A star falls in to the abyss. 3rd January 2022

Well I wonder what it's going to be

Progressive, regressive, 

"I'm flattered"

?

I'm sitting in the car watching people go by

Listening to Nadja.

Time to go...

---

3rd January 2022.

His 'Hello, come in' sounds exactly the same as normal. No 'chit chat'...The sound of the spoon, of cups, things. Lots of stirring. Spoon sounds in cups sounds...

I'm talking about it being cold...He says the heating is on. 

And so it begins.

He -"So when you gave me your card, and you left me saying something like - and looking very bashful -  and saying something like. 'I can't believe I'm giving you this'. Because it was nearly Christmas I thought, oh this is a Christmas card and there is something in it - I thought oh, it's a chocolate bar - so when I read the card...oh, this isn't Christmas at all. So then I thought, well if I listen to it before Christmas- not knowing what was in it - then I thought, I can't guarantee that I'd remember in enough detail come January. So I listened to it in the New Year - and I didn't see that coming at all"

Me - "No, you wouldn't have, because I'm good at containing my feelings. It's an important skill."

He - "There was one bit I didn't understand"

Me -"Only one bit, well that's pretty good going"

He- "My brother?"

Me - "Well that's just one way to put it, because I'm looking at this as...<he interrupts>

He - "Literally the first time you said it I thought, oh, do you know my brother?!"

Me - "I don't know your brother"

He -"Then I quickly realized that it was some kind of metaphor"

Me - "Yes, because I was assessing - and it was at the beginning of November, a while ago now - the word brother expresses a degree of liminality. It was saying that I was assessing  what was going on with me, and the term brother was a way to...<he interrupts>

He - "So I imagine this could be...well this conversation could be potentially... change a lot of things and could be quite difficult"

Me - "It could be. What needs to be done, that's the question <he interrupts>

He - "That's the big question, yes. Because I have, occasionally a client will say at the end of sessions, 'oh, we should go for a walk, or we should go for a drink?' and usually I let it pass. Occasionally I have the conversation, and the conversation is always essentially the same, which is, I can't do that because occasionally clients go away and they come back; 12, 6, 18 months later  and if there's been social contact between, then  it completely changes the dynamic, obviously. And, I was as far as your college is concerned - still am - your therapist. Regardless of what you said about I am no longer your therapist, that I'm your mentor and all that conversation we had, as far as your course is concerned..."

Metaphorically at this moment I drive along a mountain pass, a thousand foot drop to either side, my ability to see almost nil in the fog, sleet and rain. Who and what am I? I need to hold on to my identity - I am pragmatic, stoic and reality is contracted and constructed between people...so we can make this better, because so far all I've heard is - 'You HAVE TO BELIEVE ME I HAD NO IDEA'! 

Do I believe that?

I haven't heard any awareness or kindness in his words or tone of voice regarding my valour, courage in respecting his feelings by dealing with the undertow. I haven't heard any apology for not opening and reading my letter and listening to the recording. I was waiting for three weeks. Certainly I didn't expect more than a confirmation that he'd heard. But those three weeks were a very long time. I've just heard him say 'This could be difficult' and the question is for who, and why? How difficult must it have been for me to spend over a year thinking that I couldn't possibly feel about him as I do. How difficult must it have been to be honest with him, when I couldn't even say it in the room, or show any sign, clearly the whole thing has been difficult for me!

And at this moment it feels like I have to go limp, no struggling - collaboration is the only way. But I can't do it!

There is a dagger embedded in my heart...I am angry. 

Why would I ever come back as a client? There is no therapeutic relationship to protect! 

Even a negative response such as 'I just don't like you, would have been the precious and necessary missing information - for then the ice would melt, the fog lift and my path would become clear. Instead, I felt that I was still seeking a way through. I felt that I was fighting for my life, pleading for clarity - to see my next step! Feeling as if there is a 1000 ft fall either side of me...And here now? No light, only darkness. 

His non acceptance of my request for clarity, his tone of voice, the amount of energy he is putting into defence makes me very aware of the danger of his attack. So, I must do what I've had to do so many times for my husband, my son. I'm going to have to disassemble the fear, disgust, rage, panic.

Because of how unsafe I feel. 

He is in a position of power. He doesn't know how bad a state of mind I am in. Or does he know, but he's avoiding? At what point did I know how vital it is not to trust him?

Probably at 'regardless of what you say...'! 

But here and now? 

After all I've said? 

He's telling me about the client-therapist relationship?

So this is just ignorance on my part?

Really!?

I'm ethically bound to step up, be courageous and to be honest. I had to wait until I was strong enough to take whatever outcome. And no, we don't have a client-therapist relationship. 

I can't trust him as a therapist.

He reacts defensively. 

I need to reassure him.

Me - "Absolutely. Yet you need to understand how I do things, I don't do anything suddenly, and I'm an incredibly lawful person. And that's why this has been so difficult for me. And that's why I partition and assess before making any decisions. But again I want to stress, there is a degree of liminality to this"

He - "So, what I'm really saying is there is no question for me of moving outside of the therapeutic space"

Me - "Well no, of course not"

What did saying that cost me? 

At the brittle, rippling edge, fear, pain, memories, loss, threat, grief.. As the words leave my mouth - metaphorically the car is slipping over the edge of the road - it is just balancing on the razor edge of a lethal fall.

I keep my head.

I don't panic.

I gently open the imaginary door and slide out...

And the car lurches sideways, now slipping rapidly and disappearing over the edge.

I'm waiting to hear...

A sickening crash.

Me - "But then that contract ends at a certain point"

He - "Well it never ends for me - as I said, for the reason that I've said, cause, you know. Clients come and go but some of them come back. and if there's been social contact in-between, there's something about knowing the therapist only in the therapeutic space, which I think for all sorts of reasons  that I won't go into now because it's another subject, but it's really important. And if you see occasionally, in a supermarket or somewhere a client, then it's a jolt because it's not the therapeutic space "

Me - "yes - you are talking about you"

You aren't talking about me...

And my feelings are being portrayed as my ignorance, and as a harmful thing. It would cause a jolt, it would destroy our destroyed non existent therapeutic relationship. I'm being spoken to as if I had no idea that what I said was so dangerous.. 

The pain of this misaligned insanity is beginning to tear into me.

Flashback!

May 23rd 2020, about 6 pm.

I am sitting with my back to a tree - I don't feel despair, I don't feel rage. There is simply nothing left. Psychologically I am being torn open. I know there is pain, but I can't focus on it or feel the livid edges because it is happening. It is real. Nothing can stop it. My family is being destroyed. I know this. I wont feel it. Numbness, disempowerment, loss, and damage. I think I should put myself out of my misery, because if I wake up - if I feel what is happening, no one should have to feel that much pain.. It is the end anyway. So why not take the only thing left in my control...real death. The pain of living - what makes it worth fighting for? It looks too far, too cold, too hard. I have no compass. There is no star to guide me. 

Why not just stop? 

The only reason I accepted the pain of living is that I have a vow not to kill, and as I'm now at this point just another living thing - that includes me in the vow. 

So no Kit, I didn't tell you this in our first session. I'd experienced a therapist creating potentially lethal situations before. Because I'd seen what happened to my son when he had got 'help'. Therapy rules state, when there is a risk of, 'harm to self...break confidentiality' I couldn't trust you. Looks like I was right!

Resonance of then with now - lack of truth, I'm being portrayed as someone I'm not.

Back to the tree - I don't feel despair, I don't feel rage. 

Back to the tree, and now, in his room. I have explained this. I have told him this. I'd told him how my husband's refusal to be open and honest dislocated my soul. 

I played him the music that had been going round in my head as I thought about how to end my life!

He know this!

And he knows that I have to have truth, raw and real. 

I have to hear his truth and to speak mine! 

My truth is that perhaps I do know who he is enough to know, and that I know love includes accepting that he loves someone else, is gay or finds me boring and too old. 

And I don't see this ending.

But my truth has been excised from the room - it  doesn't fit the monomyth of liberation through understanding childhood trauma. 

Slowly lights go out.

Another star falls. 

Into the abyss. 

One after another - one by one - sinking into the same drowning void, carried away by a rip tide of numbness, disempowerment and loss again. 

Part of me wants to die.

