The 3lack 3ox.

Non engagement , 'keeping one's dignity' in the face of outrageous adversity, not ' feeding the trolls ', keeping your head held high, and 'not letting the b******s grind you down, are each a time honoured strategy used to maintain one's power.  Except it turns up as a client struggling with self attack and self abandoning . Silencing oneself because it is supposed to control others, often comes from anger. A feeling of anger indicates a need to protect oneself, playing dead - avoiding/disengaging - is a serious level of autonomic (dorsal vagal) affect.  As an off the shelf answer it is avoiding your answer. Silence as a strategy to control others is a cold anger portrayed in movies as strength, yet it so often contains contempt, and it is dehumanising... I don't see strength there. I see a mouse overwhelmed by fear and paralysed, but not running away when fight flight (self protection) kicks in.  Silence, a paralysis framed as neutrality, isn't ne...

When I took this photo I was waiting for my friend, sitting with my back to a tree. Half an hour before, I'd joined the circle with a group of pagans who had fed me mead and apple cake.  I still hadn't made up my mind what to do though. So I sat by the tree waiting. My friend and I stood at the centre of the circle and as a man walked past us, I asked him ' it is a yes no question' could you answer for me? He took out of his pocket a purple disc marked with a golden, Chartres type labyrinth, 'Labyrinth means yes...' I said. And it fell. Labyrinth face upwards. I hit send... [+] I didn't feel better straight away. I felt panic,  I looked up at the grey sky, felt the rain, heard the wind rushing through the trees. Everything changes. Later the man returned to the circle and gave me the labyrinth disc. Back home, messages from the 'witches' at the Rollrights inviting me to their Samhain meeting . Messages from therapy 'sisters' of support. Curr...

I've only experienced one serious rupture with a therapist , once before.  I had said that I needed to go directly into the three states of autonomic nervous system stress ; I needed to be able to report back from dorsal vagal ' lock-down ' so that together we could get a coherent image of the landscape.   And I said that I had a way to do this experiment. My metaphor was mapping. Terror, could be redefined as  terra incognito , a land I could map and prepare to navigate. And this seemed pretty important to me! My son wasn't as ill as he was going to be, but already I was experiencing the awful, dark, bloodless and cold paralysis I associate with a dorsal vagal state .  My husband's first known infidelity had just come to light.  I was in a bad way. I said that I had three safe ways to enter each of the three vagal states , represented by the three landscapes in games I played. The Endless Forest - represents upper, human, synchronising  non-verbal, safe ...

19:29.8/9/25. Got a notification from my phone,  The moon was eclipsing . I was writing a letter. To be sent at the equinox? The basis for an article? It takes bits from my previous blog posts, this is why writing this blog has been useful... Dear 'Kit', This is a complaint, and this email is the first and the last time that my complaint is linked by your name to you. If I was a client, I would tell her, I would tell me..that when a person who is supposed to help, ends up hurting you, the damage can cut even deeper, causing deep emotional and psychological harm. I would also say that it is institutional betrayal because this isn't just someone you trusted, this therapist is someone you were told that you should trust, by a system; by their ethical body, by your college, by their qualifications. Therapists are supposed to be the safe ones; trained, receiving supervision - so if something doesn't feel right it is easy to second guess yourself; and you were grieving, you h...

There are many reasons why a person decides that it is better to keep silence. Dissociation is a survival mechanism .  The question, what is so dangerous about remembering and speaking out -  is hijacked by the myth of self sufficiency. We are supposed to be enough for ourselves. Distress is framed as transient and therefore unreal. We are advised to seek therapy so that we heal and can move on - it isn't our place to try to change anything outside of ourselves... Sorry, what?! So if you see someone hitting another person repeatedly you don't need to phone for the police? You don't need to do anything except take care of you? OK... Yes, I'm struggling, for there are very good reasons why just leaving this account here, pretending it isn't me, is the safest and most sensible option.  Except  when I felt my eyes brim with tears just through reading the words, logical positivism [+] . This confirms that if something isn't faced up to, I am self abandoning , ena...

[Re-written 9/10/25] My complaint is simply this. In 2024 I requested an apology and a process of resolution from a therapist and he told me to 'never contact him again'. He told me to 'let it go, as I was only hurting myself. It had taken me two years after 'therapy' for me to clarify my emotions enough to request transparency and understanding of why I had found therapy a harmful experience. I felt that the importance of how our sessions failed, went beyond me. And I needed to be sure that there would not be a repetition of a similar 'contaminated' process with another client. I also suspected that this had happened before. In September this year I sent the therapist my 'victim statement' with a request for an apology.  There is still a possibility that he might reply, but in the light of his first reply - I am doubtful. What I would like to happen? I would like the therapist to understand the concept of epistemic injustice, How his denial of open,...

Freeware was never the correct term. Yet the term freeware captures the sense of my intention. When I finally found enough courage to write to the therapist asking for some kind of resolution process (February 2024) he maintained that as he hadn't done anything unethical, there could not be a legitimate problem. He told me that I needed to 'let it go'. I said that unless there was a resolution process the whole thing would be 'freeware'. In retrospect, this is how I let it go.  Creative Commons doesn't sound as exciting as freeware. This blog is CC, not freeware exactly, but my intention is the same. It means no copyright restriction. This story can't belong to me alone...it would live and die with me, and that wont do. As I have said elsewhere: copy and paste - this is the original.  From here on, the 3lack 3ox is Kit-less. Outcome - he now stands as a symbol for any therapist who makes it impossible for their client to understand what is occurring in th...