He - "So, what's for today then"?
Me - "Oh, offering the scarf!"
A rush of pain washes over me as I begin to write.
This is the last session.
Then and now, I was really aware that I wanted to leave having done it right.
My integrity is rooted in one statement: love is worth dying for.
Perhaps it is the only thing...
I had chosen not to run.
I had trusted that Kit would stop treating self-disclosure as dangerous.
He didn't.
Instead he lectured me about avoidance, whilst he avoided making any reply to my questions. He ignored the power-dynamic he had created, and failed to understand that it would be maintained by his absence.
I left his room feeling worthless...disempowered, suicidal.
I'd set my coordinates straight for the heart of the storm; my role is to work with the people who get medicated unless we find a way to turn self-attack and justified rage, fear, hallucinations and paranoia into a narrative to be evolved and made beautiful. Overall I have learnt how much I had needed him to be human; to step away from the role of pedagogue, and lawyer; both roles signifying an understandable desire for self-protection.
But ultimately Kit didn't see me as worth it.
Nothing I stood for was worth it, not any of it.
This session as you will read, was almost too much...
I say - "Every time I've paid you I have have offered you money for teachings"
He sounds surprised - "For teachings"?
Me - "Yes, I owe you I think for at least three quarters of all my assignments"
But this isn't all of why I offer him the khata, I'm asking him to respect the difference between us, and respect my reasons for travelling so far to attain wisdom.
Yet he has described me as a person who - at best acting from a wilful ignorance - has in effect made an indecent proposal.
He thinks that I have little regard for the ethics of our profession.
We are both old enough to know better, and to have done better than this.
I offer him the khata, because I am absolutely at the end of my endurance, and I make myself do the best I can do, with my best understanding of the situation, whilst knowing that I don't know and that what ever I chose wont be the best...
He -"Oh, I didn't know that it was that significant"!
Me - "Yes, Balint was so useful"
He - "Yes, he's not somebody who is really ever talked about nowadays...anyway, scarves"
Me - "Oh yes! The khata"
He - "What does this mean - the scarf"
Me - "What is this scarf of which you speak - I just take these things as normal don't I!"
He - "<laughing> Well..."
Me - "Normal for me"
I am folding the scarf into seven folds, and putting the envelope that contains the money inside the middle fold.
I say - "I am treating you as a Lama OK?"
He - "OK, I'm not sure that I deserve it"
Me - "That's not the point"
He - "Don't I have to be somebody Holy and learned to be a Lama"
Me - "How would you know if you are, or are not"?
He - "Well I don't feel very Holy and that's for sure"!
Me - "So a Lama feels Holy"?
He - "I don't know...."
Me - "So, you need to stand up"
He doesn't respond...
Me - "So, you need to stand up...
I explain that the scarf is an offering of honour. The word has a very dear place in my heart, I felt so dishonoured by my husband, it was indescribable, a different sort of pain to any other. I offer the khata to him, and he offers it back to me.
Again, he asks me - "So why - why with the scarf - why give it now and receive it back"?
Me - "Play back how it feels..."
He wont talk about his feelings.
He: "What I often find is useful on a last session, it doesn't mean that we have to do it but it is a suggestion, is to think back to the very first session - and who you were then - and then telescope to the present, who are you now and how did we get from one to the other. And then...
Me - "That sounds like solution-focused to me! Um...yeah...not different, no difference for me. I'm the same person. The only difference...I suppose it is a case of...at the very first, not quite knowing where all the pieces were in relation to each other. I felt as if I'd been dismembered, parts of me in black plastic bags, that was my psychic state"
He - "Hmm....so how did you become"
Me - "Not dismembered"
He - "I was going to say re-membered, and then I realized what I'd said, or what I'd thought"
Me - "But I think that is correct - how did I remember? I had to deal with the not being able to be angry until it was justified. So that is hard, there is justifiable anger, but you can't unleash it until you know that you are correct - it could otherwise be a mistake, missing information has to be found".
He - "How did you know"?
I've explained this in other sessions already.
