We begin by talking about the 23rd of May 2022.
This will be the date of my last session, because it is when my course finishes. And this date is significant. Two years before, on the 23rd of May 2020 - my husband set in motion the resonance cascade that shattered our family.
So what are the chances of this being a good date to finish!
My only hope, during this session was that I'd be able to contain my feelings; I felt there to be no way out and no way forward.
I'd asked him to tell me how he felt in the mp3, and again in the 14th February session, possibly other times.
I'd said that this is how I get closure.
It never happened.
Instead he diagnosed my recording as transgression - this justified, in his mind, his abuse of power.
You can read the transcript!
Or perhaps I should just upload?
At the time of this session I couldn't take more instances of my feelings being dismissed, or described as crossing boundaries. He was reacting as if my honesty opened a door to a contaminating force, and this would ruin a professional, ‘clean’ therapy process.
So how did that make me feel?
At the end?
Suicidal.
When I left his room for the last time in May, I didn't want to be. I'm not going to hide this.
The abuse of power by a therapist, or a medical person, or someone you have every right to believe means you well, may occur if that person refuses to offer a sincere dialogue.
Since then my definition of abuse has changed a little.
It is abuse when a person notices that he is doing harm, and choses not to remedy the situation.
His choice not to offer authentic self-disclosure was an abuse of power, and the excuse is often supported by diagnosis. I'm not alone in experiencing this! A distressed parent, carer, or patient, or any emotional person asking for clarity, for a second opinion, needing truth, risks being diagnosed as dysregulated and unable to understand.
Misogyny is no longer about gender.
Misogyny is an enacted prejudice against expressions of 'weakness', or vulnerability, a fear of raw, human emotion. The most common forms are dismissal, ridicule or threat in order to force, coerce or manipulate the other to contain their feelings and need. It happens when a person expresses their need in an emotional way. This is translated by the abuser as a challenge to a power structure that gives the abuser power - and so...
Remaining connected to the values of the system is more important to the abuser, than working to mend the other's pain.
In the year of gaslighting, my husband couldn't speak truthfully to me because his behaviour was not coherent with his role and identity. As a professional person; he felt that his behaviour might put his job at risk.
He would lose money, status and power.
His position and need for secrecy was all the more vulnerable because he thought that her husband was a dangerous maniac.
Nothing could be disclosed...
And he defined me as a risk!
It gives me joy actually to remember that as she was messaging my husband all evening, as her husband was with her - he looked at her phone he found out! Who could have predicted that. She was in effect the cause of the danger, but - they both enjoyed the 'dangerous game', they both needed to cast their partners as mad - and I imagine that this is still the world they live in, or are now trying to preserve in some way.
Whatever!
I have asked for transparency and truth from Kit. I need it. In exactly the same way I needed it from my husband. That I've explained this, told him the effect of my husbands' lying, and I have not received truthful and honest dialogue, is cruel.
And it is unjustified.
Hedges (1997, p.221) warned that:
ignoring the erotic from our professional domain would drive therapists: "closer to a climate of incessant naïve moralizing”
My experience exactly.
So setting the date to end this makes sense.
And yes it is a bad date.
He asked me if there would be any ritual to go with it?
And in response I automatically shifted back into my heart, into feelings.
I say, 'no, no it is a Katabasis...' hear my voice change - to use his words: I sound like a small child.
I'm now breaking...
I know this vale of emptiness is leading to an empty ending. And I know that this is going to do me damage, I'm praying that he will understand before it is too late and find a way through. But my heart is cracked, my soul is splintered. Only his absolute honesty could reach me now...I'm in so much pain.
I change the subject tangentially to Giordano Bruno; an Italian philosopher, poet, and cosmological theorist who so angered the church that after his trial he was hung upside down, and burnt to death in the market square.
Bruno is my Hanging Man; and I know, as he must have known, that it has been decided. We have challenged implacable rules. Bruno and I. Neither of us could not, would not back down.
Love is love, I didn't chose it.
I recognized it as Bruno recognized that stars burn...
Me: "He was burnt at the stake for saying that stars were balls of fire"
He - What were they considered to be before that"?
He knows this better than I, why is he asking?
I ignore the question.
Me - "But also his system was heliocentric - so...and he did all these little diagrams you see, and I think this is what inspired Jung and his concept of mandala"
He - "Isn't it extraordinary what people take offence at. Mind you, I suppose if you are in charge and your belief system is challenged , and you have totalitarian authority you want to crush anybody who says different no matter what it is"
Me - "I don't know how he said it? Persistently? So there are generally thresholds people fall foul of; they get a warning. I don't know"
I am describing to him how I feel now. I too had felt warned. Threshold had been his word, 'a lot of thresholds were being crossed'.
