in them because I remember you as a child, too. You were innocent and vibrant and full of life. You had so much love to give and then something happened and you started holding everything inside and that light you exuded steadily faded until it is now barely a flickering flame inside you. I know right now you feel bereft because, to you, coming out equates to you never having children and you so desperately want to be a mum. I’m not a time traveller but I am telling you this – children are going to be part of your future and that flame will burn brightly again in the love you have for your babies.
You are incredibly strong and I recognise just how much effort you put in to surviving. Sometimes the best you can hope for is just to keep on keeping on. You’ve done amazingly. Don’t roll your eyes! I mean it. The fact that in the face of so much pain you have still somehow held it together, passed your exams, can drive, and are alive is testament to your spirit. You are so driven and this is a good thing. It’ll take you a long way in life. But do you know what? You need to learn to relax too.
You need to let your hair down every now and again and have fun. You are so serious – so grown up- because you’ve had to be. As I said earlier, I am here now, for you and for the little ones – if you want me to be. So I am giving you permission – please relax and start to heal. The adult you all need/ed is here now. I’m not super woman but I promise you that if I can be there for you when it starts to feel scary then I am going to be there – and I am not going anywhere.
Things aren’t going to feel better overnight, I think we both know that. If things are to improve then we are going to need to work together on this. And so there’s something I need to ask you to do for me. I know you know about the therapist that I see each week because sometimes you hijack my session and stamp your feet a bit; or sometimes sit there silently raging and planning how you’re going to hurt yourself when you get the chance. Between you and the little ones there’s not a great deal of space for me in the sessions. I am, in no way, complaining about this, but I was wondering something.
I know you really like therapist but it feels risky to have feelings for her. You are attached to her just like the young ones are, ok perhaps in a slightly different way, but you do love her. And that’s ok. You want to be known by her. The idea of her really seeing you is both appealing and terrifying. Sometimes you let her see you, the real you, and other times you shut her out. When you feel close to her the alarm bells ring and you instantly back away.
Look, I’ve known this woman for six years now and I’ve been in therapy with her for three. I trust her but it’s not me that needs to talk. I’m ok. Do you think that maybe you might tell her how things are for you? Or if you can’t, do you think maybe I could tell her for you?
You’ve been holding onto this pain for such a long time, and I have been sitting on your secrets for as long as you’ve been alive and I think it’s time for us to move on.
It’s coming up to three months since I last saw Anita and I can honestly say that the feelings of grief, hurt, rejection, abandonment, anger…the list goes on…aren’t getting any better, easier, or more manageable. I remember angrily spitting “Oh shut up!! -What would you know?!” at Anita when she told me, “You’ll get through this, you know”, as she was physically and emotionally peeling herself away from me in May.
Her meaningless platitudes infuriated me at the time, and seemed to completely miss how big a deal our termination would be given where we were in the work and the nature of what we had been working on for more than three years. I mean you can’t do deep attachment work with so much focus on young child parts and trauma and then just walk the fuck away leaving all those young parts rejected and abandoned AGAIN. It’s fucking retraumatising, which in case anyone is in any doubt, that is not the aim of therapy!
I remember how I felt really upset that Anita couldn’t/wouldn’t truly acknowledge/understand just how devastating the end would be for me in that really horrible couple of weeks where we just weren’t able to find a way to resolve things. She kept repeating “I know this is hard for you.” Hard? This isn’t fucking hard. It’s been completely catastrophic…and that’s not me being hyperbolic, it’s completely floored me.
I honestly can’t find the words to describe just how utterly horrific this has been on so many levels. ‘Hard’ feels insulting, frankly. But then I think if she truly entered into the reality of what she’s done, the guilt and shame would have been overwhelming for her. She always prides herself on working ‘ethically’ but in so many ways what’s happened this last year or so has been miles away from ethical. And by the very end, she simply didn’t have the capacity to hold anything of my experience. She couldn’t even hold her own.
Still, the downplaying or avoiding the magnitude of the situation felt shit even if what she was saying was meant to appeal to the resilient part of me that refuses to give up and powers on through regardless. Of course, I’ll ‘get through it’ because I have no choice but to get through it. I have kept going, but it has come at a massive cost. What I really needed was for those young parts, the ones that have been left feeling so hurt and confused, was to be seen and held in what has been one of the most distressing emotional experiences of my life.
Instead, I was left and had to watch the person who has seen more of me than anyone else and mothered me and loved me in a way that I’ve never experienced before, walk away with what seems like not so much as a backward glance.
As a child I had to wave my mum off on a train every Sunday and wait until Friday for her to return…for six years… I seemed to spend my whole life hanging on for her to come back. And what/who came back was not the mother I needed…she’s never been able to be that from the beginning. I know that’s partly why time between sessions has always been so difficult for me, that an my dad dying suddenly out of nowhere three days into a holiday. I haven’t got a secure base. And yet now, I feel like I am standing on the platform staring down the track and Anita just isn’t coming back. It’s breaking my heart.
I just can’t get my head round it after all the promises and reassurances…the relationship…like how can this even be happening? I feel like a total idiot a lot of the time for thinking that what we had was special or important but then I look around me and see so much evidence of the relationship in a physical form in my house that I just don’t know how to make my brain make sense of it all. Like tell me I am insane – do your therapists give you things like this?
I said in my last post, I think, that Anita had text me the morning before I met Elle for the first time. That was the same day I got the pretty empty message from H too. Anita and I have had a weird kind of contact here and there since we stopped meeting. Invariably, the messages have been pictures or quotes or very short ‘I miss you’ type things and Anita has generally replied with something short and then a heart. It’s been confusing to the young parts because … well, it is confusing! The young parts don’t know what’s going on, or why A has left them. They see the hearts and think, maybe there’s still some love there…an Invisible String…but then… how can there be?
I had sent a message to A on a Monday night – midway through another of my epic convulsive crying episodes. On the Wednesday I got this message from A:
Ouch. More mention of how ‘hard’ it is. Groan. Reading between the lines she’s not coming back. She’s changed her work. She still isn’t ok. And I don’t fit her ‘criteria’ anymore… but where does that leave me? We said we’d come back to do a proper end at some point but there’s no reference to anything about that. I guess she’s still not in a place to do it. So much of it is about her experience – how things are for her and how broken she is. I’ll admit, I feel pretty sorry for her clients in couple’s work. I know it’s probably not the same as the relational depth of long-term work but even so…who needs a therapist who is hanging by a thread and emotionally checked out? Of course, there’s the rescuer in me who desperately wants to try and make things better for her…but can’t because she’s shut me out…not that it’s my role anyway, but I have been let into so much of what’s going on for her over the years that this is a really weird space to inhabit.
