11.08.20 PART TWO

I suddenly got the sense I’d probably used half the session talking about how surprisingly well returning to work turned out to be and I realised I needed to dive into some of the more painful stuff so I said, ‘okay that’s enough delaying… let’s talk about the email!’ she laughed and asked me what I wanted to talk about. I told her about my interaction with my friend earlier in the day and how they had said that it sounded like some outdated beliefs and not my true voice. Linda asked how that sat with me and I used my hands to do a sort of ‘mind blown’ explosion at my head and she widened her eyes. I said, ‘yeah it’s exactly what was going on. They’re not my words.’ I then asked, ‘So, were you angry or annoyed at all when you read the email?’ Linda had a completely open expression and said, ‘Not at all. That didn’t come up for me at all when I read your email… oh and thanks for your birthday wishes by the way!’ I said, ‘yeah, you’re welcome, it looked like you were having a great time from what I saw. It’s a lovely photo.’ (then I totally cringed and wrinkled my nose. She said, ‘Thanks! Well it was lovely and warm and there was cake… what’s not to be happy about!’ I said, ‘do you think it’s weird or do you feel angry that I looked at your facebook page again?’ Linda looked thoughtful then in this really matter of fact tone she said, ‘Not at all. I just think I knew you’d look, yeah I definitely knew you would look to see if I had a new profile picture. I don’t mind that you looked, it makes sense to me, it’s like there’s a comfort there, a reminder of the connection. It was our first break. I knew you’d look Lucy and I’m okay with that.’ I found this really interesting. I wondered if she had carefully chosen a picture with the thought in mind that I in particular would see it. I talked about how I used to look at Anna’s photo to try desperately to feel the connection because I found it so hard to hold on to it with her. I pondered whether that was because of the maternal transference or because she unfortunately cancelled so many sessions that I always had this anxiety around whether we would actually see each other or not. I said, ‘I think Anna knows I still look at her profile picture and that’s why she’s kept her work photo up… I think when she changes it, that’s going to be a whole new grief. I really feel like she’s kept it up there to be consistent, it’ll be the last thing to go.’ Linda nodded and said she understood. I said, ‘do you feel frustrated with me bringing Anna up again?’ Linda said, ‘no, this is your work right here, this is what’s coming up for you so it’s really important you feel you can bring it to me… this is a very unusual situation you know, there’s a parallel relationship here, a duality to things. I obviously have my relationship with Anna and my relationship with you and it’s my job to hold that. I have to hold that. And I contain and hold it by maintaining the confidentiality and boundaries. That’s very important.’

At some point I said that looking at social media photos felt very painful and like it was almost self harmy… ‘it’s like looking in a window at something you really want to be a part of but you’re not allowed in the room.’ Linda said, ‘I wonder if the pain was already there? I wonder if instead of it being self harmy, perhaps it’s a soothing thing. Perhaps you’re self soothing by looking at the pictures?’ I thought about that and it really felt very true. She wondered if it was shame that made me accuse my behaviour of being like self harm. A fear that I could be judged or criticised. I said that was spot on and that I didn’t want her to think it was creepy. She said, ‘I don’t get any creepy vibes from you! I see it as you seeking connection and soothing… and I don’t see anything wrong in that. Lucy, you’re very open about how you feel and what you’re doing… it all makes sense to me.’

I started to question why I felt the need to send the email in the first place. I said, ‘I wrote loads of emails to you through the week and never sent them… I guess I knew that by the time our session came around I would want to focus on talking about work. Maybe the part of me that was struggling through the week feared all of that would be forgotten, that it wouldn’t be shared.’ Linda said that was all valid and true and then said, ‘but also, that was you on Sunday and this is you now and it’s important to see that you experienced that and you got through it and now you find yourself here, feeling differently.’ I laughed and said, ‘yeah you love bringing me back to the present moment!’ she said, ‘it’s important that you see that you did it, you got through it.’ Linda asked me what message I thought I wanted her to receive from the email. I said, ‘well Sunday had been so hard. There was a lot of grief coming up that hasn’t come up for weeks. It was really intense, like that primal howling type crying from the core of me. Adam and the kids were out and I was in the bath. I was fine, just relaxing in the bath and then I started to imagine a year or two from now what it would be like if she started her practice up again and I could have one final session. I was fantasising in my head telling her everything that I wanted to tell her and then all this grief poured out of me.’ Linda seemed to really understand this and didn’t seem phased by my crazy bath session. I said, ‘it was so visceral, just as powerful as it felt in the first couple of weeks and I felt like I was going crazy you know? Like I’d never stop feeling like that.’ Again it seemed like Linda really understood.

I said, ‘When I saw that Anna had liked your photo, that hurt so much.’ Linda said, ‘hmmm yeah…’ in a concerned tone then she encouraged me on. I said, ‘I really want her to be well and happy and to be living a good life you know and I’m glad that she’s still alive. Also, it’s hard to accept that she’s out there but isn’t coming back to me.’ With no judgment at all Linda said, ‘did you look at the likes to see if she’d liked it?’ I said, ‘yeah.’ Linda had a sympathetic tone and said, ‘hmmm, you were looking for her.’ I said, ‘I look for her everywhere. But then when I find her, it’s so painful. She’s gone from my life but not from other peoples.’ Linda asked me to go on and I said, ‘I feel like there might be some anger there… it’s not fair you know? I just don’t get it. I know that you have the full story so this may sound really insensitive but I don’t have the full story, all I know is that she has asthma and then the pandemic happened and then she made the sudden decision to close her practice and I really don’t get why! The amount of times I begged her not to leave me and she told me we wouldn’t stop working until I was ready and that we could have as many ending sessions as I needed, months of it if that’s what I wanted and all she gave me was a 14 minute phone call… why!?’ Linda said, ‘I wonder if there is a part of you that can trust that there was a reason. A very good reason. I wonder if you can trust that Anna gave you the time she was able to give you and that there is a damn good reason why she couldn’t give you the ending sessions you needed? Can you find a space inside yourself for that trust?’ I let that sink in and quietly the word ‘trust’ whispered out of my mouth as I looked out the window. I said, ‘I do trust her but also its hard to let go of the control, I want to ask you what the reason is you know? I can not imagine what the reason could be… also it makes me sad… it must be something so serious… she was such an amazing therapist and she worked so hard, she deserves to be happy.’ Linda was nodding and said, ‘it really is unfortunate.’

I said, ‘the boundaries are so fucking weird… the therapeutic relationship is like no other!’ she nodded and I went on, ‘I get why the boundaries are there but it’s so shit, I want you to tell her that I still think about her every day. You know? I want you to tell her that my silence is a symbol of how much I love her… I hope she knows that me not texting her has been the biggest expression of love and respect of her boundaries. It is because I love her that I have not texted her… I know it would put her in such an awkward position where she would have to in some way tell me not to contact her and I would never want to make this harder for her than it already is. Plus there would be no resolution for me. If I text her and she didn’t reply, which I know she wouldn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to wait til my next session to ask her if she was angry with me. There would be nowhere for me to go with it.’ Then Linda said something that surprised me. She said, ‘I know it feels like an eternity since you last spoke to her but actually not a lot of time has passed. Maybe in six months or a year you’ll feel differently and you will text her but I understand it doesn’t feel like a good idea now.’ This really confused me so I said, ‘Anna’s boundaries are really firm though. In her last email to me she said, ‘I’m really grateful for this final interaction’… she also said on the phone that I can’t text her anymore.’ Linda said, ‘oh I didn’t know she’d said that, I see why you feel it would be important to not text her then.’

I said, ‘I thought about texting her on the 16^th of September. That’s our anniversary of starting work together. She brought the date to my attention both years and I remember so clearly last September she told me we’d been working together for two years on the 16^th and I said, ‘wow I can’t believe you remember the date. But then maybe if it’s a significant day for you like a birthday or something maybe that’s why you remember it,’ and she said, ‘it’s a significant date because it’s the day I met you.’ I paused and felt a wave of sadness rise up. I took a deep breath and looked at Linda. She asked me what I was feeling and I said I wasn’t sure. I said, ‘I miss her a lot. I just want to ask her to come back to me.’ Then I panicked and told Linda I was sorry for still going on and on about Anna and that a few weeks ago Linda had pointed out that I was finally giving myself permission to do therapy with her and now I’m back to obsessing about Anna. Linda said, ‘this is therapy though, this is what’s coming up for you right now. This seems to be a very understandable stage to your grief.’ I nodded and said, ‘I hate that I have no control over any of it.’ She said, ‘I know.’

I said, ‘when we were working together, Anna and I talked about what we would do if we met in public. We agreed that we’d just smile at each other. But now… well when the world goes back to normal and she’s allowed out, if I saw her my heart would burst I’d want to run up and hug her and talk to her and ask her how she is and thank her and tell her she’s still impacting my life. I’d want to tell her there’s not a single day that I don’t think about her!’ Linda was smiling and nodding and I said, ‘there are so many things I’d want to say to her, we didn’t have a proper goodbye, and now I’m wasting time going on about it here… I have this tiny 50 minute slot and I’m wasting time talking about how great work was and how much I miss Anna.’ Linda said, ‘I do not experience you as a person who wastes time, I think this is all really important. What happened at work was very powerful! And you haven’t been able to say these things to Anna so this is the perfect place to say it. It feels very important that you just say these things out loud. Very important.’ I nodded and agreed and she said, ‘I can hold this. Knowing Anna and working with you. I want you to know, all I can really say is, if you can try to make peace… trust that Anna could not give you any more than what she gave you and there was a damn good reason why she couldn’t give you the ending sessions you needed… that’s all I’ll say on that.’ I think I find it reassuring to hear Linda talk like this but also very curious. I can’t for the life of me imagine what could stop a person being able to have one hour phone conversation with someone. But I guess it could be anything.

Before we finished the call Linda asked me about the rest of the week and I told her the days my kids are back to school. My youngest is starting school tomorrow and my boss has kindly given me the morning off so I can be there with him. Linda said, ‘Wowww! I mean, this week is big!’ she put her hand on her chest and said, ‘so many big changes happening for you and your family just now… reconnecting with the outside world, facing fears, advocating for yourself, preparing your kids for going back. This is all very powerful and important stuff!’

She mentioned something about taking every few Saturday’s off as she’s wanting to phase out Saturdays and I suggested I change my therapy days. I said it didn’t need to be a Saturday and I could do Tue and Fri or something similar. We agreed to talk about it on Saturday. We actually finished a few minutes early but it felt like a natural ending. She always gives a smile and wave as we sign off which feels really sweet and connecting. Oooh the attachment/transference stuff is building!

11.08.20 PART ONE

I sent Linda the following email on Sunday evening.

Hi Linda,

I really hope you’ve had a great holiday and that you’re feeling well rested… I’m not gonna lie, I saw your new profile picture (because, as we’ve already discussed, I’m a masochist and still look at the social media of all three of my therapists, just to torture myself). In the least creepy way possible – happy belated birthday, looks like you had fun. In my defence, Anna used to say she was glad I could find a way to feel connected to her between sessions by looking at her photo, which took the weirdness and shame out of it, she said it wasn’t creepy at all… but there is something painful about the reminder that I am on the outside. I guess we’ll talk about that at some point because it feels important.

This break is the first pause in therapy that I’ve had since Anna closed her practice and there have been some very hard parts. I’ve tried my best to be present with the kids, to spend time with friends, to do stuff for me… but it’s all felt a bit like I’m just about keeping my head above water. I’ve missed you a lot actually and I’ve noticed that those feelings have pulled another few bricks from the wall that stands between me and all my grief. I miss Anna so much it physically hurts. I saw that she liked your new profile picture and it broke my fucking heart. Something about her being present in the virtual world but absent in mine. The thing is, she’s not dead… maybe I keep saying it’s like she died because it’s easier to imagine she didn’t voluntarily leave me. But she’s alive and very much part of other people’s lives but she has chosen to close the door on our connection and despite knowing she will have very valid reasons, it still makes no sense to me. I’d pay her whatever it took to just have one or two ending sessions with her. I desperately want to speak to her for a proper goodbye, not having closure makes losing her so much harder. I wonder if she ever thinks about me. She said she’d never forget me but I wonder if that’s just a thing therapists say to clients. I wonder if she knows I still think about her every day. That 12 weeks on it still hurts. I know I sound like a crazy obsessed ex or something but it’s just so hard to come to terms with the fact that this thing that was so powerful and real and important is now not there and I have no control over it at all. She is still alive and interacting with people, just not with me.

