therapy

Landslide

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I woke up this morning with Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide playing in my head. I have always loved this song but haven’t heard it for a long time, years, maybe. I used to listen to Fleetwood Mac a lot with my dad, and went to see them live with him when I was studying at university. That is one of my happiest memories, being with the best man in the world listening to some of the best music in the world.

It feels like it was another lifetime, now. It breaks my heart knowing he isn’t here. The pain is still immense even 9 years down the line. I’m not sure that the pain of an unexpected loss ever really repairs, I think you just find ways of ‘sort of’ coping and learning to live with it.

Since he died I haven’t really been able to listen to anything I associate with him, or rather us and our relationship, because I just find it too painful. Music keys into a part of me that I struggle to reach at other times, the bits I have had to shut down for self-preservation, and the opening few seconds of a song can take me to a place of raw emotion that I simply can’t contain.

I really struggle with the long summer therapy break for lots of reasons. It plays straight into the childhood attachment trauma stuff (oh, but of course!). It activates all kinds of fears about being physically emotionally left and abandoned as a child by my mother; but it also taps into a whole load of unresolved grief surrounding my father’s death.

My dad was on a month long scuba diving holiday in Thailand in the summer of 2008. He regularly travelled out there to teach diving.  I knew the island intimately having travelled there twice to dive myself in the previous couple of years. When he was on these trips I would get almost daily calls telling me how great it all was. We were very close and talked on the phone all the time.

So when three days into his holiday I got a missed call at work on my phone from his mobile I didn’t think anything of it. I knew he’d call back later telling me that he’d finally arrived and was safe, like usual. When I got home from work and the phone rang again, I picked up expecting to have an update about the visibility, fish, weather, food etc – exactly what I needed after a day of teaching! Instead it was the voice of my dad’s best friend who was also a diving instructor on the island. I didn’t think anything of it until the words started coming out of his mouth, ‘errr, I don’t know how to tell you this…. But….your dad has died’.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember the sudden wave of grief, the instant uncontrollable tears and screaming. I felt like I had been attacked. The pain was unbelievable. I handed the phone over to my partner and just fell apart, it was this event that triggered my breakdown. I have never known emotion like it. Even sitting here now typing this I can feel my body starting to shake.

So it’s little wonder that I don’t cope with the summer therapy break very well. There is a part of me that lives in fear when there is nearly a month’s break from my therapist. I have to trust that the person I now trust with my most fragile and broken parts is coming back. But it’s hard when experience suggests that this may not be the case. What happens if she doesn’t come back? I just wouldn’t cope. I can’t lose another person that I love.

I spend the whole break on edge, holding back the fear and anxiety because I know (kind of) it’s very unlikely that she’ll die on holiday… but then never in a million years did I expect for my fit and healthy, 47 year old, father to die in his sleep abroad, and have to face all that that entails at just 25 years old.

It’s interesting that today of all days, then, as I return to therapy that Landslide, a song that I so deeply associate with my dad, is my internal soundtrack. The song really resonates with me. There is something about the lyrics and the way Stevie Nicks ploughs emotion into them that gets me every time:

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought it down
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too

I have been trying to make friends with my inner child/ren lately to stop ignoring them and their pain and to listen to them, and so the lyrics feel particularly apt as I return to therapy today to my therapist. I have really missed my therapist, but perhaps I just really really miss my daddy, and grieve for the mummy I wish I had had.

I survived the therapy break – so why do I feel so bad?

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It’s Monday today, my usual therapy day, but as it’s a bank holiday in the UK I’m not having a session. My therapist is still on holiday.

It’s technically day 21 of the 22 day break and with only one more day to go until my (rescheduled) session, I know I have almost survived the therapy break – so why do I feel so bad today?

Well, today signals the third (and last) missed Monday session of this break (phew!) and despite my having a session tomorrow instead, there’s something about the ‘actual’ therapy days that I really struggle with when on a break. I’m not sure what it is but it’s like my internal clock is now set up for me to be in that room with my therapist each week, and so being anywhere other than in that room, in that chair sitting opposite her, talking to her just feels plain wrong. I’m not where I should be and I feel agitated and upset about it. I am painfully aware of her absence. It throws all the issues about being abandoned into sharper focus because SHE IS NOT THERE.

