So Anna cancelled my session… here are our messages over the past two days.

Hi Lucy. I wanted to let you know that I’m not going to be able to make our Zoom session tomorrow, as I’ve been feeling unwell. Once I’ve spoken to the doctor and understood how best to treat my symptoms and have an idea of how long it will take to recover, I’ll be in touch to rearrange.
Please do not worry, I am taking care of my health, and will keep you updated on my recovery in order to reschedule our session as soon as I’m able. In the meanwhile, if you are feeling distressed in anyway, please use our pre-agreed crisis management plan (speak to a member of your family / friend you trust; let me know if you wish Linda, my colleague, to contact you. There’s also Samaritans, book a GPs appointment; if you are for any reason feeling suicidal – take yourself immediately to A&E.) Anna.

Hi Anna, I’m really sorry to hear you’re feeling unwell. I hope that you are able to continue taking care of yourself and that you recover quickly. I want you to know that I will be fine. I’m not suicidal or having any self destructive thoughts at all. All I feel is care and concern for you, gratitude for all the work we’ve done so far and hope that we will be able to continue working together soon. Of course I’m worried about you but I think that’s understandable considering how much you mean to me. If you feel that you’ll be out of action for more than two weeks then yes I’d like Linda to get in touch with me. Please look after yourself Anna and know that I’m thinking about you and sending lots of healing vibes your way. Xx

Hi Lucy. I’m not sure at this stage how long I will be off but will let you know if it is longer than 2 weeks. Thank you for good wishes. Anna

Anna are you going to be okay? I’m actually really upset. It feels like you’re going to die. I don’t know why it feels so massive to me inside. I’m not going to hurt myself I’ll be fine that way but I just feel so much panic about all of this. I really want you to be okay.

I’m looking after myself Lucy, please don’t worry. Will be in touch when I’m able to resume sessions. Anna

Okay, thank you. I really hope to hear from you soon. In the meantime I think it would be a good idea for Linda to call me. This is all feeling pretty massive. I don’t even know what good it would do, I don’t trust anyone but you. I don’t want her, I want you, but I’m taking heed of your advice to accept help when it’s offered.
Take care, speak soon, Lucy x

I understand Lucy. Email her and she will get in touch with you tomorrow.

I emailed her… reluctantly. I hope she’s nice. And I hope you’re able to speak to me soon. Look after yourself.
Sending you a virtual hug. Lucy.

Hi Anna, I know you won’t reply to this. I really hope you’re doing okay. I wanted you to know that I’ve been in touch with Louise this morning and we’re going to have a session on Zoom tomorrow at 10am. It feels very weird arranging that with her as if I’m transitioning from you to her and I don’t want that. I really hope this is just to get me over the period of time you need to recover and that you and I will resume work together soon. I’m thinking a lot about you. Take care, Lucy.

I feel like you’re dying

I immediately apologised for the very long text I’d sent her a few days ago and she said it was alright and that she understood. I said my anxiety had been through the roof and I was really struggling but I’m feeling a bit better now. In my text I’d told her I was so scared she was going to die and that I could hardly handle not seeing her. We discussed the boundaries around texting and she explained, as gently as possible, why she will maintain the boundaries we set. She explained, ‘if we were to get into the habit of texting every day or every other day and you became use to that and something happened to me, not just me being sick but also perhaps a family member of mine being sick and me being unable to respond to your messages, it would make it harder for you to manage and you would then experience a new abandonment on top of whatever else you’re dealing with. It’s important that we stick to the sessions for our main communication. Then you can hear my tone of voice and you know exactly my meaning by whatever I am saying. I have never asked you to stop texting me but I will maintain the boundary of not replying so that you continue to know how strong and resilient and well resourced you are.’ I said, ‘it’s not that you don’t ever want to hear from me and you hate getting texts from me?’ and said, ‘noooo…. No, it’s that it’s really important you don’t rely on my replies because I can’t always guarantee they’ll be there.’ I had this deep down heavy feeling inside me, like a doom feeling… I felt that she sounded low. I asked her if she was okay and she said she was. I just really sensed something from her, an anxiety maybe. Perhaps she was worried.

I told Anna that Grace had come home from school with a short story that her teacher had given them. I told her I’d read the story to my kids after dinner and it made me cry. I just sat reading it while crying and both the kids came and hugged me. Anna reassured me that it’s okay that I showed my emotions to the kids and that this is a very strange and unusual situation and we all feel overwhelmed by it. I asked her if I could read the story to her and she said she’d like to hear it so I read it…

‘The Big Problem can’t be solved with super strength or super speed. The big problem will only stop growing if all the new Superheroes use their Stay Home Superpower to stay at home. In fact, if all the new Stay Home Superheroes work together the Big Problem will get smaller and smaller and smaller every single day until it goes away!’ mummy explained.

‘But staying home is a boring superpower!’ said William in a grump.

‘Boring? No way! You have the superpower to make this fun! And staying home is how YOU can help to save the whole world – there is nothing more powerful than that!’

Just staying home and having fun could save the whole world? And he would be a real-life superhero? William started to feel excited. He started to feel powerful too! He couldn’t wait to tell all his friends that they could turn into Stay Home Superheroes just like him.

William got to work quickly, using his Superhero creativity to think of all the fun things he could do at home. He made a long list with his mummy and daddy; pillow forts and cooking and games and dancing and puppet shows and singing and movies and MORE! Even better, Willian found out he could still play in the garden and go outside too, as long as he stayed away from all the superheroes who lived in different houses. They could wave to each other and wink, because they all knew the special job they were doing!

Willian did miss playing with his friends and going swimming and to the park. But then he remembered how important his new Superhero job was. He was helping to save the whole world and that made him feel so good inside. He was very proud of himself. Then he fired up his superpowers ready to find something fun to do. Willian the Stay Home Superhero and all his superhero friends worked hard together to help save the world, all without leaving their homes. And now you know, you can be a superhero too!

She sounded moved and my voice was shaky too. She said it was a lovely way to describe the situation to children.

I spent the next ten minutes telling Anna about all the practical things I’ve been doing to try to help me feel a little more in control of all of this. I told her I’d made a mind map of what my life will look like over the next few months and included all the things I need to remember. She told me she was so proud of me and that she was glad I was able to support myself like that. I told her about the gratitude list I made and that I have a planner for the week so that I can make video sessions and sort resources for teaching my class online while also teaching my own kids at home. I said I felt really fortunate that I have everything I need to be able to do that, not just the physical resources but also the ability within myself and knowledge and confidence that I can do it. I’m so grateful for all of that. I told her I set the livingroom up so that half of it is a classroom and that I am ready to start on Monday. She talked to me about going easy on myself and that if the kids are resistant it’s okay to take breaks and spend a lot of time outside. She said, ‘and if you find yourself struggling, this is what a supervisor said to me… you can just find a couple of minutes to sit at peace, let your eyelids fall heavy until they close and focus in on your breathing. If it is fast then try to slow it down, if that feels comfortable, and just sit there in that moment, tell yourself you are safe and that there is nothing that has to be done right then.’ I thought about Anna being told that by a supervisor and wondered how anxious and overwhelmed she has been feeling about all of this.

I then said, ‘I’ve been thinking… why was I holding back all those times? I want to be with you so much right now and I can’t be… all the times I sat in that room with you and desperately wanted to have a hug or have you sit beside me or ask you to hold my hand and I didn’t, I didn’t ask for what I wanted and now all that time was wasted and I cant ever get it back!’ Anna said, ‘okay Lucy, slow down, take a breath, I would invite you to think back on those moments with compassion. We moved at the right pace for you. When you were ready you asked me for a hug, when you wanted me to sit beside you, you asked for that… we had to go at the right pace for you… we’re all doing this looking back thing at the moment and it’s far more helpful to look back with compassion than criticism.’ Her voice was so full of care it just made me crumble. I was crying as she was talking and then just burst out with, ‘I miss you so much Anna it hurts so much, I feel sick in my tummy and my chest hurts and I just want a hug so much…’ she sounded emotional and said, ‘I know Lucy, I know this is so hard.’ I really feel like she was emotionally struggling with this too. I’m fairly certain, from my investigatory skills, that I am her only client at the moment (this is not her day job)… and on the one hand that makes our bond feel very strong and very special and on the other hand it feels fragile and as if I might be a total burden for her.

At one point she told me that the name of her colleague who would phone me if something happened to her. She’s called Linda. I said, ‘I don’t want to talk to Linda I want to talk to you!’ Anna said, ‘I know Lucy and I’m not judging you for saying that but what I would say is that if you need it, don’t turn away the support. Take the help when it is offered to you.’ I was crying really heavily by that point, not the usual silent weeping… I was sobbing and saying, ‘I don’t want you to die, I’m not going to cope with this I could cope with anyone else dying because I’d have you to help me through but if you die no one would understand and I would be the last to know coz I’m not even a friend let alone family, all the important people in your life would know and I wouldn’t and I’d just have to deal with it by myself and I just really only want to work with you, its you as a person Anna I really like YOU!’ She said, ‘oh Lucy, I really like you too… and it works both ways. I know that you have said that working with me has helped you so much and that you have grown and learned as I’ve supported you, but also I have learned so much from working with you…’ she paused and there was a moment where I thought she was really tearing up, she sort of sniffed and mumbled over her words as she continued, ‘you have made me a better therapist, working with you… you know we don’t get given a manual when we become a therapist and we have to adapt and change and grow and learn as we work and working with you has really impacted me… in a great way, so I want to thank you for that! I feel honoured to have worked with you and all that you have shared with me.’ I sat there soaking up her words, really taking them in… no inner critic, no sceptical voice over in the back of my mind… just me and Anna sharing openly and honestly how much we have impacted each others lives. It was incredibly powerful.

She continued, ‘can I share something with you?’ I said she could and she said, ‘I bought myself headphones so I can continue my day job from home and you are the first person I’ve used them with and I can hear you right in my ears and, well… it feels very intimate, and I can picture our room in my mind and I can imagine sitting beside you and it feels very close and connected…’ I said I really liked the sound of that then I cried again and said, ‘I want to drive to your office… I love that drive, I want to do it so much and I want to sit in my car waiting for our time, I used to feel so nervous before a session, now I desperately want to just be there waiting to see you and I want to walk up those steps and walk in your room and hug you so much. God it hurts so much.’ I cried and cried and I guess she just sat and listened. She blew her nose a few times so I’m deducing from that that she was also feeling emotional. She didn’t reassure me. She didn’t say, ‘we will see each other again,’ she didn’t fill me with hope and optimism, she just sat with me in the grief of the moment.

I said, ‘do you feel burdened by me? do you wish you didn’t have to work with me through this?’ she said, ‘no. absolutely not. Not at all. This is a very scary and strange experience that none of us have lived through before and we are going to work through this together.’ I said, ‘don’t you wish you could just cut it all right back and focus on you and your family?’ she said, ‘no, I have this space for you, you don’t need to worry about me…’ I interrupted and said, ‘but you’re a human being dealing with all this too, you have to worry about food shortages and money worries and you or your family getting sick and you don’t need me being ME hassling you through it all.’ She said, ‘Lucy, I have my supervisor, she supports me, she supports a lot of people and I have people in my life I can talk to and lean on, you don’t need to worry about me… I told you this on Saturday.’ I said, ‘aye, it’s not that easy!’ and she said, ‘I know it’s not easy but it is important that you hear me… you don’t need to worry about burdening me I am okay.’

I said I was really frustrated and sad that I can’t just keep seeing her and I’m scared. I told her the kids have been scared and upset and crying and I am scared. It keeps washing over me in waves. This intense feeling that I am losing Anna. I thought about how when you’re standing at someone’s funeral you just wish you could tell them how much they meant to you and all the things you held behind your wall. So I said, ‘Anna, I just really want to say this to you, I’ve thought this a lot when we’ve sat together in sessions, I get the sense that… well I imagine most therapists have had to face a huge amount of difficulties in their lives, maybe in childhood or maybe at other points, I just get this feeling, I’ve had it a lot when we’ve been working together that you really understand on a deeply personal level a lot of the stuff I’ve worked on with you and well… I just feel like you have been through stuff, I can tell you have had your own struggles and you’ve worked really hard on yourself and that is just so fucking inspirational, you’ve turned whatever shit you went through into this amazing beautiful thing, you are helping people like me and I just, there aren’t the words Anna, thank you so much for it all, thank you for all the work you did on yourself that led to you being able to help me the way you have done.’ There was quite a long silence and I thought that maybe the phone had cut off and I’d have to say it all again. Then quietly she spoke, ‘oh Lucy… mmm… that really touched a nerve, thank you… that really means a great deal to me thank you.’ I said, ‘well it’s really true. I feel so lucky to have found you.’