He - "It was obvious from the recording that you've been holding this for a while"

Me - "A year"

He - "And I wonder what it was, that you decided to voice it"?

Me - "You want to know why? Because integrity and honesty matter - and always trying to work out what the best path is. Did I answer the question - what was the question? Because I had completed my work of my other Diploma, and was being assessed, because I'd written my account to be assessed to see if I could enter the Ovate grade - so there was a lot of 'this is what I've done, this is me' and this is a levelling, reducing the sharp divides and no-go areas to one plain, balanced, surface. Time for the unspoken things to be said. It was Samhain, the perfect time for feeling the ghosts, feeling the edges, assessing experience and converting it into words "

He - "So there were a lot of thresholds being crossed there by the sound of it"

His interpretation..it says a lot about how he sees me. Where does his term - threshold come from?  

Me - "No, thresholds are not being crossed. It is volitional. I either step up to the mark and acknowledge the thresholds or I ignore. I don't ignore things"

I have not broken any rule at all, nor have I crossed any boundaries - it was time to name the ghosts, assess, convert to words. To step up! To stop hiding and face the truth. 

But there was a feeling of ghosts? 

Is this countertransference? 

Am I reacting unconsciously to something running in him?

Ghosts are almost intangible and 'out there'. They 'don't make sense' but often need to be understood, they hang around because of unfinished business... 

Countertransference is often an uncomfortable and a pretty trippy experience! 

The term 'ghost' feels right to describe it.

He -"Which raises a really fundamental question for you and I because, having said that as far as I'm concerned the boundary cannot ever be crossed. That partly, that part of it is me...but I suppose the question for you is, is it viable to continue seeing me with that boundary in place or is that going to be too painful for you - or how is that going to be for you"?

To agree that this is too painful for me? How dare you. You want me to end this problem for you? You have added to my pain by avoiding being honest about your feelings, and you ask me 'is this too painful' ! 

No, it isn't. Because I am a person who refused to let the narrative of the psychiatric team condemn her son to a lifetime of Risperidone, to being spoken to as service user. I am a person who kept going with her counselling course despite the violence and fearing for her life. 

No, this is psychically induced pain created through meanings. 

Me - "This makes me laugh because I deal in futures. I am therefore massively cautious in how I use language when I talk about the future with other people. You have just given me an uncontained 'how's it going to be'. Yes I am deferring, maybe I'm deferring while my mind comes up with an answer. Let me think. Rephrase it: what would I prefer is a better question- in a way I feel that I'm being judged, and I want to know what you think. That's why I can't just answer. How would it be for me? I am quite capable of coming here with the way I feel and managing it. I've been doing it for a year.

He - "It doesn't mean that you can do another one"

The gauntlet again.

He wants me gone.

He doesn't pick up on how I'm feeling judged and ask what that actually feels like, he certainly isn't going to let me know how he feels - thus perpetuating the 'ghosts'.

I'm not having it, I'm not going to be told that going 'is for your own good' when it clearly isn't!

Me - "Does it not!"

He - "Well you've done a year with me not knowing. But now I know and that might change things"

I don't understand! 

How will it change him? I don't have permission to explore, I have no invite to ask questions and hold silences and give the eye contact I'd give otherwise. So we won't go there. I will never know what that meant.

Instead I'm thoroughly disempowered, on the verge of a mental equivalent to safe-mode.

Me - "Yes, so that's the main thing. I know I can"

He -"OK"

Me - "It's really hard, how can I tell you that I'm a trustworthy person"

At this point - as the lights are going out - it seemed to be all about trust - I felt that he didn't trust me? Being told that I was crossing thresholds by telling him how I felt? Something isn't right here.

He - "Yes, I wasn't really posing the question about whether you are trustworthy, it's more I was thinking about your emotional state".

Yeah? So telling me to think of never seeing you again is helping my emotional state? I'm feeling bloodless, empty, cold. He's asking me to walk away. And yet, I keep my voice steady...it feels as if I have to... 

Grief is a cold hand on my heart. 

Me - "Well I've got grief to deal with. I mean that was part of my assessment for over the year - so how long does it take before my grief wound (from husband, son, daughter...my family being shattered) how long before I can take another dose. And to go back to your question 'why now' well because the scabs, pretty well, the scabs pretty well..well, there's not so much of it left perhaps"

He - "This is the grief of the end of your marriage?

Me -"That grief, yes"

He - "And are you suggesting that me holding the boundary is another grief"?

And are you suggesting. It doesn't sound like a question. As I answer I am aware that I must not suggest that his holding the boundary 'is another grief''! His tone of voice made it clear that the only acceptable answer is 'no'! But a part of me can't help wondering if my interpretation of him was wrong? What if I'd answered from the heart? 

The word I used in the Samhain recording is love, and I do not use that word lightly. 

And I made the choice to deal with the twisted energies so that we could get to honesty.

The worst that could happen, I had thought, would be finding out that he didn't like me! 

I was wrong. 

This is worse, much, much worse. 

I cannot answer from my heart. Instead of any negotiating I am being told to accept this indeterminate state - or to go - presented as being for my benefit! '

No other option remains now...I must play the game by his rules.

I describe what will happen as the task of accepting reality and letting go of potential futures  - and mourning those futures. 

If in his world the right answer comes from what TA practitioners call Adult. I need to speak 'Adult'. I do this by removing my opinions (Parent) and my emotions (Child). Instead I take responsibility for all of this. And so I give reassurance in response to my interpretation of his need for reassurance. Giving the message that he has nothing to do with any of this! The tone of voice he used was so clear, too clear for me to risk getting it wrong! He wants a message telling him, 'you have not harmed me, you have no need to fear disappointing me. This is nothing to do with the real you, or how you do therapy. I take total and full responsibility. 

So I give an empirically accurate and correct answer tantamount to lying. Because who am I, what am, I without opinion and emotion? 

I cannot risk being real. 

He accepts my language. 

Would I accept such an answer from a client? 

This is grief, I will lose his living, breathing, uniqueness. 

The word is love! 

Breathless, animated, curious, enchanted, fascinated, inspired...

But how will I be able to mourn when there cannot be honesty? Without honesty there is no reality. My feelings will remain frozen, stuck. 

There will be no resolution unless he speaks honestly. 

By that I mean to shift from words and statements that describe thoughts, assessments, and interpretations, into language that conveys feeling

I felt cornered - trapped and confused - into making my 'unacceptable' feelings acceptable, and this felt to me like lying (powerlessness, unnerved!)  So I write the memories and access my  opinions, I switch on and record my feelings, I refuse to be untruthful - and so I write here and now, placing the missing thoughts, and emotions back into their rightful place. 

Integrity - feeling secure and alive - is vital. 

But integrity can be broken by the responses of others. Having to lie to oneself even can be a matter of life and death. As a child I learnt from my mother and grandmother, from television and from experience that it is best for everyone if girls just forget to care that terrible things happen to them. So we agree to smile, to look OK. We agree not to show hurt or angry. Because what would our outrage or despair communicate? How dare we suggest that anyone except ourselves can ever be out of order! 

And having 'asked for it' if we then get upset and don't like it that too has to be our mistake. Obviously we didn't know what we were asking for. And the best defence is to agree with your abuser until you can escape! But then there will be disconnection, sadness, depression. Until anger floods in to wash the bullshit away. 

I've been there, I've watched the internalised messages parade through my mind, and when I was younger I agreed with the perpetrator and jury that some unknown part of me chose this, and said yes - I did it all to myself!

So I must change myself - because it must be me?

Consequently - when I get to safety I always speak out...

Therefore I publish this blog.

He - "It poses all sorts of questions doesn't it, which, I think, given what you have just said may not be worth considering  in the sense of they are questions about what if, and maybes' in terms of where do we go from here. And maybe the best thing to do would be to go one step at the time at present"

I remember thinking that I'd got it right, I'd said the right thing.  My psychodynamic mission statement had passed the test, disarming his horror of hurting anyone. 

But meanwhile, under the surface, within the tone of my voice, he'd heard the truth; he had heard me say what I didn't say out loud; I will be in grief if I lose you. 

By framing the process of grief as acceptance of reality I shifted any sense of responsibility for the situation away from him, and onto me. 