And I’m noticing my attachment/abandonment stuff is being triggered with you. I’m scared that if I keep bringing my grief to you you’re going to lose your patience with me, remind me I’m working with you now and that I should stop talking about Anna or maybe you’ll tell me that because you know Anna, me going on about it is making it too complicated for you and you’ll need to pass me on to someone else.

I have written a draft email to you every day this week, Linda. This break has brought so much to the surface and I waited and waited because I didn’t want to email you during your holiday. I know that this all needs to wait for a session but I’ve felt a very strong presence of young parts this week and the only way I felt able to placate those inconsolable feelings inside was to promise myself I could email you Sunday night. I hope that’s okay.

I’m now going to try to get enough sleep to make waking up at 6am possible. I‘m meeting my boss tomorrow to discuss a personal risk assessment for me. I’m going to take it a day at a time. I’m incredibly anxious about going in but one of the reasons I’m doing it is because my kids will be looking to me for reassurance that it’s safe and that we’re going to be alright. I need to be a good role model for them.

Looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 4.30pm.

Take care,

Lucy

I felt okay about sending it right up until this morning when I started to panic a bit. I ended up forwarding the email to a friend this afternoon, looking for some constructive feedback. Our exchange really helped bring me back to my adult. My friend asked me what I was worried about and I said it felt like I was being really arrogant and big headed – presuming Linda would want to hear from me and read all this crap outside my paid sessions. My friend said that it sounded like a part of me was holding on to these views about myself and interactions with others but that this version of me wasn’t their experience of me – that it sounded like some outdated beliefs.. Which kinda blew my mind in it’s accuracy. It wasn’t until they brought that reframe to my awareness that I was able to see the situation so clearly. They were right! Anna would have picked up on that too and said, ‘whose voice is that?’ and Linda would say, ‘that’s so unkind…’ It’s true, they are not my words. I never talk about other people like that. These are the views, beliefs and opinions I have held onto for decades that were drummed into me by small minded, wounded adults who projected their unhealed pain onto me. Into me.

So, the session began with Linda and I giving a knowing smile to each other. She asked me how I was and I said I was good but also a little nervous because of sending her the email, we both laughed. She said it had sounded like I’d had a hard week and I said I’d go back to that later then immediately launched into telling her about my return to work this week. I explained that I did go to work yesterday and today, that it wasn’t without difficulties but it was way better than I thought it would be and that I was actually quite proud of myself because of how well I handled it all. I explained that I’ve been far more open with my work about my mental health than ever before. I told Linda that I used be so frightened that they’d find stuff out about me, that it would make them lose respect for me or lose faith in my professionalism… but actually by sharing more of myself I’ve felt so supported and it’s really enriched my experience at work. I can’t even articulate how incredible it feels to share some of my mental health struggles and still be treated with care, respect and interest.

I don’t know what I expected yesterday. After 5 months away from all my colleagues. I think I imagined they had al; thoroughly enjoyed the lockdown, didn’t take the virus seriously and would be flippant about returning. That wasn’t the case at all. Almost everyone was behaving in ways I’d never experienced them behaving before and on reflection I can see now that they were anxious, possibly traumatised by what has been happening around us, uncomfortable, feeling unsafe… and while I am used to facing these hard things head on, feeling them, healing, carrying it inside me… many of them didn’t know what to do with their fear and anxiety or how to behave. I actually felt strong. I was very aware of this awesome network of support I have that many other people don’t have. I’m already in therapy, I know the drill… I know how to ask for help. Many other people don’t.

Another thing I noticed was how relaxed I felt in myself. No nerves the night before the first day, I slept fine, no nerves in the morning… this is so unlike me. I had actually got another prescription of the diazepam just in case I needed them to take the edge off the panic to enable me to get in the building but I didn’t need them. I actually felt secure and capable. I told Linda that I was far less self conscious than ever before. Usually on in-service days everyone turns up read to show off about their amazing holidays, parading their tanned skin and new clothes. I always feel this overwhelming shame and all my self hatred seems to seep out my pours as I feel exposed going to work without my ‘work clothes’ on, I overanalyse what I should wear and generally end up flustered and wishing I could quit. I said, ‘I realised yesterday as I walked into work in casual, comfortable clothes that I really didn’t care what anyone thought of me and that I actually value my own opinion above anyone else’s.. I’ve never ever felt that before. I just had this really powerful feeling that it makes no sense to care what other people think of me when they don’t know me. They don’t know the depths of my experiences, the things I’ve overcome, they don’t know me… I do know me and I know that I deserve to feel comfortable and safe, I deserve to be here…’ I then went on to detail all the ways I’d advocated for myself at work. I’d been able to articulate my discomfort at being all in the same room (albeit with an attempt at physical distancing) for the first time, I told everyone that I would prefer them not to hold doors open for me and that as much as I love them, I need to maintain the distancing to feel safe at my work. This then opened the forum for others to share that they also felt anxious about being back and then other people explained what they needed in order to feel safe. It was a really authentic and connecting conversation unlike any we’ve ever had in my workplace.  

I said, ‘I know I’ve said that the past 5 months have been the hardest 5 months of my adult life and that is true but also it really feels like something profound happened to me in this time, something within me has changed.’ Linda asked me to go on and I then gave two analogies. The first was, ‘if someone spends their whole life terrified of heights – can’t go anywhere near a cliff edge, hates glass lifts, won’t even go up tall buildings, living their life in fear… then maybe one day they bravely do a bungee jump or something and it sort of cures their fear because they feel powerful, they conquered it… other things in life suddenly become so much more manageable, obtainable. Well my biggest fear was Anna leaving me. And as much as it really pains me to say this, there were times when she felt more important to me than anyone in my life and I honestly had moments where I believed it would be more painful to lose her than to lose my own family members. I was obsessively preoccupied with looking for the tiniest clues that she was going to leave me. I panicked about everything… I was so scared to put a foot wrong in case it would be the one thing that tipped her over the edge. And my worst case scenario came true she did leave. But I do believe her that it’s not because of me. She said, ‘you were never too much for me’ and I believe her. All that time I wasted worrying about something I had made up in my own head. It was never really true. She was never thinking all those awful things I imagined. I don’t think she ever really felt anything but loving things towards me.’ Linda was nodding and smiling she said, ‘that sounds like an incredibly powerful realisation.’ I paused for a minute and nodded, agreeing with her. I said, ‘Losing Anna has taught me something about my resilience… and resilience doesn’t mean surviving life unscathed and charging onwards barely noticing the chaos at your sides… to me resilience means being completely broken apart by something, allowing your defences to crumble and your ego peeled back, feeling all of the ugly and beautiful feelings strip you of everything you thought was you… feeling it all so deeply that you can’t help but come home to who you really are… and then though you’ve been brought to your knees… you get up and you keeping on going.’ I realised I was rambling while staring out the window, I looked at Linda and she looked kind of moved. She held her hand to her chest and said, ‘this is massive Lucy! This is your process, your journey, and it’s huge!’ I said, ‘I spent my whole life numb, Linda. I was always so terrified to even feel the edges of anything. Slowly, slowly we worked on me feeling things, tiny things… Anna and I… it feels like every single bit of work I did with her led me up to being able to really feel the enormity of the grief I experienced when she left me. It put all my other anxieties and fears into perspective. Sort of like, ‘who gives a shit what clothes I wear or what my bloody academic diary looks like, I have been thrown into the depths of my heart and I know how I am worth so much more than anyone’s judgements’… I just felt a deep connection to all of our humanness, beneath the things we use to hide ourselves. That we are all so much more than all these things I used to worry about. None of it matters any more.’ We talked a bit more about this and Linda said it was interesting to hear the experience I had and to think about the level of anxiety I was experiencing beforehand. She talked about that part of me that needed soothing and the part of me that stepped into the supportive role, the part that was able to advocate for my needs at work.

At some point I moved onto my second (rather cringy) analogy, ‘you know how crème brulee has that brittle crisp layer on the top and you crack through it with a spoon to get into the soft creamy stuff underneath…? Well it feels like losing Anna, the actual trauma of losing her broke through this hard protective layer and I had no choice but to let all the pain and grief ooze out and be seen, witnessed… felt. You know? I mean, I’m Cancerian and well – that’s a crab eh… my hard shell… losing Anna broke open my shell and it exposed my soft, deep pain – years of it… I don’t know if that makes sense.’ Linda was smiling and nodding and she said, ‘yessss it really does make sense! It sounds like a period of transformation, evolving.’ I said that’s exactly what it felt like.

I told Linda all the about the meeting I’d had with my boss and the conversations I’d had with the teacher’s I’ll be working with this year. I’ve been able to organise my timetable so I’m working almost entirely outside whatever the weather. I’m so grateful that everyone has been so flexible and adaptable to my requests and I feel much safer. I told Linda that it felt empowering to be able to go out to work, to navigate a number of difficult situations and conversations… to have that aspect of my life back and then be able to come home and enjoy my family… have more of a balance. During the meeting with my boss she said to me she’d been aware how difficult it must have been to grieve Anna without a support network. That other members of staff have shared their losses and staff have rallied around them. She said, ‘if you need and want that support, I am here. I don’t want to force myself on you but I am always here, text, phone… just pop your head in… let me know if you need that sense of support and I’ll do my best to be there for you.’ She also said, ‘if you find yourself struggling for whatever reason, send for an adult and just tell them I’ve asked them to cover you and then you just go and get some space or whatever you need… even if you need to go home, we’ll cope. I’d much rather we help you deal with things one step at a time than you hide it all and really struggle until it becomes too much for you!’ I thanked her from the bottom of my heart for being so supportive. The whole experience was really beyond what I could have hoped for. Linda seemed really energised by all of this… she said ‘it’s really so clear here… you brought your authentic self to that meeting and you were met with respect and care.’ I told her that my boss had said to me, ‘you will probably find that people respect you more when you’re honest and open with them about these things, about what you need.’ I said, ‘so far that’s actually what I’ve found! It’s like I was only living a half life before, never really connecting with anyone.’ Linda said, ‘the only way to be truly accepted for who we are is to be completely authentic… total authenticity… it’s the only way.’

Part Two

Hi Anna,

It’s been twelve weeks since you phoned me to tell me you were closing your practice immediately. It feels like the world imploded in on itself and then you disappeared from my life. And now, after 5 months of lockdown, we’re trying to assemble some sort of normality and I am at my desk at work this morning as if nothing ever happened. Every Tuesday for at least two years I would carry this feeling inside me, ‘it’s okay coz I’m seeing Anna tonight’. I’m not seeing you tonight. This afternoon I have a session with Linda. The thing is… I wish it was you. Will I ever stop wishing she was you? I saw that you liked Linda’s most recent profile picture and it broke my heart in two. Everyone else in your life still gets to have your presence… everyone but me. If I didn’t love you so much I think the anger would set me on fire. It’s not fair.

Love Lucy x

I’ve been mulling this over all day. I’m nearing the end of ‘Maybe You Should Talk to Someone’ and this line hopped out the page. ‘A person can be one thing and another. All at the same time.’ And of course I know this and I’ve read it and heard it in different ways many times before. But sometimes an idea or thought or feeling has to reach us at exactly the right moment to be felt on a body level, to be taken in. Absorbed. I can be more than one thing at once.
And so here it is.
I am a nurturing and loving maternal figure.
I am a vulnerable and insecure grown child.
I am proactive and energised and have the power to affect change.
I am lethargic and fatigued and life feels like a chaotic mess.
I have knowledge, qualifications and experience that enables me to excel in my profession.
I have unhealed wounds that demand for stillness, hiding and safety.
I can be generous, kind and thoughtful.
I have moments of selfishness, resentment and bitterness.
I can seek connection, ask for help, reach out to others.
I have moments of deep introversion, the need for complete isolation and a fear of being seen and known.
I can run a family and a household.
I have experienced the dark depths of depressive all day bed-dwelling.
I hold an unending well of gratitude for my children.
I lack patience and crave space.
I am creative.
I need inspiration.
I am fiercely independent.
I can’t bear emotional loneliness.
I love.
I hate.
I have experienced anxiety, panic, overdrive, hypersrousal.
I have experienced numb, flatness, teen dysthymia, post natal depression.
I overthink. I over-feel.
I go blank. I dissociate.
I can be both ready and not ready. Feel confident and have reservations.
Feel strong and need support.
All of the varied facets, the delicate and multidimensional parts of me… they all dwell inside me and make up the complex and ever evolving person I am each minute of the day.
Things that I accept and in fact admire in other people, I have a hard time accepting in myself.
I am on a journey… recovery focused.
Head facing forwards with one eye on the rear view mirror.
No idea what’s ahead of me but certain it’s the right way to go.

