Tonight’s session was bloody hard.
Understatement.
Felt like I was holding my heart on the outside of my body.
As she held space for me.
The very soul of me was crying out.
All I could manage was a solitary tear,
Escaping down my cheek.
Choking in my throat.
Filling up my empty chest cavity.
So much pain, feels like more than any one person could contain.
Feelings held captive for decades.
I do hope I have the strength to see this through. I couldn’t live in this space for long.
I have a friend, Jen. I met Jen when I was 12 and we were friends until we left school at 17 when we went our separate ways. As kids, my perception of Jen was that she was a high achiever, super happy (all the time), loving family, parents happily married, she was innocent, had lots of lovely innocent high achieving friends. I liked her but knowing her hurt so much. So I picked on her, teased her. I was very unkind at times. I was happy to see the back of her when school finished. When I was in my late twenties I got back in touch with her. I wanted to apologise for how I’d treated her. Turns out she’d become a therapist. And she didn’t remember school like I did. She said she found me very funny. That a couple of our other friends make her very unhappy but she always liked spending time with me. She thought I was cool, interesting and had good taste in music and apparently a depth to me that she wished she had. I told her that depth is called trauma and we laughed… sometimes it’s all you can do! So since leaving school she had a breakdown and then spent a lot of time working on herself personally and then went into the job of helping others. She was pleased I’d got in touch with her. We’ve been good friends ever since, talked at length about life at school, our childhoods, adulthood… therapy.
So, I haven’t seen her in four months. The past 5 times we’ve arranged a catch up, Jen has cancelled. All different reasons. Two of the times she told me she was burnt out and very tearful and just couldn’t see anyone. I know she has a tendency to avoid. To withdraw and move away. I know she’s been depressed.
We arranged a catch up for today and this morning Jen cancelled an hour before she was due to be here. I had a feeling that she would cancel. I was gutted. I felt totally rejected. In her text she said she’d woken up feeling awful after a hard session with her therapist the previous day and was too tearful and fragile to see anyone today. Normally I ignore how I feel and just reply with something that I think will release her from any guilt she might feel. I end up saying that I hope she feels better soon and to get in touch whenever she wants. Because I know she identifies with an avoidant attachment style and I’m disorganised/preoccupied. I don’t want to hassle her, push her away with my neediness. But the truth is it hurts so much when she cancels. I can’t help but think it’s about me. She doesn’t want to be my friend anymore but is too ‘nice’ to tell me. I’ve had a couple of friends ghost me so it’s totally plausible she would want to leave. It triggers me in the same way I get triggered when Anna, my therapist cancels. Painful.
Today I did something I’ve never done before in this situation. I told her the truth. I sent her a message back saying, ‘Jen, please don’t withdraw from me. I accept you no matter what. Maybe push yourself into the discomfort of letting me be with you today. I can come to you, even just for an hour. You don’t have to be any particular way with me. I’m personally finding it really hard to deal with all the cancelled catch ups. Xx’
She replied straight away saying that I was right and she’d come to me.
She was at mine for 4 hours. We had an amazingly honest, authentic time together talking about everything that’s going on with us both. I told her how much it hurts when she pulls away from me. That I need connection. I need regular contact with my friends. I need to see that people want to be around me. That I’m not too much for them. She said that she’s been cancelling everyone, including her therapist until the session yesterday. She was so glad I had sent that text and so glad she came to see me. We talked about how hard it is to just sit inside ourselves. To ‘be’ in relationships. To figure out life. We have different attachment styles but there are overlaps. We both overthink. We both worry too much about what other people think. We both think we’re not good enough.
Today we were vulnerable with each other and we were each accepted by the other. I started to cry when talking about an early memory of one of the many times my mother rejected me. I’d not shared that memory before and I’ve not cried in front of a friend before. We both did something outside our comfort zone today.
We were honest and authentic. It was scary. Unfamiliar. But it was so worth it. I feel closer to her. She has seen that even in her most difficult times, she can still offer something to people and she can be accepted. The 4 hours was peppered with the usual laughs and jokes that only we ‘get’. In between the more serious conversations.
When the desire to run and hide washes over you… get curious… experiment with changing that behaviour (within a safe relationship) and move closer.
Seek connection.
We are broken in relationships and we heal in relationships.