Truth is I've no idea how accurate my view is - I only know my side of this. But the situation was a mess. And I'm trying to understand - accessing the black box!

He was refusing to say - this is how I feel about you. And therefore he was as good as playing Russian roulette with my life. 

Self disclosure is a difficult thing to get right. But in this case, self disclosure was absolutely necessary. 

I'd go so far as to say that relationship is the only part of therapy that is therapeutic. The modality is no more than a way to structure language. 

But for me to feel as I do about him? There have been mixed messages. And without his honesty, the different layers of reality are impossible to disentangle. I can't take any more dissonance...not after being made to feel that I was so out of order by my husband for wanting the truth. Kit is being negligent in not understanding this, and if he does understand, in not respecting it. I have asked directly for his self-disclosure. The absence makes no sense, I'd expected reason. I am falling through the gap where honesty should be, as I hear my request for a straight answer deflected again and again. 

At this point I felt as if he'd found me at the edge of the road. No shoes, lost, cold and bleeding. It wasn't better to be found, just not so bad. As if I'd been rescued, but not given any warm clothes, or kind words. But I was no longer at the fragile edge at the borders of death, I was following him back to 'the therapy room'. 

He -"I'm finding it ever so difficult to know whether to ask the questions which are in my mind because I'm aware that normally in a situation like, in this space  it would be absolutely the right thing to do because we'd be talking about your processes, which are things that are happening out there. But I'm aware that we are talking about something that is happening in here.

Me - "Well, what is actually happening here? It is two people drinking coffee, having a conversation"

My turn to be avoidant. And all sounds are the sound of the mantra' - the fragile skill of elective detachment - a benefit of 30 years of Buddhist practice.

He - "Yes, but having a conversation where I'm saying - no - essentially. No to the question whether this can be anything more than what has already taken place in this room"

Me - "Yes, you have already said that"

Why say the thing that will hurt me the most, again? 

My fragile detachment shatters!

He - "And my immediate question is wondering what that experience is like for you? And then I think that's the usual sort of question, absolutely the right sort of question"

I am exasperated! If I accessed the pain of this moment how would it be? The pain is a splintering, agony. And if I showed it? I would be described as dysregulated, regressing - angry, or any number of 'unable to cope with the pain of it' behaviours a psychotherapist has labels for, a process similar to someone kicking you and then buying you a cup of coffee and a cake, and then they tell their friends how they bought coffee and cake for someone they found in distress.

Core to most modalities is the idea that a person is in psychological distress because their idea of how life should be is disproved by the truth; their life isn't how they think it should be. 

So always ask people what has happened to them...because  9 x out of 10 there is an abuse of power creating their pain. And it might be ongoing. The power dynamic here isn't good - he has the power to tell me to go. And he has proved to me that my words have in effect no meaning,  I'm powerless. 

The only power I have is to hold fast to what I know about myself and this situation. And the best we can do now is find a way to talk that avoids crucifying me. I tell him what he should say to me!

Me - "What is it that you know about yourself that means that you can cope with this situation? And how is it that you had the courage to put that out" and those would be the questions. So a question like 'what does it feel like' would drag me into a hurt part of myself and I really don't need to go there. I am perfectly capable of going into it in my own time and understanding myself, and taking care of me. But if you want to go there"

But if you want to go there - the nuclear option! 

Or my invitation for him to play the game of, you tell me how hurt you are and I'll be a nice parent....as opposed to my 'game' of bring the light, find the truth and then recast the narrative.

But if you want to go there?

Is my challenge to both of us. 

And now I notice that he has perfected the pseudo-therapeutic yes. It sounds wise and considered, compassionate even. I now understand that he uses it when he doesn't know what to say in reply to me. 

It sounds like he's heard me, and understood. Actually I think this specific yes is used instead of saying 'I disagree with you'.

So I step out of the loops again and back to truth. As Silvia Plath put it: 'This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary'. The light of the mind casts weird contours and shadows that can't be seen using the bright light of reason, they are the felt-things, the intuitions at the edge of awareness. The mind speaks in symbol and metaphor. 

Me -"It would need to be in a Gendlin form of metaphor and image, and sensation"

He - "See that's what I see as a potential sticking point. In the sense that normally in this space, nothing is off the table really" 

Me -"Ah...so that's not 'off the table' Gendlin's Focusing is more truthful...than words"

He - "Yes"

That meaningless, empty yes again.

Me - " I think the raw impression of sensation brought to awareness through symbol/ sensation/ felt-sense is far truer, than any already conscious understanding, symbolized in iconic or, indexical words. But then, that's just my observation...

He - "Sorry, you lost me there"

---

Remember this phrase:

He - "See that's what I see as a potential sticking point. In the sense that normally in this space, nothing is off the table really" 

Because in February it will return - when I make one more attempt to get to the truth of all this. 

Why are we not talking about it? 13th December 2021.

Monday afternoon - quarter of an hour before my appointment.

In my bag there is the Samhain recording

The missing information 

that I would have handed over last week

I mean everything seems positive?

Am I being hard on myself?

I mean in some ways this is a great adventure

Why do my insides feel as if they are made of water?

I'm beginning to unravel.

And this has certainly been an adventure, and it's been a year.

A whole year!

And really -------------- had such an effect.

Everything made sense, 

all the impressions, visions, the feelings.

I don't wish to sound all P K Dick and the pink light 

but there was something of this, in my experience.

I think this is crazy.

I just don't know.

Part of me doesn't trust these feelings.

And yet - what else is there to be done?

Of course I should trust these feelings.

I get out of the car and walk down the road to knock on his door...

--

He - "I almost opened the door and shouted Happy Christmas - Christmas coffee?"

Me -"Absolutely yes"!

There is silence in his room. Just the sound of him moving about in the kitchen behind the closed door to my right. The sound of the spoon stirring the coffee. I shift uneasily on the sofa, trying to find some way to sit that feels OK. 

He - "Are you warm enough"?

Me - "Are you?"

He - "I'm fine but I know it gets colder for some other people, before I need to have the heating on."

And then as we talk I'm saying that I recognize people by how they move more than specific facial details -as I refuse to wear my glasses (unless I'm driving that is!)

He says: "Like frogs"!

That word frog (or did he mean  a toad?) was deafening. A full force Jesus and Mary Chain feedback resonance loop. 

I remember that on his website he had written about the symbol of the toad, as a symbol of lust. And his anecdote about the toad on his door step sounded to me like an Emergent numinous phenomenon - this is when something in the real world crystallises a thought or feeling, there is an aura to it. It is more important than simply random. And it seemed to me that the world was giving him a heads-up. But more significant for me here and now, this is the second time he has told me about the toad. No matter how much I repeated to myself - frogs aren't toads - there is resonance. I feel that he's just called me a frog.

This is not good.

The resonance is confirmed when he goes on to tell me his toad story again.

How he did not let the toad in...

Much laughing from both of us!

Because I don't see any option!

No point crying, I'm going to stay in his reality...

But something leaks out.

I say - "Wipe your mind clean..."

And he says -"Am I ready for this?!"

I try to explain.

Me - "I asked you as I left last week, how would you try to teach someone recalcitrant and resistant, TA?"

He - "Oh I thought about that as soon as you went. It occurred to me why would I do that <downward inflection to tone of voice, puzzlement too>."

Me - "Hmm why would you do that <upward inflection of open optimism in my tone of voice>?

He - "Yeah, couldn't think of a single reason why I would. Because that seems like one of those mythical, impossible tasks to try and impart information to somebody who has already decided that it's no use to them. That's...that's an impossible task. And I think well - I may be many things but Hercules is not one of them. and being in the position which is doing something that is nearly impossible - no - I can't see why I'd do that "

I am the impossible to please frog-toad, sat on his sofa - the daemon temptress, Queen of impossible tasks,

He continues - "It's about therapeutic principle isn't it. You are only able to give people what they need when they are ready for it. If they are not ready for it. No point, and some things people are never ready for - at least while they are in therapy. And some people become ready in front of your eyes over a period of time. But, that's up to the client, it's not up to the therapist. Certainly not up to me. So no..."

I kind of crack at this point - "Alright!"

We both laugh. I'm clearly being seen as 'not ready, and may never be'...And this is too bizarre for words. I'm not requesting TA as a client. I was asking how he would teach a student. 

