The black box - seeking factor X.

When I began processing my therapy sessions last year (2023) my aim was to understand how my feelings for Kit came about, and why it ended so badly.  And the end really was bad. I don't honestly know how I had the strength to walk out of his room, I felt so defeated, so crushed.

To understand and answer these questions I re-entered the dialogues, my thoughts and feelings, and over the year 2023, I documented the therapy sessions 2021-2022. Most of them, not all. Some are too boring, or I accidently missed one out. And they are now being published every Monday - as the contents of  this blog.

2024 is the process part of the blog.

The fascinating thing is, that as I went through the dialogues I became aware of a factor X! And isn't X what a black box is really all about? In this case, X is the something, underlying Kit's entrenched beliefs. I can see the effect of X in the dialogues, in the way that it is as if Kit was unable to hear or consider the validity of my theories, and X - if found - will help explain why his responses to me were as they were. 

Also I think there could be more to X.

Meanwhile, as I write this I am well aware that I could make our non-resolved and cruel ending, worse - by requesting my notes from him, or by making a formal complaint. I think this says a lot to be honest. Proof that a lot went wrong. Clearly to just quote 'the ethical code' at me wasn't enough to solve a problem that I refuse to see as a problem! The ethical code does not prohibit navigation and negotiation. Resolution and change on both sides was the only way to prevent the crash. Why didn't that happen?

Seeking X is an interesting problem - and it is exactly what black boxes are for.

X made the difference between crash or fly.

My fixed position, as I begin to interrogate the black box, seeking the presence or absence of the X that blew the metaphorical plane to bits, is the belief that an avoidant and defensive stance from a therapist in response to a client's verbal expression of sexuality, blows apart everything therapy stands for. 

I can't argue with myself against this view. But I also wish to add I never said that my feelings were sexual - or rather, I didn't express those feelings. I had them! But I don't do 'flirting' or let those feelings out unless there is an invitation from the other person - I hid the bliss! Meanwhile, his refusal to speak from his own feelings, created a dissonance in me, and erasure. Certainly erasure isn't a technical term, I don't know how best to describe it; as if I didn't exist (because my feelings had to be hidden), as if it didn't matter if I existed or not (my feelings are most of who and what I am!) That nothing I could say mattered...

I needed to know how he felt about me, I didn't need a specific answer, only truthfulness, honesty. 

So X is nothing more complicated than his avoidant-defensive response? 

No, X is the explanation. 

His avoidant-defensive response is an observation, an effect of the X that froze his words, that made honesty a no-go area. I felt as if my declaration of love took him into the Zone (Stalker metaphor - The Zone is a landscape full of invisible danger, and ultimately the wish-fulfilling room). 

It isn't enough to know that the pilot flew into the mountain, we all want to know why it happened and exactly how such a tragedy can be prevented from happening again! This is the purpose of the black box. 

The verbal (word choice and voice tone) content, was how I came to feel dehumanized and objectified. And Kit either didn't understand this process or he chose to do it, this is also X!

X is his experience?

But X is also the defensive strategy?

X is something that happened to him and it is altering his perception and leading his responses.

The effect of expecting someone to be open and honest and finding that they are hiding and manipulating is dissonance, the open and honest person was absent. 

I understand 'identity' as a created within relationship - 'I' in relation to 'it' or 'thou' - and without his feelings 'I' had no reference point or way to assess why I felt as I did! His psychotherapy stance was inappropriate, and cruel actually. 

Feelings differentiate animate from non-animate, differentiate thou, from a thing, an it. I felt as if he viewed me as an 'it'. The shock and pain  was immense.

Our differences about psychotherapeutic theory is evidenced by the first dialogue - Kit does not consider that a shattering of one's identity is trauma. It is as if he believes that a person breaks only because they did not get the love they needed as a child. And so, he could not respond to the beating of my heart, my lowered eyes, my tone of voice - since I'm sure my feelings were obvious -  because his role is as he kept saying, to create a quasi-parental environment! 

To repair, by reparenting. 

I conjecture, that he interpreted my emotional response to him [confined to one mp3 - see transcript] as a symptom of my developmental deficits, and he chose / or believed (?) the theory that my feelings could not be interpreted as true feelings about or for him. I was not supposed to peak behind the curtain to see the real Kit, hiding behind the 'therapist'.

Well, if my conjecture is true - and alas, Kit choses not to refute...

Looking at it in that way - I was in effect, dragging him to the dizzy edge of something best described as psychic paedophilia. 

Wow - is that it?

Have I found X

So soon....

It makes sense of why I didn't enact 'love' for him in any obvious way. I trusted that the very fact that I returned to his room was enough. I felt that he would disapprove of anything embellished by the presence of Eros. I had to be so careful, that any subtle sign of longing was hidden, because it felt as if it would be misinterpreted; it would be loaded and crushed by unspeakable meanings. 

Psychic paedophilia!

Is this 'X' truly the reason why he continued to 'enact therapist' - though it didn't fit my behaviour, or language, it didn't fit anything that was happening! 

I was there because therapy was mandatory. I was there because I needed to love him. I found our differences fascinating. We just had hilarious conversations sometimes, fundamentally though I simply loved him as a man, and that was enough! 

And of course the promise of more would have been perfect! There were just two times when there was the most minimal possible physical contact - I experienced what I can only describe here as, a profoundly divine and unsettling gush of electricity. Very adult feelings indeed.

But if he had reciprocated then he would - in his view alone - be enacting psychic paedophilia?

It rings true.

Except?

What would make a psychotherapist hold onto that notion....there is more to this which I hope will become clearer through this blog.