This message came in three weeks ago and I haven’t responded to it at all. I don’t know how to respond. I’ve never not replied to her – or had this long in radio silence…but things are so fucked that I feel like there is nothing I can say that won’t end up hurting me more in the end. I guess asking to see her to end makes it so final that part of me can’t bear it. Asking for clarification of what she means is really just asking for another sucker punch. It just feels so utterly shit. I miss her such a lot and can’t believe it’s got to this point. You can probably understand how I ended up crying in the swimming pool changing room for ten minutes after that combined with Hannah’s message.
I absolutely hate this.
Having been in similar territory with Em (well – an unexpected end – and I’m still not recovered from that) I knew that losing Anita was going to be totally disastrous for my system…for me – all of me. And it has been. I’d like to say that I’m doing better, that the pain is less intense, that I no longer find myself sobbing face down on my bed for hours at time – but that simply isn’t the case. Of course, grief, comes in waves, and there are some days that feel more doable than others, but ultimately, when I stop and feel into where I am at rather than avoiding and trying to hold myself together, the truth is, it’s really fucking bad.
I think I spend a lot of my time in denial or dissociated where this stuff is concerned. It’s simply too much, too big, too overwhelming to deal with on my own – and whilst I am not quite ‘on my own’, I am still only four sessions in to work with Elle having had it all go tits up with Hannah after eight sessions, and so I feel like I am right back at the beginning again. It’s not ideal. I feel like I am in a spin cycle in a washing machine and just don’t know which way is up…and am drowning too. Awesome.
The kind of holding and space I need to really deal with losing A isn’t there yet – and probably never will be simply because one session a week just isn’t enough – but it’s what I can afford. Honestly, I really feel like people like us have been dealt a massive heap of shit. It’s bad enough experiencing the debilitating trauma related stuff in the first place, but not being able to fully access what we need to heal it is total bollocks. This is another horrible side effect of ending work with Anita. We had agreed a payment that worked for both of us and enabled me to access the frequency of therapy I needed. Two sessions a week makes life feel just about doable for me and so losing that, and her, is such a massive blow on so many levels.
Elle is ‘there’ in the session, and I really like her, but she’s new to me and she’s not Anita. Of course, the outside session contact has disappeared too… and with that, another level of holding and containment has just evaporated overnight. It’s massive really how much of my emotional scaffolding has been ripped away from me. It’s so hard because I just really struggle to hold any sense of Elle being real from week to week and so I guess I feel like I am almost starting afresh every week…and we kind of are because it’s so new, but this is also the fall out of complex trauma and the whole lack of object constancy stuff. It’s utter shit. But I just don’t have the energy to broach any of it. Any ‘no’ right now is just going to feel epically rejecting and I just can’t go there.
I am struggling such a lot in the week right now and really really need to be ‘seen’ but then there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be viewed as some pathetic blubbering mess who can’t cope with a therapeutic relationship ending (although we all know it was so much bigger than that) even if that’s exactly what the most pressing issue is. I don’t want to overwhelm Elle with my massive feelings. I don’t want her to freak out and go, “Oh shit, this is going to be a right fucking mess in a few months!” and exit stage left because, let’s face it, ‘stage left’ is getting kind of cluttered with exiting therapists now!
I guess, I don’t want to lose yet another therapeutic support by being too much, albeit in a different way to how it was with H. At least I still have my writing! What happened with H has thrown a massive spanner in the works and I feel like I have had my legs taken out from beneath me again – mind you I wasn’t standing, merely trying to get back up after what’s happened with Anita. It feels like being a contestant in that gameshow ‘Gladiators’ from the 90s. I feel like I am running the gauntlet being repeatedly pummelled…I mean I guess I should be grateful that it’s not being done by anyone in a scary Lycra number, but it’s shite all the same!
Sorry, I am really rambling today…I could have just written a sentence today:
This is killing me.
But hey, let’s keep going with too many words!
Part of me is desperate to take off my armour when I see Elle and just cry in her presence – because thirteen weeks carrying this stuff on my own is too much. Thirteen weeks without Anita is…just…soul destroying. Part of me wants to turn up to Elle’s with my soft toy, take off my shoes, and just let that stuff be there in the space because it is so fucking heavy carrying this alone. But I can’t seem to go anywhere near what’s happened with Anita when I get in the room. I outlined a bit in week one but since then I go anywhere but there. I guess there’s a part of me that is anxious and has no idea how she’d respond to my uncalibrated emotion because I don’t know her…and she doesn’t know me. I literally have no idea what her opinion of me is. Does she even like me? Who knows? Could I ask? Yes – but would I want the possible answer? Nope. Not right now.
I think there’s a part of me that worries if I am really vulnerable and exposed, she’ll be like Em and leave me stranded in agony and so right now it’s easier to suffer on my own because I can manage that pain (sort of). Showing someone the reality of just how terrible this all is and for them to sit there like they’re watching a spectator sport would make me feel even more alone and isolated than I already do. I’m not saying any of this because of anything that Elle has said or done to make me think she’d do that – it’s purely my own fear driving this. I am scared. And ultimately, who I really want to be there with me in this and to hold me through it, is gone.
There’s probably another part of me that is reluctant to get too close to Elle because she is looking to move to purely online work in December and as much as I thought I would be just about ok with that (I am actually delusional aren’t I?!) , I really won’t be if I get too used to being with her in person and feeling like that room and that space with her is my safe place. The idea of having that taken away would be too much so it’s probably best not to go there, not to get to used to it, and not be reliant on it/her – whatever. Yeah, yeah, I know I am meant to be my own safe space, place, person…but let’s be real here – I am not! Yet.
