"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" [LINK]
He - "Light on or off"?
Me - "It is fine"
He - "Leave it on - there is plenty of sunlight - just not in here. The sun is over there"
Me - Pointing in the opposite direction. - "Over there..."
He - "Is it?- OK?
Me - "For sure"
He - "It's not bending around the corner - So where are we going today?"
Me - "I thought I'd bring the table"
I retrieve a miniature table from my bag.
He - "The table"?
Me - "There it is, there is the table"
He - "I'm confused - is that a table for elves, it is very small.
Me - "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"
He - "I'm 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 - "which table are we talking about?
Me - "Ah, it is your metaphor - not mine"
He - "I don't remember saying that"
Me - "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"
Silence.
He is blushing...
Me -"As in 'it might be difficult to talk' - without being able to 'put things on the table'"
He -"See I don't know what the table is, and I don't know what the things are - so I am still none the wiser"
Me - "So the things are all potential, they are not solidified into actual words yet....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.
Me - "No time for introduction really....um...today - because of the date - feels like one of those days, like when I took my car into be serviced and car they lent me was a white Golf with darkened windows; the same car - though not exactly the same car - as my husband's. The car he used to have sex in with her...and I just said 'wow, thank you! A Golf'. But thinking how cruel fate can be sometimes. Today is Valentine's day - and thinking of the recording I gave you, around Christmas time; and this is an opportunity to talk about that. That is the table. The table 'that things couldn't be placed on' . Well, there it is - because I'm not the sort of person who can't 'put things on the table - I don't like there to be a gap - I like processing to take place"
He - "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. There is a possibility that he 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 still 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.
I'm pretty much back to being me, 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 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 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 -"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 I couldn't face is the ambiguity, and if I use that word 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 because everything was 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.
The alternative, to step up, be honest isn't possible for him.
So I talk 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, is 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.
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.
Ha, 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 are - 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.
But I don't just fall in love with people!
My feelings happened because of who he is, let's 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 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!
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 and to be opened by each other.
Curiously that means more than sex.
But here I am being cast as the disorderly, ignorant strumpet who would get us both walled-up, left to starve for our sins. I feel as if I'm at the core of all that is worst in 'Christian culture'. I must confuse him, I wont even accept the simplicity of shame - I unashamedly, openly, joyfully admit that sometimes disorder is required - as is the way with us heathens, and pagans.
I think ultimately, after two years, my view of him is pretty realistic and honest! I see him being a self-righteous prig to be honest. Truth is, we 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 worked out.
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"
He - I'm curious about two words you said; ambiguity and uncertainty, because as someone training to be a counsellor yourself, and presumably having done a module on the professional body's ethics. You must have known where the boundaries are. So I don't know where the ambiguity or uncertainty is"
Wasn't I clear - didn't I say that I was asking for information?
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. No way am I going to answer this question about what happened to make me believe that he might feel about me as I do about him!
His defences don't allow this level of discussion.
So, I'm being defensive through being discursive.
I am feeling that I have been 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. And he has made assumptions about me and not found the language, to actually talk to me. 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 that 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; and said - actually, know what I think you are so stupid and boring'! I'd accept that 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! Despite everything, I believe in love as a sacred bond - and I don't see Eros as a problem - unless of course, its power is disrespected, or I'm having to watch someone tearing its wings off...
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"
He - I'm feeling stuck trying to understand the comparison.
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"
He - "If you are part of an organization, the ethical code that defines your practice is given. and if one wants to change them, then work from within to have a formal agreement to change them or if that is impossible leave. but those are a given"
I am a student on a course that is approved by a specific ethical body, I don't get to choose, we have to have membership of that specific professional body!
Me - "Yes but there are human beings involved, and whatever is real is real"
He - "Yes, but I'm still not sure about this ambiguity and uncertainty. You must have known what my response was going to be"
Me - "No, of course not!"
He - "Really! but how could I behave unethically?
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, to be genuine with me.
Me - "No, 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!
He - "Well the response which is in line with professional ethics, and there is the response that is defiant of the professional ethics. You must have known that I was never going to do the second one"
Defiant?
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 - "Well I don't know when it was, I'm going to say six months ago - and it was almost along the lines, but for some reason you brought up the ethical code that you were having all sorts of questions about - and I remember my line then was, it is there to protect the client, it is also there to protect the therapist and if you sign up to an ethical body you sign up to their ethical code, and that's it."