This is a muddled, multi dimensional look at my thoughts on empathy. Touching on what empathy is, empathy’s role in parenting and self-empathy.
Empathy is so powerful. I’ve learned that not everyone is capable of real empathy. I first truly felt it from my therapist and it hurt like hell. The grief of knowing what I had missed out on was unbearable. Being seen and heard, having someone completely empathise without demanding anything in return and without losing themselves in me. Wow. It is such an incredible gift to have and be able to give.
Empathy doesn’t judge or look to change. It doesn’t criticise or condemn. Empathy doesn’t ask for anything in return. Empathy respects and validates. The authenticity of true empathy can be felt. It is a healing wonder.
Empathy doesn’t say, ‘I agree with you’ it also doesn’t say, ‘I feel sorry for you’ it simply says, ‘I see you’.
When my kids hurt themselves, even if I think it’s not that sore to warrant the blood curdling cries, I don’t question the validity of their tears. I simply see them, ‘that was really sore, I saw you hurt yourself… that hurt so much…’ or just sit with them while they cry. If they’re crying or getting angry at me because I won’t let them watch more tv or have another biscuit I don’t tell them off for being demanding or spoilt. I don’t shut them in their room sending the message that their negative emotions are intolerable. I hear them out. ‘You’re really angry with me because I won’t let you have another biscuit… it’s so annoying when you want something you can’t have… it’s hard when you really want something but you’re not allowed it.. I understand.’ This usually makes them cry louder, shout harder, complain more incessantly or collapse in an emotional heap. That’s the full force of the feelings expressing themselves through their body. (On a side note, often when I witness this I think – ‘how many times did I suppress those feelings in any given day during my childhood as these needs were never met?’) When my kids have calmed down I’ll explain my reasoning, when they’re ready to hear logic and reason. ‘Remember we agreed you’d finish watching that programme then turn the telly off because it’s good to not watch too much tv. Let’s go play in the garden.’ Or ‘I know you love this biscuits but you already had two and it’s good to eat a balance of different foods, how about some carrot sticks/an apple/a drink of water…’ Feeling sorry for them, giving in or entering into a battle of wills takes their power away and it takes away mine too. My kids pain isn’t a problem that I need to fix or relieve them of. That would teach them they are incapable of coping with emotions and difficult situations. Empathy gives me a valuable tool in parenting but it also gives my kids power and the vocabulary to help them understand themselves and articulate themselves in the future.
Empathy and boundaries work together in harmony when attempting to build a deep connection in relationships. This is a steep learning curve for me as I’m doing this with no blue print for how to parent in a healthy way. I’m learning on the job, trying to follow my instincts, accepting guidance from my therapist and reading a lot!
Empathy allows me to take myself out of the equation and see the experience my child is having as being theirs. It helps me parent from a less easily triggered place which in turn helps the kids. The hurt, neglected child in me grieves the lack of this in their life but the adult in me knows that if I can practice giving it to my kids then perhaps one day I will be able to give it to myself.
When someone empathises with us our defences go down. When we feel less defensive we feel more open to curious observation and creativity. That’s where healing happens. That’s where we learn. The connection between two people. The bridge that says ‘I’m not afraid of your pain, in fact I understand it… I know it won’t destroy me to bear witness to your suffering.’
I have googled ‘what is dissociation’ probably a hundred times. Mostly in the first year of therapy. I think it’s some sort of validation I was looking for. To feel ‘seen’ in the words I read. The most validating thing I’ve read about dissociation were the words, ‘dissociation is as unique as the person experiencing it’… I don’t remember where I read it but it helped me breath a little. I’m very good at belittling myself, criticising and questioning myself. So any time I read about someone else’s experience that sounded different to mine I would immediately start to attack myself – what is wrong with me – why do I not experience it like that – why am I like this?
We were very early on in our sessions. Maybe session 6 or 7. I was 40 feet under the thick, dense grime of attachment hell already. I was so textbook. My journey with Paul lasted almost 3 years and in that time I read and researched and fed my brain with as much information as I could. But back at session 6 or 7 I didn’t really know that much. I just knew that I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone before and that terrified me.