We moved around a couple of lighter topics. We talked about the kids drawing out hopscotch numbers on the path in the garden and she said she called it ‘pots’ when she was a kid. We arranged that my weekly sessions would be Tuesday evenings as it’s easier to get peace when the kids are in bed. We said that Saturday’s would be a ‘play it by ear’ type thing. As it stands I can still afford sessions and if Adam loses his job hopefully the government is going to help with wages and rent. We shall see.

I have been riding the waves of grief since then, since the last phone session actually. It feels like I am preparing for her death. I think it’s going to be really good to have a video session with her on Tuesday because I need to see her face. I need to see if she looks as concerned and anxious as I have imagined in my head. I feel like she is preparing for death… maybe she has to do that. Maybe she can’t fill me with false hope because therapists are meant to be realistic and sit with the feelings. Maybe she has underlying health conditions and genuinely doesn’t feel she will survive this virus. Maybe I’m projecting.

Currently I am scared and confused and feeling every part of my attachment wound activated.

‘I know you very well.’

I actually don’t even know how to write this. Where to begin…

My last session was on the 29^th of February. After that I came down with a cold and had to cancel a session, then I had to cancel my second session that week because I hadn’t fully recovered. Then I started to feel a bit better but Anna messaged to say that in light of the rapidly developing covid19 virus, the centre in which she works restricted the building so that anyone with any cold or cough symptoms should not come in. Even though I felt fine I still had a bit of a cough, so that was another two sessions in the second week I missed. Rather than asking for a phone session I took another week’s break to fully recover. I have no idea what made me do this! I wish I hadn’t because then came the message I was dreading in response to a message I sent her telling her I felt better now.

Hi Lucy. Glad you are feeling better. I am going to be sending this text to clients and realise you may wish to speak to me directly. We can have a phone session tomorrow and discuss if that’s ok. I want to emphasise that I will be in contact with you through phone/Skype etc. I will be here to support you just differently during this health crisis. I am not disappearing.
Message starts here.
I need to let you know that due to the current public health situation due to CoVid 19, that I have decided not to see clients in person until things settle down. Instead I am offering, Skype/Phone call or whatsapp video. This is for safety of clients and to keep me available to work with you. If this does not suit you I understand. If you want to leave it until it settles down that is ok. Please let me know what you decide. If you wish to call me to discuss please let me know. Thanks. Anna.

I was totally devastated. I knew it was coming but it still hit me hard. I replied with a crying emoji (I never use emojis in messages with Anna)… I then said, ‘I feel like I’m never going to see you again’ and she replied immediately (which she never normally does), ‘You can still see me but remotely until this settles. I know this is not the same.’ I told her I missed her so much and wished I could have a hug. She said, ‘I know, its such a difficult time Lucy. I’ll speak to you at 7.30 tomorrow. Take care.’ I thanked her for saying that she’s not disappearing and told her that it was an overwhelming fear I have that everything we’ve worked so hard to create, the closeness and connection, is all going to be lost.

So there it is, my last face to face session… Feb 29th. The extra day in this leap year. I sat next to her and told her I liked being able to smell that she was near me. When we hugged I buried my face in her shoulder as if I knew it would be the last time I’d see her.

I’ve been sitting here reflecting on my therapy journey and where it was heading and I’m buried deep in this fog. I’ve taken so much for granted. I had a life that was really quite alright actually. A good strong loving relationship with my husband. Healthy, happy, well adjusted children… we all have our health. We both have jobs, mine is really secure and pays well. I have friends. I have a good social life. I have a nice home. I am safe. There has never been any real threat to my wellbeing, my life. Over the last few years I have been sitting in therapy picking apart every seam, scratching and digging in at the deepest most hidden strands of potential imperfection… I’ve been peeling back the layers of daily goodness to find fractions of past hurts. Now nothing is the same as it was before, how can the work I’ve been doing in therapy continue down the path it was going? How can I sit and talk about how my mummy never hugged me enough thirty years ago when today, right now we are all experiencing this world wide pandemic? My husband is going out every day risking catching this virus because he needs to keep working. Schools have been closed and the old, infirm and vulnerable have been told to self isolate, the young fit and able are out on the front line. This is a war. And soon we will all be told to imprison ourselves. Complete lock down. I can feel the panic rising. All of the freedoms that have afforded me some space and lightness in my mental health have been taken from me (from us all) and now I am caged. But how can I complain about this? There are so many worse off than me. Now I understand, therapy is a privilege.

Therapy by phone is strangely connecting. I can feel her right by me. I cried. I told her I missed her. She told me she was right there with me, that she could hear how upset I was. She told me. ‘I know you Lucy. I can hear in your voice how you’re feeling. I can hear when you pause or catch your breath. I can hear the slight changes. I know when something comes up for you and I’m here with you in it. I may not be able to see you but I am here with you in every way I can be.’

As a child I wrote love letters to my mum all the time. I’d leave them for her all around the house. Endless words of adoration that fell on deaf ears. Over time that affectionate little girl began to shut down. It became too vulnerable to express positive feelings and risk rejection. With Anna’s help that little girl is slowly learning to trust again. Slowly learning that with this person, with Anna, my feelings are welcome… even the loving ones.

On the 8^th of March I wrote to Anna. ‘Today is International Women’s Day. I’ve seen many posts online from people celebrating and thanking their mothers for giving them a great role model. You’re not my mother but you have been the greatest female influence in my life so far. Through your consistent actions, you have shown me that I deserve kindness and that I am worthy. Thank you for helping me see that all of my parts deserve respect and patience, especially those parts that hide behind walls. Thank you for being gentle with the fear and careful with the shame, it’s teaching me to be gentle and careful with myself. Thank you for never turning away from me. It’s helping me support the parts that instinctively want to self abandon. You are guiding me in this complex dance. With each step I am learning that it’s safe to turn inwards and it’s safe to feel. I’m learning I can trust my intuition and trust certain people with my vulnerability. In just 2.5 years you have given me more genuine attention, care and support than my own mother has given me in 37 years. Along with this you have never intentionally hurt, belittled, shamed or abandoned me. Most importantly you are teaching me through modelling your own lack of defensiveness and your willingness to reflect and adapt, that relationships are not about being right and fighting your corner at all costs they are about being open and staying connected. When I look inside myself to find examples of the woman I hope to become, I find your voice… guiding me towards my true self.’ She replied. ‘Thank you so much Lucy for your beautiful text. I was very moved and touched by your kind words and I feel privileged to be working with you. I look forward to seeing you when you have recovered.’

When we spoke she told me how moved she was by my words. I thanked her for being there for me and for accepting me in all the ways that she has done. She thanked me for sharing my journey with her.

I told her I was frightened, that I felt like she was dying. She just let me sit in that fear and grief. I sobbed and sobbed and she just told me she understood. She told me, ‘the issue is that we want control and we have very little… the key is to accept that this is our new normal. It’s the wishing and wanting it to be different that causes us all pain. We are all panicking, we are all worried. Just finding a level of acceptance can help bring some calm.’ I told her that Grace was crying on Monday night about all this. Fearful of what she has been hearing in school about the virus and I was on the brink of tears myself because of the text Anna had sent me. Grace needed my reassurance and amazingly I found that as I reassured her, I reassured myself. I relayed this to Anna and I could hear her smiling. I told her what I’d told Grace… I said, ‘try to imagine that the virus is a bit like rain. We don’t have any control over it, it’s here. But we can control how we manage it. When it rains, we can wear a hood and we can use an umbrella to protect us from the cold and wet. We can also control some aspects of the impact this virus is having on us… we can cough into a tissue and bin it, we can wash our hands very well, we can stay away from people and stay inside…’ Anna said, ‘that’s beautiful! And yes… your adult was reassuring your daughter and your child!’

I told Anna, ‘I’m so sad. I miss being near you. We worked so hard to be close and feel connected and it took me so long to trust you and I just don’t see how we can work as deeply as we have been when you’re not beside me…’ She said, ‘… I know it’s not the same Lucy. I’m sad about that. I was going to say that we would work together to reconnect but I do feel a close connection to you tonight, do you feel that too?’ I said I did. She said, ‘I’m not beside you right now but I am listening, it’s not the same, but I’ve not left you. I’m still here. We will get through this together.’

I told Anna, ‘how can I lean on you about this when you are also facing reduced pay, panic buying, isolation, possible illness…?’ Anna said, ‘this isn’t about my experience. It’s about yours. People who experience war or famine are amongst hundreds of thousands of people in the same position but their individual experience is still traumatic and impactful. This is your therapy. Your fear and grief and sadness and shock and all the other things you’re experiencing are real and valid and this is the space where you can bring it all… and remember you don’t need to look after me. I have my therapist and my supervisor, i have people I can rely on to support me, you don’t need to worry about me.’

I didn’t leave the conversation feeling reassured, I left it feeling very connected and deep in grief. This is this generations mass trauma. This is it. We will be reading psychological papers on the impact of this in twenty years time. This is a world war. This will play a part in the chain of generational trauma. The hunger and panic and fear and death… this will impact all of us. All ages. But our children are at a crucial developmental stage. We need to be talking about this NOW. Don’t do what was done to us by leaving the trauma unresolved. We must feel what we’re’re feeling. Talk about it. Let our kids feel what they’re feeling and talk about it. This needs to be processed in real time for it to not linger and live and fester inside us.

Reach out. Talk. Connect.

Some of this was uploaded a couple of post ago.

I made a point of asking for a hug as soon as I went in which she gave me. The room smelled lovely. I imagined maybe she’d sprayed her perfume before my session. I’m the first client on Saturday morning so I’ve often been curious about how she preps before her working morning and wondered if I’m at the front of her mind being her first session.

I sat down and we smiled at each other. I told her, ‘so the perfume… the past few days I’ve felt so connected and secure and like sure of things… and I’ve slept better than I’ve ever slept! And every time I walk into my bedroom I can smell it and it’s just felt so nice.’ She was smiling and said, ‘I was wondering how it had gone with the perfume,’ I talked a bit more about it and then I started to doubt things, she had a straight face and I paused and felt unsettled and said, ‘are you annoyed?’ she looked surprised and said, ‘no, not at all, I’m just listening.’ I said, ‘now it all feels different… like I shouldn’t have talked about it coz it doesn’t feel as good anymore…’ Anna said, ‘can you say more about that?’ I said, ‘it just always feels really risky to talk about good things, meaningful things…’ she was making loud agreeing noises. I said, ‘the perfume thing has been so meaningful, there were no critical thoughts about it… I just felt really connected to you all the time, I’ve been amazed when I think about it. I really sent that text, you really read it and put the perfume in your bag, you were really actually okay with me spraying it on the bears! Like, wow! Nothing else has felt that secure… with other things like the blue heart stone which I do still carry with me and is very meaningful, the inner critic has a field day with that one.’ She asked me what the inner critic says about it and I was like, ‘wow we’re really just launching into this?’ Anna checked I was okay with that and asked if I had something else I’d planned on talking about. I said I had thought of something but changed my mind so I was fine with this. She said, ‘these are very important topics – this is what we are here for – to work with the inner critic, take her power… for as long as the voice stays inside it controls you and destroys things… if you talk about it you take the power back.’ I was nodding and taking my shoes off and getting comfy, spread my scarf over my knees… ‘okay…’ big breath… ‘I just don’t want to hurt your feelings or make you feel bad, I don’t want to criticise this nice thing you did.’ Anna said, ‘remember we talked about this at the end of the last session, you don’t need to worry about me, I’m okay, don’t worry about hurting me, please.’

So I began, ‘well… right from the start when you pulled the wee bag out your pocket the voice piped up saying it’s just a technique, just a therapy trick, ‘how many other clients have had a stone out that bag, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a token gesture, there’s nothing special about this, you’re making this a bigger thing than it really is, she doesn’t give a shit about this…’ you know, just making it really like clinical and cold and formal.’ Anna said, ‘and that’s happened before hasn’t it, that feeling…’ I nodded and told her that the perfume didn’t feel like that. It felt genuine, ‘but now I’ve talked about it I feel like I’ve spoiled it…’ Anna said, ‘yeah it feels like if you say it out loud it might be ridiculed or belittled…’ I was like YES! But then I started feeling fuzzy and I said ‘I’m just so sick of the critical voice and I want the wall to go away.’ Anna nodded and said, ‘but I hope that what you took from that part of the session about the glass wall that…’ I interrupted and smiled widely and said to her, ‘you beautifully reframed it Anna, that it’s good it’s glass because we can see each other and maybe it’s actually a glass door that can be opened if I want…’ she smiled and nodded. I said, ‘and yeah I remember when I first started talking about the wall, it was brick. Then it was a blind that could be put up and down… so yeah it is better now… but I still wish it wasn’t there because it stops me from feeling connected to people in my life like with the kids… everyone’ Anna asked me how the connection felt right now and I couldn’t figure it out. She encouraged me to take my time and then I eventually said, ‘it’s not that strong. I know you’re there but I don’t really feel it. I know I said last time that it’s a bit like you’re a figment of my imagination… I think I just always feel alone even when people are with me…’ she asked me what would help the connection and I said, ‘I really want a hug but then I just think that’s weird…’ she asked what hugging does that helps me and I said, ‘it really calms me down and the touch and closeness feels comforting and it really helps that I can smell you… I don’t know I feel like that sounds weird but it does help… it also helps when I look at you but that’s hard sometimes.’ Anna asked me if I feel more connected to her when she sits beside me and I said, ‘yes, I really like when you sit beside me but then I also have this stupid inner critic going on about how you probably hate sitting next to me and maybe it hurts your back having to sit there and turn to face me and maybe you like sitting where you are now…’ she said, ‘you don’t need to care for me, I’m okay… I do wonder though because when I sit beside you, you can’t see me, I wonder if that impacts your connection?’ I said, ‘actually I think it helps because it’s not so intense, I can sense you’re there without feeling the intensity of being so visible and I can choose to look at you if I want to,’ she said, ‘shall I come over then?’ I nodded.

