A whole hour of glorious attunement and empathy

After the initial admin Mark handed the session over to me and I really had no idea where to start, which I said to him. He suggested I let things settle a bit, which I did. I said, ‘this morning has been weird, quite intense feelings coming up for me. I think… the past 6 months have been so crazy for me, I wish you just knew it all so I could then get on with the work but I guess the work is exactly that, it’s in the telling. And finishing with Linda on Monday was quite weird, and awkward and maybe a bit of a let down actually. So then this morning noticing the feelings come up of starting my work with you opened another layer of the grief of leaving Anna. There was a lot of crying and really feeling it all… which I wasn’t expecting.’ He said he was aware that it was all ‘up here’ for me just now and held his hand to his chest which felt very affirming. I told him I didn’t know what would be the best way to use the session, whether it would be a good idea to try to explain to him what the past 6 months have been like for me or if I should tell him more about who I am, details of my life. I told him I’m aware that I can talk too much and not leave space for the therapist, that Anna always encouraged me to slow down and pace myself rather than going too fast and retraumatise myself. He said, ‘I think I’ll come in there and respond to that. I think often slower is definitely the better way and it helps to slow down just to feel into the words that we’re saying. Sometimes I might interrupt you to do that and you’re free to tell me you wish to carry on but yeah, sometimes it’s important to slow down and tune in to whatever is going on in the body as we speak of things.’ He said some more things about that then said, ‘where I’m coming from is that there is no rush, it may feel different from your side… and I’m very curious and interested about the last 6 months or whatever else you want to bring. But I think it’s important to bring it at a pace that’s right for you. I know some people do history taking and all that sort of stuff but I believe it will arrive in its own time. But I do want to know your history when it’s ready to be said, you know? I trust that it will just come forward.’

I struggled to put what I was feeling into words and eventually said, ‘There’s this sense inside me of having to start again.’ I started to feel the pain rising and I continued, ‘it is grief.’ He said, ‘of course.’ I said, ‘I stand by what I said at the end of the last time we spoke, I feel really hopeful and excited and pleased to have connected with you and this feels good… it’s really showing me that it just wasn’t a good match with Linda you know? Having said that there’s this real sadness that I’m having to start again and that I’ve done this… I did it with Paul and I did it with Anna and I did it with Linda…’ I was aware of the emotions swelling in my chest and burning my throat. ‘…and I’ve got this awareness of that it was so many layers of the work, it wasn’t the same work repeated and it was different with each of them, deeper and deeper especially with Anna but there’s still this… I don’t know what the feeling is…’ my voice started to shake and Mark gently said, ‘yeah, lets just make some room for all of that just to be felt and I’m here to support you with it.’ I started to cry a little and said, ‘It’s a ‘not fair’ feeling, it’s not fair! That this has happened over and over and over again and frustration, maybe anger at them leaving you know?’ I really felt Mark’s presence and interestingly as I remember it in my mind it feels as if we were in the same room, amazingly. I continued, ‘but then there are so many different parts of me because I’m aware that this in itself is progress, I couldn’t express my emotions in front of Anna for the first two years of our work, I’m a completely different person to who I was when I walked into her office a few years ago.’ He said, ‘that’s fantastic actually isn’t it, you can see the progress you’re made and that’s good but right now it doesn’t wholly feel good because there’s this place in you… it’s not fair and there are some mixed and painful feelings about that. It makes sense to me… you had things that were good and you’ve lost them.’ I was very tearful as he was speaking and his words felt like a blanket of validation or a bandage, gently covering the open wounds. I said, ‘it was so good, and I miss her a lot.’ I cried some more and he said, ‘make room for that.’

