"Ignoring the erotic..." 11th April 2022.

We begin by talking about the 23rd of May 2022.

This will be the date of my last session, because it is when my course finishes. And this date is significant. Two years before, on the 23rd of May 2020 - my husband set in motion the resonance cascade that shattered our family. 

So what are the chances of this being a good date to finish!

My only hope, during this session was that I'd be able to contain my feelings; I felt there to be no way out and no way forward.

I'd asked him to tell me how he felt in the mp3, and again in the 14th February session, possibly other times. 

I'd said that this is how I get closure. 

It never happened. 

Instead he diagnosed my recording as transgression - this justified, in his mind, his abuse of power. 

You can read the transcript! 

Or perhaps I should just upload?

At the time of this session I couldn't take more instances of my feelings being dismissed, or described as crossing boundaries. He was reacting as if my honesty opened a door to a contaminating force, and this would ruin a professional, ‘clean’ therapy process. 

So how did that make me feel? 

At the end?

Suicidal.

When I left his room for the last time in May, I didn't want to be. I'm not going to hide this. 

The abuse of power by a therapist, or a medical person, or someone you have every right to believe means you well, may occur if that person refuses to offer a sincere dialogue.

Since then my definition of abuse has changed a little. 

It is abuse when a person notices that he is doing harm, and choses not to remedy the situation. 

His choice not to offer authentic self-disclosure was an abuse of power, and the excuse is often supported by diagnosis. I'm not alone in experiencing this! A distressed parent, carer, or patient, or any emotional person asking for clarity, for a second opinion, needing truth, risks being diagnosed as dysregulated and unable to understand.

Misogyny is no longer about gender.

Misogyny is an enacted prejudice against expressions of 'weakness', or vulnerability, a fear of raw, human emotion. The most common forms are dismissal, ridicule or threat in order to force, coerce or manipulate the other to contain their feelings and need. It happens when a person expresses their need in an emotional way. This is translated by the abuser as a challenge to a power structure that gives the abuser power - and so... 

Remaining connected to the values of the system is more important to the abuser, than working to mend the other's pain. 

In the year of gaslighting, my husband couldn't speak truthfully to me because his behaviour was not coherent with his role and identity. As a professional person; he felt that his behaviour might put his job at risk. 

He would lose money, status and power.

His position and need for secrecy was all the more vulnerable because he thought that her husband was a dangerous maniac. 

Nothing could be disclosed...

And he defined me as a risk!

It gives me joy actually to remember that as she was messaging my husband all evening, as her husband was with her - he looked at her phone he found out! Who could have predicted that. She was in effect the cause of the danger, but - they both enjoyed the 'dangerous game', they both needed to cast their partners as mad - and I imagine that this is still the world they live in, or are now trying to preserve in some way.

Whatever!

I have asked for transparency and truth from Kit. I need it. In exactly the same way I needed it from my husband. That I've explained this, told him the effect of my husbands' lying, and I have not received truthful and honest dialogue, is cruel. 

And it is unjustified.

Hedges (1997, p.221) warned that:

 ignoring the erotic from our professional domain would drive therapists: "closer to a climate of incessant naïve moralizing” 

My experience exactly. 

So setting the date to end this makes sense. 

And yes it is a bad date. 

He asked me if there would be any ritual to go with it?

And in response I automatically shifted back into my heart, into feelings. 

I say, 'no, no it is a Katabasis...'  hear my voice change - to use his words: I sound like a small child. 

I'm now breaking...

I know this vale of emptiness is leading to an empty ending. And I know that this is going to do me damage, I'm praying that he will understand before it is too late and find a way through. But my heart is cracked, my soul is splintered. Only his absolute honesty could reach me now...I'm in so much pain. 

I change the subject  tangentially to Giordano Bruno; an Italian philosopher, poet, and cosmological theorist who so angered the church that after his trial he was hung upside down, and burnt to death in the market square. 

Bruno is my Hanging Man; and I know, as he must have known, that it has been decided. We have challenged implacable rules. Bruno and I. Neither of us could not, would not back down. 

Love is love, I didn't chose it. 

I recognized it as Bruno recognized that stars burn...

Me: "He was burnt at the stake for saying that stars were balls of fire"

He - What were they considered to be before that"?

