I’ve always found it difficult to be my true self with people. Always had so much going on under the surface that no one saw. Old habits die hard.

I don’t know how to be fully authentic and open with Anna. I don’t know how to be completely vulnerable with another person. Especially not a woman. It scares me. I don’t even notice the fear but it’s there all the time, under the surface. Anna asked if I hold it in until I leave the session and I guess I always have done that. Since I was very young – that Perspex bubble around me so that the criticising, blaming, humiliating couldn’t reach me… and if I hide myself then I can’t be hurt when they don’t see me. It was the only thing I could control – that no matter what happened, they didn’t know I was hurting. I didn’t want to give them the power of knowing how I was feeling. Then I can blame myself when no one shows they care, because how were they to know?

I have a very vivid image of this little girl sobbing her heart out, wanting to crawl up onto Anna’s lap and cuddle her. She’s always either crying or hiding. The image has been popping up a lot recently, louder just before sessions. It comes through as a feeling of panic and anxiety. But in the session on Tuesday there was a wall between me and her. That happens a lot. So when Anna was trying to get me to reach inwards I just had nothing. And so Anna fills the gaps with talking and that just makes it even easier for me to hide. I get a lot from what Anna says but I know there’s a part of me that is happy to let her talk more so I can feel less. It keeps me in my head, muffling the feelings. I’m sure it’s a way to protect myself but I want the protecting part of me to fuck off, it’s not helping any more I don’t need to be protected from Anna it’s just stopping me from getting what I need. What am I so afraid of? That I’ll start to cry and wont stop? That I’ll break the dam that holds back the body of water that up until this point has only been seeping in through the cracks… that it will knock me to the ground and I will drown in it all, again, and my life will be annihilated… the life that I have worked so hard to build up. What if I go back to how I was? What if I start crying and never stop?

As soon as I left the session I felt the wave of that little girl’s pain and anguish because once again I’d abandoned her in the session when she can almost taste the comfort and support she’d get if only she could express herself. It starts as soon as I turn the corner onto the street. Then I had nightmares all night and woke up with the panicky, heavy sadness and I have to get the kids ready for school and I have to be mummy and go to work be a wife and happy, laughing, capable Lucy while I carry this intense, unignorable pain around with me.

I’m so angry with myself for not getting my fucking needs met IN THE SESSION! I mean, what the hell!?? It’s burning the back of my throat now and I’m just sitting here next to my husband ‘watching’ tv desperate to just be in the room with Anna. Because even though I feel like I can’t be completely vulnerable with her. At least I can sit in the space of not being able. I don’t have to be anything in that room. Everywhere else I have to be something or someone to somebody. But with Anna I can just be. It is the most vulnerable I have ever been with another person and it’s the most frightening thing ever. And it’s still not enough. I feel like we’re going too fast and too slow all at once. It’s too much and not enough. I want to fill the session with as many words as we can fit into an hour and I also want us both to stay silent and not utter a single word to each other. I wonder what would happen if we just said nothing… would the feelings come then, filling in the vacuum created by no words? Or maybe I would spend the whole time dissociated… just an hour of nothing.