She pushed the chair next to mine and sat down and I said, ‘I can smell you.’ I closed my eyes and said, ‘it really is so comforting… I don’t know, that’s fucking bizarre I mean that’s not normal to tell someone you like being able to smell them!’ I laughed and she didn’t. She said, ‘let’s think about what you just said there,’ I said, ‘hmmm that I’m a fucking weirdo..?’ she said, ‘smell is so important. You just told me that you have felt really settled and calm this week and that smelling the perfume on Luna has helped you sleep well and feel secure in our connection. A lot of this work we’re doing is preverbal… there are no words for so much of it. Smell is so important and if that very small preverbal part of you needs to smell me to feel like she is not alone and that she is safe then that’s a really good thing. It’s not for us to question and pull it apart or criticise it and so what if Jimmy down the road wouldn’t understand why you hold a stuffed panda for comfort or why you feel more settled when you smell me, who cares what anyone else thinks, we are doing deep healing work here and this is just you and me here and everything and anything that works to help you through this is a good thing… is this making sense?’ I was actually looking intently at her in her eyes and felt very very acutely present and was so aware of the truth in what she was saying. Usually when she says stuff like this I feel shamey and I can hear the inner critic having a field day but it was just quiet listening in my head which was amazing. For the first time it was just complete attention and presence in that moment with her.

I said, ‘Sometimes I imagine there’s this really horrible angry side to you that I’ve not met yet and it’s only a matter of time before I do something that’s going to trigger it and you’ll terrify me with it… I can imagine your face as clear as day in my minds eye, angry and twisted…’ Anna looked really intrigued and smiled and said, ‘and that’s what you experienced with your mum and dad?’ I said, ‘yup…’ she said, ‘so you would feel that everything was fine and then suddenly rage or shaming or verbal attack or…’ I said, ‘yeah I never knew what was coming.’ She said, ‘so what would you do to protect yourself?’ I said, ‘I never let on how I was feeling, I just would be very careful what I was saying and if everything went bad I just would go inside myself or hide in my room…’ Anna said, ‘so it makes complete sense that you would expect that from me, that you’d be careful about what you say to me and you’d be watching me very closely like you must have had to watch your parents, studied their faces and behaviours to try to predict an outburst.’

I wanted her to hug me so much but I just sat looking at every detail of her. Her hands, the stitching on her jeans. She said, ‘you didn’t have anyone paying attention to you and how you were feeling… and I know that with Grace you will listen to her. You see if she is sad and you say ‘you look sad; and you’d let her speak.’ We talked more about that and I shared an example of exactly that happening earlier in the week.

I then started talking about my mother. I told Anna about how my mum has no boundaries. That with her there’s a fine line between having a normal conversation and one that involves way too much oversharing and feels very uncomfortable or one where I am meeting her emotional needs.

I said, ‘and when I was younger, whenever I talked to her, opened up about anything, she would always go and tell other people. There was nothing that was ever just between the two of us. So I don’t even know what it feels like to just have an intimate conversation and just feel like there’s the two of us, it always felt like there was this large network of people behind her… any time I talked to her I had to consider, would I want to share this with the whole world? And so I just found myself frozen in this place where I deeply needed to talk or connect but couldn’t because I didn’t want what she offered. I am such a private person,’ Anna interrupted and said, ‘understandably!’ I continued, ‘and she betrayed me every single time. Even if I said to her ‘please don’t tell anybody this’ that would be the first thing she would do… I’d hear her on the phone or she’d tell her friends or my dad or whatever…’ I took an enormous breath and then continued, ‘so with you, especially in the first like year or maybe two or maybe still a bit now, whenever I tell you anything I’m constantly imagining how you would go and tell someone else… even if it’s just your supervisor or your therapist or training events or whatever, I’m so aware of this sense that it’s not just you and me… and I know you are so not like her in any way but it’s just that nothing feels private… I think that’s what the tape recorder was about, and your note taking, it felt like that was a portal to everyone in the world, like anyone could listen to this…’ Anna said, ‘okay yes I really understand that, hmm I really understand that Lucy okay… so how does it feel that I’m using our work in the case study?’ I said, ‘yeah I’ve thought about it and it feels okay, it’s different, it feels like a considered, careful thing… I know you’re not like her but talking is more like gossipy, writing it in your paper is professional and still feels like it’s between you and me…’ she nodded and looked like she really wanted to know if I was definitely okay with it. She sat in thought for a bit.

I said, ‘it’s weird, I didn’t plan on talking about this…’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what you wanted, sessions where you didn’t plan what you were going to talk about and you didn’t even plan to not plan this it just happened.’ I made a wow expression. I said, ‘the perfume thing directly relates to mum. She was always going out at night and used to give my brother one of her tops with her perfume on it to help him sleep and I really longed for that but I wouldn’t ask so I would sneak it, I’d take it from her drawer you know, like having to steal these crumbs of love from her…’ Anna said, ‘why wouldn’t she give you a top?’ I said ‘I just don’t think she saw me as a child. I don’t think I ever asked, maybe I knew she’d say no and the rejection was too painful.’ Anna talked about this innate sense I had that she wouldn’t give me what I needed, that this comes from learning these lessons very early on, ‘it’s a preverbal knowing’. She said, ‘despite knowing that she would turn you away, you still craved the closeness. No wonder you have these moments of frozen stuckness when you want to be close to me and also you don’t. You want connection but you anticipate rejection. You learned to find ways to feel connected from a safe distance.’ I said, ‘Exactly! I had a lot of nightmares but I knew I couldn’t wake her. I would crawl silently into their bedroom and go to sleep under her side of the bed.’ Anna said, ‘oh Lucy,’ in a heartfelt way, ‘Did you ever wake her? Would you have wanted her to let you in her bed?’ I started to say, ‘I think yes but also no, um it felt weird to be close to her,’ Anna asked me to explain ‘weird’ further and I started to feel floaty. I told her I felt spacey and she encouraged me to ground myself. I put my head in my hands and tried to breath, took a drink of water. Told her I didn’t have words for it. Told her it felt yucky and that I didn’t want her to touch me. ‘I didn’t want to feel our bodies touching. It never felt like a motherly touch, it felt bad inside. She didn’t know how to touch me the way a mother touches her child.’ Anna asked if I had a sense of what it felt like to imagine being in her bed next to her body and I whispered, ‘not safe…’ We sat for a moment and I started to feel spacey. I closed my eyes and continued, ‘I didn’t want to feel her body. I didn’t want her to feel me. It felt sexual or something… I don’t even know… I think because she didn’t even want to sit next to me in the day time let alone have me in bed with her. There was no closeness… she didn’t hold my hand… there just wasn’t a safe intimacy with her…’

Anna said, ‘So earlier you described it as a sexual feeling shall we go back, to that can you explain that further?’ I felt myself flush with shame and my heart pound. I couldn’t look at her and I said, ‘I don’t even know why I used that word it just came out… um it just felt too close… she made things weird… she would sometimes… um well when I hug my kids I know to not touch them in certain places I just will maybe put my hand on their backs or something. I don’t know. There aren’t even words it just didn’t feel safe I don’t like it I don’t like it.’ Anna said, ‘Perhaps it’s because she talked to you about sex and her sex life with your dad and others, maybe it put those images in your head and because you were so young and it wasn’t age appropriate it confused things in your mind?’ I nodded and thought about it. We talked a bit more about this and at one point I said I could hear the voice daying that I was making a big deal out of nothing. Anna said, ‘hmmm and what do we say to that voice?’ and I said, ‘fuck off.’ And laughed. She said, ‘good, well done… a little louder?’ and I said louder, ‘FUCK OFF!’ we both laughed.

At one point we were talking about something that happened between myself, a friend and my mother. I couldn’t continue with the memory. I described it as if I was watching an old VHS that suddenly got jammed in the machine and now it was just grey and black fuzzy lines and white noise. I let out a gasp of frustration and told her I was really angry with myself. She asked me to stay with the feeling that was behind the anger. So I sat there in it. I fumbled and scrambled around for ways to describe what it felt like. Anna reminded me, ‘it doesn’t need to be sentences, it doesn’t need to make sense. Anything that comes up for you – words, senses. And so a garbled mess tumbled out. ‘its like humiliated but from inside me… shame? Like I’m rotten inside? Dirty… I’m ashamed… but.., but why am I ashamed?’ Anna said, ‘yes, it was never your shame to hold… earlier you described her as shameless. She was shameless Lucy because she made you carry it all. That’s the blackness inside you, it’s her shame.’ I said, ‘but I had to, it was the only way I could make her love me.’ Anna said, ‘she betrayed you massively Lucy. You were a child. You had no choice. It was not your fault. What you did and how you adapted was exactly what you needed to do to survive.’ There was quite a lot of quiet and we were coming to the end of the session and Anna said with a really peaceful open expression, ‘I am so proud of that young part who just told me all of that, I want her to listen as I say this… I understand. I know that it felt scary and she had to stop. That’s okay. I’m glad she stopped when it started to feel unsafe. It’s okay that she don’t trust me. I’m not going to force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do and I’m not going to try make her trust me. You will keep bringing her here and I will be here with you, I’m not going anywhere. Slowly I believe she will feel like she can trust me but I’m in no rush. And if she feels like she wants to test me – THATS OKAY! I really want her to hear that. It’s okay for her to test me in any way she feels she wants to!’ It seriously felt amazing to hear that.

Anna told me to remember to use my pandas in the days after the session. She said she felt that what was brought up today might be quite intense for me. She told me that if I have thoughts about her judging me for what I told her that I have to bat those thoughts away, that they’re the inner critic trying to drive a wedge between us. She told me that she was proud of me. She said, ‘you might find that different needs are met by each of your pandas… so you have Luna, Baby and Suki,’ she looked at me and I smiled, it’s so cool she remembers their names and makes a point of calling them by their names even when I am too ashamed to. She continued, ‘so you may find that you can keep Suki in your handbag for when you’re at work and if you’re not able to take her out, just putting your hand in your bag and feeling him might be enough to settle you, maybe the smell of my perfume on your hand would help…’ (I already do this, it blows my mind how she knows me and it makes me wonder if she has experienced this process from where I’m sitting)… ‘you might find that Baby is there for those pre-verbal moments when there are no words… maybe Luna is there for every day connection, for bedtime… you’ll really get to know yourself through getting to know them…’ I said that was exactly what I’ve been experiencing. I said, ‘when I come home from work, Luna and Baby are sitting on the wee chair in my room and I smile when I see them, it’s like they are my inner child and I am actually glad to see her…’ Anna said, ‘which is so great to hear because not long ago you didn’t want anything to do with her, you didn’t even want her in this room.’ I nodded and said, ‘I feel so bad about that, how rejecting and punishing I was of her… when she’d done nothing wrong.’ Anna pressed her lips together and nodded with sad eyes. She said, ‘that was very important to feel and work through and it might come back now and then but you are feeling something for her you’ve never felt before, your heart is opening to her… it’s very powerful. You are doing so well Lucy. I know how hard this is.’

I thought about the fact that I feel a responsibility for my inner child/ren now and that makes it very hard to imagine ever hurting myself again because it would be like inflicting pain onto a child which I could never do… and just now I’m thinking, that’s what I do when I let the inner critic win, I’m letting someone viciously bully this defenceless child. But there’s a shakiness in admitting this outloud. I didn’t tell Anna of that thought because I’m frightened of what my mother used to say… ‘pride before a fall’… I don’t want to foolishly say I can’t imagine ever self harming again only to then have the floor fall from beneath me as I’m triggered into hurting myself again. I guess that is the not linear part of healing.

