The reparative relationship...

I could not understand why Kit thought I'd ever return as a client?

 "I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about my principles, my ethical rule, that once a client always a client because you never know what the future is going to bring, and people do come back"

...he wasn't 'talking about me'. 

Whilst at the same moment, talking to me 

This erasure, this double bind, this? Well what on earth is it when a person uses the term 'you' and then makes clear that they don't mean you?

Anyway! This led to me feeling so utterly rejected, disliked even.

I'd dismiss it as utter ignorance on the part of the speaker...but, he is a therapist. and he doesn't think there is any need for apology. or reparation, so?

So I blog.

Experiencing this objectification, of being positioned as a role, classed as this other entity - no longer a person, a forever client - was such a corrosive poison that it has taken; I was about to say, it has taken this blog to cure me. 

I'm not cured. 

It isn't over yet. 

He just about rubbished all that was best, all that was most alive and all that was most able to keep me alive in too many sessions, as he explained how important his moral stance was.

It was so important?

To whom was it so important?

Certainly it wasn't important for me. I didn't experience his response of objectification as reparative or healing. 

Oh my, do you think he imagined that he was giving safe and firm boundaries to a child who had been allowed to run wild?

Alas, that wasn't my childhood - I might be saner if it had been so - and as someone who has demonstrated considerable self discipline in keeping her head in extremely difficult situation I am insulted by that notion.

If that was his notion.

About me...

Or was it misogyny plain and simple?

Dear reader, we cannot know!

Let's say that he believed that his stance was ethical, and that he was modelling for me how to maintain boundaries. I also imagine that he imagined that he was helping me to face reality. Except that falls apart when we look at the facts. In our sessions he was unwilling or unable to look at, or talk about any emotional undertow, or to look at the power dynamics or address what had actually happened...

Whatever!

I think you could also say that perhaps I wasn't willing to talk about my feelings for and with him? This is because I have good boundaries. It isn't wise to be vulnerable with a person who has demonstrated an inability to contact and stay in contact with their feelings. Anything I said about my feelings related to my experience of our sessions, was batted away into the long grass by his response. He didn't ask questions that would open that level of communication, he didn't invite dialogue that involved feeling or sensing.

Whatever.

As a person who has a high tolerance for emotional states (able to keep my head) being denied access to knowledge - the truth of what was actually happening - was frustrating and perplexing. He sealed the locks, put wallpaper over the door, and told me there is no door, there is no key...

Bluebeard?

Returning to where I began. His statement; clients, people, do come back to see us as therapists, is true. Kit went on to say that if there has been any other kinds of contact in between, then the therapeutic relationship isn't the same.

Of course this is true.

So it is worth asking if this change in relationship is significant to the therapeutic process. Or rather, if it is significant, what makes it so?

I know that it isn't significant for me. The therapeutic relationship is different in SFBT. In the postmodern modalities relationship is something instantaneous and in the present, but that's a side issue for now.

Kit knows that for him, a dual relationship wrecks therapy. And I can't tell you the underlying theory for how or why, because his statements about this were not supported by his reasons. 

He presented the phenomenon, or connection, or correlation as (in the best Freudian tradition) untestable, and full of dire predictions. 

His vehemence came from emotion.

Oh ho - Factor X!

What makes the dual relationship phenomenon less of a problem for me? 

The postmodern therapies don't seek to create a reparative relationship. It is rare I make statements about what 'we' don't do, but in this case I think it is really important to grasp the difference. As I've said relationship is present tense here and now and based on radical acceptance. I transmit a way of approaching problems; problems belong around the client more than within him. Problems are more likely to be altered positively when they are met with curiosity, with confidence and with gentleness. I highlight aspects of what a person has said with the purpose of altering their vision (but not altering their version) of events, by noticing the good. People pick up this way of thinking and start talking to themselves in this way, so if you want you could say 'I' become an internalised object. But that's not what I'm about. I am not going to be 'your twin', nor your safe argument, never your 'mirror'. I will never aim to provide you with a corrective emotional experience! 

Heaven forbid - what arrogance. 

How can I possibly know and pretend to be able to show you how you should be! 

We radiate our trust in the client through how we speak, move and in what we say. I am never part of the solution, never the more functional person in the room, never the person who knows better about anything. I wouldn't even say that we create a working alliance either, the words don't fit. Its more like play than work, and we are not an alliance against anything or anyone. I'm a witness, and I'm an advocate for alternative visions. And so I need to be willing and able to work with anything, that ability comes from my self knowledge, and knowing that the problem (content) isn't as significant as the process (externalising, mapping...) My ability to trust my own experience through my process of curiosity is the source of my confidence.

And this might be, probably is, very different for you!

The collaborative therapies are all about radical acceptance, rather than unconditional positive regard. A subtle difference, but it means I don't have any pressure to reframe in my own mind things a client believes or does that I don't like. I don't need to understand, only to hear what is working better. Sfbt has a 'non-normative' stance so any opinions I have about what normally works, or what people normally need isn't a part of the dialogue. When this is done right the effect on conversation is of lightness, it is refreshing, as if a weight is lifted, and a sense of relief follows! 

How people talk about problems really matters.

Core to the concept of reparative relationship is the notion that when a therapist provides a corrective and supportive environment, "the therapist can help clients heal and develop a stronger sense of self and emotional regulation" (quoted from Google AI). 

Corrective, interesting word - we are back to binary oppositions here. 