He knows this better than I, why is he asking? 

I ignore the question.

Me - "But also his system was heliocentric - so...and he did all these little diagrams you see, and I think this is what inspired Jung and his concept of mandala"

He - "Isn't it extraordinary what people take offence at. Mind you, I suppose if you are in charge and your belief system is challenged , and you have totalitarian authority you want to crush anybody who says different no matter what it is"

 

Me - "I don't know how he said it? Persistently? So there are generally thresholds people fall foul of; they get a warning. I don't know"

I am describing to him how I feel now. I too had felt warned. Threshold had been his word, 'a lot of thresholds were being crossed'. 

The paradox is this. When I walk out of the final session I will cross a waste ground alone. Giving up any hope will take me to the gates of my death. That is what happened before, it will happen again.

I know this. 

It is going to hit me so hard...

A part of it is my husband's conduct and untruthfulness - the wound is still raw and bleeding. I have seen Kit almost every week for almost two years now, I said it was love...why does he imagine that it would it be easy for anyone to walk away from this?

Here now, in this session - I stop the descent, for the sake of my sanity.

If being tangential is a defence mechanism, and he choses to criticise me for it, that's his choice. I need to protect myself.

I'm talking about his statues - of which there are two in this room.

Me - "...I think rational is just something we think we do, it's not who we really are.  Statues in churches, a Catholic church has statues of saints and it now makes total sense to me and it's like....<I'm laughing. His expression is of incongruity!> I do love your face <I'm really laughing now> I didn't understand statues until I had my Tibetan education - I do understand <pause> about rupas <I say the word under my breath> about form. That it causes a person to think, bring the deity to mind"

He - "yes"

Me - "I'm thinking of the bone in St Chad's cathedral in Birmingham. Mark and I, and Mark is really 'Low C of E church' and we were both radiography students. In our dinner break we went into St Chads and there was a bone on the shrine (alter) "

He - "A bone. Was it even a human bone"?

Me - "At the time I couldn't understand it. But later, understanding the Tibetan 'version' it is the real bone of St Chad for those who have faith; it makes a conduit between your mind and the 'construct', the part of your mind that longs to follow in St Chad's footsteps"

He - "Yes. Hence the prohibition in Judaism and Islam I expect. Because if an image of someone is there to venerate, to make them more than, higher than, more worshipful than the great mass of people. In Judaism and Islam the idea is, no, no it is about your conduct, and don't raise people up as if there is something better. It's about all of you, but you individually; you behave, you act. I sort of get that. Not that I'm religious in the slightest - but I get the idea of not venerating people"

Me - "Is it veneration of people? Is a statue not a placeholder for memory, for navigation? And more prosaic...Burnt Tree Island, I always wonder - what was that burnt tree, was there a burnt tree there? Like the Neolithic standing stones as a way of navigating; because at that time -  Anyways Grooved ware, around 3000 BC when  monument construction, grand ritual, was at it's height in Britain. The centre was up in the North, in Orkney - that seems to be where the real locus of power was - and so there are lots of trade routes. The axe factory in Cumbria, and Otsi whose body was found in the Alps, people used to walk many, many miles so we need memory. Things that make and contain memory. And if you lose those then a part of yourself is gone, because it is part of your <me: nervous laughter - his expression..>  

He - "Well that's the whole modern culture isn't it!

Me - "That's the whole modern culture"?

He - "All that matters"!

Me - "All that matters"?

He - "..is the here and now and what you can buy, and that makes your identity"

Me - "But people have to do stuff, there has to be movement and trade and new ideas, and flow. And placeholders - statues, standing stones, memories -  allow one to navigate. Without external navigation points...it would be so strange wouldn't it"

He - "What would be strange"?

To be without external navigation points...

Me - "  if the Lucknow <not the name of the restaurant> just at the top of your road wasn't there, it would be really strange for me. Because it forms a part of this journey, walking past the Lucknow, and how it reminds me of reading the book - The Siege of  Krishnapur"

He -"Is that what you feel when you walk past it"!

Me - " I do! I love that book."

He - "Wow"!

Me - "I do indeed. That's why I had to buy the book to read it again"!