While we were hugging (and I properly had my face buried in that space between her shoulder and her neck) she said, ‘you’re doing so well Lucy.’ I said, ‘thank you so much for letting me have these hugs.’ She said, ‘you’re so welcome Lucy.’

‘Why therapy works is still up for debate. But, when it does, it’s methods mimic the attachment dynamics of good parenting.’

During a random online browse this morning of my therapists public twitter account I found this article she shared… it so accurately describes how we work together. So amazing to read this and imagine that all the attachment stuff I panic about so much, she is comfortable with and actually wants to encourage… I don’t know what the rules are for sharing parts of a blog post so hopefully this is allowed… I just found the whole thing mindblowing and would encourage you (if you’re interested in the clinet therapist relationship) to read the original article.

Link –

https://aeon.co/essays/how-attachment-theory-works-in-the-therapeutic-relationship

I’ve included some of my favourite passages from the blog post… (PLEASE READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE IT’S AMAZING!)

‘What happens between client and therapist goes beyond mere talking, and goes deeper than clinical treatment. The relationship is both greater and more primal, and it compares with the developmental strides that play out between mother and baby, and that help to turn a diapered mess into a normal, healthy person. I am referring to attachment. To push the analogy further, what if, attachment theory asks, therapy gives you the chance to reach back and repair your earliest emotional bonds, correcting, as you do, the noxious mechanics of your mental afflictions?’

‘The way to treat these problems, say attachment theorists, is in and through a new relationship. On this view, the good therapist becomes a temporary attachment figure, assuming the functions of a nurturing mother, repairing lost trust, restoring security, and instilling two of the key skills engendered by a normal childhood: the regulation of emotions and a healthy intimacy.‘

‘This pattern of empathising, then re-framing and de-shaming looks uncannily like the mirroring-and-soothing exchanges between mother and infant in the first years of life. Spend any amount of time around a newborn and you’ll see that, when baby cries, mum swoops in, picks him up and then scrunches her face in an exaggerated imitation of his distress. According to Peter Fonagy, a psychopathology researcher at University College London, who has long studied children and young people, the mother’s amplified reflection forms a key part of the child’s developing a sense of self and emotional control. ‘Anxiety, for example, is for the infant a confusing mixture of physical changes, ideas and behaviours,’ he told me. ‘When the mother reflects, or mirrors, the child’s anxiety, he now “knows” what he’s feeling.’‘

‘After a while, clients internalise the warmth and understanding of their therapist, turning it into an internal resource to draw on for strength and support. A new, compassionate voice flickers into life, silencing that of the inner critic – itself an echo of insensitive earlier attachment figures. But this transformation doesn’t come easy. As the poet W H Auden wrote in The Age of Anxiety (1947): ‘We would rather be ruined than changed …’ It is the therapist’s job, as a secure base and safe haven, to guide clients as they journey into unfamiliar waters, helping them stay hopeful and to persist through the pain, sadness, anger, fear, anxiety and despair they might need to face.’

‘Once again, the process mirrors good caregiving early in life. Long before speech, mother and infant communicate with each other via nonverbal cues – facial expression, mutual gaze, vocal nuance, gesture and touch. In the squeeze of his fist, in the batting of an eyelash, the sensitive mother ‘reads’ her child’s emotional states and responds appropriately through her own body.‘

‘The good practitioner subconsciously tunes in to those emotions left unsaid, to the internal states the client might not even be aware of. Moment by moment, the therapist adjusts her own body language in response to her client’s internal rhythms, engaging them in a kind of dance in which both partners mutually influence and synchronise themselves to each other.‘

Reflecting on my own generational trauma and how it impacted my self-worth

I was listening to a podcast this morning as I emptied the dishwasher… or maybe it was a story on Instagram… oh wait, it was a song… Demi Lovato – ‘I love me’. (I’m leaving that meandering sentence in to show my random train of thought!) So, in her song, Demi sings, ‘Flippin’ through all of these magazines, Tellin’ me who I’m supposed to be…’ and it made me think about this very early self care rule I made. Mid-twenties, I actually made a decision for myself, pre-therapy, that did me good (this surprises me as most of the things I did back then were fairly self-destructive). Actually, it possibly started (definitely intensified) when I had my daughter and became obsessed with creating a world around her that would only ever empower her rather than strip her of her natural worth.

Let’s go back to the start… as a child I was surrounded by women who were obsessed with looks and body image. The first thing they would say about someone was a judgement on what they looked like. They would be super critical of other women (especially their appearance) and they were always hyper critical of themselves. These women were my mother, her few friends, her sisters, her mother. They taught me that in order to feel a sense of belonging with them I must pick apart other women and I must hate myself. I can now see as an adult that my dad also is very focused on appearances, diet, weight management… being judgey of people. I was surrounded by it all my life.

My mother has always been obsessed with low level tv shows… she loves soaps where everyone is miserable and going from one chaotic disaster to the next, cheating on each other and drinking too much… talent shows where people are pulled apart by critical judges… programmes that tell you how to dress or what your house should look like. I don’t know what else to call them other than low level tv shows. They are low effort. They aren’t documentaries, they aren’t films, they aren’t juicy 6 part dramas, they’re not mysteries… they don’t get you thinking, they don’t expand your mind, they demand nothing from you. You don’t have to engage your analytical mind when watching this low level stuff. It fills your head with mindless entertainment. It’s a bit like junk food. If you’re an adult and you choose to watch this stuff, great… that’s your choice. I have been known to watch a few myself. However, there are certain things I will now never watch. For example I put myself on a Hollyoaks ban about ten years ago when I realised it was becoming addictive and wasn’t making me very happy. I wont watch things like love island or Big Brother (is that even still on..?)

My mother had about 5 soaps she watched every evening and therefore we all were subjected to these soaps. I would sit with an anxious ball of nerves in my stomach as I was subjected to families screaming and shouting at each other, bludgeoning each other with irons, mindlessly drinking too much alcohol, having sex, cheating on each other, burning down houses. It was a horrible focal point in the centre of our lives. Something I will never subject my kids (or myself) to ever.  

I want to say here that I don’t want anyone reading this to feel a judgement from me. There’s nothing wrong with watching stuff on tv to zone out or get an easy laugh or feel validated for the shitty things that happen in life. I get it! I struggle to do it myself because of my history with these kinds of tv shows but I do get it. But the thing is, if you’re an adult you have a more experienced understanding of life and the fact that this stuff on tv isn’t real. You can be one step back from what’s going on. As a kid, I was in the thick of this. I knew these people’s names, they were as much my family as the people sitting in the livingroom watching it with me. It was toxic.

Then there’s the other stuff she’d watch (and make us watch). Fashion programmes informing us that if you had wide hips you shouldn’t wear vertical stripes, if you are large breasted never wear a round neck, always v-neck… if you have short legs don’t wear ¾ length trousers and never wear strappy sandals with a strap around the ankle.. it’ll make you look like you have cankles. If you are short and overweight don’t wear a top that stops at your waist because it will cut you in half. Wear longer tunic style tops to skim your thighs and cover your bum. Wear a polo-neck to hide double chins. Wear large patterns if you’re overweight, small detailed patterns if you’re thin… always wear magic underwear that holds your stomach in and accentuates your breasts and… FUCKOFFFFFFF!!!!!! Fuck off!!! I feel the emotions rising in me as I write all this out. I feel like I could write another 10’000 words on all of the shitty restrictive fucked up rules I learned as a child stating what I should wear to make my body less offensive to others. FUCK OFF! My mother lapped this stuff up! I CAN NOT STAND IT. It’s so fucking oppressive and small minded. People should wear whatever the fuck they want to wear. I want to go back in time 25 years and scream in her face, ‘turn that fucking tv off and have a unique thought! For the love of humanity push against this bullshit!’ It didn’t end there though. There were home design tv-shows she obsessed over that told us our house was kinda shit and so she would redecorate something EVERY.FUCKING.WEEKEND… diet programmes that proclaimed we were whatever we ate! BULL SHIT! She put me on a fucking shakes diet in my early teens (not that it matters but I wasn’t even overweight!).

Then there were all the magazines she would buy. Home magazines that told you how to make a small room look big, a newbuild have character, a dark room seem lighter, a cold room look warmer… magazines that told us what to wear, how to use make up to erase every unique quality on our faces… here’s how to cover your freckles, here’s how to make your eyes look bigger, here are the perfect hair styles for your shape face… WHY ARE WE CONSTANTLY TRYING TO BE THE SAME? White-washing our differences. I feel like a lot of people who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s will relate to this. It was so damaging.

So, from a very early age I learned that there was a very specific set of rules to live your life by. A specific way to behave and present myself so that I wouldn’t be completely rejected by my ‘tribe’. These wounded, small minded women who were living life blinkered, never daring to think outside the small life view they were being offered. I needed them to keep me in their circle. I needed it for survival. But deep in my core I was opposed to everything they spouted. And in the tentative moments of testing as a teen when I couldn’t take it anymore and would fight back, I was massively rejected, criticised, ridiculed, screamed and shouted at… it was very clear to me that disagreeing or looking for a different way to be was not acceptable. When I read descriptions of narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders, I see my mother. I know she is insecure, hates herself, has a very shaky sense of who she is, needs constant external validation, has a childhood shrouded in trauma… carries the trauma of her parents who both fought in the second world war and had their own unseen trauma wounds. But she chose to stay blind. I know some people may feel that she did the best she could and perhaps all I need to do is heal some more and then I’ll be able to see that too, ut right now this is where I’m at… she was selfish… she chose to stay stuck. She chose to pour her trauma into me. She chose to spend hours and hours and hours of my youth telling me all the ways her parents fucked her up while never EVER considering how she was fucking me up. She didn’t ever truly see me. I was an extension of her, something that could be of use to her. And when I chose to stop being of use to her, all hell would unfurl.

Anyway, I digress… in my late teens and early twenties when I was attempting to navigate the world of adulthood living with my now husband, my life was a mix of her shit and my shit. I bought 3 or 4 magazines a week – let it pollute me, I watched hours of tv every day, I let her use me as her unpaid therapist on the phone endlessly… but also there were splinters of my uniqueness that attempted to break off and grow shoots and bloom… I listened to music that I liked without having her judge me, I went to uni, studied child psychology and worked towards an honours degree in education. I read self help books and watched films about the law of attraction and documentaries about game changers through history. I spent time journaling and hoping for change, with one leg still tethered to the ball and chain of my past. Then I had my daughter and I was plunged into this black sea of post partum depression and anxiety, held face down in the murky waters until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I took myself to therapy. Though we couldn’t afford it, we couldn’t afford for me not to!

Bit by bit the shitty things that clung to me from my childhood have slowly fallen away. I no longer watch any soaps, ever. It’s a rule in our house – we just never put them on. We also don’t watch critical judges rip apart peoples dreams on talent shows (when the kids are in the room)… on the odd occasion we may watch them but we’re not avid followers of anything. We never EVER watch anything on tv that tells us we have to look or behave in a way that will make us more liked by others. I never buy fashion/beauty magazines. I don’t let anything in the house that threatens to destroy my kids sense of self. My mum had no boundaries, she encouraged me to have no boundaries as well… it encouraged me to kick back, build a wall and have a rock solid, impenetrable boundary that kept everyone out. I’m learning how to be more flexible, slowly.

As I’m writing this I’m thinking so may thoughts so quickly…

– my grandmas generation had magazines and books (and society) telling her all the ways to be a good little wife and keep her husband happy

– my mums generation had magazines and society telling her how to be beautiful and attract a mate

– they both received the message that they had their uses to men but that men were more important than women… oh and that differences should be feared.

There were so many shit things being told to women over the years and although I still believe that doesn’t excuse them from the fact that they let it impact them and so many didn’t try to make a change, it is making me think, my mum and her mum were possibly the norm. It was unusual to have a woman stick her head above the parapet and say, ‘I refuse to conform’. I’m angry and sad that my mother didn’t have the inner strength and determination to give me a life that cradled me in nurturing acceptance and fostered self-love but instead perpetuated the shit she and generations before her had to endure. Oh what I may have become, had I been gifted what I needed. But it ends here. IT FUCKING ENDS HERE! For my children and my inner child/ren.

