"Dust of snow from a hemlock tree". 14th March 2022.

I brought the fairy lights. Slender copper wire, and tiny, delicate white stars. He laughs, as I drape them gently over his bookcase...

And then I'm giving him a card and his money in the card, and talking about how I feel I should offer him a white scarf in return for his teachings..

There is a poem, written in the card. It is the poem that I quote on the first page of my research project:

Dust of Snow

BY ROBERT FROST.

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

He asks me why? - Why offer a scarf?

I say - "Because that's how you do it, you offer a scarf to the teacher, and the money is in an envelope"

I am purposefully missing out the obvious, that I'm treating him as a lama.

He says - "He mentions a crow in the first line. I forget the title of the book - I haven't read it, but I've heard two different programs reviewing the book and saying...and it's a magical realist book, a modern book been out three of four years, about grief. And there is a crow in the book that plays the part of grief. Of course, by the end of the book the crow has flown away. But the crow all the way through the book represents the grief that they can't let go of - the crow that plays havoc with their life. But they still don't want to let the crow go. I wonder if that is what Robert Frost meant?"

Me - "They are quite ominous, and they are dark - and the hemlock 'as if of hemlock I had drunk' Socrates. Are there any associations with crow"?

He - "I'm trying to remember if there is a crow in the Bestiary, and I can't remember precisely. Because crows are black, it was probably some form - some kind of way of representing Satan, that's usually the way. Of course crows represent death in a lot of modern literature, crows pecking your eyes out when you're dead. Or sometimes before you are dead if you look like you might be dead and you are just helpless so; and crows do"

Me - "I'll bear it in mind"

He - "Yeah you don't want to be on a field when there are crows about if you are about to expire you really don't. The crows go for the eyes. Why the eyes I don't know"

Eyes again...

Me - "I remember being sat, on Glastonbury Tor, watching a crow. And there were onion rings - not the battered rings - crispy, like crisps! And this crow had collected...it had found some, and it was picking them up and arranging them. Then having trouble with them. Just playing with these rings"

He - "Yes, I wonder what it thought it was doing"?

Me - "Entertaining me"

And then we are talking about Bran the Blessed, or is it Brian Blessed - and The Tower of London. 

Until I say - "Ah yes, my research - which was a joy to begin writing after the confinement of the assignment! So, I remember asking you questions at the beginning, And I looked at those questions again this morning  to work out what you had said and what I thought"

He - "Remind me what the topic is of your research"

Me - "I can't honestly remember to be honest with you"

He - "OK, well that seems important"

Me - "No, it's not, no"

He - "It's not important to know what you are writing about for a piece of research"!?

Me - "No. I will explain for why. I started off not knowing as much as I know now. So what ever it was that I thought I was doing - in the doing -  I'm discovering what I'm actually doing"

He - "What are you doing? Am I right in saying that your research subjects are only other people on your course?

Again mistrust - a question aimed to find out if I'm being 'ethical'.

Me - "Yes. I wanted people who had undergone a transformative experience; so they had been in a horrible place, and then something had happened and it changed it 'the way the crow - shook down on me...'. So, there is no reason why a crow shaking down a dust of snow would change anybody's mood - and yet...it does. And it did, I think what Robert Frost is alluding to, is true, those sorts of things happen. Random and weird events can transform. But me being me, I want to understand and know more...So I asked you about trauma. My view was a. and your view was..."

He - "Can I just check something before you go on? Because you are asking about transformative experiences, and you are also asking about trauma. Those two don't necessarily go together, presumably because you are asking about the two...depends entirely upon how you define trauma, If you have a very wide definition of trauma, then the two go together. If you have a more tightly defined definition of trauma, then not every body may have had an experience you can define as trauma. so it really depends upon how you define trauma"

Here is a repetition of the same glitch that occurred when we talked about this before. My argument is based on the observation that a traumatized person may experience random, non-traumatic events as hyper-significant and transformative. 

Am I in error when I go with what he has said, rather than try to explain that my work is about 'altered states'? 

Well, I don't need him to understand, and he seems very sure of his point of view.  He seems to believe that the only remedy is the reparative relationship. I don't disagree, a reparative relationship may be the key for some people, but I also know that other remedies are available; my observation is that prolonged stress and trauma cause an altered state of mind, which leads a person to an alteration in perception and understanding - and - that this weird way of seeing can be part of healing. Let's call it the flip side of psychosis. As with EMDR, it isn't just thinking and experiencing, there is a definite way to think about the experience that causes transformation.

That stress alters perception is undeniable. 

Links:

• Trauma related altered states of conciousness. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4440663/
• The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences - https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/epdf/10.1176/jnp.13.4.515

The concept of using hyper-significant experiences as part of healing, begins I think with Jung who assiduously would unpack and imbue people's hallucinations and bizarre experiences - including his own of course - with respect and meaning. I follow on in his footsteps to the best of my ability. But for the sake of this conversation, I don't explain my point of view. I don't feel that there is any room for it here.

Me - "I sort of see what you mean, but if we look at the reality. Each person I asked - I mean I can't say if what they experienced was trauma or not. My understanding of your view is that trauma is an experience connected to - you quoted Balint 'the basic fault' - so for something to qualify as traumatic it needs to resonate with this fracture, this relational / developmental absence, this basic fault - this deficit - this lack of an internal soothing voice to remedy the event. But when people say something was traumatic for them, but from your definition it is only trauma if it intersects with a  development deficit

He - "In terms of presentation - I think trauma is something which somebody brings which is sort of circular, it keeps going round and round that they can't get out of ; it may be cyclical. Lets say on some parts of the cycle they don't feel it - but they get to the bottom and they do feel it - and there is no way of getting off the cycle; no way that they know of getting off the cycle, so it keeps repeating - and there doesn't appear to be a way out. And that's, in terms of presentation, I would say that is trauma. So it wouldn't be something...let's say, that happened last week let's say...it itself. It might be something that happened last week that really resonates with something that happened last month, with six months ago, and when they were fourteen years old, and when they were twelve and so on. It feels like the same stuff.

 

Me - "The 'why does this keep happening to me...''

He - "That would be part of it yes. That's what I mean by the cyclical nature of it"

Me - "So it is a bit like a sense of being cursed"?

He - "Some people actually use that language. 'My life is cursed' or 'I am cursed'. That is absolutely trauma. 'Why do these things keep happening to me - why is the world like this'? That's their frame of reference."

Me - "Ah, OK - I didn't get that the first time that you spoke about it, that it is a reoccurring event. But I also understand trauma as happening when a person is trapped in a situation that they cannot physically remove themselves from. And there is something - the life threatening horror - of that situation and sensation of such disempowerment; that that is traumatic, it is inherently traumatic. That doesn't link to the past, it is that they have been too close to death"

He -"I think it is varying the question to ask if a situation can be inherently traumatic. Because different people have different levels of what will cause them trauma. So for example say, someone makes a living as a stunt-driver. And they are on the road and somebody isn't watching what they are doing and they are going over a red-light and they hit the car that the stunt-driver is driving. And immediately what comes into action is, the stunt driver knows what to do here, if I do this with the car I will be fine. and they get out and they have the conversation 'what were you doing running a red light like that?!' they are not traumatized because it is part of their experience. And so imagine a woman who was as a little girl of six let's say, lost her father in a car accident, and she was in the back - and she is already feeling vulnerable because she is six months pregnant, and the same car hits her, running the red light. She is much more likely to be traumatized, because she has that history. See what I'm getting at? So it's not about events, it is about the event's meaning "

This belief, as logical as it sounds; leads to a way of seeing and interpreting a person's behaviour that casts them as a victim of their past - it is actually the source of the notion that one is 'cursed'. I hear people who tried to manage an impossible situation say of themselves 'I was a doormat, I let him/her treat me like a doormat' and I say 'Perhaps you could not see any other way to make things better, you didn't want to make things worse for yourself - or worse for others; especially your children?  It is quite possible too, that a stunt man finding him/herself in a car crash might feel totally powerless without a camera running and a plan! The future and reality are not clear. For instance, leaving doesn't end the relationship when there are children.  And the idea that a healthy person will walk away when the abuse begins, creates more gaslighting. A person who stays, to try to hold the system together may be seen as suffering from attachment issues, a stunt man traumatized by a car crash - it can't be as simple as, there not being a plan, a medical crew, and a water tight insurance policy? Must be deeper issues (!) But the truth is, life is dangerous -  people in helping professions don't always help. And there are financial implications, disruption to everyone's lives. Calling out a partner's abuse is dangerous...So, is it really all about transference, or is it about power? 