Me - "It's not possible to know what the criteria will be exactly beforehand, but when it is reached it will be recognized"
He - "In retrospect, how did you know"
Me - "Because my husband lied to me one more time, for no good reason"
We were in a café garden. I asked him if he'd seen her at some CDP thing after he'd said that he wished to repair our marriage. He said no. Her husband had told me before I asked my husband, that she had also attended that CPD. This lie makes no sense.
But the evidence is plain and simple.
Even after moving out, he was still lying.
He - "OK"
Me - "It was the lying that did it. It was lying that was the unfathomable thing, or the malevolent thing. It felt malevolent, it felt like I was being pushed (off a cliff)
Which is exactly how I feel in this final session, now..
He - "Are you saying, not like a lie to cover up - in other words it is about him - but a lie to actually harm you, which means it becomes about you"
Me - "No, I think for him it was a case of, he could not be truthful - he was ashamed. But the effect is malevolent (it clearly did me harm) and I suppose that's the thing that makes me hold back from making judgments or acting... is that the standards I expect from myself, I can't expect from other people. If somebody was in pain because they have been lied to by me, then I would think very badly of myself for continuing to lie. It would be worse for me to experience, than being truthful could be. But that last lie fell into the same mental folder as, being an alcoholic, it is as if lying has become an addiction for him"
He - "OK"
If I was the therapist hearing this I would be thinking....we are clearly not in the last session! That sense of malevolence needs checking - is the husband a real threat to her? But if not, yet she feels that way, what is unfinished, what needs to be done or said?
And the client will say that there is nothing to be done - signifying their sense of powerlessness and overwhelm, their need to be safe by detaching from reality, taking care not to move, not to make any sound. Frozen...
Me - "So, there is no point, there is nothing that can be done with this. There is other stuff going on. Even then, the judgmental part of me says that is pure cowardice on his part, so my question originally was, I suppose, which kind of an infidelity is this? Is this a madness because of all the things we have been through, or is this because you are not an ethical person? That was my question to myself, which way do I think it is? It was the ethics that got me in the end - which is interesting because I feel that you have accused me a lot of times of not being ethical. That could be a feeling left over from that <awareness of possible transference>...I don't know."
He - says something but I can't make it out...
Me - " <Trying to take care of his feelings> Not is a harsh way or anything like that, but with regards to me and the ethical framework.
He - "Well I don't remember those conversations, I don't remember accusing you of anything! I was just saying that it is there for a reason"
Yup, same again, defence. And the word that I used *accused* refers back to a previous session. I'd felt bewildered by how defensive that word had made him - as I'd used it in a mock serious way... But this time I'm not joking, because the way he had responded to me had made me feel accused of treachery (how dare I criticise our professional ethical body!)
I'm puzzled.
The thing to pick up on is, 'the client' had felt accused. I hear his reply now as 'How could you see me as anything other than who I'm trying so hard to be'!
The word I used was accused - which certainly indicates a rupture in the therapeutic alliance.
Certainly in other sessions I was:
Me - <soothing tone of voice> "Yes. So that is what I was saying, it's, there's a wound from - yeah...I will make judgments, but I don't like making them. It just seems that that is the way it is. That yes, his choices were unethical"
He - "Yes"
I speak from Kit's view, to create consilience:
Me - "And so that meant that there wasn't someone worth fighting for, he isn't worth fighting for"
He - "No, it really isn't, no, no"
I don't believe that actually. I truly believe that it should be a hard thing to give up on someone, and never done lightly!
Me - "But it is very hard to reach that point. It is hard to decide when that critical point is reached. I mean I saw my husband reach that point with our son - so people do reach that point, of giving up on others, and where that point is depends on their value system, their belief system, so that means it should take a lot of thought - before giving up on someone.