So, instead of falling apart… and letting Elle into that part of my experience…I find myself talking about stuff that, I guess, lets her get to know me (because there’s significant back catalogue of shit), or a side of me – but it’s not the broken, vulnerable, utterly desperate part/s of me. It’s not false adult, either. I think it’s my actual adult-self that’s turning up, but it’s an adult self that is now so fucking fragile that I’m using every adaptive skill and strategy I have to make sure I don’t fuck this up. I imagine I come over as competent, emotionally intelligent, and generally ‘reasonably’ together (don’t laugh!). In fact, Elle wondered in one of our first sessions why I am not doing her job. H said exactly the same thing. K says it all the time, too. But being told I’d make an excellent therapist – or that adult me would (!) – doesn’t really do much for the little parts who are just crying out to not be left alone any longer. There are so many ‘not together’ parts that need attention.
I mean, it’s tough. It takes me such a long time to build trust and feel safe in a relationship and that isn’t going to get any better after what’s just happened, is it?! As much as I need somewhere and someone to process this with, I am so fucking wary now. I obviously want to do the work. I want to build a relationship with Elle. I just also know I don’t have it in me to be hurt very much more. I know at some point I’m going to have to take a step towards her…but I actually feel a bit sick thinking about doing that. That’s the level of anxiety and fear I have around this now.
Oh, fuck me. This is beyond exhausting. And yeah, I think I am circling the next trapdoor as I fall into a deeper depression. Most excellent.
A couple of years ago I left a therapy session with Anita and as I walked towards the gate, her son had his head in the bonnet of the car on the driveway. He was fixing something for A. Fortunately, he didn’t look up and I was able to leave without being seen. I didn’t feel much about it at the time, and I have literally only just remembered that this had even happened as I lead into the main bit of this post! Isn’t it weird, then, that a chance viewing of one of Anita’s children had absolutely no impact on me at all…and yet seeing the other (her daughter) set all kinds of shit off?! Hmmmm, I wonder why that might be?!
Let’s be clear, Anita is not a blank screen in my therapy AT ALL. Indeed, she is the complete antithesis to Em who revealed absolutely nothing about herself during the time we worked together. I know Anita has two adult kids and some grandkids – she mentions this on her website and occasionally mentions them in session. Most of the time that’s fine…ish (!). It really depends how I am feeling in myself and in the relationship with Anita in the moment.
If I feel settled and secure, then it really doesn’t bother me for her to reference her kids or something she might have done with them but other times (when the young parts are feeling vulnerable) it feels like she’s pouring salt directly into the mother wound. This feeling has got significantly worse in recent months, in part, due to the fact that her adult daughter has moved back in with her so she’s there nearly all the time working from home when I am having my sessions.
As I said in a recent post, sometimes I can hear her daughter moving around the house and it can feel … I can’t really explain it… awkward, I guess. There’s a kind of jealousy, perhaps, too. I feel jealous that I get so little of Anita’s time and attention these days, and so I really don’t need to be reminded of her daughter being there. I think I also feel a bit weird if Anita is reading me a story and I then hear daughter moving around. Because let’s face it, whilst we are working with my child parts in those sessions – it must sound a bit fucking weird hearing your mum reading kids’ stories to an adult.
Anyway, it is what is and I don’t let this get in the way of me getting what I need in the sessions – I just wish she wasn’t there (read into that what you will!). I try not to bristle when A says something about her family. Her family are clearly really important to her – as they should be. I guess, for lots of us though, when we know our therapists are close with their family, and involved with their kids and grandkids, it can feel like another reminder of exactly what we don’t have.
Like, “Look what you could have won… but didn’t.”
Therapy, at times, can feel like a brief escape into a fantasy world of what it might have been like had things been different (what we needed) when we were kids. Having someone who actually pays attention to us, listens, sees, and responds to us and meets some of our needs, is in so many ways the basics of interaction and caring for a child, but when it’s been missing our whole lives it feels like a magic balm receiving it as an adult! Having an attuned therapist has done such a lot for me…even if I am, yet again, whining about something that’s happened!!
Of course, therapy isn’t just playing at getting the mum we wanted. Well…it’s not only this (LOL!), there’s tonnes of work and pain to sift through as well. Often, it’s the fantasy relationship that triggers the sore points in us so that are then ready to be worked through and with (so long as the therapist is open to that and can cope with attachment stuff). I mean mine and Anita’s relationship is real, not just in my head, not only fantasy, but the child parts definitely see her as a mother figure. Adult me knows she’s my therapist but that’s an important role too and that client therapist relationship is valuable.
I am phrasing this really badly– wandering as usual! – but basically because Anita and I laid some pretty robust foundations at the beginning of my therapy, when the child parts and attachment stuff finally went live in summer 2020, we were well placed to deal with it. All the work we’d done at the beginning when I went to her when Em and I were hitting the skids and then terminated really left a clear map of what was likely to come up eventually between A and I. Anita’s absolute calm, care, and empathy hearing the absolute state of it when we first met meant that I knew that there was space for whatever might come AND THERE HAS BEEN A LOT!
I think this is really different to when I worked with Em and the aching need and attachment stuff came up and I had no idea what was going on, or why, or how to even deal with it. I was just drowning in shame week in week out. But Anita could see from the get-go that I had gone headlong down the hole with Em and triggered all my wounding in the relationship with her. Transference 101.
Anyway, get to the point RB…
So, we all know that my relationship with Anita is…deep? Yeah. It is. It’s close. It’s human and it’s fucking MESSY at times. We work through stuff in the room and it’s very specific to me and my need and my trauma. As we also know, a significant amount of my trauma stems from my mother wound…which leads to fun times! The bits that hurt the most are the bits where the young parts are triggered and feel unseen, unloved, inadequate, ‘less than’ – [insert endless negative feelings list here]…
Sooooo, a few weeks back it was absolutely pissing rain and I arrived at therapy at my usual time. I never arrive early – always bang on 10am – because I know what it’s like when students rock up early and I am still doing something else. Also, I figure if I arrive on time then Anita should be ready for me. So, that particular morning I had driven to therapy feeling a lot of feelings. It was right smack in that time when Anita’s wheels were falling off and my child parts were going wild inside but I had been keeping it to myself for fear of sending her over the edge. I had intended to go to that session and try and articulate what was happening for me because I was out of coping – I was in the zone and ready to go.
So, imagine my shock when I was head down trying to keep dry, little parts on the surface, and I walked through the gate, looked up, and there was Anita’s daughter coming out the front door.
Fuck.
I mean what a fucking fuck?! Of course we know these people exist. Of course I know she bloody lives there! But there’s something really different between having the knowledge of someone or hearing them moving about to being face-to-face with them unexpectedly. I instantly snapped into adult and pasted on a friendly smile and said “Hi”. A’s daughter smiled back and apologised for being there and then carried on out. All the while Anita was at the door – so she saw the whole thing.
