The tiny table. 14th February 2022.
"See that's what I see as a potential sticking point.
In the sense that normally in this space,
nothing is off the table
really"
I take a miniature table from my bag - it is actually one of those plastic things you get with a pizza. and I say "There it is, there is the table". He is confused. I say, it is a symbolic table.
I put it on the floor between us.
I say: "There, the table has been placed - for things to be put upon", and he is still none the wiser.
Me - "OK, no it is OK, I never expected you to understand it. You said something about 'not being able to put things on the table'.
He looks perplexed!
He asks, 'which table are we talking about? and I say. 'ah, it is your metaphor not mine'. He doesn't remember. I say, "That's fine if you don't remember - but it is your metaphor - about 'not being able to put things on the table. So there is the table, to openly put things upon"
He is blushing...
A"s in 'it might be difficult to talk' - without you being able to 'put things on the table"
I try again - "This is a symbolic gesture. The table exists, and so things can be placed upon it"
He - "OK....um"
I echo his tone of voice.
Me - "Um..."
I get my journal out of my bag.
He asks, 'So what is it that you want to talk about'?
Me - I don't know what I want to talk about. The table is there - it means that there are no, no-go areas. I don't want to cover anything up. I could put some music on instead - because I don't know what to say, but I don't want to cover anything up"
My instincts tell me that if I say - I need you to tell me how you feel - this will not be good. The recording was a 'disclosure of my feelings' and it was as open and as honest as I could be. He'd said that normally everything could be talked about in therapy ' put on the table'.
Right - here's the table, the one you said that you couldn't put things on.
Dare to be honest with me!
Everything is telling me that I am only a problem. I'm no longer a person. There is a possibility that he had had feelings for me, and killed them. If that is so, well - no need for an autopsy, cause of 'death' is well understood here. But knowing would help me make sense of why I fell for him...
I am stuck, clearly still in pain.
I believe this enactment of an avoidant-defensive response is unethical.
We are taught that non-disclosure is part of our job, but on the other hand, as therapists it is up to us to dig deep into 'our therapy culture' and ask ourselves, why do we do what we do, and is this the right way here and now? Instead here we are, fixed like flies in amber, trapped in our roles; in this room I feel crucified, nailed down.
He isn't going to be open.
But I've recovered enough from the last four years and so I am doing what I do best, 90% of my attention is engaged in listening to hear around and between his words, trying to sense the ripples and eddies of his emotion - He says and will say "This is your space, your time" but I've asked for openness. Surely it is clear that I've been open, so it can't be that I want help or encouragement to be open - I think he is being obtuse on purpose, or even unconsciously. Regardless..
I felt as if my brave and constant heart was being squeezed dry, unable to beat, unable to receive oxygen.
My request is dismissed.
So I clarify, I retrieve the meaning...I try to make it explicit.
Me - "So your question to me was, after you said something like 'potentially this conversation could be quite difficult' was something like - 'so how does it feel to have told me about your feelings' and I remember saying something like, 'well nothing has changed for me', and you replied that something has changed may change because now( meaning him) you know. That distinction feels very important for me. I am just about OK with anything that happens in life as long as I know what I think and feel, and when I don't know what I think and feel I have to stop to work it out. So by the time you got the recording, and I was here - in this room - I knew what I thought and felt. But also I really don't like secrets and things to be hidden under the surface. You asked me how it felt to come into this room, to open the door not knowing what was on the other side. It was a decision that made sense, and so it was done. The alternative was worse, I might not like facing what is on the other side, but I dislike not facing it, more"
He asks me, 'So what is the alternative that you don't like more...?' ~ sigh! "I dislike not facing it, more". I described the process, but not 'it'. Because the it isn't mine! I know what I feel.
I couldn't take the sense of ambiguity, that he created.
And and if I use that word -ambiguity - I am certain it will evoke an emotive reaction, and he will ask me about what I didn't understand, making out that I am just transgressive. In his mind he was always crystal clear and by the book and there were no undercurrents or sotto voce words or... And if I imagined that he'd had feelings for me that can only be - in this defensive logic - because I'm transgressive, wilful, because it is something I just do as a bad habit!
Keeping that view of his opinion in mind, I talk instead about how it feels to open the door and find out what is on the other side. To watch all I need and want and hope for, crumbling, burning, blowing away...just ash. To feel my skin crawling with a million scintillating insects, a mix of elation and terror, as I focus on the still centre of the whirlpool.