He - "But I remember in some of our sessions, for quite a long time, for you your husband was worth fighting for because of what had been. And you wanted to get back what had been. And as I saw it the shift was to become more and more aware of what is - and that what has been, has been, and is no longer"
Yeah, just throw away 25 years, during which, most of the time, we were good friends! The shift came about because I was remembering who I am without my husband, instead I was remembering the person I decided to be...My memory of the early sessions is of Kit telling me that 'my husband wasn't worth it'. I found his attitude unhelpful...I thought at the time that it said quite a lot about Kit, and had little to do with me.
I wondered at the time if he wanted me to see that he is better than my husband? I thought it could just be a male thing - that my husband offended him as a man - but either way it was a part of my questioning and wondering about Kit, wondering if he did have feelings for me?
And here it is again!
Me - "I can feel the energy in you about that - that version. Um, no... people work stuff out, things change, things can get recreated. It is whether people are willing to re-create, no not re-create, to create, or whether it is about destruction due to despair. I see that as the difference. He had reached the point of despair, he felt that there was no point, and whatever winds of change, whichever way his life was going, he felt that he needed to be doing something else.
He - "I think my perception was that it took you a lot to get there.
Me - "Well he had to lie to me again - but this time I knew it was a lie because already for the first time I already knew the answer to the question I'd asked him! Before that it had always been ambiguous! So then I wrote down exactly the way I thought and exactly the way I felt about it"
He - "How do you feel about him now"?
Me - "I sort of wonder if at some point he will wake up and think 'I did that wrong'? How do I feel about him - I am still scared of him, there is still fear"
He - "What are you afraid of"?
Had I not already said before in other sessions? To me he is as Ash, the synth in Alien. I don't recognise him as human, humanity has gone, he had and still has an agenda that included smashing us to bits (my son physically, me psychologically - and that is truly scary.
Ash attacks when Ripley works out that Ash will kill the whole crew - and that is exactly how I still feel (20th September 2024) nothing has changed...
Me - "The lack of recognition, I don't know or recognize who he is"
He - "Ah, OK"
Me - "But also the amount of actual rage I feel. My own rage"
I'm giving a text book answer - unlike many of my counselling sisters I'm not scared of rage, but I learnt that I needed to be very wary of gaslighting! It is a real threat to my sanity.
He - "Yes - are you afraid of that?"
Me - "No, I just don't want to feel it. Am I afraid? <pause> No, it is disgust, it is disgust. The image that was very clear and I remember writing it in journal, the way - it was interesting the way themes from the Alien film did crop up"
He is laughing - but I'm not laughing...In my voice you can hear that I'm in contact with primal fear and the gut wrenching awfulness of what happened.
What I'm feeling is a visceral horror, a direct encounter with sex and death conjoined and entangled; I'm remembering that energy affecting my husband. Or did it come from him? Was it was his energy? I don't know - Libido and Thanatos; the pairing, or conjunction is clear in the first Alien film. I experienced the presence of these forces as synchronicity - but also more powerfully as the poltergeist. My interpretation of it (and the 'car and the CD incident!) comes from Jung - Catalytic Exteriorization.
But no, this isn't funny.
I'm not laughing. I made light of the poltergeist at the time but it seemed to be trying to hurt me.
And I was scared..
This is a place Kit can not go - he is actually laughing - have I not said how awful this was for me? And I'm back there - it is in my tone of voice.
I want him to hear, he is not listening - he is actually laughing...
Me -"The men who took my son to be sectioned, in the van, were working for a company called Prometheus - the name of the spaceship in the film Alien Covenant (Covenant the band that got me through) it is almost - I could, if I was that way inclined...but that is just the way it was, and it was just chance, but the coincidences are factually true. I literally did listen to Covenant (The Swedish Electro-Goth band) and the mixture of the singer's calm voice, so I needed that music and that band is called Covenant. And the last film we saw with my son before he went completely down, was Alien Covenant. But the Prometheus van, how was that for my son, with the resonance with the film? But it just seemed to me what my husband had done was, because of having unprotected sex with someone else and hiding it all, being inhuman - having a different agenda somehow - just reminded me of the character of the android, the synth (Ash). The android has been programmed with the imperative to sacrifice the crew to get an alien onto the ship, the Nostromo, somehow. We were the crew - my sons and myself...the agenda created the feeling that comes from gaslighting. What is happening is harm it is harmful, and it will destroy. Somebody who does it that way (path of lies and deception) there is no need for it to be underhand"
He - "When you put it that way, it sounds like you are drawing parallels between the activity of the company and their unseeing agenda, and your husband and his unseen agenda - like there are two agendas going on that are not really connected, but both are operating simultaneously, and both undermine you and your son, in a way"
Undermine?