Ummm.
Let’s be honest. This completely threw me. I got into the room and expected A to make some reference to it. It can’t just be me that thinks that’s a fairly big deal knowing exactly what we work on? I mean basically I saw the ‘sibling’. The favourite one. In the normal run of things I would have said something to Anita but given how it was then, and her total lack of capacity to hold anything I wasn’t about to bring the, “Seeing your daughter and talking to her felt really weird and it’s upset me a bit because the young parts want you to themselves and I feel like these days I get less and less of you”. Basically, it was the fantasy meeting harsh reality. And of course I know the reality – I guess I just didn’t want to be faced with it like this.
So, that was weird.
Really weird.
But then it happened again a few weeks later.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
This time we had a bit more of a conversation – nothing massive but she recognised me. She must be thinking, ‘There’s that client that’s here all the fucking time and never leaves my mum alone!’
So yeah. That was unexpected and uncomfortable. I mean, I guess sometimes parts of us would like to feel more included in parts of our therapist’s lives – but I can categorically say, that the part I am absolutely not wanting to know or come face-to-face with is her beloved children!
Anyway, I don’t have much more to say on that, I just thought I’d let you know as at this point I don’t think you can make it up! I mean I could unpick the psychology behind it but we know it don’t we? Ugh.
Anita is now away on holiday so it’s a three-week break – just marvellous. I’ve got another post swirling in my brain, so I’ll get to that sometime soon – suffice to say my internal mini bus isn’t in great shape.
I mean, the title of this post says it all really? Pre-warning this post ends up nearly 7000 words so you might be just as well making your own inference from the title!
It’s been a long while since I have written anything about the day-to-day of my therapy and that’s partly because I’ve been so busy with just ‘getting through’ my days that I haven’t really had time to type, and also because Anita and I are navigating the rupture from hell and I wanted to be out the other side of it before I wrote anything. The thing is, it’s been almost six weeks now, and it’s still dire and so I think I need to put something down for my own sanity as much as anything as it’s all kind of blurring into one long disaster and the chronology is skewing in my head.
It feels like there’s just been an awful chain of cumulative events that have totally derailed the therapy and I am really all over the shop right now– I couldn’t even get out the car yesterday for half an hour to go to my session because I was frozen and kept dissociating…that’s how bad it’s felt. Part of me (thank goodness) feels like things will work out in the end because the feelings haven’t changed between Anita and I, but right now I’m having a hard time navigating everything that has happened and the changes in the way we do therapy because it’s sending shockwaves through my system and the child parts are terrified.
I guess I should go back where I left off when I was on holiday. My kids had COVID just before we went away which meant some online sessions which are always tough but I had managed a face to face before I flew off on my trip. My holiday was amazing, and much needed. Anita and I had a couple of exchanges – basically I sent her some photos of the sun – and everything was pretty ok until I got home to the UK on the Friday. That’s when the longing of the young parts kicked in full force. I was sooooo ready to see A after what had felt like weeks of not being able to get what I really needed and I really just wanted to go and reconnect and have a massive cuddle. It was going to be a lumpy period of time going forward, too, because I had just one session before Anita was due to be away for a week herself and so it felt really important to have that one session and to reconnect before yet another disconnection.
I sent Anita a message on the Sunday outlining where I was at. I had this sort of sick feeling as the day went on but hoped it was just anxiety and that everything would be ok when we got to see each other in person. Unfortunately, as the universe would have it, that session didn’t go ahead. Anita was away with her partner and got a flat tyre where he lives which meant she couldn’t come back home. It was going to be challenge enough sorting the tyre and still getting across country for the ferry. I was so disappointed when I received Anita’s message but could see how annoyed she was too, and it clearly wasn’t deliberate, just one of those things, but my goodness, the disappointment I felt was massive. It was clear, too, that she had literally been coming back for me that day when she could have stayed put so part of me felt heartened by the fact she did want to come, just couldn’t.
Anyway, no surprises that the online session was a car crash. I tried really hard to stay present and adult but it just fell to pieces. I was sad and disappointed. I had given her my elephant to wash when I went on holiday so it could be ready for when I saw her and before she went away. Obviously, that didn’t happen and so my go to transitional object was not where I needed it to be and that set the child parts off even more. After that session I text Anita to apologise for giving her a hard time and said I understood what had happened, but it was just difficult and that I missed her. I rounded off the message by asking for stories and cuddles when we got back.
The week whilst she was gone led to an escalation of panic inside. The child parts felt so untethered, ungrounded and try as I might to soothe them it just didn’t really work. I was due to see A on the Tuesday as wasn’t due back on the Monday until after our session. Of course, I was more than ready to see her. She’d text me to tell me that she was looking forward to seeing me and I felt huge relief about being able to go in and just unpack how hard the last month had been. Disruption is so hard for my young parts, separation is painful…
On the Monday evening I was really aware of how bloody sore that mother wound had got. It felt like I was bleeding out tbh. I text Anita and asked if over the next couple of weeks we could do some slightly longer sessions because things felt so wobbly and I needed space and time to settle and reconnect.
Probably once or twice a month Anita I have 75 minute sessions and I have written before about how helpful these can be, especially when stuff feels shaky as it gives time to settle into the space, ground, and then let stuff out and then give it time to be repacked safely.
Anita didn’t reply.
WARNING bells started ringing but I tried to put them to one side.
I was nervous as I walked up the driveway for the session but figured if I could just get in the room and the protectors would stay offline then the child parts could get what they so badly needed and things would start to recalibrate inside.
But no.
Fuck.
NOOOOOO.
I walked into the room and our story books and elephant were not in the room.
Instantly I froze and the protectors went live. I basically shut down. I couldn’t even look at Anita.
It felt like Anita hadn’t kept the child parts in mind and it triggered the fuck out of me. I mean it was REALLY BAD. Having had so much separation and disruption, already, it just seemed to confirm that fear that the young parts have of being forgotten about, or not kept in mind, or generally just not being very important.
