A conversation via Zoom.
And so it began - very well! He told me how much he had enjoyed our conversation in the previous week, and how pleased he was to continue in this way, so pleased that I'd decided to change our contract, that I'm no longer a client - now a mentee.
He said - "you know for a while I thought what are these sessions for really, a piece of paper to pass a course! Could be so much more than that..."
Well, my ideas had been steamrollered in the previous dialogue, for sure. But the emotional price I was paying was worth it; he had enjoyed talking to me so my skill in conversing with a person as if from within their world-view is validated! And I had learnt a lot about standard, counselling theory which would be used in writing my assignments. The cost to me, well it felt more like a challenge than actual cost. I felt as I have felt in many lectures or computer games, that I am not good enough, can't do it, I'm not clever, fast, intelligent or knowledgeable enough and should just shut up, nod my head and give in.
But I don't.
The cost to oneself of speaking and receiving a reply to a different statement or question, is self doubt. Following a year of being lied to by my husband, and then discovering that everything I'd imagined was actually true, I trusted myself and I trusted my feelings.
I wanted us both to slide into the waters and swim to the other side of so much more..
I began our discussion from where he had left it; the word re-enactment defined as a memory that has a numinous quality, a feeling of being dragged into a whirlpool, entrapment.
Now he heard me
He - "Entrapment, that’s a really good word for it - and I have to say, this distinction between memory and re-enactment isn’t in any book. This is the language I use because I find it useful...There are many books on trauma and I find them a curates egg. Many of them contain an unhealthy dose of magical thinking - like just go and do some EMDR which is the height of magical thinking!
I genuinely wish to discuss this, but obviously - in his tone of voice - this isn't something worth following up right now. He explains that he has clients coming to him telling him that EMDR has retraumatized them. I think - but I don't say - if it works for someone they won't seek a different therapist, so you will only see people for whom previous therapy hasn't worked.
I say - "You feel strongly about this"
I'm asking about his feelings - he ignores me and continues:
He - “Which brings me onto something - if trauma is going to be your main focus.."
Me - "No, its part of the journey, I'm taking this opportunity, anything to be explored.."
He - "I think that answers a key question I wanted to explore with you - about your last email, because I thought, there are some things in it which are PhD level!"
As flattering as this statement is, I have to disagree. I thought I'd been very clear and concise - and as terms can have multiple meanings it is useful for us to agree how we are going to use words. And then we are talking about Don Cupitt and the episteme shift. Oh pure joy of discussion here, perfect! Yet what I'm hearing is someone explaining that meaning is constructed from reality perceived through developmental biases - while I am proposing bias is changeable, based on more than childhood experience.
And right now for sure I am experiencing someone describing reality biased by something.
I always found that something so interesting.
Factor X
He believes developmental biases are key, therefore it is vital to ask a person how they made their assumptions about reality - and for Kit this means seeking their understanding of their developmental biases.
He - "Because these influence their perception. If one remembers one's childhood as being victimised and powerless, and then goes through life replicating that. One hopes that when they finish therapy, their past will have changed, they will no longer relive those events as victim - the child who was helpless, who did have things done to them, who is no longer the child who is helpless can now have the power to make his own choices.."
Therapy as a mission to rescue the victimised child.
My view of re-enactment relates to the present as a kind of resonance.
I explain:
Me - "re-enactment feels like a whirlpool, numinous - something operating - things going wrong in the present, It is like warning lights on dashboard saying no oil! But warning messages are not always accurate - especially on computers! I believe that when a person starts remembering the bad stuff, there is something similar happening to them in the present, it has the same emotional tone as the past. Definitely for me, I thought the feelings were about the past. I was stuck on the form, the images of the past. The emotional tone was the same, but all I could remember were the images, the events. But truthfully - I was failing to recognize the same (external) dynamic operating in the present."
He continues - "I think this is why Transactional Analysis so important. Most of what happens to us we forget. What we remember is about our identity, and that’s where the ego states come in. All are present tense, always about identity.."
Is this the crossroad, is this where we really agree and disagree?
Identity - we agree I think - operates as an organisational template about who and what we are and do. But - and this is where we disagree - I don't see re-enactment as regression. I see it as a heightened awareness of wrongness, interpreted as if it is an echo of the past. The template one has at present, is out of date, updating it - seeking the location of power, the true nature of threat and experiencing one's own meanings, is vital.
Again it sounds as if we are so much in agreement, but there is a difference.
We are taught that clients keep repeating the past, keep on making the same mistakes because the past has caused damage. Certainly bad memories are compelling, and it can seem as if bad memories are almost gluing themselves to good ones to create a cascade of despair, detachment and behaviour that leads to further alienation and pain.
Postmodern therapies assume that the 'damage' is a tangled network of 'bad memories' - activated by the present and sets about constructing a better version. There is no intermediate theory of ego states, or concepts of damage or causes except those described by the client. There is no search for 'the smoking gun' unless a client wants to do that. The Dhammapada (and The Stoics) stated that 'with our thoughts we create the world'. Steve de Shazer went further ' with our words we create our thoughts'. Words are the keys to deconstruct and, reconstruct meaning. Dialogue - for SFBT - is biased by curiosity, courage and hope. And change comes through doing the problem differently!
Meanwhile, intrusive bad memories need a safe shell to be placed around them before they can be re-contextualized; this is the 'externalising' and 'mapping' processes of Narrative therapy. First task, to find the words and images that encapsulate the problem as something a person has, rather than something one is...let's look at it. What is happening - how are power, and threat operating in your life right now....
I say - "Counselling, it is as if it is always up to the individual what happens to them. But sometimes it really is the others, sometimes the external situation really is that bad. So, thinking in terms of a continuum, sometimes I think a client can be held too responsible for how they feel. And in PCT therapy I would reflect back a person's concerns about real world events and that can have devastating consequences - that magnifies the person's expressions of powerlessness and fear in the name of helping them to accept their feelings; in effect creating a horrible feedback loop that will drown out any hope."
There is a long pause here followed by:
He - "Yes <pause> I put a new article on my website, all I'm going to say is it is based on all we have talked about. Have a read and see what you think. It is about the depth of perception and how we respond to things."
Me - "You used the term depth of perception - are you saying that it is like ultimate and relative truth?
He - "What I mean is the depth of one's perception of an event is ultimate in other words, the event doesn't exist in itself, it exists as something perceived by the perceiver and that's all the person has, there can't be anything else. And so one of the key things in therapy is to ask how did a person arrive at their set of perceptions, in other words their biography which led them to a set of assumptions about reality and those assumptions about reality will be brought to bear on whatever it is they are perceiving at any given time. and if all goes well by the time they have finished therapy sessions their perception will not be the same as when they started."
At this point - as he goes on to talk about childhood and how memories are changed in the present I believe that I hear personal memory - his memories - I hear an emphasis on developmental impact. But mostly I feel it, and begin to see myself a privileged position...should I be annoyed, or concerned?
That I hear more about him than he hears about me.
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