"in a way"
You mean, hitting, bullying, lying are possibly just a little bit undermining?
This from Kit as therapist - has had the effect of seriously undermining my confidence, Kit added his weight to the reality that 'people don't care about what happened to us, because neither of us - my son or myself - matter. What happened was so awful it shattered our family. Kit's distancing mirrors my husband's attitude. I feel that I will never be able to talk about how I actually felt...Kit's reaction has added a force of disrespect, he was laughing. I can't let it silence me! I can't curl up and howl in pain. I can't - I will stay rational and assume I made a mistake in how I said it, that he could have understood if I'd used the right words.
Me - "No, it was my husband, he was acting like the synth - Ash - there was an agenda, and the synth actually tries to kill Ripley, the character in the film who questions him, so, you know...because she might find out. So he has to - no has to but...he has to kill her basically. He doesn't want someone getting in the way of the agenda, but meanwhile this thing is incubating in John Hurt's character, and it is going to destroy the whole ship - unless Ripley blows the damn thing out of the air-lock! The company, the name on the van, Prometheus was just synchronicity, something that takes you down to the underworld I suppose? No, Prometheus suffered for giving man, fire, so no, nothing to do with that layer of myth. But for my son, Prometheus is not good - two big burley men dressed in black, putting him in a van.."
I also try to forget that I felt that my husband tried to physically harm me - I felt that he put my life in danger - in a way that would have appeared to have been an accident. And I can't even bring myself to write it. I remember a succession of jolts and tears come to my eyes as I'm writing now - I still feel it and my disintegration when I got back home to safety, crawling into a ball, simply unable to stop shaking unable to breathe. When the person you believe is your partner, when every fibre of your body says, this man has just tried to kill you, but he's making out that it was just a moment of rage...of course he doesn't want you hurt...and you don't want to believe what you know...remembering the other time, a knife.
Both times he was so angry with himself...
I was the living proof of who he is...That is how it was dangerous.
And why when I demanded the key back so he can't get into my home, I was shaking and screaming.
I still have the broken knife.
To remind me.
He - "It's strikingly bizarre, isn't it. Why would a company that does that call themselves Prometheus? Can you talk about all of that now as something that happened, rather than feeling its live presence. Does it still have any live presence for you?"
Me -"To talk about it it has to have a live presence! To talk about something...I suppose there are two things. It could be like a hijack, a flashback, the event horizon - the image is just frozen and if you get too close you will be sucked into this devastating, again the image of dismemberment. And then there is the writing about something, and it has to have life to be written about. I could talk about it at the time. Part of me was like - there is so much here! But, it is also so different to normal life. It is difficult to speak it or write it in a way that allows it to mesh, for other people to get up to speed with it. Because unless you have been in that situation; there is a whole swathe of television dramas, documentaries, people's opinions, consensus reality about what mental health problems, and care is like. And in writing about something - well there is either truth seeking or truth preserving. Truth preserving will get a bigger audience and people will understand what you say faster because you are using ideas that are already existing. But truth seeking requires me to ask myself what I think has actually happened, and it is more an edge of awareness thing, so I do prefer that. I think your question is another question - is it dealt with?
He - "That's what I mean by live, is it 'unfinished business'? Or it is something which is - it might have some emotional content to it, but it doesn't feel like its raw and unfinished and unresolved"
He laughed...how can I be open or honest with someone laughing about this!