The session was uncomfortable because I couldn’t really speak – I just felt so little and lost – and Anita seemed to be unable to join the dots. She reassured me that we were ok, and that nothing had changed but to be honest it felt like we were on different planets. It felt like she was phoning it in and not really ‘there’. Of course, it’s difficult to tell when I’m in that state because everything feels bad and listening back it was nowhere near a terrible as it felt. She asked me what I felt was different because from her side nothing was and that she still loves and cares about me – but when you feel little and abandoned it’s hard to say, “Where is elephant and why aren’t the books here and I missed you and I need a cuddle and and and…?” It’s so fucking cringe.
I know she offered me hugs early on, but I refused them. I so badly wanted to be able to bridge the gap, but the protectors just weren’t allowing it. About half-way through the miserable silence and Anita asked again what was up, I was able to reply, “It doesn’t feel safe.” And she asked, “What can I do to make it feel safer? What do you need?…I really am here for you no matter what…” but that was met with more silence. I just needed her to physically reach out to me which I know is impossible for her to do if I have told her I don’t want a hug. (I do want a hug!)
Later she wondered it I felt like maybe I thought she didn’t care, and asked me what gave me the impression that she didn’t care. I was so far gone and wedged into that dark pit of doom that I just couldn’t get out, I couldn’t tell her why I was so upset and the longer it went on the worse it got.
Anita said something about how she knows my system is programmed to think “it’s dangerous to have time and distance” because of what’s happened to me in the past, but that separation doesn’t have to me that everything has gone wrong. She told me, “I am here, and I really want to be closer but you’re not letting me.” After a little while a tiny voice whispered, “It feels like you’ve forgotten about me.” Anita emphatically told me she hadn’t but of course all I could see was the evidence – elephant wasn’t there, and neither were the books and so in the eyes of the child parts they were out of mind and that is AGONY.
I felt so overwhelmed that I got off the sofa and sat curled up in a ball on the floor. I couldn’t bear to be seen and just sat there trembling with my face on my knees. It was fucking awful. Anita shuffled herself across the sofa and put her hands on my back in a kind of hug and kept rubbing my back. Physical reconnection is so important after a big break to let the young parts know they are still welcome, and I really needed that touch. I just wish that we had hugged on the doorstep when I arrived because that would have gone some way to reminding the parts that she is still her and I am still me and so forgetting things doesn’t mean the love and care has gone…but then of course child parts don’t see grey. It’s black and white. And any hint of retreat on the part of the other signals imminent abandonment and rejection and so we are doomed!
I left the session feeling desperately sad and activated. In the past I would have written, got it down in words and filtered whatever was coming up through the adult but it felt really important to honour what was coming up for the young parts and so I did something different. I got out some crayons and let the young parts draw and express themselves. I used my non-dominant hand…which was weird, but actually really freeing. I am not good at art, anyway, so it really did look like a four-year-old had been let loose with the Crayola but that was the whole point, it wasn’t meant to be polished it was the actual feelings in the moment. And once I got going it all came.
I was in two minds what to do with them. Part of me wanted Anita to see them and part of me felt ashamed and embarrassed. However, I felt it was important that this ‘voice’ wasn’t hidden away because it was the true vulnerable stuff. So I sent them and WHOA NELLY the shit then hit the fucking fan – deep breaths for a RB meltdown!:
Crikey that felt so massive at the time. It felt like I triggered Anita into defensive parent, an almost “look what I do for you and it’s never enough” when actually I think what she was trying to do was reassure me and prove to me that she shows her commitment in so many ways. It was just terrible timing, though. I shared the most vulnerable stuff with her and suddenly money and time boundaries we coming into play. I felt like I had showed her how hurt I was and she was now taking stuff away. Jeez. It really set the cat amongst the pigeons.
After a lot of back-and-forth things settled but I felt like I’d been on the emotional waltzers – I bet you guys do too having seen it in all its glory!
Somehow, I regained my equilibrium after that (I have to say having K on my team has really helped buffer this stuff and give me space to process it a bit outside the immediate triggering situation) and the next session was largely adult – I talked about all sorts of things, I was settled enough, felt safe enough, and then with twenty minutes to go I leapt in and talked about what had happened that last session and how it had impacted me. Anita was really understanding and apologised for not having my stuff in the room and wanted me to know it’s not because she doesn’t care it’s just sometimes she forgets and it’s not intentional.
So what’s going on then? Why has everything just flipped on its axis? It turns out Anita is stretched to her limit and has basically had to rein everything in so that she doesn’t burn out.
Oh great. Here we go.
Timing is everything and coming off the back of a holiday and disruption the last thing I needed was a shift in the frame and boundaries.
Part of protecting herself from burnout is changing how she works…which is bad news for me. Adult me gets that people’s lives don’t stay the same and things change – I mean look at my life over the last two years – but it’s felt so fucking hard having my therapy impacted through no fault of my own. Stuff in Anita’s life has got harder and in order to manage that, it’s my therapy and time with her that suffers (well not just that, but you know what I mean). She’s told me that she’s tried really hard to not let what’s happening impact me and tried to keep things the same as I am so impacted by change but she has to make changes or she’ll be no good to anyone.
The child part keeps looping round to “What have I done wrong?” and has asked her several times because the extra time being taken off the table and the outside contact seemingly being reduced too…well it feels punishing. And no surprises it has a huge impact on how safe I feel in the relationship. Things have escalated into a total shitshow when they previously wouldn’t have because I have stopped reaching out for fear of being ‘too much’ or not getting a reply when I need it. It’s basically a recipe for disaster.
Case in point was recently I had a fucking awful dream about Anita- and usually I would have reached out at the time, and she would have responded with something caring or holding and it would have put it to rest until the next session when we could look at it together. This time, instead of letting her know about it, I held onto it, and it just festered and snowballed as the week went on. Then that same week Anita text me midweek to tell me she was having to cancel a session the following week but might be able to rearrange and would let me know the next day…but she didn’t let me know and so I felt panicked and stressed and forgotten about and abandoned….and that was another straw on the camel’s back…nearly at breaking point.
The dream was hideous, and it doesn’t take all that imagination to see what it was about:
I was due to go to my session and when I arrived Anita was already sitting in the room. She was sitting on the sofa, but it had been cut in half, and the part that I sit on had been removed from the room and instead replaced with a desk/workstation. I looked at Anita and her face had no expression (like still face experiment). It was like her body was there, but she was absent. I felt instantly sick. I said, “you’ve changed it” and she swore blind that she hadn’t and “nothing was different”. I pointed at the desk and said “you’ve made it so we can’t sit together, and I can’t be close to you anymore”. And she denied it again. I walked out crying knowing that I wouldn’t see her again.