I also tell him about the alternative I 'don't like more', enacted through avoidance. The alternative means I am lost, sucked down, drowning and panicking. Not being heard when I ask for the truth feels like confinement, being trapped; sensations and images of prison cells, of cold walls, of heavy chains. Crushing.
Regardless, he hears nothing of what I've said, or he ignores it.
He tells me that he is 'a therapist' so he wouldn't do anything unethical.
Define unethical!
This experience has taught me that it is unethical for a therapist to be avoidant and defensive. Whatever his actual feelings were or are, about me - they will not be made clear, and so they can not be faced.
So what would have happened if I hadn't stepped back, and if I had said ' I need to know how you actually feel about me' ? There were so many things I couldn't say to him. I simply didn't feel strong enough to cope with another 'this isn't working for you and it certainly isn't working for me...' and being told to go and never come back.
But he is right, my feelings didn't just happen. I don't just fall in love with people! My feelings happened because of 'who he is', and I could leave it at that. But there were things he said when we first began to talk that caused me to wonder if he was attracted to me, and truly I had felt that he was crossing 'a line'! I certainly didn't feel attracted to him at the start, but after those interactions I looked again, with 'the safety off' and I started to see him and then slowly I began to melt, and then to burn. I had honestly thought that he liked me, and liked me an awful lot to dare to 'cross the line.'
Nothing could enable me to say anything about this to him right now!
Without saying all this, nothing is going to be resolved.
At this moment I don't think that he likes me at all. The table was my request that he respects my feelings instead of lecturing me about how to do therapy.
And I cannot put into words exactly how important it is for me to know how he really feels...
Love in this present moment, in his room, means to be open with each other. But I am being cast as a disorderly, ignorant strumpet. Perhaps I am a disorderly, ignorant strumpet! But I didn't fall for the therapist, I fell for the man. I think after two years, my view of him is pretty realistic and honest! I see him being a self-righteous prig, quite often. Truth is, we all are! And truth is we generally end up laughing. He has his fears, I understand that but not being open and honest with me at this time, so close to so much grief and loss in my life is potentially lethal - but he didn't spot that either.
I don't often do regret, but now, so many hours, days. months and years away from him, I wish I'd said more. Whilst at the same time I trust myself, and it is impossible for me now to remember how constrained I felt in that room, how the roles of therapist/client created useless fetters and binds. I wasn't a client, end of. I wasn't there because I thought something in me needed to be elucidated...
At the time, my intuition said that if I'd been more direct in asking for his feelings, he would have asked me not to return. And as that could have killed me - I owed it to myself to keep away from that.
Nevertheless, I tell him as much as I can.
Me - "The alternative is to feed uncertainty. It isn't that I can't deal with ambiguity...but if there is information to be found, I'd rather have information. I needed to know what was on the other side of the door - and it always takes courage to do it. So how did it feel? What were the feelings associated with it? It was very similar to breath holds in Wim Hof technique, foot on accelerator and foot on the break. It feels like balance, dynamic equilibrium"
Interesting similarities there. Wim Hof method is the experience of going close enough to death, and staying in contact with the panic.
He picks up on the two core words, and asks where is the ambiguity and uncertainty? Because as I'm someone training to be a counsellor, surely I must know must have known where the boundaries are!
So how could there be any ambiguity or uncertainty?
Wasn't I clear - didn't I say that I was asking for information? Surely in therapy there are no boundaries about what may be spoken of (to repeat his statement on the 3rd of January!). My use of the word, ambiguity does imply that I'd picked up on something. Now, can he own it, or not? But it feels too dangerous to describe how I felt about being called a minx, for instance.
I diverge and go full tangential!
Me - "So this reminds me of a different way of thinking about reality, this reminds me a lot of people saying that...well, you would have to be absolutely in sync with...to take it sideways...
He has asked me what I saw that made me feel that the situation could be ambiguous and uncertain.
His defences don't allow this level of discussion.
So, I'm being defensive now with discursive waffle.
It hurts . I feel lied to; when I believed that he had enjoyed talking to me, the way our talking reminded him of coffee fuelled discussions - I now see it as an act. Manipulative, the performance of twinship.