Me - "I don't think that much of it felt raw and unresolved at the time. Because I was there, in it and present, constantly on the edge of this is too much-I can't bear it, but there was only one incident after my son had been in surgery (after his suicide attempt) for seven hours, and we couldn't find him, we were walking through dark corridors inside the place where the worst things happen, he didn't seem to be on the computer system, and eventually we were directed to a small waiting room where all the leaflets were about living with severe head injury. We had already been told that he had 'life changing injuries' and I thought - this is not a good sign...seven hours in surgery, he is being moved to intensive care, what state is he going to be in? But actually post op, he was sane then because he had been given enough opiates, so he was normal, not psychotic in terror, or rage, which proved to me - it was absolutely clear and a wonderfully beautiful experiment, I thought well, that is all it is then! If all it takes is for his brain to create the right amount of endorphins, he will recover his sanity. The equation was simple, if a person has a lack of endorphins, then their state of mind can be altered into psychosis. I'm fortunate, I've read the work of Jaak Panksepp, I don't see mental illness as complicated! Endogenous opioids, diminish the feelings associated with the grief and panic system, here is the evidence. So I knew my son would be OK, it wasn't like that for my husband or the rest of the family though. But in that waiting room, before we found that he was OK, that was a dark despair. I don't know what I believe in terms of schizophrenia and other concepts, as real things. I think the original diagnosis of such a thing was mostly a failure to recognize syphilis! But I do know that the medical drugs given to 'cure' mental health conditions are horrendous.
He - "Absolutely, absolutely"!
Me - "Unbelievably bad, truly messing up people's systems - So nothing at the time felt like, no I don't want to talk about it, or was painful, it didn't at the time, it doesn't now. My hesitance comes from thinking that the other person really wont be able to understand - and I'm not sure that I have the ability to transmit, I mean I haven't dedicated my time to trying to write better! I write, but I don't try to write better - so if I was a better writer I could do it. But it isn't as though I can't talk about it, nor at the time it wasn't like that.
He - "Yes...it puts me in mind of some of our enforced screen time sessions in the early days when you were very careful about what you did and didn't say because of other people being in the house"
Me - "Oh god, yeah! I did want to talk about it then, yes! But I suppose that's different, it was a need to put the events into order and make sense of it. So perhaps that is the question, do I feel as if I have made sense of it? It just feels like....like I was given the most...it's a bit like reading all the works of Jung. I was given so many rich ideas and images, and such an intense learning experience. So, I've actually seen the truth of things, this is what it is really like for somebody to be called service user, this is what it is really like to be sectioned, this is what it is really like to be a parent watching that happen. This is experience you cannot get in any other way, no way without having to take all of it. So...I did ask for this, crazy as that sounds, I did ask."
He - "In what way"
Me - "That sounds like a semi-mystic thing, like I asked and the universe listened! No, what really happened was I perceived that this might be what my future would hold. That is more likely. But, if you recall, it started with my son's friend who died on the rail-track. When I asked my son what had happened to him I saw something, an expression I couldn't translate pass across my son's face. So I investigated, and it didn't make sense, none of it made sense. So I went to the inquest and it didn't make sense. None of this story made sense. So I had lots of thoughts about that and ways to look at it, but still none of it made sense. I could not understand how it had happened. The phrase is ' in this day and age!' the feeling is, surely we are better than this! Where was this young man's care plan, where was the mental health care, team? Where were all the things that are supposed to happen? Because between it happening and the inquest I took a course on mental health and the course made it appear that there is some kind of logical process underpinning psychiatric care. So I had so many thoughts and opinions about mental health care, suicide, and what had happened. and every single one I faced and learnt a lesson from. I lived every single part leading up to my son's friend suicide, and then I faced the what comes after. A part of me thinks that his friend knew what comes after and that is why he is dead...because he had already experienced being in a psychiatric ward. But it was at that inquest I listened as his doctor described how at his final appointment; he had seemed happy, he was clean and tidy, and his mental health was stable. She gave him a repeat prescription for his SSRI, and asked him if he would like to talk to a counsellor. And I thought, ‘well why would he want to see a counsellor, why would he want to talk to a nice middle class lady who talks like his mom's friend, just why!? None of my son's friends would want to see a counsellor - so, I have to become the sort of counsellor they would want to see. So, there we go. So I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states. Because what I understood from my son in particular was, though there is long term work. But the people who do effective counselling in the present tense, with a person in insanity in full flow, that is a different skill, because that is not about looking at the cause of the pain - because that kind of thought amplifies it - it is entirely about taking what that pain is for that person, and finding a way to turn it a few degrees so it shifts out of the nose dive. So, I needed to find 'the psychic lightning conductor'! "
He - "I'm trying to remember his name - 1960s - psychotherapist who wrote a book about what was probably called then, madness. We wouldn't use that language now of course"
Me - "No, they wouldn't use it but they still mean it! The replacement terms still have exactly the same weight"
He - "But what he was...the whole book was that we think that people who we call mad make no sense, and the whole book was about, if you know how to listen to it, it does make sense. It makes sense for the person saying it, and it is up to us as the listener, as the therapist, to find out what that sense is..."!
