Stepping through the mirror - the anatomy of denial.
Every so often I think that writing this blog is cowardly! Then I think I should make a complaint to his ethical body. That I should step forward and see how the judgment goes.
Back to denial!
Denial has become one of my favourite subjects as a result of my experiences with Kit - so let's have a brief run through of how denial operates over and over in a thousand different companies, relationships, yada yada.
Denial begins with the complaint. Person A tells person B that when B does x,y and z, there is a serious problem. If person B empathises and understands and together they decide what needs to be done, oh if only life was that simple!
Person A has made an observation, but Person B is suddenly aware of all the possible implications! Be feels attacked, guilty, shame. Person B responds with denial, explaining to person A the rationale for A's observation. and describes how A should 'correctly' interpret what happened. Person B provides a compelling explanation. One that B tries to fit to what B thinks that A is most likely to believe.
Oh dear, this is not good!
Person A isn't going to be put off.
Person A needs something to change...so A tries again.
Person A says to person B, 'When x,y and z happened there was this catastrophic outcome of a,b and c and I wish to know that you are aware.
Person B responds with more defence.
At this point Marshall Rosenburg says, 'ask them 'please tell me what you think I have just said'
|Man: Oh, I’m not saying they’re all …
|MBR: Excuse me, hold on, hold it. Can you tell me what you heard me say?
|Man: What are you talking about?
|MBR: Let me repeat what I’m trying to say. I really want you to just hear the pain I felt when I heard your words. It’s really important to me that you hear that. I was saying I felt a real sense of sadness because my experiences with those people have been very different. I was just wishing that you had had some experiences that were different from the ones you were describing. Can you tell me what you heard me say?
|Man: You’re saying I have no right to talk the way I did.
|MBR: No, I would like you to hear me differently. I really don’t want to blame you. I have no desire to blame you.|
I haven't worked out how to do this yet!
A tried, and B continues and the process of denial continues typically proceeds like this:
Denial of causality.
Person B says:
- 'Only discredited people would try to make me feel like a victim!
- Prove it!
- Let's talk about why you are accusing me, you have a hidden agenda!
- What's this really about.' ???
Denial of harm.
- It wasn't my intention to cause harm.
- I didn't expect that to happen!
- I wouldn't have wanted that to happen!
- I didn't set out to make that happen!
- Intention isn't enough. Someone who uses this argument is denying the truth to themselves as well as you.
- Harm occurring regardless of intention, plus denial is neglect.
- We are all capable of harming others, we are not the ones able to say what someone else finds to be harmful.
- But nor are we bad people if we inadvertently harm others, until we fail to acknowledge and do our best to make amends.
Denial of responsibility:
- It isn't my responsibility.
- I'm not responsible for anything because you could have expected it!
- Beware of clichés such as, psychotherapy stirs things up.
- Beware diagnosis such as, 'you are too emotional/sensitive/anxious'
- Beware being made responsible for all that has occured - "You should have known that this would happen!
After receiving any of the three categories of answer - do not bring facts into the conflict. You now have a real problem! This is a conflictual process, there is zero collaboration occurring. You have been dumped on, if you can find a way to make things better - do so...but I'm not optimistic.
For the dialogue to become collaboration, dissolving threat is the most important step, and this will be enough to seriously improve the situation for both parties. Then both parties need to agree that they both prefer things to be better for each other.
Summery:
The denial process runs thus:
- The person who feels compelled to use denial will create an altered reality.
- It will be made of an interlocking web of denial statements and narratives.
- They will import reasonable arguments to support their unreason.
- They will use deception.
- They will re-frame using kindly terms for cruel actions.
- And they will tell you again and again how nice and reasonable they are being...
Now bear in mind all interactions are made of interlocking behaviours, ideas and beliefs. Jung would have described Factor X as a complex, a tangle of unresolved, almost impossible to identify feelings and beliefs, that show up as behaviour that doesn't seem to make any sense.
So of course, my investigations will continue...it is fascinating.