I woke up trembling and shaking on the Monday morning and it niggled away at me for the rest of the week. By the time I arrived at the session I was done in. It never used to be like this and it’s really taking its toll.
And so we go on and on and on in this messy spiral.
I will get my head round it eventually but right now it’s like I have had the rug pulled from under my feet. I feel like I have been cast adrift. I feel like I am questioning the relationship because if I really ‘mattered’ she’d find the time for me, wouldn’t she? And then of course it all comes back round to the fact that I am work, a client, and she can switch off from me whenever she chooses, and I don’t have any power in the relationship other than to leave. It’s that kicker of a reality check that really gives the critic and protectors power. They will burn the house down.
Part of what’s really hard is that the changes in Anita and I work have not been discussed or mutually agreed, they’ve been imposed by her/done to me. And this triggers back into what it was like as a child. I either went along with what was happening or I lost out altogether. I feel desperately sad that the therapy that felt so containing and holding now feels threatening to my system. Suddenly I want more than Anita can give, but my needs haven’t changed, I am not asking for more – it’s her capacity that’s changed…and that’s really hard…I am trying to get adult on board but it’s tough when all the child parts have been triggered and trust feels wobbly.
And yet, deep down, I really do know Anita cares about me and loves me. None of what she has done is meant to hurt me. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong between us. She isn’t pulling back because of me or because I am too much, but it’s so hard to accept that because that’s how I am experiencing it. It may not be me that’s causing her to retreat, but it is still a retreat, and I am still feeling the impact of it. And no amount of her explaining she has to rejig to be able to work safely is cutting it, because little me feels like mummy has decided that little girl is able to cope alone and that her needs don’t warrant attention anymore…ouch.
And basically, we’re right back in the thick of the mother wound where I had to be an adult too soon. And yes, I get I AM AN ADULT but this inner child work is such delicate work and I feel like it’s hit the skids in a big way. It’s no surprise that I am dreaming of careering down hills and my brakes not working. Argh.
Of course, I still have my two sessions a week. I can still text Anita and she does reply most of the time (just not in the way she used to). We still get to cuddle. She still reads stories. She is still Anita. In so many ways nothing has changed and yet internally EVERYTHING has been blown up. There feels like there is no space for me now. Like what if I need her, or an extra session? That’s not available and so that makes it feel unsafe and uncontained…even though I don’t need an extra session right now!
I am trying to tell myself and remind myself all the ways that things are still ok. How committed A is. BUT those teens and the inner critic can be so vocal can’t they? And it’s hard. Sometimes all I can do is take a step back and go…’but look how much you still get, look how much you NEVER got with Em, and do you really think there’s anyone who would go even halfway towards what Anita gives you?’ and when I do this I realise that actually I am so fucking lucky. I’m lucky that Anita is dug in deep too and can hear me losing my shit and accept it and apologise for her part in some things and keep showing up for me, like we are in the trenches but we’re not admitting defeat.
After the episode (meltdown) with the young parts’ drawings and elephant not being in the room Anita has had the books out in every session. She was so sorry that the little parts had felt disregarded and assured me that it was NEVER her intention and that there was no message or change to be read in her forgetting. So, I try and let that filter in. I do feel her authenticity and humanness – she is not perfect – and I guess this is another lesson to the littles that idealise her. Actually, she’s just like the rest of us – flawed – and she regularly says this herself. But she’s better than anything I have experienced previously, she is a better therapist than Em and she is more nurturing and available than my mum!
It was my birthday recently and she remembered, and not only remembered but bought me a present – a soft toy…a soft toy that I had sent her a picture of last year and said how much I wanted one because they are soooo soft and she wrote me a lovely card, too…unlike my mum who didn’t even send me a card.
Like this woman cares A LOT. She listens and she takes me, all of me, in. I feel it, I see it, and yet because the relationship is so deep and intimate now it touches on every sore bit I have when things shift and change. In fact, I text her after another disaster session yesterday and said, “I love you, but it would be so much easier if I didn’t.” I get that this is part of the work. It’s where I am at right now. We’re dealing with all the triggers and all the landmines, and I need to learn that change doesn’t signal disaster but my god it’s sending me through the crazy mill!
I absolutely love my squishmallow. I love Anita. And yet, hardly any time after my birthday just before Mother’s Day… I got up and walked out of a session … as you do. Talk about yo-yoing! It was another intolerable situation I found myself in. I had got myself worked up about that dream about the sofa, how I didn’t feel like Anita was ‘there for me’ anymore and then the thing about not letting me know if I could see her when she said she would had left me in a state because it felt like she just doesn’t get how impacted I am by disruption. It turned out she could reschedule but ahhhhhhh by the time I found that out it was too late – I was full blown shut down!…
AND YES I DO SEE HOW NIT-PICKY IT’S BECOME but this is what happens.
Trigger after trigger after trigger sees us going mental with the hypervigilance and every small thing becomes fucking massive. I know it, and yet, it’s so hard to step out of it when we’re so far out the window of tolerance – which in my case is painfully thin like a letterbox even at the best of times! I feel like I need some space to just settle and breathe and yet we keep hitting landmines. Yesterday Anita said, “it feels like one disaster after another with us at the moment, doesn’t it?” before enveloping me in a tight hug that was so very needed. The fact it had taken me half an hour to be able to get out the car because I felt so upset about a lack of acknowledgment about a card I had given her…well…fuckkkkkkkk.
Anyway, that ‘walk out’ session before Mother’s Day was another disaster. Another massive sense of disconnection. Another time when I couldn’t allow myself to let Anita close and in pushing her away fuelled the fire of feeling abandoned. She repeatedly asked me if I wanted a hug and I repeatedly said “NOOOOO”. I was keeping her at arm’s length, protecting myself but also, deliberately punishing her a bit, I think.
Parts of me are so hurt and so angry about what’s happened with the change to the therapy and my sense of her taking herself away, that I think there’s a bit of me that wants her to feel it and understand it. That’s new. Usually, my protective parts are all about keeping me safe and nothing about trying to have an impact on the other. But is it her, that I want to punish? No. Not really. It’s my mum. It’s my mum’s deficits and lack of care not Anita’s that are the problem. Anita isn’t my mum and yet she’s been more of a mum to me in the last two years than mine ever has been…and yet, my therapist, poor woman is bearing the brunt of someone else’s legacy. She didn’t create the injury but she’s feeling the full force of it.