I was going out of my mind. Tormented by nightmares that had resurfaced after our first session and what I now know were flashbacks. I felt like I was going mad… so much worse than I was before I met Paul. I needed to fix myself and it needed to happen sooner rather than later. Session 6 or 7. I started talking to him about something very traumatic that had happened to me when I was 14. It just started to pour out of me. I had never said the words outloud before. I was desperate to purge myself of the story. It felt like when you drink so much alcohol that you have no choice but to make yourself sick. I wanted to vomit the pain out of me like I had spent years attempting to cut the pain out of me.
I was talking and must have been getting distressed. I remember Paul saying, ‘you don’t need to keep going, you don’t need to tell me this.’ I was determined, ‘don’t make me keep it inside me any longer…!’ He said, ‘I think I can work out what happened, you don’t need to go on.’ I now know that he was trying his best to prevent me from retraumatising myself. He wanted to keep me within my window of tolerance. He didn’t want me to go where I hadn’t been before… after just 6 hours of working together. Then something happened. I slipped back into a space that was completely alien and completely familiar to me. I lost myself. Like falling. Or flying. Or both.
I spent almost all of my childhood numb. It feels like an exaggeration but I’m fairly certain it’s accurate. Not all of the time and not to every emotion but to a lot of them – for a large amount of time I was switched off. At 29, I found myself in a room with a man who I felt a powerful love for (which I now understand was my attachment wound leaking all over me). Having him care for me, listening to me say words that I never wanted to say or admit to… feelings surfaced that I had blocked out for all of my life. It was too much for my system and I short circuited.
I found myself at home, exhausted and confused. I sent Paul a long email. ‘I don’t understand what happened… I can’t cope with this, it all feels too much… why can’t I remember the rest of the session, I don’t remember leaving your office…?’ he sent me an email back and told me he understood it was a very difficult session for me and that he was attaching some information that might help me understand… and that he would see me next week. The information was on dissociation. I don’t even remember what I felt. Ashamed maybe. Embarrassed. Confused. We didn’t talk much about it after that and I rarely ventured into vulnerable territory again with Paul. Not about that particular topic anyway. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, he was an excellent therapist. He was able to help me deal with so much of what I was struggling with but he wasn’t the right person to help me with the core stuff. For that I would have to wait a further 5 years to meet Anna.
Last week I had session number 70 with Anna. 70 hours plus a few phone calls dotted in between. She understands trauma and dissociation. She watches me. She seems to know when I am treading near the landmines and will ask me questions like, ‘how are you doing with this?’ or ‘what’s going on for you in here?’ while pointing to her chest or stomach. Sometimes, when I go quiet for slightly longer than usual, she will pause what she’s writing and glance her eyes up at me, checking. I can’t seem to say the word dissociate in the session. It’s drenched in shame. Anna has said it but I just can’t. In the rare moments that I feel the tide of disconnection coming before I drown in it I tell her I feel ‘weird’ or ‘spacey’ and then she knows and guides me through some grounding exercises. During the deepest dissociative moment with her I somehow asked for a hug and it was almost like her whole nervous system grounded me as she held me.
I drew a picture to help me process what dissociation feels like for me and to help me explain it to Anna. She pointed at the balloons and the space behind the balloons and said, ‘this is safe… here… this is safety?’ I nodded. She pointed to the burning river of lava between our feet and asked what it was. ‘Disconnection.’ I said. ‘Either you get too close to the pain and the crevasse appears and I leave the session in my mind… or in some way you miss me and the crevasse opens up and I can’t help but leave.’
She pointed to the space between us in the picture and asked, ‘what can I do to help make this space safe?’ I couldn’t come up with anything. The hardest question in the world seems to be, ‘what do you need?’ She changed the her wording slightly, ‘I wonder if you would be willing to share with me any time you feel that crevasse opening… any time I make this space unsafe. Do you think you would be prepared to share that with me?’ I nodded. She pointed to my body in the drawing, the part where the arms and neck are attached to the shoulders and said, ‘when you feel this unreal, I’d invite you to let me know. I know it might be hard to put into words when it’s happening but it’s important we learn your triggers and if we can trace back to what was said or what happened just before the dissociation then I’ll be more able to support you.’
If there’s a way to hold someone without actually touching them then that’s what Anna was doing in that moment. I felt very held.