‘Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul, be just another human soul.’ C.G. Jung

Hi Anna,

I’ve been so tempted to just phone you from another number so I can hear your voice. Fuck it hurts like hell sometimes. We drove past where you live today and my heart silently broke again. It’s selfish, I know, but you were so good for me… we were a perfect client/therapist fit and I want you back. You were doing such valuable, powerful work with me, with the young parts of me. I don’t know how to do that work without you. You helped me in ways I will never be able to articulate and I don’t know how to continue that work without you. And in four days I go back to work. I wonder if, when you saw the news that schools are going back, you thought of me and wondered how I was feeling about it all. I still dream of bumping into you one day and bursting into tears in your arms. I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you. Please come back.

Love Lucy xxx

As I shared in the last blog post processing Saturday’s last session, I’ve been very anxious about going back to work next week. It feels too soon. Dangerous. I felt that we were underprepared and I was very panicky about the prospect of going into a building with hundreds of people after spending 5 months with no one but my family. We’ve stuck to the rules rigidly through the lockdown. I haven’t gone into peoples homes. I haven’t even visited local attractions as the restrictions have eased. We’ve intentionally been super careful. So going back to work next week full time all of a sudden definitely didn’t feel safe. Linda helped me clarify how I was feeling. Powerless. Powerless and like I was fighting the system. And her phrase ‘there are too many variables’ kept going round my head.

I went over every one of my concerns with Linda on Saturday and processed and wrote about it in my journal and blogged here. I received quite a few messages from people sharing very similar experiences which filled me with the sort of confidence that only validation can give you. Technically the validation should come from inside but in the absence of self belief, external validation is pretty powerful. I felt like what I was feeling made sense. That I had every right to feel concerned.

This afternoon I decided to phone my boss because I realised nothing is going to change if I don’t do something about it… I needed to express my concerns and ask for help. I was incredibly anxious, like pre-session nerves x 1000! I said I wanted the call to be confidential (like the one I had with her a few months ago when Anna stopped working with me and I pretty much had a break down). My boss agreed and said she was pleased I’d called. I explained that my mental health has suffered tremendously through lockdown, that I was still suffering from the grief of losing Anna and that though reluctant to admit it, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of returning to work. I listed all my concerns (that I wrote about in the last blog post) and she listened carefully to each point and was incredibly validating. I asked many questions, all of which she answered. She gave me solutions to almost all of my main concerns. She told me we will be given PPE (provided by the council – masks and visors, gloves and hand sanitiser). She said that many other staff have also requested support as they too are anxious about the return.

My boss told me that she will spend some time going over the new risk assessment with me, she also offered for us to create our own confidential risk assessment just for me to ensure they are meeting my specific needs. She has given me my own room so I will have space for my own belongings and won’t need to use other peoples classrooms. That means I can be in charge of the cleanliness of my workspace, have the windows open all the time, clean the kids hands before entering my room, have it set up to ensure distancing where possible. She reassured me that I won’t need to move around the building which will limit the amount of people I come in contact with, she told me I can wear a mask at all times if I wish. Lastly she told me she’d support me whatever I decided to do. Even if I choose to have the doctor sign me off. She was very receptive, non judgmental and empathic. She suggested I go away and read the documents she’s sent me including a draft risk assessment and I’ve to email with all my questions and concerns which she will either answer or commit to finding answers for me.

I was so relieved I burst into tears when I got off the phone, I was physically shaking. I hardly slept last night from worrying about all of this and imagining her being angry with me for being so difficult. I can’t actually believe how well it went. I could never have had this kind of conversation at work a year ago. It was hard, excruciating actually. Even a few minutes in when I could hear she was receptive and not angry with me I was still so nervous and imagined her losing her tempter but I just kept coming back to this feeling in my core that I am right to feel anxious, that my feelings are valid, that I deserve to have someone sticking up for me… even if I’m a lone voice I am still worthy!

This is me using the voice that Anna helped me cultivate. This is what she was talking about in our last phone call (eleven weeks ago today) when she said we ‘built strong foundations together that will never disappear.’ She said, ‘I will always be inside you,’ and I really felt that today. I really could feel her rooting for me through that call. I felt her calm, assertive presence. She’d have been so proud of me. I realised this afternoon as I processed the call that this is what it’s all about. Healing and progress and ‘living a content, healthy life’ doesn’t mean always feeling happy and balanced. It means having difficult conversations, it means putting your needs first, vouching for myself. Healing means knowing where your boundaries lie, stating them and protecting them!

I have been nursing a weary broken heart the past few days as Linda’s break has brought my grief for Anna to the surface but through that pain I am here taking another step. It hurts like hell but no one else is gonna do this for me. Anna shared the meme below on her twitter account at the start of last month (yes I still occasionally check that she’s still alive by looking at her social media accounts). The message on this little square made me think deeply about the things we value and how we can choose to self support or self abandon. I feel so much better about going back to work next week knowing I have clearly expressed myself. I feel confident that I can state my feelings if my personal boundaries are crossed when we do go back and I feel that I will be supported.

I told Linda that I was feeling good today. I said I really wanted to spend the session talking about how I feel about going back to work and that I hadn’t really thought much further than that. She asked if she could suggest that we focus first on how I feel today, right now then we could relate it back to how I have felt in the past. She said, ‘rather than focusing on how you have felt in the past and relating it to how you feel now, does that sound okay?’ I sort of laughed and agreed and looking back I think I folded my arms. She asked me what came up for me and I said, ‘well I think it always pisses me off a bit when you say that coz I spent so long avoiding talking about the past and Anna really worked hard at getting me to talk about the past and I know it’s not the same as this but a lot of the time I think it’s really important that we do talk about childhood stuff.’ She seemed really keen that I understand her, she explained that she absolutely didn’t mean that we should avoid talking about childhood stuff, she agreed that’s really important and reiterated, ‘I’m really glad you asked that Lucy because you misunderstood me. We are talking about you as an adult dealing with returning to work, so I think it would be a good idea to focus on how you feel right now… today… how do you feel about going back to work?’

I said, ‘yeah it is really important to clarify that so I’m glad you said all that. How do I feel about going back to work? I don’t want to go back. At all.’ Linda asked me why I didn’t want to go back and basically I spent the rest of the session meandering through the many reasons why I don’t want to go back.

I told Linda that the General Teaching Council and the union have been trying to come to some sort of working agreement that fits around the governments plans to open schools from Monday 10^th August which is a week early. I told her that my work is back different days to my kids which is annoying. I then went off on a bit of a tangent to let her know that Adam found out today that he isn’t being made redundant which is fantastic news. I told her this was great because we want to move house and I didn’t want to add ‘new job’ to the list of stressors. She asked where we were moving to and I explained we’d be staying local but wanted to move to a bigger house, ‘but that’s another topic for another time,’ and we both smiled. I ranted a few other things quite quickly and Linda threw her hands up and said, ‘woah that’s a lot… that’s a lot going on.’ And my heart started racing and then I felt floaty. I said ‘it is a lot, it’s such a lot, and I feel weird now that you’ve said that… I think… the thing is it is such a lot and there’s so much more as well and it all feels too much for me and I never know how to focus on any of it.’ Linda acknowledged my overwhelm and reassured me we would focus on things as and when they came up and that today was for focusing on work.

I explained the main points:

• We’re expected to maintain a 2 metre physical distance from other adults and children
• Children don’t need to distance from each other
• Teachers will have to teach at a 2 metre distance from the kids
• There may or may not be Perspex shields at the teachers desk
• We are responsible for maintaining good hand hygiene in our classrooms
• We are responsible for keeping our classrooms clean through the day
• We will have a full class of children up to 33 kids with any additional staff needed
• We should keep the rooms well ventilated, windows open
• If we’re unable to physically distance or we are in a poorly ventilated room we should wear a mask
• Children will not be wearing masks
• It is all down to the individual, none of the above will be ‘policed’
• Don’t mark jotters or touch anything within 72 hours

It took me a long time to work through all these points and as each one came up I felt very uncomfortable and spacey and would give a reason why the specific point is problematic. I told Linda that the management haven’t been very forthcoming with instructions as it’s the summer holidays still, that often we are expected to hit the ground running when we go back after the summer and that this seems to be no different. We will have an in-service day but that in itself is stressing me out because usually it’s a classroom with on average 40 staff all sitting next to each other for 6 hours.

I told Linda that I will be going into a pupil support role when I go back so I will be in contact with over 300 children each week. I will not have my own classroom and I will have to go into multiple classrooms each day. I will have to trust my colleagues – that they are maintaining cleanliness and hygiene. I will have to accept their room as it is, ‘I can’t exactly stride into their classroom, open the windows, hand gel all the kids and begin bleaching all the surfaces!’ I won’t have my own classroom so there’s nowhere to keep my belongings with the certainty that no one will touch them. The staffroom and kitchen are too small to use within the regulations and the toilets are communal. I know that to avoid conflict the rules will be left to interpretation and down to the individual. It makes no sense for me to be the only person wearing a mask, that doesn’t protect me from everyone else and will just make people think I’m a weirdo.

I know from social media that many of my colleagues haven’t been as careful as me through the lockdown and they have been out for big group meals, and events together. I, in contrast, have been very careful. I have stayed in my house, gone for walks outside, met a friend in her garden and maintained distance, attended osteopath appointments wearing a mask where they have been in full PPE, had one hairdresser appointment with masks. I have not been in anyone’s house, I have not met up with large groups, I haven’t even been in shops. I am now in the position where I have been super careful and I’m going to have to suddenly be in a building with over 300 people having no idea what the past 5 months have been like for them or how careful they have been. It just doesn’t feel safe and it doesn’t feel fair.

There were so many points where I felt very spacey and in one of those moments I said, ‘I don’t know what this feeling is but it’s horrible and it starts in my chest and creeps through my whole body and makes me feel spacey and floaty and it’s what leads to the dissociation and numb feeling… like now I uh… it’s this, I lose my train of thought!’ There was a quiet moment and Linda said, ‘is it powerlessness?’ and I just sat there looking at her. ‘Exactly that,’ I finally said, ‘powerless… I feel like I have no choice, this is all happening to me regardless of how I feel about it. Shit I hate feeling so powerless.’ This felt like such a massive breakthrough in this tiny millisecond moment. It’s a feeling of powerlessness that pushes me to dissociation. Wow. I mean, obviously! But also, wow.

I said, ‘Linda, I don’t know how to teach while maintaining a two metre distance. I can’t teach without constantly formatively assessing the kids work, it’s no use waiting 72 hours and you can’t do all of this verbally with 30 kids… I don’t know how to do my job to a high standard with all these restrictions in place and that makes me not want to even try… and a Perspex shield around the desk? In my 18 years experience since I first set foot in a classroom as a student I have never taught from my desk! I only ever sit down at my desk at the end of the day to mark and plan… the shield is useless!’