I'd say that the feeling people have that things must make sense is part of madness (I like the word, madness, it indicates a transient experience)
J.Panksepp writes:
...psychotic fantasies are generated by a grossly over aroused SEEKING system. It is interesting to note that stress can elevate dopamine activity in the frontal cortex. This may explain how severe stress helps promote paranoid, schizophrenic thinking patterns.
Panksepp, Jaak; Biven, Lucy. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (p. 109).
Time is slip, slip slipping away....
He - "So, what's next for you, have you got your placement lined up yet?
Me - "No. And there is such a lot to do, find a list of placements, find a supervisor, find another therapist - and I am sorry about that."
He - "Yes"
Me - "And that will be at least £200 a month, and I don't think I can afford that money, or rather I need that money. And I was ranting to my son about my last assignment, because I wrote that assignment about my existing placement - a placement not accepted by my college so my 70+ hours there will not be counted as part of my 100 - so that assignment was literally a put that it your pipe and smoke it, in my opinion my course leader is out of order for disregarding that work, which I hope I've made plain in that assignment! I am sick of people missing the post-modern therapies. These are the facts, this is the contract we use, this is the way clients arrive, this is the ethos of the place. So, I was certain that assignment would fail."
He - "And it has"
Me - "It passed, because it does fulfil the criteria demanded by the ethical body, and by the college! But I was angry, so this means I have to do a 'top-up degree', and do extra training to be called a psychotherapist and then I can come back and tell them why, why, whenever you have dismissed me, the other training I received, and what I've said - you are wrong! But you are not going to listen to me until I've got letters after my name. So, I need money for that!
He - "So, the assignment passed, does that also mean that it now counts as a placement"?
Me - "No, god no! My hours don't count as a placement there!"
He - "Isn't that a contradiction"?
Me - "We are dismissed, yet it is counselling. For I would say that someone who says that they are psychodynamic, or person centred, but they don't make a relationship with their client, they don't feel the changes in the atmosphere as the person speaks - then they are not doing counselling! As opposed to someone who is listening and is aware, and uses space and time. And even if they are not doing 'counselling', they are actually doing counselling. And there is the theoretical underpinning, and that seems sound enough for me! I know that you quote Balint, but I disagree with you. I wrote as if I agree with you Balint, but I don't, I really don't"
He - "The basic fault"
Me - "Kind of - the 'fault' is part of a person, this is who they are now. This is true. I don't disagree with that. What I disagree with is that it is fixed through awareness of what's gone wrong, and talking about it. There is the reparative relationship, that is important. But it is not as important - in my view- as working out what that person is doing in the here and now, that is working. And how they get more of that. That sounds like avoiding, it sounds like rescuing, it's not. It is literally using their skills and asking them to be creative, creative thought is very important."
He - "I think you have just described your course leader's point of view, and why she sees a difference"
Me - "But I disagree that that standard view is what counselling should be, that that standard view is only what counselling can be. Avoiding? Ordinary counselling avoids what the person wants, and enjoys and needs."
He - "Well there is a huge debate to be had there, but we are not going to have enough time in four minutes. Yes, I'm expending a lot of energy at this moment avoiding going down that path, because ..."
