Here ends Part One .
Autumn Equinox 2024.
[+] This blog begins on Glastonbury Tor.
High up - you can see for miles!
It is understood as a magical place, the meeting point of many energy lines and forces.
Many people come to stand there together.
No one single belief system rules, it is free and open to all.
Welcome!
When I wrote the first post of this blog [+] I was in recovery from the therapy I'd received. Let me say that again, after therapy ended - I was in a bad way - because of therapy.
I felt powerless, and silenced.
Again.
During the gaslighting [+] that ended just two months before I started therapy, I had needed to ignore all and any thoughts or feelings that contradicted my husband's version of reality. If I allowed myself to take my thoughts and feelings seriously, I would try to find out the truth. And when I did that....let's just say it really wasn't worth it. My husband had been lying to me - is the short version - and I've no doubt that if I ever see him again he will still be lying.
In 2020, when I found out the truth, I also found out that my feelings had been accurate, and are accurate. The awfulness I'd felt had not been just my imagination, nothing that I'd imagined had been intrusive thoughts due to severe and chronic stress. That is a compelling theory of course, but it was categorically untrue! But at that time, as I couldn't get the truth, I had needed to tell myself that it was all me, all in my mind.
Meanwhile my husband probably felt sick and full of shame -I imagine - as he knew what he was doing, and the distress it caused.
But his response was - to bully me... the situation was abusive.
I didn't let myself name that until I was literally trying to hide, crawling into the space between the wall and my bed, arms over my head. This wasn't play-back, it wasn't PTSD or CPTSD, when I allowed myself to feel and name what my body, heart and soul were telling me I discovered that I was terrified of this man, I understood that he was capable of harming me to protect himself and someone else...
I also understood that it benefited him when I believed that I was at fault. I only recognised the hidden dagger blade when I understood that he needed me to see myself as deserving of blame.
The truth is, my distress, my need for clarity and honesty was a problem for him.
And his answer was avoidance or attack.
And so when I caused the therapist to feel shame, or something I can't identify, by letting him know how I felt about him my therapy become a continuation of the system I'd just escaped. Almost exactly the same dynamic, I simply needed clear and open dialogue about feelings, about his feelings. And because he refused this I was stuck!
I needed to be able to make a realistic assessment of what was going on.
I couldn't do that without the whole story.
Kit used a dynamic more often described as 'Spiritual abuse' quoting ethical guidelines as the reason why I was in the wrong to have crossed a boundary. Except I hadn't crossed any boundary! There is a world of difference between saying how I feel compared to being 'seductive'. I feel that he used rules such as the therapist must be as a blank sheet of paper 'for the transference' to avoid risking the very thing that has happened - being accused of causing harm.
I'd argue that technically for transference to be transference the person doing it must be unaware of it, and for there to have been no cause in the present for their feelings.
I had cause..
But this absence of dialogue about the therapist's emotions, 'to allow the transference' may be something else entirely. I see it as a tried and trusted formula to convince clients that they have a deep seated problem that requires years of therapy. Balint, explains that clients become emotional when experiencing a therapist who is emotionally absent.
The inauthenticity of this dynamic is a head f**ck unless you really believe that it's you who has the problem, rather exploring the probability that is is being created by a mixture of interpersonal dynamics, economics, and opportunities!
Clients who don't receive any emotional feedback from a neutral therapist and find themselves becoming more emotional - perhaps to feel seen and heard - are described as being in regression. They may become more emotional, interpreting the lack of emotion from the therapist as a kind of accident, a failure of hearing and seeing; it doesn't make sense that a lack of emotion could be a preferred and conscious choice!
But to regress in psychotherapy means to go backwards, to be less adult, less in control, to be childish. There is only one adult cause of emotionality as described by psychotherapy; and that is grief!
So when Kit asked me if I was 'suggesting' (his word) that I could possibly be in grief at losing any hope that he might want our relationship to reconfigure - I spoke as if from 'Adult' rather than be fitted neatly into his concept of regression.
I changed the word from grief to loss. A careful selection of words was so difficult, but necessary. Why did I feel the need to be so careful with my words, to attempt perception management even? Because I felt powerless and under threat of being told that my feelings were 'incorrect'...his language was defensive, generally along the lines of "What makes you think that...about me!" And of course I could not tell him because he'd deny it, and there was no evidence.
I was careful with my words because anytime I'd said that I'd felt a misunderstanding, he would apologize and then a give an explanation of what he'd intended - because clearly I'd misunderstood him, it couldn't have been him.
Missing the fact that something had gone wrong on both sides, and I wanted to explore this, not be reassured!
I was always left wondering what had actually happened to Kit! In the incident. The one I was inadvertently bringing back into the room.
And during this Kit felt...well what?
All I know is that something had happened to him before, something to do with his reputation, and because of it he heard my truth as transgressive. Yet transgressive didn't fit the picture of what was happening in the room, I wasn't wearing low cut blouses, I didn't flirt, and I didn't even dare to make eye-contact (our eyes met only once during two years)! Only once did I allow my feelings into my voice, just once...
Kit's memories of the previous threat to his reputation poisoned our sessions.
And I was silenced.
Almost.
Once I'd realized that I had feelings for him I began recording and analyzing, to understand, and then I began writing the transcripts because it ended so badly.
This was therapy for my therapy.
I needed to know, what happened?
As I listened [+I I realized how much impact his avoidant-defensive reactions had had on me, and how much I was still suffering from the consequence.
I decided to contact him and ask if we couldn't try to find a good way through this. I had believed that my request made it obvious that something was wrong, and that communication needed to happen to make this better.
He told me to never contact him again.
But I can't allow that to be the outcome. A refusal to own one's mistakes isn't an option for therapists. Obviously I'm supposed to agree that this whole thing is in my mind, and only one of us got it wrong - only one of us is transgressive, contrary, defiant and tangential.
Overall, I'm extremely angry about how he responded.
So I decided to publish the whole thing. [+]
Here are a few posts that help I guess, to tell the story. You, dear reader are at liberty to copy, paste, quote, laugh at, analyze, dissect, empathize, sympathize with everything in this blog.
- The session in which he tells me of another client who may have had feelings for him? [+]
- The session after I'd given him a voice message, an mp3, telling him how I felt about him [+]
- The session in which he tries to get me to think kindly of my husband. [+]
- The session where I ask him once more to be completely honest with me. [+]
- The page with the mp3 I gave to him, telling him how I felt - that I'd fallen into limerence, or love. [+]
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