He -"Because probably what will happen in this problem is transference. The woman who is six months pregnant will now associate herself with her unborn child. And ' is my child now going to lose me in this crash - the mother - in the way I lost my father'? All of these transference things will come into play. Whereas for the stunt-driver, who is on his own as a man - therefore he isn't pregnant! - and he is used to crashing cars, it's a bit like another day at work really! See what I mean?"

Me - "I am unconvinced"

He [laughing] "Oh, OK..."

Me - "I am unconvinced because the stunt driver has set out to gain experience of those sorts of events and has had plenty of experiences of similar events. At the point of crash, the stunt-driver is not experiencing something completely unknown and full of lethal implication. It is possible that the woman, after she had had her child and the child is now grown up suddenly she decides that she too will become a stunt-driver. You see I think that you might say that she couldn't make that choice, and I'd say, maybe she could"

He - "I don't know, we would have to go meet her and ask her!"

Ah, another 'we' moment or is it a Kohut manoeuvre to create the appearance of relationship? Is it an indication that he feels a unity with me enough to use we? For a fragment of time, less than a moment; like elemental particles that exist only during the most extreme of times, there is an us and we can do...then immediately I feel it flickering back into the void. 

I label it as an artefact of energies and collisions, nothing more.

Whilst wanting to believe...

He - "But the blueprint will always play out one way or another. But some transferences are positive. Let's imagine a plane crash, and some people survive and others do not. And they have got the food that is on the plane..And that foods going to run out pretty quickly so then what do they do? So let's say there is somebody on that plane who was in the military, somebody who is medially trained, and so on. They already have a sort of protection around them because they are used to being in crisis situations. Somebody else, for whom this is a complete bolt from the blue  and they work as an accountant let's say; they are not used to crisis situations, or maybe they are when it comes round to February and March but it is a very different sort of crisis. so there is a sort of protective element for some because of the transference they bring to this and a vulnerable transference for others. So even there in an extreme situation, the blueprint comes into play into what someone's previous experiences, and their associations with it"

Me - "Are you saying that the blueprint updates"?

He - "The blueprint is constantly reinforcing itself - unless there is intervention. In other words from a therapist, or from a healing sort of person which might be a particularly good friend or, I don't know,  the child suddenly had a good step-parent when the original parent was awful. You know, that sort of healing experience in which case there is a chance of repair, But once it gets well established then it is very difficult to repair without conscious intervention like - well - therapy really "

Me - "So it must be chosen."

He - "Yes, because if they - so let's say a child has a terrible, terrible mother and dad leaves and takes the child with him and then he meets somebody else and they get married and then this child has a really lovely, caring stepmother and everything is thrown at her by this kid you know ' how can you be nice, because my mother was horrible!' and she just takes it, says 'I get it' and eventually the child relents and says 'you must be alright'. But even there the child sort of has to chose to relent and question and say 'maybe you are not a replica of my mother'...which reminds me, that sometimes when a client comes with trauma, because of the way they have organized their life the things they need to heal are not on their map. But sometimes the things they need to heal are to use that phrase hidden in plain sight. In other words everything they need to heal is already available to them, but they haven't been able to recognize it because their blueprint has been filtering it out. A bit like this child, who is kicking against her 'horrible' step mother who turns out not to be a horrible step mother after all - there, she is hiding in plain sight"

Me - "Good old inductive thought - the sun always rises because it does! Until it doesn't. Hmm back to what you said. You said the cure, the cure is the parent in the therapist meeting the blocks in the client. Client get's the affirmation they needed as a child...that was summarizing! Was that a massive over simplification"? 

He - "It's a headline <laughter> it is an accurate headline I think"

Me - "It is accurate - OK. what else did I re-write? It's a reconfiguration of the meanings, empowering, a recasting of the narrative, externalizing the event and seeking wisdom. Sometimes it is like I'm a different person, did I write that ~sigh! Have you ever read Marris - Loss and Change - Peter Marris? So we take our meanings of who we are from everything; relationships, buildings, people, pets, everything and when anything is gone - like Birmingham! I mean when I was a child I thought it was a building site because of the war, but Birmingham is still a building site. But I am used to it because it has been this way all my life! I would feel more cognitive dissonance if it wasn't being knocked down and rebuilt all the time! - but I remember too, on the TV, slum clearances and people being really upset because their neighbourhood is being destroyed, uprooting their relationships with others, yet being moved to better homes. And if you try to pin that upset down - asking well what is it that they are upset about? - in someway it doesn't make any sense; their upset could be called denial or resistance to change. But it is so much more than that, it is deeper. Peter Marris explains this through his understanding that everything is part of our identity; the loss of something can lead to the shattering of the self because we are constructing self in relation to external reality. I come more from his end. So a transformative event  changes meaning - an external event actually changes the construction of the self - or rather, it has the potential to do this. The transformative event is a something, a something changes the meaning. It arrives out of the blue for them, but for someone else observing, the incident may be nothing out of the ordinary at all! Yet it had the capacity to change everything because it resonated with the problem in the trauma"

He -"Hmm"

Me - "Oh, I keep using the word trauma! <laughing> I shouldn't use the word trauma but I don't know what other word to use for it. What can I call it so that it makes sense to you? So..."

He - "Well if by trauma we mean interrupting the...If by transforming the trauma we mean interrupting the cycle"

His tone of voice left no room for compromise. But really, the incidents people told me of did not interrupt any cycle; they catalysed a complete transformation in feelings and meaning. A moment before, the world had been a cruel and hostile place - afterwards, the moment of crow and snow - profoundly altered how they saw the world from that day onwards, continuing. 

Me - "Except this isn't a cyclical thing, and I keep using the word trauma as they use it because I keep forgetting to update. But in this moment, the meaning of trauma  is dis-created by...."

Dis-created. A good word methinks. I sounded then as if I was struggling, I sounded like I was a child actually. I guess his face said it all! And his tone of voice when he speaks leaves me in no doubt that I know nothing.

He - "You see this is why I was saying to define. Because you might say that somebody being told that they have to move house because their housing estate is being knocked down, and they will be re-housed. That might be very unpleasant. It probably isn't traumatic. But it might be traumatic for some people because of the thought that they brought to it"

I used to say - and this would annoy him - surely this is angels dancing on pins; meaning that the talk has in my opinion, stopped revealing anything useful or interesting.. In this conversation, we are now at angels and pins. And even as I write this I can feel how I felt then; that resolute, implacable conviction that surely he knows more than I do? I have to remember that he has failed to grasp my point. Nor am I arguing against therapy, but I am arguing against reparenting, or rather the prime importance of the reparative relationship as all of therapy! I distrust any salvation cult. A relationship based on mutual trust, a total acceptance of each other, the ability to challenge and to know that love remains; is what I'm offering to him to find with me. The difference between a real relationship versus the therapeutic reparative relationship is, that real goes both ways; paradoxically, during sessions I hear and accept so much of him. But, in keeping with our situation - I don't show it. I don't seek to touch body or soul - I 'guard my eyes', I shield my feelings. I think it could be true to say that he is more himself in the room than I am...And I can't be me because of the power imbalance. I've given him the power to shatter me...or rather, the metaphor of choice is, to throw me off the plane without a parachute!

OK, backtrack - I understand the background, his background; he told me of the experience that has created his view that I'm crossing boundaries. My understanding of his fear does not shield me from the consequences. 

