He hands me my coffee and
I'm saying: "It's quite nice that you get a different picture on your computer screen..."
My laptop is open.
He, sitting down: "It really is cold - goodness!....so, is this part 3?
Me: "Basically I'm out of my head again, today because I've got to get my assignment done by Wednesday"
He: "Do you want to talk about that assignment?"
Me: "No, no, there is nothing to be done, the words are all there. I just need to read them all out and make sure it makes a coherent story. Just I realize what a constructivist I am, meanings are all created through relationships, and I don't know what the person marking the assignment wants me to say; do they want a liturgy of possible things that could go wrong? Well I will do that, but basically people want to be accepted and loved and when they are ostracized they feel terrible"
He: "Oh is this the 'what can go wrong in a therapy session' assignment?"
Me [laughing] "No, I think that they make us experience that in class - when it was my turn, my friend, my friend(!) Elaine, and this is meant to be about grief by the way, she sits down - we are in front of the whole class - and she raises her eyebrows as if to say, I'm on your side Xerpa, I've got something good for you. 'Hi, what would you like to talk about?' and she brings this 'I've just found out that my husband's having an affair, we have been married twenty years!' I thought Elaine! How could you do this to me! So this is a scenario - not real - but I'm in the role of therapist and she didn't have to make up that story! How could she do this to me! I can't use my 'normal' strategy, because I will risk being marked down for 'rescuing'.
He: "Well that's good isn't it, if you can't do your normal strategy?"
Me: "Not in this case"
He: "Well clients aren't going to fit into a strategy"
Me: "Kit! Stow that - I will tell you a real case - client's notes say 'Depressed, drinking too much, really want to get my life in order' that's all I've got. It was a Zoom. Client is somewhere indefinable, window behind him, I can't see him because there is no light. And he is to all intents and purposes 'my husband' I mean obviously he isn't my husband, but he has exactly the same story. He blames his wife, she is being unreasonable. But he had exactly the same story, and attitude...So, I partition that, OK I'm on your case, I'm on your side, what are we doing, how can I help you, all that... So, that's fine because that is real. But this! In class! I thought, how could you do this to me Elaine! Did she think if she gave me something I know about personally I would be a better therapist in this session? Afterwards she said, 'I saw your face, are you OK? I said, yes - I just had to take a few deep breaths, but I'm OK, but honestly Elaine, how could you do that!"
He: "But why wouldn't she? Because that's going to happen at some point"
Me: "I have just explained it to you. It has happened. I've also had a client who is experiencing stuff as terrifying as I went through. If it is real, that's fine. And when it is real, I do it the way I do it which is to focus on what is working and people's needs, so in a real situation I talk with a person about what they want to change, and what they need to feel safe. I am not going to be going into the problem, which is what I'm supposed to be doing in this session with Elaine - because the conceit or deceit is that I'm going to be working with this person for infinite sessions - but truth is, sessions are limited to six because of funding! So knowing how to be brief is vital!"
He: "At the moment you are now, but what about the future?"
Me: "I don't know about the future. But I see myself as good at crisis, I am good with people who are in a state of 'I can't take it anymore, I'm at the end and I don't know what to do'"
He: "So, not private practice then?"
Me: "I don't know - perhaps - that's the thing, I've got two people, one said ' I've seen counsellor's before and I usually have to tell them what to do' and there is someone else who I really want to refer on, I don't think I'm the right therapist. So both people obviously think that I'm doing the kind of therapy they need, then, that's up to them!
He: "It seems odd to me that you are deliberately cutting down possibilities"
Me: "I'm not cutting down possibilities. It's just that...no, this reminds me of another conversation with my other mentor. I don't have that many years Kit, I recon!"
He: "You are not ninety!"
Me: "Well, it's not that far away!"
He: "It depends on what you think of as medium or long-term therapy because there are ill defined parameters. But lets say medium term therapy, just for the sake of putting a number on it, is let's say three months. And long-term therapy is over six months"
Me: "Perhaps students from my college are the best served then! - Ooops, sorry, I'm interrupting"
He: "Well it means that you can only work in very limited contexts if you are not interested in the ongoing relationship with the client, and the ongoing investigation in to developmental questions"
So, here is why I told him that I'd fallen in love with him. The currents and flow of energy between people really matter!
But where is his interest in the ongoing relationship with me, here and now, in this room! He can't talk about it...is my conclusion.
Me: "It struck me when I was writing that assignment that we are really all taught the wrong stuff. But what I really appreciate, having been there myself is that there are a lot of people who don't want to go to see a therapist and don't know how to find a therapist, and there are a lot of people in crisis"
He: "Yes"
Me: "That is where I started, and it is why I started - because of my son's friend. It is that question - how did it happen - and my choice to do something, not just sit there"
He: "You can't resolve a crisis in six sessions"
The first time I spoke to someone in crisis we resolved it in three - with WhatsApp support in between...find the passion, follow the energy and resonate.
