A bright sunny day
really cold
in my bag there is a card and a recording I made at Samhain
The one in which I tell the story
The story behind this story
The
Missing information
But how else could it be?
I need therapy for my therapy - OK, those thoughts lead nowhere!
Focus!
This is us being normal, ordinary people.
I'm here to share coffee, to hang out, to just talk with him about ideas.
As if it was normal!
No, no no!
Nothing here is normal!
I should change therapists.
But I could be asked by my course leader to give reasons for my decision.
Here is the imaginary email:
Me - "Dear course leader - I need therapy for my therapy because I hoped that during our sessions he would come to realize that together we made the dark air between us scintillate with diamond-bright star light; that the cave like confines of his room was in actuality, space; open as the universe yet as clear and refreshing as the first gulp of air after plunging into a mountain stream. Because that is how it is for me! But all the time 'doing therapy' I or we were stuck in this strange half-world of forbidden words, feelings, expressions - suppression - and apparently I'm supposed to believe that this is to keep me safe - No! I felt as if I was being crucified. Nailed down, exhibited, judged. So I just stopped the therapy with him, and now I'm so depressed - suppression of such beautiful and blissful feelings has consequences - I can hardly breathe, and no other therapist will do, they will not be him, and I can't talk about him because they might know him, or have an opinion! Therapists are human."
That is the truth of it.
And if I hadn't been there as a trainee, if instead we had this arrangement where I came and asked him questions every Monday afternoon? I would have looked at him, he would have seen me. Instead, as a trainee I know 'the rules' and I've only made eye-contact with him twice! I have taken great care not to show any emotional or physical reactions to his presence. Reminds me of reading Karen Armstrong's book - 'Through the Narrow Gate' about being a nun - the rule to appear detached at all times - 'custody of the eyes' it was called.
Did it have to be this way?
Worse question now - did I give him completely the wrong impression of me? Would things have been different - in a real and alive kind of way - if I'd been transparent?
Thoughts such as this are as nails.
Self-crucifixion and back to...Chit-chat.
I'm trying to get us to the magic land, the coffee fuelled discussion's of 3 am state. Making my case that a continuity and agreement on subjects is important - for me - and feeling the brittle, broken heart feeling. And this non-therapeutic space, is the full-empty. In this room I only have words, and I use them. But I am disabling any communication of my own emotions and body language. Some of that is a left-over from the gaslighting husband effect. The experience of being lied to for so long, taught me not to let on how I was feeling to my husband because if he thought I was in pain, he'd verbally abuse me and worse. He lied because he didn't want to feel shame....OK...and this experience of therapy feels similar?
At the time I thought I could be in some kind of play-back.
And the only way I could find out would be if he spoke emotion.
He doesn't speak emotion - so...
I say (about Berne's theory) - "It's a kind of dreaming isn't it. A way to divide up reality."
And he says - "It is, because reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense"
And here we are, I stand at the radiant heart of it.
This is why I've fallen in love with him.
Not the kind words, not the nice person.
What he possesses is rare.
I think that he may have looked over the edge...it is a different edge to Gendlin's. But, oh my God, I have no immunity. I burn! I repeat his statement reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense.
I like the feel of it.
The words are like smooth pebbles rolling around in my mouth, salty somehow.
Sea washed.
I hadn't thought of this before, words as cups, enabling transmission; and the statement is beginning to feel accurate.
And there it is, in my voice. Finally! I ask him to tell me more, that this is a wonderful notion - my sensations of warmth and fascination shaping each syllable I speak, they glow and radiate - transmission - of my real feelings, finally!
And in response he laughs, embarrassment-joy rippling in the air, riding the waves of my admiration
He continues - "You and I standing at the beach, watching the birds swimming! No, flying around. We would probably both recognize the seagulls. But, what are the other birds? If you don't know anything about birds they are just birds. Once you have the concept of language, then you recognize, 'oh a heron' or whatever it might be, there's the receptacle there, a category of thinking. Without that category, it is just another bird"...
At Samhain - Halloween - I had recorded my declaration, my account, my truth. Yeats - as always for me - interceded, with images of ghosts and Muscatel. No immunity, as he speaks I hear Yeats chanting:
"I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die."
Once a person has words, other words coalesce around the unknowing, it is fluid and sinuous, serpentine. Inaccuracy shifting into a clear description in words matched and borrowed from other words linked with other experiences. Without words the unknowing is experience; accurate and powerful, pure - non dual - of the moment. Words clothe experiences and give them the property of transmission - though transmission enables communication, it isn't whole. Yet there is a deceptive, snake like property to words. I don't say this.
And then, I hear a door beginning to close.
He - "It's quite similar to a young child who doesn't have language and they want to express something, and they get so frustrated that they just make noises, and they start stamping. Once they have the language they don't do that because now they can express themselves. So language is a kind of receptacle, it's a conduit for experience. Without which we cannot communicate with each other on a basic level. This (TA) is a basic form of communication, that's what it is. And yet there are other ways of categorizing experience, it doesn't have to be this. But personally I've never come across one as useful as this. It does a very good job. I was once at a one day workshop, and one of the tutors said to one of the other tutors - it was a psychodynamic tutor that was saying to a TA tutor exactly what you said last week ' well Child, isn't that just Freud, isn't that just Ego, super-ego and Id!' And the TA tutor virtually exploded!"
Me - "But why is it not?"
He - "Because it really isn't"
Me - But if one of them was a Jungian, the Jungian would 'see' Peur and Senex!"
Him - "Hmmm <pause> there are no archetypes in TA"
I'm at Tesco's car park
Saying now into my recorder what I mean to say, to feel.
No I didn't give him the recording
simply because
I can't see the clock in his room
It's ten minutes after the end
he doesn't tell me
this is one of the first times we've stood up together
normally there is a table between us
this time nothing
I just wanted to put my arms around him
absolute longing
and I just don't know
just longing
so what to do
I think the recording has to be given but...
I regret not giving him the recording
It was better that I wasn't as full of panic as I normally am
when I first saw him face to face my panic was that he's say no, no you have to go
or he'd therapize it, call it transference
Transference, or developmental needs
'because he's nice to me...'
but he isn't nice to me
constantly he is telling me I'm wrong!
and I'm constantly showing him that I'm un-phased by this
and I'm - what am I supposed to do as a result of him telling me?
When he's saying 'you need to be with them' meaning to be in emotional sync with the client, is he saying you need to be with me?
'you are too distant', too aloof?
I can't show him my warm, open side!
And my arms ache
I just need to be with him to curl up in his arms
Oh no it's bringing tears to my eyes
shove this thought back in the box
I think he has to have the recording
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