I placed symbols of the four directions. 30th August 2021
This is the session in which I placed symbols of the four directions, at each of the cardinal points in his room.
- A stone in the North.
- A feather in the East.
- A candle in the South and
- The sound of the sea (I played a recording) in the West.
Perhaps I should have dropped this fly-by intuition thing I was doing, perhaps I should have availed myself of his psychotherapeutic knowledge. But, he was my beloved. I had just an hour. And the terror of the Kohuts was upon me - that our laughing together, our getting on, was his deliberate construct - twin ship or some other reparative relationship manoeuvre.
Not real.
No actual connection.
Manipulation.
Only his illusion and my delusion.
And in this room, well our laughter, it felt real. But that question he asks himself, the 'who am I to the client' question and how he seeks to be 'who they need me to be'.
But I don't need him to be anyone except who he is!
My North star is vanishing. Working out the directions in his room is my grounding ritual, I am able to say: I don't know which way is up or down, and I feel as if my blood has turned to water and my legs wont work, but now I know where the sun is! Focus on that. My experience of chronic stress had taught me the importance of this. When everything is fragile and nothing makes sense, then holding on to where the sun is - is something in a world - because at a certain point all that is solid, melts into air. The stability, solidity of North, of the Earth is gone! And I'm telling him about how extreme stress meant that my sense of time was broken, and how it is the hippocampus that deals with time - and how the hippocampus is damaged by adrenaline and cortisol....and how, just a year ago I felt the edges of my sanity starting to break.
He doesn't think that knowing neurobiology is important. I disagree. It was my golden thread. It allowed me to find my way back to the world. It gave me sound and solid reasons why I would be destroyed by self attack and self abandonment. So I held tight to my relationship with direction, space and time - because this is how I hold tight to my place in this world.
I tell him I had felt - and still do to some extent - as if I'd been shot through the head. And I don't hear him say, 'You suffered such a profound loss of normality, your family fractured and gone. How on earth did you get through that?' But I answer that question anyway; I tell him that I was privileged to get a ring side view, to observe in myself the process that culminates in sectioning. I tell him that because of this, I'm not concerned with the cause of people's vulnerabilities - the attachment issues or any 'basic fault' - I am very concerned with what people are doing that is helping them now. My question is never 'what do I think they need from me' it is always a question to them, 'what's helping you?'
The strategy of therapists to use a concept of attachment and wounds from the past may create a handle for some parts of the experience, but being asked to observe the wound, to concretized suffering just made it worse for me. It avoided now, it avoided my answers and strengths - But I've said this before and I will say it again!
He is talking about a 'sense of self'.
What?
No!
I don't understand?
I've just described the effect of terror, loss and grief!
He is talking about clients who have no sense of self to help them to make sense of events..
The sound of the sea had stopped. And I was feeling my own hypervigilance, the feeling that at any moment he'd see into my heart and tell me to go, and I know that right now I'm not strong enough for this, not at all, and I'd just break.
But there is a serious issue here. I'd break now not because of my childhood issues, I'd break because I'm recovering; it takes time for the body to release the panic, when one has been too close to death.
I find the concept that someone without any serious attachment issues, or a 'basic fault', could cope with what I have been through, as childish...actually.
But hey, I get it.
Only people who have lived through it can know.
When I was at the inquest for my son's friend, I could not imagine why the family hadn't got help. Surely it was obvious how dangerous the situation was? So I remember how profound my ignorance of their situation turned out to be, I'm fortunate, life intervened and ripped up my idiot notions. It is a judgement, pure and simple - a process of subtle blame born from a desire to believe that the world is less random, and more fair than it truly is.
So I guess he doesn't know this. He believes in a more orderly world than I do! Well perhaps no one knows how fragile ordinary can be unless they have lived through it's shattering. Certainly that inquest and what happened to me afterwards taught me to never make judgments again! But no, I'm not going to play along in this conversation today.