He - "How do you get here in one piece"

Me - "Well <we are both laughing> it is all in my head so I'm fine"

He - "Goodness, that's quite a traumatic journey isn't it"?

He clearly has not read it!

He - "Seeing a siege every time you walk past"!

Me - "No it is the memory of reading the book, because I enjoyed the book. I never know why I enjoy that book so much <the dry sense of humour, probably!> Ah, I'm disappointed that you don't know why the restaurant has that name."

He - "The question never even occurred to me. Just interested in if their curry is any good really"

Me - "But it looks closed"

He - "Well that's because it is open in the evening"

Me - "Oh. It looks forlorn, I thought it was closed for good, or for refurbishment - like repair after a siege!"

He - "Anyway, this chapter three"

Me - "I came prepared to go into the past, I thought about this date a while back"

He - "We could do that if you wished"?

I started to read my notes to myself about the date.

Me - "<laughing> Oh no, poor me!...anyway...Airplane part 3"

Part 3

...meeting with the darkness of the void as an infinity that drowns all choice.   

Powerless to oppose a rip tide of expectation and consensus. 

When there is no other way but to drown willingly.  

My horror when I have witnessed this in others has been absolute.  

The first time I met it I a student radiographer. Three women outside my room waiting... I read their request forms, felt time running backwards. 

The request forms were for chest x-ray before ECT.  

And the forms invited me in, making me a part of it ; the validity of ECT as implausible as trepanation to release demons.  

I could not believe that the women were sitting as peaceful as lambs.  

Why were they not escaping! 

But how far could they go, bodies heavy with depression, dressed only in night clothes. 

I wanted them to rage. I didn't want them to go quietly. Yet the rip tide is impersonal, and implacable, and I was a part of it.  

As I positioned them for their X rays it was clear, either they or I, had drowned already.  

When imagination fails, awareness descends like the sun, below fight, beyond flight, below freeze. Dimming into a post supernova, non existent star. 

I did not accept, I remained disbelieving.  

C S Lewis described acceptance as the only way to subvert the obliterating force. 

I assumed that he meant going willingly, not allowing the star to fail.

 He - "You were an observer or a participant in ECT"?

Me - "I was just taking their chest X rays. They were pre-ECT. This was in a medical hospital. In case there was a problem, to prevent cardiac arrest.."

He - "Wow"

Me - "And I couldn't believe I didn't know. I didn't think that ECT still happened"!

He - "Yes, it's like we don't cure disease by blood letting or trepanning skulls anymore."

Me - "Well, trepanation - burr holes to reduce pressure when there is an inter-cranial bleed. So you can sort of see , but not to let demons out! I mean people think ECT makes sense, it is still argued for. People believe in it and there are people who have had it and say 'things are now so much better for me' . But there is a part of me that sees ECT as so wrong"

He - "Well I don't know if I'm being deliberately  electrocuted and putting my body through that and I really didn't want to have it happen again, I'd say that I felt much better, so I wouldn't be in the same position. Hmm yes, it is distressing. And I know that was your response"  

Me - "I think it was more about how it was implacable. That there was no way out, and I think that's part of the horror, the implacability, feeling the rip-tide how it drags people out. But it's not so much about you as an individual. It's about the position you find yourself in. My process is like following the thread of an image  - like the horns that maybe ended up on Moses (a conversation not recorded in this blog) how a symbol gets used, and used again but people don't quite remember the nuances of how it was used before. Yet they keep on using it, and making a history for the usage that is also incomplete and then it becomes something else. And I feel that ECT is a lot like that, because it mimics someone having an epileptic seizure - and after a seizure a person seems to be calmer. But causing an epileptic seizure...and yet there is more to it. It is weird it has a numinous quality. and I always want to unpack these things, put the ideas on the wall like a crime scene 'map' so that people can look at it and instantly see what and where ideas draw their power from, and see also that it is crazy and ask 'why are we still doing this'! 

He - "So the implacability of what"?

Isn't it totally obvious?