Honest dialogue is out. 

We have teacher / student and pedagogy.

Writing the transcript and adding my thoughts addresses my absence.

Clearly I take against the concept that 'it's all developmental' and reparative relationship. As Huberman said 'stress makes children of us all' . Once the things in life that create 'us' are stripped away, we panic and fall apart as children do. For children this happens every day! Adults, we just have more security blankets, and have learnt how to use fantasy to delude ourselves.

And we are back to trauma - the word the people in my focus group used - that isn't trauma (according to his understanding of the word!) I'm saying - but I don't know what the word is if it isn't trauma? The people in my research project were in horrible situations - what was happening in their lives was too much - and by that I mean that humans naturally love and care for their families, for their partners, and when someone close is in danger, or is threatening them, and this stressor is ongoing - for months (obviously this has also been my own experience too!) a normal person reacts to the threat with anxiety. 

I have a deep seated belief that reactions such as ghosting, or other forms of denying communication, and reconciliation, are dissociation - literally. And therefore indicative of a worse mental state than anxiety. I watched this happen to my husband as he shifted from anxiety induced by seeing our son's descent into madness, then rage - as fear took hold - into cold dissociation and leaving us...I entered 'cold dissociation' in moments of terror and then I came out again. I stayed with my feelings, I allowed the fear to wash through me and relaxed - because I had a good grasp on how trauma works and its remedy...compassion for self is the key.

The adrenaline led response, is anxiety. And one possible anxiety response is to keep believing that people are worth fighting for. If nothing is working the next stage may well be the need to run away, as the feeling of powerlessness threatens to become overwhelming. And finally there is avoidance, dissociation -  at worst an opioid 'dorsal vagal' shut down. Which might feel safe, as it kills hope, kills relationship, kills repair. And it leads to discarding, throwing away...moving on (leaving broken people in your wake?). This place is hard to get out of...Opioids are addictive.

Broken begins with fighting for, becomes fighting against and finally slumps into can't care..

I'm saying - "Anyone in their situation would feel absolutely broken.."

He - "I don't know if I'm picking up the right thing here, but you mentioned shame and guilt - and if I have a client where there is shame, what I will hope to do it to transform that into guilt. Because they are fundamentally different. and whether one feels shame or guilt, again it is developmental. And the distinction I'm making is; guilt is 'I'm OK - I did a bad thing, I wish I hadn't of done it, I wish I had known better, I wish I knew then what I know now. Or, I did know better, but I still did it. But now I'm going to try to do something to try to put it right and then it will be spent, and I will move on' that's what I mean by guilt. Shame is; 'I'm not OK - and the reason that happened is because I'm not OK. I am the bad thing I do, they are synonymous' that's shame. And what ever your basic position is, 'I'm OK / I'm not OK' that's developmental. And that sort of shame is a form of trauma"

I'm not OK is a pure source of pain, and pain is a pure source of endorphins. So developmental, or addiction? And if it is actually closer to an addiction, the real question is now how to get out of the need to feel pain? 'Developmental' works here because blaming the parents creates 'righteous' anger, and that's a powerful drug. 

"Therapy should generate dynamics of interaction in which people recover something in themselves (self-respect, love, legitimacy) as well as in others" (I can't remember who said this!) 

But I don't seek to find developmental faults. Though scape-goating may not be anyone's intention, it happens; 'how could my mom/dad do that to me'?! How or why they did it, can't provide a cure, clients who use it - an it is a really powerful cocktail of rage, pain, sadness and indignation - are at a way station. Their destination, as long as they access all their feelings and move beyond the righteous ones, will be empowerment. That's what I've seen, and it is my personal experience. The only cure for a broken system is to negotiate a system that works, that may involve never seeing someone again, but I'm not sure. I say this as someone who has cut three people out of my life...albeit for very good reasons, but I absolutely see it as the worst solution. I'm not happy with it at all.

Me - "In the situations my research subjects were in, they felt 'shame' and 'guilt' but they were in a situation that was telling them - through the behaviors and words of others - that they should feel shame and guilt. So they felt - in their own words - shame and guilt...there just isn't any way for them to make shame actionable. They would have to agree that they were shameful. What they are really experiencing is exile. They are being turned into something/other/objectified and erased".

He - "But again, even an impossible situation where let's say, everyone's view puts me in an impossible situation because they all think that I'm in the wrong, or some say I should do this and others say I should do that - whatever conflict is going on; that conflict can be responded to without shame or guilt; with guilt, or with shame. There is nothing about the situation that necessitates any of those three responses. And the response is about the biography of the person and the meaning that they make of it. Because one could of course say, sod the lot of them! I'm walking away because I'm better than this - and that can come from an 'I'm OK' position'. Somebody with shame would never say that. Or one could say; 'these people say I should do this, those people say I should do that, I'm going to do that because I think that is the right thing to do. And those people aren't going to like it, they don't have to like it again, someone with shame can't say that. Because I'm OK with displeasing those people, I have to do what's right"

Me - "Well yes. Integrity"

But I can see that the subject of power within a relationship is missing from this discussion. 

Integrity first, Western culture values a single-minded, perhaps obsessive focus on an individual's truth. Integrity is often defined as maintaining one's truth, one's values and beliefs and acting in accord with them no matter what! 

Power, the ability to grant or deny the thing another person needs - a person with power controls what can or cannot be said because a person with power holds more resources than the person without power, end of. If a person in power defines you as X and you refuse the label, you better have an alternative source of whatever that person has the power to give you...or you will need something else to trade that gives you some power over them. End of.

'Sod the lot of them, I'm walking away' is the movie version, in this society when you take that stance you have a good chance of ending up homeless and without any qualifications.

Over to you, Maynard.

Why am I having to explain this? 7th March 2022.

The door opens almost before I knock it!

He - "Hello, come in"

He talks about heating, I mention the light. And the coffee is there, ready and waiting for me. I am assignment free for a day or two! The assignments make me feel as if I've been locked in a box, unable to think my own thoughts; that I don't know how I'd actually answer the assignments if I wasn't 'writing to pass'.  And to remedy this sense of being confined I talk about something I wrote for him last year.

Me - "So we must still have been in lockdown, April last year? I remember saying something about 'Seven Sermons to the Dead'? And I wrote you the first one - and I did write another one - but I didn't read that second one to you. None of this makes sense"

He - "Is that a prequal and you are now saying that you are going to read the second one"?

Foolishly I'm attempting now to describe a semi-shamanistic practice of 'riding' experiences. How feeling tones translate into image...I blame the pressure cooker effect of my assignments, I just want to write my own thoughts - and the effect of the past few years is that basically I am a wreck. I say it again that after what happened, I felt as if I'd taken a bullet to my skull. Things stopped making sense, reference points were obliterated. I stumbled through year one of my degree, in a fog. Yet clearly - by my marked assignments, by my practice sessions, and by my conduct in class - I processed words and wrangled ideas well enough. I'm still stumbling, but my eyes and ears are reconnecting - is how it feels - the path is getting clearer

The songs 'Bullet' by Covenant and 'Bullet train to Iowa ' by Puscifer, helped me to return to a coherent sense of time; so clutching my Bullet journal - Mars in the sky as winter drew close, I walked home each evening after lectures, in darkness and despair. 

Music was so, so important for me - the words, especially from Covenant especially so. Their lyrics reminded me that it isn't true...I'm not alone at all.

And I kept writing....I keep writing..

Puscifer reflected the psychedelic twist, the prevalence of inexplicable resonances and intrusions that severe stress enables! But, both tracks express the same sense of unstoppable...

Me - "I felt as if I'd been shot through the head, basically"

He - "By what exactly"?

A request for declarative memory.

What a strange question?

Not 'what kind of feeling is that'?

Or, 'What helped you to keep on studying'

Or 'What you went through must have been really tough then, how is it now?'