Me - "So if we could quickly do this, so, if you said what you needed to say, what difference would that make for you"?
He - "It wouldn't make any difference, which is why I'm not saying anything"
Me - "If you could say it, just by pass the sense of time, what difference would that make for you, what would change for you"?
He - "Nothing at all"
Me - "You wouldn't be having to hold it down, there or.."
He - "Are we swapping roles here"!
Me - "Yeah, we are"
He - "No"!
Me - "Yes, only briefly, only briefly because...<tears in my eyes> OK. I step back"
He - "Yes, do that, yes. So, this all arose because I was asking you if you have a placement and you haven't"
Me - "That's this week"
He - "That's what you are going to do this week"?
Me - "To go through the paper work and work out - because I haven't had a week off since..."
He - "yes"
Me - "There are a lot of hours spent on admin, and a lot of hours seeing clients (at the other place that is counselling but not counted as counselling by my college) so...."
He - "So if you have done all the academic stuff of the course, you haven't done the placement for the course. What's the procedure? Do you send paper work in, now and again? Without actually ever attending?"
Me - "Yeah - you can ask for tutorials, but yeah, we are satellites"
He - "So I've only ever heard of that arrangement before, when somebody ends their course and they haven't got their hours, when the hours are intended to have been done by the end of the course. I've never heard of it arranged so that you would end the course without having done the hours. That seems very strange"
Me - "That is why all the assignments are so concentrated, and we do two years worth of assignments in six months. That is why it was continual, endless writing to the point of insanity.
He - "So, have you had your last meeting of the course"?
Me - "No, that's tomorrow and Wednesday"
He - "Oh, OK"!
Me - <pause - I'm breaking> "What you are seeing is...let's call it, 'agree to disagree', if I'm honest..(no I'm beaten I can hardly speak). There it goes <I gesture, indicating putting it behind me> So, I don't know what we are doing tomorrow, but the next day we are going out for a meal.
He - "OK, so it is almost going to be the equivalent of the last day of school where you play games and watch TV"
Me - "Bloody 'In Therapy' - that's time I'm never getting back. With Gabriel Byrne
He - "I've never watched that, it was mentioned to me, I've never watched it. It's not worth watching by the look of it?"
Me - "I don't know - it is entertaining. But it isn't the best use of time is it <Last session. Last minutes and we are talking about TV, this is awful > It is a made for TV story, that viewers are meant to be piecing together, basically the cop interview scene without the plot, and different sort of cop.
He - "Right, well times up"!
Me - "Right, times up"
He - "Yes <pause> So I hope all goes well, and that you come out the other side of it with what...because last time we spoke you were not quite sure what you were going to do with it "
What didn't you get about ' I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states'? My aim is to work with families who are being bullied by the mental health services, actually! Mediation and translation, meshing opposing worlds to create something better for all. My criticism of SFBT is that it was developed by social workers who wanted to be therapists.
My aim is to be a counsellor who re-invents social work!
A long silence from me...
Me - "To keep listening"
He - "And I'll put my computer on in a minute and send you the final form.
Me - OK, thank you - I kind of hoped it was going to be my score! My rating -as a client! I'd give you, Xerpa, two out of ten."
<we both laugh - and we have laughed. I can't end this, I just can't>
He - "Hmm - take care, bye"
Me - "Bye"
--
Closing the door I turned towards the road, to walk to my car, to drive to the Waitrose closest to the tracks. This is my ritual of confirmation - my promise to see all of this out until the 'end'. And I wasn't brave enough to face the trees; the ones closest to the embankment where my son's friend had gone one cold December morning, to end his life. The same trees I'd insisted that my husband and I walk to after I'd tried to say how sorry I was...and that I would do anything to make things right. The depth of anger this inspired in him never made sense, nothing about his rage made any sense.
I was at the edge of complete disintegration. Then and after this awful, awful session.
A semi-psychotic vision, a truer view filled my mind...I wrote it down and then recorded it.