It is what I have said - that a rip-tide will carry me out and away from him. That I'm going like a lamb, like those ladies to the ECT despite the implacable insanity of electrocution, and I want them to fight tooth and nail. And I'm not fighting - because I know he would class it as regressive behaviour. They too believe that there is worse. It is an implacable insanity to electrocute a person into convulsions 'for their own good'. It is an implacable insanity that he doesn't wish to preserve what is good in our relationship which requires that he accepts that I'm more of a therapist than a client, that an alliance between us of authentic communication would stretch us both, and that I'm fine if he doesn't 'want me' just I refuse to pay to talk to him, and especially I can't take the lack of truth.... Right now I feel as good as dead - as if I'm as substantial to him as a ghost. I do know that this is serious, deadly serious for me. And I know that I can't avoid the rip-tide."

Me  - "The implacability of that date. I'm not any good at accepting that there are no ways around things "

He - "You were talking before about C.S Lewis saying that the only way through the implacable is acceptance."

Well that's certainly telling me!

Me - "It seemed to be. But I don't honestly know so much - really this is so sad  - my reference for C.S Lewis is almost entirely The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. So the example of Aslan going willingly to the stone table, that that's the only way. And Jesus too, only by accepting and going willingly can you undo. and I'm never so sure about that"  

He - "Yes, but it does sort of fit in with a therapeutic truism, doesn't it. That all the difficult stuff can't be got round it has to be got through. Otherwise it will never be resolved"

Is acceptance 'getting through'? I don't think it is. 

He wants me to accept that he doesn't have feelings for me, but he wont say it! He says instead why would you think that I could ever feel that way about a client!  He wishes me to agree that I have no reason whatsoever to think there was any hint or substance; so he wants me to undermine my own feelings, to believe that I was mistaken to take the times he mentioned  'coffee fuelled discussions'  as a sign that he enjoyed talking to me; and that I was wrong to ever dare imagine that talking was enjoyable for both of us.

The alternative narrative is that he is manipulative, enacting a Kohut therapeutic kinship. This fits with his conceit that it couldn't actually be him that I wished to know - defended by his wishful thinking that the real person that he really is, is never in the room.

So the real person?

He's the ghost?

His denial means that I cannot process any of this correctly. 

Nor can I get a clear image of all the more-than-therapy moments not described in this blog. 

I'm being asked to close my eyes to depth, to truth, to vulnerable humanness. My proscribed path as he wishes it to be, is clear, I must erase my feelings and stop accessing intuition. 

The worst part is, I feel that there is a threat somewhere.

I want to know!

Why is it important to him that I should accept what he says?

Me - " That all the difficult stuff can't be got round it has to be got through. Is a concept. I see it as re-mapping, and to re-map it has to be re-activated. The memory has to be active and running. So, we are in agreement insomuch as it's not possible for it to mend unless it is encountered in some way"

 It's not possible for it to mend, unless it is encountered in some way

Here's the tiny table!

Whatever - I have no idea how those women could accept the fact that they were headed for ECT. They were my first introduction to depression; their daytime clothes gone, dressed for sleep, disempowered, their agency denied. Their acceptance of other people's madness may have been complete. Or their passive acceptance of ECT an act of faith. What struck me was their disconnection from the impulse to fight to live. 

Acceptance means survival when you are powerless. 

And what if I'm being made to accept that which is unacceptable to me - namely his much valued avoidance!

He- "Avoidance is not the answer is what I'm saying. That's what I mean by going around and avoiding. It has to be got through, it has to be processed. Without it being processed it is always going to be there. And it can grow if it is avoided" 

After 'the tiny table'  there is nothing left about me to understand, he is the missing. 

So how is he dealing with this?

I tell him the process I experience and will experience.

Me - "Well the surface fear starts to drag in anything that comes close, that's what happens, a contagion. a misapprehension of that secondary fear"

He - "So what does that mean for the 23rd of May"? 

I will be dragged out by a force akin to a rip-tide and I can't see anyway to avoid this. I will drown - rip-tides kill. Seriously, if I heard this from a client...I would get out the suicide assessment form. It is all there - 'surface drags in anything that comes too close' like...a rip-tide. And what does 'she' (me) associate with rip-tides? Oh yes, an implacable force, and people being sent off to enact the hope that ECT induced seizures are being good for the brain...coercion.

I remember when I was doing level 3 and the person I was listening to was using a metaphor about being washed away, and I side-stepped the emotional impact - because I knew what was underneath (as she was my friend) and I didn't want to take her into the heart of it, in this classroom, with so many others present, a 15 minuites practice session..