The 'by what' question could be a key to open up the contemplation of the inherent emptiness of all phenomena. A mental protocol to challenge the pervasive sense of problem and difficulty. 

So true, there was no gun, I wasn't shot.

I'm being dramatic...

Am I being out-Buddhist-ed again!

I could find it funny.

But no, actually. This really isn't light weight or funny. His response pointing me towards analysing doesn't resonant with the emotional catastrophe of the experience. 

I could, but I chose not to list the steps, the stages, the way I tried to navigate a path through Hell. 

Has he ever listened to me?  

My fault of course. I made it sound as if I'm OK - because I want to be...or he made assumptions that I'm just using words because I like the sound of them, and because I don't sound like a Child. I possibly sound like an Adult stating in a matter of fact way that four years of sleep deprivation; living in fear of one's own violent death, experiencing the fear of the next suicide attempt by one's child - isn't conducive to optimal brain function?

Then suffering betrayal by the person I had trusted and believed in as my partner, my friend, my lover- so, yeah, shot through the head! 

That's the right metaphor.

Add Covid and lockdown.

It was a strange, dissociated time.

I explain that when a person is in severely stressful situations, there isn't time to stop and feel the wounds. But when they reach safety, they collapse, and the enormity of the situations they faced are a tsunami of raw feeling and impressions. So, I felt as if I'd been shot, overwhelmed by a rush of impressions and flashbacks, panic attacks and despair.

Why am I having to explain this to a psychotherapist?

He doesn't ask for the texture, or quality of the experiences?

This isn't about contact...

He -"That sounds concerning that you were there all that time and were on a course and not learning. Or it could be concerning that you are on a course and you are not learning it"

It sounds concerning because I wasn't learning, that tells me exactly what he thinks of me!

What do I hope I'd have said?

 'It sounds concerning that you had to go through this, what is it about you that makes you able to get through terrible things"?! 

I don't challenge, and I have an impression of something, like red warning lights on the dashboard. Which version of me to access? To say 'WTF! So you are saying that everything I struggled to get through was a waste of my time? Pray tell, what was the alternative!' Nope, I use a gentle tone of voice, I placate. I plough on, I reassure. I trust my instincts. He has just told me that it - implication is that my lack of learning -  is concerning. The problem is I'm in placement - this is not good! He has power, so it is important that I don't say what I'm thinking! Being able to use the steady, calm and kind tone of voice ultimately comes from trusting myself. It comes to from speaking with my son when he was in the blind terror psychosis beings. I've passed my assignments. I wrote my first year assignments whilst my son was asking me to help him avoid MI5/Mossad/ IRA...My assignments passed first time. I probably felt worse when I was in the NHS where burn out and vicarious trauma were normal, a kind of debilitating 'background radiation'. Something we all just lived with it. In retrospect it probably helped me to develop survival skills - how to switch to automatic and take control when 80% of me is in shut-down!

He asks me -"What would you like from the course"?

Me - "To just be able to explore ideas properly, without the subjects being directed by the needs of the exam board"

And I end by saying that as we have to have so many references for each assignment (20 minimum)  and as I have used possibly every book in the library, plus all the therapy ones in my Kindle, I aim to get a quote from Gilgamesh, or another 5000 year old text into an assignment before I'm done! And yes,  I found an opportunity to quote from Gilgamesh before the end of the year!

He - "Does it matter to your clients, Babylonian mythology"?

Me -"You never know what will be useful to form a link, or a bridge, ever."

SAS Who Dares Wins has been useful twice now. Everything we see, feel, and everything that we are is important in the therapy room. Stories help, having a wide range of interests helps. But yes, the story of Gilgamesh certainly added to a conversation with one person who was deep within the failure part of their personal Great Journey. Gilgamesh could not be the king his strength and talents qualified him to be until he'd lost what mattered most to him, and reached his absolute limit - all of us reach our limits and fail. Then the journey back can begin.

There is a reason why this story is still being told.

Then Kit proposes a derive around my future. My future is not easy to see and I don't want to think about it. I'm keeping my head down, I'm doing the best I can with what I have. I tell it as if I'm exploiting my husband's inertia because the other story, the true story is that I'm terrified of my husband. This is something I don't want to talk about or feel, until I  have enough healing and enough of a wage to live on.

He - "Because one thing you have been very keen on is telling the truth regardless of what it is. and here you are, heading in the other direction because it is financially useful - yeah - doesn't really fit well "

Me - "With your image of me"

He - "Well it doesn't fit your own narrative"

I wonder what he thinks my narrative is? Wasn't it something about becoming the kind of therapist that someone like my son's friend would be able to talk to? And to become the kind of therapist who has skills enough to create the right psychological conditions for a positive change when a family is at their wits end, feeling disempowered, unheard? And training to become a therapist isn't about making money - sure, some make it pay! Who knows how! - the people I'm for wont have money...but for now, right now I am on this path, and keeping my head down.

But there is a deeper issue, the amount of fear my husband inspires in me. I think it is important for now that I let it be - I will deal with it when I have resources enough. 

My husband scares me - apart from his violence - because I understand madness, severe anxiety even into psychosis. But I don't understand my husband's calculated and resolute psychic absence. 

It destroyed me. Touching him felt as if I was touching a thing, no sensation of soul within him, when I held him, or within his tone of voice or words. 

And my fear felt alien, it wasn't mine. I don't run. But in this case - my narrative is that I'm Ripley. I don't have the ability to fight...I have to use intelligence.

Me - "Well it does, because that's the role he puts me in....because the alternative is I have to fight"

He - "See I was wondering more, there is a question there about how you see yourself and what sort of direction you want to head in"

Metaphorically on the Nostromo...Blowing it out of the airlock wont be enough. LV 426 is next!

I read to him:

13 Apr 2021

The first horse was a horse of fire. 

Traveling a road of dancing blue flame.

to retrieve spirit.

Now the second horse waits for me.

A heavyweight horse.

A mottled darkness - blue and brown.

A horse made of earth.

I open my eyes in a blasted land. 

I am here to recover my body.

Since 2016 I felt as if I was wearing an iron corset, nails on the inside.

I thought it was me…

It began when I felt we had space for me to challenge….

And then I feel the sound.

I hear my son, Josh hit the floor. 

The floor is concrete, unyielding, unforgiving. 

impact. 

I keep my head, controlling my tone of voice. 

Aiming my intention between them like a force field, protecting, earthing and disarming. 

Feeling sick.

Again, this time in the hall, Josh is on the floor. 

Heat, sound, fury. 

And I am stepping in between. 

This violence cannot be.

I feel so sick…

Time to take the ride.

We are walking down dark corridors

I am in despair, I feel weak and lost. 

I need to feel safe. 

I don't feel safe, I haven't felt safe for such a long time...

Searching for 'jack trauma',

no one knows which ward he is in.

after 7 hours of surgery.

In the waiting room. 

The leaflets are all about brain damage. 

So I've found it

I’m where I need to be

The lapis manalis

I meet my husband here in this cold, numb space.

A memory of when I said enough, I can’t take it.

If my son is brain damaged - I feel waves of panic, resentment, despair, anger. 

I will always be looking after him.

 I won't ever find my way back to the world. 

I’m trapped, helpless..

My husband's family's motto “better off dead” yes, I felt that. 

My North star shifted too far...no longer a still  and certain point.

No longer any guide.

But I’ve seen this so many times before.

I’ve heard this from people at their wits end. 

Drowning in exhaustion.

I know

Like an eclipse - it’s only the moon in the way

And a pole star returns

It may not be the same one…

But in my lifetime it’s only clouds in the way.

I open my eyes and I stand beside the river.

He said that I didn't think that he was good enough.

And I didn’t say that I didn’t feel wanted…

Each time I bought myself some shoes or a coat I felt as if I was packing my bags for a long journey

Logic says it was when Donna began work in his room.

I heard it in his tone of voice.

Talking about work, about one particular child, who would bite and scratch and would attack other members of staff

Yet I know that the dagger entered my heart years before…

Back to the beginning.