This house is filled with body positivity, which means my husband and I accept ourselves and our children the way they are. We’re very careful about making statements about other people’s bodies at all because even a compliment says, ‘I’m judging you… you may have passed now but you could easily fail my standards.’ It said, ‘I have the authority to judge your appearance’… I don’t like that message. What I prefer is, ‘wow I love the outfit you’ve put together, the colours are so much fun.’ Or ‘you look like you’re really enjoying the beat of this song, the way you’re moving your body makes me want to dance too!’ or ‘you’re so strong the way you are running shows me how much energy you have.’ I have bought books by people (mostly amazing body positive women on social media) who endorse self-acceptance and self-love. That show amazing photographs of real bodies… a variety of different shapes, sizes, colours, genders and sexualities. I want my kids to know that self-expression is welcome in this house. Autonomy is welcome in this house. Self-love is celebrated. Non judgemental acceptance of others is the way we do things in this house. We’re not perfect but I feel like I started this whole parenting journey with the following rules – let them be who they are, nurture their unique humanness, do no harm, own your mistakes, evolve.  

So back to the start of the post. There are certain ways I protect myself from further pain and distress and hopefully these boundaries also provide a safe environment for my children to grow up feeling whole and acceptable…

1. I never watch stuff on tv that is designed to pick apart our humanness
2. I never buy fashion/beauty/fitness magazines
3. I don’t let people talk to or near me/my kids about unrealistic beauty standards, diets, body shaming
4. I don’t watch or let my kids watch violent, aggressive, critical or mindless tv shows
5. We don’t watch tv shows that demonize certain food groups or celebrate drastic weight loss through extreme diet or excessive exercise

I’m starting to imagine people thinking I’m super controlling and censoring too much… hellow inner critic… but my kids are only 8 and 4 so they’re still young. I also think that we can and should critically decide what exactly we want to feed our brains with. We don’t need to let it all in, we shouldn’t in fact. And children are impressionable, they believe everything they hear and see and experience. They think, ‘oh this is the way life is done around here’ and they learn to supress their intuition and conform. It’s not black and white though. I do wear make-up, my kids both love playing around with make-up and nail varnish. My daughter says she wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up… this is all fine but I watch how I’m talking about these things. I never say, ‘I need to put make up on,’ I say I like it because it’s a creative, arty way to express myself. I never verbalise judgements about my own body or anyone else’s… I actually think this has had a very positive impact on my own sense of self-worth. I won’t criticise myself in front of my kids because I want to model self-love therefore… I am actually actively being kinder to myself than I was prior to having kids. My kids know I eat more mindfully these days. The intention is to lose some weight but they don’t need to be privy to this information. It makes my toes curl when I hear women telling their kids, ‘oh I’m too fat I can’t have that chocolate…’ I tell my kids that I want the food I eat now to make my body and mind feel healthier, stronger, have more energy. They know I go to the gym. I tell them it’s because exercise makes me feel good. I love moving my body, I like the sense of achievement I feel afterwards. I am careful about how I describe things to my kids. My mother was unconscious, unfiltered, knee-jerk, unconsidered… in everything she did and said. I try very hard to not be like that. Possibly to the other extreme… Anna is in fact working with me on developing a more instinctive way of being where I don’t overthink everything. Before I even became pregnant, I read books on how to be a gentle, respectful parent. I knew I wanted to do things differently. It became an obsession, a way for my perfectionism and OCD to take a grip. It’s taking years to tease out the unnecessary bids for control from the healthy, ‘okay’ ways of being and thinking.

I remember at 6 years old trying to hide my body from the scrutinising eyes of my mother. Feeling deep shame at the thought of anyone seeing me. My daughter is 8 and openly proclaims that she loves herself. She exudes confidence and a sense that there is no shame in being different… that our differences are what make us all so beautiful. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable now at the thought that I am coming across as a know all…hello again inner critic! I don’t mean to sound as if I think I’m amazing, I am not perfect! I make mistakes. And I’m sure I will encounter moments when my kids question their worth… what I’m working through here in this post however is the idea that I believe it is our duty as adults, with the children of the world watching us, to treat them the way we needed to be treated, to teach them about good things, to instil positive qualities, to model love and acceptance. We can look back and think, ‘wow… that hurt, I wish they hadn’t fucked me up so much…’ but that’s not the end of the sentence… we must finish that sentence with, ‘…now I know what hurt me, I am going to work hard at healing that wound so that I don’t unconsciously hurt those around me.’ And it’s not just the responsibility of people with children… I believe it’s everyone’s job. We all influence the kids around us and the child within us is also deserving of healing.

These days we are surrounded by messages of body positivity, tolerance, acceptance, love. Thankfully, the smallest minorities now finally have a platform, a voice. We are duty bound to listen. To question our prejudices, to look at what our discomfort tells us about our unhealed wounds. There really is no excuse. It is our responsibility as intelligent, resourceful, capable, curious, evolving human beings. We are not here to stay stuck and repeat. We are here to change and grow and flourish and enhance.

Three excerpts from the session on Sat 29th Feb.

I said, ‘the perfume thing blows my mind. That I just needed to ask once and you gladly gave it to me… it directly relates to my mum. I know that. She was always going out at night and used to give my brother one of her tops with her perfume on to help him sleep. I really longed for that but I would just sneak it, I’d take it from her drawer you know, like having to steal these crumbs of connection from her…’ Anna said, ‘why wouldn’t she give you a top?’ I said ‘I just don’t think she saw me as a child. Maybe I never asked, maybe I knew she’d say no and the rejection was too painful.’ Anna talked about this innate sense I had that she wouldn’t give me what I needed, that this comes from learning these lessons very early on, ‘it’s a preverbal knowing,’ she said, ‘despite knowing that she would turn you away, you still craved the closeness. No wonder you have these moments of frozen stuckness when you want to be close to me. You want connection but you anticipate rejection. You learned to find ways to feel connected from a safe distance.’ I said, ‘Exactly! I had a lot of nightmares but I knew I couldn’t wake her. I would crawl silently into their bedroom and go to sleep under her side of the bed. I remember it was very cold but I could hear her breathing and smell her.’ Anna said, ‘oh Lucy,’ in a heartfelt way, ‘Did you ever wake her? Would you have wanted her to let you in her bed?’ I started to say, ‘I think yes but also no, um it felt weird to be close to her,’ Anna asked me to explain ‘weird’ further and I started to feel floaty. I told her I felt spacey and she encouraged me to ground myself. I put my head in my hands and tried to breath, took a drink of water. Told her I didn’t have words for it. Told her it felt yucky and that I didn’t want her to touch me. ‘I didn’t want to feel our bodies touching. It never felt like a motherly touch, it felt bad. She didn’t know how to touch me the way a mother touches her child.’ Anna asked if I had a sense of what it felt like to imagine being in her bed next to her body and I whispered, ‘not safe…’ and I was gone again. I started to feel anchored to the room when I felt Anna’s hand on my arm. That felt safe.

I couldn’t continue with the memory we’d unintentionally fallen into. I described it as if I was watching an old VHS that suddenly got jammed in the machine and now it was just grey and black fuzzy lines and white noise. I let out a gasp of frustration and told her I was really angry with myself. She asked me to stay with the feeling that was behind the anger. So I sat there in it. I fumbled and scrambled around for ways to describe what it felt like. Anna reminded me, ‘it doesn’t need to be sentences, it doesn’t need to make sense. Anything that comes up for you – words, senses.’ And so a garbled mess tumbled out. ‘its like humiliated but from inside me… shame? Like I’m rotten inside? Dirty… I’m ashamed… but… but why am I ashamed?’ Anna said, ‘yes, it was never your shame to hold, earlier you described her as shameless. She was shameless Lucy because she made you carry it all. That’s the blackness inside you, it’s her shame. Talking about it is how we get it out.’ I said, ‘but I had to, it was the only way I could make her love me.’ Anna said, ‘she betrayed you massively Lucy. You were a child. You had no choice. It was not your fault. What you did and how you adapted was exactly what you needed to do to survive.’ There was quite a lot of quiet and we were coming to the end of the session which filled me with sadness. Anna said with a really peaceful open expression, ‘I am so proud of that young part who just told me all of that. I want her to listen as I say this… I understand. I know that it felt scary and she had to stop telling me her memory. That’s okay. I’m glad she stopped when it started to feel unsafe. It’s okay that she doesn’t trust me. I’m not going to force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do and I’m not going to try to make her trust me. You keep bringing her here and I will keep being here with you. I’m not going anywhere. I want to earn her trust. Slowly I believe she will feel like she can trust me but I’m in no rush. And if she feels like she wants to test me – THATS OKAY! I really want her to hear that. It’s okay for her to test me in any way she feels she wants to! That’s how she will learn she can trust me.’

Anna said, ‘you might find that different needs are met by each of your pandas, so you have Luna, Baby and Suki,’ she looked at me and I smiled, it’s so cool she makes a point of calling them by their names even when I am too ashamed to. She continued, ‘maybe Suki stays in your handbag for when you’re at work and if you’re not able to take her out, just putting your hand in your bag and feeling him or smelling my perfume on your hand would help…’ (I already do this which blows my mind and makes me wonder if she has experienced this process from where I’m sitting). ‘You might find that Baby is there for those pre-verbal moments when there are no words, maybe Luna is there for every day connection, for bedtime, you’ll really get to know yourself through getting to know them…’ I said that was exactly what I’ve been experiencing. I said, ‘when I come home from work and they’re sitting on the wee chair in my room… I smile when I see them, it feels like I’m coming home to my inner child and I am actually glad to see her…’ Anna said, ‘which is so great to hear, not long ago you didn’t want anything to do with her, you didn’t even want her in this room.’ I nodded, ‘I feel so bad about that, how rejecting and punishing I was of her… when she’d done nothing wrong.’ Anna pressed her lips together and nodded with sad eyes. She said, ‘that was very important to feel and work through and it might come back now and then but you are feeling something for her you’ve never felt before, your heart is opening to her. You’re doing so well. I know how hard this is.’ I thought about the fact that I feel a responsibility for my inner child/ren now and that makes it very hard to imagine ever hurting myself again because it would be like inflicting pain onto a child and just now I’m thinking, that’s what I do when I let the inner critic win, I’m letting someone viciously bully this defenceless child. But there’s a shakiness in admitting that. I’m frightened of what my mother used to say, ‘pride before a fall’… I don’t want to foolishly say I can’t imagine ever self harming again only to find myself triggered into hurting myself. I guess that is the not linear part of healing.

We had a fairly stressful weekend with a lot of flooding in our area and too much time spent altogether indoors. We did go outside a bit to ‘enjoy’ the wet weather with waterproofs and wellies but it is bitterly cold and really quite grey and miserable. Also, we tried to enjoy the time indoors with hot chocolates and movies but two young kids, small house, two adults in various stages of unprocessed developmental trauma needing space and time… it really was going to be a challenge at the best of times! Monday morning came and I felt my ‘child’ rear her tantrum head… she did not want to go to work. I’d taken the previous week off work with a terrible migraine and body pains… I have a very strict discipline policy at work for absence and I can’t really have any more time off. So I went in. I got through the day on autopilot.

As soon as I closed the door behind me after work the flood gates opened. I could feel it well up inside me from the depths of my tummy, up, up, up through my solar plexus, throat, head and then burst into tears. I think I had spent the day in this sort of compartmentalised dissociated state I get into sometimes when I have to just get on with adulting even when all I want to do is curl up in bed and hibernate for a year, only coming out for therapy sessions! So anyway, I was crying on and off all afternoon and late into the evening on Monday. I had to shelve the tears for my kids coming home, shelve them again for dinner, shelve them to go to the gym (which to be honest I don’t even know how I did that) and shelve them for chatting to my husband in the evening before going to bed early. The very intense thoughts of being an awful mother overwhelmed my mind. That I’m just like my mother. I had a muddled conversation with my friend as I tried to put into words what had triggered me… the main points of that conversation were:

I just feel panicky when I think about the importance of this job of being a parent and how fragile the line is between getting it right and getting it wrong. If I think about how hard we’re all working to heal this shit, all of the people I talk to online… all of the pain they’re going through trying to cleanse themselves of the trauma. Here I am now at the head of my family, I have the opportunity to NOT fuck things up right now so that my kids don’t have to work on healing from the damage I could inflict on them and I don’t think I’m managing to do that! It’s the one thing I wanted more than anything, to break the chain and not pass down the trauma, and I feel like it’s the very thing I’m doing… traumatising them, just by being here with them. And so my friend said to me that actually the bar is quite low for being a ‘good enough’ mother. And that fills me with grief and this desperate panic… it frightens the hell out of me. Because if the bar is low that must mean things were really actually awful for me growing up. That my mother couldn’t even reach a very low bar. And also, if I’m not fucking my kids up with what I’m doing and the bar is low, then what my mum did was abuse. But there’s a part of me that can’t get my head around that. Which makes me think I really am very fragmented… because I’ve talked at length about how abusive my mum was. But right now I can’t hear it or believe it. So maybe she wasn’t abusive and she did reach the ‘good enough mother’ bar. So my childhood was fine but I’m here struggling like hell so I must just be overly sensitive. I’m the one with the problem. Because I think my mum isn’t an abuser. I think she was maybe traumatised by her traumatised parents. And she had periods in her life when she was definitely mentally unstable – kind of up and down. And I kinda get on okay with her now from a distance. Also, things are easier for people who want to heal these days. It wasn’t as accessible back then. I have so much information at my fingertips that she never had. But I’m so confused, I don’t know where to go with this. How can I be angry with her when she didn’t know what she was doing, if she was traumatised, and she never wanted kids, and was possibly mentally unstable? How can I be anything but sorry for her? And then actually the bar for her should be very low. Because of everything I just wrote about her. She was fighting battles she couldn’t even see… they say you can only do the best with what you know… maybe that was her best? But for me the bar has to be higher. Because I am more educated. I have more resources available to me. I’m in a happy marriage. I have therapy. I have so much more than she had. So yes I should expect more from me… so I am failing and doing even worse than my mum. Because I have so much more help and knowledge… I have no excuse – this is why ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough for me, I should be aiming for perfection and on that note I am massively failing. There are many moments where I avoid emotional connection and intimacy with my kids. I know how damaging that can be… the emotionally distant mother can create all sorts of attachment disorders. And there are times when I go out and I miss bedtimes etc. sometimes multiple nights a week. Just like my mum did. Only I know how negatively impactful it can be. She didn’t know. So what I’m doing is so much worse. I am a worse mother than my own mother and therefore I am massively fucking my kids up and they’d be better off without me.