Linda asked what communication I’ve had from my work and I told her nothing. I told her that because it’s the summer we won’t hear much until the first day back. I told her that I felt it might be wise to speak to my boss next week but I’m very anxious about having a confrontation. I said, ‘if I wasn’t worried about what she thought of me I’d tell her that I really want her to be more prescriptive with the rules so that all staff know what’s expected of them. I want her to say that it’s our duty to maintain all of these safety guidelines in order to keep everyone safe. But she won’t do that because they are ‘just guidelines’ and because she won’t want to butt up against people and put the management under pressure to enforce the rules. So it would be pointless for me to say this… if I was the head teacher I would have a list of expectations that I wanted everyone to follow like a ‘one out one in’ rule for the toilets, wear a mask at all times if in an unventilated room or unable to maintain the physical distancing (and the school should provide the masks!)…’

I stopped and sighed and Linda said, ‘there are just too many variables… you’re really up against the system.’ I said, ‘yeah… fucking hell that’s how I’ve always felt. I hate it. Every year I grapple with the idea of leaving teaching but what could I do with a teaching degree!?’ Linda said, ‘loads of things! I always think of teaching and social work and other similar qualifications as being really transferable.’ I said, ‘I thought they were really restrictive. It’s basically a degree to be a teacher.’ Linda said, ‘yeah but the skills and knowledge are very sought after in loads of different jobs. You have an honours degree and years of experience… think of all the skills you’ve built up.’ I said, ‘well that’s for another time because I really can’t see me doing this for the next 30 years until I’m finally allowed to retire!’ Linda said, ‘yeah, my sister was a teacher for 30 years I have a bit of an insight into the job, just a little…’ I said, ‘oh sorry for patronising you with the over explanations then,’ she said, ‘you didn’t patronise me at all, my sister took early retirement and I think she’d admit she’s very relieved she doesn’t have to teach through this pandemic. The thing is Lucy let’s be realistic here, none of us have a fucking clue what we’re doing. None of us has a fucking clue. We are literally making this up as we go along and it’s very strange and scary and unknown. Tomorrow I will be going on two planes… wearing a mask the entire time, just so I can go and sit in my friends garden for 5 days and you know I think, well that’s going to be an interesting experience, I’ve never done that before! And the other day I went to a restaurant and could barely understand what they were saying because of the mask… so yeah, and that’s NOTHING like going to work in a classroom… I get it. We haven’t got a fucking clue how to do this, the whole world over!’

I said, ‘Yeah, it’s so unknown. I have been so grateful to be living in Scotland through this. I feel like Nicola Sturgeon has done an incredible job of managing this really fucking horrific situation and when I look at some other leaders around the world and how much they’ve messed it all up… all the deaths and all the people with lasting illness… it’s terrifying. I have felt, with so much uncertainty, I’ve felt like she has given us a lot of clarity. I’ve watched every one of her briefings and it’s helped to see that there’s an intelligent, empathic person at the head of our government making decisions based on the safety of the human beings in this country…’ Linda said, ‘yes absolutely, but now Nicola has decided schools should go back..?’ and I said, ‘well yeah exactly… so this is the first move she’s made that I’m not happy about. Schools can go back, millions of children and adults returning to buildings without the same safety restrictions in place that we see in other workplaces… and before gyms, offices and other things opening. How is that safe? The past 5 months none of us have had a cold or a stomach bug or viral infection or anything, that’s usually unheard of. Because we pick up all sorts from the school! But I get that she has a lot to balance. She has to think about the attainment gap that will have widened beyond comprehension through the lockdown, the kids who are living at risk of violence, abuse, the kids living in severe poverty who don’t have enough to eat one day to the next. I get that she has all that to consider and of course that’s important to me too. School is the safest place for so many. I get that. And it’s selfish, I know it’s selfish, but me and my family, we are safe where we are. The minute I send my kids into their school and I walk into mine that’s us putting ourselves at the biggest risk we’ve made since March. I am so uncomfortable with it.’

Linda talked a bit about these issues with me. I explained to her that whenever we go back after the summer holidays there’s the awkward ‘first conversations’ you have with everyone where they ask you where you went and what you did with your summer. Almost all of my colleagues are better off than me because they’re either younger than me, childless and have higher disposable income than me or they’re older than me and their husbands all have much better jobs than mine. They go on a couple of holidays abroad in the summer or they spend their whole summer in their second home in Spain or wherever and I just hate all the competitive/comparison chat. So when we go back this time round there will be people who have gone away in the last couple of weeks… one of them is holidaying in Blackpool right now… why would you go somewhere that has higher figures than here? It’s so risky. And anyway… most of them will say they’ve loved the lockdown, it’s been a slower pace or they’ve learned how to play the trombone or ride a unicycle or whatever and all this quality family time or they’ve put a new kitchen in and landscaped their garden… and me? I’ve barely survived. This has been the hardest 5 months of my adult life.’ I sort of paused, lost my place and Linda said back to me, ‘This has been the hardest 5 months of your adult life. I mean, wow.’ And of course my brain used it’s inner critic filter and translated her very caring tone into some sort of mocking, sarcasm. I said, ‘well… I mean I know you probably think that sounds completely over the top and like I’m exaggerating but…’ Linda said, ‘no, I don’t think you’re exaggerating. That’s me empathising with you Lucy, it has been the hardest 5 months of your adult life I mean, of course going back to work is going to feel so hard after everything you’ve been through and what you’ve lost.’ It felt weird to hear her say it like that, I wanted to make her say Anna’s name. I wondered if she’d hoped I was over it. Or maybe she just didn’t want to go deeply into it before her holiday. I’m aware I was starting to become hypervigilant.

I  continued, ‘When we go back to work everyone’s going to be asking how we all are and what the lockdown was like. What do I say when they ask me? Do I lie? I’m shit at lying. But I can’t tell them the truth… we have a work whatsapp group and one of my colleagues let us know a couple of months ago that she lost her dad. She’d been nursing him in the final stage of his cancer, her mum died last year and so she sent this message and we all replied with messages of love and condolences. And I know this is selfish, I’m making this about me, but I couldn’t put a message on the group chat when Anna di…left. It’s like it was a secret relationship and I couldn’t rally a community of love around me you know? I had to do all of that here in my video sessions with you.’ Linda said, ‘I know. Could you have taken that community of love and support in? If you’d had it would you have been able to take it in?’ I said, ‘probably not to be honest. I wouldn’t have put a message on the group chat. I mean, my grandpa died at the end of the year and I didn’t put a post in the group chat. It’s just not my style I guess.’ Linda said, ‘I mean, it is what people do. They put posts on social media… group chats,’ I said, ‘yeah I don’t really do that.’

This topic went on for a bit and I talked some more about how I’d hoped the pain and longing for Anna wasn’t going to be such a powerful force anymore. I knew it would come back from time to time, the ebb and flow of grief, but I hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much as this, or at least I’d hoped it would only crop up when I had time to feel it… not in the run up to going back to work. There is something beside the sadness and longing, it’s a panicky feeling… like I want to get her back, I want to get my life back. My pre-lockdown life, I want it back. At one point I stopped and couldn’t regain my train of thought. I um’d for a while and Linda said, ‘what was it you were just going to say?’  I paused for a bit and said, ‘I’m too ashamed to say it.’ She said, ‘oh why are you ashamed Lucy?’ I told her I felt like I should be over this by now. I said, ‘I was going to say that life feels like it has been frozen through the lockdown, everything has been paused and I guess it’s been easy to sort of imagine that my sessions with Anna were paused temporarily too… but as the restrictions lift and everything goes back to normal, when I go back to work… well, the last time I was at work I had her. She was part of my week, you know? And it’s going to be so obvious when I go back to work. The last time I was teaching, she was a big part of my life and now when I go back to teaching she’s not going to be there. I just feel like I should be over this by now like you’ll be thinking ‘here we go again, still not over Anna!’ but it does still hurt, I do still miss her.’ Linda said, ‘of course you do Lucy. I don’t have any judgments over how long it’s going to take you, you know? It takes what it takes and this is how you’re feeling right now and that’s valid and important and real. The thing is Lucy… the deal is, the feelings come up and they have to be felt or they’re not going anywhere. There really is no use denying that the feelings are there, pushing them down, they’re only going to crop up again at some point down the line. Best to let them come up and be felt.’ And as if by magic the tears came. Just a little and I sort of breathed myself back to a calmer state. I had no idea what the time was and didn’t want to cry my eyes out two minutes before the end. As it happens we had about fifteen minutes left.

Anyway, we made our way back to talking about the fear of the virus, ‘the logical part of my brain knows the facts. I know that it is very rare to develop a severe case of covid, I know that most people have very mild symptoms. But then I read about the people who were healthy and got covid in February/March and are still bed bound with ME symptoms, post viral fatigue, lung disease, organ failure… these cases exist. People who can’t work anymore. Dying from covid isn’t the only thing to worry about… I don’t want to get it. I don’t want Adam to be ill or the kids. Very few kids have had it really bad but they have still had symptoms and there are loads of weird ways the virus is impacting kids.’ I started to feel the panic rising again. This is really the first time I’ve explored my feelings about the virus in therapy because the whole lockdown was really focused on Anna being ill, leaving, coming back and then leaving for good. My worries about the virus itself always seemed way down the list. Also, when we were all locked indoors it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. I knew I was keeping safe. Linda asked me if I had any underlying health conditions and I told her I don’t. It feels so self obsessed to be stressing about this. There are people who have continued to work on the front line through this whole thing. But as Linda said, that’s part of the problem. I have been safely hidden away since March so to come out of that hiding feels very unsettling.

I glanced at my phone and noticed the time and felt this massive disappointment that THIS was what I’d spent my last 50 minutes with Linda talking about. I said, ‘This just seems so pointless, I can’t believe I wasted my session on this!’ Linda said, ‘Why does it feel pointless, Lucy? Why do you feel like you’ve wasted your session?’ I thought for a bit then said, ‘Why am I talking to you about any of this? You have no control over any of it… you can’t change or fix any of it for me.’ Linda was nodding a lot and said, ‘And neither do you… and I think that’s part of the problem… none of us do.’ I nodded and felt very sad. Linda said, ‘you may not be able to control any of this but you can control how you respond to it.’

Linda said, ‘it’s a horrible situation to be in, I’m not going to sit here and say ‘oh its fine, just you float on in there, carefree…’ you know? At the end of the day, working in a school and being asked to go back into that building in the middle of a pandemic is really crap. It’s fucking crap, I’m not gonna lie. The important thing is that you do what’s right for you. Whatever you decide it needs to be what feels right for you.’

She asked how I was feeling and I said I was going to miss her next week. She reassured me that we have a session on Tue 11^th (we’re changing our session days because of my work). I told her I had a couple of things booked in during my session times to get me through, ‘which was a little tool that Anna gifted me… maybe avoidance but it’s a good one.’ Linda said, ‘nothing wrong with using a displacement activity to get you through. Listen Lucy I want you to use this week to really tune in to how you feel.’ I said, ‘I’ll make you guess at the start of the session, you can guess whether I’ve decided to go in to work or not!’ we laughed and I said, ‘that’s if you come back!’ Linda said, ‘what do you think is going to happen?’ I smiled and shrugged and she said, ‘you think I’m going to decide to not come back?’ I said, ‘well it would fit with my experience… my therapists have a habit of leaving and not coming back.’ And with a playful firm voice she said, ‘Lucy! I am going to sit in the warm sun for 5 days. I will look after myself.’ I said, ‘and you’re gonna be on four planes!’ she said, ‘yes and there will be four plane journeys… I’ll wear my mask from the minute I enter the airport to the moment I arrive at my friends house.’ I said, ‘I do hope you have a lovely, relaxing time… please look after yourself.’ She said, ‘you too Lucy, whatever you decide to do. See you Tue 11^th.’ And we said goodbye. I sat for about twenty minutes breathing and trying to feel.

“The overarching learning curve of my healing journey – “Expect the unexpected.” Learning about myself has literally felt like I’m meeting and getting to know someone I’ve never met before.”

CW: This interview contains some discussions about suicide and suicidal ideations that may be triggering to some readers.

Lucy King is a childhood trauma survivor, mother, teacher, and blogger. The birth of her first child 8 years ago became a catalyst for Lucy’s personal healing journey as she recognized the ways in which having her own children triggered her unhealed wounds and how those wounds impact her ability to meet her children’s emotional needs. Lucy openly shares details of her therapy sessions and processing on her blog and Instagram page as she continues her deep attachment work with her third therapist. Her writing has inspired many followers to begin their own therapeutic journey or to deepen their current work by braving more challenging topics in sessions due to her own uncensored authenticity. Lucy discusses how her personal experiences with childhood emotional abuse and neglect motivated a strong desire to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and the ways in which she uses her adverse childhood experiences to inform her practice both as a parent and as a trauma-informed primary school teacher.

SWY: Starts With Youth believes that there is value in the ability to share one’s story and build a community. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with childhood abuse and trauma?