But this is a paid for relationship with the therapist. Paying someone to be nice to you is certainly transactional, but this relationship depends on money! Knowing that this is the only reason this person is talking to you is hardly likely to increase one's self esteem! 

And emotional regulation? Different families, let alone different cultures have different ways of understanding and expressing emotions! Can a therapist know what emotional regulation looks like if their version is from a different culture?

See I think there are significant problems with this concept. 

It's bothering me like a wobbly tooth!

Now my good friend James really is a card carrying reparative therapist. He is a true believer in both the theory and practice. James doesn't like conflict, James likes to make everyone feel incredibly valued. He is warm, welcoming, understanding. It would be very difficult for a shattered, suffering client to give that up. 

I only see James a few times a year, and we rarely have space or time for me to ask about this subject. Though after sitting on Glastonbury Tor (start of this blog, he knows Eros is my subject). I imagine that he is well aware of the conflict between Agape and Eros.

Anyway they met in the woods by accident, they are the client and James who was with his partner Paul, as they walked the dogs. The meeting was unforseen, awkward and 'difficult'. James was trying to give up private practice and this client had not wanted to end her sessions. 

Kit maintains that meeting clients by accident, is always potentially difficult.

This, by the way has not been my experience.

James had given his client the impression during sessions that she was his prime concern, now here he was with his husband, his dogs...he didn't want her to feel that the illusion of the sessions had been only that...

I've seen a couple of ex-clients who haven't noticed me, and I'm just happy to see that they are doing fine. It confirms my view that despair is a reaction to life events, not an identity or disease! And once when I was out with friends a client took my order at the bar! The penny dropped for both of us at different times. Him first! And we both ignored it. It was lovely to see him. 

But it affected me. 

When I sat down I told my friends about Kit....it was my equivalent of coming out I suppose. Kit had made it all seem so dramatic; the need to hide, how it is a shock to see clients in a supermarket or in the street. It made me rail against the imperative towards secrecy, it made me challenge my feelings of awkwardness, my feelings of shame and embarrassment.

Kit was once 'he who cannot be named'.

Had I picked up his feeling of shame, his need for secrecy? Why was I agreeing that any part of what had happened needed to be closed off or hidden? Countertransference - as if I'd stepped into the emotional undertow he was creating, but because I thought he was too self aware to inadvertently let such feelings contaminate a session, it must be something entirely of my own creation! Lesson learned. 

The interesting thing is, I have found it impossible to tell James about Kit, and we have been really close at times, much closer than I am with the friends I told that Sunday afternoon. And the reason? I'm pretty sure James would see things in a similar way to Kit.

Shattering the illusion that illusion is required to protect fragile clients...

See, this is the problem with the reparative relationship. The therapist may see Agape as a selfless giving of themselves, and that this sustaining, enduring (milky) love is the healing agent. But, it is paid for. It is confined to 50 minutes each week and I used to feel as if I couldn't 'do' therapy because I don't feel comfortable in pretending that I can give clients what they need! 

In my view the reparative relationship is a therapist's fantasy. 

Not all therapists.

There are many different types of therapy.

My supervisor at that time told me that the best therapist doesn't need to ask a single question during the session. 

And that seriously isn't me!

Something like not asking questions is a perfect way to protect your ideas about someone, it is the perfect way to maintain your ignorance and to keep on enforcing your version of reality on them...

We are supposed to demonstrate our empathy by reflecting and paraphrasing to show that we have heard. But until we hear what someone has arrived in therapy for, it's a bit of a leap to assume that all they need is the acceptance and security that was missing as they grew up! 

I also believe it is supremely ignorant to act as if we can give them this without asking them about the moments in their lives when they have received what they needed, and to engage in a genuine exploration of their needs.

And if the client replied with 'I need you' then I'd recontract, to take into account all factors and navigate with the client something that would be beneficial for both of us. If I genuinely didn't like them, if I was genuinely afraid of something, I would have to navigate that too.

In fact I'm beginning to think that the concept of the reparative relationship is delusional. Or rather, the defining characteristics of what psychotherapists recognise as reparative needs interrogation.

My aim, instead of attempting to be 'reparative', is to instigate an exploration, my role is to be a curious and trustworthy companion. This is your life, not mine, tell me how you see it.

And now I come full circle, because I believe that this is far more who Kit is, rather than the reparative therapist. At the start of therapy I spoke to Kit as if his role was to be a curious and trustworthy companion...The Festen email for instance.

What happened?

Unfortunately by the time I began recording, it was too late to find out. 

But really the answer is clear. I lost my trust in him as a therapist because of the Brian Thorne and Minx sessions. But I still believed in, needed and wanted the clever companion. I loved not knowing what he would say next and our differences. 

But he couldn't navigate ruptures. And after three tentative attempts by me to bring very low level ruptures to the session to be explored, this was clear.

One of the benefits of experiencing gaslighting is a heightened awareness of power dynamics. When he placed the cause of 'rupture' as my misunderstanding of his words and my misapprehension of his intention (!) this positioned me as a faulty receiver of a perfect message. 

The bottom line is, we have a different view of how to manage conflict resolution!

But a power dynamic was at play here, I gave away my power because I had believed that all therapists thought that dialogue creates meaning, that communication is between people. So conflict resolution requires both people to collaborate, and to understand the other.

The alternative is called teaching...

So I blew the charade of a therapeutic relationship apart, tried to instigate more 'coffee fuelled' discussions, and set out to win his heart instead.

I've never felt obliged to be a sensible sort of person!