The paradox is this. When I walk out of the final session I will cross a waste ground alone. Giving up any hope will take me to the gates of my death. That is what happened before, it will happen again.
I know this.
It is going to hit me so hard...
A part of it is my husband's conduct and untruthfulness - the wound is still raw and bleeding. I have seen Kit almost every week for almost two years now, I said it was love...why does he imagine that it would it be easy for anyone to walk away from this?
Here now, in this session - I stop the descent, for the sake of my sanity.
If being tangential is a defence mechanism, and he choses to criticise me for it, that's his choice. I need to protect myself.
I'm talking about his statues - of which there are two in this room.
Me - "...I think rational is just something we think we do, it's not who we really are. Statues in churches, a Catholic church has statues of saints and it now makes total sense to me and it's like....<I'm laughing. His expression is of incongruity!> I do love your face <I'm really laughing now> I didn't understand statues until I had my Tibetan education - I do understand <pause> about rupas <I say the word under my breath> about form. That it causes a person to think, bring the deity to mind"
He - "yes"
Me - "I'm thinking of the bone in St Chad's cathedral in Birmingham. Mark and I, and Mark is really 'Low C of E church' and we were both radiography students. In our dinner break we went into St Chads and there was a bone on the shrine (alter) "
He - "A bone. Was it even a human bone"?
Me - "At the time I couldn't understand it. But later, understanding the Tibetan 'version' it is the real bone of St Chad for those who have faith; it makes a conduit between your mind and the 'construct', the part of your mind that longs to follow in St Chad's footsteps"
He - "Yes. Hence the prohibition in Judaism and Islam I expect. Because if an image of someone is there to venerate, to make them more than, higher than, more worshipful than the great mass of people. In Judaism and Islam the idea is, no, no it is about your conduct, and don't raise people up as if there is something better. It's about all of you, but you individually; you behave, you act. I sort of get that. Not that I'm religious in the slightest - but I get the idea of not venerating people"
Me - "Is it veneration of people? Is a statue not a placeholder for memory, for navigation? And more prosaic...Burnt Tree Island, I always wonder - what was that burnt tree, was there a burnt tree there? Like the Neolithic standing stones as a way of navigating; because at that time - Anyways Grooved ware, around 3000 BC when monument construction, grand ritual, was at it's height in Britain. The centre was up in the North, in Orkney - that seems to be where the real locus of power was - and so there are lots of trade routes. The axe factory in Cumbria, and Otsi whose body was found in the Alps, people used to walk many, many miles so we need memory. Things that make and contain memory. And if you lose those then a part of yourself is gone, because it is part of your <me: nervous laughter - his expression..>
He - "Well that's the whole modern culture isn't it!
Me - "That's the whole modern culture"?
He - "All that matters"!
Me - "All that matters"?
He - "..is the here and now and what you can buy, and that makes your identity"
Me - "But people have to do stuff, there has to be movement and trade and new ideas, and flow. And placeholders - statues, standing stones, memories - allow one to navigate. Without external navigation points...it would be so strange wouldn't it"
He - "What would be strange"?
To be without external navigation points...
Me - " if the Lucknow <not the name of the restaurant> just at the top of your road wasn't there, it would be really strange for me. Because it forms a part of this journey, walking past the Lucknow, and how it reminds me of reading the book - The Siege of Krishnapur"
He -"Is that what you feel when you walk past it"!
Me - " I do! I love that book."
He - "Wow"!
Me - "I do indeed. That's why I had to buy the book to read it again"!
He - "How do you get here in one piece"
Me - "Well <we are both laughing> it is all in my head so I'm fine"
He - "Goodness, that's quite a traumatic journey isn't it"?
He clearly has not read it!
He - "Seeing a siege every time you walk past"!
Me - "No it is the memory of reading the book, because I enjoyed the book. I never know why I enjoy that book so much <the dry sense of humour, probably!> Ah, I'm disappointed that you don't know why the restaurant has that name."
He - "The question never even occurred to me. Just interested in if their curry is any good really"
Me - "But it looks closed"
He - "Well that's because it is open in the evening"
Me - "Oh. It looks forlorn, I thought it was closed for good, or for refurbishment - like repair after a siege!"
