Tag Archives: attachment based psychoanalytic psychotherapy

The February Post – Anxiety…

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Anxiety, Being Alive, Medication, Panic, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with P, PTSD/Extreme Emotional Stress Disorder and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Anxiety. That’s the word of the month for me. Not just the usual anxiety that I struggle with, about clearly identifiable things like ‘Will there be a horrible brown envelope from the DWP in the post today?’ or ‘What if the new flatmate turns out to be really scary?’, but that awful non-specific thing we like to call generalised anxiety. It been coming over me out of nowhere several times a day, gripping me with its icy cold claws, digging into my skin, even my soul – and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. My heart pounding so hard and fast it makes me think that there is a genuine chance it might explode in my chest. That sense of doom, of just knowing that no matter what I do, something very very bad is going to happen, and there is no escape. That horrible fizzy feelings behind my knees that makes me feel simultaneously completely paralysed and as if I can’t be still for even a second.

That. I’ve had an awful lot of that this month.

In therapy P. and I try to slow things down, try to work out what it is I am reacting to – but, unlike anxiety about something tangible and definable, this fuzzy whizzing fog of fear won’t be so easily captured and analysed. Of course we know that if there are a lot of things going on for me, I am much more likely to experience these episodes of panic and anxiety – but more often than not, it feels as if it’s been triggered by something so microscopically small that we can’t even distinguish it with our emotional super lens trained directly on it.

I can’t remember a time where I’ve suffered quite so much with anxiety (that wasn’t caused by something specific). And this constant fighting off an unseen enemy is exhausting. Recently I have even been considering whether or not I may need to look into getting prescription meds to help me manage it all.

Now, I know that many people have strong feelings about the use of medication to treat mental health disorders. Some feel they are an evil that should be avoided at all cost, while others say that they are absolute life savers. Personally, I am not for or against using meds. I have not been on any kind of medication for a very very long time – but the reason for that is that I have had some very severe adverse reactions to a number of drugs (both ones to treat physical and emotional ills), and for that reason my GP is very reluctant to start me on anything I’ve not been on before. Also, the one psycho-pharmaceutical I have ever been on without having one of those aforementioned severe adverse reactions happens to be one that is frighteningly high on the toxicity index, so – owing to a proven tendency to not stick to agreed safe dosages – I am rarely allowed to have even that. But, as I said, at the moment the anxiety is so bad that I am seriously considering trying to persuade my GP to let me have some sort of anxiety reducing chemical prescribed. (I’m not terribly hopeful that she will agree to do so; she once told me that she ‘doesn’t prescribe sleeping tablets for sleep’ in an attempt to not have to prescribe me an untested medication).

This kind of anxiety is kind of new to me. Or, at least having such frequent episodes is. I’ve had panic and anxiety attacks before, and I am a pro at getting exceptionally anxious about anything that could possibly go wrong – but I’ve never had multiple episodes every day. I am very used to suffering from PTSD flashbacks – I have those all day, every day – but this is something very different. As horrible as the flashbacks are (and they really are truly disturbing, each and every one of them), at least once I have managed to come out of them, I know what they were about; there is a distinct traumatic event attached to each one of them. But these anxiety attacks.. I really don’t know what to make of them.

Of course P. and I will continue to explore them, and hopefully they will get better. But for now.. it’s really tough.

Anyway, I think I’ll end this post here. It’s not quite the update I would have liked to write, – but I guess it is what it is.

To all of you out there,
be good to your Selfs

xx

I Survived A Therapy Break

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Being Alive, Communication, Drawing, Expressing Emotion, Expression Through Art, Personal Growth, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with P, Separation-Anxiety, The Therapeutic Relationship, Writing and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We’ve been on a break, my therapist and I. A Pesach / Easter / training combo break. Leading up to the break I was very aware of Little S. inside having a lot of feelings about P. going away. This, even though, I – or should I write we..? – were also going to be away for almost the entire break. There was an increased and very distinct need for emailing and texting P. to make sure that she was Real.

I think that what Little S. means by someone being Real is a combination of them not forgetting her when she’s not with them and for them to not abandon her when things get rough. But, at times it is also a way to express genuine fear that maybe the relationship with the other person is too good to be true, it is asking for reassurance; are you Real, or just a figment of my imagination, because it seems so unbelievable to me to have someone who is really there for me when I need them.

A break always brings out a lot of abandonment issues, especially for the Little S. part in me. From Adult Me’s vantage point this makes perfect sense, I understand why this happens; so many people in my life haven’t been there when I’ve needed them the most, so, naturally, when someone as important to me as P. declares that she’s going to be away, it is bound to trigger all manner of emotional echoes inside me. But, as much as Adult Me can see this, it doesn’t actually make it any easier for Little S. to deal with the anxiety and sadness that these separations inevitably bring to surface. To Little S. the worry that P. might be going on a break because she has been too much for her is very real, as is the fear that P. might – during the break – realise that she prefers not to have to deal with her ups and downs, her neediness, her constant need for reassurance.. Before a break the tension inside Little S. will keep building, until she is convinced that a) there is no way she can survive this break and b) that, should she through some form of miracle survive, there is no way that P. will ever choose to return.

A few years ago, back when I was still seeing A., I would never ever talk about any of this directly with her before a break. I would suffer in silence, and maybe – very maybe – mention it after the break was over, although generally in a very brief glossing over kind of fashion. Before a break, I would just feel the anxiety mounting, bring me closer and closer to breaking point, but I would not really acknowledge just how difficult breaks are for me. This, of course, lead to breaks being absolutely catastrophic in my mind, and it was extremely rare that I would not need to be working with the crisis resolution team during them.

In the first year or so of seeing P. I slowly and very gradually became better at talking around the subject of breaks, slightly dipping my toes in it, so to speak. I would talk about it in the way Adult Me sees it, intellectualising it, rather than actually feeling it. In part this was because I didn’t really know how else to approach it; intellectualising difficult feelings, analysing why they are triggered, rather than actually feeling the feelings, is how I have got through an awful lot of difficult times; it is a well beaten path. But, as I have been working more and more closely with P. to try to notice that there are feelings stirring inside, and to identify what those feelings are, I can now fairly often allow myself to stay with them.

The other part of why – back in the early days – I didn’t really talk about the feelings was that many of those feelings [particularly the ones to do with abandonment and separation, and the shame of needing someone else] belonged more to Little S. than to Adult Me, and Little S. hadn’t yet found her voice. Or rather, I hadn’t yet found a way to allow Little S. to express herself directly in our therapy. But, eventually we cracked it; first by letting Little S. email and text P. between sessions and then by Little S. speaking directly to P. in sessions [as opposed to through Adult Me]. It’s been a long journey, but I do feel that Little S. is now reasonably able to take part in therapy when she wants or needs to.