Eventually I said, ‘I started to feel like Linda was frustrated that I was still feeling like this. It was fine to work on the day to day stuff but every so often the grief would come up and I don’t think she got it. She didn’t really understand the deep attachment stuff. I described Anna as being my therapy mum… she was more of a mum to me than my mum ever was.’ Mark said, ‘that’s it isn’t it, yeah.’ I continued, ‘and the grief that I felt over losing Anna I can imagine is more powerful than if I lost my own parents… which I feel ashamed to admit but it’s true, I’m not close to them like that.’ Mark said, ‘I understood you, she was really there for you and then she wasn’t. that’s traumatic. It sounds like Linda couldn’t fully receive that in a way that was okay for you.’ I explained to Mark that moving away from Linda felt like cutting the last tie from Anna and he made a pained noise in response to that. I explained that I imagined if it ever got back to Anna that I had stopped working with Linda that Anna would think I had let go of her and I didn’t want her to think that. I wanted her to know I would go back to her immediately if she started up her practice again. ‘So I guess this feels like a commitment to letting her go and I described it to Linda as being as if I’ve been standing at Anna’s grave every day for the past 6 months, mourning her, but I’ve finally decided to turn around and walk away and get on with the rest of my life basically, and Linda said ‘you’ve always used the language of grief when talking about Anna as if she doesn’t get this at all.’ Mark said, ‘it is a grief. And your metaphor there is really powerful, isn’t it. Its like standing at a grave every day for months and now a part of you is ready to walk away. And its painful walking away. It feels sore, it feels raw. And that’s what you’re with at the moment. It’s not all that you’re with but that’s there and just be open to that as it is.’ I was quite tearful again and said, ‘Linda said, ‘she’s not dead though, is she?’’ and Mark interrupted and said, ‘She is dead to you! You KNOW she’s not dead but she feels dead to you, it’s as if she has died.’ Fucking hell that validation nearly bowled me over. I told Mark that it felt easy for Linda to tell me Anna’s not dead as she still sees her and can speak to her every day but for me I went from having all this constant contact to nothing. I said I felt it was difficult for Linda to empathise with me.

Mark said, ‘it’s very traumatic, you were dropped at a time you weren’t ready to let go.’ I said, ‘it was just as painful for Anna, I know that I meant a lot to her. She knew that with my abandonment wounds and fears of being too much, she knew the gravity of what was happening. In our last phone call she told me to remember that she wasn’t rejecting me and that I was never too much for her. It’s like it took that for me to finally believe her, that last ohone call, I finally let that in.’ Mark asked what it was like when I let it in. I said it was agony. I said, ‘it was like love and grief pouring in and out. Going from being quite numb most of the time to feeling it all.’

I then explained a bit more. ‘The lockdown started for me when the schools were closed in the middle of march and I hadn’t seen her since February 29^th because I’d been ill. We’d been in touch though. Then we had a couple of phone sessions which were really derailing, I could sense there was something wrong with her, she said she was fine but it was really unsettling I kept telling her I felt she was going to leave me or that she was going to die, although she reassured me she was fine I just had this really strong feeling that I’d never see her again. She kept telling me we’d get through it together. But then before the next session she text me saying she was unwell and didn’t know when she’d be better and she put me in touch with her colleague because we’d previously discussed this plan. So I saw Linda 6 sessions across those three weeks and in that time Linda described it as me jumping in with both feet. I really let out all the feelings. It was like a shock I guess. A lot of crying. And Anna had said I could text her which I did. Then she was well enough to start back up again and we had three sessions together. Which were the most open conversations, both ways, that we’d ever had. She talked about how hard it’d been for her, that she’d taken her feelings of jealousy and other things to supervision, it was a really powerful conversation. She told me that it was really severe asthma which was causing these long term problems. And she didn’t say this but my guess is that the covid stuff was probably causing a lot of anxiety spiralling you know, anxiety and asthma can go hand in hand…’ Mick said, ‘hard not to be really hard with that mix!’ I said, ‘and having to shield… I cant imagine having to hold space for clients when you’re in that position, you know, shielding, not seeing your family or friends, all areas of your life suddenly vanishing, struggling with asthma, possibly anxiety… I can see that all of that was a really bad mix for her. Then she said she was ill again and I felt more able to hold on to things so I didn’t go back to Linda immediately. I did eventually go back to Linda. I then got this message from Anna in the morning of the 19^th of May asking if she could phone me. I knew immediately she was going to tell me she had to stop working with me. So we had this phone call…’ I lost my train of thought and um’d and ah’d a bit and Mark said, ‘lets just have a little pause there, eh.’ I think I was holding myself quite tightly because he encouraged me to breath through my mouth.

