quote:

I got up early and swam for over an hour in our local pool. It was wonderful.
Then met my dear HeartM8 for breakfast coffee and some shopping.
Came home to make a lunch for my dear friend Serai and her family and wished the time we spent together today was longer as I had to rush it to get to SweetP in time.
My whole family came in to the waiting area which surprised him somewhat, and they were joking about not being weird and not doing anything to appear odd and generally larking around and we were all laughing and in he walks. And he thinks he is taking me upstairs and I have to intervene and explain he is actually meeting my family. This did throw him somewhat. Poor man.

Then I go into the session and I am still mostly on party mode and the good time had with friends and suddenly - bham - I remember what I left with him last time and I suddenly want to really and truly run out the door. I tried to laugh it off as funny but I really did want to do a runner. That brought me down to earth with a bump.

So he talks about that, and unfortunately I don't actually HEAR any of it, I seemed to go off somewhere very still and very quiet and very far away. So god alone knows what he actually said. I think it was about me learning to find ways to be safe but actually I have no idea.

Then I try to explain that I don't want to work deeply with him if he is going to walk away from me suddenly and actually he already has said that he will only work with me for a year and that then he will end, and I am worried that I don't know how I will be in a year and that it will hurt terribly and to be honest I would rather not start than go through the pain that I went through with NewFinder, all over again with him. I was trying very hard to let him know that I already have attachment and dependency issues with him and that already I am finding one week a long time between sessions. I just found that so difficult to articulate.

He looked up in his notes and saw that he had originally agreed to only one hour every two weeks for a year maximum. He asked me how I felt with that. What I felt with that was despair and panic and hopelessness but I did not feel able to tell him that. I tore up a paper tissue into pieces and wondered what to say. I WANTED to brave it out and say ' Hey fine by me, no probs" but I just could not lie either. So I asked if I HAD to tell the truth about what I was thinking and feeling and he said yes. So I said that I found that I felt hopeless. That it is hopeless. That was about all I could say. It was really difficult and hard to admit that even. I felt so exposed. I don't really like him knowing how vulnerable and attached I do feel right now.

Somewhere in all that I did manage to talk about how I felt that what I needed was to be able to safely talk and say the things the hurt so much inside and process them with someone who could help me understand them and see them less hurtingly and that I felt that all the theories about therapy were fine to a point, and that he had supervision and his supervisor had supervision but that they don't have too small and tight boxes about things because what matters the most is the heart and what feels right from the heart. And he agreed. Fortunately.

He asked me what I thought in general about therapists ending with their clients cos the therapist thinks the client has finished and the client does not. I think I said that I felt it should be negotiated by both parties. He did say he had not finished with someone when they were still in crisis. Well that sounded hopeful but then I did wonder if I would stay in crisis longer just in case he ended me.

I hate the NHS and its underfunding and how it just makes it so hard for people to have the help they really need. He agreed. Technically I think he has more lee way than he is letting on. But he does not want to offer me more than he is prepared to fight for and he is not sure how much he could fight for, for me. I left it with him to think about and we are meeting New Year's Eve for another session. (it is a bit weird meeting on this festive days.)

He said again something about me having skipped stages in development and that they are showing up now and that I skillfully filled in the gaps in various ways and with various coping mechanisms but actually it would be a good idea to have those gaps filled in.

I said something about fearing the dependency and yet knowing that we all had to go through dependency at some stage in order to grow and try out independence.

He said that I was not sheltered, growing up, and yet in another way I was sheltered, like being naive, a bit.

I talked about how I saw an Oprah Winfrey interview of four child molesters and how I felt horribly astonished that they could talk about what they did and why, so graphically, so casually, and I cannot talk about what was done to me. THEY can talk and I can't. I felt pretty confused and frustrated by that, and a little bit angry too maybe.

He also said how he hoped I would keep disclosing. That it IS helpful in the long run. And he asked me that if things were in place for me to work with him, would I be happy to work with him? I nodded.

I told him that I can often be talking in this room and I am not relating to HIM at all, but to some transference - that I am responding to him as though he were someone else. He said he was aware that sometimes I am in a very different place in myself but that it would be more helpful if I could point it out when it is happening. I hope I can.

Having written all this up and tried to remember the important bits, the actual important bit is:
that he listens to me and he cares and he hears and he is sensitive and respectful of where I am and I feel that inside. I feel heard and met and human.
I walk away and feel that in me. It is a very good feeling. It is the glow that I felt before. It is a good feeling. It makes life very nice. It is a lightness and warmth in the mind and in the heart.

I do remember saying to him quite strongly that I am a person not a thing. I don't want to be treated like a thing. I am a person, I have feelings too. That must have been coming out of the times when I was abused.
When I left I gave him my small gifts and card and he seemed touched by that. I also gave him the extract - the short version of telling - that NewFinder read out on September 29th. So he will have read that too by the time I see him in a weeks time. All this revealing is very exposing and very hard but I keep hoping it is the way through.
I don't know about him enough. In a way I need an extremely skilled psychotherapist/psychiatrist and he is not that, and he is not specialised in trauma work or attachment work but he wants to help and thinks he can. I just worry that my littlest me has attached to him and will get hurt. That I should go for the very best this time instead of the person who happened to be there when it was falling apart with the counselor.