I came home and he was panicking, didn’t want me to see, but the computer was mine...frozen with a hundred pages of porn open.

No judgment

I acted as if the searing flash, as lethal as that from the demon core, was only bright light.

Yet in that soundless blast my skin died, all my identifying features were obliterated. 

There is no sacred bond. 

And

He is normal. 

I am not.

I wanted Holy.

I wanted sacred.

Where can conflict lead?

So I intellectualize porn as 'liminal', disconnected from me.

I know that he loves me. 

Be practical: side with friendship, be his partner, just do better

I can hold multiple viewpoints.

And I can't know, won't know.

Ss the dagger blade enters my heart.

The horse looks at me as if to say, well...are you going to take this trip?

I pause. 

Still thinking.

He was right

He hit our son.

He said ‘anyone would have’

He said he should have hit him more....

It doesn't matter that I ask for repair. 

He knows that to my heart and soul, he has become unacceptable. 

Doesn't matter that I'm kind. 

The clue is in his demand that I don't speak, don't cry, don't show that I'm upset....without my reaction he doesn't have to see what he has done.

Without me he will feel OK and 'normal'.

I drown in a silence as thick as treacle. 

The bond between us had been severed...without me knowing.

Donna is 'kin' and 

I am not.

I climb up onto the horse of earth’s back, and I ride without a saddle, without a bridle. 

I ride in trust.

He - "What's it like coming out of such a bad time"?

Without Eros, I wouldn't have made it, is what I think.. Then here and now, Eros still gets me through - I want to say 'your intelligence and knowledge, your energy' I need that - I don't say that. Also, I'm not through it yet. I have a long way to go...

Me - "What is it like - it isn't like anything. It is a still point, a stasis, a disconnected place, not connected to the world, surrounded by dark corridors. It is a horrible place, and I've met many people in that place"

He - "Is it in the past - it sounds very present?"

Of course it is in the present! I've just said it! I climb up onto the horse of earth’s back, and I ride without a saddle, without a bridle. I ride in trust away and out from my marriage. But I have work to do - and getting 'qualified' is where I am and what I'm doing...There is no out of this until I have kept my promise.

"But you can't have resolution without understanding". 28th February 2022

I knock the door. Nothing happens! Feels like forever. I wait. He is making me a cup of coffee - before he opens the door. 

He sees my surprise! 

And says - "What, you are going to change your mind today? Well, I thought, you never say no so why did I need to wait!

As I sit down I'm saying that I've had enough of writing my assignments, that I just want to be 'let off'

He asks - "Is writing associated with coffee!"

I reply - "No, just my sense of time has gone wrong, and I'm out of sync, things happening at a different speed..." My voice trails away.

He - "So have you finished your assignments"?

Me - "Oh god, no. I wont be finished for ages yet. They are relentless, finish one, another begins"

And then I'm explaining how our three years of assignments are squeezed into two years. I am exhausted, and on the verge of being insane. And I'm talking about Unit 13, counselling children and how much I dislike  Erik Erikson (stages of development) and transitions.

I explain again - "The art is to work out what the tutor wants, how to make it fit what I think the question means and fit the two together."

He - "Hmm, yes...unfortunately unless you do a Phd...you are not allowed to have a mind of your own. You are not allowed to use your own brain cells....What's wrong with Erikson?"

Erikson - Erik - describes age related life challenges. Even when we did this in college we were in fits of laughter as we described our life challenges, not described by Erikson! Basically, life presents problems is all we are sure of. Erikson didn't stop with children. At my age according to EE I'm heading for the integrity vs despair challenge. 

Story of my whole life! 

Bring it on..

Me - "Nothing, but you know when you feel as if you have been force fed something. I know some people feel like that about The Archers  but I'm OK with the Archers! 'What, not the Archers again, how many times has that been on? Twice a day, BBC Radio 4"

He - "Yeah, but you don't have to write about The Archers - I presume!"

Much laughter.

Me - "Well, I don't know. They did get mentioned in a 'Safeguarding' once, the Helen and what's his name's story"

He - "Helen and Rob. Rob Tichenor"

Me - "Not Titchmarsh!"

He - "Yeah, that would be different wouldn't it"

And then we are talking about group dynamics. A tutor who asks us to 'to talk about the elephant in the room' and I for one was never convinced that there was an elephant. I always thought it was his thing, so he should name it!

He - "What modality is he?"

Me - already laughing in anticipation of the eruption. "You are not going to like the answer. It begins with a G"

He - "Oh, Gestalt! Oh when you said G, I thought you were going to say Jungian"

Why G for Jung - the J sounds like a Y, and Jung is young? He knows how important Jung was for me.

Me -   "Oh, don't you like Jungian psychology?"

He - "Well it's not Jungians, it is Jung really"

Me - "You don't like him? I would have thought that he would be OK, but Jungians might be a bit tiresome?"

He  - "I don't think I've ever met any Jungians in the flesh"

Me: "It takes so much money to be one!"

He - Well Gestalt is founded on conflict isn't it because the person who founded it was.."

I  describe how a rift was created in our class through a group exercise, and this rift was never healed - so -  my conclusion is that the sowing of mistrust and allowing feelings to be hurt is pointless!

And then he is describing Group Process - "Like being in a Quaker meeting, but with lots of shouting - you sit around, and there is no agenda, and somebody starts talking, and somebody responds and basically what you have in terms of ego-states is a room full of Children - with the emotional needs of children - and sometimes you have some Critical Parents, and so they clash with the children. and what you end up with, it's really interesting, there have been sociology studies about the way groups work. And they always come to the same thing, which is that groups work very well when there is a person who is considered to be the facilitator, and the group has a clear goal. And if you get a group together where there is no leader and no particular goal it quickly implodes - which is what happens in group process. So it is all entirely predictable. But this is apparently a must for a psychotherapy course which is at Masters level"

And onwards. 

Until I paraphrase Steve de Shazer:

"understanding a problem doesn't necessarily provide a cure.."

He says - "But you can't have resolution without understanding, you have to have cognition of something before you can act upon it?"

Me - "No, people need to know the outcome they desire - I don't believe I need to understand something when there is nothing I can do about the mechanism. It often hides a desire, such as 'if only that person understood - then they wouldn't do X'" knowing how to get to X, or what else could be X is it!"

I could have said that therapy works when a client does the problem differently and thus the whole problem dynamic changes. This sort of thinking drives him up the wall so I skim around and through the subject, keeping contact with the words alone, and I don't explain the real concept underneath. It is more important I synthesize something we can agree on. 

The truth is, I'm never going to have understanding of what he really thought about me, so just as well I can tell myself that outcome is more useful than knowledge...

He says - "But a person needs to understand their reaction"

Me - "No, I stop with need - what is it that you need in this situation. I think most of the time, things are actually simple - you can disagree with me it's fine"

He - "That is a very simple view, that's for sure. I think that the reality is often more complex"

I give an example and in so doing he finds that we are on exactly the same wavelength, just of course, our language is different...

I ask - "So do you know what the theory must be behind this group process, this arena, this gladiatorial contest"?

He - "What group process? I've asked several people who run psychotherapy courses 'What's group process for? What's the point'?  I've never had an answer. Only one person came up with something which was  an alleged answer, but it wasn't really an answer at all. And the alleged answer was; 'the sorts of things that come up in group process are the sorts of things that will come up in a therapy room. Well, that may or may not be true, except they won't come up like that; because you wont be in a room with twelve other people, you will ne one to one or two to one if it's a couple. You certainly wont be in this gladiatorial arena, you will expect empathy, you will  not expect attacks. It's completely a free for all, group process - it should not be a free for all in a therapy room because it should be a safe space. So all the context is utterly different , so as an answer it just doesn't work. And I said so and there was no reply.

Me - "Did you say it in group process"!

We both laugh.