He is operating at that same level - but why?

Listening to how much he hasn't reflected back - I'm angry - he has made it so it is not safe to be emotionally open or honest with him. 

Me - "I don't know, I think I'm pretty good at this sort of stuff"

Sounds like avoidance? 

It certainly is.

No one is good at accepting the pain that grief brings. No one can be good at feeling as if they are being dragged by an implacable force that will possibly destroy them. But at this very moment I have to believe that I am able to do it, so I'm going to say it and mean it. 

I have told him that I am facing overwhelming loss and grief, because I don't think this is erotic transfer, I believe that I'm being made to accept something that is cruel. 

So now, a skill I learnt when my husband was cold, using degrading terms, and threatening me is useful once more. I have the ability to speak up for myself in the face of overwhelming force.

This is all I can do...

Me - "<pause> But there are two parts. The first part is the past and then there is the next one, which is the future <spoken with pain in my voice>" because it is the last time that I shall see you <I feel the tears as hot as sparks from a bonfire, stinging my eyes> and that is a sad thing too"

Kit - "Hmm, yes. What does the colliding of those two events on the same date bring up for you?"

I've told him!

Rip-tides and implacable cruelty!

What answer was he after? The truth of that date is that around 4:30 am I'd discovered that all my feelings were valid and my worst thoughts vindicated, that actually things had been exactly as I'd thought whilst my husband was telling me that I was mad. 

Without recordings both of my husband and of Kit, I could be persuaded that it hadn't actually been as I imagined. As much as I appreciate Kit's view of regression, transference and the importance of therapeutic continence - which can be as extreme as the therapist always wearing the same clothes each time you attend a session, and removing their wedding ring too (continence means giving nothing away about who you are in the outside world to the client so that the therapist is a blank slate for the transference) and though I know that it is his way of honouring his clients, this is now about something else, this has demonstrated to me, and taught me a lesson I will never forget or forgive,  how therapy becomes malignant.

I didn't feel devastated by May 23rd 2020. I felt as if the sky and earth became real once more. I finally had the truth. 

I will be devastated by 23rd May 2022 - there is no similarity between 23rd then, and 23rd to come. Instead I will hear more of the same gaslighting language my husband also used, and there will not be resolution or any solid ground!

To answer the question - the colliding of those dates is simply a coincidence. The damage that ended with the 23rd 2020 date has left me wounded enough to be brought into this semi-psychotic state of almost hallucinogenic visions - they describe my psychic state more intensely and with more clarity than anything else I could say.

As I've noted, the use of language - the what makes you think // how could you imagine - mirrors my husband's evasive language. 

If I said that this this language is harmful for me right now, this would conflict with his need to be seen as good and kind and incapable of doing any harm to anything. I know this, I have tried to talk with him about any slight therapeutic rupture before.

He simply apologises!

He cannot explore it.

And that process puts the blame for the misalliance onto the client's shoulders.

The therapist as he plays it, is always perfect...or he will be ashamed.

And that dear reader is factor X.

This is my situation -  his shame is preventing me from getting a clear picture of reality. It would break his commitment to therapeutic continence to tell me that he has a partner, or he's chosen celibacy, or he just doesn't like me, or he likes me, or he wants me to but he doesn't feel able to change how things are. And this doctrine says that if the client is upset by this absence, they become childlike (regression). So, more gaslighting then!

And right now, he's asking me for what? 

"What does the colliding of those two events on the same date bring up for you?"

Again, I need to remind myself of any triumph I've had before when facing the rip-tide of grief...he hasn't a clue how to 'contain' grief. Last time he told me that I seemed 'very angry' when actually I was trying not to cry, feeling unheard, frustrated and powerless. 

I'm going to have to take care...

Me - "It is like the white Golf, it is one of those things, you couldn't make it up! A part of me thinks I've asked for it, the cosmic joke...I must have signed on the dotted line...X choses not to avoid."

Distress is a communication, based on the trust that others will help when they hear a cry. 

We also learn to avoid communicating our need for love and comfort to someone who wont give it. 

The alternative is NVC (Marshall Rosenburg's non-violent communication...)