In a recent session A told me that my silence and pushing her away can feel punishing sometimes and then she had started to cry. I was blown away. So often she’s said how she respects my protectors and the job they are trying to do so it was a revelation to hear that, actually, my self-protection can feel hard for her too, and that how I am impacts her. I mean I guess it must, but sometimes I think we forget our therapists are not robots (well, Em was!). I had said at the time my silence and shut down is self-protection not rejection, and she said that her having to look after herself was self-protection but I am experiencing it as rejection, too. Neither one of us is aiming to reject the other but that’s what it’s feeling like. FUCK!!! Being in relationship is hard isn’t it?!
Unfortunately, the day I walked out of session – or should I say what prompted me to do a runner was that my silence and difficulty saying whatever it was that I was feeling led the conversation round to the idea of control and Anita saying I have control and power in the relationship and that I can look after me. It felt like she was saying she was no longer prepared to look after me and set the fireworks off again. SHITTTTTT. Reader, that is not what she was saying at all, but it was enough for me to get up and leave. I couldn’t tolerate the pain of the disconnection anymore and ran out. FUCK. Man!!
I sat in my car crying for a bit and then text Anita and told her that I knew we were done and that I needed time to process it. I felt so desperate and lost and alone.
She replied an hour later with:
“If that’s your choice, I truly respect your decision. You need to do what feels best for you.”
Ouch. Ouch. OUCH!!!
That felt so much like the ending with Em. “Ok, thanks for letting me know.”
I knew Anita had a huge few days ahead, which is why we’d had to reschedule in the first place, and realised it was not the time to get into a huge back and forth. I might be triggered but I am not a complete asshole. I sensed she was not on her A game and whatever came next really could be make or break and it would be unfair to expect her to interact with me in the way I wanted when she had stuff on. I was triggered and she was elsewhere, so I decided to try and hold it for the weekend. That was not easy, I can tell you!
Weeks ago, my best friend had an idea that maybe I should catch myself in the moment when things are raw in voice notes rather than trying to write stuff down – partly because Anita is dyslexic and partly because I filter so much when I write (not here obvs!) and so a voice note means A can hear how I’m saying something and takes out that stuff where what’s written and what is seen don’t quite align.
So, I recorded a message to Anita on the Friday and sent it to her on the Sunday. She messaged me on Sunday night when I was down at the seaside. I’d been away for the weekend and trying to ‘not get bogged down in panic’ but I knew from the message she sent and that she hadn’t yet had chance to listen to it but was trying to open the door for me to come back (although it also felt defensive to me), so the next morning, when I woke up, I text and asked her to listen to it when she could and then text me when she had done it and then I’d come in – so I expected her to text at 10:20 as the message was 19 mins long!
I knew it was going to be hard to get to the session because I was drowning in shame and anxiety about how things had gone on the Thursday and how things have been since coming back from holiday. The message she had sent on Thursday felt like she’d checked out (but understandably so given what she had coming up) and I was struggling with that but also trying to tune into the Anita I know. Around 8:30am I got a message from A saying she’d listened to the message, and she ‘really hoped to see me’ and it felt like she was back and warm and basically ok! Phew!
I found the voice note was a really good way of saying what I needed to say in the moment. I was able to really hook into the issue but also let my mind go where it needed. I was able to be honest about how much losing the extra time felt, how hard I find it to ask for things in the first place, all kinds of stuff really- and it clearly landed as I hoped with A.
That session was a tough one, but massively connected/connecting. We talked through so much. Particularly about what happens in those awful states of shut down and what I need in those moments (Not to be told I can leave and have a choice!) but also when I run out or back myself into a corner I need her to give me a way back in, i.e the message she sent but with a caveat at the end “I’ll be here on Monday, I still care, and we can work through this if you want to”. There’s so much processing going on right now! Anita reiterated her commitment to the work and heard what I had to say and it felt ok…so you’d think that’d be the end of it wouldn’t you?
Hell no! We’re on the fifth round of the rollercoaster ride and everyone is nauseous! I want to get off!
Part of me is just watching this like a slow-motion car crash. I feel dizzy from how much stuff is going off. It’s like someone kicked over the dominoes! Another part is laughing and rolling their eyes. Like, I suppose it’s good that I feel safe enough to kick off and get upset and show my dissatisfaction and stamp my feet with A, where previously I’d sit with Em and be a ‘good girl’ and just dissociate instead…. and so that’s progress…but then the level of tantrum and upset is catastrophic and feels like I have been catapulted back into being a kid or a teen when I just want to be ‘normal’.
Jeez.
I’m trying hard not to judge myself too harshly or sink too deeply into the shame when it comes but it’s certainly not easy.
Right, so what else went wrong??!
Btw – sorry, this is so looooong – I should probably have broken it into separate posts but I would forget to schedule them and know I won’t get chance to come back to this for a while so we may as well do big rupture blog and then breathe! Not that anyone will read this anyway – but I need a record of the chaos!
So, of course a lot of this was happening around Mother’s Day…not a triggering time at all is it?! Weeks ago, before my holiday (which feels like a lifetime ago now), I saw a card in the shops for and I really wanted to give it to Anita – this was obviously way before the recent crap that’s gone off. I gave her a card last year and it was received well and so I bought it for her – it was more from the young parts than the adult so when it came closer to the time, this year, I felt scared and worried, and like she may not receive it well. I’d literally just ran out the session the previous week so I didn’t really feel I could go in a give her a card when we had been teetering on the edge of me walking away!
But, after the (latest) repair session I felt more connected and safer to express what I wanted. So I wrote out this message later in the week and took it to session on Friday just gone:
I saw this card ages ago and wanted to give it to you – and then everything went to shit recently and I didn’t because I thought you might see it as another example of me wanting more from you than you can give or me overstepping a boundary. But it’s not that. Sure, I wish I had a mum more like you and I feel sad that I don’t, but like last year I wanted to acknowledge, again, how grateful I am to you for all that you do for me and to thank you for the love and care that you show me week in, week out, year in, year out – especially at the times when I am really not deserving of it and am pushing you away.