So, there is a sub-text I can't read. 

I'm assuming that actually this is about the toad in the room. 

He is telling me that I don't want what I say I want.

Him - "So no I really wouldn't want to try and convince you of something you don't want to be convinced of. That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for"

There is something about that statement: That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for" I can't shake the sensation that I'm hearing something else. 

I'm remembering how much he had wanted to give me that cartoon, so he felt that the message in it was significant, specifically it was significant for me to see it. 

So - that's not the answer you were looking for, means what? 

If it is similar to the cartoon message then, he must feel that he has stopped the game of me telling him 'no, not there, not there?'  

Makes sense - I'm 'contrary and tangential' so nothing he can do is right, because I'm impossible! The myth of the never satisfied woman?

Underlying message, 'here let me help you unpack...but everything I do or say you see as wrong'! Why don't you see that I just want to help you?!

It would be easier if he said, please accept me! 

Because I feel as if I've stepped into something bigger.

That something again.

It takes a while but we swim to higher ground...There is an art to preventing dialogues crashing. Something about agreeing on a subtle level with the role I've been put in, until I feel synchrony again?

Him - "Well you have been given, to use your language, a cargo cult version of TA "

Me - "Yes"

He - "And I've had the experience before, in fact it was the same training day that I mentioned last week; there was one psychodynamic person and one TA person and the psychodynamic person said 'well Parent, Adult Child - that's just Super-ego, Ego and Id isn't it and the TA person exploded 'No it's not!' which is absolutely right because it isn't."

And I get to hear more about him than I hear about the difference between the definitions of mind-states. And then I'm talking about how I had to go to Freud's house

He -"Had too?"

Me - "No, or maybe yes actually!"

When I was there Herr Freud become human for me; it was touching to see his glasses and his personal belongings - and to think of Jung visiting, too. Despite the speech about not being a Hercules, he is telling me much about TA, too much. My request had been how would you teach, rather than a request to be taught!. 

He - "Does that get you anywhere near getting you to understand what you wanted to understand"?

Me - "Well I don't even know what I do want to understand - the question was, how would you give me TA?"

I'm asking for a conversation about us...

He - "I think that was why, after you left last week I had the response that I did 'why would I do that if you don't really want to hear about it' because the way I would teach you would be different to everybody else, and any individual would be different to any individual. Because in terms of teaching the first thing I'd want to know is where is this person? What is their point of entry, what do they want from knowing about it? How is this going to be useful for them?"

Me - "Outcome. So why do I ask about it? Because maybe I'm wrong, and I like finding out I'm wrong. Because getting a better version is better. Outcome, well who knows! Something in my rucksack, bits of it are in there already, but maybe the bits I've got are not right "

I feel in this room that I might be wrong. 

I need to know....

I'm not talking about TA!

He - "Well the bits you've' got from college certainly don't seem right that's for sure. The thing I notice with some people is they have a block on it because they don't like the language. And I don't know what they are hearing that I'm not hearing because I've never had a problem with the language. But they will say things like the language sounds very judgmental, like calling somebody a Child. Well, I don't hear that as judgmental. And that people play games 'that's judgmental isn't it'. Again, I don't hear that I just hear it as a really useful descriptor. Because a game is something that has a set of rules and a fixed outcome. The language about Child, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Child in the TA sense and you said 'oh, childish'  and I said it's exactly not that, it's a completely un-judgmental term just to describe where our energy is, which  part of us is in gear. and when that part of us is in gear we behave differently"  

When I think I'm challenging theory, he feels dismissed, misunderstood, misheard? That is my interpretation of his reply; tone of voice and the content, both are defensive.

And that is pretty much how I feel when he misunderstands me - so this is my countertransference? I'm feeling his feelings, because he doesn't acknowledge them? I think so, because I'm used to talking about things that are way out of my depth, with people who know more than me. I discovered that I prefer gaining knowledge to feeling acceptance, and that really the only way to be truly accepted for who I am is to be vulnerable.

Me - "Words acquire meaning don't they, so to the person criticizing the language in TA, in their world the predominant usage of those TA terms are related to negative attitudes. Whilst in TA world those words are signifiers of ego states and devoid of these other meanings. Language use is specific to culture, but words are shared. So there is no inherent judgmental attitude in the words themselves."

What are we doing? 

I'd asked in a very round about way to be led through the TA process myself, so I could see it from the inside. We are talking, but I rarely flash my true colours until, oh no! I say that knowing why a problem happens isn't a prerequisite for solving it, but knowing what one needs and wants is a prerequisite for the creation of new ways to get it!

He - "If you were broken down on the hard shoulder of the motorway, imagining what it's like to have a car that's now working isn't going to get you anywhere"

Me - "No, but the problem isn't...<he interrupts>"

I continue - "No, the problem isn't that I want the car to be working, the problem is that I need to get to my destination - so what are the possible ways to make that happen, how do I get to where I need to be"? 

He - "But if the fundamental thing that's caused the problem is going to repeat, or can't be fixed, or hasn't changed - then no problem has been solved. Lets give a concrete example, because we are talking in quite abstract terms here I think. If a client sat in front of me has a particular response every time they bring up the subject that they said  they had come to me to try to resolve, I know there is something going on that needs to be addressed. You know they go ' oh I had a lovely lunch today' 'lets get to the subject' 'oh yeah, yeah yeah, but tomorrow I may have this for lunch -I'm thinking, what are they avoiding here that needs to be addressed? If I then discover that what the person wants most of all in life is to be able to talk about this, and it is so difficult to talk about, developmentally they came from a family that anytime this person revealed part of themselves they were put down. They were ripped apart verbally, they were told that they were rubbish. If I can find that out and then it turns out that, OK there is transference happening here -  because then they are fearing that if they told me what they really came about, and we can explore it, I'm going to do that to them.  On some level they know logically I'm not  going to, because I'm  a therapist. But emotionally they are really scared to tell me this stuff because every time they told deep and meaningful stuff  they get ripped apart. Now once we understand what the root of it is, then we have a chance of changing the present. Because actually it is the present, again this is back in the TA model, this is not about the past - it is about what is replaying now that was created in the past. But it is all present tense stuff. So once we get to the point where we can say, 'OK, I'm not your mom' - and what I'm trying to do here - and some times these things have to be said absolutely explicitly - 'I'm trying to create a safe space for you, what do we need to do  to help you feel safe, to make it not like your family, what do we need to do here' then everything changes potentially. But to get to that point we needed to know what the problem was to fix it. Because it wasn't a problem was, its a problem is. Again, creation is in the past  but the re-enactment of it is always in the present. And if I just say to this person, 'OK talk to me, talk to me, just talk to me' like flicking a switch - they can't do it. They can't do it because all this stuff is in the way...<to me now> no, yes? " 

All I can do is mindlessly repeat...

Me - "A person's come to talk about it but they really can't because they feel really nervous, and they feel that if they say the words then...bad things will happen"

This isn't about a client is it. Nor is it about how to react when your car breaks down. He feels that I will rip him apart. And I know that he will do that to me. So we are both as mad as each other! 

But I am trying to get through the fear, I am doing something about it! 

Right now I have the voice recording that describes my feelings for him in my bag, by my side! Now - right now. 

The problem isn't that I think of him as being like my gaslighting husband, the problem is that he has similar traits. It isn't the wound that is the problem, it is the defence and denial, the refusal to be honest. The power dynamic here is creating a real problem...As I sit before him thinking ' don't you know how much I long to talk to you openly, behind all this...beyond all the rules, with honesty...and I will make that happen!'

He - "See unless they are uncovered, not necessarily what they want to talk about because that's usually clear from the phone call, but why in the first three sessions we are just not getting there"

Me - "Why are we not talking about it"

That is a pretty clear statement - which I say as an echo, a reflection across a mirror impenetrable, it leaves ripples in the air as it widens and seeps through the walls...through the void...Because I don't think I'm the problem. I think I could talk about it if I felt that he'd take me seriously.

