Omission. 24th January 2022.
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.
As he sits down he asks me..so, is this part 3'?
I tell the truth "Basically I'm out of my head again, today because I've got to get my assignment done by Wednesday"
He asks me if I 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 asks if this is about role play, the 'what can go wrong in a therapy session, session!' Which it wasn't! and then asks about my future. I say truthfully that "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 says, ' So, not private practice then?
I tell him that "I don't know - perhaps. 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!
For some reason he seems to have jumped to the conclusion that I'm 'deliberately' cutting down possibilities? I have no idea why he has said this!
I say "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 then starts talking about the importance of the therapeutic relationship in the sessions and how short-term therapy is a waste of time and if I don't think otherwise it is because I have no idea...
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! What he has just said seems to shred everything he's said about the therapeutic relationship to nothing. When I walked into his room after he's listened to the recording there was a way to turn all this back into how we began - but not without absolute human, vulnerable trust and honesty on both sides!
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 tells me that 'You can't resolve a crisis in six sessions'... Well, this is exactly what my research project is about, and I have heard six stories from my fellow students where a chance occurrence suddenly turned what had been a nose dive into increasing misery and disaster, into something so different... But in therapy too - The first time I spoke to someone in crisis we resolved it in three - with WhatsApp support in between...
The thing is, hear and mirror the passion, follow the energy and resonate.
He of course tells me that this can't work and it is nothing but placing a sticking plaster over the real wound. And, know what? I used to agree with this. Until I discovered that for me, doing Wim Hof and learning how to think in a solution focused way allows acceptance of, compassion for, and resolution of the past to occur. It is possible to help someone enough so that they are then able to go back to the world and get the lessons they want and need, and choose!
He disagrees, 'Without doing any of the developmental stuff? Without somebody understanding themselves?' What's to understand - I'm in so much pain I tried to kill myself, but I want to live. Help me!
After all he has said to me I think, shall we talk about your deficits Kit, about what's gone wrong? 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? What's"<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 says that I'm telling him increasing a person's awareness of their past is of no use?'
Oh my, did I say that? I didn't say that?
I don't think it is appropriate for someone in a crisis, but long term looking at the past is perfect for people who want that. I said I want to do crisis counselling, and know how to make six sessions effective! Because six sessions is all people get unless they can pay. 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. I tell him that it started at an inquest listening and assessing, and hearing a story, and thinking that what I heard was unbelievable.
His reply indicates that he doesn't care to remember anything I've told him about why I'm here, why I'm wading through these assignments.
I go through the whole story again.
"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 asks me what the psychiatric system has got to do with medium to long-term psychotherapy?
So, no he doesn't remember - I'd be mortified if I hadn't made a note of something obviously so significant to my client!
"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 still doesn't understand..
And we are at the core of why I studied solution focused therapy!
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?"
I've probably offended him again! He asks, 'Hmm do you think people like me don't see people in crisis?
What doesn't he get!
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' "
And then I'm talking about the part of me that is my protector, Trent Reznor / Doom Guy, and
I'm playing Nine-Inch-Nails: Not Anymore!
He reads the lyrics and asks me if it related to the point in my marriage when I decided that I wanted out?
No Kit, that didn't happen.
Surely I'm not going to get into telling the story again?
Instead I give a very uncertain "Mmm"
But, he continues ''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"
Again he re-states his point of view, his version of my truth - that I couldn't admit to myself how bad it had got until 'I gave up the idea that it could be salvaged'. He is certain that he knows how it really was, and he just does not get that he's wrong. 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.
And then the final lie - and I 'took the safety catch off' and blew our relationship to Hell.
Basically, by doing that 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 had felt as if my husband was pushing me to give up - which meant doing his dirty work for him. So yes I certainly 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 describes what he has heard in the song, 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.
<after a long silence> Kit asks, 'Did it help that your husband had been hit with a saucepan?'
Making light of my statement...please do not do this.
Me: "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'm not laughing...
I've said it so many times, truth matters.
Kit repeats his point, making sure that I get that <in his view> there is something comedic about being hit with a saucepan. And the contrast between taking action, rather than saying 'Oh this is terrible, my world is falling apart. 'You did this! BANG!'
He want's me to think of this as a comedy....
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