I said, ‘I struggled a lot with my attachment stuff being triggered a lot with Anna, disorganised attachment stuff. Really wanting her but pushing her away, needing the connection and pushing it away. And the minute I saw that she was leaving, all of that went away and it’s like I was finally ready to take it all in and she was going.’ Mark said, ‘yeah, yeah what a moment.’ I said, ‘she said some lovely things to me, she said she was really proud of me and spoke directly to my child and said…’ I started to cry and Mark quietly said, ‘No rush. Lots of space for what’s coming up for you right now.’ I had my face in both my hands crying heavily and he gently continued, ‘just to let you know I’m right her with you.’ Which actually felt lovely. I cried for a couple of minutes like that and then took some deep breaths and blew my nose. Mark said, ‘it’s huge for you, huge.’ I said, ‘she was upset in the call as well, I could hear it was a really big deal for her too. I think by this point I was the last client she had left. She only had a handful of clients because she was part time and when the lockdown started I think they all stopped and it was just me and her and…’ Mark said, ‘you really mattered to each other and you felt that, together.’ I said, ‘I had never felt feelings like that before, it felt like I was breaking. Also this was in the middle of lockdown and the lockdown itself I felt quite retraumatising it brought up a lot of stuff from my childhood of being completely powerless and having my life cut back and being trapped in this house and not being able to do any of the things in my life that brought me joy. My life had gone from being full of all the things I’d made the effort to bring into my life, to being a very small box and then I lost her too.’ Mark said, ‘so it brought up some very intense feelings into something that was contracted anyway.’

I said, ‘yeah so despite it being the lockdown, after the phone call I couldn’t even speak to Adam, I text him from the bedroom telling him what happened and that I was going out. I walked down the stairs and out the house and drove to her office and sat in my car and cried for hours. Which was breaking all of the lockdown rules but I…’ Mark said, ‘you went to the place that connected you.’ I said, ‘yeah I didn’t know what to do with myself, it’s like a goldfish bowl living here with my husband and kids, all eyes on me all the time, I just needed to be by myself and to go to the only physical place that connected us.’ Mark said, ‘it makes perfect sense to me.’ (I already feel like this is going to by my favourite catch phrase of his.) I continued, ‘at some point that day I spoke to the doctor and they gave me diazepam and something else… I felt, to be honest I was having very powerful suicidal feelings coming up and I guess I needed something to help me not be completely drowned by all of that. All of the negative feelings I’d ever supressed were coming up for me. It was massive.’ Mark said, ‘what helped you through that? Coz you have come through that.’ I said, ‘um… well I wrote her an email, stayed up all night writing it and finished it at about 3 in the morning. Sent it to her and she replied. Writing really helps me.’ Mark said, ‘I’m glad to hear that.’ I said, ‘in the email I shared lots of memories from powerful or memorable sessions and how she’s impacted my life and how she will continue to impact my life and how I’ll never forget her and that I love her though I never had the guts to tell her face to face. She replied saying that she would never forget me and that she learned a lot from working with me and that my words meant a lot to her and she signed it with ‘love Anna’ – it was a really nice final communication.’ Mark asked, ‘did you feel calmed by that or… I don’t know the word… that piece was important and you’d got each other, you were separate but still with each other?’ I said, ‘yeah exactly that. That this thing was happening out with our control that neither of us wanted and that we both felt really regretful and sad about it… you know… no bad feelings. It was just, in terms of… I want nothing but happiness and health for her I just really wish things were different.’ Mark said, ‘there’s real love there, is what I’m hearing. There’s something beautiful about it and also something very painful. It’s the loss of something that was very good for both of you.’

Mark said, ‘just to check in with how it is to be talking about it now with me?’ I said, ‘it’s good to talk about it. I hadn’t realised that I was really supressing all of this because I got the sense that Linda had ran out of patience for it and in the second last session with her she said to me that she had to hold a lot every time she met with me and maybe she was holding too much. I respect her for saying it but that ‘too much’ phrase is really painful for me… but it gave me the push that I needed because I’d felt that from her for a while although she would constantly say she was fine and it was okay but this time she finally admitted that it was a lot for her. I really feel like it was her responsibility, it’s like a boundary thing, I guess she’s never been in this position before but I don’t think I should have been working wither. I think it was contaminated or something, because she was friends with Anna it was complicated you know?’ Mark said, ‘yes I absolutely get it. Yes you needed a cleaner boundary of somebody that didn’t know Anna. She couldn’t hold it, it wasn’t a clean clear space for her. And actually you picked up that it was too much for her and maybe there’s a bit of relief when she finally said it, your instincts were right.’ I said, ‘I really wanted it to work and I wanted it to work partly for the wrong reasons, partly because she knows Anna. I found it easy enough to talk to Linda I just didn’t get back what I needed.’