He - "Anyway, this chapter three"
Me - "I came prepared to go into the past, I thought about this date a while back"
He - "We could do that if you wished"?
I started to read my notes to myself about the date.
Me - "<laughing> Oh no, poor me!...anyway...Airplane part 3"
Part 3
...meeting with the darkness of the void as an infinity that drowns all choice.
Powerless to oppose a rip tide of expectation and consensus.
When there is no other way but to drown willingly.
My horror when I have witnessed this in others has been absolute.
The first time I met it I a student radiographer. Three women outside my room waiting... I read their request forms, felt time running backwards.
The request forms were for chest x-ray before ECT.
And the forms invited me in, making me a part of it ; the validity of ECT as implausible as trepanation to release demons.
I could not believe that the women were sitting as peaceful as lambs.
Why were they not escaping!
But how far could they go, bodies heavy with depression, dressed only in night clothes.
I wanted them to rage. I didn't want them to go quietly. Yet the rip tide is impersonal, and implacable, and I was a part of it.
As I positioned them for their X rays it was clear, either they or I, had drowned already.
When imagination fails, awareness descends like the sun, below fight, beyond flight, below freeze. Dimming into a post supernova, non existent star.
I did not accept, I remained disbelieving.
C S Lewis described acceptance as the only way to subvert the obliterating force.
I assumed that he meant going willingly, not allowing the star to fail.
He - "You were an observer or a participant in ECT"?
Me - "I was just taking their chest X rays. They were pre-ECT. This was in a medical hospital. In case there was a problem, to prevent cardiac arrest.."He - "Wow"
Me - "And I couldn't believe I didn't know. I didn't think that ECT still happened"!
He - "Yes, it's like we don't cure disease by blood letting or trepanning skulls anymore."
Me - "Well, trepanation - burr holes to reduce pressure when there is an inter-cranial bleed. So you can sort of see , but not to let demons out! I mean people think ECT makes sense, it is still argued for. People believe in it and there are people who have had it and say 'things are now so much better for me' . But there is a part of me that sees ECT as so wrong"
He - "Well I don't know if I'm being deliberately electrocuted and putting my body through that and I really didn't want to have it happen again, I'd say that I felt much better, so I wouldn't be in the same position. Hmm yes, it is distressing. And I know that was your response"
Me - "I think it was more about how it was implacable. That there was no way out, and I think that's part of the horror, the implacability, feeling the rip-tide how it drags people out. But it's not so much about you as an individual. It's about the position you find yourself in. My process is like following the thread of an image - like the horns that maybe ended up on Moses (a conversation not recorded in this blog) how a symbol gets used, and used again but people don't quite remember the nuances of how it was used before. Yet they keep on using it, and making a history for the usage that is also incomplete and then it becomes something else. And I feel that ECT is a lot like that, because it mimics someone having an epileptic seizure - and after a seizure a person seems to be calmer. But causing an epileptic seizure...and yet there is more to it. It is weird it has a numinous quality. and I always want to unpack these things, put the ideas on the wall like a crime scene 'map' so that people can look at it and instantly see what and where ideas draw their power from, and see also that it is crazy and ask 'why are we still doing this'!
He - "So the implacability of what"?
Isn't it totally obvious?
It is what I have said - that a rip-tide will carry me out and away from him. That I'm going like a lamb, like those ladies to the ECT despite the implacable insanity of electrocution, and I want them to fight tooth and nail. And I'm not fighting - because I know he would class it as regressive behaviour. They too believe that there is worse. It is an implacable insanity to electrocute a person into convulsions 'for their own good'. It is an implacable insanity that he doesn't wish to preserve what is good in our relationship which requires that he accepts that I'm more of a therapist than a client, that an alliance between us of authentic communication would stretch us both, and that I'm fine if he doesn't 'want me' just I refuse to pay to talk to him, and especially I can't take the lack of truth.... Right now I feel as good as dead - as if I'm as substantial to him as a ghost. I do know that this is serious, deadly serious for me. And I know that I can't avoid the rip-tide."
Me - "The implacability of that date. I'm not any good at accepting that there are no ways around things "
He - "You were talking before about C.S Lewis saying that the only way through the implacable is acceptance."
Well that's certainly telling me!
Me - "It seemed to be. But I don't honestly know so much - really this is so sad - my reference for C.S Lewis is almost entirely The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. So the example of Aslan going willingly to the stone table, that that's the only way. And Jesus too, only by accepting and going willingly can you undo. and I'm never so sure about that"
He - "Yes, but it does sort of fit in with a therapeutic truism, doesn't it. That all the difficult stuff can't be got round it has to be got through. Otherwise it will never be resolved"
Is acceptance 'getting through'? I don't think it is.