'My problem' was that 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 well "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.
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!"
He - "Does it matter where it comes from"?
Me - "Yes, because the original is more complex and deeper, and in the Tibetan tradition reality is not taken as simple.
Brian Thorne's works includes a spiritual dimension, this is what I was getting at.
He - "I don't remember the bit of the ethical code where it states that reality is simple"
Me - "It doesn't say that, but it is saying that."
He - "I'm not entirely sure where we are going here, and what you 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..?"
I side-step..
Me - "Well something has to be done within this period of time. I don't have a problem I need to see a therapist about. And here I am, so something has to be done with this time. And this is what is being done with the time"
He - "An impression of what exactly"?
Me - "Sorry"?
He - "An exploration of what exactly"?
Me - "Of what was not spoken of that day"
He - "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 - "Yes, I was aware of two things very keenly that day; one, that you had put yourself in a very vulnerable position and I wanted to respect that by not treading on places that might have been too painful there. The other thing I was very aware of recalling, was that you were closing the way to a very particular type of exploration. Because you brought up the idea that your 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!
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 - "I don't know how we could tackle the problem without having something you might call diagnosis"
Me - "Well you are welcome to diagnose, if you wish"
He - "I'm still feeling a little at sea in terms of where you want to go with this"
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 - "Well what's there is, that you were pushing at a boundary and I 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 - "Well I think giving me a memory stick with a recording of about 25 minutes, something about that. Um, telling me that you have been in love with me for a year"
Me - "Yes"
He - "It's pretty much 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 - "Well you may not see yourself as a client, but you are here as a client because the course says that you have to be here as a client"
Me - "Yes it says that but it isn't possible to be a client unless I'm a client!
He - "You are paying me money every week"
Me - "I have to"
Or else I'd be disrespecting the value of your time and the contract!
He - "And you are sent by the college"
Me - "As part of my course I come here"
And because I'm in love with you, and I'm fighting for a relationship that works for both of us!
He - "Yes, and you have signed a therapist, client contract."
Me - "Yes"
He - "So you can frame it in ...
Me - "Sure, superficially! 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!
He - "You do have the choice of not coming...but then the college."
Me - "Exactly"
He - "So you have to be a client"
Me - "Carl 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!
He - "Well there is some incongruence about the ethical code"
I feel like saying 'so now you have diagnosed me with Oppositional Defiant Disorder' hilarious!
Me - "No, there is no incongruence, not at all! But you feel there is incongruence."
He - "Well, in the message, you were suggesting to me that I respond potentially in such a way that there is a dual relationship, it would be a dual relationship..."
Me - "It was already a dual relationship, from my point of view. I am talking about me - from my point of view, this is a dual relationship"
He - "Completely unknown by me"
Me - "Yes, unknown by you"
He - "That's....I'm puzzled. so to have a dual relationship both people have to be in knowledge of it. You are having a relationship with me that I don't know about. That doesn't make it a dual relationship"
Me - "It does for me, I can only talk about me I can't talk about you! For me it is"
He - "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"
Me - " I know nothing, I agree!
He - "So that was a real risk, wasn't it"
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 imagining that I feel the way I do about him because I'm clinging to his therapeutic kindness - unable to see the real man. But I keep requesting to talk to the real man! And that is denied.
But the therapeutic continence - the injunction not to show emotion regardless of what a client says. And the policy of zero self-disclosure are doing what they were perhaps designed to do?
They create such psychic pain that the client begins to believe that there really is something wrong with them!
No - let's call it what it actually is.
It is stonewalling...breaking the imperative, the ethical duty to do no harm.
He - "I mean not only personally you don't know those things about me, but also ethically. In terms of being on a course training to be a counsellor, and inviting me to break the ethical code if I respond in a particular sort of way"
Was I inviting him to break the ethical code? 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!
Me - "It is up to you how you respond. Absolutely up to you. As it is absolutely up to me how I respond"
He - Hmm but what I'm getting at, the invitation was there, you could have chosen not to give me the invitation."
Invitation?
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.
He - I'm still confused because I'm wondering about the reality of me being a therapist and following an ethical code, why that wasn't -"
Me - "Enough?"