He - "And again this is the fundamental thing which I think the people after Berne understood far more than him, which is, its about two people in the room. It's about the relationship between the two people. It's fundamentally about what the client needs from the therapist that they are not getting elsewhere - relationally - that's absolutely fundamental. So for example in this case I can be to this client I've just made up, they need me to be a version of a parent type figure who is going to look after them rather than undermine them, and that's what they really need. Because the person sat in front of me is essentially a scared child, and again on the TA model we never get to the present tense Adult understanding as long as the Child is screaming, the Child will always scream the loudest. Once we can meet the Child's needs, understanding what that is then we can move into the present tense in the Parent ego state. This is not an either or, obviously, because they are all at play all of the time. But the Adult doesn't stand a chance  as long as the Child is crying and that's about the stuck stuff...I feel like I can stand down from the podium now. But I hope you can also see, not just in what I'm saying that I'm really passionate about this."   

I am a mother, years before I'd worked in a children's hospital with parents and their children. And I didn't think of any of them as Child, only as people facing the unbearable - and I tried to match my emotions with theirs, to be as compassionate as I could be. So this notion of needing to recognize the Child, as if it is somehow difficult, isn't sitting well with me. 

I feel 'talked down to?' 

Yes, I feel talked down to.

As a mother, as someone who once worked in a children's hospital...

Because I have felt obliged to placate his Child so many times in so many sessions with him. I think I'm good at it too!

But when I've tried to be Adult with him, that doesn't go well. I take from Gestalt therapy the importance of noticing and addressing ruptures, feeling when there is something glitchy in the relationship. Or of course noticing any kind of falling out! And right from the start of my sessions with Kit there were three glitches that led each time to tiny ruptures, big enough for me to notice and important enough for me to 'bring into session'. So I listed them, I described them and I expected us to talk about them, because I'd been taught that this is what happens in therapy!

We didn't talk.

He apologized, 'if that's happening I'm sorry'. 

"If" 

If it happened?

You mean perhaps it isn't happening?

Hmm...I'd thought that describing what happened as a mystery for both of us, was an invite to explore, but just the hint that there could be something glitchy actually hurt his feelings. 

His response was defence?

My question then as now - Why are we not talking about it..

Anyway - I then go on to describe that 'we' non-TA people hear the TA words as they sound, whilst he hears them as they are meant; I separate the words Berne used, from any psychological appraisal of Berne. It is very tempting to look at the words people use and conjecture about the world they draw from, and extrapolate that into their view of people. 

For Berne.

For Kit...

That in our sessions he tells me about responding to the Child in the adult who had horrible parents, over and over, so what am I supposed to be hearing, because I know what I'm hearing. 

But none of this matters. 

I have tried to get to honesty with him, he can't do it and nor can I! And I'm 'staying on the surface' whilst at the same time highlighting how the construction of meaning takes place. Whilst referring to Kit as an 'insider / expert'. - without using those words. As I do this I can hear the metaphorical key turning in the metaphorical lock, because as a therapist, it is the client's understanding that matters, not mine. I'm bridging the gap for him. I'm using therapy skills. Because I want him to admire me? To trust me? To hear that I get it, I get him. 

I see the things I'm not meant to see? 

Was that always the problem - here, with him.

My nickname at school was Jessica - as in Dune.

The question remains:

Why are we not talking about it?

What am I doing - or rather that's the wrong question, use his favourite Kohut inspired who am I to the therapist! I am enacting Jessica, acting as a catalyst for his understanding, whilst at the same time I believe that he sees me as the Frog Queen; a demanding presence who is never happy with what he gives me? I'm doing my best to change his horrible view of who I am.

Mr Kohut pray tell, who do you think I really am to the therapist?

But why are we not talking about it!

I hear that what he wants me to really hear is his passion. And he is right - I side step it each time. I don't let myself resonate with it. Because passion is tricky, I'm 'in love with him'  I need to give and receive and then give some more! But it has to be whole, all of it. This alternative love in the here and now is supposed to be a milky-love, given without want or need.

I'm supposed to just open like a flower - metaphorically! 

I've known more than a couple of men who have seen this as the highest and most noblest form of love; pure and eternal, in binary opposition to an equally imaginary 'love' imaged as  demanding and brutish. I reject and accept the existence of both, and more, the word I'd use for what I want is real - real joy, comedy, fascination, dreams and promise - add deep trust! 

Anyway, in the light of these thoughts, it makes sense that are we not talking about it! 

And yes he's telling me again about being the kindly parent, and being who the client needs him to be, responding with understanding of their needs...

And then he says - "And we have run over, because I just didn't want to stop - so interesting, and I'm so grateful for what you said  about language because I really wouldn't have known hadn't you told me."

Is that right - call me Jessica....

And I'm handing over the envelope that contains the letter and the recording. I'm saying 'I can't believe that I've just done that'. Fumbling for the doors... Can't open them. I'm walking away...And I'm not going to see him until the 3rd of January.

I'm gone.

I need therapy for my therapy! 6th December 2021.

A bright sunny day

really cold

in my bag there is a card and a recording I made at Samhain

The one in which I tell the story

The story behind this story

The

Missing information

Chit chat. 

But how else could it be? 

I need therapy for my therapy - OK, those thoughts lead nowhere!  

Focus! 

This is us being normal, ordinary people. 

I'm here to share coffee, to hang out, to just talk with him about ideas. 

As if it was normal! 

No, no no! 

Nothing here is normal!  

I should change therapists. 

But I could be asked by my course leader to give reasons for my decision. 

Here is the imaginary email:

Me - "Dear course leader - I need therapy for my therapy because I hoped that during our sessions he would come to realize that together we made the dark air between us scintillate with diamond-bright star light; that the cave like confines of his room was in actuality, space; open as the universe yet as clear and refreshing as the first gulp of air after plunging into a mountain stream. Because that is how it is for me! But all the time 'doing therapy' I or we were stuck in this strange half-world of forbidden words, feelings, expressions - suppression - and apparently I'm supposed to believe that this is to keep me safe -  No! I felt as if I was being crucified. Nailed down, exhibited, judged. So I just stopped the therapy with him, and now I'm so depressed - suppression of such beautiful and blissful feelings has consequences -  I can hardly breathe, and no other therapist will do, they will not be him, and I can't talk about him because they might know him, or have an opinion! Therapists are human."

That is the truth of it. 

And if I hadn't been there as a trainee, if instead we had this arrangement where I came and asked him questions every Monday afternoon? I would have looked at him, he would have seen me. Instead, as a trainee I know 'the rules' and I've only made eye-contact with him twice! I have taken great care not to show any emotional or physical reactions to his presence. Reminds me of reading Karen Armstrong's book - 'Through the Narrow Gate' about being a nun - the rule to appear detached at all times - 'custody of the eyes' it was called.

Did it have to be this way? 

Worse question now - did I give him completely the wrong impression of me? Would things have been different - in a real and alive kind of way - if I'd been transparent?

Thoughts such as this are as nails. 

Self-crucifixion and back to...Chit-chat.

I'm trying to get us to the magic land, the coffee fuelled discussion's of 3 am state. Making my case that a continuity and agreement on subjects is important - for me -  and feeling the brittle, broken heart feeling. And this non-therapeutic space, is the full-empty. In this room I only have words, and I use them. But I am disabling any communication of my own emotions and body language. Some of that is a left-over from the gaslighting husband effect. The experience of being lied to for so long, taught me not to let on how I was feeling to my husband because if he thought I was in pain, he'd verbally abuse me and worse. He lied because he didn't want to feel shame....OK...and this experience of therapy  feels similar? 

At the time I thought I could be in some kind of play-back.

And the only way I could find out would be if he spoke emotion.

He doesn't speak emotion - so...

I say (about Berne's theory) - "It's a kind of dreaming isn't it. A way to divide up reality."

And he says - "It is, because reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense"

And here we are, I stand at the radiant heart of it.

This is why I've fallen in love with him. 

Not the kind words, not the nice person. 

What he possesses is rare. 

I think that he may have looked over the edge...it is a different edge to Gendlin's. But, oh my God, I have no immunity. I burn! I repeat his statement reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense. 

I like the feel of it. 

The words are like smooth pebbles rolling around in my mouth, salty somehow. 

Sea washed. 

I hadn't thought of this before, words as cups, enabling transmission; and the statement is beginning to feel accurate. 

And there it is, in my voice. Finally! I ask him to tell me more, that this is a wonderful notion - my sensations of warmth and fascination shaping each syllable I speak, they glow and radiate - transmission - of my real feelings, finally! 