So, this time around, on top of the many emails and texts asking P. if she is Real, she was also able to not only talk about her feelings prior to the break, but she was able to experience them while she was talking about them. And that felt like a very big step forward.

The break in itself actually went quite well this time. Of course we all missed seeing P., and there were a few times when either Little S., bob, or Adult Me needed to email P., but there wasn’t quite as much anxiety to deal with as there might have been, had we not been able to experience and explore some of the feelings before the break, had P. not helped me make space for these feelings to be not only shared, but also heard. P. doesn’t ever make me talk about difficult feelings, but she does actively encourage me to try – and we set the pace together. She makes it very clear to me that it is safe to allow feelings out, that she wants to hear about them, whether it be in session or in an email, a text or in a drawing. And, possibly most importantly – especially to Little S. – she reassures her that she will be able to bear those feelings, that they won’t be too much, and they won’t result in P. no longer wanting to see her. That feeling and talking and talking about feelings is very much welcomed and valued in our relationship. Even when it’s scary. Especially when it’s scary.

Another thing that P. and I do to help Little S. manage during breaks and particularly difficult times, is to let one of P.’s ‘little friends’ – a soap stone hippo called Ringo [*not his real name, gotta protect his privacy!] – stay with me. I will also leave something of mine with P. to further strengthen the sense of connection between us during the break. As Little S. would say: “Something to help you ‘merember’ me, in case you start to forget.” It may sound like a childish thing to do, this exchanging of personal artefacts, but, Little S. inside is just that – she’s little – she may live inside the body of an adult, but she still finds comfort in having something physical to hold on to help her connect with P. So, no matter how silly it may seem to outsiders, taking Ringo with me everywhere I go, it makes all the difference in the world to Little S. And that’s worth a lot!

So, when you’re facing a break in your therapy, here is my advice to you: listen to what all of you need to make that break as bearable as possible. Don’t allow your Adult Self to stop your Little from getting what they need to manage it. To the best of your ability, talk about the fears and worries that all of the different parts of you carry about this break. Write it in a letter if it is too hard to say it out loud, if the fear of rejection gets too much. And if needed: ask if Ringo can come stay with you. And, if asking for a Ringo to stay with you feels too much; start small. I was given this tip by one of my readers many years ago, and at first, having something personal of P.’s felt way too overwhelming for me, so we started by my borrowing a random pen of hers that I could use to write in my journal with. And a little note from P. to help reassure me that she wouldn’t forget me and that she would be back.

But now that I have worked my way up to having Ringo stay with me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And neither would my sisters’ kids!

Be good to your Selfs.

xx

IMG_3885

A drawing Little S. made last night to show how happy bob, she and Adult Me feels that P. is finally back

 

Feeling Bad & Being Bad – Allowing ALL of Your Selfs into Therapy

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Acceptance, Communication, Expressing Emotion, Expression Through Art, Identity, Inner Conflict, Personal Growth, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with P, Sef-Awareness, Sexual Abuse, Shame, The Therapeutic Relationship, Writing and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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“And, what if – after everything that I’ve been through – something’s gone wrong inside me? What if I’m becoming bad..?”
 “I want you to listen very carefully: You’re not a bad person. You’re a very good person who bad things have happened to. You understand? Besides, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters – we’ve all got both light and dark inside of us.”

*

The above is a transcript from Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix – film, not book – an exchange between Harry and his godfather, but – Death Eaters aside – this could just as easily have been a dialogue between Little S. and P. It’s a conversation they have had many, many times, and one – I suspect – that they will continue to have many more times.

The concept of somehow being bad because of what has happened to us is a common one among people who have suffered sexual abuse. The sense that our experiences in childhood has somehow tainted us, marked us for life, is something I think many can relate to. And even though the adult part of us may well be able to recognise that this is not the case, for our inner child this is a stain that feels all but impossible to remove. It has sunk so deep into the grain of what we were made of, that removing it feels as if it would mean removing a part of who we are. This is especially true if the abuse began when the we were very young, before we have had a chance to form a strong sense of our Selfs.

Little S. struggles greatly with being able to understand that feeling bad and being bad are not the same thing. She finds it almost impossible to distinguish between the two. And that makes perfect sense; because what was happening to her made her feel terribly bad inside, at the same time as one of the abusers made it his favourite pastime to reinforce again and again and again that the reason why he was doing what he was doing to her was precisely because she was bad, the two concepts got mixed up. So, ‘feeling bad’ became ‘being bad’. And, between the abuse and being fed the black and white fairytales that most children are fed, where bad people do only bad things and good people do only good things, yet another truth was formed: if you do something bad, you must be a bad person. Even the dialogue above goes on to state that “What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” It’s a lovely sentiment, on the surface – our actions define who we are, we can choose to be good rather than bad. But, – and it is rather a big but – for a child in an abuse situation, choices are limited, and more often than not we had to do things which we perceived as being bad [playing along, saying the things the abusers wanted to hear, we may even have been taught to act ‘provocatively’ by the abuser and so on..] all of which even further instilled in us that we were indeed bad. We didn’t just feel bad about what was happening or about the choices we were forced to make, we were bad. And because we were bad, we deserved the bad things that were happening to us. After all, the villain of the fairytale must inevitably be punished; the bad guy banished, put in prison or even killed..

As I am writing this I am aware of Adult Me wanting to step in, to protest, to tell Little S. that she is not the villain, she is not to blame. That those choices weren’t really choices at all, and those actions [the ‘playing along’, the ‘saying the right things’..] were extraordinarily complex survival skills dressed as what looked like bad choices. And that is a very good sign of health on Adult Me’s part, both the wanting to step in to protect Little S. from those misconceptions, and the ability to see them for what they are – but, Little S. needs therapy, too – Little S. especially needs therapy – she needs to be allowed to explain what the world looks and feels like to her, she needs the space to share her truth and to have that truth heard and accepted. So, for now, Adult Me will need to take half a step back.

And that can be a real struggle in therapy. I’ve written previously about this difficulty, how in my work with P. we found that the way to allow Little S. to speak, without Adult Me interfering or even censoring, was not found inside of the fifty minute hour, but in emails and drawings between the sessions. And even that didn’t happen overnight. It took conscious effort on behalf of Adult Me to stop herself from editing Little S.’s communication with P. And that is a hard, hard, thing to do. But, it has finally given Little S. a voice of her own. And, recently – with a lot of hard work – Little S. has even been able to have her very own fifty minute hours with P.