I went on to reflect on how he had responded to me sharing that it brought up the fears of being too much when I didn’t get a response to the initial email I sent him and said that if I had that same conversation to Linda she would have just said ‘oh I didn’t get it’ and we’d look no further into it. He said, ‘yeah looking at the stuff it triggers inside you is really the work isn’t it.’ I agreed and explained that Linda was good at the counselling side of things but not the therapy. As long as I didn’t go deeper into things she was find. ‘I found my defence mechanisms of intellectualising and reading and researching kicked into overdrive as if I was trying to look for validation in these books to confirm that what I wanted actually existed because she was not giving it to me and whenever I would bring something like that to her she would get defensive and I felt like we were constantly going through these cycles of me saying ‘this is how I’m experiencing you’ and her saying ‘that’s not what I meant’ and me feeling almost gaslit like ‘I feel this and its real’. Mark said, ‘it sounds like there wasn’t the space for that to be looked into and felt…’ I interrupted and said, ‘also, maybe she unconsciously or was aware of the fact that this wasn’t going to work and didn’t really know how to end it without abandoning me so unconsciously or not, didn’t really dive into the work almost to make it my decision to walk away… I dunno I’m analysing her now!’ Mark said, ‘well you do have a good capacity to do that and it’s an important one. I was touched earlier when you were talking about Anna and how difficult it would be for Anna. So you know your strong adult had reached into her world and if she’s asthmatic and there’s covid and all the things you said, which were all very true. It’s a big piece of you. And so that part of you is trying to make sense of Linda, and it’s a good part of you but its not the part of you that needed to be met, it’s the side of you that was missed that needed to be seen. I feel sad for you actually because you had this catastrophic loss and then Linda couldn’t hold it for you. I do feel being close friends with Anna, it would be really muddy for her wouldn’t it. That would have been between you.’

I said, ‘you know that phrase ‘what’s stands in the way becomes the way’… that’s become a bit like my mantra of mine… what happened with Anna completely obliterated my plans, completely removed me from the journey I was on… but then this thing that has obstructed my journey, that then becomes the journey. So the grief of losing Anna, navigating my relationship with Linda, figuring out what my next step was, that stood in the way but now this is the way… as much as its agony and sometimes I feel overwhelmed by it, I do have this other perspective that I’ll make this work for me!’ I laughed and said I wasn’t sure if that came across right and he said it makes perfect sense. He said, ‘it lands with me, it’s fabulous to hear. What I hear you saying is that it’s workable. This is what I have to deal with and I’m willing to deal with it. And my thought to some extent is that loss is such an integral part of life and loss can be obviously triggering depending on whatever losses we’ve experienced in our lives and whoever has helped us hold that through it. And well you’ve just had an experience of a huge loss, perhaps the biggest loss of your life. The gravity of it comes across. And it wasn’t able to be held. On the back of what you just said there’s obviously an opportunity because if we can meet and grieve and make those emotions less scary and digest them then you’re in a better place to meet life with its inevitable losses.’

I said, ‘I really struggled to get in touch with any younger grief with Anna, the childhood grief… and in the weeks following her leaving I would go for walks through nature round here and I would cry while walking or sit by the river and cry and really feel it all. It sounds kind of cheesy but it really felt like I was honouring all the work Anna and I had ever done but feeling it all and not blocking any of it. It felt like I was loving her and respecting our relationship and honouring our work together by doing exactly what the work was about which was me feeling. And it also unlocked all this other grief. So crying about Anna brings up all these other losses and I get images and thoughts and feelings come up from childhood while I’m crying for her. Its like it unlocked a door that I couldn’t get through with her, its only from losing her that the doors been opened and I’ve been able to access it all.’ Mark said, ‘yeah and in a way isn’t that both deeply sore but wonderful too… you could have shut that door, you could have shut down. That wouldn’t have been good, to shut your heart around it all, in an attempt to protect yourself. What I’m hearing is that you opened your heart and it’s a bit of a washing machine spin cycle and you might feel a bit overwhelmed, all over the place, but actually you’ve not closed off, you’ve opened up.’ I said, ‘for the first time in my whole life.’ He said, ‘and I’m hearing that is wonderful… though it might not feel like that.’ I said, ‘no you’re right there is a duality there, you can’t live your life never feeling things it comes up in other ways. And it had come up in other ways my whole life. And as much as its agony… I know what it feels like to be completely numb… that doesn’t feel there’s no feelings, numbness is a horrible place to be when you know there’s an ocean of feelings but instead all you have is numbness.  I never want to go back to that… so being in the place where I’m feeling the most physically painful feelings, I’d rather that than nothing. I’d rather feel all the feelings, than be numb.’ Mark said, ‘I’m really glad to hear that of course. And the numbness was there for a reason, it was a way of helping you manage the feelings that were unbearable perhaps but that’s not where you are right now. Your capacity for feeling has grown enormously through your work with Anna. Really tragic that it was caught short in a way but it’s also an opportunity to widen it because when you’re numb you’re living in a very small space inside yourself. There’s lots of unlived life. You’re feeling much more the depth of feelings that was held back or held in or held down. Numbness is a useful defence at times but that is what it is.’

