Therapy.

I began therapy in July 2020 with the person whose dialogues with me, are the subject of this blog. 

For the purpose of this blog I call him Kit Marlowe.

And I would have stopped going to therapy in October 2020 because already his underlying strategy was becoming a problem. I mean many therapists operate from the starting point of seeing the client as ultimately responsible for their own distress - as opposed to their distress being a result of awful circumstances, or even as a natural part of grief. The logic is, how you think determines how you feel....

And it was clear that he had an underlying opinion about what had happened to me. 

It felt like victim blaming, actually.

By the third session I got the impression that I was being asked to see myself as culpable for my husband's choices, and to pass the blame back onto my parents and upbringing. The therapy cliché is that 'no one can make you feel anything'. This isn't true. It is a fantasy to imagine that you can ever be so individual, so certain of everything, so able to deal with loss and grief, or that no one could ever be able to make you feel a degree of terror, or heart break that goes beyond anything you can take! The logic of 'no one can make you feel anything -  is childish beyond words, and integral to the Western individualistic Fantasyland.

Nevertheless, by October 2020 it was almost too late. 

I wasn't really aware in a conscious way yet, but I had fallen for him. And the way a therapist often frames that is? Well obviously clients who have lost their cold and cruel husbands fall for their unusually sensitive, emotionally switched on, empathic therapists'.

No actually!

He didn't listen any better than my friends, possibly he listened worse! Certainly there was kindness in him, but there was kindness elsewhere! Basically at that time I felt that any kind of love or relationship was as sensible as going into a war zone! 

I fell for him though.

Tried not to believe it, but it happened.

It was just him...his sense of humour, how he moves. And his 'first degree' in a subject that always draws me. The force of his beliefs indicated turbulent and interesting past experiences, the so called Factor X that is responsible for how badly he responded to being told that he is wanted and loved. I'm tempted to say that his belief in the primacy of developmental factors kept him tethered to his trauma...but if I believed that, I'd be as culpable of deterministic thinking as him!

Anyway, I was drawn to our difference. And my feelings about him were certainly not related to any insights he tried to give. I'd had enough of theory, I'd lived through the practical. I had experienced my son's descent into psychosis, his attempted suicide, and then had a year of thinking I was mad because I felt as if my husband was lying to me, and obviously as I'd had years of stress, and as my husband said that he wasn't lying, it must all be in my head, right? 

No, he was lying to me!

When I discovered this, practically all my symptoms of anxiety, my panic attacks, my inability to trust myself - vanished! I'd say it took within an hour of finding out. Of course I was left with something else - righteous indignation, fury and disgust, despair but these were real feelings.

Simple as that.

The interesting thing is, while I was being lied to I had been psychologically beating myself up for being so full of anxiety, I read every CBT book I could find about intrusive thoughts. I looked at what I was suffering from through every theory. All were compelling, all made sense. None of them took seriously the effect situations have on people.

So what does my experience tell you about your client who comes into the room saying that they are anxious - and they believe it is a psychological condition? 

What happened to me sure taught me to listen! 

And to metaphorically burn all the theory books.

It also taught me that I can not think my way out of anxiety. No degree of awareness or understanding can be faster than the lightning fast speed, and crushing physical grip of panic. After validation of my worst thoughts, panic would still hit me in waves. As Van de Kalk explains, body keeps the score.

I came to therapy with Kit, having tried every theory under the sun! 

Meanwhile in therapy,  Kit's re-parenting - or worse the Kohuts (!) was not what I wanted or needed. And his other strategy, his questions aimed to 'reveal my blocks', struck me as unkind actually. 

So no, I didn't like him as a therapist. And I stayed because? I stayed because therapy was mandatory for my course, and to be honest, I thought that the problem was me. He is a psychotherapist, I'm an ex-radiographer in training to be a counsellor. 

So it must be me in the wrong...

OK, going off at a tangent - training to become a therapist is believed to be bad for marriage!

Did training to become a therapist end my marriage?  

I believe it made me more aware of the void where deep connection should have been. Without it I might have stayed compliant and complicit. Training to become a therapist didn't end my marriage, because the damage began before I started my training in 2017, and I think my husband was going to leave me no matter what I did. He'd done it before.

When he married me, and Kit would like the fact that this is a TA view, my husband married me because he'd thought I'd had the right story. I fitted his script - except I didn't.

I think I knew this...

But she had the right story. 

Or does she!?

Anyway, I believe that my husband fell for her in 2015, and it was catalysed by my son's distress (or did it begin my son's distress?) and her texts. I see now that he began to seriously undermine our relationship from 2015 onwards - and at the time I'd thought that it was all about me. I 'took it to therapy' and did 'inner child work!

But no, it wasn't training to be a therapist that caused a change in us. It is too easy to feel that writing a reflective journal, and practice sessions make a person change. We simply become more of who we really are.

Whatever!

All the way through those awful years when my son was heading into psychosis I imagined that I was loved, and that was enough. I thought 'I'm a mess' but I'm loved. My life is almost shattered beyond recognition but I'm loved! But you know, I didn't feel loved...in truth he'd already gone. Hence 'taking it to therapy' ( before Kit) and hence my knowledge that when a person says 'I feel awful, my husband is talking to me like his dad spoke to his mom...' that's the problem right there - your husband is talking to you as if you are his mom? Wrong person in therapy! But looking at your childhood to understand why you are worried that he's mistaking you for someone else is a waste of money and time. Whilst looking at what you want to do now you have identified the problem, may lead somewhere useful.

He physically left me the day after I received confirmation that I had been accepted at college - so yeah, he hated therapists!

Who knows!

Then the weight of all I'd been through crushed me, I was in absolute and total despair. 