P. and I work a lot on trying to understand what feelings, thoughts and beliefs belong to which parts, and also to recognise that they are all valid. [Not necessarily true, but absolutely valid]. The different parts agree wholeheartedly on some things and disagree wildly on others, and for me, it has been incredibly helpful to stop and listen to what the different parts have to say.

When Little S. writes emails, she does so using childish phrases that Adult Me would never use, and in session she speaks with the kind of language and grammar and even tone of voice that a child of four or seven or nine would – even when she writes by hand, she does so in her own writing. It’s not about acting – I’m not pretending to be a child again – I am just temporarily holding back the other parts, I am turning down the background noise, so that Little S.’s voice can be better heard. And it is so so helpful. Not just to Little S., but to all the different parts of my internal system. It helps us notice where different parts struggle, and it helps us understand where the different internal conflicts take place. And it feels good to know that each part can exist both in its own right, and as part of the whole system; that the whole is simultaneously both exactly the sum of its parts, and so so much more.

I still struggle with this – it is simply not an easy job, understanding oneself and ones inner workings – and it has helped enormously having P. actively encourage all the different parts to speak up. This is one of the things that makes therapy so great: you’re not doing it on your own, there is a second heart and soul in there with you.

I know that working in this way – understanding the whole as being made up of many different parts – is not for everyone – and I also recognise that I am only at the very beginning of this journey myself; I am in no way an expert in the field, but, I would recommend anyone to give it a go. Maybe sit down and allow your Little to write a letter – about anything [it doesn’t have to be about something particularly difficult or painful] – in his or her own words, without the self-consciousness of your Adult Self holding them back.

Whether or not you choose to bring what you write to session, I think that you will discover both how difficult it can be to separate one part of yourself from another – and just how much your Little has to say, perhaps even things that he or she may not have been able to say before. And that has got to be worth quite a lot, don’t you think?

Do be kind to your Selfs.

All the very best,

xx

The Harry Potter and Sirius scene

When Your Therapist Goes Away

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Coping Strategies, Drawing, Expressing Emotion, Expression Through Art, Music, Personal Growth, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with A, Psychotherapy with P, Sadness, Separation-Anxiety, The Therapeutic Relationship, Video and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here we interrupt the regular scheduled programme for a Holiday Special: “When Your Therapist Abandons You”

“Big Kids DO Cry” – a little illustration I made while sitting at the library pondering what childrens books REALLY teach our children.

Yes, it’s here once again – that darkest time of the year when your therapist has almost certainly gone off and left you. My guess is that you’re just about half way through it by now, and at this point things will either have got a lot easier – because you’ve got used to having the rhythm of your week disrupted – or, got rather a lot worse – because you’ve been trying desperately to hold it together, but now you’re running out of whatever it is that has kept you going until now. Or, you may be – like me – dealing with both of those scenarios, simultaneously; things getting both easier and much much harder at the same time. [Really playing the odds with my guesses here, aren’t I?]

So, let’s talk about it.

I realise that I have written about breaks a lot, and I am likely to be covering similar grounds once again, but there is one slight difference; this post is written from inside a break, not in anticipation of it. It is quite possible that I am remembering this incorrectly, but my feeling is that I generally tend to write quite a lot more prior to the beginning of a break to then go fairly quiet and disappear almost entirely during it.

Either way, this is where I’m at: I last saw P. on December 21st. Prior to previous breaks I had got increasingly better at, sort of – very sort of – broaching the subject of The Break before it actually happened, rather than just ostriching [that’s the technical term, look it up!], which is how I dealt with pre-break anxiety pretty much all the way through the five years I was working with A.

With P. I had begun to at least mention that I was aware – very aware [I’m sure you know the feeling!] – that a break was coming up, and that there were in fact feelings connected to it. I may not have been quite brave enough to really explore those feelings, the desire to go back to ostriching being too strong, but I would at least acknowledge the fact that there were a lot of feelings floating about, messing with my head, heart and soul. This time I took it a few steps further. A few weeks before the actual break – all the way back in early December – Little S. wrote an email to P. that I thought I might share with you:


                                                                                                              *


To P.

I am feeling very extremely sad that soon you are going to go away from me again. That is because I don’t like it when you are away, because then I can’t see you anymore ever again for a very long time. And I will miss you too too too much. And maybe I won’t even remember what your voice sounds like. Also I think that maybe you will forget everything about me, because I know that usually I can be very easy to forget. And also maybe I will forget all the things you have said about feeling bad and being bad. And that makes me very especially worried in my soul. Because then sometimes I do Very Bad Things. And then I will know that I am bad, because of doing those Very Bad Things. When you are away no one can remind me about feeling bad and being bad, and I can’t tell the difference all on my own. I can only remember it when you tell me. So that makes me feel very extremely worried.

From your Little S

PS. Maybe before you go away you can think of a song that I can listen to, like you did one time before, because I really really liked that. Because then I can listen to it and I can think about you and my soul can remember your soul. Or maybe you can write a little letter to me before you go. But you don’t have to do anything if it is too much trouble. I understand.


                                                                                                              *


As you can see this is an email written by Little S. completely on her own, without Adult Me stepping in or editing away the most embarrassing bits. This is not an easy thing to do, allowing your inner child to voice their fears – in their own way – in spite of your adult self’s embarrassment and self-consciousness, but it is such a valuable tool, because when it comes to therapists [read: pseudo-parents] going away, it is often that very young part of you that takes the biggest hit. All those fears of being abandoned, forgotten, and left behind shoot straight through Adult Me’s far tougher shell, and allowing those feelings to be exposed can really make a difference.

So, we took time to look at those feelings, with P. working very hard at getting us [all the different parts] to acknowledge our true feelings, both about the actual break and about P. herself. – Yes, we are talking about acknowledging anger and disappointment and feeling let down here. Can’t honestly say that I quite managed to go all the way this time round, either, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying, and especially Little S. did a great job of using a few sessions to speak directly to P. So, yes, I’m really rather proud of us all.

Knowing that things might get more than just a little bit rough during P.’s absence I sorted out a referral appointment with the crisis resolution team for the day of my last session with P. This, too, was new: me reaching out to ensure that a bit of extra support would be on hand prior to actually hitting rock bottom.

This has worked out really well, especially since the person I saw for the assessment told me right away that they would be working with me all the way through until P. is back, rather than doing the usual little dance of “We’ll see you x times, to begin, and review your needs as we go”. That has been incredibly helpful, because as much as I always say that how difficult a break is going to be is completely independent of how long it is, it is far easier to cope with little chunks of a day or two at a time, than trying to deal with an overwhelming fourteen day break in one go.