Me: "You can actually.
He: "You can put a sticking plaster on it!"
Me: "No! I disagree fundamentally"
He: "Without doing any of the developmental stuff? Without somebody understanding themselves?"
What's to understand - I'm in so much pain and heroin takes that away, but I tried to kill myself with it. I want to live. Help me! So, shall we talk about your deficits? about what's gone wrong? Or shall we talk about your strength and courage? It is totally understandable that once someone knows how effective a pain killer is, unless they have a very good reason not to use it - they will use it! My aim is to increase the energy of I want to live!
Me: "What you mean by developmental stuff is, I believe, is to help them get into sync with their emotions. Giving them appropriate words, and you yourself being in sync with them. That is part of it "
He: "No, I don't mean that"
Me [laughing] "We are going to start arguing about angels on a pin"
He: "No. Absolutely not [warning tone] no, absolutely not, this isn't theology (?! definitely I make him angry) this is fundamental approach. I'm talking about a client understanding their own inner workings. What you are talking about is called empathy or attunement.
And I reply with anger ...because I feel dismissed.
Me: "What I'm talking about is giving a person - yes, 'rescuing', yes, all these dirty words in a counselling course. Rescuing, (as if that could be a problem!) confluence, cooperating. Actually dismantling their process of self-attack, by hearing the need underneath. And instead of picking up on the top level (of distress) hearing the person underneath, and I'm talking to that one. That's why the client - who had the same story as my husband - and this was interesting for me - after this, if I can cope with this I thought, 'I can do anything now!' So what I heard was his need underneath his frustration and pain. But he isn't going to attend long-term therapy is he! He doesn't want that. He wanted someone to tell him that he wasn't going mad , and to splurge his woe to a stranger who is anonymous'"
<pause - Kit isn't speaking - possibly counting to ten.>
Me: "You would like more for me? Is that what it is? Do you feel that it is a shame, a waste? Or you feel that I'm limiting myself, or you feel that? Whats..."<he interrupts>
An invite to actually say what he thinks and feels for once!
But no, it's been kicked into the long grass.
He: "I'm just wondering, if you have never had a client for more than six sessions...have you?
Me: "No"
He: "OK, if you have never had a client for six sessions, if you have never had a client for six months"
Me: "Well I only started seeing people in October last year (3 months ago)"
He: "Yes, yes! If you've never had a client for six months or eighteen months or two years, or whatever it might be. Then how would you know what's possible?"
Me: "I don't know"
He: "When they go beyond six sessions"
Me: "I agree with you absolutely, I don't know"
He: "But you are telling me its of no use"
Oh my, did I say that? I didn't say that? I said crisis counselling, and knowing how to make six sessions effective! I also said something about increasing people's will to live by following their energy...meaning that I'm talking about people who are suicidal.
Me: "I'm telling you that I set out with a goal - or - (it started with a) not quite a road to Damascus, but I was sat at an inquest listening and assessing, and hearing a story, and thinking that what I heard was unbelievable"
He: "Sorry, what is unbelievable"?
Me: "It is just unbelievable, the disconnect! The systems all apparently are set out to help people, but they manage to alienate the people that they say they are helping"
He: "Which system?"
Me:
"Which systems - more than one! So I thought - you know, my son's friend is taken in for a mental health assessment in June, got out of there after three days and then by December he's walking about on the rail track. So, how did he get from there to there? This is somebody in a system and so why is it that his family feels compelled to take action themselves? Why were they not asking for help from the system(s) when he appeared to be in severe mental distress and by the sound of it, psychosis? Again how did he get from there, to there? The system must have a 'care plan' surely his family had a care plan; numbers - who to phone. Again I ask, from there to there and now he is on the rail track! Where are the police? He was first seen on the track, or close by, forty-five minutes before his death. But the original phone call for help was made at 6:30 am, he was hit by a train two hours and fifteen minutes later. How do you get from 6:30 until a 8:45 with someone walking about on the rail-track? So, what is happening?
He: "What has the psychiatric system got to do with medium to long-term psychotherapy, because I don't understand?"
Me: "It is how I got into this. It was the statement from the GP at the inquest. She said "I asked him if he wanted to go to counselling". And I thought at that moment, listening to her description - and I think I had already done part of a mental health course, so I'd already got a handle on this attitude, which I'd already thought was not very good and decided that I was not going to be that kind of mental health professional either. I thought, why on earth would he say yes to counselling? So my decision was, to become the counsellor who can find her way into these gaps between the psychiatric assessment and the hour before he was hit by the train! It was a total disconnection, no one to help, no one to call. And at the time I thought of his family; why did you do this, why did you do that? And now of course, I know almost every second of it"
He: "I'm still trying to hear how that is connected to the question"
Me: "Because crisis is not medium or long-term, Crisis isn't about developmental, that's for someone like you! My skill is that, I don't know - perhaps I mesmerize - or I challenge in the right way, or perhaps I agree with my philosophy tutor (philosophy was part of my other counselling course) that we ask ridiculous questions, but we keep on asking them. We 'use the keys', the fundamental questions <looking now at his expression> but I shouldn't go on. Where are we <nervous laugh> here in this room. Are you clearer now?"