I really loved this reframe and said, ‘Yeah that’s really true, the numbness was there for a reason, I wasn’t able to hold the feelings back then, I guess we really strengthened that part of me in my work with Anna. Because before it would feel like… I remember when I would say to her in sessions that I couldn’t cry but I wanted to, it felt like my whole body was crying apart from the parts that do the crying, I would say to her that I was worried id cry for ever and it would never stop or that it would kill me if I let the feelings be felt. It was like a damn holding this massive body of water that would have drowned me if the damn broke… and I’ve learned over the past few months… its actually amazing how your system does just let you… its like a drip feeding of overwhelm, well its not overwhelm but like… sobbing this morning for a period of time and then you go wash your face and you get some breakfast and then you today a bit and you have a session and you cry some more and you do just keep being alive, you know? It doesn’t overwhelm you..?’ Mark said, ‘yeah yeah we keep on keeping on don’t we? I’d just like to say this little bit before I check in with you… when I think about it we’ve got millions of years of evolution involved in our emotional lives and the emotions know how to move through. You know, they know how to do themselves and we often get in their way, for good reason, often because were afraid of them, but actually the stuff on the other side of them… there is a growing trust I hear in you an we can grow that together too.’ I loved that so much.

With a few minutes to go Mark said, ‘How are you left? I want to see how it’s been for you, our first session?’

I said, ‘ummm…’ for ages and then went quiet to try to check in with myself. I finally said, ‘it feels like, so an analogy came up, you know when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and you’re trying to make a piece go in where it doesn’t fit? That’s what it felt like with Linda, I really wanted that puzzle piece to fit and it didn’t. Whereas this session has felt like it’s just clicked into place. It feels like… you know what it is actually? The biggest grief, selfishly, that I felt when Anna left, is that I miss how she made me feel when I was with her. I miss the part of me that was seen by her, hasn’t been seen for months and I felt it the last time we spoke and I felt it today. That is really massive.’ Mark said, ‘yeah yeah, take a moment to just sense that in your body. That click or whatever it is that tells you that, just let yourself have that as a way of just come forward. It seems like a good way of honouring what’s come forward between us.’ I took some big deep breaths and said, ‘There’s a lot of gratitude actually.’ He said, ‘ah well that’s lovely to hear. It’s a good feeling, gratitude. And you’ve had so many difficult feelings. So sit with the gratitude.’

I then said, ‘I sort of feel like I want to check in with you, which is ridiculous!’ and I laughed. He smiled and said, ‘well no its not ridiculous it comes from somewhere! What do you need to know?’ I said, ‘the fearful child part is like, ‘do you still want to work with me after I cried in front of you?’ he said, ‘yes I do! Yeah yeah yeah you’re absolutely fine. And I did clock when you were crying, I wondered how it was for you to be seen crying because I noticed you covered your face up, I was fine with it but I wondered whether you felt uncomfortable. Wondered if you felt something about the fact that I might see your tears.’ I said, ‘yeah it’s a work in progress… the only time I ever cried with Anna I had my jumper pulled up over my head so this is progress!’ he said, ‘yeah great so that’s a good little… that helps me because I’m fine with your tears but I’m aware you might not be fine, just let me know… to me it’s good because I’ve got such a strong faith in emotions and the million years worth of tears… you know, it’s your biology working that’s where I am!’ I said, yeah ill get there I’m sure.’ Mark said, ‘yes you will you absolutely will, well you are getting there you were getting there today because you let yourself cry, in spite of any possible feelings about the crying… and its fine. I hope that reassures you.’

We ended withing each other a good weekend and again he let me end the session. I forgot to turn the recording off immediately after the session and I can hear myself get up and walk to the bathroom. I can hear myself singing all the way there and all the way back… and that pretty much sums up how I felt after the session. Lighter, freer, more openhearted, seen, understood, not alone… it felt really good.