Knowing that I’d be working with the CRT throughout meant that we were able to schedule regular appointments, and also to ensure that on top of in-between appointments I would definitely be seen on all significant dates during this period: Christmas Eve [that’s when we celebrate Christmas back home, and I reserve the right to call people who insist on celebrating on the 25th Stragglers!], New Years Eve, my mother’s birthday and the anniversary of my first suicide attempt [when the abuse I was being subjected to came out]. So, that has really has been very useful.

In our final session before the break, Little S. gave P. a letter which she read in session, so that we could talk about it, and P. gave us a card on which she had – among other things – written a special bit for Little S., to remind her that feeling bad is not the same as being bad, and that she won’t forget me, because she ‘carries me in her heart, just as I carry her inside when we’re not together’. Also, as she has done over the last few breaks [and some particularly difficult weekends] P. leant me her little soap stone hippo – let’s call him Ringo – who fits perfectly in my hand, to keep me company. Needless to say [but I think I’ll say it anyway], both Ringo and the card have been invaluable to me.

It’s not been a bump free ride, but I do feel very proud of how I was able to prepare for this break, and for accessing help during it, rather than making it harder than it needed to be.

Do be kind to your Selves.
And your elves.
They are not just for Christmas, you know!

All the very best,

xx

 
What song did P. leave me with? For me to know, and you to guess.

But here’s a good one:

http://youtu.be/UVDg8fVC4EQ

A Little Bit About Attachment Based Therapy

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Attachment, Communication, Expressing Emotion, Inner Conflict, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with P, The Therapeutic Relationship and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Parent & Child – Building Blocks and Stepping Stones

I had an email recently [notice the common thread from my previous post..?] from a reader who wanted to know more about the kind of therapy that I am currently doing: attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapy. [Just drips off the fingertips when you type it out in full, doesn’t it..?]. So – after some thinking – I wrote her back, and I thought I would use a modified version of what I wrote in that email as a basis for this post, because it turned out to be a really good thinking exercise for me. What is it like to be in attachment-based therapy? In what way is it different to the more classic psychoanalytic therapy I did before?

Before I go on to recreate my email reply I want to make very clear something which I failed to highlight in my original response, namely that it is attachment-based therapy that I am doing. This has absolutely nothing to do with the highly controversial pseudo-“therapeutic” approach known as ‘ attachment therapy’, which is something I would never choose to do, nor would ever recommend to anyone anywhere, as it is, in my view, nothing but a re-scripted form of abuse trying to pass as therapy, practised on already traumatised children.. Strong words, I know, but then I do feel very strongly about calling something therapy that is clearly not therapeutic.. And I really don’t want anyone to think that this is the kind of treatment I’m undergoing three times a week.

Now that’s out of the way – let’s cut to the email and talk about attachment-based therapy:

Having previously been doing more classic psychoanalytic therapy with A., I would say that – in my experience – the main difference that the “attachment based“-part offers is that it is a very open and relational approach to therapy. Of course, all therapy is about forming a solid relationship with your therapist, but attachment based therapy puts a very heavy emphasis on building a real and genuine relationship with your therapist. It is an open invitation to form a strong attachment with your therapist, an opportunity to learn that it is OK – and safe – to attach to someone else, to allow yourself to be cared for and to depend on another person. I think this is an incredibly valuable [and often unbearably frightening!] thing to be offered, particularly for people who have not had the opportunity to experience safe and secure attachments during childhood, whether through having been given up for adoption, through abuse or through having had parents who simply lacked the skills needed to be the safe adult that all children need and deserve.

I suppose that being in attachment based therapy is a little bit like being re-parented. Not in a being-bottle-fed-again kind of way, nor in the sense that you don’t have to take responsibility for yourself or your actions, but in that you are given the opportunity to learn [ever so slowly!] to trust that someone else can really and truly be there for you, to be allowed the luxury of finding out that you are not ‘too much’ and that you can be loved and accepted for all that you are, including the bits that you feel ashamed of, the bits that you would rather keep hidden, even from yourself.

In our nearly two years together [two years? already!?] P. and I have slowly built our relationship through mutual openness. I try to be as open as I can with her, and she, too, shares openly of herself with me. I don’t mean that she self-discloses lots, but that she shares of who she is with me. The best way I can explain it is that rather than putting on her ‘therapist hat’ for me at the start of each session, she simply is who she is all the way through, and part of that is that she is a trained therapist, and she utilises the skills she has gained through her therapist training in our relationship. [I have no idea if this makes any sense to you, but I hope it does].

P. talks directly and honestly with me – no ‘blank canvas stuff’ – and I try to do the same. In fact, it is often through her openness that I dare do the same. P. has even talked about the love she feels for me and the special place I have in her heart, [now, that’s a Special Kind Of Scary, believe you me!] and she will tell me if something I say moves her or makes her angry or sad or confused or proud or frustrated, etc etc etc. And that really is one of the greatest things about our therapy, because it gives me a model to copy, makes it OK for me to tell her if something she has said or done moves me or makes me angry or sad or confused or proud or frustrated; it is very similar to how a parent who allows themself to show and share a wide range of emotions with their child, teaches the child that it is fine to do the same, that all feelings are OK and can be accepted. To me, this is also one of the more obvious differences between the psychoanalytic therapy I was doing with A. and the attachment based therapy P. and I are doing – the way P. provides a model to follow.

One of my absolute favourite things about P. is that she’ll laugh out loud if I say something she finds funny – with no attempt at all at trying to hold back her response in favour of analysing my joke. Of course there is a fair bit of analysing going on in our therapy, too, but it is much more a case of us jointly thinking about why certain things come up and looking together at why other things don’t, than P. silently sitting there analysing my every word. And if I sense that P. is hesitating to say something to me,  or seems upset by something I’ve said, we can talk about that, too. – Trust me, she doesn’t get let off the hook if I think she is holding back! Or if she is bringing attention to something more than I feel is warranted, for that matter.

Another important aspect of our relationship is that P. is constantly reassuring me that she is there for me and that she can cope with what I tell her [in the same way that a secure parent would reassure their child]. P. also encourages all the different parts of me [Little S, Adult Me, bob etc] to take part in our therapy and to share their feelings, so that we can begin to understand the dynamics inside, to see how the different parts work together and what causes friction and inner conflict. I’m not talking about dissociative personalities here, just the very ordinary internal structure we all have – the inner child, the responsible adult, the raging teenager etc etc.