After talking with my friend and regulating a bit, I lay in bed holding Baby Panda sobbing because she no longer smelled of Anna. (See notes from the last session.) At 10pm, in desperation, I text Anna this message, ‘There’s a risk that I’m going to immediately regret asking this as soon as I send it but here goes… please would you consider bringing your perfume to the session tomorrow evening so I can spray it on the bear? Sorry to send a late text. I’m asking now coz if you go straight from work to therapy (and you’re not completely freaked out by the idea and still want to see me) then you’ll need to put it in your bag in the morning (and if it’s a no, please be gentle with me… I’m fighting pure nausea just writing this text out!)’

As soon as I hit send I felt myself leave my body. I literally felt it happening. Like when you get a fright and you jump out your skin. Sheer panic overloaded my body and whoosh I was out of it. I took a couple of painkillers to help me sleep. I didn’t fully return to my body all of the following day. I got through work on autopilot feeling as though I was the captain of a robot ship – sitting in the cab steering the body, arms and legs, looking out of the window eyes. Feeling nothing. I was certain my request would push Anna over the edge. I considered on a number of occasions throughout the day, texting Anna again to ask her to pretend she hadn’t got that last text.

I was incredibly nervous before the session but in a very distant way. I couldn’t feel the adrenaline fuelled panic I normally feel coursing through my veins, this time I felt numb and floaty. I hovered into the building and without making eye contact sat down in front of Anna. I’d gone over and over what I might say to her, that I didn’t really mean it, that it didn’t matter afterall… there was silence so I looked up at her and she gave a gentle smile and placed her perfume bottle on the table beside my water. I could not believe it. I felt a massive wave of emotion blow me over. Joy, grief, gratitude, shame, warmth, terror… I looked at her eyes and she looked quite emotional. Her face was just so fucking there right in front of me like she was really willing me to engage with this moment. It was too much for me and I immediately hid my face While hiding in there she talked about how brilliant it was that I’d asked for what I needed. I managed a whispered, ‘thank you so much’ but stayed hiding for quite a while. I didn’t really hear any of what she as saying because I was so dissociated.

An intense, slow, gently connecting session followed.

At one point, when I’d come out of hiding (still with the bottle sitting on the table – occasionally being glanced at by me just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it), I told Anna the big long garbled mess of thoughts that had upset me on the Monday night. I told her about my expectations for me as a mother and she said, ‘but the bar is different for everyone. You could have 7 people all in the same family and each one would experience things differently.’ That felt really uncomfortable to me, I said, ‘so it is my fault that I felt the way I did…’ she softened and said, ‘no, none of it was your fault, you did nothing wrong.’ I said, ‘but if I made it a bigger deal than it actually was?’ she said, ‘whose words are they?’ I didn’t answer her. A bit later when I was talking about how maybe my childhood was fine I experienced this sort of surge in my brain – I said, ‘there were so many days when it was so awful though… day after day… I remember the dread, walking up the lane to go home after school, I remember the dread in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to be there, I couldn’t find a place for me anywhere.’ She said, ‘yes, and you remember that, that was real, it really did happen and it was that bad.’

(Reflecting on that now, I’m realising that the feeling I get when I come home from work is an emotional flashback! It isn’t that much about my present day life it is my body reexperiencing the dread and pain and terror and depression and loneliness of my childhood… this sinking in the pit of my stomach and a numb grey wash loosely masking the blind panic inside that my life had no meaning and no joy and no hope… emotional flashback. Fuck I was so desperately along and frightened. Such big enormous feelings for a child to hold… I need to take this to Anna!

Back to the session…

Anna reminded me that I have spoken about having fun with the kids and that sometimes when I’m in this space I can’t feel or remember these times. I said it wasn’t like that in reality. I said, ‘I don’t think I lied to you but it’s just not that clean cut… I don’t really have solid happy present moments with my family… I get triggered so easily, I get spacey and turn into myself, I want to get away from them, I fake it for a bit but it’s not really how I feel inside.’ Anna said, ‘you feel like you fake it but I see it differently. I see you making an effort. Despite how you feel inside you’re making an effort with your family, you are trying to give them what you didn’t have. You greet your kids with a warm smile and open arms every day, you read them bedtime stories, you play with them, you are doing what was not done for you…’ I started getting really agitated and frustrated and said, ‘I cant explain it properly I can’t get the words right so you get it.’ Anna’s expression… I don’t know how to describe it… like deeply connecting in a sad way.. she said, ‘I am trying very hard to understand.’ But it wasn’t a critical or defensive statement. It was like a, ‘I’m so sorry that you feel I’m not understanding you, I am trying hard.’ I felt awful for her. I said, ‘its not you, I feel you trying to understand, it’s me, I don’t know how to explain it.’ she told me to take my time and reminded me that this is why it’s great when we have these 90 minute sessions because we have more time.

Anna said, ‘I remember you talking about your mum having two sides… one where she was quite cruel and unloving to you and the other side, the side where she would call you ‘sweety darling’… do you feel that she was being fake?’ I thought about it and said, ‘yes! So I’m just like her!’ Anna said, ‘but why was your mum being nice to you in those moments?’ I said, ‘to look good in front of people.’ She said, ‘and are you being nice to your kids only when you are in front of people?’ I said, ‘no, its usually when its just me and them…’ she said, ‘yes because you want to make sure they can feel your love, they can feel your care… you’re making an effort to break the cycle and love them the way you should have been loved… your mum never made that kind of effort…’ I said, ‘in fact just before I moved out she told me, ‘I wasted 17 years of my life on you…’ Anna let out a pained gasp/sigh… even though we’ve talked about this statement before… we talked about it in depth actually as it preceded one of the worst bouts of self-harm I ever inflicted on myself with 17 deep lines scored into my leg as an alternative to the one line vertically drawn down my wrist that I’d planned. Anna held her fists to her chest and said, ‘oh that just hurts so much, it’s just such a wounding thing to be told…’ I said, ‘I hated that she called me darling, she never called me by my fucking name… I always make sure I call Grace by her fucking name because that’s the right thing to do she should know her name!’ Anna said, ‘you’re doing it because you know it hurts to not be called by your name. you’re doing it because you love Grace and care about her and you want her to feel that love… that’s connection.’ I nodded and sat with that for a bit.

A little later Anna said, ‘So you sent that text after the last session saying that the feelings hit you as soon as you left the session…’ I said, ‘yes and I suddenly missed you, so much.’ More silence. I looked at her and she was gently looking at me… just looking… it feels so bizarre to be looked at. Just holding that spoken truth in the air. She asked me how I was experiencing our connection right now and I said, ‘but you asked me that last session and I said I could feel the connection but then as soon as I left I realised I couldn’t and sent that text. Sometimes it’s hard to even feel like anyone else is here. It’s almost like you’re a figment of my imagination. So… who knows! I know that you are sitting there, you are here with me, I feel like you are reaching over to me and I’m behind this glass wall… screaming and banging my fists on this glass wall… I want it to not be here anymore, I want to feel you.’ She said, ‘I’m so glad it’s a glass wall.’ I hesitated then asked why. She explained, ‘because it’s not brick. We can see each other. And perhaps it’s not a wall, it’s sliding doors… and the doors can open like this (motioned her hands placed palms together in front of each other then opened a little in front of her) and they can close… whenever you choose… unlike the blind that rolls up or down or the wall that you peek over… what do you think about that?’ I was nodding and I agreed and said I liked that but I just wish the glass wasn’t there at all. She said, ‘it’s there for a very good reason, you were hurt Lucy, you learned how to protect yourself. I’m so glad that you invented ways to protect yourself… and now you are slowly learning how to let certain people in… baby steps remember.’ There was a moment of pause where we weren’t speaking then she said, ‘what do you feel you need right now?’ and before I could engage my brain I blurted out, ‘I just want to leap across the room and hug you…’ I immediately panicked and plunged myself into my jumper and said, ‘no I don’t… I don’t…but I do… I do soooo muuuuuch!’ in a very young longing winey tone. Eventually she calmly said, ‘would you like a hug?’ still in my jumper I said, ‘yes but also no…’ I started to cry. She asked if I wanted her to sit next to me which I did so she moved the other chair beside me, I could hear it happening. She then put her hand on my arm after asking if I wanted her to. I felt all the crying inside me and it came out in silent little drops. I had an image of my mum in my mind and how much I’d wanted to wrap my arms around her waist and be consumed by her holding. Anna eventually asked, ‘is this alright?’ I nodded. I could feel my breathing do weird things. Little breaths then one big breath in. I could head Anna mimicking my big breaths then I tuned in to her deep consistent breathing and mine followed hers. Eventually I came out from under my top and blew my nose, dried my eyes. Hid my face from her with my arm. She slowly lifted her hand from my arm.

My memories of the session are a little hazy here. I know that we talked about how stressed and overwhelmed I get at home and work. That my work is open plan and there isn’t a single space in the building where I could be alone other than a cubicle in the toilets. And at home there isn’t a room in the house that I wouldn’t be followed into. There just is no space that’s mine. I have very few minutes in my day when I am on my own in a room… I know that in a way that is a blessing but also I really need space. I need alone time to process. To be myself. To feel things. To think without being interrupted. Anna said, ‘so, beautifully, you created that space inside yourself.’ I paused and looked around the room trying to take this in, I said, ‘in my head?’ she nodded. She said ‘don’t you think it’s amazing that you have given yourself what you need, when there seems to be no way of getting it externally? You needed space and peace so you made it inside!’ (I’ve been working this over in my mind since she said it and it’s really quite incredible how she does this, she reframes things that I had demonised inside my head and she turns it into something admirable and completely understandable… and she’s right! I did this all my life. My internal world is magical. It is everything I needed and always has been. All through my childhood… I have memories of the ‘real world’ and then I have memories of all the amazing things I did inside my head… in my inner world I could be and do anything I wanted… I was so many different things… I went to so many different places. I felt all the things I wanted to feel. In my inner world I was safe and loved and free. That’s why triggers and nightmares and flashbacks felt like such a terrifying attack… my external world wasn’t safe and loving but at least I had my inner world. When that was threatened, when my inner world was penetrated by fear and doubt and shame and terror – I had nothing. I have nothing. This is something I need to take back to session.

So ten minutes before the end of the session. We’re sitting right next to each other in two separate arm chairs pushed side by side with no gap between. She’s slowly taken her hand off my arm and I am able to look at her now. I said, ‘that moment when you asked what I needed and I burst out with ‘I want to leap over and ug you’ was like this crazy speaking without thinking kind of thing… I kinda wish I could do more of that coz it was like I was speaking right from here (hand on my belly).’ Anna smiled, ‘yes and that will happen more and more, rather than chastising yourself for not always talking like that, praise yourself for saying that one statement from your gut… a year ago you didn’t want to feel even the edges of your feelings and now you’re saying ‘I really hate this but what is it I’m feeling what do I need?’ this is amazing progress… you will get there!’ I said, ‘yeah I guess so… coz you know, there are so many things that I think and don’t say…’ she was nodding enthusiastically, eyes widened for me to go on… ‘like I want to have more hugs, I wanna hug you for a long time… I just don’t want to be too much you know I don’t want you to feel depleted after you’ve spent time with me you know im scared that I’ll be too needy and you’ll be exhausted and…’ Anna stopped me and said, ‘you really don’t need to worry about me you know Lucy, I’m okay. I really am okay.’ She looked so stable and secure and like she really knew the words she was saying, she really meant it. I said, ‘I really need you to be okay…’ she nodded and said, ‘yes I know, I am, okay. I really need you to be kinder to yourself… you’re very very hard on yourself. You are doing a very hard job, you’re a mother and you are in intense therapy… just one of those things would be exhausting but you’re doing all three at once.’ I smiled and said, ‘so you don’t feel like you dread our sessions or feel like you breathe a sign of relief after I’ve gone or something…? I really felt like I was emploring her, searching her face in childlike wonder for the answers. She had such a lovely smile and said, ‘ I really enjoy working with you Lucy, I could not and would not do this if I didn’t… don’t you think you would be able to tell if I felt like that?’ I thought about it and said I maybe would.