He -"A reality that was foremost for you"
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!"
He - "I'm still really unclear. Because there was an invitation in that recording for me to respond. So there was the possibility that I might behave in conflict with my professional ethics , and I would have thought from previous conversations you would have known that I wasn't going to 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!"
He - "A therapist is my whole being - in terms of what I am in the therapy room"
Me - "Yes, that is not who you are entirely, or who you entirely are"
He - "Of course it isn't! But that's outside the ambit of anything a therapist is going to consider with a client to remain ethical!"
Me - "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 - "It was crossing an ethical boundary"
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 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".
He -"There is a bit of a difference though, isn't there, between that situation and 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"
I can't really believe this, but I'm going to quote John Paul...
"Freedom is what we do with what is done to us. We are our choices."
He - "I'm not objecting, I'm 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 -"Isn't there some, being as you mention congruence and incongruence, isn't there some incongruence with a trainee counsellor saying they don't really care much for the ethical code of their 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 - "I take it the comment about writing to your course leader, was 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...."
He - "So is being referred to as a client really an objectification?"
Me - "Yes, it is! In this situation it is patronizing and dehumanizing."
He - "A client is simply somebody who volunteers or is sent, and pays me to have a session every week. That's it. That's what you do. So you are a client. nothing objectifying about that!"
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....It's true, I am not a client and it does feel like objectification"
He - "So what is a better word?"
Me - "There isn't a better word or term, I am what ever I am. but OK. I'm Xerpa who sits on your sofa every Monday afternoon. There isn't a name for it - it's an interaction, Gendlin again, social constructivist theory...'
He -"So is it other people who are not clients, or is it just you"?
Me - You can call them what ever you want!
He - "Oh so they can be objectified?"
Me - "Do I feel that I objectify people by calling them clients? It is certainly a different status, they are in a different mental place in my mind"
He - "Well it's a contractual agreement isn't it, between a therapist and a client"
Me - "Yes, but there is also a lot of unsaid, underground stuff, implications as well that may not be clear. But mostly with clients we are in agreement, through television, word of mouth, friends experiences there is an enactment of therapist and client. There is a common and shared view of what it is going to be"
He - "What isn't clear? You said that there are other things going on that aren't clear?
The tone of his voice, the need to know...it sounds as if he is aware that he was ambiguous.
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 "
He - "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.
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 - "It depends on the boundaries, because some boundaries are agreed on by all therapists, by a professional body, and there are other things that some therapists will do and others wont. but the basic, broad starting point is the same for everyone - 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".
He - "Hmm so you know where my boundaries are, but I've reiterated that today, that you said you wanted things out in the open, so that's what I've done. My out in the open means holding the line, essentially. So how is that with you?
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 an 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...
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.
He - "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 when you sent the recording, or you wouldn't have sent it"
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 - "I could give you a list of reasons"
Me - "You could give me a list of reasons why I would not! Why I would not want a different answer?"
He - "Yes"
Me - "That's an interesting one...you could give me a list of reasons why I would not want?
He - "Yes - so foremost in my mind is the possibility, if my answer was different, you being a trainee counsellor on a course already with a track record of having broken the professional ethical code with a therapist in your wake"
Wake is a strange word to use, as if I'd leave him behind and move on to the next...so, throw me over the cliff! And how dare I offer something so sweet and lovely! This sounds like I wanted a 'one night stand!
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!"
He - "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, cruel.
He... say, 'they think we might get on outside of therapy and do I want to meet them at the pub one day' and I always say no and I usually explain why, that I'm holding the professional boundary because one day this person might come back to me"
Me - "No, this person will not come back, because it is not possible"
He - "Clients do come back"
Me - "I'm not a client"
He - "Clients do come back"
Me - "I am not a client"
He - "If in the meantime they become friends"
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"
He - "I don't understand what you mean by your vows here, why do you mention 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 was there with them.
But I've not shared half the depth of those posts with him because he missed me by miles, he applied theory, and the lack of affect and inability to express feelings (in words even) made me feel extremely uncomfortable.. But I was fascinated by 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 - "You do understand I'm never going to see you in any other way than as 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 "
He - "I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about my principles, my 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...'
Or erasure? I'm not even so much as talking about you...
Me - "They do 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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