I know dissociation was borne from the need for protection. I know it served it’s purpose and makes perfect sense considering my life experiences. I also know that it is now getting in the way of deep connection and healing. But there is something intoxicating about it’s powerful drag into the abyss. I am both drawn towards it and repelled away from it. Much like my attachment style. The push and pull. A need for love and a fear of it. Anna explains that we will work on this very slowly, at the pace of a child, one step at a time. She tells me that ‘feeling’ even just for ten minutes in the session and then catching myself before I fully dissociate is a huge achievement that I should be proud of (and that there’s no shame if I do disconnect). She explains, ‘As we nudge the edges of your window of tolerance they will widen and you will be able to cope with more exposure to the pain and connection.’ She tells me to be patient and compassionate with myself. Which always feels easier said than done.
I’m in this familiar fuzzy head space that often happens the day after a hard therapy session. It’s like driving at night through the countryside with no street lamps, only the occasional headlights moving towards you, blinding you as the cars zoom past. There’s that split second where it feels like the car is going to drive head first into you. My mind is blurred and black – an endless abyss of thoughts and images that I can’t see but I know are there, with the occasional blinding moment of complete overwhelm. Emotional flooding in a split second. Then back to nothing. It’s so fleeting that I can’t hold on to what it is or why it’s happening.
I know my brain is trying to process what we talked about and what happened. But life doesn’t just stop so I can deal with the aftermath. I have my adult hat on. I’m at work attempting to be responsible and get things done while just beneath the surface I feel like the ground is crumbling beneath me. What I want to do is go home, put my pyjamas back on and crawl under my duvet and stay there until this passes.
Last night was one of the hardest sessions I’ve ever had. I was nudged out of my very narrow window of tolerance many times and at one point thrown head first into complete dissociation. I remember sitting on the floor. I remember Anna asking me how old I felt and telling her ‘3’. I remember wanting to hide. I remember her gently enveloping me in her soft reassuring words, ‘this is so overwhelming for you… of course the feelings feel bigger than you, you’re very little… I’m here and I’m not going to leave you… it wasn’t your fault…’ but I really struggled to speak. She asked for a colour and I told her ‘sticky black, yucky, all over and inside me’ – I struggled to reach over and meet her attempts at connection. Couldn’t allow her gaze to touch me although it felt like it was penetrating me and at one point I asked for her to look away. And so I was hiding again. Curled on an armchair with another human being sitting a meter away from me. Doing everything in my power to not feel the force of her seeing me.
Anna asked me what I needed and I told her for the first time, ‘to cry’. But then another more powerful force stepped in ‘damned if I’m gonna let that happen!’ Anna asked who’s voice that was and as we explored all the ways my mother pushed me away and silenced me the more I felt like I was drowning in the inability to cry. A part of me was crying but not outwardly.
Normally my sessions are slow to start. As with each new session I need to be reminded I can trust Anna. However this session opened the wound immediately. We’d had a phone check in mid week that hadn’t reassured me like I’d hoped it would and so I started to try to explain how I’d been feeling. It turned out she had also been reflecting. Anna said she felt like she’d been taking the lead too much. Too much of her analysing/talking. She was going to change the way we use my drawings. She said she had been reflecting and had decided she was going to stop analysing my pictures completely and leave it to me to explain what I’d drawn. I could feel myself tightening. Legs curled under me. Arms folded around me. She said she felt that by her analysing the drawings it was keeping me in my head and that it was time to push further and delve into the feelings more. She asked how I felt about that and I said I didn’t like it. That it felt bad. That it felt like a rejection. She nodded. She said, ‘it’s not that I don’t want to see your drawings, you can still show me…’ I said, ‘well I don’t think I want to now!’ she smiled and nodded and I said, ‘what’s that smile? Is that a knowing smile? Did you know I would feel like that?’ she said, ‘yes’ and I asked why I felt like that. She said, ‘it’s like when you would open up or share something with your mum and she would turn you away or criticise you or not believe you so you’d think, ‘well I’m never showing you that again!’ I nodded. There was a bit of back and forth as we talked about how painful it felt to have Anna change our routine and how much harder she was making it for me. Anna talked about how every so often the work we do will begin to feel comfortable as I get stronger and that’s when we need to push a little harder into the painful areas. So that’s what she was doing. Challenging. Demanding that I grow to deal with the new limits.