Because I sometimes find it difficult to allow Little S. to speak in session [Adult Me tends to get embarrassed by her childish neediness and her desire to have a mummy who will look after her and love her] P. encourages all the different parts to email or text her in between sessions and over weekends, so that those parts that perhaps couldn’t be heard in the session have a chance to share, too. And that really has been an invaluable tool which has added a whole different dimension to our therapy. 

When I [or Little S. or bob] contact P. outside of session she will respond to texts and emails not just with a quick one-liner saying “We’ll talk about it on X-day”, but instead she responds in full to whichever part contacted her, sharing her thoughts, and also reassuring me that she really wants me to share what’s going on with me between sessions, that she wants to know.. Just like a parent would. Or at least should.   – I won’t lie, it has taken me a looooong time to feel OK with reaching out to P. between sessions, in all honesty a lot of reassurance is still needed – but, thankfully, she is happy to provide that, and that is so helpful to me, because I do need that reminder regularly. Very regularly.  We’re not talking P. telling me that it is OK to write her once or twice or even fifty times, we’re talking at the end of most sessions and after most of my emails..

Also, P. knows me well enough by now to know that – despite her constant reassurance – one of my greatest fears is that I will break her through asking too much of her, or through sharing too much Bad Stuff, and that those fears tend to crop up immediately after a difficult session, so she will often save a few minutes towards the end of a session for me to ‘check her out’. [As I’m writing this, I can hear her ever so gently asking ‘How are you feeling now? Do you need to check how I’m feeling..?’]

There is of course lots and lots more to write about doing this style of therapy; there is no way that I could fit it all into a single post, but I do hope that I have, through my rather rambling writing, given you at least a little bit of an insight into what being in attachment based therapy can be like.

Of course, this is just my experience – someone else might have a completely different idea of what attachment based therapy is like, and – as I know I’ve written on my blog previously – therapy is far less to do with the theoretic approach – that’s merely a backdrop – and much much more to do with the relationship and chemistry you build with your specific [or, in my case, terrific ;) ] therapist.

But I suspect y’all knew that already – ‘cause you’re a clever lot!

All the very best,

xx

PS. You are more than welcome to disagree with my opinion of attachment ‘therapy’, just don’t expect me to change my view about this particular subject..

Progress And Pain – Parenting My Inner Child

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with P, The Therapeutic Relationship and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s been a long time. It’s been too long, really. I suppose that I just needed a proper break from things. Or, rather, I needed to use what little energy I could muster to deal with the bare essentials, hence largely withdrawing from the world, both online and in my day-to-day interactions with family and friends.

It has been, and still is, a very rough ride. Since the beginning of the year I have had three rounds of crisis team intervention and one admission to Drayton Park, all with that burning hopeless feeling that ‘It’s pointless, it won’t make a difference’. Except, from an external point of view it has; I am still here now. I might not have been.

Therapy is the one thing that I feel is actually going well. But, as is so often the case when it comes to therapy, ‘going well’ involves a decent sized chunk of dizzying pain. The therapeutic process has never been heralded as a ‘free from unwanted side effects’ type of medication..

I continue to build my relationship with P., doing this quirky little two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance, putting my most deep seated fears and trust issues through their paces. Progress is slow, but at least we are moving. Those of you who have been in therapy will know exactly what I am talking about; one session and – almost out of nowhere – you find the courage of a lioness and take a giant leap forward, right across the abyss – the next two sessions; withdrawing and giving in to age-old fears of being let down, needing to test and re-test your therapist, to check that they really are for real, that those encouraging words won’t turn out to just be empty promises.

My need for emotional hand-holding and reassurance has known no limits in these last months and weeks, and consequently P. has had to work darn hard for the pennies.. She tells me that she knew what she was signing up for when she decided to take me on, I argue that she can’t possibly have known – because she didn’t know me – she then agrees that this is true, but reassures me that she has a very strong sense of what she can cope with, and that I really really really am not too much for her. And we take another tiny step forward.

As I have said many times before, I don’t think therapy is meant to be easy, I think it’s meant to be worth it.

Right now we are standing at the door of a two week therapy break, so – predictably – all of Little S.’s abandonment fears are awakened and hyper aroused. Adult Me works hard to try to explain that it will be OK, that we have been through – and have survived – many, many breaks before, and that we will get through this one, too, but Little S. clamps her hands firmly over her little ears, certain that this is the end of the safety and pseudo-mothering we have enjoyed from P.

What it boils down to is that my inner child, just like any other child, has no real understanding of time, and so a separation from P. is not a temporary state, but is permanent and absolute. And, again like most children, when the caregiver goes away, she assumes that this must be because of something she has done. This, in turn, makes Little S., go back and forth between putting unrealistic pressure on herself to be ‘all good’ [because, if she is very very good, maybe P. won’t leave her] and needing to self-punish [because she must have been bad, to make P. go away]. Adult Me works very hard to try to help regulate the extremes, but parenting your own inner child is not an easy task, especially when so many of Little S.’s thought patterns and beliefs still live on in Adult Me.

I still have three sessions left before the commencement of this two-week-bordering-on-eternity break, so there is time to talk this through with P., time to get another shot of reassurance injected, and hopefully that will alleviate at least some of Little S.’s [and Adult Me’s] anxiety.

We’ll see..

Anyway, take good care of your Selves, and thank you all so much for sticking with me through this hiatus, of sorts.

xx

Twenty-fourteen – A Year Of Changes & Challenges

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Acceptance, Attachment, Flashbacks, Hearing loss, Memories, Personal Growth, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with A, Psychotherapy with P, PTSD/Extreme Emotional Stress Disorder, Sef-Awareness, Separation-Anxiety, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, The Therapeutic Relationship and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I thought I’d make one final push to get an update out before the end of the year. I’m not in a great place, hence radio silence on most channels, but sometimes that’s when the best blog posts come out, so let’s hope for the best. Could be nothing, could be something.

It’s been a rough year. There are no two ways about it. At the beginning of the year I ended with my therapist of five years and started over with a new one. It’s a big transition, moving from A. to P., and a huge emotional undertaking. It’s a bit like being asked to switch out your parents. Sure, your parents might not always get you, might be unfair, might make mistakes, might be downright unsuitable to parent anyone, but at least you know them, right? You know their habits, their triggers, their blind spots and you know how they react to the things you say and do. And you also know how you react to the things they say and do. It’s that comfortable – if often less-than-ideal – Familiar versus the scarily unpredictable Unknown that I’ve written about so many times in the past.

