Trauma - 28th June 2021.

-
25th June 2021
Notes:

I want to get to a place
 where we work together to do this mysterious, great something. 
A vision - walking the Camino 
to Compostela. 
A pilgrimage through story.
Exploring dark alleyways.

Oh my words to you 
I'm so bloody obvious. 

And I'm breaking rules... 

Aligning with truth and trust...


I approached therapy with an open mind, and as if it was work. But, it was during the time of Covid lockdown and life took place on Zoom. My family were at home too. I felt restricted and stifled. 

I couldn't really talk. And after about eight sessions I was done. No getting out of therapy as a student. We agreed to talk about my course work, specifically in this session, about my research project. 

I would have left therapy if not for the course, but I couldn't face starting with another therapist - difficult to dig underneath my rationalizations, but I didn't want to explain even as little as an outline of what had happened to me again. 

Not yet. 

Nevertheless it felt deeply unethical for me to be his client. So I asked for our sessions to change focus, for him to be my mentor and I, the mentee, and this explains I think why we used his meanings and not mine. He took his role of mentor, to be teacher. That isn't really what I'd meant! But it was more ethical for me than being his client!

But yes, once I realised how I felt about him, therapy was done!

I fought hard to banish those feelings of falling for him, from my mind though. I called it an artifact of therapy, I called it transference. But ultimately I don't think that it is. And yes, that's a real problem. And in truth I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to do, because it wont fade. 

In August 2020 A boyfriend I used to go to gigs with in the late 1970s heard what had happened to me regarding my family; and got in touch. And he was so kind, so lovely to me and so integral to my recovery. It seemed to him as if we were meant to be. And it should have been a good match for both of us. There was a lot of joy and fun and electricity. 

Here is the thing, our experience of Eros set me free, his love allowed me to heal. 

So my first response was to step into his dream, and to dismiss my fuzzy, impossible thinking. But this isn't a fairy-tale and there isn't a happy ending. I simply couldn't love him. Actually, it felt like transference! Like stepping back into being a teenager, but with health issues! I stayed a weekend with him. But he didn't make my heart race, and what could we talk about? 

It was lovely to be wanted physically, but it was a kind of  - so what feeling - and that isn't good! 

I explained this to myself through other people's words: 'it's too soon for another relationship', 'I'm bound to feel apprehensive'.  

But it wasn't so. 
I wasn't apprehensive! 
I couldn't love him, someone else was in my heart. 

Meanwhile, he trusted his instincts and asked me if I was in love with someone else? 

I answered no - and as I said it, it sounded hollow to me. I didn't feel as if I was lying, I just didn't want to believe I'd do something so stupid as to fall for my therapist. So then I said yes, but the person doesn't know…

Despite saying it I tried very hard not to believe, and it was so easy for me to continue attributing the cause of my feelings to inaccurate thoughts. It took until December 2020 before a twist of fate, gave me the correspondence between intimations and reality enough to make sense of the impressions I'd formed - and the realization arrived with absolute clarity yet I continued to run though all the possible 'transferences' and reasons to consider this an anomaly, false, unreal. 

It seemed so reasonable to judge myself unable to interpret my feelings in any kind of accurate way. 

So once again I was denying the reality of my feelings, as I had with my husband and the reason was the same; the alternative, more true narrative is the unknown, unexpected and unknowable - Terra Incognita unmapped - undocumented. 

Plus I was experiencing hypervigilance, panic attacks, and I couldn't sleep. I had survived chaos, terror, destruction and then loss and grief, how could I be sane? 

I felt as if something had snuffed out my North star, and set the compass needle endlessly spinning. I'd lost my husband, my son and my daughter.
But, that 'I'm not sane' narrative isn't new.
Nor was it ever true. 
Discussion one.

Trauma -  28th June 2021.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What next?

-
Image
And so I find myself marooned - to stay with the plane crash metaphor - I've just watched Society of the Snow . And as in the film, as in the awful reality of those real events, action must be taken. There will be no rescue otherwise, no getting out.  So what action do I want to happen? In counselling, and between counsellors, what counts as resolution is usually an apology of about a thousand words. Those words need to convey to the injured other, a real understanding of the harm done, and a heartfelt regret. And how I manage to convey to Kit that this demonstration of awareness is appropriate and needed. How to do this? I don't know.  Yet. Do I make a formal complaint? The first option is to get in contact with the therapist and explain that there is a problem, and ask for some kind of resolution to be worked out. If that isn't forthcoming, if the therapist doesn't acknowledge that there has been and still is a problem, then a complaint is justified. A therapist who ...
Read more

Coercion.

-
Image
OK, this is hard - I need to dig deep. The pain of it is almost beyond my endurance, and yet at the same time I am above, observing, watching and recording. The pain is like wearing a dress made of nettles. And so I turn towards it, embrace it  and connect. Holding out my hand I ask into the empty air, 'what is your name? ' In the roiling blackness of the void I hear the words  'I am your intoxication'.  Gently I ask the pain, what do you need?  My hand touches something cold and rough, like shark's skin. And below me deep under an ocean of tears and a crimson gush of my heart's-blood, the words 'love and soul ' boil, radiant and poisonous as a nuclear flash. The sun turns blue, a 'vision' of Cherenkov light, 'the blue sun' I'd seen in my semi-psychotic state when I had left the therapy room for the last time. "love and soul..." Returning from inside to out, directing my vision to the keyboard, to the soft white light of th...
Read more

Intention.

-
Image
Yesterday I sat in the shadow of the Tor.  I had come here to complete the June visit - I connected my mp3 player to the sound bar and played a song by a young man whose death had led me here.  I thought of standing up, before letting the sounds ripple out to the four corners, to tell the whole story to everyone - and actually, in retrospect, perhaps that would have been the right thing to do.  But, I didn't.  I just played it.  It was time to let his ghost, go... As the music rang out I remembered sitting in the chamber of the coroner's court as the inquest was heard - and making my commitment to train as a therapeutic counsellor.  To become the sort of therapist he might have chosen to talk to. My question then was how do I prevent this death happening to others...or rather, how do I become the kind of counsellor who might be able to change someone's mind enough to alter their direction. At the inquest we heard that everyone had tried, everyone had done ...
Read more