He: "Well you seem to be saying something more. Because what you just said was, there's this here - which is at your college - but 'my skill set' is here.
Me: "Yes, and they are 180 degrees opposite"
He: "But what I've heard you say at other points is that not only is my skill set here and that's at college, but that what I'm doing at college doesn't work and is in someway wrong"
Me: "It is only wrong insomuch as it doesn't deal with the reality that more people are in crisis, than people who want to attend therapy."
He: "Hmm do you think people like me don't see people in crisis?"
Me: "There is a pay-wall! That is a problem. There is a pay-wall! A person has to self-identify as 'I need therapy, and I can pay for it, and I will pay for it' and that puts therapy behind a wall. So what I am saying is, there are an awful lot of people who wouldn't ever approach that wall, it's not in their culture, it's a different reality, it isn't a part of their universe. I'm not saying anything about who you see, obviously no. I do not know who you see. But all our teaching at college is set up for this long-term therapy concept. I asked - when I took level 3 - about talking to people in crisis and was told 'NO' "
He: "There is something in my experience, and I think people I have spoken to have said the same thing. which even at level 7 and level 8 is really missing. Which is - I think what you are getting at which is, what do you do with the person who is in crisis right now? And typically they get referred to psychiatric services which is going to do them no good at all"
Me: "Exactly"
He: "So that there is a gap, um..."
Me: "And that is where I'm meant to be going, you see! That's my place"
He: "Because I remember when I was training, at one point saying, 'when are we going to cover people who, right in front of us, are suicidal'? Or we know they are suicidal before the first session because they tell us so - because I always filter, use the phone, because there are legal questions I need to ask, and also I just want to have a sense of where they are coming from before we meet face to face. So, I asked the question. 'Oh, we haven't got time for that'. I'm so angry! How have you not got time for that! Because even if you have a long-term client, it may be that their starting point is ' I see you or I kill myself' that's possible. Anyway...That was all a bit of a tangent wasn't it because you were going to do something"
Me: "That's fine, reality is what reality is"
And then I'm talking about the part of me that is my protector, Trent Reznor / Doom Guy.
Mp3 player connected to my lap-top - Playing Nine-Inch-Nails: Not Anymore!
He reads the lyrics and says: "Now that sounds like your language...So this is the point at which you? The point at which you stopped to think actually this isn't everything I wanted it to be? This is too problematic. This is something in a place that I didn't want to be, and would not have chosen. But, here I am "
Me <I don't sound so sure!> "Mmm"
He: "What was that point?"
Me: "That it was there - but because I do ' we can work things out', and I'm not forgetting that there are these problems, and they are up there on the shelf, and I know what they are - and they need addressing. But, there is nothing to be done at the moment. I can't hit the destruct button until it is the right time. Because it was a question of, I don't understand. I can understand the narrative, but I don't know what the truth is about why, or anything, or what's to be done because it's not my stuff. I'm not the one who has taken the action. I'm just standing at the side of the road having witnessed my life crash, and I didn't drive it into the crash. If I'm a part of this I can't see it - I'm a bystander trying to work out what has happened. And the negative things and the positive things are weighed up and put on the shelf until I know which way to go, so...That is active rage - that song. That's like accepting the rage. And there is a freedom in that moment of not having to be nice, I can say what I truly think. No shadow of a doubt now, it was as bad as I thought. I can say it (and not be told I'm imagining things and making everything worse!). But until I know that I'm right I can't press the destruct button"
He: "When you put it like that its like you couldn't admit to yourself how bad it had got until you gave up the idea that it could be salvaged"
Oh dear, he is certain that he knows how it really was, and he just does not get it.
I was married!
Regardless of how bad, 'for better and for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health'. I'd given my word that what ever happened I wouldn't go.
And I loved him.
There was no denial on my part, only my husband's lying.
Then I really put the boot into our relationship.
Basically I was breaking my word.
Kit doesn't get this..
But yes, I threw rubbish bags crammed with his belongings into the street and shouted "She's got a family, has she. Not anymore"! (hence this track).
I disagree completely with any 'I couldn't admit 'it' to myself'. This concept is demeaning and cruel. And a complete failure in understanding that there is more involved than 'denial'. I felt as if my husband was pushing me to give up - which meant doing his dirty work for him.
I didn't 'give up' because that meant letting him win.