You said on Monday that you were like a wall, that you were solid and not going anywhere and despite recent walk outs and tantrums more and more parts of me are beginning to see this – I must trust that solidity or there is no way I would feel safe enough tell you how things feel, have so many meltdowns, and generally lose my mind on loop! Things do still feel unsteady and it’s going to take time to adjust because when I wobble it’s like a full-on earthquake inside – but when I stop and take a step back and breathe, what’s left is a really huge sense of love and gratitude. I really just want to say thank you – for your patience, kindness, generosity, trying so hard to make me feel safe, all the cuddles, stories, presents, washing elephant…not giving up on me or shaming me…and giving me the best experience of mothering I have had. I love you x
And that felt really big- so vulnerable- after how it’s been the last few weeks. I gave it to Anita at the end of the session because it had taken that long to work through the catastrophe of the previous session, and she said she’d look at it over the weekend. Knowing how crap things have been lately I imagined she’d read that and go one of two ways: 1) everything is fine, she’d like the card and the sentiment or 2) it’d be too much, and she’d feel like she needs to pull away.
In the past when I have sent Anita things she would usually respond in some way whether it be a message, a gif, or sometimes a photograph of whatever it is I have given her.
Not this time.
It was radio silence all weekend. I knew she was going away because she’d told me and that had led to another complicating factor about something I had offered her that I don’t have time for now as we’re 6000 words in (SORRY!)! So because of this, I basically went into a massive panic over the weekend. Her silence seemingly confirming everything I was worrying about. Another retreat from me. I threw myself into housework and blitzed the place because I knew that if I stopped, I would fall apart. I’m absolutely knackered this week as a result but better than a complete emotional breakdown!
Because I had heard nothing from A, a big part of me was scared to go to the session on Monday. I felt like I was just going to be walking into the lion’s den of rejection. I felt so overwhelmed. I tried hard to talk myself down but my system was in bits. I could feel the internal tremor or my nervous system freaking out and it felt REALLY BAD. I arrived at Anita’s ten minutes before time and text her and told her I was struggling to get out the car.
This is the conversation that happened that day. I was so dissociated at points I don’t even know where the time went.
Not good:
After half an hour I managed to get myself in a state where I could get out the car and into the house. I more or less collapsed into Anita’s arms on the doorstep and we had a massive hug. When I got into the room Anita was so kind and said she understood how hard it had been to come today. I told her I felt ill, and she moved over to me and wrapped me in a cuddle. I cried and cried and trembled and ugh it was painful. Anita thought I was upset about the other thing that’s too long winded to go into – and I was – but actually it was really the card that was the kicker. It was not knowing what she thought or felt about it.
It turned out Anita had rushed out on Friday and left her phone at home for the weekend which is why she hadn’t replied to a message I had sent on Friday and she was so sorry about it. We only had half an hour because of my inability to get into the room and with about five minutes to go I told Anita that I wasn’t all that upset about the thing she thought I was upset about. She stopped, and wondered what I was upset about.
Silence.
A minute passed. And then I said, “did you read the card I gave you?” I felt Anita take in a deep breath and kind of freeze for a second. I knew instantly that it was a no. I felt such a rush of feelings: disappointment, sadness, shame. She told me she hadn’t. My system went off its tits again. I said, “Just put it in the bin, then”. Anita asked “Why?” and moodily I whispered, “Because it doesn’t matter”… when what I really felt and meant was “Because I don’t matter.” Right now everything feels like such a huge contrast to how it used to be and how it is now and I keep coming back round to the fact that I am no longer important enough to Anita to warrant her time.
I know that this isn’t the case…well part of me does…but there are so many parts struggling right now.
Anita then went onto tell me that she had opened the card and saw that there was a lot of writing in it and had put it away for later because she knew it would take her an hour to read it and make sense of it. That’s how dyslexic she is. I had no idea it was so bad. Hearing her be vulnerable and tell me how much she struggles and how much it takes out of her to write and read really hit home. If that card would be so big a challenge it made me realise how much time she must have spent trying to read stuff in the past for me. Instantly, I felt different. I then asked, “Was the voice note better?” and she said, “Yes, that was amazing because I could hear what you were saying and didn’t need to actually work out what the words are and what you mean.”
She went on to tell me that it wasn’t that she couldn’t be arsed to read my card it was because she physically hadn’t had the time over the weekend to give it the attention it needed. I felt a bit less disgruntled! She told me that none of this is about her not caring or not loving me or me having done anything wrong but that stuff in her life is making her have to really rejig and she knows people who have lost their marriages over the same thing.
Again, that isn’t easy to hear because I feel like I have lost so much lately. In therapy we can be selfish and ask for our needs to be met without considering the other too much – and yet here I am, and my therapist’s life is impacting my therapy – the boundaries have changed and the frame feels wobbly and my safe container feels like it can’t hold me how I need to be held. It’s tough, for sure.
I told Anita I could read her the card aloud if she liked, but we had run out of time by then. She told me she would find the time to read it before Friday but I am preparing myself to read it to her in the session because I know she is flat out. Before I got up to leave, I said, “It feels like you have taken yourself away from me.” Over recent weeks I have said this a lot and she’s kind of denied it or made out that nothing has changed, but finally she acknowledged it – but she reiterated that it wasn’t because of anything that I have done and her feelings haven’t changed.
So. There we are. That’s the last few weeks of chaos. And 7000 words. I think my undergraduate dissertation was only 8000! Lol.
I’ll get round to commenting on people’s blogs over the Easter break but right now I am drowning in work and this rupture! I am very aware that I haven’t actually done much thinking about this stuff here, and there’s a lot that can be said but mainly I think the thing I am trying to take away from this is that people change, lives change, but it doesn’t have to mean that everything is doomed even if it feels like it. At least, that’s what I am hoping. I think falling headlong into my trigger zone has been unfortunate, but it will and has opened up a lot of conversation about my early years and relationships with caregivers. If anything, this unfiltered shit show is giving Anita a deeper insight into the damage and hopefully we’ll find a way through.
Musing on counselling-related issues in the UK. I am a counsellor/psychotherapist and a client too. As the blog title suggests, my counselling journey began in the client's seat. For information about my counselling and psychotherapy practice see my website: www.erinstevens.co.uk
holding it together as I journey through therapy - a personal account of what it's like to be in long-term psychotherapy navigating the healing of C-PTSD, childhood trauma and neglect, an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, as well as giving grief and cancer an occasional nod.
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
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