For the record if he had said that he felt about me as I do about him, but also felt unable to alter his sense that any other kind of contact with me was wrong, that truth is far less painful than what we have here now. And if instead he had said that yes, it was all an act, it was all Kohut and twinship and nothing I'd said was funny or interesting; I'd have felt empowered to reply - to say: actually, know what, being on the receiving end of your concept of twinship felt like gaslighting!'! I'd be able to accept and let go with a sense of relief! But if he'd said that he felt about me as I felt about him 'so let's go upstairs', I'd have said 'good - then you will wait for me for three years then we take it to supervision, and then we decide what is best! We have a situation to navigate, and love is worth that, he is worth that, and I know that I am worth that!
Love is a sacred bond - all of us can be self centred, selfish prigs who lecture others, and I don't see Eros as a problem - unless of course, its power is disrespected. And here I am in an unbearable situation, watching him rip its wings off...
I get back on track.
Me - So people can agree to things and think that things are OK, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are - is what I'm saying. And I've come across it many times, people thinking that they are doing the right thing and the outcome is cruel. There is no perfect ethical framework, we are human beings and human beings have feelings - and reality is reality. Dealing with reality is preferable to dealing with idealized versions of reality. I don't have the arrogance to say that I know what reality is, I find it through asking"
I'm asking for the whole picture!
He side-steps and avoids.
Me - "This is about people agreeing to something that they think is OK and that there is no God given ethical code, only the code we sign up to. But reality is reality"
The agreement to follow sacred rules is fundamental to the process of spiritual abuse. The rules are quoted in a way that supports abuse. The perpetrators quote 'sacred law' to support their actions. And once more I am hearing our ethical code used to support something that really isn't true. Surely to goodness if the only way a client can be open with a therapist is to use voice recordings! Surely to goodness the most ethical response from a therapist in this situation is to clarify emotions and feelings to see how it has come to this...
I think he is falsely quoting the ethical framework to get me to agree that I should not have told him how I feel...
He tells me that my practice is defined by the ethical code (true, have I ever disputed that?) and so I either need to leave that professional body, or work from within to change the rules. Well, if what he calls rules are guidelines, not rules as such, I am still wondering what rule I've broken? No where does it say that falling in love is out of order.
Meanwhile, acting as if guidelines are rules and letting righteous indignation, rule the day, seems to me to be more than borderline abusive...
Me - "Yes but there are human beings involved, and whatever is real is real" He tells me that there could be no ambiguity and uncertainty., because I must have know what his response would be!
Me - "No, of course not!"
I want to say, 'look Kit, ambiguity and uncertainty are not dispelled by someone saying you must have known!' And to go back to what is ethical and what isn't, the ethical code doesn't entirely rule out relationships, it asks that people think about them very, very carefully!
Surely he is aware that the only way I could separate my attachment to him, from my construct, would be to give me the whole picture, so I need him to be genuine - access emotion - speak from the heart!
Me - " I did not think that you would behave unethically - but I had no idea what your response would be. There are more than two options. Well, there are many options within both those 'black and white' parameters!
At this point he says again that I should have known that he would never behave in such a defiant way!
Defiant?
What is defiant in this situation? Feeling as I do about him is an act of defiance? Well, alrighty then...I believed that he would respond ethically and I was proved wrong. I'd assumed he would respect my request for us to 'put everything on the table'. I was wrong. Withholding truth creates an undertow which is uncomfortable and ultimately harmful.
Me - "But there is reality and reality, and I cannot know until I know. It's not possible for me to know what I don't know! I can interrogate my construct of you, but it is only a construct. So I told you!"
He responds by telling me about another of our sessions, during which there was a strange, really uncomfortable twisting of my words and meaning, one more rupture I never managed to resolve with him!
Unfortunately I don't have a recording!
The subject twisted around into being something about protecting the therapist...?
During that conversation which suddenly veered as he began to question my ethics, I was talking about Brian Thorne and a move by the ethical body to make therapy a protected profession - so that if a person called themselves a therapist they would have studied an approved course, with supervision, and placement work. Brian Thorne's position was that signing up to a system may "inevitably encourage uniformity and militate against creativity of practice" .
At the time I thought Brian had a point.
And I had said that other ethical codes are available.
I actually said that it looked as if the framework had borrowed from Mahayana ethics.
Me - "And I said at the time it was as if someone had read "The Jewel Ornament of Liberation" or rather the "Quintessence of...." I can't remember the title, Tibetan text. A re-hashing of the six perfections, which isn't surprising!"
Brian Thorne's works includes a spiritual dimension, this is what I was getting at.
