The web. 29th November 2021.
After several references in our sessions to how much he enjoyed coffee fuelled discussions at 3 am.
After our discussions reminded him of all those coffee fuelled discussions he had so enjoyed at university at 3 am...
I dared take this idea further.
It was excruciatingly difficult - but carefully, gently and slowly I explained that we could do something with this idea. Something along the lines of, if we build it others will join...There would be more people, more ideas!
So why was that so difficult to say?
Because I was using 'we', making he and I into an 'us'.
And he has done this several times before in our conversations. So I shouldn't feel so uncomfortable? And each time 'us' has been in his sentences, in his meaning, I have held tight as if to a life raft. Each instant, each precious instant was rich with a subtle heat created by our verbal conjunction - that melted my heart! I had dared to use 'we' and 'us' before, but only in a very low level way. This was my first explicit usage - clearly stated: we could create something together...
And I needed him to say yes.
And I felt as if my heart was beginning to splinter.
I knew that he would say no.
My experience of our non-meetings, is as a force-field in the room. And the only way across or through is verbal negotiation. And the boundaries are like infra-red laser lines linked to trip mines. Nothing felt safe...
Yet saying nothing about what I'd like, would be worse. I'd be letting myself down.
As I spoke, the sensation was of cold water tricking down my back. And threat. As if I'd seen a quiver in the haze surrounding the laser line; the boundary lines flare!
He said, setting up groups never works. He knows this because it is his experience. Therapist meetings become recipe sessions - as in 'I did this and it worked for me'.
Suddenly I realise the metaphors are all wrong, the cold water is toxin. I realise I have stepped into a web! And the spider is spinning threads around me so fast, I can hardly breathe!
Immobilised I am watching in a fascination and horror as he starts to say: ' It would be a dual relationship...and I know a lot about you! Would you be uncomfortable with that...?'
Me - "I'm me - and I don't honestly believe I've said anything at all to you that I wouldn't say, or feel uncomfortable about saying (publicly). I'm pretty certain about that. I mean the standard answer is always 'take it to supervision' I mean if you felt uncomfortable you would take that to supervision. But me personally no, I'm not uncomfortable. No, I suppose I'm quite proud, I'm fairly OK about me, there isn't actually anything I'm uncomfortable with, having thought or done, in my life!"
And then...basically that he could never have a dual relationship because clients come back. And the dual relationship destroys the therapy relationship!
And then occurs one of those moments when I am totally bewildered, absolutely unable to know which way something is oriented, or moving.
He tells me about a psychotherapist freind with whom clients are always falling in love. and they do this because their husbands don't listen and the therapist is a lovely man who listens!!!
Poker face...My life as comedy.
But, I'm not sure that he is a very nice man, or that he has listened to me!
I've certainly been listened to by my therapeutic sisters in training, and this really isn't as good as my level 2 experience!
He asks me: - what it would look like - our discussions?
In retrospect this appears to be a trap question. Something like, the spider needs me to struggle or else it can't continue. Like a cat playing with a mouse. Is it 'running' when I answer? I explain a basic format - we could take it in turns to decide a subject, two weeks per subject to get beyond the most obvious layers of discussion. Really go deep into a theory.
I'm not 'running' because I keep my feelings out of this. And I find not talking from and within messy, real, flame blessed feelings, is so difficult. And I guess he picks that up because he starts to tell me about the kind of non-therapy-therapy that he thought was wonderful for him and his client.
Is this is the woman who sat here for three years, the other one who might have been in love with him!
Oh! - I do not want to think about this!
I ask him a direct question about how he is feeling in this moment - He replies with a generality, a theory based exposition about 'parts of the self' that applies to 'the person'. He wont 'do feeling' so I can't. And then he explains that he is but a reaction to me.
I don't say, that I am therefore also a reaction, and if we are in effect naught but a phenomenon of self-consciousness between mirrors at infinity, I fail to see the therapeutic benefit of this!
He tells me that he'd love me to really understand Transactional analysis.
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