Me - "In fact I'm saying, 'bring it on' maybe? I don't know! <and my laugh sounds like crying>"

He - "I'm not sure I get the reference to the white car"

My laugh sounds like crying - who is avoiding now! 

This lack of empathic response creates my defence; I tell him about the car again - it uses some time. I'm talking about myself being brave. This is safe. 

Now he is now talking with me about the rights and wrongs of my husbands choice to take or not take legal action against her husband, the outcome of which is that my husbands choice was probably based on his decision to stay with her...I interpret this as Kit proving to me that his interpretation was right all along, and my hopes for repairing our marriage were fantasy (with or without a PH?) 

He - "How do you feel about the 23rd of May"?

No! I have said it, it has all been said. 

He hasn't heard and I am not going to go into it. What doesn't he get? I said rip-tide / lethal / implacable/ can't fight....I seek connection and hope...None is there - I am powerless, dispirited, overwhelmed, in pain. I will be swallowed up in the black and bitter waters and never see you again. What do you think that feels like! And what would make me feel able to tell you this - only the belief that you would reply from the heart, not the head...I have asked you to be straight with me. You aren't straight, you avoid. 

I have no option but to keep away, avoiding seems the only way.

Malignant therapy? I can't imagine that I'm the only person who has gone through this!

Me - "Well there is more. This week we have done the past and next week I will do the future"

He - "OK"

See: Hedges, L.E. (1997). ‘In praise of dual relationships’. In L. E. Hedges, R. Hilton, V.W. Hilton, & O.B Caudill, Therapists at risk: Perils of the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Descending. 16th May 2022

He - "Your email. A bit of a shock"?

Me - I suppose so..."

He - "What happened, I mean how did you discover?"

I had discovered that mandatory therapy doesn't end until we have done at least 50 hours of placement and we have a letter from our therapist passing us as stable (!) And also to have filled out more forms to highlight our areas for development, and then also listing what CPD we are planning on taking. In other words, I need not have given him a date to end therapy.

He - "So have you found anybody"?

A new therapist...I say that I will leave that until I find a placement. And he isn't saying anything. Then we are talking about transcripts. He is telling me to never write my own transcripts because I can use a transcription service! 

I write my own transcripts.. 

I say, 'where does that leave the promise of confidentiality then! I mean talking about a client to a supervisor for the purposes of making sure that I'm doing the best I can for that person is one thing, breaking confidentiality by letting some nameless person transcribe a conversation that I said was confidential, doesn't sit well with me.

And then we are talking about placements, we are not talking about continuing therapy...

He - "So what now then"?

Me - rummaging in my bag: "What's this? What could this be? It is a CD. I will let you open it"

He - as the little video inside the CD package starts..:"Oh! It plays! How on earth does it do that? It's like those weird birthday cards where you open it and it sings happy birthday but like several sophisticated stages further"

Me - "Welcome to the world of Tool"

He - "It's like a cross between Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali isn't it! I dread to think what happens if you delve in further! Are all the eyes related to some song on the CD?"

Eyes again.

I explain about the eyes in Tibetan iconography, especially those of White Tara. And then Alex Grey, and end up talking about the Fibonacci sequence (as is compulsory!) and end by saying that there is a lot to Tool...

He - "So you brought it for what, so you wanted me to see all the eyes or...

Eyes - what the Holy mountain, is it about eyes, Kit?

Me - <laughing> "So I can grant you the mystic empowerment of inner vision! No, to play one track. The song Descending has been with me a lot recently. A person in college gave a talk about how people are so cruel on the internet, and how social media is a force for harm, not good. And I said, 'yeah I know that - but at the time Fear Inoculum was released, quite a few people were writing on the Tool Facebook groups I'm in, and going through really tough times. And, we use Tool to keep us going because the songs contain so many embedded principles...it's in the title - fear inoculum - And a lot of people, me included would write to people who sounded, and probably were suicidal - and Descending, or rather lyrics from Descending, was one of the most quoted tracks. And many people posted photo's of loved ones who had died; the son who would have loved to have seen them play, my father, my brother, my sister. And I collected their photos on my phone and they all went with me to see Tool when they played recently, and then I deleted them all. That was my contribution, my ritual. But Descending "Stay the grand finale"...I always felt that you didn't really understand that aspect of me. The why I hold on. So when I first began speaking to you. What I would write in an assignment about denial, about thinking that there is hope and possibility. But what I do has to be a fair trial, I don't give in until the last moment, ever, no matter how painful or bad something is, I don't give in, or say enough is enough until it clearly is. There is a criteria, a defining characteristic. When that has been reached then I can let myself off, I can breathe again. And the other memory associated with Descending, when things were bad one night with my husband I went downstairs and set up VR and sat - with the Earth below me, I'm in space, stars above me, listening to that album with no body (characteristic of many VR 'games' is that you have no legs, torso, or arms. Just hands) it struck me as infinitely beautiful"