LK: From the outside, we were the perfect family. No one knew what life was like behind closed doors. Sadly as I write those words I can see I’ve repeated that aspect of my trauma all through my life by hiding the truth of my childhood and my healing journey from most of the world. I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m a mother and teacher and wife and I started therapy 7 years ago. I can count on one hand the number of people in my life who know the last part of that sentence. I blog about my recovery from childhood trauma anonymously. I hope that one day I will feel brave enough to be open with everyone in my life but I’m not there yet. I would tell every survivor that the shame is not theirs to carry, however I still hold onto a lot of the shame that was passed on to me. This journey is ongoing and progress is not linear. I am the result of generations of trauma that was passed down through both sides of my family. Familiar stories of our family history hold tales of wars, alcoholism, breakdowns, infidelity, prescription drug abuse, ‘untreated personality disorders’ (though I hate that term), sexual assaults… all behind the closed doors of very well spoken ‘middle class’ families. I have made a commitment to my children to break the chain, to limit the trauma they inherit.

My experience as a child was that I had no identity that wasn’t defined by how I could serve my parents. I was the product of an affair and as a result of my accidental conception, my parents decided to stay together then held me responsible for their unhappiness. Due to my parents’ own unhealed wounds, they were inconsistent, unreliable, selfish, narcissistic, emotionally volatile, and emotionally detached. I was emotionally abused by my mother daily and occasionally physically hurt by them both. My father was emotionally distant. They were both unable to meet my emotional needs. I was called names, humiliated, shamed. I was to blame for everything that went wrong in the family. For those of you familiar with narcissistic abuse terminology, I relate to the role of scapegoat. My parents found it difficult to settle into their roles as adults and we moved around the country numerous times as they both attempted to ‘find themselves’ and find secure jobs. We lived just above the poverty line and constantly on the outskirts of community. I struggled to make friends and retreated to my very vivid inner world as a way of coping. There were often explosive fights that I was dragged into and then would be forced into the role of a marriage counsellor. I was parentified by both parents and made responsible for their emotional wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of my younger brother. In my mid-teens, my parents finally separated and my mother had a series of toxic relationships that brought more chaos into my family home. I never felt safe or nurtured. I mostly felt like an unwanted burden.

SWY: What effect do these experiences have on you today? Physically, mentally, emotionally, or in any other way?

LK: In my teens and early twenties, I struggled with a range of reactive coping strategies. I self-harmed, drank, got high, and took risks. I didn’t value my life and was desperate to find a way to numb the emotional pain I was enduring. I attempted to end my life. I moved out of the ‘family home’ at 17 and moved in with my now-husband. Life became more stable, I started university and began to explore self-help books. I was still plagued by dissociation, disordered eating, deep depressive episodes, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviours, and chronic low self-esteem. I struggled with emotional and physical intimacy. I still struggle with perfectionism; I have a phobia that I will damage my children. I have panic and anxiety attacks, I experience emotional flashbacks, and during difficult periods, I suffer from intense nightmares. I struggle with toxic shame and low self-worth, I relate to disorganized/avoidant attachment patterns, so emotionally intimate relationships are very difficult for me. I overthink and analyze everything so I become mentally exhausted easily, which negatively impacts my ability to concentrate on work and other things. I still struggle with depression and anxiety. I am hypervigilant in relationships, and I struggle with asserting boundaries. Many of these things have become more manageable or have healed since starting therapy but quite a few of the issues I’ve listed are ongoing.

SWY: What are some methods you have found to be particularly effective in coping with trauma?

LK: My number one catalyst in my healing journey is therapy! I recognize that therapy is a privilege that not everyone has access to, it hasn’t been easy for me to get what I need and I felt badly let down by the limited support available for survivors of childhood trauma on the NHS here in the UK. We need far more than the 6 to 8 counselling sessions offered. I have paid for private therapy since I started in 2013. This hasn’t been easy and has at times been a difficult commitment to make financially. There were periods where I got into debt paying for my sessions. We forfeited new cars, holidays, other indulgences that our peers enjoyed because we always said my healing and my mental health was an investment for the whole family and a priority above other expenditures. It’s important to note that there are volunteer groups and many therapists offer sliding scales, so I’d encourage those who need support to not let financial constraints limit your access to therapy. It has been the single biggest vehicle for my healing and after a decade of attempting to heal through self-help books and motivational films, I can say with complete conviction that I could not have done this by myself.

My first therapist was a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. He helped me work on the symptoms of my trauma, he educated me on what was happening in my mind and body, and he introduced me to mindfulness and compassion-based work. After three years working with him, I had my second child and took a year break from therapy. I then worked with my second therapist who’s modality was Transactional Analysis. She observed my tendency to intellectualize and worked on connecting me to my inner child, my feelings (that thing I was completely numb to all my life). We did an enormous amount of work together working twice a week for nearly two and a half years and the progress I made especially in the last year has been incredible. She taught me how to let love in and was the single most influential person in my life. That work has sadly come to an abrupt end as she’s had to close her practice due to illness, which has been a huge loss for me. I am currently in the very early stages of working with my third therapist who is a person-centered therapist. We are currently working on my grief around the loss of my much-loved therapist and the attachment pain that’s bringing up. I could talk at length about my experiences with therapy (as I do on my blog)… one key thing I’ve learned is that the relationship is the most important and most healing part of the whole process. Followed closely behind by the need for the therapist to be trauma-informed and in my opinion, they should be in their own therapy along with receiving regular supervision.

As I experienced developmental/attachment trauma from having caregivers who could not attune to me and did not have the capacity to meet my needs, I have struggled with feeling, tolerating, and regulating my emotions. It has been vital for me to work with a practitioner who understands this and has provided the safe, nurturing relationship within which I can learn how to co-regulate. The end goal of course is to be a self-regulating, self-sustaining person and the only way to reach that goal is to turn towards the pain and face it within a secure relationship.
“The end goal of course is to be a self-regulating, self-sustaining person and the only way to reach that goal is to turn towards the pain and face it within a secure relationship.”

Other methods I’ve found useful in my recovery from childhood trauma are –

Reading and researching – You are the expert of your experience but don’t rely on a professional to know everything about the psychological side of things. Knowledge is power. Learn about adverse childhood experiences, generational trauma, the mother wound, coping strategies, defense mechanisms, the nervous system, fight/flight response, somatic expressions of trauma, attachment theories, working with parts… the list is endless. Absorb as much information as you can so that you can cognitively understand what you went through and how much you make sense considering what you experienced. You are also in a far better position to know what you need when you understand what you’re experiencing.

Mindfulness, meditation, and yoga – I would consider myself in my infancy with these practices (though I have been using guided meditations for years) and I struggle to consistently turn to these methods in times of heightened stress. They do help me a lot though and I see them having a massively positive impact in the wider community of survivors. Reparenting yourself through fostering good sleep habits, regular movement, mindful eating, and learning about healthy boundaries all contribute to the healing process.

There are hundreds of amazing pages on Instagram. Search tags that relate to your particular trauma to find the support that relates to your needs. If you’re concerned about your privacy, you could create a separate account that’s anonymous so you can comment and interact on the pages without fear of someone in your family seeing. Keywords like ‘adult child of narcissist’, ‘recovery from childhood trauma’, ‘polyvagal theory’, ‘healing the inner child’ are really useful. I’ve spent hours and hours delving into anything from blogs and websites to samples of books available on amazon and psychological journals/papers for practitioners.

Finally, find a community of people who ‘get it’. Whether it’s group therapy, support groups online, friends. Blogging and Instagram have been a saviour for me in finding a group of amazing, inspirational survivors and therapists (many of which are wounded healers themselves) who are a constant source of experience, knowledge, guidance, and support for me. It is an incredible validation and affirming experience to be able to talk to people who have walked a similar path to you and helps to break down the belief that you’re alone in your experience.

SWY: Is there anything you have learned that surprised you or was unexpected throughout your healing process?

LK: Yeah, so many things. The overarching learning curve of my healing journey – “Expect the unexpected.” Learning about myself has literally felt like I’m meeting and getting to know someone I’ve never met before. Also, it takes time. You need to go slow and respect the pace of the most scared and vulnerable side of yourself… no one is moving forwards until the least trusting part of yourself feels safe. As my last therapist would say (when talking of my frightened inner child), ‘baby steps, think of how far she’s come and how small her feet are’. If like me, you’ve spent your life numb and detached then it’s going to feel a lot worse before anything gets better because these very painful, suppressed, young feelings will emerge and demand to be felt. People will attempt to remind you of your strength by saying things like, ‘you survived the trauma so you can survive the recovery’ but in my opinion, this is not how it feels. Often times through the trauma we dissociate and could in fact have been numb to it our whole childhoods. In complete contrast through the healing journey, we need to feel it all for the first time and it feels annihilating. But it is true that we are stronger than we think and we are all capable of healing. Lastly, one of the most surprising things for my most wounded parts is that healing within a relationship is powerful and life-changing. Attachment therapy relies on a very close and deep attachment between the therapist and client.

SWY: As a survivor of enduring childhood abuse, what would you say to others who may be currently living through similar experiences that you have had?

LK: For any children or young adults who may be reading this… What is happening to you is not your fault. No matter what anyone has told you. It is NEVER the child’s fault. You didn’t make this happen, you are not to blame and the shame you’re experiencing is not yours to carry. If you are a child and you are currently living through abuse or neglect I want you to know that you deserve to be loved and to be safe. You might never have spoken about what’s happening to you but one day you will meet someone who you know in your gut can be trusted with your story and they will help you. I would encourage you to try to get help and don’t ever stop trying. You are worth fighting for and there may be times when you feel like you’re the only one fighting for you but you have a whole community of survivors (including me) walking in front, beside, and behind you cheering you on. Never give up! I first went to my family doctor to talk about my feelings and my self-harm when I was fourteen years old and he told me I was selfish and attention-seeking. He also told me that if I wanted to kill myself, I was ‘cutting the wrong way’. Sadly you may be confronted by these types of people as you attempt to reach out but I want you to remember that they are the problem, not you. Keep trying to find someone who is trauma-informed, emotionally awakened, compassionate and kind.
“No matter what anyone has told you. It is NEVER the child’s fault. You didn’t make this happen, you are not to blame and the shame you’re experiencing is not yours to carry.”

For any adults who are struggling with the impact of their traumatic childhood and haven’t yet taken the first step, I want you to know that it may seem impossible but you will heal. You might feel that ‘it wasn’t that bad’ but the things you’re struggling with in your daily life are telling you otherwise. Trust your body, it remembers what you may have forgotten. Often childhood abuse and neglect are so insidious and covert that we don’t even really know if it happened the way we remember. We are gaslit and invalidated so much that we question our own feelings, opinions and memories. Trust that if any of what I have written resonates with you then you were not loved the way you deserved and you do deserve to heal. I attempted suicide three times since my teen years and there have been numerous other moments where I believed there was no hope for a better future. I want you to know that it is possible. It is ongoing, hard work but you deserve to be liberated from this pain you are carrying inside you. I will be in some form of therapy my whole life, I consider it my life’s work and I hope that the legacy of my commitment to my healing is the positive impact it will have on my children and other people I form close relationships with. They talk about the ripple effect in therapy, the impact of the work you do on yourself reaches far wider than we’ll ever know. If I can do it, you can do it.

SWY: You mentioned that you are a primary school teacher – What do you think schools are doing right and wrong in terms of educating children about abuse and trauma?

LK: Here in Scotland, we are working hard at becoming more trauma-informed within the education system. Over the past few years, many of our professional development opportunities have been about trauma and adverse childhood experiences. We have been spoken to by young adults sharing their experiences and letting us know what went right for them in school and what went wrong. We are also far more informed in terms of the support in the wider community and other associations relating to supporting our vulnerable children. There is definitely still a lot more that could be done and it’s hard to convert certain people who believe that they were treated a certain way when they were kids and they turned out alright… certain people find it very difficult to question and change their beliefs. But the clear message we have been receiving from the top is that all behaviour is communication, and it is our job as the adults to support the child any way they need. This is a very different message to the one being pushed when I was a child. It’s slow progress but I think we’re going in the right direction.

SWY: Has teaching had any benefits to you in terms of being able to heal from your experiences?

LK: If I’m honest, through the hardest struggles in my healing journey, I’ve questioned whether becoming a teacher was the right thing to do or not. It is a highly stressful, demanding job and the day to day responsibilities feel relentless and never-ending. I recall my last therapist told me it made perfect sense that I went into teaching even though it was never on my ‘what I want to be when I grow up’ list as a child. She pointed out that it has given me the structure and boundaries and discipline I craved growing up. The child within who still needs safety and security feels comfortable in this stable job.