Once again he states that he isn't sure where we are going here, and what I want from this.
Me - "We are not going anywhere, and I don't want anything from this. This is an exploration. There is the table. You told me that things could not be put on the table, well there is the table and things are not being put on it!"
He -"And..?"
Now I side-step..I say that this is an exploration of what was not spoken of...
He repeats...'And what wasn't spoken of that day?'
Me - "All the things that weren't spoken of"
My turn to be evasive - I feel unheard and powerless but I continue.
Me - I think you asked a few questions, you said something like normally you would use your skills to bring the hidden things a bit more into the open".
He tells me that he was aware of two things during the session after he'd listened to the recording. He had thought that I'd put myself in a very vulnerable position (?) and that I was closing the way to a very particular type of exploration. In the recording I'd said that I couldn't see how my feelings for him were transference. He tells me that I'd brought up the idea that my feelings might be transference in order to then dismiss the idea.
In his view I bring up ideas to dismiss them, and I'm tangential and contrary.
Oh, and defiant!
Don't forget about wearing a mask so I seem affable and friendly or some such!?
Me - "I dismissed the idea by looking at it - but if you now wish to go there, that's fine now, not at the time. Then it wasn't. All that 'diagnostic' theoretical, made me angry."
He tells me that he doesn't know how we could tackle the problem without having something I might call diagnosis. So I say, "Well you are welcome to diagnose, if you wish" Fundamentally I'm trying so hard not to be thrown out of the room - yet I have to try to find out what has actually happened.
I feel as if I have to walk forwards by walking backwards...
Me - "Well there isn't anywhere I want to go with this. I don't have the 'this is something to be solved' this is more about looking at what's there (here!). He tells me that I was pushing at a boundary and that he was maintaining it, essentially.
Me - "At that time, was I pushing? No, it wasn't a push, how was I pushing at a boundary? No, it was me saying, this is how it is"
He - "OK"
Me - "That isn't pushing at a boundary - it is a statement"
He - "OK"
Me - "So I believe...do you disagree?"
He tells me that giving him a memory stick with a recording telling him that I have been in love with him for a year...
Me - "Yes"
Was pushing at a boundary when one person is a therapist and the other is a client."
Me - "Yep, you can leave it at that <again, I react to the tone of voice he uses. I feel a door being slammed and as if my fingers have been caught in the doorframe> But there has to be the acknowledgment that I do not see myself as a client. I am not incongruent, I am not here with a problem, .I am here because I have to have therapy as part of my course and I do with it whatever I do with it and I use it in the best way possible. But as in 'I've got a problem that I need to talk to somebody about' I am extremely good at partitioning. Because there is nobody that I can talk to about this! This is the only thing in my life that I would go to see a therapist about - therapy for my therapy - so this will be me sorting it out for myself."
- A plea for help...I am going to have to try to do this alone and perhaps that won't be possible.
- A reassurance to him - saying 'don't worry' I am good at partitioning.
- Bargaining with him, I respect your obvious sensitivity, so please respect what I've just said.
- So, this is past fight and flight, this is at fawning.
- And fawning is the stop before - on the polyvagal underground - dissociation.
He says, that though I don't see myself as a client, I'm here as a client because this is what the course says (?!) I respond "Yes it says that but it isn't possible to be a client unless I'm a client!' 'You are paying me money every week' "I have to - Or else I'd be disrespecting the value of your time and the contract!"
I'm here because I'm in love with him, and I'm fighting for a relationship that works for both of us! That could just be the occasional email, because I value his opinion and intelligence. But underneath all this, the talk of Kohut made me feel used, made me feel that everything had been a great big lie. I didn't want to believe that anyone would be that deceptive towards me again.... Now therapy feels parasitic, as if I'm covered in leeches.
'Yes, and you have signed a therapist, client contract.'
"Yes - but I'm not a client am I! How can I be a client unless I've got a problem that I chose to bring to a therapist? I can't see it myself! Rogers said for me to be a client I need to be present - and I am! I need to be incongruent and I don't think that I am incongruent! I wish I was - OK! I wish I had a problem! I can't think of anything that is that much of a problem!
"Well there is some incongruence about the ethical code"
I felt like saying 'so now you have diagnosed me with Oppositional Defiant Disorder' hilarious!
I reply "No, there is no incongruence, not at all! But you feel there is incongruence?"