He wants me to accept that he doesn't have feelings for me, but he wont say it! He says instead why would you think that I could ever feel that way about a client! He wishes me to agree that I have no reason whatsoever to think there was any hint or substance; so he wants me to undermine my own feelings, to believe that I was mistaken to take the times he mentioned 'coffee fuelled discussions' as a sign that he enjoyed talking to me; and that I was wrong to ever dare imagine that talking was enjoyable for both of us.
The alternative narrative is that he is manipulative, enacting a Kohut therapeutic kinship. This fits with his conceit that it couldn't actually be him that I wished to know - defended by his wishful thinking that the real person that he really is, is never in the room.
So the real person?
He's the ghost?
His denial means that I cannot process any of this correctly.
Nor can I get a clear image of all the more-than-therapy moments not described in this blog.
I'm being asked to close my eyes to depth, to truth, to vulnerable humanness. My proscribed path as he wishes it to be, is clear, I must erase my feelings and stop accessing intuition.
The worst part is, I feel that there is a threat somewhere.
I want to know!
Why is it important to him that I should accept what he says?
Me - " That all the difficult stuff can't be got round it has to be got through. Is a concept. I see it as re-mapping, and to re-map it has to be re-activated. The memory has to be active and running. So, we are in agreement insomuch as it's not possible for it to mend unless it is encountered in some way"
It's not possible for it to mend, unless it is encountered in some way
Here's the tiny table!
Whatever - I have no idea how those women could accept the fact that they were headed for ECT. They were my first introduction to depression; their daytime clothes gone, dressed for sleep, disempowered, their agency denied. Their acceptance of other people's madness may have been complete. Or their passive acceptance of ECT an act of faith. What struck me was their disconnection from the impulse to fight to live.
Acceptance means survival when you are powerless.
And what if I'm being made to accept that which is unacceptable to me - namely his much valued avoidance!
He- "Avoidance is not the answer is what I'm saying. That's what I mean by going around and avoiding. It has to be got through, it has to be processed. Without it being processed it is always going to be there. And it can grow if it is avoided"
After 'the tiny table' there is nothing left about me to understand, he is the missing.
So how is he dealing with this?
I tell him the process I experience and will experience.
Me - "Well the surface fear starts to drag in anything that comes close, that's what happens, a contagion. a misapprehension of that secondary fear"
He - "So what does that mean for the 23rd of May"?
I will be dragged out by a force akin to a rip-tide and I can't see anyway to avoid this. I will drown - rip-tides kill. Seriously, if I heard this from a client...I would get out the suicide assessment form. It is all there - 'surface drags in anything that comes too close' like...a rip-tide. And what does 'she' (me) associate with rip-tides? Oh yes, an implacable force, and people being sent off to enact the hope that ECT induced seizures are being good for the brain...coercion.
I remember when I was doing level 3 and the person I was listening to was using a metaphor about being washed away, and I side-stepped the emotional impact - because I knew what was underneath (as she was my friend) and I didn't want to take her into the heart of it, in this classroom, with so many others present, a 15 minuites practice session..
He is operating at that same level - but why?
Listening to how much he hasn't reflected back - I'm angry - he has made it so it is not safe to be emotionally open or honest with him.
Me - "I don't know, I think I'm pretty good at this sort of stuff"
Sounds like avoidance?
It certainly is.
No one is good at accepting the pain that grief brings. No one can be good at feeling as if they are being dragged by an implacable force that will possibly destroy them. But at this very moment I have to believe that I am able to do it, so I'm going to say it and mean it.
I have told him that I am facing overwhelming loss and grief, because I don't think this is erotic transfer, I believe that I'm being made to accept something that is cruel.
So now, a skill I learnt when my husband was cold, using degrading terms, and threatening me is useful once more. I have the ability to speak up for myself in the face of overwhelming force.
This is all I can do...
Me - "<pause> But there are two parts. The first part is the past and then there is the next one, which is the future <spoken with pain in my voice>" because it is the last time that I shall see you <I feel the tears as hot as sparks from a bonfire, stinging my eyes> and that is a sad thing too"
Kit - "Hmm, yes. What does the colliding of those two events on the same date bring up for you?"
I've told him!
Rip-tides and implacable cruelty!