He - "But I think the real answer is, because we have to, otherwise UKCP wont rubber stamp the course. But nobody can tell you what it is for"

Me - "Well it sounds like that is what our tutor is trying to create"

He - "It does remind me of Fritz Perls, who seemed to get a kick out of bullying his clients, and if they refused to be bullied he called them a phoney which was his sort of catch-all insult to anybody"

Me - "He was big on personal shame...But I understand where he is coming from and I would have liked to have had a few sessions with Perls because I think that he had a heart of gold. I know that you disagree with me!"

Much laughter from him!

He - "A heart of granite!"

Me - "Granite - no I don't think so. I think Carl Rogers had an iron fist under a fluffy bunny exterior"

He - "Really"?

Me - "Yes"

He - "Why?"

Me - describing Jungian 'shadow' theory - "Because like the kids who scared the grandparents because they looked like hell-beings, the scary is on the outside. You can see it. But the kid in the suit with the neat tie, he's the one you need to worry about. It's the ones who seem normal - they are the scary ones! So Perls, I think Perls was quite vulnerable in many ways"

He - "I'd like to see the evidence for that"

Me - "He was human, he was very honest about himself - he wrote about himself just straight"

He - "Hum!"

Me - "Willing to be vulnerable is what I'm saying, whereas I'm not sure that Rogers was so honest"

He - "Oh, have you read much Rogers"?

Me - "Yes. I have. Sorry Rogers I've had enough"!

He - "Mmmm - I'm still not sure where this..."

Me - "Where this is going"

He - "Where this whole exterior idea comes from"

It is pure Jungian!

Me - "I think that Rogers was psychologically quite tough. I'm not so sure that Perls was. I think Perls would break down quite a lot. Perls was very much about contact, and I understand that, I really appreciate that. And I think that Rogers took a lot from Perls  and twisted it slightly. Perls was writing before Rogers, and if you read the theories ...I'm looking at your quizzical brow! It is difficult without being able to show you the references. The whole contact with experience" 

He - "Perls...I think I've got no evidence that Perls ever did have any contact with experience at all"!

Me - "Such a sweeping comment"!

He - "No, really! If you read his works which are virtually unreadable"!

Me - "They are not, they are very readable"!

He - "If you look at the way he operated. Basically somebody being in a room bullying somebody. Calling them a phoney if they don't go along with him. That's not contact"

Me - "It is straight. Perls was straight"

He - "Well that's the word he used"

Me - " It is the word I'd use"

He - "Perls was not straight at all"

Me -  "Is it not straight to be..."

He - "The Gloria films - Perls says 'I manipulate the patient' that's not contact. And you can see how self satisfied he is, and you can see when Gloria for example gets very angry with him how he says something like ' yeah, that's it' or 'now we are in business' or something like that. He actually wants to rile her because he somehow thinks that this is therapeutic to actually poke somebody with a stick until they respond"

Me - "He would like her to realise that she is his equal"

He - "That isn't what he is doing. See what he does is, he basically calls her a little girl"

Me - "He does"

He - "Basically shaming"

Me -"He says 'Are you a little girl'? that's the point because she isn't a little girl. And from his point of view she is being manipulative, she's practically saying in body language, 'let me off I'm just a little girl' and he is saying 'are you?'"

He - "Compare with Rogers who saw the little girl in her and treated it with love. At one point she is talking about what a very, very difficult relationship she had with her father and always felt that her father disapproved of her, and he says something like 'I think you would be a lovely daughter to have' I mean, there's contact, I mean there's care and inclusion. Not poking her with a stick like Perls would do"

So much I could say; about the lack of contact with me when I've gone into feeling, with how I need honesty and truthfulness. This contact thing isn't going to be resolved.

I say -"But that's not the same thing as contact with her experience"

He doesn't get it, I'm not going to explain it to him. Contact is the immediacy and simplicity of the actual. For Perls, being able to experience what is new as new, is health! The contact boundary is the meeting place between the self and the world. The place where all expectation ends and experiencing begins - and this is where all psychological growth occurs, at the edge of the known, the beginning of knowing the unknown. Challenge in Gestalt therapy is important - to let go the security blanket of ideas that even though they might not be nice, they are familiar. But they can be changed. Perls would and did, challenge that security blanket in Gloria. Rogers didn't do that...

Me - "Instead of taking her deeper in to those feelings about her father, Rogers was colluding with her"

He - "No, Rogers was taking her into something new, into a relationship she had never had with her father. And what happened some years later - or a year later - she continued a life long relationship with Carl Rogers and they used to meet up occasionally and wrote lots of letters to each other. And I think that she used to address him as my therapeutic father. And the seed of that was that client and the Gloria film! That's therapy! Not 'I'm going to pin you against the wall and slap you about and if you don't submit I will call you a phoney"!

My heart is aching as I type this. Why were my needs for contact  - in the Rogers and Gloria sense - ignored and dismissed. Why did he treat me as if what I'd said was totally out of order. The paradox is, he reminds me of Perls. But Perls had a better grasp of the workings of the human heart. Why doesn't it cross his mind that talking about maintaining contact with Gloria, accentuates the pain of not responding to me - or rather my feelings? Because I don't play little girl, I guess? And he didn't remind me of my father. 

But he would have liked that more - if I'd been a 'vulnerable' 'little girl?

Doesn't make any sense to me!

And I'm saying again - "I would have gone to see Fritz Perls - it is hard to explain, because I do know Gestalt theory - but seeing him, not knowing the theory, because I agree with him that whatever it is that you are in, that's what you are in - and it isn't about the past - so, be it! It isn't about deficits and a need to be reparented (reparative relationship) . With Perls it is about finding the block, there is something about the experience you have not 'got' and you need to get that (whatever that is). Be it, embody it, fearlessly.

He - "Well that is deficits isn't it"?

Me -"Embodying it - it's not a lack - it sounds like your model is about deficits because a person needs to get an experience they have not had - so Rogers saying in effect 'I am the good father - now you are getting the good father experience'. With Perls it's 'You haven't got a good father, that's the way it is' there is no recovery by me, from me ' I'm not your father but I am with you as you feel what that is like - because you can get over it and through it. It is all of you and what you are'

He - "How can somebody get over and through being bullied by Fritz Perls" 

Me - "Yet it sounds like it is normal in group process, to allow people to bully other people"?

He - "That is what happens in group process, yes...and clients will come with a whole range of conflicts which they will enact before you in any way. The last thing that they need is someone trying to stir up additional conflict. That's not therapeutic. What is therapeutic is care, consideration; a safe space in order that they can air their internal conflicts in a safe environment and understand them better"

And there is a lot of laughing together at this point.

Me - Let's say Perls is like the 'Protector' Mahakala, and Rogers is like Chenrezigs - but different people require different therapists. 

He - "I'm just remembering times when clients have come with massive, massive levels of conflict which sometimes - even couples, come to think of it, only with couples- that will erupt into the room. After all the smiles, after twenty minutes and if there is conflict there it will be in the room. And of course the conversation has to be had that goes 'that's not how we are going to do things' you know <laugh> and I'm just thinking, what would Perls do! He would be rubbing his hands with glee going ' now we are at it now we are in business'! But it's not helpful"

Me - "But I don't think it is like that, I don't think that is what he was after. When he said to Gloria 'are you being a little girl?' that is what he saw, and that is what he said. But for Perls it is all about power. He had a real distaste for people being bullied - it really angered him. So to see somebody playing it small, acting as a child.."

He - "But he was a bully"

Me - "...And he wanted people to tell him, to stand up to him, to say stop it!

He - "That's a complete lack of understanding of basic human interaction, it really is, that's woeful. Because if a client comes with a basic process of 'I am not allowed to speak for myself, my voice doesn't matter and I've taken this huge leap in trying to get my voice heard by going to a therapist' and then they are cajoled and bullied and backed into a corner - what's that going to do to the person! That's an appalling way to treat somebody. And the other thing in this is I see people all the time switching ego-states in front of me. Often from Adult to Child when we are discussing not necessarily their childhood, but I see them retreat into the Child-ego. And I can see them vocally, physically turning into a Child. And sometimes I say, most often I don't, particularly when I first notice it - because it would be too exposing. What I do is notice, and treat them with the particular sort of care that their Child needed, as I understand it. What I don't do is 'ha ha! Caught you out! You are a child aren't you. You little boy, little girl, whatever' no, that's bullying"

Me -"That would be you in a Child state, using Child language - 'haha caught you out'. He said 'Are you a little girl - are you'?