Teaching has also given me a platform for me to ignite change. Both parenting and teaching have been the sources of my most powerful triggers. They challenge me to directly face my trauma on a daily basis. I’ve learned that we can’t and in fact, shouldn’t avoid our triggers. They are our greatest teachers. They show us where the pain is and where the healing needs to be focused. Many therapy sessions have centered on working through triggers that occurred in the classroom or in my current family home. I see the world through the eyes of the children in front of me but I also see it through the eyes of my inner child. Often the injustices I faced growing up feel powerfully present when I am providing love, nurturing, and support to the children in my care. I am two parts in those moments; the wise adult self who deeply cares about and has the capacity to love these children and the wounded child inside who is grieving her lost childhood and all these moments of love and nurturing she didn’t freely receive. I am still learning how to comfort and love myself the way I always needed.

Parenting and teaching have illuminated the power adults have and what a great responsibility it is to use that power for good. I started teacher training 18 years ago and became a parent 8 years ago. Over that time I have approached my role as a teacher and parent with the same passionate thirst for knowledge and growth as I did my therapeutic journey. I have read and researched childhood development, attachment theories, respectful parenting, restorative discipline… the list is endless. I became a teacher because my experience at school was almost as lonely and unsettling as my experience at home… I wanted to make a difference, even just to one child. I’ve learned that through doing this, I’ve been able to work on myself. My inner child is given permission to awaken and takes great joy in designing fun and exciting child-led learning experiences. I have not forgotten what it feels like to be a child.

As soon as we clicked on we both asked each other how we were doing and actually looking back neither of us answered we just laughed. I immediately spotted she was in a new room and mentioned it. Linda said this was the room we would work in when I come to sessions in person and that she’d relocated from the other room to make ‘preparations’… I didn’t ask but I’m sure she meant she was preparing for being back in that room, though maybe not as she said she wouldn’t be seeing clients face to face until September. Perhaps she’s seeing more high needs clients face to face earlier than that… I don’t know, I should have just asked but the conversation kept flowing. I said I liked the painting that was behind her head and she said it was the thing I’d be looking at when I attend sessions in person. I said, ‘ahh well I’ll come to hate it then!’ and she laughed a lot. I said, ‘not because I’ll hate being in session with you but because of all the hard things I’ll work on while staring at that painting!’ she smiled and said, ‘yeah I got that. I knew what you meant.’ That happens quite a lot, me checking to make sure she understands and her letting me know she got it. With Anna there were quite a few occasions when she didn’t get what I meant or hadn’t experienced something or been somewhere that I was talking about and so I’d need to explain myself but Linda seems to ‘get it’ quite frequently which is nice.

Linda asked again how I was ‘today’ and I said I was nervous, as always. I said I was aware there were a number of things going on for me right now and I’m overthinking it all and very anxious that I won’t cover everything I need to talk about. I’m so familiar with this hyper-panicky state I get into – this swirling bubbling lava of obsessive thoughts telling me that I need to make this session exactly perfect. I said I was feeling really anxious about her going on holiday next week and she acknowledged that. Later we came back to this and she said it’s really important we talk about this more deeply on Saturday before her holiday. She said, ‘this ties in with going back to work though doesn’t it?’ and I said, ‘yes… and the fact that I don’t want to go back… I mean I’m 50/50 on not going back!’ she said, ‘yes, so you feel anxious about me going on holiday and you’re anxious about having to go back to work.’ I said, ‘I’m annoyed with you for taking next week as a holiday!’ she had a serious expression and said she knew that and then said, ‘timing’ and rolled her eyes with a smile. I said, ‘the thing is though, I feel pretty secure with you… with Anna and Paul the attachment was so painful, I guess I thought therapy always had to hurt because it hurt so much with them, the longing… the parent stuff. I guess maybe it was transference stuff that just doesn’t come up with you.’ Linda was nodding enthusiastically and said, ‘I think this is really important – in my experience, personal experience, therapy definitely doesn’t have to ‘always hurt’. I’ve used this term before… masochistic… it doesn’t need to hurt… some sessions you come out feeling like wow, so hard (she frowned with her head in her hands) and then other sessions you walk out kind of like…’ she mimicked a bright eyed, head held high kind of energy. I told her that I’ve definitely had those kinds of sessions before and that they weren’t all hugely intense but that just the nature of the attachment with Anna and Paul made it painful to be with them and then have to leave. Linda said, ‘and this ties in with what we’ve talked a lot about before, that this will be different… yes you are the same person but you have changed as we all do, and I am different and the way I work is different and so it could never be the same.’ There’s still a little flash of pain when I hear Linda say this, as if she’s ripping the child from the womb declaring, ‘you’re out here now! Life will never be the same again.’ It feels harsh and aggressive and premature. But then, it has been all of those things. And despite it being ten weeks since my work with Anna officially stopped and I moved on to Linda, it’s going to take some time to adjust to this.  

I told Linda again that I was frustrated because there are so many things going on for me just now but I need to find the most important thing to focus on. I said, ‘I imagine we should talk about Adam again because it’s still bothering me so much and things between us are hard but there are so many other things that my mind is going over. For example, yesterday it was 10 weeks since Anna stopped working with me and although I’ve been kind of feeling okay about her for a wee while, I think a young part of me expected her to have come back by now.’ Linda was listening and looked inquisitive like she was curious about what I was saying. I said, ‘It feels like there’s a deeper sense of acceptance of the situation now.’ I explained that it was as if a part of me had left a door open for Anna, expecting that when lockdown eased and everyone started to go back to work, she would come back to me. Slowly that door is closing. I said, ‘I don’t even know what it would be like to sit with her now. So much time has passed and I feel like a different person to the person I was back in February when we last sat together… almost as if I would be going backwards to go back to her.’ As I write that out it feels completely untrue but when I said it to Linda I felt absolutely certain that this was how I felt. I wonder if the part of me that wants to connect to Linda, can’t admit to her that I still want Anna back.

I explained to Linda, ‘you know how I said before that I feel like I wasted so much time with Anna…?’ she nodded, ‘well I think I realised what this is about… we had so many unfinished conversations… so many topics that I started but couldn’t continue, she would reassure me that we’d come back to them and I’m realising that unconsciously I believed that if we had all these unfinished topics, unresolved problems, that she would always know that I needed her and she’d never leave me. It’s like I unconsciously dragged things out because if I reached a point where we’d dealt with everything then we’d have to stop working together.’ Linda was slowly shaking her head and said she understood and she then talked about how therapy can’t be boxed off in a nice neat little package. She said, ‘therapy is really messy… any time you try to control it, a bit like when you try to control anything in life, it just does a big fuck you (she put both her middle fingers up when she said that) and does the complete opposite to what you wanted… therapy just has a mind of it’s own, you can never predict which direction it’s going to go in, I really believe it’s about trusting the process and allowing things to materialise spontaneously, trusting that whatever needs to be worked on will be worked on.’ I laughed and said, ‘well yeah… if I was to write a list of personality traits under my name, spontaneous would not be there… wouldn’t be on the sheet hahaha… and I know that control is an illusion but I work damn hard to control everything!’ we talked about my need to plan and reflect on what I will talk about in session, my desire to write all my notes out and how I worry that I will forget everything we’ve worked on and it will all have been for nothing. ‘What if I dissociate it all away..? At least if I have it written down I can revisit it, I have black and white evidence that it happened, I can read over it and that helps me process… I know there will come a point where I look back and think, ‘I can’t believe I used to write all my sessions down,’ but I’m not there yet.’ Linda said, ‘I guess it comes down to knowing that if we always do the same thing we’ll always get the same outcome, all we need to do is tweak something slightly to get a different outcome. Though I know those tiny tweaks are fucking hard to do.’ I laughed and we talked about how hard it is to make slight changes when our behaviours and thought patterns are so engrained.

When we were talking about therapy not needing to be painful all the time Linda said something about how not every session has to be filled with tears and I said, ‘well I never had those kinds of sessions prior to working with you anyway, I wasn’t able to cry.’ Linda said she remembers me saying that and I said, ‘I have also been reflecting on that because there was a very big barrier to me crying with Anna despite me really wanting to be able to cry with her. There were a few times when she made observations about me finding it hard to cry and there was this time where she said, ‘you’ve been working with me for a year and you still haven’t cried,’ and I think somewhere along the line in my head it became more about her achieving her work than about me feeling my feelings.’ Linda said, ‘wow that’s a powerful phrase… ‘achieving her work’?’ I said, ‘but I mean in a loving way not in a horrible way…’ Linda said she took it that way and I continued, ‘more like, therapists want their clients to heal and part of that for me was always going to be about me learning to feel my feelings and cry… I never deliberately resisted, I used to imagine her with me when I was crying at home… but in the session the wall would come up of the dissociative fog would descend. I felt like she would do a mini fist pump in her mind if I started crying in session and there was a part of me that was damned if I was going to let the session be about her achieving that.’ Linda found this amusing and said she understood. I said, ‘so with you, I didn’t have that history with you, you didn’t know I found it hard to cry… I didn’t have that narrative standing between us… and when I started with you I was so devastated that I couldn’t hold it back and so it just happened.’ Linda said, ‘yeah and I witnessed that, I witnessed you crying, you just letting it happen… you trusted the process and it just happened.’ We smiled at each other.

I said that I should probably talk about Adam and began to explain that I still felt a lot of anger and resentment about everything we’ve discussed the past few weeks. I said, ‘I’m frustrated that I am still having to work on this, I remember going over it with Paul 7 years ago! But Paul would always focus on the other persons feelings, he felt that it was really important for me to have compassion and understanding for the other person. So like I remember when I told Paul about this time when I was 8 and my dad kicked me (I immediately regretted saying this as soon as it was out and I started to drift away)… well anyway Paul said, ‘that sounds like a man who really struggles to manage his anger,’ and so I guess we worked on trying to understand why dad would do that, you know?’ Linda said, ‘that’s really horrendous Lucy, that must have been awful, your dad kicked you?’ I said, ‘well he was teaching me a lesson coz I hurt my brother and he wanted me to know how it felt and I uh….’ then things go blank and I remember Linda asking me a few times, ‘what’s going on for you just now Lucy?’ it was faint at first then more clear. I said I didn’t know and I was looking down at my hands. Eventually I told her I felt spacey and that I regretted bringing up that thing about my dad. She said, ‘about your dad kicking you? Why?’ in a really sympathetic tone and I said, ‘it’s that thing where I gloss over things very quickly when actually it’s a big deal but maybe if I talk about it really fast and don’t go deeply into it then I won’t ever have to feel the feelings but I can pretend I dealt with it.’ I was talking very fast and looking back I was quite hypervigilant. I was looking all around the room and felt very agitated. Linda said she completely understood and that we could always go back to it. She asked me what I had experienced as we were talking about it and I sort of waved my hands either side of my head and said, ‘it’s like wfhwfhwfhwfhwfh’ in my head and then I floated away.’ I motioned upwards like my head was fuzzy and full of white noise then I float out the top of my head. She nodded and asked how it was feeling now. I told her I felt a little more connected now.

I went back to talking about Paul and explained that Paul interpreted my relationship with Adam and specifically this issue by saying, ‘it’s like you’re in some sort of mother son dynamic with Adam where you catch him with is hand in the cookie jar and then scold him and nag him trying to get him to behave himself and so he does behave himself for a bit then he tries to sneak something else and you catch him and reprimand and so on.’ Linda said, ‘Did you find that helpful?’ and I laughed and said, ‘Nooo! Nope it didn’t help because once again it’s about me doing the work!’ Linda said, ‘the thing is we can never guess how other people are feeling, that’s mindreading… unless they’re in the room with us we really have no idea what’s going on for them you know? What I am interested in is what is going on for you. I want to know how you feel. I want to know how it felt for you in these moments.’ This happened very quickly but there was a fleeting awareness of feeling connected to her and feeling a bit scared of this… like being aware of her being caring, liking it and then wanting to turn away from it… then the fuzzy dissociation came on again… oh shit! Hello beginnings of painful and confusing attachment disordered games. I see you!

