Autumn Equinox 2024.
As the sun dips below the equator and we begin the journey into darkness, it is time for me to slip out of any light I may have cast through writing these transcripts and my commentary. Time to add the final entry, and close this blog.
[+] 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 were 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.
But as I couldn't get the truth, I had needed to tell myself that it was all me, all in my mind. Whilst my husband possibly felt sick to his teeth -I imagine - as he knew what he was doing. And as he could see my distress - which evoked his bullying behaviour...
Who knows, I will never know!
All I can say is that the situation was abusive.
And when I allowed myself to look at the implications of 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...And it benefited him when I believed that I had to be the cause of my own despair. The dagger blade hits when I realised that in his eyes somehow this made me the one deserving of blame.
The truth is, my distress, my need for clarity and honesty was a problem - for him.
He felt shame.
And his answer was avoidance or attack.
And so when I caused the therapist to feel shame, or something I can't identify, 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.
So I was stuck, there could never be a resolution. His feelings about me had to be included in our sessions if ever I was going to be able to make a realistic assessment!
Kit chose to hide behind the psychodynamic rule, that the therapist must be as a blank sheet of paper 'for the transference'. A favoured writer and psychodynamic therapist of his, Balint, explains that clients become emotional when experiencing a therapist who has, to all intent and purposes less emotional repertoire than a stone. This mythos explains that clients who don't receive any emotional feedback from a neutral therapist, regress. And the concept of regression fits perfectly into Kit's favoured TA model of therapy.
Conjecture and refutation are absent, like Kit's feelings!
Surely I didn't need to say that!
Anyway - to cut this meander short - there is only one other 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 a diagnosis of regression.
I changed the word from grief to it's constant companion - loss.
But why was this so difficult and necessary? Why did I feel the need to be so careful with my words, to attempt perception management even!
Why not explore how our wires got crossed?
To be fair, I think he tried this repeatedly, but his language was defensive, generally along the lines of "What makes you think that...about me!" His tone of voice did not convey, unconditional positive regard.
I was cautious because defensive was his normal. Anytime I'd said that I'd felt a misalignment, he would apologise and then a give an explanation of what he'd intended - missing out that my feelings were hurt and I wondered what had actually happened!
And during this Kit felt...well what?
Shame, attack, guilt?
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)!
Kit's memories of that threat to his reputation poisoned our sessions.
And I was silenced.
Almost.
Silence is corrosive, he wanted me to feel shame I guess?
Once I'd realised that I had feelings for him I began recording and analysing, and then I began writing the transcripts. This was therapy for my therapy. As I listened [+I I realised how much impact his avoidant-defensive reactions had had on me, and how much I was still suffering from the consequences.
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.
He believed that that was a clear enough message for me.
I felt that I was being told that I should just shut up and forget how I felt, ignore too how similar situations are impacting other clients?
Can't happen.
Overall, I'm extremely angry about how he responded.
I decided to publish. [+]
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, analyse, 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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