He then says, 'you don't know anything about me, except for what you know from these sessions, You don't know if I'm heterosexual', or even single" I agree, clearly I don't think labels stop my feelings!
He ends by saying - 'So that was a real risk, wasn't it'
What?
I don't understand?
I am completely bewildered!
Me - "A real risk?
On the contrary! A simple I'm gay, married, whatever would have released me from imagining that he could want me too! I assume he is choosing to believe that I fell for his 'therapeutic kindness' - unable to see the real man. But I keep requesting to talk to the real man because the therapist is probably doing the manipulative Kohut thing! In this situation the psychodynamic refusal to show emotion, regardless of what a client says, and zero self-disclosure are doing what they were perhaps designed to do? They can create such psychic pain that the client begins to believe that there really is something wrong with them! The cynical view is, this is why therapy traditionally had to continue for years....
No - let's call it what it actually is. There is nothing therapeutic about stonewalling.
There is nothing therapeutic about avoidance.
This causes harm, and it breaks the ethical duty to do no harm.
He tries to explain what he means by a risk, without explaining anything! That there was a risk I guess that he might love Eurovision and want to buy a pug? Sorry, I'm stereotyping and extrapolating from my gay friend Alex's inexplicable - to me - love of - Eurovision and pugs!
He says that I was inviting him to break the ethical code.
Was I inviting him to break the ethical code?
Was I inviting him to respond in a particular sort of way?
I thought I was telling him that I loved him and that in the light of this, the way was open for us to decide what to do next! That the future could be seen differently, illuminated by the light of honesty.
Me - "It is up to you how you respond. Absolutely up to you. As it is absolutely up to me how I respond"
He adds more confusion by implying that loving him would have been fine, if he'd not been given the invitation!
Invitation?
I love him mostly because his responses are so inexplicable.
Me - "Then you would not know what was actually happening in terms of my feelings and what is real. And I don't know about you, but I need to know what is real. Because this is a serious thing and it is a deep thing, a heavy thing. And I don't like being split - I prefer you to know who I am. I mean this is as close as I've come to being a client - but honesty and integrity is it for me. But it wasn't an invite as such, though I don't remember my exact words now, but genuinely I think I only spoke about me - I 'own my own stuff'. I didn't say I want you to x.y or z, or even I think you should do a or b. This is me, only about me. So no, of course I don't know any of those things, I don't know what is 'on the other side of the door' I don't know. But do I have the courage to find out? Yes, I do. Because why, because if I don't find out then I'm left with the fizz and the mess, and I don't like that. I don't want that"
And that is exactly what he has left me with - fizz and mess.
Me: "You ask me why would I not be truthful with another human being? You are asking me to accept you as a role, to see you in terms of your role rather than as a human being? I am seeing you as a human being!"
And yet he still sees the declaration as an invitation, a provocation perhaps. He says that he is unclear, because he heard the voice recording as an invitation - tempting him to respond in a way that would break the ethical code. And - I guess - he thinks that if I really loved him, or listened to him, I'd have known that he simply would never NEVER NEVER do that!!!!
Me - "So why did I think that was a possibility? Well all things are possible, I don't know. I'm sorry but I'm just going to keep on with that I can't make a decision for you about what you think or feel or do. I can only tell you what I think and feel, sorry. But you ask why could I think that of you? Because you are a human being, that's all, sorry I will go back to that point, you are human, there! I can treat you as a thing, an object and say 'you are in the role of therapist, that is all that you are, that is your whole being' - like you seem to be saying, 'you are a client, that's the way it is'. And I was fortunate, I didn't suffer much sexism as I grew up, people treated me fairly, mostly. But on the few occasions when I have had a stereotype put on me I get quite annoyed by it. Stereotypes...I am what I am!"
I ask him - "So what do you think, was that recording to you as a therapist, or to you as a person? That is a question. <silence> It was to you as a human being, a person".
He tells me 'It was crossing an ethical boundary.
I disagree absolutely!
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality. Hannah Arendt.
No, nowhere in the ethical code does it say "The client will strive to protect the therapist from his own fears and triggers". But, I stay with his language, because the point should be made that doing the right thing isn't always about following rules...
Me - "Yes, I will cross boundaries and break rules, and I will ask if things are right or if they are wrong. and if somebody tells me that I have to do this thing that they consider right, I will chose as to whether I believe it is right or wrong. I learnt that lesson a long time ago - not to 'follow orders' or to shirk my personal responsibility for my actions. I had an experience in which I simply did was was expected of me, and I was shocked - when I looked at the actual consequence. I vowed never to do that again".