That was pretty much what I was going through with A. at the beginning of the year, as we slowly neared and then reached The Ending. Things had been running along the heading-for-an-irreparable-relationship-breakdown route for some time – probably for far longer than I was ready to admit to you, or myself, at the time – but at least I knew what to expect, knew when odds were that my words would be met with silence, knew when there was potential for disappointment. I also knew what not to say and what not to do to keep the status quo, to keep us from falling off the edge. In addition, I was standing on the bedrock of our previous years together, all the times we had communicated really well, spoken a similar emotional language. I had a good sense of where we had one another, of how big or small the distance between us was at any given time, how close we could get, how much trust there was and where the boundaries of our relationship were; all those things that had made our work together so meaningful and fruitful for such a long time. So, it was with a lot of sadness that I had to accept that the time for us to part ways had come.

I had met P. only once before we actually started our joint therapeutic journey. Fifty shared minutes during an initial consultation to decide whether or not we could be A Match. I left that first meeting in December last year feeling that, yes, she could potentially be someone I could learn to trust, given enough time and space to Thoroughly Test what sort of stuff she was made of. But, apart from that gut feeling I didn’t know much about her [or attachment-based therapy] when I went for my first real session in February. I knew that there was something about the way she actively sought to make eye contact in that first meeting that both scared me beyond reason and made me feel that she genuinely wanted to get to know the real me. Actually, let me rephrase that: the way she actively sought to make eye contact with me scared me beyond reason, because she so clearly wanted to get to know the Real Me. Not just the Me she could glean or guess at from the polite introductory phrases or the bullet pointing of my fragmented, chequered and often painful past during this initial meeting, but the Real Me hiding behind all that – the Me that only comes out after the Thorough Testing has been done. The Me that even A., after nearly five years, was only just beginning to get to know.

I took the plunge, and it turned out that the water was far more calm and warm than I had expected. As K. put it only the other day: ‘When you finished with A. I didn’t think you’d ever be able to build a relationship with another therapist. I thought the trust had been shattered for good. I’m amazed at how quickly your relationship with P. has developed.’ I get exactly what K. meant, because it was what I, myself, was thinking at the time. How would I be able to trust? Why should I?

I suppose the answer to that lies in the way P. is, really. I wasn’t at all ready to trust, and P. was able to accept that completely, without any expectation that this would change. Was able to meet me where I was at. She was able to accept that I simply didn’t know if I really wanted to go on with therapy, or even with life. The exact thing that had ultimately caused the breakdown with A. The very thing A. had made clear she couldn’t accept; that I may not only feel that life wasn’t for me, but that I might actually act on it. P. made me, almost immediately – without the Thorough Testing – feel that this was a part of me she could accept. She in no way gave me license to act, but she simply accepted that this could be one of the paths our journey might take.

Then, of course, only a few months later this was put to the test. A splash of a toxic chemical on my tongue, the swallowing of some tricyclics – which I still to this day don’t remember taking – an ambulance ride from the women’s crisis centre to A&E and eleven hours in a coma.

Some might say this was part of my Thorough Testing. I’m not going to argue for or against. All I know is that we survived it: P. didn’t break, didn’t conclude that the reality of acting out was so different from the theory and phantasy of it that she could no longer work with me.

And our relationship grew a little stronger.

The aftermath of this overdose – along with a previous, more serious, intake of that same ototoxic chemical – was the loss of most of what remained of my already damaged hearing. Another big thing to deal with; the knowledge that my actions would have a lifelong effect – near deafness. But, also, in a backwards kind of way, the realisation that even when I mess up it is still within my power to do something about it; the decision to hop on the not-so-joyful steroid ride, the slight but miraculous recovery of some hearing, the sorting out of hearing aids [even though it at times makes me feel I’m ninety-something rather than thirty-something].

And all year long this journey has of course been fenced in and intercepted by flashbacks, by horrendous memories of a past that is never really in the past and by nightmares that don’t go away just because I wake up. Post but-never-quite-over traumatic stress disorder. The stuff that makes day to day life all but impossible to plan. The never knowing if a day will be a 40, 100 or near continuos flashback day. Making plans, cancelling plans, scheduling and rescheduling – because I simply can’t know in advance if any given day will be one where I can leave my house without putting myself at risk.

At the moment it seems worse than usual, more 100-a-day days than 40s. I went to visit my father for the first time in two and a half years at the end of November. That may have something to do with it. I don’t know. It might be related to the fact that both P. and K. have now gone on their respective Chrismukkah breaks, leaving Little S. feeling sad, scared and abandoned, and Adult Me struggling to cope in their absence. Or it might be chance. But, whatever the reason, it’s not so easy to deal with.

Anyway, I want to take the time to thank all of you who have faithfully stuck with me through the ups and downs of this year, in spite the updates being few and far between. It does make such a difference to me. It touches me deeply every single time one of you takes the time to post a comment or write me an email to share a bit of your Selfs with me. I know that is how most of my replies to your communications begin, but it is for a good reason: it’s the truth. I am very grateful for your support.

So, wherever you are in your lives, whatever is going on for you right now, good or bad, I do wish you all the very best.

xx

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Hearing the Littles – A Therapy Break Update

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Expression Through Art, Identity, Inner Conflict, Intellectualisation, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with P, Sef-Awareness, Transference and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Våga Lita - Dare Trust A reminder written on my arm before going into a therapy session shortly before The Break

Våga Lita – Dare Trust
A reminder written on my arm before going into a therapy session shortly before The Break

It is far too early on a Sunday morning for me, or indeed anyone, to be awake. But, I am. Anxiety is stretching my nerves to the point of breaking, and I have been unable to sleep for about forty hours. Insomnia isn’t out of the norm for me; it is part of my pattern. But the anxiety is. Or, at least, the level of anxiety. I can feel the extreme imbalance of the chemicals surging through my system, splashing around, crashing into each other and the rocky shores of my insides that have until now been unknown to me. The inner landscape of my body is soaked, drenched, in acidic anxiety, and I can’t think of how to rid myself of it, how to alkalise.

I know that I can and will get through this. I have survived it before, and I will again. It is just that the strength of emotions have taken me by surprise. Yes, I was nervous about this upcoming break in therapy for weeks before it started, but I thought that perhaps this time might be different, because, in contrast to many other breaks, I – we – P. and I, had spent so much time talking about it, preparing for it, putting in place things to make it more manageable. And I, foolishly it seems now, thought that that in itself might dull the sharpness of my feelings. But it doesn’t.

I miss P. terribly, and even though I have talked to my friends about it, and many of them have responded with empathy – more so than in the past, it seems – I am still left feeling that no one really understands the depth of my emotions. Or maybe it is a sense that others expect Adult Me – the intellectualising, reasoning, part of me – to handle this, to take charge and make it all OK, for all of the different parts inside of me. Truth be told, I think that even I expect her to.