And in response he laughs, embarrassment-joy rippling in the air, riding the waves of my admiration

He continues -  "You and I standing at the beach, watching the birds swimming! No, flying around. We would probably both recognize the seagulls. But, what are the other birds?  If you don't know anything about birds they are just birds. Once you have the concept of language, then you recognize, 'oh a heron' or whatever it might be, there's the receptacle there, a category of thinking. Without that category, it is just another bird"...

At Samhain - Halloween -  I had recorded my declaration, my account, my truth. Yeats - as always for me - interceded, with images of ghosts and Muscatel. No immunity, as he speaks  I hear Yeats chanting:

"I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! 

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; 

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

 Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die."

Once a person has words, other words coalesce around the unknowing, it is fluid and sinuous, serpentine. Inaccuracy shifting into a clear description in words matched and borrowed from other words linked with other experiences. Without words the unknowing is experience; accurate and powerful, pure - non dual - of the moment. Words clothe experiences and give them the property of transmission - though transmission enables communication, it isn't whole. Yet there is a deceptive, snake like property to words. I don't say this.

And then, I hear a door beginning to close.

He - "It's quite similar to a young child who doesn't have language and they want to express something, and they get so frustrated that they just make noises, and they start stamping. Once they have the language they don't do that  because now they can express themselves. So language is a kind of receptacle, it's a conduit for experience. Without which we cannot communicate with each other on a basic level. This (TA) is a basic form of communication, that's what it is. And yet there are other ways of categorizing experience, it doesn't have to be this. But personally I've never come across one as useful as this. It does a very good job. I was once at a one day workshop, and one of the tutors  said to one of the other tutors - it was a psychodynamic tutor that was saying to a TA tutor exactly what you said last week ' well Child, isn't that just Freud, isn't that just Ego, super-ego and Id!' And  the TA tutor virtually exploded!"

Me - "But why is it not?"

He - "Because it really isn't"

Me - But if one of them was a Jungian, the Jungian would 'see' Peur and Senex!"

Him - "Hmmm <pause> there are no archetypes in TA"

I'm at Tesco's car park 

Saying now into my recorder what I mean to say, to feel.

No I didn't give him the recording

simply because

I can't see the clock in his room

It's ten minutes after the end

he doesn't tell me

this is one of the first times we've stood up together

normally there is a table between us

this time nothing

I just wanted to put my arms around him

absolute longing

and I just don't know

just longing

so what to do

I think the recording has to be given but...

I regret not giving him the recording

It was better that I wasn't as full of panic as I normally am

when I first saw him face to face my panic was that he's say no, no you have to go

or he'd therapize it, call it transference

Transference, or developmental needs

'because he's nice to me...'

but he isn't nice to me

constantly he is telling me I'm wrong!

and I'm constantly showing him that I'm un-phased  by this

and I'm - what am I supposed to do as a result of him telling me?

When he's saying 'you need to be with them' meaning to be in emotional sync with the client, is he saying you need to be with me?

'you are too distant', too aloof?

I can't show him my warm, open side!

And my arms ache

I just need to be with him to curl up in his arms

Oh no it's bringing tears to my eyes

shove this thought back in the box

I think he has to have the recording

The web. 29th November 2021.

After several references in our sessions to how much he enjoyed coffee fuelled discussions at 3 am.

After our discussions reminded him of all those coffee fuelled discussions he had so enjoyed at university at 3 am...

I dared take this idea further.

It was excruciatingly difficult - but carefully, gently and slowly I explained that we could do something with this idea. Something along the lines of, if we build it others will join...There would be more people, more ideas!

So why was that so difficult to say?

Because I was using 'we', making he and I into an 'us'.

And he has done this several times before in our conversations. So I shouldn't feel so uncomfortable? And each time 'us' has been in his sentences, in his meaning, I have held tight as if to a life raft. Each instant, each precious instant was rich with a subtle heat created by our verbal conjunction -  that melted my heart! I had dared to use 'we' and 'us' before, but only in a very low level way. This was my first explicit usage -  clearly stated: we could create something together... 

And I needed him to say yes. 

And I felt as if my heart was beginning to splinter.

I knew that he would say no. 

My experience of our non-meetings, is as a force-field in the room. And the only way across or through is verbal negotiation. And the boundaries are like infra-red laser lines linked to trip mines. Nothing felt safe...

Yet saying nothing about what I'd like, would be worse. I'd be letting myself down.

As I spoke, the sensation was of cold water tricking down my back. And threat. As if I'd seen a quiver in the haze surrounding the laser line; the boundary lines flare! 

He said, setting up groups never works. He knows this because it is his experience. Therapist meetings become recipe sessions - as in 'I did this and it worked for me'.  

Suddenly I realise the metaphors are all wrong, the cold water is toxin. I realise I have stepped into a web! And the spider is spinning threads around me so fast, I can hardly breathe! 

Immobilised I am watching in a fascination and horror as he starts to say:

He - "And there is another issue about the idea as well, between you and I - because it would set up what's known as a dual relationship. Dual relationships aren't utterly ruled out but they do have to be spoken about explicitly and clearly because if there was a group with you and I and other people then obviously I was your therapist and I would be something else so whether that's on the border line of a dual relationship or not. But I was something and now I'm something else so in my mind it would still be a dual relationship. So for example you couldn't be with a client in a business deal...And I suppose the thing about you and I as well  is that I know a lot about you so I'm sort of carrying that with me, the question is to whether you are comfortable about that?" 

Me - "I'm me - and I don't honestly believe I've said anything at all to you that I wouldn't say, or feel uncomfortable about saying (publicly). I'm pretty certain about that. I mean the standard answer is always 'take it to supervision' I mean if you felt uncomfortable you would take that to supervision. But me personally no, I'm not uncomfortable. No, I suppose I'm quite proud, I'm fairly OK about me, there isn't actually anything I'm uncomfortable with, having thought or done, in my life!"

He - "Because there are two other things in play here which happen, that don't happen that often but they happen regularly enough which is that a client finishes 6 month, 12 month, 18 months later. They come back. So if one had entered into a non-therapist/client relationship with that client then they can't comeback. But another thing that happens now and again, at the end of their last session they will say 'I think we really get on, it would be really nice to go for a walk together or go for a drink together. And I always hope that if a client is going to say that that they don't say it right at the end. And if they don't say it right at the end  there's a conversation to be had about how pleased I am that the person thinks that way about me, and the inappropriateness of forming a new relationship beyond the therapeutic bond because it is a very peculiar particular sort of thing and if this person ever wants more help in the future then we've already sort of muddied the water. I always find that a very difficult conversation to have."

And then occurs one of those moments when I am totally bewildered, absolutely unable to know which way something is oriented, or moving.

He - There is one therapist I know who was telling me how many women fall in love with him, or think they have, especially if they have been talking about their husband who  never listens to them, and he listens to them. Therefore they have the sense of 'oh, here is a very nice man who listens to me'. End of last session 'would you like to go out for a meal with me?' And he has to have the difficult conversation. I must say I've never experienced that <laugh> I don't know what it is about him that I haven't got, but I've never had that"

Poker face...

My life as comedy. 

But, I'm not sure that he is a very nice man, or that he has listened to me! 

He asks me: - what it would look like - the coffee fuelled discussions at 3 am? In retrospect this appears to be a trap question. Something like, the spider needs me to struggle or else it can't continue. Like a cat playing with a mouse. Is it 'running' when I answer? I explain a basic format - we could take it in turns to decide a subject, two weeks per subject to get beyond the most obvious layers of discussion. Really go deep into a theory.

I'm not 'running' because I keep my feelings out of this. And I find not talking from and within messy, real, flame blessed feelings, is so difficult. And I guess he picks that up because he starts to tell me about the kind of non-therapy-therapy that he thought was wonderful for him and his client. 

Is this is the woman who sat here for three years, the other one who might have been in love with him! 

Oh! - I do not want to think about this!

I ask him a direct question about how he is feeling in this moment - He replies with a generality, a theory based exposition about 'parts of the self' that applies to 'the person'. He wont 'do feeling' so I can't. And then he explains that he is but a reaction to me.

I don't say, that I am therefore also a reaction, and if we are in effect naught but a phenomenon of self-consciousness between mirrors at infinity, I fail to see the therapeutic benefit of this!