Again he talks about it being an invitation, that I was a client inviting a therapist into a non-therapeutic relationship"
Me - "I was just straight. and you can object to being given an invite, but it is up to you what you do with an invite. And you are objecting to it, OK"
Again, more ambiguity - he tells me that he is not objecting, just discussing it 'like you asked'
If not objecting, certainly sounding accusatorial and disapproving.
Metaphorically holding a pair of scissors, blades smeared with dust and blood, I watch as he cuts. Tears in my eyes as the butterfly's wings fall to the ground. Beauty is destroyed by brute cruelty.
Me - "Discussing it like I asked..."
He seems to enjoy pouring petrol onto the fire, noticing that I'm now in distress by describing me as saying that I don't really care much for the ethical code of my professional body"
Me - "I do not care to follow rules blindly without thought and consideration. To justify my actions because this page, this piece of paper this web page says, under no circumstances ever? Ah no. I will chose, after I have worked out what I think is best, I have to, and that's it, all you need to know, that's the truth of it. You can make a rule, 'Thou shalt not' and you will find a 100 situations where that rule is inhumane and not enhancing life. It is not simple. Life is not simple. And one cannot know the outcomes of anything, a choice has to be made. What I did was to say, this is how it is, and this is how it is. And yes, I will break rules that is a fact and so you can do what ever you wish with this knowledge, write to my course leader, whatever. Because all consequences were in the equation. And I will explain why. I was the same when I worked in the NHS, there were times when I was asked to do things that contradicted patient safety and therefore I refused. It has to be this way. I don't allow myself the excuse of 'following orders'!"
He fastens onto the bit about informing the college - saying that I must have known that he'd never do that! So my comment must have been tongue in cheek. <I am metaphorically - on my knees at this point. Nothing, right from the beginning of this session could possible be 'tongue in cheek '>
Me - "I've no idea...."
Again he fastens onto another emotive concept, asking me if I really perceive being called a client as an objectification?
Me - "Yes, it is! In this situation it is patronizing and dehumanizing."
He reduces the concept to its functional parts - a client is somebody who pays me to have a session every week. That's it. That's what you do.
Me - "Yes there is, there is plenty 'objectifying' about it. I'm not a client. I am not incongruent... And when I give you a version of you that you don't like, then you kind of tell me, in that specific tone of voice, and I always try to drain it (I'm enacting the therapist's role by doing this). It's true, I am not a client and it does feel like objectification"
The next bit feels like bullying, so I wont bother paraphrasing...
After I'd said something about the need for clarity when working out with people what the work will be about, finding their 'best hopes' as we say! But he responded with energy! "What isn't clear? You said that there are other things going on that aren't clear? By now I'm sick of this behaviour - the tone of his voice, the need to know. I'm not going into his triggers! Nor do I care to take care of his feelings. My turn to avoid! I give a general description of my process which fits past, present and future...
Me - "Yes, I think so. There are the explicit expectations laid out in the contract, but then there are the inexplicit expectations which I generally try to bring into the open "
'Like what?'
This matters to him and so I don't engage because I don't owe him any more truth than I have given, I've been as open and as honest as it is possible for me to be with him.
He can take 'his stuff' to his own therapist. I waffle...
Me - "Boundaries need to be negotiated as they arise, sometimes rules need to be changed. That is my point. For example, negotiating how to use WhatsApp between session times with a person - a client - who is suffering withdrawal after deciding to just go cold turkey. Things that are individual, and unique to the session to accommodate reality."
He waffles back.
And then says, 'there is just 5 minutes left, and I'm aware that you still haven't referred to your journal.
...What does he think may be written in there?
Me - "I have, twice! But we can carry on in another session because they are all more than something to be spoken of in just 5 minutes".
You dearest Kit, have metaphorically administered the electric shocks in Milgram's experiment, you have righteously followed orders. But not because you respect authority, but because you are scared that something bad might happen to you otherwise. You have held the line that separates those who accept ambiguity and uncertainty as the cost of personal responsibility, and those who blindly do what they have been told to do because in this moment it feels safer and easier.
But this wasn't Milgram's experiment.
The shock and pain I'm feeling is real.
The only difference is, there is no man in a white coat making you do this. No man with a gun. No one except you, made you do this...