I told Linda that I remembered Anna helping me process the way I had dealt with Adam when he finally admitted the betrayal to me. I had worked so hard to not shame Adam because I didn’t want to force him back into hiding. I was so grateful to finally have the truth and I didn’t want him to regret telling me or decide to never be truthful with me again so I switched therapist-Lucy on. I was compassionate and understanding, I likened his behaviour to self-harm and explained to him that whatever he was trying to supress with his behaviour was not going to go away by ignoring it… just like me with self harm. ‘Anna had said, ‘because you are sensitive to shame and being shamed you assumed he would also feel ashamed and so you worked really hard to not intentionally shame him,’ and it made me think, ‘wow… so not everyone is so easily ashamed?’ You know, maybe he wasn’t ashamed… maybe I let him off the hook too easily… maybe it was my shame I was feeling and he actually just didn’t want to have the conversation because he didn’t want to have to stop the behaviour.’ I said, ‘it really still bothers me even though it hasn’t happened again in like 6 or 7 years. It’s not part of our current life but it still causes me so much trouble. I had a nightmare about it last night actually.’

I said, ‘I guess I’m realising how avoidant I am. I avoid conflict, avoid difficult conversations, avoid hurting people or being hurt, avoid intimacy, connection…’ Linda had a wide eyed nodding expression and I said, ‘but I always thought I was preoccupied but I guess I’m forgetting that it can be different with different people. And also I always assumed that it was this archaic thing that related back to childhood but actually being with Adam for nearly two decades has impacted me and maybe my attachment style is like this in response to the way he is with me.’ Linda said that it is really important to keep bringing us back to the present day and thinking about how things feel right now and I continued, ‘yeah so he is very needy and intense. I basically gave him a day off yesterday coz I took the kids to a friends house and when I came back I had stuff to do but he was like a yappy dog. He’d been lonely all day and wanted to talk to us all but I had 37 messages to catch up on my phone and I had to finalise the school uniform shop online and I just get so angry with him standing there wanting mindless chat… I don’t think he realises how much he hurt me, how angry I am still…’ I became aware that Linda was asking me what was happening with me and I said I felt not real. I suddenly started to feel really panicky or maybe I became aware of this underlying panic. I said I couldn’t come back and Linda said, ‘lets try to regulate your breathing then. Can you hear my breathing? Can you follow my breathing?’ and so we sat together, her doing intentional steady breaths and me with eyes darting round the room and with increasing consistency looking at her and looking away trying to follow her breaths. It felt very intimate and very caring and I felt very seen. Which was both soothing and terrifying. It did eventually work and I calmed down. There was some quiet and I found the thread of my thoughts and began talking and Linda interrupted me and said, ‘do you have a sense of what’s making you leave the session today?’ I said, ‘anger,’ and she nodded. She said, ‘what do you do with your anger, Lucy? When you feel angry what do you do?’ I thought for ages and ages and couldn’t think. Eventually I said, ‘I mean, other than stuff it right down? Ummm… well I guess I used to try to cut it out of me. And there have been times when the supressed anger has burst out of me as rage and I’ve shouted at the kids and then felt awful about it. Anna and I worked on that a lot and it hasn’t happened in a very long time.’ (In fact the last time it happened I worked on it with Linda in the first few weeks of lockdown). I said ‘what do people do with anger? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it…. I guess I start to dissociate as soon as I start to feel angry.’ I don’t remember her answering this but then we talked about the dissociation some more. Linda said, ‘I notice that you’ll be talking and then you’ll suddenly stop talking, that’s when I get a sense that somethings happened for you and you’ve left the room… is it okay that I ask you to focus on what you’re experiencing when that happens?’ I said that was fine, though I feel embarrassed by it, just because being so seen can feel so frightening.

I talked about how when Adam and I are having disagreements he will sort of bring up all these things he’s done that I should feel grateful for but he does it in a subtle way. We’ll be arguing and he’ll make me a cup of tea and ask if I want one or he’ll say he needs to go load the dishwasher. It’s annoying because I feel like saying, ‘one thing doesn’t negate the other, you can’t earn your right to be an arsehole by doing these nice things… that doesn’t make me feel loved!’ I explained that when we first got together it was actually how I felt loved, I really needed him to look after me and do the cooking and cleaning and all those other kinds of things and actually that was the only way that my mum showed any love but that isn’t enough anymore. I can do my own cooking and cleaning. Linda said, ‘what would make you feel loved, Lucy?’ I thought for a very long time, so long that I felt like I should making ‘ummm’ noises in case she thought we’d lost connection. I said, ‘I actually really don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know how I feel love. I think maybe that’s the problem… because anything I’m coming up with in my head right now like him listening to me or touching me or being held or whatever I’m just like ‘no thanks!’ I don’t want any of that from him. Being loved feels too vulnerable.’ Linda looked at me and nodded slowly.

She then gave me a ten minute warning and I said, ‘Jesus Christ!’ she laughed and I said, ‘it’s not long enough!’ she said, ‘it really isn’t.’ she thought for a bit and then said, ‘I wonder if you got a big piece of paper and wrote all your thoughts about Adam on it…’ she mimed big messy writing all over this imaginary sheet of paper. She said, ‘this is a very deep rooted issue for you, it really touches some very important and powerful issues and a couple of 50 minutes sessions a week aren’t enough to explore it all. I wonder if you were to write down your thoughts about Adam maybe they would be easier to organise and discuss in session?’ I nodded and said that I’d keep it in mind along with her suggestion to write a list of all the things I don’t like about him. I told her that whenever I sit down to do something like that, I dissociate. And I’ve found writing my session notes quite challenging and often find myself getting very spacey and it takes hours to write it down. The thing is I love Adam so much, there’s a block here on this one issue and this one tiny issue is taking up such a huge amount of space. I told Linda that Paul had asked me what percentage of me trusted Adam and I’d said 95%. He had thought this was a great thing and that most people say 60 or 70% but now I believe that what my answer told Paul that day was not how much I truly trusted him but how little I trusted my intuition. Only 5% of me could tune in to my gut feelings… those 5% were right.

Linda talked again about trusting the process and said that it’s really important to allow a slower pace when I find myself feeling disconnected. I said, ‘There is such a sense of urgency though. The thing with writing my notes and thinking about the therapy all through the week is that I want to work hard at this. You know the most annoying phrase for someone to say to me is, ‘it will be fine’… it’s never fine unless I make it fine! My dad and Adam will both say to me, ‘it’ll be fine,’ if I’m stressing about something which annoys me so much! It’s never fine unless I do everything in my power to make it fine!’ Linda smiled and said, ‘I wonder if we could rephrase it to, ‘it will be what it is.’ I said I much prefer that. She said, ‘yeah… it will be.’ I nodded. I said, ‘I don’t want to just float along in life clueless… to never think very hard about anything and never intentionally process the therapy… lose all the work I’ve done in the sessions because I haven’t typed up the notes or whatever and for it all to be for nothing you know?’ Linda smiled kindly and said, ‘I don’t experience you like that at all Lucy, just floating along carefree – all detached and passive.’ I laughed and said, ‘yeah that’s definitely not me!’

I felt very close to Linda today. There were a few times that she stopped me to check in with how I was feeling when she had noticed that I’d become disconnected/dissociated. A part of me absolutely loved this. I really appreciate how carefully she watches and listens and I do get a strong sense that she likes working with me and is keen to form a connection with me. There is obviously the other part of me that’s really confused by this. The part of me that doesn’t trust easily. The part that wonders why we have worked really hard to build a connection just before she goes on holiday. I talked this through a little with Linda and said to her that I cognitively know that she’s entitled to take breaks and I actually really want her to be well rested and taking care of herself but there is the young feeling of wanting constant connection. Like a child who goes off to explore a new room and every so often will come back to touch base with mumma. So yeah, there’s a slight panic that things may feel a little unstable when that consistent reassurance isn’t there. I also know on a very deep felt level that I can not only survive holidays but I can also survive longer breaks due to sickness (like what happened with Anna in March) and ultimately I can survive my main attachment figure dropping off the face of the planet. It is not easy or desirable on any level but it is survivable… and, like I explained to Linda, I want her to come back to me but if for whatever reason she doesn’t… I will just need to pick myself up, dust myself off and find myself another therapist.

Linda said it was nice to see me and asked how our break had been and I said it was good to be away, that being out in nature was lovely and we enjoyed a couple of days of sun which was a treat. I told her I’d missed having our mid week session.

I said, ‘the break was nice but you know… we took us with us!’ I laughed and Linda had a sort of ‘I know what you mean’ expression. I said, ‘So we had the same old stuff going on only we didn’t have 4G and tv distracting us. So sandwiched between the nice nature trails and hikes up mountains there were moments of tension and disagreements.’ I noticed that Linda seemed really present and ‘with me’ through this session. A lot of enthusiastic nodding and agreeing. Encouraging me to think more deeply about certain subjects and be more gentle with myself.

We revisited the conversation we’d had last Saturday about Adam’s signs of dyslexia. Linda brought it up by thanking me for the email I’d sent her last weekend which was nice. I didn’t have any of my usual worries of, ‘oh is she just bringing that up because she’s actually annoyed that I emailed her’… I just took what she said face value. I’m noticing my interpersonal anxieties are far less triggered by Linda than they were by Paul or Anna and although I reckon part of that is definitely down to the fact that she’s only 12 years older than me and is gay (so doesn’t trigger immediate and obvious transference like Anna and Paul did), it’s also to do with her character which is very direct, open and straight forward. Paul was sometimes sarcastic in humour or would say things in an indirect way which would feel confusing and would trigger my familiar patterns of attempted mind reading. Anna always tried so hyper-carefully to be gentle and kind with me that sometimes I wondered if she was tiptoeing around topics… there doesn’t seem to be the same need for second guessing with Linda. I am aware that there’s time yet… it could all still come. And also I’m aware there’s been rapid growth through the grief. I feel like a broken record saying this repeatedly, but experiencing my ‘worst case scenario’ and witnessing my journey through the aftermath of losing Anna has afforded me the opportunity to learn about my resilience… it’s a strength we all are capable of but don’t know it’s there until sadly we are forced to fall back into it.

So back to the session, I told Linda that I’d done a lot of research and reading after last week and could definitely see signs of dyslexia in Grace and Adam. I had always suspected it but had forgotten about the information processing challenges associated with the ‘disorder’ – merely focusing on the reading and writing side of things. Having it brought to my attention that both Gracie and Adam will struggle with taking in big lists of information or focusing on one person when there is noise around them has reminded me to have patience for their need for order, a slower communication style and to keep a check on my unrealistic expectations in my relationships with them.

We talked about this for quite a while and then I said, ‘to be honest, I’m really reluctant to admit this…’ Linda told me to take my time and I continued, ‘I’m going to sound like a complete bitch but this just feels like more emotional labour… once again I’m the one doing all the reading and researching and understanding. I did talk to Adam about the dyslexia and he found it really interesting and agreed with me. He could see himself and Grace in what I was telling him and he was keen for me to find a questionnaire online for them both and to look into support at work that I can use to help Grace. And that’s good, I’m glad he wasn’t defensive or anything but this whole things is actually making me feel really angry. I’m the one who has to make the changes and organise assessments and basically be the teacher in my family… why can’t he do this?’ Linda said, ‘oooh Lucy it sounds like there’s a lot of anger there.’ I said, ‘Yeah I think I am angry because I’m tired of all this, I’m exhausted that it’s always me who is responsible for this shit…’ Linda encouraged me to continue talking about my feelings and I said that I just wished Adam was motivated to sort these things out for himself. She said she would encourage us to not go for an online questionnaire, that it needs to be a formal thing completed by a psychologist but they are very expensive. She repeated, ‘very expensive!’ and rolled her eyes. I imagined it’s something she has had to go through with her partner.

I talked about how frustrating it is to imagine that I just have to accept Adam as he is now and that this whole processing disorder thing is just a convenient excuse for him to never make an effort ever again. I said, ‘I brought up something similar to Paul years ago and said to him, ‘I know I can’t expect him to change’ and Paul had said, ‘woah why cant you expect him to change?’ and I’d said that I knew it was co-dependent to expect people to change and he’d said, ‘hmmm well no, you can’t change him but you can expect someone to make an effort just like you make an effort…’ and Anna was less direct than that, when I talked to her about Adam she’d say things from the empathy angle… she’d be like, ‘it’s not easy to watch someone that you know would benefit from therapy not taking the first step,’ and then she’d just encourage me to stop hassling him about it… and last weekend you said that his journey and him changing or not was down to him and not really anything to do with me.’ Linda was nodding and concentrating on my words then thought for a second and said, ‘I want to clarify because I feel like you heard a certain thing from me regarding what I said about Adam and change… what I said definitely comes with a caveat… so yeah you can’t force people to change but you are married to him so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect him to make an effort in the relationship… for you guys to talk about these things and agree together to work on something as a team.’ I said that sounded better, made more sense and sat well with me.