Where I've been, and where others are, is too serious.
This self, no self thing is angels on a pin.
I said - "I'm not sure where we go next - anywhere - more time travel. The 'unconstructed space' what do we do with this space? I could ask you, what are your best hopes...
He is taken aback:, but instead of hearing that I'm not good at coping with the lack of the other, with this absence of the person, he interprets this as me trying to be the one in charge!
Me - It's not turning the tables, it's a fair question....I'm in a funny position. I could feel uncomfortable about not 'doing' therapy but I don't think I've got therapy to do. But you are a therapist, so if you want to do therapy I will attempt to do therapy. I don't see myself as a client..."
He replies with a favourite therapy statement, about this being your time, your space to talk about whatever...
I reply honestly - "But I don't know what I want it to be, except through asking you what your best hopes might be.."
And he tells me that this time isn't for anything, and not for anything I might want it to be.
'Not for anything you might want it to be' ?
Each syllable a dagger into my heart.
So he knows?
Of course he knows!
Then why has he not said anything!
There is no room for this kind of thinking, it will drag me into anger or despair. I need to stay on firm ground. OK - so I know that I don't want more pedagogy, so I try to explain that in talking about anything I hear how he does therapy - as that is so often a part of what we talk about. I tell him that I hear the heart-essence, his attitude, his tone of voice. I ramble on about theory too, and that what I've got from him is really useful. Some part of me is pleading silently; please cross the river, please let go so we can start again as equals, as people.
I disconnect from that part, I hold the calm part of me steady...
Then he is telling me that therapy courses rarely cover how to deal with suicidal ideation in enough depth.
I tell him truthfully that actually they have done their best to teach us to feel confident in such a situation.
He tells me 'we should ask about suicide, and ask in the first session'.
He had asked me in our first session and, I lied. I didn't feel safe enough to be honest. Recently I've been asking the suicide question of our clients because it is 'our policy' and done as part of an assessment, but I don't know how useful it is. The people I've spoken to for whom suicide is a possibility have just told me their situation as we spoke. And even before it is said directly, I hear it in the tone of their voice and see in their body language, I feel the future has vanished, a closing down, a shutting off, preparing to go - no future beyond the wall of fear, fury, and rage. I say what I see. I tell them that I need to have the suicide conversation, and I explain that this is about my fear, but I hope it will be useful for them. I don't leave the unsayable unsaid...
And as he speaks I remember the moments clearly; when he asked me about my suicidal feelings it felt like what it was, an assessment question - it didn't even feel like it had come from him!
I say - "It is quite difficult in the first session to be asked that. I found it quite difficult"
Again I experience a nothing, his reply is: "hmm"
I echo it: "hmm"
He tells me that he has heard from others that suicidal people can be very good at hiding it. So it is something we need to get into the open. And right now, what is happening here, why hasn't he heard me? I had just said that I'd found it difficult in my initial assessment dialogue with him to be truthful about self harm and suicide. Then he had replied with 'some people are good at hiding it'. So has he heard?
He didn't 'get it into the open'....so what is he talking about!
I ask a really oblique question to find out.
I say - "I would be going by instinct, by feel - that I'm listening for the 'ring of truth' as they answer the assessment questions. Would you say that that is how it is for you, it didn't feel right (their tone of voice, body language)?"
He replies - "I don't recall that that has ever happened (so that answers my question - unless he is extremely skilled in sidestepping truth?) And he reinforces the importance of relationship by saying that to create a good relationship, 'there should be no, no-go areas in what you can talk about...'
'There should be no, no go areas'!
At at the end of 2021 I tried so hard to cross the divide, to talk about 'us' as two people in the same room. It was impossible for me to disconnect from him without getting the full picture. So now, 2023 my feelings remain exactly as they were.
And as this conversation about suicide went further, the ground became as loose and as wobbly as jelly, and I wanted to be held - I needed it so much...
I left his room understanding how devastating a non-response can be.
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