He asks me how this session has been for me!
Me - "How is that with me? What possibilities could there be in answering that! How is that with me? No different to how it was"
A magnificently safe answer.
'OK, well, you said that you would prefer to know rather than not know'
Me - "Yes"
I know nothing more, except something of the depth of his fears and how he reacts when scared.
He - "But it clearly wasn't the answer you were hoping for ...
This theme keeps repeating. 'wasn't something you wanted/hoped for'.
I reply with the truth.
Me - "Ah no, the recording is about truth and honesty. Of course I wanted a different answer, why would I not!
He tells me I'd have a track record of breaking the ethical code, and having drawn a therapist into this abyss of sin! Later, when healed, I will have images of priests and nuns being walled up as punishment for their indiscretions!
The word he actually used was wake, that I'd have a therapist in my wake...Wake is a strange word to use, as if I'd leave him behind and move on to the next...so, he has to throw me over the cliff, how dare I offer love?
Me - "There are ways to negotiate and navigate, always. To do the right thing within reality, within the truth and within the rules - and that does not mean bending rules. It means working with what is, and that means being clear in one's own heart about what is...because nowhere does it say in the ethical framework people can't fall in love! OK, how long am I going to be a trainee therapist for, I am not a trainee therapist for the rest of my life, and nor am I a naïve sixteen year old in need of protection from predation because I don't know what I'm doing!"
Shock and outrage! 'I never suggested that!'
Me - "No, but it feels like that"
He - 'As far as I'm concerned once a client always a client. So occasionally somebody will.....'
OK, this script has been repeated to me at the very least, three times already. Why on earth does he believe that I will ever come back 'as a client' when I've spent an hour explaining yet again that calling me a client is objectifying, patronizing, and very cruel.
Me - "It's not possible, I'm not a client and I wont come back, it is not possible because when I take a vow I mean my vows, I don't break my vows with the proviso that if I do break them I am aware of it, and there has to be a good reason, and repair. But I don't break my vows"
A vow to maintain my integrity, a vow to place love as the highest and most sacred gift of consciousness and life! A vow to do my best for all others, above and beyond my personal hopes and fears. That meant that I had to tell him. Integrity means that I am not his client! What does he find difficult to understand about this? Does he really think we have had a special bond because I've told him things I can't tell anyone else! Lord, no! I have another blog somewhere that charts the awful time when my son was so ill and my husband a total bastard. I shared my thought's feelings and pain with total strangers - because if they were going through the same thing - I know that feeling alone in that nightmare is unbearable - so I needed the imaginary readers as companions, and by sharing my experience if they were in the same place, I was there with them. But I've not shared half the depth and raw honesty of those posts with him in our conversations because he missed me by miles; he applied theory, and his lack of affect and his choice not to express feelings made me feel extremely uncomfortable.. But there is a lot more to me than trauma. I wanted to know who he was - and so it began.
My courage in placing love as the highest value means that I'm not playing games.
Eros can kill...my life is on the line.
He tells me again that he will never see me as anything other than a client.
He has just said 'you do understand that I'm never going to see you again...' There - my heart breaks - my soul is torn apart.
The image of the butterfly, cut and without wings merges with myself.
Me - "I know. I was between a rock and a hard place"
Tears fill my eyes.
Me - "And it was hard. But it's OK, hard and difficult are OK. So what's the best way to manage something, I have to be truthful, otherwise...but you talk about the ethical code! To not have told you, by my own standards, then I'd be breaking the ethical code. So what's the alternative? Find another therapist, well I can't particularly because what do you think would be uppermost in my mind? Dealing with this! I can't talk about this with another therapist, I know we all have confidentiality 'vows' but this is between I and you. But coming back as a client, how could I come back as a client! I couldn't "
And now what is this?
Ambiguity and a lack of clarity?
Impossible...
He tells me that 'he wasn't talking about me, he was talking about his principles, his ethical rule, that once a client always a client because you never know what the future is going to bring, and people do come back'
- Ambiguity. 'I wasn't talking about you...' then who are you talking about!
- Erasure. I'm not even so much as talking about you, even though you are in the room talking to me and this is about us.
Me - "They do (clients sometimes return) but this, here, now, this is about real human beings and me saying that that wont happen"
He - "Hmm"
Me - "It's not some kind of sacrifice, it is just the truth"
He - "But the line still holds"
Me - "The line still holds for you"
He - "We are over time"
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