He - "Yes, but he didn't say it with care. He said it with a sort of playground bully sort of voice - 'aha got you' no, looking very, very self satisfied"

Me - "Because that would be the thing, like 'I've worked out what your problem is 'your problem - client is'...

He - "That's the thing that you hate the most!!! Oh my goodness! What's happening here. You have turned 180 degrees!"

Me - "I haven't turned 180 degrees. I simply disagree with your fundamental assumptions about me. I am saying that Perls - to paraphrase his meaning - 'I've caught it, I've noticed what you are doing - I've noticed your problem Gloria..."

He - "That's the thing you hate the most. That's what you have told me many, many times. Being categorized and labelled by the therapist who tells you what your problem is!"

Me - "Whilst missing my real problem. Going back now, in my situation it was a waste of time and I'm annoyed about that. Because when I say this is my problem - yes indeed  -this actually is my problem. Not what somebody else imagines it to be. What ever a client says is the problem, that's what the client and I will be dealing with first before anything else. What ever a person says is the problem, that is where we begin. We do not begin anywhere else, it has to be with what they say"

He - "Well again, that is completely contrary to the way that Perls worked."

Me - "I don't know. But what Perls had in his mind was, 'I've spotted it, I can see what she is doing. She wants an adult relationship, but she is acting like a little girl. and so I (Perls) am going to call it out - are you a little girl? 

He - "See there's the bully"

Me - "He was calling it out! Ah, yes! I see - it is a Gestalt thing 'the client wont break' it's not Rogers! The client can take it. I'm not convinced that that is true, I know that I can break. So I hope that you are not mistaking me for Perls, I'm not actually very Perls-like when I talk to people I am very much on their side and listening to hear what they are doing their best to tell me"

He - "That thing about the safe space - I mean, the best therapist is somebody who if you say I'm really stressed and I can't sleep at night because I don't know if I have enough money to pay the rent, lets say. And somebody who says I haven't slept for six days because I can't stop thinking about killing myself, then the best therapist is one who responded in just the same way to both statements; which is with calm acceptance. I can't see Fritz Perls doing that."

Me - "You don't know and nor do I. Perls. whose dying words were 'Get Off. let me do this myself!' I don't remember. But he was dying of cancer struggling to get out of bed and the nurses were pushing him back. I like that he was fighting to the very end."

He - "Wasn't there something about a chair? That his father hit him across the back and the chair broke, not his back and he was very proud of that. What does that say about him as a person!? No"

Me - "What sort of a person? It was a creative adjustment."

He - "Yes, that's one way of putting it"!

Me - "He adjusted his way of thinking about it, and ended up as the winner. He didn't give in to the bully"

He -"By becoming one"

Me - "But compared to many hospital consultants his behavior was tea-party at the vicarage level - compared to consultants"

He - "You are talking about psychiatrists"?

Me - "No, hospital, surgeons, in theater throwing bloody - literally covered in blood - swabs. So perhaps it is because I am habituated to de-escalating angry men, maybe that's it. Definitely part of the job!"

He - "How does anybody get away with that"?

Me - "Because the consultant is not replaceable"

He - "I do know it is a very macho world, being a surgeon. I mean you need to be a certain kind of person to just unzip somebody and saw bits off and take bits out and replace them with other bits. and I couldn't do it even if I had the dexterity to do so, goodness no"

Me - "It's one of those things isn't it, if I was the only person there, and I had more knowledge than anyone else in the room and something had to be done right there and then. It's hard! But then, to someone else, its a bit like when somebody is really upset - standing one's ground - not really standing one's ground, but not getting on the boat with them and going down, drowning in their story. Being able to understand that somebody is in a lot of psychological pain but the best thing for me to do now is just to be present, to be a calm presence. But I couldn't even give and injection to be honest! And people slip into objectification; seeing a person's pain as insignificant, it is a burn-out response. It happens. Then their pain is something just getting in my way. I came close enough to that state many a time because in the NHS there wasn't any space to be the other side (empathy) no space to be somewhere quiet and embody the physical upset of the real experience. And this is why I respect the work of Perls and Gestalt therapy; the Gestalt concept that a person doesn't actually know the impact an event has had on them because there is no space to, and we are in a culture that doesn't acknowledge the wordless distress that is part of responding to someone who has been badly injured. I used to work weekends on-call - Friday evening to Monday morning - so I would go to bed but I would be randomly woken up and get called in. So I couldn't switch off, and we worked alone, so it was only me. I never knew what I was going to get. Doing NAI work - non-accidental-injury  - when a child is brought in and the registrar suspects that the injury wasn't accidental I'd need to X ray the child to demonstrate previous, healed injuries'. Well, parents would be suspicious. That was vey tough. There was a robbery one night...I've no idea where I was when it happened! Probably I'd left the department unlocked when I went to ITU...So yes, patients who were in a lot of physical distress from fractures or haemorrhaging, bowels in a twist - literally - pain was normal. But working alone, a sense of actually being in danger. I used to plan how I'd lock myself in the dark room. But there was no concept of putting all this stress down, of sharing it in a safe way with others. No safe way to feel the impact. In the NHS an emotional reaction is something to be ignored and left to get better by itself. For me that has been the biggest change in myself; coming from NHS to counselling, I seek contact with feeling without intellectualizing or believing myself to be weak. I think that I had to learn to intellectualize. It was a cultural artefact; and cultural artefacts are really interesting aren't they. So you had this group process where people create a hell-realm of issues that can't be voiced in a straight way because of the criticism. What was driving the criticism in group process? 

He - "Well this is why I say it becomes a room full of children, in TA terms because the criticisms are always based upon a projection based upon that person's experience of their parent or their family. so, if someone has unresolved issues with their dad they will pick somebody in the room to be their dad and be very angry with them for reasons that don't make much sense until we understand 'ah, you think this person is your dad' on a level that you don't understand"

Me - "Do you think that person may have said something like the dad may have said"? 

He - "That's what is usually happening in my experience. And there is no motive to resolve it" 

So, zero contact with real emotion or feeling. One of us is failing to understand that grief is loss, and that the person who has lost their beloved cannot help but search wide and far, until the beloved's lifeless body may be taken care of, buried and life begins again...  writing this is my equivalent.

A discussion on the meaninglessness of syllables. 21st February 2022.

Grey skies.

Rain.

I want to write to him and say...surely it doesn't have to be this way.

For my heart really is breaking.

He - "Hello -The usual"?

Me - "The usual."

Then questions about heating and lighting -I sigh. 

I sound beaten.

Done...

It's over.

And I say - "I keep meaning to bring fairy lights..."

He - "Is it that dark! Fairy lights in the therapy room. it would be like Christmas everyday wouldn't it"

Me - "The ones at home are just little stars on copper wire"

He - "Be nice if it was a children's therapy I think"

Me - "Hmm, children would interact with them - but by 15 years old, it would probably be OK"

He - "Yes - but a 15 year old would probably consider them childish"

He asks about my assignments, I talk about comparing the three modalities of psychodynamic, humanistic and CBT. We now seem to be at crossed purposes. He is arguing that CBT isn't on the 'same par' as psychodynamic or humanistic modalities, because it derives from behaviorist theories. And also...

He is saying - "...Erm, there are cats there are dogs and there are - I don't know - koalas, well that's not the same because cats are a broad category, dog is a huge broad category, but koalas are marsupials, so marsupial is a broad category so, do you see what I'm getting at"?