So much I'm not saying. About my total despair. About how important this song was at that moment. About my connection with all those going through similar to us...watching their family give up, giving in to fear and blame and the desire to RUN...

I 'stay the grand finale' because if I give in, what am I worth; to myself?

He - "What is it I wonder, because you often talk about Tool, because with so many bands of good looking men and lots of girls are drawn to them, and we know what the obvious appeal is there. But there is something about the way that you describe Tool as a band that draws people to, essentially the soundtrack to significant parts of their lives. What is it about them that does that?"

What, you have never met a woman attracted by intelligence and energy, before?

Me - "Lyrics, also the complexity, but mainly attitude. and Maynard - the singer - he is the voice of my shadow. I very much appreciated his expression of anger, disgust and rage!

He - "So it's a way of putting to music things you would like to express"?

Me - "No, things I was experiencing, putting them safe in the bottle. It's not the time to let that Genie out. Tool's music connects me to myself. There is a similar sensibility, that you can't tell which way, it's not ambivalence but polyvalent, there is a trickster energy, a joker energy. But clear in its own way."

He places the CD into the player...and the sound of the sea fills the room.<Plays Tool: Descending>

Me - "Remember it is a journey and it will take longer than you think."

I don't say - Listen, this is my goodbye.

Sound the dread alarm

Through our primal body

Sound the reveille

To be or not to be

Rise

Stay the grand finale

Stay the reading of our swan song and epilogue

One drive to stay alive

It's elementary

Muster every fiber

Mobilize

Stay alive..

He - "The voice sounds very low in the mix, so I heard the odd word, but I didn't really get meaning"

Me - "I suppose well, the drum kit is center stage, always well lit up. Maynard stands at the back, you can hardly see him he stands in shadow"

He - "Hmm - what does this mean to you?"

Me - "The vison of being above earth, in space is one part of it. Very much it fitted with my experience of Wim Hof breathing, with overriding 'the dread alarm', that my body panics almost as soon as I begin a breath hold, but at one minute everything dissolves into presence. The oximeter shows me that the sense of panic at first isn't about oxygen, there is no real risk or threat so I'm facing that dark sea of the unconscious. There is my apprehension of being in peril which is true. At the time I was listening to this album in VR. I was in peril - my life as it had been was in peril, so my physical reactions were completely in keeping, but they weren't useful. That's the critical difference. So, it reminds me of that. You can read it on many levels. The song is mostly about the state of the world, the foolishness of fossil fuels and all the rest of it"

He - "Yeah looks like he's written it so there is very much, a feel to this, that the meaning is in the reader rather than"

Me - "Yes, that is the point of Tool. A tool is not anything in particular, its a tool for you to use. The album is Fear Inoculum - about how personal madness can, I mean that's the next track. Imagining conversations you have never had"

He - "Ha, I'm reading Culling Voices and immediately I'm remembering things that you said to me, about conversations between you and your husband."

I am being subtly undermined.

Me - "Oh, but they were conversations we had actually had, because they were recorded! Memory I cannot trust - which is the meaning in Culling Voices - but I thought that I was madder than I actually was - until I listened to what was actually said. When I'd heard the recordings enough to separate myself and just listen to the words, rather than remember the feelings, and to see the underlying dynamic"

He - "Altercations we've never had, or so I'm told" - It doesn't feel like I'm holding an ordinary booklet for a CD. It's almost like I have a sacred object in my hand"

And why not!

I guess it is sacred to me.