Finally, in the final few minutes while we were so beautifully connected I asked again, ‘how did you feel when you read my text?’ this question came from a playful, trusting, young place. I feel like she sensed that. She smiled at me asking and said, ‘I felt very moved. It’s a big deal! I’m so touched that your young part was so brave and vulnerable, I know that it’s very hard.’ I said, ‘and was there ever a no in your thoughts at all, when you considered how you felt about bringing the perfume? Did you think it over considering yes or no..?’ she shook her head still gently smiling, ‘not at all. For a start I know how important smell is. It was a really meaningful request. Instantly a yes from me. It felt very connecting. I’m really pleased you asked…’ I took in a big satisfying breath and so did she then she said, ‘So are Luna and Baby here… and do they want a skoosh?’ I suddenly felt frozen and asked her, ‘why is this so hard…?’ She just looked at me patiently and then I said, ‘coz it feels young and exposing…?’ She nodded. I said, ‘it’s so hard to ask for things.’ She said she knew and understood, ‘that’s why I am so very proud of you, you were frightened but you asked!’ I checked, ‘this is okay yeah? You’re okay with this? This is consensual and totally okay?’ She nodded and finally I pulled the bears out and one by one sprayed them with her perfume. I introduced her to the tiny one that shes never seen before and she asked what his name was. I said he comes to work with me sometimes (like she’d suggested) and asked her to name him. Anna looked at the label and said, ‘oh his name is Suki!’ I liked that a lot. She asked if Suki also wanted a spray which I did. I sprayed loooaaadsss and then after realised I’d kinda lost myself in the spraying and felt bad that I was wasting her perfume! I was so soaked up in the joy of it all for that minute. I put the bottle back on the table and said to her, ‘I know I’ve said this so many times and maybe you’ll think I’m only thanking you so you don’t get sick of me and leave me…’ (she laughed) ‘…but you know I really, I’m so thankful, it’s just the most biggest feeling inside me, this gratitude… I’m just I feel so lucky that I found you… and you know, I mean, I know it’s your job but you could do a really half assed job and still take the money but you know I really feel like you put a lot into this and I… well it means a lot to me, thank you.’ Anna said, ‘I know, I can feel your gratitude, you’re so very welcome, I really do enjoy working with you. You don’t have to keep thanking me but I do appreciate your gratitude.’

I put my shoes on. Put the bears in my bag then slowly turned to her and whispered, ‘it’s so hard to ask for things…’ she did an understanding face and said, ‘I know Lucy. Very very hard. You should be very proud of yourself. I am.’

We hugged and I told her it was so good to see her. She replied saying the same and I floated out the door.

I slept with my perfume drenched Luna that night and had the best nights sleep I’ve had in years. Solid, sound… woke up rested. And I have felt secure in our attachment and calm inside myself since. Smelling Suki at work helped ground me all day Wednesday. Every time I walk into my bedroom I smell Anna. It makes me smile because I imagine her reading my text and her smiling at my reaching out… rather than imagining her grimacing, she is glad to read my words. She gladly brought something from her house for me. I think I’m slowly learning that this attachment that I fear so much is actually the basis of it all… she isn’t fearful of it, she is encouraging it. I am not getting this all wrong, it is all going the way it’s meant to. And the gratitude fills me up.

Anna is a transactional analysist. A lot of our work is looking at my inner dialogue. She encourages me to share the things I hear in my head completely uncensored, even when my thoughts are critical of her! Anna said to me recently, ‘of course your inner critic belittles me, I’m a threat to her! I undermine her existence.’ I said, ‘but this is ridiculous, there is no ‘inner critic’ it’s just me, all the voices and thoughts are just mine, isn’t this just a convenient excuse so I don’t have to take responsibility for the horrible things I think?’ Anna told me that the inner critic is like a contamination of the authentic self. It’s the beliefs and words of our parents and other adults who influenced us when we were children. She said she can hear when I’m speaking from that ego state because it’s not who I really am deep down. Quite often I find it very hard to hear when I’m speaking from my inner critic because it all feels and sounds so reasonable and true to me. But Anna is slowly helping me untangle it. She will stop me, challenge the statements, ask me to take a closer look at what I’m saying. She’ll ask me, ‘who’s voice is that?’ or, ‘where have you heard that before?’ or, ‘that sounds familiar’ and I’ll be encouraged to dig deeper to find my core authentic beliefs.

Last Saturday in session I rattled through a memory from childhood, rushing through the details when she said, ‘let’s just pause there, Lucy. That’s really awful. Devastating. I’m so sorry that happened to you.’ I carried on without looking at her and she gently said, ‘did you hear me?’ I said I heard her but couldn’t connect to it. She said, ‘I know, that’s why it’s important to pause and let this reach you.’ I laughed and said, ‘you’re making a big thing out of nothing though Anna, it really wasn’t that bad!’ She took a deep breath and said in a stern voice, ‘your mother told you that it wasn’t that bad. NO ONE in this room believes her.’ In that moment it burned into me, hot and unbearable. I wanted to hide behind the chair but didn’t want to make myself more visible by moving. That is when I know I’m ‘in my child’. Trapped – wanting to connect and wanting to run. This is where the work is – pulling it all apart, through the agony of being seen by her.

The first thing Anna did at the start of that session was thank me for the text I’d sent her after our last session. ‘Baby smells of your perfume which is really nice. I wish I’d taken the moment in more when you were holding her. There’s something really comforting about seeing you with them.’ I cringed and said it was embarrassing, ‘I hope you weren’t freaked out by it!’ She looked concerned and said, ‘no I was deeply touched. I know you go over your texts many times so it wasn’t just a quick one you fired off. It will have taken a lot for you to send it. I saw it as a message from a very young part that felt relieved and comforted like she was smelling Baby and thinking, ‘ahh it’s okay, that smells like mummy’ and I know I’m not your mum, but I know a small part of you sees me in a motherly role. And that touched me, it didn’t creep me out at all, it made me feel connected to you. I was proud of you for sending it. It felt important.’

In my head I was thinking, ‘this is amazing, she knows a part of me wants her to be my mum yet she’s not scared shitless,’ but I was totally numb behind my protective glass wall. I told her I felt like I was going to push her away, I was too needy, too demanding. That one day she’d snap and tell me enough is enough. She reassured me that my texts don’t anger her. She said, ‘Lucy, you are not too much for me and you don’t have the power to MAKE me feel anything.’ We talked about boundaries. We talked about the roots of these ‘archaic’ fears. She explained that the texts help her understand how my young parts are feeling because they rarely come out in session.

She said, ‘I wonder, do you think your inner critic creates distance between us between the sessions? What does she tell you?’ I said, ‘um… that you’ll find relief in forgetting about me, you don’t want to remember me and if you do then you’re angry that you’ve remembered me… and if I text you maybe you’ll roll your eyes and think for fuck sake can’t I go a few days without thinking of this girl!? I feel like I burden you…’ Anna interrupted and said, ‘do you think I don’t think of you between sessions?’ I said, ‘I know we’ve talked about this before and you’ve said you do think of me, you hold me in mind, but I feel like you’d be really boundaried about how much time you spend thinking about your clients… it’s not the same as how I feel.’ She said, ‘and what is the fantasy…? If I was to think about you through the week…?’ I said, ‘that I’m too much for you and uh…’ she got kind of enthusiastic and said, ‘yes! Go on!’ I said, ‘and um…’ I told her I was feeling spacey so she got me to put both feet on the floor and take a drink of water. I went on, ‘that you’ll suddenly just break and you’ll tell me you can’t do this anymore…’ I then launched in to a long description of my dad and how I would never know how he was feeling until it was too late. That he would seem fine, calm or neutral, then suddenly he’d explode with rage. Then later my mum would come in and tell me that I just was too much for them, I needed to stop being so difficult, that it was my fault they were having so many arguments.’ Anna reached herself forwards into my line of vision and said, ‘it was not your fault Lucy, that was a very unkind thing for her to say. It must have been so frightening to have your dad lose his temper like that?’ I nodded and felt myself falling inside. I told her that I was very good at never showing them how I felt. We talked about that for a bit.

A lot of this session was very dissociated. I struggled to write notes for it. Just bullet points and a paragraph here and there. I delved deeply into some very painful stuff relating to my dad abandoning me, choosing to not help me when I really seriously needed his help… things in my life that lead me to this very strong belief that I am better off on my own, an island. I can have people exist adjacent to me but I must not need them. I love people from a distance. At one point I was explaining something and the preamble to the story went along the lines of me saying that I knew it sounded stupid. She stopped me and told me to be mindful of the criticisms and to not over analyse myself, ‘just speak uncensored’. I laughed and said, ‘do you know me?’ in a jokey way, seeing as over analysing is all I seem to do. She very seriously replied, ‘I really hope so!’ as in, she really hopes she knows me. As I was driving home, something really massive was stirring inside me – this thought kind of blew my mind… this sort of grief – a panicky realisation that she has always been there… she hopes she knows me… she does hope that she knows me. She has sat with me every week for two and a half years… this is the 119^th session and we have had some 90 minute sessions and phone calls in addition to all the one hour sessions… all of that time… ALL OF THAT TIME dedicated to her getting to know ME and helping me get to know myself… she has been there trying to reach me every minute of the time we shared (and all of the time outside of our sessions, her reading my texts, her taking our work to supervision, her planning for and reflecting on our sessions)… and for most of it I could not feel her. That’s devastating. The care and connection has been sitting there a metre away from me and I’ve been numb to it. Those thoughts completely floored me.

When I got home I sent her the following text, ‘Sometimes I miss you almost as soon as I’ve walked out the door. I think my adult dominated the session again today. I stood in the way of that young part you were talking about, the one who felt like she could smell mummy on the baby panda. I could have cried when you said that coz it’s exactly how it felt and I’ve been too ashamed to admit it. I could easily have fallen into a deep dissociation every time we went near the topic of how I feel about you. It’s just so painful. I know we’re not planning Tuesday’s session but it’s really important that I let that small part be in the room with you. I think that’s probably the point of it. I want to limit the planning and talking and overthinking to leave space for her. So that she can be there and feel connected to you and not dissociate away from it all. Now I’m going to utilise all my tools in an attempt to not obsess about all of this in my head for the next three days. Thank you Anna, for understanding. I really felt today that you do. That’s so important to me.’

I knew I only had to wait until Tuesday before I would see her again… three days wait – easy!

As soon as I sat down I felt uncomfortable and on show. The room had been rearranged and it didn’t feel the same. I didn’t want Anna sitting beside me because my skins really bad at the moment and I didn’t want her to see up close how bad I look but also sitting in front of me she can see the whole of me which also feels too intense. At several points in the session I told her I wanted to hide.

I told Anna that I’d brought the pandas and that I’d show her later and she said, ‘is the wee one really soft..?’ and I realised it was silly to wait so I pulled Luna out first so she could remember how big she is then said, ‘here’s Luna’s baby,’ and pulled the wee one out. She immediately reached over to take her and so I passed her over. Just seeing her look right at the baby panda and hold her with both her hands melts my heart. She asked what her name was and I said she was just called Baby. It was a nice few moments of Anna stroking her, saying she was so soft and fluffy… then I squirrelled them both away in my bag again down on the floor beside my chair. Every so often I flopped my arm down over the arm and could rub Luna’s ear for comfort.