November 2020.The void of space is infinite and the starlight burns my skin. The pain I experience when I leave college and my husband isn't waiting for me takes my breath away. He has gone. I genuinely don't care if he is alive or dead now. From my own, agonized point of view there is only the infinity of space above me, the cold air, Mars above the moon. Mars - always with me on this journey. My rage is incandescent. I leave the classroom, say goodbye to people, I face the black path down the hill. I fill the void with music. Puscifer on my head-phones is the only difference, the only thing separating me from the time-slip, event horizon of frozen memories. There is an elsewhere and I can't get there until I have finished my course...And this is how it is. 

What helped me?

Not therapy. 

What actually saved me was Wim Hof's breathing technique and cold water!

I experienced a panic attack whilst watching a video in college (and as too much honesty is not a good thing as a trainee, of course I partitioned it) and then next day I watched the video again to understand what had happened.

The trigger had been the effect of the lighting on the appearance of the person's eyes in the film. Her pupils were completely black...it was a black and white video but the black pupils? My son's eyes had been like that just before he left the house and almost died..

So this really is a problem. My mind had perceived this, pulled up the memory and the feelings followed - faster than thought. So every time my mind tried to process a memory of the awful events, it was happening without my conscious awareness, but the physical reactions are part of the memory. This theory makes sense to me!

I wrote:

Nothing could touch my panic, no thoughts, no breathing techniques, nothing until I decided to stop trying to escape, and to turn around and face it. I don't believe panic attacks can be thought away, they need to do what they do - And so I began the WHM. My therapist advised me not to. But I felt that it wouldn't make any difference if I caused a panic attack. It seemed better to know I'd caused it, and to be safe at home when it happened. And so I began. I experienced flashbacks, but I kept breathing. Again, that knowledge that I chose this and that I would gain control, meant I wanted to continue. And there were also the indescribable moments of peace, and being able to sleep at last. I don't know how long it took for the panic to wear out? A few months perhaps? Anyway, definitely one of the best decision of my life to begin.

Once I'd fallen for the therapist and once I recognised it (that took about 5 months?) I wondered why, why him? He doesn't remind me of anyone. I couldn't put my finger on any transference links or connections. There are a lot of things about him I don't like though. I certainly disagree with most of his ideas about therapy - and I was in a great state of mind to tell if what he said was helpful! 

And after I'd told him about my feelings for him, we could not talk about them. Or rather, he wouldn't, instead I got silence and deflection, no honesty from him. I tried though, but I felt as if I had to be so careful. College was a factor, and the feeling that he wanted me gone. 

Took me ages to wonder if what happened was his transference and my countertransference.  My conclusion is -  yes! All this said more about him than me.

Anyway, his excuse for not talking about how he felt is -  'that isn't how (therapy ) works'! 

Sometimes not answering a client's question will freeze the session. The atmosphere changes. The connection with the client drops. So, well sometimes it is right to stay silent, but sometimes it really isn't.

But, I wasn't a client. 

Not after I'd told him. 

I needed Kit to be honest - but that would require him to entertain for a second that there is something more about him - more than being a therapist - that could have touched my heart. 

Know what? 

I'm making excuses for him!

My judgment is - he is the living, breathing epitome of why a therapist should never let their own trauma contaminate therapy. He was able to tell me why he couldn't cope with my honesty. And quite frankly, hearing that completely invalidated everything he'd told me about how to be a therapist. 

My final judgment of his therapy - psychotherapy no less - is that I paid £4000. To get another dose of pointless, psychological pain.

Am I being harsh?

The outcome.

The outcome is this blog. 

Probably I'm a braver therapist than I would be without experiencing first hand the damage a therapist will do unless they step up, and deal with their defensiveness and attack. But when I left his room for the last time I was in as bad a state as when my husband left me. I mean I don't want to lay this on too thick, but I'd watched my son unravel into psychosis; his lack of sleep, self-attack, the feeling that one's life is destroyed by one's own mistakes, an impossibility of putting anything right...grief, despair. No sleep. Repeat and repeat and repeat! This is the path to psychosis. I saw the signs in myself after four years of sustained fear, fear of his suicide, fear of being left, fear of being killed and of rape. Add gaslighting. Psychosis is caused by (rather than causing) no sleep, self-attack, the feeling that one's life is destroyed by one's own mistakes, an impossibility of putting anything right...grief, despair. No sleep. Repeat and repeat and repeat!

Four bloody years of that.

Here's a statement - and please quote me -  Wim Hof method, made the difference between life and death.

I'm going to say it again - Wim Hof Method took me off the path to psychosis.

The Wim Hof method can be dangerous, certainly. But not as dangerous as Kit's choice to avoid talking honestly - oh and telling me never to contact him again.

I was suicidal after that final session.

Therapy ended on the 23rd May 2022.

And if I put it into words - without expectation, without hope. I evoke the last memory, I let my mind draw me spirit and soul, through the dark passageway, noting as I enter, how the stone step has melted under so many footsteps. Turning my mind towards the third place, neither inward or outward; slicing time into smaller and smaller parts, moments to instances. To allow the froth of hope and fear, the proximity of win lose to become a slip stream, rather than jagged rocks, a layer of confusion. I seek to burn without being consumed. Kit's choice leaves this memory unsealed. The pain of it leaking out and made real under the illusion of solidity. As I walked away from Kit the velocity of the fall began its acceleration as I in this world closed the two doors, walking through the narrow passageway turning my face towards the sun. Wishing its fire would burn the arrow from my heart  - and yet the arrow embedded still. remains. Whatever I have said, whatever you have said, my feelings remain. Not because I chose this, for this thing arrived and remains unbidden, un requested. Not because it makes sense, it makes little sense. Yet, nor would I choose to destroy it.

Those feelings haven't changed at all.