Anna wouldn’t let me show her this weeks drawing. She wanted me to explain what had been going on for me this week rather than using the picture as a crutch. After a huge amount of delaying and discomfort I said, ‘when we spoke on the phone I said that I felt like we were talking too much but actually it’s that I felt you talked too much and when you talk a lot I want to listen and learn and take it all in so I stay in my head and it makes it easy to numb the feelings. But then I leave the session and the feelings come rushing back in and I’m drowned by them again so when we talked on the phone I didn’t want to say ‘you talked too much in the session’ coz I didn’t want to criticise you over the phone so I said ‘we talked too much and I need you to keep an eye out for that’ and then you said ‘you need to take ownership over that’ and… well I guess I am pissed off… coz I was protecting you by not criticising you and instead taking the blame…. then you said it was my fault basically and that I need to take ownership when really it was you that was talking too much and I don’t think I did make it that way but it’s all always my fault!’ I took a breath… it was a rambling, messy, frantic searching for words. Anna was smiling and nodding. She said she was glad I was pissed off. She said this was really important because it tells her what I need and how she can best work with me. She said she was proud of me. She said that we were on the same page. That I hadn’t told her in words how I was feeling last week (and the past few weeks) but that I’d told her transferencially. The times I’d said I felt like I was wasting my sessions. When I would be overwhelmed immediately after the session. These were all signs for her.
I then went on to explain how sometimes when she tries to normalise something for me, it feels invalidating. This was not easy to get out. The room was spinning and I felt sick. She asked for an example. I said that the picture I’d shown her last week (which was a drawing of my childhood bedroom with a thought bubble filling most of the space with my inner world inside it) I said that it was a really fucking big deal to show her that because it meant a lot to me and I’ve never ever shared it with anyone before. It was completely private and secret and mine. I explained that when she said along the lines of ‘everyone day dreams, escapism is normal, it’s understandable that you would want to do that considering what your life was like…’ I knew she was normalising my experience but it felt so invalidating to me because I wanted her to be saying, ‘oh my god that sounds massive’ not, ‘yeah that’s normal, everyone does it…’ I felt like I was sharing a deep precious secret with her and she was just saying ‘stop making a big deal out of nothing!’
There was a long quiet moment where that just hung in the air. ‘Stop making a big deal out of nothing!’ Eventually. Quietly. Anna spoke, ‘…and that feels familiar… doesn’t it…’ I suddenly felt like I’d been kicked in the chest. I nodded.
Anna said, ‘Tell me about that…’
And from there on the conversation felt very different. I was swimming in grief and shame. Feeling very little and very frightened.
We grounded at the end of the session and attempted to talk about what I’m going to do next week during the dreaded therapy break. We hugged and Anna told me again that she was proud of me and I’d done well. I thanked her. Got to my car and burst into tears. The tears that won’t come when I’m with her but so desperately need to be seen and shared.
I remember reading that progress in therapy is not linear, it’s like a spiral… like a slinky-toy. ‘Moving through a continuous spiral of levels, sometimes so tightly packed in that they seem to be a circle rather than a spiral, other times more clearly separate from one another and more obvious evidence of progress. Similar material is addressed therapeutically at each step along the spiral, but addressed differently at each level as the spiral progresses forward.’
It got me thinking that maybe I will feel like I am taking a few steps forward and one step back sometimes and maybe that’s okay. Because as Anna keeps reminding me, we are not in any rush to get through this. I want to be ‘finished’ already but it’s just not going to be that simple.
Every time I am less than what I believe I should be as a wife and mother I feel this stabbing fear that I am just like mum and that really I’m kidding myself thinking I can be anything better. The catastrophising kicks in. If I can’t get through a day without a cross word or irritation I feel like the whole day is fucked and that everyone who knows me will be storing these misdemeanours in their minds as reasons to hate me and never want to see me again as soon as they get the chance to leave. The thing is, I know these ‘mistakes’ I make are nothing compared to what she did to me but for some reason my mind leaves no room for error for me – I can’t so much as look at the word ‘mistake’ without fearing that I’ll career off on a journey of destruction and completely annihilate everyone in my path. I remember the day I read about narcissistic/histrionic mothers online and everything clicked into place. Like that scene on The Truman Show where he realises his whole life was a set up. It’s like it came as a surprised to me when I realised what she was really like, that it was an actual thing and that it wasn’t all my fault. Every so often I get this dead weight feeling inside me that maybe my husband and the kids don’t know it yet but they will soon realise in time how bad I am for them… just like I did about my mother. I can see that my perfectionism is still a very big part of me. The internalised unrelenting high standards/hyper-criticalness… it’s all still there, even after all the work I did on that with Paul it’s like I revert back to my original form in times of difficulties. There has been a slight softening in my internal voice as I have intentionally tried to be mindful of how I speak in my head. The voice no longer screams, ‘you piece of shit you’re so weak, grow up, no one likes you, you’re worthless…’ now the voice occasionally says, ‘maybe it makes sense that you feel like this…’ I cry by myself every day. Anna says I’m grieving. It hurts like a ball of lead in my chest but the pain doesn’t feel bigger than me like it has in the past. And crying helps reduce the intensity a bit. I’m grateful for this.