I said, ‘I feel like there’s two separate problems here… there’s him being a human being who has flaws and has good days and bad days and is easily aggravated by the kids and then there’s me, a perfectionist, who gets very triggered by people who are anything less than perfect around my kids and has very high standards for everyone around me… so it’s a difficult mix.’ Linda smiled and said, ‘ah yes well we are all flawed… I have MANY flaws!’ and she laughed and I said, ‘well yeah me too obviously and that’s my point, it is totally unrealistic for me to be so unforgiving… because some days things are great, yesterday was a really good day…’ Linda smiled and said she was glad to hear that, I continued, ‘I think the main problem is that he is not great at communicating… he just really struggles to explain himself and I find myself having to coach him through our conversations… he can’t explain what’s going on for him… so anyway, he was in a good mood yesterday and we were all relaxed and I liked him and we were all happy, then today for whatever reason he’s more irritable and losing his temper with the kids… and I seem to have such little tolerance for him having bad days, so I go from loving him and enjoying his company to hating him and not even wanting to be in the same room as him!’

Linda said, ‘wow Lucy, that’s a strong word! You hate him, wow!’ I said, ‘well I mean I don’t verbalise it I never tell him I feel like that but uh…’ Linda said, ‘but that’s a very powerful thing to keep inside you isn’t it, that’s huge.’ I said, ‘well maybe it’s not hate…’ I noticed a shift in her and felt that maybe she could see that I was feeling defensive about her big reaction to my word choice. She said, ‘okay sorry, no… I just mean I can tell this is a very big deal for you, it’s a strong feeling and that’s a lot to contain. I’m imagining what that feels like for you inside.’ I said, ‘yeah maybe it’s like a resentment or something… I can barely look at him sometimes. I hate this part of me actually but I find it really difficult to let go of things… I don’t want to be like this, like the kind of woman who becomes really bitter and holds on to every single mistake a person has ever made. I really want to elevate myself above that, to work on being more compassionate and forgiving… but it’s like part of my brain just will not let go of these things you know? So even when we’ve gone over an argument or a mistake or a wrong doing, it’s still inside me. Even if years pass, if ever he makes another mistake or is less than happy, less than perfect, it’s as if that part of me feels like, ‘don’t you dare slip, you owe me! You did this thing that really hurt me and you will always owe me because of it.’ Linda said, ‘do you know what this is about Lucy? What this resentment is really about?’ I nodded and suddenly felt flooded. My face flushed and I told her I wished she couldn’t see me. Eventually, while looking at my fidgeting hands, I said, ‘The thing is, it’s a big deal. Something big happened between us years ago and I find it hard to let go of it.’ Linda said, ‘have you spoken to him about it?’ I said, ‘yes, it came up initially when I was working with Paul and I worked on it again with Anna. Each time it came up I did talk to him about it. It reached a head again about a year ago and we went over it again… he thinks it’s resolved now and he would be totally blindsided if I suddenly brought it up AGAIN.’

Linda paused me and asked me how I was feeling. I said I wasn’t sure. I took a while to answer and I looked out the window. I said I felt numb… but not numb. In reality I think I was a bit spacey and still am actually as I type this. She asked me to stay connected to her. She encouraged me to look at her and work at staying connected to her. She said, ‘it feels very important that you work at staying connected with me while you talk about this. Even if you need to pause or stop talking, keep the connection.’ It felt like a really powerful moment of closeness between us. For some reason I felt the need to see her. I looked at her and she was looking right at me too. I breathed and did what she told me to – I worked on staying connected to her. After a while I quietly said, ‘We have such a long history, 19 years… so much has happened… I wish we could hit the refresh button and meet each other now with fresh eyes.’ Linda was nodding a lot as if she really understood this which intrigued me because I’ve never even thought it before that very moment. I said, ‘I just feel like there’s so much that clouds the relationship.’ Linda asked what exactly clouds the relationship and I said, ‘Well lots of things. All of the different people we have been over the years. The people we were when we met… I was a suicidal teenager when we met… and because of things we’ve experienced over the years together. I find it so hard to trust him. I can’t let go of any past mistakes.’ i felt totally defeated and let out a long sigh then said, ‘I know that it’s my problem. If only I could let go of my perfectionism and stop expecting too much from people then we could be happy… coz he is happy most of the time, he’s fine with things just the way they are. You said yourself, he is consistent, he hasn’t changed – it’s me who’s changed.’ Linda said, ‘oh Lucy,’ with such compassion in her voice that it touches something deep inside my chest, ‘that just sounds so unkind, such unkind things to say about yourself. There’s no blame, you’re not a problem.’

Linda asked what would happen if I was to let go of the things I’m hanging on to and I said, ‘I’d be made a fool of. I’ll get hurt again.’ Linda said, ‘that could happen anyway, couldn’t it… in any relationship?’ I said, ‘Well yeah, it could, and it did… I experienced that with Anna… she didn’t deliberately hurt me but you know by leaving she did.’ I felt a blanket of fog descend over me and said, ‘Let me think.’ I whispered to myself, ‘What would happen if I let go of the hurts I’m holding on to? I guess what happens when I decide to let go of the anxiety and hurt I notice a detached feeling…’ I said louder, ‘I detach. I think to myself – I can go back to behaving normally in the relationship but I just will never openly relax and lean into the relationship again.’ Linda said, ‘yeah that makes sense, so maybe there’s all this grey here between the black and the white.’ She spaced her hands out either side of the screen. She said, ‘so we have complete lack of trust here and we have complete blind trust here and maybe somewhere on this spectrum is a place you could feel safe?’ I let that settle for a bit and she asked how it felt for me. I said it felt a bit scary but something that I’d need to think about.

Linda said, ‘Have you ever written a list?’ I looked quizzically at her and she explained, ‘Just sat down and written a list of all the things you want Adam to change?’ I laughed and said, ‘and not give it to him?’ she said, ‘noooo, just for yourself, to give you clarity.’ I said, ‘hmmm that feels like an overwhelming task.’ She asked why and I said, ‘I just feel like there would then be a big list in black and white of all the reasons why the relationship should end.’ Linda said, ‘That’s a very big thing to carry inside you, Lucy.’ I said, ‘I know,’ I felt like I might cry but it didn’t come. I continued, ‘I am so scared of repeating the mistakes my parents made. I would never have had kids if I’d known I would bring them into a family that would end up separating.’ Linda had a lot of sympathy in her eyes and she told me she understood. I said, ‘The thing is, I love him so much. There’s really no need to worry about us splitting up, we are both so committed to making this work and also most of the time it is NOT hard work. We get on so well, we have such a laugh together and love each other intensely. But it’s where my brain goes. Like an intrusive thought on repeat. And I just can’t get past it.’ I was quiet for a bit and then said, ‘Then there is this thing that happened years ago. He really hurt me, Linda. It was a massive betrayal. He wasn’t unfaithful but it felt like it and then he denied it and lied about it for years.’

Linda asked what was going on for me right now and I said I felt shame. She sounded surprised and asked if I knew what that was about and I said, ‘I should know how to do this! I should know how to have a relationship with him. I’ve been with him for nearly two decades and struggle so much with emotional intimacy! Still? I think this is why therapy suits me, it’s a really avoidant way to be connected to someone, isn’t it!? I get to be emotionally vulnerable with you, which is really quite safe… and I pay you for that so I don’t feel guilty about it… then I can end the session and have distance between us for a few days before opening the wound again. I just hate being so closed off and shit at all this.’ I think I was drifting again because Linda asked me to stay connected to her once more.

There were a few minutes of quiet and I said, ‘this is very important and I’m trying to figure out if I can work on this with you without telling you what happened.’ Linda said, ‘is it important that you tell me this thing today?’ I said, ‘no, I guess not today… it is important and worth covering at some point but not urgently today I guess… I just don’t know. I doubt this is the most shocking thing you’ve ever heard, I don’t think you’d think it was that big of a deal actually… I’m just really embarrassed.’ Linda said, ‘I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me… can you explain why you are ashamed when it’s not something you have done, can you answer that without telling me what it is?’ I tried to explain the role I played in what had happened and how I was afraid I could be unfairly judged. That my opinion on what happened could be interpreted as me being conservative and closed minded. Interestingly Linda didn’t do what Anna used to do which was constantly reassure me that she wasn’t judging me. I think that’s partly an experience thing. Linda trusts she can show me through her behaviour the lack of judgment whereas Anna felt the need to spell things out to me. Perhaps coming from an anxious place where she didn’t want anything to be misinterpreted by me.

Eventually I told Linda what had happened. The first time when we had only just started going out. Then again a few years later. And numerous times after that.

(I’m not going to write what happened here because it is deeply personal but I will say that it’s nothing illegal but something that would divide opinion. It’s something I feel very strongly about and something that goes against one of my most important values. I betrayed myself by allowing this thing to happen repeatedly and by silencing my gut instinct and ‘believing’ him as he lied time and again.)

I rattled through the explanation as Linda sat quietly listening and then she thanked me for telling her. She told me she was concerned with how Adam had protected his own ego by gaslighting me… basically denying the thing that I knew to be true, repeatedly for over a decade. I tried to justify his behaviour telling Linda that I understood that the shame Adam felt pushed him to probably even lie to himself about it and she said, ‘yes but there’s an element of him denying your experience.’ I said, ‘yeah I know… that’s exactly how I felt… thank you! It was crazy making. There have been some very dark moments. There have been times when I have tried so hard to move on… years where it’s been nowhere near the foreground but it’s always on the peripheral. It seems to be so over for him but still very important to me. The last time we spoke about it he told me we’d ‘put it to bed’ and that he’d apologised and that I shouldn’t need to bring it up again. I had been so furious with him and told him it wasn’t up to him to tell me whether we were over it or not, that he’d betrayed me… he lied to me, repeatedly for years! I have never lied to him. I have never betrayed him. I told him that I am the one who gets to tell him when we’re over it!’ Linda was so attentive, constantly checking in on any sensations in my body or any spaciness I was experiencing. I then said, ‘honesty is so important to me Linda, so so SO important! Honesty and openness… it’s the foundation of everything!’ Linda had a very serious expression on her face and she said, ‘I know, Lucy. I really do know that about you. I learned that about you very early on. Honesty and openness is very important to you… I hear you I really do see that in you!’ I paused and just looked at her. I wanted to know how she knew! When did she learn this? I’ll revisit that another time. It was so powerful.

As the session came to an end we reflected on how I had absorbed his shame. While he has disconnected from any of the feelings he once had and barely seems to remember what happened, I am left carrying this hurt and shame inside me. Just like I did with my mum.

Linda said, ‘it felt like there was a big risk for you in telling me this, thank you for taking that risk. Thank you for telling me this today.’ I said, ‘well actually thank you, because this has been the easiest of all three times I’ve talked about it so thanks for that… when I talked to Paul, he seemed to take it personally and sided with Adam… finding loads of excuses about why it was probably my fault. When I talked to Anna about it I sensed she was uncomfortable about the topic. Maybe the discomfort was mine because she was like a mum to me and it was totally cringey telling her but I thought she was a bit embarrassed to talk about it.’ Linda smiled and sort of rolled her eyes with a kind expression of fondness and said, ‘I’m so glad you felt it was easier to talk to me about this, thanks for telling me that Lucy that’s really good to hear.’ I said, ‘to be honest I feel like it would be hard to shock you. I’ve seen the kinds of things you deal with written on your website, this is fairly tame in contrast!’ Linda laughed and said, ‘well yeah, some people have tried!’ and we both laughed.

She then said, ‘really this all boils down to one person who has a lot of self awareness butting heads with another person who has very little self awareness… and how that can be balanced and negotiated.’ I nodded and she asked how I was feeling. I said I was annoyed that the session was over when I still had so much to talk about. She said I could bring it back as many times as I need to. And I know that I will.