I say, my voice gentle but clear and strong - "I asked you for your feelings - I'm asking, do you feel that I'm pushing the therapist part of you out of the room?"

Because that is of course what I'm trying to do!

He replies - "No, there was a time I think when you first said 'I want to keep seeing you but I don't want to have therapy sessions anymore, that there were some things that came up that I thought 'I've got a foot in two camps here' because sometimes therapeutic things came up, and I was never quite sure how to respond because you said that you didn't want therapy, but you were talking about therapist things. But that's past I think ' 

I don't ask again, I simply empathize....He has not put a single feeling into his statement. And then he is saying:

He - "If we are going to do this..."

He tells me that he'd love me to really understand Transactional analysis.

So, how did this all end so badly? Read on gentle reader - we have a long way to go!

When I hear his truth, there is contact. 22nd November 2021.

I'm wearing my purry, furry, fake leopard coat. 

He says

It reminds him of his childhood...

Both of us laughing.

He tries it on. 

And then he says the strangest thing? 

"I've never seen a coat like this in the flesh"

Then - oh my heart! - he remarks so deliciously on my warmth seeping from the coat into his skin...

"Goodness - you're warm!" 

Just for a few seconds it is as if I have held him, breathing animal heat and a golden radiance into the void of darkness and separation, confronting the narrative that fixes us in time and space.

We are talking about music...lost music. As if heard in fairy hills...And then we are talking about my assignment. He is telling me that the presenting issue a client brings is often like a thin crust over the real problem. And in response I divert us down an intellectual worm hole pursuing the importance of paradox, in therapy - and more to the point - what would a meta-dox be? 

Here now in 2023 my ability to be tangential as a therapist, is a key skill in collaborative interaction. The juxtaposition is - I use that word in the ordinary sense - a dialogue that brings different interpretations of reality forward with the aim of synthesizing something new. 

And then I'm talking about Leon Festinger and Mrs Keech, how disconfirmation through paradox may also cause people to create a more fantastic work-around story - but how in Gestalt therapy, disconfirmation through feeling how a feeling really feels, instead of believing an habitual interpretation -  is in my view - core to therapy.

He explains that for him this is best expressed in the metaphor of ego-states.

He says - "...because things can be true in the child, but they are not true in the parent, and not true in the adult depending on which part is coming forward. and again, you use the word paradox, the paradox of the person being in the present - which we all are literally speaking - but behaving as though it is the past because the child ego state is now in operation. and they are behaving in disproportionate ways because they are responding to something now as if it is something back there. Which is why, in terms of time-lines, there is no past, present or future. It is all past, present, future all the time on the ego state time-line. and again, there is the crossed transaction where you ask someone something as an adult and they respond as a child.. And you can see it in front of your sometimes, you can see the body changing. The body gets smaller, the knees go together, and you see them becoming a little girl or a little boy right before your eyes. The voice goes up, and <he whispers> the head goes down. It's amazing! and then, there's the thing. You address them as a child. No, don't address them as an adult because there is something important happening here! And I suppose that is a bit of a paradox, that we can be different things all at the same time, but actually the different parts don't talk to each other <pause> so yes?"

I disagree in the need for this layer of metaphor, but I'm in his space and I'm using his world view. 

I enthusiastically say - "Yes, I see what you mean"

Because I do, when I chose to see through his eyes. 

The tone of enlightened exhilaration I put into my words is my response to feeling the ring of personal truth in his voice. 

Inside 

I'm 

like

a 

cat 

on 

catnip. 

When I hear his truth, there is contact.

I ask him questions. He continues, he begins to make new associations in his own mind, as he describes his theories....Until he realizes this, and returns to 'the session'. Then forgets, because it is more fun to really think.. And we are back to exploring words and meanings again - but I have to break the fourth wall, explaining that all this about Parent. Child, Adult only makes sense for me as I view it through the lens of the Berne universe. And  yet gently and determinedly we return to the same (non TA ) game of complimenting each other and laughing a lot, naming on the way, the 'Bowlby-Berne paradox' - as I seek to create ways for him to tell me more about him...as he turns it around and starts talking about Perls. A strategy guaranteed to get an emotional reaction from me, and lots more laughter.

He - "Goodness me, it's been really interesting today"

Me - "Because if I'm allowed to go off at tangents, this is how it is! Because reality is big, and ideas are connected in all sorts of idiosyncratic ways. And this reminds me of computer games"

He laughs nervously - I'm not even pretending that this isn't tangential!

And I explain the old arguments from gaming forums about how a story is told; and the problem and debate around making a game 'too linear' vs 'open world'. So my 'tangential' interjects are paradox, and possibly metadox, but will lead to something! And he says that he remembers reading an article that points out that linear point making, point A leading to point B, to Point C is a very patriarchal way of thinking, and that the endless circles and circles and circles, lead eventually to a much more complex picture - a much more, non-patriarchal, woman way of thinking...

And then I'm talking about phlogiston and Lavoisier! And paying him whilst saying - "Thank you for the conversation"...Obviously my feelings are that this hour was too short, and surely, surely we really could continue talking and laughing, playing with ideas forever....

Back to earth.

What actually happened? 

Was this the dreaded Kohuts in action? 

Including the  "Goodness me, it's been really interesting today"?

Was she in love with him? 15th November 2021

Paradoxical and confusing.

He opens the door to me and right away he begins with, chit-chat.

Years away from this (2023)  - and I have many hours' experience of finding people who have arrived to talk with me, lost outside the building; in the rain, the sun, the wind. Some are anxious, some are smiling anticipating telling their story and needing to feel better, many people are confused - all just people, and hopes and fears. 

And then into the peace of the therapy room...

But I never begin with chit-chat about me.

Ever.

So what is happening?

Of course I enjoy it, he's talking to me about him. Like I'm being let in, just a tiny, tiny bit. And then he sits down and we are back to my research proposal, hooray! And he is very clear in his mind that a trauma in the present, confirms the trauma of the past.  A reanimation, that occurs not to resolve it - but to confirm it - because it feels normal. 

This is like watching someone trying to assemble something from IKEA in the wrong order. Of course the present feels like the past, I want to yell! The present can only be understood in terms of the past because everything is a reconstruction of memory. We don't feel overwhelmed and powerless only because we weren't loved enough as children. Loss and grief occur because we exist in relationship with people, and with the symbolic and actual reality of everything! The problem is now, and we have no idea how to change the situation. Reparative relationships can only be a sticking plaster over the wound - I would have enjoyed saying that -  a therapist wont be there when you need him, his words of kindness wont change your situation. Doing the Kohuts is another red-herring, and in my view a therapist consciously and purposefully trying to be what the client needs, is making therapy all about the therapist! Instead let's undo the psychic time-slip so that the present can be changed! And this is done by re-entering the negative memory and retrieving the power and love, the fragments of gold under the rubble - the moments when you can remember how brave and strong you really are, now - and this is done by asking the person how they do being brave, how it feels to escape, to be the person who got through 'all that!' And then to ask, what is needed now...

He is talking about events (and events are, in Kit's view 'meaningless in themselves') being interpreted as trauma. He is stating that trauma is an individual event. In effect, Kit does not believe in inevitably traumatic events, so anything you have ever read about restrained animals suffering so much more than animals who are free to run away from say, electric shocks, can be discarded. He doesn't take onboard that my research proposes that high levels of adrenaline and cortisol, and other neuromodulators amplify the interpretation and significance of events, and this excitingly crazy mode of perception will crystalize new meanings. Not always better ones, but usually the person's interpretation is symbolically true. 

If there is a resonance.

But he is not interested in this and I've given up explaining so...

He - "What I have come across many times is, when you dig deep into somebody's trauma it is actually affirmation of the way the world works, because that's why it hit them so hard - because 'my parents didn't look after me I'm not safe in the world, and now I've got sacked for something I didn't do, and now I'm going to lose my home' it is all affirmation that 'the world's a shit place which I knew from the age of five' see what I mean? Where as somebody brought up with a sense of themselves as positive of being supported might still be in a situation honestly, where they are given the sack for something they didn't do, but they handle it differently because its not affirming what they already thought - and it might not be necessarily traumatic...because although there is that sense of  'why did this happen to me, I didn't do this, I'm OK' they are much more likely to say ' I just need to sit down with them and explain - because I'm not the sort of person who could do this sort of thing - and once they understand surely we can sort this out' whereas someone with a trauma background will be up in arms and go into a rage and want to show them what for 'why am I always treated like that' you see..."