What answer was he after? The truth of that date is that around 4:30 am I'd discovered that all my feelings were valid and my worst thoughts vindicated, that actually things had been exactly as I'd thought whilst my husband was telling me that I was mad.
Without recordings both of my husband and of Kit, I could be persuaded that it hadn't actually been as I imagined. As much as I appreciate Kit's view of regression, transference and the importance of therapeutic continence - which can be as extreme as the therapist always wearing the same clothes each time you attend a session, and removing their wedding ring too (continence means giving nothing away about who you are in the outside world to the client so that the therapist is a blank slate for the transference) and though I know that it is his way of honouring his clients, this is now about something else, this has demonstrated to me, and taught me a lesson I will never forget or forgive, how therapy becomes malignant.
I didn't feel devastated by May 23rd 2020. I felt as if the sky and earth became real once more. I finally had the truth.
I will be devastated by 23rd May 2022 - there is no similarity between 23rd then, and 23rd to come. Instead I will hear more of the same gaslighting language my husband also used, and there will not be resolution or any solid ground!
To answer the question - the colliding of those dates is simply a coincidence. The damage that ended with the 23rd 2020 date has left me wounded enough to be brought into this semi-psychotic state of almost hallucinogenic visions - they describe my psychic state more intensely and with more clarity than anything else I could say.
As I've noted, the use of language - the what makes you think // how could you imagine - mirrors my husband's evasive language.
If I said that this this language is harmful for me right now, this would conflict with his need to be seen as good and kind and incapable of doing any harm to anything. I know this, I have tried to talk with him about any slight therapeutic rupture before.
He simply apologises!
He cannot explore it.
And that process puts the blame for the misalliance onto the client's shoulders.
The therapist as he plays it, is always perfect...or he will be ashamed.
And that dear reader is factor X.
This is my situation - his shame is preventing me from getting a clear picture of reality. It would break his commitment to therapeutic continence to tell me that he has a partner, or he's chosen celibacy, or he just doesn't like me, or he likes me, or he wants me to but he doesn't feel able to change how things are. And this doctrine says that if the client is upset by this absence, they become childlike (regression). So, more gaslighting then!
And right now, he's asking me for what?
"What does the colliding of those two events on the same date bring up for you?"
Again, I need to remind myself of any triumph I've had before when facing the rip-tide of grief...he hasn't a clue how to 'contain' grief. Last time he told me that I seemed 'very angry' when actually I was trying not to cry, feeling unheard, frustrated and powerless.
I'm going to have to take care...
Me - "It is like the white Golf, it is one of those things, you couldn't make it up! A part of me thinks I've asked for it, the cosmic joke...I must have signed on the dotted line...X choses not to avoid."
Distress is a communication, based on the trust that others will help when they hear a cry.
We also learn to avoid communicating our need for love and comfort to someone who wont give it.
The alternative is NVC (Marshall Rosenburg's non-violent communication...)
Me - "In fact I'm saying, 'bring it on' maybe? I don't know! <and my laugh sounds like crying>"
He - "I'm not sure I get the reference to the white car"
My laugh sounds like crying - who is avoiding now!
This lack of empathic response creates my defence; I tell him about the car again - it uses some time. I'm talking about myself being brave. This is safe.
Now he is now talking with me about the rights and wrongs of my husbands choice to take or not take legal action against her husband, the outcome of which is that my husbands choice was probably based on his decision to stay with her...I interpret this as Kit proving to me that his interpretation was right all along, and my hopes for repairing our marriage were fantasy (with or without a PH?)
He - "How do you feel about the 23rd of May"?
No! I have said it, it has all been said.
He hasn't heard and I am not going to go into it. What doesn't he get? I said rip-tide / lethal / implacable/ can't fight....I seek connection and hope...None is there - I am powerless, dispirited, overwhelmed, in pain. I will be swallowed up in the black and bitter waters and never see you again. What do you think that feels like! And what would make me feel able to tell you this - only the belief that you would reply from the heart, not the head...I have asked you to be straight with me. You aren't straight, you avoid.
I have no option but to keep away, avoiding seems the only way.
Malignant therapy? I can't imagine that I'm the only person who has gone through this!
Me - "Well there is more. This week we have done the past and next week I will do the future"
He - "OK"
See: Hedges, L.E. (1997). ‘In praise of dual relationships’. In L. E. Hedges, R. Hilton, V.W. Hilton, & O.B Caudill, Therapists at risk: Perils of the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
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