But back to that idea that all I have is memory of how my husband spoke to me.

The conversations I imagined cast me as always at fault, they tried to restore my power by saying - everything was wrong because of what I said, if that is the case, I can change it! 

Kit is implying that the conversations I imagine make out that my husband was not being cold and cruel, or downright abusive?

And when I listened to the recordings?

It was worse that I remember.

So Descending, again he misses the message. 

And we are heading towards our 'swan song and epilogue'...right here, right now. 

4th April 2022.

Ah me, he asks, as always - if it is light enough? 

Does he ask this of everyone, or me alone.

He -"You sent me an email - whenever it was! - Between whenever last week about changing to a Friday. What was behind that"?

I sometimes think it takes all the years I've been a trainee to get past questions like this without mischievously giving a spurious reply! 

I have no hidden agenda.

The truth is very boring and related to work schedules 

He - "OK, so it is sorted, one way or another, OK"

There is a lot of emotion here! His emotion - in his voice. There is a something behind it? Did he hope that if I needed to change my day, he would be able to say that he's fully booked?  This is my sad and discouraging interpretation. Or perhaps he feels relief that I'm not going? I hold onto that last thought, 98% certain it isn't true.

He -"So, where do you want to go today"?

Me - "Well, we could do part 2 because I'm not sure where the plane is going"

Untrue - I know it will crash but I have to try...

He - "Oh, part 2 of that! There is more!"

Me - "God yes, because I don't know what I'm doing or why. Well, I think I know why - it is a release - and it was totally joyful to realize I had some time to write! I have two week longer than I'd thought to finish my next assignment!  

I'm done with being open.

Time to be cryptic.

Airplane.

Part 2.

Above the clouds, and they are impossible too, I'm holding the letter and the key...

Well gentle reader, there was a lot more. But it was for him. It was a style of writing that became a part of coping. It appears to be full of riddles, but each part is full of powerful dreams, memories and reflections describing where I am. It is a hyperreal vision-board. 

My assessment...I may as well be on a plane; this room is disconnected from Earth. And we are going to crash, and I am going to be crucified by the pain of our ending. I would like him to agree that we have a duty to prevent crashing and crucifixions. He wont, he can't.

So this is how it is.

I am of course slightly mad. The preceding three years and the impossibility of my task. Nevertheless, I continue, we meet in this place of Ancient references and lost thought....

The conversation that followed encompassed the 12 Gates, the Bardo. the death of Bruno, and possibly Arianism. It touched briefly on the possibility of human sacrifice at Woodhenge, the import of grain, goats and myth from the Middle East circa 4000 BC. Skull shape and what did Jung and Freud actually say...That part was perfect!

The plane. 28th March 2022

He remarks upon my layers - I've put on too many clothes!

I say - " Let there be light"!

I'm so used to our opening conversation always being about the dimness of his room!

He says - "Are you not too warm"

And I say - "Well, I know that intellectually"

And this remark causes great hilarity.

He says - "You don't know it physically? (I laugh) You do know it physically but it doesn't matter"!

More laughter...

He - "And what sort of conversation are we going to get today"?

Me - "The airplane - I sort of needed to put it together. It sort of came to me in the early hours of the morning - in that time when things get put together - so I just thought I'd write. To put together the airplane"

He - "Put together the airplane"?

Me - "Yes, the airplane that keeps crashing. It's crashed how many times now? The first challenge was cannibalism (These are the times he has used an airplane as a metaphor during our conversations)"

He - "Oh that airplane"

Me - "So this is a mixture, most of it is true so obviously some of it isn't"

He - "OK"...

Part one:
I'm warning you. This will be a love story. Just in case you are like me, too old for dreams of happy endings. 

  
I’m not cynical, call it experience. 

We fly lethal miles above the inevitable, and though love expands time, weaving threads of gold through dull memory, scattering the ashen ground we tread with jewels. Those diamond stars that twinkle so alluringly soon get into our shoes and make our toes bleed.   

Rest assured though, this plane is going to crash. So ran my thoughts as I shuffled between seats, towards the one with my ticket number. Sitting down I let my mind accept the view from the tiny window; the wing, the engines.... 

There was more, but it was for him - so I've not included the rest.

"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.