And I made the end into his worst nightmare, I played the screaming harridan and not only threw his things into the street, I went round and dismantled any illusions he had that I thought of him as anything other than a cheating coward, who had used me because he was too weak and insecure to face his own true reflection.
Me: "It was a balance; not salvaging. This fits into another song. I am intolerant of lies. If you wandered why I sent you that recording it was because I don't do lying, and I have to assess things. Once I've assessed them then I know where I am with it. Then it is out in the open, and this is just how things are. I had a year of being lied to. The transformation point was when he (husband) carried on lying even when I knew the truth; one more lie - I couldn't understand it he was like an alcoholic, had to keep on doing this lying thing! But it doesn't matter after I know, if it makes sense of not! Finally I know. So, one more song...three view points and I know all of them!"
He doesn't reply about the recording. And so it was that I continued to feel lied to, by Kit - and I can't call it out, he had all the power....he could ask me not to return. This was my life and possibly my death if he got it wrong.
I am tangled in barbed wire when I remember.
And I still dream of him.
I played another track. VNV Epicentre.
The song that takes me back to the last night - hours later my husband was about to lie some more and go round to her house - the air, the texture, everything about that awful evening felt explosive. Sitting on the hills, I took myself down a winding path walking away from my husband who was there but not there. He is a black, hazy looming presence in my memory, a darkness of threat and choking smoke. I sat with my back to an oak tree. The atmosphere was crushing - Like being inside a lightning cloud, or perhaps a pressure chamber. No will left, disconnecting - letting the darkness carry me away to drown - awareness of raw agony. Awareness of catastrophic decompression. No feeling, no energy - the void of space, the murderous depths of the sea. I wanted this, I wanted to die. I though of just sitting, starving, no drink, no movement. Then remembering the small knife in my bag, a knife he'd given me. Only the thought of my children kept me tied to this world. And as I'm telling Kit this, putting it very clearly that I felt suicidal that night. Does he remember that I didn't tell him this when he asked me about suicide during my assessment at the start?
But...I'd said that I needed to know...
He is intelligent. How many times have I repeated I need to know the truth so that I can make a decision? This absence from Kit, as from my husband keeps me bonded to him. The 'You should have known that I could never go there' isn't enough. I keep saying, truth matters, truth meant I could throw my husband's belongings out of the door at him whilst making sure all the neighbours heard 'She's got a family, well not anymore'.
And this blog, Kit - is the same moment for you.
Kit is quiet for a long time: "What I hear I think, is someone in crisis - asking other people not to be affected by it"
Me: "No tears, no sympathy...Yes, to be in that state I'd reached the point of , sure 'don't turn away' but all sympathy for myself had gone. It is something I understood for the first time with my first husband, his suicidal intent - the cold shutting down - was something I'd never encountered before. Friends who had said, 'Oh I want to die' but they would sob and rage - but it was emotional, emotive and alive - but he would talk without emotion, cold and mater of fact. It was real. It chilled my blood. And that is where I was that night - self abandoning - like putting your self, like an animal, down. And normally I couldn't put an animal down without emotion - so to reach that point; I understand killing from computer games, out of fear or anger, but this was cold. I didn't care. I felt it, sat by the tree; I actually don't care...But the next morning, once I knew the truth - 24 hours later - I felt immensely better. The sky was the sky, the earth was the earth again. Truth matters"
Truth matters.
He <after a long silence> "Did it help that your husband had been hit with a saucepan?"
Making light of my statement...do not do this.
Me: " <laugh> I don't know, I'm pulled in different directions about that. But I thanked her husband, genuinely, for calling it out, and he was full of shame
I've said it so many times, truth matters.
He: "Well there is something comedic about being hit with a saucepan. But there is also something about taking action, rather than saying 'Oh this is terrible, my world is falling apart. 'You did this! BANG!"
Me: "Exactly! and the man over the road had rushed over and said 'What's going on?' and punched my husband. Her husband was really pleased about that, 'I don't even know my neighbours but it shows I'm in a good road'! But my husband knows that I take action and so when I said that I needed to know the truth - before the saucepan - he had said 'why do you need to know'?
He: "What!'
Kit! I need to know what you think about me so I can make a decision about what I think, what I do and who I am...
Me: "I said, 'so I can make a decision about what I do - that's what people need information for! So I can make a decision about what I think, what I do and who I am. So with him it seemed to be about binding, like you can't make any decision, you can't know, you can't do anything. As long as you don't know anything you are stuck and that's where I want you to be. And it is still the same, he is living somewhere and I don't know where so in his mind, in theory, I'm stuck. I can't sell the house, the internet account is under his name. Same as his dad - with his mom and sister trapped in their beds!"
He: "Trapped in their beds! Why?"
Me: "Exactly! Exactly - why! Like how is that even possible?
And that whole thing really is a horror story. I had every reason to be afraid when my husband started using the same phrases and tone of voice as his dad!
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