OK - so is this about us? Is he saying that I think 'surely we can sort this out' whilst for him 'the world's a shit place which I knew from the age of five'?

It occurs to me that in his view, the body and the subconscious are somehow absent in meaning-making; that they do not play any part in 'trauma'. For him there is only - only what? The filter and the phantasy? Clearly I  disagree with this. But not here, not now. I don't engage, and so we are moving on, joking and laughing and getting along fine. But 'it's becoming a theme Kit' his much repeated statement, dogma almost, that 'trauma' is an affirmation of how the world works'. 

I'm not arguing. I don't even disagree, I have already said that there is so much more to it.

Eventually I say - "What is important is, we can all change at any point."

He - "If the central question is what heals, and I think that is what is implied in your research - which is that when there is a developmental deficit, we adapt to the deficit and therefore we prevent ourselves from receiving what heals...."

Oh, that statement strikes so deeply into my heart, certainly I disagree, but the shock comes from his tone of voice. I hear conviction. And that is the right word, a prison sentence enforced through repetition, recitation of words and feelings radiating from numinous beliefs. I step back and out, away from the barbed wire net of meanings that trap and hurt.

He - "..and when we are in a situation where it is presented to us, we don't see it because it is either filtered out, or we see it and we don't want it because it is scary. 

'We' or he? This sounds like a direct statement related to his experience - his experience of me, here and now?  I wish I knew.

He - "It is what Richard Erskin called juxtaposition. The ideas that here's the thing I've always wanted developmentally and logically we might say 'yipee!' but we don't. We say <angry voice> 'How dare you offer me what I've always wanted!' You know, we are angry with it, or full of tears because I've never had this and I'm scared because how can I ever accept this because it can be taken away. So there is all of that. I mean psychodynamicly people would talk in terms of  attachment style or RIGs or what ever it might be. But what they are all saying is essentially we are formed by our primary experiences and our expectations are formed by that. So essentially I don't think that the modalities are saying anything very different - I mean in Gestalt it is unfinished business. For people in TA it is a wound in the Child ego state, and so on and so on and for Rogers it would be an inability to self-actualize, or what ever language .."

Bless him - of course I know this feeling "'How dare you offer me what I've always wanted, scared because how can I ever accept this because it can be taken away" but I don't listen to it because it is madness! Life destroying even - so what if a partner (like mine) turns out to be 'no good'? I've got over my husband's infidelity and leaving much faster than getting over Kit (clearly I have not got over Kit!). I kind of knew my marriage would end as it did - possibly heightened neuromodulators give insight! And I know that I'd have been so wrong to have given into fear, to have been sensible and not to have taken that chance, to have said no to all that joy and love! Oh certainly Prince Charming was out there (I'm laughing as I write that! Basically, life is short and I loved the man I married) The choice is simple, do you want love, then be brave, open and vulnerable - or no - then stay safe, shut up, and shut down, and demand that others do the same to keep you safe.

And then he is talking about the Gloria films, where Gloria is talking to Carl Rogers about her difficult relationship with her father - and Carl replies that she would make a lovely daughter. Kit explains that Gloria can't accept this love from Carl, because what she experiences is the emotional reaction Erskin calls juxtaposition...I think she is seeing an old man actually, and he is way out of order!

He - "Her response is not 'how lovely' it's 'but you don't even know me'....and his response was, 'I know my experience of you now and I would like to know you more' and she didn't accept it...but she did later but not in that particular session. and again, there's an important thing because very often I see, well - two things happen - the client will tell you what they want and if you don't listen they will keep telling you until you listen, that's one thing, if you miss it they will keep telling you. But it also happens the other way around - you try and give a client what they need, what they clearly need and it's invisible to them, they can't see it because they are filtering it out, and you keep giving it to them until they say 'OK, I'm ready for it now. And I mean you don't keep on giving it to them and they are resisting and then they bolt out of the door and never come back. I mean you keep having it in mind, and giving them a little bit more until it looks like they might be ready for it...For example I had one client for was it three years..."

He tells me that she sat where I am sitting. 

He interpreted her body language as saying '

"I'm not going to accept any love from anyone at all least of all you". 

And then he says - 'after three years she reached a point where she 'completely transformed.'

How would you interpret what I've just heard?

Here is Kit's view.

He - "And again there's that juxtaposition, I'm coming here for stuff that I want. But don't you dare give it to me. Because it is fear, that developmental fear 'I'm not allowed to be loved, I'm not allowed to be accepted' but I desperately want it. And there's - it's what my supervisor called 'the client's dilemma' which I think is a wonderful phrase, because everybody has their dilemma that they bring to therapy. In other words the internal contradiction that is keeping them stuck - and very often the answer is, 'I want you to help me to heal by giving me what I didn't have - but don't you dare give it to me. Is all this adding up?"  

I can never know exactly what she went through.

But I can imagine and the word ordeal comes to mind! 

Three years is a long time and a lot of money to sit here and feel what? 

As I feel perhaps? 

What made her come back, week after week if it is true that her body language said that she wasn't going to accept anything. Well, this is Kit's interpretation, and I'm frantically asking myself is this about me? Or put another way, am I going mad? In my head I'm asking myself, was she in love with him? Was the 'completely transformed' moment when she realized that whatever is going on here in this therapy thing, it is just too messed up and plain too weird to fight against? At which point I like to believe her sanity intervened, flipped the switch and she left! Saying to herself, 'it is time to leave, but do it gracefully and do not under any circumstances let him know what's happening! That is after all, the safest ways out of the client-in-love-with-the-therapist dilemma. 

As he related this tale to me I was thinking, but she probably needed your arms around her and the promise of a future in which she could tell you how much she loved you!  Three years! What did she want? What made it worth her while to sit where I now sit? The reasons why I'm not sitting here tense is only Wim Hof method, that I practice controlling my autonomic responses. I've been educated by my counselling training to stay in touch with whatever I feel and, more importantly I don't beat myself up. 

But if she felt as I feel? Poor woman - just tension and silence, if she was too scared to reveal her need for this charade to end and reality to begin, that makes total sense in this therapy room! In this room pain is gloved and delivered softly. But in almost every therapy room any invite from the client indicating a need for the therapist to be a whole person is deflected with kindly meant words.  'I'm wondering what this means to you -  to feel this need to know me - where do you think it may come from...'. 

In short, the communication or ability to create dialogue by a client in the therapy room, is traditionally restricted by convention and skewed by theory. 

I expect that if they had met in a bar every week - she wouldn't have greeted him with the clenched fists and tension, he describes. 

The therapy situation can feel inhumane, restrictive and wrong. 

But perhaps this situation wasn't as I imagine - who knows!  

I'm clearly seeing her as a sister! 

And now he's telling me that for years, Gloria and Rogers would write letters to each other, and she would address him as my therapeutic father. 

I think her daughter Pammy said that Gloria called him 'my ghost father'. His problematic body only words, Air and Aethyr. No masculine intrusions, even of the ectoplasmic kind!

He says - "So she accepted what he gave to her, but not straight away. He was a surrogate father for her, and that's rather wonderful....which is where Heinz Kohut who was really psychodynamic but thought he was humanistic -  Self-psychology, and I don't think that he said much that was useful but one thing that was useful was the question of who am I to the client which he called transference needs....."

And yes, we have been here before...And if we had ended with an invitation from him for me to keep writing to him? Well gentle reader, you wouldn't be reading about my sessions. I would have felt respected and valued, instead of SPOILER ALERT!

Demonized as a Toad Queen, l33t hacker!

He - "And that's all keyed in with, what is it that the client needs to hear, what are the developmental deficits. The only odd one out I think is going to be CBT which goes, I don't really care what is happening in the past, think yourself better! Well that's not going to work is it...."

I am tempted to be equally as brutal as I begin to answer this, and then stop myself! 

And I'm left with this problem:

His faith in the theory that clients are only ever tense and stuck because of their developmental issues, raises a lot of questions about therapists, therapy techniques and dogma.