But, what happens during a therapy break – a break from my pseudo parent – is that Little S. – not Adult Me – is the one who is reacting to this separation. Adult Me can watch, but can do nothing about that, because Adult Me wasn’t there when the fear of separation and abandonment, was born. Adult Me hadn’t yet been formed when Little S. – or even before then – tiny Baby S. were dealing with life in a world where there simply was no stability, where her parents gave her up and left her to fend for herself, completely void of tools with which to do so. Because of this, the reassurance Adult Me is continually trying to offer rings hollow to Baby S., in exactly the same way reassurance from anybody else does. Adult Me may be one of many parts that forms the whole of me, but she wasn’t there when it happened, and as far as the Littles are concerned, she doesn’t get it any more than my incredibly kind and well-meaning friends do. Not emotionally. And Little and Baby feel just as nakedly defenceless as they did back then.

Of course Adult Me has acquired lots of tools over the years to deal with situations like these. And during normal, daytime, hours, she makes the most of those tools and is often successful in temporarily alleviating much of the fear and anxiety. But when the rest of the world goes to sleep, and Adult Me is exhausted from a day of constantly trying to soothe those Little parts, when she needs a break to stock up on supplies, that’s when the primal scream of Baby S. sounds the loudest, deafening all intellectualisation and reasoning.

Baby S. was about six months old when she was adopted, when she came to live with her new parents in Sweden. No one knows, and Baby S. can’t remember, what happened in the six months before then. But the emotional echoes of the feelings born in those months still bounce between the walls of her outer shell, and when something like this – a separation, a perceived abandonment from a care giver – happens, those echoes amplify and drown out everything else. The echoes are always there, even in peacetime, noticeable in the fear of forming attachments with others and the difficulty in trusting, but when an actual separation happens something explodes in her, because just as Baby S. couldn’t know at the time that that abandonment would be temporary, she is now – still – blind to this fact. Baby S. only knows the here and now, isn’t able to look to the future, so when Adult Me, in sheer exhaustion, takes a break from reassuring Baby S., Baby S. thinks that this will last forever.

I wrote an email to P. a few weeks prior to her going on her summer break, about the whole How to cope with your therapist abandoning you for a minor eternity-issue, and as I am writing this now, it strikes me that that is exactly what I am dealing with: a minor eternity. It is minor in the eyes of the world, even in Adult Me’s eyes, but to Baby S. and Little S. – both of them too young to understand the concept of weeks or days or even minutes – it is an Eternity. And eternities have no foreseeable end.

As I wrote at the beginning, I will get through this separation, just as I have got through separations in the past. But in order to help Baby S. and Little S. I need to remind Adult Me to deal with them gently and patiently in the understanding that they have not yet got as far in the healing process as she has. They will get there eventually, but it will take more than the survival of a few therapy breaks for them to feel safe enough to integrate fully, to get to a place where The Whole can begin to work as a single entity, rather than as a multitude of frightened independent parts.

So, I say to myself, as much as I do to you:
be kind to your Selves.

 

Much love,

xx

 

The Beginning Of A Break

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Coping Strategies, Expressing Emotion, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with P, Separation-Anxiety, The Therapeutic Relationship and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Had my final pre-therapy break session yesterday, and it was hard. Or, maybe hard isn’t the right word? It was emotional. Not emotional as in floods-of-tears-streaming-down-my-face-fifty-minutes-straight, but it certainly stirred things up inside of me in a big way.

So, P. and I spent most of the session talking about all the different feelings this break is bringing up for me. How it makes me feel like the abandoned, forgotten baby I once was, the distant echoes from when I was tiny and was given up by my birthmother, and how – even though I have no conscious memory of it – that must have had a profound effect on me. I also retold the story that my mother [technically adoptive mother, but it’s not a term I ever use; she’s just my mother] has told me so many times: that about two or three weeks after I was adopted my mother was downstairs doing something with my brothers, and she completely forgot about me. Not as in ‘she forgot that I was upstairs in the baby swing’, but as in ‘she utterly and completely forgot that I even existed’. My mother tells this story as a bit of an amusing anecdote, but of course, there isn’t really anything very much fun about it at all: I had already been given up once and then only a few weeks later my new mother also forgot that she had a baby to care for..

We also talked about how I simultaneously fear it will be an incredibly difficult break and that it won’t be difficult at all. That it, paradoxically, is easier to deal with the idea of finding this break an immense struggle, than to cope with the idea that it mightn’t affect me much at all. Because, if it isn’t difficult, if it doesn’t affect me, what does that say about P.’s and my relationship? Of course, it could just mean that I have simply developed better ways of self-soothing than during previous therapy breaks, but, knowing myself, I am far more likely to jump with instant certainty to the conclusion that it must be because P.’s and my relationship isn’t really all that special after all etc etc etc.

Last week P. gave me a few suggestions of things we could do to make me feel less abandoned during this break, to allow me to hold on to her even when I’m not actually seeing her. One of her suggestions was to give me a recording of her voice for me to listen to, if she started feeling too distant in my mind. I rejected that idea right away, stating that it wouldn’t be all that useful, considering how poor my hearing is, all the while knowing that that wasn’t the reason at all, but rather that something about having a voice recording felt too close and too scary for me to cope with. Another suggestion, in a similar vein, was that perhaps it would be helpful if she were to give me a photograph of herself to look at. This led to me coming clean and admitting that I already have a picture of her, and that – yes – I do find it very helpful to look at it. P. said that this photo would be different, though, because this would be a photo she had given me, which I agreed it would be, but that I needed to think about it.

What I failed to explain to her at the time, and which later came back to haunt me in the form of a number of sleepless nights, was that I said nothing about why [how?] I had a picture of her. Eventually, it got to me so much that I had to write her an email to explain that it wasn’t quite as creepy-stalkerlike as it may seem: because of the prosopagnosia I have taken to doing a quick search engine/social media scan for a pic to add to any new contact I put in my address book, including the guy who comes to fix the boiler. Just for clarity: I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong in having your therapist’s photo; most clients have a very natural, healthy curiosity about their therapist, and googling someone is hardly the crime of the century – it was more the fact that I hadn’t said anything about it to P. that was bothering me, because it filled me with anxiety that she might think I was exhibiting creepy stalkerlike behaviour. Unfortunately, the very sweet email she wrote back to reassure me that this wasn’t the case, that she didn’t feel it was either creepy or stalkerlike, for some reason didn’t make it through to my inbox, and consequently my anxiety was quadrupled over the next two days. But, we managed to talk all of that through later.