One thought that’s made me cry recently was that in the last session Anna said that I come out when I feel safe and go back in when I don’t feel safe. That touched me because I know I am like that but I forget, or I try to pretend that’s not what I’m like. It feels so amazing and so painful that she notices these things and still accepts me and wants to keep working with me. I am reminded of how mum used to say that I was a typical cancerian in that I’m a crab with a hard shell on the outside but I’m soft on the inside. For some reason it makes me feel angry that she used to say this. I feel like I couldn’t let her know me because she would just use these things against me in some way. But also she uses these things to excuse her bad behaviour – describing herself as a typical taurian, being ‘a bull in a china shop’ rather than learning how to think before she speaks or acts.
A few sessions ago Anna told me she felt I was stronger now and she wanted to start tackling the letter I’d written to my mum. I was defensive and I questioned whether I was stronger or were we just not talking about the hard stuff… what if we start talking about it and I go off the deep end again. She didn’t answer me and I felt like she was exasperated by my argumentativeness and unwillingness to just accept encouragement. I then proceeded to have a crap week and the following session was emotionally challenging. With relief I agreed when Anna suggested we delay discussing the letter. She didn’t want to push too hard and for me to retreat again. But I kind of wish she had pushed… because it’s like this tantruming toddler threw herself into the room and had a screaming fit that made us all back down and comply. The toddler didn’t want her to think I was stronger only for me to then let her down… but the adult me knows I can be stronger and still find this difficult. Being stronger doesn’t mean I won’t get upset or space out. Maybe I needed reassurance that Anna would stop if I needed her to, that I could take a step back and she wouldn’t be disappointed in me. That session served the purpose of reassuring the fearful part of me but frustrated the part of me that wants to push forward. Anna remained attuned to me the whole time amazingly (I felt so fragmented I couldn’t stay attuned to me… but she managed!). She became moved by a story I told her. I felt my trust deepening. I envy how effortlessly the emotions come and go for her like waves. I want to be like that.
I’m so conflicted. I always feel like I need to do something but I guess when I feel this conflicted the best thing is to just notice. Notice and do nothing. I’m not where I want to be but a few things have changed. I trust Anna more than I’ve ever trusted anyone before and I am prepared to go places inside myself I was never able to even see before. The progress is slow, but it’s still progress.
I am hunched and hiding, tucked in behind draped clothes inside the foot of the wardrobe, knees to my chest, eyes shut tight. My mother’s clothes hanging around my face and body, I am squashed between a tall stack of shoe boxes and the cold inside wall of the creaking piece of furniture. I am being held by these inanimate objects in a sort of a hug that smells like it should feel comforting. I can feel her all around me and see her on the inside of my eyelids. There is a throbbing pulse of pain that radiates from the centre of my chest and out down my arms. My tummy is telling me I’m feeling something but I have no idea what it is. I remember to breathe and then I sob as if I will never stop. It feels like I will run out of tears. I am searching my mind for the words to make this make sense. All I have is words, I’m good with words I can be articulate and clever and make grown ups impressed with all the things that I know. But I can’t figure out how I feel, what my body is feeling. Why can’t I work this out?
Why doesn’t she want me? I need for her to show some delight when she sees me. I need for her to be gentle and tuned in to me and my needs. But what hope does she have of doing that when I don’t even know what my needs are? When I am so unacceptable… of course she can’t bear to even look at me.