Just to remind myself, here is the 'inflammatory and threatening' letter I sent to Kit.
13th February 2024.
Dear Kit,
When I left your room for the final time. I felt bereft, I needed harmony, mutual recognition, to be seen and heard and respected. Especially to feel trusted - I felt unsafe for feeling as I do about you. I needed it to be put into a safe form. And for all sorts of reasons, that simply hadn't happened .
Most of all, I needed to know what I could do to make it possible for you to suggest a way for ‘coffee fuelled discussions’ - ongoing communication and joy, to continue; because I think I am someone with whom such discussion is often fun, and dare I say, enlightening. I enjoy taking ideas, theories and concepts apart, and of course I always want to go deeper into the discussion. I valued your intelligence and energy, and especially your clarity. I wanted to continue to learn with you and from you.
Ultimately though, this had to be in a way that would be OK for you. I can imagine how you feel about maintaining the boundaries between therapist and client and the queasy sense of unease around this subject. But in truth, I felt disempowered and gagged by those boundaries.
A much needed re-contracting, didn't happen.
When I heard you asking, during several sessions, if coffee fuelled discussions would suit me too? I felt inspired, hope, trust, mutuality. But I couldn’t pay you for this; the benefit of such talk needed to be mutual.
I prize and need equality.
Then when I heard you explain how such discussions ‘never work’ I felt hopeless, powerless actually. When you asked me how such a thing could work I needed to know how you imagined it. It required our cooperation. I needed you to say what would be right for you.
And so to honour my need for challenge and exploration I am suggesting that we return to what we did best; to examine the underlying history and concepts that underpin the work we do. I will be ‘contrary’ because I don’t accept dogma, I chose to ask if ideas hold water for me and if not, why not, as an investigation into properties. I will take tangents, because meaning is implied via relationship, rather than as an intrinsic property. And I suggest such discussion should be by email; perfect for including links, a slow form of communication providing time to think through and refine arguments. I see no reason to shut down, close off, reject or abandon the best of what was.
If you cannot see a way towards this, what would you need to know, or what could I do, to make it possible for you to say yes?
--
As I got no reply to that, I requested my notes.
No reply.
So I said that without more information this story, this therapy would be freeware -wrong term! I should have said CC creative commons. But there you go, I am not the l33t hacker Kit's panicking imagination saw me as!
And he did reply to that letter, the freeware letter.. requesting clarification.
His replies of fulmination, rage and accusations, then silence were continuations of the most harmful aspects of four thousand pounds worth of therapy.
His tone did not imply collaboration, or suggestions towards any useful outcome.
Anyway, the outcome.
This blog is 'freeware'. You are welcome to take the ideas, try them, see if they hold water, or reveal anything for you. But yeah, I'd rather it was CC Creative Commons, so add a reference if you use this blog for your writing!
I think ultimately - as a psychotherapist - he knew that he didn't have any solid basis for his inability to talk with me about the underlying emotions, needs, feelings, and he may have thought that I'd go back on my word not to complain. I gave a lot of thought to making a formal complaint and so I checked to see which professional body he was affiliated to. He had shifted from the professional body he'd been signed up to during our sessions and moved to the one he'd previously described to me as being 'useless'. And I suppose I could take that as him feeling guilty? As far as I understand a therapist can only be sanctioned by the professional body they were signed up to, when working with the specific, complaining client. But if his Factor X was created by a previous complaint against him, another complaint would most worsen the problem. I had to make a choice, and this blog is it.
My best hope?
That the 3lack 3ox sheds some light on therapy, what it is and, and what it should be...
The answer I'm left with for me and about me right now is that I need to practice NVC more (not less) and that I need to get over my loathing of Transactional Analysis.
TA seems to my poisoned vision to enable victim blaming, more than other therapeutic disciplines?
But I've not encountered all of them...
What else?
Well I need to sort myself out!
The only way Kit and I could have got to resolution would be through mediation.
But for my own peace of mind, I think that complaints have to be made in some form and this story made more public.