In the end I did accept P.’s offer of giving me a photograph. The actual photo is one that my prosopagnostic brain has trouble deciphering as being of her – there is something about the fact that she isn’t smiling with her eyes – as she so often does in session – that makes it hard for me to understand that it is really her in the photo, but it still means a lot to me having it. I treasure it in the same way that I might treasure a handwritten note from her, precisely because it is from her. I also showed P. the picture I already had of her, and I think she understood why that is a picture I find much easier to connect emotionally with – because in that photo she seems very relaxed and is indeed ‘smiling with her eyes.’

The final idea of how to cope with this separation was one I came up with. I had been thinking about what exactly all of those fears inside of me really are, and what different ways we had worked out to deal with each one of them, and I realised that one of my biggest fears – the one about being forgotten and left behind – could also be dealt with, with a photo. This time, I suggested to P. that maybe I could send her a photo, of me, because even though Adult Me intellectually knows that I won’t disappear from P.’s memory the second I am out of sight, her having something of me with her would make Little S. feel a lot better. [For long term followers, this idea was a modified version of the rubber duck I gave A. in our very last session together.]

So, all in all, that last pre-break session was a good one. I felt quite overwhelmed by P. saying so many kind things to me, particularly when she said that her having my photo meant that she could take me with her on her leave.. But, as I also explained to her, it was good overwhelming, not bad..

Right at the very end of the session P. asked one last time if there was anything else she could do for me, to which I said: “Just make sure that you DO come back”.

To which she replied that she wanted the exact same thing from me.

 

xx

Reconnecting

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Attachment, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, Friends, Inner Conflict, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with P, PTSD/Extreme Emotional Stress Disorder, Separation-Anxiety, The Therapeutic Relationship and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been writing this update in my head for about a month, only I’ve not got down to typing it up. I am struggling to remember where I was at, emotionally, when I posted my last update, but I know that it wasn’t a very nice place.

Things sort of spun out of control for a bit. I went into the worst period of constant flashbacks I have ever experienced and ended up, once again, at Drayton Park. The whole first two weeks of staying there I more or less only ventured outside of my room to see P. for therapy. I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep and didn’t socialise with any of the other women who were staying there, so this stay was very different to many of my previous stays at Drayton Park. I simply found it too much to be around others when I was being thrust back into the past again and again and again, in an endless waking nightmare of relentless flashbacks.

Something very serious happened while I was at the crisis house, something I still don’t feel I have properly processed or understood, and I may come back to that another time, but for the time being I won’t go into it. I need more time to think about it.

In my third and final week at Drayton Park the frequency of flashbacks began to decrease and I was able to be my usual self a bit more. I had a few really good conversations with some of the other women staying at the project, feeling privileged to be allowed hear their stories and to get to know them a little. It is always a very special thing when someone decides to trust you enough to share of themselves.

I saw D., my ex-counsellor, in passing a few times during my stay [since she is based at Drayton Park one day a week] and we had some good, honest banter over lunch one day. In fact, it must have been really good, even to others listening in, because after D. left one of the residents asked me if D. was my mother, because we had such a ‘natural and easy way with one another’. How anyone could associate ‘natural and easy’ with a mother-daughter relationship is beyond me, it certainly doesn’t fit with any experience of a mother-daughter relationship I’ve ever had, but it was a very nice thing to hear, nonetheless.

Good banter aside, as D. and I were ending one of our little mini-conversations she told me to take good care of myself. Force of habit I shot a semi-automatic “I always do” coupled with a bright smile in her direction. Only, this being D. on the receiving end, she didn’t just let that statement slide, but immediately lobbed a “No, you don’t” back at me. She then paused, looked me right in the eye and slowly repeated “No. You don’t.” And there was so much feeling in those words. There was an unspoken – but clearly received – message of ‘I so wish that you did take good care of yourself. Because you really, really matter.’  And that meant a lot to me.

 

*

 

It has now been four weeks since I left Drayton Park, and there have been both ups and downs. The frequency of flashbacks seems to be back to normal, more or less. It is in no way easy to deal with the flashbacks, regardless of the less intense frequency, but it is a lot better than what it was. As I explained to a friend of mine; it’s a bit like my breathing. While my breathing is never really all that good, immediately after a bad asthma attack the ‘not so good’ still feels like a relief, by comparison.

Therapy with P. is going well and we are continuing to build our relationship, making sure to take plenty of time to do so, so that all of the different parts of me – especially Little S., who is so terribly afraid of anything that resembles trust and care and attachment – feels both seen and heard. Little S. gets scared, because she learned very early on that all of those things will inevitably lead to pain and hurt, and as much as Adult Me wants to challenge that fear, wants to show her that this relationship with P. can be safe and won’t necessarily lead to pain, it takes time and patience to get there. It takes a lot of work to truly alleviate fears that are that deeply rooted.

We are coming up to our first therapy summer break by the end of this week and as a consequence anxiety has been running high both for Little S. and for Adult Me. Regular readers of this blog will know that psychotherapy breaks is a topic I have written about a lot over the years, because it brings to the fore all of my fears about being abandoned and forgotten. It is also one of those things that people who haven’t been in therapy never seem to fully understand or appreciate. And, to me, that is also part of what makes breaks in therapy difficult; the sense that others don’t understand how hard they really are. Whenever I mention to ‘non-therapy’ friends that I feel really anxious about an upcoming break, I always get the feeling that they are thinking that I am worrying over nothing. And if I, during the actual break, say something along the lines of finding it hard that my therapist is away, the immediate response is invariably ‘When will she be back?’ followed by an equally predictable ‘Well, it’s only X weeks left’. This, of course, feels terribly invalidating, since a therapy break isn’t really about length of time at all, but about strength of emotions and how to cope with them in the absence of a safe place to explore them.

P. and I have been talking about this upcoming break and how I will be able to manage while she is away. P. had a few different suggestions of things we could do and I felt incredibly touched by them. I know that it probably seems a little silly, but it had never even entered my mind that she would have spent time thinking of ways to make this easier. I am so used to doing all my thinking and coping on my own, and I feel simultaneously grateful and overwhelmed by the care she has shown me leading up to this break.

 

I think I will end this update here.
Hopefully it won’t be quite so long before I post another one.
[I always seem to be saying that, these days].

Just before I leave you for this time: Thank you all so very much for the many moving and kind words posted in the form of comments and emails during this past blog hiatus. I am sorry that I haven’t been able to respond to all of you, but please know that I do read every single email and comment, and they really do mean a huge deal to me.

Namaste.

 

xx