I said, ‘I’ll just launch straight in then…’ and she nodded. I then said, ‘I hadn’t planned on talking about this and actually in the car this morning felt totally fine and good actually but now I think it’s really important that I talk about Thursday.’ She said that it sounded like a good idea. So I said, ‘Thursday was the absolute worst Thursday I have had so far… I know we’ve talked about Thursdays being the day when everything just hits me but this Thursday was the hardest ever. I’m trying to think what made it so hard, let me think…’ I sat for a minute with my eyes closed thinking. I said, ‘it was the usual thing, I woke up on Thursday morning and felt the pain in my chest and throat immediately… got myself and the kids ready while on autopilot… then when Grace was at school I felt it all in my throat and chest. Welling up inside me. Overwhelming me. I had to push it all down until Reuben was at nursery and then when he was away I laid on my bed and cried for over an hour. Then calmed down again… I didn’t want to tell Adam so I just pretended everything was fine when he got home… then in the evening… something happened but I can’t remember let me think…’

On reflection I can see I was fairly dissociated at this point. I was feeling spacey and forgetful and there were big gaps in my memory which was frustrating me. She encouraged me to take a minute and slow down. I took a breath and then said, ‘oh yeah I remember now, it was awful actually I went to a spin class to try to use up some of the energy I had coursing through me and then afterwards I needed to go and get diesel but on the way to the diesel station I had another panic attack, it was fucking terrifying and I had to pull over and…’ Anna said, ‘okay lets slow down, take it slow.’ I felt like I was struggling to take a full breath in that moment and so I looked around the room and down at the candle on the table and out the window. I nodded and closed my eyes and continued, ‘to be honest with you, I know this is the inner critic speaking but it’s my own fault that I got myself in such a mess because I was talking to you in my head and doing that thing that I’ve not done in ages where I was like rehearsing what I could say to you and so in my head we were at the start of the 90 minute session that we’ve planned where I’m going to sit and not speak and just see what comes up and I mean (I laughed) it’s ridiculous because the whole point of that session is that I DON’T plan it and I just see what happens but I guess the idea of that makes me feel anxious so it made me want to plan it in my head… so in the session in my head there was a short silence then everything just came pouring out of me, all of the things I’ve never told you just spilled endlessly and I guess I was getting more and more panicked and anxious and it felt like I was being strangled, like I couldn’t take a breath and my throat was closing up and it felt like I was actually going to die and I pulled over in a layby and…’ Anna interrupted and said in a very serious voice, ‘it can be terrifying to have a panic attack, that is exactly what it feels like, as if you’re going to die, and you were all on your own and it was dark and you’re driving, very scary!’ I could feel the shame prickle and I couldn’t look at her. I nodded and continued, ‘I need to not have these conversations with you in my head they’re too scary I think I frightened myself I wasn’t ready to even imagine saying all that stuff…’ she said, ‘I know… the point of the not talking at the start of the 90 minute session is to go slow and be authentic and see what comes up in that moment, to slow right down, not say everything all at once. I think you make a good point about maybe creating a boundary around the car. I know it happens sort of automatically, that when you are on your own in the car it feels safe and containing because no one is going to interrupt you or discover you, but it’s important we keep you safe. We can’t have 8 year old Lucy or 14 or whoever come out while you’re driving and expect her to safely control the car. You did the right thing pulling over, how did you help yourself calm down?’ I told her I put the fans on full freezing cold on my face and told myself, ‘I’m an adult, I just went to a spin class, I’m going to get diesel, it’s raining, it’s 2020, I have a husband and kids and Anna and life is okay now, this will pass…’ and that by the time I’d finished saying all of that I was finally able to take a breath in again. Anna said, ‘I’m so glad you could keep yourself safe. I wonder if we can create a boundary here… like when you’re in the car and you notice your mind start talking to me or ruminating you say, ‘I am driving, I’m concentrating, it’s important that we stay safe, I promise we will come back to this when it’s safe but we’re not going to think about this just now…’ a bit like what you’d say to the kids if they asked you to look at something or they’re distracting you while you’re driving, you’d tell them it needs to wait.’ I nodded and agreed. I said it’s hard because I didn’t notice it happening until I was in the middle of it. She said, ‘it’s just about practicing the boundary over and over until it becomes a habit. You notice the overwhelm, contain the emotion, establish the boundary… with repetition of this routine you’ll begin to feel safer in yourself.’

I told her, ‘when I was getting the diesel I realised I haven’t filled this car up since we bought it and didn’t know how to open the diesel cap door. I phoned Adam and he told me it was under the footwell so I pulled that lever, got out and went round to discover the door still shut. I went back and shone my torch and realised it was the bonnet I’d opened. I phoned him back and told him and he said, ‘for fuck sake! It’s between the chair and the door, open the door and look!’ he was really impatient with me and made me feel like an idiot.’ Then I had to figure out how to close the bonnet by myself. We talked quite a bit about this. We explored why his response had hurt me so much, that it triggered my wounded child. I felt a shock inside like I had been told off, I felt ashamed for not knowing how to do it and I felt like he hated me. Then I felt angry with him. I told Anna it reminded me of how harsh and impatient my dad used to be. That sometimes he’d have all the patience in the world and then he’d snap and shout at me really loudly in my face and I remember just freezing, he’d often threaten a smacked bottom as well so I’d just not look at him and stiffen up and wait for it to be over… wouldn’t let him see how I felt. Then mum would come in and tell me she wished I’d stop being so difficult that I just push him too far, that I need to stop arguing or whatever and that because I push him so hard then they argue and I need to just be easier to live with. Anna was saying over the top of me, ‘what? No… what? That’s not your responsibility! So not only was it your fault that he couldn’t control his anger but also your fault that they were arguing? Lucy, parents should be supportive and caring and loving, that’s a horrible thing to say to a child… really horrible, you didn’t deserve that…’ she said some other things and I said, ‘yeah and so then I…’ she said, ‘Lucy did you hear me?’ I looked at her and she liked angry and red in the face which I now realise was probably anger at my parents but I felt a bit overwhelmed. I nodded and said, ‘yeah but I cant connect to it I don’t want to…’ she said, ‘I know, I know Lucy, but it’s important.’ I said, ‘but really? It feels like we’re making a bigger deal out if it, is it really that bad?’ she told me what I had said to her but she replaced me with Grace in the story and asked me if I could imagine saying those things to Grace. I said I would never say that to her, put that onto her. We sat with that for a bit. I felt a little out of it so I looked at the trees out the window being blown about by the storm. I focused on the beads of rain on the window. I looked at the candle flickering on the table and focused on it’s smell. I flicked my eyes up at Anna and she was looking down at my chair legs. I wondered what she was thinking. She looked at me and I looked away. I said I was finding it really difficult and she said, ‘I know, well done for staying with it.’

I told her that when I went home I told Adam there was no need for him to swear at me. He said he’d just put the kids down by himself and was busy tidying and felt hassled by me. I just went upstairs and went to bed. Anna came back to this later in the session and said that when people do one thing that makes me feel like there’s a disagreement or misunderstanding or they hurt me in some way, it changes the whole way I feel about them. I told her I’d noticed this and that this was one of the things that made me ask Paul if he thought I had BPD because I know it’s called splitting. She didn’t respond to that but said it makes sense that I respond in this way because that small part of me is always looking for evidence that people don’t really love me and that I’m an idiot. So his reaction to me asking for help (which is hard for me to do) made me feel shame and rejection and abandonment and all the things I fear and so it made me go into myself… I retreated, protected myself and went to hide upstairs. She played out a scenario of a more adult way to deal with. Of me saying to Adam that it didn’t feel nice for him to lose his patience with me and what was going on for him at that moment. We talked that through a bit.

I then said, ‘so when I was upstairs I cried for like two hours solid and it was so intense… I know I said this recently that I cried deeper than ever before but this was the deepest most painful crying ever, I couldn’t even stay quiet it was so intense… and I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this it’s so embarrassing and hard to explain…’ she reminded me to take my time, ‘I was like lying in the foetal position in bed under my covers with my arms over my head and there were no thoughts just deep crying and then I suddenly felt like my head was huge, massive in my hands, felt like it was the size of a space hopper or something (I laughed awkwardly)… like it was really trippy… I felt like I dunno – weird proportions…’ Anna said, ‘it sounds like a huge amount of grief being processed from a really young preverbal place, you mentioned the foetal position, you know how babies and the foetus, the head is so much bigger in relation to the rest of the body, I wonder if you were really grieving from a very young regressed place… does that sound right?’ I was nodding and just looking at the floor. I covered my face and said I was really embarrassed. She said she understood and then said, ‘I think you know that there is a huge amount of grief to be processed and a lot of it doesn’t have words because the grief and longing is from a time before you had the words to express what was happening or how you were feeling, but you are feeling it now and that’s so good, I know it doesn’t feel good but really this is exactly what needs to be happening, I’m so proud of you.’

She asked me if I knew what had made me cry and I said, ‘I’m reluctant to tell you this because I feel like it’s like rubbing salt in the wound but… well do you remember a couple of years ago I told you that my mum was a singer and had made records?’ she nodded and said she remembered. I said, ‘well there was this particular album that she recorded that had two songs on it that I loved. I taped it onto a mix tape and used to listen to it on repeat on my headphones in bed on my Walkman. One song in particular that I liked listening to had lyrics that were exactly the words I wished she’d say to me about feeling comforted and loved. So… I’ve not listened to it in decades and on Thursday night I had the urge to hear it again so I looked it up to see if I could find it on youtube and I did find it so I listened to it and that’s what made me cry so much. You know when we spoke on the phone you said, ‘you’re not that little girl anymore, you’re not alone in that room with the door shut, you don’t have to cry by yourself anymore, you’re an adult now…’ and those words had been going around and around in my head and it all just built up… so on Thursday night it felt like it was her crying, her tears, her pain that I was connecting to…’ Anna said, ‘do you know why you were connecting to her pain?’ and I thought for a moment then quietly said, ‘because she needed me to.’ There was a long pause and I looked up and Anna was tearful with a kind smile on her face. She was nodding and said, ‘yes… she is not alone anymore, you are ready to hear her and comfort her now… she needs you and you are there for her… that’s magical Lucy, isn’t that wonderful!’ I found her enthusiasm uncomfortable. It’s really hard to connect to. She asked me if the song meant something different to me now I’m an adult and without being consciously aware of it I pulled Luna out of my bag and held her against my chest. I asked Anna to sit next to me which she did and I said the song meant the same to me now. I told her the song and she recognised it and asked what in particular moved me about the lyrics. I asked her if I could say them to her and she said of course but then nothing came out. I said, ‘I know the song off by heart, it’s threaded through the bones of me, I’ve listened to it thousands of times and can hear her voice singing it in my head.

You asked me ages ago if I felt like I loved my mum and wanted her to hug me and I told you I hated her and wanted nothing from her. But on Thursday night I could just remember how much I loved her, that I wanted to be close to her so much… I remembered that she used to wear black leggings and really heavy chunky knit cream jumpers that skimmed her thighs and she had a lovely body and… its so weird it sounds so weird but even as a child I noticed this, she was soft and curvy and slim and beautiful and I wanted to wrap my arms round her waist and nuzzle into her and breathe her in but I was never allowed to… I remember her pushing me away so many times… and listening to the song and imagining her singing it to me, I can hear her taking a breath the recording is that clear and it feels intimate and like… the only way I could get close to her…’ Anna said, ‘I know you described it as rubbing salt in the wound but I actually think it was a beautiful way to show that little girl that you were ready to hold her pain.’ I asked Anna if I could show her the lyrics instead of verbally telling her and she agreed so I looked them up online and gave her my phone. I sat for an agonising minute while she slowly read the lyrics and then I covered my face so I couldn’t see her reaction. I could hear her put the phone on the arm of the chair and from inside my top in a muffled voice I said, ‘this just seems so stupid, like I’m making this much bigger than it is I just can’t believe I’m telling you all this…’ She said, ‘it is a big deal, it’s very personal and very painful. I’m so honoured you’ve told me Lucy, thank you for sharing the song with me.’

Anna said, ‘it’s so sad that you were on your own with all of that, that you couldn’t get the hugs and love you needed, but what I’m hearing is that this little girl who was on her own with all of those overwhelming feelings had the creativity to find a way to be close to her mum, she found a way to hear the words she needed to hear… that’s incredible Lucy. And she’s waited a long time to have someone be there for her and now she has someone who can love her and hug her and listen and let her cry. This is hard, hard work you’re doing here. I get the very strong sense that you know there is a lot of grief work to be done and you are prepared to let it happen now which shows immense strength.’

We started to finish up. I still felt a bit in the thick of it. Anna asked me how I was and I said okay in an unconvincing tone. I did like her describing the fact that I listened to the song as a child as creative and I also liked the fact that she read the song lyrics. It was such a private, alone, shame inducing thing I used to do… this unlovable little kid listening to her mum singing on a mass produced record that anyone could buy and listen to… I felt like a loser… but Anna reframed it… that little kid was creative, she figured out a way to survive despite being deprived of the love she desperately needed. I need to try to hold on to that.

At the end I asked for a hug and she held me tightly and swayed from side to side gently. I love when she does that. We were hugging for a wee while like that then I thanked her and left. When I got home I unpacked Luna and Baby and noticed that Baby smelled of Anna’s perfume which made me feel so happy and connected to her and like it all really did happen… like at the end of the Snowman when James finds the scarf in his pocket. It is real.