It doesn’t matter what I do, I can plan in really nice activities to take my mind off it, spend the therapy money on a treat, and yet wherever I am, whatever I am doing, inside I know where I really want to be, need to be, where my heart is. I know she’s not there. I know her seat is empty. So it makes no sense to be like this but I can’t help how I feel. I really miss her.

Once the session time has passed I feel a little better because I’ve essentially ticked another week off the break. It is never easy on a Monday if I don’t have a session and if I am honest I know it filters down through the rest of the week. I am not as present as I usually would be at home. I try and find time to be alone because I know I am more grumpy and short-tempered than usual.

Essentially the little ones inside me start to have a tantrum, or the Teenager is pissed off and sometimes it comes out with those that are near me in the form of snappy comments, long sighs, or generally being frustrated about totally inane things: toys on the floor, the dishwasher not having been loaded and put on, laundry not in the basket, someone not replacing the toilet roll, those sort of things. I’m at my absolute worst when I am on my own in the car driving. I am a safe driver but I have a running commentary about every ‘fucking wanker’ on the road! I guess it’s kind of funny.

I think part of the problem is that therapy is basically functioning as a lifeline for me right now. I absolutely need that time each week to sort through my head and be supported by someone who can handle what I have to say and hold what I feel. Without that weekly check in I find it really hard to cope. I have allowed myself to become dependent on my therapist and so when she’s not there it really isn’t good!

Don’t get me wrong, I also find the therapy really hard too. Sometimes it feels like it’s the source of my problems (i.e feeling abandoned from week to week and horrid therapy breaks!), but I’d rather be emotionally overwhelmed and possibly silent in her presence, in session, than on my own…and of course I do talk to her most of the time!

I’m going in for a session tomorrow evening and again Friday morning this week. My therapist knows I am hopeless when there is a break. We’ve had a few ruptures since Easter and one was simply caused by her having to move a session to another day, she didn’t cancel me and make me wait until the Monday, and yet I still was sent through a loop. I’m not sure I’ve really recovered from it all yet.

She suggested having a couple of sessions this week to cut down the length of the break and to hopefully recover from it a bit sooner. It takes me a while to find my feet again after any kind of disruption. I feel like I have to start building the trust from scratch and it takes a while.

Last year I did the full 28 days of the summer break, basically fell apart inside, and it took about a month to get back to business. I never told her, then, how much it had affected me as I had only recently returned to therapy. But the long break last year echoed the previous three years without her and it was really hard to hang onto the fact that she was coming back and that I would see her again.

Despite how much I have written about how much I therapy breaks and how much I need to be back in therapy I can’t deny that there are parts of me that really can’t be arsed with it all, too. There is definitely part of me that doesn’t want to go to session tomorrow. I feel so torn.

The youngest parts absolutely need to go tomorrow night. They need to see her and be reassured that she does still exist, that nothing has changed, and that they are safe in the relationship. The thing is, there are several parts of me that are just so tired of all this. Tired of feeling shit. Tired of missing her. Tired of never quite getting what I needed in session. It’s exhausting.

I hate going into session knowing exactly what I need to say and then invariably hitting a block. Sometimes my mind goes blank the moment I sit down and sometimes I have so much whirling in my head that I say nothing.

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Sometimes I feel my adult disappear on me part way through a session, the littlest ones show up, they are crying inside me but don’t feel brave enough to tell her. Sometimes the Teenager attends and is just really fucking obstructive, sarcastic, and angry. By far the worst though is when the Critic is present. I can’t say anything to my therapist and am basically locked in a tormenting interior monologue. All I hear is the attacking voice that tells me she isn’t there, that she doesn’t care, and that I am pathetic.

I really hope that tomorrow I can talk and have a positive, reconnecting session.

I know I will be there. I have never yet not attended a session. There is always some part of me that drags me there. Maybe it’s a parental part?!