The Corona Borealis.

Bad therapy intrigues me at the moment.  Because none of us want to be bad therapists, and all of us have written thousands of words describing what good therapy is, and how to provide it. And many trainee therapist have had bad therapy! Bad therapy is a continuum, a lot of what makes it not good might seem trivial, but clients are often in an extremely vulnerable state of mind. For instance one client may love sharing the room with the therapist's dog. But not every client will want that to continue - a person who is in therapy already feeling as if their words and emotions don't count won't, can't speak up. Sensitivity to how others might feel, and being aware of the emotional tone of the other person's response and asking questions in such a way to honour feelings isn't easy. But it is our responsibility - as is challenging, but how to challenge and timing depends on the quality of trust between clients and therapist.  When I was training one colleague had a ...

Not an easy thing to do. And I found myself walking past his house three times, stopping, staring up at the sky, asking myself - is this right? It was hard to do. Tears in my eyes, and the bitter, cold wind. But in the end, just returning to my car would be keeping everything the same - I'd have thought less of myself, to respect myself I have to take action - there seemed no other way. It is the 3rd of January, and I have just returned from walking the dark passageway up to his front door and posting my final broken sound recorder through the letter box, silently - I didn't let it fall.  I really didn't want him to hear me... The envelope was sealed - and I wrote on the back of it: I give you back your words because I do not wish to remember. Inside the envelope, the voice recorder containing three sound files, transcripts - the blog posts - and a hastily written DOC file: 3rd January 2025. After you called me a minx - see end of this document. I decided it was important f...

Muxia is the final destination of the Compostela. Late last night I caught a video of him teaching. I could only watch for a few minuites before the ache in my heart made me shut my eyes in pain, powerless to stop my tears. I switched the computer off. Tried to walk away from the cascade of feelings and thoughts. And woke today, back in Muxia, on the Costa da Morte. The desire is the same, to just go there - as quiet as a hare, to curl up by his door, to hope that the cold stills my heart as a I sleep beyond waking... Contrary to what he said about suicidal thoughts, I don't use such thinking to make my days bearable, I don't need to look at my end to feel alive. I am far more simple than that, I don't want to die, but nor do I want to live with this pain. I just want it to stop! Muxia is the red warning light on the dashboard, it indicates that something is very, very wrong.  The image of myself, dead outside his front door hidden from the street by the darkness of the sto...

Quote taken from this source.  [+]   All we know for sure from the various writers of the past, such as Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil and Euripides, is that Cassandra will never be believed.  No matter how real and true her words.  Nor will anyone ever believe even after it has happened, that she had known how things would be. But why Cassandra came to suffer so, the writers of this sad story do not agree. Simply put, Cassandra was  cancelled  by the God Apollo. Nietzsche in  The Birth of Tragedy (1872) contrasts Apollo as a God of light and knowledge - calm and reason, with Dionysus as a God of ecstatic emotions.  But the story of Cassandra and Apollo does not support this simple division. This story was written in a time when   Greek society valued hypermasculinity. A time when sexual expression was defined by status, not gender, not love. A free male Greek citizen was at the top of society and women only one notch above slaves. Apollo was...

I am a coward. What stops me from speaking out? When I was 17 my friend was groomed by her English teacher.  When she phoned me from the English teacher's house, she had found his photos, lots of photos in a draw. He liked to shave his most precious students, and keep the pictures. My friend had refused. He had left the house, perhaps to buy shaving foam and more razors! I drove to his house and took her out of there. After she finished her A levels, she went to university, and they lived together... until she ran away from him! And life is complicated...nice if things were black/ white, good/bad. But the point is, I knew about that draw full of photos. And I've no doubt he continued grooming, in the most literal sense. The point is, I didn't go to the police. I didn't go because my friend didn't want me to. And I didn't want to open the door to places she wouldn't want to go. The police station, the court. It would affect her education. Her life was hard en...

It has been three years since I recorded the mp3 to tell him about how I feel about him. And three years awareness of how my requests for open and honest dialogue were ignored.  I'm still thinking about some of his inappropriate responses to the emotions I felt when I spoke with him; such as how he laughed as I spoke about being paralysed by horror and fear. [+]   If you are reading this blog, you know that he refused any kind of resolution or mediation process. So I chose to publish my therapy sessions, using transcripts.  This hasn't been an easy decision to make.  A part of me remains uneasy about it.  The alternative? I seriously considered making an official and formal complaint. Now, in October 2024 we are about eight months away from it being too late for that as there is a three year window.  Actually I'm not sure, I may have more time?  And yet the reasons why I don't see complaint as the right thing, remain exactly the same no matter how I th...