Bizarrely as it may seem, I think I do. But this isn't significant. I don't set the assignments. I'd like to believe that the paradoxical and irrational nature of so much of our work at college is but a cunning plan, a way to condition our minds - like a psychological hair conditioner - to erase tangles and make us smooth and sweet scented, to teach us to stop trying to put things into categories! He has arrived in his seat of power via a different route, but also he is beginning to sound like a true believer.  

Ultimately though, my college course inadvertently became the perfect primer for my future in postmodern therapies.

But meanwhile, this conversation is rapidly becoming a comedy

He - "So the marsupial koala is a kind of CBT thing, but saying koala instead of marsupial"

Me - "Yes, and it's not simple. There are lots of cross overs and parallels, divergencies. It is interesting and it is complex. But in college, we just have to write whatever our tutor believes"

He - "It's very sad if stringing together a whole set of stock phrases is going to get you marks"

When has it ever been otherwise! I go on to explain Tuckman's five stages of team development, this is part of our training and I don't know why I don't take seriously: norming, forming, storming, performing..

And Belbin...In Belbin world I'm a plant!

Me - "You may as well use astrological birth signs"! 

He - "How does this help you?"

Then I'm talking about the bouba kiki test which I think makes sense!

He - "Since they are nonsense words, how can anybody mark it?

Me - "Because it is consensus - it is about consensus reality. 

I respond to his expression.

Me - "No no no, it makes sense - because all language is consensus"

He - "No, meaningful language is consensus"

Me - "All language is meaningless until it has acquired meaning"

He - "No it isn't! 

Me - "Is it not?"

He - "To be language it has to be meaningful"

Me - "Not at first, it is sound that acquires meaning"

He - "Well any sound without meaning isn't language"

Me - "Exactly, but language can bring in other sounds to become language; new words - sounds - to become a part of the language. But originally, those syllables were meaningless "

He - "Well all syllables are meaningless because they are not words" 

Me - "But the sound of a word, words are made of syllables, has texture and often they fit in with pre-existing rules"

He - "No, this is nonsense".

Me - "No, because all you know of this is what you have understood from me and I possibly have not conveyed it in a way that conveys adequate meaning."

The thought it must be my fault that he doesn't understand indicates that I hold his intelligence in high regard.

Me - "Language can bring in other sounds, words that were originally meaningless and they become meaningful, they acquire meaning through context"

He - "Well all syllables are meaningless - they are not words - unless it is a word which is also a syllable like a.."

I hear the penny drop.

Me - "But the sound of a word conveys texture, and fits in with rules - perhaps pre-existing rules?"

He - "No, this is nonsense. Let me give you an example - degarlog - is that sharp, or it that dull?"

Me - "It's not sharp, it's kind of long with a rounded end"

He -  "It's neither, it's the name of a language. And a language can't be sharp and a language can't be dull"

Me - "It is a word that has a meaning already, but sounds have textures. And this question is about context, so the question does the word have dullness or sharpness remains salient."

He - "So all the words in this test have to be words for objects that don't exists"

Me - "But they do exist insomuch as seeing the symbol; the words on the webpage have meaning via conversion from the retina of the eye into synapses firing in the brain, resonating with a whole set of pre-existing memories encoded in synapses"

He - "How is this helpful"

Me - "How is this helpful"?

I refrain from saying - well, there was the tiny table last week remember? And one of us is willing to talk about how they feel, and what is going on. One of us is able to be completely honest and speak from the heart- whilst the other says that he's not allowed to speak! How am I so powerful enough to be able to stop you from being able to speak? 

I don't say this only because I think he'd hurl me out of the metaphorical plane we are in!

Me - "I think it is an interesting subject. I think it does fit my concept of what somebody who makes - is it social mistakes - in terms of being unable to pick up nuances of tone of voice and language. Some people aren't so good at it - picking up nuances in how words are said, and body language. So there is something about this being able to convert, or rather, to be in accord with the majority"

And this is heresy, for those who see the natural human capacity to be conditioned by others as the great problem! I'm describing mutual conditioning as how we create shared worlds.

Me - "It seems an interesting test"

He - "So people are judged under a majority verdict which in itself is a logical fallacy because the majority view isn't always the correct one, on what a word sounds like, that aren't really words, they are just meaningless vocalizations. So there is no actual right answer , and yet people are judged on a scale. It makes no sense! I must be autistic based on this!" 

Me - "You don't know, you have not done the test" 

He - "Well I know I'm not autistic, but I do know that this is nonsense" 

Me - "No, I'm not sure that you do know that this is nonsense, because all you know is what you have understood from me and I may not have conveyed it accurately. You would have to judge for yourself through exploring it."

Do I feel that he is prejudiced against this information because I'm the one saying it? 

Yes, I do.

He - "It also suggests, if your last example is right, that there is a real connection between people's understanding of nonsense non-words and their social skills"

To be honest, that's just a guess that I'm making!

He - "And I don't think there is a necessary connection"

Me - "Social skills? I mean consensus (resonance) between people; through understanding the tone, the feel...I mean the word ' slithy' does make sense. And 'brillig', it does make sense.

He - "But we can't define the words because they are nonsense"

Enough!

He - How does this give us any useful information"?

Me - "Define useful"

He - "Something which is of practical consequence, something that increases the store of knowledge in a falsifiable way"

Me - "It is fun!"

He - "So no to all of the above"

Me - "Is fun testable? I suppose there may be a way to test fun, do you think?!"

He - "Well that doesn't really - it doesn't lead to knowledge"

Me - "So you are saying fun has to be useful or that fun isn't useful? But fun can lead to knowledge, and you are saying that knowledge is information that has to be useful"

He - "But putting meaning to meaningless sounds, how does that get us anywhere?"

Clearly a man who has not played Myst.

Me - "Getting anywhere? Where are we supposed to be getting to"?

He - "Well the whole thing was predicated wasn't it, on giving us information about meaning, about sound and language and something to do with personality. It doesn't tell us anything about that"

Me - "I disagree, it has given us loads of information.....because a significant number of people agree that word x indicates a rounded object, and word y indicates a sharp object " 

He - "Lets reframe the question - does it tell us anything useful about the world that is worth knowing"

Me - "Worth knowing is a value judgment - you might not find it useful, or valuable but somebody else might. I don't know" 

He - "I can't imagine who that person would be!"

And then I'm talking about Tulvig and  George Herbert Mead, and how the autonomic nervous system effects memory and timelines and how I am playing with time as I use language - changing the past in the present, by talking about the future by bringing experiences from the past. 

After I'd been talking about how I follow the energy more than meanings of client's words, he is talking about getting in touch with forbidden feelings - how people feel that to do so will break them but.."It never does" So, what were his feelings?

And what's going on here, and what happened? There was a lot of laughter...I think we get on, I also believe that he can't abide me. All I know is, I'm trying to convince him that I'm his equal, that I'm unique, that I'm good to be around so that he doesn't want to say goodbye to me - ever. Underneath all this is the reason why I set out to be the therapist who can wade into a family dynamic and  reflect back the hope and genius of each person I talk with. 

It makes me sad to write this, contacting a deep pool of sadness and need for him. I had the good sense to keep my eye fixed on the distant horizon seeking any star to trust as my True North. I couldn't metaphorically look down. I couldn't consider that I wasn't good enough to win. The awfulness of this situation; his insistence on dogma, evoking the  'Ethical Framework'  as for my protection was enough for me to know that I'm powerless. I'm being crucified...Yet I believed in myself and so there were but two options - to fight, or to die.

Death had started this.

It was always going to be a part of this.

The horror of the rail tracks set my course, by level 5 Death followed me through the darkened corridors of the hospital. Death was waiting for me each time in psychosis my son directed his rage and terror at me. Death was always there. Death was closest to me the evening before my husband was about to be beaten up by her husband. I didn't care if I lived or died. Something had to break...I had had enough pain, fear and condescension, more than I could take. Only the thought of what allowing my death to happen, of making it happen, would be like for my children kept me here. And now, loss and more grief - if I let him throw me out. 

This charade of client - therapist has to end.