At the cliff edge...

 

OK...so I honestly do not know where to start, because I've heard someone explain exactly what happened between Kit and I, and I feel sick and relieved, sad...but all of this, my whole blog and everything I've said. I feel like I stand at the edge of a cliff and I have to climb, not let go. The sensation of metaphorically throwing myself off is about oblivion, ending all my thoughts about this, letting go and just surrendering to a great big nothing - well that scares me more than trying to climb down. Because if I did that I'd be letting others down.

The lecture has brought me to the edge!

So there was a lecture about 'Erotic Transfer' from a person who had done his Masters researching how therapists understand their erotic feelings for their clients. As he explained his research and findings I felt as if I was being pulled in so many different directions; laugh or cry? I cried. He explained each stage I'd noticed about Kit's 'process' that I have written about here, to such a degree that I think I can now tell the whole story.

But, that isn't it...

I'm not at the edge because I'm remembering?

I need to think..

To identify what I'm actually experiencing right now.

I'm not about to fall. I don't feel that. The image clarifies - I'm walking from the edge into the unknown on solid ground - sure it is foggy up ahead, but I've just realised, by writing this blog I've been climbing back up the metaphorical cliff! This might explains my recent fascination for watching people climb horribly tall buildings without any safety equipment! I needed to borrow their single minded, possibly ill placed courage. I wanted to remember how to face fear. The effect of Kit's dishonesty was so painful and so disorienting that I was suicidal after therapy, and because I have rational reasons to believe my distress was made worse by therapy, do I have the luxury of ignoring this? I don't think that I do. I'm scared of letting the whole thing go because if I did I'd betray my privileged position of having the language and training to make sense of it, to map and to name the errors. 

After the lecture I feel validated enough to lay the whole thing out with clarity. 

As if I've climbed to the top and I can see the land spread out before me..

The journey had to be made and has been made - and it might be ill advised, ill placed courage. Well, this is who I am...back to solid ground transcript by transcript, word by word I climbed.

So what to do?

Write out the whole thing first and leave it be for a while.

Invite him to engage? 

Offer my story to The Guardian? send a copy to his ethical body - without his name - because I think they really need to know the effect of bad therapy, and put some effort into undoing the misogyny and fear Freud bequeathed us?

And who else, what else?

Right now I am angry, and I've reached the point where something must change. 

What I want to change is the narrative about erotic transfer. From the Freudian 'excuse' that it is a disruptive force, towards a recognition that it is the key to relational depth. It isn't as if I've discovered this! A therapist who is justifying harming someone through ignorance of better has reason if they are newly qualified - perhaps? A person who talks about their qualifications and calls themselves a psychotherapist and has been seeing clients for over 400 hours...no, there is no excuse for Kit's response to me.

And if I contact him to let him know that from the 3rd January 2022 onwards, of course I wasn't going to 'just let it go'? I don't expect any kind of reply from him, heaven forbid the man admits his humanness, his mistakes or his vulnerability. His process when asked to examine minor misalliance was apology, but then to explain why I didn't understand his intention. As if misalliance is the client's responsibility!

Hint - it isn't the client's responsibility to understand the therapist!

His defensiveness floating on a sea of wilful ignorance wont have changed...but as I say, right now I'm hurting and I'm angry, trying to come to terms with the fact that his ignorance very nearly created a tragedy, and other therapists are enacting exactly the same process, albeit unintentionally, harming vulnerable others. 

I've discovered what I set out to find. 

A distinct stage or level has been reached.

I now know that erotic transfer is about connection, Eros is the bridge to a deep and healing relational depth, but only IF a therapist has the courage and compassion to work with it. 

The fact that I'm not dead is his good fortune.

The metaphor is of a cliff, it comes from the sense of being thrown over the edge by Kit...but I held on, and for three years I've been climbing back up.