I feel like the elaborately decorated elephant balancing on the circus ball – clumsily attempting to keep everyone happy by fulfilling a role I was not made for. I am not made for this. I feel like an imposter and at every opportunity I take the chance to disappear. I hide in, on and under furniture. I hide at the bottom of the garden next to the loud and cleansing stream as it noisily drowns out my crying. I imagine somehow making myself small and fluid enough to be washed away by the water. I hide up in no-mans-land behind the golf course, when I am able to get away. I run up there and just breathe in the space around me. I imagine the repeating fantasy that began when I was 7 or 8 years old that I could gently sink back into the enveloping body of the earth and be drawn in and be gone. Part of the landscape. The image of the rolling hills holding me is such a comfort it warms me inside. When I am trapped in the house or the car, I hide in my mind. This beautiful tapestry of fixed and perfect situations I have created and cultivated for hours and hours. I look forward to visiting that vast space up there that is filled with exciting adventures that revolve around me and people who love me and I am so happy and funny and beautiful and all the things I am really not.
But hiding, deep inside the wardrobe… deep inside my mind. I can be anybody.
I’ve always found it difficult to be my true self with people. Always had so much going on under the surface that no one saw. Old habits die hard.
I don’t know how to be fully authentic and open with Anna. I don’t know how to be completely vulnerable with another person. Especially not a woman. It scares me. I don’t even notice the fear but it’s there all the time, under the surface. Anna asked if I hold it in until I leave the session and I guess I always have done that. Since I was very young – that Perspex bubble around me so that the criticising, blaming, humiliating couldn’t reach me… and if I hide myself then I can’t be hurt when they don’t see me. It was the only thing I could control – that no matter what happened, they didn’t know I was hurting. I didn’t want to give them the power of knowing how I was feeling. Then I can blame myself when no one shows they care, because how were they to know?
I have a very vivid image of this little girl sobbing her heart out,
wanting to crawl up onto Anna’s lap and cuddle her. She’s always either
crying or hiding. The image has been popping up a lot recently, louder
just before sessions. It comes through as a feeling of panic and
anxiety. But in the session on Tuesday there was a wall between me and
her. That happens a lot. So when Anna was trying to get me to reach
inwards I just had nothing. And so Anna fills the gaps with talking and
that just makes it even easier for me to hide. I get a lot from what
Anna says but I know there’s a part of me that is happy to let her talk
more so I can feel less. It keeps me in my head, muffling the feelings.
I’m sure it’s a way to protect myself but I want the protecting part of
me to fuck off, it’s not helping any more I don’t need to be protected
from Anna it’s just stopping me from getting what I need. What am I so
afraid of? That I’ll start to cry and wont stop? That I’ll break the dam
that holds back the body of water that up until this point has only
been seeping in through the cracks… that it will knock me to the ground
and I will drown in it all, again, and my life will be annihilated… the
life that I have worked so hard to build up. What if I go back to how I
was? What if I start crying and never stop?
As soon as I left
the session I felt the wave of that little girl’s pain and anguish
because once again I’d abandoned her in the session when she can almost
taste the comfort and support she’d get if only she could express
herself. It starts as soon as I turn the corner onto the street. Then I
had nightmares all night and woke up with the panicky, heavy sadness and
I have to get the kids ready for school and I have to be mummy and go
to work be a wife and happy, laughing, capable Lucy while I carry this
intense, unignorable pain around with me.
I’m so angry with
myself for not getting my fucking needs met IN THE SESSION! I mean, what
the hell!?? It’s burning the back of my throat now and I’m just sitting
here next to my husband ‘watching’ tv desperate to just be in the room
with Anna. Because even though I feel like I can’t be completely
vulnerable with her. At least I can sit in the space of not being able. I
don’t have to be anything in that room. Everywhere else I have to be
something or someone to somebody. But with Anna I can just be. It is the
most vulnerable I have ever been with another person and it’s the most
frightening thing ever. And it’s still not enough. I feel like we’re
going too fast and too slow all at once. It’s too much and not enough. I
want to fill the session with as many words as we can fit into an hour
and I also want us both to stay silent and not utter a single word to
each other. I wonder what would happen if we just said nothing… would
the feelings come then, filling in the vacuum created by no words? Or
maybe I would spend the whole time dissociated… just an hour of nothing.
Finding Lucy King 