What next?

And so I find myself marooned - to stay with the plane crash metaphor. I've just watched Society of the Snow. And as in the film, as in the awful reality of those real events, action must be taken. There will be no rescue otherwise, no getting out. 

So what action do I want to happen?

In counselling, and between counsellors, what counts as resolution is usually an apology of about a thousand words. Those words need to convey to the injured other, a real understanding of the harm done, and a heartfelt regret.

And how I manage to convey to Kit that this demonstration of awareness is appropriate and needed. How to do this?

I don't know. 

Yet.

Do I make a formal complaint?

The first option is to get in contact with the therapist and explain that there is a problem, and ask for some kind of resolution to be worked out.

If that isn't forthcoming, if the therapist doesn't acknowledge that there has been and still is a problem, then a complaint is justified.

A therapist who hasn't received a request for resolution from a client and is aware that there may well be a problem, is unlikely to get in touch with the client. The jury is out on whether a therapist has a duty to get in touch when there has been, what Gestalt practitioners call a rupture. A lot of therapists believe that once therapy is over then staying well away is the best option;  it is framed as maintaining boundaries, and preventing further upset.

But therapists who have experienced the unresolved rupture as clients themselves, tend to feel as I do. That if a therapist ignores the situation, the client is left - high the Andes - contemplating very uncomfortable choices, not as awful or as difficult as those made by the passengers of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 - but for me, it is almost that abhorrent to complain.

This year blew in with the energy of The Avenging Angel - Nemesis. It is a paradox that I spend quite a lot of time exploring a client's anger and sense of injustice, with them; but I know I'm failing to do it for myself. 

I really don't want this feeling or energy.

The Black Box.

26th January 2024.

It is difficult to explain how powerless I still feel about this situation. I can't think for the life of me what empowered could mean. Again I'm struck by the uselessness of understanding. I understand the reasons for the crash. Worse, I also understand what I could have done right - that is a hard thing to deal with!

I also understand the truth of the idea - that what I'm not changing I'm choosing.

But empowered? 

I can't get to an understanding of that at all!

I simply don't have a clue.

Right now I'm working on The Black-Box.  As close a thing to a real black box as I can imagine, putting the pages I wrote last year together to be stored here as this blog.

Does doing this make me feel empowered? 

No. 

As Huberman said, "Anxiety makes children of us all". Kit would explain to me how he would recognise and speak to the Child in his clients; and this was something I always found hard to take. Not least because his responses to my emotional content, were usually intellectual. 

But also because this thing about the Child, has an emotional content and history of its own that I'm really not comfortable with.